Kenji looked down at his shaking hands. The red light was leaking through the seams of his DIY suit, casting an eerie glow on the gravel rooftop. Below, the chaos was a dull roar, but Hana—standing dangerously close to the police cordons—looked terrified.
"Stay cool, Kenji," he whispered, his voice echoing mechanically inside the respirator. "Be the ninja, not the nuke."
He spotted the industrial HVAC unit near the center of the bank's roof. With a concentrated burst of speed—a mere "tap" of his power—he blurred across the roof. To any onlooker, it was just a flicker of red static in the corner of their eye. He ripped the vent cover off with his Enhanced Strength, the metal groaning like a wounded animal.
The Infiltration
He dropped into the ventilation shaft, moving with the grace of a predator. His Storm Sense was screaming now. He could feel the biological "hum" of the hostages below—thirty-two hearts beating in a frantic, syncopated rhythm. And then, there was the "Grounder." The villain felt like a cold, dead void in the electrical field of the building.
Kenji crawled through the ducts until he reached a grate directly above the lobby. He peered down.
The Scene: The entire floor was covered in a foot-deep layer of thick, black tar. The hostages were stuck like flies in amber, their legs fused to the floor.
The Villain: A man in a tattered trench coat, his hands buried in the sludge, literally pumping more of the substance out of his pores.
The Ticking Clock: The sludge was rising. In five minutes, the hostages wouldn't just be stuck; they'd be buried.
"Okay, Leo," Kenji thought, tapping his earpiece. "The floor is lava... well, sticky lava. I can't touch the ground or I'm a sitting duck."
"Use the walls, Ken!" Leo's voice crackled in his ear. "If you're fast enough, gravity is just a suggestion. Remember the physics we studied? You have the friction!"
The Rescue: Red Wall-Run
Kenji didn't wait for a plan. He kicked the grate open and plummeted.
He didn't hit the floor. He slammed his lead-lined boots into the marble pillar, the red lightning arching out to give him a split second of magnetic-like grip. He began to Wall-Run, a horizontal streak of crimson light circling the lobby.
"What the—?!" The Grounder looked up, his eyes widening as a red blur hissed past his head.
Kenji didn't punch him. Instead, he used his Kinetic Infusion. Every time he passed a hostage, he reached out and touched the sludge trapping them.
ZZZT!
A controlled burst of red electricity shattered the chemical bonds of the tar, turning the sticky mess into brittle, harmless ash. One by one, the hostages fell free.
"Hey! Get out! The back exit!" Kenji yelled, his voice-modulator making him sound like a vengeful ghost.
The Stand-Off
The Grounder roared, his arms transforming into massive, dripping maces of black sludge. "I don't know who you are, kid, but you're messing with the Puppet Master's payroll!"
He swung a massive glob of tar at the wall, aiming right for Kenji's path.