Regardless of the fatality, or genetic alterations, a bullet to the chest does serious damage that's going to take a rather long time to recover. Of course, the loss of a single important gang member temporarily, regardless of his power, isn't going to lay a huge dent in their operations; especially since he wasn't needed to maintain the gang's terror that existed before Powell came along. That's the way that the gangs worked: regardless of numbers or abilities, as long as the simple infrastructure exists, the gang continues to function as a whole. This is not directly understood by the general public in its entirety, which merely helps create the image of fear which the gangs required to survive.
One might also call that a double edged sword. The report on Powell's shooting was certainly well covered, and make him like look a rather huge embarrassment. Jenna Rook's coverage of it was rather honest, though, not trying to make the image seem any better than it was. Steve was rather pleased to see the report on television, even though he knew all about what happened already.
"...was shot in the chest by the vigilante known as Avenger earlier today. and was immediately rushed into a nearby gang-owned truck." Rook reported, "The bullet did not appear to be fatal, as Powell managed to walk away from the wound, it is reported that such a gunshot wound -- despite his lacking of major organs located there, due to his genetic alteration -- would take at the very least, several weeks of recovery. The bullet used, which the Ottawa police confess to have designed to cause a release of liquid nitrogen on impact, appeared to have been stolen by Avenger. The police suspect it was stolen from a secret police storage warehouse, and although no evidence of displacement found inside the warehouse -- with the exception of the missing liquid nitrogen weapon -- which has recently been put into entire lockdown, all valuable weapon materials from it relocated."
"Dammit!" Ken cursed at his television set. The police weapons warehouse had a lot of potential to be helpful for him as Avenger, and with the exception of the wrist mounted rocket that had apparently been either overlooked by the police, or simply not reported to the news team that Rook worked for, any other weapons had been removed. Ken didn't doubt that Jenna Rook was telling the truth on that matter. He also knew that it was too risky to go and check the warehouse to see if she was telling the truth about the warehouse being cleared. It could very well be a police trap. If there was a single of the rocket weapons, he didn't doubt that there were other weapons of its type, and he didn't want to find out the effectiveness of such a weapon on his armour. It sure looked dangerous enough. Besides, Ken had taken enough crap, and despite his obvious victory, was feeling a lot like shit physically, due to Magnet throwing him. It had hurt a lot, and he was not looking forward to dragging himself to school the next day. Maybe he'd skip. Ken wasn't certain what he'd do at this point.
He then realized that he should stop acting like that, and just be thankful that he indeed had taken out Jake Powell at least temporarily, and it was indeed a victory, regardless of any other minor things. The pain'd go away, and he'd done fine without any other exotic police bullets before, anyway.
***
The pain, however, did not go away in the morning. He had begun to expect this, and had even considered stealing some money from his mother to buy some painkillers at the pharmacy. He didn't, however, because the nearest legitimate pharmacy was at the other side of town and he didn't feel like putting on the armour to go to a store, and besides, most of it was what would be considered illegal narcotics by anyone of the late 20th or early 21st centuries; the police had far more important things to deal with. Plus, the people who sold them were greatly similar to those who sold them in the earlier 21st century.
I think it'd be rather easy to say that while they could be trusted about as far as Ken could kick them, without his armour. I don't even think that needs much more elaboration. So he decided to just suck it up and ignore the pain, which was certainly much easier said than done.
***
And this just in: nobody gives a shit! Jenna Rook did not say this, despite greatly wanting to. She was standing in the middle of the street in the south end, talking about some election in Europe. Nobody cared about politics overseas, yet she was reporting on it anyway-- wait, no, something new popped up on the teleprompter. Jolly good!
"And... this just coming in right now. The Hassé family has declared a new initiative in its so called 'anti-crime' program... the game notorious for owning much of the drug trade in the west end of Toronto and minimal parts of Ottawa has declared that it will officially kick up its program as it has in T.O., which was essentially a gang war with rival gang of the Nightmare Crew."
As many people would say it, they were definitely not nice people. In the opinion of Ken, who had decided to skip Ms. Drahn's class that day, they ranked somewhere a bit higher than the Nightmare Crew (only because they were rather inactive in Ottawa until now), although still quite lower than the average piece of horse shit. Which coincidentally...
"In Toronto, the police chief has quite blunted described this 'anti-crime' initiative as a pile of horse shit, and being nothing more than just a gang war." You might be surprised at what's able to be said on day time television when the government can't even manage a decent policing force, let alone enforce any regulations on television broadcasts.
"Our reporters have discovered a troop of uniformed gang members in Ottawa's south end..." It then cut to a clip taken from afar of, well, exactly what Rook described, with a male reporter in the foreground. What did you expect?
"And... well, shit, this is an unexpected development... it would appear that Avenger has shown up amongst the gang meeting. I'll let you take it from here, Jesse." Jesse, of course, being the reporter at the scene. Had the situation ended differently, Jenna probably would have gotten in some serious crap with the network's executives for tossing a live broadcast to him unexpectedly. He took over surprisingly well, however.
It was 2:45 PM.
Ken's usual sarcastic tone was hidden under the mechanical voice, although certainly present.
"Alright, boys, you're doing something wrong here. Anyone want to guess what?" In fact, it was a shame that Ken's face was not visible, but he was grinning like you wouldn't believe. Well, I'd hope you believe, but that's beyond the point. Even when he got shot at, he was still smiling. Idiots.
"Hey, fuck you!" Actually, the voice was female. And appearently didn't take kindly to being called a boy.
Then again, Ken didn't take kindly to being shot at, but yannow, it's been known to happen. A lot.
Then suddenly, he was lying against the ground.
Not by any force acting on its own, mind you, that'd just be stupid. It took him a few minutes to realize this, but he had most definitely been thrown at the ground. The Hassé family wasn't just your bum level drug dealing assortment of sons of bitches: they had quite much money at their disposal. Their gang members weren't just some rag-tag militia, too, it was actually well structured, much like a troop in the war.
Specifically, they were mostly mean gunmen with a few sharpshooters and Magnet-soldiers tossed in for good measure. It turns out, Steve wasn't the only one with access to old war armour. This was, thoroughly indicated by Ken being thrown at the ground despite a rather lack of the girl Magnet that he knew being around.
Furthermore, the armour definitely seemed smaller than the chunky boots/gauntlets that Magnet wore. Had Ken known shit about the way that they worked, he would've known that smaller did not mean better (as it usually does), and that the gang-militia were vastly underpowered than Magnet. But, to phrase it elegantly, Ken didn't know shit about the way that it worked. Neither did Jenna Rook.
"And, it seems that Avenger's ambush has backfired on him and he's down... again, I'm Jesse Oliver, reporting live from South Ottawa, where a deployment from the Hassé family has arrived in the city... and received a less than warm welcome from the city's armoured vigilante, Avenger. Again, it's 3:00 PM, and I'm Jesse Oliver reporting live..."
It did not take an incredibly long time for Ken to return to his feet after realizing that he had indeed been thrown down, and not by the Magnet that he knew. In fact, it took slightly longer to stand than it did for him to say "Return, stand", but not a whole lot longer. Nor did it take him very long to have...
"...knocked out the magnet-armoured soldier with a swift punch! He seemed to slow down there, but I think it's safe to say, that would have hurt..." It was indeed, very safe to say that it hurt. Later, the man wearing the armour would be dragged by his comrades escaping, and treated for his concussion at a private hospital. Although certainly not the most unlucky of the gang attacking Ken, as he would indeed be leaving the scene alive, it was certainly a serious injury.
3:15 PM, and school had just gotten out. Somehow, Ken didn't notice.
He threw one idiot rushing at him into one of the magnet-soldiers, knocking them both over. "Dammit, you sons of bitches, die, and stay down!"
"Although clearly having superior firepower, it would seem that Avenger has been overwhelmed by the sheerly massive amount of attackers and... has just been thrown... hang on. It looks like he's been thrown into the crowd of gang members by... the far more familiar, masked Magnet girl. And it looks like..."
Those were the last words that Jesse Oliver said. He hit the ground with a bullet through her head, falling onto the asphalt.
"You bloody sons of bitches!" Ken shouted. It was not clear which gang member had the poor aim to shoot the reporter, rather than Magnet, but it didn't really matter to Ken, anyways. Five bodies hit the ground within seconds of Oliver getting shot down.
"Die."
Another nearby soldier got his ribs smashed into his vital organs. Magnet did not appreciate the bloody mess. Neither did any of the soldiers wearing the similar armour to hers.
"That's quite enough from you!" One of them shouted. Looking back on it, Ken wouldn't know what hurt more, the impact of smashing into the wall, or the recurring pain that he'd feel later from getting beaten where he'd already been bruised and cut badly the day before. It took three soldiers to throw him at the wall, and he was rather getting sick of being thrown at walls.
As for Magnet, well, she joined him rather quickly. She had not experience the thrill of being thrown against a wall before, and, given the chance to avoid it, she would have gladly taken it. After the experience of being thrown at a wall, she could say with great certainty, that she didn't want to try that again.
"God dammit!" She managed to groan out in pain.
Avenger grabbed her injured body as the seemingly giant army came in for the kill. I've never had the pleasure of being pinned down by a pack of wolves, but I'm sure that to Steve, it was much like that. Of course, wolves probably had nicer breathe and generally more civilized, but it was still as scary as hell.
"...fuckers..." Was all that Steve could manage to say before passing out in Avenger's arms, as he flew away.
Had Steve known who was inside the armour, his outlook on the entire situation might have been generally different, and much nicer that she had been rescued by Ken from a stupid fight that she shouldn't have entered in the first place. The report was cut quickly after Oliver getting shot by the stray bullet, and once damage control had been assesed and Rook was given the updated situation to deliver, she would have given a casualty report in the dozens. Steve regained conciousness on top of a high rise near the hospital, and thusly missed this report, as well as an explanation for why he had ended up on the rooftop, other than the logical conclusion of Avenger was just being nice. In fact, it was this logic that he had quite trouble grasping, and led to his confusion. However, since he was just misunderstanding of Ken's alter-ego's motives, his suspicions that Avenger had a sinister motive for rescuing her remained.
But in any event, the gang relocated, rather proud of itself for its victory over the two previously undefeated vigilantes. First day in the city, and already off to a good start. Of course, neither Ken nor Steve knew of this.
Probably for the better.