Well, things had sure as hell gone sideways quickly. That was the first thought that ran through Laki Sefo's mind as the large boy found his power shut down once more as the even taller masked figure who had come out of nowhere focused on him again. For a moment, when the intruder had been looking the other way, Laki had been able to project those disorienting, nausea-inducing waves, and it looked like they had even been effective. But then the stranger turned back to him, and just like that his power was shut off. Laki could feel it there, could feel the power straining to escape. But it was just blocked somehow. The stranger's gaze stopped it.

So much for taking these people by surprise. One second Laki and the rest of the Minority had been standing on this roof, planning out how to ambush those strangers as soon as they came out of that building, and the next, they were the ones who had been quite thoroughly ambushed.

This was bad. They had this giant of a man who could apparently disable powers just by looking at someone. Not to mention his ability to completely turn off sounds, and echo voices. Blocking the team from easily communicating, and mimicking any words he wanted to, would've all made this complicated enough as it was. But he wasn't alone. Another of these strange, unknown Touched had shown himself, this one apparently capable of blasting fire and ice around. If Amber hadn't reacted quickly enough, Yeet would've been-- Laki didn't want to think about it.

They were in trouble, obviously. The team had to regroup, had to recover from this surprise attack before things got even worse. Hell, this was only two of the strangers so far. There were others, and who the hell knew where they were or what they were up to. Let alone what they were capable of. This whole situation could easily go from bad to… to an utter nightmare.

Laki's power was disabled, but he wasn't completely helpless. After all, he was still a six and a half foot tall guy in heavy, emerald green power armor shaped like that of a medieval knight.

Even as the terrifyingly tall, lanky figure looked at him, Laki was already pushing himself into a quick sprint, followed by a dive. But the boy wasn't throwing himself at that big guy. Instead, he hurled his body at the other stranger, the one with the cold and heat powers. That one had just been turning to face him when Laki crashed into the guy, knocking him right off the side of the roof. Divide and conquer. Even without his powers, Laki's powered armor would have been enough to protect him from the fire and ice blasts. Well, it had a better chance of protecting him than the costumes the others were wearing, anyway. And unless he had really missed his guess, getting out of the other guy's line of sight would bring his powers right back.

There was a voice in the back of Laki's mind right then, screaming at him for leaving the others alone with that big guy. He could turn off their powers, and… and who knew what else he might be capable of, especially given his size. If anything happened to them-- but no, that guy might've been big, and capable of disabling Touched powers, but this guy could freeze them solid, or burn them alive. He was the more immediate threat, even if not the most physically imposing one, and Laki was the only one who stood a chance at surviving a direct blast from his powers. Even Fragile was at risk. Excessive heat and glass probably wasn't a good mix. No, he had the best chance of dealing with this guy quickly.

Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be as easy as just letting the man hit the ground after being knocked off that roof. Even as they descended, Laki felt the stranger kick his way free, flipping over in the air. While the armored Minority Touched landed hard on both feet, his suit protecting him from the impact, his opponent had sent a blast of heat from one hand and cold from the other straight down. That managed to slow his descent enough for the guy to land smoothly. Though it didn't exactly help the cement. It was all broken, cracked, and melted around where they had come down. Laki was pretty sure his own feet would have been horribly damaged if he wasn't wearing the armor. And yet, this guy seemed completely fine, standing right there. Either he was immune to the effects of his own power, or just immune to any heat and cold in general.

Whatever, it wasn't really relevant right now. The only thing that actually mattered at the moment was putting this guy on the ground and keeping him there before he could do any more damage, before he could hurt anyone. And now that Laki was away from that other Touched, he had his powers back.

But the other guy still had his powers too. And he was damn quick. Before Laki could even raise his hands, the guy was already pointing at him. A blast of fire roared out and washed over the boy's armor, utterly engulfing him. The heat was… painful, to say the least. Enough to make him cry out. But his armor did protect him from the worst of it. Without that, he would've been killed.

Ignoring the pain from the fire, he finished raising his hands and sent his own wave of disorienting, nauseating energy back that way. Immediately, Laki was rewarded, both in the form of a disgusted gagging sound from his opponent, and in the form of that painful blast of heat finally stopping. It didn't exactly stop all the pain, given how hot his armor was by that point, but at least things weren't getting even worse. A second later, he could even see properly with those flames out of the way. The masked figure was doubled over on the ground, the sheer intensity of that power putting him down and leaving him dry heaving with a pained groan. Good, now all Laki had to do was get to him and put a set of the stay-down cuffs on him before he recovered. He could still hear the fighting going on up on the roof, the fear of what might be happening to the others motivating him to push past the lingering pain he could feel. He took two quick steps that way, metal-clad foot lashing out to kick the other man hard in the face, knocking him over. Before the guy could recover, Laki used one hand to keep blasting him with the nausea waves, while digging in the hidden pocket of his armor for a set of those cuffs. Just another two seconds like this and the guy would be contained. Then he could get back up there to help his teammates.

Except Laki wasn't given those two seconds. Or even a single second. Even as he reached out with those cuffs to snap one on the fallen man's wrist, something-- someone else came out of nowhere. He had no warning at all before a small figure dropped out of the sky, landing right behind him. A hand grabbed his armor with enough force to actually dent it inward, the fingers digging into the incredibly durable metal. The next thing Laki knew, he was sent flying through the air. He had been standing there, reaching for that guy's wrist one second, and the next he was casually hurled off into the sky. The figure who had grabbed him didn't even let out a grunt of effort from that. Actually, it seemed to take about as much out of them as it would for most people to casually toss a folded newspaper from a sidewalk to a waiting porch. Maybe even less.

And in this case, Laki was flung much further than the distance between a sidewalk and porch. He found himself violently sent up and over one of the distant buildings. Not even the one the others had been on, this was a building on the far side of the lot, which had rapidly vanished behind him before he even realized what was happening. He sailed over that building, barely able to brace himself with a stuttered curse before the ground rushed up at him. With a violent crash, he came down in the middle of the street, tumbling painfully end over end across the pavement. He was literally bouncing along the asphalt, the repeated impacts of his armored figure leaving cracks and holes. All around him, the boy could hear horns honking while cars swerved and braked. This was the opposite side of the block from the buildings that had been frozen. It was where traffic had been redirected to keep them away from the fight that was going on. So much for that.

An oncoming city bus just barely managed to come to a screeching halt a few feet away from him. Laki grunted, muttered a soft groan of pain, and looked up to see the front of the vehicle right there. It was close enough for him to reach out and touch the thing if he'd wanted to.

Or rather, if he'd had time to. But he didn't. No sooner had Laki taken in just how close he'd come to getting smeared by that bus, than something else slammed into the side of the thing. It was enough to knock the bus over, leaving a deep dent in one wall of it while it was sent sliding across the pavement with a squeal of protesting metal and the loud screams from passengers.

It was that small, older woman. She was the one who had slammed into the side of the bus. And probably also the one who had thrown him over that building. They had been told that she was strong, and apparently that was a little bit of an understatement. She had just flung herself into that bus hard enough to easily send it skidding on its side, and that didn't even seem to tax her. The woman just straightened up while turning to look at him. Laki couldn't make out her expression through the mask, but he was pretty sure she didn't look friendly. As their eyes met, she started to walk toward him casually, showing no particular rush.

His hand rose to send a disorienting wave that way. But before he could summon his power, the woman grabbed the bottom of the overturned bus and ripped off a piece of metal. He had just enough time to gather himself to dive out of the way before the debris slammed into him hard enough to knock Laki onto his back, leaving the boy briefly disoriented and a bit dazed. In the background, he could hear the people on the bus screaming as they piled off and scattered.

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Doing his best to shake that off, he raised his hand once more. But it was suddenly caught in a crushing grip. The woman was right there. She pushed his hand out the way so he couldn't point at her. He could feel how strong she was, as she began to literally crush the armor around his wrist. And to be honest, it really didn't seem like she was actually trying that hard. She was casually breaking through his armor like it was a little more than an aluminum can. When he tried to bring his free hand around while attempting to get his feet under himself, she dismissively swatted that arm away while snapping her foot out to kick him back down. When she spoke, her voice was clearly accented. She was an older Asian woman. "Now, now, I don't think you've learned your lesson yet when it comes to interfering with things that don't concern you. Perhaps losing an arm would get the point across?" The words were mockingly sweet.

Yes, he was definitely in trouble. Fortunately, he hadn't come here alone. No, he was here with a team. Which was definitely better than being solo, a fact that was reinforced right then, as one of Yeet's golden egg things came sailing in from the side to hit the woman. She was instantly transformed into energy and went flying off down the street, as far as the girl could send her.

Then Yeet was there, standing on one side of him to start helping the boy to his feet. A second later, Fragile flew in as a cloud of glass fragments that reformed into her body so she could lend a hand as well. Together, they got him back up, all three looking in the direction the woman had been sent off in. "Seriously, who the hell are these people?" Yeet demanded in a shaken voice.

Laki started to say he didn't know, before they were interrupted by the sound of a loud, blurted curse from down the street. When they turned that way, they saw a crowd of people blocking their view of whatever was going on. But Yeet had clearly recognized the voice, because she snapped, "Facs!" before producing two more of her golden eggs. Smashing one into Wobble and the other against Fragile, she sent both of them flying that way, then followed suit with herself.

After being sent careening through the air in that energy form, only to transform back as he landed right by that crowd of people, Wobble took a brief second to absorb what he was looking at. And then he really could have used a few more to actually understand it, because it looked like this crowd of random civilians were dogpiling on Facsimile and trying to drag him to the ground. They were all shouting something about protecting someone. The boy had already been knocked down, but had used his power to create a solid energy copy of the air around him to use as a sort of shell over himself as he curled into a ball to avoid their blows. But from the look of things, that shell wasn't going to last long against these people repeatedly hammering it with their fists and feet. But why the hell were they attacking the guy? Did they actually think he was one of the Fells somehow? It was possible they just didn't recognize Facs, since he was new.

Either way, Wobble immediately started grabbing those attackers one by one to pull them off the other boy while shouting that he was part of the Minority, that they were all there to help these people. Nearby, Fragile and Yeet were doing the same thing, all of them trying to get these people off of Facs without hurting any of them. They just had to get the crowd to pay attention.

Unfortunately, these people weren't listening. No, it was worse than them simply not recognizing the boy on the ground. They definitely would have recognized the other three, but as soon as Wobble and the others started pulling them off of their first target, they started attacking them instead. Fragile was knocked to the ground and shattered under a violent dogpile from several of those crazed people, her body reforming out of the tornado of glass shards that had been sent flying away under the force of slamming into the concrete.

Even as Wobble was starting to react to that, he felt three of the people start dragging and pushing him away from the rest of the group, trying to take him to the ground. They were still shouting and babbling something about protecting someone, going on about how they wouldn't let anyone hurt her. They were acting even more wild and unhinged than they had been when they had just been attacking Facs, as though having several more of the Minority show up had made them start panicking, the adrenaline driving these people to display incredible strength.

Wobble didn't understand what was going on here yet, but he sure as hell wasn't going to just let these people knock him down. Whatever had happened to them, they could sort it out later. Right now he simply gave a hard shove to push two of his attackers away, making them stumble. That gave him enough freedom to twist and grab the third guy by the arm so he could swing him around and push that one over by the first pair. Before they could recover and throw themselves at him again, the boy raised one hand and hit them with a wave of nausea. He tried to tone it down a little considering who the targets were, but it was still enough to make those three, and several others behind them, collapse to the ground while dry heaving. And some of it wasn't exactly dry. But on the plus side, at least they weren't attacking the Minority anymore.

Yeet was already helping too, using several of her eggs to send more of those people out of the way. At the same time, Fragile had turned the glass from several nearby shattered windows into impromptu shackles, catching other members of the crowd by their arms and legs and flying them down the street before they could do enough damage to the glass to free themselves.

Soon, it was enough for Facs to scramble to his feet, so all four of them were together, eyes darting around as they searched for the next threat. Or rather, for the actual source of this one.

"Well that was fun," a voice noted, as a woman stepped out from behind a nearby parked truck where she had clearly been watching. Like the rest of this unknown group of Fells, she wore a simple, no frills ski mask. Unlike them, however, the rest of her clothes weren't nearly as mundane. And didn't seem at all suited for some sort of robbery. No, she had a short skirt and a low-cut tank top to show off a decidedly distractingly attractive form. Honestly, the contradiction of that particular type of clothing combined with the weirdly simple mask was almost funny. She also seemed younger than the rest of her group. Actually, Laki would be surprised if she was more than a year or two older than him. She definitely wasn't out of her teens, anyway.

"But you know what I think would be even more fun?" the girl almost purred. "If you all saved me from each other." Her voice adopted a fearful tone as she clutched her hands together. "Please, please don't let the others hurt me. I'm so scared, you're scaring me, please, please help me."

Hearing those words sent a wave of intense guilt rushing through Laki. Just before he'd Touched, one of his classmates, Joe Pallamarti, had come to him asking for help in getting a creep to leave his sister alone. Laki hadn't listened, he'd been too interested in getting ready for the championship basketball game, too interested in showing off for the scouts. They won the game, but when Laki got home he found out that the creep had come to Joe's house. There was a confrontation, and both Joe and his sister had ended up dead. Just because Laki had brushed him off when the guy came to him for help. A girl had been in trouble and he was more interested in getting ready for his stupid fucking game.

Now, the festering guilt he felt from that even a year later was brought to the surface, and directed toward this scantily-clad girl in front of him. Protect her. He had to protect this girl. The others, they wanted to harm her, wanted to put handcuffs on her. No, he wouldn't let that happen. She could get hurt. He wouldn't let down someone else again. Not this time.

And yet, even as Wobble turned to his supposed teammates, those filthy traitors who were about to hurt this innocent girl, he found himself smacked in the chest with one of those golden eggs. His body shifted into energy, and he was flung sideways. But the transformation only lasted for a second, before he became solid once more, just in time to slam into the nearby wall. The jolt was enough to snap the boy out of it, bringing him back to his senses.

As he dropped back to the ground and landed hard, Laki saw the other three still facing the other girl, none of them fighting each other.

"Hm," the girl was saying thoughtfully. "Okay, I understand it not working on you." Her gaze was on Fragile. "It's always had trouble when the body is that different from normal. But you two?" Her attention shifted to Facs and Yeet curiously, before she snapped her fingers. "Ah, you're second generation Touched, aren't you? Dude, I wish I knew why I had trouble with those. Different bodies I get, but why would second-gen Touched be so hard to affect? It's really not fair if you think about it."

While she mused about that, the other three started to move to her. But before they could grab the girl, or even reach her, she was suddenly flanked by two more of her companions. The giant guy who could turn off powers and mute sound, and the one who could shoot blasts of fire and ice from his hands. All three of them stood right there, facing the other three Minority Touched.

Well, four a moment later, as Laki quickly moved to join the others. And both of them were soon joined by That-A-Way, Carousel, Flashflak, and Syndicate as Amber teleported herself and the other three over there.

The entire Minority was there, facing these three strange, dangerous Fells. Both sides stood in the middle of the street, with Wobble and his teammates arrayed around the trio. No one moved at first, as the tension rose. Something had to break, had to snap. Someone had to strike first.

And yet, before Laki or any of the others could move, one of the strangers said something. It was quiet, too soft for him to make out. But in the next second, a flash of bright, blinding light filled the air, making everyone recoil.

As the light faded, Laki staggered sideways, almost falling before catching himself. His eyes darted around in confusion. They weren't in the street anymore. They weren't in Detroit anymore. They were on the outskirts of the city, in the middle of nowhere. The freeway was visible in the distance.

"Yeah, sorry about that," the fire and ice guy was saying as the Minority took in their new location. "Our friends need to finish their job without any more interruptions. But hey, look at this way.

"Once we leave your mangled corpses lying in the dirt, you won't need to worry about what the others are up to."

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