179 Slum Rounds & Best Girl?
Markend had changed a lot since I was last here. The slums for example had grown wider and aner, spreading like a living infection along the riverbank. Buildings I rembered as rundown were now nothing but hollow fras with exposed tal, and every corner stank of smoke, rot, or desperation. We made only one round on the bike and already ran into two robberies and a woman who was almost raped behind a half-collapsed pharmacy. We called in the robberies. As for the attempted rape, Alia didn’t wait for police. She handled it herself.
Alia, still wearing her helt, hamred her fists into the last conscious thug. “Stay down,” she snarled as she raised her arm again. Most of the others already lay unconscious on the pavent, but the last one twitched with stubborn durability. The woman we saved hugged herself in the corner, clothes torn and face streaked with dirt. Alia’s gloves were slick with blood, and every punch she threw felt heavy enough to crater stone. Her power had definitely grown; she was drawing raw strength from sothing more animal than human now.
By my estimate, Alia had hit rating ten or close to it. That was the point where a cape could derive side abilities from their main power. If my power hadn’t mutated over the years, I should have gained flight or superspeed as offshoots. Instead, my intangibility sharpened alongside Empathy, mutating in unexpected ways. Alia had a different case entirely. Dr. Ti’s mutate filled her with sothing primal, and even from here, I could sense the instinct gnawing at her.
I stepped away from my bike and grabbed her arm. “Hey. That’s enough.”
She whipped her helt toward , voice low and full of venom. “He was going to—”
“And he’s down,” I cut in. “Stop. Now.”
The killing intent pouring off her was so sharp it almost buzzed. I pushed calm into her mind with my Empathy until the aggressive surge inside her softened. Her posture loosened, and she finally stepped back. “I’m fine,” she muttered, though the words weren’t convincing.
“That’s not ‘fine.’ Dr. Ti’s mutate is doing sothing to you,” I warned. “If you keep going like that, you’ll kill soone in broad daylight with a witness staring at your face.”
Alia glared at the thug one more ti and drove a vicious kick into his crotch. Sothing popped, and even through the armor of my jacket, I flinched. “He deserved that,” she said, breathing hard.
“Maybe. But save it for when we’re wearing masks.” I bent down, grabbed a jacket from one of the unconscious thugs, and tossed it to the trembling woman in the corner. “Here. Put that on.”
The woman looked at with wide, wet eyes. “Th-thank you…”
“It’s okay,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Go. Now.” I nudged her panic with a wave of calm until her trembling slowed. “You’re safe.”
She clutched the jacket around herself and ran off down the street, barely a shadow against the cracked buildings.
Alia watched her go and muttered, “People like that don’t get better. I should’ve—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off gently. “Calm down, that’s not you. It’s your power.”
Her hands finally stopped shaking as she looked away, the adrenaline fading.
I stepped beside her and muttered, “If you’re going to kill soone, you should at least do it cleanly. If you keep beating on him like that, you’ll crack his skull and paint the pavent with brain matter. It’s ssy, and too much trouble to clean.”
She didn’t even flinch. “No one would miss them anyway. The world’s better without lowlives like this.”
Before I could respond, the durability-class thug who should’ve been unconscious staggered upright. His lip was split, and he spat blood before smirking. “I can do this all day.”
I glanced at Alia. “You really think that?”
Before she could answer, the thug lunged at and clamped a rough hand around my throat. “Don’t move,” he growled, trying to sound tough despite the panic pulsing through his mind. His thoughts scread louder than his voice: ‘Who the hell is this woman? She’d fit right in our gang. Could use soone like her…’
Alia replied without hesitation, her voice cold. “The world is better without capes who throw their weight around just because they can.”
The thug didn’t know it, but the mont his hand touched , he lost. I let my body blur, pulled him along with my arm, and phased him straight into the ground, six feet down. His scream cut off with a muffled thump as the pavent swallowed him whole. Panic spiked like lightning in his chest as he scrambled uselessly beneath the surface, only to die the mont my intangibility wore off as his every atom got fused on the ground.
I walked back to Alia. “You good now?”
Her shoulders loosened. Through my Empathy, I felt her stress drain away like water slipping between fingers. She pulled off her helt slightly to breathe better and muttered, “Sorry. I didn’t an what I said.”
She probably thought her words hit a nerve. After all, she wasn’t wrong. I was a lowlife once, maybe still was in many ways.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “Don’t overthink it. Let’s get lunch after this.”
I nudged a different unconscious thug with my boot, letting my intangibility swallow him gently. He sank into the soil beneath the broken street, vanishing as if the ground itself had inhaled him. One by one, I phased the entire pile of criminals into neat, silent graves. A couple years ago, burying just one adult like this would’ve drained for hours. Now it felt like sweeping dust under a rug.
Alia watched work before asking, “Didn’t you say you already ate?”
“I did,” I admitted. “A couple hotdogs. But you haven’t eaten yet, so we might as well grab lunch.”
She folded her arms, suspicious. “You’re not using as an excuse to eat again, are you?”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug.
She huffed, but the tone had softened. I secured my helt and swung a leg over the bike. “We’ll do another round first. Then we eat.”
Alia climbed behind and wrapped her arms around my waist, the tension gone from her grip. The engine roared, and we rode back into the slums for one more sweep before lunch.
We circled the slums twice more before the sll of frying oil pulled us toward a cramped burger joint wedged between a pawnshop and a boarded-up pharmacy. We parked the bike, carried our helts inside, and lined up at the counter. I ordered a double quarter pounder. Alia ordered three of them without blinking. Ever since her power evolved, her appetite had grown into sothing monstrous.
A CCTV cara hung above the soda machine. I pressed the small button on the inside of my collar, letting my face in the CCTV shift into a completely different one. My empathic camouflage fooled people, but not machines, so the device handled that gap.
We sat in a corner booth that slled faintly of bleach and lted cheese. Alia unwrapped her first burger and said, “I used to eat in places like this with my friends… before everything got ssy.”
“I didn’t really have friends in high school,” I said. “Maybe Chad. We hit it off during freshman year. Played ball a couple of tis with him and his buddies. Though he probably doesn’t rember any of that now.” I paused as the mory surfaced of racing across a school gym that slled like sweat and old varnish. “That was around the ti Mom was still seeing Crow. I’d rather not talk about that bastard. I’m happy enough Crow’s dead.”
Alia humd thoughtfully as she kept eating. “What was high school like for you? Any hobbies?”
“Parkour, I guess,” I answered. “Or watching self-help tutorials.”
She stopped mid-bite and stared at like I’d spoken in a foreign language. “Self-help? Like what?”
“I didn’t have a dad, really,” I said, shrugging. “So I watched videos about tying shoelaces, tying ties, how to groom properly. Stuff like that. I also watched a lot of lockpicking videos, though I didn’t get to use it much. And tutorials on how to beat soone up. Plus, power research in closed doors as much as I could.”
Alia lowered her burger slowly, the look on her face sowhere between concern and confusion. “Nick… what kind of childhood did you have?”
I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you have any friends in high school?”
“Probably Mom,” I said. “We played Snakes and Ladders during weekends. Board gas, sotis. That stopped at so point too.”
A quiet flood of emotions washed through from Alia filled with pity, disbelief, worry, and sothing warr underneath that she tried to hide. She kept eating, but her eyes softened in a way that made uncomfortable.
“I worked part-ti at a burger place like this,” I added, not sure why. “Made decent money for a kid.”
She stared at again, chewing slowly, the exact expression a disappointed mother would give a child who admitted to eating glue. “Nick… you really got it bad.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
She swallowed, then leaned forward. “Who was your first crush?”
I blinked. “Now that I think about it, I didn’t really have one.”
“What? Not even once?”
“My Enhancer rating gave a level of self-mastery most people don’t have. Even if the most beautiful girl in the world did a lap dance in front of , if I thought I shouldn’t get erect, then I wouldn’t.”
Her eyes widened. “Have you ever masturbated?”
She asked it while casually taking another bite of her burger, like she was asking about the weather.
“No,” I said honestly. “I might lose protein. I was already thin enough, back then.”
Alia choked on her burger so violently she nearly slamd her helt off the table. She covered her mouth, coughed, then started laughing so hard she gagged again.
“W–what—Nick—” she wheezed, pounding the table. “Protein? You—oh my god—”
I just stared at her while she half-laughed, half-died over her al.
We finished eating, tossed our wrappers into the bin, and headed back to the bike. The sunlight stung my eyes after the dim interior of the burger joint. I slid my helt on, letting the visor snap shut with a click. Alia adjusted hers and watched quietly before saying, “Nick… why don’t we switch assignnts?”
I paused mid-step. “Why?”
“You know, maybe I should handle the underground stuff,” she said, tone careful but edged with worry. “You’re still officially SRC. We’ve been missing for four months. We haven’t even reported back. Your ‘deal’ is technically still active. If you go back to villainy, you’ll ruin your chances.”
“I’m more familiar with the villain role,” I replied, swinging a leg over the bike. “So of course I’m the one doing it.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re still a privileged cape under SRC rehabilitation. They let you work off your sentence. If you blow that now—”
I cut her off. “Alia, my power is too recognizable. Even if I wore a new mask, cape na, whatever, they’d figure out in a week. I will doo more questionable stuff in the future, and that ans using my power for what it was good for, and that’s violence. It’s going to happen, regardless of how much we prolong it from happening. It’s inevitable.”
It wasn’t arrogance. It was fact.
Not many intangibility-class capes used their power the way I did. People rembered “the ghost that buried you alive.” Even the previous generation of murderhobo intangibles would flinch at my body count, especially considering the ones who died because of my techniques.
So why bother changing my costu? Its reputation had weight. It was a weapon in itself.
“It’s non-negotiable,” I said. “If you want to make it up to , you’d better beco number one. Not just in the Council, but everywhere.”
“Number one hero?” Alia climbed onto the palisade behind . “That’s a tall order.”
“Good.”
She strapped her helt and nudged with her knee. “Should we… visit your mom’s grave? We’re already close. You haven’t gone since we ca back, didn’t you?”
“George already scolded about going places I shouldn’t,” I muttered. “Better not.”
I was about to pull away when a blur of movent jumped in front of the bike. A woman in office clothes, pencil skirt, dark hair disheveled, slapped her palms onto my handlebars.
“HEY!” she shouted. “I KNOW YOU!”
Her voice cracked like she’d been chasing soone for blocks. She tapped on my helt repeatedly, furious. “I KNOW IT’S YOU! EVEN WITH THAT HELT! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO LEFT , THE ONE FROM MY DREAMS, I FINALLY FOUND YOU!”
I exhaled sharply. “Oh. Great.”
Nicole.
Just what I needed, coincidence trying to kill harder than any cape.
She kept shouting, “EXPLAIN! WHY DID YOU LEAVE? WHY DID YOU DISAPPEAR LIKE THAT?”
Behind , Alia leaned forward and asked flatly, “Who’s the bitch?”
Nicole’s head snapped toward her. “Who the hell does this cunt think she’s calling a bitch?!”
I revved the engine once, loud and sharp. Nicole shrieked, lost her balance, and stumbled backward into the drainage ditch beside the road. She hit the mud with a wet slap and glared daggers at us as we pulled away. In the mirror, her rage looked almost comical.
Alia tapped my shoulder. “Okay seriously. Who was that?”
“Just so random crazy woman,” I said. “Forget about her.”
I drove us into the ss of Markend’s streets, pretending that wasn’t the most awkward encounter I’d had all month.
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