by Simon Archer
As the brace wrapped itself around my arm, the miniscule machinery working out of my view, I felt the trigger in my palm, and shot out my first ever grappling shot. Like a bullet from a magnum revolver, the end of the string had already left my sleeve and hit a section of the ground a few dozen feet away. I didn’t even have time to see what the head of the grappling hook looked like, or if it was even a hook at all.
It didn’t matter, though, since it managed to hook into the concrete floor with its barbs and points, and the motor in my sleeve yanked against my arm hard enough to give me whiplash in every whiplash-friendly part of my body. Through sheer force of will and a pinch of luck, I was still on my feet, and the little hook unlodged itself just as I got over it, leaving me at the mercy of my momentum as I slid straight for a pile of rubble at what felt like Mach One.
A second shot to the side had me swinging in a circle, the motor not quite activating in my wrist as I thought it would as it allowed me to turn myself around. As I now headed the other direction, I could now see where Kate and Don John’s tussle had ended up. With my cannon arm still charged up, I got to do my part in this with some interference.
Thankfully, the controls on the grappling hook were pretty intuitive. There were a few cybernetic components to it that I was connected to, so it was partially responding to my unconscious commands like it was another part of my own body. I didn’t need to think too hard about how to make it shoot out, reel back in, or just stay out when I needed them to, so long as I kept my focus in check.
Also a plus in my favor, Kate retained the upper hand and her overclocked inferno form, despite my small detour wasting a few seconds. Her explosive fists continued to batter and pummel at every opportunity, bringing the pain wherever she could. Don John would try to swipe down, and she’d punch him in the side of the arm, throwing his hand away while she continued to work him over with as many bombs as possible.
I, on the other hand, had begun my work on the pack of extra drums. Seeing him reach behind himself a few times tuned me in on how long I had to do my part. It was only a small matter of time before he managed to get a lucky break and reach for a useful drum of bullets. But, thankfully, there wasn’t anything too special about the leather straps keeping them slung around his back. I easily snapped the string with two quick shots of red energy to his shoulder, cutting near perfect holes the size of softballs in his clothing as well.
As I turned myself around with another grappling swing, I saw Don John bracing himself with his hands, taking a boxing position as he eyed the bag now on the ground. Kate continued to brutalize him, but could only hit him in the forearms as his defenses improved drastically. He was going to make a break for it, and all he’d have to do is bend down to grab it. I, on the other hand, while slingshot zooming at breakneck speeds, I wouldn’t have been able to make it in time to snatch it from him.
However, I was willing to bet that my speed plus the speed of my grappling shot was more than enough to beat him. The hook shot out from my wrist just as Don John made his move for the bag, both racing to touch the leather first. Despite my best efforts, his fingers hooked around the bag just as my hook touched it as well. In the best-case scenario, this was gonna be a game of tug-o-war, except I was alone against a bull elephant. Reflexively, I reeled the hook back in, while Don John pulled on his end in an attempt to deny me my victory over him.
Except, my hook didn’t quite catch onto the leather bag. Instead, it had pierced through the bag and straight into the metal of one of the drums inside. Whatever leather the bag was made of was no match for the sturdiness of the drum, the tenacity of my hook’s barbs inside it, and the strength of a Ghoul executive brute at the same time, and simply burst apart as the drum flew towards me.
Another two had fallen out of the bag in the wake of its destruction, and Don John tried his damndest to get to them before me as well, already removing the magazine from his gun in preparation. He had the edge on me this time, as I was occupied with the one on the hook, catching it in my purple hand. Dropping the other drum was also a smart move on his end, as the three on the ground looked identical to us, and I was willing to bet that they all did special things. If we destroyed the ice drum, we’d have been wasting our time, since it wasn’t useful against Kate’s current inferno state, allowing him to grab a different one during the distraction and regain his ability to fire with his stupidly powerful gun.
While the magic within my fingers transmuted the metal and shells within to brittle gemstone, the cannon arm was multitasking a bid for a game of ‘keep-away,’ scattering the drum barrels around and scooting them further away from John any time he reached for them. Kate had also caught on to the plan as well, aiming more towards Don John’s face to disorient him as I puppeteered them away from their former owner.
I did what I could to destroy the one in my hand completely, though the purple stone didn’t move as fast as optimal for making this part of the fight easy. Settling for breaking whatever stone had taken hold in my hand as soon as the mechanism that would link the drum to the gun was fully transformed, I left the half-circle of drum behind to hook the next.
Unlike with the leather bag, the game of tug-o-war had commenced officially with this drum in the mix, as Don John already had his hand upon it while I hooked it. With the Don’s attention split between struggling against me and fending off Kate’s constant barrage of death, I took full advantage of the fact that I didn’t have any meaningful weight in this struggle to pull against the big gangster. Instead of a quality game of tug-o-war like he was expecting, I flew towards him at the speed of a falcon diving towards its prey, retracting the cannon and giving the green back to that hand.
I’d have to be quick, since I didn’t want to die from the heat that Kate was giving off. I probably had half a minute to do anything and then leave before the hot air wore away any defenses I had and ate through my health. I had a plan, and it would bring the battle back in our favor if it worked.
With my purple hand, I unhooked my grapple from the drum. Instead, I reached for the Don’s face. Kate’s explosive fists kept his hand occupied from reaching over and throwing me off, allowing me to reach closer and closer to him. Really, I could have found any part of his body and started the process, but if I could get rid of the faculties in his face first, then this fight would essentially be over.
The purple hand was a risky all-or-nothing gambit, since it demanded that I get dangerously, uncomfortably close with my enemies for a lot longer than the average battle would allow. A big guy like Don John, too, with all of his levels and power, would be able to resist the effect much longer than, say, the shadow puppets with no real will of their own that Anu used. But none of that was the point of this current attempt to touch his face with a magic hand.
Shaking and lashing out against us, Don John managed to shake us both off, probably saving my life as I moved further away from Kate’s superheated form. I’d run myself dangerously close to the lethal zone of exposure than I had planned, but it all worked out in the end. I did what I had set out to do, and we were officially back on top.
Kate had recovered quickly from Don John’s thrashing, returning to blasting against Don yet again. However, I could see that the explosions from Kate’s punches and kicks weren’t quite as big as they once were, and she had stopped floating as high. On top of that, she was easier to look at, glowing less brightly than when she started. The energy boost she’d gotten from the fire drum was wearing off. Not that it was too bad at this point. We had him in a corner now, even if he didn’t know it. Feeling her energy burning away, she roared herself back to blowing just as brightly as before, pushing herself as hard as she could to keep up the pressure she’d had this whole time. Without the energy to back all of that boosted power up, she was going to burn out in just a few moments.
Returning my green hand back into a cannon, I hookshot-boosted myself back to my top speed as I strafed the Don with a dozen red blasts of energy. All I was trying to do was
whittle him down at this point, conserve the energy I’d just spent trying to use my crystal hand, and recuperate a bit, just in case he had some kind of final trick up his sleeve. We’d already gotten more than half of his health down already, thanks to Kate’s barrage of bomb boxing while he wasn’t defending himself. All that mattered now was consistently picking the rest of it off.
Perignon laughed as Kate’s final burst of fiery energy died down, collapsing as the light faded and the color returned to her whole body. She touched back down to the ground, still trying to keep a solid fighting stance through her exhaustion. With a stock bash, Don John knocked her back as she fell over, mostly from the taxing power surge she’d been maintaining for a good third of the fight. Nothing in his way now, the mob boss finally put a drum in his gun and pointed it towards me.
“What did I say, huh?” He gloated instead of finishing me off with whatever bullets he’d put in his gun. “Didn’t I say that you don’t mess with the Don? Didn’t I?”
I lodged my hook into his chest, launching myself into him along with a barrage of red blasts. Before I could land on him, though, he caught me in his hand, his meaty claws practically wrapping around my midsection. This might have been a good time to have some rigid armor on, if only to forestall the crushing he was putting me through with his vice of a grip. No matter how durable and bulletproof my clothes were, they didn’t resist these slow presses.
But I knew he wouldn’t crush me to death like this. Not when he had his gun on him with a fresh drum of special rounds to unload on me. He’d indulge himself to a bit of flair and dynamic slaughter, if leveling his own city was anything to go by. With all the hubbub we’d made about getting that gun away from him, only to ‘tucker ourselves out’ here at the end and fail, he wouldn’t be able to resist the delicious irony of it all. I know I’d have been tempted.
“You guys are at the end of your rope, and I’ve seen all of your tricks now.” He threw me against the ground. “I’m still revving strong, and your girl can’t even stand anymore. That fancy glowing bit was a bit scary, I’ll admit, but she’s done now, and you’re well on your way out, too.”
“That sucks.” I played along with his false sense of victory. “I really thought we had a shot in this fight. Maybe if I’d brought a few more things along…”
“You won’t be throwing any more curveballs at me today.” The Don gripped both handles of his Tommy gun, watching me ‘grovel’ on the ground. “You’re done, hotshot! You’re nothing compared to me!”
“You know, maybe I still have a shot.” I made a bit of a scene about trembling as I got back up to sell the bit, putting my cannon away to return the glowing green fist and complete the set. “You and me, one on one, mano-a-mano, eh? We let our fists settle this once and for all.”
“And let you do your weird magic to me with your hands up close and personal?” He pointed the gun’s barrel towards me. “Forget about it. You put up a good fight, I’ll give you that. Not many heroes can go toe to toe with the Ghoul’s elite with just two people. You got lucky, and you got a few shots in while my guard was down. But I’ve got a drum full of rounds in this bad boy just waiting to blast you to bits. What did I manage to get here?” He opened a slot in the side of the drum to look at the bullets inside. “Oh, would you look at that? Poison. I wonder if the buckshot will kill you first, or if the poison will choke you. I bet it’ll be the buckshot if I get you in the head.”
“Alright, so do it already.” I threw my hands out. “Kill me. What are you waiting for? An invitation? I thought you were winning? Don’t tell me you’ve lost your nerve to finish the job after all this time.”
“You were a lot of fun.” He smirked. “What’s your name, hotshot? I usually don’t bother remembering people’s names unless I care to, but I’ll make an exception for you.”
“Dantem,” I answered, preparing my next move very carefully while he kept talking to me. “My name’s Dantem.”
“Well, Dantem, here’s to you.” he repositioned his feet, standing more formally as he gave his speech. “When I first met you, I thought you were a little shit. I still do, and I’ll be glad when you’re gone. You brought robots into my city, trashed it, and you made me look like a fool in front of my men.”
I would have liked to point out for the record that he did those last two himself.
“But, Mr. Dantem, you were a complicated man, and we can’t discount the good things just because of a load of bad, right? You got me out of my bunker and into the fresh air for the first time in a long time. That means a lot to me. If your other girls survive my Capone Crew somehow, I’ll send them flowers in your honor. You were a hell of a pain in my ass. Maybe the best there ever was.”
“I couldn’t care any less.” The anticipation for the clutch moment was killing me. “Fuck right off.”
“Goodbye, Dantem.” He finished his still-living eulogy for me. “I’ll think of you every time I go to wipe my ass, you little shitstain.”
He clicked the trigger on his gun, signaling me to hit him and hit him hard. With my grapple shot loaded, I quick-fired it against his neck, reeling myself right into an acid punch to his goddamn chin. The impact didn’t change how fast the acid worked, but the punch sure felt great. With the magic acid eating through his skin, I probably bypassed a lot of natural defenses he had, so he would have felt it.
From there, I just kind of went to town, with a firm purple hand pressed against his neck and my green hand continually breaking in his jawline. He was completely confused as to what was happening right now, his body now deteriorating in two different ways as he fell backward from my initial accelerated fist.
Once he’d regained his balance, but not before I’d gotten quite a few free and fresh hits in, he finally managed to pull me off of his face and throw me back onto the ground. The crystals that had grown on his neck receded into nothing, though his face remained mangled by my acidic fist. His labored breathing was a clear sign of his rage and his confusion.
Pointing the Tommy gun back at me, he clicked the trigger again, finding that nothing happened, just like before. He clicked it again. Still nothing. Another five times, as if that would change anything, and not a single shell fired from the round.
“What?” Don saw the grin on my face. “What’s going on? What did you do?”
Checking over the gun, he tried to inspect for any flaws, frantically turning the gun over and over again to scan every last inch before checking just above the trigger. A fairly fresh finger-sized hole had been poked through, clear as day, right through the gun and into the receiver. Good luck firing any rounds when you were missing half the moving parts you needed. His Tommy gun was useless now, and his power was cut down to just how hard he could throw things around.
“No!” he cried out, mourning his gaudy firearm. “La Dorada, speak to me! Tell me you’re alright! Oh, what did this bastard do to you?”
“Sir, we have reached the timestamp.” Yomura, speaking into my earpiece, informed me of the plan’s progression. “I have already pulled the team fighting the Capone Crew out. You need to evacuate immediately.”
“Little busy at the moment,” I whispered back to him. “I want confirmation that Don John bit the dust before we call this mission a success.”
“Do not tarry a moment longer than necessary, sir,” Yomura informed me. “You are running out of time before there will not be a chance to leave alive.”
Noted. My time had run out, and I was now heavily in danger of dying in multiple different ways. I just hoped that the worst-case scenario hadn’t already come to pass.
16
“So, how about that fistfight, John?” I put my fists in a boxing stance. “Offer still stands.”
“You desecrated my La Dorada…” He’d gotten real somber all of a sudden. “My pride and joy in this world. You defiled her with your filthy hands. You, a worm of a man who doesn’t even have the right to look at her unparalleled beauty in this world. You ruined her.”
&n
bsp; “You are making this sound a lot weirder than it should be.” I put my hands up and backed away. “I just broke a gun so I wouldn’t die.”
“‘Just’ a gun?” He said back to me, grabbing the barrel of the gun to hold it up like a big, wonky club. “La Dorada demands blood and violence today, and I’m going to give it to her. She’s going to kill you, one way or the other. Dantem, whatever mercy you had been warranted by a quick death has been revoked.”
“Didn’t you already say something like that before?” I furrowed my brow. “I can’t remember. You’ve been saying so many things that just don’t matter at all that it’s all blurring together now.”
“I’ll start with your legs!” The mobster brute, growing more savage by the minute, was yelling every word he spoke now. “I’ll watch you crawl like the worm you are!”
“I’m not the one getting buried today.” I leaned to the side to look behind the cinder block shelf of shoulders Don Perignon had. “Looks like we took too long to wrap up our little quarrel, don’t you think? I think I’ve had enough fun here, so I’m just going to go.”
“Enough games!” He lifted his gun club high into the air. “Today’s the day you die!”
“Oohoohoo! I gotta see this!”
Unfamiliar voices were never a good sign, and I turned around to find that my hunch was dead on the money. Surrounding me on every side as they appeared on the scene were five guys in expensive pinstripe suits and matching fedoras, all shaped like they were the reflection of a different funhouse mirror. Like power rangers, they were also color-coded for easy identification if the obtuse proportions weren’t different enough for anyone.
Starting from the left of Perignon was the rocket mermaid that could only be ‘Rocky the Rocket,’ sporting the blood-red coat and hat along with his ruby-red rocket bottom half. Next to him in the circle was a man with a metal plague doctor mask attached to a wild and feathery mane that completely covered his head, wearing blue for his outfit and having a set of metal talons for both his hands and his feet. I assumed this was ‘Bone Raptor Sal.’ Then, right behind me was probably the most average-looking guy in the group, save for the two rotary machine gun barrels he had instead of hands. Coming in green, he could only be ‘Gatling Gun Gunther.’ At my eight o’clock was a stout barrel of a man with skin like tarnished iron, and the biggest set of motherfucking hands I’d ever seen on anyone. Seriously, they were the literal size of anvils, making the purple-suit member the obvious choice for ‘Anvil Hands Mahoney.’
