In an instant, the warehouse transforms into a kennel of aerodynamic canines--my body hurled away as Ricochet's powers crest and crash against my chokehold. There's a sharp jolt, like a siren's call to every tooth with an anchor in my gumline, as several find new homes in the dust mites and debris. I'm glad, extremely glad, that they grow back, along with the rest of me. Every part of my body thrums with adrenaline and regeneration. Honestly, I need to get into more fights, sorry Jordan. This is the best I've felt in weeks.
Ricochet, now unshackled from my determined grip, clambers with frantic energy--a fish flopping back towards his urban stream, heaving for every advantage. I roll, catch my breath, and taste iron; the sting from my mouth nothing compared to the burning rush of air blasting past me. He scrambles on the ground, quipping still, "Four against one? What is this, a superhero pile-up?"
"We're not with that one," Crossroads says, just loud enough to be heard over falling pieces of wood and cardboard.
I'm regrouping, teeth already tingling with regrowth, while Gas Mask rises like a bad penny--no worse for her collision with the crates--her quartet of drones, buzzing guardians, forming a jagged halo above. There's an air of the revenant about her, those spirited back from the near beyond with a vengeance. The vibrating halo signifies an unvoiced promise of more than just a stink bomb payload. I don't know what's underneath each of them - the one with the stink bomb seems to be depositing its remains in her hand - but I know she's ready to sue them.
Crossroads stands stoic beside Playback -- their squared shoulders forming an unspoken alliance, twin pillars facing down the upstart in his ill-begotten mask of mirth. There's no room for humor in his ranks, only the grit of resolve set against the wild card ricocheting before us.
With his face hidden behind grinning mask, Ricochet dives into his pocket--a magician indulging in his final act, revealing two small green pills. "Waste of a good payday, let's get poppa his new car…" he mutters under his breath.
In a gulp, the pills disappear beneath his mask--a fleeting retreat before the onslaught recommences. The air wavers, pregnant with the building snare drum roll of anticipated power; whatever lay contained in those little emerald harbinger has awakened. With this chemical bolster, Ricochet's capabilities flare, the very air charged as if with the static of a brewing storm.
Were they superpower pills? Do those even exist? I figured I would've heard of them before today - maybe it's just normal stimulants? Either way, Ricochet rolls his shoulders until they pop, and I feel a sudden wave of nausea as the lingering remains of the stink bomb waft over me.
The fracas reeled into a dizzying crescendo, Ricochet, our self-made pinball powerhouse, now dowsing himself with what smelled like fear disguised as bravado. His fingers, deft as a pit-pocket's, produce an epi-pen, or something like it from some inner reserve of tricks. I watch, tense as bowstrings in the drawn moment, as he uncaps and jabs it straight into the soft territory of his abdomen.
I can smell the wrongness before the thing's even clicked--a snarling, canine intuition warning of rot amidst the wounds. The substance within his bloodstream fizzes--a chemical torrent gone rabid. As the scent fills the ruptured quiet, a pungent orange almost sickly sweet, my blood sense pulses with alarm. It's like a soda, gone crazy, been frozen and thawed and frozen again. His blood is… wrong.
That's not a normal alteration. The bloodstream changes with drugs, sure, not always like this, but at least a little. Chernobyl's blood is white hot, literally white, in my blood sense. This guy's blood is orange. And it feels like it's carbonated, I don't really know how to express the sensation any better than that. It's not literally carbonated, but it tickles my brain somewhere in the part that's afraid of danger, the lizard part.
He claps his hands together, and the air goes loud and heavy, all at once. I can't even see the shockwave as it hits me.
The world blurs--a carousel spun by a cosmic child's mischievous palm. Gas Mask, Playback, and I, we're flotsam in a carnival ride with all safety checks torn screaming from the control panel. I'm hefted like a straw in the winds of a whimsical tempest, Gravity, my once-solid ally, no match for the chaotic ballet Ricochet has sprung upon us.
Crossroads, ever the pillar in our storm, somehow anchors Playback, clasping his hand in a gravity-defying grip that denies the shockwave's dominion. Beside him, the lament of shattering drones signals Gas Mask's aerial guardians, dashed upon surfaces as unforgiving as the world we've chosen to defend.
With exultant elation painted across his face, Ricochet absorbs the echoes of his own detonation--a high riding upon adrenaline's coattails, wrapped in the ephemera of untempered power. "Woo! That's good shit," his exclamation drills through the pounding in my ears, cocky and jubilant.
His shuffle, a dancer treading the boards of his stage with an actor's glee, is nearly euphoric--each bounce an echo of delirium mixed with chemical consequence. Bloodhound is recovering. Sometimes from physical injury, sometimes from just too much life, too close together. She's better with people's muscles and the specific kind of bright red the body spills when it's mad or in love. She's no good with fizzing drug blood, which feels almost like teen spirit - selfish, panicked, angry, ready to latch out.
But it doesn't matter if he's fighting gravity or the grip of addiction now; the "game" has shifted to deadly earnest. It's all hands on deck, clamber back up, catch your breath and hope that your balance returns before his blood-infused frenzy directs its eye towards your still-reeling form. I don't know what he's taken, or what he's gonna be like when it hits, or how we're supposed to put someone down whose veins are fizzing like shaken soda cans. But I don't want him to do that again.
"Alright, Tinker-Toy, if you've got any more tricks up your sleeve now'd be a great time to use them," Playback tosses over to Gas Mask, somehow finding the lung capacity amid his gags for a half jest, half plea.
Her response is an unreadable silence--vigil behind the visage of her mask, posture coiling in momentary thought. Yet, even as she reconsiders her stance, stepping in uncertain cadence towards Ricochet's bulging and altogether unnerving muscular display, the chaotic dance of fight choreography begins its kinetic symphony.
With no fanfare, no verbal ripostes or witticisms to draw the ear, we all converge upon our subject--each move a wordless communication in this full-contact conversation. Playback and Crossroads orbit like binary stars, Crossroads' arms a blur, playing the shell game with those cold-metal handcuffs while Playback skips and pivots in feints designed to confuse and corral.
Yet, for all their coordination, it is Ricochet who seems possessed of a new potency--a sneering Atlas hoarding borrowed might. His arms swell, not just with power but with the garish mapwork of veins--roadways primed with his bizarre, sludge-like lifeblood.
The first strike is mine--a hurl towards his carotid, a grip searching to seal and tighten. Yet his skin feels steel-belted, a grinning fortress reinforced by layers of unbidden strength. My fingers scramble to compensate, to reclaim leverage over this monstrous physique.
Beside me, Playback meets a suddenly granite jaw with a rapid-fire combination--bass line to the falsetto of his ongoing banter. Each thump on Ricochet feels like a pen tapping thick rubber; it's grim satisfaction tied with dread, knowing such rebounds promise little in the way of gain.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Gas Mask dances a disjointed rhythm--each strike unfocused but relentless--a maelstrom in search of a heart. Ricochet's derision goads her into ineffectiveness, her temper clouding technique, her flailings carving hapless patterns in the wake of stronger foes.
But through the bodily thrum and combative delirium, Ricochet seems to uncoil further--a human slinky somehow drawing tension from air itself. Muscles coil, his form both shrinking and growing into itself--a grotesque magician contorting under our incredulous watch.
In turn, I squeeze and clutch, bloodsense telegraphing the ricochets within his vessel even as my hands slip--desperate for the clasp of a fragile trachea among striated layers of induced fortitude. The texture, that alien abrasiveness set against my failing force, stirs a primal response--fearful and undeniable--a creeping urge to set teeth deep into throat.
Playback's rhythm never falters, chirping like a frenetic bird--each note a drumbeat against the enfolding silence. "C'mon, man, flexing won't get you on any magazine covers here!"
Crossroads dodges, a nimble waltz punctuated by the chime of cuff meeting flesh, but the rings won't close, Ricochet's enlarging wrists laughing off the attempt like a bad joke--Crossroads' stolidity does not crack, determination his sole aura in the dim of failed attempts.
We're writing poetry in violence--each blow, lock, and lunge a stanza etched in sweat and blood-fueled mist. Our gazes, far flung from the ignominy of brutality, set beyond the moment--chasing the narrative cadence that leads to a captured villain, a city secured, and peace uneasily claimed.
The crescendo of fists builds to a feverish pitch as Ricochet, with defiant snarl, gathers his swelling might--a storm within his sinews awaiting release. The air turns thick with tension; a taut ribbon stretched to its singing brink. And then, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, he unbinds his human coil, dispatching our congregation with an airburst more felt than heard.
Our disparate collection of abilities and bravado is sent spiraling--puppets snapped from their strings. We're tatters in the wind, recoiling from a hubris paid back tenfold in kinetic dollars.
I find reality's again too late, rising in the time it takes for the echo of our expulsion to fade into painful remembrance. Pain lances through me, muted only by adrenaline's sweet anesthetic -- a bruised, weathered animal, not yet bested, but bearing the taunting of each gathered shadow of former victories.
Ricochet, his gaze locked onto Crossroads, seems unaware of the blows landing upon him—no mere theft or retreat, but the siren call of dominance beckons him. It's a display of raw power, a Goliath intent on crushing defiance beneath him.
Crossroads stands, undeterred, but Ricochet descends upon him, a Goliath seeking to squash and assert. The first blow is a sucker punch--a wicked uppercut aimed at humility's cornerstone. Yet Crossroads diverts, infinitesimal seconds bought by his foresight, turning a knockout blow into mere glance.
Ricochet roars, unaccustomed to the slip of prey from his grasp. He jabs, a series of harsh crosses aiming to land with grievous intent. Playback intercepts, a blur, his movements silencing impact, only to unleash discordant crescendos of swatted hands at Ricochet's ears, followed by ripping, shredding bursts of sound that send him stumbling out of Crossroads' armspan.
Gas Mask, rejoining our chorus, lunges--her movements, no longer chaotic, are precise cuts. Her hand extends, fingers encasing pepper spray aimed with a librarian's precision, catching Ricochet in the mask and bouncing off to form a spicy, painful cloud. She tosses the can at his head, and it thuds off, stopping without a bounce and falling down to the ground. He doesn't even notice.
All the while, Ricochet sends flesh-hammers pounding, imprints of ire mapped upon my colleagues' bodies--Crossroads's ribs throb a morbid rhythm; Playback's arms hoist purpling badges of his echoed fury.
And so I fly once more to the fray, the ever-resilient hound, teeth bared and aching from regrowth. This time it's a slide, low and rapid--the world flipping as I clip Ricochet's legs. They buckle with my weight and leverage, a fleeting setback before a flailing kick launches me back, my air squeezed into the battleground. Crossroads can't heal, and I can - the calculus is easy. I punch him in the balls.
Whatever powers he has doesn't seem to be able to protect against that. Maybe he's too busy dealing with everything else. Either way, I don't feel the same dull thud that I felt when he ate my prior assault. And lucky me, he's not wearing a cup. I punch him in the balls again.
Every exhale is a small defeat; every respite a transient ally. We are sinews stretched to fray, spirits indomitable, heroes not by acclaim but by unyielding, scrappy, and altogether dogged tenacity. We circle Ricochet, an impromptu firing squad without bullets, seeking the chink in his armored performance--an opening to press advantage and drag this one-man spectacle down into closure's quiet.
Blow by blow, breath by ragged breath, our theater of war plays out--an improvisation on a theme of justice, each of us scoring the measure of our will upon the body of our adversary. Each bruise is a stanza, each grunt a line break--our actions weaving a poem of knuckles and bone.
This dance of flesh and will spirals on, and in the ragged ballet, my focus narrows to a singular and ignoble ploy--one I've tried and tested. I punch him in the balls once more, steeled for the onslaught to come. With a grunt, I let my knuckles do the talking, and just like that, our human pinball machine buckles, his vocal cords unraveling into a grunt so guttural it vibrates in my teeth.
Over the top, Gas Mask sails in a leapfrog's larceny, riding the thermals of my distraction with elegance I never pegged her for. Gloved hands plunge to seize Ricochet's own, tethering him to reality with a grip as unyielding as the narrative of our shared defiance.
The zap is almost anticlimactic--a subdued crackle lost in the melee's symphony until it's too late. Ricochet jolts, his body conducting a requiem of electricity as the voltage kisses his skin. The energy, stewed and soured within him, seeks swift exodus--a kinetic exorcism whose fury would not be contained nor quietly dismissed.
Reality bleaches to white. Sound itself is stripped from the air, a vacuum preceding a roar like the birth-pangs of creation. The warehouse weeps, its skeleton coming apart in jerks and shudders, timbers and concrete bidding hasty adieus to their moorings.
In the silence that follows the tempest's climax, I see Gas Mask--an outline of defeat yards from where her valiance left her, a collapsed truth against a wall already whispering its cracks.
Crossroads stands, his commands are the frayed threads by which we hang--a captain listing aboard his crippled vessel. "Playback, get Miss Mayfly," his voice breaks through the ringing in my ears, "and get out of here. Bloodhound, step back and send out an alert."
My nod is imperceptible in the daze, fumbling for a device, any device, my fingers slick as I trigger a distress signal bound for ears we pray will heed. My phone. The screen is cracked but it works, and I ping alerts and GPS coordinates to the HIRC chat.
"I'll keep him busy," Crossroads' tone brooks no argument, yet it's lined with the tremor of a red-lined gauge.
I chance a look at Ricochet--every convulsion a morbid twitch, the skeletal marionette whose strings are played no more by his own accord but by the echoes of violence past. Miss Mayfly's glove lies attached still, a testament to her gamut run in full, and he shakes it off, foam dripping from under his mask. I look towards Miss Mayfly and Playback, my friend and teammate applying what first aid he has on his utility belt, swaddling her behind nearly-demolished wooden crates.
The twisted ballet of muscle and kinetic discord continues. Ricochet rises, grotesque in his rebirth, the convulsions mapping the unsteady cartography of his power. Like a birthing star, his body morphs, skin oscillating between states as the air around him waltzes with invisible eddies, kicking up dust in a spectral display. "Just let me win!" He screams, shrieking like a child losing a match of their favorite video game.
I am still, my senses tingling at the periphery -- an anticipatory crawl of my skin that preludes an uncertain solace. Behind me, the steady cadence of reinforcement footsteps whispers promises, and I spin on a hope.
"Don't worry, backup's here," echoes a voice, weighty with the steady confidence that drills into my confusion. I expect the familiar silhouette of my own, the Young Defenders, but time mocks the desperation of my call.
It's just… Sundial? Alone she stands, a statement of sharpness against the haze, her eyes locking onto the scene with intent that belies her singular arrival. Too fast, too soon for the cavalry.
Then, as if the world itself gasps and is punched outward, a streak rends the atmosphere, a slingshot humanoid poised on trajectory's edge. It's a whiplash blur of cloth and protection gear, aimed with prescient precision, features moving too quickly to be seen. Someone else.
Through the yawning maw of the warehouse wall, where a hole had been punched in it like notebook paper twenty, thirty seconds ago, the new figure arrives. Her form horizontal, a missile marrying gravity and vengeance. She collides with Ricochet like a bullet, the meeting of their bodies an exclamation punctuating the chaotic sentence of our scramble, and the two of them go flying into the next nearest wall.