Running From Himself 3-12 (Patreon)

Reggie wasn’t sure where his wall was supposed to be.

Not really.The old him — A-Train — had a top speed brushing Mach 10 if he properly pushed it in a dead sprint. As long as he picked up enough speed over time, at least. Instant acceleration had been nowhere near that high, a little over a tenth of that; just enough to break the sound barrier but not much faster.

Even still, it had been more than enough to make Mister Marathon look like a joke.

The new him was nowhere near that fast either, top speed and acceleration a little embarrassing at both ends.

His current ceiling, last time he really booked it, was no more than five hundred.

Miles Per Hour, if you were American.

Any more than that and his muscles and tendons and everything else started threatening to slide off the bone like he was a rack of ribs.

But right now? Right now, limits didn’t mean a single solitary shit.

His lungs were already burning, blood in the back of his throat as he ran the whole way at top speed; Reggie breathing in nothing but the over-cool wintermint taste of pure ozone as he tore off the asphalt into Long Island. He’d taken the East River bridges like barely-there suggestions, cables and streets and cars and everything else not directly in front of him a constant smear of a near-solid bright blue.

His hoodie was gone, jeans too, both shredded and discarded miles back.

Down to just his super-suit, his phone was hidden away in one of the piping-lined slits that served as a pocket, and a pair of blue-black goggles sat tight over his eyes as he kept his arms pumping at his sides. Sparks whipped off his heels in small jagged arcs, clinging tight to him as they climbed up every curve of his body with every step down the length of the Long Island Expressway. 

Where the f- Suburbs sprawled out as he poured on the speed, each block of houses unending and identical in a modern-American copy-pasted purgatory. Manicured lawns blurred to nothing as he tracked past and through entire streets in a fraction of a second, dying dreams and endless stretches of unindividuated gray pavement barely visible as his eyes traced everything he could make out. -uck are they?

Reggie banked a hard right, cleats screaming on concrete as he left a black mark over a suburban crosswalk.

He was about to double back down another street when he heard it.

Supe-hearing was occasionally good for something other than being annoying and it came in handy now; a high-pitched scream of a dying engine revving way over the redline. Metal ground against metal, roaring decibels of mechanical agony sounding out as it hit something that refused to give.

Found you.A black-blue blur burst forward with motion and momentum; his body a weather event moving at a solid Mach zero-point-seven.

Blushift tore down another street with the wind behind him, the world screaming a dull static in his ears as time stretched thin. Holy…

Hughie hadn’t been lying one bit. Not that he doubted the guy, but it was still a shock to see Black Noir in the center of the parking lot, the supe faceless as ever; a Grim Reaper wrapped in carbon-fiber plating and treated Kevlar.

Across from him, the Boys were huddled around a car, all of them — Hughie included — armed with weapons that were without a doubt illegal and unmarked. Butcher stood the closest to Noir, the British bastard bruised, bloody and beaming like the certified psychopath he was. A grimy thumb sat right over what had to be a detonator, the tool in his hand wired to a heavy vest lined with explosives.

Not today, you limey fuck.

Reggie didn’t bother to slow down, legs still pumping as he crossed the length of an entire street in less time than it took for someone to blink. A high-speed diagonal cut straight through the dead space separating both man and supe, his hands an unseen blur to anyone that wasn’t close to his speed.

The plastic detonator was snatched free from Butcher’s grip, the heavy canvas of the bomb vest stripped clean off Butcher’s shoulders, trench coat untouched. Sorry for the friction burn, dickhead. 

Without wasting a breath, he wrapped the payload around his waist and kept on moving. Hand low to the ground, Reggie whipped all the way around and went right for Noir.

The speedster dropped his center of gravity, knees bent until he was almost leaning over the asphalt completely. One hand snapped out, fingers gripping with all the force and give of a meat hook; almost unbreakable around a black-armored ankle.

Physics was a bitch.

Even with superpowers.

And, a lot of times, especially with superpowers.

It didn’t matter if you were Black Noir, the oldest-living supe in America. It didn’t mean a damn thing if you could bench press a good seventy-two tons on your worst day or your skin was basically superhuman Kevlar. When a good two-hundred-something pounds of supe grabs your leg at more than half the speed of sound, you were gonna get taken for a ride.

Noir hit the ground face-first hard enough to crack it, the impact shaking right up Reggie’s arm as his bones rattled.

It didn’t make him let go.Tearing straight down the street, Reggie dragged the armored freak behind as fast as he could go, his legs the engine while Noir’s tumbling body served as the brake pad. Friction chewed up the asphalt, sparks tracing the air like a giant belt sander. Chunks of road turned to loose gravel as layer after layer of Noir’s armor peeled away in a literal scar down the center line of the suburb.

But Noir wasn’t just meat.

Reggie knew that — both now and then — the guy was a machine; a problem-solving spectre of muscle and malice.

Even while getting his face sanded off at a chunk of Mach 1, the bastard was fighting Reggie’s grip, already twisting to get free as he rotated against the drag. Oh — A black combat boot lashed out, a horizontal stomp more than a kick aimed at Reggie’s knee with enough sheer tonnage behind it to derail a train — Shit!

Reggie dropped the ankle, juking hard to the left as he threw his weight sideways fast enough the heavy boot only clipped empty air where his kneecap used to be. 

The shockwave from the missed kick was enough to send him stumbling, his center of mass thrown off while he was still pushing past four hundred miles an hour.

Both Noir and Blushift went flying, Reggie skidding off-road and tearing straight through chain-link. The fence tore apart like tissue, metal links snapping with a shriek as he crashed into an overgrown field, halfway paved with forgotten concrete.

The ground exploded in a geyser of dirt fifty feet high as Reggie skipped across the ground like a stone, grunting with each landing. Teeth grit tight, he caught himself mid-air, twisting head over heels to land feet-first and slamming both feet hard into soft earth.

His heels dug deep as he forced himself to brake, cleats screeching like blown tires as he spun around to face the mute killer — bomb vest thrown clear from the fight with the detonator still attached to it. Worry about that later.

Noir was already up and on his feet, closing the gap in a silent sprint with pure predatory pressure.

Guy can move. Reggie had to admit that much at least. Ninety, maybe a hundred-twenty miles an hour, wasn’t all that much for a solid speedster but it was a lot for one of Vought’s solid-built brick shithouses. 

At least if you weren’t one Mister Marathon.

Even still, high double digits, or even the low triples, was nothing against someone like Reggie.

Being nice, it was like watching a Youtube video buffer.

“You’re missing the magic, BN!” Reggie spat the words, hawking up a gritty wad of dirt and blood onto the weeds. “First rule of the magic show!”Balls of his feet bounced up and down, upper body rolling as he slipped right into a familiar fighting rhythm. “Watch the fucking hands!”The world shuddered a deep blue as Reggie blurred forward, arms up and ready. No dojo bullshit here, nothing clean or cinematic about it; he was ready to throw heavy hands at hyper-velocity. He knew he was outmuscled by at least five or six times, even after training his body to twice as strong as A-Train had been, but Reggie knew he had more than enough speed to make up for that.

Just gotta crowd the space. Spark-capped knuckles slammed full-force right into an armor-plated jaw. The impact rattled right back up his forearm, Reggie grunting at the feel of punching a Kevlar-wrapped wall. 

But he wasn’t done.

Overwhelm. Punch after punch battered Noir’s chest, each spark with an explosive kinetic pop behind it that forced Noir back. 

Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten fists — each one flurried into Noir. Brutal hooks, twisting crosses and snapping jabs dug into ribs and chest and every bit of center mass Reggie could reach.

Fifteen.

Twenty.

Discombobulate. Palms trailing blue sparks, Reggie slammed both of them where he hoped Noir’s ears were, the other supe’s head snapping back as he reeled in the most obvious sign of pain. Fuck your composure all the way up, huh?

Before Noir could recover, the speedster grabbed a fistful of Noir’s torn-up chest armor with his left, a heavy right uppercut driven straight into the mute’s useless throat.“I said, watch the hands!”

But, just like the man himself, Noir’s composure was made up of tougher stuff as he snapped his head forward a split-second later, absorbing the hit clean.

Fu-

Instead of stumbling, a black gauntlet snapped out for Reggie’s own arm, elbow already chopping straight down toward Reggie’s unguarded elbow.

-ck! Reggie blurred back, barely dodging the clinch as the armored elbow whistled past his ear with enough force to pop his eardrums. Eyes wide behind blue lenses, Reggie couldn’t deny the spike in his veins; pure adrenaline pushing him further and faster as he realized something. He’s reading me.

Noir, without a doubt, could see him; at least at this speed.

Seeing didn’t mean catching, but it did mean something. After all, you couldn’t snatch pistol fire out of the air if you couldn’t at least spot the bullet flying at you.But the other supe wasn’t just trying to see him. No, the silent bastard was pattern-reading everything he did. 

Okay, then. Reggie kicked off the ground. Then, let’s break the fucking rhythm.

He dug deep, pulling harder on that raw hum in his veins — the exact same place he tapped on instinct every time he kicked into high gear from a dead-stop. A-Train’s static buzzed at the base of his skull, spine tingling up and down his brainstem with the fragmented memory of every nerve in his brain lighting up with an aneurysm.

Reggie just pushed deeper and drowned it out with a grunt and a scream.

A split-second later, lightning exploded off his skin — more than just sparks — as the air burst back with a shockwave that shoved Noir away.Oh… Reggie took a step, concrete foundation cracking under his cleats. Oh… This was… this was a new speed, a speed he almost remembered from the fragmented ghost in his head, a familiar rush that was so close, but so different from the sloppy movement A-Train had. 

It was clean. 

And, most importantly, it was his. Oh fuck yeah!

He blitzed a diagonal, cutting across the field as he threw a shoulder check right into Noir’s blind spot; a human-sized bullet hitting with double digit tonnage of pure strength. “HAHAHAHA!”The laugh tore out of his throat, more a yell again as Noir went tumbling in a mess of flailing limbs across the dirt. Before the mute hit the ground for a third bounce, Reggie was already there in a flash of blue.

Sudden exit. Sudden reentry.Reggie struck with full force, foot coming down with a hard stomp that could buckle a steel beam. 

Against Noir’s raised arms, it just stressed bone.

But that was enough.

Reggie kicked off his opponent’s body in a bound as Noir kipped back up onto his feet, a backlip digging a literal ditch in the dirt as the assassin dragged himself to a stop.

With a wide grin and barely any breath in his lungs from all the ozone in the air, Reggie’s head snapped up as lightning sparked off him, bright and blue as the sky above. Another laugh burst out of him as he shot back into the pokcet to slam a sweeping hook into Noir’s body.

Lightning strobed all around the field, painting everything with visual static as Noir got dragged, spun, and formally introduced to a whirlwind of blunt-force.

No time for timing, no chance to breathe, Reggie kept pushing past the exhaustion burning deep in his thighs, absolute drain of pushing past the sound barrier pulling deeper from him the longer he kept on the throttle. Okay, running low… He could feel it.

And with the blood in his throat, he could taste it too.

Eyes flicked up behind a cracked visor, staring at the still-standing Noir; the supe clearly far from his last legs. That makes one of us… Reggie’s eye twitched, annoyance and exhaustion biting him deep. Fuck. Plan B, then.

It wasn’t neat or clean, but nothing about this fight was. My fault for thinking I could run the Black Noir into the ground, I guess.

With a shake of his head, Reggie doubled back, electricity sparking across the field in his blinding blue wake. The sound barrier shattered on his way back across the field, adding thunder to his lightning. A split-second later, and he was moving back towards Noir, a new weight on him as he leaned in for one last messy flurry.

Eighteen body shots, each one heavy with raw momentum, battered against Black Noir’s dense flesh and chest armor as Reggie’s hands moved in a blur of blue sparks.

Noir didn’t block, hands at his sides as he just leaned into the hits.Reggie blinked, mouth half open as he tried to understand what Noir was up to. That still didn’t stop him from throwing two more lightning-laced punches straight to the other supe’s gut as Noir anchored his boots in the dirt.

Reggie didn’t catch the perfectly timed knee as it snapped straight up.

A small earthquake of force compressed right into a single armored kneecap caught him mid-step and off guard, slamming right into his ribs. Iron-dense bones held up a hell of a lot better than a normal man’s ever could but physics was physics.

And, like Black Noir, physics was a bitch.

Somethings snapped.

At least three, the sound of them like dry firewood as they gave way.

Reggie met open air, tall dry weeds crashing into him as he held his fists closed and tight while the sky and dirt traded places over and over. By the time he slammed back-first into the ditch he’d made, Reggie was already gasping for air that hurt his lungs; eyes wide behind his goggles as he forced himself not to choke on his own blood.

After too long of fighting the wad in his throat, he finally spat it free and clear; red spraying bright and stark over his black-blue suit. Fuck… His left hand rose slow and shaky to cradle his chest, fingers pressing tight against bone he knew was broken. Fuck, that hurts…

Heavy boots crunched on the dirt, the shredded form of Noir taking his time through the weeds like the implacable Terminator he was. Bruised skin, darker than Reggie’s own, stood out underneath the armor, forcing a laugh that hurt from Reggie’s bloody lips.“Oh, so you actually Black Noir?” He fought back a snort and failed, right hand resting on one of his suit’s pouches. “That’s… that’s fuckin’ funny, man.”The motherfucker didn’t seem to think it was all that was funny, not even bothering to laugh with Reggie. Hell, the man didn’t even seem to be breathing hard.

Reggie leaned his head back against the pile of dirt Noir’s hit had dug up with his body, bloody teeth showing as he smiled back at the first black Supe on the Seven. “You know, I ain’t scared of you, right?” The words bubbled out, mouth thick with copper. “Cus you’re not gonna kill me, man.”Noir kept walking.

“...I’m on contract, you fuckin’ psycho.”That, of all things, forced a pause from the man; Vought programming and conditioning doing its job.It was all Reggie needed.

“What’d I tell you before?” Reggie coughed out the last word, left hand still clutching his shattered rib as his right moved up. "First rule of fighting the magic man."

He lifted that hand, the detonator he’d slid into his pouch with his phone gripped tight in his palm. “Watch the fucking hands.”Noir’s black mask tilted down to his chest.

Right there, strapped tightly over the assasin’s shredded armor — slipped on during that last flurry of fists — was a vest packed with C4. Plan B… 

The bloody grin stretched a little wider. For Butcher.

"Hope you like hospital food, motherf-!"

Reggie’s thumb came down.