What follows was one such excercise. This will very likely never show up in one of the actual Lash Logs, but it was fun to write and it helped me determine how I felt about Lash. In this case, I learned that I found Lash's disregard for the lives of the G.P.F. Agents very distasteful and so I've resolved to NOT have his character progress in that direction - or at least not for sometime or some major story-related reason.
As you read, consider taking your characters, as an excercise, into unfamiliar territory. Would you do this? Do you think this would be profitable? Why or why not?
I would be honored by your responses.
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A cold
barrel jammed into my eye socket, jarring me from sleep—it was not the best way
to wake up.
“Get up,
you stinkin’ scab! GET. UP.” The last two words were punctuated by a steel-toed
boot playing hopscotch on my ribs. Broken asphalt—my bed—dug into my back. It
was weird, sleeping under the skeletons of the ruined overpasses of two
once-great but now ancient interstates: 565 and 559. It was like lying on the picked-clean
bones of commerce and prosperity.
Another
kick, this one followed by a harsh curse.
Like most
sane people, I really don’t like being awoken. I’m really not partial to being
awoken by a gun barrel in my eye and a boot in the ribs. I’d have to say I
kinda hate it, actually. I hate it almost as much as I hate cursing. It’s just
so very…unimaginative and unnecessary.
“Get a
thesaurus, you clod.” I growled.
The
GPF—Government Protection Force—agent cocked his masked and goggled head like a
confused mutt. “Huh?”
My rage
boiled out of me like a molten gout of pure inferno, and I blasted the guy
thirty feet straight up into the air. He didn’t even have time to pull the
trigger or even make a sound before he slammed into the underside of the
overpass. My power makes no noise, but I’m pretty sure that the tree-trunk
pillar of blazing energy caught a few eyes, though. The panicked screams began
erupting around me like popcorn:
“What in
the-?”
“Max? What
happened to Max?”
“Help! Oh
God, somebody help us!”
“We’ve got
a CODE BLACK on our hands! I repeat:
CODE BLACK! We have a rogue Super here! Send backup!”
I rolled to
my feet, taking in the scene. Standard issue GPF Team: five guys, only one with
any semblance of training or experience. I knew if I did not take him out
first, I was done for…I’ve handled GPF teams before and, unlike most, lived to
tell the tale. These guys had already called for backup, though; I didn’t know
if I could handle an entire Squad on my own. They’d be here soon. I glanced at the
cloud-clotted skies; it was still early, and that might work to my favor.
I prayed
the bulk of the GPF’ers were still sipping their morning joe and pulling on
their fancy black body armor while they chatted about last night’s GALnet
comedies—or whatever the heck these guys did in the morning.
“Stand
DOWN! I repeat, Stand DOWN!” One of the GPF agents—the shortest of the
bunch—had his rifle trained on me. There was only a little jiggle in the pitch-black
death hole at the end of the weapon, so I figured that this guy had at least
fired one before. Most of the GPF’ers were little more than gangbangers,
thieves, or thugs that’d been conscripted. Times were really tough, and
ironically, sometimes not even crime paid. Unless you worked for the corrupt
government, I guess.
I raised my
hands, adding a little jiggle of my own to them. “Oh…oh…ok! I…I give up!
P…please don’t hurt me! It was an accident! I don’t know what happened…”
The broken pavement
grated underfoot as the Lead GPF Agent took a cautious step closer. The black
tactical mask undulated where his jaw should have been. I assumed he was keying
his mouth-mic. “Everyone. Fan out into a DELTA pattern, keyed on me. Subject is
surrendering.”
I grinned,
chuckling. I pantomimed the GPF logo: ubiquitous in presence and insidious in
nature. “We’re the GPF and we’re here to help!” I tried my best to layer in as
much ironic displeasure as possible.
“Excuse
me?” The Lead Agent asked. His voice was laced: half confusion, half fear.
Raw,
directed hatred blasted from my hands and slammed into the Lead Agent like a
Mac truck.
Bones
popped and crackled like sticks on a fire, and the Agent’s scream squalled into
the radios of his team. I caught sight of one of them as he jerked in
response—his leader’s death cries likely piercing his eardrums. I knew what was
coming next and broke into a dead run for some cover; luckily there were plenty
of old wrecks, rusted barrels, and the general flotsam of a civilization in
decay scattered nearby.
Chips of
pavement, stone, and asphalt began flying like a caustic cloud as the sounds of
rifle-fire exploded all around me. I tried to blink the stinging dust from my
eyes while I tried desperately to avoid an even more stinging slug of lead. They
had the high ground, and I was a proverbial fish in a proverbial barrel. I was
trapped, and they had reinforcements coming in—this was really shaping up to be
a bad morning.
Everything
around me was as slick as snot; it had rained most of the night, and it was
still very early. What little wan sunlight that might soon elect to bathe
Huntsvegas for the day had not yet risen. I hit a patch of slime, or barf, or
who knows what, and my slick-bottomed, worn-out boots did little to provide
traction. I went down in a tumble, my ankle twisting. Pain gleefully ripped a jagged
path into my calf from the base of my foot, and I stifled a scream.
Ricochets
resounded from the metal and concrete maze around me like a chaotic symphony.
Beneath those sounds of impatient, hungry death, I could make out the panicked
screams of the remaining members of the GPF team. I knew I had to keep them
off-balance so I could make a run for it…my only hope was their impatience,
their panic, their fear.
I channeled
my own fear, mixing it with the hot red swirls of anger and frustration and
tossing in a dash of guilt for the two men I’d already ended this morning. I
popped up from my hidey-hole and directed four quick blasts in random directions.
I didn’t even see what they hit—if, in fact, they hit anything—and then
ran-hobbled towards the interstate on-ramp. I ducked and dodged amid ragged weeds
and rusted wrecks that had been there for what looked like eons.
Every step
made me want to scream bloody murder. It felt like someone was jabbing a
serrated ice pick into my leg just below the calf. A bullet zinged off a
burnt-out husk of a jeep beside me. I whipped around and flung my arms in two
massive arcs, peppering the entire area before me with blasts forged from my raw
will and anger. I heard a cry from what sounded like a woman, and then saw one
of the GPF Agents topple over the interstate railing. I spun and was able to
gain a few steps before hearing the sickening crunch.
I kept
running.
The top of
the on-ramp loomed before me: stark, open and almost devoid of cover. Sweat
dripped in my eyes, and my breath came in ever-slowing pulls. I prayed that I
had enough juice left. I mentally wrapped a protective shield of raw emotion
over my back, envisioning a picture of a turtle I’d seen in one of Vox’s books.
Bullets pinged off my shielded back, and I shuddered with each blow, keenly
felt but thankfully harmless. I briefly entertained the thought that I just
might make it out of this mess.
That was
when the hovercraft showed up.
Titanic
guns blazed on the craft’s starboard side, and the road in front of me was
gnawed to smoking craters and hunks of molten slag. Spotlights pierced the
pre-dawn light and crisscrossed one another, pinpointing my location.
A sky god’s
voice pierced the gloom and fog. It was clam and patient, like it had all the
time in the world. Like it controlled all the pieces of the puzzle—and knew it.
“STOP. SURRENDER. NOW. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE MANDATORY RELOCATION ACT.
YOU ARE AN UNREGISTERED SUPER. WE HAVE BEEN AUTHORIZED TO USE DEADLY FORCE.”
I glanced
around, blowing out my breath in a sigh. While there was some cover around—not
much, mind you, but some—none of it was going to do me any good against those massive
lead-throwing monstrosities. I guess in retrospect, this was not the best spot
for a hide-out; a place with some handy escape routes might have been better. Oh
well, what did I expect anyway? This whole superhero thing was still pretty new
to me. I ran my hands through my grey, spiky hair and slowly, raised them over
my head.
“I surrender.”
---
Copyright (c) 2013 Ken Naga
