by Kipjo Ewers
He quickly switched his left sidearm to his right, breathed taking aim and squeezed off two rounds while under fire removing half the Titan’s skull from his head dropping him. Before he could recoup, he got slammed and taken several yards by a Mercurian.
Heavy Element having trained in combatting Mercurians knew once he grabbed one, he was never let go. He wrapped his legs around masked Mercurian, brought his sidearm close to his chest, and fired several rounds. He braced for impact as they crashed violently to the ground. He did not stop as he double tapped two more shots in the face confirming the kill.
Heavy Element got to his feet checking the rounds in his sidearm.
“Run from that you son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Sinister cackling brought his guard back up taking aim.
A light-skinned young man with a thick hair of dreads walked up wearing a black sleeveless Under Armour Shirt, black tactical pants, and brown open toe sandals. Heavy Element without hesitation fired two rounds striking him in the chest. The force of the shots ripped him off his feet and send him tumbling to the ground.
Heavy Element moved in to give him the professional double tap only to slow up as cackling came from his target laying on the ground. The dread slowly sat up looking Heavy Element dead in the eyes.
“Pussyhole! Ya keyan’t kill me!”
At the same time, he made his vile comment the large humanly fatal projectile wounds in his chest began to heal. He then grabbed a large animal tooth hanging from the platinum chain around his neck and transformed into a massive humanoid version of a male lion.
“Okay, that’s new.” Heavy Element swallow.
His transformation wasn’t finished as his were-lion body turned into the composition of the high-velocity dark metal rounds that Esposito shot him with.
“Okay, that is definitely new.”
The transformed Jamaican gangster bellowed a thunderous roar as he sprang to his feet. Heavy Element fired additional rounds to confirm that they would just bounce off his now hardened dark metal skin.
Esposito braced himself as the boosted Elemental leaped pouncing onto him. Heavy Element fell backward using the momentum to execute a quick Tomeo-nage judo throw. But the Red Rum boosted thug bounced back quickly with his big cat reflexes lunging at Heavy Element as he was half up on his feet.
The combination of his dark metal humanoid lion transformation proved a bit more than Heavy Element could handle, mainly when he used his massive jaws to clamp down on Esposito’s forearm.
“Son of a bitch!” Heavy Element growled.
Although the bite would not break Esposito’s dark metal skin, the crushing power behind it was beyond uncomfortable.
Heavy Element dug down as he rifled the side of the boosted Elemental’s head with stiff right-hand punches in an attempted to break free of his hold. The stronger gangster had another idea as he spun around taking Esposito off his feet with just his mouth holding him, before releasing him with a fling launching him through what was left of a factory wall sending him back into the partially destroyed facility.
As he smacked the ground hard, Heavy Element rolled with the hit getting back to his feet using one hand to dig into the concrete to stop his momentum. He broke into a run as his animal metal enhanced opponent entered the building charging at him.
Heavy Element leaped into the air hitting him with a hard tackle with all of his body weight. Sparks flew between the two of them as they traded an array of punches and claw swipes.
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Back outside the sky over Columbia became lit with the battle as Blitz and Merge battled several Red Rum Apollos in an all-out super aerial dogfight.
The Regulator air team had the advantage in regards to experience and sheer power. Blitz’s electrical abilities had no equal, while Merge who was nowhere on his level still had ample experience in the use of his abilities which she duplicated.
They worked as a team using in and out strafing attacks as they switched between battling those in the air and the ground troops.
The issues that had them miffed was a three-part situation.
First whoever chose the mixture of organized super-powered criminals to fight them did their homework. The power sets they were facing was either electrical, photonic, solar, or hydro. Taking down individuals with similar powers sets who could also harness and re-direct their attacks was a problem especially for Merge, while Blitz would just hit them with enough energy to overload and fry them.
Merge utilized physical fly-by strike attacks, literally punching and elbowing her opponents at high speeds out of nowhere causing them to fatally spiral out of the sky to the Earth below hitting whatever was at the bottom.
Both had to avoid to an extent the hydro-powered boosters who could short out their powers with a well-placed direct hit.
Their second problem was for criminals of different affiliations known for extreme violence against each other throughout history, at that moment they were all extremely coordinated. Those of similar power sets learned to combine their abilities to make up for the lack of power they had as individuals, especially the hydro-powered boosters. They even pulled a common maneuver where a solar wielder and a hydro wielder combined streams to create a very thick smoke screen mist attempting to make it difficult for the Hurt Locker trained combatants to fight.
Which brought them to their third issue.
“Is it me, or are these assholes really good for a bunch of newbies?” Blitz asked communicating with Merge through his internal earpiece.
“It is not you,” she responded while smacking another boosted Apollo out of the sky with a stiff elbow to the skull. “These fuckers fight like they’ve been at some superpower boot camp or something! Three of them managed to pull out of their dive before they hit the ground! Oh shit!”
Merge’s startled response came as several Red Rum boosters swarmed out of the mist that was created to ambush her. She slammed on the breaks to defend herself as six of them converged on her. Blitz at the last second lightning bolted in between her and her attackers and conjured a large electrical sphere shielding that the Red Rum boosters ran right into getting overloaded and burnt out in mid-air similar to flies that had been zapped by a bug catcher.
They briefly glanced at each other before flying off in opposite directions to provide more cover fire for their teammates below.
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Although Merge and Blitz diverted a good portion of the energy attacks away from their team’s position, Rogers and company still had to deal with those that got by. After the RPG attack, there was very little protection at the front of the building forcing Rogers and Nitro to retreat further back into the structure to defend an injured Cyclone.
Rogers kept picking off those close enough to get within the range of his rifle, but it was as Blitz and Merge figured out. Not only were the super-powered mobsters and gangsters well versed in their abilities, but they were also coordinating their attacks like a well-oiled assault unit.
If it weren't for Rogers’s veteran Marine training, they would have been overtaken him by now. Cyclone also would not stay put as she would jump in and unleash 200 miles per hour hurricane blasts slamming them back.
She had to stop due to the force of the attacks aggravating her current injuries.
“Sarge, you can’t sit here babysitting me,” she gasped. “You could do more damaged if you were free to maneuver around these bastards. I can hold my own.”
“What’d I tell you about being a hero Cyclone?” Rogers asked as he picked off another Titan from several yards.
“Not trying to be a hero, sir, I’m stating facts! Give me a minute to move someplace where I can hold up so you can bring the pain! I will follow orders, I’m not going to die today!”
Rogers quickly glanced at her before switching up the setting to his rifle
to lay down a cover fire that tore through concrete and metal.
“Get moving then!”
Cyclone pushed the pain of her injuries way down as she moved through a hole in the wall of the office they held up in to move to a different location. Rogers seeing that she was clear, became a moving tank jumping out of the opening of the building landing three floors down.
From a crouched position he traded fire with and clipped three Titans armed with miniguns due to superior armament. Although the guns they carried were the latest in armor piercing rounds, they only scratched, chipped and burn marked his ballistic suit.
Rogers rifle which was a bigger mini-railgun to Heavy Element’s side arms delivered quadruple the power making bigger fatal holes that even Titans could not heal from, especially when it came to headshots.
Cyclone was right, Rogers was more effective when he was on the move.
The Red Rum criminal boosters’ answer to Rogers blowing away ten of their men in under three minutes, was another unified RPG rocket assault. This time they launched ten rocket projectile grenades. All ten once again broke apart as smaller missiles barreled faster toward their target like hornets.
“Shit.”
The combine detonation of the projectiles had enough power to lift Rogers off his feet several yards knocking him back into the factory, while other parts of the partially demolished structure came down due to the explosion. Rogers sat up coughing up smoke as the slight ringing in his ear went away. The first thing he checked was his rifle to ensure it was not damaged.
He jumped as Sister Sledge with a well-timed leap came out of left field landing right next to him.
“You alright?”
“I’m fine,” he snapped getting to a crouched position. “Seriously, this is bullshit. You need to start carrying a firearm.”
“You know why I can’t do guns,” She admonished him.
“Then bow and arrows with explosive tips!” Rogers shot back. “Something! Because this right here ain’t working!”
“Are you done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.”
Sister Sledge glancing at her brooding boyfriend reached over pulling the sidearm from his holster. She quickly checked the clip before relocking and loading.
“Considering the situation, I’m compromising, happy?”
“Yeah, love you.”
Her eyes widened as a trembling smile appeared on her face. It was the first time Rogers said it.
“I love you too.”
“I’m taking the lead,” Rogers said as he got up. “Cover my right.”
“Got it.”
The couple moved out once again to rejoin the battle coming at them from outside.
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Back at the Ranch, Erica stood in the middle of central command watching displays of her team being attacked from all sides while feverishly attempting to by-pass whatever was preventing her from verbal contact with the Regulators.
“Give me something Maxine!”
“I am still unable to regain verbal communication with the team, nor my body or the Tornado. The source of that interference is on or near the battlefield and has a wide range. Should we contact Ms. Dennison for assistance?”
It was the first thought that came to mind. Erica, however, knew that Rogers would strangle her if she made the call. She slowly turned to an anxious Angie and Jennifer as she pondered what to do.
At that moment her mind wandered back to a session she had last year with Michael Westgate formerly known as Anchimayen.
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It was two months after the incident on the piers in Florida. Erica traveled there for her bi-monthly visit, that initially began as a weekly visit and slowly increased in increments of a week to build a case for Mr. Westgate’s execution once he became of legal age.
Erica sat in the chair on the opposite side of a reinforced clear wall with her tablet in her lap observing the young boy with ice blue eyes, freckles, pale skin and fire red hair in a linen white shirt and pants.
He nonchalantly walked around his Purgatory padded cell with a sizeable neural dampener attached to the back of his neck preventing him from accessing his Promethean mental abilities wearing a demeanor to rival Hannibal Lector.
Every now and then he’d slow his walk giving her a look which felt as if he was both examining and undressing her. The effect irritated and creeped her out at the same time.
“Something’s different about you,” Westgate wagged his finger. “You’re not your normal miserable self. What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Erica sighed. “We’re also not here to analyze me.”
“Don’t you know by now this is a give and take relationship bitch?” The eight-year-old chuckled. “You want to get into my head, you have to let me into yours. Let me guess, you tried DP for the first time, and found out it wasn’t your cup of tea.”
“Your vulgarity has become old, played out, and pathetic,” Erica answered while writing a footnote into her tablet with her stylus pen which recorded the session turning it into a readable transcript for later.
“No that’s not it,” He shook his head with a smile. “You weren’t walking funny when you came in here. Something bad happened to you didn’t it? Who hurt you?”
Erica sat up in her chair with narrowed eyes as thoughts of ways to murder him without getting caught entered her mind.
A savage grin formed on his face as he realized he was getting to her.
“Or did you see someone get hurt, and was unable to ‘save the day.’ Now you’re all fucked up over it. That has to be it. Must have been something pretty bad. How young were they? Was there a lot of blood? How badly did they suffer?”
She refused to answer, to give him what he wanted. Unfortunately, he didn’t really care if she replied.
“Do you know why people like me will never stop what we do? It’s because people like you make our job so easy and fun. That’s because people like you have limits, while people like me have none. There is a limit to the amount of death and suffering someone like you can take before your little mind cracks like an eggshell. You shouldn’t feel sorry about it, the majority of people on the planet are wired like you.
Your pathetic moral compass limits you from doing what you should do, which is killing me, and those like me.
It’s easier for you to fuck each other over, like giving a guy fifteen to twenty-five for some weed. It’s much less work, and very profitable.
In regards to me, people like you believe there is a teeny tiny sliver of hope that I can be redeemed.
That we can saved!”
Michael ended his last sentence with a tone of mockery before continuing.
“And we the Apex Predators of this world know this! And we let you believe this is possible as we secretly become stronger and more skilled in our craft.
You also make the toys that we need to do what we do so accessible. God bless the NRA!
Until finally one day, one of us decides it’s time to go out and just shatter your little fucking worlds.”
Westgate erupted in laughter as he stopped at the transparent wall in front of Erica. Her demeanor was still one of indifference although she knew he could feel the hatred she had for him.
“Do you know why mass murders kill themselves nine times out of ten before the police arrive?” Westgate asked leaning forward a bit. “I’ll tell you. The first reason is to intensify the grieving process for suckers like you. If the mass murder is dead those left behind never know why they did it. They can guess all they want, do their little analysis to try and piece things together, but in the end, it’s all speculation on their part. The truth goes to hell with the dead never to be uncovered.
Secondly, the mass murder always knows that there are more like him out there. People that will continue to do his work, who will continue to
butcher the sheep.
It’s the circle of life.”
Westgate moved closer to the window with a sinister scowl on his face unbefitting a child his age.
“So, if you think I fear death or damnation, whore, you are dead wrong, there are some of us that are just built from the womb to serve in hell that in heaven.
I take solace in the fact that I’m either going to get out of this gerbil cage really soon, and have a lot of fun, or when I die, there will be someone else to take my place and butcher the sheep like you.
And there is nothing anyone of you can ever do about it because there will always be a limit to how far little sheep like you will go to stop monsters like me.”
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“I’m not fucking sheep!” Erica hissed to herself as she pulled herself out of the memory with her fists clutched.
“Miss, are you alright?” Maxine asked with a concerned tone.
“Jennifer, you’re temporarily off the bench,” Erica announced. “All three of you upload yourselves into your Armageddon bodies then ready Sam and Buster, the family is going to Columbia.”
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Back in the combat zone, Cyclone made it to the fourth floor of the demolished factory. Staying low to avoid getting shot at, she was able to glance out of the window to see that her teammates weren’t fairing as well as they should against the Red Rum boosters. Those that fell had their places quickly taken, while the more skilled fighters rapidly recovered and regrouped. Eventually, the numbers games would out tank the Regulators’ combat experience and endurance.
