Freaks, Geeks and Guns
Prologue-
Dan whistled to himself tunelessly as he walked down the street. He wished he knew some good drinking songs. But, well, after searching his brain for a few minutes...
He realized he didn't. Not at all. Oh well.
In about an hour, he would care less about that anyway. Heck- he'd probably make up a good many drinking songs himself. Ones that didn't rhyme didn't make sense, and more than likely involved him dancing on the bar table with some girl named Chloe.
Dan sighed. Good times.
He had had a long day. Dan enjoyed teaching, but doing the same thing over and over again, the same HARD thing, he might add, for someone who totally wasn't getting it- is difficult and frustrating. So now he was looking forward to heading down to Vertigo, relaxing, hanging out, maybe throwing back a few beers, and just having a good time.
Suddenly Dan froze in his tracks. He closed his eyes immediately and turned on his inner sense. The pattern of reality was played out for him and-
Oh CRAP.
Dan leapt for the alley way and cover.
Too late. Dan felt the sniper's bullet cut through the edge of his stomach right under his ribs. He gasped in pain, and rolled into the alley. Breathing hard, he quickly checked himself. No major organs. It just hurt like hell. Plus it was bleeding, dribbling down his shirt and onto the ground.
This never FREAKING ends. Dan could feel himself getting uncharacteristically furious. Why couldn't they just leave him alone?
He took a deep, shuddering breath, and forced himself to relax. He didn't start this. He didn't ask for this. He didn't do anything to these people. But he was going to end it.
NOW.
He closed his eyes once more and took a moment to try shutting out the pain in his side. After a moment he felt his perception spread out and up, as if he were in a helicopter. He could see and feel the area around him.
Ok. Sniper on the building to his left. He has no shot right now, and if he moved down this alleyway and out the other side, the sniper would have no chance of...
Shit.
Dan focused his awareness, like binoculars, on the area closer around him. It was definitely a well organized ambush- Dan had to give them that much. Though they obviously weren't counting on the sniper only grazing him. Dan grinned.
They were about to find out just how still capable he was.
He silently counted as he spotted groups of men in black moving around him. There were six a few buildings back, behind him to his right. They were quickly approaching his position in the alleyway but from farther out. He shifted his awareness again, his eyes twitching a little.
There were... three, four, five- six coming out of the building the sniper was stationed on a few streets back. Maybe if he moved-
No. Crap. He sensed two more groups of three, both approaching either side of the building in front of him. He was going to be pinned in.
And the real kick-in-the-pants is that all 18 Black-hats were wearing black trench coats, sunglasses (a few of them were indeed wearing black hats) and of course, Dan's personal favorite- semi automatic weapons.
Wonderful.
Dan opened his eyes, wincing at the wound in his side. Ok. He had about a minute until they caught up. First thing's first, he had to do something about that sniper.
But how was he going to- Oh. That's right, of course.
Dan smiled to himself at the irony. He waved a hand in front of him, and was able to quickly find the bullet that had passed through his side. He wrenched it out of the building in front of him and concentrated on it.
Nothing quite bonded two people together like a bullet. There was a strong Correspondence now between the bullet, Dan, and the man who had shot him.Dan reached out his left hand in front of him, concentrating on the bullet. Time to go fishing... let's see. Ah. Gotcha.
Dan grabbed with his left hand, and pulled out a very confused Black Hat, seemingly from thin air, by the jacket lapel. It wasn't hard since he had managed to make the space in front of where the sniper was stationed correspond with the space in front of Dan. For all intents and purposes the man had been directly in front of him, for a fraction of a second.
Dan then quickly weaved an effect with his right hand- this one was harder since he had nothing but guesses to go on, but Dan had done it plenty of times before.
The Black Hat with the sniper rifle, hanging from his jacket, turned around, startled- "What the hell is-"
Dan winked at him and whispered him some quick advice-
"Learn to fly".
The man's eyebrow's lifted and he began "What do you-"
But then Dan swiveled on his heels, and jammed the man into the portal he had just made. He then turned fully to the right, and began running in that direction. When he got to the end of the alley, he chanced a glance to his right.
The group of six there all raised automatic weapons in his direction. But then one of the men in the front frowned.
"Do you hear something stra-" began the Black Hat at the front. But he was cut off as the sniper Dan had just grabbed hurtled down through the air, screaming, and landed on directly on top of the frowning man. The other two managed to get hit pretty hard as well, and all four of them sprawled on the ground over each-other, unconscious. The three behind them all tripped over the slumping bodies, their weapons scattering.
Good. Dan had wasted very little energy on them, and four of them were unconscious now. The other three would be set back enough so that he could either lose them, or fry them later.
Dan guessed that he was going to need almost all of his energy by the end of this little skirmish. There were at least twenty Black Hats after him, probably more in reserve farther out in each direction. That was usually how they did things.
Extreme, albeit efficient, overkill.
Dan grinned wickedly. He could do overkill too.
He called on a tiny portion of his inner reserves and increased his speed down the street exponentially. It was a simple matter of locating the pattern that was his kinetic energy as he ran forward, and magnifying it, almost like he was pushing himself while running. That gave Dan an odd mental picture. He shook it off.
The group of three that had been approaching from the right before were now just emerging from an alleyway and crossing the street in front of him.
"Yo!" He called out, as he rocketed across the empty street and stretched out his left arm, swinging it in a sharp, wide movement as he flew by them, little more than a blur to their eyes. He managed to catch all three of them with his arm, and they catapulted through the air and into glass from a store front window.
Dan grimaced. That probably really hurt.
He ran past themm barely losing any speed, and flew down the alleyway. He closed his eyes again briefly, still running, trying to reassess the situation. How many left?
His panoramic view returned, and he could see and feel several blocks now, all at once. Let's see- the group of six behind him on the left was moving nearly as fast as he was. Dan shivered at what the Black Hats must do to themselves to get that kind of speed with just metal enhancements.
There was still another group of three ahead on his left as well and...
Woops, car in front of him. Dan let go of his panoramic vision and jumped lightly, his momentum carrying him across a street, neatly over a car at a stop light.
He zoomed down another alleyway. Dan figured he was traveling at about 40 miles an hour at present. His shoes were quickly heating up. He sighed. He would need a new pair again after this.
Suddenly a Black Hat stepped out of a building in front of him way down on the other side of the alley holding something on his shoulder. Dan stepped down hard on the ground, skidding several meters before stopping. He was still a few meters away when he stopped in front of the man with-
A rocket launcher. Just what Dan always wanted.
Dan danced lightly on his feet, trying not to yelp at how hot his shoes were. He pointed a finger at the man in front of him. The man was wearing dark sunglasses, a black coat, and a dark colored hat with a wide brim. He looked like an evil cowboy.
"Dude- rocket launchers are way dangerous." Dan said, acting like he was looking out for the Black Hat's best interests.
The man nodded, in quick sharp bursts. It was like watching a switch turn on/off, on/off.
"The weapons of the Technocracy, of which I count myself one, are indeed most lethal to those who present extreme threats to Humanity."
Dan gaped. "ME a threat to humanity? Who's the one carrying a ROCKET LAUNCHER with civilians-"
But he didn't get to finish. Because just then, the man dropped to one knee, and fired.
Not good. Instinctively Dan threw out a hand, and concentrated on the pattern in and around the weapon. He could see the collecting force there. Suddenly it leapt out of the weapon. Dan immediately grabbed the air with his fist, seizing the kinetic force from the rocket. He flung his hand out to the right, redirecting the energy. The rocket zoomed through the air at him, but only made it a meter before it curved dramatically and smashed into a wall, sending bricks and dust and heat in all directions.
Dan covered his face with his hands, throwing up a heat shield that glowed red around him as heat was dispersed harmlessly into the air. He leapt back, missing the worst of the debris. Once the dust settled, he saw a black clothed arm, sticking out from a half collapsed wall.
"I TOLD you rockets were dangerous" Dan said, this time real anger in his voice.
Damnit. He had wanted do this without any casualties. But this lot was fully brainwashed. They were like machines themselves.
Something flickered at the edge of Dan's mind. Not AGAIN.
Dan spun around and flung out his hands, arms outstretched, palms open. He put up a force shield. The air immediately filled thick with semi-automatic gunfire. He could barely see anything. The gunfire automatically redirected around him, hitting just about everything else besides Dan- brick walls, street lights, windows.
He heard several screams from behind him. Unaware civilians-Sleepers, were getting hit. Damnit.
Dan did not get angry often. But this had gone too far.
They were six shooters in front of him now, in a semi-circle so they didn't hit each other. They had taken up positions behind cars and from out of windows in stores. And Dan was standing in the middle of a bullet-free island, where Sleepers all around him were screaming and running in terror, and some of them were being gunned down.
His force shield flared yellow in front of him as it pushed hundreds of bullets out of his way at once. It deepened into orange, and then red. Dan grimaced, dropping to one knee. He couldn't hold this for too much longer, and there was nowhere to go. If he lost concentration for even a moment- if another black hat came up behind him- it was all over.
"No" he said, under his breath.
He couldn't lose here. He owed too much to his students.
"NO" he said louder, feeling hundreds upon hundreds of bullets push against his shield, quickly loading his mind beyond capacity.
He owed too much to Wizard. He owed too much to the Library. He owed too much... to his brother.
The gunfire stopped. They had all started firing at the same time, and now they were reloading at the same moment.
"NO!!" Dan screamed, losing control and using Prime to push at the street concrete a few feet in front of him as hard as he could.
Suddenly the area around him began growing unnaturally dim. Night had fallen only a short time ago, and the horizon still glowed faintly in the memory of the day's sun. Streetlights seemed to lose their shine, the new moon over head suddenly seemed to fade and disappear. And it got quiet too. People were still screaming, but abruptly their voices sounded far away though they were just down the street.. The sounds of the technocrats reloading their guns vanished. Dan couldn't even hear the sound of his own ragged breath any longer.
The gunmen up at Dan, whose eyes were burning in fury. They looked around them, noticing the dimming light and the sudden lack of any sound, and their eyes widened in terror.
Using his knowledge of the sphere of Forces, Dan collected the light and sound energy from the area, especially all the sound that those guns had given off, and twisted it, changed it- into seismic energy. He added that energy to the kinetic energy he had just used on the ground, and created a power similar to the effects of a 747 crash landing into the street. Together his efforts slammed into the street in front of him like a thousand jackhammers.
The silent effect vanished, and loud breaking sounds pierced the air, as cracks appeared and grew, more and more. The concrete buckled in front of him, large pieces falling down into the earth, one section of concrete even buckled and ripped free from the ground beneath it, like a large ponderous wave of concrete. It rolled towards the technocrats, several feet of concrete being displaced every second.
The Black Hats looked up just in time to have the ground beneath their feet roll upwards violently, flinging three of them into the air. The other three dived out of the way, into a store on the other side of the street. The cracks traveled underneath the store and the glass shattered as if it were paper-thin ice. Cracks appeared in the brick walls and traveled up the front of the store. With a groan, the whole front collapsed. It fell onto the remaining three surprised Black Hats. A huge dust cloud flew up and obscured everything for a full minute.
The screams died down, and Dan heard sirens. He collapsed onto his knees, heaving. That had been stupid. He had used way more of his inner energy, his quintessence, than he had meant to spend. Well, there was plenty of destruction around here. It would be easy to pick up some more energy released by all the destroyed matter and-
Gunfire erupted behind him again, and Dan rolled instinctively. Bullets whizzed over his head. He was gasping now, and the pain in his side was starting to really freaking hurt. It was like a searing hot brand in his side. His vision began blurring as well. He put a hand to his side. He was losing a lot of blood.
He needed to get out of here, find cover, and he needed to do it NOW. He glanced behind him. It was the three he had met in the beginning. The ones who had tripped over the sniper he had dumped on top of them. They had caught up. And one of them was raising a rocket launcher. For the love of-
Dan used the cover from the dust in the air to slip into an alley way and run as hard as he could. He stumbled sometimes from his blurred vision and the pain in his side. He could only manage wimpy human speed this time.
He heaved and winced, breathing was starting to hurt. He emerged from the alleyway, and made his way across the street. There was a big building there. Good. He could use it for cover, and then get the hell out of dodge.
As he reached the building, he heard loud pounding music, and realized that he had unconsciously made his way to Vertigo. The dance club he had been going to originally. No. This wasn't good, way too many people, he-
Dan turned around. The three were already on top of him. One of them raised a rocket launcher and shot it. He was scant feet away.
Was he nuts? He would kill himself!
Dan flung out his hand, sending the first rocket off course meters away .It spun out of control and exploded into a building down the street. There was a bone-grating explosion. Flames licked the air and debris flew into the night sky.
The music coming from the dance club stopped.
Tears sprung up in Dan's eyes, as he fought to stay conscious. Pain and exhaustion were catching up with him. His shirt was soaked in red now.
The Black Hat on the left suddenly dropped to a knee. He had a rocket launcher as well.
Dan shouted an obscenity and clumsily raised a heat shield and a force shield. The patterns held together in front of him like soggy spider webs about to fall apart. The rocket stopped in mid-air via his force shield, and exploded. The heat washed away from the heat shield, but the force hit him and hard. He rocketed backwards, slamming into the doors and causing them to shatter inward. Sharp pain bit into his back and he was flung through the room, spinning dizzily through the air. He saw men and women spinning around dreamily as he flew over their heads, and fell on something that cracked as he landed on it.. He hoped it wasn't ribs. His or anyone else's.
This was not one of Dan's better days.
(read the rest at www.criticalcraft.tk)