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Metanoia flinched as she watched the car slam into the enemy cape, relaxing slightly when she saw that the villain had caught it and hadn’t been splattered over the road. Her arm muscles coiled and bulged under her armor as she threw the bone spear with a simple motion, not putting all of her strength into the toss. A tightness eased in her chest when the spear landed almost exactly where she wanted it to, a near-perfect warning shot that didn’t hurt anyone and hopefully made it clear to the angelic cape that Metanoia was on her side.

Still, that enemy cape—[i]villain[/i]—was even stronger than Metanoia had thought she was. Despite the furrow carved into the road, the villain stood up casually, seemingly uninjured, and reached for her gun—

The thin, partially-formed bone armor covering Metanoia’s chest and abdomen only slowed the bullets on impact, a spiderweb of cracks emanating from each bullet hole that penetrated her armor as the bullets lodged themselves inside her. It felt like being punched in the chest repeatedly, pain radiating from where each bullet had stopped. She gasped, stumbling and dropping to a knee, her mind running on autopilot to continue repairing, shaping, and thickening her armor. 

She’d torn out her own muscles before, ripped out her eyes, vivisected herself...but she’d never been shot before. Each impact felt like a personal attack, each bullet sent out with the intention to hurt and maim. Weren’t capes supposed to avoid using guns? Wasn’t there something about that in the Unwritten Rules?

Metanoia deadened the nerves around her injuries, flooding the wounds with pain-killing compounds even as the wounds immediately began healing. She left the bullets in, not willing to give away her status as a regenerator, but otherwise redirected crucial organ functions to operate around the obstructions created by the foreign material. Her ruined armor immediately shifted and realigned, the cracks quickly receding like a video playing in reverse even as the armor grew thicker and more intricate by the second. She hadn’t bled much from the bullet wounds, and thus her ivory plate armor was still spotless.

Metanoia watched as the villain who had shot her raced for her building, sprinting far faster than a normal human. There was only one thing she could conclude—or perhaps should have realized far sooner—the villains were obviously disregarding the Unwritten Rules. Metanoia didn’t know if she had it in her to kill someone—she’d never had a real opportunity to do so—and she wasn’t willing to escalate that far, not yet. Still, she was at least drawing the attention of one of the villains, which would give the angelic cape a better fighting chance.

Her armor wasn’t fully grown yet, unfortunately. It was [i]heavy[/i], far heavier than a normal set of plate armor made of metal due to the level of protection she wanted and the simple fact that the strength-to-weight ratio of even compressed bone was still a little worse than tempered steel. She’d need ten or twenty more seconds to reach the optimal thickness of her armor where she could maintain her current form while still being somewhat mobile. Even then, she’d still weigh far less than half a car. Spikes formed at the bottom of her ivory sabatons at that thought, and she stomped down to anchor herself more firmly into the rooftop.

She didn’t start making another bone spear—she didn’t have the time to make a weapon that’d last more than a few hits, she doubted she could swing fast enough in her current form to hit the other cape, and she didn’t want to stab her either, in case the villain’s durability didn’t including penetrating injuries. Instead, she continued increasing the size of her existing shield as the villain began climbing the building, growing small spikes into the front of the shield that wouldn’t penetrate deep enough to severely injure but would hopefully deter the villain’s attacks.

By the time the villain had almost reached the rooftop, the shield was large enough to almost cover her completely if she hunched over, but its thickness was lacking. Metanoia had focused on shunting most of her growth into her other pieces of armor, only putting enough into the shield so that it hopefully would at least be able to take a hit or two before shattering.

As the villain approaches her, Metanoia will attempt to stand her ground, digging her spiked boots into the rooftop and bracing for impact. Her goal is to hopefully shove the other villain back off the rooftop, if possible, and otherwise delay for as long as she can.