Fan Fiction ❯ TAU Elite Squad ❯ TAU 03 ( Chapter 3 )
[ P - Pre-Teen ]
By: CRose 
Anime/Manga: Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 10.26.2004 | Pages: 8 | Words: 10.0K | Visits: 380 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 10.26.2004 | Pages: 8 | Words: 10.0K | Visits: 380 | Status: Completed
**********
TAU ELITE
**********
Just an Average Day
Chapter 03
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2004
**********
Ring! Ring! Annoying Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnggggggng!
The phone was beside her bed, so she reached out from underneath the covers and pulled it under the blankets.
“This is Akiko.” She said sleepily.
“Time to get up a little early Akiko, we need you at the scene of our newest crime.” Ciko’s happy voice said, pitched high enough to remind Akiko of fingernails on a chalk board.
She growled and peaked out at the clock beside her bed. “It’s four in the &%$#!@# morning.”
“I know, I’m sorry about that. Jax said to come down there and pull out of bed naked if I had to.” Ciko said. “He needs you down at the QuLoad building ASAP.”
“What’s the situation?”
“A rogue TAU.”
“Let the others handle it…”
“Jax said he wanted you there.”
“Fine, I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“He said fifteen minutes, no later.” Ciko told her.
Growling, Akiko hung the phone up and tossed the covers off all in one motion. She wasn’t wearing much, just a pair of panties, a thin bra, and nothing else. Rolling off the bed, she stood up and stumbled over to her closet even though she wasn’t quite awake yet. It only took her a few minutes to toss on a rumpled uniform and scratch herself a few times. Her hair was a mess, but this wasn’t the first time Jax had called her to the scene of a crime in progress so she could fight one of the bad guys.
Yawning, she picked up a small device from the dresser and pressed a couple of buttons after glaring at it for a few seconds. Down in the garage Dragon’s computer beeped and suddenly started up as Jina started her regular scan of the motorcycle. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her boots on as she tucked the pant leg inside and laced it up as quickly as she could.
Her belt went on next and she stumbled into the kitchen and over to a large white box and grabbed a doughnut.
“I hate my job.” She muttered as she yawned again.
“You always say that.” Jina said.
“I mean it this time.”
“Just like you meant it the last dozen times this happened. New reports are reporting a disturbance down town, but they haven’t been able to get close enough report anything yet. The Police have managed to put up an electronic buffer around that area of town while more officers are called in.”
“Any thing else?”
“The TAU division has been called in.”
Akiko snorted and yawned again. “I’ll say.”
It was still dark outside, though the sun was due to rise any time now. She figured only that only a few hours had passed since she went to bed, but she was to tired to think about actual numbers. Working like this on a few hours sleep made her grouchy and Jax was going to pay for this if she called her out because he needed her to lift his car and replace a tire. As soon as she finished her breakfast, and complained some more, she drank a glass of water and wandered over to the bathroom. She took a comb to her hair and made sure it she had it tied back in a long braid that wouldn’t get in her way.
She’d done it so many times that it only took her a couple of minutes to get it in place. Tying the end of it with a white ribbon, state issue as part of her TAU uniform, she made sure it would stay in place with a pin. Then she grabbed the mouth wash to get the doughnut taste out of her mouth.
From phone call until she walked out of the apartment, only five minutes had passed. It wasn’t bad, but she wouldn’t make it to the scene for another ten to fifteen minutes. Dragon was idling quietly as she got on and tapped the status button on the computer.
“Jina, is Dragon ready?”
‘All warmed up, the security check should be finished by the time you get down to the garage.’
“Any changes?”
‘Negative, nothing was found.’
“Excellent.” Akiko said
Everything read okay, so she sat it up on its wheels and pulled out. A few minutes later she squealed the tires as she pulled out onto the roads. This early in the morning there wasn’t much traffic, so she tapped another button on the computer and activated the police lights.
They were set just below the handle bars, a think plastic band of red and blue that flashed like a set of strobe lights. It was the only addition she’d made that she really didn’t care for. The department asked her to make when she made it the vehicle she used all the time. The stupid things were one of the few items on Dragon that she didn’t like.
Being so early in the morning, she didn’t want Dragon’s noise to wake everyone in the area up. So she used the computer to adjust the muffler baffles and went stealth. Grinning, she sped up and let the lights alert everyone she was there as she ran red lights in an attempt to get to the QuLoad building on time.
About two blocks from the building she turned off the lights and slowed down to a stop at the corner. She didn’t trust anyone when it came to her motorcycle’s safety, so she pulled into a small parking lot where it would be out of the way hopefully. Once the security system was set she made sure her collar tabs were in place, a state mandated law, and headed for the building at a jog.
As she got closer she began to see why she was called down here. Several wrecked police cars were piled in the middle of the street a couple of blocks down. Since it was so early in the morning, she realized that they hadn’t managed to block the area off yet physically, just electronically. As she got closer to the pile of cars she saw that several of the officers were by the pile, bandaging each others wounds.
They looked up as she came to a stop and went for their guns, but stopped when they realized that she was one of them. They decided to just glare at her instead.
“Gentleman?”
“Who are you?”
“Officer Shoo.”
“You’re a TAU!” One of them growled.
She nodded. “Jax called me down here.”
“Go away and let us take care of this bastards.” One of the older ones yelled.
“No need to get testy.” Akiko said.
“Jax is back there with a couple of other freaks.”
“Thanks Levin, I never did get a chance to appoligise about your car yesterday.”
“Carl got reprimanded for that.”
Akiko nodded and grinned as she looked the cars over to see what kind of damage they sustained when the cops tried to stop the TAU criminal she was here to fight. “Is your car among these?”
“Nope, it’s back at the station getting the front axel replaced.”
Several of the officers around them gave her a weird look. Since they didn’t want to associate with the TAU officers unless they had to, most of them didn’t know what her power was. It always amazed her how ignorant some police officers were even in this day and age.
Akiko nodded. “Well I got called down here to help Jax out with whatever did this. Can any of you tell me?”
“I was taken out so fast that I didn’t even see it.” Levin said with a shrug. The rest of the men just grumbled and refused to answer her.
It was about what she expected, though she was a bit surprised that Levin wasn’t mad at her. She would have to find out why when she got a bit of free time.
“Just head down the street and look around the corner, Officer Jax and one other freak are down there fighting that monster.” Another cop told her and she saw Levin wince.
She shrugged it off, it wasn’t like she hadn’t encountered this attitude before and at least he was helping her. Even if he was being a jerk about it the information would help her. She walked over to a nearby car, and ripped the bumper off the car with a screech of metal. She pulled the plastic bits off the metal frame of the bumper and tossed them to the ground.
As she swung it around a couple of times, ignored the sudden silence behind her, and headed down the street whistling badly as she bent the bumper into a large bar like shape with her bare hands and swung it around a couple of times. For some reason she was always being underestimated so she enjoyed the sound of the officers shocked silence.
“Thanks guys!” She called pleasantly.
“FREAK!”
Dealing with rogue TAU sometimes meant walking into situations that a normal person would never believe, that included dealing with hateful team mates or unfriendly psychopaths that were out for blood. No matter how many time you told the story to them they just never understood what a TAU had to put up with and they always thought it was the TAU’s fault no matter what the truth was. Over the last couple of years she could remember fighting things from a giant slime mold monster, to flying Tau who were out to make a name for themselves.
The job was never boring, that was for sure, but whenever Jax was involved it always meant something really big was going to happen. He was a leader and rarely took a personal hand in a battle these days unless he absolutely had to. She was curious why he was even here at four in the morning in the first place. After turning a second corner she stopped to stare at a car that looked like someone had taken a large sledge hammer it, or a fist.
She recognized the style since she had used it herself several times when she needed to stop a car. The large dents and holes were from someone punching their hands and feet through body of the car and ripping the driver out by their hair. A large hunk of metal off to the side had to have once been and engine, at least she though it was, there were only so many large lumpy pieces of metal that had a fan belt attached to it. She could hear some sounds just down the street, so she made sure the twisted bar was strong enough to be used in a fight and headed in that direction.
At the corner she paused and took a second to peak at what was going on just down the street. About a block and a half away, there was large wall of darkness crossing the street and it was about six feet high. Jax and Tabitha were crouched behind it as the ugly TAU that caused this whole mess raged on the other side.
He was about ten feet tall and covered in muscles bigger than some people’s heads. The monster was pounding on the wall that Jax was generating to protect him and Tabitha. At least he wasn’t green, which would have just been so cliché, but he did appear to be wearing no clothing at all.
She blushed and realized that she might see something she would rather not see this early in the morning in the middle of the street. His muscles gleamed, those that she could see over the top of the wall, using a large piece of asphalt to beat on the wall.
She noticed that Jax and Tabitha were looking in her direction and she waved. Then she winced a little and hid behind the wall as his glare turned up a notch. It could have melted through steel at that point. “My, he’s in a good mood.” She muttered and looked around and tried to assess the situation a little better before she made her way over to the fight.
Tabitha caught her attention and Akiko realized that the girl was looking a little worse for wear. Her clothing was dirty and her long pink hair wasn’t as nice as it had been the day before. There was a rather large bruise forming on the side of her face as well. She must have gotten a little close to The Bulk.
The fact that she could see it from this distance meant that it would probably be really noticeable up close. Then Bulk roared in rage like an animal and slammed both fists down on Jax’s shield and it nearly buckled under the blow. Waves of shadow flowed away from the impact point and Akiko had to admit she was a little impressed. Jax managed to recover pretty quickly though, so she wasn’t to worried. She had seen his shields block TAU generated blasts that could level buildings so this wasn’t that big of a deal.
“Well obviously he wanted me here to fight that thing, though I think he might actually be stronger than me.” She wasn’t to sure what to think of that. “This is going to be interesting.”
“Get over here!” Jax yelled.
Laughing a little, Akiko spun the bar around a couple of times before she stepped around the corner. The monstrous TAU continued to pound on Jax’s shield and didn’t seem to notice her. She jogged over to the two and knelt down beside Tabitha.
“It’s about time you got here.” Jax muttered.
“Well excuse me for being in bed at four in the morning.” Akiko growled. “So what set this guy off?”
Tabitha looked a little sheepish. “Um…I did, by accident.”
“I was getting ready for work when we got one of our usual calls about a TAU running around down here. I figured it was just one of our usual resident panic calls. So I grabbed my stuff and headed down here to meet with the local police to see what the situation was.” Jax said and grit his teeth as his shield took another powerful blow.
Akiko glanced up at him. “Oh…”
“As I was saying, I found this guy here being confronted by the police, but he was a lot smaller then. He looked normal enough and nowhere near as irrational as he is now.”
She glanced over at Tabitha.
The pink haired girl sighed and pointed to a building down the street. “I live in that apartment complex there.”
Jax growled as the shield took another hard blow. “I contacted Tabitha when I got here, figured it would be a good way for her to get a bit of experience. With us here I didn’t think it would be too hard to stop the guy, but I was wrong.”
On a hunch Akiko glanced over at Tabitha. “You set him off like this?”
“I didn’t mean to.” She said.
“What happened?”
Jax snapped. “The bastard absorbed Tab’s blast and his body suddenly looked like it was full of inflatable muscles. Then he started acting like this and tossing police cars around like Leggo blocks.”
“If he absorbed the energy, is he also using it up and getting weaker as time goes by?” Akiko asked.
“We haven’t been able to tell.” Jax grunted as the shield took another blow and wavered a bit before he was able to stabilize it. He was sweating quite a bit and Akiko could tell that he wouldn’t last too much longer.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to let go and fight someone with my full strength, but he may be stronger than me.” Akiko said as she stood up and looked at the guy. “What’s his name?”
“He called himself Smasher.” Jax said.
“Ah, it’s another moron who can’t think up a proper name.”
“Just hit him a few times and give me a chance to rest!” Jax growled.
“Yeah, whatever Boss.” Akiko said as she sat the bar on the ground beside Tabitha and gave her a pat on the shoulder, then crouched down, and jumped over it. The bar would come in hand against most types of TAU, but a brute like this needed to be handled differently.
“Be careful!” Tabitha yelled.
Jax just gave her weird look.
Flipping in mid air she landed beside the large guy and made a quick decision. She bent down before he could focus on her and used her strength to hit him behind the knee cap. As the leg suddenly collapsed she grabbed his arm and shoulder threw him several yards away.
He yelled out as he landed on his back and rolled several times before coming to his feet in mid role and glaring at her. “ARGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
“Such an intelligent reaction.” Akiko said as she cracked her knuckles and smiled at the guy.
“Quit playing with him and knock him out so we can get him restrained!” Jax yelled from behind her as he finally let the shadow generated shield shimmer and fade. He sighed and took a few seconds to catch his breath.
Akiko nodded and waved as she sauntered over towards the big brute as he ran at her with a pair of fists above his head. For a second she could actually feel the ground tremble beneath her feet as his feet slammed into the ground with enough force to shatter the cement. She glared at him as she reached deep within to find her full strength and growled.
There was every chance that this guy was way above even her full strength, but she wasn’t about to let that slow her down. She had a job to do and this half insane maniac wasn’t about to stop he from doing it even if she had to break a few bones to do it. As he closed in she could smell his rancid sweat and her eyes flashed as she used her smaller size to duck under his clumsy arms and sent an uppercut straight into his jaw.
It sounded like a gun shot going off as her fist made contact. His head snapped up and to the side and he actually stumbled back several paces before he recovered from the blow enough to keep from falling down. She massaged her hand as it throbbed in pain and was pretty sure that the bones in her hand were all bruised.
It barely even affected Smasher, but Akiko wasn’t finished with him just yet, she needed to press her attack while he was still recovering. She shot forward and started to deliver a devastating series of attacks to his stomach chest and head. Martial arts wasn’t her forte but she could pull off some amazing moves just because of her strength. The department also trained its officers in hand to hand combat for when it was needed.
Boxing was one area where she did excel and within seconds she had him backing up. All his strength was useless if he didn’t know how to apply it and from the looks of the fight so far all he’d been doing was tossing cars around like toys. Even she could do that, it wasn’t all that hard, and it was enough to frighten the regular humans.
To a TAU officer it was business as usual, these bastards tended to make trouble and think that all their power made them the number one ass on the block. Another super hard blow to the thing’s chin rewarded her with a loud snap and spay of blood. She barely heard the scared sound behind her as Tabitha heard the noise or Jax’s wince.
Then Smasher made a clumsy block, just enough to throw off her rhythm and he puncher her, hard. It catapulted her off her feet and sent her flying back several yards. She slammed into a pillow of shadow as Jax utilized his power to save her from more damage. It sat her back on her feet and she had just enough time to look up as Smasher came down from thirty feet in the air and threw a punch.
She jumped back even more as Smasher’s fist slammed through the ground clear up to his elbow in a shower of concrete and shrapnel. The thing glared in her direction as she landed and tried to regroup. Her eyes widened a little as she suddenly realized that he was glowing a very faint purple color.
“What the hell is that?”
“Move your ass Akiko!”
“Shove it where the sun don’t shine, I’m busy!” Akiko yelled as she ran forward.
“AKIKO!” Jax screamed.
Smasher wasn’t very smart, but he did have some experience when it came to fighting other super powered people. He saw his enemy running for him and suddenly smashed both fists into the ground. The sound wave alone was enough to shatter windows for blocks, but the as the ground shattered Akiko didn’t even have time to curse as the ground shattered around her and air wave hit her with the force of a train.
Her world turned to pain as she flew off her feet, into the air, and through the wall of the nearest building about three stories up. She barely had time to be aware of the three walls she crashed through before she came to a stop and groaned. Cracking her eyes open she realized she couldn’t hear anything and that her upper back was screaming in pain.
Struggling to her feet, she dug herself out of the rubble and staggered forward, through a large hole in the wall. From there she could tell that she was in someone’s apartment and looked around to see a couple and their three children looking scared out of their minds. They were yelling something at her, but she still couldn’t hear anything over her pain.
Cursing, she turned and staggered through the other hole, into the living room, and stepped to the hole that led outside. Down in the street she could see the monster and glared at him. She’d really underestimated his strength and paid the price for it, but that wasn’t going to stop her. A tiny bit of sound suddenly filled her ears as she stood there, and noticed the screaming from one of the kids.
Growling, she jumped out the hole and dropped to the ground. She landed easily enough, though she couldn’t remember ever being hit quite that hard before. The damage to her body was enough to make her decided that she couldn’t defeat the jerk with force alone. She shook off the pain and made her way back over to where Smasher was waiting for her.
“That isn’t going to stop me.” She told him.
“AGHAAAAAAAAAA!!” He snarled, spittle flying from his mouth.
“Yeah, I know you’re an asshole.” She muttered and motioned at him. “Bring it on, wimp.”
She jumped into the air as he lunged at her, landed beside Jax where she had left her bar, and quickly twisted it into a rough baton like shape. It was at times like this that she cursed the fact that TAU police officers were not issued weapons unless they checked them out at the Station, something she hadn’t had a chance to do.
“Hurry it up Shoo.” Jax snarled as he and Tabitha watched from the sidelines.
“Don’t be so blasted impatient. I’m doing the best I can fighting this thing on my own.”
Jax didn’t say anything as she turned and ran back over to the monster and spun the baton around a few times before she launched her attack. The beast was ready for her though as he lunged at her, but she used the baton to block his arm. With her other arm she punched him I the stomach as hard as she could and hopped back. She was a bit surprised when he didn’t drop to his knees and retch all over the ground.
Instead he suddenly grabbed her entire arm in his fist, lifted her above his head and slammed her into the ground. “AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
The asphalt under her shoulders shattered as she hit and was pushed nearly a foot into the ground. Her back, already damaged, took the brunt of the blow and she grit her teeth in pain. The now useless baton was thrown and embedded itself in the wall of a building a block away. Then Akiko groaned as she watched him raise his fist into the air.
Multiple bars of black energy slammed into Smasher’s head half a second later and sent him stumbling back with a roar of surprise. Jax kept firing, hoping to distract the monster while Tabitha ran over to the hole. She knelt down at the edge and tried to see what kind of shape Akiko was in.
“Akiko!”
The blonde looked up and groaned. “That hurt.”
“Can you get out of there?”
“Yeah, but stand back, I’m going to break my way out.”
Digging her way out of the hole wasn’t to hard, but Akiko was not in very good shape. Neither was her uniform, which was starting to develop several holes and rips along the arms and back. She crawled out of the hole and saw that Jax was keeping the thing pinned to a wall that he was generating.
“Jax, we may need to start doing some damage to stop him!” Akiko yelled.
“No! We have to pay for anything we break!”
Akiko glanced over at the hole she’d made in the apartment complex and Jax twitched, but ignored it. “He’s stronger than me!”
“I don’t care, I just need you to restrain him so we can use the Bolt Cuffs!”
Akiko looked around the devastation around her. “And just where are you going to get them from? It’s not like any of our usual equipment is even here!”
“They are on their way!”
“ARGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Smasher yelled and tried to move forward.
“We can’t…” She started to say.
“Just do it!” Jax yelled.
She sighed and nodded. “Yes sir.”
Jax relaxed and let the wall and his blasts die down. “Move it, the Bolt Cuffs will be here in a few minutes. I sent for them before I even called you down here.”
Shrugging, Akiko glancing at Smasher, attempting to think of a quick way to stop him without causing any more damage, but nothing really came to mind. Normally she would have had a little help stopping a rogue TAU like this. For some reason Jax thought she could stop him on her own and she didn’t understand why.
That didn’t make it impossible, just more problematic and then there were others she had to watch out for. She could see people peeking out their windows every now and then as she fought and knew they were in a lot more danger than she ever was.
Reaching into a belt pouch, she pulled out a small plastic vial filled with two liquids, but with very thin piece of plastic separating them. She twisted it around in her hand so that she could bend it in two with one hand and ran at Smasher. If she wanted to stop him, she would have to cheat a little.
“Time to put an end to this.” She said as she ran.
The big guy looked a little confused as she ran at him, but he quickly focused on Akiko and yelled. Akiko moved around him, bent the little vial in half with her fingers, and tossed it at Smasher’s face. The instant it left her hand it lit up like a miniature star. She had her eyes closed as it went off and hoped that it would give her enough time to get in a good enough hit to take the guy down for a few minutes.
As he screamed and stumbled backwards in shock, she jumped into the air, flipped over him and landed on his back. Wrapping her legs around his neck, she scissored her legs and used her knees as they pressed into his neck to cut off his air supply. Even the monster’s neck muscles were impossibly strong, but she was no slouch in that department.
Before he could reach up and grab onto her, she placed both hands at his temples and began to press with her considerable strength. Then she increased the pressure and he stopped and tried to grab her, but she refused to budge. Using her knees she lifted his head a little higher.
He tried to shake her off and bellowed in pain, but she refused to let go and in just a couple of seconds he stumbled back and fell to his knees.
“Got you.” She muttered.
“Let…go…” Smasher said.
“Ah, you can talk.”
Let…go…of me…” Smasher said.
“Just not much it seems.” Akiko as she leaned back and used her body weight to add to the pressure she was placing on his neck.
“Good!” Jax yelled. “Now keep it up!”
“Just hurry!” Akiko yelled back.
“He’s shrinking.” Tabitha gasped a few seconds later.
Akiko hadn’t really noticed that the longer she kept the pressure on the smaller the guy got, so she figured his strength was starting to give out as well. With a wrench of her body she flopped him over on is side so that she could maintain her pressure, only letting up a little bit as they fell over. He growled in anger as she grabbed his wrists and refused to allow him to grab her now that he could actually think a little better.
“Naughty boy, no playing the TAU police officer.”
“&%$#*($.” He growled.
“I think you need soap, boy.”
“Grr…”
She was actually a bit surprised that that her quick idea had worked, but she wasn’t going to complain about it either. A lot of these take downs were touch and go at times, so this one wasn’t any different. The move was one she didn’t employ too often because there were so many risks involved when it was used, like killing the guy.
She wasn’t to worried about that though, she was more worried about what he would do if he got free again. When his shrinking body finally reached a size more comparable to her own, she let go and rolled off him for a second. The guy was barely conscious, but that was exactly how she wanted him.
Reached into her belt pouch she took a second to roll him over onto his stomach with her foot. Then she quickly hand cuffed him with a pair of conventional plastic cuffs. They wouldn’t hold him for to long if he woke up completely, but she hoped that by then the Bolt Cuff would be here. Until then she would have to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t find any way to escape her. Maybe a kick to the head every couple of minutes to keep him disoriented enough to stay down.
“Took you long enough.” Jax complained.
“As if you needed my help with this.” Akiko snapped back and noticed the pink haired girl sitting on the hood of a nearby car. “How is Tabitha?”
“Blinded at the moment, she didn’t close her eyes in time and got blinded by it.”
“Oh lovely, she’s to green to even be in the field.”
“She just needs training.”
“Humph.” Akiko grumbled.
Then in the distance she heard the sound of an approaching truck. Jax heard it as well and made his way down the street to direct them into the area. He motioned for Tabitha to stay where she was as she stood up, but then she turned and walked over to Akiko and looked down at the guy. Her eyes were still a little unfocused, but she seemed to be getting her eyesight back quickly enough.
“I can’t believe he caused such a problem.” She said.
“What was he doing down here anyway?” Akiko asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? Why did you attack him, he had to have been doing something wrong.”
“When I found him, the police had already shown up and were aiming their guns at him while he smashed their cars and threatened to rip their heads off for…um, presuming to attack an Elite warrior. I’m still not sure what he was talking about. Jax arrived a little while later and asked me to fire at him, so I did, that’s when he absorbed the blast and really got dangerous.” Tabitha explained.
Akiko glanced down at the man she’d just cuffed and wondered if he was playing possum, but the decided that he had to be conscious to use his power. They just needed to be quick when they transferred him into the van. She turned back to Tabitha and noticed that her glasses were a little dirty, but other than that, she looked fine. “I take it he didn’t get a chance to hit you?”
“No, Jax threw up his shield to protect me and the cops the instant he started growing, then we ran down the street and around the corner to lead the thing away form the regular cops before we dug in and we stayed like that until you arrived.”
“Jax didn’t attack him?”
“No, he didn’t have time. Every time he even thought about it Smasher would start to pound on the shield and we would have move back some more.”
“I see.” Akiko muttered. “I still don’t see why I had to be called down here this early in the morning, but I’m glad the two of you are safe now.”
“Jax explained that to me a little while ago, he said it was because you don’t manipulate energy like all the other strong arms in the squad, you’re just pure strength.”
Jax growled as he came up to them and Tabitha blushed as if she’d done something wrong and quickly shut her mouth. “The Bolt Cuffs are here, let’s get this jerk in the chair and finish this business off once and for all.”
“No problem.” Akiko said.
Behind him, three TAU officers were lugging large device out of the back of the transport van. They weren’t the regular crew either, but another set of rookies that she didn’t recognize. “What’s with them?”
“Replacements, the regular crew wasn’t available on short notice so some men from the office brought the Bolt Cuffs down.”
She nodded. “Let me give them a hand then. I’ve also trained in their use, unlike those morons you managed to find who don’t seem to have a clue what they are doing.” Akiko muttered. “Tabitha, if he tries to get up kick him in the head a couple of times, I know you are stronger than you look. We need to keep him disoriented enough that he doesn’t get a chance to escape.”
“Okay.” The pink haired girl said and glanced down at Smasher’s head and looked like she was about to make a practice kick, but he didn’t even groan.
Akiko walked over to the trick where four of the uniformed Tellrain cat girls were all struggling to shift the half ton Bolt Cuff chair off the floor of the truck. At one point in time the thing was motorized, but cutbacks from the department made getting a proper mobile chair impossible and they hadn’t had time to convert anything from storage yet. “I got it ladies.”
They all stopped and moved out of the way as Akiko grabbed the chair like object and lifted it off the truck with only a small grunt as she shifted the awkward weight around on her shoulder.
“Whoa!” They chorused and clapped.
“None of that, you don’t want the boss to get mad do you?” Akiko said with a grin as she walked off.
The device known as Bolt Cuffs was actually a large adjustable chair that was used to hold high powered TAU criminals. The government was the only organization that had the technology to block a TAU’s power from working and they didn’t like to share. The Bold Cuff was actually similar to an electric chair, except it immobilized most people by disrupting the TAU’s nervous system.
The subject was placed in the chair, with their hands bound together and lowered the upper bar over their chest and placed their hands inside a cup at chest level. Then their feet were secured to the frame and you turned on the power generator at the back. The only drawback was that it was bulky and could only be used in special circumstances. They were lucky that it was only hard to move to places. Once a TAU was secured in the chair it easily charged up and allowed them to activate a low powered anti grave welded to the base of the chair.
The design of the rig used leverage against the person inside it as well, no matter how strong they were, they just couldn’t break out. It was possible, but they had to be very strong and usually required the sacrifice of an arm or leg when they broke it to get out of the chair.
Bolt Cuffs were usefull against energy users as well, because the chair could absorb energy generated by the human body and either store it in power cells or bleed it off almost as fast the person generated it. The thing was an ingenious device used for all the wrong reasons and on the wrong people.
Police and military agencies used them fairly regularly and only when they came across a TAU that it had to be used on. She knew of far too many business that had them sitting in back rooms for emergencies, like when an employee needed to be punished. Even high schools had them in the doctor’s offices for when they came across a TAU attending the school and they acted up.
Akiko shook her head recalled the three days she could ever remember using one of those chairs. It was standard operating procedure for every member of the TAU unit to experience just what happened when they were in that chair. A kind of reminder of what would happened to them if they ever broke the law themselves. Her first time was back when she was in college after her powers surged for the first time and she accidentally kicked a ball into orbit. The second was when she was at the Police academy, and the third she tried to never think about.
She stalked over to where Smasher was unconscious and sat the chair down right next to him. Within a few minutes her and Jax managed to get him trussed up and ready to take back to the station. The antigravity plate activated and lifted the chair about two inches off the ground as it hummed to life.
The two of them quickly grabbed a couple of handles jutting out from the side of the chair and pulled it along easily. The two of them quickly packed Smasher inside the truck and attached the chair to it’s housings inside the transport van. This decreased the chances of him breaking out of the chair even more, since the housing was magnetic and it made releasing the various devices built into the chair completely impossible.
The cat girls swarmed around Smasher and made sure everything was locked into place. They may never actually drive the truck around, but everyone in the station was trained in the Bold Cuff’s safety precautions. Akiko stood outside the truck as Jax and cat girls made sure everything was in place before securing the back of the truck and left two of the girls inside to make sure the Smasher didn’t wake up.
Several minutes later Jax stepped back outside and walked over to Akiko and motioned at Tabitha. “Tabitha, you head on home, I’ll see you when you come into work at the regular time.”
She saluted. “Yes sir.”
“Akiko, me and you get to ride to the station and help secure the prisoner in the cell.”
“Yes sir.” Akiko said joylessly.
“Then you can spend the next two hours fixing the damage you did to the building yesterday.” Jax growled.
“What about my bike?”
“What about it?”
“I have to get it to the station so I can go home this afternoon.”
Jax shrugged. “I’ll ride in the van then, one of the cat girls can drive the truck, and you follow us. Where are you parked?”
“A couple blocks from here.”
“Why so far away?”
“Why bring my only mode of transportation into a dangerous situation?”
“Don’t get smart with me. Just go get it and I’ll meet you at the station.”
“Yes sir.”
**********
After the van pulled out of the area and the police started to head off. Akiko decided to take the long way back to Dragon to avoid the rest of the officers, she really didn’t feel like putting up with them at the moment. Her fight with that monster had taken a lot longer than she expected and she was a little wore out.
It wouldn’t take her to long to recover and it was more of a mental exhaustion than a physical one. She was getting seriously tired of dealing with things like this. At times it could be a lot of fun, but that monster could have leveled entire buildings full of people and not felt a thing when people died because of it.
Jax had warned her on several occasions that the way she saw the world was different than way things really were. She knew that there was only a matter of time before she did something that would hack off the wrong people and she would be in for a world of hurt.
She thought about those cops she was avoiding, about how they would all glare at her if she got to close to them. They were all a part of the same tea that guarded this city, took down criminals, and enforced the law. Yet, if she did anything even remotely bad and affected the department they wouldn’t hesitate to hunt her down and kill her.
Some of them would do it for no reason at all, just because she was strong and it frightened them. So going by those cops would only cause problems she really didn’t want to deal with. Her day was already heading into the toilet and the sun hadn’t even crested the horizon yet. Even the moons looked a little depressed now that she looked at them.
There were days she really had a problem controlling her temper and it would eventually lead to problems. The doctors that examined her four times a year said it stemmed from the fact that she had odd chemicals floating around in her body. So if she had to put up her own group insulting her she could easily see herself beating the crap out of the whole lot of them. The bigots really weren’t on her list of people to deal with, so she just went around them.
“Akiko?”
She turned as Tabitha stepped out of a nearby alley and made her way over. The girl looked a little nervous. “What’s going on?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Like what?”
“How do you do this job?”
Akiko looked a bit startled for a second. “Why do you ask?”
“I never wanted to do a job like this. Talking to Jax is like talking to a brick wall, he just won’t listen to anything you say to him.”
“We do this so we can survive.”
“I’m not a police officer, I never wanted to be one in the first place.”
“You can do other things.”
Tabitha sighed and the started to walk along. “I’m an artist, not a police officer. I was forced into this jot like so many others, but…”
“Most of us are, but the only thing you can do is make the most of it and adjust. Luckily we only have to put in a couple of years as officers.”
“That isn’t what I’ve heard.”
Akiko nodded. “You have to be careful what kind of actions you take and how useful you are.”
“What about you.”
“Nothing bad yet, but I may make a mistake in the future.”
“You don’t sound worried.”
“It frightens the hell out of me to allow them to have that much control over my actions, but all I’ve got is my strength. There are TAU with the Government that can do things that make them gods. I don’t want to end up on the receiving end of anyone like that.”
“What about Superheroes?”
She looked over at the pink haired girl and laughed. “Superheroes, do you honestly think that they would be allowed to operate anywhere on this planet without the consent of the Government?”
“But, they have been around for years and I’ve never heard of one that was against the government.” Tabitha said and a second later she gasped. “Not a one…”
Akiko nodded. “what do you think happens to those TAU that don’t like the government? They are branded as Super villains and the Heroes are sent after them. When that doesn’t work or they get scared they head for the Zone.”
“And it’s our job to deal with kind of thing?”
“Not in so many words Tabitha, our job is to enforce the rules and help maintain a kind of balance. Jax has been in this job for over twenty years Tabitha, he could have taken Smasher down in five seconds if he wanted to. Instead he called me down here and endangered you in the process, do you have an idea just why he would do such a thing?”
“No.”
“Because he is doing what he’s told, just like everyone else in the unit does. Very few of us want to be where we are, but we do it to protect our families from retribution, or from rubbing someone the wrong way.”
“Is there no way for us to get out of this situation?”
“There are lots of ways, but unfortunately all of them mean turning your back on the government and abandoning everything you believe in. So far I’ve found a balance between the threats and my job so I can still function.”
Tabitha sighed and hung her head. “I’m not strong like you, there’s no way I can do this job. I barely managed to shoot that guy earlier and look what happened.”
They walked along in silence for a few seconds as they rounded the corner and headed for the parking lot where Dragon was parked. “Tabitha, the secret to surviving is learning how to do the job in a way that people don’t expect. If you are told to ‘stop’ some criminal you don’t have to run out and kill him. Instead you do exactly as they say, you stop him and bring him in.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Why did you shoot that guy?”
“Jax told me to.”
“Did you shoot to kill?” Akiko pressed.
“I did as I was told to do.”
“That’s what I mean, you need to think for yourself. Instead of shooting Smasher, you could have shot the ground at his feet and liquefied the ground to slow him down, or you could have aimed for his eyes and blinded him. Instead you shot him, just as you were trained to do.”
“I…I think I understand, but I’m still a little confused.”
“Good enough. Tabitha you are stronger than me, power wise, and that places you in a dangerous situation. You need to learn how to out think of everything around you and use it to your advantage. Right now things are dangerous, but I think that in a few years things are going to settle down now that people are starting to get used to us TAU, but until then we have to be careful not to cause problems.”
Dragon was still in one piece and Akiko approached it and tapped a button on the control panel.
“I’m scared…”
“You’ll do fine Tabitha, we just need to be patient and until things change we have to be careful as well.”
“All right, I need to think about this.”
Akiko nodded as she got on dragon and started him up and let Jina run a quick scan of the motorcycle. “I’ll see you at the office in a few hours Tabitha.”
Neither of them noticed the man across the street watching them as they parted ways. He pulled out a phone and made a quick call as Akiko rode off. It only lasted a few seconds, but when he was done he casually walked down the side walk after Tabitha. He was wearing a dark trenchcoat as he passed under a streetlight and light a cigarette.
**********
Blood trickled down the side of Sara’s face as she fell to the ground with a cry of pain. She whimpered a little as she hit the ground and rolled over to star up at the one person in the world she cared about stood over her with a bat in her hand and hate in her eyes.
“Mamma…”
“You piece of filth!”
“Mamma please, why…” Sara cried as she threw her arms up to protect her face from the bat.
“I always knew I should have killed you!” Sara’s mother screamed and raised the bat into the air to do finish off her child.
Tears steamed down Sara’s face as her heart broke and she reacted on instinct, kicking out with her foot, and catching her mom in the knee. The woman yelled out as she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Sara cried as she scrambled to her feet and ran across the room.
Her mother came to her feet with a snarl and she barely looked human anymore. Sara could see her sister Nyoko grinning at her from down the hall and all she could see in her eyes was glee. There wasn’t a hint of anything in her eyes that a sister should feel, no love, no caring, not even pity.
Sara didn’t know what to do, as the seconds passed it became more and more obvious that her mother really did mean to kill her. Her body was numb, her emotions were wore out, and couldn’t think straight. More tears trailed down her face as her mother stalked towards her.
“Why!?”
“You’re a freak of nature and I will not have you stain my family with your FILTH!” The woman screamed and hit Sara across the side of the face and sent her daughter stumbling back with a spray of blood.
Pain blossomed across her face as she barely managed to stay on her feet and Nyoko cheered her mother on. She stumbled into the table and tipped it over, spilling a large package full of paper work onto the floor. Right there on the package was her name in large black lettering.
Still a little dizzy, she picked it up and before her mother could take a another swing at her. She broke into a run and made her way across the room just as the bat slammed into the edge of the table and took a big chunk out of it. Sara screamed and headed for the door, but then her mother did something unexpected.
Instead of following, she threw the bat, and it spun across the room and slammed into Sara’s leg. She yelled out in pain as she stumbled out the door and out into the front yard. Her mother and sister were only a few steps behind, yelling obscenities. Bleeding and bruised, tears streaming down her face, Sara made her way down the street balling her eyes out.
“DON’T EVER COME BACK OR I’LL KILL YOU FREAK!” Nyoko screamed after her sister and laughed as if this was the best birthday present she’d ever received.
“Whywhywhywhywhy…” She muttered over and over again as she staggered into an empty lot a few blocks away.
Falling to the ground she curled into a ball, cradling the package, and just cried. She wasn’t even coherent when a someone dropped from the sky and landed next to her. He reached down, picked the girl up in his arms, sighed as he rose into the sky, and vanished in a burst of light.
Nyoko seethed in anger as she watched her sister vanish from sight and knew that once again her big sister had just ruined her life again. She had to tell her mom about this and see if there was anything they could do to make her suffer anymore. Reaching into her shirt she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and giggled as she tossed it into the gutter.
**********
“Akiko!”
Looking up from her work station, Akiko looked over at Jax as he glared at her. She sighed, grabbed her equipment, and buckled it on as she walked over to his desk. “Sir?”
“We have a noise complaint being sent down from the top. Taka tried to refuse it, but the Commander insisted that a TAU look into this one.” Jax explained as he handed her the report.
“I see.” Akiko said as she read over the report and noticed that it involved a lot of screaming. It was from just a few hours before when she was fighting that Smasher character. “Anything else?”
“Taka hinted that this might be a #208.”
Akiko nodded. These days a #208 was kind of rare, but not unheard of. They usually ended up with a homeless TAU out on the streets for a several months before they were arrested or they made their way to the Zone. With any luck she might be able to save this one before things got bad.
“All right, this shouldn’t take to long…”
“I also want you to take Tabitha with you, she needs some field time.”
“It’s till to early for that isn’t it? She hasn’t even gone through her squad training yet.”
“Taka says we need to cut some corners.” Jax explained with a shrug.
She didn’t like the sound of that at all, but she just nodded and glanced over at the girl. “Tabitha, grab your equipment.”
The pink haired girl nodded nervously and sat her training book down. “Where are we going.”
“To find a run away TAU.”
The girl adjusted her glasses. “Is there anything we need to get before we leave?”
“We need to stop by the armory.”
Tabitha blinked in surprise.
**********
End Part One
End Notes –
C. Rose
Ertle2@msn.com
TAU ELITE
**********
Just an Average Day
Chapter 03
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2004
**********
Ring! Ring! Annoying Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnggggggng!
The phone was beside her bed, so she reached out from underneath the covers and pulled it under the blankets.
“This is Akiko.” She said sleepily.
“Time to get up a little early Akiko, we need you at the scene of our newest crime.” Ciko’s happy voice said, pitched high enough to remind Akiko of fingernails on a chalk board.
She growled and peaked out at the clock beside her bed. “It’s four in the &%$#!@# morning.”
“I know, I’m sorry about that. Jax said to come down there and pull out of bed naked if I had to.” Ciko said. “He needs you down at the QuLoad building ASAP.”
“What’s the situation?”
“A rogue TAU.”
“Let the others handle it…”
“Jax said he wanted you there.”
“Fine, I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“He said fifteen minutes, no later.” Ciko told her.
Growling, Akiko hung the phone up and tossed the covers off all in one motion. She wasn’t wearing much, just a pair of panties, a thin bra, and nothing else. Rolling off the bed, she stood up and stumbled over to her closet even though she wasn’t quite awake yet. It only took her a few minutes to toss on a rumpled uniform and scratch herself a few times. Her hair was a mess, but this wasn’t the first time Jax had called her to the scene of a crime in progress so she could fight one of the bad guys.
Yawning, she picked up a small device from the dresser and pressed a couple of buttons after glaring at it for a few seconds. Down in the garage Dragon’s computer beeped and suddenly started up as Jina started her regular scan of the motorcycle. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her boots on as she tucked the pant leg inside and laced it up as quickly as she could.
Her belt went on next and she stumbled into the kitchen and over to a large white box and grabbed a doughnut.
“I hate my job.” She muttered as she yawned again.
“You always say that.” Jina said.
“I mean it this time.”
“Just like you meant it the last dozen times this happened. New reports are reporting a disturbance down town, but they haven’t been able to get close enough report anything yet. The Police have managed to put up an electronic buffer around that area of town while more officers are called in.”
“Any thing else?”
“The TAU division has been called in.”
Akiko snorted and yawned again. “I’ll say.”
It was still dark outside, though the sun was due to rise any time now. She figured only that only a few hours had passed since she went to bed, but she was to tired to think about actual numbers. Working like this on a few hours sleep made her grouchy and Jax was going to pay for this if she called her out because he needed her to lift his car and replace a tire. As soon as she finished her breakfast, and complained some more, she drank a glass of water and wandered over to the bathroom. She took a comb to her hair and made sure it she had it tied back in a long braid that wouldn’t get in her way.
She’d done it so many times that it only took her a couple of minutes to get it in place. Tying the end of it with a white ribbon, state issue as part of her TAU uniform, she made sure it would stay in place with a pin. Then she grabbed the mouth wash to get the doughnut taste out of her mouth.
From phone call until she walked out of the apartment, only five minutes had passed. It wasn’t bad, but she wouldn’t make it to the scene for another ten to fifteen minutes. Dragon was idling quietly as she got on and tapped the status button on the computer.
“Jina, is Dragon ready?”
‘All warmed up, the security check should be finished by the time you get down to the garage.’
“Any changes?”
‘Negative, nothing was found.’
“Excellent.” Akiko said
Everything read okay, so she sat it up on its wheels and pulled out. A few minutes later she squealed the tires as she pulled out onto the roads. This early in the morning there wasn’t much traffic, so she tapped another button on the computer and activated the police lights.
They were set just below the handle bars, a think plastic band of red and blue that flashed like a set of strobe lights. It was the only addition she’d made that she really didn’t care for. The department asked her to make when she made it the vehicle she used all the time. The stupid things were one of the few items on Dragon that she didn’t like.
Being so early in the morning, she didn’t want Dragon’s noise to wake everyone in the area up. So she used the computer to adjust the muffler baffles and went stealth. Grinning, she sped up and let the lights alert everyone she was there as she ran red lights in an attempt to get to the QuLoad building on time.
About two blocks from the building she turned off the lights and slowed down to a stop at the corner. She didn’t trust anyone when it came to her motorcycle’s safety, so she pulled into a small parking lot where it would be out of the way hopefully. Once the security system was set she made sure her collar tabs were in place, a state mandated law, and headed for the building at a jog.
As she got closer she began to see why she was called down here. Several wrecked police cars were piled in the middle of the street a couple of blocks down. Since it was so early in the morning, she realized that they hadn’t managed to block the area off yet physically, just electronically. As she got closer to the pile of cars she saw that several of the officers were by the pile, bandaging each others wounds.
They looked up as she came to a stop and went for their guns, but stopped when they realized that she was one of them. They decided to just glare at her instead.
“Gentleman?”
“Who are you?”
“Officer Shoo.”
“You’re a TAU!” One of them growled.
She nodded. “Jax called me down here.”
“Go away and let us take care of this bastards.” One of the older ones yelled.
“No need to get testy.” Akiko said.
“Jax is back there with a couple of other freaks.”
“Thanks Levin, I never did get a chance to appoligise about your car yesterday.”
“Carl got reprimanded for that.”
Akiko nodded and grinned as she looked the cars over to see what kind of damage they sustained when the cops tried to stop the TAU criminal she was here to fight. “Is your car among these?”
“Nope, it’s back at the station getting the front axel replaced.”
Several of the officers around them gave her a weird look. Since they didn’t want to associate with the TAU officers unless they had to, most of them didn’t know what her power was. It always amazed her how ignorant some police officers were even in this day and age.
Akiko nodded. “Well I got called down here to help Jax out with whatever did this. Can any of you tell me?”
“I was taken out so fast that I didn’t even see it.” Levin said with a shrug. The rest of the men just grumbled and refused to answer her.
It was about what she expected, though she was a bit surprised that Levin wasn’t mad at her. She would have to find out why when she got a bit of free time.
“Just head down the street and look around the corner, Officer Jax and one other freak are down there fighting that monster.” Another cop told her and she saw Levin wince.
She shrugged it off, it wasn’t like she hadn’t encountered this attitude before and at least he was helping her. Even if he was being a jerk about it the information would help her. She walked over to a nearby car, and ripped the bumper off the car with a screech of metal. She pulled the plastic bits off the metal frame of the bumper and tossed them to the ground.
As she swung it around a couple of times, ignored the sudden silence behind her, and headed down the street whistling badly as she bent the bumper into a large bar like shape with her bare hands and swung it around a couple of times. For some reason she was always being underestimated so she enjoyed the sound of the officers shocked silence.
“Thanks guys!” She called pleasantly.
“FREAK!”
Dealing with rogue TAU sometimes meant walking into situations that a normal person would never believe, that included dealing with hateful team mates or unfriendly psychopaths that were out for blood. No matter how many time you told the story to them they just never understood what a TAU had to put up with and they always thought it was the TAU’s fault no matter what the truth was. Over the last couple of years she could remember fighting things from a giant slime mold monster, to flying Tau who were out to make a name for themselves.
The job was never boring, that was for sure, but whenever Jax was involved it always meant something really big was going to happen. He was a leader and rarely took a personal hand in a battle these days unless he absolutely had to. She was curious why he was even here at four in the morning in the first place. After turning a second corner she stopped to stare at a car that looked like someone had taken a large sledge hammer it, or a fist.
She recognized the style since she had used it herself several times when she needed to stop a car. The large dents and holes were from someone punching their hands and feet through body of the car and ripping the driver out by their hair. A large hunk of metal off to the side had to have once been and engine, at least she though it was, there were only so many large lumpy pieces of metal that had a fan belt attached to it. She could hear some sounds just down the street, so she made sure the twisted bar was strong enough to be used in a fight and headed in that direction.
At the corner she paused and took a second to peak at what was going on just down the street. About a block and a half away, there was large wall of darkness crossing the street and it was about six feet high. Jax and Tabitha were crouched behind it as the ugly TAU that caused this whole mess raged on the other side.
He was about ten feet tall and covered in muscles bigger than some people’s heads. The monster was pounding on the wall that Jax was generating to protect him and Tabitha. At least he wasn’t green, which would have just been so cliché, but he did appear to be wearing no clothing at all.
She blushed and realized that she might see something she would rather not see this early in the morning in the middle of the street. His muscles gleamed, those that she could see over the top of the wall, using a large piece of asphalt to beat on the wall.
She noticed that Jax and Tabitha were looking in her direction and she waved. Then she winced a little and hid behind the wall as his glare turned up a notch. It could have melted through steel at that point. “My, he’s in a good mood.” She muttered and looked around and tried to assess the situation a little better before she made her way over to the fight.
Tabitha caught her attention and Akiko realized that the girl was looking a little worse for wear. Her clothing was dirty and her long pink hair wasn’t as nice as it had been the day before. There was a rather large bruise forming on the side of her face as well. She must have gotten a little close to The Bulk.
The fact that she could see it from this distance meant that it would probably be really noticeable up close. Then Bulk roared in rage like an animal and slammed both fists down on Jax’s shield and it nearly buckled under the blow. Waves of shadow flowed away from the impact point and Akiko had to admit she was a little impressed. Jax managed to recover pretty quickly though, so she wasn’t to worried. She had seen his shields block TAU generated blasts that could level buildings so this wasn’t that big of a deal.
“Well obviously he wanted me here to fight that thing, though I think he might actually be stronger than me.” She wasn’t to sure what to think of that. “This is going to be interesting.”
“Get over here!” Jax yelled.
Laughing a little, Akiko spun the bar around a couple of times before she stepped around the corner. The monstrous TAU continued to pound on Jax’s shield and didn’t seem to notice her. She jogged over to the two and knelt down beside Tabitha.
“It’s about time you got here.” Jax muttered.
“Well excuse me for being in bed at four in the morning.” Akiko growled. “So what set this guy off?”
Tabitha looked a little sheepish. “Um…I did, by accident.”
“I was getting ready for work when we got one of our usual calls about a TAU running around down here. I figured it was just one of our usual resident panic calls. So I grabbed my stuff and headed down here to meet with the local police to see what the situation was.” Jax said and grit his teeth as his shield took another powerful blow.
Akiko glanced up at him. “Oh…”
“As I was saying, I found this guy here being confronted by the police, but he was a lot smaller then. He looked normal enough and nowhere near as irrational as he is now.”
She glanced over at Tabitha.
The pink haired girl sighed and pointed to a building down the street. “I live in that apartment complex there.”
Jax growled as the shield took another hard blow. “I contacted Tabitha when I got here, figured it would be a good way for her to get a bit of experience. With us here I didn’t think it would be too hard to stop the guy, but I was wrong.”
On a hunch Akiko glanced over at Tabitha. “You set him off like this?”
“I didn’t mean to.” She said.
“What happened?”
Jax snapped. “The bastard absorbed Tab’s blast and his body suddenly looked like it was full of inflatable muscles. Then he started acting like this and tossing police cars around like Leggo blocks.”
“If he absorbed the energy, is he also using it up and getting weaker as time goes by?” Akiko asked.
“We haven’t been able to tell.” Jax grunted as the shield took another blow and wavered a bit before he was able to stabilize it. He was sweating quite a bit and Akiko could tell that he wouldn’t last too much longer.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to let go and fight someone with my full strength, but he may be stronger than me.” Akiko said as she stood up and looked at the guy. “What’s his name?”
“He called himself Smasher.” Jax said.
“Ah, it’s another moron who can’t think up a proper name.”
“Just hit him a few times and give me a chance to rest!” Jax growled.
“Yeah, whatever Boss.” Akiko said as she sat the bar on the ground beside Tabitha and gave her a pat on the shoulder, then crouched down, and jumped over it. The bar would come in hand against most types of TAU, but a brute like this needed to be handled differently.
“Be careful!” Tabitha yelled.
Jax just gave her weird look.
Flipping in mid air she landed beside the large guy and made a quick decision. She bent down before he could focus on her and used her strength to hit him behind the knee cap. As the leg suddenly collapsed she grabbed his arm and shoulder threw him several yards away.
He yelled out as he landed on his back and rolled several times before coming to his feet in mid role and glaring at her. “ARGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
“Such an intelligent reaction.” Akiko said as she cracked her knuckles and smiled at the guy.
“Quit playing with him and knock him out so we can get him restrained!” Jax yelled from behind her as he finally let the shadow generated shield shimmer and fade. He sighed and took a few seconds to catch his breath.
Akiko nodded and waved as she sauntered over towards the big brute as he ran at her with a pair of fists above his head. For a second she could actually feel the ground tremble beneath her feet as his feet slammed into the ground with enough force to shatter the cement. She glared at him as she reached deep within to find her full strength and growled.
There was every chance that this guy was way above even her full strength, but she wasn’t about to let that slow her down. She had a job to do and this half insane maniac wasn’t about to stop he from doing it even if she had to break a few bones to do it. As he closed in she could smell his rancid sweat and her eyes flashed as she used her smaller size to duck under his clumsy arms and sent an uppercut straight into his jaw.
It sounded like a gun shot going off as her fist made contact. His head snapped up and to the side and he actually stumbled back several paces before he recovered from the blow enough to keep from falling down. She massaged her hand as it throbbed in pain and was pretty sure that the bones in her hand were all bruised.
It barely even affected Smasher, but Akiko wasn’t finished with him just yet, she needed to press her attack while he was still recovering. She shot forward and started to deliver a devastating series of attacks to his stomach chest and head. Martial arts wasn’t her forte but she could pull off some amazing moves just because of her strength. The department also trained its officers in hand to hand combat for when it was needed.
Boxing was one area where she did excel and within seconds she had him backing up. All his strength was useless if he didn’t know how to apply it and from the looks of the fight so far all he’d been doing was tossing cars around like toys. Even she could do that, it wasn’t all that hard, and it was enough to frighten the regular humans.
To a TAU officer it was business as usual, these bastards tended to make trouble and think that all their power made them the number one ass on the block. Another super hard blow to the thing’s chin rewarded her with a loud snap and spay of blood. She barely heard the scared sound behind her as Tabitha heard the noise or Jax’s wince.
Then Smasher made a clumsy block, just enough to throw off her rhythm and he puncher her, hard. It catapulted her off her feet and sent her flying back several yards. She slammed into a pillow of shadow as Jax utilized his power to save her from more damage. It sat her back on her feet and she had just enough time to look up as Smasher came down from thirty feet in the air and threw a punch.
She jumped back even more as Smasher’s fist slammed through the ground clear up to his elbow in a shower of concrete and shrapnel. The thing glared in her direction as she landed and tried to regroup. Her eyes widened a little as she suddenly realized that he was glowing a very faint purple color.
“What the hell is that?”
“Move your ass Akiko!”
“Shove it where the sun don’t shine, I’m busy!” Akiko yelled as she ran forward.
“AKIKO!” Jax screamed.
Smasher wasn’t very smart, but he did have some experience when it came to fighting other super powered people. He saw his enemy running for him and suddenly smashed both fists into the ground. The sound wave alone was enough to shatter windows for blocks, but the as the ground shattered Akiko didn’t even have time to curse as the ground shattered around her and air wave hit her with the force of a train.
Her world turned to pain as she flew off her feet, into the air, and through the wall of the nearest building about three stories up. She barely had time to be aware of the three walls she crashed through before she came to a stop and groaned. Cracking her eyes open she realized she couldn’t hear anything and that her upper back was screaming in pain.
Struggling to her feet, she dug herself out of the rubble and staggered forward, through a large hole in the wall. From there she could tell that she was in someone’s apartment and looked around to see a couple and their three children looking scared out of their minds. They were yelling something at her, but she still couldn’t hear anything over her pain.
Cursing, she turned and staggered through the other hole, into the living room, and stepped to the hole that led outside. Down in the street she could see the monster and glared at him. She’d really underestimated his strength and paid the price for it, but that wasn’t going to stop her. A tiny bit of sound suddenly filled her ears as she stood there, and noticed the screaming from one of the kids.
Growling, she jumped out the hole and dropped to the ground. She landed easily enough, though she couldn’t remember ever being hit quite that hard before. The damage to her body was enough to make her decided that she couldn’t defeat the jerk with force alone. She shook off the pain and made her way back over to where Smasher was waiting for her.
“That isn’t going to stop me.” She told him.
“AGHAAAAAAAAAA!!” He snarled, spittle flying from his mouth.
“Yeah, I know you’re an asshole.” She muttered and motioned at him. “Bring it on, wimp.”
She jumped into the air as he lunged at her, landed beside Jax where she had left her bar, and quickly twisted it into a rough baton like shape. It was at times like this that she cursed the fact that TAU police officers were not issued weapons unless they checked them out at the Station, something she hadn’t had a chance to do.
“Hurry it up Shoo.” Jax snarled as he and Tabitha watched from the sidelines.
“Don’t be so blasted impatient. I’m doing the best I can fighting this thing on my own.”
Jax didn’t say anything as she turned and ran back over to the monster and spun the baton around a few times before she launched her attack. The beast was ready for her though as he lunged at her, but she used the baton to block his arm. With her other arm she punched him I the stomach as hard as she could and hopped back. She was a bit surprised when he didn’t drop to his knees and retch all over the ground.
Instead he suddenly grabbed her entire arm in his fist, lifted her above his head and slammed her into the ground. “AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
The asphalt under her shoulders shattered as she hit and was pushed nearly a foot into the ground. Her back, already damaged, took the brunt of the blow and she grit her teeth in pain. The now useless baton was thrown and embedded itself in the wall of a building a block away. Then Akiko groaned as she watched him raise his fist into the air.
Multiple bars of black energy slammed into Smasher’s head half a second later and sent him stumbling back with a roar of surprise. Jax kept firing, hoping to distract the monster while Tabitha ran over to the hole. She knelt down at the edge and tried to see what kind of shape Akiko was in.
“Akiko!”
The blonde looked up and groaned. “That hurt.”
“Can you get out of there?”
“Yeah, but stand back, I’m going to break my way out.”
Digging her way out of the hole wasn’t to hard, but Akiko was not in very good shape. Neither was her uniform, which was starting to develop several holes and rips along the arms and back. She crawled out of the hole and saw that Jax was keeping the thing pinned to a wall that he was generating.
“Jax, we may need to start doing some damage to stop him!” Akiko yelled.
“No! We have to pay for anything we break!”
Akiko glanced over at the hole she’d made in the apartment complex and Jax twitched, but ignored it. “He’s stronger than me!”
“I don’t care, I just need you to restrain him so we can use the Bolt Cuffs!”
Akiko looked around the devastation around her. “And just where are you going to get them from? It’s not like any of our usual equipment is even here!”
“They are on their way!”
“ARGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Smasher yelled and tried to move forward.
“We can’t…” She started to say.
“Just do it!” Jax yelled.
She sighed and nodded. “Yes sir.”
Jax relaxed and let the wall and his blasts die down. “Move it, the Bolt Cuffs will be here in a few minutes. I sent for them before I even called you down here.”
Shrugging, Akiko glancing at Smasher, attempting to think of a quick way to stop him without causing any more damage, but nothing really came to mind. Normally she would have had a little help stopping a rogue TAU like this. For some reason Jax thought she could stop him on her own and she didn’t understand why.
That didn’t make it impossible, just more problematic and then there were others she had to watch out for. She could see people peeking out their windows every now and then as she fought and knew they were in a lot more danger than she ever was.
Reaching into a belt pouch, she pulled out a small plastic vial filled with two liquids, but with very thin piece of plastic separating them. She twisted it around in her hand so that she could bend it in two with one hand and ran at Smasher. If she wanted to stop him, she would have to cheat a little.
“Time to put an end to this.” She said as she ran.
The big guy looked a little confused as she ran at him, but he quickly focused on Akiko and yelled. Akiko moved around him, bent the little vial in half with her fingers, and tossed it at Smasher’s face. The instant it left her hand it lit up like a miniature star. She had her eyes closed as it went off and hoped that it would give her enough time to get in a good enough hit to take the guy down for a few minutes.
As he screamed and stumbled backwards in shock, she jumped into the air, flipped over him and landed on his back. Wrapping her legs around his neck, she scissored her legs and used her knees as they pressed into his neck to cut off his air supply. Even the monster’s neck muscles were impossibly strong, but she was no slouch in that department.
Before he could reach up and grab onto her, she placed both hands at his temples and began to press with her considerable strength. Then she increased the pressure and he stopped and tried to grab her, but she refused to budge. Using her knees she lifted his head a little higher.
He tried to shake her off and bellowed in pain, but she refused to let go and in just a couple of seconds he stumbled back and fell to his knees.
“Got you.” She muttered.
“Let…go…” Smasher said.
“Ah, you can talk.”
Let…go…of me…” Smasher said.
“Just not much it seems.” Akiko as she leaned back and used her body weight to add to the pressure she was placing on his neck.
“Good!” Jax yelled. “Now keep it up!”
“Just hurry!” Akiko yelled back.
“He’s shrinking.” Tabitha gasped a few seconds later.
Akiko hadn’t really noticed that the longer she kept the pressure on the smaller the guy got, so she figured his strength was starting to give out as well. With a wrench of her body she flopped him over on is side so that she could maintain her pressure, only letting up a little bit as they fell over. He growled in anger as she grabbed his wrists and refused to allow him to grab her now that he could actually think a little better.
“Naughty boy, no playing the TAU police officer.”
“&%$#*($.” He growled.
“I think you need soap, boy.”
“Grr…”
She was actually a bit surprised that that her quick idea had worked, but she wasn’t going to complain about it either. A lot of these take downs were touch and go at times, so this one wasn’t any different. The move was one she didn’t employ too often because there were so many risks involved when it was used, like killing the guy.
She wasn’t to worried about that though, she was more worried about what he would do if he got free again. When his shrinking body finally reached a size more comparable to her own, she let go and rolled off him for a second. The guy was barely conscious, but that was exactly how she wanted him.
Reached into her belt pouch she took a second to roll him over onto his stomach with her foot. Then she quickly hand cuffed him with a pair of conventional plastic cuffs. They wouldn’t hold him for to long if he woke up completely, but she hoped that by then the Bolt Cuff would be here. Until then she would have to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t find any way to escape her. Maybe a kick to the head every couple of minutes to keep him disoriented enough to stay down.
“Took you long enough.” Jax complained.
“As if you needed my help with this.” Akiko snapped back and noticed the pink haired girl sitting on the hood of a nearby car. “How is Tabitha?”
“Blinded at the moment, she didn’t close her eyes in time and got blinded by it.”
“Oh lovely, she’s to green to even be in the field.”
“She just needs training.”
“Humph.” Akiko grumbled.
Then in the distance she heard the sound of an approaching truck. Jax heard it as well and made his way down the street to direct them into the area. He motioned for Tabitha to stay where she was as she stood up, but then she turned and walked over to Akiko and looked down at the guy. Her eyes were still a little unfocused, but she seemed to be getting her eyesight back quickly enough.
“I can’t believe he caused such a problem.” She said.
“What was he doing down here anyway?” Akiko asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? Why did you attack him, he had to have been doing something wrong.”
“When I found him, the police had already shown up and were aiming their guns at him while he smashed their cars and threatened to rip their heads off for…um, presuming to attack an Elite warrior. I’m still not sure what he was talking about. Jax arrived a little while later and asked me to fire at him, so I did, that’s when he absorbed the blast and really got dangerous.” Tabitha explained.
Akiko glanced down at the man she’d just cuffed and wondered if he was playing possum, but the decided that he had to be conscious to use his power. They just needed to be quick when they transferred him into the van. She turned back to Tabitha and noticed that her glasses were a little dirty, but other than that, she looked fine. “I take it he didn’t get a chance to hit you?”
“No, Jax threw up his shield to protect me and the cops the instant he started growing, then we ran down the street and around the corner to lead the thing away form the regular cops before we dug in and we stayed like that until you arrived.”
“Jax didn’t attack him?”
“No, he didn’t have time. Every time he even thought about it Smasher would start to pound on the shield and we would have move back some more.”
“I see.” Akiko muttered. “I still don’t see why I had to be called down here this early in the morning, but I’m glad the two of you are safe now.”
“Jax explained that to me a little while ago, he said it was because you don’t manipulate energy like all the other strong arms in the squad, you’re just pure strength.”
Jax growled as he came up to them and Tabitha blushed as if she’d done something wrong and quickly shut her mouth. “The Bolt Cuffs are here, let’s get this jerk in the chair and finish this business off once and for all.”
“No problem.” Akiko said.
Behind him, three TAU officers were lugging large device out of the back of the transport van. They weren’t the regular crew either, but another set of rookies that she didn’t recognize. “What’s with them?”
“Replacements, the regular crew wasn’t available on short notice so some men from the office brought the Bolt Cuffs down.”
She nodded. “Let me give them a hand then. I’ve also trained in their use, unlike those morons you managed to find who don’t seem to have a clue what they are doing.” Akiko muttered. “Tabitha, if he tries to get up kick him in the head a couple of times, I know you are stronger than you look. We need to keep him disoriented enough that he doesn’t get a chance to escape.”
“Okay.” The pink haired girl said and glanced down at Smasher’s head and looked like she was about to make a practice kick, but he didn’t even groan.
Akiko walked over to the trick where four of the uniformed Tellrain cat girls were all struggling to shift the half ton Bolt Cuff chair off the floor of the truck. At one point in time the thing was motorized, but cutbacks from the department made getting a proper mobile chair impossible and they hadn’t had time to convert anything from storage yet. “I got it ladies.”
They all stopped and moved out of the way as Akiko grabbed the chair like object and lifted it off the truck with only a small grunt as she shifted the awkward weight around on her shoulder.
“Whoa!” They chorused and clapped.
“None of that, you don’t want the boss to get mad do you?” Akiko said with a grin as she walked off.
The device known as Bolt Cuffs was actually a large adjustable chair that was used to hold high powered TAU criminals. The government was the only organization that had the technology to block a TAU’s power from working and they didn’t like to share. The Bold Cuff was actually similar to an electric chair, except it immobilized most people by disrupting the TAU’s nervous system.
The subject was placed in the chair, with their hands bound together and lowered the upper bar over their chest and placed their hands inside a cup at chest level. Then their feet were secured to the frame and you turned on the power generator at the back. The only drawback was that it was bulky and could only be used in special circumstances. They were lucky that it was only hard to move to places. Once a TAU was secured in the chair it easily charged up and allowed them to activate a low powered anti grave welded to the base of the chair.
The design of the rig used leverage against the person inside it as well, no matter how strong they were, they just couldn’t break out. It was possible, but they had to be very strong and usually required the sacrifice of an arm or leg when they broke it to get out of the chair.
Bolt Cuffs were usefull against energy users as well, because the chair could absorb energy generated by the human body and either store it in power cells or bleed it off almost as fast the person generated it. The thing was an ingenious device used for all the wrong reasons and on the wrong people.
Police and military agencies used them fairly regularly and only when they came across a TAU that it had to be used on. She knew of far too many business that had them sitting in back rooms for emergencies, like when an employee needed to be punished. Even high schools had them in the doctor’s offices for when they came across a TAU attending the school and they acted up.
Akiko shook her head recalled the three days she could ever remember using one of those chairs. It was standard operating procedure for every member of the TAU unit to experience just what happened when they were in that chair. A kind of reminder of what would happened to them if they ever broke the law themselves. Her first time was back when she was in college after her powers surged for the first time and she accidentally kicked a ball into orbit. The second was when she was at the Police academy, and the third she tried to never think about.
She stalked over to where Smasher was unconscious and sat the chair down right next to him. Within a few minutes her and Jax managed to get him trussed up and ready to take back to the station. The antigravity plate activated and lifted the chair about two inches off the ground as it hummed to life.
The two of them quickly grabbed a couple of handles jutting out from the side of the chair and pulled it along easily. The two of them quickly packed Smasher inside the truck and attached the chair to it’s housings inside the transport van. This decreased the chances of him breaking out of the chair even more, since the housing was magnetic and it made releasing the various devices built into the chair completely impossible.
The cat girls swarmed around Smasher and made sure everything was locked into place. They may never actually drive the truck around, but everyone in the station was trained in the Bold Cuff’s safety precautions. Akiko stood outside the truck as Jax and cat girls made sure everything was in place before securing the back of the truck and left two of the girls inside to make sure the Smasher didn’t wake up.
Several minutes later Jax stepped back outside and walked over to Akiko and motioned at Tabitha. “Tabitha, you head on home, I’ll see you when you come into work at the regular time.”
She saluted. “Yes sir.”
“Akiko, me and you get to ride to the station and help secure the prisoner in the cell.”
“Yes sir.” Akiko said joylessly.
“Then you can spend the next two hours fixing the damage you did to the building yesterday.” Jax growled.
“What about my bike?”
“What about it?”
“I have to get it to the station so I can go home this afternoon.”
Jax shrugged. “I’ll ride in the van then, one of the cat girls can drive the truck, and you follow us. Where are you parked?”
“A couple blocks from here.”
“Why so far away?”
“Why bring my only mode of transportation into a dangerous situation?”
“Don’t get smart with me. Just go get it and I’ll meet you at the station.”
“Yes sir.”
**********
After the van pulled out of the area and the police started to head off. Akiko decided to take the long way back to Dragon to avoid the rest of the officers, she really didn’t feel like putting up with them at the moment. Her fight with that monster had taken a lot longer than she expected and she was a little wore out.
It wouldn’t take her to long to recover and it was more of a mental exhaustion than a physical one. She was getting seriously tired of dealing with things like this. At times it could be a lot of fun, but that monster could have leveled entire buildings full of people and not felt a thing when people died because of it.
Jax had warned her on several occasions that the way she saw the world was different than way things really were. She knew that there was only a matter of time before she did something that would hack off the wrong people and she would be in for a world of hurt.
She thought about those cops she was avoiding, about how they would all glare at her if she got to close to them. They were all a part of the same tea that guarded this city, took down criminals, and enforced the law. Yet, if she did anything even remotely bad and affected the department they wouldn’t hesitate to hunt her down and kill her.
Some of them would do it for no reason at all, just because she was strong and it frightened them. So going by those cops would only cause problems she really didn’t want to deal with. Her day was already heading into the toilet and the sun hadn’t even crested the horizon yet. Even the moons looked a little depressed now that she looked at them.
There were days she really had a problem controlling her temper and it would eventually lead to problems. The doctors that examined her four times a year said it stemmed from the fact that she had odd chemicals floating around in her body. So if she had to put up her own group insulting her she could easily see herself beating the crap out of the whole lot of them. The bigots really weren’t on her list of people to deal with, so she just went around them.
“Akiko?”
She turned as Tabitha stepped out of a nearby alley and made her way over. The girl looked a little nervous. “What’s going on?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Like what?”
“How do you do this job?”
Akiko looked a bit startled for a second. “Why do you ask?”
“I never wanted to do a job like this. Talking to Jax is like talking to a brick wall, he just won’t listen to anything you say to him.”
“We do this so we can survive.”
“I’m not a police officer, I never wanted to be one in the first place.”
“You can do other things.”
Tabitha sighed and the started to walk along. “I’m an artist, not a police officer. I was forced into this jot like so many others, but…”
“Most of us are, but the only thing you can do is make the most of it and adjust. Luckily we only have to put in a couple of years as officers.”
“That isn’t what I’ve heard.”
Akiko nodded. “You have to be careful what kind of actions you take and how useful you are.”
“What about you.”
“Nothing bad yet, but I may make a mistake in the future.”
“You don’t sound worried.”
“It frightens the hell out of me to allow them to have that much control over my actions, but all I’ve got is my strength. There are TAU with the Government that can do things that make them gods. I don’t want to end up on the receiving end of anyone like that.”
“What about Superheroes?”
She looked over at the pink haired girl and laughed. “Superheroes, do you honestly think that they would be allowed to operate anywhere on this planet without the consent of the Government?”
“But, they have been around for years and I’ve never heard of one that was against the government.” Tabitha said and a second later she gasped. “Not a one…”
Akiko nodded. “what do you think happens to those TAU that don’t like the government? They are branded as Super villains and the Heroes are sent after them. When that doesn’t work or they get scared they head for the Zone.”
“And it’s our job to deal with kind of thing?”
“Not in so many words Tabitha, our job is to enforce the rules and help maintain a kind of balance. Jax has been in this job for over twenty years Tabitha, he could have taken Smasher down in five seconds if he wanted to. Instead he called me down here and endangered you in the process, do you have an idea just why he would do such a thing?”
“No.”
“Because he is doing what he’s told, just like everyone else in the unit does. Very few of us want to be where we are, but we do it to protect our families from retribution, or from rubbing someone the wrong way.”
“Is there no way for us to get out of this situation?”
“There are lots of ways, but unfortunately all of them mean turning your back on the government and abandoning everything you believe in. So far I’ve found a balance between the threats and my job so I can still function.”
Tabitha sighed and hung her head. “I’m not strong like you, there’s no way I can do this job. I barely managed to shoot that guy earlier and look what happened.”
They walked along in silence for a few seconds as they rounded the corner and headed for the parking lot where Dragon was parked. “Tabitha, the secret to surviving is learning how to do the job in a way that people don’t expect. If you are told to ‘stop’ some criminal you don’t have to run out and kill him. Instead you do exactly as they say, you stop him and bring him in.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Why did you shoot that guy?”
“Jax told me to.”
“Did you shoot to kill?” Akiko pressed.
“I did as I was told to do.”
“That’s what I mean, you need to think for yourself. Instead of shooting Smasher, you could have shot the ground at his feet and liquefied the ground to slow him down, or you could have aimed for his eyes and blinded him. Instead you shot him, just as you were trained to do.”
“I…I think I understand, but I’m still a little confused.”
“Good enough. Tabitha you are stronger than me, power wise, and that places you in a dangerous situation. You need to learn how to out think of everything around you and use it to your advantage. Right now things are dangerous, but I think that in a few years things are going to settle down now that people are starting to get used to us TAU, but until then we have to be careful not to cause problems.”
Dragon was still in one piece and Akiko approached it and tapped a button on the control panel.
“I’m scared…”
“You’ll do fine Tabitha, we just need to be patient and until things change we have to be careful as well.”
“All right, I need to think about this.”
Akiko nodded as she got on dragon and started him up and let Jina run a quick scan of the motorcycle. “I’ll see you at the office in a few hours Tabitha.”
Neither of them noticed the man across the street watching them as they parted ways. He pulled out a phone and made a quick call as Akiko rode off. It only lasted a few seconds, but when he was done he casually walked down the side walk after Tabitha. He was wearing a dark trenchcoat as he passed under a streetlight and light a cigarette.
**********
Blood trickled down the side of Sara’s face as she fell to the ground with a cry of pain. She whimpered a little as she hit the ground and rolled over to star up at the one person in the world she cared about stood over her with a bat in her hand and hate in her eyes.
“Mamma…”
“You piece of filth!”
“Mamma please, why…” Sara cried as she threw her arms up to protect her face from the bat.
“I always knew I should have killed you!” Sara’s mother screamed and raised the bat into the air to do finish off her child.
Tears steamed down Sara’s face as her heart broke and she reacted on instinct, kicking out with her foot, and catching her mom in the knee. The woman yelled out as she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Sara cried as she scrambled to her feet and ran across the room.
Her mother came to her feet with a snarl and she barely looked human anymore. Sara could see her sister Nyoko grinning at her from down the hall and all she could see in her eyes was glee. There wasn’t a hint of anything in her eyes that a sister should feel, no love, no caring, not even pity.
Sara didn’t know what to do, as the seconds passed it became more and more obvious that her mother really did mean to kill her. Her body was numb, her emotions were wore out, and couldn’t think straight. More tears trailed down her face as her mother stalked towards her.
“Why!?”
“You’re a freak of nature and I will not have you stain my family with your FILTH!” The woman screamed and hit Sara across the side of the face and sent her daughter stumbling back with a spray of blood.
Pain blossomed across her face as she barely managed to stay on her feet and Nyoko cheered her mother on. She stumbled into the table and tipped it over, spilling a large package full of paper work onto the floor. Right there on the package was her name in large black lettering.
Still a little dizzy, she picked it up and before her mother could take a another swing at her. She broke into a run and made her way across the room just as the bat slammed into the edge of the table and took a big chunk out of it. Sara screamed and headed for the door, but then her mother did something unexpected.
Instead of following, she threw the bat, and it spun across the room and slammed into Sara’s leg. She yelled out in pain as she stumbled out the door and out into the front yard. Her mother and sister were only a few steps behind, yelling obscenities. Bleeding and bruised, tears streaming down her face, Sara made her way down the street balling her eyes out.
“DON’T EVER COME BACK OR I’LL KILL YOU FREAK!” Nyoko screamed after her sister and laughed as if this was the best birthday present she’d ever received.
“Whywhywhywhywhy…” She muttered over and over again as she staggered into an empty lot a few blocks away.
Falling to the ground she curled into a ball, cradling the package, and just cried. She wasn’t even coherent when a someone dropped from the sky and landed next to her. He reached down, picked the girl up in his arms, sighed as he rose into the sky, and vanished in a burst of light.
Nyoko seethed in anger as she watched her sister vanish from sight and knew that once again her big sister had just ruined her life again. She had to tell her mom about this and see if there was anything they could do to make her suffer anymore. Reaching into her shirt she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and giggled as she tossed it into the gutter.
**********
“Akiko!”
Looking up from her work station, Akiko looked over at Jax as he glared at her. She sighed, grabbed her equipment, and buckled it on as she walked over to his desk. “Sir?”
“We have a noise complaint being sent down from the top. Taka tried to refuse it, but the Commander insisted that a TAU look into this one.” Jax explained as he handed her the report.
“I see.” Akiko said as she read over the report and noticed that it involved a lot of screaming. It was from just a few hours before when she was fighting that Smasher character. “Anything else?”
“Taka hinted that this might be a #208.”
Akiko nodded. These days a #208 was kind of rare, but not unheard of. They usually ended up with a homeless TAU out on the streets for a several months before they were arrested or they made their way to the Zone. With any luck she might be able to save this one before things got bad.
“All right, this shouldn’t take to long…”
“I also want you to take Tabitha with you, she needs some field time.”
“It’s till to early for that isn’t it? She hasn’t even gone through her squad training yet.”
“Taka says we need to cut some corners.” Jax explained with a shrug.
She didn’t like the sound of that at all, but she just nodded and glanced over at the girl. “Tabitha, grab your equipment.”
The pink haired girl nodded nervously and sat her training book down. “Where are we going.”
“To find a run away TAU.”
The girl adjusted her glasses. “Is there anything we need to get before we leave?”
“We need to stop by the armory.”
Tabitha blinked in surprise.
**********
End Part One
End Notes –
C. Rose
Ertle2@msn.com