Talyesin's Tales

Behind us Ace yells a warning and Umbra bursts into hundreds of shadow-bats swirling and slashing. Suddenly I’m in the middle of a mob of Downtown goons, all punching and grabbing and I’m flipping and slashing at them with my claws. I feel Ragdoll roll over my back as I duck under a swing and Ace is tossing those razor-cards of his, slicing the Umbra shadow-bats into little pieces. Cricket is jumping around like crazy, kicking and flipping all over the place. Between the four of us I bet we look like three superballs bouncing like maniacs in a crowd of ugly dirty thugs, and one guy all in white with a black ace of spades on his chest, cutting down little scraps of blackness in the sky.

Ragdoll and I have worked a long time together, we dodge and flip and know each other’s moves. We have a method of dealing with multiple opponents at the same time, never staying against one for long. Ace has worked with us quite a bit too, so he manages to stay out of our way pretty well. Cricket’s the new factor but she’s not too much of a hindrance, only gets in my way once. I grabbed and tossed her over me, no harm done, though she looked surprised.

I jump over Ace and backflip towards Ragdoll. She’s got her legs wrapped around this guy’s head and she falls over backwards and flips him hard into a wall.

“We’re no good in the open!” I yell.

“The alley!”

I jump over another guy, one with a knife, rake his hand with my claws and make him drop it, kick a big bald guy in the face, backflip towards Ace. He’s flinging those cards.

“These thugs ain’t nothing, son!” Ace says. He gets a little bit country in a fight.

“Umbra’s the real problem. Duck.”

Ace ducks and a big bruiser’s punch just misses. I grab his arm and haul him over Ace’s back and slam him hard on the ground.

“We need to take this to the alley.”

“Right.”

Ace throws another couple of cards and dashes. Ragdoll flips back and runs toward the alley too. I turn and look for Cricket.

Umbra’s got her, holding her up by the throat.

“Shit,” I say, and run for them, throwing myself into a flying tackle. This tendril of shadow reaches out and swats at me, just grazing me. I tackle the shadow-man and he goes half-solid on me. Cricket brings up her legs and kicks him hard with both feet square in the face. Umbra drops her and falls to the ground, dazed.

“Thanks!”

“No problem. The alley, quick!”

We head for the alley. The back of the alley is a huge pile of old junk, rusted and wrecked stuff, generally not good news unless you enjoy tetanus shots.

We’re boxed in now. I see Ragdoll smile that now-somebody’s-gonna-get-hurt smile. She balls her hands into fists and I hear her knuckles crack all at once. Under my mask I’m smiling too.

Speedsters rely on open ground. Flyers need the open skies. Acrobats like Ragdoll and me, Cricket even? We need handholds and footholds and walls to push off of and fire escapes to grab onto. Alleys are our battleground.

The thugs come on in waves, and between Ragdoll’s spring-loaded flip-kicks that nearly go halfway around her head and my jumping back and forth from one wall to the next, we’ve nearly got them beat. Cricket’s technique seems to be jumping up and landing on their heads, which is kind of crude but pretty effective. She’s not much more than 95 pounds soaking wet but it’s an angry 95 pounds. You get 95 pounds dropped on your head, see how you like it.

“DOWN!!” Ace yells and all of a sudden the alley is filled with flying lead.

I had been wondering when they were going to start to use guns.

I’m feeling my body twitch and twitch again, jumping and dodging without really knowing how I know. I could call it a danger-sense or a squirrel-sense but all it really means is I can dodge incoming threats to my anatomy. I’ve learned the hard way that the best thing to do in these situations is let my body take over for a few seconds and try really hard not to get in my own way.

“Fuck this!” Cricket yells and jumps high over everyone’s head and she’s off and running. Can’t really blame her. She draws their fire long enough for Ace to throw a dozen razor-sharp diamond-edged cards or so, cutting deep into the guns and right through their gun hands. A lot of these guys are gonna get nicknamed Lefty. Someone outside the alley yells something and they all pull back, out of view.

“Okay assholes,” Ragdoll shouts. Guns make her very angry. “You want to find out what your teeth taste like? Come get some!” I notice she’s bleeding, but then, we all are, scrapes, scratches and shallow cuts mostly.

“Don’t think so,” someone out there says, and someone else gives a sick little giggle.

“What is this?” Ace asks.

“Dunno,” I say. “Maybe they think they’ve got us trapped.”

Ragdoll looks up at the old rusted fire escape. We aren’t trapped, her look says. I jump up and grab the first rung. It holds me well enough.

Somewhere behind us, the pile of junk shifts and some stuff falls to the ground. We’re all a bit on edge from adrenaline and we all jump. Nothing there but a pile of old junk Ace chuckles.

“Nervous much?”

“C’mon Squirrly, let’s get outta here,” he answers, flipping Ragdoll the bird. The junk pile shifts and clatters again. All those bullets must have done some major dislodging.

“The Boost,” Ragdoll says.

“Shit, she’s right. We can’t go.”

“DAMN RIGHT YOU AIN’T GOING,” something says, loud, behind us. I say something because the voice isn’t quite human, more like the voice you used to get on those old Casio synthesizers. With a bunch of clatters and creaks added in.

Before we turn around I hear Ace mutter, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

The pile of junk is slowly morphing into a humanoid mass of junk. A face kind of forms near the top, across its front, broken headlights for eyes. It’s about fifteen feet tall if not more, small legs, huge shoulders, big thick arms.

“Aw damn,” Ragdoll says, and the junk monster suddenly attacks us, moving way too fast for something that big. It forces us out of the alley and back into the street.

“What is this thing?” I yell as I flip over a huge fist made of a tricycle missing two wheels, a broken umbrella, about a dozen rusted cans, and a couple of hubcaps.

“Junkernaut!” Ragdoll yells, bending over backwards to avoid the other arm.

Ace is backing away from the main fight, throwing cards at the thing. The cards either bounce off or get lodged in all the junk.

Junkernaut is a true metahuman - not human at all - and he had been a bit player in the late eighties, a goon more than a true villain. Lots of muscle, not much brains. Hired himself out to a bunch of different mobs. Disappeared in the mid-nineties.

“Jesus, do ALL of Action City’s two-bit losers wind up in Downtown?” I yell.

Junkie roars. I laugh.

“Loser, loser, Junkie is a loser,” I taunt. Bullies never really leave the playground. He swings both huge fists at me.

“NOT A LOSER!!” Junkie yells, charging me.

Ragdoll flips onto his back and starts kicking at his face. An explosion near one of Junkie’s feet tells me Ace has pulled out the big guns, his explosion cards. Junkie stumbles and nearly falls, Ragdoll jumps off, I slam both feet into the headlight eyes and flip away. Ace launches a full-on assault of exploding cards. Junk goes flying everywhere, but Junkie is just too massive for it to do any good.

Later I figured out what happened. One of Junkernaut’s lesser-known powers - because it really screwed him up psychologically - was massive rapid dislocation. He never liked using it because it took him forever to reform and during that time he wasn’t really aware of being himself, which only added to his loss of humanity. And he didn’t always get all his bits back.

Basically? Junkernaut exploded.