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The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 60

One thing that people didn’t think about a lot was that no matter the scale of a fight, there were always rules that people expected to be followed. And not even the immediately obvious codified ones surrounding sports and the like.

A boxing or MMA match? Generally the participants didn’t go into it expecting to kill their opponent. Or for them to suddenly pull out a weapon and attack them with it.

On the other end of the scale, with full on wars between countries… Well, the...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 59

“That wasn’t you.” Armsmaster said rhetorically as I quickly dropped Amy and kicked away the mannequin – no need to risk Coil hiding something unpleasant in it if I didn’t need to.

“Trickster from the Travelers, a team hired by Coil. Line of sight teleporter and absolutely enough of a bastard to kidnap a twelve year old for his boss.” I confirmed anyway as dismissed the bug zapper spell and swapped it for a teleportation one.

My group was too spread out, and we neede...

Growing Pains - Chapter 63

I turned to face the person talking to me but the second I saw them, the planned retort I had died before I could make a sound.

I wasn’t exactly expecting someone from the superpowered community to show up for what was supposedly some minor alien tech, but I hadn’t counted it out either.

What I hadn’t expected at all was to come face to face with a naked catgirl the minute I’d gotten my hands on that alien tech.

…

My life got weird sometimes.

�...

Growing Pains - Chapter 62

Once again I was out in the wilderness training to fully master my abilities.

This time I wasn’t focused on pushing my body to its limits or firing off massive Ki attacks. Instead I was following the advice I’d gotten from both Batman and my trainers on Thymescira. I had touched on a new technique on the Preserver’s ship on how to shape and harden my Ki. Now I needed to fold that into the rest of my fighting style to the point that it became something I could do in an instant even...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.8

After kicking down the front door, I walked in on the beginnings of absolute chaos.

The issue when it came to dealing with the White Fang in most situations was that for all the Adam Taurus’s and Sienna Khan’s that made up their ranks, there were twenty more that were just normal people that were fed up with the hand life had given them and wanted to at least act like they were fighting against it.

They were the kind of people that might go to rallies or protests, rant about h...

Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic - Chapter 72

“By the Goddess, is there no end to these abominations?!” Lymrase exclaimed as her saber bisected the final Adjutant from the most recent wave of the things. “How many did Cerberus make?!”

“They didn’t.” Revan said bluntly. “There must have been more personnel down here than we expected. Support staff, scientists, guards… if the experiments caught them off guard with the power outage, there could have been a spike in the Adjutants’ numbers before Cerberus even knew t...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 58

The beginning of the fight was somewhat of an awkward, chaotic mess that really wasn’t helped by the fact that there wasn’t a clear divide between heroes and villains.

I could see a few of the Protectorate heroes throwing uncertain glances at Crystal and her family even as they moved to cover the remaining civilians without exposing their backs to the Undersiders, which didn’t seem to sit well with any of New Wave.

I didn’t have that issue. It was fairly obvious who my fir...

Growing Pains - Chapter 61

When I woke up again, for a second I thought I was back on Earth and the whole Preserver adventure had just been a dream. But considering the sky had a catwalk going across it and I was laying on Superman’s cape, that didn’t seem likely.

And since I had just been left out in the open and not shoved into another enclosure, the fighting was probably over and we won.

Yay.

Also ow.

As I shifted around to get a sense for my body, I could feel a bunch of barely healed sc...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.7

What I might have neglected to tell Jaune was that training didn’t end after one spar.

No. Training would end when he just physically wasn’t able to push on anymore, and with Leona coming along for the trip fixing him up as needed, Jaune was able to go on for a much longer time than anyone on JNPR or RWBY had been expecting.

“Hurry up Jaune! One more beowolf and then you get a ten minute break!”

There was more than one beowolf in the clearing, but I was following som...

Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic - Chapter 71

Shepard sprinted towards a pallet of metal crates and slid behind them just in time to avoid the gunfire from the last few Cerberus Troopers in the area.

She saw a few red energy bolts zip past as one of her squadmates snapped off a few shots in return and drove the Troopers back into cover. No one made any callouts, so no confirmed kills.

Her squad had been moving quickly, but they had stalled right outside the control room. Probably the worst possible place, but there wasn’t m...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 57

As much as I wanted to hunt down Kaiser and personally impress on him exactly how stupid I thought this move of his was, I did recognise that flying into a rage while surrounded by the Protectorate and a lot of civilians was not a good plan to make sure my friends came out of this in one piece.

Civilians that were suddenly looking a hell of a lot more nervous around me and quickly backing away.

‘Guess your secret identity is officially blown, huh?’ Dd...

Growing Pains - Chapter 60

-Superman POV-

It felt nice to no longer be running on fumes, he thought as he took a moment to just bask in the artificial sunlight coming from one of the enclosure’s lamps. Close enough to the light of a yellow sun that he was able to shake off the last effects of the red sun lamp he was exposed to.

Apparently the Collector really went the extra mile to get even the small things as close as possible to their natural counterpart. Something Superman didn’t appreciate when that...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.6

“Watch your footwork, Mr Arc.” I commented as I parried an overhead slash, only to sigh as the blonde haired boy literally looked at his feet to see how he needed to adjust their position.

This wasn’t the first time he’d done something similar, and while I knew some people needed to visually adjust when first learning something – Jaune had weeks to work what should be basic muscle memory into his stance by now.

Jaune was honestly a bit of a contradiction that ma...

Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic - Chapter 70

Captain Das’Baot vas Imperial steadied himself as his Harrower-class Star Destroyer decelerated from lightspeed just outside the Cerberus held planet’s gravity well and immediately started barking orders to get them in formation while preparing their fighter screens for launch.

He felt it was largely unneeded, since the Empress and Admiral had both outlined the plan before the battlegroup had even arrived in the system and his crew knew their jobs well enough without him hovering ov...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 56

“Amy Dallon and her plus one.” My bishop said, presenting the undercover PRT agent her invitation.

The guy took it like Amy was handing him a live cobra and briefly examined it and made a show of looking at some kind of list. Probably giving his superiors a chance to chime in with instructions on how to handle her situation.

Because overall Amy was in a weird spot that didn’t really fit into the normal cape roles.

Technically, she should be a villain due to being a mem...

Growing Pains - Chapter 59

Despite knowing I didn’t have the time or space to properly get into a fight with anyone, I couldn’t help but get excited at the thought of battling with someone from a proper warrior race.

Other than the Amazons and Hawkie, most people I fought with just didn’t get it on some level. A fight to them was a means to a goal or a way to stop something. They didn’t get that just fighting in the first place was already a win.

So really, when faced with that kind of declaration t...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.5 - Ruby Interlude

-Ruby POV-

The entire team staggered tiredly into their dorm room as another day of classes came to an end.

Thankfully, tomorrow was the weekend because Ruby at least definitely needed a few days to recover from combat class and she didn’t want or need Weiss yelling at her for falling asleep during one of the more boring academic classes if she could avoid it.

Even though Weiss didn’t look so good herself after the butt kicking they had gotten from the m...

Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic - Chapter 69

The Normandy slipped silently into the system but Shepard waited until EDI gave the all clear before she relaxed.

The stealth systems had been holding up so far, but the first Normandy had proved that they weren’t infallible. And Cerberus had been the one to build the SR-II in the first place so it was reasonable that out of all organisations to have something that would counter those systems when even the Reapers had trouble finding them while they were running quiet, it would be the...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 55

Eventually I agreed on crashing the PRT’s part with Amy for a few reasons.

The first and most important was that I wanted my Peerage members to get the credit they deserved for their actions during the whole disaster. Amy might be the only one actually going to attend, but anyone with a functioning brain should realise that if Amy had been working in the hospitals while the ABB was bombing the city, then the rest of my group had obviously been busy elsewhere. Especially considering th...

Growing Pains - Chapter 58

Oddly enough, despite having to know I’d escaped by now, I didn’t see any signs of the Preserver trying to stop me from running around his ship.

I knew he had robots that acted as some kind of maintenance/caretaker drone for the animals so I suspected he had some kind of security ones as well.

I had half expected to run into a handful of them once I started flying towards where I could sense Superman. Then again, the Preserver actually seemed to know a thing about Sai...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.4

I had been slightly resigned to something similar to what happened with the Varden after my victory over Pyrrah and her team. Obviously not to the same extent, since demolishing a good part of an army by myself was vastly different than beating a teenage girl – no matter how good of a fighter she was. But to my pleasant surprise, most of the school seemed indifferent about it.

I was a member of  Beacon’s staff, even if I was just an assistant, of course I was going to be good. ...

Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic - Chapter 68

The surrender of Lymrase marked the end of any significant resistance from the attacking pirates.

A small security force would be left behind to both reassure the miners and deal with any stragglers that managed to hide from the marines, as unlikely as it was that any escaped, while the rest would return to the fleet in orbit.

But as pleased as Revan was that her goal of luring out and dealing with the pirate fleet attacking her logistics network had been completed, and that she h...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 54

“So, uh, are you sure this is safe?” Clover asked nervously from her spot in the middle of the room we had dedicated to try transforming her back to human appearance.

“We’re zapping you with a field meant to make the molecules that make up ‘you’ easier to separate while Rias uses devil magic to teleport the two halves of you apart and rearrange the pieces into your original form. That is practically the definition of unsafe.” Carl replied absently, only to get a smack on t...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.3

The following day I was waiting off to the side with Leona while Professor Goodwitch explained to the class what they would be doing today. I was getting my own smaller reminder lecture on what was considered acceptable to use against students. Which so far seemed to be ‘do not break them more than we can fix them’ and ‘keep property damage to a minimum’.

Nothing I hadn’t been told repeatedly already, but Leona seemed to doubt my ability to keep my surroundings intact even whe...

Growing Pains - Chapter 57

Groaning, I opened my eyes and found myself…in another jail cell…

What the heck?

This one wasn’t the concrete and metal one like in Metropolis, but a giant glass-like tube surrounding me on all sides. Where was I? And what happened?

“Hello?” I called out, only to get no reply.

Either no one was listening, or they simply didn’t care that I woke up.

Well since I was being left alone, I decided to take a moment to figure out how I ended up here. The last...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.2

I sighed as the match between teams HNTR and SRRL came to an end.

That had been a painful mess to watch.

The individuals were fine. The problem was they were fighting exactly like that, individuals. At best there was only a few token attempts between the eight combatants to work together while the rest of the match was treated like a quartet of duels before the winners tried to gang up on the ones remaining…only to end up getting in each other’s way to the point that the match...

Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic - Chapter 67

Red and blue lightsabers collided and locked as the enemy Jedi attempted to pin Revan in place, only to slide off again as Revan relaxed and slid around her opponent like a river. Her second saber swung down aiming to remove the Jedi’s kneecaps, but missed as the Jedi lightly hopped over the glowing blade – a far cry from the dramatic flips and leaps her opponent had been using earlier in their duel.

“No acrobatics that time. Are you getting tired, Jedi?” Revan questioned as she...

The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 53

I let out a contented sigh as Gloria brushed her fingers through my hair and just kind of basked in the background chatter of my Peerage around me. 

Since the raids on the ABB and Lung’s takedown, most of us hadn’t actually done much of anything that could be considered ‘Cape activities’.

We didn’t see a reason to.

Lung had been captured, Bakuda was apparently taken down in a surprise raid by the PRT that had Coil’s greasy fingerprints all over it, and the A...

Growing Pains - Chapter 56

This…was not how I expected to spend my day, I mused as I sat hunched on a bare bench, staring through the bars on my cell.

Not how I expected my first time in a jail cell to be either.

But then again, how was I supposed to know I still had an active warrant for my arrest because of the bank thing?

Or that some random police officer was going to actually attempt to arrest me because of it?!

Either the guy was too stupid to live or was the bravest person on this plane...

A Wandering Soul - Reaper 2.1

“Mistress, is there a reason I’m in the workshop with you right now?” A tired looking Leona asked me as I did one final check of the components in front of me — which, fair. I had dragged her here very early in the morning.

Visually, everything looked fine. But in many ways this was like building a computer, you wouldn’t know you screwed up until after you tried turning it on for the first time.

“Sure, do you want the technical reason or the actual one?” I asked.