Chapter 34 (Patreon)

One minute into the race and I’d already cut what was supposed to be, roughly, a six or seven mile excursion completely in half. The city beneath me, a mish-mash of dilapidated warehouse and large, blocky buildings, moved by in a hazy blur of motion due to my Sole Protector-enhanced speed, but the cinnamony-spice ting of Amy’s perfume kept me grounded and focused on the task at hand - keeping Glory Girl behind me. 

I could see the Trainyard in the distance - a stretch of overgrown grass and abandoned shipping containers and box cars; the very same place I’d met Trainwreck. Beyond it, to the East, the towering, almost foreboding sight of dozens of beached, rusted-up ships littered the Boat Graveyard, compounding the fact that was already known to most inhabitants of the Bay.

This city was a fucking garbage heap, ready to set itself on fire.

Distantly, as seconds ticked by and I ate up even more distance, I entertained the thought of doing more to help the Bay. I wasn’t necessarily beholden to the city or anything. I had plans to clean it up, but that was mainly because I hated rapists and nazis and they’d already attacked me and my girlfriend. I wasn’t really a hero, just… a powerful mage with heroic tendencies.

‘Even then,’ I thought, glancing back down towards the blurring buildings, tightening my hold on the awed Amy Dallon in my arms. ‘... Maybe I’ll do more to help. ‘Specially if I’m building a base of operations here.’ 

How hard would it be to remove hundreds of tons of corroded scrap metal from a bea-

Chills suddenly shot down my spine.

“N-NOOOO, STOP! PLEASEEE!”

It was heart-wrenching, the sheer amount of fear and vitriol carried in the woman’s hoarse voice, and the suddenness of it all took me right out of the last leg of our little race. I came to a sudden and effective halt, dropping from two hundred miles per hour to zero in the briefest of seconds, and twisted into a smooth somersault to fly back down into the depths of the Docks. We’d been flying over a stretch of what looked like decaying residential buildings, and the screams were coming from one such building lit up by a dim, flickering red LED sign.

The entire block had a very Red Light district vibe. My stomach fell, and it wasn’t due to the sudden lurch of gravity.

“Wha- what was that?” Amy was pale in my arms, gripping my coat tightly as she did her best to pierce the darkness of the night with her tired gaze.

“Trouble,” I whispered through the rushing wind, my hands beginning to emit a warmth that bordered on hot. We were no longer going two hundred, but the roof of the building - the whorehouse, my brain helpfully added - was getting closer at a threateningly fast pace.

Amy was starting to panic, and I began murmuring beneath my breath.

“I know that, but- hold on, are we going through the fucking rooftop?!”

“-qasoraq§i Öriak§…”

“Avalon, what are you even saying-”

“-sorag§i avel!” I finished the chant, and the heat - the fire building in my veins pulsed through my hands, finding purchase in Amy’s body, her skin, the wavering and flickering spirit within her very soul. I felt it when it happened, the way that her heart suddenly skipped a beat before thumping with a steady, strong rhythm. Her panicked movement slowly ceased, and though she still breathed harshly, she seemed calmer.

Braver.

We came to an abrupt half a mere twelve inches above the rooftop, the healer’s robed form still held easily in my arms. Her head tilted back to look at me, and I saw the confusion in those brown orbs. Befuddlement and fear and maybe a little anger, but beyond all of that there was determination. Flinty and fragile, but infinitely more than what had been there only seconds prior. Hearts of Fire did that to you.

Another scream, this one hoarser and even more shrill, came from the building below us, along with the intermingling sound of sobbing, grunts, and laughter. Now that we were closer, I could also hear music - some sort of Asian pop, loud and obnoxious as if it was attempting to drown out the din of women suffering, but it did a shitty fucking job.

Aqshy was already radiating off of me, but hearing what was happening right below me made the Red Wind react like an excitable puppy rearing to get off the leash.

“Panacea,” I spoke quietly, Force of Spirit bolstering my usual chocolatey drawl into a dark, commanding baritone. 

She flinched, both at my tone and my usage of her full cape name. I knew that she wanted to ask me what I’d done to her - why she was feeling so brave and clear-headed, but she visibly bit back the urge. “... Yeah?”

I smirked, but it was humorless and cold. “You wanted to help, so consider this your first freebie: Trust your fuckin’ powers, and don’t let ‘em get back up.”

Her mouth dropped open. “... What-”

I dropped down, going from stationary to two hundred miles per hour in one smooth motion, all amplified by the haze of bright, dense golden mana encasing my boots.

The portion of the roof that we were standing on gave way immediately, and with a yelping Amy in my arms, I allowed gravity to take us down into the smoky, disgustingly-sweet smell of the whorehouse..

Turned out I wasn’t the biggest fan of sex-trafficking. Who’da thunk it?

Meanwhile, far above us, in the sky, a glowing, ten foot spear of magical energy pointed directly downwards, waiting for a lagging blonde to catch up and put two and two together.

___________________________________________

Avalon was fucking crazy.

Avalon was fucking crazy, and perfect, and way too good for her, and he did things to her - did things to her fucking brain that no one else had ever done. He made her think, made her fantasize, made her dream of doing things with her powers because she actually wanted to, and not because some crippling sense of duty and dread and guilt forced her to.

Even now, as she was stumbling into an incense-filled garbage dump of a room and and blindly searching for a weapon to possibly defense herself with, Amy’s brain - clear, for once, of thoughts of kissing Vicky, touching Vicky, hugging Vicky, loneliness, depression, anxiety, Vicky - was alight with ways to defend herself without needing something like a knife or a bat. 

GRATATATATA!

Outside of the room she’d shouldered her way into, she heard yelling in Chinese, the sound of automatic gunfire, and what she knew to be the odd rapport of Avalon’s weird goat demon Master construct firing its ridiculous laser beams. He was a fucking dynamo of human excellence - hell, he was more than human.

More than parahuman.

God, she wanted nothing more than to get more of a feel of his cells at its core, get a complete and total reading of his entire genome sequence and coax it even further into its own realm of superiority. He was already so close, but there was so much more she could do for him if only-

“Ey! White bitch! The fuck you do in my room? Wǒ méiyǒu mǎi nǐ!” 

She froze.

Through the dimness of the trashy room, Amy could see that there were others there - and the sight caused her stomach to drop. Two girls, barely any older than her, were shivering in fear as they covered their body with a yellowing sheet stained with… things that she didn’t even want to think about. They were of Asian descent, the specifics she had no clue about, and their faces were caked in cheap white makeup like some sort of fucked up kabuki cosplay. Even then, the white paste couldn’t hide the bruised eyes and bloodied lips. They looked like twins.

In front of the bed, butt ass naked with a fresh cigarette inches away from his own fat, bloodied lips, was a large, broad-shouldered Chinese man with a gray, receding hairline. He looked more pissed off than frightened, though he was tossing nervous, side-eyed glances at the door. 

Conclusions were being drawn, and she didn’t like the picture her mind was starting to paint. The heat in her chest that burned away her brain fog became even hotter. 

His tiny, flaccid penis shriveled at her withering, dead-eyed glare.

“You not English speaker, white whore? Zǒu kāi!”

Dimly, she noticed the twins in the background frantically gesturing for help, clenching their hands in a universal ‘prayer’ gesture. They’d probably recognized her outfit as ‘Panacea’, or maybe they simply saw the robes and thought that she was another crazy cape like Avalon here to save them. Then again, she did ask to go on patrol. Was that not what she was? A crazy cape?

‘I don’t like fighting,’ Amy thought, as if reminding herself, even as she narrowed her tired stare at the burning cigarette trailing its disgustingly familiar smoke up towards the ceiling. ‘I don’t like using my powers to hurt people…’

But Avalon had cleared her mind of fear for a reason, didn’t he? He told her to trust her powers, to trust herself. He brought her with him when he could have just as easily sat her on the rooftop and came in himself to help these girls. He was trusting her, trusting her independence, trusting her power… so shouldn’t she do the same thing?

After all, she wasn’t feeling any fear right now. Not at the gunshots, not at the danger, and not even at herself. All she wanted to do was help those girls.

So she came to a decision.

“Give me your cig and I’ll leave,” Amy said, jutting her chin out and glaring down her nose at the disgusting pig. The mere thought of being afraid of someone so pitiful would’ve made her laugh if not for the sobering and pitiful sight sitting on the bed in front of her. 

“Eh?!” he shouted, his eyes turning thin as he glared at her. “Bié bī wǒ dǎ-”

“I’m doing the rounds for, er… the boss,” Amy cut him off with a grimace, taking a fearless step forward. Interestingly enough, the man took a hesitant half-step back. “And I need to take a freakin’ load off because of noisy asshats like you. Guys are already getting into fights over pussy tonight. Just give me a drag and I’ll leave.”

She almost regretted her words when the twins in the back sank into each other’s arms with grief, but Amy kept her eyes on the prize. There was a slight chance that she would be able to knock him out fast enough if she got her hands on him, but he was much bigger than she was, and he had a much longer reach. She wasn’t a fighter, she wasn’t necessarily agile or speedy, and she was not physically strong.

She needed something to work with, and although she’d already broken herself off of nicotine after relying on it a bit too much recently, desperate times called for desperate measures…

“... Feh! Fine, take it and go! Freak help - I tell Bo about this!” The man spat, flicking the lit cigarette at her disgustedly. 

Flinching, Amy jolted forward to catch the little cancer stick before it fell onto the wooden floor that was much too sticky to be clean. As soon as her fingers wrapped around the thin, porous paper, before either she or the pig could hesitate, Amy pressed her thumb down on the filter, broke the back piece off, and brushed her thumb against the tobacco starting to fall out through the tear.

Data flashed through her mind, her biological scanner telling her in gratuitous detail the exact chemicals and substances stored in the cheap tobacco. She ignored most of it, however, because time was expensive and the man was actively watching her with a confused expression on his face. 

It was roughshod work, especially since she only had a few seconds to bullrush her way through the complete modification of nicotine and at least a dozen other chemicals into way too many benzodiazepines, but she got it done with nothing but a bored and distantly annoyed glare on her face. The cigarette was still lit, a thin trail of smoke trailing from the burning end. As she brought the stick to her lips and put it in her mouth, ignoring the gritty taste of tobacco, Amy decided to make another, last minute addition - something in her, deep within, urged her to do so. 

With an added dose of carbon, the smoke turned black. 

She took a deep, long drag, letting the chemically-modified smoke build up in her mouth instead of her lungs. Two years of smoking probably did enough damage down there, anyway.

“... Y-you get out now. Freak bitch!” The man repeated, watching her with confusion and wariness in his bloodshot eyes. He was inching towards the end table beside the bed now, she noticed, and the sight only pissed her off more. There wasn’t a weapon in sight, but there was a drawer.

Fear still held no place in her burning heart.

She took a step forward, and he made a stumbling dash for the end table, tripping over his own bare feet. The twins screamed, gunshots were still sending ringing cracks through her skull, and honestly, Amy was just completely done with the stupidity of criminals right about now.

She exhaled.

The smoke, black and dense and cloying, came out of her mouth like a foreboding miasma. It wasn’t much, but it filled the air in front of her in a dark, misty haze, and although she made sure to hold her breath and not breath it in, the acrid scent alone had her forcing away the urge to say fuck it and simply fall asleep right then and there. She… probably went a little too hard with the benzodiazepines in the tobacco.

“F-fuck! I-... I-...Fāshēngle… shénme…?”

The pig’s head slammed against the side of the end table as every single muscle in his body turned to jello in an instant, and he let out a low, slurring groan. His naked ass cheeks twitched, one after the other, and Amy wrinkled her nose in disgust as a yellow puddle of urine began leaking out from beneath his swollen body. The scent of the room combined with the scent of urine was nearly unbearable, but she clenched her cancer stick between her teeth and breathed through the sides of her mouth.

“... Freaking disgusting sack of- woah.” 

Two very naked, very thin bodies were suddenly pressed against hers, and Amy battled the very real flare-up of heat that flashed through her neck and chest. It wasn’t conscious - she was beyond disgusted and horrified by this entire fucking place to consciously get flustered by the victims here, but how was the hell else was she supposed to respond-

Sobbing reached her ears. The twins were mumbling something incoherent into her robe, clenching at her body with bony fingers and crying their hearts out, and any embarrassment that she’d been feeling was flushed out of her body alongside whatever flame Avalon had blessed her with. It didn’t leave her fearful and hesitant, but it did leave behind a deep, wary mental exhaustion that was only compounded by the girls attached to her sides.

She had a sudden urge to spit on the man’s unconscious, urine-soaked body.

“Do I have permission to heal you?” Amy asked the girls instead, forcing her voice into a soft murmur that was hopefully kind and nurturing and not her usual annoyed grumble. She was already touching them, for better or for worse, and although the knowledge of exactly what was in and on their bodies filled her with disgust…

She didn’t remove her touch. She wanted to heal them.

“... Nani?” The twin on her right - the slightly taller one - muttered in a hoarse, quiet voice.

They were Japanese, then. She knew those long, sleepless nights at the hospital watching old Japanese cartoons would pay off at some point in her career. Just, she’d thought it would be used while healing someone in a hospital, not an ABB whorehouse.

“Uh… Heal. You.” Amy spat out her cigarette, spitting out the unusually bittery taste onto the man’s body, and raised her hands. The girl flinched back at the motion, however, and her heart almost stopped. Immediately, she felt horrible. “Fuck, I’m sorry- just, here.”

No longer hesitant, she placed her hands back on the broken girls’ bodies and, with a dogged, stubborn determination, began healing them as much as possible.

They were too malnourished to fully heal, but she was hoping that Jason could finish off what she couldn’t. It never even occurred to her that he would need healing himself. He was Avalon, after all. Borderline perfection in near-human form. A bunch of thugs with guns would pose no threat to the man who took out Hookwolf in fair, one on one combat, and the gunshots had already quietened. If Victoria had caught up, then even better - those two together had to have been borderline unstoppable.

Pride began to warm her chest, though whether it was for her ‘teammates’ or herself was anyone’s guess. She was just happy that things seemed to have worked out for fucking once.

…

BOOOOOM!

And, of course, that was when the first building-shaking explosion went off, nearly sending all three girls falling to the floor.

________________________________________

A Couple Minutes Earlier…

I cleared the top floor quickly in order to keep Amy safe.

Was it foolhardy to drop her off in the deep end with nothing more than a bravery and mind-clearing buff and a dream? 

Yeah.

However, that was one of the only plans I had managed to come up with in order to help her get the fuck out of her own head. She was afraid of her power, afraid of using it to its full potential, and her Shard was sick and tired of being used as a 22/5 healbot. I wasn’t sure if the fanon interpretation of her Shard fucking with her mind due to her negligence was true, but if it was, well… getting her a bit of field experience with utilizing it would probably do wonders when it came to repairing their symbiotic relationship.

‘Least till I found a way to magically sever it without lobotomizing her.

Besides, I hadn’t left her completely defenseless. Even if she couldn’t utilize the mana-amplification aspects of the Gauldur Amulet, the stamina and health increases were definitely tangible. She didn’t even realize the fact that I’d slipped it onto her neck during our ‘dynamic entry’ - a testament to my magically-enhanced sleight of hand skills.

It wasn’t like this brothel was packed to the brim with security, anyway. There’d been about three ABB goons with submachine guns that were watching the hallway and staircase, but I’d been prepared for opposition like that - they were currently hanging from the peeling walls, skewered by golden spears. 

If I had to approximate, there were probably about three floors in total in the whole building. A few gangsters had charged upstairs bullishly once the gunfight started, and were promptly shishkabob'd with magical weapons for their trouble. I was willing to bet that the only other occupants in the building were the cowardly clientele and the women who were - mostly - forced to work here.

Just in case though, I needed to secure the other floors-

“U-um, sir,” A well-endowed woman, Chinese if my intuition was correct, pushed herself into my line of sight. It was an impressive show of bravery, considering I’d just gotten done turning the hallway into a magical version of a Daredevil fight scene. She was wearing nothing more than a dirty, stained white sheet around her body, hiding away her nudeness as much as possible.

I’d already dialed Hidden Intuition all the way down to its base level after my first look into one of the rooms. I did not want to know what had stained those sheets.

“I told you and the other women to stay inside the office,” I said lightly, tilting my head to the side in order to glance past her head. Immediately, half a dozen unsure, awed, and bruised-up female faces ducked back into the room at the end of the hall. The ‘manager’ had put up less of a fight than his goons, and was also hanging, unconscious, by a spear in the office.

I clicked my tongue.

“Duìbuqǐ,” she said quickly, ducking her head down so fast that I was afraid she’d strain a muscle. “Sir has done much for us. We are grateful! Let us help gather other girls. Please.”

I shook my head, placing my right hand gently on the woman’s shoulder. She flinched at my touch, snapping her eyes up to stare at me with surprise, and I offered a roguish smile. “No need, let me take care of y’all. Go back to your girls, keep them safe and calm while I take care of business. Okay?” I did my best to speak slowly and clearly, wrangling down my slight accent until virtually none of it remained, and her cheeks colored ever so slightly. 

“Shì de. I shall keep them safe.” She straightened, giving me a resolute nod, and I nodded back. Despite being bruised and battered, this woman was clearly willing to do whatever she needed to do to take care of the other women held captive here by the ABB fuckwads. I wasn’t naive - I knew that some people actively sought out prostitution as a last-resort job to make ends meet, but I didn’t need Hidden Intuition to know that the ones I saved were victims of sex trafficking.

Just something else to add to my growing list of bullshit, eh? The death of Lung…

“Good,” I squeezed her shoulder, and her eyes - tired, smudged with oily eyeshadow - twinkled in response.

I very explicitly looked up to the ceiling out of respect when she walked away, the sheet not big enough to stretch completely around her large, womanly ass.

Perhaps that’s why Hidden Intuition saw fit to warn me with the sudden tinkling sound of alarm bells ringing through my head. Danger.

I didn’t think - I teleported down the hallway, hip-checking the brave Asian woman who’s name I still hadn’t asked for, and sending her stumbling the rest of the way into the office. Before she could even utter a cry of confusion, I slammed the door shut, melded the bronze knob into the wall with a silent application of Chamon, and turned back around.

That was when Glory Girl and Oni Lee came crashing through the ceiling in an explosion of concrete, dust, and plaster.

If the black bodysuit and bandolier of pipe bombs strapped to his chest wasn’t evidence enough, easily spotted due to my enhanced vision, the ghastly, grinning Oni mask definitely made it apparent. They were mid-grapple, but as I narrowed my eyes and made to move forward, a second one was suddenly lunging into my guard with two gleaming steel katars aimed at my jugular. The movement was swift and skilled, Oni Lee clearly being an expert in their usage, but there was one major flaw in his strategy.

… He was simply way too slow for me right now.

My mask was warm and snug on my face, my eyes lidded and focused, and I forced my body to move.

His left arm was prodded lightly to the side, allowing my neck just enough breathing room to tilt and avoid the right punch dagger. I turned slightly at the same time, bringing my left arm in towards my center and sending a pulse of golden mana directly into my elbow to supercharge it with pure magical power. He couldn’t even shift the course of his original lunge before I clenched my fists, veins and tendons tightening in my arm, and blasted my hard, glowing elbow into his sternum.

CRACK!

His entire chest gave way, and I felt the beginnings of my magically-charged elbow tearing through his body before a sudden explosion of white ash robbed me of my vision.

Fucking teleportation and shadow clones, what the fuck. He wasn’t behind me, he wasn’t in front of me, I knew he wasn’t to my sides-

Above!

I reacted blindly, throwing my hands up above my head like I was Goku performing a fucking spirit bomb and sending out a wave of pure Aethyr, like a telekinetic shockwave. There was a hoarse grunt, like a skeevy asshole getting the wind knocked out of his lungs, but I was on to his tactics now - I teleported directly out of the cloud of ash, just as Oni Lee did the same exact thing. There was only a moment of staring - me, cold and annoyed, and him, silent and masked, before he went for the bombs on his chest and I jabbed agony through his body with Evil Eye-

He spasmed, hand gripping two of the pipe bombs, but no sound escaped his mask.

“SCREW YOU, FREAK!”

A blur of white and gold breezed past my head, missing me by mere inches, and crashed into the spasming Oni Lee with all the force and delicacy of a rushing train. I paid them no further heed, as both Hidden Intuition and my Second Sight alerted me of the annoying, cockroach-like motherfucker swinging at me with his fucking katars from behind. 

There was simply no time to chant. No time to cultivate and utilize the Winds.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t mad at it.

I abruptly leaned back, pulling off a real-life Matrix dodge in order to avoid his twin slashes, and flipped back onto my hands to nail the second clone that was falling at me from the ceiling with its weapons readied and primed to skewer me through the chest. My mana-empowered boot slammed against its masked chin with a crack, breaking its neck, and I allowed Heroic Aptitude to embody my movements as I rotated on the palms of my hands and round-house kicked the first clone like a blurring human helicopter blade. He went flying into the wall, cracking the plaster with his body, and two more bursts of white ash overtook my vision.

‘He’s getting predictable,’ I noted, pushing off on my finger tips to flip back onto my feet. Two daggers pierced hilt deep into the wooden floor, completely missing me, and I could’ve sworn I heard a hiss of annoyance. It swiftly turned into a rattling wheeze as Glory Girl shoulder-checked him into the wall, her golden blonde hair floating around her body like the halo of a vengeful angel as she combo’d the linebacker tackle with a brutal haymaker. Bones cracked and became powder, and Oni Lee’s clone exploded into another cloud of ash.

Glory Girl’s yell of frustration nearly drowned out his labored breathing, but I heard it before I saw him - a dark, masked figure attempting to flee downstairs. Something glinted in his hand, and I only had a split second to identify the whole bandolier of pipe bombs before they were flying in our direction.

My mind raced. Spells were thought of and dismissed, strategies weighed and found wanting. The old building wouldn’t be able to take an explosion of that caliber without collapsing in on itself, and neither me nor Glory Girl were able to comb the rest of the floors and extract every woman and civilian before the entire place collapsed in on itself. I knew it, Oni Lee knew it, and although Glory Girl was currently blinded by ash I was sure she knew it as well.

Who the fuck brought an entire building down on a bunch of innocents in order to mask a fucking escape? Fucking psychopaths, that’s who.

‘Fuck. Fuck it!’

I had to act. Pipe bombs took, what, five seconds to explode?

… Easy.

‘Five.’

I blurred forward, grabbing the leather bandolier by its strap and teleporting halfway down the staircase to catch up with the silent Oni Lee. Before he could even react to my sudden appearance, I gritted my teeth, palmed the back of his head with my hand like a motherfucking basketball, wrenching my gauntlet-clawed fingers into the eye holes of his masks and curling them into his skull. He needed his vision to teleport, after all.

“A-AHHHHHHHH-”

‘Four.’

His hoarse, guttural scream was soul-wrenching, full of genuine agony and pain, and the sensation of his eyeballs popping beneath my fingertips was foul, but the fucker had been planning to kill dozens of innocent women to avoid prison so I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic. Biting my lip and closing my eyes, I bowed my head down and Soared upwards, using every ounce of my Sole Protector-enhanced strength and speed to plow straight through the staircase and up into the third floor.

‘Three.’

Glory Girl, mid-flight to the staircase with a panicked look on her face, stopped and stared blankly at me as I came crashing through the floor head-first. I paid her no mind.

‘Two.’

I broke through the roof and into the air above the brothel, Oni Lee still screaming bloody murder in my grip. As soon as I was clear of the building, I lobbed both him and the bandolier of active bombs up into the sky. They flew like arrows, one dark shape flying beside a much smaller one, and in that brief moment of two flowing down into one, I teleported back down the rooftop and raised my right hand towards the sky.

I didn’t have much in the way of shield magic, but…

One.

I’d do what I could.

BOOOOOOOM!

The explosion shook the building.

I stood there, hand still raised and eyes narrowed as I watched for any signs of Oni Lee’s survival. A few car alarms were going off in the streets below, dim lights flickering on in the rundown apartment buildings neighboring the brothel, and I could see nosy silhouettes moving towards their windows. It was only a matter of time before the PRT came to check out what the fuck happened, if they decided to head this deep into ABB territory during demon hours, and I really didn’t feel like explaining myself to those high-horse riding fucks for the second time in twenty four hours.

Something - many somethings were falling from the dissipating cloud of smoke, I noticed. A more strained, intense look revealed that those somethings were body parts, falling across alleyways and rooftops with dull, distant ‘thunks’.

“Well, that answers that…” I murmured, grimacing slightly.

Yet another body to add to the count. I couldn’t say I felt bad, but damn… homie couldn’t wait until I had a full night’s sleep first?

“Avalon,” Glory Girl said hesitantly, floating back up through the same hole I’d created in my mad flight to give Oni Lee a taste of his own medicine. She paused beside me, searching my impassive expression before looking up at the dissipating cloud of smoke. “Is he-”

“Dead?” I cut her off, glancing back down at the beautiful girl. She didn’t shy away from my stare, placing her hands on her hips and staring right back, and I chuckled. “Yeah, dumbass got himself blown up. Probably karma for tryna bring down a whole fuckin’ building.”

She didn’t say anything for a second, shifting her stare to look up at the sky, and I followed her lead. The stars sure were pretty.

“... It wasn’t your fault.”

“Sure,” I allowed, shrugging. “Don’t really mind either way. Sex traffickers, nazis - who cares?”

“Heroes do, Avalon.” Glory Girl said pointedly, and hovered to get into my face when I didn’t bother responding. “Look; I know he was a crazy sack of shit, but- you gotta at least show some form of regret or- or guilt. The PRT’s on their way, they have to be at this point, and you’re already under a lot of heat.”

I knew that she was only being logical. I also knew that she, for some reason, actually cared about me. I was just… really fucking tired, and wanted to make sure the women I saved were actually okay. “I feel you, Glory Girl. I really do. Just… let’s go check up on the others, yeah? I left your sister in a room with a couple girls.”

She watched me for a few seconds longer, close enough to my face for me to smell the scent of ash on her skin and the sweet-smelling scent of her shampoo. Something citrusy - oranges, maybe?

Her eyes roamed down my face, down my chest and body as if giving me a quick checkup, and I idly wondered what she saw and smelled as well. I knew that I was sweating a bit, and I was also splattered with ash. I had to be a sorry sight.

But her lip curled upwards, a heat growing in her eyes, and I figured that maybe I did, in fact, smell good?

Victoria likes what she sees.

‘Oh, now you speak up?’

“Amy’s down there with them right now. Don’t really know what got into her, but she decided to comb the rest of the floors by herself. C’mon!”

Bemused, I followed the suddenly energetic blondie back down through the hole. 

Regardless of what she believed, I was fully planning on dipping before the PRT arrived. Saving a bunch of sex-trafficking victims was about all I had in me for the rest of this long ass night.

As if agreeing with me, Grimmy tossed a small mote of light towards my soul, like a dealer handing out cards.

I slipped it into my ‘deck’ without a second glance.

‘Well, if anything good came outta this whole excursion,’ I thought, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my coat, ‘It’s the perks. Always the fuckin’ perks.’

Thirst for Knowledge (200 CP - Serpent’s Hand): What an erudite you are! Always burning with the desire to learn! As a frequent patron of the Library, it is only natural. You have an incredible reading speed and comprehension rate - only a few seconds is enough for you to scan a page densely filled with text, process this text, digest its meaning and move on. You can easily discern the meaning of even the most difficult jargon and technical terminology using context clues, and learning is much easier for you when it comes in the form of books.

This also boosts your learning retention rate - no longer do you forget 70% of what you learn within 24 hours, instead you passively transfer all knowledge you acquire into long-term memory to facilitate easier recall. Additionally, you will never get bored of learning, and one would have to be actively trying to make learning dull to make you lose interest.

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Perks Accepted:

Thirst for Knowledge (200 CP - Serpent’s Hand): What an erudite you are! Always burning with the desire to learn! As a frequent patron of the Library, it is only natural. You have an incredible reading speed and comprehension rate - only a few seconds is enough for you to scan a page densely filled with text, process this text, digest its meaning and move on. You can easily discern the meaning of even the most difficult jargon and technical terminology using context clues, and learning is much easier for you when it comes in the form of books.

This also boosts your learning retention rate - no longer do you forget 70% of what you learn within 24 hours, instead you passively transfer all knowledge you acquire into long-term memory to facilitate easier recall. Additionally, you will never get bored of learning, and one would have to be actively trying to make learning dull to make you lose interest.

A/N:

So, I was writing this chapter in the shower, and… shit popped off. I don’t know what caused it, but it happened and I enjoyed writing every second of it.

Amy gets a little more confident with Jason’s help, and Oni Lee… fucks himself over? Hope you guys enjoyed the bit of brutality with his execution - I took a little inspiration from Invincible there. I really enjoyed writing a bit of hand to hand, as well.

Next chapter will probably be a little (one or two days) timeskip and some daytime activities. Jason still has to keep his promise for his minion, Trainwreck, and he’s thinking of getting Sherrel a place as well. 

We also can’t forget about Rune. Don’t worry, I haven’t - she’ll be brought up next chapter as well.

A little note that I couldn't include in the chapter without breaking the flow: Evil Eye requires a bit of preparation and channeling to actively put additional spells into, per the bottom of the perk description, and the only one he has 'memorized' in it right now is Healing Light. That's why he used the pain attack on Oni Lee instead of some instant damaging spell from it - he has to log 'em. Which he does next chapter, btw.