“I count at least fifteen gunmen down there, not counting Six-Shooter,” Visonary said, adjusting a small dial on the side of his spherical helmet. “They’ve gathered the hostages in the middle of the ball room. Perfect. I can get my drones in through the skylight, form a barrier around them, and you two can do your thing.”

  Constellation nodded, wind fanning the edge of her long coat. “I can take one half of the shooters, you go for the others?”

  Pugilist cracked his neck from side to side and rolled his shoulders, limbering up for what was to come. Already he could feel a familiar rush tingling to life in his body, an electrical current that raced through his muscles. He focused on that sensation, and not the sensation of Constellation holding him aloft in a bubble of gravity. “Uh, I’m cool with that. But are we really doing this without Trailblazer?”

  “Something came up for him. Family drama,” Visionary said, continuing to scan the rooftop below his hovering platform. “Looks like Six-Shooter is the only Apex down there. Should be fine with just the three of us.”

  “Looks like,” Constellation repeated. “But I doubt Jupiter would send just one enhanced man for this. Well, let’s get to it then.”

  There was a small whirring sound as the fleet of orbs, eight in total, positioned themselves above the skylight. “Three,” Visionary said softly.

  Constellation’s glow burned a little brighter.

  “Two.”

  Pugilist clenched his fists, the bindings on his hands straining. The wind picked up, fanning at his ivory jacket.

  “One.”

  The spheres rocketed down in unison, each one faster than a bullet, forming into a ring that smashed through the skylight. Pugilist saw them pulse with energy on the way down, the burst of energy launching the shards of glass to the far ends of the ballroom. They formed into a ring around the hostages, each sphere positioned equidistant from the other, before they flashed with a haze of blue light that formed into a dome of hardlight,

  The hostages shrieked, several bullets striking the barrier and vanishing into sparks on contact. “Shit!” one of the gunmen shouted. “We got masks coming in hot!”

  Six-Shooter stood out from his sharply dressed cohorts. A tall and muscular men, decked out n chromatic armour, over which he wore a white poncho and broad-brimmed cowboy hat. The lenses of his silver helmet blazed bright orange as he glowered up at the skylight, steam hissing from the grill that covered his mouth. “Left gun: Hellfire,” he growled. One of the weighty revolvers in his grasp made a pinging sound, the glowing chambers of the cylinder suddenly filled with an ominous red light.

  “Shit,” Pugilist huffed as Constellation and Visionary made for the opening in the skylight.

  Constellation banked them to one side as Six-Shooter squeezed the trigger and opened fire, the chamber moving automatically as a series of loud bangs erupted from the barrel. His bullets cleaved through the air, each one exploding into broad plumes of flame that belched spirals of smoke into the sky. He was fast, and accurate, but Constellation was faster as she dove through the opening in the skylight.

  Pugilist had once asked Visionary how Six-Shooters guns worked. How he could fire a pair of revolvers in perpetuity, even changing the kinds of bullets in the chamber, without ever needing to reload. The explanation, even now, had seemed bonkers to Pugilist.

  Supposedly each chamber had a tiny 3D printer inside of it, able to create new bullets or alter the internal ammunition at incredible speeds. When he asked where the guns got the material to print anything at all, Visionary had said they were likely linked to some pocket dimension flooded entirely with raw material.

  Artisans, Pugilist continued to insist, were bullshit.

  A wave of gravity flew from Constellation’s hand, slamming into Six-Shooter and flinging him into a nearby wall. Plaster exploded around him, but he quickly righted himself, grunting and inching for a pair of double doors beside him.

  “I’ll go left, you go right,” she said, launching Pugilist through the air.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You got it Connie!”

  He caught a glimpse of two men with machine guns opening fire on her, but their bullets instantly instantly fizzled away as they drew close to her, reduced to puffs of molten metal that orbited her golden aura. A hard flick of her wrist caught them with a rush of force, sending them scattering like bowling pins.

  Time slowly slid to a halt from Pugilist’s point of view as he landed atop one table, three of the gunmen slowly taking aim at him. In that moment his vision became flooded with spectral images of his attackers, predicting the paths they would take. Blue lines protruded from their barrels of their guns, as if on a scientific diagram, showing the trajectory their bullets would take when they opened fire.

  The world did its best to categorize Apexes and their abilities. Dreadnoughts for immense physical abilities, Materialists who could create and control certain elements, Conduits who could do the same with types of energy... but then there were people like Pugilist who did not comfortably fit into any one category, Apexes who were called ‘Oddballs.’

  His physical abilities were slightly superhuman, but not to the extent of a Dreadnought, nor were his mental powers strong enough to count as a Psion. But his abilities were damn potent.

  An encyclopedic knowledge of all forms of unarmed combat, imprinted into his brain, and a mind that could instantly identify threats before him and guide him on the best route forward.

  His foot snapped forward, striking a chair at just the right angle to fling it into the face of one man, knocking him out cold with a satisfying crunch. In the next instant Pugilist sprang forward, leaping away as a second gunman squeezed the trigger and sent a spray of machine gun fire tearing through the wood. He closed the gap, a harsh chop slicing the machine gun in half.

  The shooter had a split second to look at his broken gun, dumbstruck, before a palm to the face knocked him out cold.

  A third man got a bead on Pugilist with his handgun and squeezed off three shots in quick succession. But Pugilist dodged each shot with swift jerks of his upper body, closed the gap, and laid the man out with a speedy roundhouse.

  Semi-automatic was always so much easier to dodge.

  At that moment he heard a whine from overhead, a trio of Titanium drones flying in through the broke skylight. They opened fire, downing several gunmen in a hail of rubber bullets. But one of the shooters had swapped his rifle for a sleek energy weapon, the silver surface gleaming in the light. One shot slammed into Constellation, smashing her through several tables across the ballroom, and a second shot scorched a deep scar into the plating of one drone.

  “You good Connie?!” Pugilist called out.

  “Fine!” she called back, rising swiftly and gesturing to the doors by Pugilist’s side. “Six-Shooter ran that way, get after him!”

  The remaining shooters had swapped from ballistic weapons to energy ones, and Pugilist didn’t fancy his odds of dodging many shots from those. So, nodding, he turned and tore through the twin flapping doors.

  Six-Shooter was far ahead of him in the long corridor, moving with impressive speed for a man decked out in armour. But Pugilist was swift too, bombing down the hallway like an Olympic sprinter.

  The gunman whirled around, quick as a flash, and drew his namesake in each hand. “Both guns: Full auto.” The chambers started to spin, turning into luminous rings of white light, and he squeezed both triggers at once. But Pugilist was already leaping into an alcove that led to the staff bathrooms, and the first salvo instead tore several chunks from the wall. Clouds of shattered brick and mortar puffed out from each impact.

  “I’m the one gunman you’re not gonna beat with your fists, dumbshit!” Six-Shooter shouted, his boots squeaking on the floor as he inched back between shots.

  Pugilist ignored him, his mind already doing the calculations. He was fast, and a damn good dodger, but two full-auto weapons trained on him in an enclosed space? Even his Oddball powers couldn’t overcome that.

  Still, in that very hall there was a cart taller than his whole body, each shelf of it lined with trays of hors d'oeuvres, only a short distance around the corner. “Fuck, this is one of my dumber ideas.” And yet he moved all the same, rounding the corner in a split second of silence as Six-Shooter pressed for the door.

  Pugilist booted the cart harshly and sent it rocketing down the hall, the angle and speed calculated to perfection by the strange mechanics of his brain. Bullets ate into the steel, tearing chunks from it, struck the trays and sent chunks of ham and devilled egg spraying into the air. Yet Six-Shooter did not manage to destroy the cart before it rammed harshly into him, cracking his visor and sending him tumbling onto his back.

  He pressed on, aware that he’d only have one chance to close the gap before Six-Shooter righted himself.

  Then, at that moment, the door was kicked in and a chill breeze wafted his way. A figure stood in the doorway, totally unfamiliar to Pugilist. A young man in a dark costume, golden highlights framing his sleeves and trousers. His face was covered by a glossy black mask, a golden V-shaped visor concealing his eyes. In one hand, wedged between his thumb and index finger, was a quarter.

  Warnings flashed in Pugilist’s brain, a fraction of a second before the coin took on a vibrant golden glow. The young man flicked it forward and Pugilist leaped back. But the coin exploded halfway between Pugilist and the downed Six-Shooter, the explosion slamming into Pugilist like an invisible wall. He spun through the air, all the air shunted from his lungs in an instant, and he landed harshly on his side.

  He could just see the stranger helping Six-Shooter to his feet, the walls blown inward and chunks of the ceiling dangling loose from their smoking moorings. His ears were ringing, but he could hear Six-Shooter clearly enough. “Shit, kid, you’re not supposed to be here. Your old man will kill me.”

  “I’m not a little kid anymore, Six.” He certainly sounded young to Pugilist.

  A woman entered behind them, this one at least semi familiar to Pugilist. Zipcode was a squat and somewhat round woman in a red costume, white lines running in jagged patterns along it. A large ‘ZC’ was emblazoned diagonally on her chest.

  “None of the others gonna make it?” she asked, huffing.

  “Drones, bound to be a lot more of them on the way, we can’t afford to-” Pugilist was forcing himself up as the doors at the far end of the hall were blown down. A drone hovered in the opening, armour scuffed and scarred from several laser shots. “Shit,” Six-Shooter growled, “Zip, get us the fuck outta here!”

  A whirlwind of crimson light swirled around the trio as Zipcode activated her powers, while the drone was spooling its gun. Pugilist caught a final glimpse of the mystery kid and then the three were gone, vanished into thin air.

  Pugilist huffed for breath, grimacing as he pressed a hand to his sore ribs. “Who the hell was that?”