Technique had about fifteen seconds to think before a giant who could shrug off gunshots came to beat the pulp out of him.
Unfortunately, he spent that fifteen seconds panicking.
“I need help”, he desperately said to Lucky. “Look, I don’t want this test. This isn’t-“
But Technique didn’t finish the sentence when the door opened and the man stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Daniel Quan. Technique guessed that he was about six and a half feet. He briefly wondered what his mask name was before he realized he didn’t particularly care at that moment.
He retreated to the far end of the store instead. Quan cocked his head at him and gave a short laugh. He pointed at Technique with his bat, as if aiming a gun. He approached slowly, twirling his bat around and lightly touching the shelves full of products as he walked.
Technique sent out a desperate searching pulse with his power, searching for what he could use. Computerized light system. He didn’t waste a beat before disabling all the lights he could feel. A second later he disabled the TVs and the wall mounted refrigerators to get rid of the light that they emitted too. Outside, the streetlights hadn’t switched on yet, even though the sun had set a while back. The end result was that the store was shrouded in reasonably pervasive darkness- Technique couldn’t make out much more than what was a feet ahead of him. He crouched and moved off to one of the other aisles.
“Coward!” Quan called out. “You want to rob my store, fucker?! Then fight me.”
“Lucky. Lucky Guess. I didn’t agree to this test. Please”, he tried again with desperation. Using his power to send the message rather than speaking helped in that it didn’t betray his position, but voicing his frustrations out loud provided a certain catharsis that using his power didn’t provide, even if it spoke in the appropriate tone. Technique felt like he wasn’t really asking for help because his mouth wasn’t physically moving, despite knowing that the pulses and signals were being sent like they were supposed to.
She was just ignoring him.
Technique could hear Quan’s footsteps; Technique judged that he was about two aisles over. He wasn’t saying much- he was listening for Technique as well.
Technique sent out another pulse and found what he was looking for. He triggered the fire alarms- what followed was an ear-splitting shriek from all over the store. It was nearly intolerable, but it would probably cover any sounds that Technique happened to make. Of course, the same could be said of Quan- Technique could no longer hear him coming.
He looked through the cameras placed across the store again. They were low light cameras- stores and banks often used them in cases of robberies that took place after hours, when the store was closed and the lights were off. They weren’t particularly good, but he could make out the vague shape of both himself and Quan, and that was all that mattered. He had the feeds overlaid over his vision.
“Asshole! Turn that shit down!”, he heard Quan yell. He slammed a shelf with his bat as if to punctuate his statement. The shelves were apparently welded to the ground- it didn’t fall over, but there was a large indent where he had struck it, and packets of crisps had fallen to the ground. He can hit hard, Technique thought, in the midst of a renewed bout of panic.
Technique’s plan was simple- sneak to the exit and bolt. Fuck the test.
Unfortunately, it was probably simple enough that Quan had anticipated it. He had turned and was walking back to the doors, probably to block them.
“I can wait here all day, cocksucker!”, Quan yelled over the alarms. “You ain’t going nowhere now, and I’m gonna beat you until your eyes pop out”. Quan opened the door to let in some more light. It made a difference- A rectangular swathe of the store that Technique could no longer walk in without being seen.
But it also gave him options. Bitbird had still been hovering outside for the last few minutes, doing nothing as Technique panicked. Taking care to maintain a distance, he had Bitbird move up to the store’s entrance- its cameras picked up Quan standing at the entrance.
Bitbird was possibly the most useful of Technique’s devices- on the field at least. Of all the money he had stolen so far in his brief career, Technique had probably spent a solid half of it on his gadgets and devices, and Bitbird accounted for half of that half. He had it modified and improved by three different mask makers, and it had become something of a hobby for Technique to maintain and modify it himself. It was equipped with regular, night vision and thermal cameras, directional mics, speakers, an embedded satellite phone, and more. Technique had a mask maker install a crude ‘claw’ system; it couldn’t perform surgery, but with a bit of fussing and fiddling it could pick up, lift and move objects that weren’t too heavy. Really, the only problem was that it was somewhat of an easy target, and Technique worried about it getting struck down every time he used it in public.
For now though, what Technique needed was the attached tranq gun. He had it installed on a mask maker’s recommendation, and it was the only part that Technique didn’t touch. He wasn’t sure how it really worked and was afraid he would tranquilize himself. It didn’t have much capacity- only six darts at a time, and Technique didn’t exactly have a steady supply of tranquilizers. The end result was that he had only used the gun six times- five times for practice, and only once on an actual person. The aiming was better than one might expect thanks to Technique’s Abnormally enhanced software.
The first dart still missed however. It zipped just past Quan’s head. Quan whipped his head around in response, and it took him a few seconds to notice the drone.
He laughed rather derisively. “Now that’s awesome. I’m going to beat you with that thing until both of you break”, he yelled. Both Technique’s own ears and the mics in the drone picked it up. Quan looked around for a moment, grabbed a can of soda from a shelf near him, and threw it at Bitbird. It went long, but Technique moved it a bit further away regardless.
Technique gave himself a bit more time to think before firing the second shot. Shooting his leather jacket was probably useless- it would probably just get stuck before it hit skin. Fuck. Technique had somehow forgotten that Quan had hardened skin. The darts wouldn’t pierce his skin anyway. Idiot, he cursed himself.
He fired a shot at Quan’s face anyway. This one hit- it seemed to pierce Quan’s ski mask but not his skin. It hung limp, caught in the fabric of his mask. “The fuck is this shit?” he asked. Technique was oddly aggravated by how amused Quan seemed, like this whole thing was a joke to him.
He needed to focus. He had just lost a lot of time and two darts because he was too busy panicking and not thinking. The tranq gun was useless. What were his other options? He surveyed the store with the cameras once more. He couldn’t see anything of interest. He looked once again at the thick glass shields at the counter. He couldn’t see the shopkeeper. Where did he go?
Technique looked over to the counter with his own eyes. There was now a door ajar on the other side, leading to a back office probably, and possibly another exit. But he would have to get past the glass for that. He had Bitbird move towards the back exterior of the store.
Quan turned his attention back to the interior as the drone flew away. “I’m starting to get bored here”, he yelled. To Technique’s horror, Quan stopped standing guard at the entrance and started walking amongst the aisles again. Technique scrambled further away. The fire alarms were unbearably loud.
Technique’s hunch had paid off, in a manner of speaking. Bitbird hadn’t spotted an exit, but it did see an open window, one that it could fit through. Technique slowly and carefully directed it to through the window. Breaking Bitbird was the last thing he needed at this point.
At the same time, Technique prowled through the store, staying at least two aisles away from Quan while looking for anything he could use. He found and grabbed a pair of scissors, though he doubted he could do anything with it. Mostly it was all just food. Fighting him wasn’t an option.
With dread, he reached out to Lucky Guess again. “Please. I fail your test, okay?”
No response.
Quan had started hitting the shelves with his bat indiscriminately. “For fuck’s sake”, he yelled. He followed it up with a string of frustrated expletives. He held a hand over his ear in reaction to the fire alarms. Technique couldn’t blame him.
Bitbird had entered an office of sorts. He found the shopkeeper in fetal position near the door; he had immediately taken notice of the drone. Technique worried that he would attack it, but instead the shopkeeper curled himself into an even smaller ball.
The drone zipped out of the door and went down a corridor to what was clearly the other side of the counter. Exulting, Technique looked towards the counter to see Bitbird hovering on the other side. Wasting no time, he had the drone’s claw pull the lever that Technique assumed control the shields. Luckily, the lever wasn’t too stiff for the drone. Unluckily, the shields descended with an almost comically loud whirr that immediately attracted Quan’s attention.
Quan wasted no time in bounding towards the counter, and laughed again when he saw the shields descending with the drone on the other side. Technique immediately had the drone go back to the room with the shopkeeper, but Quan didn’t seem to care. He turned around instead.
And he spotted Technique.
There were no slow walks this time. With a guttural yell, Quan ran up to Technique readying his bat. Technique had to throw himself to the floor to avoid the arc of his bat as Quan swung it. The bat smashed against refrigerators mounted against the wall. Glass and water bottles broke; Technique felt the thin sheen of water rush in as he lay on the floor. Water, he thought.
It was only something he saw in the movies, and he wasn’t sure if it would work. But perhaps it only mattered that Quan would think it would work.
Rather than waste time getting up, Technique crawled out the way, just in time to dodge a downwards swing of Quan’s bat. The impact cracked and broke the tiles around the point of contact. Technique scrambled to get up but didn’t run this time. It was risky, but he really didn’t have another plan.
He narrowly dodged another swing from Quan’s bat, which hit another of the refrigerators on the wall. More water, some soda, and a lot of alcohol coated the floor when a number of bottles were smashed.
Technique figured that was probably enough and ran away for a second, before diving into one of the aisles. Quan gave chase but thankfully slipped against the wet floor, which gave Technique enough time to lose him. Quan let out another string of expletives.
Technique sent out another pulse with his power, and to his relief found what he was looking for. The place had a digital electrical panel. He didn’t waste time to think about which channels corresponded to which outlets or devices and shut them all off. On the surface it didn’t make a difference considering all the lights were already off, and the fire alarms apparently were on a separate system as they kept ringing. But he could no longer see through the cameras.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Playing hide and seek around the store for the last few minutes finally came in handy. It didn’t take long for Technique to find what he was looking for- a small hand drill. Technique doubted that the drill could do anything against Quan’s skin, but that’s not what he was there for. Over an absurd, desperate few seconds, Technique used his scissors to separate the power cord and plug from the rest of the drill. He didn’t bother making it neat, he wanted loose wires sticking out. Technique begged that Quan couldn’t hear the crinkle of plastic and cardboard as he made his DIY electrocution device.
Once done, Technique grabbed the severed cord and plug and scampered back towards the aisle where the fridges were smashed. He didn’t bother being quiet this time. He found what was looking for near the ground beside the fridges- a plug point. He could hear Quan following Technique’s footsteps. In a hurry, Technique plugged in the frayed cord, and dropped it on the ground, onto the water. Technique’s heart skipped a beat- but he hadn’t electrocuted himself. He hurried to move away from the wet part of the floor.
Quan on the other hand, had caught up to him, and was currently right in the middle of it. Hoping he didn’t accidentally electrocute Quan, he had a nearby light switched on. Quan paused in reaction. Good.
Technique used his mask to speak.
“Electric cord”, he said, pointing so that he could see, thanks to the improved visibility. “And you’re standing in water. Make one move and I electrocute you.”
It was a bluff. For one thing, he wasn’t sure if electricity would work against thickened skin; his instinct was that it would, but there was no way of telling with Abnormals. Then there was the possibility that it might not conduct through his shoes and clothes, or that the movies were wrong and the current wasn’t enough, or the fact that there was more alcohol, juice and soda on the floor now than water, and Technique had no idea if those things conducted electricity.
A bluff. But a mask made for a good poker face and being able to speak without speaking made his voice sound confident even if he was scared shitless.
“The power’s off right now”, he continued. “You move even a step, and it would take me less than a second to have the electricity flowing back through this plug. And electricity doesn’t care how tough your skin is.” I hope.
Quan didn’t immediately respond and was looking at his feet instead. The ground was covered by a dark purplish sheen of liquid, a mixture of a bunch of drinks.
“You understand?” Technique asked, bolstered a tad by the lack of movement from Quan.
When he didn’t reply, Technique took a tentative few steps away. Quan didn’t react; Technique took a few more steps towards the exit.
But then he stopped. And walked over to the counter instead.
Quan looked over when he heard Technique reaching over the counter, and laughed.
“Keep still. I can see you through the cameras even when I’m not looking myself”, Technique told him, hoping Quan wouldn't notice that the cameras were off too, and then turned away from him to look for the money. His mask spoke with confidence. “I’m going to rob your store now.”
Quan laughed again, louder. Ignoring him, Technique turned the cash register to face him and opened it. There wasn’t a lot of money in it. Definitely not a thousand dollars. Suppressing the urge to swear, he grabbed what he found, and rifled through the nearby drawers. In the third drawer he opened, he saw three wads of cash. He didn’t bother counting it, but stuffed it down the pockets of his pants. Good enough. When he turned around, Quan was still watching him.
“You almost got me you fucker”, Quan said, sounding half angry and half amused.
Then to Technique’s surprise, Quan dropped his baseball bat and took a few leisurely steps towards him. Before Technique could process it, Quan was out of the water. And Technique had done nothing. Fuck.
He would have to run for it. And he had almost started to, before Quan spoke again.
“I say you pass, Computer Boy” he declared.
After taking a few seconds to process that, Mark suppressed the urge to scream. “What?” he croaked.
As if on cue, the shopkeeper emerged from the office, looking terrified. They were in on it. Mark felt like an idiot for not immediately suspecting it. Fuck that, I didn’t even have time to think about it.
“Hey”, Quan called to the shopkeeper, who was reacting to the destruction. “Disable the cameras, and switch on the lights. And turn off those fucking alarms, Jesus.”
The shopkeeper moved to comply, but Mark beat him to it.
“Lucky Guess put you up to it”, Mark said, with his own voice. His voice was shaky, and he was clenching his fist tight enough to hurt through his gloves.
Quan took off his ski mask, and Mark saw someone else’s face instead. He had seen it before, when he was researching Scalpel. Steelskin.
Steelskin grinned at him, looking entirely too happy with himself. “You passed”, he repeated.
Passed? He had almost electrocuted Quan-Steelskin. He had almost electrocuted himself. He was terrified, he was still terrified. Mark wanted nothing more to wipe that smug fucking grin of Steelskin’s face.
But he walked out without another word. Fuck this, fuck them.
“Hey”, Steelskin called, but Mark ignored him.
Less than a second after Mark reached the exit, he ran into Lucky Guess. He hadn’t been keeping track of all the devices around him and didn’t notice her coming. That just made him angrier.
Lucky Guess’s body language shifted as soon as she saw Mark’s own.
“You’re angry- “, she started.
“Fuck you. Fuck you people. First you point a sniper rifle at me, find out my identity, and now this. I could have died. I could have killed myself and that asshole. Electrocuted. Fuck you. Stop fucking with me.” Mark was using his own voice again, he was shouting, and his words and sentences were coming out disjointed, incoherent.
To his dismay, his voice was hoarse and cracking. His throat had a lump in it, and he knew he was dangerously close to crying, which would be the last fucking thing he needed at that moment.
“No, look- We set this up ahead of time with the brothers. No one was going to enter the store, and Steelskin, the guy in there, he wasn’t going to really hurt you. Even the shopkeeper was in on it. I’m sorry.”
But Mark didn’t want to hear it. Scalpel seemed fond of putting in him stressful situations and telling him not to worry about it. He was angry, and he was angrier that he was coming across more whiny than intimidating. He didn’t trust himself to be there any longer without crying or making a fool of himself. So when Lucky Guess reached out to put an arm on his shoulder, he slapped it away and turned to leave.
“Fuck off”, he said, and walked away. Lucky Guess took a step as if to follow, but then stopped.
“We can drop you off at your place”, she called out after a few moments, but Mark kept walking without responding.
Bitbird caught up and trailed behind him, watching them as he walked away. Steelskin had joined her outside and they were both watching Mark as he stomped off. The mics and cameras on Bitbird faintly heard Lucky Guess swear and saw her smack her head.
A few seconds later, Mark rounded a corner and they lost sight of each other.
Mark stopped for a second and bent forward with his hands on his knees. His mind was racing. He could still feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, begging him to do something with his body. He almost felt like puking. Assholes.
He took two deep breaths and thought about what to do next.
How would he get back to his place? He had taken ‘his’ car- a car he stole a while back- to the meeting at the factory and left it there when Lucky Guess drove him to her ‘test’ using her own car. His car was too far away to get to right now.
A quick mental command and his chip fed him the directions back to his place. A forty-minute walk. Great.
So he walked. And he thought.
He thought about how fucking unfair all of this was. Less than a year ago, he was in high school- he had friends, he had a girlfriend. He would play tennis after school, and had just taken up the violin. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but he was happy. He was supposed to be in college now, as a business-econ major.
Then one day he woke up an Abnormal. And it was like his life was destroyed with calculated malice.
All that was left of his life was fear, guilt and more fear. He had actually gotten his hopes up with Scalpel. Maybe it was his fault for expecting anything else from a group of self-admitted supervillains.
Most of all he didn’t understand the why. Why did everyone insist on fucking with him, or using him, or hurting him? And how long did he have to take this? Did he have to take it from everyone? Even Scalpel were the same kind of assholes.
He had considered going back to the government of course, with his tail tucked between his legs, and promise to help them enact their dystopian bullshit without complaint. Mostly it had been ego that had stopped him- they were the ones that set all of this in motion. They were the one who ruined his life to begin with, ruined his dad’s life- to go back to them somehow seemed like a betrayal. But he was considering it now.
Mark didn’t know what to do anymore. Yet again the familiar refrain went through his mind- I’m not cut out for this. But ‘this’ was apparently his life now.
He moved to wipe the tears from his eyes before he realized he was still wearing his mask. He almost chuckled at that.
-------------------------------------------------
Mark had left the previous neighborhood to a relatively better area- better being a relative term. The downside was that there were more people out on the street. Mark was trying to walk through side alleys and stay out of sight, but more than a few had noticed him. People moved away as they saw him- it would be stupid to do anything else when one saw an unknown mask. A few had tried to take pictures with their phones before Mark used his powers to disable them. But it was possible that there were others outside his range. Yet another thing to worry about if the pictures found their way to any of the innumerable people after him. He’d probably have to move again as soon as possible.
After far too much walking, Mark found himself approaching his apartment, exhausted. He had only been there for a week- he had only come to this city on Scalpel’s invitation. But the first thing he had done upon moving in was install a number of portable cameras both inside and outside of the building. Standing a bit away from the building, obscured in darkness, he used his power to review the footage of one of the exterior cameras over the past day. His heart sank; about five hours ago a short pudgy man with blonde hair and a bald spot had stood outside watching for a bit before entering the building.
Mark recognized him; Liquefy, a mask that worked as a bounty hunter. One of the people that had responded to the Happy Family’s bounty out on Mark; Mark had had a close call with him before- Liquefy had missed him by a matter of minutes the last time. He had found Mark again.
Liquefy could turn his body into some kind of disgusting goop that could slip through most cracks and holes. Liquefy used it to infiltrate buildings and absorb damage during combat- punching his goop form apparently didn’t do much. He apparently liked to turn himself into goop and drown or waterboard his enemies with his own body.
Mark looked through the cameras in his apartment- the lights were off and he couldn’t see anybody, but it was possible that Liquefy was hiding in the sink or in the drains or something, ready to pounce. It wasn’t worth the risk. Mark swore silently.
He didn’t have a spare set of clothes on him- he had left one in his car and the rest were in his apartment. He had the money he had just stolen, but motels didn’t exactly take in mysterious costumed masks either, and the nearest one was about a two hour walk away besides.
Mark walked away in a random direction. He didn’t know what to do, but it was best to think about it elsewhere.
The egotistic side of him was rankled by the fact that Liquefy wasn’t even a particularly impressive mask- at least that was the impression that Mark had gotten by looking around online. And the whole reason for all this was that Mark was supposedly too powerful to leave alone. And yet Mark was the one hiding from Liquefy.
He thought about what Thinker had said, about the need to become a player rather than an asset. The more he thought about it, the more he agreed with it, and the less he was happy with it. What exactly did ‘being a player’ entail? Going back and fighting Liquefy? The very idea terrified him.
Mark sighed. The calculus hadn’t changed. He still needed Scalpel, for exactly these kinds of situations. He was still angry- thinking about the day’s events still made his fists clench. Mark wondered if he needed thicker skin, and not in the Daniel Quan sense. He didn’t think his anger was unjustified, but maybe being an asshole was just par for the course for masks, and maybe he should just learn to live with it. He shook his head- I don’t need to take that shit.
Mark considered the idea of going back to Scalpel after the scene he made. He estimated that he had passed their little test, so perhaps they wouldn’t fuck with him anymore? The idea didn’t thrill him. He felt like it would be letting Thinker and Lucky Guess win after the shit they just pulled.
Later, a voice in his head complained. He was sweaty despite the cold, his legs were tired and he had just been through one of the most stressful days of his already stressful life. He needed sleep. He could worry about all this later.
His random walk had taken him to a park- or an excuse for a park. It was a block sized patch of overgrown grass with a few bushes and trees here and there. It was surrounded by a chain link fence, although the fence was torn or missing for most of the perimeter. From the looks of it, it was hobo central- there were more than a few homeless milling about, some asleep, some drunk, some talking to each other.
The park was only illuminated by two dim streetlights, which Mark immediately disabled. Trying not to attract too much attention, Mark moved to a more isolated area of the park, using the darkness for cover. He found a little grove of trees and bushes and ducked behind them. Satisfied that no one could really see him unless they got close, he plopped to the ground. It was grassy, a bit wet, and not at all comfortable, but he sighed and closed his eyes nonetheless. Mark fell asleep the second Bitbird landed next to him.