Scene 12 - October 20th

Exterior City, Continuous

Quinn Kaufman

It was painful, leaving Canaveral alone. On one level, obviously I knew that he was an experienced hero and had fought Legion before. But... he had clearly been struggling, and he had little backup. Her ability to consume organic matter was clearly far more dangerous than I had initially thought, with her having absorbed and controlled asphalt of all things, and that meant that the mass of the entire street was at her command (in retrospect, no wonder she hadn’t shifted even a little when I used her as an anchor for my TK).

As I moved, I couldn’t help but think... what had I just done? I had leapt into a super-powered battle without even thinking. Was I meant to be a hero after all?

...no, I had been useless, I realized. Worse than useless, in fact - I had probably been distracting Canaveral, and that was why he was having difficulty. He had been trying to get me to run the entire time, and what did I do? I stuck around and made things harder for him. What kind of shitty hero would I be?

Hell, Legion had clearly not been taking the fight seriously. She had barely paid attention to Canaveral and seemed to be trying to stay deliberately nonlethal with me. She had caught me twice, both without apparent effort, and could have almost definitely absorbed me then and there if she wanted to.

Unless the PA4 that I was wearing wasn’t organic? I had no idea what it was actually made of.

Still, I doubted it would have actually stopped Legion if she had been really trying. It was just a costume, psychic awakening or not, and it wasn’t even armored except from the knees and elbows onward (which, I had to say, is a weird place for it to be armored). If she could mimic asphalt, I was sure that she could mimic some kind of carbon-fiber blade and cut ribbons through me.

I had to pause on a rooftop as it suddenly hit me - I really had been close to death! The gun hadn’t seemed real and still didn’t, somehow - maybe it was because, like I had told my dad, I had never felt in danger with Canaveral there - he hadn’t been challenged at all by the gangsters. But Legion... she had been holding him off all on her own, with no difficulty at all. And she didn’t have to be on her own. Any time she wanted...

I suddenly felt the need to be closer to the ground. I needed a few moments to just... not be in this context. Not be in this costume, not be in this rooftop world, to not be Newton and to be Quinn instead.

I took a moment to leap off the roof, landing in Vivaldi Park, and sat down on a bench. I glanced around briefly with my eyes and ESP and, seeing no-one around, reached for the tiny button on the clasp of my belt that would loosen the PA4 and allow me to pull the mask off.

Before I could, however, a tree behind me warped and shifted and, bird in its branches and all, became a woman. I sighed, and put my nervous breakdown on hold for a moment.