After the chaos that the Surge brought to Ascension, Apex divided the Ascension into five sectors so they could adequately staff Protectors to patrol each area of the city. Whereas Sector one consisted primarily of Ascension’s bustling downtown and the swanky Governor’s mansion, demanding the most attention and strongest Protectors, Sector five was largely comprised of manufacturing facilities and run down strip malls that were unfit for anything except demolition. Each night, the Sector was left nearly empty after the last of the warehouse floor workers flooded into their cars and headed West back home, leaving only a slow trickle of janitorial staff to take their places in the dark. This meant that there was hardly ever any foot traffic in Sector five past dark, and tonight was a particularly freezing night with nothing but the gloomy streetlights to illuminate the sidewalk outside, which made it a pretty safe bet that Penny wouldn’t be seeing any more customers come through the doors.
Luckily, that meant she could spend the last two hours of her shift at Jim’s Jewelry store getting ahead on inventory orders and cleaning the cases, ensuring her handoff to Beck would go smoothly tomorrow morning for the store’s opening. Beck had spent her past few shifts leaving passive aggressive notes to Penny about the cloudy spots on the jewelry cases, going so far as to circle in dry erase markers the spots she thought Penny missed, so she devoted extra time to cleaning each and every spot her eyes caught, unwittingly staying half an hour past the store’s closing cleaning the glass cases and hunting down every last imperfection.
Penny finally threw her heavy jacket on and shut the lights off for the night. As she stepped through the door, she noticed a dark figure standing against a car on the opposite side of the street, hood covering their face, a few storefronts down from Jim’s. She felt herself tense. She hadn’t seen anyone come down the road for hours, and with the weather there shouldn’t have been anyone out on the street at all, much less standing there and waiting for…something.
Penny, wasn’t exactly sure what that person intended to do once she was gone, but Jim’s was the only store on the street that would be worth breaking in to; all the others were thrift stores or manufacturing parts meant to service the warehouses, neither of which were exactly worth enough to entice an Altered to break in. She pulled out her phone, searched for the line to report a potential Altered to Apex, and saved the number. She had seen plenty of fights between Protectors and Altered on the internet, but hadn’t ever actually encountered an Altered herself, and she was hoping to keep that streak going tonight. She took a deep breath, stepped out the door, locked it behind her, and started a brisk walk in the opposite direction. When she was certain she wasn’t the target, she picked up her phone, dialing Apex’s response line.
A few moments later, Penny had gotten a hold of someone and appraised them of the potential situation, feeling relieved at a promise that Apex would send someone right over. She sighed in relief, then groaned loudly at the realization that, if someone were to break in, all that extra time spent cleaning the glass cases was probably going to be for nothing.
—
With eyes like a hungry lion, Sola watched the overly attentive store clerk finally disappear behind a corner. She had been standing on the street for the past half hour, well past the store’s closing, waiting impatiently for the woman to finally shut the lights off for the night and head out. Now that the woman was gone, and the store finally empty of anyone she’d have to force out of her way, Sola rolled her neck, stretching her tight joints against the cold air, and pushed herself off the beaten sedan she’d used the hood of for a seat. She straightened out her black jacket and casually made her way across the silent street, stopping just short of the storefront.
This wasn’t what Sola imagined she’d be doing when she gained her abilities. Her dreams were bigger than breaking into a run-down jewelry store on the edge of town, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She couldn’t have gotten her powers without help, and now it was time to pay that help back, even if it was doing something she considered beneath her. After all, she didn’t really want her first time using her powers in Ascension to be in service of something so…small.
All she had to do was break into an unmanned jewelry store. Not a bank vault. Not pull off a multi-layered art heist in Italy. Just a small store with little to no security and barely any payoff.
“God,” she said, disgusted with herself. She put her hands on her hips, shaking her head as the white neon sign lit up from the bottom to the top, illuminating a diamond twice the size of her head. “This is so cliche.”
She raised a hand, purple energy gathering in her palm, and loosed it, sending a stream of plasma that slammed into the store’s door handle and shot it back into the store, clattering against the shelves. The door swung open and Sola, wordlessly, took a step towards it, only to be stopped by a wall of black metal bars that slammed into the ground, blocking her path.
She sighed. “Cute.”
Raising both hands, bright purple energy gathered and swirled around her fists, crackling with unnatural heat in the fall air and drawing her like a magnet. She grunted with exertion, then let out a stream of plasma that cut through the bars, dropping them to the ground with a clang loud enough to alert the entire street to what she was up to, if anyone cared to check. But if Sola was feeling the pressure of potentially drawing attention, she didn’t show it: she strolled into the store, casually eyeing the jewelry safely tucked away behind the glass case as if she was an aristocrat on vacation in Vienna.
She spent a few minutes perusing, her eyes glancing from piece to piece, sapphires and emeralds placed in rings, opal earrings dotting the green felt-lined cases. Then, without warning, like a hawk suddenly diving down towards its prey, she stopped, then slammed a plasma-covered hand through the glass, turning it into a sizzling liquid. She let the pieces fall into the case, then pulled out the largest diamond the store had to offer, a sparkling sphere of clear crystal roughly the size of a dime.
“Damn,” she growled, turning the jewels over in her fingers, “still not enough, but at least I’m getting closer.”
Leaving the other cases of silver jewelry untouched, Sola stepped out of the store and back onto the street, keeping her eyes on the diamond. She grimaced, then slipped it into her coat pocket, annoyed that this trip wouldn’t be the last one she’d have to make that week. She finally lifted her eyes, only to then notice a couple standing next to her on the sidewalk, wide and terrified eyes staring back at her.
“Want something?” She asked, gesturing to the broken entrance. She was met with silence until another metal bar, previously hanging by a thread, gave way and crashed onto the rest. The man put his arm around his wife, stepped in front of her, and pulled her urgently back down the street, the pair sprinting away from Sola once they thought they were out of range.
“I was just trying to be nice!” She yelled, shaking her head. She huffed, her breath visible in the frigid air. “Everyone acts like I’m a monster.”
“If you want to improve your image,” a woman’s voice rang out from behind her, younger than Sola’s own, “maybe you should try not attacking the only valuable shop in this entire district.”
Sola turned to find herself staring at the woman, a head shorter and at least a decade younger than her. Barely visible under the streetlight, Sola could just make out that she was dressed in a yellow leather jacket with black gloves and black pants to match, with padding in the shoulders and thighs.
Stolen novel; please report.
“I’m sorry,” Sola said, faux-apologetically, “there’s just so many no-name Protectors running around. Which one are you?”
She held out her right hand, and the street light next to Sola began to flicker violently before shattering entirely, raining glass over her head. Sola cursed and ducked, moving out of the way, then watched as a stream of light flowed lazily from the lamp to the woman’s hand. Wordlessly, she put her closed hands together, then spread them apart, creating a staff of pure light.
“I’m Syphon,” she answered, flexing her hand over the staff. “And you must be the reason I got dragged out into the cold.”
“Guilty,” Sola answered, bowing her head deferentially. “But in my defense I didn’t expect Apex to send a child out past her bedtime.”
Syphon laughed, spinning her staff. “Got a name?”
“Sola.” Her eyes narrowed at Syphon’s weapon, created from seemingly nothing. “I must admit, that’s an awfully neat trick.”
“Thanks,” Syphon said. She tapped the ground with her staff, sparks flying off paired with a solid sound emanating from the bottom that made Sola wince. “Hard light. Hurts like hell when you get hit with it. I’ve been told it feels like getting smacked with a lightning bolt.”
”I don’t doubt it,” Sola laughed, “which is exactly why I’m proposing we avoid this whole situation.”
Syphon raised an eyebrow, but her muscles stayed tensed, ready for anything Sola might throw at her. To Syphon’s surprise, instead of attacking, Sola sighed heavily and spoke.
“Syphon, I’m a pragmatic person and, truth be told, I don’t really want to be here tonight. It’s too cold, I didn’t get what I came for, and I’m not exactly happy. Unlike a lot of my…colleagues, I didn’t get into this line of work for the violence. In fact, I’d say you and I are closer aligned than I am to someone like Duclaw.”
“That so?” she called back. Sola nodded.
“So, what do you say that I walk down this way to the nearest bar, and you get back to…whatever it is Protector’s do when they’re not harassing someone. Probably looking for someone else to harass.”
Syphon considered her proposal for a second, tilting her head back and forth as she weighed her response. “Sure,” she said, “so long as you return what you took.”
Sola offered her an apologetic glance, grimacing. “I can’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?” Syphon asked. “You just said it wasn’t what you wanted.”
”True,” Sola admitted, “but that’s because I was hoping for more. And if I put these diamonds back, I’ll just have to get more the next time.” Sola’s left hand started to glow a deep purple. “And maybe next time, I run into someone who tries to stop me, someone I can’t reason with. Someone who doesn’t realize who they’re standing in front of, or what I’m capable of.” Syphon held Sola’s intense stare, her heartbeat quickening. The purple energy around Sola’s hand grew brighter, illuminating her hardset jaw.
“Maybe you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. But maybe you’re starting to realize, and you’re thinking about how easy it’d be to just walk away. You should do that.”
Syphon’s eyes were glued to Sola’s hands, tightening her grip on her staff.
“Or,” Sola drew the word out, the plasma radiating from her palm. She threw her fingers open, blasting a window and shattering the glass. “You can try to stop me from leaving, and I’ll put a hole in your chest.”
“Sorry,” Syphon said, drawing the light from the neon sign in front of the jewelry store, forming into a white sphere the size of a tennis ball of orange light rotating swiftly in her palm. Sola narrowed her eyes, watching intently. “They don’t pay me to walk away.”
Syphon launched the sphere of white light right in front of Sola, the ball exploding in a blinding flash that sent Sola reeling backwards, nearly tripping over the curb. She coughed in the face of acrid smoke, waving her hand in front of her mouth and shuffling backwards to find a patch of clear air. Just as she was able to open her eyes, she caught the glint of light Syphon’s brilliant yellow staff breaking through the cloud of grey smoke and coming down straight for her head, forcing her to dart out of the way.
Syphon followed up her attack with a wide swing, aiming to catch Sola in the ribs, but came up empty when Sola jumped back and launched a blast of plasma right in front of Syphon’s foot, throwing her off balance as the rubble exploded around her, giving Sola a bit of breathing room and a chance to catch her breath.
The moment was short lived.
Syphon feinted left, and Sola fired off a blast of plasma that crackled right past Syphon’s ear as she then brought her staff back right and caught Sola right on the thigh, sending her to one knee with a roar of pain. Syphon took her staff and put it in front of Sola’s eyes.
“Now’s a real good time to let me take you in,” Syphon said, wearing a cocky smile that set off a fresh wave of rage in Sola. “I’ll be honest, it really is getting close to my bedtime, and I’d love to wrap this up and get home to feed my birds.”
“Your birds are going to have to wait,” Sola growled, both hands swirling with purple energy. “Unless you back off right now. Come on. Don’t make me hurt you.”
She laughed derisively, catching her breath. “Honestly,” Syphon said, “if this is the best you can do, I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”
Syphon launched into another overhead attack, her staff glittering in the yellow streetlight, but this time Sola took a much more subtle move to the left. When Syphon came up empty, her staff cutting through the air and bouncing off the street, Sola was only a foot away. She threw her fist right into Syphon’s stomach, doubling her over and forcing her to drop her staff. Sola placed her hand around it, then yelped when she was shocked by the staff, the pain like touching a live wire. Sola reared back to strike as Syphon snatched her staff and rolled away from Sola, putting ten feet in between them, both standing dead center in the road.
“Always love when Altered find that out,” Syphon laughed, tapping the end of her staff. “Hurts even more when you get hit in the face.”
“Well?” Sola asked, putting her arms out to her side. “What are you waiting for?”
Syphon took a few running steps, raising her staff high.
“Can’t say I didn’t try,” Sola muttered.
She brought both of her hands up, aimed them at Syphon’s chest, thought better of it, and let out a long burst of plasma that burrowed into Syphon’s left thigh, hoping the padding would eat most of the blast.
Judging by the scream of pain Syphon let out, Sola didn’t think that was the case.
Syphon’s staff flew out of her hand and clattered on the street while Syphon went down awkwardly, landing hard on her shoulder. She rolled, settling on her side and immediately began clutching her leg. Sola walked over to her staff and let out two plasma blasts, disintegrating it and scorching the street. She set her sights on Syphon, her skin exposed from the burn in her pant leg, already blistered and an angry red.
Sola kneeled next to Syphon, then let out a long whistle.
“I think…think it’s broken,” Syphon managed to get out between clenched teeth. “I landed on it…in my fall.”
“That looks painful,” Sola said. “But it’ll heal. My advice? Stay down. Don’t make it worse.”
Syphon, in a last ditch attempt to sway the fight her way, weakly reached her hand out to the streetlight overhead. Barely able to lift her arm, Sola was able to easily pin it back to the street. Sola brought her other hand, radiating purple energy, over Syphon’s face, who did her best not to let out a shrill whimper. Sola held it there a moment, the heat alone nearly overwhelming Syphon, then said:
“Be grateful I’m leaving you with just a broken leg.”
Her voice was full of venom, but glancing down at Syphon’s pained face, her body shivering violently, Sola couldn’t help herself. She stood to walk away, then hesitated, finally rolling her eyes, annoyed with herself, and angrily took off her jacket, draping it over Syphon.
“You’re going into shock,” she said, “this will keep you warm until your support team gets here. Also, I am going to want this back, so please don’t throw up on it.”
“They’ll…send someone else,” Syphon managed out, clutching the jacket. “To find you. To stop you.”
Sola shrugged. “Well, let’s hope they take me up on my drink offer. Because if the next Protector Apex sends also wants to waste my time…”
With the sound of sirens fastly approaching, Sola glanced down the street, red and blue lights reflecting off the glass windows. She picked an alley and started towards it, darting into the shadows. She spoke loud enough for Syphon to hear her, her voice echoing off the stone walls.
“They’re going to end up with a lot worse than a broken arm.”