"...So you will teach me how to roof run?" I asked, watching the young superheroine.
Shadow Stalker nodded. "Apparently. Velocity is busy with trying to track the ABB down and he is the only other one that does this kind of thing regularly." she said, crossing her arms.
The ABB had hit the prison transport moving Lung, breaking him out.
Some bomb tinker named Bakuda did it. The PRT wouldn't take that one laying down so they were now coming down on the ABB hard.
They even had the Wards out patrolling. But I was so bloody green that even with my powers I was basically useless until I learned basic protocol.
Which meant that somebody was assigned to babysit me for some basic training.
Shadow Stalker had drawn the short straw as she was the only one other than Velocity that could move like needed.
Shadow Stalker had the classic 'dark knight' look going. All black body suit with dark metal armor and a dark mask modeled after a woman's face. She carried a pair of air-pressure crossbows like a old school gunslinger and a cloak of all things.
I went with something simpler. A pair of good boots with good grip, a pair of dark cargo pants, grey hoodie as well as a dark leather jacket with a red Hydra pattern on the back. However, I was stuck with a simple mask across my eyes until I could learn how to change my face enough to look different but still human.
The hoodie and jacket were made to break apart at the seams if I ever needed to 'hulk out' while the pants, thankfully for everyone, would stretch... well, to a limit, but still. The fact that they were made to break apart made it cheaper. They could be collected afterwards and easily repaired... easier than if they tried to resist anyway. The Protectorate accounting department is likely thankful for that.
It took a hell of a lot fighting with Glenn to get it down to this, but I managed it. So now my training begin.
"Well.. I appreciate it." I said with a shrug, my hands in my pockets. "I'll owe you a favor or something."
I could feel that eyeroll even if I couldn't see her face. "Yeah, whatever. Anyway, we are the only ones in town that move around like that. Everyone else have some other way of moving during patrol."
I nodded. "Vista does whatever bullshit it is that she does."
"Exactly." Shadow Stalker said. "I don't even know why I'm here. I move in my shadow state, I don't need to worry about damaging roofs or something like Velocity. He should have gotten off his lazy ass and done this himself!"
I shrugged again. "Let's just get this done before it start to rain." I said and looked around the roof of the old concrete building. We were in the docks, out of any of the major gangs' territories or at least in somewhat neutral space. The weather was rather overcast so it was not exactly bright outside, but at least it wasn't raining. Yet.
"This don't exactly bother me with the way I move." she said. "But the trick that Velocity told me about is to figure out your next three landing spots before you hit the first one. Don't break anything. If Piggot get on my ass about it, I'll kick yours. Now follow me."
With that she turned and ran towards the edge of the roof and jumped. In mid step she turned see through, like a shadow in the air as she floated across the ten meter gap to the roof on the other side of the street.
As she landed she turned back and stopped, looking back at me.
Starting at the shallow side of the pool, isn't she?
Bloody hell.
I walked over and looked down the side of the building. It was a three story building. It used to be a store furthest down with two apartments on top.
That was at least a twelve meter drop, if not fifteen.
Gulp.
Sure, I would survive it. Hell, I could likely fall out an aircraft and walk away, but I didn't like the idea of falling fifteen meters any more than anyone else.
Taking a slow breath I returned to the other side of the roof before turning back to see Shadow Stalker leaning against a chimney of the next roof, her arms crossed in annoyance.
I slowly nodded to myself.
In theory, I should be able to do this. While I have so far only done the Brute section of the tests, I would likely get a Mover rating as well if not a Changer one.
But I did not have any Breaker powers. Meaning, if I wanted to travel like this, I would need to do it with muscle power.
Luckily, I worked on that with Aegis for the last couple of days.
Turns out... that training from hell stuff that you see in anime that would never work without destroying your muscles in real life?
Yeah, I could do that.
But ten meter jumps could not be done by humans. Not normal humans in any case... there might be an Olympian or two that might manage it, so to travel like this, I needed to be more than human in ability.
Luckily, we figured out how to 'force' my evolution in the right direction.
I closed my eyes and focused to morph the right changes.
If I just lifted weights, yes, I would become stronger, but I would bulk up. Become slower.
I was still restricted by inertia, something Shadow Stalker didn't need to worry about.
But if I was forced to become faster... I might make the jump and the landing, but I would be a lot less useful in a fight without adapting again. There was only so much you could do with improved speed without a Breaker rating.
Physics was a bitch.
So instead we did something silly.
We strapped weights on myself during sparring. A lot of weights. If I slowed down, I got punched in the face... and with me actively forcing myself to keep looking human, I had to adapt some other way.
My muscles got denser. Stronger without bulking up.
Each time I started to move faster to avoid being punched in the face, we put more weights on.
In the end, there was a lot of lead weights strapped to me.
With them removed... even weighing over twice as much as I did when we started...
I started running towards the edge as fast as I could, my feet hitting the edge and I Jumped.
You know how super hero comics and movies always make roof jumping look so easy?
Well, they lie.
I flew through the air and even as I reached the apex of my trajectory, I realized that I miscalculated. I would be short. Too much altitude and too little forward momentum.
My hands morphed, dark armor covering them, the finger tips changing shapes into claws. Not the blades, but true claw shapes.
I slammed into the brick wall hard, about a meter beneath the edge, my claws driving into the wall, showering the luckily empty street below with smallfragments.
Then I was hanging there, staring at the brick wall in front of my eyes. At least I managed to avoid smacking my face against it when I stopped myself with my hands.
Okay... so what the hell do I do now?
I glanced up at my hand holds. Damn, my fingers were buried into the brick wall to the first finger joint.
I was basically hanging by my finger tips and I didn't even feel any kind of strain.
That's when Shadow Stalker poked her head over the edge. "Are you done fucking around? I have places to be."
Bitch.
With a growl I heaved myself upward hard. I flew up, landing heavily on the roof.
I can't believe I managed to do that. I thought for sure I would fuck up and launch myself backwards or something.
Doing my best to try to hide my 'Holy crap I did something cool!' reaction I busied myself with looking over my hand. It was very similar to what they looked when I walked out of the bank.
"Let's try that again." I said, my hands shifting back to normal as I brushed the dust off them before walking across the roof so I could get some speed to try to jump back.
No. Not try. Do. I knew I could do this.
"There is testing to be done. Be nice and you get cake after."
When you actually got the hang of it, roof running was amazing. That was something the comics got right at least.
As soon as I learned to not jump into walls, Shadow Stalker called in to HQ to report that we were done.
Instead of being dismissed, though, we got new orders. She was to patrol the area of warehouses close to the ship graveyard.
I was to support and observe.
Well... I had mostly learned to avoid jumping into walls.
I groaned as I picked myself off the ground, brushing dust from my jacket. Perhaps trying to do something fancy, like, for example, changing the direction of my jump by scraping my claws against a chimney mid jump, was not the best idea in the world.
Yes, it did change my direction as they dug into the brick... but it also put a spin on me.
"Are you done? I want to get this finished before it starts to rain," Shadow Stalker asked, looking down at me from the top of the building that I had missed.
I growled and crouched down before I jumped as hard as I could. As I reached the top of my apex I used the wall in front of me as a fixed point, bouncing away from it to bound across the street. Amazingly enough, even though it put a flip on me, I managed to land on my feet on the roof across the street.
Damn, I'm getting better at this. Not needing to worry about getting hurt really made this thing much easier to learn.
Taking a run up I jumped over to join Shadow Stalker on the other roof. "Give me a break, I started doing this like a hour ago," I said as I landed.
"Whatever. Just try to keep up," she said. Then she shifted to shadow and was off again.
I sighed and started running again to follow her. I could definitely see why the Wards didn't like her.
Keeping up was harder than it sounded, though. While I matched her speed, she could take paths I could not.
For example, things like walls didn't really slow her down.
Fucking Breakers.
That made keeping up a tad tricky.
My foot hit the edge of the roof of the warehouse and I jumped as hard as I could. It was getting easier though. A hour ago I would not have made this jump. The warehouse across the street was a story higher than the one I started at, but I still made it... only to run straight through Shadow Stalker's shadow form.
Fucking hell that was freaky.
I shuddered and turned back to her. "Why are we stopping?"
She raised her hand and peeked over the edge and to the left.
I stayed quiet.
"Merchants," she said and pulled back from the edge. "Empty warehouse at the end of the street. Sentry outside."
What? I didn't see anyone.
I walked over and took a quick look. There was indeed somebody standing outside the warehouse fifty meters away. "Think he saw us?" I asked as I pulled back.
Shadow Stalker shook her head. "No. If he did, he would be reacting."
"Call it in?" I asked and she nodded, her hand going up to her ear to activate her headset.
"So what do we do?"
She held a finger up for a moment before she nodded "Yes sir" and turned back to me. "We are to check it out but avoid confrontation."
"And if there is a cape there? The Merchants have... Skidmark, Squealer and... what's the third guy?" I then asked, taking another look over the edge and down the street.
"Mush. He covers himself in trash to make himself a Brute," she said. "Our orders are to simply check it out. Come on. Don't get spotted."
As soon as she was done talking, she turned shadow and started across the rooftops again, running towards the Merchants warehouse but keeping away from the streets.
I took a slow breath and started to follow her. Not as fast this time, trying my best to stay quiet.
Not easy when jumping between rooftops... but at least the warehouses were concrete and brick, not metal.
If they were, it would have been impossible for me to approach quietly.
Luckily, the last distance between the warehouses next door was a short one, barely three meters across an alley so my landing there could be extra soft. I even shifted back to my base form in mid air.
Yes, it made my legs scream in pain from landing, but I didn't make any sounds.
I looked around as I slowly stood up, listening hard, shifting my hearing as I strained to hear if there were any reactions.
I could hear talking and laughing from below but not exactly what they were saying. No yelling. No alarms.
Good.
Shifting back to the denser muscle mass I slowly and carefully moved across the flat roof over to Shadow Stalker where she was kneeling, peering down a dirty skylight, a body laying on the concrete next to her.
"Alive?" I whispered as I knelt down next to her.
She nodded. "Jabbed him with a sleepy dart. He will be out a couple of hours. Look. Guy sitting on the car."
I leaned in and dusted a bit of dirt from the glass so I could see. A dark skinned man was sitting on the hood of a half stripped muscle car, his back against the windscreen as he smoked something.
He was wearing a mask over the top half of his face.
"Skidmark," Shadow Stalker whispered.
"What are they doing?" I whispered back as I leaned to the side until I could see a table with a bunch of people putting things into small bags.
"Dividing drugs for sale. If we could take them now... it could really hurt them," Shadow Stalker whispered. "I'll call it in."
"Is it me or are they starting to pack up?" I said softly as they started to throw those small plastic bags into suitcases. "Were we spotted? They don't sound spooked."
"No... I think they are just done," She whispered back. "Fuck... PRT will never get here in time. Skidmark might be a dirty junkie, but he is a slippery fucker."
I nodded and stood up slowly.
Well, I just had a bad idea.
"Call it in. Take a shot if you get it... I'll distract them." I said and jumped straight up before she could answer.
AN// *Throws balloons full of thanks at WarpObscura for betaing this section.*