Writetober 2019

October 29-Injured

Connie flew after the getaway car, wishing she could just turn into an elephant and squash the back end of the thing. But even if she could morph into something more than ten times her weight, there was too much traffic to do so safely.

She turned on her comm and yelled over the wind, "Where are you guys? I've chased this car halfway across the city."

"Mr. Indestructible is stuck in traffic, and Guinness got caught up assisting with the car accident that caused the traffic," Phoenix answered me. "Tracker and Trapper are en route and should be there soon. Still waiting on word from the others."

"Well, can you tell them to hurry it up?" Connie asked while watching the car swerve into a neighboring lane and nearly cause a wreck. Car horns blared. "These criminals are starting to make my grandpa's driving look safe. Oh frick!"

She hung up abruptly and dove. Someone was going to walk right in front of them on the crosswalk. The guy was on his phone and didn't even see death baring down on him. She barely snatched him out of the way in time. "What happened to looking both ways before you cross the street?!"

She set the guy down on the sidewalk and took back off after the robbers. If they almost ran over another pedestrian, that was it. She was going polar bear on their asses. Fortunately or unfortunately, she didn't get the opportunity.

The masked person in the passenger seat rolled down their window and leaned out. Connie worried for a moment the idiot was going to bail and kill himself. Is he insane?! The other cars won't be able to stop in time! Then he pulled a gun. Oh...

Connie swerved and dipped as the man attempted to aim. His first two shots missed. Connie's grin at successfully dodging faded when she heard the shatter of glass and a scream. She looked down and spotted an elderly woman looking up at the dozens of glass shards falling toward her.

"No!" Connie twisted and dove, shifting her large, soaring wings to more resemble the streamlined cut of a falcon's. Almost there! She tucked her wings a little tighter and stretched her arms out to grab the woman. Got you! She held the woman close and flared her wings to slow down as she angled up away from the sidewalk.

Another gunshot sounded behind Connie, and her world spun. Something had hit her wing. She dropped the civilian a few feet above the sidewalk just before she collided with the side of a building.

She came to with someone shaking her shoulder. "You with us, Guardian? Don't make me get Tracker. Come on..." The man was dressed in a grey and dark purple costume.

"Lay off, Trapper," Connie said, batting his hand away. "I'm fine." She knew without looking that she'd reverted to human form. That always happened when she got knocked out. Though she did wonder how spectacular the crash must have been to make Trapper worry.

She shifted back into her winged and much more muscled and gender-neutral form before sitting up. Hopefully, no one else had seen her as her. She was rather enjoying watching the internet forums go back and forth on what Guardian's gender was. Every time one side seemed to gain traction, she'd show up in morphs of the opposite gender just to throw them off.

"How much did I miss?" She asked, brushing herself off as she stood. Though she'd been shot before going down, her wings were pristine as ever now that she'd had a reset.

"Tracker should be wrapping up the fun by now. I knocked them for a loop before finding you."

"Aw, you guys couldn't save me even one?" I complained as we headed for the crash at the end of the street. The front end of the car was wrapped around a light post. Yikes, when Trapper takes someone down, he isn't kidding.

"They're alive," Trapper said, waving a hand dismissively. "It was that or let them cause a five car pile up that would involve a kid being crushed."

I took his word for it. That was his power. He could see how things played out in the immediate future—normally ten minutes ahead, sometimes stretching to 30—but he was never wrong. And he could help events along to their most favorable outcome, though it wasn't pleasant for those he directly used his power on.

Two of the guys I'd been chasing were zip tied to each other and to their car's door handle. One of them was too busy throwing up to notice us approaching. The other was groaning with his head between his knees.

"There you two are! I was beginning to worry," Tracker in his signature dark blue and hot pink outfit said. He was dragging a third guy behind him—the one who'd shot me.

I scowled and contemplated turning into a bison just to scare the bejeebers out of him. When Tracker dropped him next to the other two and tied him up, I realized he was unconscious. "Ugh. You ruin all my fun."

Trapper laughed.

The guys stuck around long enough to chat with police before returning to base. I gave them their standard ten minute head start while signing a few autographs, then gave chase. I beat them back to HCS by less than a minute—Trent had gotten scarily good at using his powers to dodge traffic—and landed in the parking lot.

"Ha! Beat you for once!" I called to their car as they entered the lot.

I was already shifting back to human when they stopped, and Trent jumped out of the car. He frantically yelled, "No, stop! Don't demorph!" But it was too late. As the last vestiges of my wings and extra muscled faded, pain lanced up my leg and through my hip.

I screamed and went down. Ethan managed to grab me just before I would have hit my head on the pavement. Trent was right beside him swearing. "I'm so sorry! I didn't realize you were hurt until we were almost here. I should have had Ethan pull you back."

I grit my teeth and morphed again. Injuries I sustained in morph vanished once I returned to me, but while injuries to my real body faded in morph, they always returned when I dropped out of morph. I must have fully reverted to human somewhere between crashing into that wall and hitting the ground.

"Can't you pull me back now?" I asked, already knowing the answer but hoping anyway.

Ethan shook his head. "No, it's been too long." If Ethan were going to use his power to pull someone out of an event that led to their injury/death, he had to do it within the first few minutes following said event. Even then it took a toll on him, and the person he pulled had to live with remembering what happened before he intervened.

I sighed, standing up while disguised in the morph of another person. "Guess it's time I paid Dr. Turner a visit, huh?"