Summus Proelium

Pencil didn't exactly waste a second after declaring what he was going to do. But he didn't just shoot at me either. No, that would've been too simple. It was what he figured I was expecting. Instead, he pressed something on his glove and a separate, independent gun turret that had been set up out of sight behind me took its shot. It was the same sort of concussive force gun that had put me on the ground when he had confronted me at that cabin, the sort that blew right through my normal amount of protective paint.

Fortunately, I wasn't taken by surprise. I knew the gun was there thanks to my strange and only partially understood environment sense. It considered the turret part of the environment, so I knew what he was about to try. And I was ready. Even as his finger moved to that spot on his glove, I was already using a mix of blue and green on my shoes to instantly hurl myself up to the ceiling. But I inverted in the air so that the same blue and green spots would knock me right back off of it while shooting red at a spot past Pencil to yank myself that way through with the same momentum. The cannon behind me opened up, sending its blast through the space I had been an instant earlier. A second later, my feet collided with Pencil. At the same time, I hit the man with a spray of yellow paint to slow him down.

It didn't accomplish anything, not on the surface. Not my feet and not the paint. The former simply bounced off him, while the latter completely fizzled with no apparent effect. He wasn't hurt or slowed down in the least, though my impact did push him back a step or two before I dropped and rolled to avoid the three bullets he immediately sent at my moving form. I had already painted an orange and blue stop sign on my back, which I activated while acting as though I was having trouble getting back to my feet. He took advantage, firing three more quick shots right into my chest while I was still pretending to push myself up.

Once again, even though the damage was reflected back on him, it accomplished nothing visible. He glared at me, his eyes sharp with hatred and promised violence. “Oh please, as if I wouldn’t have prepped for your fucking paint. Trust me, kid, I've got more immunities than you have lucky breaks. See, I've been paying attention.” he pointed his gun and fired two more quick shots, that time fast enough that I didn't even have to pretend to be having trouble getting up. “And it seems to me that you don't have an unlimited amount of that paint. No--” he fired again, but that time I threw myself backwards to avoid it, considering my paint had worn off by then. I reapplied it while he continued. “You definitely have a hell of a lot less paint than I do immunity charges. Sooner or later, you're gonna run out. And once you do, this whole thing is going to be over, and you'll find out exactly what a pathetic piece of shit like you deserves. But hey, maybe I’ll run out of bullets.” He made an exaggerated gasping noise while pointedly firing half a dozen more times in rapid succession, not even trying to hit me. “Oh wait, that’s right, my guns are special enough to automatically pull new ammo from a basically unlimited supply. Oh well, I guess you’re just plain fucked.”

“You should really watch your mouth,” I shot back, taking a second to collect myself and let my paint recharge while he wasn’t shooting. “Is this really the sort of example you wanna be setting for your sister if she ever wakes up?” It was a cheap shot, but I wanted him angry and not thinking.

Well, I got him angry. The man snarled almost like an animal, before spitting out the words, “You’re gonna die on camera, kid, you know that?” His hand gestured around as though showing me said camera even though I still couldn’t see it. “I love putting my best hits online for the most loyal fans and vocal critics. And you? They’ll love seeing me shut you up once and for all.”

Even as he said that, the angry, murderous little man hurled his knife past me. I managed to jerk my head back just in time to avoid the blade, but a dark green gas exploded outward from the handle as it embedded itself in the nearby wall. The gas was thick and immediately filled the air around my head. At the same time, words appeared on my visor indicating that the air was toxic and that it was activating filters. So apparently Wren had included another upgrade in this helmet that she hadn't mentioned. I felt the thing tighten on me just a little around the neck and chin, as it sealed any openings so the gas couldn't get inside. At the same time, the heat vision kicked in, so I could see an outline of Pencil approaching through the gas with his gun raised. Before he could shoot me, I dove sideways and let the bullets hit the wall where my head had been.

If I made it through this, I was going to have to hug that kid so hard she might just pop.

As for my actual opponent himself, he snapped his now-free hand out and made a second pistol jump into it. I had no idea where he was pulling these weapons from, but they seemed to either jump out of his sleeve or literally teleport into his hands. Either way, he was already taking aim to shoot at me with both guns that time. And if he was telling the truth about that unlimited supply of bullets, I was about to have a lot of them coming at me.

Without conscious thought, I activated another bit of blue and orange to reflect the damage from the rapidly incoming bullets, but even then it was obvious that I was taking the worst part of the exchange. The damage I reflected back at him did nothing thanks to his immunity, and while the orange paint reduced the damage I took, it still felt like getting rocks chucked at me. I almost recoiled directly into the path of another hidden turret that had just popped out into view, but realized my mistake at the last second and used blue-green paint on my shoes to shoot myself straight up toward the ceiling just as the blast tore through the spot Pencil had been maneuvering me toward.

I flipped over in the air to land against the ceiling, my boots keeping me there. It was tempting to try to use pink paint there and escape up into the next floor, but I wasn't confident that I would be able to do that before Pencil managed to hit me with enough damage even with my resistance to put me down. After all, he had two of those big guns that I knew could punch through my defenses. Who knew what other tricks he had up his sleeve? It was even more obvious that my theory that he had planned all this from the start was right. He was too well set up for this. He hadn't been taken by surprise. He was here on a mission, and he had things set up already to help with that. This room was a death trap.

One thing was for sure, the man wasn't wrong about me most likely running out of paint before he ran out of immunities. I wasn't exactly certain how many he had or how that worked, but I had seen a lot of people try to shoot him repeatedly before, so he obviously had more than a few charges. That was what he had called them, immunity charges. That raised questions, but I wasn't going to ask them.

Wait, why not?

“So, immunity charges, huh?” I asked while diving sideways along the ceiling in my upside down position to avoid his next couple of shots, which should have sent bullets up into the next floor, or at least into the space between floors. Instead, they seemed to hit some sort of energy shield, which flickered to life under the impact and made them rebound off it. A force field? Great, good thing I hadn't decided to go with the plan to use pink paint to escape. The shield seemed to be right under the ceiling material. My guess was that Pencil had planned on letting whoever he brought in here think they could find a way to escape by breaking through the walls or ceiling, only to find themselves hitting that shield while he hit them from behind. Yeah, I was really glad I had dismissed that possibility already.

Still rolling while processing that, I continued my remark. “Is that straight up blanket immunities to everything, or separate charges for each type of damage? You know, fire, ice, lightning, do you have a different set of immunity charges just for that annoying itch you get in the middle of your back that's so hard to reach?” While blurting those questions, I sent two shots of red paint, one at another filing cabinet and another at a spot right between Pencil’s feet, so the heavy metal box full of folders was sent flying that way. It didn't hurt him, simply bouncing off the man, but it did distract his aim a bit, giving me a chance to keep talking. Which, in turn, gave me a chance to keep thinking. I had to do that part quickly, but what else was new at this point?

He was right, this wasn't going to work. He could overwhelm me before I overwhelmed him if I just kept it up like this. And I couldn't depend on anyone else making it down here to help. Not if they were really being attacked by the other Scions that he had brought in here with him. No, I had to do this myself, and I had to find a way to change my tactics, come up with something that would run through his immunities faster than he could run through my paint.

In short, I had to change things up. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of how to do that. I just had to actually pull it off. Even if the thought of what I was going to try made me certain that I really was as suicidally reckless as people kept saying I was. But I couldn't hesitate. I couldn't stop to think any more. Pencil was already recovering and taking aim with those guns. So, I stopped thinking, I stopped planning, I stopped worrying.

I just did.

A spot of blue on my shoes launched me off the ceiling, and I was already extending my hands in either direction. My right hand hit two quick spots with red paint, one next to Pencil and the other on one of those tables. The table was sent sliding that way, bouncing off the man without causing any damage whatsoever before starting to rebound backwards. At the same time, my other hand sent a shot of red against the far wall so I could yank myself that way just as he fired two more quick shots at me. He had already been anticipating my motion, so the second one actually bounced off my shoulder. But I had an orange armadillo image on my back, so it just stung a bit while the red paint yanked me onward. He kept shooting, of course, but the table had bumped into him by then. Even though it did nothing to actually hurt him, it still threw off his aim for just a second, sending the next couple bullets past the side of my head to give me time to get to that wall. Just before I did, I inverted myself in the air to hit feet-first. The instant my feet touched solid material, I activated another couple blue spots I’d stuck on my shoes, these ones mixed with green.

Instantly, I was sent rocketing across the room, not quite straight at Pencil, but about ten feet away. As I went sailing past while he was still twisting around to shoot at the spot where I had been a second earlier, my hand reached toward him. My arm was painted purple and pink, making it snap outward several feet longer than it normally was so I could grab my target just before canceling the paint. That snapped my arm back to normal, while I flipped over in the air to land on the opposite side of the room than where I’d bounced off the wall. My momentum sent me sliding several more feet. In my hand, I held one of those pistols he had been using.

With a low chuckle, Pencil stared at me. “Bravo, but if your goal was to disarm me…” He made that hand gesture again and another new gun appeared in his grasp. “You're about to be--” He stopped, as a bullet rebounded off his face. A bullet from the gun I was holding now. It kicked in my hand somewhat, but not nearly as much as a normal gun that wasn’t Tech-Touched would have.

“Huh, what do you know?” I found myself announcing as the realization clearly hit the man. “I can use them too.”

He reacted quickly, that was for sure. Not even a full second after he realized the mistake, Pencil was already shooting at me. At the same time, the two hidden turrets twisted to shoot as well. But I wasn’t there anymore. I was already hurling myself sideways, activating a green pair of wings along either arm for speed just before slamming my blue-painted shoe down on the floor to bounce clear over the table in front of me. On the way, my left hand pointed that gun, and I pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession while allowing my instinct--or rather, my power to guide me.

It worked. Just like with the paintball gun we’d used while Amber, Paige and I had been testing my special aiming power, I hit the target without any effort at all. All three bullets hit Pencil dead-center in the middle of his forehead. Of course, none of them did anything with his immunities. But that was okay, I had plenty more where that came from. He’d said it himself. His guns were special. They pulled from a practically unlimited ammo supply.

Suddenly, I didn’t have to use up my paint supply reflecting damage from his shots back at the man. I could do it myself. And even though I didn’t exactly feel comfortable holding a gun, in this case I was willing to make an exception.

While in mid-air, I made the wheels pop out of my shoes, landing smoothly on them just before using a quick shot of red against the far wall to yank myself forward while Pencil filled the spot where I had just been with his own bullets. In that same time, five more of my shots hit the same part of his face as the last four had. Now he was angry. Now he wasn’t playing around.

Neither of us were.

Sensing one of those turrets twisting to track me, I ducked while still being hauled forward by the pull from the red paint. The shot passed right over my head, several of the filing cabinets exploding into a shower of metal under the impact of the blast before I snapped myself back up and kicked off the ground and toward the ceiling with a blue-green assist. On the way up, I flipped myself upside down, extending my hand to shoot no less than seven more times, as quickly as I could pull the trigger. Four of those shots hit, while the other three passed through the air where Pencil had been as the man dove out of the way.

“Hey!” My shout filled the room even as my wheels hit the ceiling and sent me gliding along it upside down. “I made the great invincible Pencil dodge! Is it possible you used too many immunity charges fighting your way through the security in here?!” Already, my hand had snapped to follow his movements, pulling the trigger another half dozen times through the course of those two sentences. Between his speed and my aim-power’s trouble with living targets, I couldn’t hit his head with every shot. But I still hit him with all of them, even if it was mostly center of mass. Not that he reacted any more than if I had been hitting him with small balls of paper. But he and I both knew his secret now. He wasn’t permanently immune to everything I was hitting him with. He only had so many invincibility charges. I had no idea how many, but I was damn sure going to find out.

“I mean, they are really good security. They’d have to be, to get left here to watch over these guys. How many times did they all manage to shoot you? Enough to put all those neat little holes in your shirt!”

Pencil rolled behind a desk on the far side of the room to get out of my line of sight, but I aimed at the nearby wall. With barely a thought, I sent three quick shots that way. My power might’ve had a little trouble tracking a moving living target, but against a wall it could do basically anything. The bullets rebounded off the shield there and went straight at the spot where I’d seen the man vanish from view. They must’ve hit him, because he bellowed a curse and rose to shoot back at me. Not only with his own pistols, but from both turrets as well. Fortunately, I wasn’t on the ceiling anymore. I had dropped back to the floor at the same instant that my bullets were rebounding off the wall to hit him. Even the twin blasts from those turrets weren’t enough to tear through the forcefield, though they did make pieces of ceiling debris rain down on both of us.

While the man tried to adjust his aim to my new position, I was already gone. A blue launching pad sent me up and forward, skating along the wall to his left as quickly as I could manage while simultaneously extending my hand to shoot four, five, six more times. All six hit the man in the chest area, even as he pivoted to try to track my movements. But before he could fire his own shot, I pulled the trigger one more time. That shot didn’t hit the man himself. Instead, it collided with the gun in his left hand. While he was immune to damage, the things he was holding weren’t. The impact from that shot ripped the pistol from his hand and sent it skidding along the floor.

He was already turning to take the other gun out of my sight even as I fired again. But I anticipated that, so my next shot went past the man to hit the wall there before the bullet rebounded off the forcefield to collide with that weapon, ripping it from his grasp as well.

“Shouldn’t you be teleporting away by now?” I taunted, while the turrets took aim once more. There had to be some sort of delay for them to charge up or something, because there were several seconds between their shots. But now they were ready again, and tracking me. Immediately, I hurled myself sideways off the wall, hitting the floor with a red-blue puddle to make it incredibly slippery. Landing on my back like that, my momentum combined with the red-blue paint sent me sliding along the floor while I hit Pencil’s chest with another half a dozen more shots without even looking at him. I wasn’t aiming, just sort of pointing the gun that way while pulling the trigger as quickly as I could. Nonetheless, I knew every shot was hitting the man.

Meanwhile, my free hand pointed to the left, then right as I sent out two quick shots of red paint, one toward either turret. Just as they locked in on me, I activated that paint. The turrets were yanked out of position and sent flying toward one another just as they fired, completely destroying themselves in a messy explosion of shattered metal.

By then, Pencil was already making that gesture to summon a new gun. Just as he did so, with the explosion of the turrets destroying one another filling my ears, I sent a shot of red at the desk next to him to yank myself off the floor and up that way. In the exact instant when the new gun materialized in his waiting grasp, my foot was already lashing out to collide with the barrel, sending the gun off onto the far side of the room.

“Sorry, sir, we have a strict limit on the amount of guns you’re allowed to play with at one time,” I blurted, while landing almost directly in front of the man. “But hey, if you want this one back, you’ll just have to say the magic word!”

Pencil did not say any magic words. Or any words at all. Instead, he snarled and lashed out at me with a kick, but I had already activated a large green clock on my right leg. Suddenly faster than he was expecting, I twisted aside and let his foot snap past me before shooting him another two times at point-blank range. “Wait, don’t tell me you can’t teleport away!” A put-on scandalous gasp escaped me. “Ohhh right, no teleporting for you until those side effects wear off. That’s why you had to drag me down here with that whole intangible floor thing instead of teleporting directly. Damn, sucks for you, doesn’t it?”

My borrowed gun fired six more shots directly into his face through that. Some part of me was saying that aiming a gun at someone’s head and pulling the trigger was wrong, especially when I didn’t know exactly how many invulnerability charges he had left. But I was too focused on stopping him. Besides, he wasn’t nearly panicked enough to have run out just yet.

That small voice in the back of my mind pointing out that he might not know how many charges he had went mostly ignored.

I had been running out of paint, but I covered that by simply standing in front of Pencil to shoot him. His flailing hand slammed into the side of my helmet with enough force to knock me sideways, even as I continued pulling the trigger as fast as I could. Bullet after bullet slammed into that son of a bitch, all of them seemingly doing nothing.

I could see why people had previously given up on trying to shoot him. He certainly seemed to be completely immune to bullets. But I knew the truth now. We all did. I just had to hit him enough times to wear out his power.

Shot, after shot, after shot went into the man, all to no avail. He grabbed my arm and I used just a bit of pink paint to make his hand go through my bicep while hitting him three more times. His gloved hand rose and opened, revealing a nozzle to spray something in my face. But once again, the cloud of whatever it was (grayish this time) couldn’t get through Wren’s filters.

The filters, on the other hand, couldn’t protect me from the concussive blast that came from his other glove. That one slammed into me almost as hard as one of those turrets would have. Fortunately, I’d activated an emergency orange shield I’d left on my actual stomach under my costume at the last second. But the blast still sent me flying. The gun was torn from my grasp and sent flying off out of sight even as I managed one last shot.

Hitting the wall, I bounced off it and then fell to my hands and knees with a grunt. A second later, Pencil was right there, slamming his foot into my side to knock me backward. “Got anything else smart to say, huh?!” He demanded, rearing back to kick me again. It didn’t really hurt, not with my paint. But the force still sent me back against the wall once more. “Anything at all?!” That demand came as he summoned yet another pistol to his hand and took aim. Two quick shots came, both of them hitting hard enough to leave bruises even through the paint protection.

I muttered something while lifting my head, making the man stop and frown. “What?”

Raising one hand, I pointed a finger that way. Not at the man’s gun, but at the side of his head, where a thin red mark was visible. A thin red mark that was leaking blood, from that last shot that I’d managed while the concussive blast from his glove was sending me flying. The shot that had cut through the last of his immunity charges.

“Do… you need… a band-aid?” I repeated my previous question, even as Pencil raised his free hand to touch the blood with a look of bewilderment. He hadn’t even noticed the injury in his rage.

While he was still reacting, I hit his new gun with a shot of red, yanking it away from him and tossing the gun aside. In the same motion, I used blue paint under my body to launch myself upward, fist extending to slam into the side of his face as hard as I could.

He felt it. The motherfucker fucking felt it. His head recoiled, a grunt escaping him. Staggering sideways while bleeding from the lip, he made a noise of mixed surprise and pain.

“Well, look at it this way,” I snarled the words while the full realization of his vulnerability hit the man. “You did say something about a pathetic piece of shit in this room getting what they deserve.”

And with that opening to the real fight, I launched myself at the man.