As if from a great distance I heard shouts, orders, and a woman's screams. They barely penetrated the haze of hate that had taken hold and concentrated my attention to the thing I was holding down. All I knew was that if he got up one of us was going to die.
Thirty seconds I kept him down before he threw me off. How he did it I couldn't say, but it didn't really matter. One second I was making him eat carpet and the next I was airborne, the wall getting a lot closer a lot faster than I liked. Easily remedied --- I altered the momentum pushing me forward. My feet hit the wall before my face, my knees absorbed the little bit of the impact they needed to and I pushed off, the force that had thrown me instead propelling me back the way I came. I landed, driving my elbow into the back of his head with floor-cracking force as I flew over him, coming to a stop a little distance from where he lay. I slid into a table, knocking it over and spilling a bowl of pineapple punch with a loud crash, and scrabbled to my feet. I spun around, noticed the room was empty and the door was shut, and launched myself at The Justice Fiend.
He had pushed himself off the floor but hadn't gained his feet yet. My kick caught him under his chin and snapped his head back before my foot lifted him off the floor. My fist was flying before my foot was down, landing in the center of his chest with a sound like a 2x4 snapping under a heavy load and throwing him backwards. He knocked over another table as he completed a very flat ballistic arc that ended with him crashing into the wall and leaving a man-shaped depression in the wallboard-covered concrete. Dust rained down as he pulled free and shook himself.
I started to draw power to myself from everywhere I could get it, but it was coming slowly and took too much of my attention. He took a step forward and stopped, looked at his flopping arm, took it in his good hand and, without even a grunt at the pain he must have felt, snapped it back into place with a single yank.
"Have to do better than that," he said with some effort.
I merely took a guard pose in response and wiggled my fingers back and forth in his direction. Come on, they said. Come and get it.
He roared wordlessly and ran at me, his arms flung wide in the opening to a deadly hug. I saw murder in his eyes, could feel it in the tension in his arms. If he got his arms around me they wouldn't stop squeezing till they met on his chest.
I moved, ducking under his arms, and drove my elbow into his side as hard as I could and still get out of his way. I heard the expelled air and grunt as my blow found home, but I was spinning, throwing myself to the floor to put distance between us. I pushed my head forward so only my shoulders hit the carpet, spreading the impact out over a wider area but with no risk of stunning myself. I came to a stop quickly, kicking my legs up and down to get the movement I needed to flip to my feet. A kick at a fallen bottle and a twitch of focus sent it smashing into the back of his head with a loud crash. He turned around, just a hair slower than before. Was it pain or wariness? I didn't know. My brain wasn't clear enough to tell.
Unbidden, a memory overpowered me and for two or three seconds I was locked in its thrall --- part of a conversation I'd had with Redgrave during a helicopter flight to an insertion point. I could smell the hot metal behind my head as we sat in darkness, waiting for the green light to unhook the safety harness.
"The files all say the prick's immune to any kind of damage, so no, I wouldn't take a contract on him," he'd said. I'd been bugging him since he'd given me the orders saying he was in charge and he finally had started to talk about being a big game hunter. How we'd gotten on the subject of The Justice Fiend in specific I couldn't remember, but I'd always remembered his next suggestion if I never ran afoul of the brute.
"Kiss your ass goodbye and pray your shoes are in good shape, because the only way you'll stay alive is if you keep running long enough that he gets bored, tired, or distracted."
His fist caught me under my left eye and sent me flying, pain shattering the memory and snapping me back to reality. I couldn't recover in time and slammed into the wall behind me, knocking over a table and two chairs on my way. I barely managed to spread the impact across the whole of my back instead of my shoulder, but it still felt like I'd been thrown into a wall. It knocked the wind out of me and I saw stars as my head crushed through the thin wallboard and smacked into the thick concrete underneath.
I fell to the floor on my hands and knees, shook my head a couple times to try to clear it, and got to my feet in a hurry. My entire back felt like it was going to bruise and I knew as soon as I stopped moving I was going to stiffen like a gutted fish in the sun.
Of course, depending on how I stopped moving I might very much resemble a gutted fish.
He rushed me, running, arms wide again. I considered for a split second stopping him or drawing from his speed to fuel a counterattack, speeding myself up and throwing a punch like I'd used on Sablewing, but I realized it wouldn't do more than stun him. I was too pumped on adrenaline and pain to develop the fine focus I'd need for anything fancy anyway, though the serum burning its way through my body and sanity certainly wasn't helping.
He crashed into me with a roar, our bodies hitting and breaking through the concrete wall into the corridor beyond. I had just enough control to defuse the impact broadly, so it did little more than sting. Dust flew, the floor came up to meet us, and we tumbled across the paint and dust into the other wall. He hit first, his shoulder cracking the concrete and making him grunt. I hit him rather than the wall. Not a lot softer but enough --- I was on my feet first. That cost him a kick to the middle of his face that put his head through the other wall we'd hit. The concrete gave like so much paper, throwing powder into the air and sending a shiver through the floor.
And then he began to laugh.
His hands moved faster than I'd thought possible for a non-speedster and grabbed my leg. Before I could try to shake them off he threw me down the hall, his muffled laughter echoing in my ears.
During my military days, before I joined Alpha Zulu, The Justice Fiend's psychology was often debated on television. The overwhelming opinion was that he was a duty-driven sadist with an overwhelmingly jingoistic attitude and a chip on his shoulder so large it cast a rain shadow. The only real dissenting opinion that gained any popular appeal, before being quashed by a censorship campaign run by, you guessed it, the Heroes' Guild, took a very different tack.
It said that he was, in fact, more of a masochist than a sadist, though he definitely exhibited many sadistic tendencies. The proof, as they said, was in the pudding: Even though he was almost always capable of destroying an opponent quickly, the more powerfully they presented themselves the longer the fights lasted, even and especially when they didn't need to. While most "experts" attributed this to him "toying" with them, this new theory stated it was to prolong and even increase the pain and punishment, paradoxically heightening and lengthening his pleasure.
In either case, everyone agreed he was cruel, relentless, talented, and even at the best of times barely under the control of the Guild's upper echelon. He was a mad dog and woe shall befall whomever causes him to be loosed from his chain.
I righted myself, and with the slightest twitch of focus brought myself to a graceful landing. There was nobody around except Clarence that I could see, though the hall dead-ended not far away behind me. My antagonist continued to laugh as he brushed some dust off his shirt.
"I like you, boy." He turned to face me with an almost sexual smile and continued. "You got some fight in ya, don't ya? I like that. Yes, indeed, I like that. But I hate to tell you, I'm stronger than you and I've beat tougher little shits than you in my sleep."
"That has yet to be proven, asshole." I didn't raise my voice but I knew he heard me because his smile faded slightly. "How's your arm?"
He looked at the arm I'd dislocated and his smile faded entirely for a second. I saw him nod ever-so-slightly.
"Yeah, I did that. Me. Give me a chance and I'll do worse." I wasn't baiting him, I was making him think. I'd hurt him once, worse than he'd ever bee
n hurt before, though possibly not as painfully, and that meant I could do it again. "How'd it feel, losing the use of your arm? First time, right?"
Every word was a risk. If he recognized my voice it could go very badly for me, but I'd be damned before I'd try to disguise it, even if he was faster and stronger than I'd given him credit for.
And I knew that if I tried to hold him back I'd tap into a rage fountain that would possibly overwhelm me, especially as unsure of my focus as I was. Yeah, I might be totally mistaken about how finely or intensely I could focus yet, but that didn't mean I wanted to risk it. History had already shown that it took a while for my brain to adjust to the new levels of serum in my blood, and I was already having flashbacks. Actually, picking this fight may have been the stupidest thing I'd ever done.
Funny, though. I couldn't see myself not. Everything about him rubbed me the wrong way.
"Come on, dipshit, I want to see how far I can get the other one to bend."
"Fuck you, boy." He said coldly. "I ain't gonna give you that chance."
Slowly, overly-dramatically, he started to rise into the air.
Right. Fucker flies. Now why didn't I remember that?
"Nice trick." I rocked onto the balls of my feet and used the movement to propel myself into the air as well. "Mind if I join you?"
Maybe it was the adrenaline analogues --- though I really shouldn't assume my system had been changed that much --- or the serum levels messing with my brain, but giving away the fact that I too could "fly" was actually pretty stupid. It gave away a possible advantage or surprise on my part for very little gain, but I wasn't going to be bested or give any ground to this asshole even if my life depended on it. On some level I knew I could take him, that I was better than him in a fight, and I was going to prove it or die trying.
In hindsight, logically speaking, dying was a lot more likely.
The Justice Fiend roared and rushed at me, amazingly at a lower speed than if he'd merely run, his arms at his sides and his fingers curled into fists. I didn't know what he was planning and I didn't care. I dropped under him and threw myself in a back flip, kicking my right foot between his legs in a vicious blow that would have sterilized a lesser man. This time, however, it felt like I was trying to break two rocks against a solid granite wall with the top of my foot. He howled as he flew over me, a note of pain mingling with the rage reverberating against my ears.
His flight changed from a flat trajectory into an out-of-control curve that didn't stop when he crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor. As it turned out, that wall was shared with the yard and he flew through it, shattered chunks of cement and tortured pieces of rusty-red rebar joining him in his abortive flight. The sounds of the street and shouted chants of the protesters outside the building destroyed the near-silence of the hall and masked any noise of his impact.
I drifted through the hole and came to a gentle landing a short distance away from where he'd hit. He'd recovered his footing quickly and was facing me with his arms crossed over his chest and a smile on his face, but his eyes looked a little glassy. Of course, so did his smile.
There was also something a bit... off about his expression. That wasn't pain, though that danced across his lips boldly enough to let a blind child know he hurt.
"I'm gonna give you one chance to walk away, boy," he said huskily. "Normally I wouldn't, especially after that low blow of yours, but I'm feelin' generous."
"You're a liar, Clarence." I had to raise my voice to be heard over the background noise. The sun was behind the Guildhall, starting its slow decent into night, and of no advantage to either of us. "You're hurting, bad. Maybe worse than you have since you were a kid, and I can tell that you stopped enjoying it."
"Last chance," he said, almost snarling.
"One of us is going down," I said, cracking my neck to relieve a little pressure. "Even though we're not talking blowjobs here, my money's still on you."
"Fuck you, boy!"
"No thanks. I could give your daddy a call, though."
He rushed me again, not a fast as he had been moving, but the slight hitch in his stride was a tell I couldn't ignore. He would have been easy to avoid, sidestepping around him and letting him crash into the wall behind me, but I wanted to make a point.
I took two quick paces forward, stepped inside his arms and threw a bone-shattering punch to his jaw. It landed with a satisfyingly loud crack, flipped him backwards, and he hit the ground like a sack of potatoes thrown off the back of a truck. I felt myself wince as pain spread from my knuckles to the whole of my hand and ran up my arm, reminding me that his head had less give than an I-beam.
He did a pushup and shook his head. I let him get back to his feet, though he was moving even slower than he had been. Something about it, though, made me wary. He was in pain, yes, but not that much...
We faced each other a little more than arm's length apart. I could read calculations behind the glassy stare, the slight frown, and see the pain that caused the sweat to bead on his forehead. One of us was going to have to move first, and I had the feeling it was my turn.
I feinted a right cross and was rewarded with him ducking back. I pressed forward with a low-kick to his calf that he stepped out of the way of and used the momentum to spin around, his knotted fist catching the side of my head had enough to have flattened a pickup truck into a pancake. I stumbled backwards, my visual world that of exploding points of light and whirling darkness.
Before I could get my balance and my sight back, another powerful blow landed in my gut, doubling me over and sending me flying backwards. I couldn't breath, I couldn't see, and then I crashed through another wall. I slammed into something metal with the back of my head, stopping my flight, and jarring my teeth nearly loose.
But something else happened as well.
My mind cleared.
My eyes snapped open and it was like a haze had been lifted. My thoughts were sharp, centered, and focused. My back, well, hurt. Actually, hurt was an understatement. It throbbed, spasmed, and sent pain signals I wouldn't have believed if I wasn't experiencing them.
Somehow I could ignore them.
The falling dust drifted lazily in air currents I couldn't see but knew were there. Without a thought I pulled the movement from them and propelled myself vertical without even a muscle twitch.
Even the voices in my head drifted into the background and quickly fell silent.
Alright. Play time was over.
I left the building slowly, my feet clearing the rubble that my entrance had made by a handspan or more. That I had to hover in the air to do so wasn't lost on Clarence. He nodded as I came to a rest on the ground, his smile returning with a hungry cast to it.
He took three steps forward and threw what he must have thought was a killing blow --- a punch aimed right for my Adam's apple. It was fast, vicious, and thirty seconds too late to actually hit me. I doubt it would have killed me, had it hit, but it would have done a lot of damage.
I caught it and used some of the force behind it to stop it cold. The report of his fist hitting my palm sounded like a .30-06 fired from a short-barreled rifle and was easily as loud. The shattered air slammed into my eyes hard enough to sting, but that was the extent of the pain. It took him a moment to realize what had happened and he stared in disbelief for a full second before he tried to pull his hand free.
I let him. I needed to know which one of us was stronger. Even if he killed me, I had to know first.
"Hit me," I said quietly, knowing it would carry over the noise from the street. "Give me all you got, you goddamn waste of skin."
His punch came out of nowhere and jerked my head to the side, but I dissipated the force of the blow so successfully that while the ground behind me dished in deeply, all I really felt was something akin to an angry slap from a drunken bar-date.
"Again," I said. "Harder. Come on. Gimme all you got, you fucking pussy. Hit me. Hit me!"
This punch caught the other side of my face
. If I hadn't sent the energy spiraling into the ground, creating a dust fountain large enough to cover a small office building, I would have suffered a broken cheekbone.
"Is that all you got?" I screamed at him. "Is that all? Hit me you fucking---"
His fist flew at my face but this time I didn't let it touch me. I jerked my body back and to the side, wrapped my arm around his when it reached full extension, locked my elbow behind his, and pushed it to the breaking point. He spasmed in pain but that didn't stop me from driving my knuckles into his left eye three times with every last bit of personal strength I could muster before letting him go. The third time I felt noticeably less resistance and some part of my brain wondered why.
He fell to the ground and didn't immediately get back up. His entire expression was one of pain-filled disbelief. His left eye was slightly less-open than his right, too.
"Are you going to get up?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "Or are you going to lay there like a fucked-out whore?" I waited for a second or two before speaking again. "Let's see who's really stronger, shall we? Or do you want to just admit it's me now and save yourself more pain?" I uncrossed my arms and held them widely apart, my fingers spread in the classic pose. "Of course, I could just beat you down again, if you'd prefer."
Some part of me was screaming against the stupidity of what I was doing. Kill him, it said, before he can kill us.
Another part of me was reveling in the power I had over him. Every bit of pain brought me that much more pleasure.
A third part knew that, whatever psychological problems he had, he couldn't resist the challenge and would test his strength against mine.
A fourth part was wondering what I was going to have for supper.
I worried about that part.
He grinned, understanding washing over those thuggish features. He stood and dusted himself off, a meaningless gesture that merely moved the shredded remains of his jacket around on the dust-encrusted shirt.
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