“How much you tip her?” I asked, as we strolled down the street at 2 AM. Mr. Hill had a set of keys for a place down closer to the water, and we were on the way to the garage.

“A grand. Their time is money.” Money, easy come, easy go. “How come you never offered to do something like that?”

“I know what I’m doing. You’d either black out for a couple hours, or you’d get another hard-on and maybe kill someone.” If not from the discharge, from being mocked and taking out some drunken idiot making fun of him.

He grunted, but didn’t contest it. “The drink was nice and easy, too,” he added. “What was in it?” I told him, and he just grumbled and shook his head again. “Whatever the fuck I am now, it sure ain’t human,” he finally said.

“Avatars generally aren’t anymore,” I agreed. Given he had the Earth Subtype, pretty much a given. “Maxie come through?”

“Yeah. Even got a ride put together quick for me. The Mick knows his stuff. Does a lot of specialty work.”

“The girls sing for you?”

He grunted, clearly amused this time. “They know what’s going on better than some of the lowlifes do. Maxie’s is a good place, gets a lot of mob in there. Loose money, loose lips. They know I won’t touch ‘em, too.

“We got an appointment tomorrow. The Resort.”

I eyed his trenchcoat, and his attire under it. “You’re gonna need some clothes. Show the suits you know how to dress. You already got the dominating pose and size. Put some fine threads on you, and they’ll quake to see you walk in.”

He flicked a non-existent hair off his trenchcoat. “Yeah, this is my look when working active-like, but these guys are old school, where clothes make the man. Never bothered to have much to do with the money guys back then, they always had a flunky pay me.”

“Probably worried you’d off them when they started showing attitude. Working class ex-military with power? Like a bad smell.”

“The closest some of them have ever come to a true Powered might be a psi or Shaman they rented for something, or a Core user trying to cheat at cards. They probably still think a gun is a true equalizer,” he huffed.

“To give them credit, for less than one in a million people, it’s not.” I spread my hands slightly. “I can’t take sustained gunfire, after all.”

“You can put up them shields and magic armor and stuff. Same thing.”

“Not to a gun in my ear.”

He started to reply, and thought about that. “Okay, I get it. Though given what I’ve seen of you, anyone who could do that to you would have someone like me helping them out.”

=========

A couple weeks before, out in nowhere in the Mojave...

“You want me to lay out everything I can do for you?” I smiled despite myself. “You know I’m not going to do that. Tone it down, old man.”

He grunted in mock displeasure. “Okay, earned that. I need to know you can take care of yourself, and how you do it. I’m not bad with teams, but I tend to work alone because most teams can’t handle the Weight if I use it, and if all they want is a bruiser, they can find one of Mechanar’s cyborg rivet-jobs or some Joe in power armor, like Tank or Ironjaw.”

“So, you want a demonstration of my Dynamo and Dealer sets independently.” I dusted off my hands. “Okay, I can do that. I can tell you that I can probably survive your Weight unless you really spike it, but I’m not strong enough to fight you while it’s up.”

I brought up my hands, and lightning crackled over them. “Don’t bother using the Weight, that’s your win button. But you will probably have a hard time laying a hand on me, and keeping it if you do get one.”

Mr. Hill grunted as he took off his trench coat and set it aside, leaving him in his wife-beater. “You looking down on me, little girl?” he growled menacingly.

“Says the guy seven feet tall.” I rolled my eyes. “Okay, coming in.”

---

I was absolutely correct, of course. He had Might, but not Power. He could move very fast, as he was effectively weightless to himself, and definitely faster than any normal human boxer, as he didn’t have to worry about muscle strain or tendons popping or anything.

But faster than peak human was still way slower than me, and his reflexes were conditioning and skill, still fairly standard human-based. To me, he was very slow indeed, and I also had those Eyes, looking for all his moves and attacks, such that I was responding to things before he actually moved, and he couldn’t correct his blows before I had already dodged them.

In return, I hammered on him.

His Strength was in the 26-28 range, although his Might was much higher at 68ish. He was a decent brawler, but hardly transcendental in his skill, maybe an Eight, and the +20 or so to hit me just really couldn’t, as long as I stayed focused on him.

Yeah, his effective DR was his Might bonus, which was sitting around +30. That was also at least the amount of his energy resistance, as the electricity I was pouring out was doing slim to nothing to him as I began to hit at him.

I didn’t have an effective Chasuble yet, so the 6d6+10 or so base was simply getting conducted down him and into the ground, doing basically nothing other than a grunt about one time in four as he felt a spark or two get through.

That said, he couldn’t dodge me, couldn’t avoid me, couldn’t outrun me, and I could literally be sticking to him and he couldn’t touch me.

I literally wasn’t strong enough to hurt him. The amount of punishment I began heaping on him like he was a stony punching bag would have served to crump most steel armor decisively, definitely with the voltage backing it, but I had difficulties making him even go off-balance just with hits, although I could Repulse him and force him to Root or he’d stagger a step or two, even at his full weight.

I could move around on the ground a whole lot faster than him, jump completely over and around him with no effort, and actually circle him faster than he could spin.

This didn’t perturb him, as his Weight could cut the legs out from under a speedster trying that trick on him.

“Damn, you do hit hard for a little thing,” he admitted, stopping the one-sided shadow boxing practice with a flicker of his Weight, which the Red Eyes informed me was coming. I hopped back to get out of range of his hands before my weight increased twentyfold. It slowed me down extremely in comparison, but I had a roughly x40 human Might modifier, so I could still move around somewhat stiffly... and my Repulse was still strong enough to keep my feet just off the ground, giving me an idea of just how powerful it was.

He shook off the minor bruising and faint welts as if they were nothing, and they were. They’d be gone inside an hour if he just laid down on the ground.

“Very fast hands, accurate, ya know where to hit, where to push, and you can even throw me.” He’d let me, of course, startled when I actually did it to him, and he went sailing a dozen yards as I’d whipped him off his feet after an overextended punch. He’d landed on his feet, but it just demonstrated that I could toss a heavy opponent around if need be, and knew when and how to. “That voltage you’re putting out is fairly intense, too, take a normal man out in one hit.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Decent technique with hands and feet. You’ve definitely been taught to fight somewhere.” He nodded, as if I’d passed something. “Shoot me a few times with that Bite of yours.”

=============

If you're not reading this on Royal Road, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! I have not given permission for this story to be posted ANYWHERE ELSE.

=============

I was happy to unload on him, the voltage and coherent beams alternating as they slammed into him repeatedly. I first retreated quickly, began to move around as he tried dodging, and I began to hop, do somersaults, spins, jumps, cartwheels, dodge tosses of stones of his own whipping by, and basically never missed him the whole while.

“And them web-things?” He wasn’t worried about those, either, as he’d seen them down in the practice range, and even the strongest ones weren’t able to trap him. He’d just wade through them slowly as they snapped.

I promptly covered him in web anchors, then tied him off to boulders with another pattern, wrapped him up in veils to block off sight in the area, covered his face, spun around him and wrapped him up in web-ropes and tried to deny him leverage as I literally spun around on top of him before he could reach up, layering him in close-binding webs.

Still, he was just too strong. It took him a little effort, but he still brought his arms up, the webbing ripped and tore, and he tugged at the stuff as he stepped away, especially the way it clung to his fingers and skin.

“How long does this stuff last?” he asked, shaking his hands.

“Wad it up in a ball between your fingers,” I advised him, watching him as he did so. Good practice for other sticky stuff, which might use super-adhesives and steel. “At least a couple hours, if I don’t dismiss it.” He finally got all the strands on his hands and arms wadded up, pressed the mass against a rock, and scraped it off with pressure. To congratulate him, I made it all vanish with a snap of my fingers. “Warlock stuff. Magical. I can probably improve it some, but containing something as strong as you would require a lot of work and power.”

“That Bite has some nastiness to it, and you’ve a good shooting eye. Trick shooter?” he asked me curiously, impressed with my aim.

“Skill-wise, no. My reflexes are fine enough that I can probably fake it.”

“Okay, that gives me a good idea of yer Dynamo set. What about yer Dealer set?”

I snapped my fingers, and my Mask gathered, my attire shifting to match. Even he had to admit the swirly effect was eye-catching as I lifted off above the ground. “Mr. Hill, I am a Wizardess, not a Sorceress. That means I potentially have a very large array of magical things I can do, which expands by the day.

“However, contrary to what you see,” I pulled out a sealed new deck of cards, popped them open with my thumb, and they shuffled out into my other hand, forming a moving stream of cards around it, “I am going to inform you that my Cards are absolutely, one HUNDRED percent, not essential to my magic at all. They are a diversion, and a focus, but they are not necessary in the slightest.”

“Huh.” His dark grey eyes gleamed knowingly. “I like it. What kind of magic do you prefer?”

I smiled slightly. “Lethally accurate and precise offensive magic of the blasting variety.”

It was his turn to be surprised. “Not illusions and curses and enchantments and Summoning in monsters and stuff?” he asked warily.

“I can do all that, and I will do all of that to maintain my cover. But my specialty is Shardcasting, which I disguise as Cardcasting.”

I flicked up a card, and eight variants of the Clubs suit lifted off around it, spinning black shamrocks shimmering with fractal light. “Brace yourself, Mr. Hill.”

He looked at me for a moment, then set his feet, Rooted himself, and raised his arms.

I flicked my wrist, and sent the glowing Card hurtling at him, eight Clubs spinning around it.

They hit him considerably harder than my Wrath. The chiming cracks of impact against his invulnerability made him grunt, and I was absolutely right: If he hadn’t been Rooted, he would have gone flying.

“Now that has some kick to it,” he admitted, lowering his arms, and then stared at another Card, and the thirteen red Diamonds floating around it, chiming softly with some power that seemed to be echoing inside of him. He could see sparkles of frost gathering around me, falling to the ground.

He put his head behind his arms again as I flicked the Card at him.