1.19 Ascendance Part 2

Leo wastes no time as the black-clad Adonis comes crashing through Joan’s bedroom wall. With one swift motion born of inhumanly good reflexes and battle-honed instincts, he summons Reinkal to his hand as he aims the halberd at the intruder.

Still charged from the mop-up after the battle with Apocalypse, Leo fires off a beam of black energy at the hostile parahuman.

These people are dangerous and mean business.

They just casually killed Abigail. We can’t risk them doing the same to Joan or us.

And we have to take things extra seriously with that woman involved.

The energy beam rips through the head of the parahuman and man topple over, his corpse falling forward with the head half gone.

Whatever his powers were, they weren’t enough to protect him from Reinkal.

With a single stride, Leo stabs Reinkal into the corpses to restore some of the power he just spent.

One down, four to go.

“D-did you just-” stutters Joan, not even finishing her sentence as she stares at Leo in shock.

“Yes,” replies Leo as he looks at the cameras and other sensors via his phone so he can track the other invaders.

One of them is a black haired woman with pale skin, most likely a Bellator. She can phrase through walls and fly.

Then we got Jane Smith in her black catsuit with a thin, tall, hunchback man with razor sharp one foot long claws instead of fingernails. Probably an Abnormal given those deformities. Given how he slew Abigail, he has long ranged invisible razor attacks. Capable of tearing through high level nigh invulnerability with pin point precision.

I doubt that is much width to such as an attack so dodging is still an option.

But looking at the footage, he seems to have some good reflexes. Definitely superhuman and most likely superior to our own.

That is a problem.

And the last guy?

Tinker or Gadgeteer with power armour and a large variety of equipment.

Could be worse.

We still don’t know the full extent of their powers.

True.

We must be wary.

“Follow me Joan,” whispers Leo, “Take your phone out and use the camera function.”

“How do-oh, Ceta has got it,” replies Joan as she begins to pull out her phone, “She is going to use the nano-bots in me to give me HUD.”

“Good idea,” agrees Leo as he pulls out some modified sunglasses that will give him a HUD of his own, “Give me a moment.”

Moving swiftly since he doubts they will have much longer, Leo heads over to Joan’s bed and pulls out a emergency utility belt that he has stored away along with a couple of handguns with Hunter bullets.

Maybe I am paranoid, but I’m sure glad I’ve prepared for a situation like this.

It isn’t paranoia is they really are out to get you.

Damn right.

“Here,” says Leo as he tosses a handgun to Joan, giving the other for himself as he places Reinkal down for the time being.

I can also summon it again later. This way I get a surprise weapon up my sleeve in addition to having additional hand free.

As he spots the Abnormal stop moving on the floor below him and begin to raise his hand upwards, Leo quickly steps back. He barely moves out of the way in time to avoid the Abnormal using an invisible ranged attack to tear a hold through floor.

The Abnormal points a finger at Leo and smirks even as Leo aims his pistol. But while he doesn’t vaguely feel some mental discomfit and his emotional state heighten, Leo is unaffected by whatever the Abnormal is trying to do.

Idiot doesn’t realise that we are immune to mental attacks.

He doesn’t give the Abnormal a chance to realise his mistake before firing off a single shot. The Hunter round lodges itself within the Abnormal’s skull and explodes a split-second later, taking most of the head off in the process.

Did you see him begin to regenerate before the Hunter round went off?

That would have been troublesome.

Good thing we used explosive rounds.

Leo glances as the ammo counter on his HUD. The number has gone down from twelve to eleven.

It feels like I am in a video game. Despite everything I’ve done in Gears.

Probably because things like this aren’t supposed to happen to us while we are home and when we do things like this, we’re supposed to have our power armour on.

True. Somehow the compromise of having some gadgets rather than having all of them or none of them just makes this feel less real.

“*&%£ you $%@#ing *&@#%£$!” screams a woman and Leo turns around just in time to the black-haired phrasing woman phrases straight through the floor and into Leo before he can do anything.

As he feels a sudden surge of agony and stress, Leo staggers backwards, clutching his head before toppling over.

“Leo!” shrieks Joan, but Leo can’t hear.