Chapter 8: 7.5 Sniper (Bonus)

"Does it match up with the map?" Sarah's voice comes through my earpiece clearly. I'm comparing the exits, lining up the building in my mind.

"Yeah, this is the one." I tell her, rolling the map up and storing it into a pouch on my belt. "What should I do, should I get a closer look?" I ask her. She goes quiet, consulting her future sight.

"Feather, don't make any sudden moves yet, but I think that you're being watched." I tense, not moving.

"By who? Everyman?" I ask quietly. "Pollock?" I try not to look around too much, searching for any puddles.

"No, in one of the outcomes, I saw you dodging bullets. I can't tell from where." She replies, slightly frustrated.

I nod, turning away from the building. I tap the glasses, the recording glasses. "I'm still broadcasting, right?"

"Yeah, you are." She says.

"If I leave now, what are my options and outcomes?"

The line goes silent for a moment as she thinks. "You can start running across rooftops, walking away normally, or jump off the roof and weave through the alleys." She lists off. "The outcomes? Unconscious in one, running in the others."

I nod at that, looking at the edge of the building. Am I unconscious because the person is waiting for me in the alley, or am I unconscious because I'm an easy target?

I can't possibly know which of the two it is, so I take the last option and break into a sprint across the rooftops. I dip slightly and dive, hoping to throw off whoever might be aiming at me.

Something enters my area of effect too quickly for me to react, pinging off of the rooftop nearby. I look over my shoulder and around at nearby rooftops, but I can't find the Gunner. A tiny glint catches my eye and this time my ears pick up on the small 'piff' of a muffled shot. The shot hits my leg and despite being softened, I fall to one knee in pain.

My eyes widen as I peer closer at the glint. "It's Sniper." I tell Sarah. I'm unfortunately very familiar with Sniper. She's my mom after all.

"What!? What's she doing there? Was she following you?" She asks frantically.

I get up, a stinging pain shooting through the leg that got shot. "I don't know, but I can't win a ranged battle. I need to shake her." I run as fast as I can, ignoring the pain in my leg.

Another shot rings past me, narrowly missing my head to the right. Why is she aiming for my head? That should be an easy shot, did she intentionally miss?

"Dodge right." Sarah's voice comes through. I jerk to the right and another shot misses me, this one crackling against the building. Taser shot. That was close. The shots come to a halt and I jump to the next building, placing a wall between myself and Sniper.

"How'd you know where to Dodge?" I ask, panting.

"It's clearer the sooner it is. How do you think I keep up with the Wardens? Duck." I drop down and a section of wall above me explodes. "It's easier to process reactions like that myself usually."

"God, she's really coming after me, isn't she?" I say, getting up slowly. I wince as I put weight on my left leg. That's gonna be bruised for sure. "Ow."

"You need to-” She goes quiet for a second before a small static noise plays through the tiny speaker. Her voice comes back almost immediately afterwards, “Sorry, you need to duck into the alleys and hide. If you can lose her, you can slip away."

I shake my head gently. "No can do. She has a thermal setting she can switch to. She'll be able to track me easier with the shadows contrasting me." I tell her, thinking. I break into a sprint for the next piece of cover, trying to ignore the stinging in my leg. The pain is starting to fade a bit as the adrenaline kicks in.

No bullets come for me. What's she thinking?

I run through my useful gadgets that I have on me in my head. I've got these glasses, which allow Sarah to use her power on me. If she can't see what's happening, her ability to warn me about dangers goes way down. I've got to make sure that Sniper doesn't realize the use of these glasses. I've got my tonfas, but I don't think my reflexes are nearly good enough to block a bullet with those.

I hear a whistling sound approaching slowly, slower than her normal bullets. I turn my head to the right just in time to see a bullet fly past my cover. "Roll forward!" Present shouts at that same moment. My eyes widen in understanding and I immediately fall into a roll, the bullet turning ninety degrees immediately and shooting past me, grazing my suit. Momentum switch bullets. I can hear the sound of one of my Tonfa’s clattering out of its holster. Glancing down at the holster, I can see that the bullet grazed me in just the right way to knock away the securing straps. I’ll have to leave it for now and retrieve it later.

I break into another run, ignoring the dulling pain in my leg. I've dodged too many bullets. She has to know that Present Perfect is helping me at this point. She'll be looking for a decisive victory. I need to close the distance between us, not make it wider. I turn around abruptly, my eyes flicking to the location of the glint I saw. She's not there anymore. I hear another muffled shot from ahead and I dive into a roll to the right. The bullet collides with my left arm as I'm rolling, causing it to feel numb and limp. If I hadn't dived, that could have been my leg.

I look to where the shot came from, seeing her much closer than she used to be. She looks up from her scope at me and I grit my teeth, reaching over with my right hand and making sure my left tonfa is still in its holster. That arms out of commission for the next three minutes, I need to make it count. The numbing agent should wear off around then, maybe sooner, but I need to get by without it for now. Which is awful timing because Sniper is nearby now.

She looks back down the scope, her hands deftly reaching into a pouch at her side and loading another bullet into her signature sniper rifle. "You gotta get out of there, Soft Paw. Fighting her won't go well." Present Perfect says urgently.

"What are the paths?" I say, keeping an eye on her.

"She's going to catch you unless you run, I know it. The way I see it, you can run or you can fight her alone. I'm sure you know how bad that idea is." I hum in thought, staring down the barrel of Snipers rifle. Why did she phrase it like that? Sniper has loaded her rifle by now, but she doesn't shoot immediately. Why is she waiting? Why the missed shots?

"Codeword." I say, quietly.

The line goes silent for a few moments before a new voice comes on the line. A familiar voice. Sniper's voice. "Clever. How'd you know?"

I breathe out slowly, realizing my hunch was right. "You missed too many shots. I realized what that bullet that went by my head was meant to do. You hijacked the comms." We don't actually have a codeword, but Sniper doesn't need to know that.

"Yeah. Your little friend is smart. She cut the comms before I could track the signal. Come quietly and I'll go easy on you." Sniper threatens, shifting slightly in her position. She has a myriad of different ammunition on her, it's going to be impossible to escape. She wanted me to run because it would be easier to catch me.

I loosen up, letting out a breath. I reach up, taking the recording glasses off just so I know I don’t damage them. I pack them safely away into my suit. "I mean, I guess I don't have much choice here, do I?" Sniper tenses and I can tell she's ready to shoot. Thankfully, I've seen my mom at work before and I know exactly where she's aiming. I also have a guess of what kind of ammunition to expect this time.

The muffled sound of a gunshot rings out seconds after I duck forward, and start running towards Sniper in an attempt to get under the bullet. Before the bullet even reaches me it explodes into a mist. I hold my breath and close my eyes while I run through the mist. When I eventually feel the mist hanging in the air behind me with my power, I open my eyes and take a breath. I soften the air between me and the mist to stop it from blowing this way.

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Sniper is already loading in another shot as I dash across the rooftop towards her. I duck and weave, using my power briefly to dig my boots into the roofing and give me the extra traction I need to change my direction. The bullet she fires next immediately splits into three separate projectiles, one curving through the air and striking me straight in the chest, the other two hitting me in my left arm and side respectively. I take the hits, wincing at the sting of the pellets. Thankfully the shot seems to have kickstarted the nerves in my arm, waking it back up. When I look back up, I'm surrounded by thick white smoke. I run forward, towards where I know her to be, but the smoke follows me as I move.

I feel a punch coming in on my left side and I soften the hit, pulling up my still kind of numb arm to deflect the punch and dodging to the right. The punch comes out of the smoke, barely missing me. I try to affect the smoke at all with my powers, but it doesn't want to move. I block a kick on my right side thanks to my powers, but this white smoke is impairing my sight.

The attacks stop coming and I feel Sniper back off slightly. "Hmm, you definitely can't see me, but you can obviously still sense me somehow." She says, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

I brace myself, running forward to swing my tonfa at her. I shift my aim to correct as she enters my range. She blocks my swing easily, catching my hand. I soften her fingers and slip out of her grip. "You can't see the smoke." I mutter, keeping her in my range. “Hallucinations?”

"You're definitely annoyingly clever. I can see why the Wardens have been having a tough time dealing with you." Sniper jeers from somewhere just outside of my range. A strange mixture of pride and guilt fill me at the pseudo-compliment from Sniper. I close my eyes, focusing on my powers’ sense as a substitute for my sight. The smoke doesn’t disappear, but it does get a bit darker. I hear the small click of her loading something into her sniper, so I dash forward, aiming a kick towards her midsection as she enters my range.

My foot bounces off her upper arm and she grabs it with her other hand. I soften her hand, pulling my foot free before she can send me off balance. She takes advantage of my blindness, peppering my sides with quick jabs before I can soften them. I’m too focused on making sure none of the strikes that are aimed for my head are able to hit me at full force to efficiently soften or block the rest of them.

I try to focus on the rhythm of her attacks, certain combinations of punches and kicks actually starting to slot into place as being a part of a routine. My mind races to soften the air where her punches and kicks are going to land, finally catching up to her pace mentally. She doesn’t know it, but I actually recognize what she’s doing. We’ve sparred before, and after a lifetime of training, I’m more than able to pick up a few things from her. If she actually knew that it was me she was fighting, she’d likely go for different moves. She’s trying to find a weakness in my defenses, but I won’t let her see it if I can help it.

Her attacks ease up slowly, her presence backing out of my radius as I hear the mechanical clicking of her fiddling with her sniper. I try to close the distance, but I very quickly lose track of her footsteps as all I can hear is mechanical sounds slowly getting farther away. I have absolutely no idea which direction she’s going and I have no idea what her next plan is.

With my vision still obscured by smoke that doesn’t exist, I book it, using my ability to attempt to navigate the rooftops blindly. With less than a few seconds to react to any obstacles, I almost immediately stumble over a low metal object, managing to soften it just in time to prevent seriously hurting myself, but not in time to stop myself from tripping over it. As I fall towards the ground, I feel something enter my radius very quickly. So quickly that I can’t stop the needle from sinking deep into an open patch of skin not covered by my super suit.

Perfect aim when it matters. There’s only one person I know who could make that shot.

I pick myself up, fatigue coursing through my muscles immediately. The smoke manages to start clearing as I feel my energy being sapped out of me. I reach back, pulling the dart out of me, completely empty of whatever it may have been carrying before. I glance backwards. Finding Sniper dangling from a wire a few feet above where we were just fighting. That explains why I couldn’t hear her footsteps…

I wanted to get a little more done before getting caught like this…

The rhythmic sounds of footsteps behind me alerts me to Sniper’s approach. My strength is almost entirely gone at this point, but I manage to flip onto my back, just in time to see a familiar tonfa hovering just above her head. After a moment, the butt of it slams into the side of her head, hard. Sniper doesn’t even have a chance to look surprised before falling towards me.

I force out a final burst of will into softening her fall as she lands over me, my world slowly blacking out as I lose the last bit of my strength.

---

My eyes flutter open and I squint at the sunlight streaming through the nearby window. I reach up, blocking the sun from my eyes and slowly coming to. I take in the scenery that surrounds me. Jolting up suddenly, I look around the room quickly. I can feel my heart pounding in excitement, adrenaline quickly filling me as my brain pieces together what I can about my surroundings. I wince at how sore my body is, several light bruises from my brief scuffle with her before I was able to catch up to her pace.

“Hey! Easy there. You should rest some more after a fight like that.” I turn around to look at Sarah, finding her looking at me slightly annoyed. She reaches out, grabbing the top of my head and pushing me back down into laying on her lap like I was before I woke up. “Rest, dummy. I dunno what Sniper hit you with before I got there, but you’ve been out for two hours.” From my position on her lap, I can see her glancing towards the window instead of looking at me. “I was starting to get worried, you know.”

I can feel my tail flicking lazily, and slightly guiltily, still waking itself up from the fatigue. I look down at myself, not wanting to meet her eyes, “I’m sorry.” She shifts slightly, adjusting my position in her lap carefully.

“S’okay,” she says, grabbing the remote from the nearby table and turning on the television, “Just be sure to rest up.” I turn my head slightly to look at the news segment that she puts on. Has she been sat with me here this whole time without the television on? I decide not to comment on it, whether or not it’s the truth. She’s clearly been worried for me and I’m already extremely grateful that she saved me at all.

After a few moments of comfortable silence, I shift my head to look back up at Sarah. She turns to look down at me as I do so and I suddenly feel awkward lying in her lap. Sarah doesn’t normally feel like this when she lies in my lap, does she? I shake the thought away, getting distracted from the question I intended on asking.

“Did you hit Sniper over the head with one of my Tonfas?” I ask. She snorts at that, glancing over at the table. I look over and see both of my Tonfas there.

“Sure did. One of them happened to get dislodged during your scuffle with Sniper I guess. Good thing too, it was just what I needed to get the jump on her.” Sarah puffs out her chest pridefully and I chuckle at her antics.

“You arrived at just the right time. Thanks for saving my ass back there.” I smile at her easily and she returns the smile in turn.

“Yeah, well… you would have done the same.” I nod easily at that, but she continues, looking at the television distantly. “I’ve, uh, seen it at least once. You ended up not needing to, but… you would have.”

“Oh.” I say simply, digesting that fact. Having precognition of any kind must be a really interesting experience. It’s just another thing that makes me wonder how I would view the world from her point of view. I guess in some ways it’s nice to only have to deal with one possibility most of the time.

“Still…” she continues, returning her gaze to me, “You put up a hell of a fight. You nearly went toe to toe with the Sniper. And without any direction from me for most of that fight.” She rubs my arm gently, “Sorry about that by the way, she-” I touch her hand gratefully to stop her.

“It’s no problem, Sarah. She hijacked the comms and was gonna track the signal. I figured it out after a bit. I didn’t realize she had a voice modulator gadget of some sort. She sounded like you, it was creepy. Guess it’s a good thing that the heroes don’t entirely understand how your power works.” I tell her, sighing in exasperation at the memory.

Sarah lets out a whistle, drumming her left hand against the couch idly. “Tinker tech is spooky.”

I shake my head from my position in her lap. “That’s not Tinker tech. Not any I’m aware of at least. Sniper’s invention quirk is only being able to modify her sniper or ammunition, any sort of voice modulation device would have to be external to that in some capacity and there isn’t another Tinker I know of that could make something like that.” I muse gently, realizing after a moment that I’m thinking out loud. I snap my mouth shut, before continuing in an attempt to correct for what I should feasibly know.  “Uh, except for Toybox maybe, but… well, I’m sure it isn’t Toybox’s. For one, Sniper wouldn’t have been able to hook it up with the same technology her Communication Hijacking Bullet is because of Toybox’s invention quirk. At least, I’m mostly certain that she wouldn’t be able to.” I continue down that line of thought mentally for a bit more, musing after to what extent my power nullification would conflict with her inventing power. Maybe one day when this ruse is all over, I could actually contact Mom about testing some things out in that regard.

Sarah cuts off my internal musings once more, rolling her eyes at me happily. “Riiiiiight. I’m gonna be honest that all the invention stuff is beyond me. I didn’t really take you for the type either, to be honest.” Sarah says. I blush slightly, chastising myself about zoning out about inventions around Sarah. “But if not any Tinker, then who?” she asks.

I shrug, shifting to look back at the television. “Dunno. The Wardens have connections to other super organizations. The Tinker family has connections to even more independent super inventors. Really, it’s anyone’s guess as to who she’s collaborated with for gadgets.” I sigh a little at the fact. Even being her own child, I’m not sure I could find out who exactly she’s collaborated with considering how she likes to keep plenty of extra tricks up her sleeve just in case. Even I can’t know all the secrets of one of the most secretive heroes.

Really, it’s a wonder that I got out of that encounter nearly unscathed. Mom isn’t a world renowned super hero, but she is well-known. I could probably count the amount of villains that have withstood an encounter with her and not been arrested on one hand, but I’d have to do some digging. The reason she’s not world renowned is because she mostly takes covert missions. Even so, I’ve definitely heard a tale or two about the few who manage to get away. Tidbits sprinkled in between stories about her numerous successful missions of course.

I pull myself out of her lap once more, swinging my feet off of the couch and onto the floor. I test my strength gently, wincing as I put some weight on my leg that took that first bullet. Yeah, that definitely feels bruised alright. I look over at Sarah as I hear her shift. She looks at me nervously, but I just shoot her a smile. “I need to use the restroom. I’ll be right back to resting afterwards.” She nods lightly, turning back to the television. I stand up, putting most of my weight on the non-bruised leg, the blood rushing to my head as I do so. I rest a hand against the couch to steady myself for a second as I get my bearings. After a few seconds, I make my way to the bathroom and glance over my shoulder at Sarah as I’m at the door.

Miraculously, I would declare this another successful mission, Despite all odds. A bit painful, but we both made it back in one piece. And on top of that, we know we have an accurate map of the layout of Everyman’s hideout.

What did I do to find a friend and ally as good as her?