Jessie announced the approaching intruders like it was just another normal occurrence. There was no worry in her tone, though Ranger could sense her annoyance. The men in her apartment activated at once, calling the control room to give them a heads up. When Ranger asked her how long they had she shrugged, estimating 20 minutes or so. Jessie stretched her arms over her naked body then tilted her glowing eyes down to acknowledge she was still undressed. "Shit, I should put clothes on." Her chuckle was self deprecating. Jessie went back to the bedroom, Ranger hot on her heels. As she searched the dresser for her favorite low-rise sweat pants and a tank top Ranger folded his arms and waited for her instruction. He knew enough to admit that he wouldn't be in charge this time, he likely wouldn't even get to fight. It was hard for him to be relegated to back-up in his own building.
Jessie threw her clothes on along with her Chucks. The purple top she had chosen made her eyes look even more green and bright. Her shirt's message of "Underestimate me. That'll be fun." was all too true. When they emerged from her bedroom, fourteen Rangemen were waiting for their orders. Tank informed them that he had sent the contract workers home and secured all of the exits. His accompanying eye-roll spoke to the fact that locking their doors was not going to do much good against unmentionables. Thirty eyes were staring at Jessie as she checked the clock on the wall. "Alright guys, I think you should all get to five and watch from there. No matter how bad it looks, stay put. I'm going to draw them to the gym. I think less damage can happen there.". The men were grumbling, being benched sucked. "Look, you have all given me everything I need to get this over with. Don't for a second think that you aren't in this fight WITH me. I owe each of you… big time.". Her little pep talk bolstered their attitudes. Lester was wagging his eyebrows at the thought of being owed something by Jessie. "Ranger, I'm going to try to keep your building in tact, but I can't make any promises.". He could tell she was genuinely concerned. "Loba, you could level the place and I wouldn't care, I'm insured. As long as you come out alive and well, that's all that matters to us." He pulled her forward and kissed her passionately while the others nodded their agreement.
When they broke apart Jessie turned to Ram, "Can I borrow a Glock and the Benelli?". When Ram smiled mischievously and nodded, Jessie concentrated on the armory. Seconds later she opened her door to find the pistol and shotgun waiting for her. Ranger unhooked his thigh holster and fitted it on her left leg, below her dominant hand. Before leaving the apartment she squatted down and called Wyatt. He walked to her purposefully, though not overly excited. "Go with Ranger. I will be fine big man. It's your job to keep THEM safe and healthy. If anyone gets through...handle it.". She smiled at him as he licked her cheek, his eyes still luminous. As she stood she muttered to herself about being hungry. "Oh shit, I almost forgot...". Just as she said it, the intercom in her apartment clicked to life and E40 started to pump Go Hard or Go Home throughout the entire building. The men laughed. Someone who didn't know any better would think the Rangemen were about to have a party. Her smile was brilliant as she bopped up and down to the beat. "This shouldn't take too long.". Cocking the shotgun, Jessie blew them a kiss and walked out the door for the stairwell. The men were all semi-hard. Ranger and the guys headed out behind her with Wyatt in tow. Lester remembered to snag some extra jelly beans.
As the men filed into the control room and took positions around the bank of monitors, Manny brought up the second floor cameras on the largest viewing screens. Hector pressed a few buttons and brought the live audio up so the men could both see and hear the show. Ranger was fighting the urge to pace, his cool and calm persona was starting to slip. Jessie entered the gym and walked over to the sparring mats. She stretched for a minute, placing the shotgun within reach at her feet. She focused her attention on the main entrance doors to the Haywood building, unlocking and opening them. She then used her heightened powers to create an unbarred pathway of her choosing between the entrance and the gym's double doors. It took more concentration than she would have normally used, but she created a magical barrier around the fifth floor. Jessie had never attempted this feat, but felt she had the power to make it happen. The Rangemen could leave the area but no one else could enter unless she lifted the veil, or they were exceptionally powerful. She snickered to herself when she left the elevator out of service. Jessie sensed the first intruders before the Rangeman cameras caught them on film.
Either she was way off, or he had only sent three men to make the initial contact, again. She was REALLY insulted. She was also frustrated, this whole situation was such a pain in the ass. Diesel had said Destroyer had 25 men, why the hell was he sending three at a time? Was his plan to bore her into surrender? Jessie looked up at the security camera, her irritation was obvious. Ranger understood, it was show time. She mentally followed their progress through the building, directly down the path she had created. Standing on the mats, arms akimbo, she looked like any other woman when they entered the doors. Sure as shit, there were three of them. All large, all ugly, and by the looks of it they were also pretty dumb. Faced with someone so petite and unassuming, their eyes lit up. They thought this would be easy. They advanced on her slowly, all from the same direction. So dumb. Jessie did her best to look frightened. In the control room Hector was laughing his ass off.
One of the three ugly fuckers started to talk, his voice smooth and deep. "Ms. Matthews, you WANT to come with us. You WANT to give Destroyer your powers." Oh, so this was his first attempt, using bad guys with influence. She fought really hard to not roll her eyes. The fact that her opponent had no idea she was immune to influence was pathetic. One of the men jumped when Jessie smiled sweetly and made the intercom roar to life. As Puddle of Mudd played Psycho, Jessie's eyes started to glow brighter. The ass-hat who had tried to influence her was speaking again, in an even deeper voice. Jessie held her hand up and he froze, his mouth open in mid-word. "Look, that Barry White shit doesn't work on me. You got anything else to try?". She was right, they were morons. The other two looked at each other, no idea what their next move should be. It was obvious that Destroyer had deemed them cannon fodder. She would have felt bad for them if they weren't already low-life scum. Jessie sighed. "Well, this is ridiculous. Please tell me he's sending more than you three. Better yet, why doesn't he just come to me himself?" Again, the goons were too stunned to respond. The men in the control room chuckled when she muttered something about wasting a perfectly good song.
Jessie held her hands out toward the three men, palms up. It looked like she was waiting for someone to give her something. They were all frozen now, and they were scared shitless. Maybe they weren't that stupid after all. Jessie closed her eyes and Ranger watched in awe as an invisible current started to move between Jessie and the frozen men. There was no color, making it difficult to see, but there was definitely a wave of energy flowing between them. Almost like a disturbance in the air. Jessie was taking their power, swallowing it into herself. When she opened her eyes the men looked sick. She unfroze each man in turn. She looked pissed. "You", she was pointing to the creep who had failed to mojo her, "you used your power to rape a young girl!". Her voice was scarier than ever before. The asshole didn't look ashamed. "That means the two of you get to die quickly" she pointed to the others, snapped her fingers, and snapped their necks.
As their bodies crumbled the rapist finally realized the shit storm he had walked into. He made a move for the door and Jessie stopped him with her mind. She lowered her voice, "You like taking advantage of women? You think it's fun to have your will taken away?". He wet himself. "Press your thumbs into your eyes. Do not stop until I tell you." The man whimpered as he raised his hands to his face. He didn't want to do it, he had no choice. As he dug his thumbs into his own eye sockets he screamed, Jessie pulled her pack of menthol's from her pocket and lit one. As the rapist continued to howl in pain, blood seeping down his cheeks, she kept smoking. She occupied herself for a minute checking out her fingernails. When she instructed him to press harder he swayed but complied. Seconds later there was a grotesque squelching noise as both orbs fell from their cavities. He dropped to the floor in a small puddle of his own blood. Jesse stepped over to him, looked down, and placed her foot on his throat. As she stepped on his windpipe, suffocating him, she was whispering something that the control room couldn't pick up. The Rangemen were transfixed, though Hal had had to turn his chair and look away. When the asshole stopped breathing Jessie waved her hand and moved all three bodies into the corner of the room. When she looked back up at the camera her eyes were just as bright, but the tint had turned red.
Jessie snapped her head toward the gym windows, staring again at the unseen. The new trio of intruders was moving fast, faster than humanly possible. On the monitors they looked like a blur traveling up the stairwell and down the hallway. Jessie put her telekinesis to excellent use as she moved the weight lifting machines into a tight circle around her. Just as Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up started to blast through the building, the first man ran full speed into the leg press. He flew backward, carried by his own momentum and landed on the floor unconscious. Jessie laughed. The other two were circling her position like the Flash on meth. Thanks to the added juice she received from the Rangemen, all of her senses had been heightened. They were still fuzzy, but she could see the circling idiots. None of them were overly special, they were actually pretty scrawny. She had not left a big enough gap in between the machines to allow them to pass. As they whirled around her she found herself getting more irritated. Her stomach growled and she let loose a string of unladylike curses. Jessie raised her voice and shouted "Enough!" as each machine in her protective circle flew outward at once. The speed freaks were caught off-guard and hit with the equipment.
All three lay on the gym floor with various cuts and broken bones. Dumb-asses. Jessie lifted her hands and repeated the process of taking their powers. She then lifted them into the air with her mind, slammed them together a dozen times, and threw them onto the growing pile of dead bodies in the corner. As Prodigy finished their masterpiece, Jessie took a few "sprints" around the gym. Her curiosity about this new power was too insistent to ignore. To the men on five she too was a blur. When she stopped moving at the speed of light she opened the door to the drink cooler and found someone had left her a Pepsi. Jessie popped the top and hollered to the men upstairs, "I love you guys!". Binkie beamed, he had been the secret soda fairy.
Jessie walked over to her shotgun and picked it up. She then found herself a comfortable seat on the bench press. As she lit another cigarette and swigged her Pepsi, Ranger could read her frustration. Her face looked normal, with the exception of her increasingly reddening eyes, but her posture was off. He didn't know if anger was making her so stiff or if it was pain. She had now taken on two more powers, though the influence she learned was similar to her own. As her song ended Ranger hit the comm button to buzz the gym. "Loba, everything good?". He didn't want to alert his men to her physical change if they hadn't already noticed. She took another drag from her smoke and smirked at the camera. "I'm fine Carlos, really fucking hungry. Hey Manny, you there?". When he answered in the affirmative she smiled brighter, "I think I'm gonna need you to call your sister for me as soon as this is over!" Manny and the guys laughed. Ranger was not convinced that hunger was her only problem, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.
Jessie opened her mouth to say something else to the men but stopped and cocked her head. She stood stock still while her eyes scanned the gym. System by Korn sounded from the intercom. It happened almost too quickly for the Rangemen to catch. One second she lifted the Benelli to her hip, the next second she was firing a shot at the gang-banger that had blinked into the gym. She caught him in the chest from only a few feet away, it made a terrible mess. Jessie's red eyes lit up, Ram laughed approvingly as she stroked her small hand down the barrel of the gun. Wyatt huffed. She squatted down to the floor and laid the shotgun down. As she stood she pulled the Glock 17 on her thigh and fired another three shots into the face of a second blinker. The poor hood-rat half-wit had just popped up to get a mouth full of lead. Jessie closed her eyes and concentrated on her surroundings. Just like the game she developed with Diesel, she couldn't see the blinkers before they appeared, but she could sense their presence right before they made themselves visible. Sometimes it was possible to hear them first.
Her instincts were telling her there were three more nearby, waiting to strike. Jessie began singing to the song, her voice growing louder at the chorus. She was taunting them. They popped in at once, surrounding her on three sides. Jessie didn't think, she just reacted. Coupling her learned fighting skills with the speed she had just inherited, she was unstoppable. The first thug was on the floor before the other two cold advance. She leaped at them, knee up and fist drawn back for a brutal blow. When the second hood's face met her fist, he crumpled to the ground. Shoving his nose into his brain was highly satisfying. She toyed with the third one a little, landing blows that injured him but kept him alive. Breaking bones one at a time was initially amusing. Growing tired of her own game she kicked hard enough into his ribs to puncture his heart. Jessie sauntered over to the unconscious thug, took his power, then shot him in the back of the head. Waving a hand she removed the bodies. Noticing the 9mm whole in the gym floor she half-shrugged, "I'll pay to fix that."
Jessie placed her hands on her hips and looked around. The gym was much messier now, the coppery smell of blood was permeating the air. Her improved sense of smell was making it worse. She scrunched her nose and magicked the mess away. Staring into the distance Jessie gauged that the next assault was gearing up to attack soon. She was getting tired of this crap. She also couldn't believe Destroyer's lack of imagination. Really, sending bad guys in waves with the same powers? Juvenile. Jessie picked up the shotgun and returned to her bench seat. She cracked her neck and rubbed her temples. She thought she was developing the mother of all migraines. Maybe some yoga breathing was needed. Remembering her previous attempt at conversation with Manny about food, she was just about to start making specific taco requests when the building lost power.