The sun was out and burning bright. From where I stood at the guard's back, though, I could see that there was a bleak set of clouds visible on the horizon which would soon be rolling in. I scanned the glass front of the marina building for our enemy, but he was still keeping himself well hidden. With my hand outstretched and pointing over my ally's shoulder, I tried to track his movements, but it was more of an art than a science, and with the size of the structure before us I had trouble making the input from my power into a practical set of coordinates.

We tried firing explosive rounds inside, shattering out the windows and creating short flashes of light, but none of them were hitting the mark. They could have been stopping short at any number of obstacles. Walls, display cases, and so on. Just because I could make out a psychic silhouette did not mean that I knew anything about the landscape we were facing.

We had no choice but to wade inside, granting the man who could very likely walk-through-walls the major advantage of the playing field.

My theory before was that he could not make himself intangible but knowing now that he could cause himself to turn invisible, I had trouble imagining this was correct. Surely, he couldn't be individually making trillions of photons intangible, that would have resulted in a black blotch where he was standing. It had to be an effect localized to his own person instead, causing the photons to ignore him. Yet, at the same time, I had seen how much of a strain it was on his power, even compared to having two full sized vehicles fuse together with one another at will.

It could simply be an arbitrary rule, I thought, much like my own power's enhanced ability to cause people to ignore me while struggling with the simplest of other forms of mind control. Something which he can bend, but not quite break.

That was a good enough theory, but I kept in mind that we couldn't under-estimate him. If he came running through a wall at us, I would have to be prepared for every possibility. It only took one touch from Passthrough for a total game-over in the worst possible way.

The lights were out within the building, and smokey murk now pervaded from the smoldering spots that we had left behind. Every cough I sputtered with, or wince as my eyes burned on bitter air, was a moment where I lost track of the aura I was following.

This marina functioned also as a yacht club, containing both a gift shop and a restaurant. The layout therefore was difficult to conceptualize. There were offices, hallways, kitchens, and corners to spare, and all I had to work with was the faintest of colored smears in my vision.

"He's... doing something," I said. He was crouching down, and his hands were together.

"Let's route this way. He's in the kitchen."

Unlike me, the guard was familiar with close quarters combat and building layouts. He knew how to sweep and clear even the most complex of spaces, I gathered, which helped me to calm my nerves. He was able to estimate where our enemy was just from my pointing.

For added measure, I had energy at the ready also. I might not have been allowed a gun in this fight, but I was still ready to fire off a small blast of agony if the opportunity presented itself. Before we went any further, I tried letting out a ping, just like I had done back at the start of the conflict with the rampager; a sonar blast to gather a higher resolution image.

A hint of Passthrough's mind came back to me from the blast. His intentions were muddied with a complex plan, something that gave me serious pause about whether or not we should keep going. Breaking through my hesitation was the realization of just how close he was, though. I picked up, through my burst, the dim smell of fry oil. The flash of a vision. Unmistakably, I was certain we had him in our sights.

"He's standing by a fryer. You can hit him through a cubby in the bar," I said.

The guard nodded with acknowledgement, and we picked up our pace. He readied immediately to lay down another explosive burst. No way we would miss this time. That was, if we could get close enough without alerting him first. Something he had anticipated.

The chairs to our side were flung forward as we ran, suddenly alerting Passthrough to our approach. He called to us from within the kitchen, still too far recessed around the corner to be shot at, full of smugness as he knew this. "You'll want to watch your step, heroes!"

I heard the guard cuss under his breath as he reached for his belt-clipped knife. We were so close, but he seemed to be frozen in pain, yet with no clear sign of injury. It took me a moment to finally understand why the two chairs that had been yanked from their placing were now lying out in the middle of the dining hall. They had been thrown by his own momentum since they were attached to him.

Once I knew what I was looking for, I only had to squint to see it.

Fishing line had been strung all throughout the room. Each end of a segment of the line had been fused with the chairs resting upright on the tabletops. They were at chest-height, and just waiting for either one of us to unfeelingly walk into them where they would string up our organs.

He can... sense when they've come into contact and resolidify them.

All these tricks were the product of years of experience. There was so much I had to learn if I ever wanted to be able to match someone like this. God knew, my own power probably had countless uses I had yet to think of. There could have been an obvious solution here that I just wasn't seeing. There were millions of ways any power could be used.

Millions of ways he could kill us right now...

Before I was able to wrack my brain any further, the guard took matters into his own hands and struck back.

He had cut away the fishing line on one side and then yanked it out of his chest wall from the other. Seeing no more reason to tread carefully, his aura was brimming with greater anger, and he turned to the easiest solution available. He trashed everything in sight.

Gunfire crashed over me while tables clattered down. The explosive ammunition being used sent splinters of wood flying as it cut through the furniture like paper. It wouldn't matter then if the fishing line was still intangible; not if it fell down and into the flooring where it couldn't harm us. All he had to do was clear the path forward first by flattening everything standing.

Something I did not expect was how literally the guard executed this directive. He created a new path as he emptied the last of his magazine out, blowing a human-sized hole through the kitchen's wall and proving that Passthrough was not the only one here who could make his own way. Once that hole was open, we both saw our opportunity.

The villain was down behind the ovens messing with the gas lines. Preparing some kind of explosion had him distracted, and as he watched us burst through, I saw him nearly stumble over himself in panic. He was dressed in plain black clothing with a smooth white mask on his face, but none of that could hide his aura. I'd seen before in its hues that he hated to lose. His motivation was undoubtedly his pride, which left only one thing that overrode it... and that was his own life flashing before his eyes.

Something I noticed in the hospital was that when death was nearest, people played their greatest regrets on repeat in their minds. Usually, these had to do with family, and Passthrough's was no different. It was an image of his daughter going down the slide, but that was all I gathered before it ended.

The memories of her went away as fast as they had arisen. Just as soon as the guard reached for his sidearm, Passthrough figured out that he still had time to run for his life, and he took off through a side door. Too fast to hit, but just slow enough to shoot at.

"Wait!" I called.

The guard squeezed off only one round from his pistol and the prepared explosion erupted.

I was thrown on my back while he was left standing. Heat and shrapnel washed over us, and jagged splinters of wood waited for me on the ground. Though they pierced my skin, I barely noticed with the impact. You reached a certain point of damage where you were so covered in cuts and bruises that new ones failed to register. My hospital clothes were singed, and everything ached, but my body still kept moving as I found myself standing and readying myself to keep going. After a mistake like that, we were left vulnerable to a sneak-attack.

As I stood, however, there was no sign of Passthrough's aura. Not that I could find.

"Is he dead?" the guard asked.

There was a foot long spike of wood standing up on the ground right beside where I had landed. "I don't know," I said, "but I almost am. Holy hell… I tried to warn you he was making a bomb."

The guard merely sighed. "I figured that much out, Headcase. But he was intending to activate it with his power after he cleared the blast radius. I wasn't fast enough to hit him, so I turned his own trap against him. I ask again. Is. He. Dead?"

My head was still swimming, so there was a chance I was wrong, but... "I think so," I said.

"Let's confirm."

We wasted no time in opening up what was left of the door which Passthrough had fled by. Fires were breaking out and making it hard to pass safely, especially with my bare feet, but the guard was able to go ahead of me and see for himself.

I was anxious to hear back, so my voice cracked heavily. "Well? Do you see a body?"

"Negative!" the guard yelled. "What does your power say!"

"I can't find him!"

"Shit! Get to the front door. This place is coming down around us."

"Right!" I acknowledged his order and was happy to do so. My feet were bandaged from the damage they'd sustained in the fight against the rampager, so they had my eyes watering with pain as I walked. Just this morning I had left the hospital in a wheelchair. Now I was looking forward to exchanging splinters for gravel at least.

I reached the door and looked back for the guard's aura. I half expected it to have disappeared, killed by some clever trick of our enemy, but he came out into the main room with no problem. He signaled for me to keep moving and soon joined me on the outside. Both of us were able to regain our composure there, and I could search more concertedly for the villain using my sonar ability to check every different direction. What I found was not a satisfying conclusion.

That damn coward.

Passthrough's aura reappeared far up the road. With his car trashed, he had no choice but to leave the fight on foot. My compatriot might have been able to catch him, but I sure wouldn't be able to in my state. "He's gone," I said. "He's running."

The guard looked at my bleeding feet and nodded. "You're in no shape for pursuit, and if he turns invisible again I would be helpless. We survived, so that's all that matters… That’s all that matters."

Hearing the sorrow in his voice, I made sure to say, "I'm sorry about your friend." It was weak, especially because he had died for my sake, but it had to count for something. It was all that I could offer.

"Don't be, Adrian. He died doing his job, and that's all any of us can ask for. To be heroes."

We hadn't been able to deprive the villains of their asset, but neither could they say the same for us. In reality, this was how most fights tended to end. People preferred to run rather than be killed or captured, and many supers had powers which made for efficient getaways. I didn't doubt that Passthrough would continue to be a problem later on, but that was a problem for future-Adrian.

My goal in the meantime had to be to get stronger.

"Well..." I turned and grimaced. "What now?"