Hiro and Valeria thought they had the Lady in the Yellow Raincoat pinned. Through the goggles, Valeria had tracked her movements as she skipped right past a Hunter and settled in an alley.
“She’s crouched now,” Valeria whispered to Hiro, the two of them on a rooftop less than a block away. “I don’t know what she’s doing, but she has her umbrella. It’s her. Or another bitch with an umbrella.”
“We have to be certain,” Hiro said, repeating Rena’s words from earlier. “We’re not hunters.”
“Not yet,” Valeria told him. “For the streets, remember? The gate is going to open, and neither of us know what that means. Best we deal with thorns in our sides now. This is the Interim. We’ve been told there will be others. This begs the question, the Interim to what?”
“I haven’t given it much thought. I’ve been focused on—”
“Surviving. Just like the Doom System wants us to do. Look. I know Juan wants to kill her. I don’t blame him. But if I can take the kill shot, I will. And to do that, I need you to distract her. Your cats will help. My pigeons will help. I can summon my ash warriors. And you’ve got a ton of shit up your sleeve. We don’t let her leave here alive is what I’m saying, Hiro.”
“You’re right.”
“We have enough shit to deal with from the Doom System and its wackiness, yeah, you heard me,” she said, her eyes twitching as she seemed to speak to the system directly. “One less player killer will only make this easier.”
Hiro popped his Inferno cartridge in his vape pen. “We’ll burn her out. Make it easy. I can hop over, send in the cats, release a puff of fire, land, and go from there.”
“Use your potential buffs too, but not {Kiss or Slap} just in case she’s already been injured.”
“Got it.”
“And I’m glad your dog isn’t barking.”
“Hachi knows better. I don’t know how Hachi knows better, but he knows we’re tracking something.”
The dog had remained in the streets near Juan and Rena. Occasionally, he would dip off into an opening in a building or slip into an alley sniffing the ground, but he never blew their cover. As far as Hiro could tell, the demonic shibu inu was going to be a true asset, even if it wasn’t exactly friendly.
Valeria extended her fist to him. “You ready to do this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Hiro bounced to the next roof over, where he landed near an air duct. He took one more leap and summoned his phantom cats, which fell out of the air and into the alley below.
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He cast {Thoughts and Prayers} midair, which, as expected, didn’t do anything.
Hiro landed on the edge of the next rooftop and spewed flames into the alley just as he saw the ends of the Lady’s raincoat whip to the side.
The fight was on, especially once Valeria landed and fired several bolts into the alley. One thing Hiro hadn’t planned on was the sheer damage of his Inferno cartridge, which ignited everything, from what was left in the dumpsters to some of the exposed wood that had framed up parts of the building.
Like it had been pre drenched with gasoline, the fire raged faster than any he had ever seen, making it difficult to track the Lady from the rooftop.
Thunk!
Valeria continued to try to hit her with bolts, Hiro doing the same with his Finger Guns. Anything to stun her, anything to pin the Lady and prevent her from killing again.
Daggers flew past Hiro, which he knew originated from the woman’s umbrella. Two of them clinked against his duct tape armor as he shouted to Valeria, “Get down!”
Valeria dove just as daggers flew in her direction. Hiro came up again this time with his fuzzy pink shield, the tendrils of which had started to come alive. He remained behind it as Juan raced into the alley, the man in his full-bodied metal form, which told Hiro that fire didn’t have the same effect on it as he would have thought.
The flames raged below, Hiro on edges he waited to see what would happen next. There were sounds of metal on metal, Juan’s angry cry, and finally, a surge of energy that spiraled upward to the flames like a tornado.
Once again, Hiro protected himself with the shield. Even though it was fuzzy in nature, it never caught fire.
He glanced to the other building to see Valeria on her stomach and creeping forward, crossbow ready.
Hiro wished at that moment they could communicate in some way aside from gestures. This made him briefly think of telepathy, which he instantly wished he hadn’t considered. If Survivors had powers like that, it would make all of this much harder.
But did they? When the Doom System handed out superpowers back in January, there had been those who were able to use telepathy. Some of the things that Survivors could currently do, the things he’d witnessed, all resembled superpowers even if they were constricted by a system that quantized everything, or labeled it as a Roulette Skill.
Ask the right questions.
“But do it later,” he told himself as he focused on what was happening below. The fire had started to fade, yet everything it ignited created billowing clouds of smoke that continued to obscure the action.
Hiro mentally scrolled through the list of things he was able to do, none of them exactly helpful at the moment unless he wanted to use a One Hit Wonder.
Hachi’s barking caught his attention.
He peered yet again into the alley below and caught a glimpse of the dog’s tail as it charged into the fray. “I’m going in!” he shouted over to Valeria as he drew his katana and jumped down.
Hiro expected to land on solid ground in the alley.
Instead, he kept falling, the wind rushing around him as he appeared high in the air over the East River.
The change in location was so sudden that he had no time to shout, no time to get his bearings as he plummeted to the cold water below, the impact so sudden, so powerful, that everything went black as a familiar voice shouted to him: “Don’t worry, I got you—!”