Book 2: Chapter 27: Vigilante (1/2)
Dan ducked behind a supply truck and waited for his moment. Zim dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Two gunmen let out paired shrieks of alarm as they found themselves weaponless and nude in the middle of a firefight. Another slumped bonelessly to the ground, bits of assault rifle raining down beside him, while his companion flailed for a sidearm as he found himself bereft of a weapon.
Everyone else opened fire on each other.
Dan crouched down, shielding his head with his arms as stray rounds peppered the surroundings. He kept low as he sent out feelers, tiny tendrils of veil creeping across the concrete streets. It was the same technique he'd used to map out his house, a spiderweb of awareness built out of hair-thin strings.
He could feel where rubber soles met gravel, where concrete touched ice, and the impenetrable outlines of people. He could feel discarded brass, the blood pooling around Zim's body, and the warped remains of his ball bearing, where it had burrowed into the street. He absently tagged the metal chunks, and sent them to t-space. No evidence, no crime. Dan would claim that he sent Zim's own icicle back at him. It matched his existing capabilities, and, given the whole thing had happened almost out of sight, hidden from spying eyes behind Zim's own ice barrier, was almost impossible to prove or disprove.
Within seconds, Dan had mapped out the locations of every living being on the street. In those few moments, the massive metal-manipulator bulldozed through a concrete pillar, and the two feds hiding behind it. Dan felt the moment they died, when the invisible shield surrounding their bodies—that ephemeral barrier that he occasionally wanted to ascribe to a soul—shredded and gave way. His veil connected to meat and bone and nothing at all.
Dan pushed away the nausea and began to track his targets. He felt as ice walls sprang into existence, as the ground froze over, as the air thickened and congealed into fog. He wanted to rip it all away, but he was too far, and it would take too long. The nearly constant trading of gunfire made closing the distance a dubious prospect at best. The two gunmen he'd disrobed were already dead, caught by stray bullets in their surprise and confusion. Any work Dan could do would need to be done from cover; his own, or the icey blockades the villains were creating.
Another shout, as Dunkirk's upgrade sent the metal-manipulator tumbling across the ground. The villain jumped back up with barely a hitch in his stride, as he dashed forward towards another group of feds who were taking cover. They hadn't yet unleashed their own upgrades, and Dan suddenly realized why. This was a field office for the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Though Detective Baker had called the deceased James Webb a spook, that wasn't quite true. They weren't spies, they were investigators. Dangerous intrigue, under the constant threat of death, wasn't their normal trade. Though some, like Dunkirk, clearly carried combat capable upgrades, Dan doubted that it was the norm.
They were paying for it now, Dan thought, as the metal-encased villain tore through another agent. The man beelined towards the entrance of the office, and Dunkirk dove out of the way. The villain didn't even bother sparing the fed a glance, as he plowed through the steel gate separating the lobby from the rest of the building, and continued to rampage onward. Dunkirk staggered to his feet, then immediately dove behind cover to escape a hailstorm of icicles.
Dan needed to act now, before he ran out of allies. The ice golems were capable of doing just as much damage as the armored giant, they were just slower. The agent's firearms weren't penetrating the layers of overlapping ice, which seemed to constantly repair themselves. Dan assumed that there was an armory with heavier weapons inside the field office, but the agents, like everyone else, had assumed the truck's crash was an accident. Anyone within reach of that armory was likely now dealing with the metal giant.
Dan flipped a mental switch, and the icicle he'd pilfered from Zim began to accelerate through t-space. One thing at a time was his limit, thus far, and he didn't plan on trying to break those limits in the middle of a gunfight. There were maybe half a dozen feds still up and shooting, but the ice golems were lumbering forward with all the inevitability of an avalanche. Their massive, frozen limbs probably wouldn't be landing any hits on the slippery federal agents, but once their cover was destroyed they'd be summarily mowed down by the surviving gunmen.
He would take the latter out first. Dan used his veil to carefully carve away a patch of ice covering the ground. He lacked the dexterity mods that the feds and, presumably, villains were using to maintain their balance. Slipping as soon as he appeared was likely to get him dead. The gunmen seemed unaware of his attempts, slow and mild as they were, keeping their eyes forward as they peppered the feds. Surely, they were wondering who it was that had briefly assaulted them, but the feds were giving as good as they got, and leaving the villains no time to ponder.
Except... one of them wasn't firing. It would've been impossible to notice, normally. The villains had been enveloped in a thick fog once more, but the obscuring mist only made it easier for Dan's veil to track their movements. He could feel how the man's weapon was angled slightly downward, how his head was slowly scanning the field with whatever supernatural senses he'd been endowed, how he was set in a tense shooter's posture, awaiting a target.
He was waiting for Dan to reappear, ready to test upgrade-enhanced reflexes against an enemy that obviously had a different ability. It wasn't a bad gamble. Against an actual short-hop user, even a mutate, the gunman's cosmically enhanced accuracy and reaction time would make short work of Dan. The villain probably figured it was just the element of surprise that had kept Dan from being perforated the first time through.
This, Dan realized, was why Naturals were so feared. His power wasn't predictable. It didn't fall into the neat little preconceived rules that upgrades and mutates were forced to follow. He had flexibility in spades, a million different angles of attack and ways to track down his enemy, none of which could be countered without explicit knowledge that few people in existence knew. It was the same thing that had brought about Andros Bartholomew's downfall. What was that old saying about assumptions?
Never assume. It makes an ass out of 'u' and 'me'.
Dan withdrew his veil, then blinked inside the villain's guard, his hand impacting the rifle literally the same instant he appeared, driving the weapon upward and away. Dan's veil tagged the weapon even as the villain's free hand dropped towards his pistol holster. Dan ripped the assault rifle into t-space and vanished, right before the villain emptied his sidearm in the space where Dan had just been.
Dan sent his veil skittering back out, reforming his map. He'd never practiced maintaining this particular technique while sparring, something he was quickly regretting. It drastically dipped into his reservoir, lowering his teleportation weight limit in turn, but guns really weren't all that heavy. Neither was armor, so long as he took it piecemeal. He filed that thought away for later.