Cole
Managing to block out most of the light with a dirt and tar-streaked hand, Cole saw the blur of movement and reached out to catch the object on reflex, realizing too late that it was a flashlight.
The moment the electrical device settled into his hand, a massive current surged through it, melting the plastic for all of an instant before the energy surges into the simple circuit, the rush of current causing the lightbulb to flash like a tiny sun for the shortest of instants before it promptly exploded.
"..." the Conduit stared at the lady, then down at the ruined flashlight, then back at the sewer working, "Probably should've warned you about that..."
"Anyway," Cole continues, "I'm down here because I'm trying to get away from a...I honestly don't know what it is, but it's not the police, it's not a Conduit, and I've probably gotten far enough away from...whatever it is by now."
Michael
"Later," Michael says, continuing to scan the rooftops, "Right now, we need t-"
Just then, a tiny semi-familiar glint catches his eye, of a kind he hadn't seen since-
Rifle scope. Sniper.
"Behind me," Michael shouts, staff in his hands all but instantly, "Keep a hand on me so I know you're here!"
Just then his vision wavers a bit, the last throes of the poison coursing through his veins, right as the tiny glint is accompanied by triplets of even smaller flashes, looking like mere sparks from this distance as the rifle gave birth to its lead children.
Suppressed weaponry? Are they desperate? No, there was no end to those peons, so there's no reason for a specialist to risk revealing themselves unless-
Mere instants pass, each tiny interval feeling like an eternity to the Enhanced immortal, before the glint of the first round enters his view. A surprising portion of the shots were rather far off the mark, but this could be attributed to the distance. They were mostly aiming to incapacitate, instead of kill, aiming for targets below the waist to hamper mobility.
To say that he moved the staff would've been inadequate, as this would imply that the staff was a separate entity from Michael. At the same time, to say that he moved the staff as if it were an extension of himself would have been similarly inadequate, for it would imply that the staff was only now part of him, that it was something that had been grafted on to him, an unnatural extension of himself. Thus, it would be accurate to say that he moved. His weapon was not merely part of him, it was him, but his weapon was not the staff; rather, he was the weapon. Everything he was, body, mind, and soul, all of it was honed to fight. That was the weapon he wielded. So while it may have seemed as if it was the staff that turned the bullets aside into the expected crowds of shadow-beings that sought to seize them, it was his mind that plotted the trajectories and judged the proper way to deflect the rounds, it was his body, of which the staff was merely a natural part, that moved the rounds in the directions they needed to go. All the while, a tiny voice seemed to scratch at his very soul.
Destroy. Break. Sunder. Shatter.
A voice that would go unnoticed for now, for it was not part of the fight.
