by Brian Cody
“Alley!” Bryen exclaimed as he turned, and Nate and Shawn rushed. Breaking away as they rushed into an alley, Bryen lunged into the center of the road; then, with a fling of his right, he extended his shadow into an outstretching path, bounded onto it as that rattling cry became earsplitting, and pushed off into an accelerative race as Shawn and Nate turned out view.
I am not fast enough, exploded through Bryen’s mind as he skated over the black line stretching before him. But it is fast enough to have overtaken me by now…is it dragging this out? Bryen looked over his shoulder and watched the aircraft inch towards him. He then looked towards the end of that road and the rightward pathway connecting to it. Upper nineties, maybe low one hundred m-p-h—I can’t go any faster on a level surface and I can’t maintain this speed for more than another minute. Unless it crashes into a building, it’ll have a clear shot when I turn. “This better do something!”
He curved, with his legs shooting in front of him, and the sideward contact of his feet angling his shadow towards the beginning of that second street. The momentum of his drive and the centrifugal force of that sharp turn flung him onto the connecting road, while, above him, the obsidian craft angled its wings to ascend over the buildings before it; then, rolling, it turned and dove after Bryen, locking onto him as he initiated his second race, and then locking onto another darting towards it.
As Bryen passed, Turrisi squeezed the trigger of his M16’s hanging extension. The preloaded round shot into the air, slammed into the jet’s right wing, and erupted in a small, shrapnel-vomiting pop. Before the flames and smoke could clear, Turrisi swiped his hands around one another, passed off a second round, opened the back-end of his extension, loaded, closed, and fired a second shot. The second round followed the trajectory of the first, before slamming into the nose of the jet and erupting.
Figure out where it’s crashing; figure out what debris will move towards you; figure out an escape plan to get to cover, fired off in Turrisi’s mind. His thoughts halted, however, as he found that craft not plunging, but continuing in its curve and then letting off another churn—artillery!
Turrisi gasped as those first rounds were loosed, and he jolted as the following bombardment curved towards him. He grunted at the sensation of being diverted, and he looked to his left as Bryen shoved him from the line of fire. He bounced to the ground and Bryen lunged back as the barrage sped between them in an earsplitting and earthshaking crash. As Turrisi jumped to his feet, the jet passed, rolled to the left in a breakneck spin, and rocketed away in a rising curve, the force of its acceleration sending fissures along adjoining buildings. “Did you see that!?” Turrisi exclaimed, with eyes widened and a slight grin.
“No time, let’s go!” Bryen replied as he ran down the road.
“What!?” Turrisi replied as he jogged after Bryen.
“It’s coming back!” Bryen replied. “Hurry up!” he called as he looked to Turrisi trailing by fifty feet.
“B-money, I don’t have powers!” Turrisi groaned.
“What?” Bryen slowed and looked back. “Oh yeah…um…shadow!” With a thrust, he directed a portion of his shadow to slither towards Turrisi.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Turrisi grunted.
“Run…no, skate!” Bryen replied as he looked towards the jet exiting its turn and moving on a beeline for that road. “Crap, like inline skates!” Bryen exclaimed.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve never used those!”
“Ice skating; it feels like ice skating! Turrisi_!” Bryen grunted as he spun back, “go!” He darted on his shadow and looked back as Turrisi stumbled onto that blackened line and then bounded in uneven and lanky strides. Those strides provided motion, pushing him forward in an extended and quickening slide over the pavement. Bryen then extended that branching limb of his shadow, and Turrisi, over the next few moments, moved with stronger and more even bounds. Bryen glanced back once more, the jet’s shape increasing in size as it closed in from half of a mile away. He then looked ahead. Simultaneously, the nearing machine expelled and launched two more rockets which spiraled over a skyscraper and then dove.
In a flash of lightning, Nate slammed onto the ground behind Turrisi, and, in a simultaneous roar, Erik slammed out of the side of an adjoining skyscraper and deactivated his flames to land alongside of Nate. “Just like I explained it!” Erik yelled as the two projectiles flew fifty feet over the road. Nate pitched an electric blast at a parked sedan lining the street. Then, he spun, launching the magnetized vehicle at the nearest of the projectiles. The first rocket impacted and detonated, and the second rocket, adjacent to it and engulfed in flames, followed suit. Erik stepped and thrust his arms. The shockwave and that combustive cascade, in turn, were redirected into the obsidian jet’s path.
The moment the craft, in its continuing dive, rushed past those flames, Erik skyrocketed for it with his katana drawn and overhead. He spiraled to the right, and drove the steel edge along the side of the left wing, with the contact lasting for a moment before the two forms passed. Erik looked back, locking onto the location of his strike, expecting a cut, complete divulsion, or, perhaps, a scrape. The wing was unscathed.
“Dang it, Japan!” Erik growled as he sheathed his blade and ascended. He lifted his goggles as he angled towards the jet, but a sharp pop sounded in front of him, and the ejection of another rocket drove him to tense, to spin, and then to bolt as the projectile rushed after him.
“That doesn’t sound like it was helpful”, Bryen grunted.
“B-money!”
Bryen looked back as Turrisi pointed forward. Bryen then spun, his eyes widening as he looked to the building one hundred yards ahead and then looked to a perpendicular road, that time on the left. Turrisi can’t make that turn!
“Crap”, Bryen groaned. He looked over his shoulder and located the obsidian jet’s drawing. Already within firing range… “Get ready to turn!” Bryen called as he looked ahead.
“Too fast!” Turrisi replied as he looked to that corner, “B-money, ramp me into the first floor window!”
“What!?” Bryen barked as he looked to the building. The front of the first floor was lined with glass, and beyond those panes was a dimmed space containing rows of clothing. They’ll cushion him; that works! “Get ready_!”—an obstreperous bellow thundered behind him as automatic rounds were launched.
Bryen spun to Turrisi. The gunfire was five seconds off, the building, three. Thrusting his left, he expanded the blackened strand upon which Turrisi moved and ramped it off of the ground. Turrisi bolted from the ramp; simultaneously, Bryen retracted that strand as Turrisi flung beside him, and, with a swing of his right, Bryen angled his silhouette into another ramp, off of which he bounded past the first floor and onto the surface of the second, and where, via his shadow, he dashed.
Simultaneously, Turrisi hammered through the first story’s window, shooting through and then plunging towards the carpeted floor. He rolled. As the impacts of the aircraft’s sortie became earthshaking and as the first shell gored through the door two yards behind him, he lunged to his feet. He stepped, while one hundred rounds drilled through the entrance; and while blasts of shrapnel moved past his bounding form. The intermingling clangors of shattering and exploding debris, of shredded cloth, of grinded furniture, and of imploded walls sounded behind him and then around him.
Turrisi made his third step as the gunfire ascended above that story, and he leapt to the floor as the debris crashed around and atop him. A moment from crashing into the building, the jet motioned its guns skyward to fire after Bryen, who sprinted up the building’s side. Five and then ten stories—Bryen kept his eyes locked on the twentieth story, the apex of that building, as he ran, with the sounds of shattering glass and whistling rounds increasing in stridence as the guns’ barrage angled towards him with greater speed. He perceived the jet’s angling engines, and then its booming push-off as it, with rigorous precision, rushed into vertical flight up the structure’s side. Bryen looked
back—the bullets were feet from him. He then looked forward—the edge of the roof was a second off. He gave one more push-off, and, at the same moment, the guns halted and a rocket was launched. Bryen heard the exhaust as he stepped onto the ledge, and he pushed off once more as he heard it erupt one floor below him.
Though launched skyward for fifty feet alongside of scorched stone and glass and though his ears chimed in a perpetual ring, he maintained his bearings. Recalling the jet’s placement, he motioned his feet for a portion of cement spinning across from him, and, at the zenith of his flight, kicked off and back-flipped. The jet passed in front of him in the next instant, with Bryen falling past its right wing, righting himself, and firing two shadowy limbs from his sleeves that latched onto and tethered him to the wing. He reeled himself in by those limbs, and, as they retracted, he wrapped his gloved hands around the front of the wing, while the obsidian craft pitched backwards to complete a breakneck, 360-gyration and rushed into level flight.
Wait, has it noticed me? It hasn’t noticed me! Okay. Outstretching his right, Bryen sent a line of his silhouette down the front of the wing, and then expanded it into a gaseous, semisolid that was siphoned into the nearest air intakes. The moment he could feel the pressure of his shadow being devoured, he fisted his hand, tripling the amount of the blackened ether. Overlapping scrapes and tears followed, jostling the engine and then the wing. Bryen tensed his fist and, once more, the umbriferous substance tripled in mass. The far-right engine, then, vomited orange and blue flames. Bryen, in turn, retracted the remainder of the black line into his silhouette, but gasped as the wing curved upward. He spun to his left as the jet ascended and turned, and he expanded his silhouette and increased its adhesion as he was jolted from the centrifugal pull.
His ears, then regaining a portion of their hearing, tightened at cadent zooms. Bryen spun to the fuselage as those sounds strengthened and then deepened, while an azure glow concentrated along the right wing’s commencement. Is this what hit_?—as Bryen released his shadow’s adhesion, an azure surge spread across the wing. He fell, but in that first instant, though yards from contact, a bolt arced for and surged through him. Numbed with eyes closed, he tried to breathe while wading in and out of consciousness, but the stronger he breathed, the sharper his body burned. With teeth clasped, he blacked out and plunged from five hundred feet; he fell, however, for a moment before another snatched him and continued on.
While holding Bryen, Shawn pursued. The jet, as he drew near, shot a rocket ahead of it which then spiraled over its left side and bolted for him. “Nope!” Shawn blared as he outstretched his left and conjured a surge of papers from his armor and from the ground that conglobated into a thickened, foot-wide sphere. Shawn wound back as he rushed for the rocket, and he pitched the sphere a second before impact. The missile, struck head-on, was crushed and detonated. Shawn, however, emerged from the flames, his left outstretched and pressed against a curving white shield which protected both himself and Bryen. He then dispersed that shield as he closed in, and he reshaped the dozens of documents into a thirty-yard lasso. Shawn clasped the lasso’s back-end while spiraling to the right of the jet, and he pitched as he came within fifty feet.
The loop spiraled and tightened around the tip of the right wing. Ensnared, the jet rolled leftward, and Shawn, in retort, shot up and to the right, with the elongated strand remaining intact as the two forces pulled against one another. Shawn looked down at the churn of the obsidian jet’s right gun and rushed into forward motion as loosed gunfire flashed below. The jet turned and ascended, while Shawn curved in the opposite direction, the bullets rocketing past him and alongside of his rope. Shawn jolted upward, but the jet rolled leftward for better aim with its rightward gun. Shawn jolted leftward, but the jet ascended in a gradual slant and then dove to expose its weapon, and, once more to recommence its attack. “Come on!” Shawn grunted as he jolted left, then right, then left, before diving, while those rounds sped inches from his cape. A jolt diverted him to Bryen opening his eyes. “What took you?” he asked as Bryen looked up. Shawn faced forward, swerved, dove, and then rose in sporadic turns.
The shriek of passing rounds caused Bryen to shake his head and then to reposition his glasses over his eyes; he jolted as he looked down and saw close to a thousand feet of open sky, but his gaze was redirected by the shapes rushing a foot from his head, barely discernible in their blinding speed, but recognizable by the damage they could incite. “Crap!” he barked as he looked up and Shawn dove. “Crap, crap, crap, crap!” Bryen wailed as he flailed and kicked.
“Stop!” Shawn interjected as he rolled to the left, “stop—B-money, I swear, if you keep flailing, I am dropping you!”
“Drop me the next time the gunfire is above you. I’d rather plunge than have my head blown off!” Bryen roared.
“B-money, I am not explaining to your parents about how I let you fall to your death!” Shawn retorted as the jet ascended. Shawn dove, swerved to the right as the gunfire followed, but then gasped as he watched the second gun spin and shoot in concert with the first. “Shoot!” Shawn jolted upward, the rigidity of his tether diminishing as he moved with the jet. Then, as the two weapons swiped their bombardments across the nadir of his rope, the papers were rent. “Shoot!” Shawn roared as he skyrocketed, while, simultaneously, the jet spiraled into another dive.
With a mile between it and Shawn, the jet levelled its flight, angling towards a road wide enough for it to clear through and then diving past a building’s roof. An orange pulse, however, flashed in front of it as Erik rocketed out of an alleyway, turned towards the falling craft, and shot towards it. The aircraft’s leftward gun gyrated once more, but Erik doubled his speed, rushing towards the sound barrier as he clasped the hilt of his katana, unsheathed, and swung while passing under the left wing. Behind him, the moan of sundered metal and the ring of unfired rounds passed through the air as the leftward gun plummeted to the ground. Erik spun while humming under his breath. He then rolled leftward, beside the surge of exhaust leaking from the jet’s tail, and, kicking against its propulsion, accelerated skyward, a thunderous pop sounding behind him as he tore past the sound barrier, back-flipped, and dove for the road.
Okay, so it is sharp enough; I just don’t have the force to cut it unless I’m moving supersonic. Need to hit it head-on again. “Sounds good”, Erik spoke as he sheathed his katana and levelled off above the road. A mile across from him, at the far end of the road, the jet spiraled with an inward curve of its wings to about-face and to accelerate at Erik. It opened fire.
Erik jerked into a spiraling evasion, and the jet wound its remaining weapon after him. Erik, in riposte, tightened his spiral and increased his speed. The jet tightened the turns of its weapon, but Erik moved just beyond the projectile wave, the sound of bullets tearing inches by his legs and feet screeching in his ears, and his surrounding—the sky, the road, and the buildings—melting into a blur as his spiral tightened to only a few feet in diameter. He felt the pull on his muscles, the difference in gravitational forces between his head and his feet, and he felt the strain of his joints from the breakneck maneuver, but he too saw the nearing shape of his foe, and, a second from collision, with the surge of gunfire inches under him, he reached back with his right, clasped his katana, and pushed off into a supersonic thrust.
He accelerated past Mach two in that instant, clearing the distance between himself and the craft. The millisecond in which he passed beside the gun, he unsheathed his blade in a hard yank, wrapped his left on its bottom, righted himself, swung, and then, in the passing millisecond, re-sheathed. In Erik’s wake, the gun expended its remaining ammunition as it plunged to the ground. “Thanks, Japan! Dave, now!” Erik exclaimed as he skyrocketed.
In a beam of shattered glass along a building to the jet’s left, David plowed into the open air, his teeth clasped, his eyes widened, and his arms outstretched. He swatted the tip of the left wing, his arms wrapping around the jagged points, and his legs spreading as he acte
d against the aircraft’s flight with his own volitation. With a downward yank, he pulled the left wing towards the ground, but, with a downward fold of the same wing and with a matching fold of the right, the jet levelled off and then ascended. It loosed another rocket, but, as the weapon shot ahead and before it could about-face, a column of lightning crashed on an adjacent building’s rooftop, and, lunging from the radiant pillar, Nate fired an electric blast that struck the rocket and magnetized it towards the jet’s cockpit. The rocket detonated, engulfing the jet but failing to bring it down as it angled skyward and fired its four remaining engines into an earsplitting and superheated overdrive.
David tugged as it ascended past five thousand feet, and he pulled as it passed ten thousand feet and while still accelerating. With each pull, jerk, or slant he would enact, the jet would right itself, and, with each failing maneuver, another sound would rise. David looked to the body of the craft as a drone filled his ears. “Not again!” he proclaimed as he thrust his legs to point forward and under the wing. He pushed off in the opposite direction and increased his mental drive. Five seconds, and the drone strengthened; ten seconds, and it neared its crescendo; fifteen, and that stertorous beat turned into a zoom, while a slight azure glow surrounded the jet’s chassis. With a tightened thrust, David enacted the whole of his self-propelling abilities, and, in so doing, he brought himself to an immediate, midair halt; the jet’s left wing, still in his grasp, pivoted to hang over David’s head, and the jet, though still propelling at full throttle, remained in place as David held it sideways.
David grinned, looked to the earth three miles below, and pitched. The jet plunged, spiraling with its engines still active, failing to right itself, and, seconds after its launch, slamming through the top of a skyscraper and bouncing thrice at its base. The sounds of its engines diminished; the exhaust ports were voided of flames; and the internal whirs once adding to its cacophony slowed, weakened, and then silenced.
