AnotherArchetype
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105 - No Easy Way Out
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 08:32:56 +0000 UTCUsing my enlarged thigh muscles, I shot out of the bunker with as much force as I could muster.
The flashes of gunfire, not darts, but real gunfire, lit up the forest like a strobe light. I was glad my ears weren't heightened to the nth degree because the sound of the gunfire even at a regular volume was awful.
The trees whipping by me on my way upwards were torn to shreds by the bullets.
The gunfire wasn't stopping, and I didn't have the luxury of floating through the air and figuring out how and where I wanted to move next.
By pure instinct I had to twirl myself over in the air and kick off against one of the tall thin trees, kicking it so hard the dead tree snapped under the force delivered to it.
I fell diagonally down towards the ground, turned over again, and bounded off in the direction opposite to where Xandra had departed to.
I caught a brief glimpse of her landing after leaping forwards with her elastic movement; no sooner did her foot touch the ground did she spring off again, moving so fast the movement occurred in the blink of an eye. The forest floor and surrounding trees where she had just been were torn to shreds from more bullets.
Need to get out of the forest, I thought.
And that was all I had time to think.
Were my life not on the line, with every micro movement being the difference between dodging a bullet or death, I had no time to second guess what I was doing, nor to think about how impossible it should be.
I moved like a cannonball from tree to tree, from tree to ground, as well as bounds between trees; I did this with no pre-planned thought beyond making sure that I moved so sporadically that even keeping sight of me, let alone firing a gun at me, was going to be an order of magnitude more difficult for my attackers.
After striking off from the ground and several more trees, I again hit the ground and bounded off again, using every ounce of strength available to my legs.
This time I saw one of my attackers. A tall man wielding an assault rifle. He was dressed in a Pied Piper Task Force officer uniform which was similar to the traditional officer's uniform with the exception that it was sleeveless.
The officer's gun was still firing, and was aiming down towards me. But I was moving faster than the officer could divert the aim of his rifle.
Had I the time to think about what I was doing I might not have done it, but I didn't have the time to think, and every fiber of my being was desperate to live another second.
So I charged through the officer with the full force of my jump. His body crumpled against the impact of my head, neck, and shoulder. I felt his bones breaking, his muscles tearing, his organs puncturing. And this only lasted for a fraction of a moment before I continued onwards, bowling the officer aside where he was forced back against a tree.
Dead, I thought.
I didn't need to look back. I had just killed that officer.
More bullets. More harsh gunfire noise. More muzzle flashes. Men yelling amid the chaos.
My heightened vision caught sight of the grenade which landed on the ground a meter in front of me. I turned my body through the air, kicked off from a tree and headed back the way I had come, just as a grenade exploded and ripped apart several trees in its wake.
Two officers wielding assault rifles were standing ahead of me. No sooner did I see them did they open fire.
I reached out for the tree to my right and yanked as hard as I could muster on it. I heard the sound of a bullet whizzing past my ear.
How long could I keep this up? Sooner or later one of their bullets was bound to hit their target.
I spun my body round, using the moment of having yanked hard on the tree, and broke into the fastest sprint I could muster. But it wasn't fast enough, I needed more speed. I willed my body to take on the full elastic springiness it had before.
My shoes touched down on the ground and I felt the difference like I had before. The power of the kick had increased significantly, as did the air-resistance to my increased speed trying to slow my incredible force down.
The sparse forestation provided a hundred different obstacles for me to evade, from fallen trees, to the ones still standing, to the half dozen Pied Piper Task Force officers firing their guns at me.
I started to yell at the top of my lungs because I had never been more afraid in my life.
I hit down hard on the ground with both feet and bounded off to the left to avoid the wave of gunfire tearing its way towards me.
And then I did two things.
In my mad desperation I thrusted down the fox-hat over my eyes. I wasn't sure why I had to do this, I only knew that it was something a part of me needed.
The second thing I did was to increase the muscles in my arms as well as the elasticity. My hands hit the ground at a speed and impact which, were I not powered, would have crushed my bones to splinters and turned my hands to bloody mush.
But I was powered, and working off pure instinct to survive.
My arms, like powerfully taut springs, pushed off the ground, somersaulting me over, allowing me to continue the momentum brought about by my legs.
The ground was a rolling blur of debris sailing beneath me. It was as if I were flying over the forest floor.
At last I cleared the forest and entered out to the barren field beyond.
I continued bounding onwards, using my legs to rocket me over the field. Although it felt to me like a great deal of time, it only took me several seconds of bounding onwards as fast and as powerfully as my body could muster to turn the forest behind me into a distant place.
The roar of a car engine and tires tearing up the barren earth alerted me to the jeep closing the distance to my right. A gunner stood atop the jeep.
I had less than a second to decide what the best course of action was.
The gunner began to fire. I thought the sound of the assault rifles had been loud, but the sound of this heavy gun was on another level entirely.
I kicked off the ground and decided if I was going to be murdered, then I would make them regret trying. My body sailed forwards and struck the left-side window of the jeep. I broke through the window, landing inside the vehicle. There was two men inside; one driver, and one in the passenger seat; the man in the passenger seat had died as soon as my head and shoulders drove through the window; his neck and collarbone had provided a cushion for my fall.
This was not to say that I wasn't in an immense amount of pain. But my body was powered, resilient, somewhat elastic, and had been the force which made the impact and not the other way around. My face was cut from shards of glass, though not too deep as far as I could tell.
The crushed passenger had gone limp, and the driver of the vehicle was reaching to the holster at his hip for his handgun.
I hit the officer with my closed fist. His face crumpled beneath the force of my punch and, as I should have expected, the driver's control of the vehicle ceased instantly.
The jeep made a hard turn and began to turn over and over again.
When the vehicle finally stopped rolling over it was upside down.
I lay still for several moments wondering if I might be dying.
But I could still breathe, and the pain across my body wasn't unbearable. The lack of motion from the vehicle made me want to throw up.
Getting out of the vehicle proved difficult, I had to go backwards, going out the way I came in. I did so clumsily, only picking up the speed with which I crawled out the more seconds passed.
Once out of the vehicle I realised the extent of the damage done to me. My right hand was bent at a horrible angle, and shards of glass were stuck into my face and shoulder.
I sat myself down on the ground whilst the jeep beside me started to catch fire. Dazed, I concentrated my attention on my broken wrist and willed the power to fix it.
Agony followed. I let out a guttural scream as the fragment of the power inside me that knew all of the medical knowledge I had soaked up before, took charge of the healing power. My wrist corrected itself, snapping back into place.
The sound of two more jeeps in the distance told me I didn't have long to make my next move.
My mind feeling even more stretched and tired, I concentrated as best I could on the glass shard stuck in my face, collarbone, and shoulder.
All at once my body pushed out the shards. The open wounds stopped bleeding, but didn't disappear entirely. I let out a childish sounding whimper from the sheer agony of it all. Somehow the healing of the wounds, in the instant of healing, hurt far worse than the wounds themselves.
The jeeps were getting nearer and would be on me in a few seconds.
"Yah!" I cried out, to try and rid my mind and body of its complacency.
It wasn't the time to feel pain, or feel sorry for myself. If I wanted to live I needed to keep moving. Stopping was death.
I looked to the distance and saw the dark outline of what I could only assume was the abandoned factories Xandra had mentioned before.
Was that the way I wanted to go? The only alternative I could think of was going back to the motorway; maybe the odds of evading the Pied Piper Task Force were better in that direction?
I decided to head towards the abandoned factories. At least there the jeeps would have a harder time keeping up with me and there would be more opportunities to hide among the buildings. So long as I didn't stay out in the open there was at least some potential for me to fight back.
With another yell I bounded off in the direction of the factories. Heavy gunfire from the jeeps told me with finality that the violence had only just begun.
Comments
Charles Borchard
Glad to hear. I love Shounen stories so good that some of those vibes get across.
حسين عباس عبد المهدي
I love this chapter the action is done really well and burgess sounded like shounen protagonist
