Amaranthine

The calm, cozy moment didn’t last long enough. Kennedy’s vision had begun to unfocus, just relaxing against the solid heat of Qi and enjoying the cool tea as it slid down her throat, when a pre-wave cadillac screeched into a wild park at the building across the street.

No way.

Five figures piled out of the car, masks of 4 old white men and one black one over their heads.

No way.

The figures brandished automatic weapons, threw huge, but clearly empty, duffel bags over their shoulders, and ran up the steps to a building Kennedy was just now noticing read ‘First Chicago Bank’.

NO FUCKING WAY!

“Qi,” Kennedy said, calmly, quietly, doubting her own perception of reality, “you seeing this?”

“Yep,” Qi said, her voice a mirror of Kennedy’s own. The second after she finished speaking, lights began to flash in the building, as a shrill alarm sounded, audible even through the glass across the street.

“Should probably do something,” Kennedy said, pouring the rest of her boba (way too many), into her mouth and crushing the cup in her hand. “Leshfuckingo.”

Qi smirked at her struggling to gulp down her snack, before pushing up from the window bar and starting to head outside. Kennedy had a thought, and grabbed her arm.

“Ah,” she gasped, mouth finally free, “wait, you are pre-ty conspicuous. They see you across the street things could get hot in there. Give me a sec.”

She reached out, and found Rose, the cat was bored but content, and happy accepted Kennedy’s link.

“Annie?” Kennedy said sweetly, turning to face the boba tea attendant who was staring petrified at the scene axross the street. Her look of horror turned to one of amazement as her eyes fixed on Kennedy, her hair growing, shifting into raven black feathers that matched those on the wings sprouting from her back. “Does this place have a back door I could use?”

Less than a minute later, Kennedy soared above the First Chicago. She’d taken a circuitous air route, hoping no one thought to look up. Any criminal worth their salt in DSM would, but Technocago hadn’t handled it’s crime via superhero since the early days of the Waves.

“Just let me know when I’m good to kick the door down,” Qi said over comms, and Kennedy could feel her watching anxiously below. Not worried about Kennedy’s safety necessarily, she knew she could handle herself, but neither one of them was exactly trained for this. No-one in the city probably was, honestly, trying this in Technocago yesterday would have been tantamount to a particularly elaborate suicide.

Things change quick in the World of the Waves, Kennedy thought with a smile. She dove, cutting as much time as possible off her descent to the roof. Her talons crunched onto the gravel right as she heard a door beginning to open beside her.

Unlike Qi’s hulking draconic form, all of Kennedy’s friends compared the shape she got from Qi to that of a particularly fuckable xenomorph. It was a form much, much more suitable for stealth. Kennedy moved like a snake, silent, to the side of the door, watching as a gun barrel swept the roof in front of her. Even as it began to turn towards her, her tail shot up, pulling her to the roof of the cupola. She was out of sight before the robber could check the lee side of the door, while she watched from above.

The man, Kennedy could see his mask was of the world’s cutest war criminal, so she dubbed him W., cleared the roof calmly and efficiently. He grabbed a radio from his belt, and Kennedy heard the words she’d been waiting for.

“Roof’s clear,” W said, and before he’d even returned the radio to his belt, Kennedy was on him.

Her tail poked the radio out of his hand, before it shot up to his neck, twisting tight around it and lifting him off the ground. Its tip curled around positioning itself in front of his eye.

Kennedy caught the radio in one hand while the other grabbed his hand, crushing it and the firing mechanism of his gun to shards of metal and bone. His neck strained against her tail as he tried to scream, but no air was getting past that barrier. She waited a moment, until he stopped struggling.

“How many,” she asked, letting her tail loosen just a bit.

“Three!” he gasped, panting through the pain. “Now—”

Kennedy’s tail punched through his eyesocket, and he went limp.

“Saw you go in with five,” she whispered, mostly to herself now. “that was just to see if you’d lie to me. Didn’t have time to fuck around playing games.”

She leapt through the door, latching onto the ceiling around following it down the stairs. She stopped at the second floor landing, where the door stood open. Kennedy could hear a calm, confident voice spouting some bullshit about no-one getting hurt.

Too late for that, asshole.

More importantly, the bright light of an office lobby shone through, and Kenmedy realized her black scale armor wouldn’t be much good as camouflage.

“Fuck,” she hissed, a moment before inspiration struck. She whispered into her comm. “Gwyn, you still with The Council? Is PlazLoad there?”

“Yes, and yes,” Gwyn replied after a moment. “Why, whatsup?”

“Have him cut power to the First Chicago bank, ping my position if there’s more than one. I’m in the middle of an honest-to-god bank robbery and need some cover.”

“No fucking way!” Gwyn said excitedly, but Kennedy could hear her relay the instructions almost immediately.

“Right?” Kennedy agreed, keeping her voice low despite the excitement. “That’s what I said!”

A couple seconds later, the lights cut out with a chunk-whoooom, and Kennedy heard the speaker outside, suddenly much less calm, scream ‘FUCK!’.

Kennedy didn’t waste time, scuttling out into the sudden darkness of the lobby. A benefit she’d rarely used when linked up to Rose was passable nightvision, and with a monochromatic tint to her sight, she took in the situation in the bank.

Her eyes were immediately drawn to the man she assumed had been speaking, stood on a central island and swinging his rifle around wildly. It hadn’t registered earlier, maybe just because of the company she’d been keeping all day, but the guy was big. Not Cait-big, either, Qi-big, shit maybe Bullrush-big. The gun he held looked like a toy in his grasp.

He jumped down, and the building shook under an unnatural weight, confirming Kennedy’s suspicions.

“Qi,” she hissed, “You probably already are, but stay ready. They’ve got an Altered bruiser with them, no telling if I’ll be able to take him or not.”

“Hell yeah,” came Qi’s unprofessional, but nonetheless reassuring, response.

The man, given his mask Kennedy named him Obama, thundered to the back of the bank where the massive door to the server vault stood open.

“Is the goddamn transfer still working?” he asked.

“It will be,” responded a man Kennedy couldn’t see, “once this asshole stops stalling.”

“I’m not stalling,” stammered another man in the vault, frustration flavoring the absolute terror in his voice. “There are a lot of protocols in place to make sure, well, to make sure exactly this doesn’t happen! It takes time to get through them all! And you all know every cent of this is tagged and tracked, ri—”

There was a titanic crash as something heavy hit metal, follwed by a soft ‘eep!’

“Well then,” Obama said, “guess we’ll get caught pretty easy then, won’t we? But we gotta get that fucking money first? Right?”

Judging by the silence afterwards, the bank manager had found enough motivation to satisfy Barack, who stepped back out of the vault, bringing his radio to his mask.

“Bubba, any sign in the basement of what happened to the fucking power?”

Kennedy didn’t wait to hear any more. She’d crawled along the wall as she’d listened, positioning herself right above a man in a blonde mask, who stood in front of a huddled group of hostages. She dropped to the floor silently, coming up behind him like a predator. Moving fast, she grabbed his gun at the same instant her tail entered his brainstem.

The kill was silent, but the sharp gasp of the hostage who got spattered with the robber’s blood wasn’t. Kennedy hissed, grabbing the ragdoll body and scurrying behind the teller stand.

“Don?” Barack asked. His voice had already been on edge, but now it was on guard. “Don, what the fuck?”

Kennedy peeked over the stand, and saw Barack approaching the gathered hostages.

Don’t want them to get more attention, she thought, and dashed for the vault. Her motion caught Barack’s eye, and gunfire stitched the floor behind her, a few rounds sparking off her scale armor.

That’s fine, hostages are in the other direction.

Kennedy was fast in this form, and she was at the vault by the end of that first burst of gunfire. A man in the mask of an almost skeletally old Biden, sitting cross legged in front of a laptop, looked up at her in confusion in the instant before her claw took his head clean off.

Once more, an innocent bystander was in the splash zone, and the bank manager’s scream showed none of the restraint of the hostage’s shocked gasp.

His shriek was followed immediately by a grinding bellow of rage, and Kennedy figured his mind had put the pieces together.

“Coming to you, Qi!” she yelled, and dashed out of the vault. Immediately, her vision was filled with 9 feet of dude, and her neck snapped back as she bounced off a chest as solid as Cait’s skin. She felt a massive hand close around her throat, lifting her off the ground before the stars cleared from her vision.

“You ain’t goin’ anywhere, little lizard,” Barack rumbled. Kennedy felt his fingers flex, but even with titanic strength, it wasn’t enough to crush a throat reinforced with Cait’s durability and Qi’s armor. Not entirely.

Still, the flame she was able to conjure in response was pathetic compared to what she was usually capable of. The puff of flame burned away part of Baracks suit, revealing a torso literally carved from stone. Onyx, black and shiny as her scales. His laugh sounded like tectonic activity.

“Rock, what the fuck is going on?” said a new voice, and Kennedy, vision beginning to fade, saw a man in a Clinton mask coming out of a stairway.

Then she saw that man get absolutely exploded by an ATM thrown at speed.

Qi’s feral roar scared the hostages more than the robbers had, judging by the screams. Kennedy hadn’t even heard her crash through the doors, deafening though it must’ve been.

Not a good sign for my brain oxygenation, she thought sardonically, before she was flying, and not by her own power.

Qi caught her, gently, spinning to absorb her momentum. Unfortunately that killed her own, so the second she slowed to set Kennedy down, Barack the Rock slammed into Qi like a linebacker from hell.

The dragon’s reverberating snarl shook the air, skidding back as her claws rent massive grooves into the floor, trying to stop herself from being bowled over. She got herself square, and brought both fists down in a hammer blow on Barack’s back. The rock giant’s knees threatened to buckle, but he held firm, legs pistoning to push Qi out of the carnage she’d made of the bank’s entrance.

Qi looked panicked as she was pushed inexorably back towards the steps, where she’d inevitably lose what footing she had. She roared again, and leaned forward, arms flexing as she wrapped them around Barack’s waist. Veins bulged hard enough to be visible beneath her scales as she strained upward, roar becoming a scream of effort. Just as they reached the stairs, Barack’s feet cleared the ground, and Qi wrenched backwards, sending them both falling as she executed a kind of superpowered suplex.

That landed them both on their backs at the bottom of the stairs, and the fight restarted from zero. QI was up first, using her tail to spring up, then diving back at Barack, striking with her claws. Chips of onyx flew with an ear peircing screech, like god himself scratching fingernails across a heavenly chalkboard.

Barack snarled, rolling to his feet and circling away from Qi. Kennedy, catching her breath, rushed to watch, and saw Barack’s eyes flick to his shoulder, were thick red blood trickled from rents in his stone armor.

“You’re tough,” Qi taunted, circling across from him, tail flicking like an agitated cat.

“Real fuckin’ tough,” Barack rumbled back. “Why don’t you just let me go, call this a wash. Won’t have to see how tough I really am.”

His mask had torn just enough that Kennedy could see his face fall when Qi laughed at the offer. Not like it was an Alpha thing either, actually laughed, like he’d told a joke.

“Hah,” she wheezed, “No, you’re tough, but you ain’t nothing compared to my girl, and I fuck her up all the time.”

Kennedy felt Barack’s shiny diamond eye fall on her in confusion, and she grinned back.

“She’s not talking about me idiot,” she called, and in the moment of distraction, Qi was already on him.

Without the element of surprise on his side, the fight was no longer remotely fair. Barack was an impressive Altered, Guardian level for sure, and if he’d had more training or experience, he could’ve been a real test for Qi.

But he was just a thug. Probably recently Altered and looking to cash in. Qi had five years of full time Guardian experience under her belt, and had been training at AEGIS for longer than that. She dismantled him, and it was one of the hottest things Kennedy had ever seen.

Every hole in his defense was exploited, every mistake capitalized upon. He visibly shrank as the fight went on, each of Qi’s calculated strikes tearing away more of the stone adorning him. To his credit, it actually looked like some of it was beginning to regenerate, but it simply wasn’t enough.

He got hits in, but each time he did, it was made abundantly clear that they were glancing blows, landing because Qi wanted them to. Each of his minor successes was followed by a massive strike to a critical area, and soon, he wasn’t even getting those glancing blows in.

After 10 minutes of work, he lay, curled in the fetal position, looking more like a big man who’d had a terrible accident in a quarry than a hulking rock monster.

“I give, I give!” he yelled, unwilling to remove his hands from protecting his head. Surprisingly, under all that rock, he was a white guy, making his choice of mask highly inappropriate.

“’Course you do,” Qi scoffed, and he groaned as she planted a foot on his flank, holding him in place. ARMOR forces had arrived a few minutes into the fight, but like Kennedy, they’d seen that Qi had it handled and most had gone into the bank to secure the hostages. Now, Qi nodded to those at the perimeter, who walked over to try and figure out what to do with this guy.

“Damn, they build Guardians different in Des Moines, huh?” one of the officers asked, looking up at Qi like he was looking at a statue of God come to life.

“Some of us,” she chuckled, and turned, sauntering back over to Kennedy. “You oka—”

Kennedy grabbed her arm, pulling herself close and putting one hand on Qi’s armored stomach. She hoped the heat in her gaze when she locked eyes with Qi came off as the lust it was, rather than anger. She gave a single command.

“Take me home.”