Kyle Mason adjusted his mask as he walked out of the building door. The fight with the Skulls had left his costume a mess, he noticed, and he took a moment to dust himself off, wondering how all those other heroes managed to stay clean.
Kyle, otherwise known as Mobius Knight, hadn't been in Paragon City very long, but he knew that he was easily over his head. In a city of superpowers, superheroes and supervillians, he, a "normal", was out of his depth. Sure, there were heroes without superpowers running around, and they apparently did as a good a job as any superhero, but they had gadgets, or magic, or some kind of edge. He had a battered sword, a pair of extremely high-tech goggles that weren't much good in a fight, and some second-rate body armor that didn't seem to do much good against the various bullets, body blows and whatever else everyone kept throwing at him. He felt bruised, beaten, and pretty tired.
Well, not really tired. The Superadine fumes were still buzzing in his head. He'd probably be awake for days.
"Hey! What are you doing here?" someone shouted. He looked for the source of the voice to see several Skulls approaching the building he had just recently cleared. Probably on their way to pick up a shipment of homemade Superadine from the now-defunct lab. Kyle lowered his goggles over his eyes as they approached, and the sensors in the device quickly scanned the approaching group. Handguns, a shotgun, and a whole lot of melee weapons. Not to mention they all seemed to be in good physical shape. Criminal records as long as his arm, though that wasn't unusual. He was quickly finding that there were a lot of criminals wandering the streets, and wondered what kind of wet paper bag they used for security at the local prison.
He didn't answer the challenge, because what would be the point? This was only going to end one way. He sighed, rolling his head to loosen up, again, and prepare for battle, again.
"I said, what the hell you think you're doing here?" the same punk said as the group came closer. Kyle assumed he was the smart one, because the other Skulls didn't look capable of speech beyond a grunt. "Don't you know this is Skulls turf?"
"I bet he's a cape," another punk said, proving Kyle wrong. They were moving to surround him now, six of them closing in from all sides, and there was nowhere to run. Not that running was in the plan, or that there was a plan at all, but now he was committed.
"You a cape, punk?" the first Skull asked, cracking his knuckles loudly. Kyle shook his head in disgust, raising his goggles as he stifled a laugh. It was hard to believe that idiots like these gangbangers were serious threats ometimes. In great numbers, sure, but individually?
"Why don't you ask your friends inside?" Kyle said as his hand drifted down to the sword strapped to his belt, "Wait. Never mind. They're having nap time until the police show up. Better to let them sleep it off."
"He IS a cape!" the second Skull said, "Toothsnapper told me about this guy! He's...uh..."
"Don't force it," Kyle cautioned, "Aneurysm's are messy."
"Mobius Knight!"
"There ya go," Kyle said, clapping his gloved hands in mock applause, "I knew you could do it."
"Well, Mobius Knight," the first Skull sneered, "You better put down that sword if you don't want a beating." To punctuate his point, the Skull smacked his baseball bat into his hand. He was probably threatening to little old ladies on the street, but to Kyle, it was just funny. A street punk with delusions of grandeur, hassling a hero who claimed to have taken out a whole group of his compatriots. How stupid could you get?
"Oh," he responded. He unhooked his sword, still in its sheath, from his belt and held it tightly in his hand. "You mean this?" And he drive the hilt of the weapon into the Skull's face with all his strength, catching his target right on the nose. He'd learned quickly on arriving in Paragon City that it was hard to fight with a face full of blood, and that hitting someone right in the nose in just the right way would really get the blood flowing.
It certainly did in this case. The Skull's nose practically exploded as the hilt of the thin sword struck, and the punk screamed, clutching his nose like it was going to fall off. The other Skulls were taken aback by the sudden, violent assault, and Kyle took the opportunity to unsheath his blade. He delivered a swift side kick to the nearest skull, catching his opponent directly in the stomach and knocking the wind right of him, before delivering a blow from his katana to another Skull, catching him across the face with the blunt side of the weapon. There was a sickening crack as the blade struck, and the Skull went down and didn't move.
A sudden sharp pain in his leg caused Kyle to stumble, and he spun to face another Skull with blood dripping from his large knife.
Damn armored pants don't do anything!
Kyle attacked ferociously, cracking the ribs of the Skull with a single powerful blow, before raising his knee into the punk's face. Immediately, he turned around just in time to take a blow to his side from a baseball bat. He gasped in agony as he felt his body move against his orders, pushed aside by the attack. He recovered quickly, grabbed the baseball bat, and yanked it from the hands of the attacking Skull. He threw it at another Skull, hitting his target right between the eyes with the fat end of the bat, before slashing with his blade and striking the batter with a blow that would have killed easily enough, were Kyle using the sharp edge. Both of the Skulls simply fell over, unconscious.
Kyle tried to catch his breath, but there was no time. Another Skull threw an overly clumsy punch, and Kyle leaned back to dodge it, grabbing the extended arm as he did so, then stepped forward, pushing the arm up and back as he placed his leg behind the crook. The Skull went head over heels, landing on his head with a crunch, out like a light.
Just one left, the idiot he'd smashed in the face to begin with. The Skull was still holding his explosively bleeding nose, and looked at Kyle with a mixture of fear and anger. Kyle could see the indecision in his eyes: should he attack and avenge his friends, or run and live to fight another day? In the end, fear won out, and he turned and ran. Kyle, bruised, beaten, and now bloody, thought about letting him go, but that just wouldn't be fair, would it?
Reaching down, he picked up a crowbar dropped by one of the Skulls, took careful aim, and threw it. He was off: instead of hitting the Skull in the head as he'd planned, it caught the coward's legs, but the desired outcome was the same. The Skull tripped over the crowbar and went down face first into the ground. Hard. He didn't move.
Kyle retrieved his sheath and put his thin sword away before clipping the sword back on his belt. He looked around at the results of his handiwork. Six Skulls, six arrests, not to mention the destruction of a Superadine lab and all the Skulls in the lab. Not bad for a day's work, assuming it only took him a day to recover from his injuries. He carefully felt his side where he'd taken the baseball. It had missed his ribs, but it still hurt like hell. His body armor was good at turning a devastating blow into a non-fatal one, but not much more. A few more shots like that one, and he'd be down for the count himself.
He could feel the blood seeping from his leg, and took a moment to wrap it with a bandage from his belt pouch. He cursed under his breath as he saw that it had stained his pants; blood was hell to get out of the white fabric. Not for the first time, he considered wearing different color pants, but that would have to wait.
He could almost guarantee that Statesman or Manticore or any other the hundreds of heroes running around the city with superpowers didn't have to worry about blood on their clothes. Hell, they probably didn't have to worry about much of anything in the way of injuries, not like him. Being normal was nice and all, he could live life outside of being a hero, which was more than could be said by some of the heroes he'd run into with blue skin or spikes coming out of their skin. But that being said, he sure would have liked to be invulnerable today.
Taking a deep breath, he hobbled off towards his apartment, favoring his leg as he pulled out his cell phone to call his contact.
