He’ll be dead in a minute, tops.
“I’ve never seen the uniform either. Is this a super villain group?” Victoria asked, standing up.
Miu sauntered over and blasted her elbow into the man’s forehead. His head dropped to the ground unmoving.
Unconscious.
“I’m not familiar with it if it is one,” Miu said. “Lily or Andrea would know. They’ve had more dealings with them.”
The bodyguard had made it inside as well. He was at the door. He had it cracked open by a scant inch, and was looking out of it.
“Can hear them out there,” said the bodyguard. “They’re arguing about who has the money. Us or Dimitry’s guy. They’re here for a cash grab.”
“Damn. That settles the concern over Dimitry though. Alright, up we go,” Victoria said, moving towards the stairwell off to one side.
Felix grabbed hold of the unconscious dying man and dragged him along the ground. Finding the underside of the stairs empty, Felix moved the body that way.
Shoving him underneath, Felix left him there to bleed out and darted after Victoria. He didn’t think it’d help, but taking ten seconds to possibly save them minutes or hours seemed like a good gamble.
Flight after flight they climbed. Passing by a number of fire escape doors that probably led into apartment corridors.
Up ahead, Victoria went out through the door leading onto the roof.
Felix shielded his eyes as he came out into the open air.
In front of him were two men, staring back at Victoria as she charged them.
One had a scoped rifle and the other binoculars.
Before Victoria could get a hold of them, one man got a hand to his earpiece.
“They’re on the roof! On top of—” His voice cut off as Victoria’s sword cleared its sheath, the blade coming around in an arc and separating his head from his shoulders.
The second man had slower reactions, and Victoria took two more steps to reach him. Her blade flashed out, the tip of it sliding through the man’s chest.
With a soft gasp, the man collapsed to his knees, his hands closing around Victoria’s blade.
Placing a booted foot on the man’s chest, she yanked it out of his body and spun.
There was no one else on the roof.
“We need to go. Now!” Miu said. Putting action to her own words, Miu started running for the opposite side of the building.
Pushing himself onward, Felix followed. Even when Miu sped up and leapt off the side of the building, Felix poured on the speed and doggedly pursued her. Getting his feet right before he reached the edge, Felix stamped down and jumped. Sailing across the gap between the buildings, Felix caught sight of an empty alley beneath them and his stomach flipped.
Then he was rolling across the top of the building. Managing to not fall too poorly, Felix got to his feet and stumbled after Miu.
Victoria and the bodyguard landed better than Felix did and caught up to him quickly.
“How many more like this?” Felix asked as Miu dove off the side of the building in front of him.
“Four more. But… but then we have to make a choice,” Victoria said.
The conversation paused for a moment as they all took a running leap off the building.
Gritting his teeth, and feeling the bruises his knees and elbows were already developing from landing hard, Felix cursed whatever god did this to him.
Getting up, he managed to get next to Miu before she bolted off again. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and held on to it tightly, keeping her stationary.
“I’m not made for this. I’m built for spreadsheets,” Felix muttered. Then more loudly he asked, “What choice do we have to make?”
“We can head into the streets to the west. Where the buildings reach a ground level that we can get to easily. That runs the risk of being seen and being on the run again. It’s very possible they’re not even there though, but it’s a risk. There were a lot of people back there, and they were trained, equipped, and prepped. I’d imagine they have a large swathe of the area encircled,” Victoria said. “Or we keep going over the rooftops to the south. It’ll end up dropping us off near an industrial complex where it runs out of room.”
Felix could smell there was more to that statement. Smell it a mile away.
“And?” he prompted.
“And it’s the safer of the two routes to choose if we think they’ll keep after us,” Victoria said.
“And?” he prompted again.
“And… and it’s supposedly where a villain known as Neutralizer is supposedly building a base. The Heroes don’t know about it, and we only found out about it because Lily keeps in touch with her old contacts.”
“I don’t know him. Give me the tourist two sentence version,” Felix said, looking around nervously.
“He uh… anything within a mile, he can exert his power over,” Victoria said. “And before you ask, his power is to remove the power of others. He can only hold down about five people, which is why the Heroes guild doesn’t ever have too much of a problem with him. His counter is simple. They just send two squads for him.”
“Except for us right now, who don’t even number more than four, he’s a problem,” Felix finished for her.
“Yes. But that’s if he is even there, and assuming that he wants to make a problem for us,” Victoria said hurriedly. “It really is the safer option. If we get down, and find them waiting for us, either we’ll end up in a fight on the streets, or being chased.”
“Where the hell are the police? The Heroes? Shouldn’t they be working on this?” Felix asked in an annoyed tone. Opening his phone he stared at the screen. “Are you kidding me? No signal? On top of a building? That’s not normal. Something is very not right. This is beyond well coordinated.”
“I’d bet that communications have been cut in a few key places,” Miu said. “That or a few people were paid off. It can happen. I was the target of many bribe attempts in security.”
“So, it becomes more of a question of, do we believe that those chasing us were more well equipped than we thought, or that a villain may have an interest in us,” Felix said.
Everyone stopped talking. Far to the northwest, the sound of a helicopter could be heard. In fact, it was just barely within eyesight.
“That isn’t a news-chopper,” said the bodyguard.
“South it is,” Felix replied.
Chapter 5 - Insane Devotion -
“Right,” Miu said. They were all watching the helicopter. Everyone was assuming it wasn’t there to help them. There was little chance of it and there was no point in taking the risk.
Miu instead sprinted southward. She took a running jump from the building they were on to the commercial building next to it. Felix followed right behind her.
The roof cracked with Felix’s impact, shattering and sending cracks out in every direction. Rolling forward Felix managed to get out of the space even as the entire thing began to fracture and come apart.
Scrabbling for traction, a grip, anything, Felix crawled and scuttled forward.
More and more of the roof fell inward, giving way. The bones of the building were starting to tremble as the weight of the whole thing began to shift.
Did they just fucking ignore all their maintenance? Holy shit!
Miu grabbed him by an arm and hustled him towards the edge of the building. Taking a monstrously strong grip on his shoulder, she jumped, dragging him along through the air.
In the middle of the jump, Felix got a good look backward.
Victoria and the bodyguard were still on the previous building They watched as the entire roof gave way.
Landing with a crunch, Miu fell to her knees. Felix was sent rolling to one side. Lifting his head he caught sight of Victoria looking like she was going to jump anyways. Waving his arm at her, he caught her attention.