[center][h2]Kitsune[/h2][/center]

The city had become a warzone and Akeno had no idea what she was going to do about it.

Over the past hour, from the moment the first… thing appeared and started attacking people to now, she had done nothing but fight. Oversized men with steam-powered muscled who boiled themselves from the inside, enraged people dressed like hospital patients who bite and scratch and flailed at anyone who got close, weird human-animal hybrids and cyborgs and a few unique looking individuals who she refused to approach. A few days ago she had never even seen, let alone fought another person with powers; now it was like a mad scientist had upended the entire contents of their lab onto the streets and she was having to deal with all of it herself.

Up ahead a car rolled past the intersection, completely ablaze and with no one inside that she could see. Overhead, a pair of people with jetpacks roared past, one of them banking around the corner while the other clipped a lamppost and spiralled into the ground. Gunfire, sirens and even the occasional explosion sounded from adjacent streets.

It was chaos.

It was hell.

It was, allegedly, the kind of situation heroes were supposed to deal with, but so far she hadn’t seen any; police, paramedics and a lone fire engine, but no heroes. Well, she had seen a couple of drones flying around that looked like the ones that Grim guy had used, so maybe there was someone else out there.

The sound of metal being dragged along tarmac caught her attention and she turned around to see a group of men wearing the same outfit and masks approaching her; five of them in total, the one in the middle dragging a steel pipe while the others were unarmed. They’d seen her and were clearly looking for a fight; normally she wouldn’t oblige, five was more than she was usually willing to deal with by herself, but there was nowhere safe out here tonight and running would just take her to another threat. Besides, these guys didn’t looked too bad, tall and thin unlike the thugs she usually dealt with; the only thing worrying about them was the strange uniformity they had with each other.

Probably nothing.

They started to split up, spreading out to surround her, and rather than let them do so she rushed forward and attacked the one furthest to the right. A jumping, spinning back kick, the same one she used to knock out the telepath a couple nights ago, and the guy hit the ground even easier than she had expected. Then she was on to the next, kicking his lower leg to unbalance him before throwing a series of punches at his head; he blocked by throwing his arms over his head and she knocked him away with a kick to his chest instead.

She had a brief second to wonder about how easily they went down before the remaining three, no four, all rushed her at once and forced her to back away. Fights against groups didn’t often go the way they did in the movies, with the henchmen forming a circle and taking turns getting knocked out one or two at a time; if they were smart they all rushed in a once, overwhelmed the opponent with numbers and bringing them to the ground. What usually followed after that couldn’t be called a fight. It was the same now, four people all bearing down on her as she retreated and sought to keep them from surrounding or reaching her, hoping to split them up again.

One pulled to far ahead and she reversed direction, charging back in and slamming an elbow into their chest that doubled them over. She pushed them towards a pair, forcing them to catch their friend or trip over him as she went after the third and chopped down on their neck with a forearm strike. They fell like a puppet with their strings cut and she spun towards the pair and launched another back kick at the first as they untangled themselves. Behind them she could see the others she had already dealt with picking themselves up or being picked up by others. The two she had knocked down had become four and she only just now noticed the one with the pipe was still back there, watching the whole fight while leaning on their weapon like a walking stick. Things began to click into place right as a hand grabbed her ankle and she reacted by wrenching her foot free and then stomping on the grasping hand; turning to look over her shoulder she saw [i]two[/i] people lying there were before there had only been one.

Backing away again, she put distance between herself and the now twelve-strong group that was approaching her. Clones maybe, duplicates or even illusions; they felt real enough when she hit them, but if they were all in her head why wouldn’t they. Either way, she decided to activate her power, cranking up the heat all across her body and adding a slight shimmer to the air around her. If all of this was fake, or if [i]they[/i] were fake then she could afford to be a little less careful with how she dealt with them. When the next one reached her and threw a sloppy punch her way she grabbed its wrist, skin immediately beginning to sizzle under her fingers, and drove her other forearm into the back of their elbow to snap it backwards.

It had… less than the desired effect as the man simple lunged for her with his other arm and forced her to kick him away.

“They don’t feel pain.” She glanced towards the voice and saw the one with the pipe had drawn closer, walking towards her with the weapon hefted over his shoulder. “They don’t feel… anything.”

The distraction was enough that she didn’t react quickly enough when the rest, more than twelve now, rushed her. The first she fended off with a hand shoved in their face, mask and skin burning from the contact and the second she tripped and shoved back into the rest of the pack, but the weight of so many bodies was too much and she was pushed back against a parked car. Each of her arm, still blazingly hot, were grabbed and pulled to the side while the press of bodies prevented her from getting any leverage with her legs. Only her head was left clear, the copies, clones or whatever else ducking down or standing off to the side so that she had a clear view of what must have been the original.

“No pain… no anger… no joy or sadness… no remorse… no guilt…” She tried to throw the copies off of her, straining her arms as hard as she could, but there was no way she was throwing a dozen or more people off of her. “They did… at first… they each had… a little of everything… from me… but when they disappeared… I never… got it back…” They gripped the pipe with both hands, holding it like a baseball bat as they turned their shoulders away from her. “And now [i]we[/i]… don’t feel… anything.”

The pipe came down and everything went black.