The Fugitive: Part II
Easy broke the grip on his throat almost casually, instantly reversing in midair. Looking around, though, he frowned, and refrained from choking his opponent. The two of them were suspended hundreds of feet in the air, the lights of the forum barely more than tiny specks down below. Knocking Tirin out would be a bad idea right now.
"Yeah." Tirin smirked, seeing where Easy was looking. "Checkmate." And like that, he put them into free fall. The wind screamed past their ears as the speed picked up, and Easy turned around to see Tirin was aiming to smash him into a parking lot...
"YOU KNOW.." Easy had to shout, to make himself heard. The fedora had long since disappeared from the other man's head.
"YOU USE THAT WORD..." As they started approaching the rooftops, Easy shifted holds and executed a takedown, moving to pin Tirin's arms together from behind. Tirin just laughed, knowing full well that he could rotate the both of them whenever he cared to anyway.
"A LOT MORE THAN YOU REALLY SHOULD!" Hoping desperately for this to actually work, Easy suddenly planted both feet on the small of Tirin's back, and then vaulted off of it with all his might, aiming for the warehouse nearby. Surprised by the sudden boost in speed, Tirin didn't manage to decelerate in time, as planned, and ended up breaking several bones on impact, while Easy crashed through the roof of the NFTea warehouse. Growling, Tirin gave himself a few seconds to heal, and then burst in through the building's wall. The inside was mostly occupied by empty space and scattered rubble, along with a few crates here and there. The thick-limbed figure of an angry Polack rose from the ruins of one of them.
"So, the good news is," he grunted, throwing aside some debris, "the roof and these crates of limes pretty much broke my fall." He advanced on Tirin, stepping into the moonlight. The fires of fury were burning in his eyes, but his voice sounded eerily calm .
"The bad news is, I fucking hate limes. Now I'm really pissed off." He took a step forward, and Tirin froze time.
There was no more holding back, no more concern for teaching lessons or exacting some appropriate punishment. As much as he'd used his powers today, optimistically, he had a minute or so. Probably less. In that time, he had to eliminate the threat with everything at his disposal. As long as he didn't do anything he couldn't undo later, it would all be fine.
In fact, the exertion of swinging the two-by four over and over and over again meant that he had to end the timestop less than fifty seconds later. He breathed a sigh of relief as the horrifically battered man in front of him collapsed and fell to his broken knees, and without making a sound, toppled over face down, and was still. Finally. Tirin threw away the bloody piece of oak and turned to go home. Time to get some sleep. He'd come back and fix the guy up tomorrow. Maybe. If he felt like it.
"Hey." A hand closed around his ankle. "Don't get so far away from me." Tirin groaned with exasperation. It sounded menacing as hell, he had to admit, but people should know when they're beaten. Fuckin' Polacks.
"Y'know," he said aloud, turning to look at Easy, sprawled on the floor and reaching out to him, broken legs trailing behind uselessly. "I was trying to be merciful. But, if you don't cut this shit out..."
"Merciful?" Easy laughed, spraying blood all over the floor in front of him. "Heh. Hurts t'laugh. Tell me 'bout it. I could'a caved your skull in anytime. In fact..." He pulled on Tirin's ankle, dragging himself forward to put his other arm into striking distance, "still could. C'n you fix that with your time bullshit, Newfie? Huh?"
"Yes." Tirin answered solemnly. "Whenever I die with my time powers active, I'll end up reverting automatically. Takes more time if the pieces are more spread out, but, still." He shrugged. "A nuclear goddamn explosion couldn't kill me. Let alone you. Maybe one day you'll get some common fuckin' sense and learn some manners, but you're not powerful enough to show me mercy. And right now," the light enveloped his eyes, and his hair began to rise and wave about, as if by some unknown wind, "I'm startin' to get too pissed off to show you any. Let. Go of my leg."
"Can't tell me how to live my life."
"That's literally exactly what I just did." With the last of his power, Tirin created a portal on the floor beneath them, watching Easy's eyes widen in surprise as he fell through. Only his grasp on Tirin's ankle now connected him to the world, while Tirin for his part floated smoothly above the hole, looking down at him within.
"That's a portal to Interspace" he explained calmly. "Outside dimensions. That's how I explain it to dumbass Mongoloids like you, anyway. I can go in and out whenever I want, but Interspace is infinite. Finding someone like you in there, and getting him out, would take more power than even I've ever got. You fall in there, you won't just be dead. You'll be deleted. Understand?"
Easy ground his teeth angrily, and said nothing.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'," Tirin smirked. "Now, apologize, admit that you're a stupid, Czech faggot, and give me your word that you'll quit trying to fight me, and I'll pull you back out. And hurry up with it, or I'll just close the damn portal around your arm. That's the last bit of mercy I've got."
Easy just glared at him, silent.
"No? Might wanna think real hard on this. It's the only way you're getting out of there, I promise you." There was a gleam in Tirin's eye. "And I'm no liar."
"Y'know..." Easy said carefully, as if thinking it over. "Yes?" Tirin encouraged him, mockingly.
"Y'know, you were right, in a way. I'm really not powerful enough to have mercy on you. I can see that now." Tirin rolled his eyes in response. "Yes, obviously. Now, are you gon-"
"But not for the reasons you think."
"Yeah, okay, so are you gonna-" Tirin stopped mid-sentence, and frowned. "Wait, what's this now?"
"What I'm saying is, Tirin, you should really know your place." Easy grinned bitterly and mirthlessly, showing a wide arrangement of red-stained teeth. "Because in a situation like this, when the chips are down, when you've pushed it to the edge and there's no going back... you're really not powerful enough to have mercy on me, either."
Tirin stared, trying to work out what he meant, when Easy pulled himself up with the one hand, and punched clear through his abdomen with the other. Overwhelming pain flooded his mind and paralyzed his actions as Easy dug around beneath his ribs, grabbed hold of something, and ripped it right out.
He saw Easy fall down into the void, still smiling, a handful of blood and guts in one hand. An extended middle finger on the other. He saw the portal close, and he collapsed to the ground, vision starting to fade. He saw Stealthy suddenly step out of a nearby shadow, and hold one hand up to an ear.
"Jackpot. Head to my location for package collection, and get the Committee together. We're moving to Phase Two."
And then darkness.
"Ah, so you do remember" Stealthy noted, seeing Tirin's reaction. "Good. I didn't think you'd actually believe it if I told you. Fun fact: we still can't figure out how to clone you, so we had to give you Easy's liver. How's that for irony? Y'know, since he took yours. No one else's could have handled the job." He chuckled. "And then, since it worked, and we already had the equipment all set up for it, we just grew Easy parts for all the rest of it, too. Why not?
"Losing so much of your own tissue's gonna make your time powers a lot weaker, but hey, you take what you can get. You should consider yourself lucky, you know. Closest donor match was technically W1LG3R, since he's also Canadian. I'd keep quiet about it, though. Who knows how much Req's gonna have to say about Easy being inside you?"
"So you have the cloning machine?" Tirin asked, ignoring the jibe. "Hm? Oh, yes," Stealthy answered. "Common knowledge out there by now. Kind of embarrassing, really. I must be slipping. I have no idea how they ended up tracing it back to me." He sounded slightly annoyed. "Well, whatever. Minor inconvenience. Speaking of which," he turned to the doctor, "Frilzer, you're free to go. Good job on this one. And, remember! Mum's the word."
"Yeah, yeah." Frilzer muttered, unhappily.
As he turned and started walking away, Stealthy nonchalantly drew a pistol and shot him in the back of the head.
"What?" He asked, seeing Tirin's expression. "It's not like he actually experienced it. We'll clone him if we need him again."
"Let me guess." Tirin's eyes narrowed. So he'd been right to be suspicious. "Just like Easy."
"Easy? No. Technically, it's against regulations to clone forumers unless they've been killed, and while I'm no legal expert, I'm not sure if getting removed from existence really counts." Stealthy looked away, avoiding his gaze.
"And besides... things are running the way I'd like them to, right now. You and Easy tend to complicate things."
"Bullshit." Tirin spat out. "Why'd you save me, then, huh? What the hell are you planning this time?"
"For old time's sake," Stealthy calmly replied, "and because you're not powerful enough to stop me anymore." He pushed a button on the pod, and Tirin's cuffs were released. He jumped out of the machine ready to attack, when a white-hot pain shot through his entire body and drove him down to his knees.
"Also," said Stealthy, holding up a small remote dial, "because I had a control module put in during the surgery, along with some other things. All rigged to blow if they're tampered with, of course." He didn't ease up on the dial, but stepped closer and then knelt down, bringing his face down to Tirin's level.
"Now, I don't actually have to tell you anything else, really," he said. "But I will give you just a bit of advice before you head out of here. First, you're the most wanted man on the forums, and I hear NFTea's offering a hell of a lot of Likes for anyone who brings them your head. Don't get caught. Second, we're pretty sure your time powers are going to wreak havoc on the transplants. I'd try to avoid using them, if I were you." He patted Tirin's shoulder with one hand, and then stood up and pressed another button on the remote. Almost immediately, Tirin went unconscious.
He woke up to the sight of an empty street, and the sound of approaching sirens. So he stumbled to his feet, and ran.
End of Prologue.