Reinforcements

A beast leapt over my head and full-body tackled Phet, knocking him down to the ground and pinning one of his muscly arms.

Beast was the only way that I could adequately describe the thing that had leapt over my head.

Instead of skin, it had heavy armour plating covering its body, leathery and cracked. It was strong and muscly, with four arms and legs that bent at awkward angles, almost similar to the leg of a frog, just much more built up. Its head was also heavily armoured, with a crest of bone covering its elongated skull.

It used that heavy crest to headbutt Phet in the face, bloodying his nose. Using his free hand, Phet struck the creature across the face. While he may have been small even by human standards, smaller still next to the beast, the impact of his strike boomed throughout the street. For a moment the creature was stunned, but it never lost its grip on the smaller Powered.

It recovered in moments and tossed the man away, through the wall of the theatre and through a few more by the sound of it, before giving chase to its prey.

Relief flooded through me like a wave and I almost crumpled underneath it.

"You doing alright there?" The girl who had spoken before asked.

I turned, heavy on my feet, to see three people standing next to another vehicle. All three were wearing masks of some description, but from build alone, I could tell that the other two were both guys.

The girl took a step forward, a cocky smile spread across her face, "You know, you saved us an awful lot of hassle tonight," she said.

I couldn't tell what she looked like under her domino mask, and the rest of her costume didn't give me any clues either. She was dressed almost completely in black, with two white stripes diagonally going over the bulletproof vest and armoured trousers that she wore.

In a previous life, she might have looked like some kind of paramilitary contractor, as it stood everything about her screamed Powered.

I didn't know what to say, really. Was I doing alright? No. To be honest, I wasn't, I'd just barely gotten out of a fight with one of the strongest gang leaders in the community. But could I tell these unknown Powereds that, without knowing if they were villainous or looking to take advantage of me? Equally no.

Instead, I didn't say anything.

"We heard that Phet was out looking for us tonight, and I've gotta admit we were all on edge. Kind of weren't even sure if we were gonna come out tonight. Eventually we just kind of said to hell with it, wing things, see how they turn out. Not our usual MO, but sometimes it has to be done."

Another crash sounded from somewhere deep in the theatre, followed by a beam of light that flickered out just as suddenly as it had started. Whoever the beast was, I hoped they still had the advantage.

"We get there, and lo and behold, Loper is sitting there with a bunch of goons surrounding him. Without Phet, though, Looper knew he couldn't take on four Powereds and ran. Your doing, right?" The girl asked, almost babbling with the amount she was talking.

The girl waited a few moments for me to reply, but I still wasn't sure what to say. I felt like I was in some sort of dream, or a nightmare.

"Wildthing shouldn't be able to handle Phet as well as she is, the hell did you do to him?"

"I uh… stun weapons, high voltage, think it was a bad power interaction?" I ventured, glad to be asked something about my weaponry. Whenever people mentioned crafting my power seemed to get the better of me, I couldn't help but weigh in on things.

"Yeah well, he's clearly not holding up too well, so whatever you did definitely hit the spot," she laughed. "Still, he'll work it out eventually, so we've gotta move."

Did she expect me to go with her or something? Her and her two…no, three teammates. That beast was a person, a girl no less.

"Okay, introductions first," She went on. "The big scary one taking on Phet right now is Wildthing, the guy on the left is Bastion, the guy on the right is Pulsewave, and last but certainly not least, I'm Crashcourse!"

I went back to clamming up, unsure of how to respond to the deluge of information.

"Look, I get you're scared, first night out and all that, but we really can't stand around here for much longer," She said, a point that was punctuated by another guttural roar and a blast of twin green beams that were much bigger than before. "Want us to get you out of here?"

I shook my head, to which the girl offered me a shrug in response.

"Well, lemme put it this way Sparky, in less than a minute a big shot from the PHA is going to come soaring over the rooftops with a happy-go-lucky hero smile on their face. They're gonna find two bad guys involved in a Powered fight that's destroying a bunch of, I'll admit abandoned, property," Her smile turned almost sinister. "You're gonna need to run."

With that said, the three of them got back into their vehicle, and the beast- Wildthing- came springing out of the hole in the wall, blood streaming down one side of its monstrous face.

I couldn't believe what had happened.

From their heights and Crashcourse's voice, it was easy to tell that they were all around my age.

It wasn't the craziest leap of logic to figure that the kids that Phet had been talking about killing at the beginning of this messed up fight had in fact been them all along.

And they were villains.

And I had helped them.

And they wanted me to come with them, which meant… they thought I was a villain too.