The Reckoning

[Raven]

"Flare suspects his powers aren't as strong as we thought," Cyrus said.

[Gifted]

"I mean, powers or no powers, she didn't get to her position without having a head on her shoulders." Rick put in. "And if he keeps increasing his aggression towards guns I kind of doubt she's wrong."

[Raven]

"The question is if we can use it," Cyrus said. "I'd like to see if he reacts the same way to grenades or if it's piercing damage he doesn't like."

[Gifted]

"Well, he seems less worried about blunt force trauma than he is about bullets, that might be something." Rick put in.
"Why do you say that?" Iris asked curiously.
""That's three times now he's gotten into a fight with a telekinetic or similar. Two of those were entirely unneccessary fight. We've seen his powers at work, he can incapacitate an Epic in seconds, way before they have a chance to fight back. Yet he let Mist and Techno try."

[Raven]

"You know how the light stabbing thing works to hurt Starlight? Maybe Nightmare has something similar," kailen said

[Gifted]

"I don't know, maybe, but that would mean I saw it wrong." Rick answered. "Starlight has those loopholes because invulnerability isn't her power. Her power is that hitting her makes her stronger. What I saw was definitely a primarily defensive power."

[Raven]

"Well, then what makes sense with invulnerability and not being invulnerable?" Kailen asked.

[Gifted]

"I'm not sure what applies in Nightmare's case. Off the top of my head? Maybe he's only invulnerable for a certain amount of hours per day. Maybe he has a finite amount of durability before he has to recharge and guns chip away at it. Josh would probably start talking about different metals that could possibly break though it. Maybe only his skin is invulnerable and he's worried one of these days someone's going to shoot him in the eye. Maybe it's something he has to mentally maintain and bullets are distracting because he doesn't know when or where they'll hit exactly. Could be any number of things."

[Raven]

"We'll have to test it, since we're not making much headway on his weakness," Cyrus said.

[Gifted]

"That last one intrigues me." Iris admitted. "An active ability rather than a passive one... that would make him function somewhat like Rick, would it not? ...So there is a precedent."

[Raven]

"It's also, unfortunately, the one we can't actually do anything about," Cyrus pointed out. "Unless we manage to catch him completely unaware, which would take a sniper at least."

[Gifted]

"Why is that a problem? Iris can snipe." Joan pointed out.
"Josh can snipe and we're working with Starlight. We might not even have to put Iris in danger." Rick put in. "And Bug and Flare told us that Nightmare likes to hang out around the shops... we could use them to get an exact location when we end up needing one."

[Raven]

"And then it depends on him being perfectly relaxed when we choose to do it. He catches anything off, and we might not get another chance at it for a long time," Cyrus added.

[Gifted]

"Right, so we can't be seen. But neither Iris nor Josh are exactly the most noticeable of people. I mean Joan can snipe too, but she's way more likely to attract attention."
"Iris hardly spoke to him. We don't know he'd even recognize her." Joan agreed. "And he's only seen Josh once."

[Raven]

"It could work," Cyrus said. "We can have Bug watch to see if he's relaxed without any way of being detected. I don't care about Josh, but I won't send Iris alone."