Talyesin's Tales

Suddenly I’m falling. Dammit, how could I have been so stupid? Kimmy is going to have a field day with this one, and I wonder as I’m falling, is she going to bust a gut laughing or tear me a new one first?
My claws sink into the swinging door of the false floor I just fell through, nearly tearing out my shoulder from its socket as I stop falling, hard. Then Squidface Calamari is standing at the edge.
“Hey there, Shquirrelly,” he mushmouths.
“Hey yourself, Squidface,” I answer.
I think he’s smiling. It’s hard to tell, because, you know, of all those tentacles he has surgically grafted to his face.
“Ragdoll’sh gonna tear ya a new one,” he laughs, this bubbly gross laugh of his.
“Assuming I survive, you mean,” I remind him.
We both laugh at that one.
Then he pulls out a gun and I stop laughing.
Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. Normally I’d twitch-dodge out of the way and he’d empty the clip into thin air and I’d knock him out and that would be that, he’s in a police cruiser and I’m on my way home to Kimmy.
Normally.
But I’m hanging from the arm that I hurt yesterday, falling - always with the falling! - through a skylight as I chased Black Crow down Bendis Avenue. It hurts like a bitch - falling nearly four storeys will do that - and I don’t think it’s going to be able to lift me out of the bullet’s path fast enough.
I really need to talk to the security guys at the Kane Sanitarium. They seriously need to get on the ball there.
I hear Squidface pull back the hammer on his gun, clicking it menacingly. His tentacles are really twitching now, a sure sign he’s really agitated. I risk a look down.
The bottom of the trap is broken glass, sharp bits of broken wood, rusty nails. Not a fun landing pad.
“Thish ish going to be sho shweet!” Squidface slurs happily.
“You sure you wouldn’t want to do this mano a mano?” I ask, stalling for time.
“Shquirrel a shquid, you mean?” he asks, his curiosity rising. Wow, I didn’t think he’d fall for it. “I throw away my gun and let you climb up here, and we try and kill each other like civilized folk?” He lets the hammer click back into place slowly, his tentacles twitching, and his eyes examine the ceiling as he’s considering it.
He looks down after about a second and says, “Nope,” levelling the gun at me again and that when I heave myself up, high out of the pit, through the air over his head.
I’d taken that split-second to grab the door with my other arm.
And the air is filled with flying lead and I’m twitching and dodging and jumping out of the way, and then I hear the sweetest sound of all, the click of his pistol emptying, and I backflip out of the way of his flailing tentacles, they’re suddenly everywhere, and I’m grabbed by an ankle and a wrist. I slash out with my claws and then he only has me by the ankle, and I get a grip on a support beam, pulling and twisting and I tie two tentacles together behind the beam and slash at the one on my ankle, and he lets go, I backflip away from the beam and land square on his shoulders, slamming him hard into the concrete floor. I give his head an extra kick for good measure and all his twitching tentacles stop twitching and fall to the floor, retracting to their normal length as they go.
And I collapse to the ground, panting hard. My shoulder is a white hot ball of pain. I’m barely able to move it, now that the threat of death has cooled and the adrenaline is leaking out of my system.
I pull out my ID and the police arrive as I’m sitting there on the floor, still in pain, although at least I’m not out of breath any more. I recognize one of the cops as they’re coming through the door, stunguns out and at the ready.
“Hey, Jimenez,” I call to him.
“Squirrelman,”he nods back. “You okay?”
“Sure,” I answer, hauling myself slowly to me feet. “Just another day in the action-packed life of an Action City Costumed Crimefighter.”
I can tell he’s smiling behind that reflective faceplate that they all have on their helmets. He can probably tell I’m smiling under the full face mask I wear.
“Listen, Jimenez, tell your Captain to tell the security guys over at Kane that I’m getting pretty tired of cleaning up their sloppiness,” I tell him, reaching over and giving my hurt shoulder a slight squeeze that sends white hot knives into my arm and leaves me a little dizzy from the pain.
“Aw Squirrelly, you know it won’t do any good,” Jimenez sympathizes. “All the copper in the building, plus, well... you know-” meaning the ghosts and other weird stuff in that goddam creepy old place - “well, the modern electronic security systems just don’t work right. And guards patrolling the corridors can get... confused.” He means go crazy and let out the prisoners. I swear to God they should bulldoze the damn place and exorcize the land and salt the earth where it stands.
But I just nod. Action City needs a Sanitarium for its costumed and powered psychos. Just so happens I tend to attract quite a few loonies in my rogues gallery.
“Anyhow,” he says. “We’ll take care of Squidface. You get the collar. Anybody for the assist?”
“Meaning is Ragdoll around somewhere?” Seems like the whole world knows Kimmy and I have been an item since the Alternity Amalgamation.
“You know cops love celebrity gossip,” he smiles.
“She’s got her own turf to patrol,” I say to avoid the question.
“Sure...”
Jimenez’s partner - never did get her name - calls him over and they finish putting the clamps on Squidface’s tentacles while I stand there trying not to fall over from the pain in my shoulder that isn’t getting any easier to deal with. I watch them haul Squidface out to the cruiser and they go stiff, like their listening to something - probably the police-report link they have inside their helmets, info scrolling past the inside of the helmet visor as the police operator gives them the basics.
“What’s the skinny?” I ask.
“Homicide over on Reeves Boulevard.”
Out of my turf, but I ask anyway.
“Need help?”
Jimenez’s partner is inside the cruiser and firing up the thrusters. Jimenez just waves and says, “We can handle a simple homicide, Squirrelly. Go get your shoulder looked at.”
And the cruiser lifts into the air and flies off. I decide to call it a night and head back to our place. Ragdoll is coming in at almost the same time as me. She’s been tracking down a Boost cartel and needed to do more net research.
She rips me a new one over hurting my shoulder again.