The non-lethal approach was a surprise. The shoulder holsters he'd had seen were most certainly for pistols. In fact, the way the bearded man carried himself, Joseph was pretty sure the guy still had his weapon holstered inside his jacket, but this guy decided to come at a Joseph with a stun gun. Beard's approach was cautious but steady, shuffling forward while keeping his body coiled for a lunge.
What did the preference for non-lethals say about the situation?
Joseph didn’t know. Analyzing that aspect of the encounter would need to wait, because a second set of heavy footsteps approached him behind. He turned sideways to assess the new threat and be able to meet both attackers at once. The second assailant, the tattooed man from the vending machine area also held a stun gun, which he thrust in front of him like a lance as he charged forward. Meanwhile, Beard used Joseph’s momentary distraction to close the distance and try to end the fight before it began.
Beard, being the first to close on his target, thrust with his stun gun aiming for Joseph's sternum before bringing his empty hand around to either grab Joseph’s shirt or wrap him up in a hold. Joseph blunted the stun gun thrust with the partially ajar door of one of the upper washing machines. Its thick plastic was a solid weight that swung forward and smashed into the tip of the black cylinder with a *bang* but it didn’t have the mass to do any damage to it. The things were made to be sturdy. However, it was enough to make Beard retract his arm momentarily to protect his hand and wrist out of reflex. Beard’s momentum carried him forward, however, and the grab he was going for turned into more of an awkward side-hug. Firebreak brought his left arm down to pin Beard’s grabbing hand in place then twisted at the torso to bring the man’s body fully around until he was in the way of Tattoo’s charge.
Having built up plenty of momentum in his charge, Tattoo tried to bring himself up short, softening the impact with Beard's back with his hands. He hadn’t been holding trigger of the stun gun like Firebreak had hoped, but the collision worked in the super's favor anyway. Beard’s body was forced all the way up against Firebreak’s torso, making the use of the burly man's weapon arm difficult, which gave Joseph a chance to grab the wrist to control it.
Beard, now locked in a contest of strength and leverage with his target, gritted his teeth and grunted with effort as he worked his arms in an attempt to get control of one of his limbs. Nearly nose to nose, Joseph could smell the tobacco on the man’s breath and saw the stains on his teeth. He sucked in a fortifying breath and slammed his forehead into Beard’s nose.
The simultaneous sound of crunching cartilage and the explosion of bright spots in Joseph’s vision told him he’d scored a solid hit. When the spots faded, he saw Beard blinking tears from his eyes and blood poured out of his nose and into his beard. This was the point where Joseph would normally try a kick to the knee or maybe to the groin, but when he did so, the cast on his leg betrayed him, unable to bend properly. Instead of a front kick, Joseph let go of Beard and reeled backward several feet like a drunk in a bar fight.
Meanwhile, Tattoo shoved his companion to the side, squeezing past him to the forefront of the fight. The guy seemed to know they’d given up some of their advantage, now choosing to edge in carefully with his stun gun held out like a fencer’s sword.
Joseph, now in a proper kickboxer’s stance, barring his leg, thought about reaching for one of the workings in his pocket but thought the better of it. Tattoo was unlikely to give him the chance to bring it out and open it, not without significant distance between the two of them.
Even if the working came into play what then? What would happen if Firebreak started chucking fireballs around a hotel? Would his assailants consider this a use of lethal force and respond in kind? There was no way to know.
Joseph did know, however, that he did not want to go hand to hand with two armed men without bringing everything he had to bear. That meant getting some distance and getting outside.
At first, he attempted to inch back on the balls of his feet, giving ground slowly as Tattoo made quick thrusts at Joseph’s forearms with the prongs of his weapon. Tattoo caught onto this quickly, though. The way Joseph moved was awkward and stiff, probably triggering a predatory response in the man’s brain, urging him to press harder. Soon, Tattoo was all up in Joseph’s business with punches followed by the stuttering pops of electricity as he tried to skewer Joseph with the business end of the stun gun.
For his part, Firebreak took the punches on his guard while focusing on knocking the stun gun out of line and into the adjacent appliances as much as possible, attempting to negatively reinforce Tattoo’s commitment to forceful blows at least with that hand. Punches he could take, but Joseph had no idea the amount of juice their stun guns could put out. They looked like serious hardware, probably made for the military or maybe supers. Getting hit even once with kit like that would probably swing the fight more in his enemies’ favor, and it was already headed that way without the introduction electrically induced paralysis.
It occurred to Joseph that backing out of the narrow hallway of the laundromat into the open parking lot would give his attackers a chance to get on either side of him again, but he also wasn’t ready to set a hotel on fire today. He wished very much, just then, that he'd brought a blue or green tube with him. The lie he'd sold Johansen had a cost, and the bill for his deceit was already coming due. It hadn’t even been a day.
Behind Tattoo, Beard had gotten himself under control again, shaking his head and snorting through the copious amounts of blood now congealing in his nose and throat, but if anything, he looked more ready to fight now than he did at the start. The blood-streaked beard and wet eyes gave the man a deranged look, made especially so when he bared his teeth.
Once the two men were able to come at Joseph together, things would get ugly.
Another block, another punch to Joseph’s guard and a kick to his thigh, then Joseph’s boot made contact with the door threshold with a thump. The door opened toward the outside and appeared to be propped wide open against the wall by a cinder block. He thought about kicking the block out of the way and trying to hold the door closed to buy himself some time, but that plan was out thanks to how slow he was with the cast. Instead, he backed out into the sunlight, finally reaching down and making a grab for one of the tubes in his pocket.
Tattoo changed tactics. He sprang forward out of the doorway, hunched low with arms stretched out wide in a football tackle that carried him into Joseph’s legs right at the thighs. Joseph wasn't’ fast enough to dodge or stable enough to set himself, so he went down hard on the pavement, his hand still stuck in his pocket as Tattoo wrapped him up in a tight hold. The guy must have had some wrestling experience, because he wasted no time in using his superior position to bring his legs forward and tuck his head in low to make his way up to Joseph’s torso where he could pummel the super at his leisure.
Beard wasn’t idle during this time either. He loped out of the laundromat and into the sun, circling around the two combatants until he was next to Joseph’s head, attempting to deliver a kick to the super’s temple, which Joseph twisted to take on the shoulder instead.
Joseph’s hand wrapped around the tube in his pocket, his senses telling him that this was one of the less destructive ones, or at least one of the workings with a smaller reservoir. He couldn’t get his hand out of his pocket with Tattoo holding him like he was, so he popped the lid with his thumb and took a hold of the paper in between his fingers, wriggling until the paper was free. That was when he felt the first jolt of electricity just under his ribcage, cramping the muscles in his torso painfully and causing his diaphragm to contract, forcing him to take a gasping breath.
Yep, their stun guns had plenty of juice.
Another shock, this time in his left shoulder. Then Beard got in on the fun, shocking him on the right side of his chest. Joseph writhed under the pressure, attempting to keep an arm in front of his face to block the punches and kicks but failing to catch most of the blows now that his nervous system had to contend with an extra 100,000 volts from time to time.
Something needed to change and right the hell now, or Firebreak was going down.
Joseph brought his free hand, his left, up to grab onto Tattoo’s hair. Again, Tattoo seemed to have some experience with this, because he brought his weight down on Joseph’s upper arm to control just how hard he could pull now that he had a hand hold. Joseph wasn’t looking to rip the man’s hair out though. Instead, he flattened his hand, pressing on the man’s scalp, then summoned his fire. The screaming began almost immediately followed by panicked punches and kicks that held less power than the ones before.
Tattoo had to fight the instinct to create distance between himself and the man that was currently setting him on fire, while still attempting to win the brawl. Instinct won in the end. The man’s legs kicked and his body shifted until Joseph had enough leverage to buck Tattoo up and forward until his chest landed on Joseph’s face. Unpleasant, but at least it protected Joseph’s upper body from Beard's nastier blows.
With Tattoo's legs no longer pinning his arms at his side, Joseph pulled his hand from his pocket, the working he’d grabbed clutched in his palm.
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Joseph and Tattoo both made pained noises as they tussled on the ground. Tattoo because his hair and scalp were burning and Joseph because, yet again, he was using his fire without giving the heat a way to escape. The sound of sizzling flesh and the smell of burnt hair became Joseph's entire world for a desperate few seconds.
The two of them were locked in a contest to see which one could handle the most pain, and Joseph was pretty sure he would win this one. In the end, human desire to not have their head catch fire would be stronger than a little searing of the palm. Firebreak thought about burning the working in his hand, but the time wasn’t right. If he’d pulled a fireball from his pocket, he’d need to aim the thing, and if he was still stuck in a life or death wrestling match with Tattoo, he'd be working blind. He couldn't see, and he couldn't think overly well just now with the signals from the nerves in his hand screaming at him to stop grabbing the stove. All he could do was hold on and wait.
The muscles in his thigh twitched and spasmed, though the sensation wasn’t overwhelming anymore thanks to have a much more immediate source of pain already flooding his senses. It seemed that Beard had moved around to Joseph’s lower half and was delivering electric shocks where he could to give Tattoo a hand.
At this point, Tattoo was in full on panic mode, punching and throwing knees at Joseph’s body with reckless abandon, attempting to do something, anything to get the super to stop applying heat to his favorite brain area. Then, he abruptly gave up on offense, springing to his feet and slapping at the charred part of his scalp. Joseph let him go, deciding to use his one good leg to push against the ground and propel himself away from the two men as much as he could to get distance.
It was less than effective. Joseph, as shaky and battered as he was, couldn’t push himself very far, and the concrete seemed to grab at his sweatpants and shirt, robbing him of much of his momentum. Instead, he just made Beard take a step before he was kicking Joseph again and stabbing out with the prongs on his stun gun.
Beard looked like shit. His face was twisted up in a permanent snarl with the blood running down his nose now staining the chest of his outfit. His jacket, half open revealed a darkly stained shirt missing a few buttons as well as the strap to his shoulder holster.
At least if Joseph died today he would die knowing he left his mark someone.
Why didn’t either of these guys go for their guns? Joseph knew they had them. He’d seen the weapons earlier. Did they want him alive? Did they want to keep things quiet? Could he use that?
Joseph kicked out again, catching Beard in the shin, eliciting a sharp gasp from the man that propelled droplets of blood and saliva onto Joseph’s pants. Meanwhile, Tattoo was back to his old self again, readying for his patented charge. Any attempt to get to his feet would probably be met with kicks or zaps, so Joseph stayed on the ground, bringing up the fist with his working in front of his face, summoning his fire to consume the paper and feeling his mojo go to work.
As he expected, the working on the paper was a pretty standard fireball. A small one at that. The construct would be simply warm while it was in his hand but potentially devastating when it was launched. The energy he’d fed into the reservoir when he'd created it was almost entirely heat, but the construct at its center was a combination of force and potential that gave it some concussive force and fuel for when it was launched. The construct would start small but end bigger and nastier once it reached its destination.
Right now, the working hovered above Joseph’s palm, a perfect sphere of bright orange light with flames licking upward as some of its energy bled away. He would need to launch it soon if he didn’t want it to fizzle out.
The addition to a ball of fire changed the equation of the fight somewhat. Beard and Tattoo collectively paused, unsure what to do. Tattoo looked the most hesitant to commit to another hand to hand fight, having already 'felt the burn' so to speak. He twitched and stutter-stepped, never getting close enough to be grabbed again. For his part, Beard reached up to unzip his jacket the rest of the way, perhaps to pull out his handgun. However, he seemed to decide against it at the last second. Instead, he reached up to his ear where a wire dangled over the lobe. He spoke a couple low words that Joseph couldn't quite make out then went back to staring menacingly at Joseph and probing for openings in the super's guard.
It was an odd stand off. Neither of the two men wanted to be set on fire (or at least be the first person to be set on fire) and Joseph didn’t want to kill either of them with his fireball. And, yes, Joseph was certain a fireball would, indeed, kill whoever it hit. Horribly. This one wasn’t as big as the one he’d brought to the lasher den, but neither of these guys were the size of a Buick either. Still, time was on Tattoo and Beard's side. Even now the flame guttered above Joseph's hand, threatening to fizzle and leave him in his time of need. Something needed to happen soon.
It was Tattoo that gave the game away. While the three of them postured and looked for opportunities with each other, Tattoo’s eyes flicked up and behind Joseph, into the parking lot. Taking the hint, Joseph angled himself perpendicular to the fight and turned his head to see another man, this one short with a high and tight haircut Joseph usually associated with military folks, creeping between the vehicles in the lot, gun drawn and pointed low at the ground.
That was all Joseph really needed to see. He brought the fireball around in a sidearm throw that sent the construct screaming off into the parking lot, but his aim was off. The fireball hit the side of a metal brush guard attached to the truck the gunman was using as concealment. The construct detonated, flinging strands of sticky napalm across the truck’s grill and into the gap where the gunman crouched.
Joseph saw at least a couple of the thin strands shoot out and splatter against the man’s shoulders and neck, but that’s all he got a chance to see. Even as the gunman’s screams began, Joseph whipped his head around to meet the oncoming Beard and Tattoo, who had taken the cue to charge. They didn’t get a chance to pile on top of Joseph again, however.
Tattoo tripped, mid charge, seeming to fall on his face with his hands splayed in front of him, his stun gun clattering and rolling away from his outstretched hand. Then, as he raised his head questioningly with his mouth open in shock, he rocketed backwards with a shriek, one of his legs slightly raised and his upper body dragging on the concrete and leaving a thin trail of red behind him. His horizontal momentum seemed to change direction after a few feet, carrying him diagonally, up into the air to the second story of the building. Physics being a cruel mistress, the momentum carried Tattoo into the wall, bouncing his head off of the brick before he went still, now suspended by one leg from the lip of the roof.
Beard, having seen his accomplice get strung up like a deer, understandably hesitated to continue the fight. He looked from the upside-down Tattoo to Joseph and back several times, waffling between doing what he'd set out to do and cutting his losses to run. He didn’t get the chance, though. From behind Beard’s right shoulder, Joseph spotted a distortion in the air, a slight bending of the light spectrum that you could sometimes see on a hot blacktop or over a gas stove. Then, from that distortion stepped a towering figure.
It was tall and reedy, dressed in all black flowing fabric that covered the entirety of its body with the exception of its head. The skin on its face was oily and deathly pale stretched thinly over a skull that was a patchwork of steel plates and circuitry with chromed surfaces and glowing lights that winked on and off from time to time. In fact, its only skin appeared to be its face, which maintained a dead, blank expression around glowing red eyes. As it put a hand on Beard’s shoulder and squeezed. Joseph could hear the thug’s collar bone pop even above the man’s agonized gasp. Then crackling electricity shot through Beard’s body visibly arcing from him to the cyborg and back, smoke billowing from the two of them until Beard collapsed onto the ground, twitching.
The cyborg creature looked down at Beard, its face still blank while it stared into the smoke curling up from the man’s body. Then its head whipped around so fast to regard Firebreak, the super didn’t even see it move. It’s red eyes bored into him intensely, perfectly still. It doesn’t occur to most people, but human beings move, even when they are attempting to stand still. They breathe. Their eyes focus on different things. Muscles twitch. Hell, even their pulse keeps them moving if only slightly. This creature did none of those things. It was uncannily still, watching Joseph as he laid there, frozen mid backward crawl like prey under the gaze of a predator. To make things worse, the screams of the burning gunman behind Joseph created the most disturbing background music ever conceived.
Joseph made a concerted effort to break the staredown, sparing a glance over his shoulder to the parking lot where the wailing was coming from. The cyborg seemed to register the man’s screams eventually as well. It straightened itself and, with a sort of warble that didn't come from its mouth, was gone again in the hazy distortion of light from whence it came.
The roof of the flaming truck collapsed with a crunch, and the cyborg was there, both of its feet dug into the metal with the three steel claws that made up its feet. The truck’s shocks squealed unable to take the weight, and the passenger side tire popped under the stress combined with the heat from the fire. The mechanical man, heedless of the inferno, jumped down next to the burning gunman. It extended its arm and a white foam shot from an appendage that had snaked its way out of one of the sleeves. The foam quickly coated the burning man and expanded until it encompassed the entirety of the man's body from head to toe. Joseph could tell the foam was solidifying as well, retarding the victim's panicked movements until the guy couldn't move at all, cocooned as he was. It didn't stop there, however. The chemical foam grew and solidified to such an extend that, after thirty seconds or so, the neighboring vehicles rocked on their springs and tires screeched as the trucks were slowly shoved apart, eventually colliding with their neighbors. Joseph could still hear muffled wailing from within the foam, but at least there was no fire visible. The screaming stopped quickly, however, whether from relief or suffocation Joseph didn’t know.
Then, with a *woosh* of displaced air, the cyborg was back in front of Joseph with a gloved hand extended, nearly brushing his nose. This time, the thing's face wore a disconcerting smile that never touched its glowing eyes. The gesture, creepy as it was, came through, nevertheless. Willfully dispelling the thought of ending up broken and tased like Beard, Joseph took the offered hand. It felt skeletal underneath the glove, and the grip was iron (no surprise there). Once Joseph had a hold of it, the cyborg catapulted him to his feet, the whine of servos just barely audible now that Joseph was right next to it. Once his rescuer had Joseph upright, it reached back and pulled up a black hood to cover the majority of its more visible augmentations on its head, and its eyes dimmed until they were the muted red-brown of dried blood.
When it spoke, the voice came out perfectly modulated, distinctly male and so perfectly pronounced and tone so precise that it felt uncanny. “Hello, Firebreak," he greeted Joseph flatly. "I am Deathless. Please submit to questioning,” His smile grew until the expression nearly split his face. “Or don’t. Either way I will have answers.”