"True. Unless I intend to become such a threat."

Well, that response made everyone in the room more likely to be a threat. Not knowing about the danger sense, they try not to show it.

"I wasn't going to say it. Do you?"

"Not to you. Leave your capes here and go wait outside."

"...so that you can fight them? If that's what you meant, no. Definitely no."

"We can take her," one of the capes interjects. "She's outnumbered—"

"On a field she chose, and surrounded by her machines."

And then another officer recognizes the robots as the Machine Army, and Ellie is extremely under arrest.

"I'd like it to be noted that I did offer you the chance to walk away."

And then her two blasters open fire on the master while she uses the speedster to get to cover. She sends the activation command to the units she has by the door, which can at the very least hinder the retreat.

They don't retreat.

The master starts shouting "Stop!" repeatedly halfway through Ellie's sentence. The police exchange fire with the robots. They don't shoot at Ellie, likely because they know the second cape is creating three-foot force field pillars in front of her. They block the smoke blaster power fairly effectively, but each goes down after the first lightning bolt. A new field appears about once every two seconds—too slow to actually cancel out her blasters, but the translucent fields do help obscure her vision.

Ellie isn't forced to stop. But after the first time she ignores the command, she sees a rodent of unusual size leaping straight at her from stage left. The second time she disobeys her left leg goes limp, and the third time her aim worsens beyond what she'd already expect from being unbalanced.

And that's supposed to be enough to stop her? He'll have to be much more persuasive.

Smoke is useless, go away. She summons the earthquake cape, starts that beneath her enemies. Mover has done its job, replace with shadow-molder, begin gathering darkness. The rate of fire on the lightning continues to increase.

If she keeps not stopping, a shallow wound opens up on one of her arms. Nothing she can't ignore. Then she starts involuntarily flinching every few seconds, then it's a case of hiccups, and then the cape must have guessed that the effects got negligible because she runs for cover. Or staggers for cover, what with the earthquake and all.

Between the smoke, the shadow, the earthquake, and the remaining force fields, everyone's accuracy is pretty terrible. Ellie is earthquake-free but has the additional difficulties from some of Edict's effects so it's roughly even.

Most of the robots are down, but some of the police have been zorched and the people still standing are having a hard time with the remaining ones. The earthquake's fault.

Who needs accuracy when you can fire three bolts of lightning a second? She keeps up the pressure on the forcefields, and begins dragging herself in her best guess to where the master is hiding.

At the rate she's going the force fields can only block one shot in six. The cape makes sure to drop the occasional block in her way; slowing her down is worth an extra lightning bolt. He's less affected by the earthquake because all the force fields are at least a foot wide anyway; he doesn't need to be as precise.

His partner shouts again, giving a clue to her position. This command doesn't have any obvious penalty any more than the last one did. But Ellie's robots are definitely about to turn on her right now.

Her hand twitches towards the self-destruct. But- even if they were, they're still on the other side of the fight from her. And it's not like they can move.

She pauses to rescan the field.

The robots she deployed are, but what if the half-completed ones behind her finished building themselves weapons, she should at least consult the tinker power for whether they could have—

There's one robot still shooting, and three officers. Ellie's power doesn't tell her if the downed non-capes are dead, but the danger sense confirms that they're not threats. With a few more questions it can narrow down the master's location, which it turns out is just on the opposite side of the half-open fortified door. There are force fields providing enough cover for her to duck in and back out, and the shaker is keeping his distance at a wide enough angle to avoid the earthquake. While she pauses a sharp pyramidal force field appears in front of her with the point directly toward her good leg.

...the hell with it. She'll just start over. She swaps shadow for that brute to use its resilience, replaces the earthquake on the shaker, and hits the destruct button for the robots, who all go off like hand grenades.

Most of the robots were behind her, but she's fine. Some of the neutralized robots had intact self-destructs, so the police are not fine. The master sticks her head in the Endbringer shelter and shouts again, and when Ellie ignores this one she's blinded. Her power sight and danger sense are unaffected, so the opposing capes might not even know what happened.

The lightning shade continues to pound at the shaker. They won't be able to hide forever. Ellie resumes her course to the master.

The shaker doesn't have cover and can only layer so many force fields. Ellie's aim is still terrible but the sheer number of bolts overwhelms him. He cries out after getting zapped.

Ellie's course, meanwhile, leads her straight into the pyramidal spike. The brute power means it glances off without doing more than scratch her, but it gives away the fact that she's bad at avoiding those. Licit could probably make use of that if he weren't a little busy right now. Edict doesn't want to reuse her power so soon but fires her taser at the lightning shade and drops it. Half the bolts from the next volley get diverted through the path of least resistance.

If Licit was hit, it's a good time to step up the attack. Danger sense isn't as useful, she can tell where the capes are well enough herself. Switch for another blaster, continue firing.

The second blaster still isn't very effective against the force fields. But since there usually aren't force fields—

Licit is desperate now. Sharp fields appear pointed at her face, in hopes that making Ellie stop shooting will be more effective than trying to block. But it's still only scratches. Edict shouts continuously again. Paralyzed arm, fall to the ground, trip again, inability to talk, no effect. She tries a handgun but can't get a clear shot through the smoke from the new blaster. Ellie manages to inch closer to Licit while he's pinned down by lightning.

She is going to reach this cape and rip the life from his beating breast, and he can't stop her, and neither can anyone else.

Step. Step. Step.

He yelps again after another lucky shot zaps him. Edict risks getting closer for a direct line to Ellie, fumbling through the smoke.

Bullets switches targets, shooting at the approaching cape. Step. Step. And then she's on top of him and grasping-

The bullets miss, of course. But they don't need to hit to billow out more smoke and protect Ellie from bullets. Shields appear in front of her, separating her from her target. But they're never very big; she reaches around and—

–destination–

—the power is exactly what it looked like. Force fields, simple three-dimensional geometric shapes, three cubic feet maximum and selectively intangible. Can only take so much punishment; the bullets and smoke power could batter it down eventually. It's hers now.

She drops bullets again and uses her new forcefields to pin down Edict, throwing some lightning her way too.

Now that the force fields have switched sides, it's much quicker.

After claiming the master power, she gets a sense for duration. She's not permanently blinded or paralyzed or cetera, but it may take a while to wear off. Half the effects will disappear after an hour, half of the remainder after a day, and from there it slows down to a half-life of a week. No control over what disappears when, which is inconvenient because she probably needs to move.

With luck the big things will be gone first.

Any danger approaching?