There was a lot wrong with the world, sure, but there was a lot of enjoyment in it too. A man had to have a cause, or he wasn't much of a man, but a man also had to have some fun, or what was the point?
And if you were even halfway on the ball, you could have fun while serving your cause and making money. Ethan had seen a lot of grim and gloomy people on the job. And sure, some of them, they had reasons to be down on life right then — a death, maybe, something final like that. Most of them, though? Determined to be unhappy, or serious, or some nonsense like that, and accordingly upset about the commute or the coffee, or too busy thinking about how serious they needed to be to do the job to, y'know, actually do the job.
Real professionals enjoyed what they did, knew when and how to cut loose, and when to be serious. And how to have serious fun being serious. Not a quarter of the mercenaries he'd worked with understood that, and most of them didn't last: being serious when you should have been relaxed makes for unnecessary enemies, and being relaxed when you should have been serious is the kind of mistake you get to make once.
But it's a free world: you choose the life you want, and deal with the consequences after.
There were always replacements coming along, anyway.
Honestly, having to spend time with that all too common attitude of self-important seriousness might have gotten Ethan down from time to time... if it hadn't been so damn fun to mess with such people. And it was a no-lose situation! Either the joke never got old, or they lightened up and were thereafter nicer to be around. Making the world better through teasing, one humorless coworker at a time.
He smiled, and then started whistling softly: 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.' Not a patch on, say, the Colonel Bogey March or Greensleeves, musically speaking, but you had to suit your whistling to the circumstances, and things right now had a distinct whiff of farce about them, or even slapstick.
How could you not enjoy being paid to fight Nazis?
Such great villains.
When he was younger, he'd hoped that they'd make a third Indiana Jones movie, get back to what made the first one great: beating up Nazis. Pity that the second one had effectively killed any hope for that franchise to continue, but second acts were notoriously hard to get right. Too many people tried to change everything, and lost what made the first one great. Most of the rest tried to change nothing, which meant there really wasn't a point to the sequel at all. No, the secret to any good second act, in drama as in life, was to keep the essence intact and vital even as circumstances changed.
Granted, he wasn't actually getting paid to beat up Nazis just at the moment. A more pessimistic man might have called it the reverse, and gone home early: technically, he was getting paid to not beat up Nazis right this second. That man would have missed out on some of the best fun Ethan had had on the job for a good, long, time.
Getting paid to watch Nazis beat each other up was hilarious.
He kept a running internal commentary going, in the style of the wrestling matches he had loved watching as a kid.
And Big Guy is going for a headlock on Shaved Head. He's got it! And one punch to the face! Two! That's GOT to hurt, there. Three! And Shaved Head is on the ground. Could he be out? Will Big Guy be the last one standing?
Wait!
Mustache is getting back up off the ground, and he's got a pipe! Ooh! To the back of the head! And Big Guy's on one knee, and... oh, that was a kidney shot right there. Mustache is really going for revenge here.
He's walking around, winding up for a big swing, and... Big Guy just gave him an uppercut to the nuts! I'm sure there are a lot of men in the audience crossing their legs around now, folks, that's hitting below the belt in the worst way possible. But this is a no-rules street-fight tonight, and that means, yes, he CAN do that!
And... after that brutality, and the way Big Guy has been pounding his face into the pavement since, it's probably a relief for Mustache to pass out.
Big Guy is having trouble standing, but is he... wait.
Is Twitchy Kid coming around?
No, Twitchy Kid is trying to crawl away, not get up. Big Guy has done it! He's the last man standing!
Fantastic entertainment while officially on the clock. There were better ways to spend a Friday night out... but not that many, really.
Sadly, he probably couldn't get away with bringing popcorn along next time: the boss would think it unprofessional, and the joke simply wasn't worth the extra duty assignments he'd pick up along the way. Worth asking about it, though, just to get a rise out of someone. Maybe the wife.
His grin broadened. For all the effort he'd put into loosening her up over the years, she was still pretty... uptight. Not that her singleminded focus was a bad thing, no indeed.
On the street below him, the biggest skinhead limped over to another thug also sporting a wolfshead design on his black leather (why was it always black leather with these types?), leaving the three wearing the skull to bleed in peace.
Ethan tapped his phone and spoke through his earbud. "No capes at this fight, boss. Anything else on for tonight?"
The answering voice was clinical. "No other predicted hotspots. Clean up what's there, and return to base."
Ethan smiled, eyed the three on the ground and two walking away toward one end of the alley, and picked his spot. He dropped to the ground behind the two, landing silently — a bit of cheating was involved, sure, but like his dad had always said: "if you're not cheating, you're not trying."
Three steps following their limping progress, and it was clear that neither 'Big Guy' nor 'Crew-cut' were going to notice him following them any time soon, and while it would be fun to wait until they noticed, he had another three to clean up. Besides, the sirens would be coming in any minute now.
A tap on the shoulder of the big one, to freeze him for half a second looking the wrong way, and Ethan just bonked their skulls together. Classic. Not necessarily efficient, but these weren't the kind of opponents where he'd need to pull out all the stops, and he had controlled the force of that impact precisely. No damage done he didn't intend to deal.
He turned around to pick up the other three, and found four. Yet another idiot wearing black leather with fake military trappings and a skull motif... but this one wore a full costume.
And that meant he might have to get serious tonight. Ethan's smile sharpened.
"You needn't take them away, you know — you'll find that no one involved will wish to press charges. No witnesses will come forward either."
"Is that so?" A discreet triple-tap on his holstered phone, and HQ was listening. Did he need backup? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no. But being professional meant covering that chance too.
Arms spread, one foot back, a faint accent that might be German — real or assumed? With these clowns, could be either way — the costumed man spoke again. "It is an internal dispute, you see. These... debates do not involve lethal force. None of us wish to destroy the prize for which we fight."
"Guess you won't mind my taking these two away, then, seeing as they're not any of yours."
"I am afraid that even such straying sheep as these are still mine to shepherd. Protecting them goes some way to demonstrating my claim to be their leader, no?"
"Maybe we can make something stick to them, maybe we can't. You're a different story, though."
A nod. "And yet, I am a reasonable man, one who values order and discipline and efficiency. Would you really prefer to have Hookwolf running things?"
Ethan's grin was positively predatory by now. "I always was a fan of 'none of the above.' "
A light step launched him forward, instantly accelerating him to about sixty miles an hour in a long flat leap toward Krieg. He could go faster, of course, but stopping safely was always the trick — he could fake a Brute's invulnerability to physical threats by conscious use of his power, but human reflexes had limits.
"A pity." Krieg flipped a hand up, and Ethan found himself launched mostly upwards, clearing the villain by a good ten feet.
A fingertip tap on a fire escape let Ethan readjust his motion into a spinning drop straight down; a little effort on the landing ensured it felt effortlessly soft while launching him sideways into a nook where the buildings weren't perfectly aligned and out of Krieg's line of sight.
A quick tap to his earbud. "Assault. Engaging Krieg."
This was going to be a game of Hide and Go Seek, then. If Krieg saw him before he reached melee, he'd go flying again. If he put a finger on Krieg, that'd be the game. The great part about being a strong Striker was that almost anyone you could lay hands on, you could lay out. The frustration was that everyone else knew that too, and spent a lot of effort on staying out of arm's reach.
A rippling series of finger-taps on the brickwork behind him sent him up the wall, swift and silent. Everyone remembered the way he could smash through walls or send tons flying with ease. And sure, that was fun. But control of the speed, momentum, and acceleration of anything you could touch — and of your own, while you could touch something — lent itself to all kinds of subtler tricks.
Also, fantastic massages.
A fast and noiseless crawl along the roof later, he risked a peek over the edge — Krieg had relocated. Not that much of an idiot, unfortunately. Another peek showed five skinheads scrambling toward one end of the alley, and a single backlit silhouette at the other.
Hmm.
Using his men as decoys to cover his escape... or vice versa?
Assault pondered, and then moved toward the lone man, taking care to keep out of line of sight.
Two beeps in his earpiece. Reinforcements en route, and nearby. It was nice working with professionals.
He checked again, and Krieg looked up at him as a walkie-talkie crackled. Sharp senses, or a spotter? Either way, it was time to keep Krieg watching the known threat. He poked his head up over the roof, hand reaching out to circle the mast of an old satellite dish, probably no longer hooked up to anything.
"You can't think this is going to end well for you, Krieg."
A hooked pulling gesture was his reply, but as long as he wasn't completely out of contact with anything, the pull was nothing he couldn't counter with his own power.
"You fight to capture, Herr Assault."
"You won't fight to kill, Herr Krieg. Unless you want a kill order on your head." Assault grinned. "Would you really prefer to have Hookwolf running things?"
"Touché." The angle was wrong to see his face beneath the brim of his cap, but Ethan rather thought the man was smiling.
Krieg was backing away slowly, and as he turned to run Assault leapt down, chasing him at swift lope, one hand running along the wall. Krieg half-turned, and shouted "Purity!"
Assault dove for cover behind a dumpster as a light ignited on the rooftop to his right.
Three seconds later, when the light failed to move and the dumpster failed to disintegrate, he poked his head up, and saw the light bobbing off over the roof in the distance, and then going out with mechanical suddenness.
He smiled.
A flashlight! He'd been snookered by a powerful flashlight! Granted, a flying blaster was the second worst kind of cape for him to fight, and Purity was more than strong enough to warrant care, but that had style.
Still wouldn't stop him from putting Krieg down hard, though.
He resumed the pursuit — Krieg's bluff had bought him a dozen steps, but that was all. Assault took two quick steps, toeing a length of chain and launching it down the alley before resuming his run. Krieg half-turned, and again gestured up… this time just setting the chain spinning more wildly.
Assault grinned.
Most powers had some kind of restriction like that — a clear vision of your target, or concentration, or touch, or something. Applying force at the center of mass of a rapidly spinning length of chain was apparently just a little too complex for Krieg. The chain struck Krieg on an arm, then wrapped around him with bruising force, bringing him down mid-stride. He slid almost the end of the alley... where a white van was even now pulling up, panel door sliding open.
The fact that two people were stepping out was cause for some concern — people didn't generally step into a cape fight unless they were themselves parahuman. Both were wearing plain black civilian clothing under a cloak with the hood up: grey for one, black for the other. Close enough to a mask, under the circumstances. The outfits were known to him, but that pair had left E88.
Another bluff?
He paused.
The one in grey dissolved into fog as he stepped forward, leaving the other one as a dimly seen silhouette helping Krieg to his feet, though none of them advanced down the alley.
Not a bluff, then.
This was the worst kind of cape for him to fight — someone whom he couldn't touch, at all… and Fog could still kill him if they closed. He could avoid losing this fight, but it would be awfully hard to win it without backup. Putting Krieg down while he was surrounded by Fog would be very hard, at least without resorting to probably-lethal amounts of ballistic bombardment, and Night was some kind of Brute/Changer/Stranger. If he could stop her at all, it wouldn't be simply done. He'd never really liked killing — done more of it in this costume than the old one, as it happened.
Worse, the sound of gunfire and explosions echoed somewhere nearby. That was either his backup, or something serious breaking out which might well divert his backup.
A tap. "Assault. Facing Krieg, and it looks like Night and Fog just came out of retirement. Could use some help here."
"Miss Militia here. Engaging Alabaster and Fenja with PRT support. Handling them both, but occupied for the moment."
"Armsmaster. En route with Triumph, but ETA two minutes."
Two long minutes, and they'd still be outnumbered at the end of it. Battery, Dauntless, and Velocity were on a recovery shift right now. For anything short of a truly desperate emergency, maintaining patrol coverage meant the Protectorate simply couldn't field its full force in any single fight.
"Boss? They're standing off, for the moment. Do we let them go?"
A pause.
"Can you hold them long enough?"
He smiled, teeth gleaming in the night.
"I can find out."