The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 27: Vigilante

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.

The commotion in the backline had drawn the attention of the rest of the villain contingent. The remaining gunmen swept the field, using whatever enhanced senses they’d been gifted to try and ferret out Dan’s location. The fog user, and one of the ice projectors, were performing first aid on what was left of Zim. They had frozen over the ruin of his torso, and were currently dragging him inside the remains of the cargo trailer. One of the ice golems had slowed, half-turning backwards to check on his allies, but the other plodded resolutely forward.

Agent Dunkirk and his men weren’t idle. They began to focus down the approaching golem, its massive form towering above the fog, laying into its legs and chipping away the ice like a jackhammer drilling into concrete. It staggered, its ice regeneration faltering before the rain of bullets. It interposed one of its massive arms, catching some of the bullets, and presented its side to them. Its approach became an awkward shuffle, as it attempted to blunt the assault with the thicker ice of its torso and arms.

The villains soon realized what was happening, and quickly reoriented. The second they refocused, Dan appeared between the remaining two gunmen, his hands already wrapped around the barrels of their weapons. He twisted, pulling with his arms and veil, and the villain’s were stripped of everything they carried. He flickered in place, booting one out from cover, before being clocked in the jaw by the other. Dan winked out of existence, face throbbing, before the man could find something more deadly than his fists. The nude gunman slid across the frozen ground, his howling, indignant surprise being cut off by a bullet.

The unoccupied ice projector began to throw up fragile barriers in front of his own allies. The golems crashed through these impediments with ease, but they served as brief protection from the onslaught of gunfire. The feds were running out of ammunition, but with the enemy gunmen out of play, they were free to relocate. The second ice golem had caught sight of Dan flickering in and out of the fight, and seemed to be struggling with indecision.

Dan made the choice for him. He appeared beside the golem, slapping his hand against the freezing cold ice, and stabbing out with his veil. He ripped away a chunk of its frozen torso, then fired his icicle at the tender flesh beneath. This time, his aim was true. The frigid projectile blew a hole the size of Dan’s fist in the man’s stomach, and the villain immediately dropped.

Dan chose not to think about the fact that he’d definitely just killed a man. Probably his second for the day. The fight wasn’t over yet.

He moved grimly forward. His heart pounded in his chest. His blood rushed through his limbs. His hands shook and his breathing was ragged.

He’d never felt more alive.

A blanket of sharp sleet crashed into his position, but Dan vanished before it could do more than buffet him. He reappeared behind the ice projector who had attacked him, putting the man in a headlock and squeezing. The man scrabbled at the arm around his neck, and Dan hissed in pain as cold blossomed along his limbs. He blinked away the ice, then reappeared in front of the man, booting him in the chest hard enough to crack ribs.

Something, instinct or a sixth sense or just plain paranoia, had Dan flickering away immediately after his blow landed. He ducked behind one of the many ice pillars now dotting the front of the field office, and heard something loud crunch into his previous position.

Visibility was almost nonexistent in the fog. He had to be almost on top of a person to see them, and he was relying entirely on his veil to see. He probed outwards, sensing the final golem flailing at the federal agents. It was too slow and unwieldy to catch them, and was slowly being grinded down by Dunkirk’s shouts, without the support from its fellows. He still had no sign of the metal-manipulator who had invaded the field office, but Dan was hopeful that someone inside had taken care of him.

The last two enemies were bunkered down in the cargo trailer. The fog creator and the final ice projector had been tending to Zim, but the latter had taken the time to attack Dan’s last location. Dan’s veil crept across the trailer’s floor, tagging his targets. He appeared between the two, slamming his elbow into the projector’s nose, and cracking his knuckles across the fog creator’s cheek. The latter had a glass jaw, and dropped like a sack of bricks. The former whipped his hands at Dan, and Dan immediately teleported outside the trailer.

He heard a muffled screech of ice and metal colliding, and moments later the villain dove out of the trailer, casting his arms in both directions. Walls of ice sprang up, but Dan casually ripped the one in front of him into t-space. He reached out with his veil, confirming the villain’s location, when a single shot rang out. Dan’s could suddenly feel flesh, and a body thumped onto the floor.

Dan blinked as one of the feds charged out of the fog, jabbing a pistol in his face and bellowing, “Federal agent! Put your hands in the air, vigilante!”

Dan instinctively tagged the weapon with his veil, flicking its bullets into t-space. He took a moment to catch his breath, and seize control of his shaking limbs. Then he pointedly glanced down at himself, his bright orange safety vest, and the volunteer ID slung round his neck on a cheerful yellow lanyard. He looked back up and cocked his eyebrow at the federal agent.

“You fuckin’ kidding me?”