Scene 18 - October 15th

Exterior Junkyard, Late Evening

Abraham Armstrong

I had to pause briefly to stop a mugging on my way to the junkyard, but I still arrived in good time. “Doesn’t look like they’re here anymore,” I commented. “I’m going to check in with the security guard.” I focused my power as I hopped off the edge and fell towards the ground, leeching away my energy at the last moment to slow my fall so that I landed silently. Unlike most telekinetics, I could affect myself, which allowed me to do fun tricks like... well, like that.

“Canaveral!” cried the guard as he landed. A middle-aged man, somewhat overweight and beginning to go bald - no wonder he hadn’t challenged the intruding meta, I thought, then immediately felt guilty for thinking. “Thank god you’re here! She just left.” He pointed eastward. “That way,” he added, unnecessarily.

“Of course,” I assured him. “We of the New Champions take these kinds of reports very seriously. I’ll follow the meta in just a moment, but first, can you give any more details about what you saw?”

A few minutes later, I returned to the skyline. The guard had described the meta moving erratically and throwing things around without touching them - some sort of telekinesis, likely not entirely under control, I concluded, and Anima agreed over console.

“I just hope I’m able to catch up with her,” I muttered to myself more than her. “I know getting these briefings from the witnesses helps, but it’s so slow.”

“Fortunately,” came Nic’s voice in his ear, “I projected out there to find the meta while you were talking to the guard.” After an experimental magical operation to cure his degenerating hearing when he was younger, Niccolo Mellas’s senses had been spatially disconnected from his body. He could project the point that he saw and heard from at high speeds, and still report back from his own body. “As of about thirty seconds ago, she was at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Grossman Street, heading east.”

I grinned. “Thanks, Hypnos,” I said, and launched myself onwards.