Chapter Text
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 22:30
It was a rainy night in Seoul, and Sunwoo was busy finishing up the closing tasks in her family’s restaurant. Lugging two black trash bags behind her, she stepped out into the alleyway behind the restaurant. This was one of the last tasks for the night, just get these bags in the bin, do a quick wipedown of everything, and she could finally relax for the night. It’d been a busy day, there was a hero fight a couple of blocks over, and the heroes involved stopped by the restaurant for lunch, which of course brought their fans in, which created a lot of work for Sunwoo and her family.
Using her thumbprint to open the bin, she tossed the bags inside when she suddenly heard a small noise on the fire escape of a building down the alleyway. Wondering what it was, she started turning towards the direction. Something in the back of her brain was telling her something was wrong.
“MRWOW”
“Oh?”
Sunwoo turned to the meow to see a stray orange cat making its way towards her.
“Oh, sorry. There's no fish cake left today,” She said as she crouched down to pet the cat. This cat had visited Sunwoo at the end of her shifts for a couple of weeks now. Whenever they had leftover fishcakes, Sunwoo would give them to the cat. She hadn’t thought of a name for it yet, but she was close to convincing her family to let her adopt it.
That wrong feeling in her gut returned stronger. It felt like someone was watching her. She looked up, trying to see if she could spot anyone in the darkness of the alleyway. An advertising sign at the other end of the alleyway lit up, revealing a silhouetted figure crouched down on the fire escape she had heard the noise from earlier. They were pointing something at her, and through the rain she could see a lase-
*CRACK*
A bullet slammed into her shoulder, knocking her to the ground. She quickly got up, grabbed the cat, and used her wind to dash behind the dumpster as her assailant opened fire.
She slammed disorientedly into the wall behind the dumpster and let the cat go. She barely noticed it running off as he held a hand to her shoulder, blood already pouring from the wound.
Breathing heavily, she scooted closer to the edge of the dumpster and peeked around the corner to see her attacker jumping off the fire escape. Before they hit the ground, a gust of wind caught their fall, kicking up the light fog that was covering the ground, and letting them land unharmed.
They have a wind quirk too?
Sunwoo caught the reflection of her assailant in a puddle on the ground and grabbed her chef's knife off her waist. It wasn’t very big, but it was better than nothing, and if she timed it right…
Sunwoo watched as the shadow of her attacker on the wall got closer. She took two deep breaths to steel herself.
*CLANG*
She jumped out from behind cover, swinging her knife upwards with her momentum. She caught her attacker's rifle with the slash, knocking it upwards. She tries to get a look at the face of her attacker, but their hood shadows their face, and it’s too dark to see anything.
Wind coils around both Sunwoo and the hooded figure, repelling the rain around them. She lets out a scream of exertion, pushing her quirk further than she ever has to blast back her attacker. The wind rips around the two of them harshly, Sunwoo’s exertion clearly matched by her adversary, until all they both can see is the wind.
VENICE, ITALY 24 HOURS LATER
“Huf, huf.” A young man runs up to and takes cover behind a wall in front of a door, panting from running.
“Phoenix, please tell me you have the package.” A feminine voice crackles in his earpiece.
“I would, if somebody-” he replies as bullets impact the wall next to him “-was a little less aggressive!” he sighs, thinking of what led up to this.
3 MINUTES EARLIER
“Phoenix, we’ve tracked the spike’s energy signature to the alleyway ahead of you. From what Cypher can see from the cameras, the person carrying it has it in a blue shoulder bag. That's the package you’re after. Be careful, we don’t know their quirk or if they're armed.”
“That person wouldn’t happen to be wearing a blue outfit with a hood, would they, Sage?”
“Yes, that's them.”
“Good, I’ve got them then,” He starts moving to the hooded figure when they spot him approaching and take off running.
“Shit, they saw me. I’m going after them,” he relays to Sage before pursuing the figure.
“HEY! STOP!” Phoenix shouts after the figure as they round a corner. He rounds the corner after them too hard, running into a wall and knocking over crates with fruit in them, before continuing his pursuit. “I said stop!”
The person he's chasing jumps in the air and turns around while unsheathing 5 throwing knives held in the wind around them. Their hood comes off, revealing a young woman with white hair. She hangs in the air for just a moment before launching the knives at Phoenix.
Phoenix grunts in exertion as he manages to evade the first three, and the fourth bounces off the gun in his hand. However, he's too slow to stop the fifth one as it embeds itself in his right shoulder. After her volley of knives, the girl in blue uses the wind to dash over a small bridge over a canal.
“Oh, that's how you wanna play it?” Phoenix calls out to her as he rips the knife from his shoulder, a trail of flame leaving the wound and following the knife as he drops it to the ground. Focusing fire into his left hand, Phoenix lets out a grunt of exertion as he skids to a stop before throwing a fireball in front of the girl in blue.
The fireball lands in front of the girl in blue, expanding into a field of lingering fire, blocking off the route ahead. The girl seeing this, readies herself, then leaps using the wind to propel her four stories to land on the roof of the building in front of her. Phoenix following close behind, takes aim. A small holographic sight pops out of his gun as he puts it up to his shoulder.
*BANG*
Phoenix fires a shot right as the girl is cresting the roof, grazing her left arm, severing the strap of the shoulder bag, and knocking her into a courtyard down below. As she’s falling, the girl clutches the bag, breaking through flags strung up in the courtyard before landing hard on the floor, bouncing away from the bag.
She looks up, seeing Phoenix rushing towards the courtyard she’s in, she quickly scrambles to her feet. While he’s running Phoenix sends a wall of flame at her, throwing his hand to the left he curves the wall right in between her and the bag just before she reaches it, sending her flying back into a wall and knocking the bag into the center of the courtyard. The bag has been jostled open this time, sitting innocuously inside is a small triangular object, pulsing with a faint blue light.
PRESENT TIME
“You can not let her plant.” The voice in Phoenix’s ear says to him after a moment.
“Alright, I’m going in.” Phoenix responds to her.
“What about the hostile?”
“I wouldn’t worry about her,” he says, as a wooden beam lit on fire by his wall crashes down onto the ground, further trapping the girl in the courtyard.
“Are you certain?” The voice asks once more.
“One hundred! I got this.” As he says that his eyes glow a fiery orange, wisps of flame looking like small solar flares come off his shoulders, and the LEDs on the inside of his jacket go from a dull orange to a blazing fire. Moving in slowly, Phoenix scans the wall of fire for any sign of the girl, keeping his gun raised in front of him, ready for any movement.
*WOOSH*
The girl unexpectedly dashes through the wall of fire. Phoenix’s eyes widen as they track her movement, his arms too slow to respond. She lands behind Phoenix with a suppressed pistol pointed right at his head.
“Aw, sorry,” the girl says in Korean, giving a slight smirk as she pulls the trigger. A quiet bang and the flash of a muzzle go off before Phoenix falls to the ground.
THREE MINUTES LATER
Phoenix’s body is lying in the courtyard, the girl long since gone. Suddenly, his body catches aflame, turning into nothing but embers in under a second. A short distance away, there is a flash of energy. A burst of flame appears by the door Phoenix took cover behind earlier, coalescing from the flames is Phoenix, looking unharmed.
“Ugh” He sighs out as he dusts off his coat. “Hey control,” he starts while he straightens his jacket, starting to raise his head to look forward. “So about that package..” he trails off as he sees what's in front of him. A chunk of Venice now floats in the sky. Water falls down into the crater where the floating island arose from. A city forever changed because of his mistake.
AN UNKNOWN TIME LATER, IN AN UNKNOWN LOCATION
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!” is the first thing the girl hears when she joins the call. The heavily distorted voice of her boss sounds angry, thankfully, this anger isn’t directed at her.
“I don’t know,” a distorted European voice responds, “Nothing within my calculations predicted anything like that.”
“OH SURE, DOES ANYTHING IN YOUR CALCULATIONS EXPLAIN WHY THERE’S A GODAMN CHUNK OF THE CITY FLOATING IN THE SKY?!”
“The projected energy of the spike shows nothing close to the amount needed for this to happen. My best theory is that while it was collecting quirk radiation and DNA, one of the people caught in the blast must have had some sort of levitation quirk. The stress of all the quirk radiation being concentrated and them being within the spike explosion radius must have caused their quirk to overload, causing the floating island. I’ll have to cross-reference the samples we’ve gained to confirm this bu-”
“No, you’ve done enough,” The distorted voice cuts them off. “We were supposed to do this on the down low, now every goddamn hero out there will be looking for us. Not to mention whoever was behind that pompous brat that was chasing Jett. Did we at least get some of his DNA?”
“That we did,” a third heavily distorted voice, different from the second but sounding similar to the first, responds. “And I think you’ll like what we’ve got.”
“Good.” The first voice responds. “Acceptable work, Jett,” The voice addressed the girl. “You’ve made up for that fiasco in Seoul yesterday.”
“Thank you sir.” The girl responds, thankful her mission wasn’t deemed a failure after the city rose from the ground.
“Now to plan what comes next, we should strike while the iron's hot after all.”
----------------------------------------------Task Force: Valorant--------------------------------------------------
Accessing Agent Profile: Phoenix
(Pseudo_Admin:Key)
Access Granted.
- VP Agent-09: Jamie Adeyami
- Home Country: London, England
- Callsign: Phoenix
- Quirk: Phoenixmancy - Phoenix has the ability to produce and control fire, as well as to heal from any fire he’s produced. His quirk also imparts a high level of heat resistance, if not immunity. His greatest application is to set a marker and channel his energy internally to restore himself to that location and condition after a short time. This quirk seems to have some effect on Phoenix's personal time flow, as indicated by the method of his recovery and his “Ultimate Ability.”
- Bio: Was scouted by VP-01 after an incident where he accidentally lost control of his quirk and burned down his performing arts school in Peckham. Has been cleared for field operations after control training with VP-07.
- Abilities/Techniques/Equipment:
- Heating up: Phoenix can heal injuries and stamina by reabsorbing the fire he’s emitted. This effect also seems to affect his clothes, leading to speculation that it is more than simple healing or recovery.
- Curveball: Phoenix creates a small concentrated ball of flame that when thrown curves and explodes in a blinding flash after a short delay.
- Hot Hands: Phoenix concentrates flames into a fireball that is affected by gravity. When this fireball hits the ground it explodes into a lingering flame field that lasts for an average four seconds.
- Blaze: Phoenix creates a wall of flame that he can cure whilst conjuring it. This wall blocks vision and damages anyone who moves through it.
- Run It Back: Phoenix’s self-proclaimed "Ultimate Ability" He sets a “Marker”, and when Phoenix sustains sufficient damage or he ends the ability, he “Respawns” at the “marker” fully recovered and with reloaded weapons, suggesting temporal manipulation.
- Agent Notes: Phoenix has a lot of potential and a lot of destructive capabilities. He’s gotten better at controlling his quirk, but his “hotshot” personality and ego can be a detriment to teamwork. Overall a strong member with room to grow. - VP-07