He used one of the translucent blades on his hand to tap the side of his tiger mask’s nose as he turned to look down at me.  When he spoke, his voice was deeper than Brian’s, “Don’t need to see you, sweetie.”

I was really, really growing to hate enhanced senses.

Haha, yeah, that’s caused quite a lot of trouble, hasn’t it. Lung’s enhanced hearing, Bakuda’s apparent ability to detect the Undersiders in the darkness (although didn’t that turn out to be her simply predicting their movements?), Armsmaster’s tech workaround for the darkness (which shouldn’t work unless different types/wavelengths of sound are differently affected), and now this.

Grue blanketed the back doors of the ambulance in darkness to mute the noise as he cracked it open to cover the outside as well.  Noiselessly, the four of us backed out of the ambulance.

Four…? The driver, Grue, Skitter… *scrolls back* Oh, there was a woman in the front passenger seat. I completely missed that, focusing too much on the dialogue surrounding that bit of narration.

Grue flooded the block with darkness, and I scattered my bugs out from the surrounding area and the compartments in the ambulance’s interior to follow in the wake of the darkness, spacing them out to cover the ground and the other objects around us, giving myself a swarm-sense of my surroundings.

I know I’ve said this a few times now, but I love how this has become a standard tactic.

I grabbed the hand of the woman ‘paramedic’ and pulled her away from the middle of the street, toward the sidewalk.  Brian brought the driver in the same general direction.

My bugs felt someone come after us, fast.

Ah, shit. I guess Hookwolf’s metal form might have some way of sensing through the darkness?

I didn’t have time to get out of the way and lead Coil’s faux paramedic to safety as well, so I shoved her in one direction and leaped in the other.  The man leapt into the space we’d vacated, and I felt a rush of wind set my hair to whipping around my face.

Hm, wind seems to imply Stormtiger.

There was an explosion of sorts, a blast of wind powerful enough to lift me off the ground and push away a fair share of Grue’s darkness.  Stormtiger stood in the epicenter of the clearing, reforming the translucent ‘claws’ around his raised left hand.

Definitely an airbender.

I wonder, is Cricket obnoxiously loud at night?

Stormtiger, the man with the chains and tiger mask, and Cricket, the girl, apparently tied back to the same circles of parahuman prize fighters that Hookwolf had once been part of.  I couldn’t begin to guess their motivations for following him, but I suppose it hardly mattered.  Hookwolf was dangerous enough on his own.  With friends?

“We run,” I muttered.

Yeah, if you can, you should. It’s the only way to salvage the “no direct confrontation before meeting up” thing, and also what gives the best chance of survival at this point.

So, uh, the driver? Is he still alive, or…?

Hookwolf and his buddies had their backs turned to us and were walking toward the police barricade.  Stormtiger flexed his hands, and the air blurred around them, congealed into a half-dozen pale, translucent blades that jutted from each hand.

“We have guns,” spoke the driver, “We shoot them from behind.”

Okay, so a) the driver is alive. I think I misinterpreted the exact location of Hookwolf back there, reading him as having ended up inside the car, while he was actually just in front of it.

And b) Stormtiger, as expected, has an offensive power on top of his tankiness. It seems to be a form of airbending with which he can form things such as these “claws” out of thin air – literally, by thickening it to the point where it’s practically solid?

“No,” Brian spoke, “It won’t hurt Hookwolf, and I suspect Cricket and Stormtiger could do something about it, or they wouldn’t be so brazen about walking towards those cops.  Skitter is right.  We retreat.  Ready?”

Yeah, let’s go.