Chapter 11: Martial Law

I could have protested, but that wouldn’t have accomplished anything, and I would likely have just looked like a whiny, complaining little bitch, and that wouldn’t’ve gotten me anywhere. Instead, I simply stood and glowered a bit as all the other people from upstairs drifted down, and formed a loose circle of ten around me. I turned my gaze back to Javier, who looked at me with a lazy, smug expression on his face.

“So, you want me to take them all out and leave you defenseless, huh?” I asked him.

He chuckled. “So cocky!” He drawled a bit, “but I think my boys can handle you.”

“Suit yourself,” I tossed back at him, and then turned my attention to Tony. “Jump in, and I’ll kill you first, after I finish dealing with these yahoos,” I warned him.

“Yahoos?” The cocky “young Benjamin Bratt” lookalike snarked; I turned to look at him next, “Old man, I don’t even need any help from my boys; I’ll take you out by my damned self!”

I offered up a feral grin. “I guess I’m gonna hurt you first,” I said with dark amusement.

He took a step towards me, but I didn’t wait for him to get to where I was; I launched myself at him, using a fraction of my abilities to actually spring towards him and close the distance between us. I ‘speared’ him, taking him down to the ground, hard and fast, and then rolled over him, coming back up onto my feet just behind him, and D-man standing next to him. D-man had only just turned around then, and for a split second of a split second, I felt bad for what I was about to do to the young man, but then I ‘remembered’ that he— and the rest of his cohorts— were planning to put a hurting on me, and I stopped feeling bad; with no fancy moves or real footwork, I kicked out to the side of his knee with the instep of my foot, and even without any of my new Power, I snapped his rather substantial knee very much out of place; the knee pretty much collapsed, and D-man fell ponderously to the floor, howling in pain.

That gave a few of the closer gang members a moment of pause. Mister “I’ll take you out by my damned self” looked a little indisposed, groaning heavily, and rolling around on the floor for the moment. I looked back up at the remaining folks; the young ladies were watching, but they didn’t really look like they wanted to actually jump in, not now anyway; I suspected that they would probably get a few kicks and licks in, if I had been down on the ground being beaten by everyone else, but my show of strength might have given them a second thought.

The guys still standing all took a quick look towards Javier.

“What are you guys standing there for?” He growled at them, “Look- first one to take him down and keep him down gets a hundred dollars.”

I scoffed. “Shit- is that all?” I looked at all of them. “I’ll do it better; first one to take me down, I’ll give you a thousand!” It was an off-the-cuff remark, but I realized that I could use it to my advantage; it would point out that I really was the badass they would end up thinking I was, and it would point out that I was a man of my word, one way or another. It also had the potential to start undermining the boss man, to make him look bad— like someone who wasn’t really willing to take care of his ‘troops’— which could only help me, long-term.

Three of the remaining six thought that they could rush me, and I shifted around to keep them getting in their own way; when I had a clear shot at one of them, I rushed forward and kicked straight into the knee of the closest one, of the leg he was currently putting all of his weight upon; just like with his buddy D-man, the entire leg collapsed under him, and he went down, howling, and rolling into the way of his other two buddies who tripped over him. One, I helped to the floor as he stumbled past by driving my elbow into the back of his head, hard, aiding gravity in his fall. The other I pushed at him as he fell towards me, stopping his fall enough to momentarily keep him upright, and then blasted him with an uppercut that made his bottom jaw snap hard enough into the top part to break a tooth. I followed that with a backhanded dropped fist— using the same arm— across the bridge of his nose, breaking it with an audible crunch. I then kicked his feet out from under his still not very stable standing position, sending him just about face first into the floor as I dodged to the side of him.

The last three— which included Javier’s two ‘lieutenants’— seemed to have their heads about them, as they seemed to be trying to position themselves around me to make it so that two of them would be out of my direct line of sight at any particular time. That might have worked, if I were cooperating. Krav Maga didn’t ask for cooperation, though.

I ran towards the one facing me, and he dropped down into a lower crouch, probably thinking that I would do to him what I’d done to the first one; instead, I leapt up into the air as I ran at him, driving my knees into his face in his crouched position, my momentum carrying him over onto his back, and me almost driving his head into the ground; at the last moment, I pushed off of him, and tucked and rolled back onto my feet, spinning around to face the other two.

One of them decided that he didn’t want to fight, and pulled a gun from behind him.

I stiffened immediately, glaring at him, as I slowly came up to a standing position. A smug smile drifted onto the gun-wielder’s face, behind the sunglasses he wore, as he drifted a bit closer to me.

“Pull that trigger, and one of you gets shot, and the other will be deep-throating the barrel,” I growled at the pair.

“My boys too much for you to handle?” Javier decided to chime in, looking smugly at me.

“Not at all,” I replied, my voice sounding a lot more calm and sedate than I felt or looked. “But if you don’t want them dead, I suggest you advise them not to bring guns to a fist fight unless they want to be buried with them.”

Javier laughed at my words. “You ain’t Superman, puta,” he grinned. “Go ahead and shoot him, Carlos,” he continued, giving his lieutenant— Carlos— a green light to pull the trigger.

But Carlos had drifted just a bit too close to me, and as he lined up the gun to fire, I shifted, both closer to him, and just outside of his line of fire. He managed to pull the trigger before I could reach out and grab his gun hand, but if the bullet actually hit me, I couldn’t tell.

In a move that surprised even me, I managed to do just what Hollywood showed all the time that real life experience said was all but impossible; I managed to twist the gun so that the barrel ended up facing in his direction, while his thumb ended up caught in the trigger guard. Reflexively, I suppose, he pulled/pushed the trigger.

Because the barrel wasn’t aimed at his head, all he got was likely the wizz of the barrel as the bullet raced past his ears; he flinched, and hit the trigger again, this time, managing to graze his buddy, the other only remaining gang member standing, across his temple as it shot past him. He dropped to the floor, holding his head and screaming about having been shot, blood beginning to ooze, and then trickle steadily from where his hand was pressed against. I made good on my threat, though, using a bit of my strength to overpower Carlos and shove the gun barrel into his mouth.

His eyes lit up in panic.

“Now, don’t hit the trig—” I tried to warn him, but he gave a jerk of his hand, trying to push the gun out of his mouth, away from him, and once again hit the trigger.

Thankfully, there was no matter splatter in my direction, as Carlos slowly pitched backwards and then hit the floor with a disgustingly final sounding meaty thump, but Javier looked pissed off and horrified.

“What the fuck??” He squealed. His response told me all I needed to really know about him; he was a big fish, in a very small pond, and wasn’t someone who had yet seen what real violence was about. To be honest, neither had I, but I knew better than to think that just because I had something resembling power— or actual Power, in my case specifically— that violence and destruction would never touch me. This kid— even if he were my age, or even close to my age, he was still a kid— had never been tested like this before.

I glanced at Tony, who had apparently decided to watch and see what would happen to me; his expression registered amazement, until he saw me looking at him, and then he gave me a more speculative look. I filed that away in my head for later, and turned back towards Javier.

“I tried to tell him not to hit the trigger,” I offered, still more calmly than I felt. I wasn’t bothered that he was dead, I wasn’t bothered that I had a part in his death, and I wasn’t bothered that he— formerly known as Carlos— had a hole in his head that I could almost stick my hand inside of. What bothered me was that it was so ... chaotic, so uncontrolled, so nearly random. Dying as a result of a fluke accident. But I shook it off for the moment.