Lag 6.13

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

“Fuck the plan! I can take him!”

If he had the time, Hardkour would have laughed right in his face.

Instead, the blond jumped back far, flinging himself backwards twenty or thirty feet to land back on the street again. He touched down and snapped his head back up, just in time to spot the mass of roiling air Stormtiger launched his way suddenly veer off. Greg darted away again, leaping back several more feet to make sure the blast wouldn’t follow his movements.

Huh. His concerns went unrealized as the air bomb swung wide to the right, the entire thing smashing into a parked car with metal-shredding force. The turbine-like roar the air bomb gave off as it flew came to a sudden end, every other noise dwarfed as the sedan went up like a bomb.

Hardkour barely had the time to raise his eyebrows, half a second to take in the raw power. An instant later, Stormtiger let out another scream at the top of his lungs.

What the- Greg winced and gritted his teeth as the scream actually impacted him with physical force, a wide-ranging - yet somewhat weak - roar of Aerokinesis strong enough to lift him off his feet for a second or two. The shirtless villain followed up the roar of anger by launching another large air claw from his other hand, barely a second of windup before it was airborne.

This one…

Hardkour felt it before he saw it coming.

Aerokinesis was a special sort-of power, different from Pyrokinesis in a basic and fundamental way. Pyrokinesis was something he could turn on and off, a hose of power that sprayed fiery hot death at high speeds whenever he let the nozzle loose. Aerokinesis, though…

It was entirely different.

Air was all around him.

All the time.

Flames, he had to call up and let go. Flames existed around him when something was set on fire; that was when he could feel it. Air? Greg couldn’t keep himself from feeling it anymore than he could keep himself from seeing when he opened his eyes.

Hell, half the time when he spoke, he had to be careful not to let the wind propel his words like a carnival barker on steroids. Instinctive and unintentional use of Aerokinesis like that was terrifyingly easy now, using so little mana for something so small that he literally didn't even notice the drain. At first, doing the booming hero voice had taken some effort, an actual flexing of his power, but now, it just seemed to happen without a thought whenever he put on the costume and took on that identity.

Sure, it was cool as hell, but deepening and altering his voice like that was firmly reserved for when he was in his White Knight costume. Using powers that belonged to his other identity was almost off-limits so that he could keep them seperate for as long as he could, even in his own mind, but Aerokinesis did its best to make that effectively impossible with the way it worked.

Even now, he could feel it at work. The rents in the air stood out to him like the tactile equivalent of neon signs in the night, the paths where Stormtiger’s air claws passed by so glaringly obvious to his senses they might as well have been glowing.

Another one. Said senses stood out to him again as he felt Stormtiger prepare several more blasts, eyes widening slightly as he saw them coming.

He tensed slightly as [Danger Sense] buzzed a redundant warning. Faster.

It was about twice as fast as the last and that one had already been a good deal faster than the one Stormtiger had managed to land on him minutes earlier. In fact, it was so fast that the teenager almost found himself taking a slash of metal-rending wind head-on.

Almost.

Instinct nearly had him pull on the pool of gold light inside him the instant he felt it coming but he pushed down the urge as he clenched both fists tight. Instead, Hardkour forced himself into motion in a harsh swerve, body jerking in the opposite direction without leaving another second to waste. A moment later, the powerful bursts of air screamed past his head, the roar of wind overpowering Stormtiger’s own belligerent vocalizations.

Can’t let him push me back like this, Greg thought in a hurry, his plan for focusing on Krieg becoming less and less likely with every passing second. Speaking of Krieg… Wait.

The blond ducked another air knife, teeth grit, eyes narrowed and - Wait, what’re they doing?

From the corner of his eye, he could see the other Empire capes still maintaining their same position, neither Krieg or Nordwind moving an inch as the other woman stood between them. Her hands glowing with a soft milky light as she rested them on both of their shoulders, it was clear that whatever the green cape was doing wasn’t going to help him out.

“Wha-” Greg bit his tongue with a wince as he felt the air scream again, the sensation filling his thoughts at the same time his head buzzed with a warning of danger, the signal as irritatingly obnoxious as usual. Obnoxious or not, the pulse of [Danger Sense] rang a second too late.

“Hngggh,” A slightly strained noise left his mouth as he stumbled slightly from the hit, a sound of pain more associated with bumping into a door or a mild headache.

Not something like a subsonic bolt of condensed air tearing through his sleeve and across his forearm with the force of a bullet.

- 72

Bright blue eyes shot over towards Stormtiger’s direction. A half-second later, his eyebrows shot up as those same eyes went wide once again. Without pausing to think or process, Greg simply moved.

Buzzing blades of tightly packed air flew towards him — each one just a little smaller than the last, their speed increasing the smaller they became. Stormtiger hurled them through the air in an unfocused barrage, nothing as pointless as aim even a consideration as he carpet bombed the street like a madman.

+ 1 SPD (137 → 138)

Hardkour blurred from place to place, jumping like a rabbit as he avoided Stormtiger’s air bombs. Each one pockmarked the asphalt where they landed, exploding with the force of land mines and with the frequency of a hail of bullets. Where they didn't strike the ground with explosions of gravel, they pulverized walls, grass, cars and sidewalk alike with the force of grenades.

“Shit!” The curse leapt from his mouth almost unwittingly as he quickly jerked his head to the side in a sharp dodge.

The move was perfectly-timed, aided by both Danger Sense and the instinctive air sense that came with his advancing skill in Aerokinesis. The teenager could only thank both of them for saving him from a sudden right-side-of-face-ectomy. Acting on instinct, Hardkour’s hand snapped up to palm the side of his head even as he scrambled around Stormtiger’s barrage. Roaming fingers confirmed what he already knew a short moment later, as he neither felt nor saw any sign of a wound. Regardless, he wasn’t much happier.

Okay, his teeth met in a hard grimace, so we’re playing it like that?

One eye twitching from annoyance, the blond’s free hand twitched at his side, the temptation of pulling out the chipped katana in his inventory a powerful one. No. No. Greg shook the thought away a half second later as he darted past several parked cars to bound himself off the wall of a building. Even for intimidation purposes, the battered sword he carried around just wasn’t worth it for a fight like this. No… let’s try something else.

Hardkour let out a quick breath, focusing his gaze on his current attacker. He knew plenty about the shirtless Neo-Nazi in front of him but reading about Stormtiger was one thing. Aerokinesis; usually expressed in the form of explosive air bombs. His wiki said that much and a bit more on the cape, info like the fact that his aerokinesis was strong enough to deflect bullets and that the guy could kinda-sorta-maybe fly with it.

Watching Stormtiger’s fights online was completely different. While he wasn’t the blur of motion that Krieg was or the shining pillar of light that Purity came off as, the man still managed to be impressive on his own. Hell, he was rarely caught on camera for long, given that his powers were so… explosive. However, the little that was seen of him made it clear that his abilities were powerful and not something easily beaten.

Facing Stormtiger’s powers in action was… something else entirely.

Stormtiger’s powerful and over-muscled arms pumped like mad as the cape slashed pressurized air in Hardkour’s direction, seemingly uncaring of his teammate’s refusal to assist. In fact, the cape showed nothing but anger fueled by eagerness, all of that wrapped around a single-minded desire to end a teenager’s life.

Eyes narrowed as he shot Stormtiger a piercing glare, the young cape only had one thought on his mind as he rushed forward, dancing around baseball sized air-bombs with a grace bordering on inhuman. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

"DIE!"

Another blast rocketed from Stormtiger’s open hand with that scream, the Nazi’s furious eyes boring into Greg’s own as the cape cleared twenty feet in an effortless leap. Passing over the air mass, the teenager twisted his body in mid-air and frowned slightly as he caught sight of the angry yet determined grimace on Stormtiger’s face that had yet to fall away. No point fighting air with air.

Still in motion, the teenager in the ninja costume brought up his open palms as he soared forward in mid-air. Stormtiger raised his own hands to release another set of his patented air-claws and at the same moment, small wicks of bright orange flames flickered to life in Hardkour’s gloved palms. Let’s try it with fire.

“Hey, Windkitty!” Greg flicked a single wrist forward, the small tongue of flame in his left hand roaring to life as it shot out from Greg’s palm and rapidly grew. I really should workshop some jokes before a fight… “Eat this!”

The cat-masked cape barely had a moment to react as a firebomb struck the ground just in front of him, exploding past the size of a beach ball in an instant. The explosion wasn't too large, nor was it overwhelmingly loud, but it was undeniably strong. Strong enough to send a grown man flying, at least.

Unfortunately, Stormtiger was more experienced and capable than most grown men, at least when it came to cape fights. Hardkour simply narrowed his eyes at Stormtiger as the man stood with both arms raised in front of his face in an “X”. He stood almost untouched in the middle of the street, entirely unbothered by the heat or the flames licking at the asphalt around him.

Greg barely had to even look to realize why, both of his senses confirming what he already suspected. Just barely visible in front of the man was a flickering wall of barely-visible air, the man having blunted almost all the damage with it. It was an expected move, especially from a man who often used air to block bullets in their path.

Even then… It didn’t matter much to him, really.

His other hand shot forward with another expression of pyrokinesis. With a sound like rushing air, heat roared from Hardkour’s open palm, the dimly-lit backstreet giving way to the bright light of a plume of raw fire.

Without wasting another moment, Greg rushed forward and jumped through the fire , heat of the flames barely even singing his clothes at the speed he was moving. His eyes locked on to Stormtiger, the man wearing a look of frightened surprise as he jumped away from the fire wall, still keeping his own wall of wind going as protection.

Hardkour touched down in a crouch, one unnecessary fist on the ground to steady himself, while Stormtiger was still mid-leap, intent on dodging the flames. The blond burst forward the instant his boots made contact with the ground, not holding back nearly as much on his speed this time as he rushed up to his hapless opponent.

As Stormtiger's boots met the asphalt, the cape barely had a moment to react as a figure blurred up directly in front of him.

He blinked. Shock and confusion was clear on the face of the E88 cape as the black-clad cape appeared in front of him, so unprepared for the sudden burst of speed he didn’t even have time to bolster his defenses.

"What th-" The sentence shifted into a pained groan as a gloved hand pierced his aerokinetic shield like a knife through warm butter, five fingers like steel trapping his forearm in a vice grip.

Aerokinesis (Adept) Lvl Up! (19 → 20)

"This one’s for the kidnapping."

Stormtiger swung his free hand forward with a grunt, palm roiling with two or three half-collected and semi-translucent blades of compressed air even as he instinctively tried to pull himself free from the young Brute's unyielding grip.

In another blur of motion, his other hand was trapped as well, the readied claws dispersing into nothing as his five fingers were locked in a tight grip with another gloved set. Stormtiger grit his teeth from effort and sudden worry as he took stock of his position with quick jerks of his head. Both his limbs were held hostage in hands that could dent metal, hands that simply refused to give, no matter how hard he pulled.

"This one’s for the surprise attack."

His pale face whitened even further as the bloodied cape holding both his forearms stared up at him wearing a grin that Stormtiger normally only saw reflected in his opponent's eyes. His befuddled expression almost immediately shifted to plain horrified realization as Hardkour's restraining grip tightened enough for both his wrists to release uncomfortable noises in pointless resistance. “Waitwaitwaitwaa-"

CRACK.

"-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

A sudden sickening crunch and both hands hung limply on the villain’s raised arms, the action itself occuring in one single painful instant. The muscular Neo-Nazi stumbled back on unsteady legs as he stared in pure shock at his useless wrists, mouth wide open as he creamed bloody murder in a pitch a man his size should be incapable of.

"And… Well, I guess this one's for making me bleed my own blood."

Stormtiger didn't even register the words. In fact, the still-screaming man didn't even look up before his chest buckled with another loud crack as a single foot made contact with his torso in the form of a powerful Spartan kick. For an instant, Greg could see the villain's expression shift from one of raw pain into blissful unconsciousness, before Stormtiget flew back from the force, his body sent skidding back across the ground.

One down.

A familiar pulse at the base of his neck urged him to move, a warning throb that ran from his neck all the way down to the base of his spine with immediate intensity. This time, Greg didn’t hesitate to listen.

He moved.

To his left, the ground exploded from the force of a powerful crash landing, the asphalt cratering somewhat from the impact. Hardkour didn’t have to bother to steady himself, Surface Adhesion keeping him steady but the teenager still took a sudden step back, eyes flickering between the new cape in front of him to the unmoving Krieg and the equally still Impuls with her hand still on his shoulder.

His gut warned him that the black-clad Nazi was up to something and his brain only made that gut feeling worse with what he knew of Krieg’s powers. The man was a monster to fight with the way he could resist and deflect things. Not just hits; things. Almost everything had kinetic energy and the man could keep it all at bay.

Greg was drawn away from his wary gaze at the stoic Nazi as the cape closest to him pulled his focus. With an angry roar far more high-pitched than Stormtiger’s, the figure in the center of the new pothole made herself heard.

“Fucking hell!”

She screamed the last syllable with a forced masculine grunt, one that didn't match her curves or anything else about her looks. The female cape rose from her half-crouch in the catered asphalt, arms out at her sides as the scant remnants of Hardkour's firebomb burned to nothing around her.

A second later, both her hands clenched into tight fists and, to Greg's slight surprise, his mana-born fire flickered out instantly, embers vanishing to nothing immediately in front of his eyes. The woman in blue and gray - Nordwind, he recalled quickly - took in a deep breath, chest and shoulders rising with the motion as her gray hood fell back, exposing her white-blue facemask.

She exhaled.

Greg tensed where he stood, eyes narrowed as two simultaneous shudders ran up and down his spine. One from Danger Sense and one, far more common.

With a sound like cracked glass, the crater Nordwind stood in was surrounded entirely with a layer of white frost, icy fractals appearing ex nihilo between eye-blinks. Similar patterns of ice raced up the arms and legs of her costume, the noise repeating itself several times in a second until it stopped completely as the woman's exposed lips turned a distinct blue.

Those same lips turned up in a vicious grin as a pair of grey eyes turned on him.

Oh. Thermal-Inversion Kinetic Enhancile. Greg's head bobbed up and down in an unintended nod as something in his brain finally clicked together, context meeting definition in a blast of awareness. So, that’s what that means.

He only had a moment to think about that new information as Nordwind roared again and in a blur of motion, she jumped.