Chereads / Do I even have a choice Hero? / Chapter 3 - S Rank Threat part I

Chapter 3 - S Rank Threat part I

"I know I shouldn't have accepted this job on the fly...but isn't this downpour a little too harsh even if I have a pseudo thermal regulator installed in my gear?..."

Clad in a pitch black cloak and standard dark gray mercenary apparel beneath the rather worn looking article of outer wear, the figure sporting a nondescript faceplate ballistic mask could only feel a shiver travel down her spine as she felt, the bone chilling cold of the mid november storm, already in the process of letting its grievance known all throughout the ruined district of Eos, City of light.

"but a job is a job and i have reputation to keep...so I'll leave my complaints at that."

Extending a gloved hand from beneath her cloak which was gradually getting more soaked as the torrential rain continued to fall on the building she stood on. red spark like lighting began to flicker around her armored fingers which gradually crawled towards to encompass the rest of her gauntlet, as slowly but surely a pole like object composed of sleek, black material began to materialize out of her palm.

It only took a moment until the ominous looking black rod fully took shape, odd red circuit like grooves marring the surface of its body, with the occasional red Spark of electricity occasionally emitted from its sleek and seemingly ominous form.

"its a bit crude but I think it should do."

Bella muttered as she examined her newly constructed weapon.

The power to recreate "Unique" constructs and abilities she had managed to study and comprehend, that was her power as a metahuman.

so long as Bella had a firm grasp of the basics of things she wanted to create or copy, she could theoretically recreate or reproduce anything so long as her own mind isn't overtaxed, since using her ability to "recreate" certain unique abilities and produce her arsenal of toys "required" her to expend "psions" or mental energy in layman's terms to maintain them.

frankly Its a rather dangerous power to possess for the untrained Metahuman, one wrong slip and she would be either turned into a complete vegetable or get knocked out of commission...

'gods know what might happen to me if it were to happen in a battle to the death.'

leaving out the massive red flag that invited all kinds of Nsfw fanon works that would happen to her if she made such a rookie mistake...

'like anything like that will happen....'

Bella's power allowed her to punch way above her weight class since whatever material her constructions were created from can easily tear through even the toughest of alloys and depending on the power she managed to reproduce she could literally become anything she wants to so long as she wasn't completely spent.

letting out a breath.

Bella rested her weapon on her left shoulder as she stared far into the distance at the dilapidated streets of the long abandoned district, a large area cordoned off within the mega city that was abandoned not long ago, all because of a biological plague caused by a metahuman in the past.

Bella checked her rebreather installed in her mask for umptenth time to make sure it still worked as it is intended. even if it was over a decade now since that incident, bella would rather eat shit than die by choking on mushroom spores that would rapidly proliferate themselves inside her body if she carelessy let it in until she became nothing more than a glorified seed bed...

'I don't really want to go out like that..'

its not really a lie that bella had "some" measure of reservations about this contract. the dead zone aside trying to clear a "corpo" grade mission is an almost always a death sentence for even S rank mercenaries, the aftermath of successfully completing one is even more so but if you are gonna personally ask Bella for her opinion...

the more unhinged side of her...

the masked villain doesn't really care even if she stirs up a literal hornet's nest.

it also helped that Bella's secret identity hasn't been revealed to the public yet. Any chance of finding out would be close to impossible with the measures she had made to keep it as it is.

leaving any of her worries behind. bella placed her construct onto her shoulder as she licked her dry lips as she psyched herself up.

"Mission start!~"

leaping off the building with a peal of laughter drowned by the uncompromising Weather, tendrils of reddish black ooze like substance burst forth from her upper back as they rapidly extended into the distance, Slamming their semi solid drill like ends as hard as they could onto nearby building within the villain's range.

bella then subconsciously willed the burrowed tendrils to retract, pulling her forward at speeds that made her adrenaline surge, which deepened the growing, gleeful smile beneath her mask.

if one were catch sight of Bella and make a comparison, the masked villainess would greatly resemble a certain Spider themed hero from another mega city that also used such means to get around but the similarities ended there.

Bella's way was a lot more destructive, animalistic and downright more... unrestrained, as it each successive swing fueled the speeds at which she is going.

Uncaring of the collateral damage she was causing, the semi solid ooze like tendrils roughly broke themselves off from the things they latched themselves on, tearing large parts of concrete and steel apart in quick succession.

Bella had other means of travel yes, She could even float to a certain extent with how versatile her power is but based on her own experience and years of being... well.. just being her thrill seeking self. Nothing really beats swinging around in high places, performing all sorts of aerial acrobatics and stunts where one wrong move could potentially be her last.

the simple joys she felt when gravity tried its best to bring her down...

one wrong move and she may as well be a bloody pancake on the side of the road...

she simply let herself go and enjoyed the moment...

'I just can't get enough of it ~'

just thinking about the mayhem she'll be causing tonight...

She'll be sleeping quite well tonight~

she continued to smile as she steadly made her way to her destination.

....

it didn't take too much effort to find what she was looking for atop her new perch overlooking the road where her quarry was currently in the midst of slowly exiting a derelict service tunnel that directly led out onto the dilapidated main road.

Understanding she couldn't let herself just charge in without a plan even though she wanted to, her first tasked was to cripple the head convoy effectively halting their advance and from there she could simply cut loose without fear of any of the convoy vehicles escaping, her "sharp intuition" saying she could more or less handle it.

yes. thats all the planning she needed. anymore and she would rather go nuts since its such a simple job.

destroy everything. retrieve what she needs.

snapping out of her thoughts. it was time to take action.

"show time~."

Brandishing her weapon. she channeled more of her psions into her construct to create a volatile looking spear head that crackled and "glitched" upon its materialization onto reality.

Bella gritted her teeth as she felt a small pang of weakness causing her to feel marginally disoriented, but already quite used to her power's side effect she easily recovered only a fraction of a second later.

Adopting a throwing stance, bella deftly threw her weapon with practiced ease, creating a small localized sonic boom that ruffled the villain' cloak revealing more of her a lean, albeit quite petite build that was a far cry to the immense strength behind her otherwise lacking size.

The volatile construct despite the initial "boom" it made upon being thrown, it was as silent as it was deadly. the moment the spearhead struck the side of the lead armored vehicle.

the mobile fortress like APC was simply torn apart without a chance to explode, the spear rapidly expanding from its previous small size to a colossal one, effectively pinning the armored carrier down, its passengers' fates unknown.

Unconcerned of the possible lives she may have ended with that single attack, a humming bella leapt down as her tendrils cushioned the impact of her fall.

She already had prior intel before hand where her objective is being kept so the masked villainess could simply leave that for last as she plans to thoroughly have "her way" with the rest of the convoy's forces.

it was mainly to scratch that incessant "itch" to shed blood and tear her enemies to shreds that steadly getting louder in her head.

feeling a hint of Resignation(?) mixed with excitement which was an odd combination of sensations to say the least.

in the meantime while she was steadying herself the mounted turrets swifly swiveled and aimed their massive rotating barrels towards their lone assailant.

Seeing the literal objects of murder trained on her somewhat inconsequential figure. bella simply tipped her chin up in arrogance, a Euphoric expression hidden beneath her mask and uttered a single muffled word...

"Boom~."

A hail of anti personal rounds erupted as soon as all turrets locked onto their target.

[Aegis]

bella simply thought of a key word that she trained herself to remember that allowed her to rapidly recreate whatever ability or weapon associated with said word.

honestly its akin to a "spell" or programming that allowed her to call upon her power to do the brunt of the work with little input from her besides providing the cost, speeding up the process to a near instantaneous extent.

however such a powerful boon comes with its fair share of downsides. anything created from this shortcut would be vastly inferior in terms of overall durability for constructs or magnitude when its comes to a copied ability.

receiving the prompt command, her tendrils shot out once more from her body and then molded themselves into a new viscous shape. it assumed a semi lunar, incomplete Sphere around her that easily deflected, caught and even outright consumed the hail of hot lead as the masked villainess took her time enjoying the staccato of bullets impacting her barrier like it was some sort of Concert and she...

The Conductor.

walking towards one of the nearby APCs that still kept on raining her flak, Bella did only the sensible thing...

she tore the thing apart with a single swish of her hand once it entered within the range of her power making sure she didn't compromise the defensive capacity of her [Aegis]. she redirected a small portion of her barrier to assume paper like thin blades that easily cut through the durable metal alloy that comprised the armor of the behemoth like mobile fortress like it was made of butter.

seeing the contents that filled the now eviscerated vehicle from the corner of her eye as she continued to walk towards her next target.

'Is the convoy fully automated?... that would be the dissapointment of the century.'

slicing up another vehicle apart and finding another empty shell that didn't have any human or even a threatening bot that would happily tear her a new onAe really dampened her mood a bit, by the time she disemboweled her third one by literally tearing it apart starting from its unberbelly with her tendrils uncaring if she exposed herself with how much she drew from the material that comprised her barrier, Bella was already quite miffed and on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum.

"Come on.... where are they? the IPA is an international corporation... where the heck are the heavy hitters? the big kajones? the top guns?...they should have at least assigned one or two metahumans in this convoy I could have fu-" she loudly whined and stamped her feet due to her built up frustration but as if to mock her obnoxiously childish monologuing, several laser like beam of highly compressed jets of water slammed all around her barrier, nearly breaching them in the process due to her carelessness.

"Tsk. ask and ye shall receive.... took you long enough..."

she spoke out loud, her previous tirade all but forgotten replaced by a small sensation of glee and murderous intent.

she would really tear him to pieces for making her wait.

Several Shorter burst of "Lasers" Impacted her [Aegis] as if to reply to her arrogant sounding words.

it caused her to click her tongue in annoyance again as Bella finally noticed how much each hit she tanked consumed a large chunk of the material that comprised her semi autonomous barrier.

Bella might be a irredeemable battle junkie that would go out of her way to fight enemies head on in a cock sure manner, especially if she believed them to be quite strong but the masked villainess still loathed exerting herself too much nor exposing her hidden trump cards so easily.

its one of bella's contradictory aspects, a chink in her messed up character to say the least and she as a cultured young lady would much rather discuss her peculiarities over a cup of tea than in the middle of deadly fight.

'so save questions for later m'kay?'

keeping her main defensive skill up was starting to get annoying, her [Aegis] is after all just another byproduct of her power's rather versatile capability of recreation thus it ate away at her psionic reserves whenever she had to replenish it.

based on her intuition she would only last another hour before she falls under the mercy of those beams.

"now... how should I got about this hm?~"

she muttered as A devilish grin slowly took shape...

"Lets do that then~"