Summus Proelium

The door was locked.

I tried it very carefully, intending to sneak inside. But it didn’t budge.

Okay, so I was going to save this guy. Just one problem, now I had no idea how. Hell, I wasn’t even sure how I was going to get into the building with the door locked. I could try to use the strength paint to break through, but they might hear that and kill the guy before I could even get in there.

I needed a better way through, and I needed it quick, before they… before the guy ran out of time.

But there was nothing. There was no window to sneak in or anything, it was just a blank wall. And the longer I stayed here trying to figure out how to get in, the bigger chance that the whole point would be moot. They could be killing him right now. I had to find another way in besides that door.

Or did I? Standing there, staring at the door with the mounting thought that I was failing my first real attempt to save someone, I thought of something. It was pretty stupid and crazy, but maybe stupid and crazy was all I had time for.

There was a trashcan at the end of the alley, near the entrance. Looking that way, I pointed a hand and shot two bits of red paint, one at the side of the trashcan itself, and one at the ground next to it.

That done, I turned back to the door, reared back my fist, and struck the thing as hard as I could. I tried to make it sound like there was a whole army out here waiting to bust the thing down.

Knocking five or six times as loud as I could, I then put a bit of purple paint on my legs and threw myself upward in a jump. Red paint appeared on my hands and feet, to hold myself against the wall.

It was just in time. The door slammed open and one of the guys came storming out beneath me. He was the only one who appeared, much to my disappointment. Still, he was there. So I quickly activated the paint on the trashcan and ground. It made the can fall over, as if someone had just run past and bumped it.

The guy took the bait. He went running that way, shouting something I didn’t catch. He probably wouldn’t go far once he hit the end of the alley and saw nobody in sight. But that was all I needed. The red paint I was using faded, and I dropped to the ground, using a tiny bit of black to silence my landing. Then I spun the other way, looking through the open door. There was a short, unfinished hallway on the other side, and no one in sight. Good. Good. Now I just had to—

“Hey!” That one was directed at me, as the guy at the end of the alley had turned back to see me standing in front of the doorway. He had a gun in his hand, but before he could point it at me, I threw myself into the building. My hand caught the door, and I slammed it shut with a loud clang.

Apparently the door automatically locked, and this guy didn’t have the keys, because he immediately started banging loudly on it, swearing emphatically at me.

Okay, okay, I just had to get to the guy still in here (and their victim) before he figured out what was going on. Or before the guy outside managed to call him or something. Turning back to the hall in front of me while the pounding continued, I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat.

There were three doors, but two of them were open to show unfinished bathrooms. The third was closed, and that was the one I went to. Pressing my ear against the door, I tried to shut out the banging from the other one.

Actually, wait a second. Turning back to the other door, I shot a bit of black paint at it and silenced the damn thing. There, now I could hear.

Footsteps. I heard footsteps. They were coming closer, along with muttering and cursing. Eyes widening, I quickly threw myself at the nearest open door, where one of the half-finished bathrooms was.

I’d barely shoved myself out of sight when the door I’d been listening at banged open and the guy came storming through. He was cursing about the guy outside forgetting to prop the door before he went outside.

My heart was pounding so hard that I was almost sure he’d hear it. But he didn’t, stalking right past the bathroom where I was hiding on his way to the exit. There, he grabbed the door and threw it open, already starting to demand that his buddy tell him why he let it shut.

The guy outside was saying something, but I didn’t give him time to finish. Before he could get more than a word or two out, I was already launching myself down the corridor. I’d brought the wheels of my pace-skates out, and put a green smiley face on my chest, as well as making both of my gloves purple. With my speed and strength boosted, respectively, I hurtled through that hall. The guy at the door had time to look over his shoulder just before I slammed into him. The impact sent him flying out into his partner, both of them crashing to the ground.

Meanwhile, I caught myself against the door jamb. The two thugs were entangled with each other and cursing, both rolling over. I quickly slammed the door again, trapping them outside.

Unfortunately, if the first guy hadn’t had the keys for this place, I was almost positive the second guy did. So I had to hurry. Turning, I moved to the nearby bathroom door. Gripping it near the hinges, I activated another spot of purple on myself and heaved backward. It cracked, but resisted, until I heaved again. Then the door gave up the fight and broke free of the wall.

By that time, I could hear keys jingling outside, and the lock was starting to turn. I had to hurry!

So I did. Dropping the door onto its side, I shoved it as fast as I could up against the door. The way it was positioned, one side of the door was up under the door jamb, while the other side bumped up against the far wall. It was squeezed in tight, and the door couldn’t open like that. It was shoved into place just as they got it unlocked, and I heard cursing as they tried throwing themselves against it to no avail.

Okay, okay. They probably had another way in somewhere. This couldn’t be the only door there was. But it would take them a minute to decide to give up on this one and go to it. I just had to hurry the hell up and get to the guy they’d dragged in here, free him, and get out. Easy pea–

I stopped before finishing that sentence, but the damage was probably already done. Flinching, I pivoted and ran back down the hall, to the door that the second guy had come through. Find their prisoner and get out with him. Find their prisoner and get out with him.

My luck seemed to actually be holding a moment later, as I passed through the door and found myself in what looked like a half-finished (or maybe half-destroyed) office floor. There were a handful of broken cubicles scattered around, a bunch of random desks, and some separate offices around the edges and corners. More importantly, directly ahead of me was a heavy metal chair with a man sitting on it. A man who was chained to that chair by a couple different handcuffs attached from it to his wrists. Yeah, I was gonna go ahead and guess that was the guy I was trying to rescue.

Sprinting that way, I neared the man just as his gaze snapped my way. Seeing me, he made a noise of surprise while jerking backward. The chair was apparently bolted to the floor or something though, because it didn’t go anywhere. He did, however, start cursing and pleading with me not to hurt him, and that he didn’t know where ‘he’ was. Whatever that meant.

“Shhh!” I blurted, holding up both hands. “I’m here to– I’m here to help you! Look, you wanna get out of here?” When he hesitated before nodding, I pressed on. “I’m gonna get you out of that chair, okay? Just hold on a second. Let me–”

“Look out!” The man jerked in his seat as he blurted that, looking at something past me.

I didn’t look. Instead, I threw myself to the side, landing on the floor. And it was a good thing I didn’t turn back to see what was going on, because a bat whiffed through the air right where my head had just been a second earlier.

A guy was there. A different guy from the two who were outside. Of course, just because I’d seen two guys come in here didn’t mean they were the only ones in the entire building. Fucking duh, Cassidy.

The guy was tall, very pale, and covered in tattoos. His chest was bare to show off those tattoos, and he wore ratty old jeans. He wasn’t super muscular or anything, but he had some definite strength behind his swing. Which was evidenced even more as he followed up that first swing with a second. This one came around and down toward the spot where I was sprawled, and I barely managed to throw myself backward in an awkward roll as the bat rebounded off the floor where I had been with a terrifying clang.

“Hey, jackass!” the guy snarled, his face twisting in a way that made him look ugly and vicious (helped by the collection of piercings he had). “Who the hell invited you?!”

I couldn’t help it. Terrified as I was, the response blurted its way out of me before I could stop it. “Well, it wasn’t Better Homes and Gardens, I’ll tell you that much. This place is filthy.”

Holy crap, why did I say that? If the guy hadn’t already been angry, that definitely didn’t help. He snarled, taking a quick step after me before swinging that bat even harder. That time, however, I was ready. Raising my open hand, I made my glove red while also shooting a bit of red toward the bat itself. Activating both bits of paint, I let the bat rip its way out of the man’s hand and fly into mine while he made a grunt of surprise.

Barely catching the bat, I made it back to my feet while the guy froze, staring at me as if seeing my costume (for what it was worth) for the first time. As he took that in, I turned the bat around in my hand. “Are you sure this thing is field-legal? Cuz it feels a little hefty to me.” Adopting a scandalized tone, I gasped and pointed the bat at him. “Does your Little League coach know you’re cheating?”

With a sound that was half-snarl and half-curse, the man hurled himself at me. He would have tackled me, and that probably would’ve been the end of it. But I saw him start to move and quickly brought a tie-dye splash of green and purple across my chest, activating both for a speed and strength boost.

Thanks to the speed, I was able to sidestep out of the way as the man lunged. And thanks to the strength, my follow-up swing with the bat connected with the side of his leg hard enough to knock the man to the ground, as the loud crack of the bone breaking filled the room. Owww. I wasn’t even the one that was hit, and that still sounded bad. And his leg was… well, it didn’t look right, that was for sure.

The guy collapsed with a cry, clutching his leg while I dropped the bat in surprise at just how much damage I had done. It clattered along the ground, and I almost fell over while backpedaling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I reflexively blurted, before realizing what I was doing. The guy probably would’ve hurt me a hell of a lot worse than that if he’d gotten hold of me.

The sound of running footsteps snapped my attention over toward a nearby hallway, as my two friends from outside came sprinting. Both of them had guns drawn. Before they could fire, I used red paint to yank the bat back into my hand and hurled it at them, forcing the two to duck as it flew past.

They immediately straightened after that to take aim. But that was a mistake. Because just as they did so, I activated the red paint that I’d left on the bat before throwing it, as well as my newly repainted glove. The bat made an abrupt turn in mid-air before flying back toward me. Which made it crash into the back of one of the guy’s heads. He cried out, falling to one knee, which made the other guy stumble as well.

“Okay, we got off on the wrong foot,” I conceded. “I said some things, you said some things. I don’t suppose you guys want to thumb wrestle to settle this?”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, what was I doing? What the hell was I doing?!

Catching the bat once more, I did two things at once. First, I pointed it toward the first guy, the one whose leg I had broken. He was pulling something out of his pants pocket, and I really didn’t want to know what it was. At the same time, I clicked my heels to make the wheels on my pace-skates pop out.

It was a gun. The guy on the ground had hauled a small, but still dangerous-looking revolver out of his pocket. Just as he tried to take aim, I turned my glove blue, sending the bat flying away from my hand to crash into the man’s face. I didn’t have time to make a full swinging-throwing motion, but the blue paint worked just fine. The bat rocketed into his nose, knocking the man flat once more while blood sprayed everywhere.

At the same time, I made a bit of green appear on my skates while throwing myself to the side just as the guy by the hall who hadn’t been hit in the back of the head managed to aim his own gun at where I had been, opening fire with a couple quick shots.

Shots. He was shooting at me. For the second time that night and the third time in the past couple of nights, I was being shot at! This wasn’t a game. It wasn’t just pretend. I was being shot at by psychopaths who wanted to kill me, who would kill me if I gave them half a chance.

I almost surrendered right then. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was childish. But I was scared, and I very nearly just stopped and pleaded with them to let me go. I didn’t want to die.

Some hero I was. A couple bullets came my way and my first instinct was to piss myself and beg for them not to kill me. How pathetic was that?

But I didn’t. If I’d been asked in that moment to say what stopped me from surrendering to the terror, I couldn’t have said. I honestly, truly had no idea. Maybe it was simple momentum. Or maybe I was more afraid of what would happen if I surrendered than of what would happen if I didn’t. Either way, with that burst of speed from my green paint (and a little orange for extra protection), I skated along the side of the room in a quick blur of motion while the guy with the gun fired several more shots that failed to come anywhere near me. With my skates and the speed boost, I was too fast for him to adjust his aim quick enough.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t slow myself either, or he would hit me. I threw a couple shots of paint that way, but both missed. I was rocketing along too quickly to aim properly.

Rocketing along so fast, in fact, that I was about to crash headlong into the wall as I approached the corner of the room. I’d been so focused on seeing what that guy was doing that I almost didn’t see where I was going in time. At the last second, I leapt, spraying paint from my hands at the wall that I was hurtling toward.

It worked. Holy god, it worked. Red paint on the wall and red paint on my skates, and I was rolling along the wall. I was literally skating over the wall as if it was the floor, spraying more paint ahead of myself. Holy shit, holy shit! I was skating along the wall!

And then I ran out of paint. Suddenly, my skates weren’t sticking to the wall anymore. As a loud cry escaped me, I went flying off, crashing headlong into a pile of desks and chairs in the opposite corner of the room. I went down in a heap of metal and wood, groaning a little.

Okay, okay. No more paint for a few seconds. The guys were already starting to recover, I couldn’t make myself fast or (relatively) immune to their bullets, and they were pissed off. Meanwhile, I was lying here on my side half-beneath an overturned desk, which, along with the pile of partially-broken chairs just above my head, served as the only things protecting me from their bullets.

This was going swimmingly.

Fortunately, they didn’t know that I couldn’t use my power right then. That was basically the only thing I had going for me. Because it meant they hesitated. One of them called, “Hey, asshole! You gonna come out of there, or do we have to drag you out?!”

The guy whose leg I had broken interjected with a bellowed, “Just go get the fucking cocksucker so I can go to the hospital, shit-for-brains!”

Right, they were a bit nervous about coming after me. They didn’t know exactly where in the pile of junk and desks I’d fallen. I was out of their sight, able to slowly turn over onto my hands and knees without disturbing anything. There was so much crap around here, including a couple broken cubicle walls, that they couldn’t see where I was.

Think, Cassidy. What could I do now? Just wait for my paint to come back?

There wasn’t time for that. I heard footsteps coming closer, as one of the guys carefully made his way around. Peeking through a little hole in the underside of the desk I was hiding behind, I saw him. He had his gun up and ready as he made a slow approach, waiting for any sign of me.

So I gave him a sign. Carefully but quickly, I picked up the top half of a broken chair and gave it a toss over to the opposite side of the junk pile. It hit one of the propped-up cubicle walls, knocking it over with a loud clatter.

It worked. Several gunshots rang out, and I saw the guy who had been getting close go sprinting past the desk. He actually bumped against it in his rush, cursing loudly as he took the bait and threw himself after the sound of the crashing junk.

All of their attention was focused over there. Which gave me an opening to throw myself in a roll right past the spot where the man had just been, and through an open doorway into a small corner office, where I put my back to the wall and breathed.

“Nothing!” the guy who was poking around where I’d thrown the bit of chair called. “Nobody’s here!”

“Look again!” the one on the ground with the broken leg demanded. “He can’t just disappear!”

“How the fuck do you know?!” the guy who had been hit in the back of the head shot back. “He’s Touched, right? So maybe he can disappear! You ever hear about this guy?”

There was a collection of denials, before one of them shouted, “Whoever the hell you are, little punk, you better be scared! Powers or not, we’re gonna fuck you up!”

Yeah, that was likely to make me come out and show myself. Idiot.

Hearing footsteps approaching the office as the guy left the junk pile to come look, I realized my time was up. He was almost to the doorway, and if he saw me like this, just sitting on the floor like a helpless little bug…

I did the only thing I could think of. Pointing my hands straight up, I shot red paint at the ceiling while praying that I actually had paint again.

It worked. Paint appeared, and my body was jerked up from the floor. I didn’t even have to jump or anything. The paint just yanked me that way. I hit the ceiling and clung there, using paint on my feet to keep myself in place. All that just an instant before the man stepped through the doorway. He was right under me, barely inside the room as he swept the pistol from one side of the room to the other.

Then he looked up. His mouth opened, while he started to jerk the pistol my way. But my hand was already pointed at him, spraying black paint that took the man along the arm and gun, muting the sound of both as he simultaneously fired and shouted. His bullet silently hit about halfway up the wall.

Before he could adjust his aim or do anything else to draw attention, I dropped from the ceiling to crash into the man. Small as I was, my weight still took the guy to the ground before he could brace himself. We fell into a heap, and I quickly turned my arm purple for the added strength before punching the man hard.

Ow. His skull hurt my hand. But I hurt him more, as he jerked with a still-muted cry. The guy tried to struggle free, heaving my body off of him before yanking his gun up a bit dizzily.

Then my flailing foot hit his face, and he went down hard. His body collapsed, and a very slight moan escaped him as the black paint wore off.

Scrambling, I took his gun away. Not that he was in any mood to stop me. The guy just laid there, mostly-unconscious. I stared at him for a second like that, until a voice called, “Steve!? Hey man, you okay over there?!”

He wasn’t. His eyes blinked blearily at me, mouth opening as though to say something. Then his eyes closed and he slumped. He was breathing, but he was definitely out of it. A thick bruise was already starting to show where I had kicked him, and he had teeth missing. Or at least, teeth that weren’t in his head anymore. I could see them scattered along the floor.

“Yo, man, this isn’t–the fuck?!”

The remaining guy was in the doorway. He saw his buddy and me both there, his gun jerking up into position.

He fired. Luckily, I’d already brought a splattering of orange paint over my chest. It still hurt, almost knocking the wind from me. But I’d take ‘hurt’ over ‘big bleeding hole in my chest’ any day. He shot me point-blank, and the bullet felt like being hit with a rock.

Clearly surprised by the lack of blood, the man froze briefly. Just long enough for me to throw the pistol I’d taken from the other guy at his face. His head jerked back reflexively, giving me an opening to scramble to my feet. Purple and green appeared in a pattern of stars along both of my arms as I threw myself at the man, tackling him out of the doorway with strength and speed that he wasn’t prepared for.

He landed on his back with me on top of him. Before he could recover, I punched him hard. Then I hit him again, and a third time. By that swing, the man had stopped struggling to throw me off. But I hit him a fourth time, the adrenaline and terror of the moment driving me to keep swinging.

He wasn’t fighting me. He was lying there, groaning in pain. My rush of energy left me panting as I perched there on the man’s chest, staring with wide eyes at him as he tried to curl into a ball and whimper.

“Eddie?!” the guy whose leg was broken was calling. “Steve?! The fuck is going on over there, guys?! This isn’t funny!”

Taking a few breaths to steady myself, I straightened and caught the guy at my feet by the arm. With a little help from my purple strength boost, I gave him a toss out from behind the pile of junk. He crashed to the floor in plain view of his buddy, who suddenly started cursing.

The guy cursed even more after I tossed the other guy out there as well, letting both fall into a heap together. He was cursing and praying at the same time.

Deepening my voice, I called, “You’ve got two choices! You can throw the gun away, or–”

There was a clatter as the pistol was tossed over, bouncing along the floor before I could even finish that sentence.

“Well, okay then,” I managed with a little cough. Taking a breath, I walked around into view, staring at the man who was watching me with wide eyes.

“Whoever you are, you’re gonna regret fucking with us! We’re getting that fucking bounty, man!”

Ignoring him, I moved over to the guy chained down to the chair. As he stared at me, I reach down to grab the legs of the chair. Powering myself up with purple paint, I yanked hard. The legs snapped off after grinding in protest, and the guy was able to stand up. He still had handcuffs on either wrist, but they weren’t attached to anything as the legs of the chair fell out of them.

“Who… who the hell are y-you?” he stammered, his voice shaking with each word.

“I—” That was as far as I got before the sound of squealing tires drew both of our attention to one of the nearby doors, through which there was clearly a parking lot. People were here. And I was pretty sure they weren’t friendly.

“I’m the guy rescuing you,” I blurted, instinctively embracing the mistake that everyone seemed to make about my gender. It would help me keep my true identity secret. “Unless you’d rather get help from whoever just showed up.”

The man’s head shook quickly, as the sound of slamming doors and running footsteps reached us.

“Great,” I replied.

“Then let’s get out of here.”