Celeritas

Sitting down on a sheet of metal at her home, Fiz felt something was wrong. Not only that, but she couldn’t seem to stop bouncing far more than usual. She knew why, someone she cared for quite a bit had just run off into an explosion.

Though oddly enough she had felt fine about it, until a few seconds ago. Her gut seemed to be crying out that if she didn’t go now then bad things would ensue. She wasn’t really one to think about these things.

Double checking that Til was sounds asleep, check. That the door was locked, check. That no steam engines would suffocate the child, check. 

Fiz, content with the state of her house. Sprinted off at her usual breakneck pace into the distance.

She had always been fast at running, and sprinting and jumping and just about every other physical activity. She loved the feeling as air blew past her face, bounding through alleys or across rooves as though they were a common path. 

This had often disturbed many of those who lived with her.

Fiz had never really cared though, and moving faster than she ever had before, she definitely didn’t care now. Plus, each foot she seemed to land dented onto people’s weakly structured houses.

Being the person she was, Fiz felt immediate regret and shame upon each landing. Though for once she was going to put her own feelings ahead of others… for the purpose of saving someone.

Fiz arrived at the castle faster than probably anyone in the history of ever, though she encountered a slight issue. Due to a commotion at the entrance of the castle it didn’t seem like she’d be able to enter for a while. She’d have to resort to the caves at the side of the castle.

Landing practically silent down below, her first action was to scan her surroundings. A fairly good choice as she dodged a flying punch by probably the length of her nose. 

Fiz knew the castle wasn’t exactly a nice place, but she didn’t expect a greeting this insensitive.

Slightly annoyed at the action of whoever had attacked her, she flung out a kick into the approximate direction of her attacker. She definitely hit something, that something then exploded into the ground and that something did not move again.

The first thing on Fiz’s mind, was that she was worried she’d killed the poor man. Yes, he might’ve tried to attack her, but a measly punch like that wouldn’t have killed her. 

In response she had almost killed her attacker, so she spent a few minutes nicely dressing him up on the wall and removing blood and so forth.

She also remembered she had someone to save, though her gut told her he could wait a little while. She finished tending to the man by enforcing him to never outwardly punch someone again.

Using the end of her foot as an axe, Fiz snaped the man’s bone clean in half. He wouldn’t be able to punch for a while now. Though by this logic she should also break her own bones… Fiz couldn’t be bothered.

Suitably certain that there weren’t any others waiting around, Fiz stealthed her way through the cave. Using whatever animalistic sonar, she used to spot caves in trash heaps, she used the same to judge the length of the tunnel. It was pretty long.

Sprinting down to the other end within a minute, Fiz found herself at a solid steel door. Unfortunately, as much as she wanted to, she couldn't destroy steel, she’d been practicing though. 

Instead, her foot flung into the rock wall a few times, which then proceeded to crumble into a nice lil gap for her to slide through.

Inside her eyes spent some time adjusting to the light, and with another scan around she saw… a lot of people. Several cages hung throughout the area, they all contained various young women throughout. Some cried out to her, while others wailed.

Fiz wasn’t exactly sure why they were being kept in cages… but she doubted it was for good reason. She counted at least twenty girls hanging above her, she needed both a way to get them down and break open the cages.

Doing some quick loops Fiz found a set of levers and set her hands to work. Using the power of RNG she manged to successfully drop at least three of the cages down to ground level. From there she deduced that she would be able to jump from cage to cage.

What followed was a process that probably sounded very simple in Fiz’s head, and very complicated to others. Just leap very simply from cage to cage, when on cage wrench open the steel bars, and if lady inside is unwilling to drop to their probable deaths then carry them out to safety.

She told the girls to head out back through the cave, pass the man with the broken arm and follow the ladder to freedom. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy, as Fiz’s… far from quiet rescue had called the attention of a few Spotless. 

By a few, Fiz probably guessed at around somewhere in the double digits.

Still, the girls were able to escape, though she happened to be the only thing stopped a group of Spotless from chasing them. The other unfortunate part was that there was no way she could outrun a bullet… mainly because she lacked practice.

Hence Fiz found herself currently lying flat atop one of the cages, as several Spotless aimed to shoot her down below. She needed a method of dealing with most of them all at once.

After a few seconds she came up with the perfect plan. As after some trial and error earlier she had noticed that the cages can be moved at very fast speeds, reach practically anyway in the room and also slam into the ground.

Using her impressive long jump distance, she landed back over at the levers (kicking into a negligible victim in the process). The next process included more random lever pulling, until eventually she had at least halved the number of Spotless people still standing.

She included standing as anyone on their feet… which admittedly included this one guy unconscious against a wall, and several others who seemed about to collapse. She dealt with the rest of them fairly easily.

Now it was time to head up, pouncing her way up a full flight of stairs she found herself… somewhere. She didn’t really know where she was just in a hallway of some kind, with several other hallways and stairs in other directions.

At the very least her gut told her there was no real hurry, hence she didn’t exactly take her time but instead sped several circles around each floor moving upwards. Though hearing some commotion downstairs that incentivised her to move towards it. 

Think of it as a compass which leads straight towards danger.

Fiz eventually stumbled upon the source of the commotion, plenty of faces she’d seen before but not the one she was looking for. She eventually found herself in an armoury… There was quite a nice weapon there. It seemed to be a solid steel ball on a chain, it even had spikes.

Taking a liking to it, Fiz decided to bring it with her on the search. The search was almost over too, as she found Eugo unconscious at the edge of a balcony. Carefully placing her weapon away from her wounded friend.

“Hey Mr, you awake there?” Eugo’s eyes groggily opened

“Oh, Hi Fiz… How the heck did you get here?”

“Oh, I just went and did a sprint a couple whacks, saved some gals and found this cool looking beauty and then came here.”

“Huh?”

“Don’tcha worry about it Mr, I’ll take ya on outta here and we can head home.”

“Guh!”

“Mr, if ya could use proper words that be great… but its ok.”

“Mumph.”

Ignoring the delusional pleas of her friend… Fiz had no idea what he was saying anyway. She took both her weapon and friend and sprinted off back home. This time when exiting the cave, she wanted to try destroying the metal door.

Briefly placing Eugo down she took her ball on chain and eviscerated the door into nothing but thin steel strips. Very solid effort she thought to herself.

§

Sprinting back home, she passed some of the girls she recognised from before. Similarly, she gained a lot of attention herself. As a lady sprinting across rooftops at lightspeed carrying both an unconscious teen and what looked to be a very deadly weapon.

She reached her trash heap a little later, moving admittedly slower due to carrying solid steel and another human. Til was still asleep when she entered and Fiz placed Eugo down next to her so he could rest. 

For as much as she wanted to help him with his injuries, she did not consider herself a capable doctor.

Proud of a good day’s work, she laid back and took a rest.