Spinning a Life-line

Raz knelt on a fire escape, two stories above the crowds and rioting below. Her helmet lay open, allowing a cat-green eye to close in with the scope of a rifle. Sure, she had a targeting camera on her helmet but she always trusted her eye more. The butt of the rifle, snugged against her shoulder, was flanked by her left hand, resting on her right bicep. Cradling the gun, supporting it with her elbow, she aimed at a flare of black cloth and purple flame flitting about in the air.

Raz breathed, focusing on her target. Nevermore worked the crow like a carnival barker, rolling and twirling with fire blazing from him like he was God's gift to Hollywood's pyrotechnics budget. The ostentatious display was just that -- a display. An act. But she didn't focus on the fire or the banter. She followed his movements the way a leopard watched its prey, leading, anticipating. She breathed. The sounds of the crowd faded out. The chatter over her comms became nothing. In. Out. Breathing. The groan of the fire escape beneath her and the blaring horns of news vans nosing through the mob were silenced by the counted rhythm of her heart.

Raz breathed as the world fell away, leaving nothing but her, the gun, and the target. Sniping consisted more of patience than precision, really. Yes, quick draw shooting factored in sometimes, but in reality, this is where all the real talent and skill and work happened: Knowing when to not squeeze the trigger and knowing how to wait. In. Out. In. Out.

He wandered over her crosshairs.

Phft!

The tranq dart flew in a long arc, smacking solidly into Nevermore's left thigh.

In.

The helmet had already started closing in around her face as she stood, folding up the lightweight tranq gun and slapping it to the magnetic grapple on her back. "Hellhound here, one target darted. Moving in to retrieve before this mob gets him, over."

"Copy, Hellhound. Do you need support?"

Raz's eyes narrowed slightly as she vaulted over the edge of the fire escape, landing on the sidewalk below with an impact that shook the ground. The corner of the mob around her got a lot more nervous and a lot more respectful. "Negative, NTO. He got a full shot of LimpWrist. If he can take that and not go down, I got five more waiting for him. Hellhound out."

It didn't take long for her to find him. Soon as the dart had hit home, pumping in the sedative-and-paralytic cocktail the military had cooked up for neohumans (and was promptly named LimpWrist by the troops after the first case of friendly fire), Nevermore had started to drift on the wind like a kite with its' string cut. The stuff worked fast and she'd tracked harder targets than a floating, half-conscious neohuman falling out of the sky.

Emphasis on falling...

The flames that kept him up were guttering fast, sending him into a steep dive. The map at the bottom of her HUD predicted the point of landfall and Raz picked up the pace. If she couldn't catch him before he fell, she might as well ask for a firing squad to end her miserable and useless existence as a soldier.

She found him drifting in a rather clean alley, floating five feet above the concrete, buoyed on flickers of violet flame. Raz stared for a moment, the scene both eerie and somehow... beautiful, in a fey kind of way. Once more checking the status of any nearby units -- none within half a block -- Raz grabbed the neo by the collar and glanced around. It'd taken her two weeks to figure out how to disable her tracker and recorder with a switch without any of the tec squad to get a ping; another three weeks to pass until enough chaos had reached a peak to tie up enough attention that no one would notice her suit had stopped recording.

An opportunity like this might not come up again in months, if then. Letting this slip by was not an option.

Things were happening. Things in the government, the military. Shadows were moving and she had no idea what they concealed. Things weren't lining up. Interrogation by a short, hairy neohuman. Talos, the suits that had swept her away, and later told her to work with her again. The callous, inhuman briefing about Peyton Powers, aka "Calamity."

Raz sensed things were not as they seemed but the cover-up -- if it existed -- was good. How far it extended, just what it entailed, just how much and how big this went, she had no idea. Probing only got her polite smiles, non-answer answers and a punishing reprimand that nearly cost her a silver oak leaf. She needed answers, intel and she couldn't get it from her side of the fence.

But maybe she could get it from the other side.

Tugging the neohuman behind her -- he glided on air like a paper plane -- she snapped off the chain securing a door in the alleyway. Inside looked like the remains of a pro kitchen of some sort, with only a tiled floor, some dusty dining chairs, and a variety of utility hook-ups to indicate what it had been. A glance through double doors to the main dining area revealed a massive blue and white FOR RENT sign plastered across the windows.

A small compartment built into the side of her suit produced a small bundle of zip-ties, which she immediately slipped over the young neohuman's wrists just as his flames sputtered out entirely and sent him slumping on the floor. Raz pressed a fingertip on his neck, waiting until the heartbeat monitor in the gauntlet reported a slow but strong heartbeat. Then she finished tying him up to one of the dusty red and green chairs. After a moment, she used the rest of the ties to secure the chair to a few steel water pipes. Just in case. As she secured him, she removed the dart from his thigh, sliding it into a pouch on the belt slung across her hips.

Raz stepped back and once more checked her systems. No one had asked her to report in. No one even seemed to notice she'd set a random route throughout the nearest four city blocks on her tracker system. The nearest units were now two blocks away. She was on her own.

"Not like it's the first time, Raz," she muttered. It would take roughly half an hour for the LimpWrist to fade, she knew. The tranq gun unfolded in her hand with a ready snap to it, still crisp off the factory line. They had become standard carry shortly after the White House had gotten attacked. If the neo woke up ready for a fight, at least she'd be able to put him out again without much fuss. She just hoped he wouldn't flip out and simply appreciate he wasn't in a holding cell or under a more lethal barrel. She desperately needed answers and she'd put all her chips on this kid being the one to provide that for her.

Raz waited, studying him. Sheesh, he's just a kid... Age didn't mean much to Raz, who'd been officially elevated to full active service by 17. You didn't have to be fully grown to kill -- warlords in Africa had learned that readily enough. But this was an altogether different type of war, with different stakes. Die in battle? Easy.

Survive capture, interrogation, torture, be hunted your whole life?

Not so goddamn easy.

It pissed her off, a bit. At the end of the day, this kid was just a civilian. He shouldn't have to worry about things like that. That's why she existed, to secure a life of peace for the people under her protection. He should be worrying about girls and college and get his second used car. Not dancing in the air to the terror and mania of the news and being shot out of the sky by his country's own supersoldiers. It shouldn't be this way.

Standing near the opposite wall, Raz watched him and waited. Adrenaline would sneak into her veins whenever the coms chatter went crazy but it each time became a false alarm. The other neos were giving the city's forces a hell of a good chase. Raz soon fell back onto breathing techniques to keep herself alert but not hyper-focused on the chatter alone. She waited. And she breathed.

In.

Out.

It's about patience over precision, really. This is how revolutions were really made; not in the mobs and riots, but knowing when to strike and how to wait for the opportune moment. Knowing when to listen and when to start looking for answers.

Nevermore Spider-Man Gensokyo Girl