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Samyo: You'll have to wait and see, my friend… you'll have to wait and see
A Face in the Crowd
"Weakling!" Griffin roared, as another punch towards his adversary only resulted in him taking a brief spin as Skinner dodged the blow again. "Stand and fight, won't you?"
"What's with the sudden eagerness for a struggle, Hawl ol' boy?" Skinner asked, trying to sound casual to conceal how tired he was getting; training with Terry was all well and good, but at least there, on some level, he'd always known he'd survive no matter how badly he fought…
"I have always been prepared to fight for what is mine, blasphemer!" Griffin yelled, lashing out with another punch at Skinner.
"Oh, really?" Skinner asked, as he stepped off to one side and lashed out with a rapid side-blow that caught Griffin in the right side of his face. As the original invisible man hit the ground, Skinner stared down at his adversary, his face behind the mask cold hatred.
"You always wanted a fight, and yet you wanted to be invisible?" Skinner asked, looking at Griffin angrily, trying not to think about the fact that his friends were lying behind him in varying degrees of pain. "No offence, but if you wanted to get into fights, wouldn't it make more sense to work on enhancing your strength rather then your stealth?"
Griffin rolled over on the floor and leapt back onto his feet, apparently glaring at Skinner; he certainly appeared to be facing the other man, but his facial expression was, for obvious reasons, a matter of some debate.
"You call me a coward, and yet you once possessed the same power as I did?" Griffin yelled at Skinner, as the two men began to circle around the room, each one waiting for an opening to strike back. "Hypocricy and blasphemy? You truly seek the anguish of Hell itself!"
"I'm not a hypocrite, Griffin; I'm just not like you," Skinner said, glaring back at his rival. "You wanted to be invisible because you thought it would give you great power; I just wanted to be invisible for the stealth. You want to rule the world, you should try and get a power that lets you kick some serious arse."
He shrugged, smiling slightly. "Me, all I wanted was to be a bit better at hiding."
"LIAR!" Griffin yelled, as he kicked out at Skinner with such speed that, for the first time, he actually got through the other man's defences, sending Skinner flying into a nearby wall with an unpleasant crunch!
Skinner took a quick mental check of his body. Nothing seemed broken, but his shoulder was in a more than noticeable degree of pain.
Theatrically, Skinner stood back up and glared at Griffin.
"The gloves are off, Hawl," he said, as he reached down to the aforementioned pieces of clothing on his right hand and wrist, took a hold of it, and pulled it off…
To reveal nothing underneath.
Griffin stared at the seemingly empty wrist in horror and outrage, and then looked back up at Skinner.
"You did it AGAIN!" he yelled, sounding somehow happy and appalled at the same time. "You took on the power of invisibility once more? You truly DO wish me send you to Hell for your crimes!"
"No," Skinner said, as, pulling off his other glove, he reached up to his face and began to wipe off the tan theatrical make-up he'd acquired from Hartdegen's room. He'd have preferred his usual grease paint- it was far quicker to apply- but he'd wanted to make sure he took Griffin by surprise, and the make-up had seemed the best way to do so.
"I may go to Hell for stealing, Hawl, but it won't be because you feel I deserve it," the ex-thief said, as he shrugged off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. "I did this because it was the only way I could protect my friends. If I had my way, I'd just chuck the invisibility thing and never look back…"
As he shrugged off his shirt, he chuckled slightly. "But, when you're visible, it's bloody difficult to find something else that'll make you extraordinary."
Griffin didn't bother to reply. Instead, he shrugged off his dressing gown and began to pull off his trousers as Skinner did the same. In a few moments, the two invisible men had vanished, brief indents in the dust that covered the ground the only thing to suggest that the two of them were even still in the room.
"Damnit…" Sawyer muttered, his eyes tracking the slight disturbances on the ground that were all that could tell him where the two men were. He knew that now the two of them were pretty much evenly matched, he knew that this was the only way this fight could have turned out…
Still, that didn't change the fact that he would have preferred it if Skinner had continued to fight Griffin while they were both wearing something; at least that way he would have known which one was which…
Then a thought occurred to him.
There was one League member who might be able to help.
"Terry!" Sawyer hissed over to the cyborg, who was still lying slumped against the pillar in a manner that didn't give Sawyer any confidence. If Terry had been human, he would have been dead already; as it was, all Sawyer could hope was that Terry's self-repair systems were as good as the cyborg had sometimes said they were.
"C'mon, Terry, wake up…" Sawyer hissed, as slight grunts and thumps indicated that Skinner and Griffin had started to fight again; evidently neither invisible man was going to surrender, even if they couldn't actually see where their foe was.
Then, to Sawyer's intense relief, Terry's eyes blinked and he looked up at the young American, an almost human expression of curiosity on his face.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Basically? We got captured by the original invisible man, Skinner came back to help us, and right now both of them are slugging it out in what has to be the dumbest fight in history!" Sawyer said, indicating a table that had just been knocked over by something crashing into it. "And…" He lowered his voice, anxious for Griffin not to hear this part of the question, "I was wondering… you mentioned something to me once about being able to see Skinner by his body heat?"
"Yes; so?" Terry asked, raising an eyebrow.
Despite the tension of the situation, Sawyer couldn't help but smile slightly at Terry's oh-so-human expression. He was definitely making progress at the 'being-human' thing; in the past, it was all you could do just to make Terry even smile.
"Well, any chance you can use that to figure out which one of the invisible men is Skinner and then give him some advice on where to hit?" he said, getting his thoughts back to the matter at hand; he'd compliment Terry on his more human behaviour later.
Terry glanced over in the direction of what, based on the various sounds of flesh hitting flesh, was the current location of the fight, for a few moments, and then looked back at Sawyer with a confirming nod.
"Affirmative," he said, the corners of his mouth turning up in a small smile. "I have Skinner's heartbeat stored in my databanks; from there, it is easy enough to determine which invisible man is which."
AN: I don't know if you actually can tell people apart according to their heartbeats, but it's a technique that Daredevil of Marvel Comics uses sometimes to tell people apart, so I'll assume there's some basis to that theory
Then he turned back to the fight, studied it for a few seconds, and then yelled out, "Hit to the left, Skinner!"
There was a brief pause in the action, then a yell of pain as something hit something else, and a distortion in the dust as though something had hit the ground.
"YES!" Sawyer cheered, as he saw the body hit the ground. Even the increased distortion that was presumably caused by the man getting up didn't dampen his spirits.
His hunch had paid off; even if Griffin knew where he was standing in relation to Skinner, he couldn't know where Skinner was standing in relation to him. Therefore, with Terry active and able to see both invisible men, as well as the ability to tell them apart…
Sawyer chuckled.
Griffin doesn't have a prayer.
"To your right!" Terry cried out. Instantly, Skinner lashed out with a roundhouse kick, wincing slightly as his heel met hard bone, apparently the ribcage from the feel of it. Still, the resulting yell of pain and the crash to the ground were more than worth it.
This time, Skinner refused to give Griffin a chance to get up; diving to the ground, he launched another punch at where his foe's head appeared to be, based on the dust dispersal, then grabbing the other man's throat and beginning to squeeze, hoping that he'd be able to deprive the man of enough air that he'd pass out.
He knew that there were easier ways to keep the guy down, but most of them involved Skinner having to actually pun him down by sitting on him in some way, and Skinner was not in favour of coming into skin-to-skin contact with another naked guy…
Then Griffin lashed out with a desperate punch to Skinner's head, throwing the other invisible man off to one side. Only Terry could see the sight before him, as Griffin leapt up to his feet, glanced contemptuously in the direction of the League, and then towards the door.
"I don't have the time for this foolishness!" he yelled back at them, trying to sound more confident than he actually was. "I came here to punish you for your blasphemy, but evidently some higher power has decreed that this shall not be the day you fall! There are powers before which even I must bow to, and, for the moment, it would appear that you are being protected by one such power! But be warned, League, it shall not last forever! I will return, to exact my revenge!"
As Griffin turned and began to run, Skinner reached over to a nearby table, picked up the Winchester that was lying there, and aimed down the corridor.
"Nope; you'll die and be buried!" Skinner yelled, firing down the corridor in what he hoped was Griffin's direction. A sound like tearing muscle and an agonized scream indicated that his aim, despite lacking anything to actually shoot at, had proved accurate. He couldn't be sure where he'd hit Griffin, but at least he'd actually managed to shoot the bastard; might give them some time away from that nutcase…
Sighing, he put the gun, picked up his coat from where it had fallen on the ground, shrugged it back on, and looked back at the other League members.
"So," he said, putting on his pince-nez as he looked around at the other League members, "who missed me?"
Sawyer chuckled slightly at the sight of his old friend standing before him once again, looking for all the world like he'd never actually left the League…
Then his face fell as he thought of how long Skinner had wanted to be visible once again; how long he'd spent asking Jekyll and Hartdegen to find a cure; how long he'd spent staring in the mirror, an empty sleeve tracing the face above his coat, always knowing he was there but never able to see himself…
"Skinner…" the young spy said, looking at his friend with sadness in his eyes. "Why'd you do it? You wanted to be visible more than anything…"
Skinner shrugged as he stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a set of lockpicks.
"Well, Tommy boy," he said, as he bent down and began to examine the chains holding the League down, "once you're visible, it's bloody hard to be extraordinary."
He chuckled slightly as he briefly appeared in front of Sawyer. "And, believe it or not, I've actually come to like being extraordinary."
Still, as the thief turned back to examine the bonds holding them down, Sawyer couldn't help but think that he'd need to have a talk with Skinner later on about this…