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Message-ID: <47432asstr$1081818605@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Imagineer <imagin8r47@yahoo.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Cruel Summer 42 {Imagineer} (FF nc viol ScFi)
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Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:10:05 -0400
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Cruel Summer

copyright 2001-2004 by Imagineer.

comments to 
imagineer 47: yahoo green eggs com ham
but without the green eggs or ham

http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Imagineer/www/


// 42: Unleashed


  The sun had long since gone down.

  The mammoth hall's lights had been extinguished for mood. Pinpoint
spotlights, overhead lasers, and the occasional reveler's glowstick
were hardly enough to give more than ghostly form to people and
objects. And a pall of synthetic fog should have further diffused
sparse photons into murky blackness.

  But for an instant, it was brighter than daylight.

  It was as if lightning had struck the dance floor, bringing with it a
sharp thunderous boom, indelibly marking the moment of impact with a
bowel-shuddering bass hit and a visual explosion of blue-white light as
irresistable force met immovable object.

  When eyes recovered enough to see, they found two forms etched near
the center of unexpected conflict.

  One standing. One fallen.

  The crowd was silent, in rapt awe of the fearsome collision and its
two seemingly-unbreakable components. Emptiness surrounded them for
thirty feet in every direction, ringed by tangled upended masses of
people who a moment before had been dancing, gradually disengaging
limbs from one another and attempting to understand what had happened.

  Eyes first gazed upon the fallen one, a dim ring of blue light
encircling her neck, casting an eerie halo over her her slender form,
limbs splayed about seated torso, looking very much like a spider.

  The light around the other one continued to ebb, permitting eyes to
recognize the form at its center. A young woman leaned forward, one
knee bent, other leg back, head down, arms up, wrists crossed, fists
clenched, crossed sapphires burning brightly, throwing light like an
ethereal shield held in front of her.

  The spider stood, taking the form of a tall, slender young woman,
twin swatches of pink around shoulders and hips brightening an
otherwise-black-clad beauty. Hair tossed as the woman shook her wits
clear. Arms fell to sides, but held out from the body in anticipation
of movement. Long fingers alternately stretched and curled, hands
looking like twin spiders dangling from their webs.

  Heads swiveled in unison to size up the opposition.

  The spider's angelic adversary straightened up slowly, shoulders
rising and separating, chest thrusting forward, feet squared apart atop
tall stiletto heels, long legs leaned forward, pelvis jutting forward
to align with chest. The furious angel unfurled her wings with a drama
that enraptured the room. Arms slowly uncurled down in front of her,
then separated to her sides, continuing back and out, a breeze from
some unseen wind billowing large winglike sleeves from wrists to neck,
arms coming up to form a T as she inhaled deeply before again coming
forward, hands together in front of her waist.

  Sapphire raised her head, eyes opening to flash with regal command.

  The two stood there for what seemed an eternity, bodies glimmering in
the ephemeral cast of their unearthly energy. Synths and drums
continued to blare and beat, but no one dared move.

  Finally, Black Widow leaned as if to take a step, but stopped cold as
Sapphire spoke with a voice of unwavering feminine power:

  "No."


  Valerie paused. It was happening just as it had before. Just when her
rage born of torment had risen to give her a clarity of purpose, this
angelic creature had descended to stop her. Opposing forces balanced,
as if the universe itself protected the monster masquerading as the man
Gerald Bates. Fate was taunting her.

  Or testing her.

  Val eyed the stilted little self-proclaimed superheroine darkly.
Couldn't this stuck-up bitch see past her own self-righteousness to
recognize the greater evil here? Or was she a part of it? Ginger
Hartwick, the woman who'd 'killed' Valerie, claimed that Sapphire was
working for her; Hartwick was in turn obviously working with or for
Bates. Of course. This was no superheroine. Sapphire's reputation was a
smokescreen, a sickening PR job for a counter-assassin.

  Valerie Strain looked beyond Sapphire, searching the stage for her
target. To her eyes his aura of evil glowed like radioactive waste.
Like most everyone else, he was frozen where he stood, even as a
desperate bodyguard tugged at his elbow. Just moments ago he'd raised
his fist in triumph, having through some cruel twist of fate siezed
upon Valerie's vengeful act and spun it into positive publicity. She'd
been nothing but a freak show, a fantastical foil by which to align and
elevate himself. Everyone loved a strong victim, so much so that they
never considered the means by which he might have become victimized. To
think that a man might possibly deserve the visitation of vengeful
death was to deny the validity of the victim state. The paradox
propelled her more powerfully toward his punishment.

  Couldn't anyone else see his demonic debauchery? Couldn't they see
the way his eyes had roamed over the crowd, picking through crops of
nubile women searching desperately for something greener? Wasn't anyone
aware of his twisted tendencies? Hadn't he left enough shattered girls
in his wake? Wasn't the miscarriage of justice that had given him five
short years and buried his true crime in a dastardly deal with the
devil a sufficient warning? Had the public no memory for scandal when
it mattered? Couldn't anyone feel the vile ooze of neopubescent
perversions that still seeped from his pores to coat everything and
everyone he touched? Were they so blinded by his business acumen, so
misdirected by his monopolistic misdeeds that they couldn't see the
black heart of the beast?

  Well to hell with them if they couldn't see the truth. Valerie Strain
knew. She'd experienced it.

  She wasn't here to explain. She was here to exterminate.


  Black Widow stepped forward, slowly, but boldly. Sapphire stood
unmoving as she approached, waiting until Black Widow was just two
steps away before raising her right hand out in front of her, palm
thrust forward in a forceful 'stop' gesture. In another step the hand
would be in the furious vigilante's face. 

  Black Widow immediately ducked and stepped to her right, accelerating
her body. Her left leg kicked up and swept left-to-right across
Sapphire's knees, cutting the girl's legs out from under her. At the
same time, she pitched her left shoulder forward into the smaller
girl's ribcage. The move was lightning-quick, catching Sapphire by
surprise -- and sending her spilling backwards, left arm out, right arm
up, feet knocked out from under her, legs flailing uselessly to either
side of the charging Black Widow's driving hips.

  Sapphire blasted desperately, randomly, the net effect throwing her
clear of the charging Black Widow by nearly twenty feet, making the
vigilante's attack look far more powerful than it had been. She landed
smack in the lap of still-downed partygoers, all but one of which were
too stunned to grab an opportunistic handful of girl-flesh as they
struggled to help her up.


  Valerie loped past the downed superheroine, fueled by indifference to
anything not Gerald Bates and by overconfidence built on the faulty
assumption that she had checked Sapphire into the crowd entirely on her
own.

  Suddenly she felt herself yanked back off her feet; Sapphire had the
taller woman by the collar, pulling her toward an exit. Val kicked and
squirmed, but her heels could get no purchase, and her flailing arms
had no anchors to grab nor vulnerable points to strike.


  "You're coming with me," Sapphire grunted, tugging violently to get
her arm around Black Widow's neck.

  "Then you're going to hell!"

  Black Widow suddenly reversed tactics, driving her legs as hard and
fast as she could, pushing herself into the heroine, rushing her
forward, slamming her up against the wall. 

  The sharp Slap! of skin against unyielding concrete had a shimmery
metallic harmonic; a strobe-flash of sapphire light amplified the sense
of impact; the shocked audience collectively cringed.

  Black Widow recovered first. She spun around, taking a single step
back to obtain the proper striking distance. Unlike Sapphire, the dark
vigilante had had basic self-defense training. A former lover had given
her a crash course in disabling an attacker, drawing on brutal methods
often discouraged in more P.C. regimens. Muscle memory brought it to
the fore now. While Sapphire slowly turned around, Black Widow rocked
her hips back, then shot her left foot in a roundhouse kick that caught
the smaller girl just under the ribs. The wicked blow sent the
featherweight female flying.

  Sapphire crashed into a slow-footed couple, splitting them as she
stumbled past, trying desperately to keep her feet. Black Widow
pursued, tossing stunned spectators aside with forearms, elbows, and
shoulders. She knew she had to stay in close where Sapphire's kinetic
advantage was neutralized. If she could pound the girl fast enough and
hard enough and cruelly enough, Sapphire might stay down long enough
for Black Widow to exact her revenge. What happened after that didn't
matter.

  Sapphire got a hand up just as Black Widow reached her, holding the
taller girl off with a stiffarm. But Sapphire hesitated to hit Black
Widow with a force-blast, knowing that with the supernatural assassin's
sapphires she would be a deadly missile in such crowded surroundings.
Why were onlookers continuing to crowd around them? Couldn't they see
how dangerous it was?

  "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" The chant grew with each passing
moment. The surreal atmosphere and frequent pharmaceutical concoctions
seemed to have turned this deadly confrontation into some kind of
spectator sport.

  And Black Widow was playing for keeps. The taller, faster, more
skilled fighter was unrelenting in her attack. A quick forearm sweep
cleared Sapphire's hand from Black Widow's chest; a forehead shove sent
the girl spiraling back toward the middle of the room; a sidewinding
southpaw caught her in the ribs; a knee to the groin lifted her little
feet up off the floor. Black Widow beat Sapphire back, the heroine's
hands lamely trying to block the blows, each accompanied by a small
strobe of blue-white light as the two combatants' forcefields collided,
lighting suspended moments of onlookers' reactions like a chorus of
flashbulbs. 


  Val knew she was winning; with each blow, Sapphire would stumble back
and left, struggling to maintain her balance, her escape held in check
by the thick crowd that rushed to part and often failed, bumping
against the retreating superheroine, keeping her upright but
off-balance and within Val's devastating reach.


  They had come full circle. Back up against the wall, Sapphire
squealed as Black Widow's open palm loomed in her face and smashed up
her nose. Thoughts of the crowd's safety vanished in the shadow of the
crushing blow; a desperate defensive response, two hands pushing away
blindly, launched Black Widow hard, plowing through the crowd like
bowling pins before folding her through a thick threaded-pipe railing
at the base of an elevated platform.

  No one moved for a long time. Sapphire recovered from her frightened
recoil, opening her eyes to the row of hurt she'd sown. She jumped up,
shrugging off her pain to help people up as she approached the
laser-illuminated cloud of dust billowing from where Black Widow had
crash-landed.


  Val shook her head clear, holding one arm over her nose and mouth to
keep from choking on the dust. Apparently the decor had been made of
cardboard and plaster, tacked over a plywood and stud core. She dusted
herself off as she waited for the pain to subside enough to get up.

  Motherfucker! That hurt!

  Her hand fell to something cold and thick. Her fingers gripped it
instinctively. As she pushed herself to her feet, she evaluated the
object's heft. It was long and heavy. She glanced down to see a
three-feet long section of pipe in her right hand.

  The Black Widow knew something about the impact of a baseball bat.

  She lifted it in front of her, her other hand coming to help grip one
end tightly, the other end wagging over her right shoulder.

  Sapphire would rue the day she crossed the Black Widow.


  Sapphire reached the edge of the settling dustcloud just as Black
Widow stepped clear of it.

  Suddenly Sapphire found herself launched backwards, her head snapped
violently over her right shoulder. She couldn't see for the blinding
blue-white light in her eyes.

  Somewhere she thought she heard a church bell.


  It was the sound of the pipe in Black Widow's hands, ringing with the
impact against Sapphire's skull.

  Now, whether or not they'd followed the bizarre reports of angel
vigilantes and bulletproof assassins, everyone in the crowd now
realized the very real, very ugly nature of the battle taking place in
their midst.


  One among the crowd saw things through different eyes. A man, looking
out of place in such party surroundings, curiously dressed like a
tourist who missed his flight, and old enough to be the father of the
two deadly damsels at the center of everyone's attention. And unlike
the slack-jawed surprise of those around him, this man had the look not
of someone who had seen a fantastic urban legend come to life, but that
of a man whose plan was coming to delightful fruition.

  A hand went to his chest. And Fang Manxie felt the almost-painful hot
humming of a mystical amulet excited to near-atomic activity.


  It took Sapphire a moment to regain her bearings. A fat lady had
collapsed beneath her and was rolling around, trying to get up. The
petite superheroine could only writhe around atop, flipped on her back
like a turtle balanced atop the ample woman's gelatinous belly as it
slid this way and that. Finally the girl managed to roll down off the
woman, coming quickly to her feet. And quickly feeling the crushing
pain in her head.

  She'd heard that ringing sound before -- and felt that disorienting
pain. It was Ginger and the crowbar all over again.

  But this time she could strike back. She just had to be careful not
to hurt anyone else.

  Black Widow rushed in, her steel club held high. Sapphire quickly
waved it off as she sidestepped her tall foe; Black Widow stumbled but
quickly spun around. Sapphire turned, thrusting a pointed hand, jabbing
Black Widow's clenched hands with a narrow blast, throwing off bright
blue sparks. The force of the blow forced the would-be assassin to drop
the weapon; it clanged as it hit the floor. A flick of Sapphire's wrist
sent it skidding away under the crowd's feet.

  Sapphire put her hands out in front of her, moving them in and out as
a clear warning she would strike again. 


  Val's hands stung. This Sapphire bitch was starting to get pretty
accurate with her little thrusts. She looked around; the crowd had
backed off a respectable distance, but was more densely packed than
ever. There was nowhere to run. She was going to have to take her lumps
and hope to get in close again. The arachnidian assassin drew into a
taut crouch, legs out wide, straining against her tight pink skirt,
hands low, the pose of a spider spied, holding perfectly still but
ready to spring...

  Onlookers wisely cleared out from behind her; now even they knew what
was coming...


  Max watched the two young women with awe and wonder. These were not
martial arts experts calling and raising each others' practiced moves
with clever improvisations. Nor were they brawling testosterone
factories bludgeoning each other with predictable jackhammer volleys of
five-part projectiles. These two were evolving their fighting style on
the spot, minds whirling in search of new ways to use their fantastic
gifts, each trying to understand herself as much as trying to
understand her opponent, each as different as they were the same. One
with street experience, physical advantages, and a disregard for the
uninvolved; the other hampered by naivete and concern, but blessed with
touchless reach and a fearsome force weapon.

  It almost made him sad that he would have to interfere.

  But as beautiful as this awkward and unpredictable show of force
might be, Max knew a far greater and more lasting beauty awaited.

  Max looked around. So focused were minds on this fantastic combat, he
felt no need to cloak himself as he stepped closer to the action. He
stretched his mind to meet Val's, being ever so careful to look without
touching. Her frustration was palpable -- Sapphire was not her
interest, yet she was forced to deal with the flitting female before
she could complete her mission. Max felt sorely tempted to pull at
Val's simmering anger towards the interloper, but he dared not. He
already saw in her the growing conclusion that she would have to put
Sapphire down before she would be allowed to finish Bates. That thought
would be close enough to serve his purpose.

  Max's mind turned to Sapphire. He was still fascinated by her
impermeability. Every mind he had deigned touch had exposed access
tokens -- emotions to be felt, senses to be tapped, thoughts to be
turned over. With effort these could be rearranged, or parted to reveal
further tokens, or illuminated to see their compositions and
connections. With still more effort they could be dashed altogether, or
conjured from nothing.

  And when Max found one whose body was impregnated with deposits of
absorbed sapphire energy, he could tug upon it like a string wound
through the mind, extracting and unraveling all the thoughts and
feelings it touched with invigorating ease that approached the orgasmic.

  But Sapphire was unique. Her mind alone was completely closed to him.
But in closing one door, Fate had opened another. Where her sapphires
ensured that her mind was hers alone, they laid bare her body to feel
her fearsome power become forbidden pleasure at his whim.

  Max pondered the irony that the one woman whose mind his quest
demanded he subvert was made inaccessible to him... 

  ...and the irony that the one man against whom she would most need
her power could turn it against her to render her mindless with ecstacy.

  Max was so intent on this curious conundrum that his first imposition
upon her was quite accidental.


  Valerie watched Sapphire's probing hands with growing apprehension.
It was as if the superheroine was trying to decide which hand to use to
deliver her devastating attack. As if measuring the distance to her
target. As if waiting for the crowd to move themselves clear of the
path of harm. As if deliberately pausing to let Valerie's cringing
anticipation grow.

  Finally, the winged warrior thrust her left hand sharply forward; Val
flinched, but curiously felt no furious blast of invisible force. No
abrupt phantom shove. Not even a gentle nudge. 

  And instead of fierce determination on Sapphire's face, Val saw
something else.

  Surprise.
  And lust.

  It lasted but an instant, but an instant was all it took. Val knew
the look, and she knew what it meant.
  It meant Sapphire was vulnerable.


  Black Widow launched herself at Sapphire with fearsome quickness.
Sapphire, momentarily confused by the pleasant failure of her power,
managed to twist out of the way just enough that Black Widow only
caught her with an arm, sending the two slamming to the floor
side-by-side. Sapphire blasted herself up, spinning free of Black
Widow's arm, quickly jumping astride the taller woman, pressing her
bejeweled hands into Black Widow's back.

  But the Black Widow was not so easily held. Her sinewy form flexed
violently, bucking Sapphire up once, then twice, then rearing up and
throwing her off behind. The assassin kicked up and flipped back,
throwing her head back like a club smashing down on Sapphire's face in
a spitting flash of blue.

  Black Widow leapt up and spun around to face her downed opponent.
Sapphire used a quick burst of force from her hands to propel her to
her feet, but just as she planted, Black Widow twisted her hips into a
fast leg sweep. Sapphire spilled, but planted her left hand first and
cartwheel-flipped into the air, hovering a moment before doing a
weightless ballerina-like leg-sweep of her own. Black Widow crashed to
her hands and knees. So intent was she on regaining her feet as quickly
as possible that she missed Sapphire's landing.


  Sapphire was no more than a foot above the floor when her energy
suddenly turned on her. Stiletto heeled shoes hit hard, one slipping
out from under its wearer, sending the gossamer girl spilling forward
to one hand and one knee.

  The crowd saw it, but didn't think much of it when she immediately
sprung back, sticking a second landing.

  But Max knew the truth. His second touch, deliberate and focused, had
been *very* effective. He saw it in her face. The way her lips had
parted to gasp. The way her eyelids had fluttered ever so briefly.

  So revelrous was he at her rapturous surprise that he failed to
notice the knowing reaction of the young man standing beside him.


  Ricky's brow furrowed. Sapphire had unmistakably stumbled. But there
was something more to it -- a momentary change in demeanor. So subtle
that no one else caught it, much less recognized its carnal cause. But
to Ricky's eyes, Sapphire's fleeting look was unmistakable. 

  The look brought forth a jolting flashback to Angela sprawled out on
his bed... 
  ...and to Sapphire pinned to the restaurant wall by the Black Widow...

  And for the first time Ricky had an inkling of Sapphire's horrifying,
humiliating weakness...


  Val looked up to see Sapphire standing still over her. Not one to
look a gift horse in the mouth, she straightened up quickly, leading
with a wicked right cross that sparked across the petite heroine's chin
and sent her reeling back.


  And Max smiled as he chose his moment of triumph.

  Sapphire put her hands back to catch herself; her wrist gems
flickered briefly, seeking to stabilize her and help her keep her feet.
But without warning, their energy reversed course and hit Sapphire with
a jarring hot flash. It was just an instant, but the unexpected jolt
hit her hard, completely debilitating her with a strobe of sexual
nirvana. She fell to the floor hard.

  Sapphire's eyes suddenly went wide. She'd shrugged off the first blip
as a lack of concentration, but there was no denying what she'd just
felt. It was not the gradual, seductive glow of sapphires nearing
exhaustion. No, it was a shocking sexual invasion. Such a sudden and...
distracting outage could mean only one thing.

  The Hunter was here.

  A chill ran up her spine as Sapphire's head snapped back and forth,
eyes frantically searching the crowd for the source of her sudden
weakness.

  Movement in front of her demanded her attention. Recovering quickly,
the superheroine kicked a toe at Black Widow, manifesting itself as an
upward thrust to the gut, knocking the girl up and back a good six
feet. 


  Val landed on her feet, just barely. But the blow wasn't nearly as
surprising as Sapphire's darting, wild eyes. Her focus was not on her
opponent, but on the crowd. As if she was searching for something. As
if she was *afraid* of something.


  Ricky gasped in horror as his precious Angela fell flat on her back,
twitching briefly. What was happening to her? The look of denied
rapture told him what, but why? Was it some kind of curse?

  The answer suddenly crystallized when he saw the fear in her eyes.
And the way they scanned the crowd. Her weakness wasn't internal.
Something was causing it.
  Some*one*.
  Someone close.
  Someone *very* close...

  Through the corner of his eye, Ricky saw something unexpected.
  In a crowd full of shocked and frightened onlookers, the man standing
next to him was *smiling*.

  The hairs on the back of Ricky's neck stood on end as his head slowly
turned to look. An older Asian man, completely unremarkable. And
completely familiar. The memory of a grainy black-and-white
surveillance video flashed through Ricky's head.

  The Hunter.


  Max prepared to hit the girl again, waiting with bated breath for the
superheroine to try flexing her ethereal muscle again, itching to hit
her even harder. His eyes bulged in gleeful anticipation. Arrayed
around the black spot of impenetrability that marked Sapphire's mind,
Max felt Valerie's spike of bright red frustrated hate towering above
an array of minds filled with blue-green excitement and bewilderment...

  ...and a growing spectre of white horrified outraged recognition
standing right beside him...

  "It's you..."

  Max turned to see a teenage boy staring at him. His eyes burned with
righteous indignation. Muscles tensed in anticipation of movement...

  Max's eyes flashed with recognition. He knew this boy. He'd touched
him before, in the boy's own home, expecting to find a reserve of
captured sapphire energy but finding only a well of infatuation. Max
touched him now, his hand on the boy's arm...

  ...and felt a dizzying rush of emotions feeding an overwhelming urge
to protect Sapphire. Emotions Max recognized, emotions he'd felt once,
and might still feel toward Val.

  Concern. Anger.
  Love.

  Max panicked. He threw a huge disruptive field of mental energy at
the boy, a desperate random wall of illusion. He ducked, spun on a heel
and bolted.


  Ricky blinked his eyes in confusion. The Hunter just *vanished.*


  Val prepared for another rush at the downed heroine. But Sapphire's
next move surprised the assassin. Directly from her seated position,
the winged wonder shot up in the air, crossing to Val in a single
graceful arc, landing just inches from her. She grabbed an arm and
pulled, spinning the surprised assassin around, and threw an arm around
Val's neck.

  Val felt herself pulled down, arching her back to keep from losing
her feet. An instant later she was hauled skyward, her feet dangling
above the heads of a stunned audience.


  Sapphire leaped into the air, sapphires blasting her high above the
crowd, aiming for the top floor balcony. Black Widow dangled helplessly
from one arm, Sapphire reinforcing her headlock with her other hand on
her elbow, drawing her arm in tightly to her chest, forcefields
squeezing each other with a bright blue glow.

  She had to get to the balcony. She had to remove herself and the
Black Widow from the crowded floor before anyone else got hurt.

  But a heroine's concern for the innocent was second in her mind. Fear
was first and foremost.

  She had to get away from The Hunter.

  Halfway up, Sapphire felt something draw taut across her shoulders,
briefly slowing her progress before snapping free. Out of the corner of
her eye she saw a broken cable slither away through the darkness. She
looked up. Her eyes strained to see countless more shadows an instant
above, criscrossing each other in every direction. Her memory flashed
back to early that evening, when she'd killed time waiting in the
rafters, watching workers erect and secure statues and stages and
towers of speakers and lights and equipment, waiting in the shadows as
gaffers scurried about just below, throwing and catching and hauling
and taping and connecting myriad guy wires and power cables and
decorative banners.

  She would have to power through them now, relying on brute force to
break past the web of wires and onto the freedom of the balcony.

  But as she kicked her legs for a little extra energy, she felt not a
burst of speed, but a blast of bliss.

  And gravity gripped her shuddering form.


  Valerie inexplicably felt the grip on her neck slacken. She tucked
hard, head forward, pelvis thrust back, knees up, pushing away from her
captor. A moment of weightlessness yielded to the pull of gravity; she
saw a large irregular object coming up toward her. Val reached out to
tackle the object, painted in irridescent pinks and greens that
sparkled in the dim disco lighting, wrapping arms and legs to either
side as the object's leading edge hammered her torso bluntly. The air
was briefly hammered out of her lungs with the unexpected impact, but
she hung on until the world stopped shaking. 

  Valerie looked up over her shoulder, squinting through the flashing,
spiraling, strobing lights, expecting to see Sapphire bearing down on
her.

  Instead, she saw a frightened, flopping, falling female clawing at
the air as she slid back down through a twisted web of wires...


  Max growled with animal delight as his mental attack quickly reversed
the rocketing heroine's fortunes. Valerie had fallen free to land on
top of a large decorative wall shaped like a fish. Sapphire had renewed
her escape attempt, shooting through a tangled web of wires and cords
and cables on her way to the top floor balcony. 

  Max would be sure she didn't reach it. He clenched his fist in
physical mime of mental action, all of his attention focused on the
sputtering dance of the girl above.


  Sapphire felt the wave of unwanted ecstacy rip through her once
again, short-circuiting her flight. She kicked and clawed frantically
at the suddenly-unsupportive air as weightlessness gave way to
unrelenting gravity. She thrust upward again, only to feel the crashing
horrible pleasure grip her body and tug her earthward. Again and again
she kicked, pushed, arched, coiled, and stretched; and again and again
she was rewarded with frightening flames of curling physical heaven.

  She screamed as she felt something grab her ankle.

  Something sinewy and smooth wrapped itself around her calf, then
suddenly drew taut; Sapphire's body lurched upside-down for a moment,
sapphires sparking in protest. Her arm felt something constrict as she
cartwheeled, suspending and stretching her sideways. She stopped in
mid-air, but only for an instant before the grip on her calf slackened.
Again she began to fall.

  Again and again she tumbled down, only to be yanked and stopped and
started by spinning, snapping metal serpents twisting, coiling,
constricting about limbs and torso, shaking her like a ragdoll on her
sickening earthward journey. All the while her desperate sapphire
blasts crashed back upon her, pummeling her with erotic energy.

  Finally, her descent stopped as as stubborn cable snagged her wrist
above her and twin coils gripped her thighs.


  Valerie sneered at Sapphire's predicament. She didn't seem to be
struggling much; and she had *that* look on her face. Val doubted the
bonds would hold for long. But Valerie didn't need long.

  She pushed up off the large object that had caught her, rising to a
sitting position, legs swinging down to straddle it like a rider on a
huge horse. She looked up the length of its curving spine, its bent
shape surrounding one of the elevated dance platforms below to the
right. She rolled forward onto her chest, kicking her legs back and up
until toes touched the ridge, then pushed her upper body back up as one
foot came forward, neatly uprighting herself and breaking into a run
down the giant fish's spine toward the main stage.

  The assassin scaled the stair-stepped dorsal fin, almost
instinctively plotting an elevated course toward the main stage,
leaping off the fin into darkness, her entire body stretching airborne,
reaching for a shadowy ripple. Hands grabbed and clung to one of the
large hanging banners hoisted above the hall, momentum swinging her in
a half-arc up toward the top of a huge bare scaffolding tower bedecked
with massive speakers and bristling with lights. She looked down;
directly below was a knot of dark suits pushing through the dancing
masses.


  Max watched with disappointment as his queen rushed off, her vengeful
quest renewed. But he dared not tamper with her again, not while she
was so focused. He looked up at his bound angel. He would have to
harvest Sapphire's stones himself. Quite a trick in her present
condition...


  Sapphire hung in mid-air, forty feet above the floor, a butterfly
snagged by a spider's web, gasping in exhaustion and surprise -- and
arousal. She fought to remain still as she took stock of her situation,
afraid that movement would only tighten the terrible coils around her
tender flesh -- and afraid that any attempt to use her power to free
herself would only bring her closer to the brink of sexual enslavement
and ignomious defeat. For all she had endured this day, the Hunter
frightened her like nothing else. As long as he was here, Sapphire was
never more than a heartbeat from heavenly horrifying helplessness.

  Finally she felt something break loose above her. She fell, twisting
and gyrating and spinning like a cat trying to land on its feet, her
gems trying in vain to stop her ragged descent, their energy
exquisitely shunted straight into her nervous system. Her body spasmed
helplessly, snagging and snapping an unending web of cord and cable and
wire as she tumbled, limbs and torso being yanked and squeezed and
released in rapid succession. Onlookers likened her to a marionette at
the mercy of a demonic puppeteer, twisting and tangling her threads
with sadistic glee. 

  But as helpless as Sapphire was in her fall, things only got worse
once she landed. For an instant, the girl stopped moving, stunned by
the impact. But then angry coils of trailing wires, pulled so violently
earthward by her frantic airborne struggles, now caught up to the
tossed and tangled teen, accumulating in a sea of sinister spaghetti,
whipping and binding, their increasing mass bearing down on her.
Sapphire's panicked mind envisioned being buried alive, permanently
ensnared beneath a mountain of meshed wire that wouldn't stop falling.

  Sapphire thrashed and screamed, a frightened fly stuck by a spider's
spinnings, mindless clawing and kicking only snaring her more
seriously. The heroine's bondage seemed to multiply, Sapphire cemented
to the center of a spun singularity, drawing endless lengths of roping
restraints in from everywhere. Ends frayed and split whipping and
biting, odd anchors and connectors and plugs pummeling like stones.

  Panic and pleasure pushed the girl far beyond the rationality to
reign in her sapphires, frantic force-blasts fizzling, erotic energy
curling in on her, crashing her senses, caught inextricably in an
escalating ecstatic feedback loop.


  Ricky pushed forward, digging at the crowd, getting agonizing
glimpses of his fallen angel through the shifting compressing flesh of
an interested throng. He wanted to be at her side, but others nearer
her were already moving to untangle her; he found himself pushed back.
He looked at his tortured heroine's sexual state. He recognized the
flushed cheeks; the heaving, swollen chest; the pelvic gyration. He'd
seen her this way before. It at once sickened, scared, enfuriated, and
enthralled him.


  Through the web of wires, Sapphire began to feel hands. Countless
hands, grabbing and pulling and sliding and groping. Helpful onlookers
fought through the network of random netting that held the heroine
down, but the frantic female felt only aggressive grip, subversive
stroking, and teasing touches.

  And the more the cables constricted, the less Sapphire was able to
move, the more panic fueled fearful excitement. At first Sapphire's
thrashings were desperate bids to escape, but now as the girl continued
to coalesce into a bundle of bondage, her helpless situation and the
rhythmic rubbing of myriad textures both binding and caressing her skin
became a frightening stimulant of sexual surrender. Abject flailing
became cyclic squirming. She felt her will to resist fading. Her body
flopped less furiously, her pelvis thrusted more rhythmically, the
horrified heroine's will shrinking amid the sexual assault of a
thousand threads and a hundred hands and the taut cord between her
legs...


  Ricky continued to watch in helpless horror as his precious Angela
was ruthlessly humbled, humiliated, violated... 

  ...and helpless concern became focused anger.

  He looked over the crowd, scanning the sea of bobbing bodies for the
phantom Hunter who moments ago had stood beside him. Ricky's fists
clenched tightly; he could not just stand here while his angel was so
wickedly manipulated by a monster.

  I don't know by what witchcraft you've hidden yourself, but with God
as my witness I will find you. And I will make you pay.

  There, in the shadow of the giant fish statue's tail, something
shimmered. A face came into focus. It was a man, though somehow his
features seemed to shift before Ricky's eyes. The furious teen shoved
his way closer; the man's face clarified. His brow was not furrowed
with concern, but concentration. Ricky continued working his way
through the thick roiling crowd, glancing back and forth between his
fallen angel and this mystic devil. 

  As Angela's kicks and squirms become more rhythmic, her unbidden
pleasure more overt, Ricky saw the Hunter's face become recognizable.
Concentration became calm, became satisfaction, became a spreading
smile... the sick bastard was taking pleasure in Sapphire's misfortune. 

  No, not just taking pleasure... but giving it. Creating it. Causing
it.


  Max began to withdraw his attack; Sapphire's gemstone-outbursts grew
less and less frequent as her thrusting gyrations became more and more
lustful. The girl had worked herself up enough that her own momentum
would carry her over the edge. He turned his focus back to the crowd,
searching their reactions and gauging the method and effort required to
extract his fallen angel and her precious stones from this chaos.

  And it wasn't long before he became aware of an insurmountable
problem -- a growing spike of an aberrant mental pattern, a jagged
angry red tower of anger and galvanizing response suddenly looming over
the mental landscape, a red-hot glowing spectre of violent emotion
among a forest of fright and sympathy and disbelief.

  Ricky Aquino.

  This boy would have to be put down.

  Max reached out toward the approaching teen -- and quickly drew back
a painfully shattered thought. This boy had the same hornet's nest of
emotion protecting him that Val had thrown at Max earlier that day at
the airport. But how? He had no sapphires of his own...

  Max cursed the prickling emotional barrier he'd encountered. It
wasn't about the sapphires at all.

  It was about this meddlesome young man's feelings for Sapphire
herself.

  Damn! Max would have to deal with this mental infidel conventionally.

  It was then that he saw Ricky reach into the back of his trousers...

  ...and pull out a gleaming metallic trump card.

  Max flexed his mind, compelling those around him to suddenly shove
themselves clear, opening a bubble of freespace around him. As soon as
the boy got close enough, a quick aikido move would disarm him...

  ...but the lad suddenly stopped, raising the weapon and taking deadly
aim.

  Max probed delicately, and found a disturbing well of confidence. Max
remembered that this was the son of a policeman. And he'd come as
prepared in skill as he had in equipment.

  Max would best this boy, but it would not be now.

  Max gritted his jaw with mental effort, suddenly closing the empty
space between them with a liquid rush of confused bodies.


  Ricky lowered his weapon, gripping it tightly to his side to keep
from losing it in the jostling mass of party flesh, forcing his way
through to the space where The Hunter had stood...

  ...but he was gone.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


  After a few moments of frozen chaos, Bates found himself hurried off
the stage, across the great hall's floor toward the north side. A great
statue of a man wielding a hammer, a classic symbol of age-old manual
labor, and a latticework tower of lights and speakers stood between him
and the doors that led to the loading dock, where his bulletproof
limousine and escort cars awaited.

  Bates hated running. But the Black Widow was no ordinary assassin.
Terrifying images of her last attempt on his life played over and over
in his mind. A restaurant full of terrified people. A highly trained
and very expensive team of bodyguard/counterassassins mowed down in a
few moments. An entire building destroyed. Himself a breath away from
death, saved at the last minute by an angelic young woman descended
from above.

  And it was all happening again.

  Something leaped from the darkness above to land with a Smack!
directly in front of him. She was ablur, moving too fast for eyes to
focus on her. Two bodyguards immediately jumped her; she threw them off
with a lightning-quick dodge. Bullets from a third bodyguard sbounced
off her, their ricochet killing him and a fourth. 

  It wasn't just like last time. This time, his guardian angel had come
up short.

  Bates wheeled around to flee, and stumbled over a fallen bodyguard,
falling to hands and knees. Three sharp footsteps hammered the platform
as they approached from behind him. But instead of a fourth footstep
beside him, there was silence. 

  Then a pair of black high-heeled ankle boots come down hard right in
front of him.

  Bates looked up to see a beautiful young woman. He'd known her, years
earlier, her body just blossomed and her mind caught in that knowing
ignorance of adolescence. Such sweet fruit that had been his undoing.
She had sated his old demons in a way no one before had done -- and
awakened new ones he'd scarecely understood. And after five years of
state-sponsored abstinence, those terrible, beautiful demons had barely
begun to stretch their wings when this wicked warrior had descended
upon him.

  Twice, now. Back from the grave to resume her wrath. 

  Her eyes bore the searing heat of a mind with just one thought: end
his existence.

  The blood drained from Gerald Bates' face.

  The woman snarled. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

  Her name was Valerie Strain.


  Valerie looked down at her shivering prey. The world fell away,
leaving nothing, not even her own life, only this manifestation of evil
before her. She knew not how she had existed before this. And she cared
not what would happen after. 

  All that mattered was that He Paid.


  A vicious kick to the chin. A boot to the chest. He was upright. And
unable to breathe.

  She could have ended his life with a single blow to the throat.

  But she wanted it to hurt.

  Rock-hard fists rained blows down upon Gerald Bates. Bloodied the
face, smashed the nose, cracked the orbital socket, fractured the
cheek, dislocated the jaw. Bates fell back to the floor with a heavy
crash.

  She jumped on top of him, fists banging down on his chest.
Bludgeoning him with her body.

  But the reality of her attack, the crushing weight of pain as this
armored assassin hammered away at his flesh overrode his fear. Gerald
Bates was not accustomed to receiving pain; he dished it out. His mind
rejected the reversal; defiant anger amplified self-preservation; a
lifetime of violent experience gave it direction. And Gerald Bates
struck back.


  Val scarcely felt the first blow, interrupting her whirling fists
only briefly. The punch to the ribs was barely worth notice.

  But the second shot, a massive knee to the groin, demanded her full
attention. It lifted her lightweight body three feet off the ground,
her fists suddenly striking nothing but air.

  In this unexpectedly-elevated position, meaty hands found the base of
her ribcage and gave a mighty thrust. Suddenly Val found herself tossed
through the air, legs pistoning uselessly. She crashed against a fake
planter box, her bulletproof back smashing the laminate structure to
bits. Plastic leaves rained down on her.

  But before Bates could get all the way to his feet, she was on him
again, screaming like a banshee as she unleashed a violent volley of
kicks and punches. He blocked what he could, but even Gerald Bates'
massive frame couldn't take an endless barrage of blows from hands and
feet and limbs harder than steel...

  Gerald Bates fell like an imploding skyscraper, his face smacking the
carpeted floor with a sickening wet splat.


  Sapphire swiftly approached sexual release, but her cocoon of
constriction became progressively less intense. Hands stroking,
gropping, and grabbing became less insistent, preferring to grasp at
the strands that held her rather than the heroine's flushed skin. As
her bonds were loosened and the fantasy of powerless escape faded to
the reality of physical extraction, Sapphire began to realize that
those around her were not trying to stimulate her, but help free her.
As the cords digging into her slackened and her sexual fever cooled, a
small part of her felt disappointment. But Sapphire quickly regained
control, finally standing and shucking the last of her plastic-coated
prison. 

  Her eyes scanned the dark floor, straining to somehow see her
attacker. She could think of only two alternatives, both chilling. She
could flee him, or she could fight him -- but neither with the aid of
her sapphires. It seemed hopeless -- but she had survived hopelessness
more than once already. 

  The sound of crashing props and flashing gunfire drew the
superheroine's attention across the great room. Hunter or no, Sapphire
could not leave the Black Widow to plow through countless innocents on
her path to destroy Bates. And Ginger Hartwick's threat of mass
destruction still hung heavy in the air. Quitting was not an option.

  Sapphire rose up, freeing herself of the bonds of gravity, carefully
checking herself for any lingering appendages as she floated upward,
stopping her ascent just above the heads of those around her, eyeing
the dark space around her cautiously. People looked up in awe as the
crowd swallowed the space where she'd stood a moment ago. Hesitant
hands reached up, hoping to touch the feet of this floating female,
this goddess of gravity hovering just out of reach, and just outside
the bounds of reason if not reality.

  Satisfied that her bonds were broken, Sapphire leaned forward, arms
held out behind her, mentally gathering herself for a brief moment
before setting off across the massive hall. The superheroine appeared
to dance above the crowd, bounding back and forth inches above the
human river, eyes peeled for obstructions as she zigzagged with longer
hops and increasing velocity of regained confidence, finally streaking
across the hall just above the dancing hoardes like a night fighter
skimming the treetops...


  "Jimmy, it's Ricky. I'm at the party."
  "I can see that."
  "So is the Hunter."
  "Fuck. You saw him?"
  "That's just it. He was right in front of me, and then he just
vanished."
  "He got away?"
  "No; he *became* *invisible*."
  "You're seeing things."
  "I'm *not* seeing things. Just help me."
  "Well, there's a problem. Everybody else took off. I'm all you've
got."
  "Fuck!" Ricky's profanity stunned Jimmy. "He's hurting her. I have to
stop him." His voice was pleading.
  "Ricky, you don't know what he can do; maybe you shouldn't-"
  "I don't care!" Ricky erupted, his voice both angry and anguished.
"You gotta help me."
  "All right. I'll try... Holy shit!"


  Gerald Bates collapsed. His whole body screamed with pain. Broken
ribs, shattered wrists, hands turned to hamburger, face fractured and
cut and swollen. No one dared intervene on his behalf; the half-dozen
men who'd tried were broken or dead, bodies arrayed about him. There
was no one left to fight. Not even him. There was simply no stopping a
woman made of iron and fueled by hate. 

  "You sick son of a bitch. You evil motherfucker. What you did to me,
and you only got five years. You should have gotten the fucking chair.
You should have been fucking tortured, the way you tortured me. I wish
I could torture you forever. I wish I could make you hurt the way you
hurt me. But all I can do is kill you. At least that way you'll never
do to anyone else what you did to me."

  Bates coughed, a sputtering, bloody cough. "But *you* seduced *me*,"
he gurgled, lisping through broken teeth. "You unleashed the demons.
You created me."

  Val's blood chilled.
  The worst evil is the evil that fails to recognize itself.

  She squeezed her legs together, putting excruciating pressure on his
ribs, leaning forward to address him. He vaguely felt his head lifted
up by his hair. A pair of lips hissed hotly in his ear.

  "When you get to Hell, tell them Valerie Strain sent you."

  He felt his tie yanked around and pulled taut around his neck...

  ...and a furious rush of wind seemed to blow his killer off his back.


  A blinding-white blast of light strobed the building. Valerie's
vision blanked; her body folded around a furious meteor, screaming in
pain.


  Sapphire suddenly stopped in mid-air; Black Widow's momentum carried
her forward, smashing her through a fully-stocked bar like a
cannonball. Her limbs caught as she skidded to the ground, spinning and
cartwheeling and flipping like a disintegrating airplane. Her body
finally came to rest at the foot of a giant statue.


  Valerie opened her eyes and looked up. She breathed carefully;
nothing was broken, she was sure, but she felt like she'd been hit by a
truck.
  At Mach Two.

  Sapphire touched down gently several feet away from the fallen
assassin. "No more," she said in a commanding tone.


  Now that mortal danger had been subdued, a bevy of fresh black suits
appeared from nowhere to attend to the beaten Bates; they lifted him to
his feet, throwing his arms over two men's shoulders and hurrying him
off toward the north exit and the loading docks beyond.


  Val stood, dusting herself off overdramatically. She gritted her
teeth as she watched Bates flee the scene. A step toward him brought a
forbidding response from the angel. Sapphire raised a hand next to her
head, open palm pointed toward the would-be assassin, fingers curled as
if holding an invisible ball of force. The heroine's whole body
stretched, torso turning, hand drawing back. And her eyes glinted with
fury. 

  This would be no displacing shove. Val remembered their restaurant
dance, and the way Sapphire had used her as a wrecking ball. Reaching
Bates with Hurricane Half-Pint here ready to strike was out of the
question. So was getting to the nearest door. She needed a
distraction...


  Sapphire watched Bates' entourage rush him across the floor to the
far end of the hall. She saw Black Widow's eyes dance back and forth
between the receding Bates and the nearby door.

  But the assassin made a third choice.

  Unexpectedly, Black Widow juked to her right; Sapphire flinched to
deliver a blow but saw people in her path; damn! She leaped into the
air, looking to get a clear line of fire as she wondered what the hell
the Black Widow was doing going the wrong way, pinning herself in a
corner. Black Widow's behavior seemed to get even stranger as the tall
woman ran headlong right into the base of a scaffold equipment tower.
The scaffolding rang with the impact...

  ...and then it began to creak.

  Sapphire lowered her hand. If she struck Black Widow now, she would
knock over the tower, and it would come crashing down on all these
people...

  But as Black Widow extricated herself, Sapphire saw with horror that
it was already happening. She kicked her legs and zoomed higher, hoping
to extend her defiance of gravity to this swaying, screeching,
shuddering totem.

  Sapphire held her arms out wide above her head, hands spread,
mentally stretching her force as broadly as she could, trying
desperately to cradle the falling tower. The spindly assemblage creaked
and groaned and flexed, joints pulling open over its length, but so
much equipment snaking so much wire over the scaffolding held the thing
together like tendons on bones. The petite heroine grunted with the
effort, her gemstones glowing bright. She slowly, carefully began
rising higher, pushing the A/V colossus back toward the vertical.

  She looked below her; an overconfident crowd had scarcely started to
scatter when Sapphire's heroic move brought them rushing back to get a
better view of this miraculous deed.

  Suddenly Sapphire's lights went out.

  The superheroine felt a sickening sweet sapping. Gravity wrapped its
tendrils around her body as unimaginable terrifying ecstacy strangled
her soul.

  Sapphire's scream froze the people below her in abject terror.


  Ricky's heart leaped into his throat as he saw his heroine falter.


  But Sapphire refused to fall. Somehow she fought off the licking
flames of sexual feedback and pushed out the marauding presence that
was trying to turn her stones against her. As the tower began to sway
back toward her, she halted her descent, toes just inches from the
ground, and shot back up.

  But it was a pyrrhic victory. Her body screamed at her, begging to
succumb to the subtactile assault, pulling at her will like a loose
thread on a sweater...

  ...and as Sapphire met the falling tower with arms held wide, her
gemstones blazed with an uneven, warm flaming purplish light.

  The steel skeleton shivered and shuddered, held up by the defiant
heroine but quickly coming apart. Even as Sapphire fought mind and
body, she saw her battle with the tower was doomed.

  And below her, people still scrambled to get clear of its looming
shadow.


  Max felt a growing nausea as he pushed harder; was he nearing the
limit of his strength? Beads of sweat formed on his brow as he fought
with the girl for control of her sapphires. For control of her.

  "Fall, damn you! Fall!"


  "Nnnoo!" Sapphire screamed, bouying briefly upward. The light of her
stones sparked and faded, color shifting from bright purple to ice-blue
and back. But the jolting move had broken the tower in two, the upper
half swinging down like a massive club, certain to crush a dozen people
under its tangle of equipment and cord and steel.

  If Sapphire couldn't still the tower, she would have to move the
people.

  Like a misguided rocket Sapphire shot down to the floor, hammering
the concrete with a shockwave that sent debris scattering. Her calves
and thighs flexed, springing her forward, hands held out in front of
her, pushing out a wall of force. Chairs and tables and people alike,
everything in her path was swept clear like playing cards in a wind
tunnel.

  A horrendous crash, shattering, smashing, splintering chaos of steel
and glass and wood and wire fell on an empty floor.

  And a shuddering superheroine.


  Ricky rushed toward the still-settling wreckage. He screamed for
others to help him dig.


  Max's eyes surveyed the scene around the heap of equipment, stage
props, and signage that was Sapphire's sarcophagus, but his focus was
on what his amulet-given mind's sight beheld: minds watching and
reacting to spectacle, a chorus of thoughts easily arranged and
conducted. He reveled in the mental regimentation brought about by
physical chaos and his contribution to both.

  His smile grew as he touched upon mind after mind, effortlessly
erasing his presence as he sampled surprise and fear and confusion and
anger and hope, seeking out those who'd received gifts of sapphire
energy he was compelled to collect.

  And with each rush of energy he felt, he turned and shot some of it
back toward the fallen girl. He wanted her completely subdued by the
time her rescuers extracted her. There would be no blasting away this
time.

  Soon her stones would be his. Max's smile grew into a sneer.

  Until his mind felt a sudden stab, like jumping barefoot on broken
glass, a lone jagged edge of emotion rising above the crowd.

  It was The Boy.


  Ricky heard something stir beneath the twisted mess of metal and
cords. His hand reached into a dark recess... and felt a small hand
grab his.

  "Thank God you're alive!" Ricky breathed. "We'll get you out of there
in a second." 
  A voice came up from beneath the pile of broken equipment. "The
Hunter. He's here," she said weakly. 
  "I know. We have to get you out of here. You can't let him keep doing
this to you." 
  "I have to stop Black Widow. I have to stop Ginger."
  "But he'll keep hurting you!" 
  "Not if you find him. He's... [moan] he's still close, I can [gasp]
feel him touching me..."

  Ricky burned hot, but... "I can't leave you. Just hang on." He looked
pleadingly at the growing group of rescuers frantically shucking
smaller pieces of debris and straining at larger ones.

  "You have to find him. I'll be [grunt] all right. Just find him. He
won't come near me if he [gasp] knows you see him. Use your friends...
he can't hide from them."

  Ricky could tell by the strain in her voice that The Hunter was still
assaulting her. It enraged him that someone could be touching her so...
intimitely. It was a worse violation than any physical attack.

  "I'll stop him." He stood up, jumping up on a fallen amp, spinning
around a full 360 degrees, scanning the crowd. "I'll kill him if I have
to," he said through gritted teeth.


  Max felt Ricky's emotion burning like a flare over the candles of
other minds. It seemed the more Max weakened Sapphire, the stronger her
valiant knight became. Max had been lucky to be far enough away to duck
into the crowd beneath Ricky's gaze; the boy seemed to have a sixth
sense for spotting him when he was near.

  Perhaps Valerie's mind wasn't the toughest nut to crack after all.
Perhaps he wasn't meant to subdue this meddlesome child on his own.
Perhaps it was time to enlist the help of his queen.

  Max turned and vanished into the crowd.


  Ricky's phone rang. It was Jimmy. "Dude, he was right there!"
  "Where? Which way?" Ricky began turning, looking hopelessly over a
jostling jumble of bodies. 
  "There, stop! Dead ahead! He's on the run!" 
  Ricky didn't see anyone, but he did spot a void pushing through the
crowd. His right hand balled into a fist of anger. And with a shimmer
the shape of a retreating man revealed itself. "You're mine now, you
bastard." Ricky leaped off his makeshift pedestal, wading through the
crowd in hot pursuit.

  His phone squawked; Ricky put it back up to his ear: "What?"
  "Ricky, what are you gonna do when you catch him? How are you going
to stop him?" 
  "My dad's a cop." He tapped his side, knowing Jimmy could see him. 
  "You're *packing*?" Jimmy said, incredulously. 
  "I've always known the combination to my dad's safes." 
  "Dude, when he finds out, he's gonna ground you till you're thirty."


  A dozen able-bodied men and women struggled and strained at the
twisted jumble of scaffolding imprisoning their fallen savior. They
tugged this way and that, trying to break pieces free so they could
release the fragile-looking girl, all the while growing concerned at
her shallow breathing and quiet gasps.

  But then a soft grunt, and the mewling sounds stopped.
  For a moment, they thought the worst.

  Then: "Back away! I'm gonna break out!"

  The twisted rubble squeaked and groaned and bulged. The ad-hoc rescue
squad quickly scrambled for safety.

  Suddenly the wreckage split open, and a rocketing eruption of light
burst through the top to come to a gentle landing a dozen feet away.

  Sapphire looked a little shaken, but she was still standing. She
nodded to the people who'd been digging for her. "Thank you," she said.

  "Thank you!" an appreciative man shouted back. Moments earlier he'd
been standing where a smashed collection of spotlights now rested. He
was lucky to be alive.

  Sapphire quickly dusted herself off as she looked up and down the
hall, considering the quickest route to Bates -- and the Black Widow.

  Suddenly she felt a large hand grab her arm. "Sapphire, you're under
arrest!"

  A goatee-dusted man stood before her, his free hand holding up a
police detective's badge.


  Detective Miguel Rubio tucked his badge into his pocket as he reached
for his cuffs. He'd finally bagged the scourge of the city. Sapphire
was his!

  Without warning, he felt his legs knocked out from under him; he
spilled to the floor, landing hard on his ass.
  "Back off, *Defective* Rubio," Sapphire spat. "This is just between
us girls."

  Detective Rubio watched in amazed silence as the scantily-clad
heroine took to the air in pursuit of her prey.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


  The loading dock ran the length of the building. A dozen pairs of
doors connected the dock to the intermediate hallway, and through
another dozen pairs of doors lay the main floor of the convention
center. From the dock, a concrete lip hung out over the rough-textured
roadway, periodically interrupted by diagonal cuts for trucks to angle
in and load or unload cargo. Opposite the building was a concrete wall
fifteen feet high, up to ground level, where reflecting pools seperated
the monolithic structure from the street. The roadway between spread
out some fifty feet wide, forty of which was covered by the convention
center's mezzanine level above, leaving ten feet of open sky, sliced
into sections by the massive concrete beams and columns forming the
flying buttresses that connected retaining wall to structure. 

  During the days and hours before a major convention, the dock would
be full of trucks coming and going, strong-armed laborers pushing and
pulling and waving and shouting, horns and backup chimes and diesel
engines honking and beeping and growling. But by the time the event
started, the dock was abandoned -- an overscale western town's main
street, deserted for a gunfight.

  As it was on this night, save a single tanker truck marked "Master
Brew" at one end, and a trio of sinister-black Cadillacs at the other.

  "Come on, boss, it's time to go!"
  "Dammit [cough!] Spicoli, I'm not leaving until I know that
bitch-freak has left the premises. [cough!] That woman is a menace!"
  "And that's exactly why we've got to get you out of here. Need I
remind you, sir, it's *you* she's trying to kill!"
  "If I leave without ensuring the safety of those people inside, the
media will villify me!"
  "Better to be villified than dead," Spicoli said, trying once again
to shove the beaten but still imposing entrepeneur thug into his limo.

  It was when his boss suddenly stopped resisting and fell into the car
that Spicoli knew something was wrong. He leaned inside to give the
driver a final instruction. "Take him straight to the plane. Don't wait
for us." The door slammed shut.

  Spicoli turned around.

  The pastiche of city lights leaking into the partially open cavern
shimmered across a tall, slim spectre some two hundred feet away. At
first it seemed an illusion, but as it strode with demonic confidence
down the double yellow line, its heels clicking and crunching the rough
pavement, he knew it was all too real.

  "All right boys, time to take the gloves off. Remember Joey and the
boys at the Club."

  Five burly men gathered at the side of the limousine, placing
themselves between their boss and the hate-possessed woman who
approached. They brandished weapons both improvised and well-honed,
from a pair of black-polished batons to a homemade mace.

  Spicoli smacked his palm on the side of the limo. "Come on, take off
already!"

  One of them stepped forward with a heavy assault rifle. He
snick-chacked the first round into the chamber, bringing the weapon to
bear off his right hip like some action movie star.

  "Dammit, Marty, you're only gonna piss her off!" Spicoli cautioned.

  The AK-47's muzzle flash lit up the shadowed road and walls like a
bonfire, the reverberations of its crackling report hammering eardrums
as its bullets hammered against the girl approaching them, spitting
blue sparks as they ricocheted away. Black Widow's pace increased, now
taking large, hip-swaying steps, arms out, fists clenched, eyes burning
hot red hatred.

  Spicoli's head snapped around, looking at the limousine that was
inexplicably still there. "Go, go, go!" he shouted at the car. He
snapped back around to regard the agent of vengeance rapidly
approaching, his eyes widening in panic.

  As Black Widow charged toward them, the optimistic gun-toter still
standing in front of them, blissfully changing cartridges, Spicoli
thought he saw something move near the other end of the dock. Like
paper caught by the wind blown across the roadway and out to the street
beyond. But not exactly paper. Softer, faster, like a racing ghost.

  Black Widow was on Marty now, quickly juking her upper body like a
boxer to avoid the meaty man's awkwardly-slow roundhouse. She reached
and spun around him, impossibly fast in those heels, jabbing him hard
in the kidney. Marty's body contorted in agony before crumpling forward
to the pavement.

  Another moment and she would be upon them.

  But it never happened.

  A whispering roar of air rushed the space between them, swirling
around the woman who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, a
coiled collection of curves that formed a now-familiar calling card.

  Sapphire.


  Black Widow stumbled in surprise; where the fuck did she come from?
Before she could contemplate an answer, she felt herself hammer against
an invisible barrier a few inches beyond Sapphire's outstretched palm.
Black Widow bounced back through the air, tumbling and skidding against
the outer wall before landing in a heap more than twenty yards back
down the corridor.

  "Get out of here," Sapphire barked over her shoulder. Weapons dropped
to the pavement as big men moved faster than would be thought possible
toward open car doors.

  Sapphire leaned forward, taking one step before levitating and
gliding down the corridor toward her fallen foe.

  Black Widow began to rise, shifting her feet defensively, looking for
an angle of attack. Sapphire kicked a toe forward; Black Widow felt a
tremendous blow to her chin that seemed to stretch her out and launch
each of her vertebrae separately; she skidded and rolled, the rough
concrete pavement clawing and biting and grinding, thinning and holing
her skirt before ripping the side seam to the waist, snagging and
tearing her stockings and blouse.

  Val scrambled back to her feet, but this time turned and ran. This
was not advantageous ground; she was trapped here, helpless but to
careen off the walls like a human pinball. And her opponent seemed
determined to set the high score.


  "Stop the car," Bates ordered. "Have the men guard the doors. Get
word to security. I don't want anyone coming onto the docks. If these
two are going to duke it out, I don't want anyone else hurt." He
coughed, wincing at the pain in his chest.

  "Fine, Mr. Bates." Spicoli got out, waving to the other two cars and
pointing at the doors. "No one comes on the docks! Call Security!" He
ducked back in as the men scrambled. "Now you've got to get out of
here. It's too dangerous. What if Valerie gets loose?"

  "That's not going to happen," Bates said, his voice wavering with the
effort of pointing down the corridor.

  Spicoli looked. Bates was right. Black Widow was being tossed like a
paper cup in a storm. 

  And Sapphire was a typhoon.


  A shove to the back spilled Black Widow to the ground. An invisible
kick flipped her over. Another sent her bounding and rolling to slam up
against the outer wall. She coughed and gasped for air. Her whole body
ached, her muscles stiffened, her bones buzzed. Her mind struggled to
hang on, desperately digging for a way out of this beating.

  Valerie looked up to the dock, recognizing the squat security hut and
the candy machine that she'd passed on entering this corridor just
moments earlier. Her head swiveled back toward her attacker. Sapphire
hovered just inches above the center of the road, her form long and
lissome, feet together, head down, arms outstretched and upswept. As
she touched down her body seemed to draw more compact, her arms
lowering to her sides. Swirling winds stirred her scant garments into
flames licking and leaping from her petite curves. The vision of
feminine power had momentarily held Val in awe despite her confused
scramble for self-preservation. Only when Sapphire looked up and
stepped into the glow of a nearer light could Valerie tear her eyes
away. 

  Valerie scrambled up onto the dock, running back the way she'd come.
She felt a force shove her sideways, up against one of the buttressing
concrete walls that extended halfway out the dock, but she kept her
feet, dragging her arm along the wall as her legs continued propelling
her toward the door and escape.

  But just before she reached it, the door opened. And a blonde woman
dressed in a fitted waitstaff's black suit charged straight into her,
halting her retreat and knocking her on her ass.

  A rush of wind and a scratching click of stiletto heels marked
Sapphire's leaping arrival next to the fallen vigilante. Valerie rolled
sideways, pushing herself up to stand in a single fluid motion. But all
her grace was hammered out of her in an instant as Sapphire pivoted and
slammed Val up against the wall with a powerful palm thrust. Val sagged
against the wall, only to feel herself lifted onto tiptoe and
flattened. When her eyes could again focus, Sapphire stood before her,
right hand extended low away from her hips, fingers extended, as if
pushing against a wall. Which in a way she was -- with Val caught in
between. She saw Sapphire's eyes flash in recognition as she took a
labored breath. She tried to move, but found she could only twitch
fingers and toes. Even her head was pinned, turned awkwardly to one
side, toward the door that seemed so close and yet impossible to reach.
Sickly green-white flourescent light streamed through the door from the
hallway beyond. Val could see the opposite doors that led to the
convention center floor.

  "Nice trick," sneered the black-suited blonde, noticing the way Val
struggled against Sapphire's invisible hold to no effect. The sinister
silhouette turned toward the gossamer girl. "Get the door, would you,
honey? We don't want to be interrupted."

  Valerie's eyeballs strained left toward Sapphire, who turned her head
slowly to regard the still-open door. Her left arm raised, cocked back
as if to slap a rude man for an unwelcome advance. Valerie felt the
weight on her chest slacken slightly, then press down harder as
Sapphire's free hand flipped and struck at nothing. In time with the
slap, a thunderous cacophany marked the candy machine's crash against
the door, slamming it shut and crumpling sideways to block it. Soft
metallic creaks and groans emanated from the settling wreck. Sapphire
turned back to look at Val again, the superheroine-puppet's right hand
pulling back ever so slightly, appearing for some reason to adjust the
pressure of her hold for her captive's comfort. Val suspected that had
she not been wearing sapphires of her own, she would have been crushed
by the initial attack. She was able to move her head enough to look at
the smaller girl directly. Sapphire's look softened, her glare of
determination fading as if she was only now becoming aware of her
surroundings. Valerie almost thought she saw a moment of sadness before
the girl's face again hardened into an expression of sullen distaste.

  Suddenly Valerie felt the burning of another's stare. She turned to
regard the woman in the black suit, who strutted confidently right up
to the pinned vigilante's side, a brief glance betraying the woman's
desire to stay out of Sapphire's line of fire.

  The unflattering orange glow of the dock's night security lighting
cast an evil bent on the woman's sharp features. But the eyes were
unmistakable. Valerie had stared into those eyes before. The devil's
eyes.

  Ginger Hartwick's eyes. 

  "Well, as you live and breathe!" Ginger announced broadly. "For the
moment, anyway," she added, almost dismissively.


  Ginger looked at Valerie with a growing hatred. Black Widow, indeed
-- on first glance, an insignificant thing, but her bite had nearly
been fatal. 

  For all Sapphire's enfuriating thwarts, the naive girl was still
fundamentally just a bumbling bimbo puppet whose strings had to be
found -- and now, despite the heroine's unexpected persistence and
surprising toughness, she was firmly under Ginger's control.

  Valerie Strain, on the other hand, represented an impossible
aberration in Ginger's universe: someone who'd outwitted her. Outplayed
her. *Tricked* her. It was a far more profound threat to Ginger's
existence than Sapphire could ever be. The Black Widow was not a woman
to be controlled; this was a demon to be destroyed.


  Valerie's sneer masked her fear. "You again. So what, are you just
Bates' hired gun, or do you fuck him, too?"

  Slap!

  "Do I look like I work for a human slug like Bates?" Actually,
dressed in a waiter's uniform not much different from the dark suits
Bates' thugs had worn in the alley that night, that's exactly how she
looked. But there was a defiance, a lack of fear despite her obvious
peril that made impossible subservience to any man. This woman was a
predator.

  And Black Widow was on the menu.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


  Max strode down the access hallway with regal confidence, heading for
the first set of doors that would lead to the dock. Two beefy-looking
black-suited "gentlemen" stood in front of it, arms crossed. Max smiled
broadly as the men's eyes suddenly blinked, apparently caught unaware
of his approach. They each stepped to one side as their faces went
blank, only to step back and shake off their momentary lapse of
attention after the invisible Asian had passed.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


  The Black Widow was trapped. 

  The slender young woman kicked and squirmed, looking not unlike a
caught spider. Her pink patent leather jacket and skirt were in
tatters; her sheer stretch top was riddled with holes, gathering and
stretching into a broken web of fabric; her stockings were torn and
holed and run. 

  Ginger approached, licking her lips in anticipation. "Now, be still
while I relieve you of your charming little necklace, and I promise
I'll make my bitch here kill you quickly." She reached for Valerie's
neck. The pinned vigilante felt the hold on her upper body lessen. She
reached up with her arm, but Sapphire used her free hand to slap it
back down -- hard -- with a flick of her wrist. Ginger leaned far over,
doing her best to stay out of the avenging angel's line of fire; she
never cared to feel that crushing pain again.

  Sapphire watched Ginger as she fondled Black Widow's baubles. It made
the superheroine ill. She wasn't sure which gleamed more brightly: the
sapphires, or Ginger's eyes.

  But the evil glee quickly dimmed. "Dammit, where's the clasp?"
Ginger's fingers tugged at the choker, pulling it around her victim's
neck an inch at a time, inspecting each link for some kind of loop or
catch.

  Black Widow smiled, turning her head on her immobile body. "There
isn't one, stupid." She spat in Ginger's face.

  Ginger looked to Sapphire, as if to elicit a punitive response, but
the heroine did nothing.

  "Fuck!" Ginger shouted, her voice echoing up and down the docks,
returning like the voices of an angry mob. "Hold her," she ordered
before storming off to the security booth.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


  Ricky squirmed in the grip of the mountain of a man that held him. He
looked down the corridor to see the Hunter striding purposefully down
the center of the roadway. "Stop him!" he pointed. 

  The thick head rotated slowly on massive shoulders. What was this kid
pointing at? "Stop who? There's nobody there. You're seein' things,
kid. You're on a bad trip. Just relax; there's nothing to see here."

  Ricky was incredulous. Couldn't they see the Hunter? Didn't they know
what he could do to Sapphire?

  Of course not.

  Ricky drove his heel down hard into the top of the huge black dress
shoe; he spun around and ducked low, driving his elbow back as hard as
he could. The falsetto yelp told him he'd found his target. As did the
slackened grip on his arm. Ricky quickly twisted free and lit off
through the door, jumping down off the dock to sprint down the roadway.

  "Leon! Get the kid before he gets killed!"

  The kid was quick, but Leon was 6'2" and a former track star. The
teenage troublemaker wouldn't get far.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


  Sapphire watched the Black Widow squirm at the end of Sapphire's
ethereal lance. The pinned woman's eyes burned with defiance and...
contempt. As if she were better than Sapphire. "How does it feel to be
a puppet for evil?" the vigilante sneered with moral superiority. The
comment bit deeply into the heroine's psyche. It was true. Sapphire's
dogged pursuit of this woman wasn't done to save Gerald Bates, or even
to save the Black Widow from herself. Sapphire was just carrying out
her orders. Delivering a package. Enabling evil. Sapphire twisted in
the irony that this single-minded ruthless vigilante had the moral high
ground. As little regard for bystanders as Black Widow had shown, as
brutal as she'd been toward a corrupt man who probably deserved a
firmer temperance of justice than he'd received but surely didn't
deserve the merciless violent death this woman had sought...

  ...it was nothing compared to the willful, wanton wickedness Ginger
Hartwick had already inflicted. She lied, she belittled, she destroyed,
she killed without hesitation, she took pleasure in beating someone
senseless, she gambled lives with cavalier cruelty, as if she relished
losing as much as winning.

  Black Widow, for all her mindless violence, was nothing compared to
the calculated chaos Ginger Hartwick would create.

  That Sapphire would create.

  But could she commit innocents to die based on nothing more than an
intuition of evil?

  A voice interrupted her thoughts. "These should work." Sapphire
turned to see Ginger approach with what seemed to be an oversized set
of pliers, but with a nasty parrot-beak looking business end. "Bolt
cutters," Ginger answered the unarticulated question.

  Sapphire looked back to Black Widow; her face had turned the pale
shade of imminent death.

  Sapphire watched Ginger approach, each step slow and deliberate, the
predator's prance before the prey is killed.

  The dance of the devil before she ascends to let loose all the fury
of hell upon the world.


  Ginger hefted the cruel cutters, adjusting her grip to open the
powerful jaws. The lower blade came to rest on the Black Widow's
collarbone, making her shiver as it slid in for the kill.

  "It'll all be over soon," Ginger said, both in mock comfort and
quavering anticipation.


  In a flash, Sapphire saw the awful accumulation of this devil's
deeds, the terrible trauma she herself had set in motion, and she
reacted. Unseen might leapt from an upswept left backhand, hurling
Ginger away from the Black Widow, bouncing her off the wall and dumping
her to the concrete floor several feet away. Another furious burst
lifted her off her knees and slammed her back against the wall. The
force of the impact made her spit blood. She hung there, limp as a
ragdoll, hammered a heartbeat short of death.


  Ginger lifted her head slowly, turning her head as she gasped and
coughed, looking out beyond the dock to the opposite wall. Just out of
her field of vision, she knew the tanker truck sat, ready to let loose
its explosive cargo. Pinned where she was, her back to the thick
concrete buttress, there was a chance she'd survive -- singed, but
standing. Most of the blast would hammer through the thin roll-up door
in the next bay, force belching fire tearing into the heart of the
convention center. And Sapphire, standing out on the end of the dock,
would be tested to the extreme. Bullets were one thing; a 3500-degree
supersonic storm of flame was quite another.

  And if Ginger didn't survive, at least she would see the end of this
insipid bitch who'd wrecked everything.

  Her arm scraped along the wall, moving toward the transmitter in her
pants pocket...

  Sapphire took a half-step forward, leaning toward Ginger, her eyes
flashing with commanding fury. 
  Ginger's hand froze. And her eyes bulged as her breath left her by
force.

  The heroine's hand backed off and relaxed slightly; Ginger took a
huge gasping breath, relieved to be granted the ability, and fearful
that this slight girl who stood before her could take it away again
with the slightest movement.

  "Now what?" Ginger rasped. "You can't kill me."
  Black Widow strained at her unseen bonds like a collared pitbull.
"Lemme go, I'll kill her."
  "No, you will *not*!" Sapphire remanded, pressing home her point with
a flex of her hand; Black Widow gasped. "Whatever happens, you are
finished here," she said with authority. She was clearly in control.

  But Sapphire herself was not convinced.

  It was a stalemate. Sapphire stood, afraid to move. Frozen by
indecision. Feeling the weight of the world settle on her. All she
could do was hope that help would come -- Police, Security, even Bates.
Help to immobilize Ginger, disarm her, find and defuse the bomb... 

  Anyone. 

  She looked to the Black Widow. Maybe she could help. Maybe Sapphire
could explain the danger, maybe the terrible cost of so many innocent
lives would temper the young woman's vengeance. But the fear and rage
spiraling out of control in those eyes said otherwise. She'd already
acted with criminal disregard for the lives of others in her
unrelenting pursuit of vigilante justice. Black Widow could not be
trusted.

  Sapphire needed help. If it was left to her alone, disaster would
result. She couldn't hold them forever. Even now, she felt the familiar
flame curling its tempting tendrils around her... it was only a matter
of time before she failed.

  Seconds ticked away. Why wasn't anyone coming?


  Someone was coming. But not to help Sapphire. To free his Queen.

  Max saw Valerie, her clothes in tatters, pinned up against the wall.
Even from this distance, he felt confusion, fear, helplessness, defeat,
despondence.

  No. His queen would not be stripped.

  Max reached out, his thoughts hardened into a singular petard of
amuletic energy, borne down upon Sapphire with brief but terrible
impact. It was not an attempt to neutralize; it was an attack intended
to destroy.


  Angela's conflict of mind had seemed insurmountable, an impossible
test of character with no positive outcomes. But in an instant it
became a triviality, lost in the all-encompassing throes of violent
animal ecstacy.

  Mind-numbing, blinding pleasure gripped Angela's whole body,
squeezing the very life out of her with agonizing, blissful spasms. 

  No defense, no understanding, no thought, no breath, no space, no
time. 

  Only overwhelming sensation. 
  Ice and flame. 
  Oppressive touch. 

  Synaptic rapture.


  Black Widow felt herself fall forward, her weight returning to her
feet. Sapphire stood before her, just barely, eyes unfocused, her body
trembling. The hands that had held Black Widow and Ginger prisoner fell
to the slight girl's side.

  Inexplicably released from her invisible bondage, Black Widow leaped
at Ginger, who was bending down and reaching for the bolt cutters. But
Black Widow was quicker, striking with lightning brutality. Her right
hand shot out, fingers grabbing blond hair, pulling Ginger's head
toward her left knee, rising and turned with cocked hips, smashing the
older woman's nose with a sickening wet crush.

  Ginger staggered back, propelled by the force of the blow; hands shot
to face through a stream of blood. She felt something grab at her side,
underneath her jacket. Her gun...


  Ricky ran as fast as he could, at once toward the Hunter and away
from the well-meaning mafiosos who couldn't see him. The Hunter had to
be stopped. Somehow he was able to break through Sapphire's forcefield
and render her helpless. And he seemed to be able to cloak himself from
others' awareness at will, even vanishing twice before Ricky's very
eyes. The determined teen didn't know it was his focus on protecting
his love from this sinister shadow that now kept the Hunter in sight.
But as the memory of Angela's sickening fall flashed through his mind,
Ricky did know that he could not let the Hunter violate Sapphire again.

  Ricky saw Max stop and fall to one knee, head still up, one hand
outstretched, fingers closing into a fist as he began to sway from
extreme effort. Beyond, he saw his beloved Angela. 

  Only moments earlier she had stood proud and defiant, hands pushed
out in front of her, holding down her opponents. 
  Now her hands fell, her shoulders slumped, her head lolled. Angela
was in agony. The Hunter was crushing her.

  And as Ricky continued racing headlong toward the beast of a man
still some thirty yards distant, seeing Sapphire another fifty yards
beyond practically withering away where she stood... 

  ...the corridor seemed to grow, the roadway seemed to stretch, the
heavy footfalls of his pursuers seemed to loom.

  He had to stop it now.

  In two hammering steps, Ricky stopped. He squared up. His hand
reached behind him, extracting the terrible agent of his love's
salvation. It was but a heartbeat, but Ricky felt the moment draw
itself out slowly. Left hand cradled right. Eye sharpened down the
sights. Shoulders shifted slightly. Target found. Finger squeezed.
Slide shivered back.

  Ricky's vision blurred as he felt himself propelled violently forward
by something large pressed against his back. Arms circled his chest.
Concrete rushed up toward his face. Disorientation. Crushed. Can't
breathe.


  Max strained with extreme concentration; his vision tunneled. He
couldn't hope to keep up such an intense outflow of energy for more
than a moment. But the moment seemed unending. His vision blurred, but
his mind's eye could see Sapphire folding, collapsing within herself;
he could see his precious Queen loosed, her fury intact but redirected;
he could see the woman called Ginger fall.

  And he could feel the gunshot, feel the large-caliber bullet rip
through her flesh. As if it were ripping through his flesh.

  But it was more than a psychic sympathy. It was painfully real. The
sensation crashed his concentration, pulling him back from the ether
into the immediacy of his own peril. His hand went to his shoulder
while his eyes watched Sapphire stiffen and fall to one knee.


  As suddenly as it had attacked her, Angela felt the devastating
feedback vanish, pulling her into a vaccuum of sensation, leaving her
feeling empty and disoriented.

  A horrible wet gurgling sound brought Sapphire resoundingly to the
present. She looked up to see Ginger bent over, eyes wide in disbelief
and confusion, her face a dripping bloody mess. But as Ginger's hands
came up from her torso, it was the blood she found there that first
perplexed, then immobilized the evil woman. A dark crater of ruined
flesh dominated her abdomen. A pool of fluid oozed down from the wound
to pool around her feet, looking black under the orange glow of the
dock lights. Ginger's gasps were shallow, her face ghostly white.

  Sapphire felt as gutted as Ginger looked. Despite the heroine's
indecision, a choice had been made. And within seconds, the terrible
price would be paid.

  Ginger's body went slack. Her eyes lost focus, staring dead at
nothing.

  Sapphire heard an echoed Click! from across the corridor. She turned
to see the tanker truck, and what looked like a tank of balloon-filling
helium sitting next to it. And something clicked in her head.

  The walls of the tanker truck rippled, then shredded open as if rent
open by a thousand invisible knives. A vibrating Crack! reached her
ears an instant later. A shimmering cloud of vapor began to expand . . .

  With inhuman speed, Sapphire launched herself toward it, limbs
drawing inward. An impossibly-bright spark ignited at the center of the
deadly cloud. A matching brilliant flash burst forth from the
superheroine, expanding as a shield of light.

  Flame ripped through the vapor, igniting it in a growing, glowing,
boiling tumble of heat that reached out toward the building...

  ...and was rebuffed by an impenetrable blue-white barrier, turned
back on itself in rolling, careening, swirling confusion, ripping back
through its host, slamming and searing and slagging the outer wall,
fleeing out and up toward the night sky, boiling water, scalding grass,
incinerating trees, blasting above and across the street, heat and
flame chasing the force of displaced air, a wall of glass shattering at
once, windows of five floors seemingly winked out of existence to leave
gaping holes into which bubbling flame reached...

  ...and then retreated, pulling millions of deadly shards back with
them, the vaccuum of explosive consumption recalling much of its fury
back toward its core before slowing, separating falling solids from
rising black gases.

  As the angry orange flames subsided, so too did the unnatural blue
glowing tendrils that shrouded them, until darkness took hold.

  And an agonized, exhausted cry marked a spent heroine's fall to earth.



__________________________________
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-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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