City of Masks: Vigilante origins

Chapter four: Testing your limits

ALIAS profile name: Impulse, the wildcard of the original vanguard.

Master type: had complete control over electricity to the extreme that she could travel through electrical wire & control machines under the condition they had a circuit board.

Caucasian woman, 5'9" , of athletic build, natural light blue hair & blue eyes.

Wore a tight black/blue costume with a short spiky blue cape.

A true prodigy as far as master-types are concerned, it was a shame to hear from the Vanguard that Impulse left without word, just three months after Chimera-girl's passing.

7 Year career (MIA) 28 arrests, 10 Evab Takedowns, 18 civilian rescues

September 26th

I awoke sometime later, being buffeted by the smelly hot exhaust of an underground vent. My shirt was stuck to my chest caked with dried blood. I slowly crawled to my feet, every sharp movement threatening to split me open. How did I let this happen? I had beaten the man, & even still, because of my sloppiness I allowed myself to be shanked half to death & left for dead like this. Which begs the question, how was I still alive? I peeled my sticky shirt back to observe the multiple wounds. I had been stabbed about four or five times. Fortunately I was no longer bleeding, the holes in my flesh had scabbed over already. However they were tear jerking to the touch. I knew Abnormals healed at a faster rate but this was frankly unbelievable. All of those puncture wounds targeted normally vital areas of my body, such as my lungs & liver, & yet, here I was still standing. Except no I wasn't because standing so quickly caused me to go light handed & fall to my knees again.

It was then I finally looked at my hands. My fingertips on my right hand were coated in blood. I stared in confusion wondering how they got like that until I reasoned that my hand must have fallen in the blood & I just only now noticed. No reason to assume it was his blood.

I needed to go home quickly, before anyone spotted me, & take a long nice hot shower. Mostly because I was freaking cold but washing all the blood off me would be a nice bonus. What time was it? I checked my phone. 10:47am.

Crap! if Josh wakes up to find me missing he is going to have it out with me. I need to get home without making a scene.

The apartment elevator was taken, so in order to avoid small talk covered in my own blood while I smelt like marinated garbage, I decided to head up the stairs instead. I kept my jacket taut over my chest to hide most of the blood from any suspicious glances I might catch. However any close inspection was going to catch me looking mighty guilty. Finally I reached the apartment & dropped the keys once as I hastily opened the door & flew inside just as Josh's bedroom door opened. That's just perfect! I switched tact, making it look like I was going for the fridge so that he could only see my side & back profile.

"Did you only just get home now, Elliot? Where have you been?" Josh yawned.

"Oh you know," I deflected, hastily, "just out & about doing my errands."

Thankfully I was dealing with zombie Josh at the moment which gave me a chance to get to my room without raising concern.

He flopped out the yoga mat as he usually did & began his morning stretches.

Now I just had to figure out how to do that.

"Oh yeah, did you let everybody know you're still alive?"

"Uh huh," I bobbed my head, scouring all of our fridge's contents. "You can call them yourself if you don't believe me."

On my shelf I had leftover Chinese food I could probably throw, a couple bottles of beer, a six pack of yogurt cups I bought, ate one & then forgot about. Meanwhile Josh's shelf was much better organized with Asian sauces, a tupper-ware for leftovers, a prepped lunch wrap & a carton of eggs. I caught myself leering at that lunch wrap longer than I meant to.