A nest of hornets - Part 5
There were a lot of guns. So many guns. Caitlyn had no intention of getting in the way of the many, many bullets that those many guns could fire at her. Instead, she had caused a distraction, which had worked far better than she could have hoped for. Criminals may be a cowardly lot, but the fact that most of them were incredibly stupid wasn't exactly her least favourite attribute right now. If only she could untie the police officer, things would be much easier.
Except, whoever had tied the cop's wrists together really knew what they were doing. Even as the bad guys were changing magazines in their guns, Caitlyn still struggled with the cop's bindings. She heard the old man cough and she hoped he wasn't too injured. Meanwhile, she started to think that, perhaps, she should just try to break the ropes. She was, after all, really quite strong in this suit. Another cough made Caitlyn look up to check that the cop wasn't dying on her. He wasn't.
"Well. That'zz bold." Vezzpa, stood to one side of all the gun wielding bad guys, wiggled her finger toward Caitlyn and the cop. "Kill them both."
Caitlyn couldn't count how many gun barrels pointed her way, but it was a lot. Without even thinking, she grabbed hold of the old cop and jumped as high as she could, straight up, as a barrage of bullets tore up the concrete floor of the warehouse. She, and the cop, reached the rafters with a little more ease than she had expected, landed on a metal beam, and she tore the ropes from the old man's wrists.
"Don't go anywhere." She began to move and stopped, looking back. "Well, you know. Not like you can. Or anything. Like, be careful, and stuff."
She landed in the middle of the bad guys, crouching, looking around, and thought about that baseball bat she liked so much. Sure enough, it grew in her hand and she wanted to say something really cool and defiant, like 'batter up', but she had too much to worry about, what with all the guns turning her way.
A crater appeared in the floor, cracks spidering away from the centre as an enormous amount of bullets struck the concrete, but she wasn't there to see it. Another leap had sent her arching over the heads of the guys behind her and, as she reached the apex, smashed the baseball bat made from her suit into the face of the nearest guy. It cracked into his nose. Literally cracked. She heard the bones breaking as the bat hit him and he collapsed, grasping at his face.
She heard a click almost too late, but Trooper Jane had coached her for this kind of thing. The baseball bat disappeared from her one hand and, in her other, a shield spread outward. A circular shield almost an exact copy of Trooper Jane's, only in black with threads of red running through it. She had learned, early on in the training, that she could only create one thing at a time. Either the bat, or the shield. Never both. She had ideas about that, but those ideas had to wait for a time when people weren't trying to kill her.
Bullets battered against the shield, sending shudders running through her body, but she held fast and, when someone pressed a gun into the back of her head, she rolled forward, the shield disappearing, and kicked her legs up into the face of the guy that had come too close. She had wrought chaos among the bad guys and now she saw that a few of them were already on the ground, nursing bullet wounds. Ricochets from each others bullets. Idiots. Bad guys were idiots.
Now the training from Trooper Jane took effect and Caitlyn began to move, taking advantage of the extra space she had gained for herself. She had tried to listen, take in everything the beautiful legacy hero had told her, but Trooper Jane had appeared disappointed with everything Caitlyn did, shouting at her for every teeny-tiny mistake. Caitlyn didn't have Trooper Jane shouting at her now. Any mistake she made could lead to her death and, worse, the old cop's.
She began to move through the assembled bad guys, punching and kicking as she went. Moving in close had effectively taken the guns out of the equation. They didn't want to shoot each other and Caitlyn felt glad there wasn't a psychopath among them that didn't care how many of his colleagues died so long as they got Caitlyn. At least, she hoped there wasn't. Up to now there wasn't and that, that was a good thing. A really good thing.
A man's arm broke in two, below the elbow, and Caitlyn had to stop herself from apologising mid-fight. She still had trouble gauging her strength, especially against non-supers. Trooper Jane had even shouted at her for not watching her strength, yelling that a hero doesn't hurt bad guys more than is needed to take them into custody. Easy for her to say, she was already a veteran combatant before she took the modified super-soldier serum that had given the world Trooper John. She knew how her own body worked.
Up until recently, the only time Caitlyn had ever punched anything was one of her large, stuffed plush toys after Lori Leone had humiliated Caitlyn in front of the whole school. Admittedly, that was in kindergarten, but it still hurt. And Mr Snufty, her purple, three feet tall elephant should never have suffered because of it. Lori Leone!
Distracted! She had become distracted and some smart idiot had decided to use his useless rifle as a club. The magazine dropped from the rifle as he smashed the butt into the back of Caitlyn's head. It didn't hurt much at all, the suit's mask, or more like a helmet, cushioning the blow, but it appeared to give the others the green light to launch into an all-out physical assault. Caitlyn had to crouch into a ball while she thought about what to do next.
Ignoring the punches and kicks and ... and the groping? What kind of a bad guy gropes super-heroes? Especially considering the suit made Caitlyn look vaguely on the masculine side of androgynous? She caught that hand and broke a couple of their fingers and immediately felt bad about it. This had gone on for far too long and Caitlyn had to put a stop to it before she hurt any more of these poor idiots.
The baseball bat reappeared in her hand and she spun in a circle with a little more speed and strength than she really needed, cracking the bat into several ankles, sending the attached bad guys collapsing to the ground, screaming in pain. Caitlyn rose to her feet, catching a really big bad guy under the chin with the tip of the bat, and took a headcount of those that remained. Still a few standing and the real bad guy, Vezzpa, hadn't even joined in yet.
"Hey! Hey! Alright! Look, I don't think you guys get paid anywhere near enough for this kind of thing. Am I right?" She punched a guy racing toward her, yelling, right in his face. He probably wasn't going to listen anyway. "What do you say, you all go home with most of your bones intact and leave the fighting between me and your boss?"
"Or, and as police officer with a little integrity, I arrest you all, right now, and you all spend five-to-ten on Stormfield Island." How the old cop had got down from the rafters, Caitlyn didn't know. Good for him. He'd picked up an AK and ratcheted a round in the chamber, pointing at the bad guys. "And you, new guy? Vezzpa's gone. Looked like she took all the money, too.
"Why, thank you, brave police officer type person. I ... Hey! Be nice!" She stepped on the hand of one of the men on the ground as he reached for a gun. She cringed beneath the mask as she heard a bone break. Restraint! She needed to learn restraint. "I'll just ... uh ... go after her then, I guess. Have you got this?"
"Yeah. Now, which one of you skells has my cell phone? It's on contract!" The cop looked serious as he swept the rifle barrel over the bad guys. He paused, glancing to Caitlyn. "Who are you anyway?"
"Blood Obsidian." Caitlyn jumped to the rafters, heading for the hole she had made on the roof. "Later!"
-+-
The suit gave her night vision once again and she saw flashing lights headed her way. Understandable. Gunfire had a way of getting police swarming like flies and some decent citizen, there were still some left, had probably called nine-one-one. That was good, it meant the old cop would soon have friendly faces to help him arrest those bad guys below. That would mean, however, that Vezzpa was probably running, flying, in the other direction. She turned her head, searching the horizon, and caught the flickering of insect-like wings not too far away, heading south, along the riverside.
That was good, too. There were fewer buildings out that way and, what buildings there were were surrounded by high, chainlink fences and wide grounds. Fewer people for the super-villain to attack and force Caitlyn to save them. She took off, as fast as her suit-enhanced legs could carry her, bounding from one building to another until there were no more buildings to run across and then she dropped to the ground, running as fast as her short legs could carry her.
She had never run so fast, obviously helped by the suit, and the landscape around her blurred into speed lines. She dropped her head, pumping her arms and legs, taking the occasional glance upward and found, to her amazement, that she had started to catch up to Vezzpa. Under her mask, she began to laugh. She had never felt so excited. So strong.
Up ahead, she saw a bridge. Not a big one but, if she timed it right, it may just get her within range of the super-villain. Caitlyn could see the bags in Vezzpa's hands, all that stolen cash adding weight, slowing her down and Caitlyn guessed that those tiny wings couldn't carry much more. Reaching the bridge, she leaped as high as she could, landed with both feet on the upright and launched herself upward, latching on to Vezzpa's legs.
When the helicopter appeared before them, rising into the air from a pad below, Caitlyn had a worrying thought. There was no way her Aunt Mary could identify her if she became human sushi, chopped up by those spinning blades.