(WIP) Worm - Duellist 16

(The first half of the next chapter. Still editing the second half, when it's done, the whole chapter gets posted on QQ).

Level 16

It takes us no time at all to meet at the spot she highlighted, far from the prying eyes of the public.

It's a briefly pleasant surprise that she doesn't ambush me the instant I drop in. The version I was familiar with would have taken the opportunity for all that it was worth, but actions had consequences out here in the real world - and for once, that went in my favour. She doesn't stay still for long though. We're both here to get the measure of the other with our fists, and neither of us is keen to delay or tiptoe around that fact.

From the moment we first trade blows, there's one immediate, noticeable difference between the real Sophia and the version I had been fighting so far: This one hit harder.

It was obvious when you think about it. Somewhere between six months to an extra year to grow, gain muscle and practice fighting with and against other Capes under professional supervision - it would be more of a surprise if she wasn't noticeably better than her counterpart. The rough, brutal fighting style had become slightly more tempered and refined, taking full advantage of her power and relying less on her counterpart's more brutal methods of gaining an advantage.

But unlike against her younger self, I had my own powers available to me - I hadn't agreed to any restrictions this time as payment for luring her out to face me, nor would I expect the real Sophia to accept such an offer even if I did extend it for whatever reason. We split apart from the initial exchange of blows for a moment. She doesn't offer even a word of complaint at the shadowy pile of ash squaring up next to me, a stoic confidence in herself that I already knew was well-earned. From her perspective, she had little to fear from a melee 1v1 or even 2v1 - she couldn't know yet that my clone would disperse after a single, good hit but she wasn't concerned even if it stayed around.

Her mask turns slightly towards my clone. "I did hear that you clashed with Oni Lee the other day. You'll spook some of the paper-pushers, getting his power only off of a single fight like that." She settles into a fighting stance, not pulling out her crossbow yet.

"It's pretty inconsistent, I guess I haven't worked out the trick to it yet." I respond airily. "Oni Lee off of a single fight, sure - but I went and rubbed shoulders with some Wards at an event the other day. Ran around all afternoon, shaking hands and having conversations - I only get Vista and Clockblocker. What's up with that?"

"Should you be telling me this?" She challenges me.

"Are you going to tell me that what I did was wrong?" I throw the question back.

"Depends on your perspective of things." She closes the gap first, body leaning forward as if to tackle me. My body remembers faster than my mind, one arm coming up to guard my side on the same side as her trailing leg. The impact rocks my body only a moment later, as the kick almost seems to materialise next to my arm at full speed.

Not getting me with that one again. She'd gotten better at concealing it from the front, but the motions were the same - she used the rest of her body to shield her trailing leg from my line of sight, disguising the fact that a large portion of the lower half of her body had already dissolved into smoke. Which, naturally, enabled her to reposition that smoke faster than I was used to. It was one thing to see her disappear into smoke, and understand that an attack from any angle would soon be coming - but quite another to react to the faintest whisper of smoke from an attack that was already wound-up and rushing towards me, materialising into the physical plane as it went.

My clone attempts to tackle her while I attempt to trap the leg, both of which she avoids with contemptuous ease - only dipping into her power long enough to fix her awkward footing from the failed attack. Her knee smashes into, then through, my ash clone as it falls to the ground to a leg-sweep.

"Depends?" I prompt her again as she gives me a considering look.

She pauses, then seems to shrug. "From the perspective of someone who doesn't want to die to Lung within the week, probably a pretty smart move if you didn't want to just sign up with the Wards. From the perspective of someone that just wants to do all they can to do some good in the city, I get it. I'd do the same thing. Take what you can get, right?"

"I sense a 'but' coming." I phase through her next punch, my cloud rushing forward into her personal space - latching on to her armour as a grip to hurl her towards the floor. I skip away without looking to avoid retaliation, already knowing that she would never allow herself to hit the floor so early and easily in the fight.

By the time I turn around, she's already standing again looking completely unphased. "But the paper-pushers won't see it like that. Most of them aren't interested in being effective, just in looking good to the public. You might think that you're doing well and have people on your side, but they'll just drag you in front of a court and say 'This young, foolish boy deliberately and unlawfully utilised his power against unaware heroes doing charitable work. This power could have had any number of unknown effects...'" She stops talking only long enough to reform her face as my jab passes through it harmlessly, handing me a solid strike to the knee in return that glances off harmlessly. She drops the deliberately overdone nasal tone. "-and then they threaten you with jail for 'reckless power use' and tell you that vigilantism is illegal, effectively pressganging you into the Wards. They aren't looking to be understanding or reasonable. They think that they're doing the right thing by being sticklers for the exact letter of the law or skirting around at its edges, because they tell themselves that they might be saving your life by doing it."

She doesn't comment on her failed counterattack. Did she notice? I pull back for a moment to let Glory Girl's shield recharge. I didn't intend to keep it a secret, but I wanted to make a good impression here. And I knew her well enough to know that to make a good impression on her involved beating her black and blue. Every hit I landed would give me a bit more respect and legitimacy in her eyes, and spilling all of my skills right from the start would just result in her dodging everything and beating me down from a position of absolute safety rather than getting involved in a constant back and forth.

"I'm well aware of what the lawyers at the PRT would say." I smile behind my mask. "I asked what you think. You were pretty similar to me, once upon a time. Used to follow your sightings online when you were pinning Nazi's to walls and leaving them for the cops to find."

"I was way better than you." She seems annoyed by the comparison. "Giving people some bruises and leaving them in alleyways might sound like a fun time, but you didn't make a blind bit of difference in the long run. I went to the centre of the Empire's territory, terrorised them for weeks and had the entire gang roaming the streets in groups all scared of the nameless Cape in the shadows. There's a reason none of the gangs cared about you even weeks after you first appeared."

"Oni Lee is in prison now, I don't think I ever heard about any Cape fights between you and any villains until two months after you first became a Ward." I adopt an innocent tone, which only serves to bait her into attacking me again. This time, it isn't one powerful attack to attempt to end the fight from the perfect angle - it's a flurry of jabs and blows, individually weak but difficult to counter when so many simply passed through my guard in a rush of wispy darkness. Not materialising on the other side, thankfully - even though I knew she was capable of that in a pinch.

She snorts. "Blind luck, and you had a partner. I could have beaten most of the Empire Capes myself if they walked around alone and I had a good partner to work with." She dismisses my argument as my helmet finally absorbs a real hit, then another - I backpedal to safety, flailing against her ineffectively even as I condense air to the right side of me. The shrunken space never looks that strange in the heat of the moment, so Sophia doesn't notice the ploy until one of my waving arms nearly doubles in apparent size as it stretches through the tunnel of warped space to smash into her mask-protected chin. She stops chasing at that hit, passing her own hand through the space I swiftly vacated and watching her fingers seem to stretch. "And I can see this is going to be annoying."

"Wouldn't want you to get bored." I quip. "But anyway. Chalking all of my efforts down to luck is a bit much, isn't it? You're bruising my pride here." I circle to her left, keeping just out of her range. "And you didn't answer my question again."

"I did, you're just too dumb to read between the lines." Sophia matches my cautious circle. "It's obvious that you should be trying to get stronger any way that you can. Even before you picked a fight with the ABB. And if they're in their hero costumes, they're fair game - I'd say it's hard to blame you for how they decide to interact with the public on official business. Little different from a patrol, really." She steps back for a moment and drops her guard. "Stop for a moment, that reminds me. You're a new cape, so maybe you don't know. When it comes to secret identities, it would be a completely different story-"

"Unwritten rules, I'm familiar with them." I nod in understanding. But not acceptance. I was a bit past that point now. It was always doomed with this powerset. Well, perhaps I could have put some moral code on myself to only tag people in costume once I knew they were a Cape - but even if the thought had occurred to me back then, I think getting killed a few dozen times would have beaten that spirit of fair play out of me.

"Better be." She grunts, flexing her arm out to the side and back again. "Anyway, as I was saying, even if the PRT would disagree it's probably best for you to look out for yourself in this case. There have been two other vigilantes out of Winslow that I've known about, one of them died three weeks in and the other got crippled by Stormtiger and left town shortly afterwards."

First I've heard of them, which was rare - considering that I had my finger on the pulse of Cape news most of the time. "Friends of yours?"

She snorts. "Fuck no. Just stood out from the rest because most of the time, kids in the shit side of town go crawling to the gangs first chance they get. They didn't get far, but I can respect the attempt to do something. If they'd been smarter, or strong enough to back up their talk, Winslow would be practically crawling with heroes compared to most of everywhere else in the city."

Maybe that said something about what a cesspool Winslow was. Most schools, Arcadia excluded, would count themselves as among the truly special for having any sort of Cape hiding in their ranks. Capes were rare, on average. Perhaps the general low-budget state of affairs, combined with the overwhelming dominance of the gangs over the nearby areas, made the perfect conditions for a trigger?

Or, were they like me? Cauldron... I'd made the effort to root all the way to the bottom of the conspiracy hiding in the depths of the internet, but nothing said that they couldn't choose to reach out to people on their own. What use would a Cape be all on their own in the middle of the countryside? If they had to make one, best to put them into a target-rich environment and see how they fare. Was that the right logic? You wouldn't find the next Eidolon, or the next Butcher or Fairy Queen if all they did was rescue cats out of trees.

Just how prolific were Cauldron's operations? If it weren't for a few very public, very well-documented triggers I would be half-serious about asking if the idea of triggers was just a smoke-screen to disguise the fact that all Capes were in Cauldron's pocket. As it stood, what was the real ratio of Cauldron Capes to genuine triggers? One percent? Ten? Fifty?

I return to the subject at hand. "Too late for that now. If nothing else, I'd like to consider myself a bit smarter than them - and, without being too arrogant, my power has a lot more potential than the average D-lister that makes up the worst of the fatality statistics."

"You're really going to claim that you're smarter after prancing around your school like that, days after you ended up right at the top of Lung's shit list? They know you go to school here now. Don't go acting too surprised if you try taking the same route tomorrow and you find a group waiting for you on a rooftop with more guns than braincells between them." She's actually a little amused, you can tell by the slightly less scornful tone in her voice compared to normal. "To say nothing about why you would even think that's a good idea anyway. What were you even hoping to achieve? The only crime happening around here in this time of day is inside the school, all you're doing is acting like an attention-seeking clown." She gives me a suspicious look. "Or is that the point? You want to provoke a fight? Are you stupid?"

I wasn't stupid! I prided myself on my intelligence. At worst, I'd admit that the occasional poor decision might cause someone to say that Wisdom was my dump stat - but outside of roleplaying nobody would want any hypothetical points in that anyway. I was fine with that label. "I wouldn't quite go that far." I couldn't exactly deflect the accusation by saying that I was simply burning out my temporary insanity that had been induced by my power deliberately refusing to mitigate the effects of superpowered drugs flooding my system when I lost a fight in my head. "Although, I wouldn't be that opposed to a meeting if he decided to show up. It's the kind of thing I could benefit a lot from, and I'm-" Absolutely confident. "-fairly confident that I could get away from Lung safely if it ever came to it."

I can tell that she's rolling her eyes, even without seeing them. "Of course you want baby-Lung powers. Starting to see why you're so suicidal now. Your power rewards you for putting yourself in stupid situations-" Not quite correct, but it matches the story I'm going with. I nod. "-but even if you achieved that. What does it matter? Based on what you've shown me so far, what's shown up online about you-" So she has been searching me up. Knew it. "-you're just not cut out to be a serious combat Cape. All of this work that you've done, and you aren't even the strongest grab-bag in the Bay."

I furrow my brow. Not the strongest grab-bag? What was the alternative? Armsmaster? Did Tinkers count if they built the tech to qualify for a sub-power rating? No, surely not.

I furrow my brow more. Miss Militia? Noctis Capes wouldn't count either, surely.

Who else-? Oh. I crack my knuckles threateningly. "The fucking clown?" I pull myself up to my full height to demonstrate exactly how offended I am. "There's no way you just said Circus is stronger than me." Even Parian had better feats than Circus. Velocity had better feats than Circus. A skilled escape artist, true. But she was dead-last in the Brockton Bay power rankings for a good reason.

I can sense the smirk behind her mask. "Seems pretty close to me. She-" She hesitates on that. One of the great mysteries of the Bay. A cross-dressing boy, or a cross-dressing girl? I'd seen the curves in what little footage we had of her, but nothing that couldn't be attributed to a bit of padding. "They are pretty good when backed into a corner, and better at not getting into that situation in the first place."

"Half of their powers barely even qualify as superpowers." I protest. "You're just saying that to get under my skin. I'd easily win that." Eventually. My power might give me a shit scenario or three to start with, but I'd still win before long.

"I don't think you'd protest so much if you didn't know that it was true." She raises her fists again. "Look at all you've done already. You seem to have gathered yourself a nice group of powers already and you're still taking hits from me. Not exactly the next Eidolon, are you? I'm almost going to feel bad for you when you stumble into a cap on the number of powers you can hold, or run into a range limit away from the person you loaned them from."

"It's too early to say something like that." I protest. "You've met me for all of a few minutes, and you're already trying to write me off? I expected a bit of jealousy, don't get me wrong - but isn't that a bit much?"

She rears back. "Jealousy?" She shakes her head, now stepping forward into my range - easily avoiding my initial kick aimed to stop her advance. "Don't be ridiculous."

"What else am I supposed to think? I'm going to have to get used to that kind of reaction, that's the nature of a power-copier. Nobody wants to see themselves get one-upped." I catch her fist and shove her back, weaving backwards as she rushes me again - my ash clone practically disintegrating as she moves through it, dismantling it in several strikes emerging from her shadow state without revealing her full body. My interest sharpens as she pauses her advance for a moment as she tries to pass through it, stepping back and returning to her physical state for long enough to observe my clone dissipating. Interesting. I hadn't even considered that as a possible interaction - but perhaps the rapidly-fading traces of ash that my clone left behind were a weak counter to her power for similar reasons as pepper spray. It didn't seem painful, so perhaps not something I could rely on to take her out - but if it was enough just to force her to leave her shadow state, that would be a useful tool against her.

A high kick passes through me harmlessly as I shift to shadow. She leans into the spin, coming around a second time right as I phase back in. It rockets into me as I try, and fail, to duck under it. A heavy hit, and I'm grateful for the fact that this particular variant on the costume has some real head protection over the scarf/hoodie combo that I've been trying out recently. Nothing beats a proper, full-face helmet for head protection. More importantly, that was a new trick. Haven't seen her do that one before. Maybe another inch or two of height makes it more viable compared to her younger self, or maybe it's something she learned to do in the Wards. Doesn't matter.

"Don't talk about one-upping me when you get hit by a perfectly normal kick. That's just insulting to me." Sophia doesn't let up, but has to break up her next attack as she steps a little bit too close and allows me to get a grip on her costume and hurl her to the ground again.

Good. The progress I had made learning to fight her challenge-self still applied here. Some new tricks, but I could still catch her out. Still push her into defensive uses of her power. Maybe ninety percent of the time, she gets the shift in time - no damage. But that last ten percent was what was letting me push the challenge further and further every time. The times when she doesn't see the attack coming, or doesn't quite phase out before some part of her collides painfully with the floor.

Or, when she does phase out successfully, forgets that I have a constantly respawning clone nearby that she's forgotten about - one that respawns faster the quicker she kills it, an unintuitive quirk that she hasn't worked out yet. The best thing to do would be to leave it alive for a solid minute or more, then take it out and enjoy the next minute of pure 1v1. By being her usual blender of shadowy violence every time it drifts in between us, it becomes available again mere seconds afterwards. And now it's piecing itself together behind her, it's sole command already issues at the instant of creation.

I don't have it hit her head. Helmet or not, I wouldn't want to risk anything permanent on an unaware target. Instead, Sophia squares up in front of me only for a full-body, flying kick from behind crashes into her centre-mass. I don't hesitate to drive forward myself, fist burying itself into the surprised heroine's gut. It sinks in with a satisfying impact, even as the armoured padding makes my knuckles pay for the privilege - and then she disappears in a flurry of shadow once more. I can't stop the kick from behind to knock me off balance, but the immediate attempt at twisting my arm behind me is aborted as my clone lunges at her again - almost hitting me in its haste.

I dismiss the clone as Sophia backs off, apparently it had survived the impact of its own attack and was going for another attack based on my original command - but having the clone active too long would only mean more downtime when it was eventually destroyed. Quick bursts of usage were best. I let some of my grin seep into my voice as I regard the still form of my opponent, warily holding her guard across from me - slightly hunched over with more distance between us than usual. "Time for a break, perhaps?"

"In your dreams." The voice is a little strained. "Don't start thinking that one cheap shot like that is enough to keep me down."

Of course she would say that. Good to see that some things don't change. "Well, I hope you're happy to hit a defenceless guy while he's down then." I sit down deliberately. "It's nice to have some low-stakes sparring with someone, but it would be rude of me to just take advantage of you after a hit like that. It would cheapen the next hit I land if you were still winded. We can just talk for a bit, can't we? Civilised people that we are."

I get a begrudging grunt as she heads to the nearest unbroken wall, dropping down to lean her back against it. "Whatever."

I've lost track of the conversation. "What were we even talking about?"

"You were on some bullshit about being stronger than me, and then your face got kicked in." She chips in helpfully.

"And then you got folded, I remember now." Surprisingly, that doesn't send her raging back to her feet. "Anyway, I didn't mean it like that - believe it or not, I have an immense amount of respect for your capability in a fair melee and I don't expect to beat you without tricks anytime soon." She seems slightly mollified at that. "I mean, it might happen eventually - but I mean more in the case of... these powers, people generally went through some pretty traumatic stuff to get them, right? It feels like something they earned, a part of them that they put time and effort into training. Having someone just run up and take it, then maybe even do better with it - it's bound to be a tough swallow for some."

"Fuck them." Sophia is as eloquent as ever. "And don't include me in their number. If you're stronger, then that's it. You're stronger. Nobody is going to tell Alexandria to hold back a bit because Glory H- Girl looks bad in comparison. If Glaistig Uaine wasn't so fucked in the head and wanted to help at Endbringer fights, they'd probably have fed her everyone in the birdcage and cheered her on regardless of the optics or any concerns about 'permission' or the merits of the death penalty." She leans her head back against the wall. "Not that I'm saying that you're anywhere near that level, or ever going to be, but the attitude should be the same. If you're strong enough to take it, you take it. If you're too weak to handle any fallout, you deserve to get beaten down for trying. You can't let other people decide what you are."

I doubt that she'd be quite as agreeable if she realised exactly what my powers did right now, but I couldn't help but feel that this was the next-best thing to getting her approval of what I was doing. In an... ideological sense.

I peer at her challenge sheet. Three minutes and fifty two seconds to stall before I got another attempt. One here, two more in my following classes and then perhaps another attempt at the end of school? One period was usually two short to sneak in three attempts, but catching her a little earlier or later was enough to make the cooldown timings work out. At this level, at least. I didn't have a watch in this outfit, but this was... probably fairly close to the end of lunchtime already, but being a bit late to class never hurt anyone. Especially when the entirety of the class in question was 'continue working on your coursework'. Anyone could catch up on that whenever they liked. I was guessing Sophia felt the same way, based on her lack of urgency to leave.

I stretch my neck, sighing loudly. "An inspirational speech. Your time at the PRT has clearly paid off."

She flips me off. "Fuck you."

"And here I thought you were starting to warm up to me." I push myself to my feet, not making any immediate moves as she mirrors me - evidently recovered from my earlier hit.

"I like your attitude." She leans away from my punch, not bothering to shift as she continues to talk. "Maybe not the impression that you have about me enjoying my time with the PRT." Knew those comments would tick her off. An angry Sophia is a talkative Sophia. And a talkative, angry Sophia is the only type of Sophia willing to be genuine with a stranger. "And definitely not the word-vomit that comes out of your-"

She pauses.

"-mouth." She tries to continue her sentence, but something in her tone is off. She looks like she wants to say something, but cuts herself off. "Forget it, it's annoying."

"Problem?" I query.

"I said forget it." She scowls at me. "You're a much better conversation partner when you aren't talking."

"Doesn't quite sound right to me." I raise my fists into a guard. "But I get the sentiment."

Taking the lead to move first, she winds up a punch. A fake, Fake-Sophia telegraphs her feints like that too. But what was the trick this time? I keep my guard up, looking for the usual switch into a kick or leg sweep - only for her to actually follow through on the punch, shifting into her shadow state at the last second to adjust her hands around my guard into a steady grip on my arm - giving her leverage to pull me forward into her rising knee. My own shadow-state lets me slip free and right myself, but she's already back within my guard the moment I come back to the physical world. We flail into each other for a moment, my punches aimed not at actually damaging her - but forcing her to break off her own attacks or disincorporate for safety. Strikes at the head when she briefly reveals her upper body for leverage and vision, matching punch with punch - knowing that she would back out of a trade if our fists would collide.

She has the advantage in this exchange and she knows it, pressing forward ceaselessly - knowing that at any moment, I'll fail to respond properly and get sent sprawling across the floor.

And then my Echo rockets into her face at full force, point-blank range - drawing a shocked grunt of pain and forcing her back completely for the first time as she attempts to work out what just happened. I don't let up, following up with a flurry of punches and kicks - trying to capitalise on the moment while she is still off-balance. She's still reeling from the impact, but she manages to turn aside the incoming punch without resorting to her shadow state, only barely stepping out of range to avoid the next roundhouse kick. I continue chasing, but the moment is already gone - she regains her bearings and allows my blow to pass directly through her, while her still-solid arm rockets around into the side of my head.

I give an unphased grin as we both back away, Sophia clenching and unclenching her fist in pain. "Glory Girl?" Not a question. The only invisible forcefield in the Bay that could have stopped that last attack.

"Mmhm." I give a pleased hum in response. There was something to be said about the idea of hiding everything from the heroes, but the nature of my powers wasn't really something that could be hidden when pushed. They were too iconic, too limited to disguise them as something else the moment I got in a serious fight. I'd already settled on the path of distant cooperation, not least because of the fact that I genuinely did want to be on their team - or, perhaps, for them to be on mine. It's just that I was aware that such an ideal would probably only be possible when I was the undisputed 'leader' of the team. Until then, I was going to have to play the egotistical, overconfident vigilante.

"But not something you can have active all of the time, or you wouldn't need to pull your attacks for the sake of defending. A last resort." Sophia muses. "Weak versions of the power, you said? If it's still strong enough to turn aside a fist, then there aren't too many other ways to weaken it other than uptime."

"There's a lot of difference between blocking a fist and blocking a bullet the same way Glory Girl does." I counter, leaving the power active to bring the shield back up for next time. "Keep guessing."

"You're a terrible liar." She circles me. "No. It isn't always active. Your punches would feel different if they had a forcefield over them, they feel nothing like hers - and they'd be so much more effective if they were that you clearly can't do that."

"Not all of my powers are created equal." I match her circling pace. Quietly, delicately, I shrink the space between our lower legs using Vista's power. "Some of them are just better than others. Yours, for instance. I rely on it a lot, but someone like Clockblocker rarely has a real chance to shine. My version of your power is pretty strong, no obvious downsides-"

"One second." She interrupts.

Damn. "What?" I pretend to play dumb.

"The time limit. One second at a time. Consistently. Every time you use it, that's how long it lasts. Even in cases where you would obviously want it to last longer or shorter, you don't get to choose." She sounds smug at my sour silence, calling out to me as I scrounge around on the floor nearby for a suitable response. "Don't tell me you didn't think you could hide something that basic from me, about my own power - no less?"

I throw a pebble at her, it passes through her harmlessly - but serves as a valid excuse for me to dodge the question and resume fighting. My leg sweep into thin-air, already pinched together by my discretely distorted space, sweeps her off of her feet - the graceful eruption into a black cloud as she hits the floor is expected, my ash clone forming and diving into her cloud to force her out of it. Not to try and work her into a compromising position, she was too agile for that from this position - but simply to force her to react and focus on something that wasn't me as she turns solid.

Plink.

The second rock ricochets off of her mask, my ash clone dissipating into nothing as Sophia quietly executes it with a crossbow bolt clenched in her fist. The first true weapon of the fight, though she makes no effort to take her crossbow out alongside it.

"That's never going to beat me, you know." She calls out. "A rock? Really? What are you even trying to achieve?"

I glance up slightly, to the timer by her head. A few more minutes to get another attempt. "I mean, it's just a friendly little spar to get to know each other. It's a statement. If I can predict you and hit you with something as slow as a thrown rock, I could have shot you with something as well."

"My power is pretty good about kicking in on its own when bullets get involved." And knives too, whether she knew it or not. Some kind of damage threshold to activate automatically - something to test more once I get past her current challenge. She crosses her arms. "And don't go thinking that you actually got the better of me, you're not the only one holding back. I could have nailed you to the wall before you even noticed I was here if this was a real fight."

"I didn't doubt it for a second." My laconic admission doesn't appear to improve her mood. "And I appreciate the information on your power. Hope my version does that too, but I'm not really keen to test it." Not my current version at least, but perhaps at some point I could count on it as a backup to Glory Girl's powerset as a passive defence against ambushes and surprise attacks. "I'll let you know if I ever have the bad luck to find out."

She grunts wordlessly. "Do that. It would mean that you fucked up badly enough that you need help desperately."

"Oh?" I tilt my head. "Careful, it almost sounded like you were offering to help me out there. Anyone would think you're going for a rebrand of some sort. Edgy, brooding goth chick turned to a tsundere, genki-girl sort."

"Tsoo- what?" If looks could kill, I'd be reincarnating as a termite right now. "I don't get it, but drop dead. If you get yourself killed with my power, it just makes me look bad. That's all there is to it."

"So you say, so you say." I earn a scowl for my obviously-fake, appeasing tone. "But if that's the concern, me just using your power badly and having any defeats recorded for the world to see would look bad for you too - wouldn't it?"

The reply is blunt. "Your point?"

I wiggle my eyebrows. A pointless gesture, but it felt right even if the expression was hidden. "I wouldn't be such a terrible embarrassment of a Cape if I had a veteran Cape showing me the ropes. The occasional sparring session, maybe a patrol or two at night."

"...is this your way of angling for a date? Not interested." She tries to shut me down.

"Not a single romantic thought crossed my mind." I tell her. A half-truth, perhaps. While I was genuine, the additional chances to challenge her and closer proximity might lead to something happening a bit faster than it would otherwise. "To be honest, I have a similar arrangement with another Cape right now - but we don't exactly go out every day. The PRT knows about Oni Lee, but we've been pretty active even before then. Thing is, I'm the one teaching her the ropes - so far all I know, I'm just passing on bad habits."

"If you want a mentor, why not go to the PRT? They'd fall over themselves to have you. And your friend." Not an outright refusal. Good.

"Help from the PRT comes with strings attached. My friend doesn't want to join the Wards, and I, well - we've already touched on what my intentions are. I think I'm better off without my every movement being monitored to make sure I don't stir anything up." I smile. "On our own, roaming the shit side of the Bay - it offers a certain degree of freedom away from prying eyes. You're obviously sneaking out to pound some heads every now and then anyway-"

"Wards don't perform any patrols outside of those scheduled." There's an undercurrent of tension in her words there. Oddly stiff choice of words. Very un-Sophia-like.

I roll my eyes. "Maybe not officially. But getting caught for doing unsanctioned patrols or vigilantism is the leading cause of all disciplinary actions for Wards nationwide. I've seen the stats - and those are just the ones dumb enough to get caught. They give you a slap on the wrist and move on. You're going to tell me that you're nothing like those guys, you're actually a goody-two-shoes following the law to the exact letter? You don't want to get your boots dirty?"

She's slowly getting more irritated by my prodding. "Getting pulled over the coals for breaking some random regulation is annoying for me." She replies shortly. "It doesn't really matter what I want to do."

"That's not an answer. That's just saying it's a pain if you get caught. I'm saying, you don't have to show up as Shadow Stalker and start announcing your presence on every front page the next day." I cross my arms. "I mean, I get it. Everyone knows that Armsmaster chases you into an alleyway one night, you disappear off the face of the planet for a week and then debut as a Ward. I guess he threw the rulebook at you and he kind of counters your powers. But they can't make it illegal for you to just be around the city. You don't have a tracker on you, it would interfere with your powers-"

"Why do you think that?" She plays dumb.

"Tried to walk into a few walls that I shouldn't have walked into." Not even a lie. It wasn't how I found out, but I can chalk a serious number of defeats down to my shadow-self walking into the mains electricity where I had hoped to just find concrete and plaster.

She winces. "Hm." At least she doesn't try to deny that weakness any further. "My sympathies for the way you had to find out." That sounded genuine. To be fair, the memory of shared pain would do a lot to establish a bit of empathy. I imagine that Sophia's first discovery of the issue was a lot more painful than mine. At least I had known in advance what getting unlucky with the wiring would mean.

"I got better." I cough. "Anyway. No tracker, except in your phone or perhaps your actual costume. There's no reason that you can't don another disguise, or venture out in your civilian identity and mess around a certain location with friends." Trump card time. If all she needs is an excuse... I had one lined up. "Especially because of the deniability you get. After all, in the poorer parts of town there isn't much solid surveillance footage to worry about. And if you're hanging around the same kinds of areas as me, then any momentary sightings of a shadowy figure turning to smoke mid-battle can be blamed on the other person with that powerset." I tap myself on the chest proudly.

She pauses at that. She hadn't considered that aspect yet, clearly. "I'm listening."

I grin. "There's not that much to it. Think of it as a trade. You get to show me-" I pause. Was this a good idea? The potential for it to blow up did exist, but maybe laying some groundwork for an amicable relationship was what they needed before the truth came out? "-and my other partner the ropes, a bit of sparring practice. Especially for her, she doesn't really know how to fight - and I don't really enjoy fighting girls."

"Could have fooled me." Her dry voice reaches me as my mind catches up with my mouth.

"You don't count." I wave a hand in the air. "You know. You're... strong." That was the best way to diffuse this. "I wouldn't like fighting you if I had five Brute powers and lightning rushing through my limbs either. As it is, I'm not going to feel sorry for someone likely to beat me in a fair fight with all our cards on the table. But my partner can't throw much of a punch at all. Kind of- scrawny isn't the right word, but not exactly a wall of muscle. And her power is to drop enough bugs on you to fill this entire room - so a with-powers fight is deeply unpleasant, and a no-powers fight is completely unfair."

"Sounds like a liability." Sophia grunts.

"It's easy to say that unit you see the bugs in action. It's a bit hard to describe how effective they are properly." I bite my lip in thought. Probably best not to leave that first impression to fester, wouldn't want Sophia to act in her usual way and cause Taylor to blow up. "And regardless of her personal skills in a fight, it's been good enough to send the ABB crying and she had a big role in taking down Oni Lee. Even if she's not at her peak potential right out the gate, I think it's even more admirable that she's trying with what she has. The attitude matters, right?"

She mulls it over. "Right. That doesn't mean that I won't run into the same issue as you. I'm not holding back even if I don't use any powers. Every fight's going to go the same way for her, just as it would if you did it. Wouldn't call myself a great teacher either. If she runs off crying, I'm not chasing after her."

Halfway to acceptance already. "I don't think that will be an issue. She's stubborn when she wants to be. And she's better off learning from you than me. I win half my fights because my powers are good in melee, and the other half because I'm a guy that had a big safety blanket in place when I started getting real experience in fights." She'd assume that I was referring to her power, but I wasn't lying. The challenge system couldn't have made it much safer, once I realised what was happening. "I can't teach either of those things. You can say the same for the first part, but for you - the other part is that you put effort and practice into training and becoming skilled."

"Flattery will get you nowhere." Lies. You're a sucker for compliments, you'll just never admit to it. "But I'll admit, I'm interested. Maybe I'll check you guys out, maybe I won't."

"If nothing else, we'd love to have someone else around to crack heads with." That was the part that she was probably interested in the most, after all. "You'd have to lose the crossbow, because otherwise it would be obvious that it's you-" I tap my body, indicating the lack of obvious weapons. "-but I figure you might enjoy the workout. Even if you like the solo-gig, when was the last time the PRT let you bust a drug den? I don't mean to brag, but we're pretty good at finding them."

"I said, I'll consider it." Yep. Definitely got her hooked. How different would this conversation have gone if I hadn't already known what a combat-junkie she was via her challenge-self? Probably terribly. I'd have tried to put on a PR-friendly face, tried my best at sucking up to her and gotten shut down immediately. Maybe a threat or two about setting the rest of the PRT on me before she left. True, I knew she was a bit of a bitch - not entirely in a bad sense - via her real-life actions, but I don't know if I would have been able to translate that into something positive here on the first try. The irreverence, the casual disregard for the effectiveness of her current organisation, the chafing against the rules holding us both back from doing something about the gangs, and, of course, the universal love language of struggle, violence and strength.

Our impromptu meeting lasting this long wasn't an accident. I had her interest. And, along with it, some semblance of respect.

"You can grab me on PHO if you're interested. I'm guessing you won't be using your official account, but I'll try and spot your message in between the waves of fanmail." She gives a snort of disbelief at that. What was so unbelievable about that? Sure, most of my notifications were people flaming me for my awesome takes on some random thread or another - but it was obvious that I had real fans out there. Every moderately famous person had them, even if they were openly terrible people. My fans, clearly, were simply the type to mind their own business.

Sophia glances out of a crack in the building towards the school. "Another round." She decides.

"We'll be late for classes if we don't wrap up soon." I hum.

"As if you and I are ever going to need anything they have to teach us." She flexes her arms to the side. "We'll be Capes until we die. One way or another, our jobs are already decided for us. Nobody ever really manages to step away from the scene without dragging their powers into their lives somehow. Just a question of who it will be that ends up doing us in. My money's on an Endbringer myself."

"That's a dour outlook on life. Perhaps not entirely wrong in sentiment, but I have no intention of going down easily to anyone." I eye her challenge cooldown again. Fifty-four. Fifty-three. Fifty-two.

"Who said anything about going down easy?" She scoffs. "Just being realistic. I'd like to think that I'm too difficult for any run-of-the-mill villain to take down, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can outrun Behemoth when he decides to put a lightning bolt through my chest."

"You're still being a downer. I'll take out all three of them, and you can just start planning out which retirement home you want to be put in. Deal?" I wiggle my eyebrows through the helmet.

"...you have no idea how much I want to pull my crossbow out and shoot you right now." She groans. "Maybe you would actually get fanmail if you turned into the strong, silent type. Tape your mouth shut, stop posting on PHO and people might actually start to like you."

I think of all the times that her other-self has ended a conversation by pinning me to a wall, the ground or just executing me from afar. And then the times where I said or did something that annoyed her enough to maintain the grudge into the next challenge, and assassinate me from almost the moment I spawned in across the street. "I think I can guess. Best leave it though, or I'd have to go all-out as well."

Eight. Seven. "You think that would make a difference?" She sounds doubtful.

"I know it would. I'm a tricky sort of guy right now. We didn't get to beat Oni Lee by being stronger than him or anything. I'm absolutely confident that I've got more than enough tricks to beat you a single time - even if you did have that crossbow to hand."

"I-"

Zero. "Challenge." I whisper the addition as she starts to respond, and the building disappears in a flash of light.

"Back already?" The other-Sophia doesn't take long to come and find me.

"You know me. Don't know what's good for me." I wave. "Though I'll admit, not sure I should really have bothered. Maybe there's a certain amount of Sophia I can handle in one day. I mean, this is my third, fourth separate conversation with some version of Sophia today? Maybe two more yet to come? I'm thinking I should branch out, look for some variety."

"Shame about your personality, or you'd be falling over yourself for all the people wanting to talk to you." She smirks at me. The helmet left behind already.

"This is what I mean. That abrasive personality isn't doing you any favours. Madison is a fun conversation partner and is only slightly condescending the entire time. I can say one nice thing about Taylor in front of Emma and she'll have her panties halfway to the floor before I'm done talking. But you? It's always violence and barbed comments. Don't get me wrong, that's hot as well, but it wears on a guy over time - you know? I need a break from it now and then."

"I guess you're still talking with her now then. You've been restraining yourself from saying anything crude this entire time, haven't you?" She sounds amused. "And now you're here to blow it all on me instead. Kind of pathetic to be honest. Talking shit behind someone's back is one thing, but flirting with someone behind their back? Grow some balls."

"With your tendency to make a target out of them, that sounds like a dangerous idea." I shrug. "And I wouldn't say I'm doing it behind her back, I'm flirting with a different version of her. It's different."

"It's weird. And I'm not the sort that can be seduced from my objective. I'm a simulation. A memory. Not a person. My sole objective will always remain unchanged, just like every other challenge you've faced so far." She crosses her arms, an unconscious mirror of the other Sophia's typical talking pose.

"Preventing me from winning?" The silence I get in return is unexpected. "No?" She says nothing. "No. Huh. Really? What is it then?" Silence. "Not allowed to answer that? Or not going to?"

She shrugs. "It would usually be to do my absolute best to stop you from winning. Without the presence of a REAL modifier, nothing would be more important to me than stopping you from completing the challenge." She taps her crossbow idly. "Here though? A duel to the death isn't the point of the challenge. An indirect route isn't out of the question in any challenge, nothing wrong with a bit of pre-battle banter if the simulation allows for it - but words matter here. Personality matters here. Sometimes, all that's being tested is a raw matchup of powers in certain situations. But not here."

"The rules seemed pretty clear to me. Restrain you. Don't let anyone die." I drum my fingers against my leg. "And unless you're willing to let me slap some handcuffs around you-" A shake of the head. "-then it seems to me that you're in opposition to that."

"Indirectly. Shouldn't it be a safe assumption that I wouldn't just blindly agree with what your objectives are? This isn't supposed to be easy." I scowl at the answer. "That's just the part I have to play. The only one failing their part is you."

"The EVNT modifier." I conclude. "I know how this night is supposed to go. Armsmaster comes in, zaps you once or twice and carts you off to the Wards."

"Is that what you think?" I pause at the non-answer.

"It was, until you said that." I admit. "There wasn't any footage of the fight, but the result is public knowledge."

Sophia sighs. "If only you had a witness around you could ask about it."

"Like you?" I point out.

"It's not supposed to have happened to me yet. You already know whose place you've taken this time, you should know what night this is for me." She dismisses me. "At the very least, I haven't lied to you. Even if your assumption about 'why' is wrong, the solution is just about strength in the end."

"Strength you won't get to see if I don't get to use my powers in our fights." I phase out myself to prove the point.

"An agreement I only agreed to, because that's what I would have done. A fun distraction on a boring night, beating the shit out of another Cape that needs an ego check - thinking that they can handle me without any powers? What a joke. The nature of the challenge might have swayed my decision-making towards trusting you and weakened the consequences of it going badly, but the real Sophia would have felt the same way I do." She leans in. "Equally, if said Cape decided that they wanted to change their minds and use their full powerset... then I would have ditched the arrangement on the spot. Eager for a fight, but not stupid or arrogant."

I breathe out heavily. "So I need to break our arrangement to win?"

"You could, theoretically, win without powers." She admits. "Might even help, unless you've lucked into the perfect anti-Sophia powerset. But not as you are now, you're not strong enough for that."

I don't mention my discovery about the ash-clone fucking with her phasing. "We're talking in circles here-"

"I agree. Let's stop doing that." She shoots me in the leg. It bounces off harmlessly as Glory Girl's shield winks out. She gives me a wary stare.

I raise my hands into the air. "I've gotten into the habit of leaving that on. Forgot to deselect it." I admit. "What's with the cheap shot anyway? We had a perfectly good conversation going!"

"And I already told you where to go for answers if you really want to get inside my head. I'm a copy. Go talk to the original if you want a big speech. Or do you expect me to hold your hand while you learn to put two and two together, like a stupid baby playing with blocks? There's nothing special about this challenge. It was all laid out for you right at the start." She shoots me again. This time, I manage to dodge away before her finger has fully tightened on the trigger. "I don't know where you got the impression I was interested in helping you defeat me and drag me off to the Wards, but I'm rather opposed to the idea."

I raise my hands in surrender. "And I'm just saying, nobody said you had to join the Wards. All I have to do is put you in cuffs. You could leave again afterwards if you wanted?"

"All you're actually saying is that you didn't understand the assignment. It's pissing me off." She jabs a finger at me. "I'm not talking about this for another second until you've had that conversation, and you actually understand what you need to do to win here. Now. Hands up. You promised to make up for that disaster of a round last time when you decided that I was here to provide a free detox service. Only one way to settle that debt."

"I still have yet to hear a credible reason why you can't just tell me yourself." I argue. Silence. I sigh, bringing my hands up into a guard. "And here I was hoping for a break from you trying to beat me to a pulp."

"Tough shit." The first fist floats through my guard, and our battle begins once more.

FAILURE

One day, all of my efforts in there will pay off. I'll beat her senseless in her own arena. Give her a taste of humility that she so desperately needs.

"-would like to see you try. In fact, I'm all for it. I won't use my weapon, but you can use whatever you like. You win, I'll come and beat up your new girlfriend, show you how to actually be a pain in the ass for the gangs. You lose, I'm out of here. Not interested."

In truth, the challenge version of Sophia wasn't a massive mystery to me that I needed to solve now. An idle curiosity, one that might need to be solved before I could move on to a later challenge. But I was still getting value out of our sparring sessions, although, if I could get the real, improved version as a sparring partner that value would rapidly decrease.

And I couldn't ask her now. Now was not the time to ask about her humiliating, crushing defeat a year or so ago. After we'd gotten more comfortable with the other. Had a session or two to get to know each other, I'd bring it up then.

For now... best make good on my earlier promise. "Dirty trick incoming then. Don't start getting angry or say I didn't warn you." I pause. "And, for the record, I'm going straight to get changed and get to class after this. I'm not hanging around."

"Get on with it." She makes a rude gesture at me. "Go on, what is it? Clockblocker?"

"Worse." I reach into my belt pocket with both hands. A slight tearing sound is the only giveaway as a prepare my attack. She tenses, ready to dodge. What was she expecting, a grenade? I had nothing so fancy, where would I even find one of those?

I check my weapons as best I can without revealing them, then drop into my speed-state. Sophia seems content to allow me to come to her, making no move to rush me - curiosity outweighing her desire to win.

I rush towards her with Velocity's power. She phases through my lunging attack, but I simply maintain my flurry into the cloud - waiting for her to decide to reform. She'd recognise Velocity's power, remember that it was largely useless in his hands and then... I easily dodge her counterstrike, returning to my ineffective rush of punches that fail to land on anything meaningful. Careful, so careful, never to make contact with the tips of my outstretched fingers.

Her head finally reforms. My fingers lunge at the slits at eye-level, the tape squares easily separating from my fingers as it finds a new surface to latch onto - one rapidly smoothed over and pressed into with my full weight behind it. Not as impressive as it sounds when I'm in my speed-state, but how much strength do you really need to smooth down some tape over a flat surface?

Good enough to win a challenge for me, good enough to work in real life. It was hardly my fault she didn't use some kind of visored helmet with more visibility. A basic eye-hole like that was easily covered, and that tape wasn't some dollar-store knockoff that would come off in just a swipe or two of her fingernails. I step back, leaving my speed state as the effectively blinded heroine flails to try and catch my hands or counter my 'attack'.

About a third of the way through the paralysis brought from deactivating Velocity's power, Sophia seems to realise what I just did. Her fingers come up to try and peel the tape away, then nails try to penetrate through it. It's not effective, and before she can try anything else - I'm already on top of her. She phases out of my grasp, but my ash clone rushes into the cloud and starts to dissipate. She reforms again, and this time, my tackle takes her to the floor - each of my arms used to pin down hers, and my full body weight pressed down on her torso.

I take the opportunity to admire the excellent things our brief moment of exertion was doing to her chest. Sometimes armour could really ruin a sight like this, but the costume department had definitely managed to keep the female element in the design. I'd rather be in this position without the costume in the way, but I still seemed to be a way off from achieving that. Simply being appreciative in the meantime was the best I could do.

Sophia, for her part, almost seemed frozen. Not even straining against my arms or trying to break free. Guess I caught her by surprise, or that losing has just sent her mind into a soft reboot.

"Yield?" I prompt.

That seems to start something. "I-" She swallows drily, before the slightly high-pitched tone shifts to something annoyed. "This doesn't mean anything. That wouldn't work twice. And not in a real fight."

"Why wouldn't that work in a real fight?" I challenge. "Do you have a different mask for those?"

"It's ridiculous!" She snaps.

"It's preparation. No shame in losing to that. Plenty of Capes in the Bay that can be blinded like that." She doesn't seem to get any less angry. Or, is humiliated the right word to describe her? "I did warn you I was going to use a dirty trick. And if you're confident that it won't even work again, and you want to prove that to me..." I stand up. "Then you know where to find me, don't you? See you around, Shadow Stalker."

"Wait, get this-" I don't wait. I'm out of the nearest window before she can even finish her sentence.

Goddamn. I'm so fucking cool. I wish I had recorded that.

She'd be able to get back to class if I left her like that, right? I'm moderately sure that tape wasn't coming off without a suitable tool, I hadn't left any corners to pull it off - and I doubted that she had something to cut around the eye holes that easily. She'd have to take the helmet off to try and put her bolts to work, but she wouldn't do that unless she was one-hundred percent sure that I had left the area - which she couldn't easily verify now.

Well. She'd be fine. It wasn't a serious setback. At least the delay meant that I'd be back well before her. Us arriving late to class at the same time might look a little strange in the eyes of the other person.

In the end, Sophia arrives a full twenty-minutes after me with an absolutely thunderous expression on her face that has the teacher pause in their automatic recrimination of her tardiness and instead murmur for her to take her seat at the back of the class quietly.

And, to my slight consternation, I spend the remainder of the class with the unshakeable feeling that a pair of eyes were digging into my back.