Midday Crisis (Limen)

Limen had learned a while back that poking police without reason was luck’s favorite time to cash in her dues and a wonderful way to get herself arrested. More often than not she was able to avoid them well enough, but outright provoking police was the best way to get the worst of it set on her.

She had learned that lesson, but she had yet to give up taunting the police if they were the one to pick the fight. It had gotten less common in recently times for the police to follow her more than they were obligated to, but her guesses were it was a slow day for the six officers and two cars who had spotted her minding her own business about the docks (on her way to one of her stashes after selling off a bunch of her recently gained goods, actually), and she had thought it wouldn’t be poor sport to stop for a second to pop their tires with a couple of arrows.

This, as luck had the humor to have it, gave them the opportunity to, in turn, pop her tires. Down a motorcycle, Limen had thought she’d have time to load her dough into her backpack for the looming on-foot travel. She did, but the police also were given time to call for backup.

She had further thought she’d given the three new cars the slip when she vanished into a neighbouring building and used its stairs and a now broken window to get herself onto the roof and that roof onto the next, but the theme of this afternoon and the shots fired proved otherwise. Down the drainage system of another building, she’d located a pedal bike that was hers now and figured if she put her hood up and kept to the dark alleyways, she was set. This, too, was quickly shown to be a false assumption and she was forced to leave Stolen Bike #57 behind to scramble up another building side so she could leap a couple of rooftops and vanish proper into another alleyway.

She’d managed to give them a quick slip via an open window in a building and a turnaround while they were expecting her to continue on the path she had before, but it was a lead that was being quickly closed by their advantage of having wheels to do the legwork. And, on her exit of the building, she misjudged her jump. Who put buildings so misgiving far apart? Limen managed to catch herself on the railing of the fire escape ladder - barely - but in doing so dropped all of her weight on her right shoulder. Normally it didn’t really mind having that much weight depending on it, but there was a difference in mood between making eye contact and exchanging a nod before tossing a 100-pound package to someone and shouting ‘think fast’ and giving it a chuck. Her arm caught her weight and lifted her well enough up onto the building, but its disposition put it as not willing to shoot anything until she gave it some ice and a rest. Outrunning the police it was.

When she heard gunshots behind her, she did a bit of a leap before she looked down into the first alleyway in front of her, landing in a muffled roll. Sirens were close to follow, and the hooded target of the ten angry and probably bored officers cast a glance down the side of the alleyway that pointed to the street. There was another figure in the alleyway, probably a civ who was trying not to get dragged into whatever the police were up to. Limen had planned to leave him be - no reason to bother the guy, really, and there was plenty of space in this alleyway to go around, but then a police car came to a screeching halt at the end of the alleyway she was about to 100-meter sprint down. Limen stopped abruptly, turned on her heel- to see, actually, there was a good old wall at the other end, and the police were getting out of their cars.

Goal number one today was to not get shot. There were just a couple present hurdles in the way of that goal. She wasn’t going to be able to jump over these guys with guns and bulletproof vests, she couldn’t take out five police offices while another five were threatening to shoot, and she wasn’t going to make it very far up any of the buildings before they did shoot.

So, Limen didn’t like to get unpowereds involved in her issues, and she was going to have to deliver a written apology and chocolates to this guy’s house when this was all over, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Limen drew a pointed arrow from her quiver and, giving it a couple of spins to situate it in her hand, ran up to the back of the fellow in the alleyway, grabbed him around the chest with one arm, and brought the tip of the arrow up to his neck.

Limen leaned in close to his ear and whispered. “Hello, nice to meet you and all that. Say, friend, you and me seem to be in a similar predicament of the wrong time intersecting with the wrong place. Help me out a bit here and I’ll let you be on your way like this never happened.”

The officers were positioned behind their open car doors, guns out and aimed towards her. They were shouting threatening lines related to the situation, but neither them nor she made any actual moves to attack. She made a headcount - six, meaning four were probably going to try to circle - and shot a grin at the one that appeared to be in charge. Her grip on the guy was strong, enough so that adult men who kept to their workout routine would have trouble wrestling their way free, but was almost overly tense. She was nervous.

“Just play the part of a hostage without struggle and I’m going to try to make sure neither of us get shot, yeah?”

It was Limen’s turn to battle the poker face. Of all the people she could have possibly run into and grabbed while being chased by police; Limen bust out laughing, letting that cover the pure shock and hope that maybe luck didn’t hate her entirely after all. She couldn’t be happier to be called Robin Hood and she could certainly give Luck a pass with this little revelation. Only problem was Skeletor had a face to maintain, and Civilian Steve here wasn’t supposed to be able to do the thing that needed to be done. Limen didn’t let her stance falter, nor enough of herself out from behind him that the police could keep to their duty of saving his life by taking a chunk out of hers. They wouldn’t risk shooting him - being nice people probably and all that - but time was not going to allow this standoff for very long. Changing locations to somewhere they couldn’t be seen so they could change locations to somewhere they couldn’t be seen was what most would call redundant and unlikely to end the way Limen was gunning for. It was going to have to happen right here, right now.

Guess the taser was gaining a new power today.

From a simple laugh, it twisted to a cackle reminiscent of a saturday morning cartoon’s antagonist. Then, with a long and relieved sigh, she narrowed her eyes at the policeman in charge, her smile weaving up and growing to teeth.

“Thought you had me cornered, aye officer?” Limen said darkly, making sure she was speaking loud enough to be clearly heard. “This is perfect - see, I’ve got this new trick of mine I’ve been wanting to test out. You don’t mind me taking this fellow along with me, do you? Haven’t tried it with a buddy yet.”

Panic flashed across the man’s face and the officer shouted something about getting ready to fire, but there was nothing of Limen to fire at that wouldn’t risk hitting the innocent as well. Grinning madly, Limen let go of the fellow and deftly reached into the side pocket of her bag, from which she drew a stashed smoke bomb. She threw it hard at their feet - and Skeletor and Limen were engulfed in a thick cloud of dark smoke. It was dense enough she could just barely make out the person in front of her, and large enough that they and a good few square meters around them would be better covered than any insurance plan. The police wouldn’t be able to see a thing happening inside.

Limen returned the arrow to her quiver. “No need to play Orion today, friend.” She chuckled quietly. She assumed he had the rest from here.

When the ground appeared underneath her feet, Limen let herself flop backwards onto her back, arms wide, heedless of the roof’s ever so comfortable concrete. That had been a good twenty minutes of solid sprinting, jumping, clinging to the sides of buildings, and trying to not get her ankle twisted or her general person shot. Her chest was pounding with adrenaline and her legs (and arm) were just slightly miffed. A moment of being not vertical was in order.

“Got spotted and then got unlucky.” She exhaled, though her grin was wide. Limen took two more deep breaths, then, with a grunt, swung herself up to a crouch and gave Skeletor a tilted smile. “This makes two times you’ve risked life and limb for me to varying degrees of intention. You ever need my help with anything, just shout the word and someone’ll probably pass it onto me.

“Oh, also, it was about this.” Bringing her backpack over her shoulder and in front of her, she pulled open the main pocket, revealing a beat up laptop, and almost half a million dollars in wads of hundreds.

“I just sold a load of stuff I stole from the Keepers. Was on my way back to stash this in one of my cashes so I can buy a bunch of weapons and stuff for Pandaland later by virtue of a black market shopping spree, and I ran into a couple of police officers. Nice chat we had, doubt their insurance is going to cover my motorcycle.”

Limen grinned at his reaction to the money. “Actually, I came across a whole bunch of cool stuff. Weapons, books - a lot of books, plans for various things that looked dangerous, nicknacks I can’t make heads or tails of but I figure someone will appreciate, if only for paperweight value… and from a good variety of names I’ve had the honor of crossing out. This here is from selling off a bunch of weapon and tech plans and one completed hunk of wires and metal that doesn’t actually work, but the dealer didn’t ask so I didn’t share. I think he assumed I wouldn’t know.” She snorted. “My guess it was a dumped project for a hardrive, from what I could gather, by this person named ‘Azoth’. Their name’s popped up quite a lot in the stash, actually.” She added, musingly.

She was really glad all (or at least most of all) the money was still there. There’d been a couple of trips on her run when she was sure she was going to make someone a few thousand dollars richer and deprive one of her friends of that rocket launcher they wanted. Limen zipped the bag closed and pulled it back over her shoulder.

“There’s this kid I fought once who’s, in my professional opinion, in dire need of a weapon and better headware, so I’ve kept some daggers and a hat. Also kept a couple interesting books and this necklace that came packaged with one of them.” But she wondered if there was an alternative reason for him asking. Resting her fist on her chin, she grinned at him. “I’ve mostly just got scraps half-buried in cash left, but I’m going to need some help picking out and hauling around the stuff I’m going to transmute that cash into.” Granted, she only needed help as much as a child needed ice cream. “If you feel like tagging along, I’ll pay you in black market goods.”

As almost an afterthought, she added a moment later, “So what should I call this face of yours? ‘Carl Haventone’? You look kinda like a Carl.” Limen extended her hand for a first meeting shake. “Rook Argall on my end, if I haven’t told you yet.”

Limen’s eyebrows arched. “The boyfriend of one Azoth? Man, and I thought my poor luck was going to stop with the happen chance meeting of several angry police officers. To think it’s also placed me before someone I would like to congratulate for entering a relationship with another super without the destruction of any buildings - you guys haven’t wrecked any buildings, right? - whom I would also think to normally have a vendetta against me for selling off his girlfriend’s stuff for explosives money. Assuming this is your Azoth, wouldn’t that be a coincidence. My, this would normally put me in quite the situation. Good thing I can threaten a terrifying scratch - my nails are quite sharp, I assure you - and explosives at a later date as bribes. And ponies. I’m sure there’s one in the black market somewhere. Where else would unexplainable ponies come from? And, I’ll tell you, nothing makes dealers want to lower their prices more than two twigs out fist-fighting their intimidating guy who stands scary-like in the corner.”

She was grinning wide and had been throughout, but there was a fairly large elephant in the room that, for once, was not a source of stifled giggles as everyone else neglected to mention it and she played along for sake of a joke.

“Tristan, I, uh, about setting an angry keeper on me, I actually won’t probably be fine.” Limen paused, dramatically spinning on her crouching heel to the side and placing her chin in her hand in great contemplation, and the other on her hip. After a long ‘hmm’, she looked over her shoulder and grinned, like a chemistry professor about to impart knowledge of how to blow up everything in the lab. “So, Tristan, I haven’t told you my true power yet, have I?” Chucking - bordering on cackling - she spun herself up to a stand. “Limen, also known as Rook, the living taser, is, in fact, an unpowered who doesn’t actually have any super powers.”

Limen slapped her hand down on Tristan’s shoulder and looked him dead in the eye, her expression and tone completely flat. “You seriously saved my butt back there. Thanks.”

Limen’s brow furrowed and her grin dropped to a grave frown, returning Tristan’s dead-eyed grin, and, for a moment, just stared at him. She wound up a backwards swing like she was going to slug him good and hard in the face. She considered it - he had gone and gotten her worried there, that he had some good old deeply grained hatred for all unpowereds always - but, about midway through the swing, course changed and opted instead for a light bop to his shoulder. “Ass.” She laughed, cracking back into a smile. He was right, keeping a straight face was hard.

Limen coughed into her fist. “First I feel the need to address these allegations of kidnapping. They are entirely true and should be expected if you hang out with me for any extended amount of time.” She put a hand on her chin. “Or any amount of time, really. You just happened to roll the ‘kidnapping’ dice result twice, congrats.”

She got back to the point. “As for my ‘powers’ - that, my dear friend,” she said the word teasingly, with a raised eyebrow, “has a very scientific explanation.”

Limen held out a finger to signal a wait and began wrestling with her sweatshirt. Quickly victorious over the old hunk of cloth, she pulled it over her head and dropped it in a wad on the ground like a basketball.

As was usual this time of year, Limen was wearing a simple (fraying) black sleeveless underneath. Unlike the sweatshirt, the shirt did a wonderful job of showing off her arms - strong, but not toned (bulky useless muscles were useless), and covered in scars. The largest were the edges of claws that carried from her right shoulder onto her back. The remains of the stab wounds from when they’d raided that supermarket (and the following stab later that week) were still visible on her upper arm, along with various other slashes, stabs, cuts, blunt object attacks, and evident collisions with blunt objects of the limbs’ own volition scattered about. There were also a number of burns, the bulk of which were electric - and it was the cause of such that Limen intended to proudly display.

A set of wires ran down each of her arms, held in place by small straps midway between her shoulder and elbow, and elbow and wrist, before a final strap - on the right hand, at least - just before the join. The left’s was supplemented with a very beat up apple watch with an altered wrist band. To the other direction, the wires led to her back and then down, and connected into a small, thin device strapped carefully to the small of he back. It was fairly unusual in shape for what it was, but the electrical wires, the “+” and “-” printed in various places, and circumstances made it pretty clear what it was; namely, a generator.

“Ta-da.” Limen said, throwing her arms wide. “It was secretly the powers of a hardware store all along.” She placed one hand on her hip and pointed upwards with the other, and put on a smug grin. “It’s pretty simple, actually.”

Holding up her arm, she fiddled with the wires hanging just below her wrists. Presently, the tips were folded under a wad of a rubbery substance that, when she twisted it, proved to be flexible. Pulling it backwards revealed the exposed ends of the wire, ready to shock anything that came into contact with them. “I wrap these here wires on something metal,” she then pointed to a dial affixed to the bottom of the apple watch’s strap, “set the voltage there, and then hit something fleshy. That there’s the reason why I’ve lined the finger holes and grip part of my brass knuckles with leather.

“Now, know what you’re going to ask next. No, ‘course, you can’t take over security systems and speaker sets by electro punching them, unless you’re an honest to goodness super with some weird ass powers.” Her grin spread, and she held up her left arm in a fist, wrist and watch outwards like she was a character charging up an attack in a card-based children’s cartoon. “I hack ‘em. With this.” She pointed to said watch. “And my Hackbook, in my bag. This watch is a shell of its former self, but it’s been recreated from the ashes of its sullied code. Mostly to connect to my laptop so I can execute commands and stuff. Run the code I need and get updates on when it’s done so I can time my finger snaps to when the music starts.”

She shrugged. “Nope, no powers. Never had any, and at twenty-one, probably never going to.” She put a hand on her chin and looked upwards. “What else. Erm, the sharpshooting’s hard work - I’m just good at that. All the stuff’s because I hack rich peoples’ bank accounts and then spend their money on guns. My sleep schedual’s because god knows why plus coffee… The eye’s from Dullahan, though, and I’m pretty sure that’s magic.” She leaned in close and pulled down the lid of her left eye.

“But!” She took a step backwards and clapped her hands together. “The police - and other scary supers who have it out for unpowereds - don’t need to know this, right? Consider this me trusting you, Skeletor.” She said cheerfully.

Limen’s expression grew consequential and important, like she were imparting the climactic speech the hero (Geata) needed before he began his training montage to take down the greatest foe of this arc. She again placed a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Geata, Tristan, consider my respect for you to have grown. That therein is something less and less supers seem to be getting lately. I blame popular opinion.” Limen nodded seriously. “But we’re all people, yeah? So let’s all be people together.” Her grin returned, and she took a light step backwards. “I am also proud to accept the title of unicorn, if you call me that I will not complain.”

She picked up her fallen sweatshirt and balled it up. Plopping down to sit criss-crossed on the ground, she dropped what had aged into basically a glorified lump of cloth into her lap. This question required sitting.

“If I was doing this on a whim, I’d’ve died years ago.” She chucked. “There’s lots of reasons, really, which I’ve left scattered with various people across the city if you ever felt like scavenger hunting for the long answer. Abridged version, police tend to leave me alone,” she paused, “as long as I don’t piss off specific individuals anyway, usually. Supers’ll actually talk to me, supers are less likely to try to OHKO or auto-death me, ‘cause civ life sucks, I couldn’t go back if I wanted to, and also because it’s a hell of a lot of fun.” She was grinning wide at this point. “I mean, there’s other reasons too, but those are the highlights. Why’d you become a super?” She asked, mostly rhetorically. “You’re technically just as squishy as I am, aren’t you?”