Lance ran about two blocks before seeing what the source of the commotion was. Three gang members were surrounding a single lady to mug her. He kept quiet until he got closer; in order to avoid spooking them away before he could catch them. He walked up behind the men, signalling to the lady to not pay attention to him so his cover wouldn’t be blown. He wound one arm back to get ready to knock the center man in the back of the neck when a shout from his left caused them to turn around.
“Three men picking on one lady?” the masked man proclaimed; his uniform was green with golden lining, the design seemed to be reminiscent of the costume style of a Luchador; a Mexican wrestler. One of the muggers pulled their gun, and shot, grazing his shin as he jumped out of the way. Spotting the bit of blood that fell to the ground, he guessed this man’s powers didn’t include any that protected him from mundane weaponry.
“Hey meatshield! Cover me will ya!” the man called over as he rolled across the ground. Once he settled in a crouching position he put a hand to the ground, a slight tremble running along towards the muggers. The three began to move out of the way while trying to get their guns ready.
“The name’s Lance!” He called back, disregarding the wave, as whatever it was, it wouldn’t harm him. He struck one of the muggers in the chin with an upper cut. The man fell back several feet as the wave hit them, robbing them all of their balance. Lance kept a wide stance to keep the trembling from making him fall as the other two turned back to face him, each wobbling and waving trying to keep their balance at the same time.
“Whatever!” the other man called out “I need a moment to charge my attack” that made both of the muggers turn back to him; Lance just wanted to bury his face in his hands. This guy must be a new hero; there’s no way an experienced hero would ever shout battle plans right in front of the enemy.
lunging forward, Lance grabbed the end of one of the guns with his hand just as it fired; the bullet stopping at the end of the barrel where his hand was; his sudden movement causing the other man to turn and fire at him; the bullet striking his neck and falling down. These thugs had remarkable aim; he remembered back when several dozen shots might be fired without a single person getting hit.
Without skipping a beat, Lance pulled the gun out of the man’s stunned hands, and proceeded to beat him upside the head with it, a little brutish, but it took him to the ground easily enough, the last man got the picture though and turned to run, unfortunately, the other hero had apparently charged enough to launch his next attack, an semi-spherical distortion passed by Lance’s face; of the few powers that caused that kind of effect, Lance figured the most likely was the ability to project kinetic energy.
The energy hit the last man in the back, knocking the wind out of him and pushing him to the ground. With the three of them down, Lance pulled his cuffer out of his pocket. The cuffer was a device all heroes are given, it projected a pair of energy based cuffs on the arms and legs of a person it was used on; the down side to it was that the cuffs were fairly weak when first generating, making it impractical to use them before incapacitating the criminal first.
Once three were cuffed, and the police had arrived to take the three away, a representative from the Heroes League brought the two of us aside for debriefing.
“Those thugs were about to rip that lady apart” the other hero declared “and meatshield over there was just mozying along like nothing was wrong, Its a lucky thing I was here to help” Lance gave him a sidelong glance; he knew what was going on, the guy was trying to get primary credit and stick him with ‘assist’ credit. He remained quiet though; the representative spoke first. that was the unspoken rule.
“I see” the representative said, his uniform was a full body white with the Heroes League symbol; H/L on his chest. He pulled a bookkeeping device from his pocket and continued “Kinetic Hornet is it? I see you are new so I’ll let you know, in these debriefings, you are expected to be courteous to your fellow heroes, you are all on the same side, now… Lance, what did you see when you arrived on the scene?”
“I saw these three men ganging up on that woman, likely with the intent of robbery” he began “due to my lack of ranged powers, I was attempting to get in close so that I could catch at least one of them for questioning when Hornet appeared on the scene.” he tactfully left out his feelings about being interrupted, and quickly but carefully formed the next phrase “His assistance was helpful in capturing all three of the men”
Lance had been on the losing end of enough of these interviews to know he was going to get primary credit at this point. A lot of these interviews were pure politics; you had to make it clear who was first on the scene and who was in the role of assistant, but if it came down to squabbling and fighting over primary credit; it was not uncommon to have it marked as ‘undetermined’ with both heroes only receiving assist credit.