Woooh, I can hardly wait

When you bought your equipment you already knew that you were missing something, gloves. If years of bouldering and parcour as a hobby have shown you something, than it's how useful gloves are when working with rough surfaces and edges, and while mordern architecture is actually quite good to climb on, it's by no means built with smooth materials. In other words: your climbing will be rather uncomfortable due to lack of gloves, but you just didn't have the money for a pair, you <u>already</u> have to exercise some serious self-control with money this month. But apart from that small hiccup the very first part of your patrol goes smoothly, the appartment building you live in was specifically built for the universities students and the walls outside the appartments share the insides traits, they all look the same, meaning they're easy to scale.

Soon you reach the rooftop where you put in a small break, not to catch your breath though. Rather to open the SP app on your phone and list yourself as "on patrol", meaning that you're open to receive missions. With that done you sprint across the flat roof, jumping directly at the edge. The momentum of your sprint combined with the jump propels you a few meters forward, the strength of your legs almost borders on superhuman levels (even with your enhanced physiology which makes your muscles look like less they're clearly very well trained after all), which is enough to bring you to the neighboring row of buildings. You spend almost twenty minutes travelling the city at that height, only sometimes making big leaps that would be impossible (at that frequency at least) to normal people to jump from row to row, crossing side-alleys and even small roads. Eventually however you reach your first actual high-rise building, it stands before you like a behemoth of concrete, metal and glass.

Normal people would hesitate climbing something like that, especially with equipment like yours. But you aren't normal, you're a superheroine, you must know no fear, so you beginn climbing immediately, finding footholds, grabbing edges, not slowing down even once, superhuman endurance and experience in climbing allowing you that. But even though you climb quite fast it's a tall building and takes you some time, even longer than it took you to get here, but you absolutely want to get to the top of it, you haven't found anything else to do yet, so why not go for a vantage point.

Eventually you finally reach the top, a small barren surface of concrete, the only features a kneehigh barricade running around the edge and the ugly elevator house that is so typical for these rooftops only existing "because". You decide to wait here for some time, observing the city below and imagining for a bit that it can sleep safely only due to your doings. After just a few minutes however you hear a "ding" and feel vibration in your left pocket, the phone! Your lock screen has a notification,

Super People
Help request!
Cat stuck in tree. 82nd and 125th.

not exactly a situation that sounds like a lot of thrill, but everyone has to start somewhere. You press the green checkmark on the messages right side, you don't have to do that, anyone can just show up and help with things like that, but accepting the task does officialy mark it as yours, increasing the cjance that it's acctually gonna be you who does it in the end. Once that is done you do something that doesn't seem very superheroine-like, you call the lift, climbing down would take longer, and if there is an actual call button up here you might as well use it. After enduring the elevator music for the ride you sprint along the streets, the corner where someone asked for help isn't far, especially when you can sprint the whole way.

It's a scene like in a book, at he edge of a small park is a tree, in one of its branches sits a cat and meows sadly, underneath the tree stands an old woman visibly distressed. "Oh thank god you're here, the man on the telephone said someone would be here shortly. It's Betsy, she's up there and is too afraid to come down, oh please help me." the old lady says as she sees you, she's really the cliche version of an old woman, frail, too technologically inept to use the civilian version of the SP app with only textmessages instead of actually calling someone and goes on walks with her cat, incredible. But the situation doesn't drive you to laugh, rather you smile at her reassuringly, say, "don't worry, I'll get her", and beginn climbing up the tree. The actual climbing part isn't much of a problem, a tree like that doesn't hold much of a challenge. Making the cat understand that you're there to help proves much more difficult, she doesn't quite seem to believe you. There are lots of scratching and hissing from the feline, drawing the occasional call from the old lady to behave herself and not hurt the "nice girl". Eventually you give up on convinving her and move on to a more direct approach, grabing her, ignoring all the clawing and biting and climbing back down. This tactic works, it even almost works well, one of your feet is already back on the ground when the cat slashes a claw across your face, leaving a long and bleeding cut. "Oh Lord, oh dearie, are you okay, oh I'm so sorry!", no you're not okay, that hurts like a bitch, but you can't tell her that, you have to claim it isn't bad, simply to calm her down. But she doesn't really calm down, unlike the cat who now seems very content with how you cradle her in one arm and purrs loudly. Eventually you simply hand the cat to the still fussing lady, "please wait just a moment". You close your eyes, concentrating on your superpower, not the invisibility part but the shape-shifting one, actually healing that wound would take two or three minutes but you don't want to endure the old womans worries much longer, so you settle to simply put some undamaged skin over the cut, it's much faster and makes it look like the wound is gone, which is wrong, it's simply hidden. After a few seconds you hear a small surprised gasp from the lady and reopen your eyes, "Ohh dearie, the cut's gone, ohh that's amazing, I'm so relieved", she says, takes your hand and shakes it, "Oh I'm very grateful, really, thank you so much, from Betsy as well, she was just sooo scared of the height.". After a few more thank you's and similar she leaves, allowing you to finally let out a small "agh, fuck" and concentrate again to actually heal the wound.

Five minutes later you climb up a two-story building next to the park, you plan to stay in the area for now, the buildings are high enough to move unseen but low enough to jump of them. Another plus around here are the nearby bars and nightclubs, you circled back to the university's vicinity, where night life might provide opportunities for a young superheroine to prove herself.

You have fallen into a little pattern you continuously follow, it allows you to observe a great area that encompases the surroundings of fifteen bars and two nightclubs, plus a few busstops, backalleys and other such things. It doesn't take long till you see something that might demand your attention, a young woman walks through an empty alley, only there is a man silently following her, and now a superheroine above, following both. As the woman is so far in the alley that people outside wouldn't hear her the man quickens his pace, catches up with her and grabs her by the shoulder, spinning her around and against a wall so she comes out facing him. She might have let out a yelp of surprise when she was suddenly touched so aggressively, but the man quickly drives her to silence by speaking over her, "hey there baby, I'm broke and you look like you aren't, so why don-" his little speech ends there abruptly. It ends because you leapt from the roof, flying right into him, sending him to the ground, you as well but you manage to turn it into a roll and come out on your feet. "I really wonder, why are there so many criminals in a city with so many superheroes?", you say, standing between the man getting back on his feet and the still fearful woman. "And what are you supposed to be bigtits? Is that enough to become a heroine nowadays?" He charges at you, fists swinging wildly, wildly but not dangerously, the only martial training you had so far was the self-defense class you go that coupon from, but even you can tell that he has no skill, his attacks are sloppy and unorderly, even with not so keen reflexes you could evade his attacks, but <u>with</u> them? No problem. An interesting question though, do you even need to evade him? Normally men are stronger than women, testosterone you believe, but you're not normal, abusing your superpowers at the gym has made you strong without really looking the part, so his advantage should be less than is to be expected, he doesn't look very well trained, maybe you're even slightly stronger than him. All these thoughts apply to your torso however, your legs would actually be enough to allow you a place in the olympic games, they look very well trained, which is an optical <u>under</u>statement like any of your muscles. Deciding that you don't wanna take the risk in your first ever battle you go for a kick, as he pulls back his fist to punch again you strike, a single kick to his side. He half stumbles - half flies sideways almost two meters, landing on the floor again, this time not standing up immediately but rather trying to digest the shock of that attack. Well, he'll have plenty of time to digest that soon, because you used the time he spent out of the action to get your cable binder out and bind his hands together, which are then bound to a small pipe coming out of a building. "You okay?" you ask the woman. "Yeah I am, thanks" she answers, adding "uhm, I don't wanna be rude but who are you?", after a few moments. "Truth be told I don't have a name yet, still pretty new, and no offense taken." it's your turn to answer, "do you think you can go on alone from here or do you want me to escort you back to the street?". The woman decides that it will be ok for her to walk on without you, although she will go for the well lit street as fast as possible, before she leaves both of you use your SP apps to notify the police and mark her down as the intended victim and eyewitness. It takes about ten minutes before the police which was raised by SP arrives and takes the man over from you, he will probably avoid prison and simply spend the night at the police department, you stopped him before he could actually do something and there is no evidence or proof, they only way he'll actually go to jail is if he already has something going against him. The two police officers who came thank you for your help and take him away, you resume your surveilance pattern.

For some time nothing that would need your attention happens, at about half past eleven however you spot someone spraying graffiti. You land next to him but he's so focused on his artwork that he doesn't hear you, that's somewhat understandable though, this isn't just a crudely sprayed name or short phrase, he is creating an actual piece of art, forming delicate patterns and drawing a surprisingly well done punk mona lisa, all of that completely free handed. "Hey, listen" you loudly say, causing him jump in surprise and turn to you (you had waited until he wasn't spraying), "I gotta admit that looks pretty dope, but that's not really the place for that. Normally I'd stop you, but that's not just some dumb-ass line or just a random name, it is actual art.". He visibly relaxes as you say you'll let him finish. "But listen, for the future, don't spray illegally ok? The uni got a program where people can spray legally, somewhere where it'll be actually appreciated too, give that a try if you want, you don't gotta be a student for that." He looks at you questioningly, but eventually nods "I'll think about it.", "Ok, thanks, for the awesome art <u>and</u> thinking about it, keep this between us ok?". He gives you a thumbs up and you go back on the roofs.

The only other thing that happens in this little "neighborhood" that night is when two police cars show up and collect someone from within a nightclub, that might have been interesting but you didn't notice anything unitl the police came.

It's about three o'clock in the morning and you head back home, crossing through a little districts streets that feel almost dead at that hour. BANG! you suddenly hear, a gunshot! You were just about to pass next to a bank, but it seems it's being robbed. It can be seriously doubted that you ever climbed a building this quickly, it takes you only seconds to enter the roof and crouch next to a skylight, even turning yourself invisible to decrease the chance of being seen, they could have only seen your head anyways, and your mask is in fact the only thing you have that turns invisible with you. Inside the bank are only a teller and a security guard who apparently got the night shift, the only other two people are the robbers, facemasks conceal their faces, one threatens the teller into handing him money with a handgun, the other points a short shotgun at the guard, keeping him down. You wish you could do something, but you are not at all capable of dealing with a situation like this, they have weapons, <u>fire</u>weapons and pottentially hostages, the best you can do is wait until they leave and then follow, with some luck you can do something then or find their hideout. Be all that as it may be, for now you have to do something difficult, nothing, you have to wait for what happens.