by Erin Halfelven

3.7 Patrol

I sensed Kevin, or Skarab, arriving before he took out the hovering fat dude with a long, low leap. The meaty impact sounded like it hurt the would-be jewel thief. Good, I thought.

"Not nice to stomp on people, jerkface," Kevin bantered as they careened down the hallway. Kevin kept the bad guy under him while they bounced a few times.

I rolled over and jumped to my feet, noticing as I did so that I actually was sore where the bozo had landed on me. I hadn't felt it in the middle of the fight.

My dealie-bobbers warned me just before Blutarsky's (he really did look a bit like John Belushi) partner attacked. Or partners.

There were four of them, lean and tall where Bluto was pudgy and short. They surrounded me, punching and kicking with meta-swiftness and power. They looked alike, but I didn't notice that immediately. What I mostly noticed was that about half of their blows were landing, and they did hurt. One caught me on the jaw, and I really did see stars for a moment.

I jumped out of the middle of the fight; they might be quick and strong, but they couldn't jump like I could. I took a moment to kick one of them in the head as I leaped past. Another of them yelled something. "Howie! Get us out of here!"

I'd hardly landed before they surrounded me again. I glanced over at where Kevin-Skarab was trying to shove the fatter guy into a recycling bin. "No hitting my sister!" Kevin was saying. "You're a bad sleazoid! Bad thug! No cookies!" He delivered a kick to the ass and seemed to be enjoying himself.

Sister? We would have to have a talk about that, but I had my hands full. Four guys, each of whom seemed to be about four times as strong as any normal person, were all trying to punch out my lights simultaneously. Of course, according to Gumpy, I was maybe ten times as strong as I looked which should give me an edge against any one of these guys but four of them did make it a contest.

And where was Gumpy? Wasn't he going to join this fight? I didn't have time to look for him and scarcely time to think about it. The four guys co-ordinated their attacks like they were thinking with one brain and that gave them another edge. It was like fighting a double octopus.

I shook off another thump to the side of my head and flung one of my attackers out of action, up against a wall. The sight of his legs upside down and akimbo caused me to twig to something. These guys were NOT all alike; they had on different colored socks. Did that mean anything?

"What the heck?" I heard Kevin say. "Where did he go?" I glanced over that way, Bluto, or Howie, or whatever his name was, had disappeared from his semi-immersion in the recycling container. I glanced up and saw him near the thirty-foot high ceiling, coming down feet-first at Kevin's head.

"Skarab!" I shouted and Kevin dodged sideways, towards me, warned by my shout and the feeling I sent through our antennae. I leaped out of the circle of my attackers again, aiming up at the human missile plummeting down at Kevin.

Just like that, we swapped foes. Bluto couldn't change his attack quickly enough to account for me hitting him in the side, and Kevin went into the group of identicals like a blue-and-gold bowling ball picking up a six-seven-nine-ten split. Six flew into seven, tangling them up, and Kevin's charge carried himself and the nine-ten pair out the window of the mall onto the grassy verge around the parking lot.

More collateral damage, I thought, but I couldn't worry about that at the moment. Slugging Fatboy didn't seem to do much; he had something like telekinetic armor, deflecting my punches. And he could add his TK to his own punches, giving me a pretty good pounding.

"Pete!" he shouted. "Pick-a-back!"

One of the multiple guys made a noise like a dog growling, then turned and ran down the middle of the corridor. "11-28 Check Red!" he yelled as he dodged through bystanders scrambling to get out of his way. One guy didn't dodge. Unfortunately for "Pete", that guy was Gumpy.

Still in civilian clothes, Gumpy didn't move when Pete ran full-tilt right into him. A hand the size of a first basemen's mitt came up and grabbed Pete by the neck.

My dance partner had pulled his disappearing act again and I looked around wildly, trying to spot him. There he was, coming down from the ceiling, aiming at Gumpy this time.

I felt my wings unfurl as I leaped into the air, and I flew like an arrow toward Bluto-Howie; fists clenched in front of me to make a spear point. I didn't even think about it; I just flew. The wings made a whirring noise, like a scale model helicopter—or a giant bug. I concentrated on flying straight at Bluto and trying not to laugh because—I was flying!

Gumpy saw that he was Howie's chosen target, so he picked up Pete by the neck and used him as a shield. Pete made strangling noises, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He might be four times as strong as a normal person but even in mufti, my Gumpy probably rated up around 20 times manstrong. Pete was helpless and I was impressed.

I should say, a Pete, as the other three multiples broke toward Gumpy with Kevin in hot pursuit.

I speared Howie in the side with my fists, and he said, "Oof!" like how much it hurt surprised him. He also swerved sideways, landing on his feet behind Gumpy.

I gained some altitude, intending to kick Howie as I flew past. Gumpy spun around, still holding his Pete like a shield while the lanky bast-, uh bad guy, braced himself with his feet against Gumpy's chest. Kevin overtook the trailing extra Petes and slammed one into the tiles with an elbow smash.

Howie and Gumpy's captive Pete clasped hands; Howie muttered something that sounded like, "Rope-a-dope!" and they both disappeared, followed almost immediately by the disappearance of the extra multiples.

While Kevin and I were staring around, expecting another attack from somewhere, Gumpy pulled his own disappearing act, melting into the crowd–pretty remarkable for a white-haired giant.

I landed beside Kevin-Skarab, and grinned at him. He grinned back. I said, "I can fly!" just as he said, "You can fly!"

I looked around to see about fifty phone lenses pointed at us. I waved and kept grinning. The noise of the crowd resolved into a few discernible voices. The prevalent question seemed to be, "Who are you guys?" though there were murmurs of – "Wow!" – "New metas!" – "She's hot! – "He's hot!" and a few "F—ing comet trash!"

Yes, folks, just like in that series of movies with Patrick Stewart, there are people who hate all metas.

Pressure from the back of the crowd was pushing the forward members closer to us. Someone reached for one of my wings. "Let's get out of here," I said to Kevin.

"Out the broken window," he agreed. I flew ahead and he followed me. We went out across the south parking lot toward the medical buildings there and beyond them to the trees concealing the entrance to Dreadnaught's underground turnpike; Kevin hopping like some gigantic blue-and-gold flea all the way.

I laughed. I had to laugh. I swooped, I dove, I climbed high and did an Immelman like I had seen in some old movie. "I can fly! I can fly! I can fly!" I squealed. I could hear Kevin laughing as he bounced over parked cars and 40-foot tall palm trees.

The Behemoth came roaring out of hiding and screeched to a halt near the exit to the parking lot. Kevin and I changed our courses to intercept it, and Gumpy came barreling out of somewhere to reach the car before we did. The front doors opened for us, and we got inside quickly, my wings folding up and disappearing as I landed.

Gumpy slid behind the wheel, and the doors closed as Kevin settled beside me. "You can summon this thing? How'd you do that, Unk?"

"Yes. No," said Gumpy. "Howie Dudat and Pete Henri Peet, the Bruise Brothers."

"Is that who those guys were?" I asked.

Behemoth accelerated to cruising speed, we took the underpass, hooked the offramp and merged into traffic on the 22, heading east. Gumpy still hadn't touched the wheel.

"They usually operate out of Seattle, mercenary bad guys," said Gumpy. "Smash-and-grab robberies they do just for fun and beer money."

"I had fun," said Kevin. "But they got away."

"Howie can teleport short distances," said Gumpy. "Their usual M.O. is to go up to the roof and then 'port somewhere nearby where they can hide."

"We should look for them!" said Kevin, excited by the idea of continuing the fight.

Gumpy shook his head. "Let the cops or some other supers take them on. You guys are still not registered, and you could get in trouble." He winced. "For one thing, you don't have meta-insurance for any damage you cause."

"Is that why you didn't suit up?" Kevin asked.

"No, I just…." He stopped talking for a moment. Behemoth, still in self-drive, took the ramp onto I5. "Let's keep it to only one Skarab on scene for now, okay?" said Gumpy.

Kevin nodded and so did I, as if I had any say in it.

But Gumpy was grinning at me. "You flew! On your first patrol, you flew. Good job." He widened the grin to include Kevin. "You both did good; those guys are a bit out of your league but you made them retreat."

Kevin laughed out loud. "How about that, sis? We did good!"

I laughed too, but I asked. "What's this sister stuff? You called me your sister to that Howie muffin-top, too."

"Well, you didn't want me to claim you were my girlfriend, did you?" he asked.

I slugged him. Not hard, sitting in the center seat, I didn't have the leverage to hit very hard, so I struck with my other hand for his ribs and tickled him, too. He laughed like a loon and tried to capture both of my hands in one of his. "Stop! Don't! Unk, help! She's tickling me!" he complained, still laughing.

I realized something. Kevin was not going to hit back while I was Darla, or rather, Damselfly. I kept tickling him. I said, "This is what sisters do!" I knew because Tanya used to do it to me.