Now
"MOVE, bitch, GET OUT THE WAY!"
I have the volume turned up too loud, thought Brody, eyes opening wide as a masked man kicked the passenger door open.
Streetcars swerved spectacularly out of the way of the enormous gunmetal grey truck, the armored vehicle itself careening hazardously across all lanes of traffic. Trailing sparks and police cars, the busted-up wreck on wheels sported a more unconventional passenger as well...none other than Bugger, NYC's newest - and most controversial - defender.
"F@%&!"swore the Bronx Bug over the roar of the engine and the blast of his music, having barely avoided being scraped off the side of the barely-attached passenger-side door by means of contact with a lumbering double-decker bus. There was no grip involved in clinging deftly to the side of the metal juggernaut; like the arachnid emblazoned on his conspicuously colorful attire, Brody Burns simply stuck to the side, microscopic feelers latching on where his fingers could not. Headphones stuffed under the mask blasted his shuffled playlist, but he was starting to wonder if it was going to be too distracting.
Inside, the right-side passenger reloaded his machine gun just as Brody scrambled wildly back onto the side of the car, the pavement inches beneath his feet rushing into little more than a blur. Just as he heard the click of the clip back into the muzzle, he risked a glance up ahead, a hastily-erected police blockade completely obstructing the road about twenty miles ahead. His eyes, narrowed, were suddenly filled with equal parts horror and exasperation. The beat dropped.
"Oh crap..."
Five Minutes Ago
Brody Burns sprinted fast over the rooftops, vaulting effortlessly over every potential obstacle in his path. Air rushed over him, felt despite the presence of the mask and costume. Every new rooftop was a foreign obstacle course, cleared casually by the self-proclaimed Agile Anarchist. Sometimes he slid underneath air ducts, body practically flattening to accommodate the lack of space to navigate; other times he leaped, soaring over chimney stacks and dispersing the smoke with a deft spin. Every time, he landed without issue, sometimes rolling, sometimes bouncing off of an extended leg.
When the jumps were too big to make, he shot out a hand, a translucent strand of silk spraying from the end of his wrist. The elastic web, coiled in his veins and endlessly produced by his unique body, latched onto anything it touched, the Free Bug springing in tow. What could not be jumped over, he climbed, scrambling violently up the sides of windows with Grudge-like flexibility. Hand over hand, foot over foot, he moved faster up the side of a building than he could run on the ground, the uncanny sight eliciting responses from the crowds below ranging from disgust to giddy admiration.
He ignored them all, enjoying the moment. The playlist was coming to an end as he came to a halt atop a skyscraper, loading up the next song. He stopped for a moment, taking out his MP3 and considering changing the track. He wasn't a fan of helping out the big corporate businesses, so he largely stuck to tiny companies like Sony. They'd been hit hard by the strides made by Animus and Knightfall Systems, bringing their stock to an all-time low; he could practically buy their tech for free, if he wanted to. The music (pirated, of course) started up again. He hovered his thumb over the skip button.
Out of the corner of a multi-lidded eye, obscured by his mask's whitened lenses, he saw an armored car drift around the street corner below, propelling a collection of fellow drivers onto the sidewalks and into shop windows. Gunfire, chaos. Nice.
He looked back down at the MP3, then back to the car.
On second thought, this one's perfect, he thought, taking a running leap off the building after the action he lived for.
Now - Again
Brody swung up on top of the truck, narrowly escaping a new status as a stain on the front of one of "NYC's finest's" car.
That's the establishment. Always interfering in my life, he thought sardonically. There was some truth to the statement, even if it didn't quite apply just right now. He squinted, gasping as a low-hanging streetlight approached at incomprehensible speeds. Rolling to the side, he barely avoided the rain of sparks that arose when the lamp was crushed by the top of the car. Turning over onto his stomach, he made a fist, experimentally striking the top of the car.
Ow, he thought, shaking the stinging knuckles. Can't punch through steel, I guess.
Staying low, he straightened his back, crouching atop the out-of-control vehicle. He experimented again, shooting two strands of silk from his wrists onto nearby walls and attaching the ends to the top of the van. It slowed down ever so slightly, the chunks of building dragged out of their position along after the car, nearly flattening a collection of unlucky pedestrians.
Well, he thought, before a familiar clik-clak sound filled his super-sensitive ears above the chaos.
"OK, you I can work with," he said aloud, contorting his body dramatically to dodge the spray of bullets from behind. Brody watched in slow-motion as a cascade of hot lead filled the air where he'd just crouched, now practically flat to the top of the car. Twisting his wrist under himself, he spun, lashing out with a kick that functioned more like a whip. Without any bones to hold him back, he could contort into nearly any shape he could imagine...building up what he deemed a metricshit-ton of potential energy in the process. When he uncoiled, he did so like a whip.
The foot caught the unlucky bandit in the face, the strike shattering the mask and hoisting him from the hatch he'd opened atop the vehicle. His body spasmed in mid-air, spinning across a lane of traffic and crashing through an office window.
"Ha. Loser," he said, returning to a crouching position from his loose pose. Fingers curled, he raised an eyebrow, the song about to finish. No more time to fool around.
Leaping from the back of the truck to swing alongside it with a well-placed silken shot, he looked on from above. They'd see him, rising high into the air in the span of a second only to dive low an instant later. At the last possible moment before his descent finished, he shot out another strand overhead, straightening out to come up alongside the truck, fully prepared to disable it with an even better maneuver. His mind wasn't on that though. His mind was on the airtime he was about to get, and the message he could spread along with it.
Hello, America. Bugger's 'ere. Prepare to get F#@%d.
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