章 4: Chapter 3 - Kicking Butt and Giving Names
The first thing I did while held at gunpoint was step forwards. It was the first future that didn't have everyone blowing holes in me or getting themselves hit in the crossfire. They would fire in the next two seconds, but I or their buddies wouldn't get caught by a stray round.
Blazing rounds made my ears burn. It would've shocked me for a second, but I didn't really need to hear anything right now. All I needed was the precognition that manifested before me.
If I was being completely honest, Will Rouge's ability was borderline cheating. Of course, if you know what to look for, and exactly how it worked then it was easy to trick. For the unknown grunts, however, it was like they were in the palm of my hand.
Four different colored phantoms superimposed themselves over my sight, each pertaining to if I took a step left, right, forwards or backwards. Each phantom then placed themselves over everyone in the immediate vicinity. What step they wanted to take or were thinking about taking was all reflected, mere seconds before they even started moving.
It wasn't all knowing, or something of the sort. The precognition just based itself around bodily and subconscious intent; specifically the intent of those around me. That meant if they were shooting at me, I would know before they even thought of pulling the trigger. Of course, this didn't mean that I could accurately find the paths of every bullet that flew at me, but with the second aspect of the power I didn't have to.
See, weapon omniscience didn't really apply to just the weapons I was holding. It applied to every single weapon in my sight; including the ones that I could see several seconds into the future. This meant that I knew exactly how fast the bullets would be coming at me, and if there would be any deviations from its path due to the mechanisms in the gun.
I twisted to dodge the three bullets that would have torn into me, letting their paths only trace small lines of blood from the sheer speed at which they traveled. The wounds stung, but it was better than getting filled with hot lead.
In response, I raised the gun in my right hand, power feeding me everything about it. The bullets were high caliber rounds capable of shredding through people with disgusting ease. A sleek grip and a bulky barrel accentuated the weapon with a nice chrome finish.
Whatever work Rouge had done on it had changed the aerodynamics of the payload by a tiny amount. It wasn't much, but I didn't really like having to compensate for the bullets traveling left more often than not.
Then I shot the gun. A deadly piece of lead burning a path through some unlucky soul's shooting arm. He basically threw himself into the way of the bullet, too.
He would be down for all the couple seconds into the future I could see.
My next target was someone closer to my room. A stockier fellow who would eventually unload his gun into the room, hitting four of his comrades in ways that didn't look too comfortable.
I charged him as my precognition fed me how everyone was reacting. A couple of them looked shaken from the sudden confrontation while other reacted with a little more experience. I decided that those guys needed to go first.
The guy that I charged saw me, and pulled out a large machete, discarding the gun that would have felled his fellow man. His swings were predictable. An overhead chop followed by a horizontal slash; both of which I stepped into, and aligned the barrel of my gun to his foot.
My arm jerked as the gunshot rang equal with his shout of pain. He collapsed to the floor holding the new hole in his foot as I stepped over his body to kick the gun away from him. For good measure, I whipped him with the butt of my gun to knock him out.
'Just in case,' I thought to myself as I thumbed the safety of the gun just as I kicked it. Superhuman knowledge on every weapon is rather nice when you need to disarm people.
I fired four times behind me, not really aiming for anyone, but more as a distraction. The next couple seconds were filled with cacophonous gunfire as I scrambled for cover, eventually finding refuge in a small closet. My little intruders had all come together to see me as a serious threat, and were now concentrating on ending me.
My shock was thoroughly used up, and I still counted eight more men firing at me; luckily I had been able to down five people in the first few seconds. Two were lodged behind the fridge that they had pulled down for cover, three had stalked into the living room after they had saw me retreat and the rest were located in my room.
Precognition was telling me that they were gaining back confidence, and sooner or later they would begin to assault my small hiding spot. The ones in my room were beginning to filter out into the larger living room as the gunfire died down to a slow crawl. I saw one of them step up before he actually did.
"You can come out now." He said in a heavy accent. I couldn't quite place it, Vacuvian maybe? I would need to look it up. "Junior just said to rough you up a bit, and bring you in. We ain't tryna start a full on fight, Mr. vigilante."
Oh well that made everything better. Sure, let me turn myself in now that I know exactly what you want from me. It's not like we spent the last couple minutes redecorating my apartment via gunshots.
Instead of answering, I took stock of what exactly was happening. They stupidly announced the name 'Junior'. That meant he was with that orange haired man, Roman I think his name was, and Neo. Was this payback for what I had listened to earlier today? I didn't even know what exactly I had listened to.
As for my chances of taking them all out with my current position and skill, they were rather slim. Sure, I could see several seconds into the future based on their intent, but that held nothing in the way of actual combat skills. Most of the futures I could see involved me getting loaded up with a couple of permanent lead piercings in the most unpleasant of manners.
My breathing was growing ragged as I tried to calm myself. A couple of seconds of fighting, and I was already exhausted. Several places on my body were marred with small dribbles of blood from bullets that had cut too close for comfort. My shirt was in tatters; I really liked this shirt, too.
'Geez, Jaune,' I berated myself internally. 'If I survive this then I really need to take up running, or the gym.'
"We ain't got all day!" A particularly antsy man said. He would proceed to gun down my hiding hole in the next ten seconds if I didn't say anything. Precognition is stupid when you can't even react to it.
"Alright," I said as slow as possible, the nearby powers were flitting through my head. "I'm coming out, okay?"
"No funny business! We ain't tryna fight a Huntsman." The accented man spoke again.
I frowned a bit as he said that. I was in no way a Huntsman, nor was I inclined to believe that I was one. They were heroes who fought against monsters who I couldn't find the heart to match.
Instead, of answering the man I pulled on a nearby warmth and felt the knowledge sink into me.
[Variable distraction based focal points. Increased cosmetic affinity.]
It was the only one that was around at this time, and was close enough to think through on the literal seconds that I had to get out of my closet. The power was also one that I had used several times before as my proximity to it was close in my apartment. I had the best bet with this than relying on powers that I found just lying around.
Essentially, I created areas where people's attention were more likely to be drawn. In a cramped space like this one with everyone wielding dangerous weapons, it was a rather potent ability to make use of.
Immediately, I threw the remains of my shirt to one side of the closet, it landed with a heavier thud than I was expecting. Then I crumpled up into the opposite end as fast as I could. With how everyone was so tense, it was no surprise that they easily took the bait towards the distraction. I curled up into a ball as the rain of lead tore open my door.
Then the moment that I had been waiting for happened.
Out of everyone firing, there were two people whose guns hadn't been properly cleaned in a long while. Whether it was from carelessness or pure laziness, I had no idea, nor did I care as their guns jammed suddenly. There was a lapse in the gunfire in their immediate vicinity that I had hoped for a while before I arrived in the closet.
This improvised plan worked like a charm, and I burst out of the closet like a teen who just had his home shot up. Everyone was startled by my sudden appearance that a couple of them forgot to even reload, snapping at me with futile payload. The ones who actually had ammo left were easily sidestepped as I had already seen which ones were dangerous, and they were too spread out to actually lay down anything that resembled cover fire.
The shock was gone, but now it was the awe's turn to take centerstage.
I reached one of the men with the jammed guns before anyone could refute my sudden charge. He gave something between a scream and a yelp before I slammed my fist into his throat, distracting him from the fact that I now had the slide of his gun in my hands. It was easy to dismantle, and I put it to much better use than when he had used it whole.
Using the slide of the gun as a makeshift knife, I embedded the metal into a nearby man's forearm before he could raise his gun. He screamed in pain, but I cut him off as I swept his legs off the floor, sending him crashing down in a heap. His head cracked painfully on my hardwood flooring. There were no moves to get up now or in the immediate future.
I knocked out the man whose gun I had just repurposed, grabbing the rest of his defunct gun as I quickly strode to my next target.
The next man was met with a face full of a thrown gun that seemed to find him before he completed his dodge. I saw a tooth or two fly out as he collapsed before I ducked behind my couch, and bullets bore into the thick cushion, spraying varying amounts of cotton fluff into the air.
I spun on a dime, throwing a cushion one way, making sure to drag everyone's attention there before I stood up and unloaded the last three bullets in my gun. It bucked as the payload blasted into their desired places.
The first shot hit rather close to where one of the less experienced men were hiding, and startled him out into the open. He fumbled with his gun, eventually finding the courage to shoot, and, miraculously, his aim would be actually lucky. It would have hit me dead on, too.
If no bullet collided with the his free hand, he wouldn't have screamed out and aimed into his friend's leg. He was too busy crying over the new hole in his hand to really care, though. His buddy was also taking courses in the school of rolling on the ground and screaming. I sent a nearby broken lamp and table leg to silence them both to painful dreams.
My last bullet slammed into the arm of another man who had not been as distracted by the random plushie cushion. He took the wound like a champ, and shot back at me with only a small grunt of pain. However, his aim wasn't as accurate as it could've been.
I already knew where the bullet was going, but I hadn't the time to correct my stance as it tore a sizable chunk from my left shoulder. Biting my lip hard enough to draw blood, I kicked up another nearby pillow into his vision. Luckily, the distraction worked this time as he never noticed my now empty gun slam into his face. The same gun that I caught just as it bounced off his surprising squishy face.
He collapsed like all the others, a large bruise welling up over his right eye. I strode forwards, and dove into the empty doorway of my bedroom. Easily finding my sword that I had spent good Lien on, I turned around to find the last two who were now looking at me with a slight hint of fear.
As much as I wanted to question that, I knew that it wasn't normal for someone to take down so many armed men in such an enclosed space with nothing but a pistol. I barely took anything greater than the large gash on my upper left arm, so it could almost be counted as a near flawless victory.
Well, considering my past fights, it was certainly a step in the right direction.
I wanted nothing more than to ask if we could talk this out, but the awe was still in effect. Instead, I smiled as happy as I could through bloodied teeth. "So, I take it you guys don't have any insurance that can pay for all these damages?"
One of them shook his head numbly. His gun was trying to raise between his shaky hands. I looked him with the straightest face I could muster, then raised my sword in my hands, twisted the special handle mechanism and watched as the straight blade spun into a jagged, segmented whip of deadly, metal shards. He slowly lowered his gun.
"Screw this! I didn't sign up for some crazy Huntsman who doesn't fight with Aura, and still hands us our asses!" The other one yelled, jumping out the window in an impressive display of commitment. There was a slight yelp up as he collided two stories down, but, for the most part, he seemed to be in great health. His limping grunts of effort could be heard for quite awhile.
I looked back to the last standing member of Junior's task force, and watched as he squirmed under my gaze. He looked like he was regretting not taking the very same actions. His attention snapped back to me as I opened my mouth, I was falling into my hero mentality to hide the fear of the whole situation hitting me, "You want to explain what happened here? Or maybe why you thought it was a great idea to attack me when I wanted to rest a bit?"
"I… I'm sorry!" The man stuttered, throwing away his gun. "I was just following orders! It was supposed to be an easy job! Only to grab you when you slept, and maybe rough you up a little bit before we delivered you to Junior! I swear it!"
"I see…" I stated, letting the thoughts click in my head. This Junior was definitely out to get me, and for him to easily find me meant that he was willing to easily escalate.
A small lance of fear ran through me, wondering if he knew exactly who I was, and about my sisters. I had no plans of getting them involved in this, but if whoever this Junior was could find me, then I wouldn't put it against him on being able to find my family. He obviously had no scruples of targeting me in my own apartment with armed men.
The slight inklings of rage seemed to be appearing in my visage as the still conscious man had fallen to his knees. "I'm so sorry, Huntsman, sir! Please believe me that I didn't want to do this! I just wanted the Lien!"
"Lien?" I queried, a small amount of anger spiking up as the idea that the information of my family was being spread around for a little Lein was very unsettling.
The man seemed to curl in on himself more, whimpering now. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm-"
He was suddenly droned out by the ring of my Scroll. I realized that I had dropped it right before this entire charade had started. Then the ringtone reminded me of the fact that I hadn't called my mom, and it was also very late at night.
The man was looking at me in some form of fear and hope now. I frowned at him, shaking the metal whip sword in my hands, and reforming it back into a straight sword. "Don't make a sound… Also don't move," I tacked on, but felt that I was being a little too forceful before I added, "Please."
He promptly crouched on the floor, and proceeded to do just that. I danced between the wheezing bodies between my Scroll and me. Taking it in my hands I noted that the only casualty of the entire fight had been my Scroll's glass screen. It was shattered beyond all repair.
Stifling a tear about not having it for a couple weeks, I tapped the screen to accept the call from my mom.
"Jaune!" She started out screaming. Great. "Where have you been? I've been trying to reach you for the past thirty minutes!"
I held back from saying that I couldn't hear the ring over the gunfire, and just pulled on my distraction power. "Sorry, I was watching a movie, and the action scenes were pretty loud."
"Hmm? I heard those have rather realistic gunshots," She mused, latching onto the distraction. "I hope you're not disturbing your neighbors. I know I didn't raise you to be impolite, Jaune."
"Right, um, I totally forgot." I said, taking a moment to hope that my sudden guest had taken the foresight to remove people from the building. Though, considering the warmth that was approaching my door, I wasn't going to enjoy the answer.
"Don't you think I don't understand what you're doing, young man." My mom then quipped back, and my back began to sweat with the implications of what she meant.
"What do you mean, Mom?" I asked, palms sweaty.
I could practically hear her already tearing into me. Precognition didn't really help with anything over the Scroll either. "What other reason would you have for watching a movie at this hour? Do you think I can't hear breathing in the background? Jaune, when did you think you were going to tell us?"
I felt my heart sink at her words. It appeared that the whole thing was out of the bag now. Sighing, I got ready to apologize before I felt my distraction power picking up that it was working.
My mom finished whatever misconception she had come up with. "When did you think of telling us that you got a girlfriend?"
I blinked, looking to the sole other person in the room who could make sense of the situation. He was looking at me, face pale. I think he was more worried about his life than to help me out of this one.
"Don't think we didn't notice you sometimes forgetting to call. You were rather obvious about it, too. Acting all shy around the topic about your disappearances, but don't think that your mother's intuition ever led her wrong!" My mom's declaration wasn't even close to being right.
"What… Mom, actually," I started, pausing to wonder what exactly I was revealing. I can't just say that 'no, I'm actually going out and beating up bad guys while gathering information on them, and just now I was in a huge fire fight in the middle of my cramped apartment.'
"What?" My mom asked incredulously. "Could it be that I was wrong?"
She had gotten the idea that I had a girlfriend in her head, though, and it was an easy way to hide what exactly I was doing. Would it be so hard to say that me and this mysterious girlfriend had broken up before my parents asked to see her?
I get to continue to be a hero with them none the wiser, and mom is happy that I am getting to know people. It's a win-win scenario; what could go wrong?
"Nothing," I lied. "Yeah, you guys caught me. Me and…" I frowned as I wondered who exactly I knew that my parents would most certainly not meet. A name came to mind, and I hoped that this wouldn't come back to literally stab me later. "... Neo. Have been dating for awhile now. I just didn't want to tell you guys since it was still kinda early, you know."
"Oh, this is wonderful!" My mom gushed from the other end. "I want to know everything! We're going to meet her when we all come to visit, right?"
"Uh…" I was regretting all my choices. "Yes?"
"Great! Violet and Coral are coming along, too. Is that fine?"
I swallowed my nerves. My twin, younger sisters were definitely a terror that would prod the truth out of me, but if I kept saying that we broke up it would be fine. Hopefully. "Of course." I was finding lying to be much harder than I thought.
"Well, I don't want to take up you and this Neo's time together, so I'll leave you alone for now. But I want you to call us more often from now on, Jaune!" She asserted.
"I'll try."
"No, Jaune, I want you to make an Arc's promise to call us more often!" My mom was stubborn on this, and I had the inkling that she wanted to catch all the gossip on Neo, my supposed girlfriend… A primal shiver traveled down my spine at that.
So I made the best decision of tonight. "Zzt! What was that mom?" I chickened out. "Bzzt! I think I'm losing you! Crzzt! Love you, Mom! Bye!"
I clicked the Scroll off before she could she respond, and turned back to the silent man. Then I realized that he had heard my name several times in the conversation. Too caught up in what my mom was saying or the fact that she called, I had failed to remember the fact that this man had just tried his hardest to kill me.
"Uh…" The man was tense from his position on the floor. I think I was projecting a bit, but I was seriously considering violently making sure he kept quiet.
Not killing him, of course. Maybe just put the fear of Jaune within him.
So I leaned in over him, my sword in one hand and empty gun in the other. He shivered like the unconscious bodies around him.
"You have two options." I said as clear as possible without my voice wavering. "One, you can accept my vengeance for destroying my place, and hearing my name." I stated, holding up my sword. Then I switched to raising my empty gun. "Or two, I can be merciful so long as you turn yourself in to the police, and admit to every crime you've ever committed."
The man shook, taking in his options, and I was slightly distracted by the words 'vengeance' and 'mercy'. Maybe they could be the names for my weapons? It was a little cliché, but who cares? He was just about to speak before there was a rather abrupt knock on my door. I suppressed the need to jump at the action, but the shivering man wasn't so lucky.
He gave a small yelp and scrambled backwards.
'Am I really that scary?' I thought to myself as I looked to the door. The link to one of my powers was behind my door.
Frowning, I knew that Rouge was still at his shop, and that only left the distraction power. They had certainly been around before this whole fiasco, so were they a disgruntled neighbor about to complain about the noise? Whoever it was, they had picked to worst time to introduce themselves at least.
I shot a withering look at my unwilling captive before opening the door. Peaking just enough to hide the large gash in my left arm, I found who was up at this hour.
The first thing that came to mind was how much cosmetic affinity showed on her. Dressed in only a pair of short shorts and thin top, this one girl had my eyes bulging from their sockets. Her clothes matched so well, and they just so happened to leave enough for the imagination that my teenage brain, addled with horrible hormones, didn't know where to look. In the end, I settled on her eyes.
The daring brown eyes bored into me from their perch on her delicate features. However, they were promising nothing delicate with how much anger I could almost feel roiling off of her.
A lock of hair was dyed a vibrant orange in contrast to her deep brown hair, cut just above her ears. Her skin was pale as well, not as pale as Neo's, but certainly the second most clear skin I had seen in awhile.
"Uh… hi." I waved lamely.
Then I felt her power drawing attention away from her hands, and looked down to find a disturbingly large gun propped in her hands. The pistol looked more geared to drop aircraft than get into the firefight I had just been in.
Slowly, I shifted her from hot girl to probable psychopath. No normal person has weaponry like that.
"Hey…" The girl finally ground out, voice gravely as if she just woke up. "Look, I heard noises…"
I pulled on Rouge's power before I did anything. With no futures showing she was going to shoot me on the spot yet, I opened my eloquent mouth, "What noises?"
She twitched. "You know…" Her power dragged my eyes to her midriff as she gesticulated with her artillery weapon. From how easily she swung it around, she must've been hiding super strength somewhere. "The gunshots?"
She sighed tiredly. "Are you under distress?"
"...No?" I answered.
Her exhale was filled with much more fire and exhaustion. "Listen, buddy, whoever you think you are. I don't care if you or your boyfriend, girlfriend, or whatever are having a good time, but I happen to have a very important test for Beacon tomorrow, so if you don't mind quieting down, that would be appreciated."
"Uh…" I honestly didn't know what to say. She was obviously aggravated by being woken up, so I probably shouldn't antagonize her. "I'm sorry."
"You should be." The girl glowered, turning around to head to her own room.
"Oh, uh, if you have any other problems, my name is Jau-"
"Don't care." She cut me off before I could introduce myself, and really, I had no idea what I was trying to accomplish there.
She did say that she was trying for Beacon as well. To think I had met three prospective students in a day. Though, Velvet didn't really strike me as a protector of mankind; I hadn't even thought of checking her super power in case that was part of her acceptance. Still, what are the odds of everything happening?
'And on that note…' I thought, closing my door to find my shivering captive. "Can you tell me about Junior?"
It only took a few seconds before the loyalty to his employer broke.
クリエイターの想い 
Dabombdigiti
Dabombdigiti Here is the promised chapter! Haha, sorry for leaving on a cliffhanger last time, but really I had no time last week. The next chapter should be out around Tuesday, or Wednesday depending on how things go with my homework. If you have any questions, concerns or gripes, I'd be happy to know them.
As always, Enjoy!
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