Hot Dark Pursuit
Sunstroke
checked the information on his phone one more time before he landed on the ground: a lone metahuman, hostile, no known accomplices, involved in a robbery. Several reports of injuries and property damage, but no fatalities. By all accounts it was the exact kind of situation he excelled at solving quickly and simply. He'd run in there, let his or his squad's reputation precede him, and then, if he was lucky, get to fight a little besides. The thought spread a smile across his brown face as he leapt through the air. The superhero gripped the high collar of his chest piece with both gloved hands as the ground raced up towards him. Sunstroke grunted with the impact of his boots along the concrete, taking a few running steps to gather himself like a plane landing on the tarmac. He'd gotten more accurate with his massive leaps across town, but timing his solar powers to soften the landing was often more trouble than it solved. Instead he skidded across the asphalt, trying not to warm it beneath him with each step.
It wasn't hard to distinguish which building had been hit: the block had only one building whose facade looked like some giant beast had taken a bite out of its second floor. Debris littered the floor outside the building, and he considered whether to use the front door or enter via the hole that someone else had already made. The latter made more sense, and glass crunched beneath his laced boots as he looked around.
"Oh thank God!" Someone yelled as he stood there in the hole in the wall, illuminated by the midday Sun behind him. He loved the feeling of sunshine on his back and the promise of his energy stores refilling as he fought. Thank God for daytime missions. Sunstroke presented the picture of aggressive confidence as he scanned the room.
"Oh shit... is that Sunstroke?" another asked.
"Like... from Kinetic Solutions?"
"Ahhh shit..."
"You're safe. I'm here." He quieted the crowd's chatter, his hands already glowing with his signature solar might. The facility's employees sat in small clusters, each guarded by a strange shadowy creature. From this distance, each bipedal guard looked like an undifferentiated mass of dark grey, like an opaque shadow. The creatures turned to face him the moment the civilians began yelling, and Sunstroke prepared for the fight he'd been waiting for.
The monsters—bipedal and clawed with strange, misshapen heads—leapt at him en masse. They made low, guttural noises, more beastly than human, and Sunstroke met their aggression in kind. He bobbed and swayed, moving his thickly muscled frame with agility and efficiency of a trained boxer. The first creature raked the air in front of him and then disappeared into a puff of smoke when he punched through what would have been its chest. The next leapt at him, and Sunstroke discovered they had tails when a third wrapped its appendage around his exposed knee. It pulled him off balance and the one sailing through the air sliced his cheek with a sharpened foot. Both puffed into smoke a moment later when he punched down into the one wrapped around his leg and caught the other in his white hot palm. He hurled the mysterious beast into another of its kind and then scanned the room for threats, calling out the hostages ringing the room.
"Everyone still alive? Did you see who did this or where they went?"
The clump of hostages nearest him waved him over, its members still looking around as if the monsters might emerge from the shadows again at any moment. A woman with bright brown eyes held half of a ripped shirt against a nasty looking cut, and a younger man explained that the woman responsible had burst through the wide building unannounced and unprovoked. She'd summoned a dozen of the monsters he'd fought before subduing the building's meager security and leaving most of the monsters to guard the hostages. Another employee interrupted to describe the woman, and the one who'd spoken before nodded along.
"Big purple hat, purple clothes, and glowing eyes." They all agreed about her eyes. They bickered loudly about her stature and complexion and exactly what she'd told them. Sunstroke let them talk, already signaling for a paramedic.
"Ok, great. Aside from shadow monsters, what did she do?" He asked. The sunlight bounced off his gear: boots reminiscent of hard armor plates affixed to boxing boots, a thick belt around his flared shorts that left room for his thick calves to see the sun, a chestplate that stopped just below his ribs and just before his shoulders but featured a high collar that nearly covered his chin, and armored gloves that stopped at his knuckles as to not hamper the sunlight that gathered in his fingertips. All of it colored in red and white with yellow details. All of it clearly marking him as a brawler hero choosing between showing the skin he used to absorb skin and protecting his most vital parts during a fight.
The initial report, the one he'd responded to when he accepted this job, didn't identify her as any known meta, hero, villain, or otherwise. That was rare but not unheard of, but he wanted some foresight about who he was about to apprehend and if or how they might resist. Even boxers studied tape of their opponents to prepare for a match.
The chatter grew louder as the worried victims each tried to speak over each other. The brawny hero heard no fewer than a dozen terrified and conflicting accounts of what this woman had done or said and what she was capable of. the only thing that they agreed about was that she'd headed upstairs, into the R&D department.
A vicious rumbling interrupted his investigation and sent the room into violent cacophony as people huddled on the ground. Screaming and wailing, the tall, athletic hero quickly decided that he had no better option than to investigate on his own. It was no secret that the Kinetic Solutions—the superhero team he led— were recommended for the jobs likely too violent for other teams. Nails in need of a team of hammers. He checked his armor—red and white with yellow accents in a clear artistic interpretation of the Sun that powered him— and jogged toward the stairs.
What's her hazard rating right now? He wondered, checking his phone. The Hazard system, long used as a rough guide, informed what level of response he could reasonably justify. A villain who hadn't murdered anyone shouldn't expect lethal force, and neither hero nor villain could claim they "feared for their lives" without serious extenuating circumstances. This woman's No one needed to die today
Shattered glass and twisted metal decorated the stairs. Sunstroke wondered if the damp, unpleasant smell of the stairwell predated this attack or not. He leapt up the center of the stairs, zooming out of his stories high arc and over the railing when he heard the familiar buzz of damaged electronics.
The door presented only token resistance when he pulled it off its hinges and stepped onto the R&D floor of the Meritron Inc building. Smoke poured from ruined devices lining the walls, engineering and science equipment he'd only seen in machine shops and labs. Whoever had been working here had been busy with something. The far side of the room was too obscured by smoke to see clearly, but the high ceilings, thick concrete walls, and sturdy floors of this level made clear that Meritron intended on keeping whatever work was done here close at hand. Sunstroke's brown eyes glowed with the same yellow white light that wound around his dark brown skin in ever changing patterns.
The blue-grey haze 20 feet in front of him was smoke. Natural. Carbon based. The product of burning plastic and silicon. But the smoke pooling behind it?
Magic.
Blocking his vision, denying the illumination pouring off of him. His hands glowed and Sunstroke braced himself, bobbing and shifting in his stance to present a moving target. He threw a single bolt of solar energy into the smoke, angling it towards the floor to hopefully avoid any further damage. It it exploded with a crisp sound and spread a harsh glow that illuminated her silhouette in the smoke
"If you're in there, this is your chance to come out, hands up, and keep this simple."
A door opened in the deep grey smoke, like curtains parting. And then she appeared. He saw her eyes first: her irises were yellow discs sent against the deep black abyss of her pupils and sclera. The effect was chilling, inhuman. She stared at him behind thick, golden framed glasses, and a curious smile spread across her dark brown face. Her cheeks were soft and round, as was the rest of her. Her visage clarified as he approached her. She was small, with a deep purple dress inlaid with gold glyphs that stretched over her generous curves. He looked over her quickly, noting the purple fog blanketing the floor around her. The purple hat and cape gave her the distinct image of a sorcerer or a witch, but her heavy gloves and boots suggested someone much more accustomed to hand to hand combat.
She stared at him, hard, for a long while before saying anything. He figured she was sizing him up the same as he was her. "You first responder heroes are never any fun." she said, resting her chin in her palm and folding that arm over the other. "Go call for backup and tell them to bring me a challenge." She dropped something from her hand and it disappeared into the split cloak waving behind and below her without a sound. Then she dismissed him with a wave and turned around, returning to whatever she'd been doing when he'd arrived.
Sunstroke gritted his teeth but kept his emotions in check. He'd done this for too many years for such a simple barb to get under his skin.
"Joke's on you, witch; when I'm the first responder, I'm the only response they need." He knew exactly how 'witch' sounded and relished the wide eyed rage that flashed across her admittedly pretty brown face. Even with her long purple and black braids partially blocking her face, there was beauty there. Only those inhuman eyes ruined the effect. A reminder that she wasn’t just a pretty thicc woman in a revealing dress.
"Oh?" The tendrils of smoke beneath the woman tightened and coalesced as she turned to face him again, and he noticed now that she was floating. Likely mere centimeters above the ground, but the visual of her bobbing up and down made it clear that she wasn't standing on solid ground. She unfolded and crossed her arms and regarded him with what looked like intrigue. "Tell me more, hero." He noticed her fingers waggling but ignored it.
Now it was Sunstroke's turn to regard someone with intrigue and interest. "You're new in town, huh? Pretty sure they have wifi in the jails now. When you get there, look up "Kinetic Solutions. Last I heard I was the man in this city. Ask about me. As a matter of fact..."
He lost himself in his own introduction. Who wouldn't? He'd led the city's— no, the state's— most dangerous superhero team for almost 3 years. He was tall, dark, handsome, and as skilled at tactics as he was as scrapping. He was squad leader for a reason. His solar powers made him sturdy, dangerous, mobile, and let him be as aggressive as he wanted. He didn't even have them on yet. His bands weren't even glowing right now. And-
And then she was flying toward him, knees first, yelling what sounded distinctly like "Malus Meteora."
