Melissa Abbot knew she wasn't like other kids. She never had been. She didn't think like they did, didn't like the same things they did, didn't know how to talk like one of them. Really, she hadn't even hung out with a kid that was vaguely her own age since… actually, she couldn't remember ever doing that. Not like how she watched in movies or read about in books. She couldn't remember just hanging out with another kid like her, playing games or going out for… for anything.. Just like how she couldn't truly remember a time before she had been sick.

There were some very vague impressions that her brain probably could've just been making up, but other than that, the girl might as well have spent every single one of her first nine years of life with bones that were so weak they would break under any more than the slightest bit of pressure. Bones that were so fragile, she could barely get out of bed now and then without risking serious damage that, even with the meds and advanced tools her dad had access to thanks to all his-- the bad things he did, really hurt and took a lot of time to heal. Time that she'd had to spend being even more immobile than usual. Which had totally sucked. It super-sucked.

Fragile. That was what she had been, and what she was now. It was what she would always be. That was why she took that as her name, to own it, to make it a part of her, to hold onto who and what she was. But one thing she would never be, the thing she'd never let herself be, was weak.

Maybe it was weird to prove that by shattering herself into a couple hundred tiny pieces, but hey, what part of her life wasn't weird? And the point wasn't how many pieces she was in, but what she did with those pieces. Or something, that whole bit probably sounded better in her head. The point was, the very first thing Melissa did as she and the rest of the Minority (minus one Raindrop) found themselves teleported to some new place with three of those clearly incredibly dangerous Fell strangers, was shatter herself into all those tiny pieces and make them fly apart.

That guy, the enormous one who towered over the rest of them at a staggering nine feet, was the biggest threat here. He could turn off their powers. It had already happened to Melissa back on that roof. For those few seconds that he had focused on her, the girl had been frozen. Her body didn't shift back to flesh and blood or anything, it stayed glass, but she didn't have any control over it. She couldn't move at all. Through that time, brief as it was before he focused on someone else, Melissa had been nothing more than a statue. Just a helpless, immobile statue.

It was a horrible experience, and one that she absolutely would not stand still and let happen again. Not this time. Even as the rest of the team were just barely starting to react to the sudden transport, while that guy who shot fire or ice out of his hands or whatever was saying something threatening, Melissa was already shattering herself. They didn't have time to waste on stuff like thinking. She had to move faster than those guys were thinking, faster than they were moving. She had to act right now before that big guy focused on her again, before he could statuefy her again, or whatever the word for that sort of thing was. She didn't have time to think about what the exact right words should have been, there were bad guys! The only dictionaries that should be involved in the next few minutes were some big heavy ones she could hit those jerks with!

Well, she didn't have any heavy dictionaries right now. But what Melissa did have was a plan. It was a plan the young girl had come up with in those few seconds right after she'd been freed from the big guy's power-turning-offer eyes. Maybe it was dumb and wouldn't work at all. Heck, it might even make her more vulnerable than she already was. But she still had to at least try it.

The others were doing something, but she didn't have time to focus on them. She was spreading herself, all her tiny shattered pieces, out as far apart as she could make them go, sending the shards of herself into a wide circle around the big guy. He was gonna go down. Or at least end up being super-annoyed by what she was about to do. Either way, he definitely wouldn't forget her.

In that second, just as she finished spreading all her pieces around the man, Melissa felt his eyes on her. Well, the parts of her that were still in his line of sight, anyway. She couldn't see his eyes through that mask, but she was positive that he was staring right at those hovering shards. Mostly because as soon as he did, those parts of her started falling right out of the air to crash into the hard ground, which broke them apart into even tinier pieces than they already were.

But what was really important wasn't what those parts of her were doing. It was what the other parts were doing. Namely: still hovering. She was right. Melissa was right! When she was all split apart like this, the bits he wasn't actively looking at could still move! He could only turn off the parts of her he was actually capable of focusing on at the same time. The parts that were behind him, or just out of his line of sight, were completely fine. Now this she could work with.

Before the guy could realize what was going on, Melissa sent half of her remaining pieces flying at him. Yeah, it was kinda weird being split apart like this. Instead of seeing through any sort of 'eyes,' she saw things from a third-person view, zoomed out so she could see every bit of her.

From that angle, she was able to direct those tiny pieces of her toward the man's masked face. She knew the cloth itself would probably be a bit too thick for one inch shards of glass to cut all the way through unless they were going pretty fast, so she put everything she had into it. The first shard didn't penetrate clear through to skin, only managing to make it about halfway into the cloth, which was even more reinforced than she'd thought it would be. That piece got stuck there, but it did enough damage in that specific spot for the next shard to pass through and cut into his chin. The guy's skin was tougher than it should've been, the glass failing to draw blood.

But it got his attention. As did the next several shards that flew in from the opposite side and cut through the mask just under where the lenses in the mask were. She'd already tried to break those before, but her power had no effect, so clearly the lenses weren't actually made of glass.

She could, however, cut through the cloth this way to open up a way to get at his eyes. For now, she just drove the glass shards through the skin there, shoving them as deep as she could into that vulnerable space under the eyes while he recoiled. He didn't cry out or anything. He didn't say anything at all. But the shards she was digging into his face suddenly went completely still before falling to the ground, out of her control. He was focusing his power-negation on them.

Unfortunately for him, she still had plenty more where that came from. And now that she'd tested it enough to know that her attacks were actually doing something, it was time to go all in. Just as he made those first shards fall, she was already attacking the back of his head and neck with a new flurry of razor-sharp, one or two inch-long shards of glass. Before he could turn that way, she hit his left cheek, then his forehead, then another spot near his eyes. Those shards fell, yet even as the man pivoted and swiped at the shards attacking the back of his head, the ones he had been focusing on came back to life. Just like she'd thought, as soon as he directed his power toward one set of shards, the ones he wasn't currently focused on were right back under her control.

The others were already fighting, she knew that in the back of her mind, but Melissa couldn't pay any attention to them. She had to hope they were okay, because it was already taking every bit of focus she had to keep hitting this guy from all sides, retaking control of whatever shards of her body weren't being actively grounded and hitting every part of his head and neck that she could reach. The entire point was to keep distracting this guy so much that he couldn't actually turn that power-denyer gaze at the rest of her team. Maybe someone else could hit him hard enough to put him down, or get some stay-down cuffs on him before she exhausted herself too much. But she couldn't even take the time or effort to call out for someone to do that. There was too big of a chance that this guy would recover enough to do something bad to one of them.

With that worry, the certainty that this monster would do horrific things to her and her friends the first chance he got, Melissa poured on the pressure even more. She could feel herself starting to get a bit tired, but it didn't matter. She had to keep hitting him from every side, as fast as she could, as often as she could. She couldn't let him catch his breath or recover at all. He was too dangerous. Taking him out of the fight, and keeping him out, was the best way she could help.

Even as that thought came through the slight haze of just trying to keep hitting him as often and from as many angles as possible, a voice cut through. It was familiar, but she was too distracted right then to narrow it down further. The voice shouted for Fragile to 'flatten against him now.'

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It could've been a trick. This otherwise silent, mysterious figure had already shown he could duplicate voices. But, at least so far, he'd only repeated things others nearby had said, and she didn't think anyone had said those words. Besides, she could do that and keep up her attack. So, after only the slightest hesitation, she made every piece of herself shove itself into his mask from all sides, pressing the sharp edges of her glass deep enough in his skin to draw blood.

It was then that she realized who had called out those words. That-A-Way. The other girl's voice was altered just enough in costume that it had taken Melissa a moment to associate it with Amber. She was the one who had called out for her to flatten herself against that guy, and now that she had, Way was appearing right behind him. Her hands grabbed his sides before she disappeared again, teleporting all three of them, Melissa included, out of that spot and away from his allies. Which wasn't perfect, since it meant they were leaving their allies behind too. But at least the guy wouldn't be there to mess things up by turning off their powers.

As soon as they appeared far enough away that the distant freeway was behind them rather than in front as it had been before, the big guy managed to lash out with one foot, kicking Way to the ground. He immediately followed up by pivoting around to fix her. His gaze disabled the girl's powers, so it didn't matter which way she was moving. Which meant nothing would stop his foot from colliding with her face full-force. And a kick like that from a guy over nine feet tall would do bad things to what, in that moment, was basically just a completely normal teen girl face.

Which was precisely why Fragile couldn't let him do it. Even as his foot rose into position, she yanked all of her shards out of the man briefly, then drove them back in as hard as she could. It was enough to make him bleed even more, the red fluid bright and creepy against the silent man's unnaturally pale white skin. Or at least the parts that were visible through the cuts she had managed to make in the mask. There was also something weird about those parts of his face that were uncovered. In the midst of this whole situation, Melissa couldn't quite work out what it was, but the thought that something was wrong kept tickling at the back of her mind.

It didn't matter, not right now. The only thing that really mattered in this moment was stopping him from kicking Way in the face, and she managed that much. Digging her glass into his skin had distracted the man, had broken his concentration, so the other girl was able to use her power. Specifically, the one that made her invulnerable. His foot bounced right off her face, making him stumble slightly.

Before the man could recover from that, Way dove to the side, turning her motion into a lunge up to her feet and then a sprint as her speed from moving that direction kicked in. A small part of Melissa briefly wondered where she was going, but the vast majority of her attention was devoted toward hitting this guy with her glass as much as she could. He was still stumbling, hands frantically trying to smack the parts of her away that his gaze wasn't actively leaving inert. It was like trying to swat bees away. Bees that were actively determined to do as much damage as they could to stop him from being able to focus on anything else at all. Especially Way.

Speaking of whom, the other girl had run a good fifty yards out to the side before reaching down to grab something with both hands, hauling it up out of the dirt and weeds without missing a single stride. She angled her sprint then, still moving in a direction that kept her super speed, but slightly turned so she could look over at the power nullifying man who was still doing his best to smack all of those glass shards away. But there were too many of them, too many sharp little pieces of Fragile. He was trying to smash them into bits that were too small to do any real damage, but she simply rebuilt them, fusing the glass bits together to the exact size she wanted them to be to keep cutting him. Which seemed to be frustrating the man even more.

Well he was about to be even more frustrated. Because that was when Way made her move. Just as her sprint was about to take her too far away, she took that object she had picked up a second earlier and violently heaved it that way as hard as she could. As fast as she had been going, it didn't take long for the thing to cross that distance and slam hard into the man's back.

It was a three foot long, one foot wide piece of wood that must have fallen off the back of a truck or something. The discarded lumber had been lying there for who even knew how long, and now it had been flung almost eighty yards before colliding full-force with this giant target. To say the wood broke would've been a real understatement. The whole thing basically disintegrated right on impact. Splinters flew in every direction, and the force of it sent him crashing to the ground.

This was the only chance they'd get. Melissa knew that, and she wasn't about to waste it. This guy and all his friends were bad, that much was obvious even in the short time they'd known him. They were the sort of people even her dad wouldn't have in his gang, and if the Minority let them escape, they were going to hurt-- probably kill-- a lot of very innocent people. This was what the Star-Touched were for, the real reason Melissa wanted to join the good guys in the first place. She wanted to help make sure people like Rot Bone, the man who had infected her with the disease of the same name, couldn't make another little kid feel like she had. Or even worse.

This guy, whoever he was under that shredded mask, was just like Rot Bone. He was just one more guy who thought it was funny to hurt people, to kill people, to make them suffer for no reason. He was just another totally evil jerk who laughed at making people feel pain and loss. And if they didn't stop him now, with this one chance they had, he would be laughing a lot more.

Melissa was trying to hit the man's eyes as he lay there in the dirt. Most of the time she would have avoided that. Even with advanced healing stuff, it still wasn't easy to replace eyes, and she knew even better than most how bad it was to be stuck in the hospital in pain like that. She was pretty reluctant to make anyone else go through that for an extended time. But in this case, there was something about these guys that made her feel totally okay with doing real damage.

Unfortunately, that wasn't as easy as it sounded. Somehow, she kept missing the guy's eyes no matter how much she dug her glass shards around in his face. Which was weird. Sure, he was writhing and flinging his head back and forth the whole time, but she still should've been able to hit his eyes at some point in all that. How was she still only hitting skin? What was going on?

Even as she was trying to figure that out, in her continued attempts to at least temporarily blind this guy, Way had managed to reach them once more. He was already starting to push his way up when the girl leapt over and landed on his back. Yes, the guy was big and clearly strong, while Amber weighed something like a hundred and fifteen pounds. But that was still enough, when she landed on his back after a full sprint and jump, to knock him right back down face first into the dirt. And before he could recover from that, Way had managed to snap one side of her stay-down cuffs onto his right wrist, giving that a hard yank. But her strength alone wasn't enough in that moment, and the guy was already starting to heave himself up.

Fortunately, Way wasn't alone. Melissa flew back out of his face, reforming into her person-self before grabbing that same arm. Together, she and Amber both heaved as hard as they could and barely managed to get the arm behind his back long enough for the older girl to snap the opposite side of the cuffs in place. And just like that, he was at least somewhat secured. He had been pushing himself up to his knees, but as soon as the cuffs were locked on, they activated and he slammed right back down once more. Now he wouldn't be going anywhere, not as long as those Touched-Tech shackles were on him. Whatever else happened now, this guy was done.

Orrrr he should've been done. He shouldn't have been able to do anything but lay there. Yet almost immediately, as he stopped struggling and went still, there was a warning chime from the cuffs themselves, and Way blurted, "Fuck, they're losing power! They were fully charged a second ago!"

Oh, oh crap, it wasn't just Touched powers and sound this guy could mess with. He could even drain actual electronic power, and now he was doing that to these cuffs. In another second or two, he'd be free again and everything they had just done would be for nothing.

Amber was already reacting, producing that taser baton she used sometimes before driving it into the man's side as she triggered the thing. Immediately, he was being shocked, but only for a moment before the once-loud sound of the electric prod began to fade and turn sickly. He was draining its power. Yet the longer he focused on draining that power, the longer the cuffs would stay on him. It was a very temporary solution. But what were they supposed to do beyond--

And then Amber showed that she had the solution to that too. Keeping the shock baton pressed firmly against him with the button down so it would keep distracting him too much to focus on disabling the cuffs, she reached into a hidden pocket in her costume, producing what sort of looked like one of those otoscopes (the things doctors used to look inside someone's ear). But she didn't put it in his ear. Instead, she pressed the thing against a bit of exposed neck and hit a button on the back. There was a quick, loud hissing sound, before the man went completely limp.

"Tranquilizer," the girl informed Melissa shortly, breathing hard. "I made them give me one of these things for emergencies so I wouldn't have to… so I'd have options. He should be out for at least twenty minutes. Now let's get back to the others.

"And hope they're still okay."

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