Walking around a city, even one as big as Toronto, is easy when you don’t get tired. That being said, if you are looking to hit up thrift stores as you do so, it’s better to bring a truck. I was driving Rachel to the next store on the list while she was looking up photos of me wrestling a lion online.
“I don’t even remember seeing anyone taking pictures.” Granted I had a big kitty to worry about at the time but I still felt like I should have noticed cameras in my metal vision.
“Well, we know that you have a distance limit. Plus, distractions.” Rachel continued to scroll on her phone while I followed the GPS directions.
“I’m assuming I’ve gone viral.” I could have faked everything and still gone viral so I was sure I had.
“Yes, but only because this incident involved a cat.” We both laughed. “Otherwise, who really cares.”
I couldn’t blame her logic, it was impeccable. “Anything else going on in the world?”
“According to my news feed, the first, First Nations Party minister has been elected to the cabinet. Prime Minister Vaughn calling it a successful completion of his first campaign promise.” Rachel read the headline like a news anchor.
“I assume that means James Vaughn was re-elected Prime Minister for another term.” I had voted for him the first time and was happy to hear things seemed to have worked.
“Yup, so now indigenous people have their own party to elect their own people into any position that directly affects them. The only real opposition was that their population only really warranted sixteen seats according to the national average but the PM said he wanted an odd number and giving them an extra seat was hardly unfair. So, yay to them!”
“I didn’t think campaign promises got kept. What a strange new world I have woken up into.”
“Article about you catching the AC unit and why it’s a hoax. Article about the price of gold going up again.”
“Oh man, if only I owned a metal mining company. I’d be so rich…” Sarcasm aside, I did start to wonder if or when I would try to re-enter my life.
“Assuming you didn’t eat it all.” An entirely fair point for her to make considering how tasty gold was.
“Another article, supposedly about superhumans in Toronto so I think they might assume there are more than one of you.”
“It’s because I keep changing costumes isn’t it?” I had four spare costumes each in their own bag on the back seat.
“Probabl-” Her scoff was cut off by a small yelp as her phone buzzed loudly in her hand.
“That an Amber Alert?” I cancelled the route on the GPS expecting to put in a new location.
“Active shooter at the UofT Athletic Center. Evacuate area.” Rachel shuddered as she spoke.
I didn’t know its location but the moment the GPS processed my voice and plotted the route, I hit the gas and laid on the horn as I cut through the intersection we had been approaching. Rachel might have been upset over the traffic infractions I was committing with her truck but she wasn’t even paying attention. Her focus was on learning anything new while I furiously broke the law. She reached over and turned on the radio to tune it until we heard gunshots and screams.
“Some event, they were broadcasting.” Rachel and I listened as the shooting continued and whoever had been at the microphone wept.
A police car, either responding to my driving or the shooting, had its sirens going as we made our way through the final intersection before I pulled up onto the curb. I had barely managed to avoid the bikes and a similarly parked moving van as I slammed the gear into park before getting out.
“Tell the cops that’s the bad guys’ van!” I shouted at Rachel.
The sound of gunfire was loud enough to be heard at the door where I could see a chain holding it closed on the inside. Between my strength and the fact that the entryway was mostly glass, I wasn’t deterred. Putting my foot on the left door I yanked the one on the right and broke the inside handle off rather than the chain but it had done the job of giving people an exit not covered in broken glass. Dashing forward I was swept off to the side as an explosive force tore the entire entryway to shreds. I hadn’t even been thinking about a trap or bomb but the nails I found embedded in my corset should have been obvious to my metal vision had I been looking for it.
There wasn’t any time to bother plucking them out as the gunfire, possibly paused at the explosion, started back up. While it wasn’t the first time I had paid a visit to the place, I didn’t know my way around and didn’t know where the shooting was coming from with the way it echoed. My best guess was that it was happening in the Field House on the third floor since it was the biggest open area that didn’t involve a pool but it was hardly the only place where an event could have been located.
“Where is he?!” I shouted while running up to the third floor and hoped I was right.
I noticed the chain on the opposite side of the first door to the Field House that I saw when I got up the stairs and charged on through. Again I broke the handle of the door I kicked rather than the chain but I didn’t care. There was no bomb this time but I could plainly see the carnage that filled the room. Some sort of event, radio station set up off to the side, and a heavy machinegun being unloaded onto the trapped attendees.
It looked like one of the heavy Russian guns you find mounted on a vehicle or tank but it was being carried by someone encased in metal. I didn’t know how someone could carry the gun and the armour when neither should have been practical but there wasn’t time to ponder.
“Hey! Over here!” I shouted trying to distract him but most likely went unheard due to the noise.
Bolting down the track that circled the massive room, far faster than anyone else ever could manage, I could see people dead and dying in my peripheral vision. I snagged a chair that had been off to the side of the event as I ran and heaved it at the shooter. It bounced near him, but at such a distance I just wanted to get his attention. He turned to face me and the movement struck me as rather mechanical before a burst of heavy calibre bullets struck me. They hurt and they forced me to adjust my balance as I ran but I wasn’t stopping. I could tell he thought the bullets were going to be enough because he turned to shoot into the packed crowd again before turning back to me.
There were more stings as bullets hit me as I closed the last few meters and could see the mechanical workings surrounding the red fog inside. He was wearing powered armour of all things. I had no time to speculate as I grabbed the barrel of the gun and gripped it hard enough to pinch it closed while I lifted it towards the ceiling. A solid uppercut to the weapon’s action above the drum magazine bent the whole weapon into uselessness. I tore it from his grip and cast it away.
No sooner had I done this that he drew another gun from his hip and, with a heavy boom, sent a 12-gauge slug into me. Unlike before when I had the momentum of my charge to counter the gunshots, each hit staggered me with the impact and the pain. However, it was somewhat comforting to know that each shot that hit me was one less for someone who couldn’t survive it. I felt my resolve harden and the pain fade as I looked past the hand I put up reflexively to shield myself and glared at my enemy.
Not interested in waiting until the shotgun was empty, it too had a drum magazine feeding it, I charged towards him and grabbed the weapon with both hands. I crushed it and threw it away when he let go. I felt the heavy hand grab my neck and struggle to lift me for a moment before more power went into it. He tried to choke me but I just slammed my fist into the heavy metal helmet. I didn’t have a lot of leverage with my feet off the ground so it was as useful as his attempt to choke me. Even his eyes were shielded and I couldn’t even dig my fingers into the slits of his helmet before seeing him bring another weapon up from his other hip.
The fire blocked my sight but I could see the handheld flamethrower well enough to pinch the feed line closed and cut it off. Looking between me and the weapon it seemed like he was finally realizing I was unkillable. He threw me against the concrete wall with his hand still around my throat and with his hand free, having dropped the flamethrower, made a fist and slammed it into my face.
It felt weird to be punched by a giant metal fist and not feel much of it. Unfortunately, striking back was difficult since I was still off my feet. Of course, a wall would work just as well. I bent my legs to put my feet on the wall and grabbed onto the arm holding me. I kicked off and pushed him off balance enough to stumble. The moment I was let go I turned around and started laying my fists into him. Hard metal clangs with each impact resonated through the massive room as I laid into him. Yet, I was finding that the armour was just too heavy to simply punch through, much like he had with my face. I wasn’t sure how much effect I was having on the meat inside but it didn’t seem like enough.
Keenly aware of how many people needed medical attention, and wouldn’t get any until it was safe, I went for a low tackle. The kick, and the speed that it had arrived, caught me off guard. Though rather than turn me to paste like a normal person, it knocked me upright. In the moment I took to plan my next move after the failed tackle I could see him pull out a chainsaw modified to hold like a sword.
“Seriously?” I asked as he pulled the ripcord to start it.
Gunning the motor he slashed at me and after a few deflections, he got under my guard and drove it into my belly. The heat from the friction actually felt nice next to the sting. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and the blade with my right until it jammed and the chain broke. Whipping the chain away, I kept a hold so I could flick my wrist and get it to coil around my hand. Not that my punches were really enhanced by the chain, the faster head movements belied the panic felt by the monster inside. I pulled him towards me and punched him in the face hard enough to knock him back. My patience was all gone. If I couldn’t knock him out I had to disable him.
Instead of going for the face or any other armoured points, I struck out at the joints. An uppercut to the side of the elbow of the arm I was holding cracked one of the pistons inside. I grabbed onto the torso and put a foot right into the knee hard enough to hear something burst inside. Not wanting to waste the grip, I lifted the entire suit off the ground and slammed it back down headfirst. Flipping him over, I started grabbing at anything on the back I could get my fingers into. I felt a hard shock of electricity as my fingers dug into the mechanical guts and felt two things. First, a far more powerful burst of pleasure than I had in the club bathroom. The second was the sudden stillness of the suit. The only struggle was the red fog inside it suddenly unable to move.
I looked around, “Shooter is down! There was a bomb on the front door so don’t try and leave! Help who you can!”
Voices started rising as people were no longer trying to go unnoticed. Many were trying to organize the chaos. I was about to pick up the suit to carry outside when someone came up beside me.
“Take this, before it all comes off.” The woman said, handing me a sports bra and filtered mask.
Again my costume was ruined and I took the sports bra to quickly put it on while she blocked the view. Not that I was concerned about being modest at the best of times but I appreciated it. The mask on my face had been melted on along with my wig but I covered it with the new mask anyway.
“Thank you.” The woman seemed like she was barely holding it together after finding out she wasn’t going to die after all.
“Help someone else now.” I encouraged her as I hefted the heavy suit onto my shoulder and started running the track all the way back to where I came in.
I shouted warnings about the bombs and told people the shooter was down as I carried the broken machine gun in my free hand. When I got outside, Rachel’s truck was gone and officers were filling up the street. I threw the suit and weapon onto the ground with a hard thud, unconcerned for the person trapped inside.
“Shooter is disabled inside the suit. There was a bomb at this door.” I gestured to the destruction behind me. “But I set it off so it’s safe. I don’t know about any others. There are a lot of wounded people upstairs and we need every ambulance there is.”
The two officers closest to me seemed ready to head inside while another made calls on the radio. I rushed back into the building and they followed with far more caution than I was showing but they picked up the pace at my urging. When we got back into the massive room one made a call on his radio while the other addressed me.
“Is this the only room with injuries?”
“All that I know of.” I really didn’t know if anyone else had been hurt.
Leaving them to sort things out and call for more help, I turned to the cries of the wounded and rushed over to help someone. I tried not to look at the still bodies but I could see them regardless. When my eyes fell on a man who was still breathing I knelt next to him. There were three bullet holes in his torso and blood everywhere. Even if it wasn’t all his, I didn’t know how he was still alive in the first place but he still managed to speak to me.
“How do I look?” He asked with a fatalistic tone already knowing the answer.
“A solid eight, at least. Maybe a nine if you cleaned up a bit.” I didn’t know how to tell him what he expected.
He tried to laugh before coughing blood. “Well, I knew you were going to lie to me but that was a bit over the top.”
I held him by the hand but it felt cold. I wouldn’t have been able to stop the bleeding even if I had three hands.
“Am I going to make it?” He asked with a slight smile, no doubt fishing for another joke.
“Well, that really depends on the degree you are going for. If it’s liberal arts I’ve got some bad news for you.” I got a bigger smile that time but there was no follow-up cough.
I gently placed his hand down on his chest and shuddered. I wanted to cry and bawl my heart out.
A hand on my shoulder startled me and I could sense a man with body armour and strapped on tool kits behind me. I turned to look and made an easy guess that he was with the bomb squad.
“I need to ask you about the device at the front door.” I could tell he was trying not to let the scene get to him while he focused on his job to find any other bombs that might have been around.
“Tripwire, would have seen it if I had been looking for it.” For all my complaining about not being able to turn off the omnipresent metal sense, I wished I hadn’t adapted so quickly.
“What else can you tell me?” I wasn’t sure he understood I was caught in the blast.
“It hit me with these.” Some of the nails had remained embedded in my pants and I pulled them out to show him. “Now that I’m not in a rush, I can help you find any more. I have sort of an x-ray vision for metal and I’m bombproof.”
He was surprised, to say the least when I pulled out the nails but stopped short at believing me. “Do you seriously expect me to believe that?”
“Do you have a wedding ring in the bottom of your boot?” I noticed the gold ring the moment after I noticed him but didn’t think it was relevant enough to ask about at first.
He seemed genuinely surprised but it had more to do with the ring than me finding it since he looked down at his left foot. “Right, come with me.”
We passed the paramedics and firefighters flooding into the room as I followed him. Back on ground level, we approached one of the other main entrances and I, paying attention this time, instantly sensed the metal casings of a bomb lined with nails in what looked to be a backpack behind a garbage can. The tripwire was a fishing line that stretched across the entryway.
“Found one,” I stated before realizing he was still back with his crew watching something on a tablet. “Found one!”
He perked up at my call and started asking me questions without approaching. I described what I saw to him and learned very quickly that I didn’t know enough about bombs to use the right words. Despite that, he seemed to have talked to enough laymen to know how to get information from the technical terms I was using such as ‘wire thingy’ or ‘spring bit’.
While I waited I noticed something else, a ring in the garbage can. However, unlike the wedding ring in the boot, this one was a simple wire attached to a pin. I’d always wondered if the pins looked like they did in the movies and apparently this one did.
“Found a pin, like for a grenade. It’s in the trash. Should I get it and put it back in the bomb?”
“No!” He called out quickly before making me describe the pin in detail.
I was happy he was allowing me to help at all and keeping my mind occupied so I didn’t complain. Without knowing anything about police procedure I knew my assistance was supposed to be staying behind a line somewhere and not getting involved. When I used a camera he passed me to look around the device, relegating me to the role of a bomb disposal robot, he finally permitted me to retrieve the key. However, when I was allowed to slide it into the pinhole on the silver cylinder sticking out from the bomb I could see movement inside. I made a judgement call and tore the cylinder right out of the bomb and held it as far away as I could before it went off in my hand.
“Well, that didn’t work.” My hand stung from the detonation.
I backed away from the bomb and showed what was in my hand to the officers and one opened up an evidence bag for me to drop it all in. As I wiped the debris off my hand, I noticed a new man wearing a bland suit farther down the hall holding one of the bags I got to hold one of my spare uniforms.
“Is that mine?” I asked more as a polite courtesy than anything else.
“What happened with the bomb?” Still, with his mind on the task, he remained behind the ballistic glass barrier they had erected while I had been looking at the bomb.
“I put the pin in and that triggered a mechanism inside. Since I figured that a safety pin was supposed to prevent a trigger rather than be one, I just yanked the whole thing out. Sorry.”
He examined my hand as the man with my bag came up to us. It had already been opened, unsurprisingly given the situation, so I snagged the stretchy fake corset out of it. Rachel had picked what one to give me well as I could quickly put it on over my borrowed sports bra once my hand was free from examination. The man politely continued to hold the bag as I threw on a new hooded cape.
“Capes are cool, don’t judge me.” Nobody seemed to be inclined to say anything so I continued. “So, I think if the main bomb or device was going to go off, it would have. Do you have one of those bubble bomb containers on a truck made to withstand an explosion?”
My hand gestures probably didn’t make me look any more professional than my vocabulary.
“Can you see it on the road?” The man who still had a ring in his boot asked.
I clued in immediately that it was a test, he sounded too much like any of my professors did when they were trying to test my bullshit in class.
“I can’t quite see the road. Fences for sure, the bike racks when I was at the bomb itself. I haven’t actually measured it scientifically.”
Satisfied with the answer, he made a call on the radio to bring the containment vessel up the road to the door we were at. I returned to the door and, after cutting the chain on the door, picked up the bomb to carry it outside. Trying to ignore whoever may have been watching, I placed it in the heavy steel vault-like container before closing the door. Coming back inside, we checked other doors and while most had been bolted shut, there weren’t any more bombs. The man who had brought my costume followed us the whole time.
With the first pass complete I suddenly found my spirits lifted by the presence of the sniffer dogs they had brought in to do their own search. I immediately became terrified that I had missed something and that the dogs might get hurt so I moved ahead of the second sweep to make sure they would be fine. Only once they had finished working was I allowed to pet some of them. There was more work to be done of course, but I felt like I did everything I could and everyone else seemed comfortable enough.
As we had been conducting our searches, the injured had been taken out as quickly as possible and I wondered how many were still left inside. I took a moment to simply step outside and lean against the wall and slide down to sit against it, annoyed that it wasn’t any easier to relax since my muscles weren’t strained by standing in the first place.
“May I join you?” The man asked, speaking for the first time and still holding my costume bag.
“Sure,” I wanted to quip at him but nothing came to mind.
He sat on the grass next to me. “Do you know what my job is?”
“Your gun isn’t loaded. You wear a vest. And you have the most inoffensive face ever. I’m guessing you are a negotiator.” I got a friendly chuckle out of him.
“The gun is because I don’t want to get shot if I am forced to give it up to establish my lack of threat. The vest, well that’s obvious. And I do tend to put people at ease with a smile.” He paused to gauge my reaction just like dad used to do. “I showed up because we expected things to turn into a hostage situation. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. Did you see the hand cart stacked with ammo up there?”
My reaction sufficed as an answer as I turned to look at him with wide eyes.
“He brought enough for everyone in the building and a march down the street. See the response team?” He pointed at the men who may have even been the ones to chase me at the hospital. “They took one look at the suit and said they couldn’t have stopped it. We were on the phone with Fort York and others for the kind of hardware we would have needed.”
“I certainly wasn’t expecting powered armour, that’s for sure.”
“Well, thanks to you, we didn’t need it. Still too early for an exact count, but over three hundred made it out alive from that room alone.”
“How many didn’t?”
He did me the courtesy of being blunt. “About forty. Lot’s of critical cases that can go either way. But what you did was incredible.”
“I just wish I got there sooner. Caught them walking in before anything.”
“How did you end up here?”
“Phone alert. I was driving to another thrift store to get more costumes since I go through them so quickly. I got here as fast as I could.”
“Seems like it. Look, I’m not a concealer or psychiatrist trained to deal with this sort of thing. That being said, I do know a few things. There are a lot of things that happen that you can save people from if you happen to be there. But you can’t be. You can only handle what’s in front of you to the best of your ability and you did that. Buying costumes might seem frivolous when lives are on the line but where would you have been if you didn’t need them? At home? How far away is that? That stupid thing that puts you in a place and time might just be exactly where you need to be. If you were running along rooftops looking for crime, you could have been in any other part of the city. Could you have gotten here faster? There are too many variables in the world to dwell on what-ifs. Save that for history nerds on the internet.”
“Speaking of that, this is going to be all over it isn’t it?”
“It already is. Someone was live-streaming the event and when the shooting started they kept focused on the attacker. The guy recording literally said ‘whoever sees this, tell the cops what they are running into in the hopes that we would be ready.”
“Did he make it?”
“I think so. Because I was watching it when, from off-camera, a chair comes flying in. The shooter stops shooting at the people and the camera shows some girl charging down the track. You can see the bullets hitting but they do nothing.”
“They hurt like hell, but it fades quickly. Like someone using an overpowered paintball gun with frozen rounds.”
“Ouch, well, I couldn’t tell since you smashed up the gun in one quick move. At first, I wondered if maybe, despite the obvious signs you had been shot like sparks and damage to your clothing that maybe he missed. But then the shotgun, the flamethrower of all things, the chainsaw and even just the punching. All of that should have killed you in one hit. Instead, you broke his joints and yanked out his power.”
“It happened so quick. I was scared the whole time.”
“Of what? I mean, I doubt you were born indestructible so instinctively–” I cut him off.
“Every second I wasted fighting was less time for help to arrive. Paramedics aren’t going to charge in under fire. I had to put him down hard and fast. I just didn’t know how. I didn’t even know suits like that were a thing, let alone prepared to fight one.”
“You and us both. As uncomfortable as the thought is. But you figured it out. Even if we knew what to do the moment it started, we still wouldn’t have had a gun on hand to take him down quicker than you did.”
“I suppose life is an endless experience of learning things that would have made life easier earlier.”
“Agreed. I don’t suppose I get to learn your name do I?”
“I don’t have a superhero name yet. I just hope the internet doesn’t stick me with something awful. But you can call me Violet if you need to call me anything.”
“Gary. Would you mind if I asked you a few things I know people are going to ask me about you?”
“Go for it.”
“How did you get to be the way you are? Are there more of you?”
“Something happened, the odds of which akin to the reasons for the creation of the word ‘nonzero’, and it only happened to me.”
“Wow, you are a master of the vague response. Alright, so you were the one that caught the AC unit right? Saved the baby?”
“And hung the guy out of his window with the chain he used to keep his girlfriend locked up. And a mother with her baby who went into the lake. Then that officer who would have been ambushed in the alleyway. Also, whoever that gang would have attacked if they hadn’t picked me. I don’t know the name of the officer who responded to that one but she shot me so I don’t think she likes me.”
“I see,” some points were clearly news to him.
“Also, I saved a kitty stuck in a tree.”
“You mean the lion that escaped from the zoo?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Fair enough.” He saw me pet the dogs, he knew the kind of person I was. “Are you going to be a problem for the police?”
“Not by intention but probably.”
“Please don’t.”
I gave him a look.
“What I mean is, I need to at least say I told you not to engage in vigilante justice. We couldn’t stop the shooter in powered armour and you kicked his ass so I don’t think we can really stop you either. So a polite request seemed like the move to make.”
“That’s fine. I get why it’s illegal. I just can’t sit back and not do anything. The guy I hung from the balcony, I used the chain he used to bolt his girlfriend to the floor in their apartment. I don’t care what the finer points of the law are, I’m kicking down the door and saving the girl.”
“Did you know that before you kicked down the door?”
“I could see the metal through the wall. Those pink bandanna guys were camped out next door trying to get evidence to give to the police. Though, to be honest, I’d have kicked down the door even without metal vision.”
“I appreciate the honesty. I don’t know the details of that case but it sounds like the guy knew where the lines were and kept things hidden.”
“That’s my point. We can talk about the finer details of laws and authority versus rights and freedoms all day but nothing we, as humans, create will be perfect. There will always be those who abuse the law and act above it for their criminal interests. Maybe because they have good lawyers, money or connections, a position of authority, or are just smart enough not to leave any proof.”
“You aren’t wrong.”
“Even if we did have a perfectly balanced system without discrimination, it’s still operated and enforced by people. Have you met them? We’re lucky not to implode civilization every other week.”
Gary just nodded as I continued, no doubt learned from experience that it’s sometimes best to just let the person talk.
“I’m not saying I don’t respect the system. Sure, I can offer some suggestions but you are constrained by the very necessary limits to your power. We all know what happens when you don’t need warrants or wear body cams or whatever else. I’m just saying that while you enforce the letter of the law, I enforce the spirit of the law. Yes, I will operate above it if I need to, but it will be against those who do the same. Or just things that happen right in front of me. If I can just pass things off to you, I will. If you are talking with some robbers at a bank, it’s going to be your show. Let me know if you need anything. But if everyone knows some crime boss lives in a mansion, or some rich dude has a kill room, or the police chief has kill quotas for whatever group, then I am going to beat wholesale ass.”
“Can you at least do us the courtesy of reporting whatever it is and letting us take the first crack at it?”
“Yes!” I probably didn’t need to shout with exasperation but I wanted to be clear. “If you need me to check out more bombs your robots can’t handle, or if there is a threat, then call me up. If your SWAT team needs me to soak up bullets or be a battering ram, I’m all for it. I’m reasonably certain fire doesn’t do anything to me and I don’t need to breathe so if there is a big blaze going on, let the fire department know I’m available. I don’t need to sleep.”
“Why not just join then? Hook you into the official system. It would be faster.”
“Because then I’m tied to your rules. If I became an officer, would I still have to wear a bulletproof vest? Because of policy or whatever?”
“Probably, but in your case, it would keep you from being near-naked every time you did something.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “I’d still need to get warrants and such. Look, if my powers were throwing fire and lightning or other magic junk I would just tour universities making bank assisting experiments and making the folks over at CERN cry every time I changed the laws of physics. But instead, I am someone who can’t be stopped. Not by weaponry or the law. Restricting myself doesn’t help anyone. I’d still be doing what you are doing, just with less personal danger. You probably wouldn’t even let me work overtime. I am aware that I am breaking a law that absolutely should continue to exist. Just as I am aware that I have an enormous amount of power that I need to use responsibly in accordance with my moral compass. If the police want to stop me, arrest the bad guys before they appear on my radar. I’ll go back to picking up guys at bars and seeing what gets me drunk fastest.”
“Will you kill anyone?” The bluntness of the question gave me an indication of how worried he was about my answer.
“That would NOT be my intention. Would I, had the shooter not been wearing that armour? Maybe, just from the urgency of the situation. Anyone willing to murder innocent people won’t be getting the kid gloves but if I can get through life without ever killing anyone that would be fine with me. That being said, I won’t hold back to save a life so if that’s what it takes to save someone, I will do it.”
“I see.” He just nodded. “So the general idea you have is to kick down the doors and knock people around until we can take over?”
“Happily. I don’t have a home, let alone a prison facility. Separating myself from you also gives you the excuse that you didn’t tell me to raid that mansion. You were just responding to the call and found all the cocaine laying about when you got there.”
“I’m going to have a lot of long talks with our crown attorney later today I think. After everyone else I am going to be talking to of course.”
“Not needing to attend boring meetings, another bonus of not signing up.”
“Do you have a side-kick yet? I can sit on my microwave or something for powers.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at him. He obviously had his agenda of keeping me from breaking the law but also knew that if he couldn’t do that then at least make friends.
“I realize you can’t actually help me break the law. Just try to help people understand why I am doing what I am doing. If I acted like a normal person, more people would be dead right now. If I was an officer following rules, more people would be dead right now. Maybe not as much, I don’t actually know what all your rules are, but still. If people have a problem with me, what I do, then explain to them the simple fact.”
I got up, my cape stuck to the wall as I slid down and peeled off with the sound of static. I turned and helped Gary to his feet.
“What’s the simple fact?” He asked and I could tell he knew I was being dramatic.
“You can’t stop me.” I gave him my warmest smile before realizing I was wearing a mask and just hoped it showed in my eyes instead.
I walked away, then learned very quickly that a crowd had formed behind the perimeter and cameras were all aiming at me with people shouting. Most, happily enough, were cheering at me. Some were asking me for my name but I still hadn’t thought about it so I threw up a V with two fingers.
As the police started to move the crowd away to let more emergency vehicles through I took the chance to slip away. I knew I was being watched and didn’t want anyone seeing me when I finally found Rachel sitting in her truck a block away. While stealth was never my strong suit, I managed it well enough to not find any videos of me online getting away when I looked later. I took over driving, her brief stint after I got out had been less than comfortable and took us back to her house.
“So, that was horrible.” Rachel clutched her phone and I knew she would have seen something horrible on it if someone had live-streamed the whole thing.
“It was worse inside,” I replied, trying not to think of it.
“Did you…” Rachel trailed off like she couldn’t even think of something to ask.
“Is the news covering it?” I knew the answer was yes but I wanted her to have something to do other than idly fret.
Boy was it ever being covered.
JimmyAgent007 Writing 