Erich settled in place on the roof, pulling his cloak tight around him as the camo system flared to life, rendering him all but invisible in the evening gloom.

“Now to wait,” he murmured.

It didn’t take long; the sound of pounding feet and harried breathing reaching his ears mere moments before the first figure burst onto the roof.

“Suit: prepare for sequential fire,” he whispered as a second figure followed the first. “Designate first and subsequent targets priority two.”

“Acknowledged.”

Feeling his heart thumping in his chest, the villain watched warily as seven more figures emerged from the stairway, eyes wild and chests heaving from the exertion.

To his surprise, Manacle was the last to emerge.

“Designate ‘Manacle’ priority one,” Erich said as a targeting reticule superimposed itself over the man in the faux fireman costume.

Momentarily, he wondered as to why the sadistic pyromancer would choose to take up the dangerous position of rear-guard.

A question that was answered quite spectacularly as the man promptly turned around and sent a powerful stream of fire down the path he had just emerged from.

The Meta planned to burn the building down with his pursuers still in it.

Along with however many people live here, Erich noted grimly.

Still, that wasn’t his problem.

“Spit, evacuate the drones,” he radioed. “Manacle just made a concerted effort to burn the building down.”

“What now boss?” One of the frightened Kings asked as Erich received a confirmation from the nervous street urchin.

“Now we jump,” Manacle instructed, grinning down at the smoke and flames that were now billowing from the stairway.

“Uh, Boss?” Another King flinched as the pyromaniac turned his eyes on him. “I’m… I’m not so good with heights.”

If anything, the villain’s smile only grew.

“Well then, I suggest you get comfortable,” the villain said. “Or you can choose to try your luck with the flames and the bots.”

Ah, so they saw through the drone’s paper-thin disguise.

Not exactly surprising given that drones weren’t exactly uncommon on the West Coast. While their association with the Master made automata something of a taboo on the East Coast, the opposite rang true out here, with the use of drones being seen as something of a status symbol.

So it wasn’t exactly strange that Manacle could recognize a bunch of drones in clothes, even as he was running away from them.

“I’ll… I’ll jump boss.”

“Good, let’s go,” the man said, turning toward the ledge.

Which conveniently meant the whole crew had their backs to where Erich was crouching, as his metallic tentacles slid out from under the cover of his cloak.

You know, if I were someone else, I might have used this moment to banter. The classic meta-human pre-battle banter.

Fortunately, he wasn’t someone else, and he didn’t need to stroke his own ego by gloating moments before his victory.

So instead, he just said one simple word.

“Fire.”

For just a moment, a trio of pulsing red beams illuminated the rooftop, flashing three times within half as many seconds.

Six steaming bodies toppled over the ledge a moment later, dead before they’d even started to topple.

Unfortunately for Erich, Manacle was not amongst them.

Note to self, Manacle has a minor bruiser factor, he thought franticly as the man in question turned around, eyes – quite literally - alighting on the exposed glowing barrels of the hidden villain’s weapons.

Erich’s world became heat and fire as a stream of white-hot flames swallowed him.

It had been quite some time since the engineer had shrieked in mortal terror, but he found the noise returned quite naturally to him as he instinctively raised his hands to in a futile attempt to ward off the flames, taking a step back as he did.

…Right over the ledge he had been leaned against.

Weightlessness seized him as he tumbled, his stomach rising further into his chest as he fell.

Still, some small part of him managed to retain some semblance of coherent thought, and it was that part of him that acted; tearing the flaming fabric of his cloak off. Able to see once more, and no longer on fire, the engineer barely managed to stick his hand out and bond his hand to the wall.

The resulting stop was painfully shoulder wrenching, but even as the servos in his arm – and his arm itself – lit up with pain, he knew it beat being splattered against the pavement.

Of course, that meant he was still dangerously exposed, and still dangling from the side of the building, when Manacle’s psychotic features peered over the rim of the roof.

“Shields?” He hissed.

“32%”

Sounds about right, considering those flames were apparently hot enough set fire to my cloak through my shields, he thought grimly.

Biting down on a curse, those half-forgotten instincts came to life once more as Erich kicked off the wall, leaping out of the way moments before another stream of fire washed past him.

Of course, given that he leapt directly backwards, it was more a product of luck rather than skill that had him smash through a window into an apartment in the building opposite - and not say, straight into the unforgiving concrete of the building itself.

“Sorry,” Erich muttered distractedly to the man whose dinner table he had just landed on and promptly flattened.

Clambering up, he dashed out into the apartment block’s hallway, slapping shards of glass and chunks of dinner off his armour as he went.

“Ethan, where the fuck is Manacle?” He hissed into the comms, fear and indignation colouring his tone.

“He’s uh… following you.”

“What do you mean he’s-” was as far as the villain got before the doorway of the apartment he’d just exited exploded outwards.

“Mechromancer,” an unholy abomination made of smoke and fire levitated out of the smouldering apartment.

Oh, he can use his powers to create thrusters under his hands and feet, Erich thought numbly. No one mentioned that. Why did no one mention that?

As he dove into a stairwell, narrowly avoiding a fireball, the engineer couldn’t help but feel some level of self-recrimination.

Lasers are fine you said, he thought taking steps two at a time as he clambered down the stairs. Pulse weapons would be overkill on the new suit. Too energy intensive. With both them and the new UV shield running, it would cut down on operational time too much. Make the new suit too heavy. Less agile. It’s supposed to be a stealth fighter this time, not a battle tank.

Oh, how it had made sense at the time. He had actually patted himself on the back for the compromise.

Now all he wanted to do was turn back time just so he could punch his smug past self in his rat-bastard face.

“Spit, where the fuck are my drones!?” He shouted, hoping he was injecting more authority than raw panic into his question.

With any luck, bullets would prove more effective than masers, though failing that, he’d settle for them momentarily delaying the meta-human while the monster took the time to tear his hard work apart.

It was funny how a few minutes could change a man’s priorities.

“C-coming,” the young woman responded. “The drones are still in the process of evacuating the initial building. It should be about thirty-”

“I don’t have thirty seconds!” Erich shouted, as he burst into another hallway, shoving aside an elderly gentleman as his autonomous weapons fired behind him as he ran. They weren’t doing anything to the flaming meta-human, but it made him feel better.

That aside, he might have felt momentarily bad about shoving aside a retiree, but the sound of the gentleman in question being instantly flambéed by another fireball from his pursuer put any thought of concern for others from his mind.

He was probably a criminal anyway, he reasoned as he continued sprinting.

Part of him wanted to dive out the window and clamber down, but that plan had two issues. First, sticking to walls with the base of his hands and feet meant that climbing down would be slow, and he would be sitting duck during. Two, Manacle could fucking fly.

Which meant that out on the street the dude was basically an attack helicopter. An attack helicopter that was immune to lasers.

“I’m going to gut you, Mechromancer!” the being behind him roared.

At least within the building he’s roughly contained to the same two dimensions that I am, Erich thought as he dove around a corner, ignoring the shrieks of apartment dwellers as they caught sight of him, or the veritable inferno following him.

In here I can at least… hide?

Manacle was pissed.

Royally pissed.

He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d been this pissed.

The Saints weren’t meant to be this much trouble. At worst, he’d expected them to be a momentary speedbump on the Third Street Kings road to expansion. He had thought they’d fold. Just like the Dogs, and the Blood before them.

He figured it would take a month at the absolute most.

Three months. Three months filled with setbacks, he raged, sending an errant blast of fire into a nearby apartment building – the screams from within doing little to appease him.

That crossdressing cunt impersonating his people. Intercepting orders. Giving new ones. Starting internal fights.

He’d known fighting a shapeshifter would be annoying, but he didn’t know just how annoying. And the sad part was, that wasn’t even the worst of it.

Four new enemy Metas – more than doubling the number the Saint initially had. One of his guys getting his head crushed before anything even started. The Saints rank and file suddenly swelling with drones and laser weapons.

That last one had hurt. Not physically – if anything it made fights even easier for him – but casualties amongst his rank and file had skyrocketed.

Morale was shaky. Doubts were beginning to set in. His mishmash of conquered gangs and territories were seeing his inability to bring the Saints to heel and sensing weakness. The Kings sudden expansion was in danger of imploding.

And now, some pissant in a suit had the balls to attack him while he was visiting his mistress to try and take his mind off things, he thought as he flung a fireball at the suit dwelling prick in question, growling as the man dove to the side at the last second.

Said mistress, had taken a bullet when the drones had initially stormed onto his floor, but that didn’t particularly bother him. Women were lining up to drop their pants for the leader of the Kings, and even if they weren’t, he was more than capable of taking what he wanted, regardless of willingness.

He often did. For variety, if nothing else.

A bullet winged off the wall next to him, and the gang leader ducked instinctively at the sound of something that could actually threaten him – unlike those piddly lasers the suit asshole was using - losing track of his quarry as he turned to face the new threat.

A nobody – old, fat and balding. Ancient handgun in shaky hands as he stood in the doorway to his home.

The Meta lit the fat fuck up like a candlestick.

And now even asshole nobodies are taking pot-shots at me.

Objectively, he knew that the people here were defending their homes against what they perceived to be an attack on them, but in his rage addled mood he simply saw it as more gnats sensing weakness.

“Mechromancer!” he roared, renewing the chase as he blasted down the hallway.

…only to find nothing.