Shatterbird, meanwhile, was drawing closer, using the glass-storm to bar Ballistic’s access to the crate of explosives.  Grue’s power was serving to counter hers, and any glass that entered the darkness seemed to drop straight down like rain, bereft of her abilities.

Oh! Since her power relies on ultrasound, which doesn’t penetrate the darkness!

Momentum still carried, however, and any glass shards that entered at a high enough velocity seemed to exit at roughly the same speed.

I wasn’t sure about Ballistic, his costume was among the best money could buy, but I wasn’t sure what that entailed.  Grue, at least, should be able to endure a beating.

Yeah, he may have a low-budget costume, but he picked good things to make it out of. Not as good as Skitter, but that’s a bit of a special case.

Beneath his motorcycle leathers, he was wearing the costume I’d made for him and nearly finished.

Oh! Well that’s even better!

It wouldn’t protect his head, but his helmet would serve in a pinch.

Yeah, I was honestly mostly thinking about the helmet.

When she was close to the rooftop below, she cut the chain, let herself drop down.  She was running the second her feet met the surface, using the momentum from her slide.

Speedy thing slides in, speedy thing runs out.

It was tiring, constantly running, but she didn’t want to look bad in front of Shadow Stalker.  She was going to spend weeks with this team, and Shadow Stalker was the only other girl present that was close to her own age.

Ah, yeah, I suppose the only other potential female friend would be Vista.

Or Director Piggot.

Doing double shifts of patrols, eating, showering, relaxing with her teammates, day in and day out, it would drain the life out of her if she had no friends to do it with, if she had no conversation and camaraderie.

Yeah, that’s fair.

At least this wasn’t so different from the exercise she got on her nightly patrol back in New York.  The problem was that this city was unfamiliar ground.  The buildings didn’t match together well, the skyline was jarring, didn’t flow.

And that was the case even before large portions of the city were ravaged by an Endbringer.

Back home, traveling from rooftop to rooftop wasn’t much harder than running, with the use of her grappling hook to move her every minute or two.  Here, it was a jerky, stilted exercise, slow, awkward, demanding use of the grappling hook for nearly every building.

…you know, it would be just like Wildbow to actually stop to consider what the rooftops of New York are like before writing this.