Chương 32: Stranger Danger

Crazy Cat Lady's talons had dug themselves into the top of my calf, squeezing the flesh as hard as she could, but then, finally, her limb stilled, elbow slumping to the ground. I'd done it. Both of her arms were now completely comatose and I wouldn't have to worry about her razor sharp claws again. Well, after I extricated them from the skin of my leg. Her head lifted as she eyed her disabled arm, shoulder jerking again and again to try to move it. It didn't.

One by one, I popped her finger fangs out of my flesh, and, with more force than was necessary, flung the arm that tried to kill me as far as I could.. It flopped over onto the top of her face with a dull thunk. She screamed but it was muffled by the flesh of her bicep lying immobile over her mouth. I'd push it off her but she still had her broken nose to breathe through and if she had a hard time intaking air, well, it might just teach her a lesson about what it felt like.

Victory tasted like bran oatmeal right now- you knew it was the right thing to do, the good choice to make, but vengeance the Pop Tart would have been so much sweeter. Her body started shaking like she was having a seizure, rolling around until her comatose arm finally slid off her face. That's when she started shrieking. Maybe that inhaler had demons inside it. My hand rushed to cover her mouth.

"Shut up! You lost, it's over!" My voice ground out of me in a wispy growl like I'd been smoking for the last hundred years or so. Her head raised off the ground, shifting around until she could bite down on my fingers. I jerked back my hand, but her teeth clenched on it like a dog with a steak. Her tongue snuck out to begin licking along my skin. I was going to need an old priest and a young priest with this one.

It didn't hurt per se what with my new steel digits, but I was not going to spend the rest of my life with this thing hanging off of me.

"You are making it really difficult to not kill you!" I tried to yell down at her. Instead, my voice came out in an angry wheeze, but I'd like to believe she understood the intent all the same. The sound of something heavy whipping through the air came from behind me, followed by a metallic thud. I turned around, Jaws still gnawing at my fingers. A super crouched on the ground, wearing a metal helmet with a silver visor shrouding his eyes.

His costume didn't have any brand markings on it, it was just a dark gray steel with lots of lights and buttons at various parts. The guy had a thrift store powersuit vibe. Kind of like if Tron and Robocop had a secret love child. He stood up and walked over.

"Need help with that?" His voice was altered, with a slight electronic edge to it. My body stilled. If I'd had the chance to run as soon as I heard someone else come along, I would have. He wasn't a super that I recognized, but that wasn't saying much. With his sparse, bootleg suit, he didn't look like the typical hero the Academy churned out, but maybe they were just tight on their costumes budget.

The only part of him I could see that wasn't covered by something was the lower half of his face, which didn't have wrinkles or even stubble so I had to assume the guy was on the younger side. Whatever he was, he couldn't know that I had powers.

'Yes, please," I croaked in my frog voice, shaking my hand with her attached.

"I can't get her off me." His mouth pursed and he paused for a second, then kneeled down next to us. Rabid dog girl began growling at him, prize meat still clenched in her mouth.

"She's a Chem Head," he said, head leaning to the side to take in her appearance.

"Once they take the vape, they're like animals for hours. The only solution is to knock them out."

"Look, I just want her off me–" He pulled back a gauntlet fist and knocked it into the side of her head. It jerked back, teeth scraping along my fingers, and then her body clonked onto the ground, mouth hanging open, crazed eyes finally closed. I let out a long breath. The fight was finally over and I had gotten out of it alive. Bleeding, bruised, choked, bitten and licked, but alive. Now if I could just not go to jail. His visor was pointed in the direction of my hands.

"Looks like you fought a Chem Head and won. How'd you do that?" I looked down and shrugged.

"I was just walking home and then I heard a fight down here and kind of got dragged into it." He held up one of her limp hands.

"I see she had some enhanced nails here. And her teeth also appear extra sharp. So why aren't you dead?" My hand gestured to my neck and the red hashtag symbols all down my arms.

"I did almost die! This isn't my normal voice, she had her claws pushing my throat into the ground for the past half hour!" Green letters began typing onto my vision. Congratulations! You battled a temporarily enhanced mutant and won! Fight summary Zero (Vigilante) vs Unnamed (Chem Head Mutant) Civilian saved from grievous bodily harm 100 HP Level 0 Mutant apprehended 150 HP New Total 263 Hero Points 0 Vilain Points It began typing my stats, but I dismissed the window with a flick of my eyes.

That all could be dealt with later. The super held up the mutant's cast away inhaler, inspecting it.

"So how did you break free?" I let out an aggravated sigh.

"I know Kung Fu." Visors obviously block a significant amount of facial expression, but the set of his lips seemed skeptical. I held up a hand.

"Well, actually it's a type of Kung Fu. A very precise, defensive form of Tai Chi, so that's how I did it. I disabled both her arms and then that's when she bit down on me like a chew toy." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. He glanced down at my hands again.

"That's very impressive." He paused as his head turned from the unconscious mutant to my arms.

"You've got scratches all along your arms and wounds on your neck, but your fingers don't even have bite marks on them." I immediately reached to cover that hand with my other one.

"She wasn't biting my fingers, it was my arm." He shook his head firmly.

"I saw it."

"Well, you saw wrong, Mr. I Wear My Sunglasses At Night." I teetered onto my knees, beginning the slow, painful process of getting up.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go get medical care. Thanks for getting the pit bull off me." I began walking away.

"If you're going to a hospital you'll need to take off the sock tied around your head. They report any masked patients to the FRA." My feet stilled as the moronic nature of my mistake settled in. I needed to use less comfortable socks for my masks, that was the problem.

"You won't have to worry about me telling anyone. If you haven't noticed already, I'm kind of a vigilante, too." I turned to look at him. So that was why he didn't have any markings; he wasn't a registered hero. His gear and suit were clearly more advanced than mine, so he must have been doing this for a while. Or maybe he was lying, pretending to be a vigilante just to call the cops on me later? I folded my arms in front of me.

"Why didn't you join the Academy?" He gestured to the unconscious Chem Head below him.

"Clearly, there's too much crime going on for them to handle right now. I think I can help better by being on the streets rather than stuck on the Academy campus." Silver Visor leaned down over the unmoving body, checking through her pockets.

"What about you– why aren't you in a cushy dorm yourself? Did they not accept you because your only power is tough fingers?" He was smiling at me– laughing. I showed him the strength of my middle finger. He laughed harder.

"Alright, alright. I'm sure it's a good power, but I'm betting it's not your only one." His hand reached inside her jacket, bringing it out in a closed fist. He reached out toward me, holding it in his fingers.

"Here, this is yours." I stepped forward cautiously. What could Cheetah Girl have stolen from me? But when I looked down, it was just dollar bills in a money clip. I shook my head.

"That's hers, not mine." He put the cash into my hands.

"It was hers, now it's yours." I paused. On the one hand, Gran and I could use this money far more than Miss Mutant and I had previously accepted that it was perfectly right to take money from criminals. On the other, anything this mutant touched now felt dirty and tainted. Including myself.

"I don't want anything of hers."

"You know, I'm guessing that she stole it from others, so it wasn't really hers either. Think of it as an unauthorized payment from the city for doing a good deed." I thumbed through the bills.

"This is three hundred dollars." His head turned from side to side, looking down the alleyway.

"Look, you said you were dragged into this and that you're going to need medical care. Consider that due reparations without the headache of a court case." He took something from a tool belt around his waist. My body froze when I saw it was a gun, but it was made of plastic and looked like a toy. He raised it in the air and then pulled the trigger. The shooting sound of a firework blasted from the gun and a flash of light coupled with a crack and a pop followed high in the sky.

"That'll signal the police. I've got a hideout with some basic medical care nearby, if you want to follow me." I paused. The world still tilted when I moved too fast, my clawed arms on a low but constant setting of pain. My lungs took deep, wheezing breaths, trying to stockpile oxygen after their great famine. Half of my brain cells felt like only shells of their former selves.

I was in no condition to go back home without raising a lot of red flags for Gran, but going off to hide with a complete stranger wasn't the smartest of ideas either. But this was the first vigilante that I'd come across and clearly, I kept getting in over my head with this stuff. I could use some advice and he had been very helpful and straightforward so far. And if necessary, good ol' steelfingers and timestopping were always available for defense. I raised a finger at him.

"Just know that I can poke you to death any time I want." He nodded.

"I'll keep it in mind. Let's go." I took a step towards the opening of the alley, my vision tilting a little as I struggled to keep balance. He stepped forward beside me.

"We can't take the street. It's too public." His arm wrapped around my waist and grabbed tight. Stranger danger! Gran warned me about this. I tried to twist in his grip so I could send my knee flying between his legs, but his arm was half covered in metal and closed around me with the finality of a hydraulic press. His other arm raised into the air and a cord shot out from the armor around his wrist.

"Hold on."

"Hold on? Let me go, you Comic Con reject!" His power armor had several openings. The hand and forearm were covered, but he just had metal braces connecting them to the chest piece. I prepared to stab my finger into his elbow as hard as I could when his arm around me pulled hard and the world flew away beneath me. Captain Radio Shack had a thing for grappling hooks with recoil mechanisms attached. We soared through the air like a rocket and I opened my mouth to scream, but it came out more like a tire losing air.

Physics soon took over and our flight through the sky slammed us into the side of the building. His armor made a deafening crash as metal hit concrete, but it was followed by a teeth jarring grind as we continued to be quickly reeled upward. When the roof's edge came into view, he tossed me over it like a sack of potatoes and then scrambled up himself. My head wobbled as it raised and I put a hand onto the gritty surface of the building, staring down at it.

If the ground was unsteady before, it was now spinning up here. Words like 'concussion' and 'brain hemorrhage' swirled around inside my head as possible diagnoses, and then I vomited. It's one of the unfortunate truths of the universe that no matter how disgusting it is to throw up, you always feel better afterward. The world was no longer one giant ripple effect anymore. The red flare still burned above our heads and sirens wailed in the distance. I pushed myself slowly to my feet.

We were five stories up and Robocop's mouth was twisted in a grimace as he looked at the barf dripping from the corner of my mouth.

"We really have to move. I can carry you… I don't think you can make the jumps between buildings in the state you're in." I delicately wiped the upchuck from my face with the back of my arm as I stepped to the edge and looked down.

"The jokes on you; I couldn't make that jump on a good day." His chrome-covered head gave a small nod as he took two steps forward and grabbed me again. He threw me over his shoulder, the metal armor there digging into my still queasy stomach, my bleeding arms flopping against his back. Whatever gizmos he had in his legs revved up as he leaped across the gap to the next building. A hiss sounded as we landed on the next roof, absorbing the impact of our weight.

It made the landing significantly more comfortable than I expected. The vambrace on his shoulder only felt like a punch to the gut instead of displacing my organs like I thought it would. He fell into a loping run as he crossed the roof and jumped to the next one. Each step shoved his shoulder into my stomach and if there was anything left in there, it would have puked again. I really needed to get that under control before people started deeming my super name Vomit Gal or Puke Person.

"Here," he said, finally slowing to a stop and then leaning down so that I could get back on my feet. I landed on my butt.

"You alright?" My hands held my stomach.

"You were one more hop away from getting a new barf-colored suit. At least down the back." He nodded, still breathing heavily.

"Thanks for holding back." I held up my arms with their red claw marks.

"Probably got blood on it, though."

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time." His hand reached down and helped me to my feet. By the look of the surrounding buildings, we were in the poor part of town- the kind where broke tenants pay way more for rent than the slum was worth. Yellow square windows dotted along the dark apartments, letting out the sound of overly loud TVs, the oily scent of fried food, and couples yelling at each other– either in anger or pleasure. So, basically the same as my place.

"This is where you live?" He shook his head.

"No, this is just my lab." Turning, he made his way to the outhouse-sized structure on the roof with a door. It was chained up with a padlock.

"Just a regular lock? I thought Robocop would have some kind of eye scanning thing or lasers to protect his lair." His head was down, searching through a pocket on his arm.

"First of all, this is a lab, not a lair. Secondly, it's called a retinal scanner and with enough time, one day I will have one." He took out a key, twisted it into the lock and pulled. It opened slowly with a long, loud creak and then hung there, showcasing a completely black interior of whatever was inside. Much like a haunted house or a murderer's lair.