Made lightweight by her power, Shadow Stalker leaped to the nearest wall, then vaulted herself off, careening directly toward three of the retreating men.  As she landed atop the one in the front, she dropped out of her shadow form, returning to her normal weight.

One mister Mario Mario is jealous of this move, having to carry his normal weight every time he wall-jumps onto an enemy.

Planting her feet on his shoulder blades, she combined the force of her weight and her momentum with a downward kick of both feet, driving him into the water, hard.  She went shadowy a half second later, becoming almost invisible in the gloom of the empty lot, effortlessly reorienting her now lightweight body to land on her feet.

…I just realized something.

What if part of why Sophia was so good on the running team was that she was cheating by adjusting her body’s weight on the track?

Both of the men behind Shadow Stalker attacked her, one swiping a knife at her, the other kicking for the small of her back.  Smoky, dark flickers appeared where limbs and weapons passed through her.

A rare case of a knife going through someone being a good thing for the person in question.

Almost casually, she holstered her crossbows, then straightened up.  A flurry of other attacks passed through her.

Pretty handy defense, this.

You only need to wait like that if you’re going to be violent, Flechette thought to herself.  Why?  When she has the tranquilizer bolts?

Ah, right. Time for Shadow Stalker’s more favored bolts, eh?

And Shadow Stalker had neglected to inform command.  Flechette reached for her ear, where an earbud was nestled in the canal. She squeezed it twice.  “Console, woman under attack by twelve or so ordinaries.  Shadow Stalker and Flechette stepping in.”

Oh jeez, that’s like twice as many men as I was imagining.

Which suggests organization. Are these Chosen goons, perhaps?

“Acknowledged,” a voice in her ear responded, “Good luck.”

She fired a bolt into the corner of the rooftop, then jumped, rappelling down.

Shadow Stalker was already engaged by the time Flechette arrived at the fight.  In a matter of heartbeats, Shadow Stalker answered Flechette’s unspoken questions.

Which can’t be a good thing. Right?

The other heroine didn’t flinch as one of the men swung a baseball bat at her – the weapon passed harmlessly through her head.  In response, she stepped back, materialized from her shadow state, raised a crossbow and shot him in the side of the neck.  A fraction of a second after the glass arrow stuck in her target’s neck, Shadow Stalker stepped forward again, driving her armored elbow up at an angle at the spot where the bolt had struck home.  Glass shattered and the combination needle-arrowhead was violently dislodged.

Yikes.

The man went tumbled with a splash, going limp before he hit the water.  The side of his neck and the corner of his jaw were a bloody mess of cuts and embedded broken glass.

Ouch. Is he alive…?

Shadow Stalker wheeled around, then simultaneously slammed the top of her right crossbow into her left forearm and her left crossbow into her right arm.  There was a barely audible click as cartridges loaded into the top of each crossbow.  She extended her arms to fire at the two of the men closest to the woman.  They dropped on their backs in the water, splashing.

She’s looking awesome, but she’s also – as expected – being far more violent than was probably necessary.

Realizing what they were up against, the group began to scatter.

I don’t have high hopes for Stalker letting them go that easily.

Flechette raised her arbalest, shot one bolt so it struck a wall just in front of one man’s throat.  Still running, he ran headlong into it, clotheslined himself, and fell over, gasping and gurgling.

Though apparently Flechette agrees with that, she still takes a less violent approach.

She spared a glance to double check he wasn’t in a position to drown, which very nearly cost her.  One of the thugs turned to attack her, drawing a gun, but she had a bolt loaded and fired off before he could aim it, spearing through the gun’s barrel and out the back, to strike a wall.

Not bad!

She loaded another bolt even as she was already pulling the trigger to fire it, so it was sent out an eye-blink after it was in place.

Seems to me that with most firearms, pushing the trigger during the reload would get in the way of the reload, but this isn’t most firearms. Probably Tinkertech, this crossbow too.

The shaft of metal struck the thug through the crotch of his sagging jeans, pinning them to the wall he was backing up to.  He didn’t scream, so he clearly wasn’t well endowed enough to get hit anywhere important.

Heh. Sure, let’s try not to pull a Hebert here.

Flechette wasn’t exactly an expert -or even a novice- in that sort of thing, but she was ninety-nine percent sure that men didn’t dangle nearly to their knees.

Ahaha! Yeah, that’s usually not the case. 😛

(Also is that another hint about her being a lesbian?)

“Why’d you stop?  You see something?”

“Come.”

Alright?

Shadow Stalker led Flechette to the edge of the roof.  Looking down, they could see a group of men in a loose half-circle around a middle-aged woman.  The woman was backing away from the men, who were gradually closing in.

Oh hey, look what we found: fuckers.

Hopefully not in the literal sense, but I can’t rule it out yet.

“Why haven’t you done anything yet?!”  Flechette gasped.

“These things go smoother if the culprits are clearly committing a crime when you step in-”

To be fair, it is entirely possible that the woman is the culprit and these men are confronting her about stolen goods or something, but it’s not bloody likely.

A man grabbed the woman’s wrist, and she pulled back, struggled.  She screamed, attacked the man, only to get punched and knocked back on her ass, landing in the shallow water.

Ah, there we go. Good enough for you yet, Sophia?

“-And there we go.”  Shadow Stalker leaped from the rooftop, falling at a normal speed, slowing to an almost gentle floating descent when she was partway down.

Nice. Let’s beat up some bad guys.

She fired the needle through the corner of the roof just in front of her, and it passed through without resistance.  It continued on to strike the rooftop below and in front of her, nestling in deep as the effect wore off, bonding on a molecular level to the material around it.  The chain stretched down at a fifty degree angle, taut.

This grappling hook mechanic got a lot cooler with that explanation.

Flechette stepped forward, onto the chain.  The space between the spikes of her cleats made for a groove the chain could run through.  She slid down, one foot behind the other, arbalest held behind her with the chain reeling out, a safety measure in the event she slipped or was pushed off, with the added advantage that it allowed her to control the speed of her descent.

Okay yeah this is pretty sweet.

She infused the three-foot length of sharpened metal that was mounted in her arbalest with her power.  The more power there was in it, the less it was affected by the natural laws of the universe.

So essentially her power is to infuse something with Breaker essence?

I guess the first natural law to go would be gravity, making just about every shot essentially at point blank range for Flechette.

Focusing more power into an object meant gravity, air resistance and general physics held less and less sway over it.  She could tune it, make the effect longer lived, shorter lived or bias the effects to allow for more of one element or less of another.

Awesome.

I take it this isn’t limited to the projectiles, for that matter. Sounds very versatile.

She could do other things, but the primary benefit, the easiest thing to do, was making her ammunition punch through anything.  It would glue itself in place on impact, if she had the effect wear off at the right time, and she was very good at timing things.

Huh. I think we may have seen this in the Leviathan fight.

And hey, I guess that makes for another parallel with Shadow Stalker. Sophia makes herself pass through matter, Flechette makes her ammunition do the same.

She could charge the metal of her cleats so they bit into any surface, and though it was too slow to be used defensively unless her foe telegraphed their attacks, she could make her costume frictionless.

Neat.