Adam stared through the scope of Arquebus, his intelligent gun. The Legend lay on the top of a hill overlooking the town. The gun automatically located his allies by their comms, displaying each of their locations in an overlay. “How you feeling, Lini?” he asked.
There was a long silence in his ear before his fellow Legend responded. “Still like shit. But I’m ready to move.”
The cold blooded fighter was sitting in the corner of a church auditorium with her head between her knees, partly because it hid her conversation from the thirty seven other civilians huddled around and the three armed rangers standing at the entrances. And partly, she was trying not to throw up.
Nullifying her powers to let herself get captured and in with the hostages required basically giving herself an intense fever, and that made her skin feel merely chilly to the touch, as opposed to able to cause severe frost bite. The fever generally made her feel a little under the weather, but occasionally, like this time, it hit her hard, and even though it was already wearing off, she just wanted to curl up and die.
“Hey, are you alright.”
A good Samaritan. That’s all she needed.
She looked up, her face pale and sweaty. “I’m fine,” she said.
The woman, in her late forties and well dressed in a blouse and skirt, reached out for Lini’s forehead. Lini snapped her head back out of reach. “What are you-”
“It’s fine, I’m just going to check and see if you have a fever. I’m a doctor.” She reeled back as she grazed Lini’s forehead with the back of her hand. “Jesus, you’re freezing.”
“I’m fine,” she hissed again, eyeing the rangers, the one at the closest door watching them out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s going on?” Adam asked in her ear.
“What’s your name, miss?”
“Look, lady, just leave me alone.”
“I’m sorry, you look terrible.” The woman turned to the ranger and raised her hand, waving to get his attention. “Excuse me!”
“What the hell are you doing?” Lini asked, but the ranger was already walking over, his finger on the side of the trigger of his AK-101.
The doctor ignored her. “Excuse me, I’m a doctor, and I think there’s something wrong with this woman.”
“I need a martini,” Lini hissed.
“One distraction, coming up,” Adam said. He aimed Arquebus just outside of the door of the church nearest to Lini’s position.
“Are we moving now?” Impaqt asked over the comm.
“Not yet, hold for my command.”
“Ugh, fine.”
Lini tried to tune them out as the ranger asked her what was wrong.
“I’m fine,” she insisted again.
“She’s freezing,” the doctor said.
The ranger looked her over, scrutinizing her. “Get up.”
“What?”
“Get up,” he said again, leveling his assault rifle at her pointedly.
Lini took a deep breath and pushed herself up to her feet, keeping her head down, her long brunette, sweaty hair draped over her face. She didn’t wear a mask normally, but the idea had been that without her suit, in a baggy flannel shirt and sweatpants to hide her well toned body, no one would give her a second look and she’d be able to get in with the civilians. All until some nosy Nelly with a doctorate decided something wasn’t quite right.
“Freezing, eh?” he asked, reaching for her face. One of the other two rangers was making his way over, his gun ready.
“I need that drink now,” she said, not moving as his hand moved closer, the tip of the rifle inches away from her abdomen.
“What drink is that?”
“Shit!” she heard Adam shout into her ear. It was loud enough that the Ranger heard something, and he took a step back, raising up his AK in both hands and leveling it at her face.
“How many of you are there, Legend?”
Lini raised her hands slowly, giving the doctor an irritated glance before she stared at the ranger. Both of the others were approaching swiftly now, keeping her in their sights. She sniffed. “I’m about to sneeze, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me when I do.”
Adam had been about to pull the trigger when Arquebus had given him a warning. “YOUR EIGHT O’CLOCK.”
Adam had spun in time to see a Ranger in camo sprinting at him. He’d kicked Arquebus out of his hands before he could get his gun up, and then brought the butt of his own rifle down against Adam’s head.
“Shit!” Adam barely managed to duck out of the way, robbing most of the force from the blow as the butt grazed his temple. This guy was good, getting the drop on him like that.
Adam rolled over and sprang to his feet, catching the gun as the ranger swung it again. He twisted it from his grip. The ranger gave it up too easily, and Adam stepped in and threw his head to the side as the ranger drew his pistol and pointed it at his face. The gun fired right next to his ear, deafening him.
“Ah, fuck!” Adam dropped the rifle and grabbed for the pistol, pushing it upwards as the ranger fired again. He managed to drop the clip out and swatted it away, letting go of the now empty gun. Too soon, the ranger smashed him across the nose with it, breaking it with a crunch.
“You piece of shit,” the ranger said, following it up with an uppercut to the gut.
Adam coughed and staggered backwards, bringing his hands up defensively. His ears were ringing, and he couldn’t make out what was going on in his comm, and he could barely get what the ranger drawing a combat knife and tossing it from hand to hand was saying.
He dropped, going for the hidden piece in boot. The ranger was on him, and he was prepared for what he thought was a quick strike at his right arm going for the gun, but was just a feint, and the ranger slashed him deeply across his left upper arm and then kicked him in the chest when he recoiled in pain. Adam stumbled backwards, barely able to keep his balance, but he dropped the gun, and the ranger kicked his gun to the side and switched knife hands again.
Adam spit blood and braced himself.
Sheriff Pat Henley clutched his stomach. The bullet he took in his shoulder ten years ago from a drug runner that he still bragged about was nothing compared to the pain of being gutshot. He’d gotten one shot off when the men had rushed into his sheriff’s office. He’d missed, and one of them had casually shot him in the stomach before telling everyone to get down. They’d left him to watch as they took everyone’s guns and ushered them out. They were good, highly trained, coordinated. His shot and the one that was now lodged in his gut were the only two that had gone off in the whole operation. There were only forty odd people in the small town of Townsend, Tennessee that day, all of them but him had been rallied up and taken to the church while the group went about their mysterious business. Sheriff Henley figured they’d be lucky if he was the only one who died. And he was pretty sure he was going to die.
He’d pulled himself into the kitchen, and after far too many painful attempts, had managed to get the first aid kit off the top shelf of one of the cabinets. “I’ll have to tell them to keep this thing in the bottom drawer,” he said to himself while he did his best to clean and dress the wound. “Yup, this is just ridiculous.” He gritted his teeth as the rubbing alcohol burned the wound. “Ya learned two things t’day, sher’f. You can’t shoot fer shit, and you need ta keep the damned first aid kit near the floor.”
The door to the sheriff’s office opened.
Sheriff Henley started breathing hard, fresh gouts of blood spilling from his wound. “Ya’ll come back ta finish what ya started? Well I’m back here!” He brandished the most menacing thing he could reach, a tongue depressor from the first aid kit, and steadied himself against the cabinets with his other hand.
He thought the blood loss was making him see things.
Two women walked back into the kitchen. They were completely identical, and dressed in the most bizarre thing he’d ever seen.
“Am I ‘allucinatin’?” he asked, coughing.
“No, you’re not hallucinating,” the first one said. She was wearing a tight black and bright yellow body suit. It was mostly black, darkest at her left heel and slowly lightening up to the almost blinding yellow star on her right shoulder. Her shoulder length blonde hair was worn loose, and a black domino mask with dozens of tiny stars on it adorned her face. “My name is Cygnus and this is my sister Sirius, and we’re with the LC. We’re going to help you.”
He nodded. “Right, well, I’m afraid you ladies might be a little late fer that.” He coughed again, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, and looked pointedly down at his stomach.
“We can help you,” Sirius said, kneeling down next to him.
“Is the bullet still inside you?” Cygnus asked.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“There’s no exit wound,” Sirius said.
“Okay. What’s your name?”
“Pat. Pat Henley.”
“Alright Pat. I’m going to get that bullet out of you. It’s going to hurt, a lot, but we’re going to share that pain with you,” Cygnus said, and Sirius nodded, putting her hand on his shoulder.
“I reckon that’s alright. It alright hurts like a real sum’bitch.”
Cygnus pulled away the bandages, examining the wound. It wasn’t pretty, and she gave a worried look to her sister. They could share his wound and his pain, but not until the foreign object was removed from the body. If he healed around the bullet, he would almost certainly die anyways. “Are you ready?”
“I s’pose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, two bonafide Legends showing up in my town,” he said, but she wasn’t asking if he was ready. Sirius took a deep breath and nodded. Cygnus would need to concentrate on getting the bullet out, and Sirius would have to take on all the pain by herself.
Cygnus removed one of her gloves and doused her hands in rubbing alcohol. “Sorry about this.”
“Sorry about wha-” his eyes opened wide and pressed her slender fingers into his wound, feeling around blindly. His mouth opened in a silent scream of pain, and it took eight long seconds before any sound came out, and when it did, his scream was ear shattering.
Beside him, Sirius had her eyes screwed shut and she was taking short, measured breaths as she grit her teeth through the pain she was taking from him.
“He’s going to go into shock,” Sirius hissed between breaths.
“I’m trying,” Cygnus said, inadvertently picking up a bit of the pain and stress from her sister. “Found it.” Her fingers clasped around the bullet, and she carefully eased it out.
“Now the hard part,” Sirius said as her sister dropped the bloody bullet on the ground.
Lini sneezed, keeping her hands up. She raised her head up and then bucked forward again in another powerful sneeze. The three rangers had surrounded her, all keeping their guns trained on the feverish Legend.
She looked up again and held up her finger. “One more.” She reared back. The ranger on her left looked back over the rest of the civilians on the ground, who were all staring at them, too preoccupied seemingly to try to use the opportunity to escape. Small blessing, because while she might get herself shot here, it would likely be only her. Outside, she had no clue what was going on. She’d heard a deafening bang from somebody’s comm and nothing else.
She threw her whole body forward as she sneezed again. The secret, insulated pouches in her sleeves were thrown forward to where she could reach them, nimbly pulling them out and opening them. Water sprayed out at the rangers in front of and to the right of her, and she froze the streams, slushy ice water catching them both in the eyes.
They screamed and both fired blindly, but she’d already moved, tackled the third distracted ranger on her left. Her body still wasn’t as cold as it normally was from the fever, but her hands wrapped around his had his fingers too numb to pull a trigger in less than a second. She kicked off one of her loose sneakers and pressed her bare foot against the puddle from the water she’d fired, and it froze in seconds. By the time the time the other two had gotten their wits about them, she rolled off the ranger she’d tackled and kicked the legs out from under the closest one, and he slipped on the ice and went down hard. She was springing to her feet when pain exploded through her right shoulder, and she looked at the hole and small, growing red spot on her flannel. Yup, she got herself shot.
She grabbed the barrel of the rifle with her left hand, jerking it to the side as the ranger fired again. He kept firing, but the gun quickly jammed as the metal froze and warped.
“You shot me, you dick,” she growled, jerking hard on the gun, and the frozen metal snapped. She’d almost reached her normal temperature, and the cold radiated off her in waves.
He let go of the broken assault rifle and grabbed for his pistol. She grabbed his hand, squeezing it in her own. He screamed as the nerve endings froze. Without her gloves, even still coming off the fever, her bare hands were probably as cold as -150°F. He’d never use that hand again.
She let him go, and he dropped to his knees, clutching his frozen fist.
She turned to the doctor, who’d scooted away from her into the safety of the crowd on civilians, watching in a mixture of fascination and horror. “You stupid, nosy bitch. I told you I was fine!”
“I- I- I-” she stammered. She was shaking, both from the sudden temperature drop in the room, and from sheer terror.
Lini’s face softened at her expression. At all of their expressions. They were more afraid of her than they’d been the armed rangers. This wasn’t like her. “I’m sorry. I, uh, we’re here to save you all. Please, stay here, you should be safe here.”
She turned her attention to the three rangers. The one that had fallen was out cold, and one was trying to warm his mildly frostbitten hands, while the other was trying to fashion a tourniquet around his wrist over his dead hand. “Consider yourselves under arrest,” she said as she quickly checked them for additional weapons, freezing their guns and breaking them and tossing their knives aside. They made no move to stop her.
She tried to pick up her shoe, but it was frozen to the ground. She was aware of them all watching her silently as she pulled on the shoe, getting more frustrated by the second. “Fuck it,” she said.
The crowd parted, most of them still on the ground, scuttling backwards on their hands and butts to clear a path as she walked towards the door. “Somebody- help should be here shortly.” She walked out.
She’d botched that, and not just the doctor calling attention to her and making her jump the gun. She was on hostage duty because normally she was the best with people. It would have been much easier to send the twins in and not make her deal with the fever to warm her up enough to get in, but the twins could be off putting. And she’d managed to terrify an entire town.
“A plus job, Elisabeth,” she muttered to herself as she looked around.
Wrestling with muscly dudes was one of Adam’s favorite extracurricular activities, and under different circumstances, he might have rather enjoyed this. But as it was, he was getting his ass kicked.
Adam trained hard. He was currently the only Legend without any sort of power, ability, or magic, and while he’d been recruited because of his intelligence and technical and mechanical skills, he worked hard to make sure that in the field he could pull his weight. But this guy was better.
“So what are you and your boys doing out here anyways? You’ve been MIA for years,” Adam said, hoping to get him talking.
“None of your business.” The ranger darted forward, taking another swipe at Adam with his combat knife, the sharp blade grazing across Adam’s Kevlar body armor as the Legend turned into the strike and struck him hard in the collarbone, a blow that was meant for his throat.
“Come on, you’re wearing me down. Might as well tell me what I’m going to die for.”
The ranger snorted as he struck again, scoring another shallow wound on Adam’s forearm as he blocked it.
“Right, if you wanted to kill me, you could have done it when you got the drop on me. And to the best of my knowledge, you all haven’t killed a single person yet.”
“Nope, not yet.”
“You don’t want the shit storm that’ll rain down on you if you kill me.”
“I heard someone already killed your head honcho. How many shit storms you all got?”
Adam switched to the offensive, stepping in aggressively as he held off the ranger’s knife arm, trading a few solid punches before he head butted him hard.
“Struck a nerve,” the ranger said as he backed up, wiping blood from his own broken nose.
“That I won’t-” he stopped as he saw Impaqt sprinting towards the ranger from behind. The girl could move, her ability to increase the kinetic energy made from contact with anything let her push off the ground and run at ridiculous speeds. She barreled towards them, dressed in her lightly armored blue vest and shorts, her brunette hair pulled back in a ponytail.
The ranger heard her heavy footsteps and saw Adam’s expression of shock, and turned, knife ready.
He wasn’t fast enough, and she leapt straight into him, driving her knee into his ribcage. She hit him like a freight train, his bones shattering with a sickening crunch. His broken body sailed through the air a good fifteen until it bounced and landed with a thud
“Jesus Christ, Zoe!” Adam shouted.
“You’re welcome,” she said, rubbing her knee.
Adam rushed over the ranger, checking for a pulse. It was faint, but there. “The hell was that?”
“I just saved your ass. Again, you’re welcome.”
“Thanks, but you didn’t need to hit him so goddam hard. He’ll be lucky if he survives this.”
“The fuck do you care, Adam? He was about to kill you.”
Adam looked up from the ranger’s broken form. He studied her face. The rage he’d seen in her face as she charged had abated to tempered anger. She hadn’t come hurtling over the hill like a human missile to save him. “You weren’t the only one to get tuned up during the assault.”
He’d hit a nerve. It was a nerve that was raw for all of them. “Yeah, you got your candy ass zapped by your own gun. I’m sure that’s about the same as Barrage snapping your leg like a twig.”
“Zoe-”
“Screw this, let’s just finish this.” She abruptly turned and walked away.
Adam sighed. He checked his comm, but it was broken. He pulled the ranger’s own comm out of his ear and started walking back to Arquebus.
“This is Adam Fry with the LC. Whoever’s comm I’m on is in critical condition. This is your first and only opportunity to surrender peacefully,” he said into the comm. He picked up his gun as he waited for a response.
“WELCOME BACK,” the gun said.
“Sync up to this comm and get me their locations.”
“RIGHT AWAY,” Arquebus replied.
“Get bent, supe,” came the response over the comm.
“You asked for it.” He looked through the scope as the gun overlaid the locations from the signal in his scope. He target one and put his finger on the trigger.
“IT WILL TAKE ANOTHER THREE MINUTES AND ELEVEN SECONDS TO GET SATELLITE DATA TO PATTERN THEIR BODIES BASED OFF THE COMM SIGNALS.”
“Shut up and just call for a medical chopper.” He took his time, lining up his shot. The gun could pierce walls with ease, he watched the signal move for a few seconds until he could determine how the ranger was walking. He predicted where the body armor would be. He fired at the closest one, and the bullet found its way into the rangers shoulder at the edge of his armor.
He didn’t need the damn gun to do it for him.
Sheriff Pat Henley looked down at his stomach. The wound seemed to shrink, and the pain subsided to a dull ache. “What kinda magic is this?”
Neither girl answered, concentrating on their task. They were so focused they didn’t notice the ranger sneak back into the sheriff’s office, drawn by the pained screams of the injured sheriff.
“Put your hands behind your heads and get up slowly,” he said as he stepped into the kitchen, his gun leveled on them.
The twins glanced at each other and did as they were told. They moved gingerly, and as they turned, the ranger saw that the fronts of their uniforms over their stomachs were wet and crimson with fresh blood. He glanced at the sheriff on the floor, who was pawing as his own stomach, his pale flesh still stained crimson with blood, but there was no sign of a wound.
“The hell?” the ranger asked. A sudden pain seemed his stomach, and he felt a sudden warmth as blood soaked his front.
He put one hand to his stomach, and Sirius kicked his gun out of the other. Cygnus leapt up and kicked him in the jaw, and the ranger went down hard, clutching his stomach.
“Is this the one who shot you?” Cygnus asked the sheriff.
“No, that wasn’t him.”
“Damn,” Cygnus replied.
“That would have been really fitting,” Sirius said.
“What, what did y’all do to him?” Sheriff Henley asked.
“Same thing they did to you,” Sirius said. “Minus a bullet.” She kicked the bloody bullet over to the sheriff.
“Plus a kick to the face,” Cygnus said.
Sheriff Henley watched as the two identical super heroines walked out of his sheriff’s office, leaving him completely fine and a ranger bleeding out from the same wound that had almost killed him on his floor. “Well ain’t this a day fer the books.”