Commercial District West

November 8th, 20:45

---

"-and look at this one!" Suzuya excitedly exclaims, shoving his phone in front of Emma's face, "it took ages to get her to wear a proper kimono, but look how pretty she is!"

Reluctantly, and mostly for a lack of anything else to do, Emma looks at the picture. It's of an attractive girl with pinkish-blonde hair wearing a fancy looking kimono decorated with sakura petals.

She can see what Suzu means about her being pretty, because that girl definitely won the genetic lottery. But she's also two years younger than Emma, so she doesn't really feel all that attracted, and she's pretty sure that Suzu isn't actually interested like that either, he's just genuinely admiring her from an aesthetic standpoint.

Emma, Suzu and Mary are on their way back from hanging out at the mall right now, with Mary walking ahead of them both. Emma is sure that Mary is keeping ahead so she can avoid Suzu's bragging about his new friend.

They were hanging out with Mary's friends, who Emma can now say for certain are all assholes, but they all had to leave early thanks to their jobs. Not that they told Mary's friends that, obviously. They just used the excuse of controlling parents not wanting them staying up late.

Well, Suzu used that excuse. Emma's excuse was a very real doctor's check-up on account of how she threw herself of a building not long ago. She is still embarrassed that she did that, but at least seeing a doctor is better than Mary's excuse, which was that she was late for an orgy...

Over the next twenty minutes, Suzuya shows Emma fourteen more pictures of his new friend, Taylor, in different outfits. Apparently the two of them spent a whole day playing dress up, only with Taylor being the only one getting dressed up. Emma feels kinda bad for the girl, getting dragged into Suzu's orbit like that.

But all of that stops mattering as their walk back is abruptly interrupted.

Suzu and Emma end up walking into Mary, who suddenly stopped walking without warning.

Emma opens her mouth to ask why she stopped, but Mary beats her to it.

"Do you hear that?" She asks, her head tilting slightly to the side.

"Oooh no, I'm not falling for this one again," Suzuya says guardedly, glaring at Mary and tensing as if he's about to fight, making Mary's lip twitch in amusement.

Before anyone else can say anything however, they hear the crack of a gunshot, which in and of itself is a daily occurrence in Brockton. Except that the shot sounded as if it was fired only a couple of streets away from them.

The three of them exchange glances, having a silent conversation that ends with them all grinning and sharing a nod.

"Investigation!" Suzuya exclaims as they start making their way over to the noise.

A short jog later and Mary signals them to stop, peaking around the corner of an alley.

The other two move up to join her, and what they see ignites Emma's righteous fury, causing small bursts of flame to dance over her fingers.

Out in the street, under the light of a single streetlamp in the otherwise dark night, are two groups of men.

One group is clearly Empire, by the shaved heads and tattoos that four out of five of the men have. Only one of them is armed, holding a handgun that was clearly the cause of the sound they heard.

Further evidence of the fact being the state of the other group.

Two men and one woman, young, late teens early twenties at best and dressed in hoodies and loose pants, they don't seem like the type that would be involved in gang business.

Yet here they are, two of them kneeling on the sidewalk while the third, one of the men, lies in the street atop a steadily expanding pool of dark red liquid, a small hole in his face. 

The gun is loaded with hollow-point rounds, Emma grimly notes, glancing at the top of the corpses head. She can just see the edges of the large, gruesome hole that has been opened in the back of his head, spewing grey matter across the street. A result of hollow-point rounds.

They're too far away to hear what is being said, but Emma decides it doesn't matter, and moves forward to intervene, only to be pulled back into the alley my Mary's hand.

"Let go of me!" She whisper-shouts, "I have to help them!"

Mary rolls her eyes, and Emma suddenly realises that neither of them seem at all bothered by the innocent corpse before them, causing an uncomfortable feeling to well in her chest. She chooses to ignore it for now as Mary answers.

"Obviously we'll help, but we're in our civvy clothes right now, so at the very least, put on a mask before you go charging in."

At her words, Emma feels an awkward flush that only intensifies when she sees the dry look Mary gives her, all while Suzu reaches into a pocket behind her and dons his own mask.

"You don't carry around a mask, do you?" Mary asks, and Emma doesn't meet her eyes.

She hears a long suffering sigh and abruptly has a piece of cloth being pushed into her face.

"Just use mine, I can't exactly go out right now anyway, it takes at least a few minutes to get this shit off," Mary says, gesturing to her dyed brown hair, "and it's not like you two will need any help against a few gangbangers."

Gratefully, Emma puts on the blindfold, which doesn't actually blind her, and shares a nod with Suzu before exiting the alley.

Realistically, the masks won't do a great deal by themselves to hide their identities from anyone who cares to look, especially since they are wearing the same clothes they've been wearing all day. It wouldn't take a genius to put two and two together.

But thanks to the Unwritten Rules, it doesn't really matter. So long as you keep up the farce of hiding your identity, then the Rules are in effect, meaning no one can use your civilian identity against your cape identity.

No one wants the kind of escalation that would be born without these rules after all, even if they get fragrantly ignored by most of the big players. Not that Emma truly understands that yet.

As Emma makes her way to the murderers, she sees Suzu extend his clothes like a grappling hook to pull himself up to the roofs out of the corner of her eyes and smirks briefly before smothering the expression as she rounds on the men.

Fire cloaking around her, she walks up to the group without fear. 

They soon notice her, as expected with her lack of subtlety. They all grow visibly nervous at her showing, even the two victims, and Emma flares her fire just a little bit brighter.

"Drop your weapons and get down on the ground, I will only ask you this once."

She hears a few quiet swears and arguing as two of them throw a knife to the ground and another throws a pair of brass knuckles, four of them dropping to the ground compliantly.

The final skinhead however, does not.

"What are you doing Steve," one of them whisper-shouts up at him, "stop being a retard and get down. Kaiser will have your head if you shoot a fucking Ward."

However, Steve does not listen. Instead, he seems to be struggling to rub together the pair of braincells needed to form a thought, staring contemplatively at her, gun in hand.

Well, Emma thinks, preparing her fire, there are always fools.

The next moment, a lot of things happen at once.

The skinhead snaps his gun up and fires of a round at Emma's gut without hesitating, and in almost the same instant, Suzu comes flying down from a rooftop and crashes into the man, pinning him to the ground and sending the gun skidding across the street.

But when everyone looks away from Suzu and back to Emma, expecting to see her on the ground, they are instead greeted by an unexpected sight.

Emma stands there, unharmed, and with a single bullet resting betwixt her forefinger and thumb.

Looking down on the man who shot her, she walks over to him, noticing him to be slightly dazed from Suzu's attack and staring at her in incomprehension.

"Performance issues?" She asks, inspecting the bullet, "well, no matter. At least you tried your best, yeah?"

To say she's happy that her gambit paid off would be an understatement, but she is doing her very best to keep from showing how giddy she actually is.

Can you really blame her though? She stopped a freakin' bullet! How cool is that?

"Ne, Red-chan?" She turns to meet Suzu's eyes, raising a brow in question, "how'd you do that?"

She shoots him a grin as they both stand to their full height, Suzu not bothering to get off the thug's back.

"Simple," Emma starts, happy to brag about her accomplishment, "I noticed that while my power only burns people, it still exists enough to effect the world, kind of like wind really. And after Leech put a sword in me, I decided I needed some defence against projectiles, and figured out how to do this."

With her words, she raises a palm and creates a ball of red fire that she knows won't burn Suzu. But she doesn't just leave it at that, instead she starts compressing it down into a smaller ball until it abruptly shifts. 

Red fire becomes blue and the man below them starts sweating, feeling the weight of his guilt burning down on him.

"By compressing my fire, I can make it kind of like a jet engine. Try and poke through it." The only reason she says that is that she knows Suzu isn't really effected by her power.

With a look of wonder on his face, Suzuya pokes a finger into the blue ball of fire, and finds that he can't push through it. No matter how he tries, it's like trying to plug the hole of a high pressure water hose.

"Woah~."

Emma preens at his awe. "Yeah, I basically gave myself a barrier power. Cool right?"

Suzu rapidly nods his head in agreement, but their conversation is soon cut short by Mary's voice coming from their side.

"You two forgetting something?" She asks, and the two give her a quizzical look, noticing that she has acquired a beanie to hide her hair and is using a simple strip of cloth as a 'mask'.

Without a word, Mary points behind them, and they turn to see the two victims kneeling over the corpse of their friend, their positioning making it so that the three Heroes cannot see the corpse's head or upper-torso.

Emma winces, berating herself for forgetting something so important. However, her eyes soon widen as the supposed corpse's legs abruptly spasm.

She knows about cadaveric spasms, of course. When the recently deceased's muscles become rigid and seem to move, but she feels as if this is not the same.

And she is proven right, as the body spasms again and the two young adults abruptly fall backwards, startled, and crawl a short distance away, allowing them to see the body in full.

Most importantly, it allows them to see the thin, disposable needle sticking out of the bodies chest, right above it's heart.

A sudden gasp and the body lurches forward, landing on it's arms and legs as it heaves dry air. With this angle, they can all clearly see the blown out back of the man's head, allowing them a clear view of his brain matter bubbling and writhing.

Emma's head snaps to the side as she hears movement and sees the four Empire mooks on their feet and legging it. Once again, the moment she tries to move, she is stopped by Mary's hand.

"Ignore them, they aren't important right now. Suzuya, don't let those two follow the skinhead's lead." 

Scowling, Emma accepts Mary's words, and Suzu bounds up to the two young adults, his clothes wrapping around their wrists like cuffs as he drags them out of the street.

As he was doing that, the two girls watch as the former corpse slowly and unsteadily climbs to his feet, swaying and nearly loosing his footing multiple times.

"I never really played zombie games," Mary offhandedly comments as she starts walking up to the newly risen man. "Ohayo~!" She exclaims, waving at his hunched form, "you in there, Bud?"

Her answer is in the form of a thick, ribbon like tentacle rapidly growing out of the wound in the back of the man's head and swinging around to impact with her side. Mary is sent crashing into a wall, cracking it slightly.

"What the fuck." Emma hears the whispered words coming from below her, and swiftly delivers a stomp to his head, not particularly caring if she hit him hard enough that he gets brain damage.

Yet that distraction was long enough for the thick ribbon to reach her side, and before she can properly react, it has already wrapped around her waist, squeezing her hard enough that it hurts, before flinging her to the side.

She impacts a wall opposite Mary on her side, and she hears her arm break before she feels it.

Crying out, Emma forces herself to ignore the pain and look dazedly at her foe. He looks mostly the same as he likely would have in life, except for the glowing red eyes that fill her with a feeling of weakness, and the fact that at the back of his head, his hair seems to extend into a thirty foot long ribbon of blood.

The living corpse raises it's face to the sky and lets out an ear piercing screech that has Emma seeing double. A familiar, best left forgotten feeling of helplessness willing up inside of her.

Only for the spell to be broken with a shout.

"Redemption!" Mary's warning reaches her ears, allowing her to push passed her daze, just in time to see Mary appear by the should-be corpse's side.

She lands a solid kick on his rib that has him ragdolling in Emma's direction, though he does manage a counter with the ribbon, flinging Mary back where she came.

But Mary's actions were not a waste, as Emma brings her power to life, sending her flames surging forward over the man, who immediately calls out in pain, the sizzling of flesh and scent of burnt pork filling the area right away.

She holds up her fire for a bit longer, only when she sees the body stop regenerating from the damage being done, does she let up.

Dispersing her flame, Emma is left standing there, panting and staring blankly at the charred body before her as it flops to the ground, face first.

"Phew," Mary sighs after a moment, standing again a few steps behind Emma, "I sure am glad the living flamethrower is on our side."

Emma doesn't answer. Instead she watches numbly as the blackened body twitches, slowly moving, attempting to crawl in the direction of its living friends. 

None of them say a word, they simply watch in sombre silence as he raises his blackened head in their direction, reaching out with one arm.

"I-I...'m s-so...rry...."

His arm falls to the asphalt, and finally, he stops moving.

The woman, still tied up by Suzu, lets out a choked sob, the man staring at the floor in silence, and Emma can't help but feel like she failed.

In the mournful silence that follows, Emma hears soft footsteps behind her, but she doesn't turn her head away from the corpse, even as Mary reaches an arm around her to give her a shoulder hug, resting her head on Emma's.

"Don't beat yourself up. He was already dead when we got here. 'Sides, he's clearly some kind of drug dealer, so no big loss, right?"

Emma knows that she's trying to be comforting, but she only feels worse after hearing her words, something Mary seems to realise.

"Look, think about it like this. The fact that you feel shitty about this, just proves that you're a Hero, through and through. 'Cuz you're willing to kill, to sacrifice your peace of mind, all to save other people."

Emma's eyes blow wide at Mary's words, her mind going back to Her, and the words She said, all that time ago. Unwittingly, Her voice overlaps with Mary's own as she continues to speak the same sentiment.

"And what is a Hero, if not someone willing to sacrifice for the sake of others? It's better to dirty your own hands, than allow the hands of innocents to be stained."

Her words feel like poison on Emma's ears. Like condemnation.

"You're a Hero, Emma."

The title feels like an accusation.

It's all Emma can do to keep from hyperventilating as Mary pats her on the back and walks past her, moving over to check the body, unknowing of Emma's thoughts.

But as Mary walks away, she can't help the way an image of That Woman overlaps with her body. The illusory sight is so painful that she squeezes her eyes shut, hoping to dispel the phantom image from her mind.

It's not her, she thinks to herself, She's not here.

She's gone. She repeats the words like a mantra. And she keeps repeating it until her breathing stabilises.

She's gone.

---

Hannah was having a good night.

She had a good day at work, only having to stop two muggings and a case of racially aggravated assault, which, in the city of Brockton Bay, is a pretty quiet evening, all things considered.

It's at the point that if she had a whole day without any incidents, she'd start feeling antsy about when the other shoe was going to drop.

But it wasn't just her work that had her in a good mood, no. What really had her in a good mood was that Mary had made friends, despite how reluctant she was to attending university in the first place.

But not only that, she was actually hanging out with them, and she invited Suzuya and Emma to join too. So Hannah was happy, because her troubled Wards seemed to be getting the chance to just be teenagers. Hang out, do dumb stuff and maybe get in a little trouble, but most importantly, have fun.

She fully expected to get some call about disorderly conduct that she'd have had to sort out. Not that she would have let Mary get away with it, but it's a good excuse to get the cynical girl to do some community service.

So, with all that considered, Hannah was having a good night.

Which is of course when she gets a call from Mary.

Hannah may never have been a parent, but she knew the instant she heard Mary's tone that the girl had gotten into something.

Then the girl goes into detail about how, on their day off, her Emma and Suzuya still somehow ended up in a fight with someone dosing on TGT. Even worse, Mary let her know that she's probably broken a few ribs, and that Emma's 'whole side is just sorta fucked up'.

Which is why she now finds herself driving her Humvee onto the out of the way street Mary said she was on, with support on its way, namely an ambulance. It's a good thing she doesn't need to sleep.

What she sees as she pulls the corner does not fill her with confidence.

The first thing she takes note of is the corpse lying charred on the road, with a mutated head, no doubt a result of TGT, if a so far undocumented one. 

The next thing that draws her eyes is Emma, thanks to the fact that she is playing with her fire, either out of boredom or to distract herself from the pain of her clearly broken arm. Or maybe both.

Besides Emma is a pair of young adults, a boy and a girl, sitting morosely. It doesn't take a genius to figure that they were probably friends with the corpse. Hannah has seen scenes like this enough to be able to tell from a glance.

But what really has her brows twitching, is the sight of what her most troublesome pair of Wards are doing.

They are both sitting on a curb, with a skinhead hogtied on his knees in the street in front of them, with his mouth forced wide open. And the Wards? They are taking turns throwing change into the poor Nazi's mouth as if he's a wishing well.

She'd be more upset by this if he wasn't so clearly a Nazi.

Hannah brings her car to a stop right by the two misbehaving teenagers and kills the engine before hopping out.

Neither of them get up to greet her.

"Gypsy, let that man spit those coins out and tie him up in a less uncomfortable position, I highly doubt he's going to try and run." As Suzuya fires off a poor salute and goes to do as told, Hannah turns to Mary. "Now, I assume you've already interrogated these three, so what have you learned?"

Technically Mary shouldn't be doing interrogations, but it's not a big deal and Hannah knows Mary would do it regardless, to satisfy her curiosity if nothing else.

"Sure did Boss-Lady. I'll summarise it real nice for ya 'cuz I think we shouldn't waste time with this." That doesn't bode well, Mary usually enjoys wasting her time.

"Firstly, Deaf, Dumb and Blind over there," she thumbs the mostly alive trio over her shoulder, "are drug dealers, small time, pedalling for Love Triangle. This mook," she gestures to the more reasonably tied up Nazi, "and four friends were givin' them the ol' rough and tumble. As you know, Love Triangle is made up of Rock, Paper and Scissors, but apparently they've had something of a falling out and split up."

Hannah isn't too surprised by that information. They had already gotten some chatter about it, but nothing concrete.

"'Parrently the group's split, each of them taking up residence in different places. These clowns work for Scissors and the Nazis knew she was around here and wanted to get her exact location from them. Which is when we showed up, and after seeing what happened to their pal, they've decided to share that location with us. Which is why I think we should hurry. Strike before she scurries away, y'know?"

Hannah hates to admit it, but she makes a good point. Unlike the kids around her, Hannah very much doesn't like rushing into confrontations blindly and at the drop of a hat.

"Alright, but only if the EMT says you're healthy, and after some more backup arrives." As she speaks, the first of the emergency responders start to arrive, luckily being an ambulance that Hannah directs Mary towards.

"I'm fine."

Mary's words are only met with a glare boring a hole into her head, causing her to look away.

"Tch." Hannah smiles as Mary gets up and trudges her way over to the EMT, however that smile falls when she makes her way over to the still seated Emma.

"Redemption," Hannah softly greets, "how are you holding up?"

Emma shrugs her good shoulder. "Better than jumping off a building, not as bad as getting stabbed."

Hannah sighs at the reminder of her previous injuries. "At this point, we might as well get you a personal room in the hospital, with how often you seem to be visiting it."

Emma scowls, and Hannah considers that maybe that wasn't the best thing to say.

"I got distracted," Emma says after a moment, her voice reflective, "it won't happen again."

"I'm sure it won't. But for now, just sit tight, the EMTs will be here in a moment with a gurney, I imagine. Oh," Hannah exclaims, as if just remembering something, "and here, take this."

Emma blinks at Hannah's extended hand, which is now holding one of her Redemption masks. Hannah thought to bring it, since Mary mentioned how Emma was wearing her blindfold.

"Thanks," Emma mumbles, quickly switching the two headpieces, with Hannah's help of course.

"Always happy to help," Hannah answers, smiling with her eyes, even as her mind is focusing on the image of the fallen, charred body in the street, her perfect memory searing the image into her brain.

His mutation is different from the four that have been seen so far, and a new variant could have terrible connotations. However, Hannah is rather confident that the abnormal mutation was simply a result of the state the body was in before taking TGT.

Though, that brings back another unfortunate thought.

That man was shot through the head, yet TGT allowed him to fight her Wards.

In other words, TGT can bring the dead back to life.

The only question is how long they need to be dead before it stops being an option.

Whatever the case may be, hopefully they'll get some more answers once they bring Scissors into custody.

---

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Nearly posted this chap with words missing and now I'm thinking I might have accidentally lost some of it? idk.

Got my wifi back today, which is cool. 

Also, I've mentioned that I'm treating this arc like a video game, and I do mean that. 

Like, standard gangsters are mob enemies, gangsters with TGT are like Elites and 2 stage mini-bosses. Capes like Leech are also like mini-bosses.

So they meet the first enemy in the tutorial, which was the first TGT guy, then there's the interaction with Circus that unlocks more of the TGT stoyline that leads to some mob slaying quests that give a hint to the location of the first boss once they finish it, which is now. And now they face the first main story boss, Scissors. But things might not turn out exactly as you're expecting. Though it will definitely be videogame plot worthy. :)

Read 16k words in advance on pat.reon, link in description and profile. Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses