The man who could fire the directional lasers seemed shocked by the fact I’d managed to take his friend down. 

It hadn’t been easy, but I’d still managed to do it with just a couple of hits. 

But it didn’t take him very long to regain his composure. 

The short mutated villain let out a barrage of lasers, one shooting from each of his fingers and thumbs. 

They streaked toward me, slower than the speed that light would usually travel, but fast enough that dodging all ten was going to be a bit of a nuisance. 

With a pulse of thrust from the boosters in my boots, I soared high into the air at the last minute. Two of the lasers impacted the ground, boring narrow holes into the ground in my wake. 

Flying through the air I launched my grappling hook again, hoping to pull off the same move that I had against the guy with stretchy arms. 

But he had been expecting that. 

With the two fingers that had been freed up thanks to the two lasers impacting the ground, he fired another two shots, these two flew straight toward the end of my grappling hook. 

The lasers hit my grapple hook dead on, exploding on contact.

The lasers themselves didn’t manage to do any damage to my tool, other than slightly scuffing the surface of the metal, but they did manage to send the head of the hook careening off to the side where it embedded itself in the ground. 

I could work with that. 

I yanked my arm that was connected to the grappling hook back to send myself flying back down to the ground at lightning-quick speeds, faster than the villain with the laser hands could even register and ploughed my armour covered knee into his chin. 

I was pretty sure bones cracked and shattered under the force of the hit as he was sent sprawling to the ground. 

With another hefty yank of my arm, the head of my grappling hook came free from the ground and wound back into its holder. 

That had been… fairly easy, all things considered. 

Sure, not all of my attacks had gone exactly to plan. Sure that elastic arm guy’s attacks had managed to take a fairly large chunk of my durability away. But at the end of the day? I’d come out victorious. 

The elastic man was still unconscious, and the laser wielder was writhing around with his hand up to his jaw. 

I’d definitely broken something there. 

Behind me, I heard the wailing of more cars and vans pulling up. I turned, more soldiers, with their rifles aimed directly at me. 

“Stand down!” One of them yelled, “Put your hands where we can see them and surrender or we will open fire!” 

I… didn’t want any trouble with the army. I was looking to help people, do good and keep people from being hurt. I didn’t want to fight against the military of my own country, that was just… counterproductive. 

I sighed and put my hands up into the air, palms facing the soldiers so that they could see there was nothing in them. 

“I’m not looking to cause any trouble,” I said out loud, speakers from somewhere on my suit’s outer shell projecting the words so that they came across as louder than had I just said them on my own. “I was passing by when I saw these two engaging the police in combat that the officers of the law were unequipped to deal with, and so took them down myself.” 

The guns that were trained on me weren’t lowered by my admission, if anything the people behind them looked even more tense. 

“It’s true,” A voice croaked, one of the soldiers that I had taken for dead. His side had been damaged by a laser blast, but he was still alive. Just barely. “He came in while we were being massacred, took them down as quick as he could.” 

Murmurs started up among the ranks of the soldiers, uncertainty bred by the approval of one of their own. 

I lowered my hands and turned on the spot, at the end of the day even if they did try something it wasn’t like they’d even be able to put a scratch on my armor. If lasers that could burn through a body in an instant hadn’t even left a scratch on my grappling hook, then what sort of a chance did normal weapons have? 

“Stop where you are!” The first soldier, the one who had ordered me to stand down, yelled across the street turned battlefield. 

I let out a sigh. 

“That’s not going to happen,” I said, not bothering to turn back around, “There’s going to be a ton of other situations just like this all over the city, well, all over the world actually. I can do something about that, so I’m not going to be turning myself in any time soon. Got it?” 

There was silence for a moment. It clearly wasn’t the sort of speech that the soldier had been expecting. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d even radioed back into their base to seek approval on what they should do next. 

“No such broadcast was detected by my sensors,” The suit’s AI responded unbidden to my thoughts. 

Fair enough. 

“Fine… You’re free to go,” The officer said begrudgingly through his loudspeaker. “You’re right, the situation isn’t pretty out there in the rest of the city, and we do need all the help we can get so I’m not going to turn you down right now.” 

I couldn’t help but grin underneath my mask, “See you around then, don’t forget to detain the two I’ve dealt with properly.” 

I raised my arm and shot my grappling hook up high into the wall of one of the buildings to my left. 

“Wait a second!” The officer shouted before I could leap off into the distance, “Just who the hell are you?” 

“Me?” I responded, “I’m just a guy who’s a hero for fun!”

And with that, I launched myself into the air and away from the combat area.