“Supernova!”

Acting on instinct, I summoned a blinding ball of starlight in the opening that had materialized in the wall. I put a little extra into it, unsure of what we were dealing with and unwilling to risk getting caught by the next blast.

The warehouse we had been fighting in was at least 30 feet wide; anything powerful enough to send Cash from one side through the opposing wall was definitely something I wanted to avoid. I disappeared into the thick smoke the best I could, watching as a lumbering figure emerged from the original hole in the wall.

He was twice the height of a normal human male and three times as thick, but I had no problem identifying him by the large metal contraption welding his jaw together. I knew it had to be Slack-Jaw, but when the hell did he get so massive?

The photo we had seen of him portrayed him as a slight, cold-eyed man, vastly different from the tower of muscle and sinew silhouetted against the choke smoke. Unfortunately, he appeared immune to the smoke, as well, since it didn’t seem to be having any negative effects on him.

I moved quickly, darting up a set of metal stairs to a second floor landing. My movement must have attracted attention as the next moment a piece of metal equipment came barreling toward me, taking out the stairway completely. I raced along the second story platform and vaulted through an open dormer window. I didn’t want to get pinned in the building with that monstrosity.

Moments later, a fierce, rumbling yell preempted a second hole in the wall exploding beneath me. I was perched on the roof of the mill, some 20 feet above the ground, watching as berserker-Slack-Jaw advanced toward Cash.

For his part, the notorious hitman looked thoroughly pissed. I guessed he wasn’t used to getting slung around like a child’s toy. Cash picked himself off the ground and squared away with his over-amped opponent.

“If you surrender,” Slack-Jaw taunted, his voice deep and guttural, “I promise I’ll only rip off your arms. You can always get more, right?”

There was a sneer in his tone, though his metal jaw prevented it from reaching his lips.

“In my profession, I prefer quick kills,” Cash responded, un-intimidated. “No need to prolong the inevitable; get in, get out, get paid.”

He paused as he flexed both arms in front of him in a fighting stance. Only the faintest bionic whir could be heard as he amped up his own strength.

“But then again,” Cash continued, “this isn’t business. Kicking your stupidly-named ass will be a pleasure.”

As the two men clashed together in a massive display of force that seemed to reverberate through the air, I surveyed the area. Had Slack-Jaw come alone? Had he been waiting for us to attack? If so, he was a grade-A prick to sacrifice his guys for a dramatic entrance.

Seeing nothing else in the area, my attention returned momentarily to the fight. Slack-Jaw was a hard hitter, but Cash seemed to have the upper hand in experienced hand-to-hand combat. Many of his blows found their mark, while Slack-Jaw appeared to be better suited against people who stood still while he pummeled them. If he could connect a hit, however, the force he was putting out with each blow might do some real damage.

Bullies, I thought disdainfully. Each blow of Cash’s fist only enraged Marshall’s head goon even more. Only good at picking on the weak and the brainwashed, apparently. They never know what to do when someone stands up to them.

And they never fight fair. Something whispered in my mind. Again, I scanned the area for anything or anyone looking to interfere with the dueling pair. My perusal was cut short, however, as Cash sent the giant man flying through the warehouse roof not 10 feet away from me, churning up a cloud of dust, debris and lingering choke smoke that billowed through the hole he left and wafted around me. I turned to glare at my companion.

“Really?” I chided. “Watch where you’re--”

Before I could finish, a blur of movement emerged from the gaping hole in the warehouse from earlier and knocked Cash back into a pile of stone rubble left over from the abandoned rock mill. Stunned by the sudden attack, Cash took several blows from the re-invigorated Slack-Jaw before regaining his composure.

He kicked the man off him and moved to press the offensive. But Slack-Jaw dodged in an almost invisible blur.

“What the hell?” I said aloud to nobody in particular. “How did he get so--”

I felt more than saw Slack-Jaw begin to move again, it all happened so fast. I couldn’t explain how I knew he was about to end Cash’s life, but in that moment I believed it with a rare and intense certainty.

An ingrained sixth sense for danger, bequeathed to me almost at birth by nomad parents and honed by decades of living in uncertain situations, warned me Slack-Jaw meant to press his advantage and score a fast victory. While some other, unknown sense, convinced me he had the power to do it.

The tiny hairs on my arms stood up and tingled. Operating on instinct, I instantly screamed out an incantation, unsure of what I was doing but knowing I had to somehow act faster than a man who’s movement speed approached superhuman.

“SUPERNOVA!”

What emerged wasn’t the focused ball of stunning light, or the lengthy channeling of my more damaging shots. The resulting supernova borne of desperation was a blinding flash of cosmic energy radiating in an area of affect around Cash.

It didn’t matter how fast Slack-Jaw had suddenly become; he wouldn’t be able to dodge the blanketing, blinding affects of my ability. He stumbled and skidded through the dirt past Cash. Enraged at being thwarted, Slack-Jaw regained his footing awkwardly, clutching his eyes as he did so.

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Cash’s bionic eye had always been immune to my supernova ability, and as the light continued to radiate, I could see him standing stoically in the middle of it. The expression on his face told me he understood how foolishly he had underestimated his opponent and how much it had nearly cost him.

Almost as if the theme of this encounter was transformation, I saw Cash change before my eyes, as well. Gone was the casual look of a man punching it out with a persistent, yet pitiful opponent. In his place, stood a dead-eyed, calculating killer.

I knew what Cash was, a legendary assassin, a man who passed out death sentences with little remorse and even smaller amounts of mercy. On paper, I understood what he was, pondered it, accepted it. But until that moment, I had never seen it.

Using my interference to his advantage, Cash moved toward his opponent still bent on one knee and sent a flying kick into his metal jaw. The force launched him back into the same pile of rubble he had thrown Cash against earlier. The latter wasted no time, advancing on the still-stunned man to pin him down against the pile of rocks. With his bionic arm, Cash pulled Slack-Jaw's left arm behind his back and pushed. The resulting pop and crack of sinew and bone being wrenched away from each other could be heard even from where I was perched on the roof.

Slack-Jaw screamed in pain as Cash perched a booted foot on his back and drew back his fist. The prone man must have sensed his own demise at hand, and self-preservation had him wrenching his own arm out of socket and twisting, narrowly dodging Cash’s charged attack as his arm buried itself in the rock where Slack-Jaw's face had just been moments before.

Then he resumed his blurring pace, though his left arm hung uselessly at his side. Unfortunately, Cash couldn’t match Slack-Jaw's speed, but his injuries kept the fight from being one-sided.

It was only then that I noticed Slack-Jaw wasn’t quite as large as before. He was still of equal or slightly bigger stature as Cash, but he was no longer the hulking mass of muscle he had been initially.

Was he shapeshifting? I dismissed the idea as shapeshifters changed into different species or different entities altogether. This seemed like some type of body modification, but it wasn’t augmenting—at least none that I had ever witnessed. It took time for body augmenters to modify themselves, several minutes at the very least. But this transformation had happened so fast.

What was Slack-Jaw doing? And how many more of these surprises did he have in store?

The number one rule of any Outlaw job was to know what you’re up against. Preparation made risky jobs profitable. We just didn’t have enough information. In a best case scenario, Cash could somehow put the man down before he could fully recoup. In any other scenario, we were going to need an exit strategy. Luckily, every good Outlaw had an exit strategy.

I tapped my coms.

“Vomero,” I spoke calmly but efficiently. I had told Vomero what we were up to just in case we needed back-up.

“Let me guess,” he said, “your reckless plan went sideways. You want me to do the thing?”

“On my mark,” I said, ignoring his smart-ass comment, “please and thank you.”

As I suspected, Cash wasn’t able to pin down the quicksilver Slack-Jaw again. Surprisingly, however, he was able to match him almost blow for blow. The two men were beating each other apart. Literally.

Cash’s bionic arm had started to spark, pushed beyond its intended limits. Slack-Jaw's jaw was...a lot more slack, dangling by a pin.

“Cash!” I yelled. “We need to go.”

I had parkoured my way along the shattered rooftop closer to their fight to be heard. Cash looked like he wanted to argue, then simply nodded and moved in my direction.

Slack-Jaw had used his superior movement speed to retreat and catch his breath. Apparently, he was unwilling to let us do the same.

“Uh uh uh,” he blubbered through his twisted jaw. Suddenly, he was right behind me on the roof, moving so fast he appeared to teleport. As I turned toward him instinctively, arms up and daggers out, he punched me hard in the gut with his good arm.

My light daggers scrapped down the length of his bicep as he did so, peeling off layers of flesh as the blow picked me off my feet and sent me sailing through the air. The force crushed the air from my lungs and shattered ribs. I wasn’t made of muscle and metal like Cash, nor could I change myself to impenetrable rock like Dick. So, the blow did exactly what it was meant to do, catastrophic damage.

I tasted blood in my mouth as I sailed through the air, felt it filling up my throat as I coughed it out in a spray behind me. I mentally braced myself to hit the hard, rocky ground two stories below. To my surprise, I landed forcefully against something soft and fuzzy that plucked me out of the air like a leaf. Grateful and sure that the twenty-foot fall would have finished me off, I clutched Kiara’s soft fur as the giant, winged cat glided me gently to the ground near Emery. She was our exit strategy.

“You can’t leave the party when it’s just getting started,” Slack-Jaw said, no longer slurring his words. “I’m glad you brought more friends, though, especially pretty ones. I think I'll let you both keep your arms. I’m sure you can put them to good use for me later.”

“Gross,” Emery replied, putting herself between me and Slack-Jaw where he still stood on the roof. “The whole sweaty, veiny, beat-to-shit look wasn’t grotesque enough? You had to go adding sexual deviant to the mix?”

It was then that I noticed Slack-Jaw's jaw had been realigned, the peeled flesh on his arms regenerating as he clutched something in his hands so tightly it was crushed in his grip.

A vial? I thought hazily, struggling to pull in air. What was left of my energy was channeling full force through my Salvere tattoo, and it was barely enough to keep me alive. Slack-Jaw looked as fresh as the moment he had first burst through the wall. More than fresh, actually. He looked especially juiced up...realization dawned. The crushed object in his hand was an auto-injector.

“He’s juicing,” I said as Cash and the recently arrived Emery stood near me. I clutched Kiara’s neck to stay half-standing.

“Fuckin’ roid head,” Cash growled.

“We need to go,” Emery said.

“Isn’t that what you’re here for?” Cash snapped. “Get her and go. I’ll hold him off.”

“No.”

My resolute tone waylaid any argument brewing between them.

“I’m not running from this piece of shit, Skye,” Cash said.

“No, Cash,” I huffed air, “you’re not running. But you are leaving, or none of us are leaving.”

“Not without saying goodbye,” Slack-Jaw's voice growled menacingly as he moved toward us.

He was still fast but not in the super-human way as before. As he moved to attack, Cash stood and intercepted his attack. Bionic fist collided with Slack-Jaw's over-sized palm. The roided-out man smiled and simply closed his hand around Cash’s fist, squeezing as the sound of machinery breaking and whining brought the assassin to one knee in pain. Toying with his food, Slack-Jaw released Cash’s arm and grinned maliciously again, raising a muscled arm to chop him down.

I was struggling to breathe through the fluid I could fill filling my lungs, but with my remaining strength, I reached for Cash and tapped my ear com.

“Now, Vome--” I choked out the words.

And with that we dissolved into a mist of amber light.