As everyone stared at her, Erika carefully pushed the sword away with her foot and took several steps back until she felt her back bump into someone else.

  “Are you okay?” The older woman’s voice came from behind her again, her voice dripping with concern.

  “I’m okay,” Erika whispered back, refusing to turn her head away from the Beastly Boys. She didn’t lock eyes with any of them, but watched their feet carefully. If they took even a step toward her, she would run for it, rules be damned. She’d already broken the first, so her odds of getting dragged into the fight rose astronomically.

  Luckily for her, the metas soon turned back to White Knight. Erika breathed a sigh of relief, though the feeling didn’t last long. Where were the other heroes or police backup? SWAP? No, if SWAP showed up, things were way worse than a trio of metas committing basic street crimes. It was better that SWAP wasn’t here. They didn’t exactly worry about collateral damage after all.

  “Tin can’s weak,” Bull Crush laughed. “Mongrease, grab him,” the villain said, jerking a thumb at the downed hero.

  “Got it boss!” The meta laughed as he scampered over to White Knight.

  “Freeze! On the ground now!” One of the HPD officers yelled, his weapon drawn and pointed at the metas. His partner stood just a few feet away, mimicking the other’s stance with his own weapon drawn.

  Without White Knight drawing everyone’s attention, Erika got a better look at the two. Locals, both had the distinctive tan that people who’d spent a lot of time outside in Hawaii had. This was bad. Guns out meant the police were ready for things to get really bad really fast even though guns weren’t all that great against most metas. At least the basic ones police usually carried.

  Erika felt a tugging on her arm as the older woman started moving to the side, giving the police and metas even more space. She let herself be dragged along, appreciative of the older woman’s kindness towards a complete stranger. The unawakened needed to stick together, and with guns out things were about to escalate beyond just a simple brawl between metas.

  “Beastly Boys, you’re under arrest! Surrender now!”

  “Your poppers ain’t shit,” Bull Crush snorted, turning around and lumbering towards the two officers. A meaty thump echoed through the shopping street as Bull Crush dropped to all fours again. “Run or die popo.” The villain pawed the ground with his hand, looking exactly like the videos Erika had seen of bulls about to charge. She and the other civilians began moving faster, getting out of the way of the villains and the police. Several people skirted past White Knight’s crumpled and unmoving form, still keeping a wide berth around the downed hero. Helping him would only drag them into the fight, and they were just unarmed baselines. Those villains would tear right through them.

  “Stop!”

  Erika glanced over her shoulder as she moved with the crowd to see the officers standing their ground. She had to give it to the police. Her experiences with them were that the police were useless, usually showing up too late to help and practically worthless when dealing with a meta. What baseline got into a fight with a meta when their weapons were only meant for baselines and the weakest of monsters? A crazy one, or someone with more bravery than common sense.

  “Just remember I gave you a chance,” Bull Crush snorted as he leapt into a charge.

  Gunfire shattered the midmorning as the two officers opened fire. Civilians ducked and screamed, no longer content to inch away and all out running for cover. Erika felt herself get pushed around as the crowd of civilians surged all around her, the older woman’s grip on her arm vanishing as she was swept away in the tide of humanity. Erika felt blow after blow knock her about as she tried to move with the people, but gave up and instead ducked behind a concrete pillar as the civilians ran. Her head ached from the migraine and where someone’s elbow had slammed against her head in the panic. She could already feel the bump forming.

  Huddled behind the pillar, she heard the gunfire cut off with two pained screams and meaty thumps as bodies hit the ground. A thrill of fear shot through her at the sound as her mind conjured image after gruesome image. She didn’t enjoy gore, but her curiosity urged her to peek out and see what was happening. Hiding away wasn’t her style, and any information could be useful.

  Peeking out from behind the pillar, she was shocked and relieved to see the two officers hurriedly slapping cuffs on Bull Crush and Fursona, the metal bracelets glowing faintly as they clicked into place. Fursona was unmoving, and as Erika watched the fursuit disappeared, revealing a sweaty, androgynous person dressed in jeans and a hoodie.

  “The fursuit must’ve been part of their power,” she muttered to herself.

  With the two metas cuffed, one of the officers rushed over to White Knight and began to check him out while the other stood guard and spoke quickly into his radio. Without the pressure of an active meta fight, Erika could see that White Knight’s armor seemed to be fine, and from the way the officer treating him was acting, he was just unconscious, not bleeding out or already dead. She could hear more sirens approaching in the distance and sighed with relief. Seemed like it was over.

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  “Civilian here!” she shouted, calling the officers’ attention to herself..

  The two men whirled towards her, the one by White Knight putting his hand on his gun while the one standing guard half pointed his towards her. “Come out slowly with your hands up,” the older man said, standing guard over the cuffed metas.

  “Got it, coming out!” Slowly, Erika moved out from her hiding place, her head pounding as she tried to remain calm. Meta fights were scary, and the two men had just unloaded on a pair of villains. She didn’t want to do anything to make them jumpy. She wasn’t resistant to bullets like the metas they’d just taken down.

  Wait. The pair of them?

  Erika let out a strangled yelp as she felt a greasy, furry forearm wrap around her throat and several pricks in her neck as several sharp things pressed against her neck.

  “Nobody move!” Mongrease shouted, his greasy voice ripping through Erika’s ears and making her migraine even worse. “Lettem go or the girl gets it!”

  “Let the civvy go,” the older one said, taking a half step forward.

  “I said don’t move!” Mongrease shouted, one of his claws sinking into Erika’s neck.

  Erika could feel a warm trickle of blood start to leak down her neck as her heart pounded in her chest, sending even more pain lancing through her head. Her chest grew tight as adrenaline kicked in. She felt exposed, defenseless, and pissed. Fuck, she thought to herself as the warm trickle of blood touched her shoulder. It’s going to fuck up my shirt, John’s going to be pissed. As her manager’s smug face passed through her head, she had another realization.

  “You don’t need to do this! Just let her go before you make things worse for yourself!”

  If she was stuck here much longer, she’d definitely be late if she wasn’t already. She didn’t believe for one second that John would give her a pass just because she was taken hostage by a meta criminal. She was more vulnerable than anyone else she worked with, and John knew it. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity to punish her for being late. She was pretty sure he got off on being a scummy ass boss. She couldn’t afford to lose her job. Rent was due in a couple weeks, and her landlord wasn’t the sort to give her a break either.

  “Fuck that! I won’t let you pigs take my friends anywhere! Let them go or the civvy dies!”

  If she missed rent, she’d be homeless in hours, anything she had of value confiscated and the rest thrown out. All the employee and tenant protections in the world didn’t matter if you worked and rented under the table. If that happened, it’d just be a slower death than having her throat ripped out.

  “You have three seconds to let them go before I—” Mongrease stook a step back, dragging her as he pointed his claws at the officers as he spoke.

  She could wait and hope the police or another superhero saved her in time, or she could act. She chose to act. As soon as the claws pointed away from her neck, Erika twisted around in the meta’s grip, her skin burning from the friction against his furry forearm and she pushed him away as hard as she could. “Why you—aaargh!” he started to snarl at her, only to snap his jaws shut as she kicked him between the legs as hard as she could. Howling in pain, Mongrease cupped his groin with his clawed hands, acting purely on instinct. Erika punished him for it

  As Mongrease was still reelling from the first kick, Erika stepped forward and drove her other shin between the meta’s legs, smashing his unsheathed claws into his vulnerable flesh as he screamed. Pushing herself as fast as her body could go, Erika slammed her fist into the Mongoose-man’s snout, sending him stumbling back another step, but it didn’t put him down for good, only enraged him.

  “You’re dead bitch!” he screamed, ripping his claws out from between his legs as he rushed her. He didn’t get very far.

  Before the meta could take more than a step, one of the officers slammed an extendable baton into the meta’s arm, knocking him off course before the other officer tackled him from the side. Working together, the two officers rained blow after blow down onto the meta’s skull, only stopping once he stopped moving. Gasping for breath, the officers slapped another pair of cuffs on the unconscious Mongrease.

  “Nice moves miss,” the younger of the two said, nodding at her appreciatively.

  Erika could only return the nod as she bent over, resting her hands on her knees as she took a shuddering breath. She felt jittery. Energized, scared. A baseline taking on a meta unarmed was a desperate move, one only those with a lot of training or fighting experience would think of doing. But she’d done it, and won, with a just a bit of help at the end.

  With the last of the three meta criminals down, things moved fast. She had to stay for a few minutes and give a statement to the older officer, a sergeant named Onishi, while his partner Officer Kanakoa guarded the three captured villains. White Knight woke less than a minute after everything ended and an ambulance and backup showed up not long after. Erika let the paramedics clean and patch up the wounds left by Mongrease’s claws while more HPD restrained and piled the three criminals into a special prisoner transport, but declined transport to the hospital. She couldn’t afford a trip to the ER.

  “You’re all patched up miss,” one of the paramedics, another 20-something local guy, said. “I really don’t like that bump on your head though. You should really get checked out at the hospital.”

  “No, it’s fine, I have to get to work.”

  “Your boss will understand if you’re late, you were involved in a meta fight and from what the police were saying, even helped take one of them down.” The guy looked at her skeptically as he finished packing his kit up.

  “He really won’t.”

  “Look, I can’t force you to go to the hospital, but take my card. If your boss gives you crap or you start to feel unwell, give me a call and I’ll come check you out,” he said, handing her his card. “Free of charge of course,” he added with a wink.

  Absentmindedly taking the paramedic’s card, she slid it into her pocket before pulling out her phone to check the time, she groaned as she saw the shattered and dark screen. “Fuck,” she cursed, drawing the paramedic’s attention again.

  “Everything alright? Changed your mind about the hospital?”

  Showing the guy her broken phone, she shook her head, wincing at the movement. Between the blows she took when the crowd ran and the headache she had all morning, she was feeling like she’d been run over by a bus. Or taken hostage by a villain, her brain sarcastically supplied. “Phone broke. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Oh sure.” The paramedic glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s 9:08,” he said as Erika’s heart dropped into her stomach.

  “Fuck I’m late!”