I skipped back ten seconds just to be sure I'd heard it right. "Fuck, you'd think he was in town or something." Definitely what he'd said, although I have no idea who he meant by 'him'. I looked up to see where Gilpatrick had gone, only to see him standing at the end of a two-person line at the cash register. Something about the way he stood made me think he wasn't really paying attention to the register or even to Denise, who stood behind it ringing up a young woman trying to wrangle two kids while paying for her meal. The guy between Gilpatrick and the harried mom looked to be an older guy, maybe seventy something, who already had his wallet out, shaking hands working to slide a payment card free. That's when I realized that something about his posture kind of made my eyes slide right past Gilpatrick. He wasn't invisible, and if I looked at him, I saw him standing there just fine, but if I didn't concentrate? He was just a guy standing in line, not worth paying attention to.

A shadow filled the entryway to the restaurant, and then a size fuck-you combat boot slammed into the intersection of the doors. They flew open, glass panes shattering, chunks of safety glass raining across everyone in line as the doors flew open, the hydraulic arms that would normally pull them closed dismounting with the force of the kick. Denise froze, her hand moving to close the register out of habit more than any reflex. The mom screamed and jumped to her kids, pushing them down and huddling over them, an instinctual response that might have helped against a marauding predator, but not against a predator in human skin. The old guy, already a little unsteady, crumpled to the ground and lay there, gasping and clutching at his chest.

A guy who had to hunch to fit under the doorway stepped into the room, straightening up once he got inside. At first I hadn't been able to see him clearly; Gilpatrick stood almost straight between me and the big guy. When he straightened, I got a look at him. Shaved, pale scalp that would send shivers down the spine of any Person of Color who'd kept abreast of fashion trends of the White and Supremacist. Asymmetrical black streaks of face paint under his eyes and across his cheeks, but somehow despite the big guy's obvious intentions, it looked less 'mercenary soldier' and more 'high school football player'. Tacticool gear belts across his chest and around his waist held enough spare magazines to keep the guy shooting long after every human being in the restaurant was bloody scraps on the floor. He wore grayscale urban camouflage under the tacticool belts, but the black cloth trench coat over everything else made 'camouflage' even more useless than it was in a restaurant anyway.

Overall? Other than his size and the violence of his entry, the guy would have just looked ridiculous, but the guns he clutched were anything but. His right hand held an automatic rifle with a dangling shoulder strap, its barrel pointed somewhere near the old guy on the floor. His left hand held an automatic pistol that looked big even in his big paw; he pointed it at the ceiling and fired three shots. "EVERYBODY ON THE FLOOR! I'm the Soldier of Misfortune, and you're all my prisoners of war!"

One instant the Soldier commanded the attention of everyone in the room, from the terrified wait staff to the customers cowering on the floor to the nondescript guy waiting in line. The next, Gilpatrick stood, arms akimbo, shaking his head, an amused laugh burbling out of him as he spoke. "Nah. I've known a lot of soldiers, son, and you ain't one. What you are is a big jerk with something to prove and shitty trigger discipline."

Whoever the Soldier was, he'd obviously seen enough interactions between Supers and Villains to try his banter. He bent his arm to rest the pistol against his shoulder, still pointing at the ceiling, and growled out, "I'm not your son, boy! The government trained me to kill, and if you're not on the floor before I bring my gun down level, you're next!"

Right about then something flickered through Gilpatrick's fingers. The spoon he'd picked up earlier, rolling along his knuckles like somebody might roll a quarter, or maybe a pen. He shook his head as the Soldier lowered his pistol with slow, calculated menace, then Gilpatrick heaved an obviously deliberately histrionic sigh. "I warned you, young man."

I couldn't quite follow what happened next; Gilpatrick, or really the 'Agent of Karma' never seemed to rush or use any kind of super speed or complicated martial arts moves, but one second the Soldier lowered a gun toward his face, and then all of a sudden both guns went off, the Agent had his back to the Soldier's chest, his fingers interlaced with the Soldiers, both of the Soldier's arms twisted and bent backward at the elbow over the Agent's shoulders. The next moment the Soldier's face hit the floor, the Agent standing over him, one foot between the Soldier's shoulder blades, one hand gripping the Soldier's left thumb, the other his right pinky, both arms twisted around behind the Soldier's back.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I realized just then that without really thinking about it, I'd pointed my video recorder at the Soldier the moment he kicked in the door. In the middle of a Super battle, even an E or D list Super battle, and I still managed to record it. Maybe Gilpatrick was right and I should look into a journalism minor or something. At that point the Agent twisted the Soldier's arms enough to get a solid grip on both the bigger man's thumbs with his left hand, then pulled his cell phone out of his pocket with his right and tossed it to me. "Be a pal and call the cops for me? Low pain tolerance aside, I don't think I want to take my attention off him long enough to get the authorities moving this way."

I'd managed to catch the phone, a solid, old school Nokia brick, only to see that the Agent had already speed-dialed the local police department. Ten minutes later, we heard police sirens in the distance. In the meanwhile, Denise had helped the old guy to a closed off dining room to lay down on the seat of a booth, then collected the mom and her kids and set them up in a corner booth with drinks and food, 'on the house'. The other waitresses had started sweeping up the shattered safety glass, but stopped when the Agent told them to wait for the police. Instead, they'd used the handles of their brooms to nudge the firearms completely out of the Soldier's reach. I first noticed the blood when they were doing that; a small puddle near the business end of the rifle, another line of splatter from the Soldier to where his pistol had landed.

While we waited for the cops to arrive, I turned to my video recorder, rewound it to the moment the Soldier kicked in the door, and started it forward at one quarter speed. Even at that speed it was hard to see the Agent move, but not because of any kind of blinding speed or other Super shenanigans. Instead, it seemed almost like he didn't move, he just kind of leaned, or adjusted his stance, or even let himself collapse, and the Soldier's own weight and strength did the rest. I'd watched footage of Super martial artists, and this reminded me a little of them, only... not. The only person I'd ever seen footage of who moved like that was an old Super action movie star, Bruce something. Lee, I think. Except even he moved like a martial artist, where the Agent? Just... sort of flowed.

I ran it back and slowed it down again, watching each movement carefully, trying to actually focus on the Agent's few movements instead of the massive Soldier behind him. I had to roll the footage back twice before I recognized his first action for what it was; he flipped the spoon he'd been carrying up into the ceiling tile. It bounced off, because it wasn't a knife or a fork, but a spoon, so of course it didn't stick into the ceiling. His hand flowing up as he almost stumbled forward, the Agent grabbed the gun, but instead of putting his hand around the barrel, he put the heel of his palm right over the opening, simultaneously lifting and pulling. The gun fired, a splash of red, a bit hitting the ceiling, but most of it going straight back.

Right as the slide moved to eject the spent round, the spoon bounced off the opening, jamming the round in the ejection port. The Soldier, his gun having gone off without him bracing for it, lost his grip, and the Agent pulled the gun away, tossing it backward even as he laced the fingers of his other hand through the Soldier's.

At some point during that whole chain of events, the other gun had gone off. I rolled the footage back and watched as the Agent's stumble forward hooked his foot into the shoulder strap of the rifle, pulling it down. Much like the pistol, it went off, the recoil breaking the Soldier's loose grip on it, the Agent's calf seeming to coincidentally kick the gun away from the Soldier. I had to roll the footage back yet again to see where the bullet had gone; instead of ricocheting, it had gone into the top of the Agent's shoe, a crimson splatter leaking out from beneath it. As the he kept falling forward, the Agent spun around, pivoting his weight on the hold he had on the Soldier's left hand, until his back rammed into the Soldier's solar plexus, the Agent lacing the fingers of his right hand through the Soldier's free hand, then twisting. He pushed himself upright, 'coincidentally' shoving the Soldier back off his feet, leaving his full weight to come down on his arms, which twisted painfully as the Agent forced the Soldier's elbows to bend backward over his shoulders.

The Agent fell to his right, letting go of his grip on the Soldier's right hand, forcing him to spin even as he hooked one foot across the Soldier's ankles. The big man toppled forward, unable to use his dislocated free arm to break his fall. Following some kind of really awful instinct, he forced his arm back behind him to try and grab at the Agent, who just grabbed the Soldier's thumb and twisted, using the grip to push himself back upright, which put his full weight on the Soldier's hyperextended arm and finger.

I watched it twice more before the cops got there. In less than two seconds, with not a single wasted motion, hell, no motion doing less than two things at once, the Agent had just demolished a guy who had to be twice is size and armed with not one but two guns.

And he'd made it all look... not even easy. He made it look accidental.

Right before the cops came in, I caught Gilpatrick's eye and glanced down at my video recorder. He shook his head, just a tiny twitch, and I shut the recorder off and slipped it into my briefcase.