Mom, I'm Bulletproof

Chapter 5.5: Beeswax

Inside the main room, surrounded by various student inventions, Future Girl hovered in midair, surveying the room. "Please," she said, "I just want to talk."

Marci ducked down behind a table. She knew the girl with the guns could be hiding anywhere. While Marci remembered her and Amber's talk about X-ray vision, a shot rang out, echoing around the room. With speed Marci didn't think possible, Future Girl zipped through the air and caught the bullet before it struck anything. She then tossed it harmlessly on the floor.

"Your guns aren't going to work here," Future Girl said. "I'm sure this is all one big misunderstanding."

The other girl stepped from behind a large wheel-shaped device that some Mirai student no doubt spent hours constructing. She kept both pistols aimed at Future Girl.

"You Temple sonsabitches are tricksters," she said. "I ain't believing your beeswax."

"Bees what?" Future Girl blinked and shook her head. "Never mind. This isn't the Temple. You're at my school. I think you've come here by accident. If we could just talk..."

"You'll talk, all right. Why'd all you from the Temple kill my parents?"

"I haven't killed..." Future Girl started, but the other girl was too quick. She fired both pistols, unloading bullet after bullet at Future Girl, whose arms moved too fast for Marci to follow, catching each bullet in her palms, knocking the spent cartridges to the floor.

Her metal pistols now empty, the girl looked around the room, and then ran toward one wall.

Marci wanted to shout, "She's unarmed," to Future Girl, but stayed quiet in her hiding place.

"Just give me a second," Future Girl said.

"Guns!" the girl said.

Marci peered out from behind her hiding place and saw that the strange girl had noticed the same wall of prototype weapons Marci and Wendall had walked past earlier.

"Stop!" Future Girl said. The girl did not stop. She tossed her pistols to the floor and pulled two matching prototypes off the wall. She pointed one of them at Future Girl.

"You Temple folk sure got some funny-lookin' six-shooters."

What happened next was an exercise in who could do the most in one second. Could Future Girl fly at the stranger fast enough and disarm her, or was one second enough time for the girl needed to pull the trigger? Proving herself an unusually quick shot, the stranger got the shot off.

The girl had luckily – or, Marci wondered, perhaps wisely – grabbed the sonic weapon. The resulting burst of pure sound sent Future Girl reeling across the room and through the wall, letting more sunlight in. Marci forced her fingers into her ears, trying and failing to drown out the sound.

Her ears ringing, Marci watched as the girl placed the gun in her holster. She grabbed the second weapon, which Marci remembered was the laser gun. She then placed the miniature fire cannon into one of her coat's deep pockets.

Future Girl flew back into the room, cupping her hands to her ears. The ringing started to fade from Marci's ears, but she could tell Future Girl had been hit harder, and was still slightly disoriented.

"A saddle!" Marci heard the strange girl say. "And reins!"

The girl climbed onto Wendall's S.T.E.E.D. device, seeming to know by instinct how to work it. The garbage can-shaped S.T.E.E.D. rose into the air, with the girl holding both controllers.

"Yee-haw!"

The girl flew the device in a circle around the room, buzzing right over Marci's head. She flew out the hole in the wall, knocking some pieces of debris off its sides.

Future Girl shook her head in a clear-out-the-cobwebs motion, and then also flew through the hole in pursuit, leaving behind the gust of wind that tended to follow her entrances and exits.

The crowd of students and teachers started cautiously flowing out of the auditorium doors.

"What happened?" Dr. Urant said.

"They fought," Marci said. "Now they're out there, chasing each other around."

Wendall looked around. "Where's my project?"

Campus security then burst into the room, dressed head to toe in their now-familiar hazmat suits. They questioned Marci and her fellow students about what had happened. Liz's device, including all the artificial sharkskin cells, was confiscated.

Marci and Wendall walked out of the theory building to see a strange yellow light shooting up into the night sky in every direction they could see.

"It's a containment field," Wendall said. "Security can activate them any time they're worried about someone leaving campus who shouldn't."

"I had no idea," Marci said. "They can just seal us off from the outside world any time they feel like it?"

"This is one crazy school," Wendall said. "They must have done it to keep that cowgirl psycho trapped on campus. It's only a matter of time now before security or Future Girl finds her. Maybe then I can get my S.T.E.E.D. back."

Marci didn't answer, instead gazing at the yellow lights shooting upinto the starry night. It was a visual contradiction, and she didn't like it atall.

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Next: One of these days.