Scarlett Baxter could barely contain her excitement, and it showed in how her Anima roiled around her before she could contain it back into

Scarlett Baxter could barely contain her excitement, and it showed in how her Anima roiled around her before she could contain it back into a thin, protective film. Her Anima colour was the same shade as her hair, which wasn’t particularly benign-looking, considering she wanted to be a hero. 

Childhood dreams, years of watching heroic shows, a vast collection of comic books and graphic novels put the fire in her, but was dampened by the very nature of superpowered beings in the world. Altered Humans were monsters. 

Alongside the superheroes, Altered were vilified as evil. Villains to the human heroes. The Altered were changed from humans, and in the process, lost their humanity. A twisted reflection akin to a mirror in a fun house. Grotesque. 

But not all Altered. She couldn’t see where Lilibeth was, but her visage appeared in Scarlett’s mind nevertheless. Proof that not all Altered were evil, ugly, or dangerous. 

‘But no, I’m Altered, too,’ she thought to herself. Warring emotions were settled by a simple truth: anyone could become Altered, but it was a choice to become a hero or a villain. 

It was embarrassing how long it took her to come to that conclusion, and she sometimes wondered what her friend had done to her so that she could see past her biases. Nevertheless, she appreciated it. 

Ah, but she needed to return her focus to the matter at hand. She peered over the roof’s ledge and stared at the gangsters guarding the warehouse. There were several men armed with guns, but most of them looked identical to each other. 

Multiplier. Or as Lily called him, Multiman. Not much difference really, but the former was what the cape called himself, or rather, what the online message board, Cape Watchers Online — CWO for short — labelled him. 

She swallowed nervously. All of them had guns as far as she could see. Assault rifles? She glanced at her partners, Brilliance and Speedrun. How would they fare against flying lead? Her Anima could either boost her physique or protect her from harm, but not both at the same time. Or rather, she was too weak to be effective at splitting her Anima. She had a regeneration Altered power, but it was slow at best. One good hit from the gun would put her down if she didn’t armour herself up. 

“What’s the play?” She whispered. 

Lilibeth didn’t answer and nodded to Speedrun, instead. The young man cleared his throat.

“Scout out the surroundings, then we strike. Bril, you fly over and blast the clones, I’ll go for the others, and Hara, you go for the unpowered gangsters.” He looked at Lilibeth, “Regalia, if you keep overwatch and prevent injuries and fatalities?” 

“Alright,” Lilibeth said with her dulcet voice, only slightly muffled from her helmet. It was deeper than her normal speaking voice, but still quite pleasing to the ear. All three of them were momentarily dazed, but Scarlett broke off quickly and shot her mischievous friend a glare. Lilibeth just shrugged. Infuriating tease! “Keep to protection, Harakin, better safe. You can leverage your baton well enough to disable the unpowered thugs even if they’re head and shoulders taller than you.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Harakin grumbled. She knew she was short, no need to rub it in! 

“Bril, I’ll send you the go signal. One beep.” He tapped his earpiece, to indicate what he meant. Neither she nor Regalia had anything like that, though they did use their phones to communicate. However, Lilibeth was somehow able to speak to her even if she was far away and wasn’t using the phone; it was a pity she couldn’t respond.  

Speedrun was surprisingly light-footed. He clambered down the side of the building, then zipped around to check the warehouse. The place was big, at least a hundred paces long and fifty wide. It was three storeys tall, but of course, it was probably all one floor inside. She hadn’t been to many warehouses in her life to know better after all. 

A few minutes later, Brilliance startled, then rose off the building, her body bursting with silvery light. She’d been wearing a set of sturdy clothes while unpowered, as well as a domino mask, but when she powered up, the brightness of her light concealed everything. Considering the light came from her body, it shone through her heavy clothes, and she might as well be naked, considering the silhouette she created. 

“What the? Shoot, shoot!” The thugs yelled, and was soon followed by the staccato beat of their guns. 

Harakin ran towards the warehouse, though at an angle from where Brilliance flew up. 

Bam! Blam!

The glowing girl shot her hard light beams, and Harakin reached the ledge just in time to see the other girl hit Mulitplier’s clones, which popped both of them. According to CWO, the villainous cape could produce his clones every second, but they always came from his main body. That weakness was why he usually kept a clump of them together to hide himself. The clones, once defeated, returned some kind of energy to the original, bearing with it their memories and experience. He didn’t control them like he was a hivemind, thankfully. His trump card was the ability to fuse his clones, whether with his main body or with other clones and the resulting merge multiplied his base abilities by the number of clones. That information came from Lilibeth and the two heroes rather than the network site. 

There were five clones outside, but that didn’t last long. The other cape on watch was from the Caplan Gang, Ballistic, who wore a Battle Ball-inspired outfit and threw the game’s standard issue balls with lethal results. The SBBs were about ten inches wide, were made out of leather, had several indents for easy holding, and weighed nearly three Jin. Ballistic could hurl them at about half the speed of sound if he had to, significantly less if he didn’t have wind-up time. Either way, he manifested, then flung a battle ball at Brilliance, who yelped and fell out of the way. She didn’t falter with her blasts, however, shooting them from her feet this time, though she missed clones. 

“Heads up!” Speedrun flashed into the scene and clotheslined Ballistic and knocked him on his ass. 

Harakin jumped off the building and landed easily on her feet. The impact of her fall was absorbed and dispersed by her Anima. There were a few microfissures, but according to Lilibeth, a bit of damage like that promoted growth. Speaking of Regalia, she swapped over the road, then floated there menacingly. She snapped her fingers, and there was a rather audible crack that resounded from the lookout points as well as yelps of surprise and fear. 

After she landed, there was only one clone left outside, and a couple of gangsters who were goggling at the heroes. What were they doing out here anyway, and why so many? They just drew attention to the place, right? Not that there was much attention to be garnered considering they were right smack in the industrial district, and this late, it was practically deserted of normal folk. 

There were a couple of unmarked, white vans with blacked-out windows and windshields parked nearby, and oh, it opened up, and a couple of goons…another cape came out. Harakin frowned. The cape, distinguishable because he concealed his face with a helmet, and he wore a skin-tight leather outfit, accented by a bomber jacket. His lower face was uncovered, however, revealing pale skin, a square jaw, and bright red lips curved into a smirk. His stride was masculine and confident, however, so she didn’t know why he had lipstick on. 

Harakin considered briefly whether to engage or not. His confident, bordering on arrogant, stature gave her some pause, but considering she had powerful backup, she chose to press on. She barely took a step when the man spoke. 

“Stop.”

Harakin froze midstep. Her mind raced as the floozy strolled up to her, his grin wide. She didn’t know if she was the only one affected, but she couldn’t hear any noise behind her. Oh no…

She struggled. Her mind flailed, her Anima trembled, then flared! Whatever it was that affected her, she rejected it! 

The man paused and stopped a few paces from her, his lips set in a frown. Harakin’s limbs trembled as she struggled, and the pervasive silence slowly disappeared. She could hear movement behind her. The boom of the guns, the concussive explosions from Brilliance’s beams, and the hard crack of Speedrun’s batons slamming and breaking limbs. 

The command was fading from her mind, releasing its control. Clearly, the masked man didn’t expect his power to fail or falter so quickly. He took a wary step back. Why didn’t he utter another word, Harakin wondered, while simultaneously being thankful that he didn’t. Powers like his were the reason Altered were so hated the first time they appeared decades ago. The power to control and manipulate others, even if the targets were not human. 

The first known Altered Human villain had the power to control trees. Plants, really, and had been an anti-industrialist. A bio-terrorist. She untold death and billions of Torries of damage when she forced a stop to industrialised agriculture, though she claimed never to have taken a single life. The famine was what caused deaths. And the plagues. 

She mustered her courage and determination and pushed! Whatever was holding her still slowly gave way… but it was too slow. The masked Dominator regained his composure and his painted lips stretched back into a smirk. 

“Obey me.”

The command knifed through her body and mind. She could feel coldness claw into her brain, stretched over her nerves and slowly, slowly took control. Then it hit something that made it slide off as if it was rain hitting a glass window. The look on his face said it all, jaw slack and eyes wide. 

In the meantime, the vestiges of his first command fell off and she rushed up to him, her collapsible baton snapped open with a gesture, and a moment later, it careened toward the farker’s temple. He managed to react by raising a forearm to block, and Harakin wasn’t quite strong enough at her base state to do anything more than bruise. Probably. 

Smack! 

“Argh!” He mustn’t have been used to pain since he flailed and staggered back, “Shoot her! Shoot her!” The second was a command, and it affected someone else. The gangsters that came out of the van aimed their weapons at Harakin and opened fire, barely missing the Dominator in the process, which prompted another squeak of surprise and outrage. “Watch it, you apes!” 

The bullets slammed into Harakin’s Anima, flattened, then fell off. She winced in pain. While her condensed aura was enough to prevent lethal injury, she still felt every hit, and she wasn’t tough enough to shrug them off. She didn’t have to stand there waiting either. She jumped to the side and inadvertently put Dominator between the goons and herself. She expected them to stop shooting, but they didn’t. 

Blossoms of crimson burst from the man’s suit, and he collapsed into a pile. The goons continued firing at her even as she stared in shock. Only when she felt the bullets fracture her defences was she able to react. She lurched towards the shooters and slammed her baton on the closest one’s arm. They made no attempt to avoid her blow, only to keep shooting. She hit his arm again, and this time, something must have broken since he dropped the assault rifle, but then, he scrambled to catch it and tried to attack once more. She hit his chin and knocked him down. The other kept on shooting until she did the same. Finally, it was done, and she looked at the fallen form of Dominator with a mixture of fear and guilt. 

“…heh… this isn’t… over.” He gasped, then fell unconscious. His face became increasingly pale and she had no doubts that death would claim him within minutes. 

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep