I was scared.

No, to describe my feelings on my current situation as ‘scared’ was like calling a tank ‘heavy’. Concrete was heavy. Dumbbells were heavy. Tanks were in an entirely different class that made the word ‘heavy’ seem inadequate.

I was pants shittingly terrified, such that if the entirety of my mind wasn't otherwise preoccupied with the herculean task of not getting murdered I might not have been able to do anything at all besides cry.

My name is Nicholas Suite. I have an arts degree from a middle of the pack program that wasn’t good enough to get me a job or get me into a band of any kind. I worked as a cashier, and had never been in a single fight in my entire life.

And I was going to survive god dammit!

“Hey, you got a minion! What’s it do?” Aiden asked me curiously, glancing at the hole in the wall Breakdown had been launched through and then back to me, even as he took the slash from the stone soldier's blade on one forearm. Predictably for my Level One ability, the soldier's sword instantly snapped in half - but I didn’t care because I was already making a run for it.

The way I saw it, I had two options. I could rush towards the interior of the building, where Breakdown was, or I could make use of the damaged window she’d entered through to make my way out into the parking lot. Inside was where - presumably - most of Adrenalines victims were which was a point against the area, but that was also where Breakdown was.

Unfortunately, while I wasn’t very smart, I was conscious of the easily avoidable trope of a newbie dragging an experienced fighter down by getting in their way.

So while Adrenaline was lazily avoiding the swinging fists of my stone soldier, I had already bolted the left of him, and made a flying leap out the window.

It was a jump I couldn’t possibly have made prior to gaining powers. The windows were four feet off the ground, and I was easily ten feet away from my location by the time I had finished sprinting forward and jumped. Under any other circumstance I would have gone half the distance I needed, and landed on the ground like a jackass, or possibly even worse, on the edge of a broken piece of glass - handily stabbing myself.

Instead, as I took the leap I felt that strange corrective effect I’d been getting since waking up, and my sloppy posture shifted into a smooth vault that took me from a standing position out the window and into a perfectly performed breakfall and roll that I wouldn’t have imagined possible before this.

Weirdly, it seemed like it took Adrenaline a couple of seconds to notice I had even moved. He just kept dodging my minion while lazily reaching out to punch pieces off of it every now and then while I escaped, and only seemed to fully recognize that I was missing a full second after I was gone.

Not that I cared. The instant I had summoned the Terracotta Soldier, several things had been instantly apparent to me - and not because I suddenly realized them either. This was intrusive information. Knowledge that had been crammed into my head - presumably by my power - telling me the approximate health of my minion, complete with what amounted to a ‘Dismiss Summon’ button I could slap to get rid of the thing.

“Whoops. Got distracted. Listen I really don’t recommend-” Adrenaline started to yell to me in what I could only describe as a conversational tone. I didn’t let him psyche me out with his mind games, and I didn’t wait for him to finish speaking. Instead I rapidly triggered the ‘Dismiss Summon’ ability, causing the half dismembered Terracotta Soldier that Adrenaline was lazily holding down with one arm to disappear - then in the same moment, resummoned another one, causing my Ki to drop another two points.

Health: 6/100

Ki: 6/10​

Now, as I had previously noted, I seemed to be capable of sending orders to my summons before they had fully manifested. I took advantage of that here by having the new soldier appear already in the middle of a low tackle to Adrenaline’s knees.

Metahuman he may be, but so far as I could tell, Adrenaline still had to deal with conventional physics when it came to his strength - which meant things like leverage and grip were actually relevant to him, and more importantly, meant that despite being significantly stronger than my soldier, he was unable to prevent the forward momentum of the thing from taking his legs out from under him.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I cursed to myself, taking the moment when no eyes were on me to turn and bolt into the parking lot.

Okay so… now what? I didn’t have a plan, I was just making snap decisions that seemed like the best option I had at any given moment. I was making all of this shit up as I went and it really showed. The fact that I had gotten even this far was purely a testament to how not seriously Adrenaline was taking me. He seemed more amused by my Terracotta Soldier minion than anything else. If he had the strength to get rid of Breakdown so easily, he definitely could have just instantly destroyed the-

Almost as if in response to my thought, I felt my Summon go from what amounted to ‘full’ health all the way to ‘none’ in a single blow.

Yeah, I had definitely pissed him off there.

So what were my advantages? He couldn’t currently see me, I guess.

And that was about it.

Still, thinking back to when he had first found us in the break room, he had seemed genuinely surprised to find us there - which meant he didn’t have any way of finding people who were hiding from him other than sight.

With that thought in mind, I threw myself to the ground - and shimmied under a nearby truck.

That’s right, I hid under a car.

And apparently not a moment too soon, because just as I had managed to fully cover myself there was a loud thump elsewhere in the parking lot that caused the ground to rumble, shaking my ribcage and nearly making me bang my head against the underside of the vehicle I was hiding beneath.

‘Okay idiot, now what?’ I asked myself silently.

“Okay idiot, now what!?” Adrenaline yelled grouchily into the lot, somehow perfectly mirroring my inner monologue.

‘If I fucking knew that-!’ I mentally screamed. My heart was hammering in my chest so hard that if Adrenaline had any kind of improved sensory ability he’d have found me almost instantly. I was sweating profusely, and my skin felt both sticky and slick as I did my best not to make any noise where I was hiding. Desperately, I tried to pan my head around to locate the villain, but was unable to see his feet from my current location, and was forced to listen for him instead.

“Hey, I know you’re hiding out here - clever and all, but mostly just annoying. Just come lemme talk to you for a second here, one ‘Minion Master’ to another.” He called out again, this time sounding closer.

In a panic, I nearly shifted around frantically trying to locate him, but realized that if I did so, I’d immediately give myself away.

I needed a distraction. Luckily, I happened to have an excellent one on hand, and made use of it by quickly targeting a car positioned a good distance away from myself that I could still see, and summoning a Terracotta Soldier under it. The soldier then proceeded to make a very light banging noise against the bottom of the car it had appeared under. Then stopped moving.

Ki: 4/10​

“Look, I don’t really wanna wreck all these nice cars just to get to you so-” Adrenaline continued to yell, now almost right on top of me until he heard the clunk of my minion appearing - at which point he leapt from wherever he was, to directly in front of the ford pickup I had used to distract him, and used both his hands to hurl the entire vehicle upward and onto the car behind it.

“See, look at this shit! I love this! It’s damn clever!” He yelled, before quickly stomping down on the soldier - completely obliterating it in a single strike.

“But it’s also damn annoying! I know you can’t do this forever, so why don’t we skip to your valiant last charge so we can talk like adults!” He growled, and this time I could see him return to prowling the parking lot, occasionally glancing underneath the nearby vehicles. I figured I had about ten seconds before he gave up and just got on his stomach to look underneath all of them at once.

I also realized that my Ki - I guess the Monk’s equivalent to Mana - wasn’t regenerating. It hadn’t gone up a single point this entire time, despite my health having ticked up twice to eight points during this period of time.

Did it just… not come back normally? Did I have to meditate? Was that a thing for Monks? Holy shit, did I completely screw myself by picking this class?

Even with all of that panic inducing information rattling around in my head, nothing about my situation actually changed - so I did the only thing I could, and summoned another Soldier. I made sure to keep it near the original, but far enough away that it would still earn me some time. Adrenaline had to figure I needed line of sight to summon the things, which meant that if I spaced them too far apart he could probably at least guess where I was hiding, which was the last thing I needed.

Ki: 2/10​

“Listen, you might not like or trust me, but at least hear me out here. You’re a lot more reasonably seeming than whatsherface in there-” Adrenaline called out again, while casually tossing another car and obliterating the minion under it. His statement was accompanied by a loud crashing sound that rattled my bones which emanated from the inside of the building.

“-case and point. So let’s just get this over with huh? I’m actually trying to do you a favour here!” He yelled again.

‘Yeah, because ‘just trust me, I promise not to kill you’ is absolutely a thing people believe coming from a known supervillain. And what the hell does he mean ‘whatsherface’ they’re literally archenemies!’ I mentally complained to myself.

For a moment I had the absolutely ludicrous thought that I would have to update Adrenaline’s wikipedia page when I got home from work to reflect the fact that this was apparently untrue, then had to stifle a delirious bout of laughter at how absurd it was to be thinking that in this situation.

Looking at my Ki I still only had two points left, and the longer it went without regenerating, the more it was looking like there wasn’t any regeneration, no matter how slow it might be.

I hated to admit it, but at this point I would get more mileage out of a suicidal rush than by continuing to piss him off.

Which is not to say I had to be stupid about it.

So, instead of rolling out of cover and running at him - which would give the villain ample time to respond to me - I deliberately rapped a knuckle against the car overhead.

Almost the minute the sound rang out, Adrenaline - somewhat predictably - bounded straight to me, no doubt expecting another distraction.

It was, but it wasn’t the kind he was expecting. This time, the second the car over me was swatted away, I summoned my last Terracotta Soldier behind him. It appeared feet first, with the rest of it spreading into existence from the point where it’s foot made contact with Adrenaline’s ankles.

Yes I was going to do the same thing I had done to get away from him in the first place. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Adrenaline, seeming genuinely surprised to have actually found me, didn’t even realize there was something behind him as my Summon swept his legs out from under him. But I didn’t stop there - this was my last stand, so terrified as I was, I had absolutely no reason to hold back in any capacity. Once more alien skill flooded me, and rather than just throwing the best approximation of a kick I could manage, my own extended foot met Adrenaline’s chin as he fell forward, pushing him back upward with supernatural strength as I executed what I for some reason knew and recognized as a Macaco em Pé maneuver.

That is to say, somewhere between coming to work today, and gaining powers, I had inexplicably acquired a great deal of knowledge on a great number of Martial Arts - such as Capoeira.

Basically I did a cartwheel and kicked the bastard in the jaw so hard he went from falling to standing up straight again. More interesting to me though, was what that singular strike had done.

Ki: 3/10​

My Ki had gone up. The second my foot had made contact with his jaw, I felt a flare of energy rushing through me, and I finally understood.

I wasn’t an RPG character. I was a Fighting Game one. And I had a god damn combo meter.

I was so elated by this that I briefly forgot exactly how outclassed I presently was, and ordered my Soldier to kidney punch the man before me as hard is it could. It didn’t look like it hurt him much, but the minute physical response to the attack told me it still hurt, and as much as I felt bad for poor Aiden, I wasn’t planning on dying today - so I followed up, flowing through a series of attacks that rapidly saw my Ki returning to peak levels, and prevented Adrenaline from easily responding to me or even getting his bearings enough to try.

Experimentally, I had my minion punch him in the back of the head, unsummoned it, tripped him, then resummoned the minion on top of him in a single fluid motion.

‘Holy shit, I’m doing it! I can win! I can-’ I started to cheer, only to have my burgeoning sense of hope cut off when something grabbed me by the ankle.

“Kay. Tried to be nice. You win. Get fucked I guess.” Adrenaline said in an annoyed and somewhat disappointed tone.

I had just enough time to blink once at the statement, and look down to see his hand firmly grasping my ankle.

And then I was flung at the exterior facade of the build so hard I think I might have literally exploded if I wasn’t recently empowered.

Health: 0/100

Ki: 8/10​

‘That doesn’t seem good.’ Were the last coherent thoughts I managed before slipping into unconsciousness.

And this time, there wasn’t a floating window to keep me semi conscious.