I left the parts on top of an abandoned building and watched from a distance as a Union drone came by and picked it up. I could use the ray gun parts on my suite but that came with a few risks.

  On one hand, ray guns weren’t really effective against wishers. Sure a blast or two could take them down, but solid rail gun bullets were way better for general offense. Everyone built their suites around ray guns. They were the most common weapon and every single wisher from Minor C’s to Major S’s had some sort of defense for them.

  Ray guns didn’t actually shoot out rays, but rather shot out a condensed powder of material at the subject. The material was constantly exploding and depending on the radius of the shot, it could have many different outcomes. A concentrated shot could shoot through metal, brick, and many other materials. It would focus the exploding powder into a dense bullet-like density and propel it through the thickest of materials.

  In that sense, they were the equivalent of bullets, but the shots died at longer distances. The powder would break up into smaller pieces due to air resistance and at a range of about a hundred feet, most shots would be reduced to hot bursts of air.

  You could also set them too wide and have them hit a person with a dispersed force, making each shot the equivalent of a very strong punch. That, and you never ran out of ammo. You could get low on energy but the powder that ray guns used came from very dense and synthetic crystals that could last a near lifetime of usage.

  Law enforcement preferred them to regular guns as did most civilians. They were also endlessly augmentable. You could make up for the range, the deadliness, the force, and even the color of the shots.

  I preferred missiles, though I had a few ray gun components on my suite.

  “Burton!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Money hit!”

  “Nice.”

  Fifteen grand was a whole lot of money but not much in the world of high-tech exosuits. The only way I had managed to build this one was because of the contraband I had stolen back when I had first gotten Mochi. This suit in total was worth about three hundred thousand, and most of that value was in the battery.

  I pulled up my AR headset and started scanning the streets.

  One of the biggest impacts of privacy laws was the absolute lack of technological patrol. There were no drones or unnecessary cameras everywhere and even if you wanted security cameras outside of your house, you weren’t allowed to point them upward or anywhere that wasn’t your property.

  It hadn’t been like that at first. Even after the Upheaval and the rough relationship between wishers and ordinary citizens, wishers hadn’t requested such strict antimonitering laws. But over the years, again and again, people proved to track down a mask’s secret identity and do any number of things to them.

  Secret government agencies, villains, and even regular people would track down wishers for one reason or another. Extortion, experimentation, hostages, trafficking, wishers had been victims of it all.

  And eventually, the Heroes Union grew a spine and a fist and started threatening absolute abandonment of nations, along with threats of invasion if those nations wouldn’t respect the privacy of wishers.

  “Anything on the drones?” I asked.

  “Nope!” Mochi chirped.

  And so the time went. Like I said, crime didn’t have a schedule.

  “Maybe I should swing by other regions and-”

  “Wait! I got something on the police scanners, hypersonic speed at the downtown region, looks like a showdown between two Major D’s!”

  “Send me the coordinates and I’ll head over with the drones,” I replied.

  Just seconds after I said that the boom hit me. Hypersonic was Mach five and higher, and when masks moved at that speed the impact could be heard even from several miles away. I had caught it moments after Mochi had.

  I flew, pushing my suit to its top speed.

  Oak City was one of the largest cities in America. It was also one of the newer ones. It had been built post-Upheavel and stretched wide across the land, hosting a bolstering ninety million people in its entirety and having a spread out landmass with sprawling suburbs, parks, and lakes, it wasn’t the easiest place to navigate.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  But I wasn’t too far off from the downtown area and was able to make it just in time to see the fight.

  There were three speedsters below me and most of the booms weren’t coming from them. Speedsters were great all-rounders depending on how their powers worked. They could think fast, act fast, and hit fast. But that wasn’t their greatest use case.

  Their greatest use case was evacuation. The three speedsters limited their speed but ran around picking up humans, animals, and possible objects in that order. One of them paused and looked at me for an instant, then he nodded and got back to work.

  Caleb wasn’t here, thank God.

  Speedsters and teleporters or portals were most commonly used in evacuation. The main fight was between two growers. They were both tall, both reaching the height of a bus. Now that alone didn’t make them dangerous but their supernatural compact muscles along with their sheer durability and size made them both a menace to deal with.

  The shorter one had obsidian black skin and bladed elbows. He squatted, touched the ground, and ran.

  Boom.

  The air shouted as he ran towards his opponent at hyper-sonic speed, his bladed elbows pointing towards his stomach. His opponent, a blue-scaled ball of muscle brought his forearms together directly where the strike would have hit.

  Bone cut flesh and flesh gave way.

  The blue man screamed, pushing his forearms forward into the black-bladed fellow.

  The fast one with the sharp joints was a hero, the blue was the villain. I recognized them, Razor and Roid, arch enemies.

  Razor tore away his bladed joints and took several steps back, his black sharp elbows painted blue with his opponent's blood.

  The blue monster roared and lunged. Again the air screamed but he was sonic at best. Razor was the one who specialized in running. Razor ran circles around him, leaping from one side to another.

  Then he came from the back, elbows out in attack.

  Roid turned backward, a rabid grin on his face and he punched Razor like a Mac truck. The speedster went flying backward and into a stray building.

  “Uh oh,” I muttered.

  Roid ran towards Razor, trying to take advantage of the downed grower, but before he could do that, one of the speedsters hit him with a pole. That was the thing with growers since their abilities were tied to their emotions, they needed to be wild and emotional to be powerful. So simple provocations, even obvious distractions meant to give the opponent more time, worked like a charm.

  As Roid turned and reached for the speedster who was already long out of his reach, Razor had already gotten back on his feet.

  Abilities were ranked on a multitude of criteria, nature being one of them. But the most defining aspect of an ability was the level to which you could use it.

  Roid was a Major D. As far as growers go, he would be considered a Major F if not for his exceptional strength and durability. He was hard to injure and keep down, and while most growers simply ignored the pain, Roid averted it. Even now his scaled blue forearms were closing up the seconds old would and his strength, if used right could bring down a building easily.

  Some growers grew only a few inches tall and gained somewhat superhuman strength. Those were in the Minor leagues.

  Razor lacked durability but his healing was on par with Roid’s and his stamina surpassed his. That, along with his enhanced speed and stable intelligence, gave him the ability to register as a hero and use his powers legally.

  But a speedster of Razor’s level would be much faster, twice at least. And a strongman at Major D would be stronger than Roid and have similar levels of durability. But they wouldn’t have the other various abilities that the two growers had. They wouldn’t have Razor’s healing or bladed limbs and they wouldn’t have Roid’s healing and pain tolerance.

  Most growers lost their minds the stronger they got. But Razor seemed to stay sane, if a little violent.

  But Roid, he was a different story. He took full advantage of his powers, even consuming a mixture of drugs specially synthesized to increase his rage before he transformed.

  He had a kill order.

  “Roid face sheet,” I said to my AI.

  Roid: Grower, Rager

  If seen in human form kill as quickly as possible.

  Kill order issued: 01/03/2173

  Crime: Killed fifteen bystanders as a distraction for his escape.

  “Holy cow,” I muttered.

  You had to do some fucked shit to get a kill order. The Union wanted to capture villains more than kill them most of the time. It wasn’t for rehabilitation’s sake either, the villains would be locked up on the Second Moon till the end of their natural lives if they were bad enough. No one knew why they didn’t just kill them or as to what they were doing up there, and the truth was no one really cared.

  Roid looked around in anger, trying to find his target.

  He was angry and he was dumb but he was still thinking.

  He looked around, searching for something, then he saw it.

  A car, he ran towards it picked it up, spun, and threw it directly at a building. A still occupied building.

  How much could you evacuate in about two minutes? That’s how long this fight had been going on after all. Masked fights were quick and about a quarter mile away was a still occupied building, one that they had yet to clear out. It was four stories tall and the car was aiming directly towards the highest one.

  The speedsters ran towards it. They broke the speed of sound practically tripping over each other to stop the car from hitting the building.

  But while they could move that fast, the people they were trying to evacuate couldn’t. Their necks would snap and their organs would smush against their inside at that acceleration.

  Razor ran, using his immense speed to run up against the wall of the building and leaping off of it. His body propelled forward, meeting the car in mid air and stopping the collision with his own body and strength.

  But that wouldn’t do anything, not when Roid had thrown another car directly after the first one.

  Not when Razor was in the air and unable to do anything about it.