It was hard to navigate at this speed, at these heights. Couldn’t see street signs. Had to use landmarks.
NIH and Walter Reed were good landmarks. West from there, two or three more jumps — needed to follow those woods onto Greentree Road, had to lose the montum, had to find that one building, where was the religious center—
There! Found it!
I dropped down onto the low roofs and let all my montum fade in the fire, then turned to the road. Mariem’s ho was just southwest of here, had to find the corner; there.
One jump to get height. One jump to get line of sight.
One last passage through the flas dropped at the top of the cul-de-sac, right in front of Mariem’s house.
The front door was closed. The windows were fine. The doorstep and upstairs lights were on, even if the entry hall’s light wasn’t. Waqas’ car was in the driveway. Everything looked perfectly fine.
But sothing was off. There was sothing, I couldn’t quite put a finger on what, but my instincts were practically screaming at that sothing about this picture Was Not Right.
I glanced at the adjoining house and the interior walkway connecting them, but those were completely dark. Instead I circled around the side of the house to the back—
The sliding glass door into the kitchen was broken.
The glass had been shattered, tiny jagged bits left behind in the fra. The pieces had pretty much all gone inside, with only a few shards on the tile walkway going around the house.
The stalker was here. And since he’d entered from the kitchen, the most readily available self-defense options were cut off.
Even after so many years removed from it, my NMR training warned not to go inside, to call for help and wait for backup. But I couldn’t do that. Not when the stalker was already here.
Not when Zara’s distress had been enough for to feel through such an attenuated connection.
I conjured up a ball of foxfire and entered, doing my best to step on as little broken glass as possible. A quick check of the knife block showed nothing missing, which was… bad. Bad, but not indicative. The glass on the kitchen floor didn’t look to have been kicked around much, which could either an the stalker hadn’t left, or he’d gone out the front door. I hadn’t checked if the front door was locked, though. Maybe I should have, but maybe that would’ve… no; I had to not spiral.
I passed from the kitchen to the sitting room, ears twitching towards the front of the house as I finally heard sothing over the sound of my own heartbeat pumping worryingly loud: the frightened whimpers of a crying child, and a scared fox’s quiet yowls.
And I still didn’t hear any sign of Waqas.
I wanted to call out, to say sothing. I needed to know if she was okay. I needed to know why I couldn’t hear Waqas. But that was the sort of mistake that could potentially get her killed. I needed… shit. Okay, Naomi, you’re badly out of your depth here but you did learn how to do this, so think; what were the possibilities here?
The best possibility, and simultaneously the most unlikely: the stalker had just left re minutes before I got here, Hounaida and Waqas were relatively quiet from shock, but they were unhard. Second-best possibility: Mariem’s stalker was only still here because Waqas had gotten the drop on the bastard, he was out cold or dead, and they were stunned into silence from an adrenaline crash.
Another possibility: the stalker had co in, threatened Hounaida, and used that threat to kidnap Waqas, leaving Hounaida scared and alone. Or he’d co in, done sothing to Waqas, and then left.
None of those seed likely. All of them explained why I only heard Hounaida and Zara, but they didn’t fit. Not with a stalker who’d gone from doxxing to leaving threats on the doorstep to breaking and entering. No, there was one more scenario, and this one was the most likely.
The stalker was still here. Hounaida was quiet because she was terrified of an attacker who was right there.
And Waqas was silent because he was either hurt or dead.
I swallowed, hard. What the hell was I doing? This was a hostage situation, set up by soone who knew NMR hostage crisis protocol well enough that he used it to psychologically manipulate Lady Liberty! What did I think I was going to be able to do here!?
But then my ears flicked towards a slightly louder whimper coming from Hounaida, and the way Zara’s snarls paused just long enough to breathe. There was nobody else here. Even if I’d called the police before entering, there still wouldn’t be anybody else here for long enough that the stalker could kill both Hounaida and Waqas and be gone well before they arrived. Hell, nobody else would’ve even known to look!
It was stupid. It was reckless. It was impetuous, dangerous, and so many more things.
But there was nobody else to do it.
So I walked forward into the sitting room, foxfire hovering in front of , and rounded the corner of the hall leading to the house’s entryway—
click-click-click-tchk
My left ear flicked towards the sound before I even consciously registered what I was hearing, and I flinched away from the source of the noise the instant I recognized it, long-atrophied instincts kicking back in.
A spike of protective alarm from the core of my being told Gorou was awake now, and it was all I could do to send back feelings of no stop don’t do not before he could bring himself to .
That sound was the hamr of a gun cocking back. If Gorou showed up now, that gun was probably going off. Gorou couldn’t help here. He couldn’t even watch.
I was stuck handling this alone.
“Get rid of the fireball,” the man said, his voice sohow perfectly steady. He was holding a little girl at gunpoint and had a grown man unconscious at his feet… but there wasn’t even the tiniest hint of a quaver in his voice. I sat there watching him for a second, two, three.
Then his thumb twitched from its position on the hamr of the revolver in his grip.
I let my foxfire fade away into nothingness.
The stalker smirked.
“Miss Foxy?” Hounaida’s voice was a terrified whisper, barely audible over the tense silence and vulpine warning growls filling the house’s entryway. She clutched at the curtains hanging in the front window, almost trying to wrap them around herself and pull Zara back into them with her, to hide herself and the little fox from this dangerous man’s gaze, maybe offer a little more protection than the fox-print pajamas she’d clearly just woken up in.
Ah. That was what had gotten so worked up out front — the curtains had been hanging wrong.
I spared Hounaida a glance and a tremulous half-smile, then refocused my attention on the stalker, gesturing beside him ever so slightly at Waqas, who was sprawled out on the floor and slowly bleeding from a gash on his head.
“How long has he been unconscious?” I asked, then inwardly winced when I heard the tiny nervous warble I hadn’t quite been able to keep out of my voice.
“Hm?” The stalker nudged Waqas with his foot, but didn’t even turn to look at , his attention — and the barrel of his gun — squarely aid at Hounaida. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to care about him. Nobody needs to care about him. Especially not Mariem Mouthlaki.”
Shit. I bit back the urge to curse as I desperately fought to keep calm.
“Hounaida, honey—”
“Up-bup-bup!” the stalker interrupted, tapping his foot to punctuate his interjection and ignoring the snarl the motion drew from Zara. “I said, nobody needs to care.”
I held back the frustrated growl that wanted to slip out, instead just letting my ears pin back in stress and anger. This bastard… Mariem’s stalker wasn’t an idiot. That was the worst part of this. Everything he was doing here ca from knowledge and experience.
He’d sohow divined Mariem’s location and identity by comparing her response to his ‘affections’ against NMR hostage rescue training, so of course he would know not to shift his attention from the squishy normal human onto the Moonshot. And he wasn’t letting find out how long Waqas had been unconscious, which ant I had no way of knowing if he was already dead and the rest of his body just hadn’t caught up yet. Contrary to what popular culture would tell you, if a blow to the head knocked you unconscious for more than ten seconds, you probably had brain damage, or worse.
I’d been standing here for maybe thirty seconds. Waqas was breathing, but that was it.
And the stalker still had his gun unwaveringly trained on Hounaida.
“… okay,” I acknowledged, thinking of how I could buy myself so ti. I just had to hope Hounaida understood why I’d be saying these things. “You’re right. He’s unimportant.”
“Now that’s not what I said, is it?” the stalker responded with a sneer, setting my fur on end. “There’s nothing wrong with being unimportant. I’m unimportant. You want to be unimportant, Foxfire. Even my lovely Mariem clearly likes a bit of peaceful unimportance, doesn’t she?” He waved his free hand around the entryway, but the rest of his body maintained its focus on Hounaida. “What I said is that you shouldn’tcare about him. But… heh. That’s asking too much of you, isn’t it?”
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“I don’t follow,” I said, chewing on my bottom lip as I desperately tried to co up with so kind of plan.
The gun in his hand was a revolver, which ant six bullets and a lengthy reload — unless he had a speed loader, but the kind of desk jockey who pored over datasets and spreadsheets for long enough to dox a superhero probably didn’t have one. The problem was, I couldn’t get him to point the gun away from Hounaida, and I didn’t want him to point it at Waqas, either. The only acceptable target here was .
As a general rule, every A1 Moonshot was stronger, faster, more durable, and generally better physically than a regular human. It wasn’t even sothing that had to be part of our respective powers, either. Sothing about how we’d beco what we were now just set our physical baseline higher in every way.
This wasn’t to say I was bulletproof, or even bullet-resistant. It just ant a bullet wouldn’t hurt as badly as it would a regular human. More importantly, though? Even if I took a bullet, as long as the bullet didn’t brain , the damage was temporary.
If I could get in front of Hounaida and tuck my head down so I didn’t take a bullet to the brain, I could just flicker to fla and ‘reset’ my body. It would hurt, yes; hell, it would probably be the single most painful thing I’d ever experience. But the important part was that I would survive getting shot.
Hounaida wouldn’t.
So if I could get in front of her before the stalker pulled the trigger, she’d get through this.
I just needed to figure out how.
“Well you see,” the stalker continued, “this whole… ss, we’ve found ourselves here? It’s all your fault really, you nosy mutt. You could’ve just left well enough alone, kept out from where you’re not wanted. But no. Instead, you had to get between and Mariem, to try and take her away from . I wouldn’t have had to do this, do any of this, if you hadn’t made do it!”
What the hell? For lack of any other way to express it without risk of the stalker firing his gun, I flicked my ears forward then tilted them sideways in surprise and disbelief at that absolute quagmire of—
Wait. Was that — had he…?
I couldn’t assu. I had to check.
“And for that I… apologize.” The last word was practically excruciating to say, but if there was any way to catch the stalker by surprise for even a mont, if only to confirm my suspicions, I had to take it.
He blinked once, twice. Surprise or confusion, maybe.
Now.
I flicked my right ear twice, like when trying to wave off a gnat while my hands were occupied. And sure enough, the gunman’s eyes briefly left Hounaida and flicked my way at the motion.
Aha! I was right!
He was trying to read and anticipate my reactions by watching my ears.
Okay. Okay, that was big. Huge, even. I had an idea now. It was a gamble, yes, but the longer this situation lasted, the more likely sothing was to go even more wrong than everything already was.
It was a bad plan. It was a stupid plan, a shitty plan, and the kind of thing I fully expected to get yelled at over after this. But a plan was still better than no plan. Besides, all I needed this to get for was half a second.
Half a second to get in front of Hounaida and ready myself for pain.
“Oh you don’t get to apologize, bitch,” the stalker practically growled at . “Not after what you’ve done. Not after leaving your little pet to play guard dog.”
I shouldn’t taunt him. I shouldn’t do anything that would put Hounaida or Waqas at risk. But the stalker was clearly off-balance by this point, if for no reason other than his own damn monologue.
I had to keep him talking. I had to get him to stop focusing on where he had his gun pointed for even the fraction of a second needed to get out in front of it.
“Bitch is the wrong word,” I ventured, flattening my ears against my head to try and draw his eyes off of Hounaida again. “It’s vixen. And just like , that’s a fox, not a dog.”
“Oh, spare the fucking pedantry!” The gunman’s eyes flicked to again when I moved my ears, but I also heard the slight creak of his grip tightening on the revolver. Fuck; had this backfired? “Yap yap yap; what are you, a goddamn Poranian? Do you not know how to shut? Up!?”
He stomped one foot as he said this, drawing a frightened yelp from Hounaida and setting little Zara the fox to growling again. I took a halting breath and opened my mouth, but closed it again without saying anything the mont his eyes flicked my way again.
Okay. I had him angry. Angry people made mistakes.
I just had to play this right, and keep him off-balance. Either keep him angry, or get him talking. Or both. Actually, yes, that. Both would work better. People couldn’t maintain focus on too many things at once. The more the stalker had going on, the better the odds I sold this.
But first, I had to lay the groundwork.
So I swiveled my right ear to face the door for just a mont before turning it back towards the stalker.
Sure enough, he looked.
Okay. I could do this. I had to get him talking. We’d already been quiet for five, almost ten seconds. Any longer and he might act.
“What did she do for you?” I asked. “Mariem, I an. Lady Liberty.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” the stalker murmured, a wry smile on his lips. “She made important. Everyone else had already written off anyone still trapped. But not Mariem.”
I swiveled my ear towards the door again and let it linger there for a mont longer this ti before slightly tilting my head that way as though listening closer, then did my best to subtly tug the corner of my lips down into a tiny confused frown. This didn’t have to look good, I thought as the stalker’s eyes flicked towards and lingered for a mont longer this ti, but it did have to at least not co off as fake.
“I couldn’t shout for help,” he continued once his eyes were back on Hounaida, “but she still found . Dug through rubble for three hours, all to save one person. All for .”
“Chest compression?” I asked, hoping that he’d take the chance to elaborate. “Underground? Breathing problems?”
“Pacific Coastal hit the Columbia Center with a goddamn ballistic train!” the stalker yelled. It was now or never.
I swiveled my ear towards the door again, tilted my head slightly more this ti, and took my eyes off the stalker to look out the small window at the top of the front door, as though I’d spotted sothing at an angle the stalker couldn’t see.
“None of you unimportant fools even rember 2004! None of you except—”
Now!
I threw my eyes wide, pinned my ears low in terror, forced a shocked expression on my face, and scread.
“Wait Mariem don’t!”
The stalker flinched at my yell, his entire body turning to face the door.
And the instant he started moving, I fell apart into fla, then reappeared standing over Hounaida with my head tucked down into my chest and—
BANG
Gh—ah! Fuck, that—!
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG click click click click
Agh—gh, tha—ah, ah—!
Holy—ghrgh, ugh, urgh… fucking—
The most horrifically agonizing cough I’ve ever felt forced its way out of my throat, deep red-black blood splattering all over the curtains over Mariem’s front window.
I… I had to—
I can’t describe the agony of getting shot. I don’t have the words. There’s no way to properly convey just how incredibly fucking awful it was, the horrid hot-cold tearing and wrongness and… and…?
The pain was… gone?
The pain was gone. Black danced in the corners of my—
I fell apart into fla, and when I had a body again, it was fine. No holes in it, no internal bleeding, no pain. My blouse and blazer still had bullet holes in them, but that didn’t matter. The stalker still had his gun.
I had to change that.
I spun on one foot and leapt for the stalker’s gun arm, which had flicked the revolver’s cylinder open and angled towards the floor. His free hand was reaching for a pocket. That ant he’d brought extra ammo.
That ant I had to take away the gun.
NMR training may not have been great, but the sa hostage rescue training given to those of us who could tank a bullet had been painfully, abundantly clear on how hard it was to get a weapon out of sobody’s hand. Hands didn’t like to open, and grip strength was deceptively powerful. If you wanted to quickly get a weapon out of sobody’s hand, then unless you were one of the rare few whose powers let you force sobody's hand open? You had to break the hand, the weapon, or both.
And maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly, what with getting shot, but I didn’t particularly care what kind of damage this attempted murderer took in the process.
My fingers brushed against the revolver, and foxfire practically devoured it, slagging the barrel and heating the tal a terrifying cherry-red in an instant. The stalker howled in agony and collapsed, unable to let go of the ruined gun due to how the glowing-hot steel had essentially lted his flesh onto itself.
The stench of cooked pork was nauseating, but my stomach didn’t heave. I used a leg to shove the stalker across the polished wood floor until he was far enough away that I could safely check on Waqas, then call for backup and an ambulance. So amount of brain damage was probably a foregone conclusion at this point, but with quick enough—
“M-miss Foxy?”
“I-it’s okay Hounaida,” I gasped out, feeling a bit shaky. Fuck, why did the adrenaline crash have to hit now!? I wasn’t done yet! “I’m just checking on—”
The sound of a weak, wet cough froze in my tracks. I turned to look — and my heart fell.
Zara the fox had her tail hugging the underside of her body, ears held low and flat in terror, and her eyes were wide with despairing comprehension. She’d spotted the sa thing I just had.
We were both frozen there, eyes locked on the slowly growing dark red spot on Hounaida’s white pajama top.
“I-it, it h-hurts…” she whispered, her eyes hazy and unfocused. She wavered on unsteady feet.
Then Hounaida collapsed back into the curtains, and a terrifying amount of blood stread down her front onto the floor and curtains below her.
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