Running From Himself 3-21 (Patreon)

“Bro, are you s…” 

The words stumbled out slower than he himself moved, Reggie skidding backward until the treated rubber of his cleats chewed a smoking divot through the Bronx asphalt. “...bro?” One hand left his pocket and went up high, a busted smartphone cracking and hissing against his palm; lithium battery still sparking. “Bro!”‘I have respect for the dollar.’ Nicolas Cage said that once, for some reason, but Reggie really didn’t need the reason to take something away from those words. He also had respect for the dollar and when fourteen-hundred of them just went bye-bye, he started feeling real disrespectful to everybody else.The thing about a phone in your pocket during a fight was that it was hard to keep track of it and you tended to forget it was there in the heat of the moment. 

Which left Reggie holding what had been a perfectly good brand new iPhone 12 Pro Max five seconds ago. “Two months. Two good months I had this.” He waved the folded corpse of the phone, a sandwich of sparking glass and aluminium. “Two.”And all it took was one big dumbass with concrete arms to catch him with a swinging forearm in the leg to leave him like this. 

Said dumbass was already laid out, jaw nowhere near as tough as his fists. Two of his boys stood beside him, eyes half on the knocked-out Rojo and half on Reggie; clearly unsure about whether they wanted the same. The one on the left was more ready to go than the first, those dark veins crawling and throbbing their way up his neck in an ugly red spiderweb almost all the way to one eye.Rojo. It was always the veins first.“A’ight.” One fist squeezed tight, the device crumbling in his grip. “Who wants to buy me a new phone?”Reggie didn’t bother waiting for an answer, already launching off a single foot. A chunk of asphalt went flying as the world dropped into blue, the veined ganger raising his hands halfway up by the time black-gloved fists met his body. 

It still didn’t stop three quick hooks from racking his ribs before the street supe’s brain caught up to the fact Reggie had already closed the distance. It definitely didn’t stop the fourth from catching him under the jaw and taking him off the ground.

The last one tried to run, if you could believe that, Reggie blinking up at the back of the Rojo’s red hoodie as he sprinted for the mouth of an alley.“...hey, you know I can do like four hundred on a slow day, right?”Reggie’s yell didn’t stop him.The space between them vanished by the time Reggie finished rolling his eyes, a good forty feet of distance eaten up in a single stride. Hand full of the back of his hoodie, the speedster spun to bleed momentum and — gently — tossed the ganger against a dumpster with enough force to shake the whole container. A single finger pointed down. “Stay.”

The street supe stayed, hands out in front of himself as he let Reggie ziptie him up without any more of a fight. A few seconds later, Reggie stood there just outside of an alley with the other two unconscious Rojos tied up, not even breathing hard.

“Shock-absorbent case… ” Reggie tossed the shattered remains of his phone in the dumpster with a sigh. “Yeah, okay. Not that shock-absorbent.”

Honestly, the phone stung more than anything else, which was really a silver lining.

“Big Nate…” With a sigh, Reggie tapped the smartwatch on his wrist, his earpiece beeping as he opened up a call. “Need you to do a quick order for a new phone, bro. Another one down from a supe junkie.”

The sound of keyboard clicks was the first response he got before his older brother even said a word. “That’s… what, that’s the third one this year?”“Don’t do me like that. It’s only number two.” Reggie clicked his tongue as he crouched to the ground, checking pulses out of habit. Two fingers met the throat of the second Rojo, a kid no older than nineteen with those thick veins of dark red throbbing stronger than his own heartbeat almost. 

Fast and steady.“And…” He jumped back to his feet. “And don’t do the thing.”“I ain’t doing a thing.”“Yeah, you are. It’s the big bro thing where you say a number all slow to try to make me feel irresponsible.”“...do you feel irresponsible?”“...do you feel like you want a Christmas bonus?”“What number? I never said no number.”“Uh-huh.” Reggie rolled his shoulder out. “Just tell me when the cops are heading ou-”“Hol’ up, Reg.” Something changed in Nate’s voice, all jokes sliding out as his older brother suddenly got serious. “Forget the phone. Forget the cops. Something’s going down at Vought right now.”“Another protest probably.” An eyebrow went up, Reggie still stretching out. “They’ve been nonstop since Homelander did his thing in Africa.”“Nah, I mean goin’ down like a couple dozen 911 calls from a half-block around the building with a livestream out the tower with 40k viewers right now.” Keys clattered on the other end, almost as fast as Reggie could move his feet. “We lookin’ at a supe attack. Tower’s on fire.”

“...well, damn.”He was already gone the second his lips closed around the second word, the world hard and blue at the edges again as everything slowed except him and the acceleration did its thing on him. 

Never the top speed that really did the worst on him, no; top speed he could manage and maintain for longer but it was the acceleration that got him first. Pushing as hard as possible those first few seconds left him feeling all torn up inside, force going into pavement that was never built to hold it. His cleats would dig trenches in asphalt if he didn’t manage his own feet in a full sprint and almost every step would spray gravel like shrapnel on top of that.

“You hearing me, bro?” The Bronx smeared from row houses to storefronts in the amount of time it took for Reggie to slow his lips down separate from the rest of him. “I’m hearing you, keep talking. What’s the supe I’m supposed to be looking for?”“Reports are saying the supe is your man…”

“My man?” “El Diablo.”That name almost had him stumble, Reggie’s hand slapping down on the road to keep from spinning out. Concrete cracked under his palm as he redirected and shot his way up an off-ramp. “...say again?”"El Diablo. Fire guy. Your fire guy."

“That ain’t…” Reggie almost shook his head as he came off a street doing something just south of six hundred, bleeding off speed to make a turn without going clean through a wall. “Nate, I fought that dude too many damn times. Can’t be him.”“Just going off what the feeds are saying, Reggie.”“Nate, I’m tellin’ you. Bald-ass pyro can’t even beat me. No way he’s attacking Vought on his own like that. He-”Reggie came around the corner onto Sixth, the words stuck in his throat as he almost swallowed his own tongue. Heat hit him the second he rounded the street turn, a wall of temperature enough to force Reggie to throttle down off instinct as he felt an open oven door where it should not be. “What...”Reggie stopped hard, cleats digging into the asphalt as he stared up to see Vought Tower with a hole in it.

Nothing close to a broken window, this was like someone had taken a giant bat to the side of Vought; an oversized gaping spot just over the lobby. Three whole floors of glass were just empty, smoke pouring out sideways and right in front of the building was-

Oh.Okay.A hundred-and-something feet tall and still growing, a giant stood there made out of blackened bone, a body cracked-open with visible veins and seams of red-orange running through. It was like looking at a giant skeleton with lava and molten iron in the gaps between all that bone; a skull the size of a car with two burning pits of flame in place of eyes. 

Reggie blinked at the shimmer around it, like heat coming off a summer highway as he opened his mouth again. “...the fuck…”  It was like watching fireworks close up in the worst way, floor after floor lighting up from inside like someone had dropped a whole bundle of them inside the building. Every few seconds, he could only blink as another window just popped right out of its frame in a spray of glass glitter that caught the light of the fire on its way down. “The fuck am I looking at?”

Sirens were packed down the street, big red trucks trying their best to spray the building down from a distance while cops tried to push back the crowd of New Yorkers who didn’t know well enough to run for their own good. 

“You tell me, bro…” Nathan took a low breath. “Livestream’s looking crazy on my end.”“I’m looking at a whole barbecue pit the size of a building walking on two legs, man.” The speedster pulled in a breath as he watched its oversized footsteps burning the ground with each move of its legs. “...Nate?”"Yeah."

"Where's the Seven?" It didn’t make sense, that something like this could be attacking their base and nobody was around. No fuckin’ way, man. Somebody’s gotta… Reggie licked his lips as he looked at the mess in front of him. Somebody’s gotta be closer. 

“Nate?”

"Working on it."

"Nate…” Windows popped one after another on the plaza-facing side of Vought Tower, more flames bursting out as the giant waved an oversized hand. Reggie ran forward, already cutting a wide arc across the plaza that put him just behind the thing. “Where's Homelander?"“I’m workin’ on it.”“Need to know quick, bro…” The fountain was already boiling like it was on a stove, Reggie sweating as he darted past it. “Cause I’m looking at a hundred feet of burning man in front of Big Homie’s office—”

"Seattle."

"...He's where?"

"Seattle. Him and your replacement went off there, since about four hours ago. A Stormfront sighting had them out." Nate typed hard, a fast angry clatter loud in Reggie’s ear. "There's been a dozen sightings every hour since last night. All of ‘em’s got at least one of the other Six going on the hunt. Maeve's not too far from you. Nubia’s in Jersey, and Noir… well, Noir’s Noir."

Reggie automatically nodded at those last words as he stared back up at the giant. "So the building with the name on it is empty." His teeth ground together, one eye twitching as he tried to figure the best way to handle this. "Cool-cool-cool. Real solid staffing decision from Stan fuckin’ Edgar, m—”

A roar of air sounded loud over the broken glass as something bright came off the giant's hand.