The thief continued to speed through the city, their enhanced legs letting them jump through the crowd like nothing Nikola had seen before. A sharp right was made at the next corner as well, nearly letting the criminal get out of her sight before she caught up once more. Making an iron ball smash against their back, the hero was dismayed to see how little reaction came from it.

The power of a herculean fighter yet they didn’t have the brain to not steal the cash from a small shop. Nikola saw some irony in that as she flew above, watching the half-man half-reptile try to scale an apartment complex. Climbing on the buildings and onto the roofs had perhaps worked in the past but they weren’t expecting her to merely fly up to their level again.

A piece of the roof was thrown at her, turned into some form of metal scrap. Nikola didn’t let that hit her too hard, using her power to gently let it rest on another roof. Catching the criminal was important but public property wasn’t to be destroyed needlessly, as rule thirty-six of the Hero’s Notebook mandated. That was just about the only rule the woman could remember.

The chase started again once the Augmentation user noted their feeble attacks being blocked. Not feeling like dragging it out much longer, Nikola fully connected to the electromagnetic waves around her. They bounced just about everywhere, the cluster of electronics making her mildly dizzy. Yet that period settled quickly and the small pieces of metal lying around connected with her mind, flying towards the half-reptile in full force. She didn’t try to damage the creature, restraining working much better. Steel chains around the feet and arms made it lie in the air, helpless to do anything but watch.

Nikola flew near, grabbing the bag of cash out of the thing's hand. Looking inside, there had to be a good few thousand dollars.

“I have a family to feed,” the reptile begged in the background. “Please, let me go.”

“You don’t have kids, Greg,” Nikola replied without looking at it, trying to make her phone work again. Using her power to fly always made it a bit jittery. Finally, though, it connected. “Scotty, I have the reptile. Get us over to the loading chamber.”

“Righto! Standard teleportation commencing in five, four, three…” the voice on the other end said. Nikola touched her palm against the reptile, readying herself for the brief passage of space and time. The Teleporter she’d known for the last year could handle them both separately with no hardship but she had also learned the slight errors made in them. She liked the blood vessels on her arm staying where they were, thank you very much.

The sensation of being pulled, imploded, and then twisted in every meaning of the word was had before the new surroundings became obvious to the woman. Sleek, white floor met her feet and the lizard beside her fell face-first into a regular containment field. It was nice how that had been automated, no need for burly guards to restrain them for her.

“Get this into evidence, please,” Nikola said, putting the bag of cash down on the table. The bleary-eyed man on the other side nodded weakly before tapping the bag with his finger and letting black energy run over it. In just a few seconds, the bag was gone and Nikola could move on with her day. Getting through the security door with the use of her card, the woman went into the hallway.

Half a minute of walking led her to the active break-room. It was mostly empty, the few respondents currently on duty resting in other areas. It didn’t truly matter where they were, having been assigned to one of the few teleporters in the city who could remotely teleport others.

“Would you mind grabbing me a cuppa?” Scotty asked without even looking at her, continuing to talk into the small headset that he used for communicating with the heroes moving around. “No, I wasn’t talking to you Siphon. No… well, if you get the time, I actually wouldn’t mind. Clear the channel, though.”

Nikola saw the young man having the time of his life, sitting there on the sofa in his white-and-blue spandex. She still couldn’t understand his choice in picking so retro for his active suit. It was bulletproof and could handle just about any knife, sure, but that didn’t mean the woman would ever be caught dead in such a thing.

Her own, more fashionable suit was much easier on the eyes, the blue-and-black colour scheme helping most stains from being noticeable. Most of it was insulated as well, thicker rubber around the feet and hands stopping any mishaps. It was a shame she was never cleared for the cape, however. It would have helped complete the look when she was in air.

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

“Thank you, Tesla,” Scotty said, sipping at the hot tea she’d brought him. She sat down on the couch next to the table, tasting her own as well. She was never one for hot drinks but drinking tea was one of the few things she was allowed to do while on active duty. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a ‘chamomile’ type of person.”

“You wouldn’t take me for a lot of things,” Nikola answered back, noting the use of her hero-name. Looking back at it after a year of being on her own, there was little love for it. What had seemed like such a brilliant pun at the time was slowly becoming a flat joke. “The radio is blinking, by the way.”

“Oh, crap,” Scotty swore as he picked it up again, the table which had their beverages on it showing a small map of the city. A few moving dots could be seen on the map, Nikola noting a golden one moving through the streets at quite the extraordinary speed. She couldn’t remember any speedsters. Had somebody recently moved to Sector 43 without her notice?

She stayed silent as the teleporter worked his magic, a waving hand going in and out of reality as he directed the heroes’ position from the comfort of his couch. Teleporting them hundreds of metres while being just as far away was a power that very few had, even fewer able to use it. If not for Scotty’s lack of professionalism, Nikola didn’t doubt he would have been recruited for the main city.

It was no lie to say there was a hint of jealousy in that fact. A year of hard work and no real news about her achievements. Nikola supposed there were too many street-level heroes in the series though. Not enough slots for everybody to become a Branded Hero.

“Another wannabe villain is trying to take over a part of the city,” Scotty noted with an annoyed tone, taking an extra-large gulp of his recently brewed drink. While the young man could manipulate space to the extreme, drinking a piping-hot drink was not among his skill-set. Coughing was had, Nikola taking another taste test of her concoction to hide her smile. “That is the eighth one this week. Villainy is on the rise once again.”

“Isn’t it always on the rise this time of year?” Nikola questioned, noting that summer was about to end. It would get colder soon. She needed to buy a new jacket when she got the time.

“Not like this,” Scotty said. “It’s meant to fall and then rise over the year but it is just not stopping with the second part. This job of mine takes more out of me than I’d like to admit and this increased workload isn’t going well for me. They aren’t even increasing my paycheck.”

They were paid by the hour. Not by the number of times they used their ability. Nikola remembered the last time somebody had tried to complain about that. It hadn’t ended too well.

“We have nearly a hundred heroes on the payroll in this city and over seven thousand worldwide,” Scotty continued, Nikola choosing not to break in with her thoughts. Resting her mind and listening to a mind-bending rant wasn’t the worst way to waste time until the radio called for her again. “How many instances of Villains have we been getting? Ten times that number for serious cases. Nearly a hundred times that for petty offences, nearly all of them meant to be taken care of by the Heroes’ Association.”

Nikola liked to think of the bosses as more of a self-preservation group. The number of people with abilities wasn’t too high, with only one out of fifty having some form of power. And out of those fifty, only one in a hundred could be more than a minor threat. Yet… that one in five thousand could wreck buildings with their minds, could turn people into puppets, and could make an entire country turn into a world of darkness. Nikola still trembled slightly when she thought back to what had happened to Sector 18. Nobody should have been forced through such a thing.

The power of gods could be granted with no real issue to people who had no training or qualifications to wield them. It took one power-hungry fool who got lucky before an international crisis appeared. It only made sense that most of the world banded together to make sure nothing like that happened.

“The police are still here to help with the petty things,” Nikola commented, breaking her own rule about only listening in.

“If there is the slightest chance of the scene involving ability-users, they aren’t allowed to interfere at any level. You should remember that from the academy, Tesla,” Scotty replied. The young man knew his stuff. “And the usual thievery from the civilians without powers are at stable levels. It’s the villains that are the issue now. They’re getting too greedy, too self-assured in their powers. If we don’t have a hard knockdown on a Villain soon, I think they might just start grouping together.”

It had been a hot minute since the top heroes had struck down on one of the serious Villains. What had it been again… a giant robot squid? Nikola still wasn’t sure how anybody had gathered enough materials and power for such a monstrosity, much less how they’d figured that making a giant robot would make it possible to take over their sector. Where had that taken place anyway? It had been by the sea so clearly one of the single-digit Sectors…

“Maybe we just need to recruit more,” Scotty continued when Nikola didn’t put out any rebuttals. “I know a few teleporters that didn’t make the cut last round. It wouldn’t hurt to put in another letter of recommendation.”

“I don’t think those ever worked, Scotty,” Nikola said with a smirk.

“Isn’t that how you got in?” Scotty fired back with a tone of innocence, not even realising what he’d said. “Lux had been rather adamant about getting you in without the regular testing.”

“Not being able to pass the tests wasn’t the main reason he stepped in and it most certainly didn’t do too much,” Nikola said with a tense verse. The Teleporter on the couch looked ready to drop it after that.

“Well whatever,” Scotty said, noting the blinking red light on the table once more. “We have another ongoing robbery. Low-level Augmented User with limited range. Do you wanna take it?”

“I have to make my paycheck worth it somehow,” Nikola answered back, leaning forward to let the teleporter get a hold around her shoulder. With a clap, she was thrown into the cosmos for a single instant before reappearing at the scene of the crime.

Making her back pop, she took chase once more, flying high as she looked down on the criminal. It was simple, easy, and utterly devoid of challenge.

How Tesla wished for more.