I made a rather swift retreat right back out the way I came. I had maybe two minutes head start at the most and as I escaped, I casually wondered if it mattered that I wasn't there or not, I certainly had to have left some sort of scent trail.

Even though Pinky was curious as to why I had made such a sudden change in plan, given her continued desire not to know everything about my powers, she didn't question it too far the moment I said it was a "hidden power thing." She circled around the ant hill, meeting with me back on the roof I had started from as we waited for some sort of response to my intrusion.

"I've never heard of Tailstrike before, but if he's only level 14 then he's probably not doing all that well in the wave to stand out. Saint Mantid on the other hand… I know that one sounds familiar," Jon said, a rapid clatter in the background as we talked in our private chat. Pinky was pacing along the ledge, her attention on the cavern entrance.

"Chick reminded me of that one weird nun horror movie," I said, crossing my arms over my chest. "Though she had a mask covering her mouth… oh god what if she had sharp teeth under there…"

"The… Nun?"

"Yeah, she had this long black cloak on and the hood was pulled up over her hair but her mouth was covered. She already mostly looked like a praying mantis with the arm blades, so I wonder if that extended to her face."

"No the movie's name is… nevermind," Jon said with a sigh, muttering something else that I didn't quite catch. "Anyway, I found it. Saint Mantid… ugh that's right… she got into a big fight over in Spain last year against The Matador. Dude found her actually attacking a church in the middle of a sermon and they destroyed a few blocks in Madrid during their fight."

"Sheesh really? I mean she seemed strong but not that strong," I said.

"Well it was a bit on both of them. The Matador is a bit like Pinky in terms of how he charges for his attacks," Jon explained. As if sensing we were talking about her, Pinky cleared her throat and broke us from our conversation.

"Are you sure there were people coming?" Pinky asked as she turned on her heel and hopped off the ledge, sauntering over to me with a raised brow.

"I said I thought they would be coming after me… I had a head start on them and it's entirely possible they could only spot me while I was right in the room with them," I explained, looking past her. There were still ants coming and going from the cavern entrance, but it had to have been at least ten minutes since I had made my escape and there hadn't even been a peep.

"Well you got me all excited for a fight, what am I supposed to do with all this energy now?" she complained.

"Bottle it up for later?" I asked, causing her to roll her eyes maybe a bit too dramatically.

"It doesn't work like that and you know it," she said, shoving my shoulder as she turned around and looked back toward the hill. "They were what, a Ninth and a Tenth waver?"

"If I had to guess, I haven't exactly encountered other people from the Ninth wave so I couldn't say what level they would generally be, but she was level 27 and I feel like that's about where the Ninth Wave should be at," I said, looking over at her. "Didn't you fight a couple of them?"

"Yeah, Hightower and Muscle Multiplier. They were both level 25 when I encountered them, but they were both purely physical and meatheads to boot. They never tried any strategy and just kept charging me up like a couple of idiots," she explained, shooting me a smile. "Unfortunately I can't say I only won because of that. They had thirteen levels on me but Quizmaster was basically using them as batteries. His powerset let him power himself up by stealing stamina and power from people that answered his questions wrong and once he realized they weren't going to be able to stop me… well, they were a couple of idiots…"

"That's fucked up," Jon muttered. "But I'm also really not all that surprised. I've read more than a few stories since Augments popped up where villain groups came together only to turn on each other after they stopped the heroes in their way. Hell, they turned that entire incident out in Japan a couple years ago into a movie."

"Land of the Fallen Sun! I've seen that one like, half a dozen times," Pinky replied, her eyes growing wide before she clapped her hands together. "Oh if there isn't an attack tonight I know what we're watching."

"You're a bit of a cinephile, aren't you?" Jon asked and she let out a laugh.

"Yeah maybe a bit," she said before her head cocked to the side. "Though, now that I know about the Merchandising Options… I gotta wonder how it works for Miscreants… I mean, does the game actually give them profits from the ticket sales for movies like that? Ooooo do you think they'll make a movie about us?"

"Oh wouldn't that be awesome?" Jon shot back quickly, maybe just a bit too overeagerly. Almost like a switch was flipped, he started to ramble. "Granted when there's footage of all of it all over the place, seeing it replicated as a movie is kind of weird… Or… do they use footage of the events and turn that into a movie instead of getting actual actors? But no… Idris Elba was definitely in that last Paragon's movie and I know he's not actually Tea Master. That means they'd have to have an actual cast for them."

"Ahhh a girl can dream," Pinky said wistfully. "I wonder who will play me."

"Guys…" I said, reaching up and pinching at the bridge of my nose. "How did we get on this?"

"Ummm… it's Codex's fault?"

"Oh come on, you're the one who got us talking about movies," Jon said and Pinky shook her head.

"Okay fine, it's my fault. But I mean, they would have come out by now, wouldn't they? Unless they have some sort of way to sneak up on us, you've got to be in the clear at this point I'd think," Pinky said with a shrug.

"No, I'm pretty sure I would have-" I said, stopping in my tracks as I felt the sudden appearance of a large glob only a few inches behind us. Even though I hadn't been focusing on it, I had had Area Sense activated and up until that moment I hadn't felt anything outside of what I had been expecting within my zone. As much as I wanted to though, I didn't have time to worry about that.

The glob erupted, smacking into both Pinky and I. Almost immediately, Launchpad activated. Since I hadn't been using Center of the Universe however, it didn't actually end up sending me anywhere. That was actually unfortunate for me, since one of Pinky's abilities also activated and she went barreling up and into me as she was launched forward in a powerful leap.

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She bowled me over as she went flying away from the roof and I skidded along, coming to a stop just as I hit the ledge. As I started to regain my composure, I saw as Tailstrike finished shimmering into view.

"I couldn't resist such an opening," was all he said before I activated Timekeeper's Control.

"Ahhh a girl can dream," Pinky said wistfully. "I wonder who will play me."

I turned on my heel in a whir, punching into the air and unloading 1000 points of my Stamina into Mass Driver at just about the spot where I had seen Tailstrike appear. Pinky actually jumped in surprise as my strike connected with the invisible threat. Tailstrike shimmered into view as he was caught in the attack and went spiralling backwards.

As he went flying, I ramped Center of the Universe all the way up, catching him in the field just as he reached the edge of my zone and dragging him back toward me as fast as I could.

"Get his tail and make sure it's not pointed toward us!" I ordered, my hand grabbing Tailstrike's shirt with an iron grasp the moment he was back within arms reach. Pinky, though still a bit shocked, jumped into action and grappled his tail just before it could whip toward me.

"How the fuck, no sense should be able to get through my camouflage," Tailstrike grunted, struggling ineffectually against us. Between both mine and Pinky's enhanced Strength, as well as the fact that I was maintaining the full draw of Center of the Universe just in case he was stronger than us, he barely even moved.

"Call it a lucky guess then," I said, staring back at him. "What's the plan, Tailstrike? I'm not normally one to point out something like this, but we kind of outlevel you. You're picking a fight just a bit out of your league. Where's Saint Mantid?"

"What and share the experience? Taking you two out would score me a hell of a bounty," he spat back.

"He's probably talking to her internally, Pinky keep looking around, she might be sneaking up on you guys," Jon instructed.

"Well, creepy scorpion dude's got some guts," Pinky said. "Scorpion's uh… scorpions can't actually go invisible like that… can they?"

"I mean, most bugs can do some sort of camouflage, though I doubt it's anything like that… but most boars don't have retractable tusks now do they?" Jon asked and I could see Pinky nod her head in approval over Tailstrike's shoulder.

"Guys…" I muttered internally while keeping as serious of a look on my face as I could. I wasn't sure how I was suddenly the one who felt like he was herding cats and yet here I was.

"Well come on Loops, you gonna finish the job or just hold me like you wanna kiss me?" Tailstrike said, struggling against my grasp again.

"What are you guys planning? Where's the next attack coming from?" I asked. It was a long shot that Tailstrike would reveal anything, but it couldn't hurt to try either. One of his arms, so far unused throughout the fight, lifted up and to the side as he sneered at me.

"Like I'd fuckin' tell you," he said, swinging his arm forward. With a grotesque, ripping sound accompanying it, the arm erupted in a flash.

Suddenly, a large, sharp looking claw was swinging, reaching right toward my head. I ducked the blow, my hand twisting into the denim of his jacket to tighten my grip on the man. Even with the apparent danger, I didn't want to let go of Tailstrike while I still had him in my grasp. Unfortunately for me, at the exact same moment, black goo erupted from the tip of his hooked tail and immediately exploded. Although I was largely shielded behind Tailstrike's body, I felt as a small glob of the goo smacked right into my shoulder with an unnecessary amount of force.

Everything that happened next happened in less than one, maybe two seconds, though it was hard to say every detail of it wasn't going to be etched into my mind for a long time.

Launchpad activated. As I had still been maintaining Center of the Universe, this time the ability activated at full strength and I went launching up and into the air with a powerful force. I wasn't sure what the ability was called, but with a burst of speed, Pinky went hurtling off and away from the rooftop in a burst of pink sparks. This is, of course, where things went wrong for Tailstrike.

Having cemented my grip on Tailstrike, as I went rocketing upwards, I managed to maintain my grip on him, causing him to get dragged upwards with me. Pinky, having very much listened when I told her to grab his tail, had grappled the thing like she was about to perform a piledriver, and as her power activated and sent her rushing in the opposite direction from my upward flight, a sickening riiiiiiip filled the air.

Tailstrike howled with pain as his tail was forcibly removed from his body and black goo gushed from the wound on his back. His health bar plummeted downward, stopping with only around 10% left. He convulsed in my grip, his single claw arm flailing wildly as I struggled to hold on to the fabric of his denim jacket.

"Shit!" I said as we reached the peak of the leap.

His claw smacked up and into my arm, shaking my grip loose as we broke apart in midair and while I was able to immediately catch myself with my flight, he went plummeting back down toward the ground. Although I expected him to have some way of catching himself during the fall, because we all seemed to have a way to do that at this point, he seemed to panic, turning over in mid air over and over. He missed the roof entirely and instead careened down and smashed down into the cement.

A New Achievement was just appearing at the side of my vision as I felt my breathing hitch. His health bar had completely zeroed out and from the height he had fallen… Even though he was an enemy, I refused to acknowledge it. Instead, I activated Timekeeper's Control, rewinding and finding myself right at the peak of the leap. While I could have gone back farther, it was hard to say this wasn't the most disabled we were probably going to get him either. As we broke apart this time, I chased after him as he plummeted toward the ground.

He wasn't an ally, so I couldn't catch him with my Gravitational Field, but I didn't have to make him fly, I just had to make sure he didn't hit the ground that hard. I barreled right into his stomach, a loud OOF escaping his lips as he smacked at my back with halfhearted attempts. I slowed us down as quickly as we could, dropping him down and onto the ground when we were only a few feet up. At the same moment, I deactivated my flight, landing in front of him as he scrambled to get back to his feet.

There was a flash as an injector materialized into his hand and I moved as quickly as I could. Before he could jab it into his arm, I smacked it away, turning and punching him as hard as I could right in the head. I didn't activate any extra abilities, but with his health as low as it was, I didn't need to. My strike sent him sprawling backwards and dropped the bar the rest of the way down, leaving only a single sliver of red in it before the KO debuff appeared floating over his head.

Although I had really barely used any of my Stamina, I still found myself breathing heavily as I stood over his prone form and I stared at him as I worked to catch my breath. Once I was sure that he wasn't about to suddenly spring back up, I looked around, searching for where Pinky had disappeared to.

"Pinky, you okay?"

"Yeah… I guess now I know how far half my damn kinetic bank will send me if my Enraged Leap activates at full power… Must have jumped at least a mile away here and I'm drained of kinetic… What the hell was that goo and how'd it make me activate that? Is Tailstrike still a threat?" she groaned.

"He's down… I got him KOed," I said.

"Cool, need me to head back or what's the plan?" she asked.

I looked down at him before looking back over at the ant hill. There were still more questions that I wished I could make him answer, but even if I did rewind things, he didn't exactly seem like he was willing to cooperate. While I could try to take him with me, maybe arrest him if I could figure out how that worked, I couldn't be positive if he had alerted Saint Mantid either. I lifted off from the ground, briefly hovering over Tailstrike before I looked vaguely in the direction that Pinky had launched herself.

"As much as I think we still need some answers, I think it's a risk hanging out here any longer unless we want to start the party early… better to retreat for now and go over what we know somewhere we won't accidentally draw attention to ourselves," I said, eliciting a laugh from Pinky.

"Fair enough, I'll stay where I'm at and wait for you."

Before I could put on the speed and escape, I found myself looking back down toward Tailstrike. There was no part of me that could understand why the Miscreants chose to go that way and given Tailstrike was less than willing to have a friendly chat, I doubted I'd be finding out from him anytime soon. Even so, even if it was just accidental, I couldn't find myself wanting to kill them just to get them out of my way. I didn't want to be a murderer. And if I could find another way with my power… I wanted to make sure that I did.

"I hope you stay down…" I muttered out loud, looking away from Tailstrike's collapsed form before I put on the speed and raced away.

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