Book 2: Chapter 26: Conflict (1/2)
Before anything else, Dan needed to decide if he should hide his own identity. What he was about to do was, strictly speaking, legal. His crisis volunteer certificate gave him the same privileges as a police officer if he were to encounter villains while performing his duties. Dan was, technically, allowed to use his power in the defense of himself and others. It just... wasn't something people tended to actually do.
Dan could handle being unusual. What worried him, was showing what his power could actually accomplish to a building full of feds. His paperwork was solid, backed by Anastasia, but it could only cover him for so much. Dan fully planned on firing off a ball bearing in someone's general direction, and he couldn't really explain that away.
It should go without mentioning how bad an idea it was, showing his face to a pack of armed gangbangers while he thwarts their plan. Dan wasn't exactly a 'known' entity, but why take the risk? Well, the answer was simple. Vigilantes were, both under law and public perception, almost indistinguishable from villains. If Dan threw a mask on his face as he tried to fight off the Coldeyes' attack, he was liable to get shot in the back by a confused federal agent.
That would be suboptimal to say the least. Dan couldn't hide himself. The consequences of doing so outweighed the risks. He needed to limit himself to his known abilities, which admittedly, were many. No cutting with his veil, he would have to fully teleport things, and he needed to lay hands on at least a part of his target. Normally, Dan would just run his veil through the ground to reach people. It was harder on moving targets, though, and he'd have to get closer besides. If he was going to look suspicious, he'd rather be loud and overt. The quiet, sneaky strategy wouldn't be an option here, with so many eyes around, watching.
So he, in turn, watched them.
Dan knew the brief ceasefire wouldn't last. He needed to take advantage of it while he still had a clear view of the situation. Soon enough, things would dissolve back into chaos, and he'd have to be ready for it. His eyes roamed the gathering, taking it all in. Never had he been so glad for Cornelius' lessons in memorization. Even the man's drunken ramblings on threat prioritization were coming into use.
The first priority was collateral damage. Which enemy could cause the most destruction, the easiest? Which could kill you or your teammates, even when they weren't aiming at you. These enemies were the rarest sort. Upgrades generally did not scale well. Something that could kill a man in an instant, often could not as easily kill a group of men. There just weren't many upgrades available that could produce that sort of result, even with mutations taken into account. This was, of course, by design. The dozens of watchdog organizations that controlled and registered upgrades constantly kept an eye out for that sort of threat.
Nobody wanted another Cold Star.
Regardless, he hadn't seen anything particularly destructive from the villains. Danger they had in spades, but crashing a semi-truck into a building would have been unnecessary if they had the power to blow it open themselves. The team was built with precision in mind. The most threatening individual that Dan could see, at least in terms of collateral damage, was Dunkirk himself. His shout was widespread enough to cover the entire battlefield, but it didn't seem particularly powerful. Gunfire, then, was the main threat to Dan's life.
His gaze roamed over the six armed and armored gunmen, their positions and weapons, how they stood, the angles of their barrels. He committed it all down to memory with speed born of painstaking repetition. They likely had upgrades increasing their speed, reflexes, or accuracy. Or all three. Certainly, the armor indicated that they were no tougher than the average person. Unlike the bare-chested man who had first emerged from the trailer— who was, even now, standing out in the open, unafraid and taunting—these men were actually utilizing cover. His approach on them would have to be nearly instantaneous, else he'd get himself shot.
Priority number two: speed. Who could he take out quickly and efficiently? The armored giant was going to be a problem. Dan had seen the way bullets had just splashed against him, and felt how he twisted the metal of the cargo trailer as it touched his skin. Even if he could teleport away the armor, Dan was dubious that his railgun trick would work on the man. The feds would have to figure out a way to deal with him.
Dan's biggest advantage was that he could simply blink past cover. If he was right about the gunmen, disarming them would effectively take them out of the fight. The Coldeyes' members would be a little more difficult, given that they obviously had more overtly dangerous upgrades. Most didn't even bother wielding firearms, though Dan could see the grip of a pistol sticking out of Zim's waistband and a submachine gun slung across his shoulder.
They weren't bulletproof, at least. Each of them had conjured up some sort of defense to deal with veritable swarm of gunfire being passed between the opposing sides. Their upgrades all seemed fairly similar, which made sense given what Dan had learned about how gangs operated. They likely only had one or two upgrade patterns that were distributed between gang members. The lucky ones, the ones who mutated something useful, were promoted up the ranks and sent into battle.
There were seven cold-themed villains that he could see, plus Zim, but they had perhaps only three upgrade variants between them. The first was the ice golem upgrade. Two Crew members were encased from head to toe in a layer of shifting, grinding ice. It was thick enough to block bullets and, though they moved slowly, their swings had enough mass behind them to dent steel.
The second upgrade was the fog generator. Dan could see it pouring slowly out of the man's nose and mouth. Where it fell, he could see ice forming. Tiny crystals, frozen water droplets, hung in the clouds, catching light and twinkling. The fog pooled around the man's feet, slowly creeping outwards. He was tense, waiting for an opportunity to throw cover back out for his allies. He was the only one with his upgrade that Dan could see.