Era

1

All men are not created equal.

Era grinned beneath her mask, a bloody, feral thing. She leapt to the next rooftop, rolling into the crunch of her ankles and reveling in how her cuts and bruises ached with every breathless movement. She stood, ignoring the hairline fractures of her legs, feeling them fade into the rest of the background pain as she urged her flagging body to keep pushing onward.

It was exhilarating. Feeling herself slip past her limits, the strain and snap at her tendons, her muscles tearing past exhaustion; Era didn’t like to think herself dependent on anything, but, well… she could see herself getting hooked on this.

Yeah, all men are not created equal, and sure she might have gotten the short end of the stick when you took in the big picture, but god damn it was moments like these that threatened to make everything worth it.

“…istening to me?”

Oh. Right. Hero, chase, escaping the long arm of the law, all that good stuff. She’d gotten distracted again, with the wind in her lungs and the burn of sweat at her brow. This is a good one, she thought. Most heroes didn’t give her quite a workout. It wasn’t that they couldn’t catch her, with enough hard work and some clever Quirk-usage, but Era worked very hard to make it not quite worth the effort. She could outrun, outlast; could break and contort her body into something that was far more trouble than it was worth.

This one, though, he saw something worth chasing. Era wondered, not for the first time, what she’d done to get on this guy’s shit list.

Her eyes darted ahead, flitting across the path before her before her feet sprung from the edge of the roof once more, reaching out towards the fire escape across the way. She could clamber up that easily enough, make it to the higher rooftop and then—

A loop of fabric snared around her calf for the briefest of moments, and though Era managed to wrench herself free she found herself tumbling into the cold metal railing of the fire escape with a sickening crack, unable to hold back a groan of pain.

Broken ribs. Shit. Those would take a little longer to heal than some measly hairline fractures in her ankles, and would be significantly harder to run with. Still, she considered, it could have been worse. Could have been her spine instead. Paralysis meant no running, and running was all Era knew.

She staggered to her feet, prodding her ribs back into place in a futile attempt to speed the process. She knew it would only make things worse but… like a kid picking at a nasty scab, she could hardly help herself. The fire escape stretched above; she’d fallen a little further than she’d initially planned, but she could definitely still make it up quickly enough. Era perched on the railing, beginning to reach up for the next landing before the pain in her ribs became nearly unbearable, blinding her with white hot agony. Gritting her teeth, she pulled herself up… and promptly flopped over onto the metal floor. Okay, this was not going to work.

Two heavy footfalls, and she suppressed a wince. A quick glance above her revealed the hero—whoever he was—had reached the fire escape as well, a few floors up. Hopefully he’d take his sweet time, thinking her already incapacitated, but that would be lucky, and Era had never put much stock in luck. She didn’t seem to have much of it.

Her side burned. Simmered. Stilled. She felt the uncomfortable sensation of her ribs slowly knitting themselves back together like maggots writhing just beneath her skin, eating away at flesh and bone, even as the steady footfalls above her grew nearer. He was light on his feet, she realized, but it was near impossible to be stealthy on metal grating like this.

“Are you okay?” He sounded almost bored, but Era knew better than to take something like that at face value. Threat threat threat

He was too close, she was vulnerable, she needed to get out get out get out before the walls closing in can’t breathe can’t breathe before he found her, before he caught her she needed to run I need to run