Narrowly avoiding crashing into some cacti, I came to a landing around the side of a old, deserted-looking warehouse on the edge of some patchy woods. Shaking out my wings, I retracted them and folded them in tightly, hiding them beneath my hoodie. I tugged a bit at my clothes, adjusting them so they didn't look quite as windblown. Now I looked normal, or at least as normal as I could with my eye blackened and my cheeks scraped from the fight with the Serpentine. Oh well.
Heading around the corner of the warehouse but sticking close to the wall, I saw the three guys standing around the one guy I'd seen from the air. The three guys on the outside were my age or a little older, maybe around sixteen or seventeen. The one in the middle, however, was probably about nine to eleven. Instantly, I thought of Kai and Jay.
"I told you, you weren't supposed to tell anyone about my problem with Cyrus!" The tallest of the three older guys was yelling. "You shouldn't have gotten involved. He deserved it."
The boy stared at the guy incredulously. "He deserved to get beat up? He deserved to look like he got hit with a car? No way! What did he even do to you, Cryptor?"
"He said the wrong thing to the wrong person," the big guy said menacingly. "He got in my way, so he deserved it."
His two friends chuckled. Why did people have to be such jerks?
But these weren't just regular jerks, I saw, peering at them. They were armed jerks. A rather large gun was dangling from the hand of one of the two jerky friends. Yikes. That didn't bode well.
Nothing ever did bode well for me, though, so that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that these jerks were picking on someone not their own size, someone who probably couldn't defend himself. It reminded me of all the times the whitecoats and the Serpentine had hurt me and my family. I wouldn't let anyone else get hurt like that.
Pushing off of the building, I strode toward the group. The boy in the middle saw me through a gap between two of the big jerks and his eyebrows shot up. Apparently that clued in the jerks, because they turned in unison to stare at me.
They examined me for a moment, but then they seemed to shrug mentally, like they were thinking that I was just some random guy passing through, and they turned back to the kid in the middle. They had taken their eyes off me, as if I wasn't a threat. That was their first strike.
"All right, now, Wu, I'm starting to get a little angry. In fact, I'm starting to think you deserve to get the same treatment I gave Cyrus," the biggest guy stated.
"Three against one, makes sense," I called out, making my way forward and coming to a stop right by the biggest guy. I was trying to stay calm, stay reasonable, stay clear-minded, but it was hard. What made these guys think they could threaten a kid like this?
"You better watch it, dude," the stockiest of the three tall guys, the one holding the shotgun, told me. "In fact, you better clear on out. You really don't want to be around for this."
"Actually, I really do want to be around for this," I said brightly, weaving around the tall guys to stand next to the kid named Wu. Wu stared at me quizzically, like he couldn't believe what I was doing. "Not only do I want to be around, I think I want to be a big part of it. In fact, I want to beat you up the way you've been threatening to do to this kid."
The three jerks laughed. That was their second strike.
Due to all the genetic engineering and whacked-out experimenting that had been done on me, I was incredibly strong, just like the rest of the flock. I was even stronger because of all the martial-arts training Jeb Garmadon had taught me and the others. I was good at fighting, even if before yesterday, I'd fought my family members for fun. No matter what these jerks threw at me, I could take it, but I'd need to get Wu out of there somehow.
Moving to stand in front of Wu, I put up my fists.
"Oh, you think you're funny," the biggest guy mocked. He turned to the thinner of the two other guys. "Grab Mr. Funny-Guy."
The thinner of the two other jerks moved forward. That was strike three. They were about to be out of here.
I moved with all of my unnatural, experiment-given speed, kicking high and firm right into the thin guy's chest. A cracking sound filled the air, like my kick had broken a rib or something, even though on Cole or Nya, that kick would've barely made them move. The guy staggered back, choking on his own breath and looking shocked out of his mind.
The other two guys ran at me at the same time. Spinning in place, I yanked the shotgun out of the stocky guy's hands. Gripping it by the barrel, I swung it like a baseball bat and smacked the side of the stocky guy's head with its handle. He fell to his knees, and I tossed the gun aside as I turned and punched the biggest guy in the stomach. The tall guy doubled over.
I took a moment to breathe, glancing over my shoulder at Wu, who still stood behind me. His eyes were wide and he looked scared, and I hoped it wasn't because of me.
"Get out of here!" I advised him. "Go! Run!"
"I can't just-" Wu began, but then the three jerks were standing and stalking toward me, and Wu high-tailed it out of there.
That's when I saw what I'd done wrong. I should've held onto the shotgun, because now the tallest guy had picked it up off the ground and was starting to level it toward me.
"You're about to regret that," he warned.
"Not a chance," I spat back. Then I turned and ran for the woods.