“That doesn’t matter when it comes to parahumans.”

“Call it a token thing. I like my gestures of respect.”

Rotten Apple slowly raised her hands, until both were visible.

She’d had another orb, before. Where was it now?

Damsel looked, and she spotted it at the last second, almost invisible with the haze of gas in the room. It was on the ground, and it had rolled past her.

The orb detonated with some force, and the money was scattered into the air throughout the room. Damsel was forced to back away from it as the miasma visibly colored the air.

Rotten Apple was already preparing for another shot.

Damsel could have used her power to shoot the money, but it was so scattered that she would have hit a relatively small fraction.

Instead, she ducked through the doorway and blasted the floor of the hallway.

Down. Down to safer territory.

Rotten Apple followed. Another orb was thrown, and Damsel wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way. The detonation knocked her over, and the resulting fall was unexpected and hard. Gas swept over her as she worked to find her feet.

It felt like standing up took a lot of effort. Was that the gas?

As the gas burned at her nostrils and tickled her throat, threatening to force her into a coughing fit that would have her inhale more gas, she raised a hand.

The use of her power knocked her over and did force a resulting, involuntary intake of breath, but it also destroyed the gas that was touched, and it annihilated the very air.

Gas flowed into the resulting vacuum, where it could be blasted again.

It didn’t eliminate everything, but it thinned the gas, and it gave her a way to hold things off until she could find her feet properly again.

She saw Rotten Apple lob another sphere, and blasted, hoping to get the gas before it could expand too far. Instead, the power connected with the sphere. It was wiped out of existence, with no gas resulting.

Damsel made her way down to the floor below, putting another hole in the ground and jumping through before Rotten Apple could do anything.

The ceiling of the floor below, as it turned out, was a little higher than average. She had to use her darkness blast to break the velocity of her fall. Her landing was a hard one, all the same, knees banging on the floor.

A lab. Improvised, dirty, panes of plexiglas with whatever glue or caulk had been used to connect them together running in dribbles and gobs. Metal bands helped keep them from coming apart—which was good, because each seemed to be under pressure.

Damsel straightened, aware that Rotten Apple would be coming after her as soon as she could access the stairs.

Vats. A row of them against one wall, dirty and smeared enough that the contents weren’t immediately obvious.