As more weeks passed by, Nikola did start to grow worried about what a certain Vigilante was getting up to. Seid had always been one to get distracted at every step yet he did at least give her some form of a message by the end. And with a direct promise, wouldn’t he at least have sent her a text? She’d given him her phone number for a reason. Even his radio would have likely been able to pick up his signal if she still had any reason to use it.

Looking over at the box beside the sofa table, she nearly thought about pulling out her suit and trying it on. The box had started to get dusty, as she hadn't used it in too long a time. Nikola wasn’t really happy about that, her dreams of being a Hero slowly turning into a dream of just not being bored all day. She was still getting paid and she was still getting all the bonuses in the world. She might even get paid more than she usually did when working.

And yet she did nothing but stay in her apartment day in and day out. She still went to train at the facilities now and then but there were only so many hours that off-duty people were allowed to take from the currently active ones. She knew for certain that one of the new Speedsters was taking up the hours for the electricity room. Why exactly the Speedster was learning how to throw lightning bolts was out of her realm of understanding. How that even worked confused her even more, Nikola not understanding any part of that young man’s powers. Any forces related to speed were outside of her expertise, the regular electromagnetic waves being her forte. Once it diverged from regular patterns by the smallest variable, she wasn’t able to comment. Abstract powers were just too weird.

A prayer was sent towards the poor bastards who had to study Reality Manipulation before Nikola finally got out of the sofa and onto her own feet. Some exercise was what she needed. Looking at the time, there was still an hour or two until she needed to be at the training facility, where she was only able to get a time slot due to pure luck and happenstance.

There was little to do but just put on her shoes, grab her necessities, and get out of the door and down the stairs. It was barely a ten-minute walk to the Heroes’ Association but there was always the chance to take the scenic routes. And it wasn’t like she would be doing anything productive anyway.

Iris hadn’t found anything after the initial inspection of the corpse and further attempts to figure out the details about the man-made Parasite had ended up with them half-destroying the specimen. It was too delicate and too hard on some parts, the combination causing a fractured Parasite before any actual data could be found. Iris promised she’d try again when she had the time, clearly still grateful about the use of her new medicinal experiments, but Nikola doubted the specimen would ever get another look. She didn't blame the woman for not caring too much. There wasn’t anything interesting from it, a thousand other cases like it.

Nikola did try to count the number of times she’d been forced to fight against biological robots of some sort. There had been quite a few in the past two years. Most of them were bigger than the brain one, standing on several more legs as well. It was curious that the mad scientists of the current era thought that would make them more imposing. After the sixteenth, the woman had to confess that they had quite the opposite effect. It was impractical at that point, honestly, though the materials did make it quite easy to crush the beasts. That was one flaw of having metals in the body, after all. Anybody with a knack for magnetism could crush most robots with minimal effort.

There had been one in the news a few years back that had ignored such a weakness by simply regenerating. It had been more than a few storyes tall, big enough that even the more powerful of Nikola’s colleagues couldn't destroy it in one go. How it had been made was still a pure blank but she remembered its ability to regenerate the metal lost. Any limb ripped off would just come back on a second later, tons of steel just appearing without any noticeable losses.

Nikola idly wondered how that mechanical monster had been beaten. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember. Maybe something with ice.

Getting out on the streets of the city, she was quick to notice the chanting in the far distance. Nikola would have normally not put much thought to such a commotion, seeing it better to just avoid such things. Yet… with nothing but time on her hands, the off-duty Hero decided to take a gander. It had been a while since she went to more public places anyway.

Going through the streets, following the source of noise that wouldn’t leave her ears, Nikola was confronted by the sight of hundreds of people. They walked along the streets right in the middle, clearly not caring about the cars trying to get through. Some even stepped up on the hood of the vehicles, letting the windshield shatter but moving on without even leaving a number to call for insurance. Having grown up in upper class neighborhoods, Nikola wasn’t sure what to say.

Or… maybe she did have a vague idea after seeing one of the signs in the air. It was the face of her favourite Hero by the name of Umbra, the older man having some badly photoshopped bars in front of him. Listening in on the chanting for a few moments, the Hero wasn’t surprised to hear the words.

“Put him down!” “Stop protecting him!” “Do not let him go free!”

The shouting never ceased, the masses having air for days upon days. With how ragged some of them looked, Nikola wouldn’t have been surprised if the entire thing had been going on for days. So much time had passed since those recordings had been released but the public was still not accepting the lack of statements from the Association. The silence was an admission of guilt in the current day. Nikola nearly felt like putting up a sign herself, but instead just followed from a distance, trying to figure out where the hell they were going.

The answer was the different media companies strewn across the industrial parts of the city. Some minor groups broke off to protest in front of select companies that hadn’t critiqued the Heroes’ Association for their lack of action. Most went along with the big group, however, Nikola being one of them until they came to her stop.

Few even gave the actual building the slightest glance, the local Association looking as boring as it always did. The woman was sure she could find the actual company that had legal control over it if she tried but she doubted a single worker from that place had ever entered the premises.

With her time spent wandering with the protestors, it was close to the hour where she had the training facilities to herself. Giving a nod to the doorman, likely some retired hero specialising in keeping the building safe, Nikola was quick to take the elevator up to the changing rooms. She wasn’t going to be using her suit, of course, taking one intended for training purposes only. It solved the hassle of bringing it along every time while allowing her some form of anonymity while inside the building. With an identity mostly based around looks, having a dull white and grey suit kept most people from instantly recognizing her. That would require hearing her actual voice and she made sure to keep her mouth shut.

Getting the suit on without any problems, Tesla stalked the halls once more, noting one of the changing posters on the wall. Umbra truly was getting into every charity drive he could. Never in a million years would she have expected to see that face anywhere close to Sector 37.

Getting to the training facility, she configured the room before she could finally begin. The different parts of the coils settled into the place where she usually wanted them to be, the modifications quickly becoming semi-permanent as the proper insulation finally completed itself.

With a mental block ripped away, the lightning started to circulate through her body. It was like light flashed before her eyes for a moment before the entire room thundered. Maybe she could break her previous records today.