A young man stands idly on the balcony to his apartment, leaning over the railing and toying with a cigarette. He checks his phone. 12:58 PM.
He sighs. The gun in his pocket feels like a lead weight, burning against his thigh, even if he knows he doesn’t have to use it.
12:59.
When that kid had made the offer, she’d promised he wouldn’t have to do anything dangerous. He hadn’t really seen the point of that. If something’s not dangerous, it’s not worth doing. So, when she mentioned that plan of hers…
The gun in his pocket burns, but the pain feels almost like freedom.
1:00.
The man pulls himself upright, and stalks back into the building, where his supervisors are having a meeting. He won’t kill any of them — he doesn’t think he could, even if he wanted to. Instead…
A distraction, she’d called it. He can work with that.
—
“I’m really sure you shouldn’t be here, kid,” Clockwerk grumbles behind the wheel of her clockwork vehicle. She swerves, tires drag against pavement, coming to a stop in the plaza. Judging from the grunt she hears behind her, the kid finally stopped clinging to the rigging — about a mile too late. Wonderful.
Clockwerk leans out the side of the car-thing, absentmindedly grabbing her equipment with her other hand while she stares at the kid.
“No you aren’t,” they grumble, peeling themself up off the pavement. Racc shakes their head and hops to follow along as Clockwerk stomps out into the plaza.
She scowls. “Your little trick doesn’t work on me, pipsqueak,” Clockwerk mutters, only half lying. Maybe she hadn’t been able to care when the kid started crawling all over her beloved scrap-mobile, but whatever eldritch presence follows the kid around never said she has to be nice.
Ugh, and if the kid gets hurt, Claire’s actually gonna kill her. Maybe there’s some way to convince the little shit to go hang out in a convenience store or something…
Clockwerk ponders this as she hefts a large pack behind her, pulling it over her shoulder and dropping it with a metallic thunk. Brown folds drift to the ground, revealing a large, cylindrical contraption. Clockwerk smirks, sliding out a wrench. “Hey, shitrat. Store over there makes amazing fuckin’ donuts, if you wanna fuck off for five minutes while I set this up.”
Ideally they will be gone for longer than five minutes. Hey, a girl can dream.
Racc snorts, pulling a gun from their waistband. “You’re not slick. We’re getting donuts after we kill bad guys.”
Apparently, a girl cannot dream. Clockwerk’s in the middle of priming her device when she catches sight of a familiar face marching into the plaza, and she decides the machine’s as good as it’s going to get.
“Your power work if your opponent doesn’t know it’s you?” She mutters, leaning closer to Racc. The child shrugs.
Wonderful. “Hey! Lookin’ for someone?!” Clockwerk shouts.
An array of patchy mercenaries split, making way for a familiar figure in a tattered outfit draped in metal canisters.
Suckup scowls. “Damn right. Where’s the bitch?”
Clockwerk shrugs. “Busy, probably.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “With. What.”
She laughs. “I bet you’d like to know! Hey, uh, whatever you’re thinking of right now? It’s probably worse!” And just as Suckup’s eyes widen, and his hands dart to pull out his phone, Clockwerk spins her contraption around and stomps on an extended petal.
The machine explodes, small metal devices erupting from its internals streaming with white gas, and in a moment the plaza is filled with smoke.
—
Cook is late. He’s not really sure how it happened, actually, it just seems like one thing leads to another, these days. You accidentally drop a pack of salt in your coffee one morning and suddenly your entire fringe operation decides to try a rebellion all at once.
Well, it’s nothing that serious, so Cook isn’t worried, but it’d be nice if that idiot subordinate would take some initiative for once. Cook ended up having to take the calls himself. Hopefully that tip the moron had mentioned goes well, and he’ll finally learn to make himself useful.
So, really, things are looking up since he’d gotten out of that transport, with only one major setback.
He’s. Late. The lack of professionalism irks him. So, maybe he’s rushing as he herds his mercenaries out of the truck, so sue him. Maybe he doesn’t notice until one of them discretely taps his shoulder that there are one less sets of footsteps following along as he marches down a short side-street.
“Sir.” He’s about to verbally bite the man’s head off, when finally, he does notice.
“…Where is the fourth?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Not sure. We passed an alley, and…” The man looks disturbed, which isn’t in his job description, Cook is sure.
Cook swipes a hand over his head, sliding the other into his coat pocket. “We’re being ambushed. Form up, facing away from me while I call for reinforcements.”
The mercenaries turn, forming a haphazard array on the sidewalk while Cook pulls his phone from his coat and makes a call.
The line picks up. “Are you available?” There is a response. “Who is?” There is a tentative response. “And you’re certain?” There is a nervous response. “Send them. Don’t bother returning to work tomorrow.” The line ends.
“…Sir?” A mercenary turns his head to look at Cook hesitantly.
Cook sighs, taking a moment to close his eyes. “We will be waiting some time for reinforcements.”
When he opens his eyes again, the mercenary is gone.
In his place stands a monster. A thing two full heads above him with long white hair and gleaming red eyes, a frame that would make grown men shake poorly covered in a long, stitched trench coat. Below its boot lies the mercenary.
He didn’t see it take him down. Concerning. The monster raises its head, and stares at him. Its movements are smooth, calculating, inhumanly so.
It smiles, and from under its coat, a pair of long, insectile claws, bloody tendons and exposed muscle stretching between thin white bone, extend.
Cook’s remaining mercenaries open fire.
—
Clockwerk ducks as bullets whiz over her head, reaching out and blindly dragging the kid down with her. Thankfully, the kid has the sense not to take potshots, and Clockwerk takes the time to slip a couple net-claymores from her belt and array them around her machine. They’re not motion-activated, or anything, but multiple heavy footsteps should be enough to set them off.
Boots against concrete approach, and Clockwerk takes that as her que to drag Racc along as they dart to the side, creating some distance from her previous location, backing away into an area less saturated by smoke.
The shadows shift, the sound of stone grinding pierces her ears, and three wide rock pillars burst out from the smoke, spiraling wildly. Clockwerk sidesteps, ducking under a stray pillar and keeping one hand on the kid to keep them close while she unslings her bolt gun. Judging from the origin point the pillars stretch from…
She pulls the trigger, and the gun jerks in her grip. She hears a scream, and a shadowy figure falls.
Clockwerk drops into a run while she pulls another bolt from her bag, the kid shooting potshots as they follow along behind, making their way around the edge of the smoke cloud.
A loud clang echoes, the shadows shift again, and Clockwerk recognizes the sound of her nets activating well enough to know when to drop into a crouch and shoot out another bolt.
It hits, if the strangled shout she hears in response is any indication, and her eyes widen as the ground beneath her starts to rumble. She turns her head to glance at Racc. “Kid — !”
Pillars shoot out between them, forcing Clockwerk to dart back, and Racc to stumble away in the opposite direction. “Nice shooting, dipshit!” She shouts, shoving another bolt into her gun and sprinting in the opposite direction to the ratty teenager. Suckup lets out a string of unintelligible curses, and this time the rumbling is intense enough to knock Clockwerk off her feet.
She lands in a crouch in time to watch as Suckup, with a wordless shout of rage, sweeps his arms out.
A spiraling cage of stone spires whips out from his feet, blowing away the cloud of smoke and throwing the remaining mercenaries like ragdolls. Clockwerk coughs and shields her eyes against the rush of smoke, considering if she should try another insult to draw the villain’s attention away from Racc, but —
Suckup ignores the kid completely, even as they shakily level their weapon. He crouches, slams his hands against the concrete, and jumps. Propelled by an erupting spire beneath his feet, he flies forward, hands outstretched, and Clockwerk grins as she drops her boltgun and clutches a gauntlet.
She doesn’t usually get the chance to use these, but if he’s going to hand the opportunity over on a silver platter…
Clockwerk twists her torso, pulls back her fist, and swings. Her fist makes contact, a mechanism in her gauntlet switches, pressure is released, and the mechanism fires, the full force deposited directly into Suckup’s jaw. The man’s momentum is immediately halted as he spins once midair and drops to the concrete.
Clockwerk huffs. “…That was a bitch to do. Hey, come help me drag him to the car!”
Racc nods, and for once in their life, resolves not to break anything.
—
The monster tenses, even as bullets tear their way through it, and Cook takes a step back, raising his arm.
It doesn’t help him when the thing lunges, barreling into him and throwing him out onto the street. Behind it, a number of — civilians…? — emerge, brandishing firearms and rendering his bodyguards less than useless.
Unfortunate. Cook staggers to his feet and pulls a vial from his jacket. He tilts it over his shoulder, and where it splashes against the torn skin on his back, the wound starts to close.
“Resorting to petty thuggery, are we? I’d say something about how the mighty have fallen, but you were never really very mighty, were you?”
The monster laughs. “’Petty thuggery?’ Like that’s somehow beneath you? Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re anything more than a common criminal. Your organization has been dismantled in two days by a teenager.”
Cook can feel his eyes narrow reflexively. Dismantled…? Last he’d heard, his distributors were handling it.
He pulls out his phone. Dials.
The monster lets him.
The phone clicks. “Status report.”
He hangs up. The monster’s smile widens. “Embarassing.”
Cook twitches. The thing doesn’t know what it’s talking about, obviously. Can’t it see? Can’t it see his power, his accomplishments? Does it really think this is enough to destroy him?
Well. Maybe he ought to show it. “You’re fooling yourself if you can’t see what I’ve built! My work! My empire! I’ll show you the results!”
He throws his coat aside, pulling a larger canister from its place in his pocket-lined outfit, glittering with foreign, colored fluids. The canister injects automatically as it’s pressed against his shoulder, and Cook doubles over, clutching the injection site.
Fire spreads through his veins, under his skin, each beat of his heart echoing loud enough to tear him apart. He can feel his left arm bulge, ripping fabric with each pulse, bones creaking under the strain. He’s never used this specific concoction on himself, before, it being a relatively new invention, but —
Well, that’s what science is for, right? He’s a genius — an intellect head-and-shoulders above the rest — his work is unparalleled. Cook grits his teeth against the wave of pain wracking his bulging, muscled limb, and swings it back.
He looks up at the monster, and its arms — all four of them — spread out in anticipation.
It’s still smiling.
He’ll wipe that ridiculous expression off the face of the planet.
“You… lowly, back-alley worm. You rotten parasite. You think my work will crumble so quickly?” He snarls, voice grating. “I don’t kill for fun, you know. I’m a man of business. Of progress. And yet…”
Cook grins. “I believe I’m going to enjoy this.”