Sam’s office building  vibrated as an explosion shook the city centre. He rushed out of his cubicle and joined his coworkers who were already looking out the large windows that made up one wall of their office.<br/><span style="color: #80BFBF">“Look down in the street!” </span>Someone exclaimed with a gasp. Sam followed his coworkers gaze to the end of the street down below, past a gathering crowd. Smoke poured from the ground floor of a building on the street, it’s windows shattered and frames charred by flames. Another explosion erupted from the main entrance, fire spewing out onto the street and blackening the pavement. Sam’s brow furrowed and his chattering coworkers hushed as a trio of figures emerged from the flames.<br/>Here we go again, Sam thought.<br/><br/>Sirens blared as police vehicles hurtled down the pedestrian street, bypassers hurriedly getting out of the way as they noticed the chorus of sirens.   The cars came to a stop just as a second explosion detonated and blasted out the main entrance of the smoking building. Three figures emerged from the flaming facade as the cars’ drivers and passengers disembarked, taking cover behind their vehicles as the only available cover. While some of them were Scarlet City police officers, the majority of the department was decimated following the massive corruption scandal uncovered by federal agents not long ago. Barely any of the city’s law enforcement infrastructure had been left intact, so National Guard units were brought in to supplement regular police officers that had been transferred from various other jurisdictions.<br/>The guardsmen slung their rifles around and took up positions, using the cars as cover and to brace their weapons. The three figures walked out of the smoke that now streamed up into the air, their features becoming clearer as they approached the semi-circle of squad cars and trucks that surrounded the blown out building.<br/><span style="color: #4000BF">“That’s them, watch out for his -”</span>, an officer shouted before being cut off by a brief but deafening bang accompanied by a blinding light.<br/><br/>Aimpoint, a superhero with the FSA, loaded his DMR while sitting on the outboard bench of a little bird helicopter. Scarlet City was a blur beneath him as his hands deftly prepared his Scar-H TPR rifle, ensuring it was in perfect order before engaging a trio of villains that had been engaged by federal forces downtown. The group were responsible for several incidents recently, each time racking up a body count. Only two of them had powers, but that was more than enough. One, uncreatively dubbed Flashbang by the media, effectively replicated the effects of his namesake, which was a nasty surprise for anyone in his way. The other powered criminal had some kind of physical augmentation ability that hadn’t been fully investigated yet.<br/>Not only was approaching by air an effective way to rapidly respond to incidents across the city which was becoming all too necessary these days, but Aimpoint also hoped it would completely eliminate the danger from Flashbang.<br/>The little bird slowed as it approached the pillar of smoke that billowed into the sky, lowering to hover just above the rooftops where it whipped around in an arc to give Aimpoint a clear view up and down the street. Below him the police officers and national guards were locked in a gunfight with the three villains who were moving amongst the police vehicles, having incapacitated or killed those taking cover behind some of them. Aimpoint brought up his rifle and almost immediately acquired a target. His abilities allowed his nervous system to operate at a much faster speed than average, coupled with slow-motion-like perception of events when his adrenaline spiked and abnormal fast twitch muscle fibres, he was an extremely effective gunfighter.<br/>He normally operated on the other side of the country, but had been redeployed to support the rest of the federal units that were brought in to compete with the spike in criminal activity since the mass arrests that took place after the corruption was rooted out. Not for the first time since his arrival in Scarlet City, Aimpoint cursed Casey and Thorne for kicking up such a sh*t storm for the rest of them to deal with. He kicked other thoughts out of his head, steadied his breathing, then got to work.<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>Kira pocketed her phone and flopped down onto her bed, finally relieved. She had just finished talking to Sam after ringing him the instant she got home from school and saw that a gunfight had happened just outside his work. He calmed her down from a near hysteric state, insisting that he hadn’t been near enough to be in any kind of danger, and that it was more or less over before the violence could get out of hand. He also told her that unfortunately he would be late home from work because of the incident, so Kira would have to make her own dinner - cooking was yet another thing she was criminally lazy in regards. An odd thought popped into Kira’s mind as she lay there. It occurred to her that if she made it through the cadet program, she might someday be the one dealing with a situation like that, just like Casey or Mongrel.