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Zinerva shifted her head to watch the sunrise through her window, the brilliant orange glow painting the interior of her apartment and playing over her exposed muscles and veins. The high-rise apartment wasn’t exactly cheap, being situated in the heart of the downtown Denver, but the view from the skyscraper was worth it. The windows in the living room stretched from floor to ceiling, giving her a panoramic perspective of the city as she watched its inhabitants begin to fill the streets.

It was beautiful, really. She adjusted her nearly severed head with one tentacle to better take in the view, letting out a happy sigh. Sleep was more of a luxury these days, with the way that her regeneration mitigated the effects of sleep deprivation by clearing out all the metabolic waste and other nasties that would otherwise accumulate in her brain, so she had more opportunities to see sights like these.

But just as the sun could not lounge about the horizon indefinitely, so too was Zinerva compelled to begin with her day.

She removed her probing appendages from her neck, telling the cells that made up her experimental set of vocal cords to undergo cell death and autolysis, and reconstructed her more usual set of vocal cords as the neck wounds began sealing themselves over. Her tentacles split into strands of muscle she rearranged the flesh and sinew into its more usual hand-shaped form and regrew her bones. Flopping off of her couch, she checked to make sure she hadn’t smeared blood all over the cushions before shuffling over to her closet, stifling a yawn and stretching. She didn’t need to do either of those things, of course, but her body still rewarded her with a small rush of endorphins.

There weren’t a lot of clothing options to choose from, not when she was just going outside to grab some food and look around the PRT building. She had a shopping list saved on her phone filled with interesting foods that she hoped to interest her power in, and she had the vague beginnings of a plan to register at the PRT as some kind of independent hero so no one would mistakenly attack her if she showed up to a fight as a parahuman.

In the end she picked out her usual outfit, which was a comfy pair of pajamas suitable for wearing outdoors, sunglasses, and a similarly comfortable pair of leather boots she could jog around in. The baggy outfit was something she wouldn’t wear to anything resembling an important event, but since she had nowhere important to be she didn’t really care what anyone seeing her on the streets might think of her. More importantly, the pajama pants had actual pockets, which meant she could just bring her wallet, keys, and phone along without having to bring a purse.

After tucking some loose strands of silver hair behind an ear and adjusting her sunglasses, she left her apartment and jogged over to the elevator, heading straight for the ground floor. It was a somewhat lengthy trip to the bottom, so she spent the time crafting and evaluating plans for surviving a sudden elevator cable failure that dropped her to the bottom of the shaft. It wasn’t very likely, given the large amount of safeties built into elevators, but perhaps a severe lack of maintenance coupled with catastrophic failure might cause such an event. By the time she got to ground floor, she’d settled on a plan of simply taking the fall and not healing her injuries at first while waiting for emergency responders. She’d “miraculously” survive if rescue came, but if it took too long for them to come to her aid with her survival still being plausible, she supposed she’d just have to crawl out of the wreckage herself and pretend she had never been there at all. But then there’d be security footage to deal with, so maybe she’d pretend she’d triggered in the accident?

She shook her head ruefully as she jogged out of the ground floor lobby, giving the receptionists a friendly wave and a smile as she passed them. Maybe it’d be for the best if she just never got into a situation like that all, as there were far too many problems to deal with in that kind of scenario.

Her first stop was a nearby donut shop where she was methodically working her way through all the flavors, avoiding buying too many at once so she wouldn’t attract attention. Truthfully, her power probably wouldn’t find much benefit in eating the different variations of flour and eggs that donuts were comprised of, but she enjoyed the food and, strictly speaking, taking in more exogenous organic mass was still beneficial for her power development.

Strolling down the street to her next destination—another donut shop—she was interrupted mid-bite by a car skidding and tumbling down her street, the noise of screeching metal grating in her ears as it flew past her. She stared at bisected vehicle, confused, then traced its path back to where it came from. Two parahumans were apparently the cause of the damage, one of them taking apart another car with a punch as she watched.

[i]Dangerous[/i]. Zinerva took three perhaps slightly too-fast strides to reach the nearest alleyway, shucking off her boots and sunglasses and leaving them on the ground. An ivory helmet began extruding from her skin, her skin and fat dissolving to allow her bones erupt from her skull before reforming underneath. A similar process began over the rest of her skin as she started climbing the nearby two-story building, slender and intricate armor taking shape as clawed gauntlets helped her dig into the brick exterior of the structure. Her clothes, unfortunately, wouldn’t survive, but luckily she had multiple sets of these pajamas back at her apartment.

Zinerva had never been in a cape fight before, and she had, at one point in time, hoped that she’d never get into one. Nevertheless, she’d resolved a while ago to take a greater responsibility in protecting the things she cherished in the city, and now was perhaps the opportunity to make good on her promise to herself. Two capes blatantly attacking civilians in broad daylight in front of her was something that she didn’t want to walk away from.

But they were dangerous, ridiculously so. One was vaporizing metal with punches, the other casually tossing halves of cars. She didn’t want to close distance with them, not when she had no real chance of winning a melee against either of them at the moment.

By the time she reached the rooftop, thin bone armor was covering her body. It resembled slender plate armor, closely following her figure, and was intricately constructed and filigreed. It was still unfinished and growing thicker by the second, but in the state it was now Metanoia doubted it could even block a small caliber bullet. A shield was forming on her left forearm, but it was still small and very incomplete. Her helmet was the closest to completion, encompassing her entire head and leaving slits for vision, with small flared wing-like shapes adorning the sides. It’d taken her months to design and practice the armor, to make something that would give her a distinct identity she could use or discard as needed, but she couldn’t exactly say she was happy about having to use it.

She dashed to the edge of the rooftop and managed to catch sight of another parahuman confronting the other two, flinching as she saw and heard the gunshot. Then she shuddered as she took in the warped angelic form, nearly falling to her knees at the sudden influx of terror flooding her mind. Ripping her gaze away from the aberration, she took a deep breath and steadied herself, focusing her attention on the two hostile villains just in time to see the angelic cape hurl the remaining half of the car at the other two.

Regardless of the outcome, Metanoia will create a bone spear and hurl it like a javelin toward the general vicinity of where the two hostile capes are after they deal with the car being thrown at them, aiming only to warn and not to hurt. The fragile bone spear will shatter upon impacting a hard surface like the road or the side of a building, though the fragments will only startle and distract and won’t be dangerous enough to injure any bystanders. Metanoia is going to make sure to avoid even getting close to hitting the angelic cape, trying to making it clear that she’s on the angelic cape’s side.