Aaron distracted using her body

He was trying to steer a speeding train, and she was the one with her hand on the throttle. Her will was an iron fortress, and his consciousness was just a battering ram, slamming uselessly against the gates. He was losing. He could feel his own presence, his own *Aaron-ness*, being squeezed out, compressed into a tiny corner of her mind.

Panic, cold and sharp, cut through him. He was about to be ejected, or worse, trapped. He needed a diversion, something to shatter her concentration, to overwhelm that rigid control. He needed to hit her with something her disciplined mind would never, ever see coming.

He didn't have control of her limbs, not really. She was fighting him for every inch. But he was *in* her. He could feel everything—the tension in her shoulders, the steady rhythm of her heart, the faint scent of gunpowder and expensive perfume. And he could feel other things, too. The base, biological instincts that lay beneath the layers of training and cold-blooded professionalism.

With a **** surge of will, he abandoned the fight for her arms and legs. He focused all his remaining energy, all his frantic, teenage-boy desperation, on a single, crude target. It was a stupid, insane, possibly suicidal idea, but it was all he had.

He made her hand move.

Not the hand holding the comms device, not the one ready to draw a sidearm. The other one. It twitched, a spasm she tried to suppress, but it was too late. Her own hand, acting on an impulse she couldn't comprehend, moved with a will of its own, sliding down the tight fabric of her tactical pants.

"What are you—" her voice snarled in their shared head, a mix of confusion and fury. She tried to pull the hand back, to clamp down on the rogue impulse with her iron will, but it was like trying to stop a sneeze. The connection was made.

A foreign, electric jolt shot through her system. It was completely unexpected, a signal her body wasn't trained to interpret as a threat. Her razor-sharp focus, which had been entirely on the room, on the hostages, on the escape plan, shattered. It fractured into a million pieces of pure, unadulterated shock. Her breath hitched. Her knees, for a fraction of a second, felt weak.

That was the opening.

That tiny crack in her fortress was all Aaron needed. He poured himself into it, not with brute ****, but with the sheer, overwhelming wave of his own chaotic, undisciplined consciousness.

Her mind recoiled from the raw, invasive sensation. It was a psychological attack more than a physical one, and it was one she had absolutely no defense against. The iron wall of her will buckled, then crumbled.

"Stop... get out..." she whimpered, but the thought was weak, lost in a storm of sensation she couldn't process.

And just like that, Aaron was in the driver's seat.

The world snapped back into focus, but now he was the one behind her eyes. He could feel the lingering echoes of her shock, the frantic, confused buzzing of her consciousness shoved into the backseat of her own mind. He had control.

"Everything's fine," he said, his voice smooth and steady, using her vocal cords like an instrument. He turned to the two masked gunmen, who were looking at their boss with confused expressions. "The vault is on a timer. It's a new security feature. We just have to wait."

One of the gunmen lowered his weapon slightly. "Why'd you... you okay, boss?"

"Perfect," Aaron purred, a dangerous glint in her eyes. He walked towards them, her hips swaying with a confidence he didn't know she possessed. He was drawing on her muscle memory, her ingrained persona, even as he fought to keep her suppressed mind from fighting back. "In fact, I've had a change of plans."

He was standing between them now. He could feel the coiled power in her limbs, the knowledge of a dozen ways to disable a man in seconds. It was intoxicating.

"Hey!" one of the gunmen started to say, but Aaron was already moving.

He moved faster than the men could process. Her body twisted, a hand chopping down on the wrist of the nearest gunman. There was a sickening crack, and the man screamed, his gun clattering to the floor. Before the second one could even raise his weapon, Aaron drove the heel of her hand into his nose. Blood exploded, and he staggered back, dazed and disoriented.

Aaron didn't stop. He followed up with a spinning kick that took the first gunman's legs out from under him, then disarmed the second with a flick of her wrist that sent his gun skittering across the marble floor. It was over in seconds. Two trained professionals, dispatched by their own commander.

He looked over at the hostages, who were staring in stunned silence. He gave them a reassuring nod, then walked over to the vault door. He input the code he'd plucked from her mind—a six-digit sequence she'd been rehearsing—and with a heavy clunk, the door began to swing open.

"Police!" he shouted, using her voice to project authority. "The robbers are disarmed! We're coming out!"

He dragged the groaning gunmen to the center of the floor, then walked towards the front doors, her hands raised. As he stepped into the light, he let go. It was a conscious decision, a release of his will. He poured himself out of her, his purple form ripping free and shooting up into the ceiling, invisible to the outside world.

The woman stumbled, her eyes wide with confusion. She looked down at her hands, then at the two moaning men on the floor, then at the open vault. The last few minutes were a complete blank, a terrifying hole in her memory. She had no idea what had happened, only that her perfect operation had inexplicably collapsed.

Police swarmed the building, securing the gunmen and leading the dazed woman away in handcuffs, her face a mask of bewilderment.

High above, Aaron floated next to Cody and Hailey, his purple form shimmering with exertion and adrenaline.

"Holy shit," Cody breathed, his green form wide with awe. "Did you just... win a fight by... by..."

"Don't say it," Hailey warned, though her orange face was split with a grin. "But that was the most insane, disgusting, and brilliant thing I have ever seen in my life."

Aaron watched as the paramedics helped a very shaken Hank to his feet. The big guy was looking around, trying to understand what had just happened.

"We need to get out of here," Aaron said, his voice a low echo. He looked down at his hands, his spectral form feeling more solid, more real, than ever before.