The Nikon cost six hundred dollars.
Aria turned the display model over in her hands for the third time, checking the weight, the grip, the way the dial clicked under her thumb. It was solid, a model her old camera would have approved of.
Her old camera had died last Tuesday. She'd saved up two summers of allowance for that thing when she was twelve, and it had followed her everywhere since. Field trips. Mark's baseball games. The one road trip where Dad actually stayed the whole week.
When it finally gave out, she'd held a small funeral in her room. Mark attended under duress and gave a eulogy that got him a pillow to the face.
She missed it. She knew it was stupid to miss a camera, but she missed it anyway.
"That model's popular, but for a first camera, I'd point you at something more entry-level," the salesperson said, already turning toward the cheaper shelf.
"It's not my first. I want this one. Does the kit lens come bundled or are you charging me twice?"
He blinked. "Uh, let me check."
Aria raised the Nikon and framed the crowd through the viewfinder while she waited, spotting multiple moments that caught her eye.
A dad wrangling twins by the fountain. Two old women sharing one giant pretzel. A guy by the escalator who was maybe cute.
She lowered the camera before that last thought could go anywhere.
Her standards these days came from a higher shelf anyway. Mom got saved from a rolling car by a literal superhero space alien and married him. It was hard to settle for a normal guy after growing up on that story.
Mark said that she had unrealistic standards, and yeah, she agreed. But a girl could dream.
Dad said they were bound to get their powers anytime now. She looked forward to it. Becoming a superhero wasn't exactly her dream like her stupid brother's was, but in a world as dangerous as theirs, having superpowers would be a lifesaver in more ways than one.
Flight was the only reason she wanted to get her powers so badly. Aria couldn't wait to start travelling around the world. Imagine all the gorgeous photos she could take.
Maybe she'd go to Alaska first? She always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis there. Oh! What about Hawaii? She heard it was one of the best places for stargazing and astrophotography.
The salesperson came back with a boxed unit and a bundle price that was almost fair. Aria paid and tucked the box under her arm.
Her smile vanished when the wall three storefronts down exploded. Concrete and glass sprayed across the hallway, a mannequin cartwheeled past the fountain, and something orange and enormous came through the hole in the wall shoulder-first, roaring.
Then everyone was screaming and running at once.
Aria got shoved sideways by the crowd, losing her footing and catching herself on a kiosk. The exits were a crush of bodies. The supervillain from the wall bellowed again, and a bench went spinning overhead like a thrown toy.
She dropped behind the kiosk, camera box crushed to her chest, and made herself small.
Wanting to call Mom or Dad, her hand instinctively went to her pocket, only her phone wasn't there. But she always put it there! Why wasn' it-
Oh. Right. Mark had spilled his cereal on her phone this morning and broke it.
Her desire to inflict violent sisterly love on her brother pierced through all the fear and adrenaline.
"Markus Sebastian Grayson! Just wait until I get home!"
OOO
The setting sun painted the sky in shades of blue and orange, casting long shadows across the ground. In stark contrast to the thing of beauty above, police sirens and the screams of people filled the air.
Leon stopped to a screeching halt at the mall's parking lot and slapped his bare palm against the concrete.
The mall bloomed in his head, hundreds of signatures stampeding for the exits. A dense knot of them jammed at the north doors. Two heavy contacts were in the central atrium. One was massive and moving like a wrecking ball. The other was smaller and doing his best to dodge.
Leon pulled on both brands. His trusted friends appeared beside him in a wash of light with Lily already in his battle form.
"Lily, go to the east side's upper floor," Leon said, pointing in said direction. "Titan's wife and kid are watching his fight from there. Get them out, then clear the north doors before someone gets trampled. Nyx, find anyone wounded. Prioritize the ones with the worst injuries."
"Understood."
"Okay!"
Nyx and Lily shot off as Leon went through the doors.
Rampage was easy to find. Nine feet of armored bulk stood over Titan in the middle of the atrium. Armor the color of old rust wrapped around him from neck to heel, and he was raising fists in the shape of morning stars for a blow that would likely go through Titan and the floor.
Leon crossed the distance in the time it took the fists to come down. He caught Titan by the collar, and the two of them were forty feet away just as the impact crater finished forming.
"You good?"
Titan spat blood and knelt on one knee. Stone plating crawled back over the cracks in his stone hide. "...Been better. That thing hits like a train. Who are you?"
"Wild Card. Cecil sent me," Leon said. His hands glowed with Healing Light. "I'll deal with him. Go. Your family's covered."
"I feel like a new man." Standing tall, Titan patted his chest in surprise. "Thanks. I owe you one."
Rampage turned. Up close, the spiky armor was made up overlapping orange-gold metallic plates and riveted armor sections. The helmet similar, having no holes or gaps. It was shaped as if someone molded the helmet using a cactus.
"You," Rampage said, pointing a morning star at Leon. "You're one of Stedman's. They told me about you. Told me to expect you."
"Then I guess only one of us failed to meet expectations. You're supposed to be in a hole somewhere."
"They're getting me OUT!" He slammed a fist into the floor, and marble buckled in a ten-foot ring. "Out of this armor! All I have to do is kill Titan, so MOVE!"
He charged. Each step shattered the tiled floor and made the ground tremble.
Leon shifted to the side and let the man of metal blow past him before slamming an elbow into the armor's flank as it went. The impact rang like a church bell and did nothing.
Rampage wheeled and swung again. And again. Wide, furious arcs that demolished a jewelry kiosk, sheared through a support column, and sent a bench pinwheeling toward the crowd still jammed at the north doors.
Leon caught the bench out of the air and set it down. The man couldn't touch him. Rampage could swing until next week and never lay a finger on him. But every miss was a hit the building couldn't take, and the building still had people in it.
Can't trade blows with him. Can't burn him or blow him up either. Fine. I'll take the armor.
Leon slipped inside the next swing and put his palm flat against the chestplate, reaching into the metal the way he'd reach into any steel.
Nothing happened. The metal was right there under his hand, cold and solid. But to his metalbending, it might as well have been empty air.
Something else answered, though. A low hum in his mind stirred, and he felt the urge to break it.
Leon frowned. What is that?
He couldn't dwell on it. Had to dodge a grab and try lightning instead, shooting a bolt into the armor. Current crawled across the surface, dimmed, and died. Rampage didn't even slow down.
C'mon! Even lightning?
Despite only encountering two so far, Leon was starting to grow tired of supervillains with invulnerability and an immunity to electricity.
Rampage tore a planter out of the floor, tree and all, and hurled it. Leon split it down the middle with a hand chop and was already moving before the halves landed.
All right. Change of plans. Bending the armor or lightning weren't viable options either. But he didn't need to knock Rampage out to beat him.
Leon stretched his arms to the sides and used Metal Kaiser. Walls a foot and a half thick rose from the ground around Rampage.
"You really think you can TRAP ME?"
He hammered at them, each blow leaving massive dents and cracks. Placing his hands on the box in a hurry, Leon repaired any and all damage as soon as they formed while reinforcement poured into the structure.
The bastard's strength was no joke. Leon estimated it would take at least another half minute of reinforcing the box to contain him without the box eventually breaking.
Rampage screamed and swung but got nowhere. The box began closing over his shoulders just as somewhere behind Leon, on the far side of the large atrium, concrete groaned.
He felt it through his enhanced spatial awareness before he heard it. The concrete of the pillar anchoring the suspended wooden ceiling's wires, cracked by one of Rampage's first misses, chose that moment to quit.
The suspended ceiling dropped. A woman was under it. Her eyes closed and her arms came up on pure instinct.
Damn it!
Giving up on containing Rampage, Leon turned and shot more energy into his reinforcement, making the world slow down. He tried earthebending a solid tent around her and got no reaction. Whatever she was standing on, he couldn't earthbend it.
The ceiling continued falling.
Now full-on panicking inside, Leon went all in. Using the Movement Ring's charges, he teleported thrice in quick succession. Space warped, bringing him closer each time.
It wasn't enough. He was barely ten feet away when the wooden ceiling fell on her arms and... stopped?
The fallen ceiling tilted, scraped sideways, and crashed to the floor where she somehow shoved it. She stood in the middle of the debris, coughing, gaping at her own hands.
Leon took one good look at her face and knew it was her. Cecil's file photo had been a school portrait with flat lighting and a practiced smile.
Then what he saw hit him. Aria Grayson got her powers.
Immense relief and dread swirled in his chest. He was relieved because she managed to save herself, but if she had been a normal person instead or hadn't gotten her powers in time...
Rampage bellowed inside the creaking metal box, and Leon shoved the rest of his attention to where it belonged. He rushed back. The walls sealed off at the collar, leaving the man's cactus helmet free and everything below it entombed in reinforced steel.
Rampage thrashed against it. The heavy pounding of metal against metal grated Leon's ears, but the box stood tall.
"Let me out! LET ME OUT! They PROMISED! They said Titan was the price and then I'd be free of this cursed armor!"
"Who promised?" Leon asked.
"I don't... I never saw. There was a voice in my cell and then the door was open!" His voice cracked down the middle. "Eight years... Eight years I've been in this thing! You don't know what it's like! I can't feel ANYTHING through it! I can't even eat or drink!"
Wait. What was it he said before? Cursed armor? Was the man being literal or just hyperbolic? If the armor was cursed, it would explain the feeling he got earlier.
Leon tilted his head. Well, there was no harm in trying, right? Jumping on top of the box, Leon grasped the top of Rampage's helmet.
"Wh-What are you doing?"
"Shush."
Rampage promptly shut up and Leon activated Curse Breaker. It was about time this ability finally got some use.
Starting from his hand, grey veins began spreading to the rest of the armor like a living fungus as he shoved more energy into the ability. A fifth of his current reserves had been drained when Leon felt the curse shatter.
The armor unraveled, falling apart into separate sections starting from the head. Leon quickly metalbent the box open. He watched as a casually dressed bald man, who was all skin and bones, dropped to the floor alongside the clattering armor.
The sight stunned Leon.
"Shit."
He approached the extremely emaciated man and carefully turned him over. Rampage's eyes and cheeks were sunken.
"I'm... free?" Rampage whispered, voice hoarse.
What the fuck happened? He sounded completely healthy just seconds ago.
"Yeah, you're-" Seeing Rampage's skin turn pale, Leon's hands glowed with Healing Light, but Rampage's condition wasn't improving. "Hey! Stay with me, dammit!"
"It's been so long..." Rampage raised his hand, grasping the air as he smiled. "Can finally feel... the air..."
The hand fell.
[Defeated Rampage! Reward: 350 GP]
[Feat Achieved! Contained a rampaging supervillain in a public space with zero civilian casualties. Reward: 50 GP]
Leon ignored the notifications and stared at the man that just died under his watch.
Was the armor and its curse keeping Rampage alive or was the act of breaking the curse the reason he died? Did something else do it? He may never find out.
I don't even know his real name. If I knew this would happen...
He felt conflicted, but there was no point thinking about it now. The man was dead. Besides, Rampage's smile told Leon he was at least glad to be free of the armor before he died.
Leon closed Rampage's eyes and stood to assess his surroundings. The glints of Rampage's scattered armor pieces caught his eye.
"Not like Cecil's gonna find a use for these. Might as well take this loot myself."
Activating Voltaic Reinforcement for a moment, he zipped around the area, shoving all the pieces inside his bag of holding. Within seconds, the floor around Rampage's corpse cleared.
Across the atrium, Nyx hopped between the wounded near the fountain, rings glinting as he closed a gash on a man's scalp while he stared at her. Lily's voice echoed from the north doors, deep and steady, moving the crowd through in rows.
Everything seemed to be handled on their side.
Leon turned back around.
Aria was still standing in the wreckage of the suspended ceiling. Crossing the field of debris, he headed towards her, his shoes crunching on concrete. He stopped a few feet short and touched the ground, wanting to know why he couldn't earthbend it.
The answer was rubber. Leon shook his head and turned his attention back to Aria.
Up close and only seeing her side profile, he noticed specific details first. She was tall enough to nearly look him in the eye despite him growing another few inches these past few weeks, and her straight black hair grew past her lower back. With Measure King, he found out she was about 5'11".
Her clenched hands were shaking. Leon wondered why until he followed her eyes and saw the camera lying in pieces on the ground.
"Six hundred dollars," she spat the words out. "I only had it for four minutes."
Leon sucked in a cold breath. That was a lot of money. Fortunately for her, he had the best ability suited for this situation.
"Reparo."
Aria gasped as the camera and its box slowly became whole again. A laugh came out of her, short and full of disbelief. She looked down at the box in her hands with a bright smile.
"There you go. Good as new," Leon said, smiling under his mask.
Her face lit up and she turned towards him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! How did you do that?"
He shrugged. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."
Aria snorted. "Try me."
"Magic."
"Magic, huh?" Aria hugged her box tighter and gave him a cheeky smile. "I believe you"
A beat of silence passed between them before they had a quick laugh. He didn't even know why they were laughing, but he needed a laugh after everything that just happened and it seemed so did she.
Leon shook his head at the ridiculous moment they just shared. Mark's sister was more chill than he imagined.
Aria looked at the now fallen suspended ceiling. "That should have killed me."
"Yeah."
"But I caught it."
"Yeah."
She gazed at him with an eyebrow raised.
"I'm going to need a longer answer than that."
"Yeahhh."
His response earned him a playful eye roll.
His earpiece crackled. "Wild Card. What's your status?"
Leon held Aria's brilliant blue eyes through the mask. This stranger he'd been briefed on and never met was standing in the aftermath of what seemed to be the worst and luckiest afternoon of her life so far. Honestly, he could say the same.
"Give me a minute, Cecil."
He held out his hand. "Come on. Let's get you to safety."
She looked at the hand for a moment before taking it.