New Look...New Problems (Alva)

East City was kinda boring in compared to West City. Not that it was, like, a bad city or anything. if anything, the fact that it was so boring for someone like Alva was good reasons to believe it was actually quite a good city. Though someone like Alva sort of benefitted from things not being boring. So, she supposed it was up to her to make things not boring anymore. Besides, all the powerful good guys were being forced into hard labor or something thanks to Derry's decree. That was what it was, right? Meaning... No one was actually going to stop her if she did something bad!

"Stop that thief!" the bank teller shouted as Alva blasted out the door in her mech suit, a fat sack of cash over her shoulder. He'd never catch her, of course - she was flying at nearly a hundred miles per hour! 

Alva would've turned around and stuck her tongue out at him, but her face was currently being obscured by Ted. "Alright, Ted, what's our haul?" she asked him as they zipped around a corner and the bank went out of sight. 

It took a moment, but Ted replied, "Based upon my calculations on weight and average bill denomination, you currently possess two point five million zeni. Approximately fifteen percent of your father's accrued debt." 

"Woohoo!" Alva exclaimed. Fifteen percent? So they'd just need to rob, what, six or seven more banks like this before it'd all be paid off and she could finally relax a little bit? Why hadn't she gotten back to all of this sooner? Alva had wasted so much time letting the accords scare her away from doing any of this stuff, but in reality, the accords were a huge help! "Ted, remind me to thank ol' Derry next time I-" she started to say, but then as they swooped around another corner, she crashed into something... Blue.

The bag of zeni flew out of Alva's hand, and landed on the street, where it splayed open and dollar bills flew everywhere! Alva had spun out of control, briefly, but Ted quickly stabilized her in flight. "What the hell!?" she exclaimed as she whipped around and frantically looked for the bag. Ah, there it was! But the money was...! "Aagh! That's going to be so annoying to gather back up!" Alva glared down at the blue fellow she'd run into, who looked to be some kind of Saiyan. "Hey, asshole! Watch where you're standing, next time!"

"Oh, shut up, hedgehog head!" Alva snapped back as the blue haired kid she'd rammed into had some choice words of his own for her. He was fine, wasn't he? What did he care if he'd gotten a little hurt? Most people would've been knocked out cold or worse from a hit like that, so, all things considered, he should consider himself lucky. "And for your information, this suit is actually a gold-titanium alloy that-" she started to explain, but then she realized, with each passing second, more of her money was getting picked up by the wind and blown away!

"Milady, I highly advise you begin recollecting your bounty, lest it be permanently lost," her suit began to advise, "I detect that you have likely already suffered a seven percent reduction in the amount you will be able to retrieve. Further delays will exponentially increase your losses."

"Gah, I don't have time for this!" she exclaimed. Her sensors were indicating that this loser only had a power level of five, so he was just a normal dude, really. Nothing to get all worked up about. Alva raised her suit's hand and fired a moderately powerful but mostly just concussive ki blast at the blue guy. "Sweet dreams, douchebag," she jeered at him as she fired off her blast. If he really was as weak as her scouter was saying, no way he could protect himself against that.

Immediately after firing, she swooped back down to the street and snatched up her back, then began to frantically pile any bills that had spilled out back in. Some had probably blown too far away to even see att his point, though... Man, what an absolute pain in the aft end.

As Alva scrambled to snatch up the zeni off the ground, her suit's scouter began to beep as it detected an unusually high power level nearby... Just her luck. Who was it gonna be this time, another wannabe hero? Alva started quickly trying to figure out whether or not she'd have enough time to grab any more before she'd need to make a hasty retreat, when she realized that the power level that was being picked up was actually much, much closer than she'd initially thought.

In fact, it was coming from someone whose power level she'd already scanned.

"Wuh-" she exclaimed and flinched back as the blue kid suddenly appeared in front of her in an instant. Euch... His power level had jumped from just five to eighty-one thousand. He must have been masking it somehow - no transformation had that kind of multiplier on it! "Ah hell," Alva cursed. He wanted to know where the money was going, huh? "Charity function? ...Yeah, something like that," Alva replied. 

She wasn't so sure that this guy was actually being serious - it was hard to tell how easy these meathead types were to trick. Some really were that stupid. "So, how's about it? Wanna help me collect the rest of this cash so I can get it over to help out some sick kids?" On the off chance the hedgehog wasn't genuinely asking, Alva had Teddy's power level ramp up significantly. For the moment, her suit's power could go as high as 90,000 power units, and so that was where Alva took it. 

Not that the blue guy had any way of noticing, of course.

Of course she wasn't actually buying the junk this moron was selling. But Alva liked to be at least somewhat optimistic every now and then, so she was really just hoping that the hedgehog was dumb enough to believe her if she played along. Though, as soon as Ted's sensors picked up that ki was being charged into the fist of the man bending over in front of her, Alva sighed.

Did he really think that was just gonna go unnoticed? Let alone unpunished?

"You're real stupid, you know that?" Alva grumbled as she activated Ted's rocket boosters. Her suit spun her around rapidly, her head swinging back and out of the way of the blue boy's fist just in time, while her metallic foot simultaneously swung up and smacked straight into that fist in an attempt to break the idiot's wrist!

After that, Alva spun backwards and righted herself with her boosters again, hovering a few feet in the air as she looked down at the monkey, bag of money tightly gripped in hand. "Look, buddy, I don't know if you're trying to play at hero or anything here, but the banks are insured. Literally no one gets hurt if I snatch up this cash. You really wanna risk flinging laser beams around a buncha civilians so that your billionaire overlords can sleep a little easier at night?"

Alva gestured around at the civilians that had gathered to watch, each of which had pitifully low power levels. Stray shots and blasts that would only scratch or bruise Alva or the Saiyan could quite quickly become lethal when lobbed at folks as weak as regular Earthlings. 

"So, what's it gonna be, hero? Collateral damage or a minor blow to that ego you're looking to massage?"

Clearly this hedgehog wasn't exactly one to listen much to reason. Alva figured that any reasonable person in his situation would take her argument and at least sit on it for a second, but this guy barely even skipped a beat before he shook his head and replied with another self righteous spiel about right and wrong. "You sure aren't saying that when it's the snobby rich guys who are doing the stealing from the poor!" Alva snapped back, grouchily. 

It was pretty clear words weren't gonna be getting through to this meathead, though. He'd already decided that he was going to try to beat her up to feel good about himself, and so clearly nothing was going to steer him off that course.

And, as he'd threatened to do so a moment earlier, the Saiyan launched himself at her and grappled with her as he took the both of them high enough up in the sky that the people who had been watching them were now mere specks on the ground. "Get off me!" Alva shouted at him as she brought her elbows down onto his back before managing to wrestle free from his grip. Just as she broke free, Ted's sensors detected a powerful strike incoming, this time from the Saiyan's foot instead of his hand.

"Ted! Ramp up power!" she mentally ordered her suit, and its power level surged, though this could only last a few moments without overheating and damaging it, so she'd need to be swift in her next actions. Alva rapidly somersaulted in the air and held up her hands to block the blow - but this time, her suit projected a special kind of barrier. The Saiyan's foot smashed right into it, but the barrier didn't break - and the energy that had been projected from the Saiyan's foot was instead absorbed into Alva's suit!

"Thanks for the boost, dickwad!" Alva jeered as her suit's power reserves received a not insubstantial boost from absorbing the power of that attack. And as a special thanks, Alva swung her own foot around with Ted's rocket booster, and aimed it straight for the side of the Saiyan's face. She was trying to smash his jaw!

Alva supposed if her opponent wasn't a tenacious one, he wouldn't be a Saiyan. As her foot swung up to kick him in the jaw, the Saiyan reacted just fast enough to block her foot, which was honestly getting annoying at this point. How much longer until this guy ran out of juice? Ted was going to need a break for at least a few moments soon to recharge its energy reserves, but Alva wasn't being given that moment to recharge. 

He was also swinging her around in a circle, which made Alva glad she'd installed modules into Ted that helped reduce motion sickness. Her first test flight before their installation had ended in her having to spend a good while scrubbing down the inside of Teddy's helmet...

Alva elected to just let the Saiyan swing her around, since they were pretty high in the air and even if he threw her down at the nearest building, she'd have plenty of time to course correct with Ted's flight boosters. He didn't throw her down back at the city, though, and instead tossed her through the air - then reappeared very quickly on the opposite end of where he'd just thrown her from! "Tch!" Alva clicked her tongue in annoyance, and managed to right herself enough in the air to hold up her arms.

"Ted, tap into reserve power!" she ordered the suit, and it obeyed her immediately, forming a barrier from the spare power reserves she always had it charged with just in case. Luckily, this wouldn't pull from the main power supply, but it also meant its supply was even more limited. Typically only good for one good barrier and one good attack. 

The barrier was enough to block and sustain the Saiyan's first attack, but the second... Well, it blocked some of it, but it was a bit too much for it to hold, and for the first time, the Saiyan managed to land a good hit on Alva, smashing into her chest and sending her flying a few dozen meters down. "Gck!" she grunted as she gripped her chest. She wasn't hurt, but her suit was definitely a bit damaged. Ted was quick to alert her, of course.

"Milady, minor contusion detected in the chest region," Ted warned her as the pop-up flashed on her visor screen. "Yep, got it," Alva curtly replied as she cancelled out of the warning window. "Okay, that's it, I'm shooting him." Alva leaned back and thrust her hand out, and from the arm of her suit, a blaster cannon popped out and formed around her palm. "I built it myself, thanks for asking," she called up to him. "This is a new addition, though - tell me what you think!" She then blasted off the cannon at full power! ...Which wasn't that much power, but it was also powered by its own, separate reserve energy, so Teddy was finally able to restore a bit of its own reserves as the Saiyan was forced to deal with the dangerous beam that was currently barreling towards him.

Heh, bull's eye!

Alva's mouth curled up into a devilish grin as her projectile nailed the Saiyan right in his chest, with a strong enough concussive force to send him spiraling back. The blaster around Alva's arm, having spent its energy, reformed itself into a proper hand and retreated back into the suit until it was next charged and ready to be fired. Probably not until next time Alva had a chance to plug in back at home. 

The Saiyan was pretty quick to recover, though, and Alva noticed him rather quickly flinging himself back at her with a flurry of punches and kicks that she was forced to react to. Luckily, her suit was sturdy enough to simply blocking the weaker attacks with her arms or weaving her way between them was enough to keep it from sustaining any real damage from the Saiyan's assault. There was a kick in the middle of it all that she was forced to block with both arms that sent her reeling a few feet back in the air, though.

At this point, Alva was just getting kind of annoyed.

"You think making tech like this comes easily?" she shouted back at the aggressor as he claimed she could've just made trillions making weapons for other people. "Or that I want to be some big weapons manufacturer? I do have something of a conscience, you know - you don't see me holding up small businesses or stealing people's wallets off the street, do you?" Alva did care not to hurt anyone who couldn't afford to get hurt when she did her jobs - not that it made any difference to a boot licker like the monkey who was fighting her.

"Doesn't exactly help when your family name gets blacklisted for reasons that-" Alva paused and shook her head. Now wasn't exactly the time to be going into her own life story, here. "Whatever, just piss off if you know what's good for you!" And with that, Alva held up a hand and fired off an energy blast from it, this one not particularly potent, but strong enough that the Saiyan would definitely feel it if he got hit by it!

After she fired the blast, Alva turned around and took off down towards the city. If she could lose him down there, he'd have a hell of a time finding her again even if he could sense for energy - Alva's suit didn't give off even the smallest trace!