Shade: Unbound

The city was bustling, as usual, and Finn tried his best to avoid the crowds as he made his way to the first location on the mission list. This new outfit was making it significantly easier. Dressed in black cargo pants and an old gray hoodie, along with some gloves, he snuck from building to building. It wasn't necessary, but this type of practice did keep him alert.

As far as equipment went, he didn't have much. Just what he'd been able to take from home. Some thread, a water bottle, duct tape, and a wrench in place of a real weapon. But he wasn't planning to fight, the missions were about stealth.

In contrast to the crowded streets, his destination was far quieter. It was an abandoned building near some industrial terrain. This kind of sight was common. With so many people flinging their powers at each other, buildings tended to get destroyed, and it was up to either the government or private landowners to fix them. And given that it was Apexia, assimilation tended to take priority over maintenance.

As Finn approached the building, he could see that it had been cordoned off with yellow caution tape. He checked his Aegis Corp app for more information and saw that the building had been damaged in a recent battle between two villains. Recent by megacity standards, at least. It had been months since that event occurred, and no one had come in for repairs yet.

He used his power to blend in with the environment and got a closer look. He couldn't find anything suspicious, but the objective didn't involve people. Strangely enough, he was supposed to enter the building and take pictures of the damages and look for any hidden compartments. For a moment, he wondered why no one else had done this mission already, then reminded himself the whole thing was worth a meager five credits.

Upon taking the mission, he had been worried that the pictures he took with his phone would be traceable, but after some research, he had discovered that Aegis Corp had an automated filter for media files that rendered them and made the device they were recorded on indiscernible. Having learned that, he was less apprehensive about using Aegis' software; anonymity was a business model for them.

Finn entered the building, his footsteps echoing off the walls. The inside was dark, and the air was thick with dust. It was clear that no one had been inside for a long time. He turned on his flashlight and started walking around, examining the damage.

The walls were pockmarked with holes, and the floors were littered with debris. Finn wondered if anyone had bothered to salvage anything before abandoning the building. He continued walking, looking for any hidden compartments.

Past the next door, he felt the floor groan underneath him the second he stepped foot inside. Taking a step back, he quickly took a few pictures and backed out of the devastated room, not wanting to make it collapse. A five credit reward wasn’t worth breaking his neck over.

Finn continued his search and found a hidden compartment behind a fallen wall. He carefully removed the debris and pulled out a small metal box. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should open it, but then chose to do so.

Inside the box, he found a stack of papers and a small, broken device. He snapped some pictures of the papers and examined the device, but he had no idea what it was or what it did. He would look it up in the Aegis store later.

The papers weren’t making sense to him either. It was all technical jargon he didn’t have the knowledge to understand. He was pretty sure it had to do with construction though. Which made sense, given where he had discovered it. But whether it was suspicious or not, Finn couldn’t tell.

Satisfied with his findings, Finn made his way out of the building and back onto the city streets. He had completed his first mission for Aegis Corp, and it was a success. And yet, as he walked away, he couldn't shake the thought that there was something more going on than just a simple reconnaissance mission.

The next location was thirty minutes away. On the way there, Finn spotted a figure rushing through the air on a storm cloud towards a plume of smoke rising in the distance. Finn knew he couldn't have made it there in time, even if he ran at full speed, but he was glad to see there were heroes responding so quickly. Even if he wished he had the ability to fly like that.

But that was neither here nor there, his objective was the other way regardless. It was another set of abandoned buildings, this time closer to a residential area. The mission was similar to the last one but not quite the same. He was supposed to take pictures, but rather than look for hidden compartments, it required him to collect evidence of any potential crimes.

Finn thought his power should be well suited to that. And he ended up being correct on that front. After entering the building, he discovered his power actually had a lot of forensic utility. In addition to being able to change the color of an object to spot fingerprints, he was also capable of spotting other traces, such as minor damages the naked eye would have otherwise missed. Or other clues like gunpowder residue, footprints, and blood.

It certainly felt good to succeed at something so easily. This place had been the crime scene for what seemed to be assault or murder. That set him on edge at first, but Finn realized none of the evidence looked particularly fresh. He doubted anyone would be coming here today.

As if the universe was trying to prove him wrong, he heard screeching tires outside at that very moment. He ran up to the dirty window to see what was going on.

It was a van. Four people exited the vehicle, and the first thing Finn noticed was their weapons. Three of them carried knives, and the last one was holding an actual gun. Not a small one either. Some sort of automatic rifle or something. Finn wasn’t an expert on firearms.

But he had prepared for this eventuality, no one would know he was—

A woman happened to be walking by. What were the odds? Finn had no idea why anyone would be wandering through such an area at night.

Oblivious to his misfortune, one of the guys accosted her and dragged her into the alley next to the abandoned building while their gunman made a phone call.

What was he supposed to do now? Leave her to her fate? He had come here prepared to hide his presence if need be. So why did it have to be here, of all places, that a random person showed up and fell victim to a bunch of criminals right where he stood?

Finn could almost laugh at the bitter irony of his predicament. In all his preparations for tonight, he may have been right in judging his own capabilities and choosing the correct path. Except, he had failed to account for what would happen if someone else was getting hurt and no other heroes were around to save them.

Without proper preparation for combat with his powers, he didn’t feel as prepared as he would have liked. He knew some basic fighting stances and moves, but nothing that would even the odds between himself and four adult men. Let alone armed ones.

However, his legs were already taking him out of the building from the side door which led into the alley. It was out of sight from the other three guys. He walked up behind the assaulter.

He made sure to be as quiet as possible, but that might not have been necessary with how distracted the guy seemed to be with the struggling woman. He could hear him growling threats at her in a low voice.

Finn used his wrench to hit the man in the back of the knee. He buckled and lost his grip on the woman. The man began to swipe his knife behind him, but Finn was ahead of him with a punch to the jaw. He was out cold.

For a second, Finn halted to process how easy that had been. The size difference hadn’t been too great, but still.

Shaking his head, he regained his focus and began tying the man up, starting with duct tape over his mouth to prevent him from making any noise.

He looked at the woman, who he now saw was a lot younger than she’d looked from a distance, and signaled for her to be silent and run all the way upstairs into the opposite building.

Finn used the interim to call in the authorities, then waited. His power lasted a few seconds after he touched something, so he changed the color of the door the girl had gone through to match the walls. That way nobody would notice the entrance and chase her. He kept the door to the building he’d done his mission in, ajar, and waited.

After another minute or so, the gunman, apparently the leader of this group, seemed to be done with his phone call and addressed his men. “Where the fuck is Leo? I swear, if he’s taking so long because he couldn’t keep it in his pants, I’m kicking his teeth in so hard he’ll be eating his food through a straw for a year. Go check on him.”

When they reached the alley, the one guy shouted in alarm, pointing at Finn, who promptly rushed into the other door beside him. They gave chase as anticipated.

Once inside, Finn immediately hid beside the door and used his power to match his clothing with the pattern of the building’s interior, which wasn’t hard, given that it was only one color.

The two men ran right past him upon entry, then one shouted for the other to go upstairs while running into another room. Finn let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Pulling out his water bottle, he stalked closer to the other room.

He saw the guy looking in a closet with his back to the door, giving Finn the opportunity to come closer. Before he did, however, he set a trap near the middle of the stairs.

As he crept between the dusty furniture, the water in the bottle turned black. Then, when the guy finally turned, he was splashed in the face with black liquid.

Robbed of sight, he wildly swung his knife back and forth as he shouted, but Finn waited for an opportunity to smash the hand wielding the knife with his wrench, then promptly tackled the guy into the closet, knocking the back of his head into a wooden plank. Now unarmed, the guy was still struggling to clear his vision as Finn hit him in the jaw.

His beginner’s luck seemed to have run out, because the blinded man shoved Finn away, sending him rolling over the floor as his opponent got up. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the lingering ache in his shoulder.

Wild swings came before he was ready, and one of them caught him in the side, pushing him back down. Finn grimaced. The man’s vision was recovering and he’d barely made any progress.

Outside the room, he heard the other gang member thundering down the stairs, then falling over the thread Finn had tied there. Using that moment of distraction, he rolled back, swung the door shut and used his power to black out the window.

The first gangster, who had just gained a clear line of sight, was now blind again. A moment later, he was shoved in the back. Finn didn’t waste another second and kneed the stumbling man in the face, earning him a grunt.

Given that he was going off memory, he had to undo his power to reorient himself. What he saw was that his opponent was still not down for the count, glowering with a hand covering his nose. Before the man was up, Finn kicked him back down and ran to the closet, then blacked out the surroundings.

Finn grabbed the top ledge of the cupboard to hoist himself up and almost fell back down, barely saving himself by using the hinges and handles with his feet. When he was on top, he got the tip of his shoe between the wall and closet, he pushed with all his strength.

The only thing the criminal saw when the light shone back in, was a giant closet falling on top of him. This time, he wasn’t exactly raring to continue the fight, groaning pitifully underneath a piece of furniture more than double his bodyweight.

Finn had already moved to the other side of the room, breathing heavily, because the guy’s buddy was coming in. He didn’t make it two steps before tripping over a camouflaged leg. The door swung shut and the blackness descended.

Disarming this guy was easy; Finn just stomped on his hand and broke his grip. He cried in pain, making Finn hesitate. The thug almost managed to get his bearings, but Finn recovered first.

He wasn’t going to try a grapple against someone heavier than him, so his technique was simple: rain down blows from unexpected angles until the enemy gave up or stopped moving.

It took longer than Finn would have liked. After the seventh hit, he wished for a warrior power that would make physical confrontations like this trivial. But it worked, and probably in less time than Finn felt it had taken.

The man was mumbling something unintelligible, but Finn gathered the general sentiment, which was that he surrendered in the face of that onslaught. He didn’t even resist the tape tying his limbs together. Apparently, falling down the stairs, getting tripped, and subsequently beaten into submission was a bit discouraging. And painful, going by the constant flinching.

Part of Finn had expected to have to fight another round, but the other gang member was still on the ground, cursing under his breath. He wasn’t as receptive to being tied up, but he also wasn’t in any position to negotiate with Finn standing on the closet and weighing him down further.

A minute later, both of them were subdued, and Finn was about to get up when he heard shouting outside. “Just come on out, you little bitch,” the gunman was saying, “I promise I don’t hit girls.”

Girls? Oh, right. The leader had never seen Finn. He assumed the girl from earlier had done all of this. But he seemed hesitant to enter the alley. Almost as if he didn’t want to stray too far from the van.

“You have until three! One, two…”

Finn was no longer listening, instead having found a way out of the house through the other side window with some new loot from his fight. By the time he could peek around the corner, the cacophonous gunfire had already started. He saw the would-be murderer firing recklessly into the open house. Didn’t he care if he hit his goons?

Either way, that wasn’t going to stop Finn from sneaking up on him by camouflaging himself in the peripheral view of the distracted criminal.

Letting up, the gunman opened his mouth again, but cold steel pressed against his throat.

“Drop the weapon,” Finn said in a low voice.

The rifle clattered to the sidewalk, making Finn’s eyes widen. Though he supposed it would have been risky to call his bluff, even if he never planned to actually use the knife.

“What gang are you in? Homeland? Look man, I wasn’t gonna stay on your turf for long, just a quick drop-off. That’s it. No need to make this ugly, alright?” He shifted, exposing a tattoo on his neck. Finn recognized it.

Venin. This guy was a member of Venin, a local gang run by Viperia and all the villains working under her, who each commanded their own groups of men. Ones like this guy. If this guy failed to report back, that meant reinforcements might arrive, which meant more armed men could show up. Or worse, ones with powers. But he could already hear sirens, so he should be fine.

Pushing the guy onto the road, Finn dropped the knife as the cops got out of their car. The gang member put his hands in the air and waited for his imminent arrest.

As Finn stood there, watching the police apprehend this gangster, he took a few seconds to convince himself this was real. He had actually stopped four of these guys by himself, and he had prevented a potential murder from happening. The tension in his body gave way to a rush of pride, followed by exhaustion.

One officer approached him, and Finn pointed in the direction of the remaining criminals. At the beginning, the man thought Finn was a criminal, then he realized Finn was on an Aegis mission. His tone still had a cold edge to it, though.

The conversation concluded after a few more words, and Finn glanced to the side to see the cargo from the white van being unloaded. It was a metal cube lined with neon lights and a glowing center with strange markings on it. He managed to take a picture from a distance. Scrolling through the Aegis app, he found a mission for gathering intel on Venin, and submitted his photo.

Having confirmed that the gangsters were all in cuffs, Finn made his way over to the other building and walked up the stairs. Behind a dusty old chair was a crouching girl, turning frantically at the sound of footsteps behind her. She relaxed when she saw who it was. Beckoning her to come with him, he made his way out.

This whole experience was surreal. He replayed the fight in his head, and went over each mistake he could identify and how to fix them. Frustrating as it was, practice alone wasn’t going to help him solve every issue. He frowned. If this was how he did against normal humans, what would he do if he encountered an actual villain? Those credits couldn’t come fast enough.

At the bottom of the stairs, he realized he hadn’t been speaking very much, too focused on his performance evaluation. “Are you alright?” he asked the girl.

She just nodded.

Finn kept talking as he opened the front door. “I almost didn’t realize you were here. If that guy had just shot you instead of sending his lackey…” he trailed off.

She looked unnerved at that, and Finn cringed internally at how badly he was messing this up. He was supposed to reassure the victim, not remind them how close they came to certain death.

“Thank you,” he heard the girl say in a soft voice behind him as they stepped out into the alley.

“It was nothing,” he replied. “Just don’t wander around alone in these kinds of places at night. Don’t you have a safety routing app?”

“No, I do. I’m sorry. I was just dealing with a lot. I- I did something I can never undo, and I just wanted to get away from it all, and then I ended up…” She sighed. “I was lucky you happened to be here.”

Finn took a closer look at her. An immaculate glittering red dress embraced her tall figure, boosted even further by a set of high heels. Her hair and makeup were ruined, however. He figured she’d been crying from the mascara trailing down from her slanted eyes. But he couldn’t tell if her tears came before or after she ran into the thugs.

A moment later, he nodded as he checked for credits on his phone. Still nothing.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

Finn paused. He hadn’t thought about it a great deal, but he supposed he now had a better understanding of what did and didn’t work for him in battle. That warranted a suitable name.

“Shade,” he decided. “Call me Shade.”