Fascinating Villains

{41} - Cargo

With both hands engaged, I am halfway through creating a circular shield when their ammunitions reach my position. The blue disk is levitating, its center aligned between my palms, its diameter increasing every second, but still not covering the top of my head. I duck behind my creation, kneeling sturdily to have balance as I telekinetically hold the surface up.

The shower of bullets is equivalent to an extremely loud, ill-mannered and loosely coherent conversation that takes place closely, and only worsens with every word, while I'm trying to listen to someone who speaks very softly. In other terms, it is a remarkable strain on my focus. There exists potential for me to have phenomenal control over my kryptonite energy, but the substance is not an integral part of me, it is not connected to my skin, to my bones or to any nerves. Simply put, I cannot experience sensations or stimuli that are inflicted to my kryptonite creations. Hence why their assault can only physically injure me if I let my blue wall shatter. Or if the effort becomes so significantly draining that the energy contaminates my blood vessels, then damages my tissues... It's best to focus on my kryptonite shield, right now.

My initially round prototype is spreading into a rectangle, which at the moment is at least six people wide and a dozen heads taller than the two shooters. The one on my right scrambles, attempting to make their way around the border to attack me. The other thug can barely form the thought that it's a good idea and that they should try to do the same. I curl my right hand into a fist, clapping with my left palm against my folded fingers. The kryptonite barrier instantly wraps around the miscreants, molding a cylinder before the muffled sound of my hands has ceased echoing around us. 

After I have commanded large bars to trickle across the top of their prison, assuring they cannot climb out of the enclosure, I glance towards where the truck was parked. Once an energy creation is done, it might as well be set in stone. More accurately, it is set in kryptonite. From what Cheryl has taught me, I believe regular gunfire should not fracture solidified kryptonite matter.

The cyclical pulsing of all the lights gives the area the eerie semblance of a sinister party. Fortunately, this perpetual activation and deactivation is not restricted to lightbulbs, making every electronic device in the vicinity unable to function for longer than a second. The truck has only travelled a handful of feet away, rolling forward slightly before shutting down over and over.

I cautiously approach the right side of the vehicle, already scouring the borders of the driver's mind. She has her foot forcefully weighing down on the gas pedal, which is an issue I need to resolve before I disconnect her brain. We will foreseeably require the truck intact to transport the cargo elsewhere, so I cannot simply slash its tires.

I mentally trace a blue rectangle, a large perimeter around the truck. While I'm considering my options, I suddenly realize that I did not choose a wise spot to stand and think. The driver can see my reflection in the side mirror, and I am only aware thanks to her own stream of thoughts, embarrassingly. Remaining inside the boundaries I have etched, I decisively command walls of energy to rise up from them, capturing myself along with my target; I need the driver to leave her seat.

She cusses loudly enough that I can hear it from outside the cockpit as her briefly functioning vehicle groans and bumps into an unnatural cyan wall instead of gaining an additional inch of distance. Gun in hand, I hear the driver slam the door open, and as soon as her shoes touch the ground, she shoots no less than three consecutive times at the front of my kryptonite energy box. 

And she's already stomping around the hood of the truck to come meet me.

Swiping my hand upwards, I summon a barrier between us, which luckily sustains the spurt of four bullets that she projects my way.