Chicago Wildlife - 22. What Are We, Some Kind Of...(Part 8)

Pierre looked up from his rifle’s scope. Yes, it was much easier to shoot a stationary target like a sheet of ice with a high caliber round over a moving target. Too bad for the kid though. He seemed friendly enough, if a little on the dim side. But it was probably that dimness that would allow Persephone to wield him like her own personal cryo-laser. Pierre was just a normal mime. Men like him couldn’t compete with supervillains without fighting a little dirty.

Pierre looked though the scope again. A good assassin always certifies the target’s status before considering the job complete. A good thing that Pierre adheres to this professionalism, as he saw what looked like a comet come flying at the kid as he descended. His BFF, as Jessica would say. Pierre observed as Cid unlit himself, caught Fred’s body, and twirled down towards the pavement with him. Further and further they fell, and Pierre wondered what the smarty-pant’s plan was. Surely not to die with his compatriot? Quickly, the two fell behind the cover of a building. Pierre did not take his eyes off it, and for good reason, as then he saw the comet fly up again, and towards a nearby rooftop. It was interesting, Pierre noted to himself, that Cid was capable of igniting himself in select areas, such as, in this case, the lower half of his body. With a perfect arc and trajectory expected from a bookworm such as Cid, Pierre watched as Cid deactivate himself again midair. Still holding Fred’s body, Cid tumbled onto the rooftop. It did not look painless.

Painless, however, is what Pierre was hoping to give Cid and Fred by planting a bullet in their heads. He readied his rifle and took aim at Cid’s head in order to perform just that. Cid dropped Fred’s body to the floor. Then he lit up fully again and swept fire from his hands, forming a massive circle all around the rooftop. The act in of itself was enough to give Pierre pause. Cid then raised his hands up like he was overturning a table, and the circle of fire rose up, now forming a literal column of fire.

Pierre realized his mistake. He had let his one chance to kill Cid slip by, and now Cid had made a smokescreen to obscure his and Fred’s whereabouts. Pierre could switch to a semi-automatic rifle and start shooting indiscriminately, but then there was always the possibility that he’d miss, and more importantly, it’d give away his dual nature to Cid, Fred, and possibly anyone else on the team.

He had a few options now. He could try to outwait Cid, assuming that Cid couldn’t keep the fires going indefinitely, and when the fire wall was lowered, strike then. He could keep an eye on the building as a whole, see if the pair try to escape through the front door. Again, this plan only worked on the assumption that the two didn’t try to escape through the back of the building, which Pierre obviously couldn’t see. Or he could try targeting any of the others on the team while the clock’s still ticking. Focusing on these two all night would only result in one of the others finding and stopping Ditto Perfect, and if that happens, then everyone will disperse, become too hard to track down in one night, and if that happens…Francesca…

Pierre quickly packed up his gear and booked it down the building. It didn’t appear that anyone suspected the simple mime of foul play. If he hurried, he could still make it to where Ditto Perfect was, act like he hadn’t made a deadly diversion. Ditto Perfect was extremely close to the hospital now. They were all running out of time.

#

You arrive at Ann & Robert’s. The Author must’ve picked one hospital over the other and directed you here. A loving couple walks past you. They seem subconsciously aware of your murderous aura, but their minds can’t put a reason with it. All they know is that they need to put a wide birth between them and you. The knife you hold could also, perhaps, be swaying their opinion on the matter. You think about ending their meaningless lives, but the emotional weight needed to make it impactful just isn’t there. Meaningless murders are only exceptional in small doses, where the nihilistic angle can really be hammered into the Readers, and you feel as if you have already done enough senseless violence in this issue. The only kind of killing you plan on doing for the rest of the night is very much premeditated and contains all the right kinds of meaning.

Your plan is simple enough. Ditto Perfect will visit this hospital over Northwestern. It’s only a matter of time before someone else from the group arrives here. For dramatic value, it will not be the twin-parallels. It would be considered out of character for them to arrive separate from one another, therefore they would arrive together. Their entire characterization relies on them being a packaged deal. Furthermore, it would break the Reader’s immersion if you were suddenly able to effortlessly kill two incredibly in-synced supervillains with just your feeble knives. No, it will be the playboy, the gangster, or the assassin. None of them require you to punch above your weight. It will only require you to change your tactics based on who showed up.

“Well if it isn’t Broody McEmo,” you hear coming from across the parking lot.

The playboy walks up to you. He’ll do. You rest your knife against the magnet.

“Considering the hospital is still standing, I take it our boy hasn’t stopped by yet?”

“No. Don’t worry. The climax of this story won’t take place until all the main characters reconvene.”

“Yeah…about that. Fire and ice should be here soon, but I ditched Jacques and the mime like half an hour ago. If they value their lives though, and I’m 99% certain that they do, they’ll find their way here. Come on,” he says, patting your shoulder, “let’s go to the roof. I want to know exactly where Ditto Perfect is before he gets here.”

A scene forms in your head. You follow the janitor silently into the hospital. In your world, so many of your previous victims wind up here. If you had a sense of humor, you would feel as though the staff should feel honored to host your presence, as you constantly keep them busy with work. None of that matters though, in your world or this one. As soon as the Reader’s eyes shift to another panel, the bodies essentially fade into nothingness, their purposes served. Not like in the real world.

“Come,” you say, walking with purpose. “This elevator leads to the roof. We’ll use less energy compared to taking the stairs.”

He blindly obeys. You walk up to the nearest elevator and push the button. The elevator slides open and to your relief, no one is inside. You don’t need a deus ex machina to intervene in your slaughter to provide a last second act of heroic bravery, allowing the playboy to escape. You both step in and you press the top floor button. The door slides close and the elevator slowly lurches upwards.

You are both silent. The playboy faces forward. He makes for a poor horror comic character. You, however, are the perfect character for the medium. You slowly, soundlessly, reach for your dagger hidden behind your back. You grip the handle so that you can make a forward stab. You believe that a literal back stab followed by a classic throat slash will appease the Readers. The panel will show the door closing on two, living bodies on one page, and the next page have the panel showing the door opening to a coat of blood and one, limp, dead body.

A moment more of silence. And then you plunge the knife into the playboy’s back.

Or so you would have liked. To your surprise, the janitor catches you by the wrist. He doesn’t even turn around to do so. He then uses his free hand to sucker-punch you in the stomach. You only saw it for a split second, but you are sure that no normal human arm can bend the way this one just did. So, the playboy had powers all along. Clever move on the end of the Author’s, for keeping this under wraps all this time. Though you can’t possibly be held accountable for reading every side series connected to this crossover. You yank yourself from the playboy.

“You make for a poorly predictable villain,” he says, facing you now.

No. You won’t vanish! If a surprise killing won’t suffice, then an action piece must! You take a swipe at his head, hoping to achieve that throat slash after all, but he bends backwards at a degree that would leave you paralyzed for life. You slash down at an angle, but he again caught your arm, and bowed under it like he was doing a curtsy in a ballroom dance. He also yanks both yours and his arms in that maneuver, dislocating both and causing you both pain. You immediately recognize the sound of only one set of bones being broken…yours. You remember it’s appropriate to yell in pain when something like this happens, so you do as such, even though you’re no longer capable of feeling pain.

Ignoring your broken arm, you strike the playboy in the face with your uninjured arm. He must’ve not expected you to recover so soon, considering he didn’t block this attack like the others. He instinctually let go of your broken arm. You take the opportunity to wrap your good arm around his neck, tightening it. If your other arm were still in good shape, you would snap his neck there and then. It wouldn’t be as spectacular as a throat slice, but perhaps the Author would spin it as a much more realistic (and therefore frightening) way of murdering someone. You briefly ponder, though, whether a neck snapping would even work on the playboy, considering his supernatural power seems to be having bones made of plastic. Regardless of how his bones are made, a lack of oxygen is a lack of oxygen, and a stab through the throat yields the same results in everyone.

The playboy starts elbowing you in the ribs, but you have suffered far greater attacks from more powerful heroes to be phased by such petty blows. Your grip around his neck remains steadfast. You push through the pain shooting through your broken arm and will it to grab another hidden blade on your person. However, before you can do so, the playboy backs up, causing you to slam your back into the wall, the railing digging into your back. He then jumps forwards. Obviously, he wasn’t going anywhere with his head in a vise. But then he uses the momentum to bend his body nearly in half, allowing his feet to come behind your head. He crosses them together, and proceeds to throw you over his head with his feet like he’s an orangutan. You can’t maintain your grip on his neck, and you go slamming hard onto the ground. In the real world, you most likely would’ve been stabbed by one of your many knives you keep on you by doing this, but lucky for you, you’re a central antagonist. You aren’t bound by logic.

You anticipate that the playboy will try to literally kick you while you’re down. Grabbing you would only place his vital organs within stabbing range. You visualize where the kick will come from (his right foot), where it will go (at your ribs), and when. You stretch out your good hand and grab at nothing. Naturally, you grab onto his foot. You yank it westward, causing his whole center of balance to disrupt, causing him to fall on top of you, back-to-stomach.

You quickly grab whichever knife your dull, unresponsive hand can grab, raise it up so you and the knife sandwich the playboy’s body, and slam the knife down. You know it will hurt you, but kill him. He brings both hands up and catches your hand. You bring your head up and sink your teeth into whatever flesh of his you can manage. You wish he had landed in a way that allowed you to rip his throat out with your teeth. You had murdered over a dozen cops tonight. Surely that meant the Publishers would allow for such graphic violence. It seems you will have to settle for ripping off his ear, however.

The playboy yells in pain as you yank as hard as you can, but it is so difficult to rip through soft flesh when it is covered up by latex. He lets go of the knife with one hand and proceeds to slam his elbow into your face. But you…can take it… He keeps bashing…his elbow into…your face… Seconds pass unaccounted for. You couldn’t…can’t continue…grip on…the ear… Why won’t your…arm respond? The knife’s in…the corner of the room…

The corners of your vision start to close in on you. The hero stands triumphant over you. You hope…you were…at least an entertaining villain…

“Go the fuck to sleep, Freddy Krueger,” he says, as he slams his fist into your face.

#

Cid observed as Fred stirred himself from unconsciousness. Besides a concussion, Fred would most likely achieve full recovery from his brush with danger.

“Woah…total wipeout, man…” he groaned, rubbing the spot on his head where he had knocked himself out.

“I haven’t known you to be the type to not ‘stick the landing,’ as you call it,” Cid openly mused.

“Totally, bro. It felt like the floor was just ripped out from under me!”

“That would be because it was,” Cid supplied. “Someone shattered your frozen ramp before you could land on it.”

“Say what?!”

“Which means someone was watching us.”

“But who would want us, the life of the party, dead?”

“I don’t even WANNA go into how retarded dat question just was!” came Persephone’s voice. It was still disconnected from a corporeal body.

“It’s true, though,” Cid conceded. “There are plenty of individuals whom we have wronged with our illegal antics over the years. The list of suspects is quite numerous.”

“You even listening to me, man?” Fred asked.

So it seemed Persephone wasn’t broadcasting to them simultaneously. Interesting.

“And HOW many of dose ‘iNdIvIdUaLs’ have access to a high-powered sniper rifle, hmm?”

Is that what the assailant was using?

“You forget, my dear young Sheldon, dat I have eyes and ears everywhere in dis city. Even on yo average, everyday mime assassin.”

Mr. O’Myut. That’s what Persephone had referred to him as earlier. Cid felt the creeping realization that Persephone’s inter-cranial speech earlier tonight might not have not consisted entirely of fabrication.

“I am getting the sense that Mr. O’Myut may have been behind your near brush with death.”

“The mime?! Aren’t we all supposed to be on the same team?”

“By force.”

“Look, I know I ain’t no college graduate like the rest of you, but even I know that getting six people to do one thing is easier than getting five people to do one thing.”

Cid tried to mentally tell Persephone to just activate the bomb inside Mr. O’Myut’s head, but she didn’t give any indication that she either heard him or cared to do so.

“It would appear that Mr. O’Myut doesn’t see things the same way,” Cid replied.

“And allow me to add my two cents by saying I DON’T GIVE A FUCK what chu dink about yo beloved teammate’s inevitable betrayal. You two are gonna get yo asses back out dere and stop dat walking time bomb from goin' off, and I DON’T care if you have to bash yo fellow man’s head in in order to get it done!”

Cid stood up and started to make his way towards the door. The plan had changed and, as they say, time was of the essence.

“Whoa, wait, where are you going?” Fred asked.

Fred managed to erect himself and keep pace with Cid.

“Still?”

“Yes. We still have the issue of the nanomachines embedded within our skulls-”

“Dink of it like an insurance policy.”

“-and my working theory is that the sooner we resolve Persephone’s issue, the sooner we absolve ourselves of this whole matter.”

The pair came to the building’s back entrance.

“And what, Poindexter, is your grand plan on getting us out of this place without getting 360 no-scoped?” asked Fred.

Cid decided to correct Fred’s perception of what three hundred sixty degrees means another time. For now, it was time for him to put his intellect to work.

“Judging by the trajectory of the bullet that was fired into your icicle slope, Mr. O’Myut would have been situated in a building facing the north side of our present building. Thusly, we exit via the south. Even assuming Mr. O’Myut left his post after attempting to assassinate you, he would not have time to vacate the premise and arrive either here or adjacent. He would not risk instigating a common brawl situation. His predilection towards firearms belies a dearth of offensive superpowers. Additionally, long-range firearms provide insufficient tactical advantage in close-quarters combat with two elemental-manipulating individuals. Thus, he would have no alternative option but to infiltrate an adjacent building and set up his sniper’s nest there. No matter what route he attempts, he lacks sufficient time to construct a situation whereupon he is guaranteed a victory. Thusly, I believe that he has vacated the premises, and is banking on us not realizing his presence in the first place.”

“Oooh boy! When are ya gonna start charging for yo audiobooks? I’ve been having a hell of a time with insomnia lately!”

“But we DO know he was here!” whined Fred.

“That is not a relevant issue at this time,” Cid replied. “Our priority should be neutralizing Mr. Michaels. Still, I would advise caution when exiting the building. I cannot account for the desperate sloppiness of an assassin.”

Cid engulfed himself in flames and opened the double doors. Behind him, Fred, who also iced himself over, beamed ice overhead Cid, creating an ice tunnel to shield them both from oncoming bullets.

“You zigzag west towards the hospital, and I’ll zigzag east. We’ll meet up with any survivors and, hopefully, Mr. Michaels himself.

“Gotcha,” Fred said.

“Let’s make haste.”