The bright morning light shot through the window, lancing into Erika’s eyes and waking her up with a muffled scream. The migraine she’d gone to sleep with the night before returned in full force, curb stomping her brain with the help of the cursed tropical sun. Flipping over in bed, Erika pulled her blanket over her head and blessed, soothing darkness eased the pain a bit. Taking a few slow and deep breaths, she slowly fell back asleep.
Only for her bed to start shaking, the movement sending new spikes of pain through her mind. Her windows rattled in their frames as a series of loud booms filled the air, the sonic assault on her brain ensuring she would find no more sleep. But if Erika was anything, she was stubborn. Growling at the migraine, she flipped over in bed and buried her head under her pillow, the anemic cotton stuffed brick slightly muffling the rumbling and clattering sounds. It didn’t help.
“Earthquake!” someone screamed from the unit next door, the woman’s shrill voice sending another spike of pain through her already throbbing head.
It's a meta fight, not an earthquake, Erika mentally corrected her shrill neighbor.
Sirens blared as cars passed by, the sounds echoing through the concrete canyon that was downtown Honolulu. Even with the windows closed and the air conditioning running, it did little to muffle the sounds that sent more spikes of pain through Erika’s brain.
The building shook a few more times before Erika gave up trying to get back to sleep, instead just pressing her pillow over her ears as she did her best to blot out the sounds of the outside world.
After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a couple minutes, the booming and shaking stopped, followed by a gusting sound as something large flew past her window, shaking the heavy glass and steel in its frame.
Excited screaming and loud chattering came from the unit below as her neighbor and her kids started talking about the superhero that flew past.
“Solar Surfer! Did you see him mommy?!” the little boy in the unit below screamed excitedly, his high pitched voice stabbing at her last nerve. Of all the days to wake up with a migraine, it had to be one of the days she opened.
“Yes I did!”
“He’s so heroic!” a pre-teen girl’s voice chimed in, thankfully less annoying than her mother’s, but still painful. “Can you imagine being saved by him?” the tween sighed dramatically, and way too loudly.
Erika groaned as the downstairs neighbors continued to chatter in loud voices about Solar Surfer’s heroics. Solar Surfer this. Solar Surfer that. Solar Surfer’s a bitch.
Pushing herself out of bed, Erika checked her old smartphone. 7:57am. As she looked at it, the bright screen faintly stabbing at her eyes, it went off with a shrill screech as an emergency alert popped up.
“Emergency Alert: Meta fight in Downtown Honolulu. Reports of structural damage to multiple buildings. Debris, anomalous energies, and supernatural phenomena may be present in the area. Remain indoors or seek shelter until further notice. Avoid the area if possible.”
By the time she finished reading the alert, a new text popped up to the work group chat from her boss John. “Ignore the alert. We’re opening at 9. Show up or find a new job,” it read. Several of the people she was scheduled to open with were already responding.
“Traffic backed up. Bus stuck,” Mary texted. Erika really hoped Mary didn’t get fired.
“I don’t care if you have to get out and walk. No excuses,” John texted back.
“Got it boss! I’m already on my way!” Rick texted back.
“Kiss ass,” Erika muttered to herself. She knew he was aiming for the open shift supervisor job even though he’d only worked there a couple months. What better way to climb the ladder of a corporate coffee shop than to kiss the manager’s ass like it was his soul mate. She should file an inappropriate conduct complaint against him with the amount of time Rick spent with his lips puckered up to John’s ass.
Several more texts popped up on her phone, but she didn’t have time to read them. Throwing her phone back onto her bed, Erika stripped out of the oversized shirt and shorts she slept in and threw the sweaty clothes into the pile of dirty clothes and jumped in the shower. The hot water helped to soothe her headache a bit, but not enough. She wished she could call in sick, but there was no way John would let her do that. She didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d fire her if she showed up late.
Hair still dripping, Erika locked her apartment door behind her and rushed down the hall, her hair still dripping with water. Luckily for her the wait for the elevator was short and she got the rare chance to ride down alone, using the mirrored sides to double check her appearance. The black blouse slightly strained at the seams from her chest, not because she was particularly well endowed, but because the company purposefully designed the shirts to give that illusion for female employees. The uniform disgusted her, but she didn’t have much room to complain. The company she worked for at least paid decently, and it was still better than the “superhero” themed cafes and restaurants that had their servers running around in skin tight spandex and body paint that left little to the imagination. Or worse, forced all their staff to wear capes.
Capes were stupid. Anyone who chose to wear one for fashion was even stupider.
As the elevator doors opened, Erika pulled a facemask out of her purse and put it on. Her nose filled with the smell of filtered air and her own breath as she started to push through the crowd of people already waiting in the lobby for the all clear. Erika pushed through the crowd, getting confused and offended looks as she headed towards the backdoor. The press of humanity only made her head hurt worse, but she endured, slipping through the heavy steel and plastizine door before it slammed shut behind her, sealing her in a small room as she heard the whirring buzz of air compressors starting up. Cold, dry air vented into the room, drying her hair a bit before the outer door opened, letting her exit in a rush of air. As soon as she was through the door, the outer door slammed shut, cutting off the cool breeze and leaving her to the tropical heat and humidity.
Already starting to sweat again, Erika bunched her now mostly dry hair up and tied it into a high ponytail as she walked, joining a small but steadily increasing group of people. Men and women in tailored suits, dresses, and business alohawear power walked down the street past people dressed more casually, some probably college students, others probably customer service workers like herself, and even a few she clocked as homeless people, those people the politicians and superheroes pretended to care about, though they hadn’t done anything to really address the issues in decades.
One and all wore face masks covering their faces.The wealthier professionals wore full face masks that covered everything, while most like her wore relatively simple plastizine cloth masks and the poorest wore simple paper disposables that’d long gone out of widespread use.
Masks were the new way to tell how much money someone had. Nice shoes and clothes were cheap enough that it was hard to tell from outfits who had money and who was just playing at it, and plenty of wealthy people dressed down these days since standing out was just inviting some freshly awakened thug or wannabe henchperson to mug you to try and break into supervillainy.
But standing out or not, no one got a cheaper mask than they could afford. Between superscience fueled diseases, unstable chemicals, and exotic energies, walking around without a mask after a meta fight was just asking for death. Or worse. You never knew what kind of powers a meta had, even the most well known superheroes were tight lipped about how their powers actually worked, and if the government knew it probably fell under the category of “classified” information. Even supervillains’ abilities weren’t well known. No one wanted a repeat of someone like Pandemic or Meltdown, and with new metas popping up somewhere every day, it was only a matter of time before someone else showed up with similar powers if they weren’t already out there. The less the average person knew about how certain powers worked, the less likely it was that a criminal meta would figure out how to replicate the successes of some of the most dangerous supervillains to ever exist.
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“Stop! Thieves!”
Speaking of standing out, Erika moved to the side of the shopping street she cut through to save time as a trio of furry people barreled through the crowd snatching purses and phones and knocking people over while two masked police officers chased after them. The leader of the three was a hulking brute with a bull’s head and pointed horns, like a minotaur from Greek mythology, though the unbuttoned aloha shirt and jeans he wore ruined the aesthetic immediately.
Right behind the minotaur was a mongoose. A 6-foot humanoid mongoose. Wearing a custom black sports jersey covered in stylized claw marks that said “Beastly Boys 4 Lyfe” in bloody red letters and surf shorts. “You’ll never catch the Beastly Boys coppers!” The mongoose spun around and screamed.
Bringing up the rear behind the pervert was someone Erika could only describe as a furry convention reject. Bright blue fur with neon purple stripes and a white belly, wearing cargo shorts and a leather biker vest with chains. Cartoonishly large eyes, one winking and the other with a comical heart shaped pupil. Strange meta mutation? No, definitely a fursuit. Erika really wished she didn’t know what a fursuit was, but she spent far too much time online not to know. And now she was staring at a wannabe criminal, possibly a meta, in a fursuit.
“Halt, scoundrels!” A man’s voice echoed out across the shopping street, cutting through the background buzz of passing traffic and hushed conversations. The voice was firm, confident, and classically heroic sounding. It made Erika want to cringe with second-hand embarrassment.
Erika could hear the sound of metal clinking as the sparse crowd parted to reveal a man in a shiny suit of armor complete with furred cape walking towards the Beastly Boys. A helmet covered his head, but his visor was up, revealing a roguishly handsome clean shaven face with piercing blue eyes. A rogue lock of blonde hair artfully framed the side of his face, clearly put there purposefully.
The three zoo-rejects cartoonishly came to a stop as the Renaissance Faire actor revealed himself.
With a flourish, the man drew an actual longsword and pointed it at the minotaur in the lead. “Return the peoples’ belongings and surrender yourselves peacefully and I’ll speak on your behalf to the authorities,” the superhero said confidently, flashing a megawatt smile.
Are you fucking kidding me? A suit of armor and a cape in this heat? What an idiot, Erika thought with a grimace.
Minotaur-man came to a stop just a few feet away from the spandex-covered hero and slammed his fist into his chest as he laughed with bravado. “Hah! Shut up tin can! Who are you to get in the way of Bull Crush and the Beastly Boys?”
Erika, like all the other civilians caught in what was looking like another meta fight, glanced between the Beastly Boys and the still unnamed and unrecognizable hero. She wasn’t the only one trying to hold back a laugh. Sure the musicians they’d named themselves after were old, like last popular when her parents were still kids and she wasn’t anywhere close to existing, but a few viral videos with their old songs meant that people still knew them. It still didn’t give the criminals a good excuse to use such a blatantly ripped off version of the name though. If nothing else, it was embarrassing.
“Yeah! You don’t know who you’re messing with pretty boy, we’ll fluff you up!” Fursuit said in a high-pitched voice as he pulled a bright pink bat wrapped in barbed wire from out of nowhere.
She didn’t know what was worse, the metas’ group name, unironically threatening to “fluff someone up,” or where her brain immediately jumped to proposing that Fursuit might have been hiding their weapon. She couldn’t help but shudder at the mental images her brain conjured, but thankfully the movement didn’t draw the metas’ attention. Rule one of being a civilian near metas: don’t draw attention to yourself. It didn’t matter if you were armed or not. A good guy with a gun stood little chance against a bad guy with laser vision. A hand cannon that’d work well against a mugger would help against an E-Class at most.
The knight-cosplayer let out a loud belly laugh and continued to smile. Erika could’ve sworn she saw his way-too-white teeth actually flash in the morning sunlight. “Very well then! You have the honor of facing the one and only White Knight! En garde!”
Erika felt a flare of pain in her head at the extraordinarily stupid name he said with such pride. Maybe it was her being too online cropping up again, but “White Knight” didn’t inspire confidence. It inspired nausea and second-hand embarrassment.
White Knight charged Bull Crush, his sword aimed in a thrust for the meta’s throat.
“Moo!” Bull Crush screamed, dropping to all fours and charging head first at the knight, his horns pointed down. The sound of metal on horn rang through the air as Bull Rush deflected White Knight’s sword, only for the hero to dodge to the side before he could be trampled.
A group of office workers dodged out of the way of Bull Crush, barely avoiding getting trampled though one unfortunate office drone in a nice green and light blue aloha shirt dropped his coffee as he did, staining his pants in valuable caffeine. “My coffee!”
A meaty thwack filled the air as Bull Crush slammed head first into a concrete wall, his horns piercing deep into the concrete as people inside the store screamed. Roaring, Bull Crush began to thrash, causing cracks to spiderweb across the wall. “Don’t just stand there! Mongrease, Fursona, get him!” Bull Crush shouted as he struggled to free himself.
“You fluffed up now!” Fursona screamed, swinging wildly at White Knight.
The armored superhero danced back, blocking and parrying blows with his sword and retaliating with the flat.
“Who even is this guy?” Erika muttered to herself.
An older woman nodded next to her as they watched the metas fight. “I heard about him. He started showing up to street crimes and low-tier monster portals a couple months ago. My brother up in Neo Diego said he was a small timer up there. I guess he moved here to try and make it.”
“Of course he did,” Erika scoffed. It was pretty obvious the hero was new to the islands.. Who in their right mind wears a fur cape in Hawaii? “Think he’ll be staying?”
“Who knows?” the older woman shrugged, not taking her eye off the metas as they fought. Rule 1 of being an unawakened civilian near a meta fight: don’t take your eyes off the metas. “He must be dying of heat in that armor though!”
“Right? Armor’s important and all but who wears a fur lined cape here? Even with the trades it’s still crazy hot.”
As Erika and the older woman casually chatted, the police officers finally broke through the crowd and were trying to get close to Bull Crush, one holding a pair of suppression handcuffs and the other with his gun drawn and pointed at the struggling bullman. Not that she thought the pistol would help much. Even the weakest meta was resistant to bullets. A regular civilian pistol like the police used wasn’t much better than a hard punch unless you hit them somewhere like the eyes. Meta or not, a bullet to the eye usually ruins your day. Unless you’re someone like Titan. He could tank machinegun fire even as a D Class.
“Argh!” Fursona cried out as White Knight gave the criminal a left hook across their furry jaw that sent them skidding across the paving stones of the shopping street.
Erika and the older woman stepped to the side as the villain slid towards them, barely moving out of the way before Fursona came to a stop where they’d been standing. The villain’s garishly bright weapon clattered to the ground at Erika’s feet and she briefly considered picking it up and taking care of the fur-suited villain before she took another large step back. Getting involved would be just asking for trouble.
The number one cause of civilian casualties in low level meta fights wasn’t a villain going on a rampage so much as it was making yourself a target. Running away, or worse, getting involved just attracted attention and made it more likely a desperate criminal might try to use you as cover to escape, either as a hostage or as a human shield. So it was just common sense to stay still and attract as little attention as possible.
Unless they started throwing around fireballs, explosives, or punches that could level buildings of course, then it was better to just run away if you could. This fight was definitely the first type. She wasn’t sure what White Knight’s powers were, but she would guess some kind of body enhancement. Maybe supernatural fighting skills or enhanced senses in addition to the normal body enhancements that came with being a meta. Bull Crush seemed to be a mutation type, embodying some of the aspects of an animal, just like Mongrease who only dodged about and swiped with his claws ineffectually Fursona was the only wild card, their power seemingly allowing them to create that bat they used. As Erika watched Fursona pick themself back up and charge back into the fight, the bat making its appearance in their hands again, she couldn’t help but wonder if that was all the villain was capable of, or if they were just that uncreative at using what could be an incredibly powerful ability.
With a roar and the sound of concrete breaking, Bull Crush broke free, throwing off the two HPD officers before they could throw suppression cuffs on him and charging back into the fray. White Knight, distracted by Mongrease and Fursona, didn’t notice Bull Crush coming and took the meta’s horns in the back. With a toss of his head, Bull Crush sent White Knight flying as people screamed.
White Knight hit the ground with a crash of metal on stone, rolling a few times before he smacked into the plexi-glass door of the cafe across from her. His sword meanwhile slid across the paving stones right towards her. Acting on instinct, Erika stomped on the blade, stopping its slide with her shoe in a crash of metal.
The street went silent.
Erika looked from the motionless White Knight, to the police officers still pulling themselves back up, to the silent crowd of civilians, and to the Beastly Boys. Everyone was looking at her.
Fuck, Erika thought to herself. She broke rule one.
