"Go on. Take a picture. Anyone who wants a selfie, take one. But keep your distance, of course."
Immaculately dressed in a black Armani suit, striding through Times Square, was a man with a vulpine smile and slicked back hair. He rolled a silver dollar expertly across the knuckles of his right hand; the left was tucked away in his pocket. He exuded an aura of invulnerability. As he walked on the sidewalk, few paid him any mind, save for those who noted his sleek manner of dress and pale dark look. On second glance, they'd see something more disconcerting - a cell phone rotating around his upper body in a perfect orbit. He openly exhibited a metahuman ability, and New Yorkers who noticed had begun searching him up.
"Ladies, gentlemen," he shouted, winking at the camera that twisted around his form - livestreaming him to the world.
He casually stepped into traffic.
"Behold, my metahuman aspect: EGOCENTRISM."
An oncoming car slammed on its brakes, but was lifted into the air, the screech of tires drowned out by horns. The man in the black suit cocked his head backwards and made eye contact with the frantic driver, and winked at them. The car, suspended in mid air, started to spin around him too, further away from the phone. Then he collected another car, then a truck. They all spun around him at languid speed the moment they entered his gravitational aura. Screaming, panic - on the outskirts, though, some people who had yet to notice craned their heads to watch the event. Then crowds started to rush away. This had all the makings of an attack.
Someone had already called the MIRA hotline. 9-1-1 pings had gone out: someone was menacing Times Square with what appeared to be telekinetic powers. They quickly locked onto his livestream.
He was calling himself Egocentric, and he was an unregistered metahuman. Nobody had been hurt yet, but that could quickly change. Police surged towards Times Square to attempt to contain the situation, which could quickly go hot.
More cameras and phones were snatched away from the fleeing crowds. Any police men who drew near found themselves hoisted off their feet, suddenly rotating in his inextricable orbit, an invisible grip turning them into slowly rotating celestial bodies the moment they entered his range. A sphere of mist and dust formed around him, barely visible. His grin grew.
"Gilgamesh!" he announced with a sly grin. "Come out to play."
The problem with being a cloak, who mainly operated within a specific city, was that your patrol routes became public knowledge. 'An intentional design flaw cooked up, by the most chronically online social media managers, to ensure that the most rabid fans had something to do outside of drawing photos of their two favorite jurors fucking in the breakroom.' Gilgamesh thought to himself. He knew the reality of it though. It helped MIRA control the flow of press and control any disruption to the local economy. Any other day and it wouldn't have annoyed Gilgamesh nearly as much as this day.
It was rare for someone to be so clinical that they called out a Juror publicly. It still happened and those cases were often ignored and left to whoever MIRA had nearby. It was only a matter of time before the would be challenger types finally employed their third braincell to ensure that the person close by was the Juror they so badly wanted to meet. This had happened before, in Seattle, and the Juror in question thought it was a scheduled event. He ended up KIA. Gilgamesh didn't break his stride as he rushed toward the sound of the chaos.
"This is Gilgamesh. We have a code 256. The bastard put himself on my patrol route. There's too many civilian eyes for me to pull out. I'm moving to engage." The Juror muttered under his breath. The duty of a cloak was to ensure the myth stayed in tact. If he ran here it would be a PR nightmare. He had no choice but to round that corner.
Cops were already setting up a perimeter and civilians who could were backing away. "Copy that, Egocentrism....no ID....fantastic. Have my PA contact the press who were scheduled to intercept me on 122nd & Broadway. I might be a little late." Objects seemed to orbit him and based on the collection he had gathered their weight didn't matter; the pace they moved at was the same. The civilians in the vehicles seemed safe for now and until there was at least a basic understanding of how his powers worked Gilgamesh didn't want to risk changing that.
"Nice suit, I have one just like it..." the hero called as he crossed the police perimeter. "I'm here like you asked so lets keep the uninvited guests out of it hmmm?" He maintained his stoic expression. Eyes locked on Egocentrism from behind his Bottega Veneta Classic Square sunglasses. He avoided getting to close before determining the range of his opponents PMPD ability.
Gilgamesh had arrived. His opposite. A man with abilities that he had gathered were very much like his own.
Egocentric let the coin fall off his knuckles and into a field. It twitched and trembled, and then began rotating around him at high speeds. He was to the nucleus as the objects were to the electrons of an atom. Only the coin, though, accelerated at his command - the other things became something of a shield, from captured pedestrians to entire vehicles. Each object was in a fixed orbit approximately fifteen feet away from him, moving at various speeds dependent on their size.
The coin, as he focused on it, became little more than a silver streak, the afterimage more visible than the thing itself. It made a hissing noise as it cut through the air in front of him. Egocentric himself was cool as could be; with a minor twitch of his ring finger, he suddenly extended the coin's orbit, looping it in an ellipse to lash out at Gilgamesh as he approached, not unlike a jab. If it landed, it'd strike him in the head - as fast as a bullet. Just as quickly, it'd be pulled back into his immediate orbit.
"No. My apologies. We're all part of this whether we want to be or not."
Gilgamesh watched the coin begin rotating around his opponent, simultaneously digesting how their powers worked and looking for what kind of targets he could go for. A slight bend in his legs prepared him to move to intercept the objects path should the need arise. Its speed indicated that he had a degree of control over the speed of the objects within his orbit. Only a degree though as a number of other objects seemed to move at speeds based on their size. He estimated the range extended out about 14-16 feet from him.
His thoughts were cut short when the attack came. Thankfully he didn't even have to move. The coin struck against his polarity field. Giglamesh didn't bat an eye. It shook slightly in the air as a foreign force tried to push past his unbreakable defense before being whipped back into his opponents orbit.
"And what, exactly, is it that we're all apart of? I have reservations at Daniel I'd like to avoid missing."
He couldn't engage yet. The risk of getting caught in his opponents orbit were too great. Instead he slipped a hand into his pocket and took hold of a marble. He needed to get him talking while he looked for the perfect moment to probe his defenses.
"Go on. Take a picture. Anyone who wants a selfie, take one. But keep your distance, of course."