When Shadow Stalker had disappeared from view, Flechette remembered she was supposed to follow.

…I think Flechette was just genuinely Distracted by the Sexy.

Do we perhaps have a lesbian or bi character here? 🙂

She cocked her arbalest, flipped a switch beneath the trigger while sending a burst of her power through her weapon to connect the chain to the ammunition, and then fired a needle with an attached chain to the edge of the rooftop.

Hm. So what exactly does your power entail?

The needle bit deep, and the chain went taut.  A second later, she was reeling in.  The pull of the chain wasn’t quite enough to carry her straight to the rooftop, but the pull of the chain coupled with her ability to plant her cleats into the face of the building and run up the building face let her reach the edge of the roof.

A bit of momentum, one hand and her cleats gave her what she needed to hop over the roof’s edge.

Not bad! Not quite as cool as Shadow Stalker’s ninja moves, but still neat.

Running across the rooftop, she used her index finger to flip the switch, severing the chain, then reconnected the chain to the next piece of ammunition as her free hand loaded it into place.  It took her a second to spot the vague blur that was Shadow Stalker, almost three buildings ahead of her.  The girl was practically gliding as she fell, moving more horizontally than vertically.

Nice. Shadow Stalker would make a good satellite. Though I doubt NASA would cooperate.

“If you can’t keep up, don’t worry about it.  Keep moving in a straight line, I’m mostly untouchable, hard to spot, so I’ll scout ahead for trouble, double back every minute or so to check on you.”

Sounds reasonable.

“Got it.”

Shadow Stalker swept her cloak over one shoulder, simultaneously shifting into her shadow state.  She turned and leaped twenty feet to the side of a neighboring building.

Whoosh!

Y’know, “My School Bully is a Secret Ninja” sounds like a Disney Channel show. Poor Taylor.

Grabbing a windowsill, she vaulted herself another fifteen or so feet straight up the face of the building, caught another windowsill, and then heaved herself up once more to reach the rooftop.

Okay so I know this is Sophia but she’s also being pretty damn cool.

Her cloak billowed out around her, and Flechette saw how Shadow Stalker’s costume clung to her body.  One of the surprisingly few people who could wear a skintight costume without armor pads or features to mask minor physical imperfections and emphasize or suggest certain features.

…are you implying her body is very visually appealing? Because that makes you the third narrator to comment on that.

“I suppose being twitchy is excusable,” Flechette excused Shadow Stalker, looking out beyond the rooftop to the dark streets.  Some of the buildings looked ready to fall over, and the main street below the pair had a two-foot crack running down the middle.  Water covered everything at the ground level, a half-foot deep.  “And the apology is accepted.”

Honestly, that apology was more than I expected.

And yeah, under these conditions, the twitchiness is understandable.

“So.  You joining the team?”

“No.  Temporary stay, until you guys fill out your ranks again.  Maybe a few weeks, maybe as much as a month or two.  Weld told me you were out on patrol, that you might need backup.”

Right.

Some time has definitely passed, though it’s unclear exactly how much. How much progress has Weld made on rectifying his first impression?

“I don’t do backup, and I don’t do the team thing unless someone makes me, but I’m willing to hang with another crossbow aficionado.  Is that the right word?  Aficionado?”

I think you’re spelling it wrong in your speech… I’m pretty sure it’s either two Fs or two Cs… let’s see – ah, no, never mind. Just me.

But yeah, it’s the right word.

“What the hell!?”

To be fair, it does seem like you startled her and things have been rather intense recently in Brockton Bay, but a “hero” like Shadow Stalker should definitely be more careful. Accidentally shooting a civilian or someone on her side to death just because they startled her wouldn’t look good on that already tainted record of hers.

Shadow Stalker rose from a crouch, becoming opaque in the process, “Oh.  You shouldn’t sneak up on people when they’re on patrol.”

What?  I nearly get shot and she blames me?

Hehe, yeah.

“You nearly killed me!”

“It’s a tranquilizer shot, and you have the fire escape behind you.”

Allegedly a tranq shot, at least.

Flechette turned to see Shadow Stalker was right about the fire escape.  The bolt in her hand had a glass shaft, filled with fluid, a three-pronged head with a wider cross-shaped flare at the base of it to prevent it from stabbing too deep.  Tinker made?

Okay, fair enough, seems this one’s genuinely a tranq shot.

We do know she isn’t always so kind, despite what she’s been ordered to.

“Geez.  You shaved a year off my life, doing that.”

“Sorry.  A little twitchy.  Good to see you,”  Shadow Stalker crossed the roof, offered a hand.  Flechette shook it.

I did get the impression that these two hit it off during the Leviathan fight.

Gonna be interesting to see how Sophia acts when Taylor isn’t around, someone she actually likes is, and she herself is on duty.