The man led us inside, down the stairs, and through some offices. I told him our names, Ink and Phoenix, using the text on my arm again, but there wasn't any way for us to learn his name, unfortunately. I decided to ask him after we took out whoever was blocking the sound.

We went down one more set of stairs and came face to face with another door. The man punched in some kind of password into the number pad next to the door and it opened. He then faced us, nervous. His mouth was opening, but I couldn't lipread, so I simply followed his gestures. He pointed beyond the door and then to the left. Both me and Flare - no, Phoenix, I really needed to get that into my brain before I slipped up out loud - nodded and went through the door, leaving the pensive man behind in relative safety. I stopped for a second and faced him once again.

'THANK YOU'

He glanced at my message and grit his teeth with a frown before nodding. Something about that gesture made me feel like he was saying 'don't make me regret this'. I would certainly do my best not to, I assured him with my non-existent telepathy.

As he directed, we walked through the abandoned office and turned left. I raised my palm to stop my partner before we walked in front of the door though. I peeked in through the window to look for dangers. And dangers, I saw aplenty.

Incredulously, there were black snakes floating through the air. Dozens of them, I couldn't count them all. But they were decreasing by the second. Sparkling swords slashed at them and orange hair tentacles tore them apart, turning them into dust. There were already heroes on the scene. One I was quite familiar with. A girl with ginger hair coiling around her limbs and face, swinging more hair tentacles around. And then a boy in a ridiculously shiny outfit, controlling tiny particles of the same shiny stuff to make swords and shields. Threadmaker and Prism. I wondered how they got to the crime scene so fast. They must have been already there, among the civilians, I surmised.

Facing them were the villains. A tall hunky man with long black hair and a bull-shaped mask covering his face hefted a large axe, smashing into a sparkly barrier stationed between him and the two young heroes. There was also a chunky bald man wearing a mask resembling a skull. He held a gun, shooting at Prism's barrier. It tore out pieces of it, but the barrier always reformed in a few seconds. Lastly, a young woman with curly brown hair, wearing a mask shaped like a dragon. She waved her hands in the air, creating tiny clouds of smoke, from which more snakes shot out. They all wore red motorcycle suits for some reason.

On the side, there were the civilians, the hostages, huddled into a corner of the room. The two heroes did their best to prevent any snakes from reaching them, but they were obviously at a disadvantage. Outnumbered. That would soon change, however.

I looked at Phoenix and gestured towards the door, then pointed up and flapped my hands like wings. She understood right away what I wanted her to do. But just to drive the point home, I formed swords on my cheeks. She answered with a nod.

I let Phoenix go in first as I ducked below to prevent our enemies from seeing me. She grabbed the door handle and nearly ripped it open before running in and taking flight. I followed right behind her but hid behind the counters as I stalked my way forward on all fours.

At first, everyone was surprised at a sudden third party joining the fray. But the heroes almost instantly regained their cool as soon as they saw the Rega hybrid burning the snakes, helping them.

As for me, my first target was the one who erased all sound. The woman summoned the snakes, so that left the crazed axe man and the gun-wielding baldy. It was a fifty-fifty chance, but my instincts told me to go after the gunman. After all, keeping up an ability like that might take a bit of focus, and if you are swinging an axe around as that crazy guy did, you might be focused on other things.

And so, I dashed. Around the main fight and into the enemy back lines.

On my way there, I carefully observed the ongoing fight. With Phoenix joining the fray, the snake count began dropping like raindrops. A single particle of her superheated ash touching the snake meant that there was no more snake. Normally, it would be dangerous for everyone involved if molten ash was thrown out in every direction. But luckily, her power was extremely useful for preventing friendly fire. She seemed to have quite the fine control over it, only burning the snakes, and nothing and nobody else.

The presence of Phoenix gave the two heroes some freedom to act more offensively. I saw Threadmaker grab the crazed man's axe and toss it aside to disarm him. Unfortunately, before it even hit the ground, the axe winked out of existence and reappeared in the man's hands.

Fortunately, that confirmed it for me. The axe man had some sort of object teleportation power. That meant the sound muting power had to belong to the bald man.

Nobody noticed me until it was too late, about a meter away from him, my target's eyes widened and he mouthed probably some kind of swear before he snapped his gun to aim at me instead. But too little too late. I punched the wrist of his hand holding the gun. His feeble grip couldn't hold on to it and the gun was sent flying. He tried to retaliate right away, but I was faster. I punched him in his gut with my right hand and then spun around and delivered my - almost signature at this point - hand chop to his neck.

He landed on the ground with a loud thump. Yes. A thump. A sound. It was back. All of it. The sound of metal clinking against crystal as the axe man swung his weapon. The sound of sizzling as the ash neutralized the snakes. And the sound of the villain woman shouting "WHAT THE FUCK?!". Among other things.

One down. Two to go. Just a second ago, they had the upper hand. It was three versus two. But in mere moments, that quickly turned around into two versus four. The heroes were now in the majority.

"So who are you two again?!" The hair controlling heroine shouted.

"We're new heroes! Here to help! I'm Phoenix! That's Ink!" My partner shouted from above as she slew more snakes.

"Alright then! Don't drag us down!" The other hero shouted back.

The snake summoner, in turn, looked back and forth between me and the rest of the battle as I slowly strode in her direction. And her panicked eyes landed on me. But for some reason, that quickly turned into a sneer. I widened my eyes and looked around in alarm, but couldn't see any snakes approaching me. I only heard a silent buzzing in my left ear.

And then, pain. My vision went completely white and I felt my body being violently tossed to the side. My hearing left me once again. Everything hurt. Everywhere. Even my brain refused to fully cooperate with me. I felt dizzy.

I knew something had happened. But I had no idea what. I got attacked, I knew that much. So I did the only thing I could, and flooded my body with roots, trying to repair the damage before I even hit the ground.

What I felt through the roots shocked me. I had severe burns on the left side of my body. I was bleeding all over, the membranes in my ears were popped and my retinas were scorched. And the most disturbing thing of all, my left arm from the elbow down was missing.

Explosion.

Something just exploded right next to me. How I was still conscious I had absolutely no clue. But as for where that explosion came from, I had a few ideas.

Like I have already figured out, these guys were the new villain group. Liberators. And apparently, someone in their ranks could cause explosions at will. I should have paid more attention. Once again, I made a dumb mistake. We read about them just before we left. I should have been prepared. I should have expected this.

But whining about what could have been never solved anything.

I lied there unmoving, pretended to be dead or knocked out as I worked on fixing all the damage. First, I worked on closing my wounds to stop the bleeding, as well as turning some of my unneeded fat into blood so I wouldn't pass out from anemia. That also required a bit of shuffling around, since I needed to put the newly created blood into my bloodstream, but it went smoother than I expected. I was getting used to this power.

With that done, I set to work on my crippled senses. I needed to know what was going on. And being both deaf and blind didn't help things. Since I wanted to continue the playing dead act as long as I could, I didn't want to open my eyes, so instead of those, I fixed my hearing.

And immediately, loud shouting reached my repaired ears.

"INK! FUCK! INK!" That was Phoenix.

Right. I was playing dead. That meant I was not only tricking my enemies but also my allies. I hated to freak her out so much, but I couldn't risk being attacked again in this state. That could end up with me really being dead. I needed to fix myself up just a little more.

Other than her frantic screaming, there were other sounds that I didn't like. More explosions. Coming from the direction of where Phoenix flew through the air, as well as on the ground where the other two heroes were. From the sound of all the huffing and puffing, nobody else got hit by one of them yet. For now, they were successfully dodging them. For now. I needed to hurry up before someone suffered the same fate as me. Phoenix had some minor regeneration power with her ash, but I was not so sure about the two others.

I set on fixing my eyes. Now that I thought about it, I didn't know much about human biology. Sure, I knew the general theory of how an ear and eye functioned. But not the details. Somehow though, I just knew what I needed to do to fix it. Like I had some sort of default 'map' of my body installed into my brain. All I needed to do was use it as a reference, and more or less copy it to heal the damage.

A moment later, my eyes were fixed. I still hadn't opened them, so I shouldn't have known. But my instincts told me everything was as it was supposed to be. So that was most of the major damage dealt with. Except for, of course, my missing arm. I felt that it was possible to regrow eventually, but it would probably take a lot longer than simply closing the wound, and we didn't have time anymore. I needed to get up and help out.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

And so I did. On all fours. Well, all threes? Into my signature cat stance. And finally opened my eyes. It was mayhem. Phoenix kept dodging explosions left and right, as did the two earthbound heroes, all while still trying to reduce the number of snakes. The crazed axeman was also after them, but Prism's barrier did its best to keep him at bay. Luckily for me though, nobody was paying attention to what I was up to anymore, except for the still hysterically screaming Phoenix. However, as soon as she saw me rise up, she stopped and widened her eyes. But then her mouth formed a firm line and she nodded. And then continued screaming my name.

She was smarter than I gave her credit for. If she suddenly stopped being all frantic about me, it might have prompted our foes to check up on me. The element of surprise would have been gone.

I had the chance to turn this into an advantage. I was still missing a part of my arm, but it didn't matter. I was slowly working on it. And more importantly, I was pissed. The explosion obviously completely destroyed my clothes. I was naked now. Even Masquerade's mask was gone. Only the black roots covered me. And I made sure they covered me in full to act as clothes. Even my face was enshrouded. Eldritch horror from nightmares? Well, if it was my enemies thinking it, then good. Let them have nightmares. I would make them pee themselves like babies for wrecking my favorite outfit. And yes, I had decided the white shirt and black skirt to be my favorite outfit. And they would pay for what they have done to it.

I finally focused my eyes and found out what exactly has Phoenix been dodging. There were little black dots flying all around. And then each of them got replaced by an explosion. They were bugs. Flies. The bomber was using explosive bugs. That explained why I didn't see it coming. I wasn't looking for insects. I was looking for something big and obvious.

That made things both easier and harder. Easier because I knew what I was looking for now. Harder, because they were so freaking difficult to see.

I turned into a sprint. It was a bit awkward with my left arm missing, but I managed it. The snake woman still wasn't paying attention, manically laughing and summoning more snakes. But I put an end to that. I approached her from behind, jumped, spun around, and landed my remaining hand right into her neck. She crumpled without a scream and stopped moving as her limp body hit the ground. I briefly wondered whether I broke her neck, but quickly dismissed the thought. I didn't feel or hear anything cracking, so she was probably fine. Well, I didn't really want my first real hero outing to end up with me killing someone, but if it did, I wouldn't dwell on it too much. Those fuckers did after all try to blow me to smithereens. That's seriously crossing the line. I would have died if not for my power. Had they hit anyone else, it would have been over for them.

Somehow, the crazed axe man didn't notice me at all and kept trying to smash through Prism's barrier. But he wasn't alone despite what it looked like. There was still the one who blew me up. Where was that bastard? Where was he hiding?

I stalked forward, glancing around, trying to find my next target. And then I heard something buzz near me. This time, I didn't wait for anything. I launched myself to the side just as an explosion rang inside my ear. Got scorched again, but not as gravely as before. I quickly healed the new burns and fixed my ears before refocusing back on my arm.

I couldn't stand around like an idiot. I had to move. And so I did. But I decided to temporarily abandon the all-fours stance and stand upright. Before the burns were even healed, I dashed around the room and kept my eyes open for any insectoid bombs.

And as I expected, since I wasn't trying to be sneaky anymore, the crazed axe guy finally noticed me. He didn't even hesitate before whipping his weapon in my direction the moment I came closer. I narrowly dodged by jumping just above the sideways swing. But he didn't stop there. He used the momentum and let the axe spin above his head before swinging it down on me. Once again, I dodged, this time by dashing to the side. He had nothing on my reflexes and speed.

Then, a scream. Along with an explosion. I whipped my head around and saw Threadmaker wincing, the hair covering her right arm scorched.

"No!" Prism shouted in horror as his teammate got hit.

"I'm fine!" She yelled back at him and let a new layer of hair cover the wound.

It was getting worse. The bug bomber would take us out one by one while the maniac in front of me distracted us. I was stuck between a rock and hard place. Either we found the bomber and took him out of the picture or we neutralized the brute to give us space to actually search for the bigger danger.

I made my decision instantly. Just as an axe blade zipped right past my arm and got wedged into the ground I jumped forward and spun around. I put all of my strength into my leg and with the sudden idea that popped into my head right at that moment, I let the roots modify my foot into something harder, heavier. No idea what exactly, just something that packed a punch. Or a kick, rather.

And it did. My foot landed in the middle of my foe's chest and sent him flying. Judging by the loud gasp, I probably pushed out all the air in his lungs out. He landed with a loud crash along with his axe. I swiftly turned my foot back so I could keep moving. And just as I did, my arm finally finished regenerating. I was back at full force again.

"Holy shit!" Exclaimed the sparkly hero as he watched me take out the big guy.

"Find the bomber!" I shouted as I dodged yet another fly-induced blast.

That was it. Just the bomber and some stray snakes left. It was four versus one. But he had the advantage of us not having a frikkin' clue where he was. One option was that he had another sub-ability that camouflaged him. Another was that he was hiding somewhere in the building, and simply controlled his weapons of mass destruction from safety. And the last one. He was one of the civilians.

I really really hoped it wasn't the first possibility, because that would have made him almost impossible for us to find. I couldn't fully discount it, of course. But for now, I focused on the more likely ones. The possibility of the villain trying to blend in with the civilians was very high. But which one would he be? I couldn't just go and beat them all up. There was still the chance of him hiding elsewhere. No guarantee he really was hiding among them.

I danced between the explosions as I eyed the civilians, looking for one of them to do something suspicious. If he wasn't creating these volatile insects and simply controlled the ambient ones, he would run out eventually. If he was creating them, then I would notice him doing so in the crowd, or notice where they were coming from and track him down.

"Uaaaah!" Screamed the familiar voice.

Right from above me, my flying comrade has been shot out of the air by the bomber. I grit my teeth as I ran to her and caught her before she hit the ground. I couldn't wait around though, I had to keep moving to avoid getting blown up. In the meantime, the two heroes were doing their best, dodging around the blasts, while searching for the source of the bugs. Prism even created some sort of mirrors in mid-air with his crystals to look into the back rooms, without having to actually go there.

"I'm fine! Not burned! Can't get burned!" My teammate shouted from my arms.

Right. She had fire resistance. And even if she didn't she could just decide to not get burned if she used her power. But the impact of the blast still affected her, and that was why she lost control and fell down.

I tossed her figure into the air like a bird and she flapped her fiery wings and readjusted herself while yelling "Whooooa?!".

I resumed dodging around when I heard a freaking howl. Turning my head, I found the source. It came from the downed axe guy who wasn't all that downed anymore. He stood, axe in hand, howling into the air as wolf ears sprouted on his head and a tail found its way out of his suit.

Hybrid form. He was a Wul Hybrid. I didn't even realize he wasn't using his hybrid form before. He was already tough and strong, now it would just be impossible to do anything to him. Dammit!

"Alright! Let's play, little kitty!" He barked at me, before rushing forward.

As expected, I dodged the sideways swing without any problems. But this time, he put much more strength into it and I felt the air rush past me despite the attack missing me. And of course, he didn't stop there. He began swinging the giant weapon around like a maniac again as I dutifully dodged every single one of his attempts to split me in half.

But it was all a trap. He was just a distraction. The real attack came from behind. My back erupted in pain as the pressure wave of the explosion pushed me forward. Right into the blade of the axe. I let out an empty scream as I fell down on my burnt back and immediately began working on closing the deep cut across my entire stomach.

"INK!" Screamed my best friend.

"Hah! A regenerator! This is gonna be fun!" The towering figure above me put on an ugly grin and raised the axe high above.

He showed absolutely no signs of being scared of my visage, despite me letting the roots cover my entire body. He really was a mad man.

I rolled to the side just in time to dodge the iron death coming down on me. He still managed to cut off several fingers as I didn't get my hand out in time, but those could be quickly replaced. If he had hit my heart or my skull, that would have been much more difficult to survive.

Despite the pain, I got off the ground and dashed around once more.

In theory, if they never landed the killing blow on me, I would always recover and fight back. In theory. Neither Phoenix nor the two official heroes had the same privilege. We had to find the bomber and finish this. And soon.

The axe kept swinging after me, but I kept dodging and doing my best to keep a lookout for any other tiny bombs around me. I wouldn't get caught out a second time.

Then, an unexpected helping hand came to my aid. Or rather, an unexpected slew of hair. It enveloped my assailant's arms and legs and restrained his movement. But I held no illusions about it lasting. I leapt up and wound up my fist, aiming for his stomach. I threw it, and mid-swing, modified my entire fist. Harder and heavier than my kick was. Steel? Gold? Tungsten? No idea what it ended up being, all I knew that it was really freaking heavy.

The punch knocked the wind out of him. And some of his stomach's contents as well apparently. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed still standing. The hair let go of him and he hit the ground with a crash. I really hoped he wouldn't be getting up anymore.

But I didn't waste any time. Before I even finished turning my hand back, I was intently scanning the civilians huddled into the corner. One by one. Face by face. Wondering which one of them it could be if any.

And then I finally spotted him. I almost missed it, but thanks to being a Felice hybrid, my eyesight was sharper than ever. It was an unassuming blond man in his twenties with brown eyes and a very forgettable face. It was his expression that made him stand out. Among all the scared and panicking faces, he was frowning, gritting his teeth. As if we just knocked out one of his teammates.

Wasting no time, my eyes locked onto him and I ran as fast as I could. His face paled as he realized I figured it out. The rest of the people also paled for some reason, but I chose to ignore it. Unlike the rest of them though, he gritted his teeth even harder as I dodged yet another one of the bomb-in-a-bugs. He was getting both more irritated and scared as I steadily approached him.

"Got you!" I shouted prematurely.

And the very same second, pain erupted in various points across my body. I screamed and slid along the floor as my limbs stopped cooperating with me. My roots already trying to fix the problems, while I tried to look around and see who attacked me. I found four objects in my body. Made of lead. Shaped like bullets. They were bullets.

"No. I got you." Said a voice, before all sound disappeared again.

I looked towards it and spotted the very first villain I had knocked out in this fight. He looked different now. He had a large lizard tail protruding from his lower back. Gray scales covered the top of his head, tail, and other uncovered parts of his body. He was holding up a gun. Aimed at me.

So, his power wasn't necessarily an aura. Just now, he must have used it on only himself. And his gun. To sneak up on me and take me out.

Too bad. It seemed like since the bullets were wedged in my body, my roots could affect them. So not only did I know what lead felt like to my roots now, and therefore I could reproduce it if I wanted to, I could also repaint the bullets into tissue they have broken into. Erase them, while healing myself.

The bald man didn't get any more shots off as hair coiled around him and restrained him. Liz hybrids like him usually weren't any stronger than regular people. Just tougher. But being tough didn't help you from being tied up by hair. The sound muting dropped again.

I rose up to all fours again as the last bullet turned into healthy tissue.

That was it. Two of them knocked out, one of them restrained, and we finally found out where the last one was hiding. Victory was ours.

"Nobody move!"

Or at least, that's what I hoped for.

"Nobody move. Or there will nothing more than a bloody puddle left of her!"

I saw what he meant. There was a black-haired girl sprawled on the ground in front of the civilians. The bomber probably pushed her out or something. No, but more importantly. There were bugs. Crawling all around her clothes and her arms. Ready to detonate at the villain's will. The girl in question wasn't stupid. She knew what these bugs could do. She didn't even dare get up from her position on the ground. She was shaking. Pale-faced.

Fuck. Now they were really crossing the line.