Jason's planning came to a head two weeks later. By now, the hotel staff knew him fairly well; greeting him by his fake name; this time, Jason Lane; slightly less memorable than 'Byrne', by his considerations. The room had become comfortable. Familiar. He no longer had difficulty sleeping on the too-comfortable bed in the too-cold room. He still had a nasty habit of leaping to his feet and grabbing his gun at the slightest noise from the surrounding rooms; but that would likely follow him for years to come.
He'd finally seen the news report about his own crime during the second week. He was being sought in connection with assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder of a police officer, obstruction of justice; all sorts of nonsense. They had his picture, his name, everything; and of course, warned that he was a former soldier, to be considered armed and extremely dangerous; a D-grade Meta but one who should be approached by a swat team, not regular police.
Good to know he hadn't fled town for nothing. But if it took over a week for the guy to wake up, he could've at least scammed the airport out of that signing bonus... Ahh, well. Back to business.
Watching the three banks gave him a fair amount of information;
Crater City Credit received a visit from an armored truck once each week; on thursday morning they would load up the vault; and before the bank opened, a guard from the bank rather than the truck company would come with the staff to load up the ATM outside. While the bank guard seemed professional but only bore a vest and a handgun, the guard for the truck seemed dangerous; the weapon he carried was some sort of rifle, clearly made to take out meta-humans; and the armored truck had a guard behind the wheel at all times. In fact.. the second guy stayed in the back, with the cash, except when he was walking the delivery in with the bank crew. After the bank closed for the night, a cleaning crew came in, disposed of the trash; clearly the vault and all cash was fully locked up at this point.
Colorado Bank and Trust was visited twice the first week, once the second; monday, thursday, and tuesday. No way to predict when it would next arrive without getting word from the inside, or, maybe, planning things out for weeks in advance. The same truck, the same company, the same methods. The staff must be required to clean up themselves; no cleaning crew, nobody else entered after close.
Lastly, ColCorpWest; CCW. This place was either ridiculously busy, or kept much less cash on-hand; a different armored car company came by every day; smaller, lighter vehicle. The guards didn't look to be as well-armed, more ordinary side-arms, but they used the same method; one guard was always in the driver's seat, while the other was always in the back. Good, logical setups. And, of course, the same cleaning crew from CCC worked here; they came in and cleaned up after the first one entered.
He checked each one out in person; and while he wore a surgical mask over his face, he was forced to reveal his poorly-made-up face; the mask had even smeared it each time; before entering the CBT and CCC. They actually said he was fine wearing it inside; but he needed to pull the mask and look at the camera, then he could put it back on, or leave.
Ultimately speaking, CCC seemed to be the best target. The armored truck would leave about an hour before the bank opened. Then the ATM would be filled half an hour later. Any vault would have a timer on it, and they'd probably open it just before the truck arrived, load it all up, and then use a lighter, less secure door they could open and close to let people into the safety deposit boxes to seal things until they closed for the day.
So... Hit the place before they open. Grab all the cash before they load the ATM. Get the hell out. End of story.
When thursday morning came along, Jason was ready. His truck was hidden off the interstate, tent all set; he'd finished that before midnight. His hotel room packed up; but he was paid through the end of the third week. His bike? A fake plate on it, a bad spray-paint paintjob applied.. and hidden behind a dumpster just out of camera view.
He watched the armored truck pull away, carrying its guard and whatever threat that weapon posed... probably none, but who knows. After a quick check-up, making sure all his gear was in place; his helmet secure; in five minutes they'd be loading the ATM. Those cylinders they stuffed with cash for the tiny vault inside it were either freshly loaded, or in the process. Now or never.
Inhaling deeply, Jason sprinted forward; he knew where the power lines came in. He knew where the phone and internet lines were; and rapidly cut the latter pair with some wire snips, before dropping them to the concrete; he'd never touched them without gloves, not even when he bought them at that yard sale; lit off his improvised incendiary grenade.. and shattered a window with a swift kick from a steel-toed boot, hurling the device inside.
He hadn't thought the glass was bulletproof; and the satisfying crash as the glass scattered informed him that this was the case... and the sprinklers inside going off as he stepped inside, drawing his pistol with his right hand... and his customized Shroud grenade with his left. He cleared his throat for a moment to make sure the digitizer he'd slapped into his helmet; mostly just a badly malformed jailbroken android phone; was working.
"Alright everybody! This is a robbery! Bring out all the cash and nobody gets hurt!" It seemed a bit ridiculous to be shouting that in the empty lobby; he charged forward, the bank currently flashing and buzzing with the fire alarm, the heavy vault door wide open; but a secondary metal-barred door sealing it shut, showing a cart with drawers that would likely go to the teller line laid atop it. Leaping the front counter of the bank, and smashing through the side-door; sliding a few steps afterwards as he found himself in a small room; three women were standing there, panicked, afraid, rapidly becoming soaking wet from the sprinkler system; and four long metal cylinders, one containing hundred-dollar bills, two containing twenties, and one containing fifties, were laid out on the counter.
"Or, well. Convenient enough, that." A quick assessment. Those four chunks of metal contained well over fifty thousand dollars; if the one of hundreds was all the way full, over a hundred thousand. "I'll take these. One of you load them into the bag. Whoever has the key to that door out there is gonna open the vault."
The bank guard was standing there, looking torn between grabbing his pistol and reaching for the ceiling. He could predict the guards actions easy enough. He wasn't a threat. No need to shoot. "Drop the gun, do what I say, and nobody gets hurt. I'm Eyeball; never killed a civilian yet.. in this country... and I'd like to keep it that way."
The guard seemed to settle on his decision; Jason gave a nod as he dropped the gun; and raised his hands. One of the women shoved the heavy metal containers into his bag; it couldn't close, but then, he hadn't been close enough to see how big these things were before. "All of you, together. To the vault."
As the group, crying, one woman clearly on the verge of collapse, moved out the door at gunpoint, Jason saw something... a movement. A movement that hadn't happened yet. Fuck.
He yanked the pin on his 'Jason Special', tossed it in the lobby; and heard a loud 'pop', followed by the spluttering sound of something spraying into the air, invisible among the falling water droplets. A sudden, loud crack.
Lightning... the fastest man alive, generally regarded as the most powerful, dangerous man on earth, in a vivid blue-white uniform of a blue base with streaks of lightning across its whole form; appeared as if out of nowhere, slamming face-first into the counter, and collapsing to the floor, making a loud groan of pain; his body covered with dozens of tiny red splotches of blood.
Well. As Jason looked down at him; and the woman who'd been worst off before simply fainted to the floor; those red splotches... seemed to be fading. Shrinking before his eyes. Any second now, the man would be on his feet, and Jason would be dead. Or in prison. He lifted his handgun; three shots. Loud cracks that briefly overwhelmed the cacophony of the fire alarm and sprinkler combo. Turned back to the two remaining, standing, women; one blonde, one red-head. Name-tags...
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Well, Tammy? I'd still prefer to keep my civilian kill count at zero; that gentleman certainly didn't count as a civilian. But if you take too long opening that door, it'll be
"Come on now, ladies, times wasting. The vault."
***
Mark Maxwell led, from his perspective, a boring life. His ridiculously accelerated time rate.. one that apparently settled, at minimum, around fifty times normal, and didn't have an upper limit.. had led to fame. Fortune. A bottomless appetite. A ridiculous number of secondary casualties. And a complete lack of meaningful personal relationships.
He'd dated five other speedsters before; nice women. Generally attractive as well; this particular powerset tended to turn its owner into a slim, lean figure with muscles in all the right places and just enough fat to stay healthy. The papers generally assumed he dated dozens of women; maybe multiple at a time without anyone possibly knowing, since he kept his personal life so secretive.
But no. His life was... boring.
His 'Viewing Room' was where he spent most of his time. Five hundred tablets; each containing a single page of his current book; a Stephen King work that he hadn't read yet, just released; a rare treasure. The walls were covered with them, networks of charging cables forming to keep all of them topped off.
He would read a page, tap the screen to send it to the next book he would read; and then turn to look at the next tablet. It would take a few seconds for the screen to change pages, which meant that, from his perspective, he could read all... four hundred and fifty-nine... pages of this book, then go take a walk and look out at the same mountain view he'd seen millions of times before... and come back in to start the next book.
Books over five hundred pages were a bit frustrating; he could spend a few hours reading, or, well. Fractions of a second... and then have to wait for the second half to load. The Wheel of Time had been particularly frustrating in that regard; he'd sometimes had to change the pages three times for one book, and with all the convoluted connections from book to book, he'd ended up spending what would've been weeks worth of his internal time going over it again to really understand it.. and be frustrated that a healer hadn't reached the author in time to save him.
Halfway through his current reading, an alarm clicked on. He casually walked into the next room; setting a pin in the wall next to the tablet he'd been reading; and checked out the alarm. Ooh, a bank had just lost its internet connection, and had called out to report a fire alarm via cell seconds later? Nice. Either he was about to nab himself a bank robber, or there was a legitimate fire, and he could save someone! Perfect.
Stepping out the door of his home into the clean mountain air, he inhaled deeply, appreciating the crisp morning breeze; and carefully tuned himself in. Finding the right frequency to shift his body at, allowing him to pass through air molecules, would let him achieve almost infinite speed in the low-humidity mountain environment; and when he reached the ground, with less than 1%?
Each long, loping stride covered hundreds of yards; he could feel the faint wisps of that tiny bit of humidity pushed aside as he passed; noticable; the folks driving down the interstate might see a brief flicker of disturbance; but not enough to cause the sort of devastating shockwaves he'd be causing without his vibration.
For them, seconds would pass. Probably less than a second, even. For him, thanks to the unfortunate reality of things like black ice, he actually had to pay attention as he ran; so the distance of 507 miles would feel to him like half an hour or so.
He thought about his long career in hero-work. At first, trying to make up for the problems caused when he first developed powers; all the deaths and destruction. Then his attempts at dating... and discovering that, like most first-gen mutants, he was completely infertile. The radiation exposure his mother had suffered while he was in the womb hadn't just altered his DNA enough to give him powers... it had made sure he would be the last of his family name.
Even if he could have kids, dealing with women who had to make an extreme effort to keep up with him.. well. It wasn't fair to them to be so angry.
And then... Crater City. He paused for a moment in his run, stopping at his favorite donut shop; they had some absurd donut they called the 'Crater'; and helping himself to a dozen, leaving a twenty on the tray; slowing down to a more casual walk as he approached the bank, eating them one by one... and then gently folding the box, and leaving it floating above the trash can; sure to be quite loud to whoever happened across it later.
Looking at the bank from the outside, he couldn't see much; water falling from the sprinklers in the ceiling. As he stepped through the hole in the glass, he shifted.. changing his 'frequency', matching up with the water instead of the air. He couldn't move nearly as quickly now; he'd have to deal with all the shockwaves he'd make in the air; but more than fast enough to deal with any normal human, and even ninety-nine percent of other Speedsters.
He walked over to the counter, seeing the group; slowly, sluggishly, moving out the door; three women. Pretty. Young. Scared. An older man; heavy-set, a guard uniform. And some lunatic with a shiny motorcycle helmet and some poorly-drawn Eyeball logo on it.
Good lord, is this what it was coming to for new supervillains? Idiot probably called himself 'the eyeball'. Was he even a supervillain? Hah.
As he headed towards the counter, he could see... a Shroud grenade? Oh, maybe not so unprofessional. A good mix of water, dust, ash, whatever else that thing had might slow him down enough for a mid-grade speedster to be able to get away. But clearly a dud; nothing was in the air but water, despite the grenade clearly having gone off before he arrived.
As he hopped over the dud, avoiding it just in case it was mid-detonation and about to start spraying debris at supersonic speeds, he suddenly felt... a sharp pain in his chest. His arm. His legs. Something... something in the air. Invisible? No... it just... looked like water. No!
As the droplet-sized projectiles were driven through his flesh by his own enormous momentum, he could feel flesh tearing, bones breaking... and he lost control, tripping, slamming into the counter and feeling even more things break. This was... the second-most pain he'd felt in his life.
Given time... and food... he could heal, even from this. He'd healed from worse, even, that day he'd saved the earth from aliens by playing tungsten javelin and been caught up in the debris formed by his own shockwave. All he needed to recover was a break. A few seconds, a good meal, or some energy bars...
He wouldn't get one.
The bullet hit his heart. That was probably it. With all the other damage, he wouldn't be able to heal that one. He honestly wasn't sure if it were even possible. The second bullet was coming for his head. And... he was too weak to dodge. To move. He could slow down time. Watch the bullet as if it were standing still.
He did just that. There was no hope. No chance of recovery, of survival. None of his limbs were responding; he couldn't even take this helmeted nutjob with him.
He thought about his life. All the people he'd saved. The fun, the terror, the joy. He'd been a hero for over 20 years. Subjectively, he'd lived for thousands. With his powers, he could stretch it as far as he'd like. He could turn this last moment, the bullet crawling towards his skull, into another thousand years.
Perhaps he did just that.
He'd never be able to speak of it, however; his powers finally faded when that bullet struck, right through his left eye; followed moments later by a second, through his right.
Lightning, the Titan, one of the most powerful men alive, had died.
****
Before seeing the hero dead, the two women had been panicking. The guard had second thoughts about giving up his gun. But after seeing the casual way this villain had slain such an incredible hero? He was glad he'd dropped the gun.
The second bag was quickly loaded down with hundreds, fifties; it wasn't large enough to hold all of the twenties in the vault; Jason stuffed a few more twenties in with the ATM cylinders, gave a salute and a smile... which the poor bank employees couldn't see.. and, in a final gesture, reached down and grabbed Lightning's mask; mostly ornamental, everyone knew who Mark Maxwell was; before running back out the door.
He almost slipped in a puddle of water inside the window; only saved by his own vision of himself slamming ass-first into the tile; and less than a minute after he left the bank, he was on the bike, one bag was secured; it took another thirty seconds to tie the other one shut, holding the cylinders in place; before he took off; motorcycle engine roaring as he sped down the brief intersection onto the highway; breaking quite a few traffic laws as he weaved through the morning rush to get out of town, but then... the cops wouldn't even be sending out units for another few minutes.
It had worked! All he needed to do was ditch those bulky cylinders in case they had trackers... and he could move north. Retire. Buy some cabin with cash and start over as.. well. 'Jason Byrne' still sounded terrible, but it would do.
However much cash he had in these... he was home free!