In the background of this scene a rippling purple portal appears and then a woman with enormous pink wings mismatched red and blue eyes a yellow wizard hat and similarly mismatched shoes tumbles through. She snaps out her wings and comes to a hovering stop for a moment before landing gently on the ground.

She looks around taking in the scene. "Ooh, a plot hook!" She coughs, "I mean... Halt! Stop hurting that man."

"Shit, cape!" The men back off quickly and face her; they are clearly suddenly nervous and unsure of themselves, which is a polite way of panicking. The one in the rear is slowly backing away.

("Anyone heard of her?" "I don't think so -" "With those wings you either have or you haven't -" "Could be a tinker in costume -" "It's some kinda puppet, real capes have masks -")

One marginally-less-scared-looking guy seems to be the leader. "You're on Empire turf," he says. "We're, um, lawfully punishing a trespasser. Who are you?"

"Ooh!" she smiles broadly, "a real live evil empire what a classic. I haven't heard of any nice group that 'lawfully' beats people up for trespassing. Or feels the need to stand guard like that while doing it. I guess that means you're mooks. So are you going to run and get someone else or should I knock you around a bit? Don't worry, I won't kill you."

"...Jeff, phone it in. Everyone else, don't be the one to start anything."

("Does that mean I'm in now?" asks the one who was beating the man, and gets a slap upside the head. Another of them takes out a cellphone and starts a quiet, urgent-sounding conversation.)

They start backing away while keeping their eyes on her but they're not actually running, except for the one in the rear who is backing away even faster than that and is, as a result, opening up some distance between himself and the rest of the group.

The man on the ground scrambles up and tries to run away in the opposite direction, finds out his legs aren't working too well right now, and settles for limping to put the cape between himself and the others. "Thank you," he says fervently.

"You're welcome." She says cheerily, then she mutters to herself, "Hmm, what flavor of beat down should we go with? These mooks don't look very durable so hmm, nothing too sharp gotta be a staff, let's start out gentle."

She holds out a hand and a long staff tipped with a large amethyst materializes in her hand and fires bursts of purple forward the fire rate is relatively slow only once every couple seconds but they fly fast enough that they probably can't dodge them.

Each burst hits with the force of a roundhouse kick and pushes them back since she's targeting their upper chests most of them are probably knocked onto their backs.

That definitely gets them to run away! And they can't dodge attacks from behind while running, so all of the bursts hit and most of them make the target fall or at least stumble badly.

One of them climbs a house fence to hide behind; another crawls behind a parked car. The one who was giving commands takes out a gun and shoots at her; the shot goes wide.

The man who was in the back is really hoping she'll target the closest ones first and he can make it to the next junction.

Shutters start closing in the houses along the street, making it even darker.

She won't bother to chase them. If they're running away then she's won. She'll turn back to the man she rescued.

"So! Are you alright? Do you need anything? Are you in contact with the resistance?"

He isn't sure how many of his bones are broken! She should be calling the cops and medics, not doing stupid cape heroics patter!

"...I'm - very bruised and in a lot of pain, and can't walk well? I definitely need medical help, could you please call a taxi to take me to the hospital? Or the cops, even. Or if you could help me walk I know someone who lives two streets that way, he'd help me."

What is the Resistance? Is that a new Black gang in the city like they have down south? He hasn't heard of anything like that and even if he had he wouldn't admit to it.

"Oh right you're hurt." She disappears the staff and materializes a red lantern and puts it down. "That should help. Anyway, I just got here so I don't have a way to get in touch with..." she pauses, "Oh! I get it. Those weren't real law enforcement for an evil government they were just some sort of criminal group? That's a bit of a let down."

That... actually seems to be healing him? The pain starts receding, anyway, and that's really great, it makes the tiny voice in the back of his head yammering 'oh god am I going to die or just be crippled?' recede a bit.

"Thank you!! No, those were Empire toughs, not anyone from the government. ...the Empire is a superpowered gang. I didn't know they claimed this neighbourhood, I always pass here going home from work, they must be moving in..." He inches closer to the lantern like a freezing man next to a fire.

"...they broke my phone first thing," he adds, glancing over to where it lies shattered on the sidewalk, "I wouldn't trust the cops or cabbies here if I didn't have to but it's a much better bet than Kaiser's enforcers."

The lantern doesn't seem to be hot or work better by getting closer.

"Aha, so the government is a bit corrupt after all, makes sense. Is the Empire the only super powered gang I need to worry about? Oh, and do we need to leave before they send someone else? I can probably take them but I'm not that used to protecting people while I'm fighting so that could be bad for you."

"Oh! Oh no - yes you're right we should absolutely leave, the Empire won't back down to a cape attacking their guys." He is visibly conflicted between running away and leaving the lantern behind. 

"You're not from around here - so, there's the Empire, which is the biggest and has the most capes. And there's the ABB, the Asian gang, which only has two capes but one of them is Lung and nobody can fight Lung. And then a bunch of small-time villains and other capes who don't actually have territory, I guess some of them are in gangs but there aren't any big names that I've heard." And the Protectorate, who are not a gang by virtue of working for the actual government, which is otherwise bloody useless.

"I can walk with you or just let you drink a health potion, should heal you right up but it's a bit bracing if you're not used to it. The heart lantern is gentler."

"Thank you!" If he's really going to heal all the way then he can just... walk to his bus stop like he always does? It's on the far side of this residential neighbourhood. He might miss the bus but he can get a taxi there if he has to, being saved by a cape from gangsters (and from the hospital bill) makes him willing to pay as much as he has to to get home. (Shit, does he need to look for a new job now?)

She'll pick up the lantern and walk with him. "So there's too big gangs and the government isn't doing much to stop them. Anything else I should know about? Is there somewhere I can build a small house without bothering anyone?"

"Um. What kinds of things do you want to know about? And do you mean like buying a vacant lot, or building outside city limits? I don't know the laws for outside the city."

"Ah, so this is one of those places where everything's owned by someone. Is there a good way for people with superpowers to get money then? It's hard to know what the right questions to ask are. I guess, if you pretend I have amnesia, are there important things about this city or the world I need to know about that aren't obvious on the surface?"

He has no idea what to tell someone with pretend-amnesia and superpowers about the world! And he super extra has no idea what to tell her that won't make her unaccountably angry at him! (Capes aren't normal, right, it stands to reason you can't really expect normal reactions from them?)

Where does he even go from here. 'This is our world, it has obvious stuff like cats and evil Empire gangs and also nonobvious stuff like money and property rights'?

"I... I'm sorry, I really don't know what to say," he apologizes frantically while looking for something better to say. "What... kinds of things are not obvious? You can get money by - selling whatever you can do with your superpowers, I'm sure people would pay a lot for quick healing." That might not be in his self-interest to point out, but it's also bloody obvious. "And since you can fight, you can join a hero group like the Protectorate and I assume get paid. I don't know if they pay a lot, they always talk about heroism being its own reward."

"Makes sense, how can I find this Protectorate? Sounds like I should talk to them even if I don't end up joining them. Maybe they'll have a better idea of what someone new needs to know."

"They have a building in the town center, I can tell you how to get to it - or I guess if you can fly it's probably that direction? It's pretty tall, I think we'd see the tip from here if it wasn't dark. There's a shield saying PRT on the front. And then they also have a floating base out in the bay, lights up at night, go east until you reach the beach and you'll see it."

(He is not a cape geek, doesn't like to think about the world going to shit the dystopian nature of reality and is quite ignorant of the fine distinctions between Protectorate, PRT and the Wards.)

"Or I guess you could just phone them but I don't know the number. The police would know because there's an emergency line for reporting cape fights but that's, well, for emergencies," which are hopefully over for the night.

"I can fly so that works." With her immediate curiosity satisfied she'll switch to humming an upbeat tune until he's healed up and they've reached his destination. It should only take a couple minutes for him to heal up so that'll probably come first.

Walking to the bus station takes less than twenty minutes; once he's healed he starts walking as fast as he thinks she'll be fine with. 

There are people at the bus station, which is good because it means he hasn't missed the bus, and he'll be safer in a crowd.

It's possibly not entirely good, because some of them start talking about the costumed woman with the cool-looking wings and one of them pulls out a cellphone to take a photo and she's not masked, isn't that supposed to be really important? He looks at her kind of nervously.

This is one of the things she didn't know to ask so she won't react much beyond smiling at the attention. "Looks like we're here then, I hope the rest of your night is safe." She'll wave to the other people and disappear the lantern before flapping her wings and flying up into the air.

How obvious is the Protectorate building if she flies up above the city?

(Oh wow she's an actual cape, one they never heard of before, photo photo photo and then race to be the first to post it online!)

The PRT HQ building isn't particularly built to be obvious from the air, although it does have a helipad on the roof, but it's fairly close by and it's one of the taller buildings in the city. If she flies in the indicated direction and looks for a tall building with a sign saying 'PRT' she can find it in short order.

The Protectorate HQ in the bay is several miles away but if her eyesight is good enough it's also easy to locate, since it's all lit up in the middle of an otherwise dark bay.

Well she can check the nearest tall building for the letters PRT and if it has them she'll land on the street and look for the entrance it's probably on the same side as the sign right?