Painful lesssons (escaping the League under fire)

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!" The curvaceous grayscale woman next to you shrieks in your ear - not only out of impatience, but because she has to scream at the top of her lungs for you to hear her, on account of the fact that half a dozen black-clad League security guards are laying down withering suppressing fire on the overturned computer mainframe you and she are crouching behind as cover. Hundreds of submachinegun rounds are tearing into the expensive equipment and ricocheting around the narrow hallway. "POP UP AND SHOOT BACK! BEFORE THE HEAVY HITTERS GET HERE!"

You are crouching on your knees, hands over your head, lip quivering. There is a brief respite in the barrage while the men and women up ahead are reloading. Apparently, although superheroes don't stoop to carrying firearms, it's fair game for their mask-less lackeys. Hopefully those are nonlethal 'mercy bullets' or something that they're shooting at you but it sure doesn't sound like it, and you don't want to test that theory. "Ohhhhh!" you wail, sticking your hand up over the edge and firing off a few bursts blindly, unable to even look. "I can't...! Oh man, this was a lot easier when it was a bunch of swarthy, freedom-hating Baathists... those are my fellow Americans, not even supers!"

"They ARE supers! NCPs! Did you see that bitch with the green hair? She was throwing exploding bubbles at us!"Bones rubs a palm against her forehead. "Fine, save your ammo, we'll detour to the left! Move, move!"

You and she dart out of cover and down the next hall just as the barrage starts again. A bunch of those exploding bubbles that she mentioned drift into your path, threatening to cut you off - but miraculously, one hits the wall and sends out a shower of wood and drywall which hits the other bubbles, detonating them too and clearing your way. You duck your head as you run forward.

This is a terrible situation for you. The thing that was supposed to make you a 'super soldier' was your reaction time and vertical mobility, being able to jump faster than opponents could shift their aim. But in a maze of narrow corridors with low ceilings, your strengths are all but useless.

As you're running forward a pool of liquid shadow coalesces on the floor in front of the two of you and rises up, spreading like a curtain to reveal a woman with a coincidentally similar 'skin condition' to Bones, with the same kind of slate gray flesh - with dark purple hair and wearing a skimpy black leotard with a pair of inky black wings stretching from her back. "You girls aren't very smart, are you?" shes says in a scratchy, very bored sounding voice. "C'mon, go ahead and put your hands URRKKKK!"

The uzi in your hands barks wildly as you rush forward, hammering the gothy superheroine with a couple dozen slugs. They don't penetrate but they don't bounce of harmlessly either - the "hard" super-toughness that Maiden America and some others have, that lets them laugh off puny weapons completely, is a lot less common than the "soft" kind that works more like having steely bones and a skin made of bulletproof fiber. It won't kill them, but the energy transfer still happens. And seeing that, you follow it up with a flying, leaping two-legged snap kick to the stomach. The heroine goes flying backwards and rolls several times before landing face down, her legs in an undignified spread-eagled posture.

"Wow," Bones says with a snort as you round the corner, tossing a smoke grenade over her shoulder to slow down the pursuing guards, "uh, good hit. Got over your shyness about shooting the 'good guys'?"

"Well," you say as you run (more like a light jog for you, otherwise you'd leave your partner in the dust), "she really reminded me of this one trashy goth bitch who bullied me every day in high school, so..." You hope she doesn't recover before you are out of here, she will probably be quite mad at you.

Bones, starting to get out of breath, sighs in between pants. "Fuck's sake... well, whatever works. I'm... I gotta slow down a minute and catch my breath, hold them off in this stairwell a minute while I get down and blow the door to the garage."

As you cover the doorway you hear a tongue clicking sound. "Ch ch ch... You are in over your head, cariño." the dulcet, latin-accented tones of a man's voice chime in. A handsome, mustachioed man in an all-black leather cowboy outfit twirling a revolver in his hand and a pair of bolas in the other approaches casually. "A pretty girl like you must have had a hard life to be making an armed attack on a place like this... perhaps if you take me to your boss I can-"

The ripping-cloth noise of your uzi emptying a clip interrupts him. He is fast on his feet and tumbles, ducks, and cartwheels away in a manner that is undignified, but effective, as you walk the burst towards his feet. "Aiy! Wait! C-can't we banter first? AGHHH! DIOS MIO, MY LEG!" Trailing blood, he leaps through an open bathroom door and does not re-emerge.

"Fuck, man," you mutter, wrinkling your nose, "when you have to shoot, shoot! Don't talk!" You reload the mag before that security team reaches the intersection, and the wall of flying lead discourages them from putting their heads around the corner. You do a flying leap down the long stairwell, reloading in mid-air, and find Bones leaning against a wall and panting at the bottom.

"Hey, you're super-lucky or something, right? So one of these justice wagons and super cars down here ought to have the keys in the ignition for us, right?" you say to her, the adrenaline in your system making your voice peppy and cheerful.

"Shut up!" the no-nonsense woman barks at you, making your responsive 'rabbit ears' droop. "That isn't how it works! I hope you can make that remaining mag last, because I have to hotwire one of these overengineered pieces of shit!"

90 seconds later you are ignoring that advice and holding down the trigger in a panic as a veritable costume party of outlandishly clad men and women advance across the garage towards you under a beautiful brunette woman's glowing projected forcefield. "Holy fucking fuck what is taking you so looooong?" you shriek in a high pitched tone as you resort to hurling the gun in their direction.

"It's running! Get, in, go, go, go!" Bones shouts as she gets an armored SUV running. She doesn't bother opening the door which means you get keel-hauled, holding onto the handle and trying to open it as she accelerates past 40 MPH. If it weren't for your metal shock-absorbing boots you'd probably have broken ankles.

At last you're jumping in, the garage door only starting to close by the time your escape vehicle is peeling out of it onto the streets. "Jesus H. Fucking Christmas! I can't believe we made it out of that!" you pant, pulling the seatbelt on with numb hands. "Um... sorry that I made you have to let that guy fuck you."

"Yeah." Bones says, wiping sweat off her forehead. "Me too. On both counts. You did... alright. Keep your eyes up and make sure they aren't tailing us."

"Wait..." you say. "What about Jokester? Do you think he made it out?"

The sound of shattering glass pulls your attention upwards. As you turn and look out of the window of the SUV as it speeds away from the League headquarters, you see a familiar, bulky male figure amid a cloud of broken glass at the 8th story.

Falling. Not flying.