The Great Game, with its cowled heroes and villains, came about mostly as a form of escapism.

Think about it – grown men and women putting on masks and costumes to have overly dramatic showdowns in front of an attentive audience. Climactic duels and free-for-alls, where the contestants use all their wits and skill to come out victorious. It was like a combination of a masquerade ball and a talent show, with just enough danger and violence to get everybody's blood pumping.

Sure, money and politics eventually got involved – both the government and corporations attempted take control over the phenomenon – but by that time the cowl culture had already set in rather firmly. Graffiti proclaiming that 'Your Second Life Is Your Own' and 'The Gifts of the Starspawn Are Not Meant For You' still decorated some of the older buildings in Dreadward.

...The city name made sense if you knew your history.

Ding, ding.

“Your attention, please!” The bus speaker system sparked to life. “According to Covert S.E.E.R. dispatch, Sanction and the Nefarious Nine are currently battling near the intersection of Cuchilla Street and East Hillgate, so I'm taking an alternative route. Expect the scheduled stops to be delayed by eight minutes. Apologies for the inconvenience.”

The passengers grumbled, but nobody was particularly surprised. The fringes of the city had a (rather undeserved, in my opinion) reputation for being disreputable.

Showtime.

I tapped my RIG-7, activating the Cowl, and made my way to the front of the bus.

“Please excuse me, my dear man,” I tapped the driver on the shoulder. “But I believe this is my stop.”

The young man turned around and blinked, taking in my costume. Formal wear of shirt, vest and trousers was colored in the shades of white and light grey, all overlaid by a rich purple longcoat. Paired with vivid auburn hair and a poisonously green carnival mask (“to match your eyes, dear,” the saleslady told me), the resulting explosion of color tended to be so garish and eye-watering that it made even the most stoic of people do a double-take. Not the outfit of my dreams, I admit – but I was improvising during my first outing, and its unexpected success, far beyond the initial estimates, caught me by surprise. The costume earned a certain reputation – one that was too useful to discard – and I had to choose between my pride and my plans. I chose the latter.

It wasn't the last time I had to make that choice.

“Excuse me,” I coughed pointedly, and the bus driver hurriedly turned his attention back to the road, stopping the vehicle by the sidewalk.

“Hero or villain?” The young man lowered his voice, trying for professional nonchalance.

“Villain.”

“Oh,” he paused. “Local?”

I shook my head.

Hm, the bus route ran along the outer edge of the city, south to east. Presuming the driver reached the bus terminus on foot...

“Captain's Loss,” I mentioned off-handedly. “It's a small neighborhood just south of - ”

“Special Region 21!” the brunette exclaimed. “Dude, that's where I live! Represent!”

He raised a hand, and I bro-fisted him.

Hero or villain, people always tended to cheer for the home team.

***

The most dangerous part of any cowled fight was the very beginning, when you didn't know the powers of those involved.

Is that guy running forward because he has a touch based ability, or is that just what he wants you to believe? Does the girl shooting fireballs at you embody the squishy wizard archetype or can she boil the blood in your veins, if you come any closer? Does the cowled team pulling back signify retreat or are they preparing a large area-of-effect attack? Distance, weapons, cover, tactics – everything depended on who you were facing.

Fortunately, by the time I arrived the fight was already well on its way.

The two groups clashed in a parking lot in front of an unfinished construction site. The U-shaped building blocked off most routes, leaving only one feasible avenue for both attack and retreat, and that's where the fighting was the most fierce. The once smooth asphalt was broken and pockmarked with craters, as though somebody set off a chain of explosions all over the place, and the property itself was completely in ruins. The construction trucks that the defenders dragged in front of them for a makeshift barricade were scrap metal, and the gaps between them were completely filled with smoky ghost-like figures that obscured vision and rushed the attackers, delaying any decisive action.

Still, the other group made some progress. Clad in military fatigues and wielding assault rifles, the men unleashed deafening bursts of gunfire from behind opaque blue forcefields that both shielded them from the stray projectile and forced the ghost minions to take the long way around. The forcefields, each about five feet wide, were roughly half a dozen in number, with another one rapidly taking shape, and placed in a widening v-pattern, revealing the attempt to flank and divide the defenders. The attackers, set into three two-man teams, were slowly making their way closer, with a single sniper positioned at the very back, behind the original forcefield.

Which, conveniently enough, left him alone and distracted, with his back turned toward me.

But, before I could take a single step closer, another cowled made his move.

It was a burst of yelling and gunfire that drew my attention to the leftmost group. A shadow seemed to have dropped out of nowhere, grabbing one of the men before spreading its wings and leaping back into the sky with its prize. As the shadow rose, its contours seemed to distort, fade into a mix of invisibility and incorporeality, dissolving into a shapeless, colorless blur.

“Non-lethals!” barked a grizzled gunner with greying stubble peeking over the camo half mask. I mentally dubbed him the Sergeant. “Awol rounds only unless you can see them!”

The gunfire stopped as the fighters fiddled with their rifles, and the minions took the chance to surge forward.

Sergeant swore.

“Sortie, Fixer, eyes up front! Airstrike, clear the field. Calibre, cover him.”

I slipped out from behind the building and silently raced toward the sniper under the hail of 'yes, sirs' and renewed gunfire. Whether it was my lucky day or I was just that good, I managed to reach my target undetected. With a practiced movement, I pulled an ND Baton from my belt, activated the field and softly tapped the sniper on his helmet.

Neural Disruptor Batons were, at one time, highly popular among law enforcement. They provided an effective, non-lethal way of disabling the opposition, and were both compact and easy to use. Hilariously illegal for private ownership, of course, but that was just the perk of being a villain. As far as I knew, the tip of the baton created a spherical field with about a foot radius that caused a temporary cessation of all voluntary neural activity within its area of effect, something about disabling the ability of neurons to receive signals. That was about the extent of my knowledge, but you didn't need to have a complete grasp of an item's internal workings to be able to use it. I just knew that affecting somebody's extremities would result in temporary numbness, while tapping somebody on the head would knock them out for five to ten minutes.

The sniper turned around.

...Or they could randomly have non-standard, highly specialized protective equipment against NDBs. Sure, that was cool too.

Both of us took a second to blink in surprise. I managed to react faster, as the baton was both more lightweight and easier to use than a rifle. The 3-foot long stick struck forward – but a dull thud revealed that the sniper lowered his head, shielding himself with the helmet. A second later, his rifle whipped me in the side, glancing off the elbow and hitting right under the ribs. I grit my teeth against a flash of pain and moved forward into his personal space, dropping the baton.

Though I had some rudimentary training, I was not much of a martial artist or even a particularly good brawler. Still, when it came to hand-to-hand fighting, I had one indisputable advantage.

Close combat was ruled by instinct.

As I shielded my ribs with an elbow, my right hand flew toward the sniper's face. He twitched to the side, leaving me with little more than a moment of skin-to-skin contact. That was enough.

Connection established.

{A sudden flash of light and a rumble of thunder} made the sniper instinctively flinch back, hitting his own forcefield. I used that singular moment of disorientation to strike his nose with the palm of my hand. As he reeled, I grabbed the sniper's head and smashed it into the forcefield with everything I had. Then I did so again, then a third time. That did the trick. The helmet prevented any skull fractures, but a concussion was guaranteed, leaving him well out of the fight.

I crouched down, taking a moment to even my breathing, and peeked over the opaque forcefield to see if the situation changed while I was occupied. The answer was: not really. The entire fight took seconds, and the gunners were still mostly occupied with the ghostly minions, which took the chance to swarm toward their enemies en masse. For a moment I mused that my presence was not even really necessary. With only five people remaining against a triple-digit number of phantoms and a shadow swooping in from above, the Sanction seemed to be done for.

Then Airstrike spread his hands, and I got firsthand experience as to what kind of power could turn heavy construction trucks into scrap metal.

It started with a low whine, at the very edge of one's hearing. In a number of places around the parking lot, the air seemed to distort, like colorless smoke or fine mist, and the earth trembled, as though heralding an earthquake.

Then the world exploded.

Despite having the foresight to close my eyes, it still took me several moments to regain my vision, and it revealed a vastly changed picture. The parking lot was decorated with a new set of craters, the number of at least semi-intact trucks was reduced down to two, and the minions, in all their entirety, were ripped apart and fading into motes of dim white light.

By the time I recovered from the ringing in my ears, the air was filled with the sounds of swearing. Interestingly enough, most of it came from one of the Sanction's gunners, as he picked himself up from where he threw himself to avoid the explosion.

“Sunova... You're fucking supposed to blow them up, not me! The other side, you know, the one in front of your - ”

Of course, the shadow chose this exact moment to dart in.

It was good timing, taking advantage of confusion and disarray caused by the bombing. It was good timing, but whether Airstrike had good instincts or he simply expected an attack after such a display of power, he managed to react. A burst of gunfire echoed throughout the parking lot, swiftly followed by a scream of pain, and the shadow fled back into the safety of the skies – at least as far as the gunners were aware.

A few seconds later, a quiet thump signalled something almost invisible and almost intangible touching down beside me.

“Good morning, Mauler.”