So here I was, Miami. Dressed up in about a hundred pounds of Kevlar and alloy plating, that had been formed to look like pistons, servos, and even with little lights here and there. My clothing didn’t seem to have much effect on my ability to absorb incoming damage, and at the extreme, it looked like my powers seemed to absorb the damage before they could be damaged themselves.

I had focused on kinetic energy, because over three-quarters of all metas used it in some way, from throwing cars to spines or bullets. A lot of stray energy was going directly into my temperature resistance, because Miami was HOT, especially when you were wearing a hundred pounds of heat-absorbing, gunmetal-gray painted costume.

I didn’t need it, but fooling people about your power’s source was cowl 102, and we had decided that looking like a power armor type was probably the best we could do. Tinkers were known for going all rogue vigilante, and if the eventual capes thought it was someone taking vengeance for a cartel killing off their village or something, they might not be quite as eager to try to bring them in ‘at all costs’.

I couldn’t drop the building. Well, I mean, at full power I probably could, but there were bound to be a whole lot of innocent people inside sleeping off a drunk on their vacation or something. Miami was a good spot for the Cartel’s hide for that exact reason. I was not going to slaughter a family just to make a point.

Tino told me that at full power I could probably claim rank C, maybe even higher if I could figure out how to use it more effectively, but at low power, my actual damage capacity was closer to a G-ranked human, it only scaled up as people beat my ass.

Or in this case, while we were waiting in a parking Garage, it scaled up as Vapor leaned forward and kissed my lips, letting me have the full power of her gift, right on the mouth. I kissed her back but made sure not to give it my A-game. Right now, it was time to cause a ruckus other than getting naked with her on the hot concrete. I was very glad that my ability seemed to handle entropy all the time at full strength. Melting my face would have made the kiss a lot less fun.

“Give them hell!” she said brightly, before heading towards the stairs. She was going to head to the top floor of the 7-story parking structure, and then airwalk up to the building’s 19th floor while I started a distraction. Unfortunately, we had to time this, because, between my energy absorption and her inability to carry electronics while she vaporized, communications were kind of impossible.

I watched her silk-clad bottom swaying away and gulped. She was in a full mask and bodysuit, all pale gray, that clung to her form like body paint. Any projectiles that impacted her would instantly vaporize when she was on the defensive, and in her vapor form she was pretty much immune to beams and the like, but weird-ass powers were sort of par for the course for metahumans. Which was where I would come in.

I hopped over the rail, my strength sort of stupidly high and making the hundreds of pounds of armor feel like I was wearing a warm breeze, and strode towards the front of the resort.

I was wearing a sort of voicebox thing on the front of the mask, which took battery power but seemed to be okay as long as it wasn’t touching my skin. It modulated my voice into sounding metallic and much deeper, as well as loud as hell when I turned it up.

The third member of our team was Redshift, which was why my cut was only 20%. He was our escape route, or at least our drop point. Naomi had a set of bags, one of which had a red ribbon tied to it, to drop loot off of the side of the building as they were filled. They were extremely tough, but she had to keep them under 50 pounds each. Not a real problem, since she didn’t have any sort of extreme strength, but Redshift would catch them at speed and take them to the drop point.

When the red ribbon was dropped, that was his signal that the haul was over, and to disappear. Whether it was because of too much heat, or because she had looted all that she intended, red ribbon meant to go like hell… and running like hell was what he did best.

She trusted Redshift’s self-interest. He was a mercenary, sure, but like a mook, he was in a good position. If this job went as planned, many more would likely come his way, and being on both Kjootoo and his daughter’s ‘naughty’ list could be a career-ender, if not a life-ender. Kjootoo’s powers were SCARY. He was only a class C because his abilities were not good for wide-scale destruction, but if he really wanted you dead, you were dead.

Not to mention Kjootoo had some serious lawyers on retainer. Even if he was caught with some of the goods, Redshift would likely never see the inside of a jail cell for more than 24 hours. That was worth a lot more than a 100% cut. That was another reason I considered the government’s ‘power rankings’ a bit of a joke.

We had not actually planned my distraction, it really depended on what sort of situation I found myself in, so I had to improvise.

I ignored the doorman, who was frantically speaking on his radio as I entered, carefully pushing the center of the revolving door so that the whole thing flopped over with a crash of glass into the middle of the floor. I had always hated revolving doors, and that felt good.

I looked around, noting that there were several people and employees around the front desk, a gift shop filled with overpriced nicknacks, designer garbage, and glitzy jewelry, and turned the volume on the front of the mask to the maximum.

My voice ripped out, so loud and deeply vibrating that the distortion could actually be heard pinging off the marble and brass all over the entryway. “Everyone that is not one of Quattro’s bitches, Leave! I am bringing this building down!” I stepped over and pushed my hand through one of the heavy Marble pillars decorating the main lobby, sending it crashing into a multi-story waterfall. It had beautifully designed vegetation in multiple tiers that seemed to start most of the way to the top of the building, cascading down the inside lobby into the now-wrecked display.

You know, the giant robot armor, scary voice, and display of stupid seemed to help. I had done stuff like this before, but it was usually while shooting a gun into the roof or brandishing a tire iron or something, dressed in a black sweater and balaclava. The speed with which almost everyone seemed to immediately push through the now much-improved entryway was gratifying.

Almost, but not everyone. I noted the positions of people that choose to watch or start moving toward me carefully. Most likely, those were the minions that were about to make my job exciting.

I walked to the front desk and checked carefully. I had to be careful with the public address system, but I moved my vocalizer out of the way to speak into it in a calm, soothing voice.

My mask was not full-face unless I swung the mouthpiece over it, but I didn’t really need to look like a faceless horror. Whoever had designed it had don an amazing job, with little flip-down plastic eyepieces and weirdly pokey bit out of the helmet all over that made me look like I was in communications with half the world. All cosmetic, of course, but reasonably tough and business-looking.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please evacuate the building in a fast and orderly fashion. Hotel Management cannot be held responsible for any valuables left on the premises, please avoid the west side if at all possible. Elevators have been disabled for your safety, so please proceed to the stairs.” and I closed my mask, reaching over and tripping the fire alarm on the wall.

See! A full mask does have some use! I was sprayed with the dye pack used to find out who tripped the alarm, and it mostly just left a filmy light blue that darkened and spread as some of the spray from the ruptured waterfall hit it.

The west side, of course, was where Redshift would be picking up the bags, so keeping civilians away was the plan. He would be retrieving them in mid-fall, so there was not much worry about them splitting and spreading or destroying their contents, but the fewer prying eyes, the better.

And that’s why cowls had crews. You couldn’t do everything yourself efficiently. Cowls didn’t tend to come in teams either since most of them didn’t work well with others, which was a great reason most capes did.

There were a lot of people running through the lobby now, I think that the fire alarm must have… pardon the pun… lit a fire under them. As I noted the calm ones, I said, “My name is POWERdox!” before I remembered I had left the volume maxed. I turned it down a little as I saw how many people covered their ears as they fled, and then yelled “You killed my father! Prepare to die! Unless you’d rather take this outside?” and I started walking towards the doors at the back of the lobby.

Honestly, I didn’t want to risk all the civilians trying to escape. If powers started to come flying, someone was likely to get hurt, and rule number 1 was to try and keep civilians out of the line of fire.

I kicked the doors out of the way, and people were scattering through the kitchen. I still had plenty of energy, so I picked up the...probably ten-thousand dollar range, and tossed it through the back into the dumpsters on the east side of the hotel, shortly following it. With lots of wrecked tables, an expensive range, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in wrecked scenery, I was doing a pretty good job making a point.

The moment I stepped into the loading zone, a man dressed in what looked like a green Lucha libre mask with gold bands around the eyes and mouth dropped from an upper-story balcony and landed lightly next to the dumpsters. To my great disappointment, it wasn’t a superhero landing, but I understood that those sorta sucked in practice and if you were super strong, could cause a lot of damage to the terrain you were landing on.

He had a long cane sword in his hands, and with a flourish, brought what looked like a saber out of it. He looked like he was dressed in a nice suit, much like the one I had worn to the party three days ago, but he had discarded the jacket and tie and left the top couple of buttons of his shirt undone. He was built with light muscles and pointed the sword at me in an overhand fencer’s stance.

Likely some invulnerability, rapid reflexes, and maybe force manipulation, if he was facing power armor with a sword. This might be fun.

“Who are you, who is your father, and why are you invading our territory?” he asked.

“My name, as I said, is POWERdox.” I was careful to emphasize the power part, mostly because I didn’t want any idiot journalist calling me paradox. There were plenty of cameras, and some idiot across the street was filming it with his phone.

Man. You know, hundreds of powered fights and civvies STILL hadn’t learned that when power throws down, you run like hell. Meta abilities flying around almost always lead to phone-wielding idiot deaths, and now I was going to have to split my concentration to keep the 20-something white kid alive.

“You killed my father, You and your cartel buddies, and now I have the perfect tools to destroy you and your entire empire built on the suffering of those you are addicted to your poison!” I said, laying it on a little thick.

Really, I was… not terribly sympathetic toward people who wrecked their own lives using addictive substances. I would happily help anyone that had been addicted against their will, like the stream of poor girls constantly headed towards the ‘big city’ only to find a life of chemical abuse at the hands of some pimp, but most people? I had a lot more sympathy for the people they hurt on their way to the bottom.

“You, unfortunately, choose a poor time and place to make your stand, Tinker,” he explained. “If you had approached us appropriately, you could have been compensated, but now you are going to have to face the Blade of Zorro!”

“The Blade of Zorro? Isn’t that like the name of the uhh… you know, the stag porno flick? And it’s copyrighted. Besides, you are wearing a Lucha Libre mask. Why not be creative, and call yourself the sworded manhandler, or the swordbunny?”

He looked very irritated, “Zorro is a fictional hero, and the movie you are thinking of is Zorro, the Gay Blade. After I have disabled your foolish armor, perhaps we can discuss it while I cut off pieces. If you are lucky, I will leave enough to consider recruiting, since tinkers are always welcomed by the Quattro de Mayo!” and he stabbed me with the sword.

Okay, I admit it, I was expecting it to do something, at least. I mean, come on, he jumped like 3 stories, and he was a villain with a sword. I thought it would turn into like a lightsaber or something at the last second, or be driven with enough force to get past my absorption. It was just a stab that broke his sword, not even penetrating my armor, and barely giving me the slightest buzz of power. He probably had little more than a minor strength boost, and he wasn’t even as fast as Tino.

I caught his right wrist, carefully closing my hand until I heard a crackling sound from his wrist. He barely even tried to dodge! Yes, fully powered up, my speed was good, but he looked and dressed like an agility specialist.

I didn’t want to kill the guy, I mean, he was just a goon, so I stepped forward and slapped him against a dumpster. He was practically a baseline, so I was careful not to use too much strength.

“Okay, that was fun. Sorry, but your girlfriend should heal in a few weeks. Only one guy? Against power armor? What the hell, man?”

I was a little worried, so I dropped him and started throwing dumpsters up at the second and fifth-floor windows. I need to cause a distraction, not just disable a street-level minion. The dumpsters were light, and the damage when they went through a window was impressive, but I was hoping that the civilians had cleared out.

Should I have stayed in the lobby? Usually, by this point, every stupid guard should be charging at me or at least unloading.

“I will kill you! I will slaughter your children where they sleep and stuff their heads in your woman’s chest when I cut her open!” he ranted.

Seriously? I took a step towards him.

A second later his eyes narrowed and he vanished, and I heard and felt a ‘clink’ from the back of my neck. Pretty good shot. Right at the second and third vertebrae, right where my helmet nested against the raised neck of my armor. If I had needed the armor, and it wasn’t going for my bones, it might have hurt.

I spun around and managed to catch his left shoulder with my gloved hand. “Seriously? A guy just slapped you down, and you start with the horrible threats? What the hell kind of stupid goon are you?” I said, his eyes opening wide.

Like I said, I am not a killer, usually. But those sorts of threats from a guy who looked like he had some kind of stealth movement and striking ability went over the line.

The dumpsters weren’t really getting enough attention, so I aimed for a 12th-story window.

Unfortunately, I was not left-handed! I snickered to myself. I missed the middle of a window, but his head hit it hard enough to crack it and leave a smear of… ickiness before he started to fall. Naomi’s energy boost was starting to wear a little thin, so I jumped up to the window myself and kicked both it and the wall out behind me.

I had always had little respect for the cartels. Sure, they were scary, but they did it with terror tactics. Any good cowl would have had his boys trying to beat my head in at this point, so I went through the wall instead of the door, winding up back in the lobby on the 2nd-floor landing, and then, when I made sure that there were no civilians nearby, I kicked the railing off of the landing to shred halfway down against the other landings below this one.

In moments I was getting hit by gunfire from multiple sources and felt my energy starting to charge up again. Ahh! There they were. I guess moving things outside had been a tactical mistake.