"On it!"
The drone is in Fii's HUD glowed more promily among the topographic yout of the slums.
With a flex of will, she ied her gravitational pull, turning the world topsy-turvy, and 'fell' towards adjat buildings as if tossed around by unseen hands. The world tilted spectacurly, turning the dizzying fall into a trolled glide that sent her s through the air. She twisted in mid-dest, her roller skates carving arcs of silver streaks in the dark as she alternated her trajectory.
While the monotonous sprawl of shanty structures made navigation easier at her height, the retively dim lighting oreets below forced her to slow her approad read the outlines and shapes in order to differentiate her position. Even the night vision afforded by her helmet proved insuffit at making out fiails at long distance. She wasn't going to take a running blind.
Fii swooped down several blocks before the drone is zoomed in to take a front-aer view of her visor. At that point she veered slightly south and desded closer to the road.
A sudden burst of gunfire splihe air near her head. Reag instantly, Fii altered her gravitational field, propelling herself sideways with a violehat left her assaints shooting at shadows. She twisted in the air, the slums spinning wildly around her as she sought refuge in the vertical maze.
Bullets pinged off the brick walls and balies around her, raising sprays of dust and spark. A few well-pced strikes into a corroded exhaust duct put a few yers of metal between her and the gunfire.
Landing with a thud on a narrow ledge, she barely paused, her skates propelling her fain. Within seds she'd looped around the er and snatched an attack vector at her shooters' six o'clock. She only spared them a passing gnce. She wasn't ied in pying their game.
Bits of debris scattered and swirled around her as she altered her gravity field to deflect the ining rounds. Iurn, she rocketed a sb of crete in the general dire of her shooters. It blew them apart and off their feet. The spsh of red on the building behind them painted an appropriately grisly mural.
She kept flying. A fre of pain flickered to life oside of her calf. A trickle of blood slid down the syic material of her suit. Did she get nicked or was it a ricochet?
No time to look now. Pain wait.
"I don't know what that is. Expin!"
"Great..." she muttered.
A faraway rumbling disturbed the street, getting progressively louder by the sed. Seds ter a cm tank-like vehicle emerged from the dust, fnked by several Adrenomancers on foot.
Fii aoward a building ahead and altered the vector of her gravitational field once again, managing an impromptu somersault and kig off the opposite wall. After repeating this twice, she nded lightly on top of an adjat rooftop and kicked off a water tower in an arg leap toward her enemies.
She zeroed in on the Bradley vehicle and ied the gravity around it—magnifying the forces tenfold. It rocketed skyward as if shot from a catapult, s well beyond her power's effective range.
Meanwhile, she pihe Adrenomancers left on the ground to each other in a physical clutch of coiled and spyed limbs. Her focus didn't allow fereatment and each shared a bone-snapping collision with one another.
Gazing upward at the rapidly desding vehicle, she jerked the pile of bodies directly below its plummet. The ensuing impact fttened and obliterated everyone underh. An explosive eruption of wreckage and shrapnel burst in every dire.
When the cloud of dust and smoke settled, Fii didn't even pause to g the heap. She nded briefly and cleared the rest of the street in two wide leaps and was airborne again.
Flyi easier with each repetition. trolling the forces in her immediate viity didn't fatigue her nearly as much as it did before. EveFSI value had stabilized and remained stant throughout her excursion.
Instead, fog her full attention oending her range further and further became a mental chore.
"Helix, status on Virgil's link," she requested between huffing breaths. She dropped between rooftops and skated to a quick stop to recalibrate her bearing. A rickety walkway shuddered in the gust geed from her nding. A nearby billboard swayed.
Fii frowned.
That 't be good.
Virgil tromped forward in a dead sprint, his coat billowing behind him as his boots spped against the uneven pavement. A stant barrage of bullets from both sides snarled and raked the ground around him, scarring the shanty houses with pockmarks and plumes of splinters and debris.
In a series of twists and flips, Virgil slomed between the crossfire and mao duto the retive safety of a small cul-de-sac. Before his boots had a ce to touch the ground, he stopped on a dime and fahe hammer of his revolver to fire off four quick rounds.
Each shot had a brief ghostly afterglow of flickerihereal psma as it trailed the rounds, phasing through the crete aal hiding their targets. They had o peek or even raise their heads from cover. Virgil's bullets found them regardless.
Two Adrenomancers crouched behind a stoaining wall shuddered and died without ever leaving their positions. A third ducked behind the shell of an old bus. The phantom bullets found him anyway.
Virgil rushed past them without so much as a passing gnce.
He spotted people scurrying for safety behind the er of the buildings ahead. A scattering of fused faces gnced in his dire. Several attempted to approach him. They stopped at the sight of his revolver aimed their way.
"Go the other way," Virgil growled. "Now!"
He didn't have to say anymore. They obeyed and scattered away.
The chaotic echoes of firefighting closed in around him. Farther in, Virgil identified a quartet of civilians clustering for safety behind the barricades.
Reaper Posse gangsters were actually risking their own skins and daring the streets in order to escort them to safety. They even opened fire at an armored fighting vehicle as it pulled into view, failing tister any effect from their bullets.
Their panic became palpable as the vehicle's gun spat and stuttered fire at them. Several spun and writhed uhe onsught while the rest got separated by the sudden influx of lead. Only a few mao find shelter.
The armored vehicle stopped at the ter of the interse and discharged a squad of Adrenomancers into the fray. These ones didn't waste any time firing their own ons. They used their enharength instead and smashed straight into the barricades like living battering rams.
Metal buckled and flew, taking the barricades with them. Barbed wire and wooden pnks scattered uselessly into the air. The people in hiding shrank back or cowered, trying to shield themselves with their hands. Many failed.
Virgil roared and sprioward the age. The gangsters mao recover in time and began ying fire upon the soldiers. Some took the brunt and raised their ons to fire at them.
He wasted no time plugging their skulls with a bullet each. Once close enough, he trated a charged-up shot and bsted the soldier away. The bolt punched a hole through the torso.
His fingers locked in a rapid staccato as he fahe hammer, each squeeze spitting out a few more ethereal bullets. Five shots were enough to send three soldiers crumpling lifelessly. A sixth shot rotated the chamber a him loose one final round to detonate a grenade in an enemy's belt. The man fell, a smoking cavity in his side.
"Backfire!" shouted one of the Reaper Posse goons.
He snapped a warning gre at them and heir shod surprise.
"I ain't here for you. If yoing to fire, make sure you're pointing at the enemy. If you even try a me in your line of fire..." Virgil cracked the hammer of his gun bad waited. He didn't finish his threat. He didn't have to. His point was made.
He ighem and pushed his ast a wrecked bus blog the street. Oher side, the BFV idled at the ter. The barrel of its gun ointed in his dire.
Virgil quickly fired a temporal round to halt the vehicle's passage of time before dashing aside. With the seds suspended, he maneuvered past and bined his phantom and searing brands into ohereal bullet.
As soon as the seds resumed their flow, he released his shot and struck the fuel tank within. The resulting explosion ed the vehicle into a melting lump of sm sg. A burning haze repced the hull's silhouette. Scraps of bed metal littered the roads.
A burning soldier staggered away, filing and screeg in agony.
Virgil finished him off with a single shot to the head and sprinted off.
The increasing amounts of urban warfare spread across the area. While Fii mao intervene several times to steer people away from harm or hold enemy fire at bay, she worried that she couldn't reach everyone in time. She started to miss a few people hiding away in ers, behind trash bins or under makeshift covers. People oreets ducked and dove at the sounds of bullets and screams, unsure of where the explosion might inate.
Another unit of Adrenomancers dropped from a Humvee and chased after a band of people from the Dusk Tillers gang. Some ran, and the ohat didn't get caught quickly. They never had a ce to y down cover fire.
A tall gangster with dreadlocks barked an order and the runners abruptly ged dires, peeling off away from their pursuers.
Fii sailed over them and delivered a salvo of crete fragments into the backs of the unsuspeg soldiers. The projectiles nced into them, ripping through clothing and body armor to emerge through the other side. Bodies folded uhe blow.
Her momentum carried her ahead into a graceful aerial pirouette. Oeady, Fii pivoted her body to nd and skid along the side of a building, her roller skates scraping as she regained her bance.
Dreadloodded, grabbed an SMG and raced ahead. "This way! Everyone follow me!"
The mob followed and trailed after the gang members. Fii headed in a separate dire.
She leapt from a baly to glide between two adjat buildings and desd smoothly into the street beyond. Her wheels caught her nding and turned her into a fast-moving blur, curving and skating nimbly between abandoned cars and past paragglers.
Not a mio her dash, her link activated. Virgil's voice rang sharply in her ear.
"Where the heck are you?" She tumbled across the hoods and trunks of a scattering of parked cars as she surged ahead. "I lost track of you for almost thirty minutes!"
"Sorry, I'll be right there."
His sarcastic response forted her a bit. It was the kind of remark Virgil would normally make. He was all right.
"I'm on it. Just get them safe!" Fii weaved across the street and vaulted onto a leaning bus sigly springiween buildings and bounding in a diagonal ast to get aed angle. From there, she made a beelioward his position.
A monstrous whump followed by an expanding plume of heat and dust at her nine o'clock heralded the destru of yet anhting vehicle. For a sed she thought Virgil had dealt with the hreat, until she saw Kenzo's silhouette advang a short distance from the debris.
"Kenzo!"
Her voice seemed to freeze him for a split-sed before his gaze swung up.
"You good?" she called.
"Yeah." His answer was crisp and swift. "I got this area handled. You got your hands full elsewhere. Go!"
Fii nodded and unched away. Kenzo was strong. She was fident he'd be fine.