Running From Himself 3-23B (Patreon)

“They’re not…” Hughie swallowed a mouthful of drywall dust and thick smoke before he got out the sentence. “They’re not here for us.”

“Quoi?”"Frenchie…” The young man hissed under his breath as he looked into the street as the Rojos stood across Stormfront and her group, powers readied and weapons in  hand. “They're not here for us!"

"Ah, well…" The frenchman already had a pistol out, the thing hanging loose in his hands as he shook his head. "Zis does not make it better, my tall friend."

Hughie’s next words were swallowed as gunfire rang out loud, a sharp crack splitting the air. A single bullet sparked off Stormfront’s chest, the woman looking down like nothing happened.For all the damage it did, it might as well have been the wind.“Cute.” Stormfront scoffed and, with that, the woman dropped.Straight down from a hundred feet up, the intersection cracked under her as she hit the ground like Homelander always did — only without bothering to bend a knee. Her costume…  Hughie immediately hated himself for the thought, but he couldn’t help the way his eyes immediately slid to her opened neckline, the normal ‘V’ almost a full chest window.“Well, well, well.” Her lip was curled up in that usual smirk but Hughie couldn’t deny that it looked different than usual. Whether that was because anything was actually off with it or the simple fact that Hughie knew it belonged to a Nazi now, he really couldn’t say.That same look, more unbothered than bored, sent something crawling down his spine and it took Hughie a moment to realize it was relief. She… He swallowed a laugh before it could change what he’d just realized. She really isn’t here for us. Hell, he was pretty sure she didn’t even know they were around, as lucky and unlucky as that was for them. Their whole group had just been unlucky enough to make their way deep into Rojo territory. …dammnit.

“Look at this.” Stormfront walked a few steps forward to take point in front of her gathered team of supes — three of them Hughie didn’t even recognize — as she smiled in a way that felt too old for that face. “All it took was a little bit of knocking and the rats came running out the door. Now-” 

Her hands clapped together, the sound ringing just as loud as the shot that bounced off her breastplate seconds ago. “Be nice and surrender. If you do~ooo, I’ll make it quick.”A Rojo answered her with a charge, a kid no older than nineteen in a Mets fitted; two hands thrust outward in a familiar pose. Force answered him, veins throbbing in time as something traveled out his open palms. A burst of white energy cracked against Stormfront’s jaw, snapping the Nazi’s head to the side.When she looked back again, that smile was still there. “I tried.”In a blur, she caught his arm and with a sound Hughie never wanted to hear again, that arm was gone in a spray of thick blood. Stormfront didn’t even bother looking back, the woman already moving past her kill as purple electricity crackled back to life in her hands.The second got a bolt to the skull as soon as he threw a bolt of his own, Stormfront laughing at the hit as hers put him through the wall of a check-cashing place. The third, fourth and fifth weren’t even Rojos, some ordinary teenagers just running for cover launched into open air as Stormfront swept her lightning lashes every which way.Hughie clapped a bleeding hand over his open mouth as they hit the ground at speed, all three splattering open on the asphalt. “Keep them pinned!” Vikor’s shout was almost drowned out by the shouts of a dozen more red-veined Rojos as they rushed the gathered supes, powers and gunfire filling the air alongside screams and explosions. In seconds, the Queens neighborhood went from a disaster zone to a war zone. “This is our battle!” The big man bellowed out again, massive hammer swinging out in a brutal arc. The bronze head caught a mutating Rojo in the ribs, a clap like thunder sounding out as the man was launched dozens of feet through the air. “Our fight!”Your struggle… Hughie kept moving with the rest, hand still clapped over his mouth; the taste of blood keeping his laugh from spilling free. A lance of yellow tore through the air, the youngest woman on Stormfront’s side — looking almost like a kid herself — laughing as her pale gold spear punched a clean superheated hole through the engine block of a gray minivan trying to drive its way out of the chaos. The family of four inside screamed loud as another blew out the black window, showering them all in molten glass.Masonry rained down on the sidewalks, the blond heavyweight from before dragging a headless body by a red hoodie as he charged out from an alley to rejoin the ugly meat grinder.  “Becca!” Butcher’s voice made Hughie almost jump as the man pushed both mother and son forward. “Don’t look back! Just bloody run!”“What about you?” She looked back over her shoulder at her husband, still clutching Ryan to her chest. “Billy?!”“Right behind ya, sweetheart!” As reassuring as the man wanted to sound, the words came out a snarl as he pulled a heavy black handgun from his waistband. “Keep going!”

"Hughie."

"Yeah."

"Hughie."

"Yeah, I'm…” He blinked over at Mother’s Milk. “Y-yeah."

MM had his shoulder. "You with me?"

"Sh-she just…" His voice cracked an octave higher than it had since puberty, Hughie still talking through it anyway. "Those kids were just standing there, man, they weren’t… weren’t even…"

"I know." MM was already turning him around by the shoulder, pushing him forward as they all tried to push past the worst of the fighting. "We got a job right now though. Protect Becca and the kid and that includes protecting our asses too. Right now, that's the whole job, you hearing me?"

He was.Despite the tinnitus, he was hearing him very well.I…I need a gun. He wasn’t sure what’d one would do to help, and he wasn’t going to say that out loud but he still needed one. “I need a gun.”Both men blinked at each other, for the same and entirely different reasons until Mother’s Milk sighed and glanced over his shoulder. “...Frenchi-?”

Golden light punched through the wall about a dozen feet to their left, tearing through brick and everything else as it kept going and going until a car went up in flames on the other side of the building. Hughie’s eyes widened as he realized he could see all the way to the street on the far side, both holes wide enough for him to catch the clean circle of daylight.Another one flew even closer, a cannonball of sparking gold power hissing through edges as it cooked paint in its path. 

"Move, move, MOVE!"Hughie pushed forward, following the example of Mother’s Milk as he grabbed a kid and ran forward. “No!” Frenchie yelled out the supe’s name as the telekinetic ran out of his sister’s grasp. “Kenji!”Kenji? Hughie’s eyes widened as the supe forced himself into the middle of the street, arms at his sides and hands clenched tight as he locked eyes with Stormfront.Her lips moved but Hughie couldn’t make out what she said, something happening on her face that was too pleased to be surprised as she pointed a finger at Kenji like she was picking out a dessert.Kenji moved and took the asphalt of the parking lot with him.The whole surface came up in a sheet, a thirty foot slab of blacktop torn loose from the ground with rebar hanging off the underside. It hung over his head for maybe a half second before it rocketed across the street like Kenji had fired it from a cannon.Purple light blew a hole through it, Stormfront flying straight through the whole mass with electricity dragged behind her a-Jesus!An explosion rocked the woman, a Nissan Sentra pulled free from the gym wall and used as a missile. Another car came right after it, then a street light, and somebody’s entire stoop.“Ver-” For every one the Nazi blew apart, another hit her hard enough to send her rocking back through the air; Kenji not wasting time or effort as he repurposed those destroyed pieces as further ammo. “Vermin!”A blur leapt into the air, Kimiko moving faster than a car as she launched herself right at Stormfront. “More of you!” A backhand knocked the Japanese supe aside, a second fist striking apart another projectile from Kenji in the second breath. “Unbelievable!”She kept moving forward, Stormfront pushing through concrete and glass and rebar, closing distance a dozen feet at a time as Kenji gave more and more and even more ground. “You really should have done yourself a favor—” A single hand shattered a flying Honda Civic with a casual wave of lightning, a gas tank lighting up to wash the street in orange flame “—crawled into a hole and died.”

Kenji backed up another few steps; not much parking lot left behind the supe with only a chain-link fence a few dozen feet back.Oh… “Hey’s running out of room.” Hughie forced the words out. “MM, he’s… he’s running out of room.”The fence was torn free from the ground, metal squealing as he sent it on a screaming path towards the approaching Nazi supe. 

She went through it.A dumpster spun off the curb and Stormfront went through that too, the woman close enough that Hughie could see her face clear as day. That smile from before was gone, the anger vanished too; the woman staring with empty eyes as she made her way over to Kenji.Thirty feet.Twenty.Ten.Stormfront raised a hand as Kenji moved to run. “Really?”Bright purple electricity crackled in her gloved palm for all of a second before a blast of blinding yellow lightning caught the Nazi directly in the chest.“BITCH!”