Going for Speed [Moar Quickshot Training]

Training for C-Rank Ablative Aura

Quickshot had run into a spot of trouble. Apparently, the old tenement building he’d been hiding out in was part of the turf of some high-brow gang. High-brow in the sense that they were packing serious heat; probably patroned by some sort of villain with cash to spend or a technological bent. Just what he needed… to piss off the local maniac by breaking his toys and the normies wielding them.

He’d been staying there for a few days while he prowled the city in search of his sister. Apparently, he had a few friends here. They knew him, at least, a little rogues gallery of second rate hacks who regarded him with a mix of fear and respect… mostly, it seemed, because of the partner he’d been teamed with. They hadn’t learned much about either of them, so they were no help as far as rediscovering his past went, but they did manage to fill in a few gaps, and to point him toward a stretch of highway on the Midwest that a speedster bandit had been hitting.

It wasn’t until the third night that they even came in. They used the place to stage heists and the like, he’d come to learn, when they woke him up with a planning session. He’d never been the best sleeper, and the basement corner he’d holed up in carried sound like nobody’s business. He was getting ready to slip out before trouble started when they found some empty take out containers he’d left lying around and got antsy. Antsy in the sense of a sweeping search of the place. He caught a glimpse of the heat they were packing, some kind of modified assault rifles, and lamented how trapped he was. There was a chance, not a slight one, that those things could spit out enough bullets fast enough to hit him if he made a break for it, and his pests seemed a little drugged out. Maybe a performance enhancer from whomever had gifted them with their shiny weapons?

He only had so much time before the found his corner. As quietly as he could, he collected his gear, keeping his bow in hand. Sometimes the best defense was a good offense. He might be able to get arrows through all three of their throats before they could even shout warnings to one another. Might being the operative word. Think, think, think.

Was it possible that the same aura that protected him from the results of his super speed might protect him from speeding bullets? He wasn’t a physicist, but it seemed at least tenuously probable. Probable enough for him to gamble his life?

Well, it was better than sitting here and waiting for them to come shoot him. He readied an arrow, and then blurred.

In the instant that he started moving, he tried to enhance the blazing blue aura that surrounded him, tried to… shunt speed into it, was the best description for it. Part movement, part sheer willpower, similar to what he’d done to master the aura in the first place. It encased him and anything he was holding, and protected against some of the fringe rigors of superspeed. Running through a cloud of debris, for example. If it could protect against small rocks, why not anything else? Especially if it was his speed countering the speed of the bullet.

He let one arrow fly and then knocked another; the first was already through one of the gangster’s throats, just showing a few inches of shaft and fletching as he contorted. He set off a wild arc of fire that alerted the others, who immediately just started spraying bullets everywhere. Great.

As it turned out, his idea worked. Not well enough to save his life, if he’d suffered a direct hit, but fortunately, the one stray bullet that did get him was only glancing. It was like being punched by someone with super strength; he veered wildly, nearly crashing into a wall before he regained control and fled up the stairs and out into the night. When he finally stopped and inspected his bicep, the angriest bruise he’d ever seen stared back at him, with the puckering of some powder burns to boot.

With what he’d learned, it wasn’t too hard to master the application of the aura.

[721/700 words]

Training for C-Rank Focused Defense & Super-Speed

They just never learned, these evil geniuses. Quickshot had picked up a gig that he hardly minded; breaking into the laboratory of a markedly anti mutant scientist named Theodore Lamell and making off with his personal computer. The criminal who hired him was no better than Lamell in the long run, but well… Quickshot had some ideas about that. All in due time, all in due time.

The laboratory was nestled in some backwater woods, incredibly conspicuous with its twenty foot tall wall and turret guns. The compound itself was fairly massive, with a heliport atop and a variety of fixtures jutting out of the steel and concrete that he was hard pressed to even guess at the general purpose of. The gate was a massive steel monstrosity, no way he was getting through that, and from the specs he’d gotten, going over the wall meant contending with two of the automated turrets simultaneously if he positioned himself just right.

He’d stocked his quiver fully, and was carrying a rucksack to stow the loot in. Holding his bow in his left hand, he gave himself a nice lead and then blurred toward the western wall, hitting the sort of speed that allowed him to run straight up things with ease. The motion detectors and automated targeting programs came to life, and soon the turrets were spitting laser bolts from each of their four barrels. They missed by a wide margin, at first, but as they adjusted to his speed the blasts got closer and closer and then too close for comfort. He hit the top of the wall, then immediately changed direction and started running toward one of the turrets.

He’d timed it just right; he was at the Buick sized gun before it could get off another shot, and he quickly darted around behind it and latched on. He was no technical wiz, but generally, wires meant power, and power meant lasers. Using his bow, he quickly severed every conduit he could find in a blur of motion, and the turret went dead.

He took off again, just in time. The other turret opened up, and the one he’d been clinging to exploded in a rain of fire and shrapnel. He outran the cloud, ducking down the side of the wall briefly and then simply running on it. He touched down on the ground, and with his knowledge of where the cables were, loosed three arrows in swift succession. The heads cut through the wiring, and the only other gun in range was suddenly powered down. So far, so good.

He was in for a fight no matter what. The perimeter defenses had been activated, and so now the interior ones would awaken as well. Sure enough, holes in the ground began opening up, and some dozen killbots began rising up out of them. They weren’t particularly human; they relied on two wheels to move, with long triangular bodies, and a rectangular head with red sensors. He’d put arrows through two such sensors before the squad of ‘bots could even roll out, cutting his opposition by a full sixth.

That was about all he had time to do before he was forced into defense. He took off at a run as numerous apertures opened on the remaining ten robots, all surely ready to launch something deadly at him. Small, rapidly rotating circular blades, it would turn out. With his freakishly fast perception, he didn’t have much trouble noting the teeth as the tore through the air. Fast, but not fast enough.

Or maybe not. The air was suddenly full of whirring blades, and the robots didn’t much seem to care if they struck one another. Their shells were hard enough that the blades just careened off with a very angry screetch, scoring metal but doing nothing at all to stop the onslaught.

He used his bow to deflect a few, running an erratic circle around the group of machines, weaving through them. None of them could actually target him for a hit at his cruise speed, but the longer this went on, the more chance there was of a random misfire catching him off guard. He needed to change up his tactics, or he was going to get bled to death by the robots on the back of sheer number of projectiles.

He decided to stand his ground. The buzzsaws weren’t all that fast, and the robots fired at a very predictable rate. If he put everything he had into it, this might just work. Bringing his bow to bear, holding it with both hands for better control, he burst into motion.

His feet remained fixed. He’d taken up position more or less in the dead center of the nest of hornets. The metaphor was even more appropriate due to the perpetual buzzing created by the weapons of his artificially intelligent enemies. He didn’t stop moving though, not for a fraction of a second. He was ducking, twisting, parrying, pinioning… dozens, and then hundreds of the little circular death saws went whizzing past him, or wound up deflected harmlessly to the ground. It looked like someone had tipped over an entire shelving unit at a home improvement store. There were blades everywhere, piled up around him.

Sweating and breathing hard, he continued. He’d developed a sort of rhythm, which was fine against machines. Their programming didn’t seem capable of adjusting to him like the turrets, so after perhaps a minute of fending, he was actually having a pretty easy time of swatting the things out of the air. With a steady pace to go at, he could actually relax some and conserve his stamina, and after another two minutes of blocking and dodging, the first of the machines ran out of ammo. The others followed quickly, and the bulk of the threat they posed had passed. Four eight foot long metallic tendrils appeared from new apertures, but they weren’t nearly so dangerous as the buzzing blades had been.

He dismantled the robots one at a time, wrecking their sensors with arrows or simply breaking them down with his bows. Only one managed to score a hit from behind that threw Quickshot to his knees, but other than that, he emerged unscathed.

The armed guards inside the compound proved similarly unchallenging. For all his technological superiority, Lamell hadn’t seen fit to equip them with anything more formidable than standard Berettas. They might have had access to more, but they didn’t have time to go for supplies before the speedster had handily disabled all of them. The first pair came running out the doors to meet him, and wound up getting thwacked on the back of their heads in rapid succession, dropping them unmoving to the ground. Four had formed up in the interior choke point, but Quickshot was good at abusing cover. He blurred back and forth, firing off arrows to pick off each guard one by one, and then sped down the corridor.

The approach to the lab was littered with pressure plate triggered explosives, but those Quickshot didn’t even have to worry about. He just ran fast enough that he didn’t even trigger them, then skidded to a stop and marched into the lab.

Regrettably, Lamell wasn’t there. Quickshot wasn’t much for cold-blooded murder, but the man was an enemy to his entire race. He tortured mutants, tested them, poked and prodded to learn their secrets, and then built machines designed to capture or destroy more based on what he’d learned. He would have put an arrow through the man’s heart in less than a heartbeat. He’d have to settle for stealing his secrets for a powerful enemy, though, which might prove to be effectively the same thing for all he cared.

He found the computer easily enough. He wasn’t tech savvy enough to download the contents, or whatever, so he just unplugged everything and stashed the tower in his rucksack. Just as he was preparing to leave, he noticed a bay of gas lines tied to Bunsen burners, and grinned.

He turned on all the gas lines in a blur, and found some old school matches in a desk. On his way out of the corridor, he quickly struck one and flung it behind him. Racing fire out of the hall made for a decidedly cool exit, and with any luck, he’d just wrecked an awful lot of mutant killing stuff.

Now all that was left was to escape and get paid.

[1416/1400 words]

Training for C-Rank One Inch Punch

This was bad. Really really bad. Quickshot had plenty of time recollect exactly how he’d wound up bruised, beaten, and tied to a chair when his captor left between beatings, presumably to eat, get some rest. Things that Quickshot would have loved to indulge in, were he not tied to a fucking chair.

He’d been stupid. Really, really stupid. He knew that Spectre was in the city, and hated him. He just didn’t know precisely why, on the latter point. The masked hero was formidable by reputation, and Quickshot had planned to steer clear, to get out of Houston as quickly as he could before the man could get on his trail.

But then he’d been fool enough to linger when he heard there was another speedster in town. It turned out to be a he, and an arrogant prick at that. The Streak, or something similar, he called himself. A red herring on his quest, and sticking around long enough to investigate him had given Spectre all the time he needed to find him.

He got him in the motel room. Cornered and surprised, Quickshot hadn’t had a chance against the energy sapping tactics of the hero. He was unconscious, and when he woke up, he was bound someplace dark and damp, with a black, faceless mask staring at him.

“Where. Is. He?” The Spectre’s voice was gravelly, probably intimidating to most. In lieu of responding, Quickshot dazedly tested the strength of his bonds, and got a solid right hook to the jaw for his effort. The chair rocked, but didn’t tip, and The Spectre repeated his question. “Where. Is. He?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he mumbled through the pain. “I-“

He cut out speaking when suddenly, a boot clad foot was pressing down on his crotch. Not actually harming him, yet, but the threat was obvious enough. “I’m not interested in lies, Quickshot. You were a fool to ally yourself with the likes of him, but if you tell me where he is, you’ll survive this encounter.”

Now wasn’t the time to make a smug remark about the floral way the hero spoke. “I’m not lying. I don’t remember anything earlier than-“

This time, the chair toppled. The roundhouse kick to the side of his head had him seeing all sorts of stars, clovers and blue moons too. He hit the ground with a grunt, and laid still until the Spectre hauled him back up.

“You can… hit me all you… want.” The archer was laboring to speak. “My story isn’t going to change. I don’t remember anything past a few months ago. I woke up, and… that’s all.”

The words finally seemed to sink in. Either that, or the Spectre was as given to dramatic pauses as he was prosey speeches. “I suppose he no longer had a use for you. Well, I do. You might know more than you think, and I have a friend who might be able to help sort that out…”

That was when the beating really started. Quickshot had never quite been worked over like this before, at least not that he could remember. Spectre was a real pro, just good enough to really put the hurt on him without actually knocking him out. When it was finally over, he was bleeding and bruised, his right eye swollen shut, most of his fingers broken.

The beating proved to be the key to his escape. Spectre was no slouch at tying knots; probably a boyscout, back in his childhood, no doubt. Quickshot wasn’t nearly strong enough to loosen the bonds, but Spectre was, and he’d exerted considerable force in punishing the speedster. Sure enough, when he tested the ropes, they were considerably looser than they’d been when he’d woken up.

Especially after the beating, he still didn’t have the strength to free himself. It was a few minutes of self-loathing before he realized that he did have the speed. He could move fast enough to exert much more force than his muscles were capable of, and his aura should keep him from hurting himself too much in the process.

Rapidly, he began to thrash, using every micron of the few inches of slack he had earned here and there from being tossed around like a ragdoll by the Spectre. He had a hard time exerting his full speed, at force, and the pressure of his captor returning at any moment was stifling, but within a few moments he’d battered the ropes apart, fraying them strand by strand until they gave way. He didn’t bother with anything but escape. He might have gotten the Spectre in a fair fight, but he was in pretty sad shape at the moment…

[788/700 words]