The bullet hit the ATM’s camera from an oblique angle, far across the street. The woman who’d fired it stuck her pistol out into the air beside her and released it, where it disappeared into green-tinged nothingness which then itself disappeared.
She was wearing a windbreaker jacket, a baseball cap, and loose sweatpants. The baseball cap almost covered the wireless earpiece in her ear. She looked up and down the street twice before she started forward. She trotted across the street, swiped her card, and quickly punched the required buttons. The blinded machine hummed while she fretted, bouncing and shifting her weight like one in great need of relief, muttering “come on come on come on” at the sluggish machine.
Finally, it printed out a receipt, showing the requested balance.
$0.00
“Damn it,” she said aloud. “It’s just like you said.
“The money’s not there, is it, Tina?” a bored sounding woman with an English accent said in her earpiece.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I hate to say I told you. I hope that was worth going out in broad daylight.”
“I had to know,” Tina said.
“You don’t trust me?”
“I trust what I can see,” Tina said.
“And now you can see that I told you correctly, so please do get your gifted and talented young arse back out of sight.”
“Check the escrow account?”
“I’m looking at it right now,” the voice said. “I’ve been looking at it since I called you.”
“Well, refresh the page or whatever,” she said, turning her back towards the ATM and scanning up and down the street. She raised a hand to her face and worried at a fingernail with her teeth.
“I’m telling you, the money is just sitting there. What do you want me to do? Drag it over with the mouse?”
“Did you send the acknowledgment?”
“Do I even need to remind you which one of us is the professional?” the woman asked. “Of course I did.”
“Well, send it again!”
“I did that before I called you. It bounced.”
“Fuck!” she swore. “Fucking fuck.”
“Look, that only proves that the first one went through… the email address was only supposed to be good for the one time,” the woman said. “It doesn’t mean anything that the subsequent one bounced.”
“Yeah, but what the hell does it mean that the money’s not there?” Tina said. “The job’s done. The Dragons are fucking slain. What’s the hold up?”
“Look, stay calm… don’t go shooting off half-cocked.”
“Funny. But that money was my ticket out of here,” she said.
“Your ticket’s still waiting at Star Harbor International. That was taken care of in advance. Again, I am a professional.”
“Metaphor, dumbass… metaphor!” she said. “It was my ticket off the street.”
“‘Off the street’ is where you should be right now,” her handler said. “People are going to be looking for you.”
“Nobody knows about me.”
“You just started and ended an entire gang war all by yourself. They don’t know you yet, but people are going to be eager to find out,” the woman said. “Just hang tight. The money’s in escrow. Nobody can touch it.”
“Including me,” Tina lamented.
“Look, the site says that Webmistress is having some technical difficulties right now. I’m sure she’ll get the money released… and if she doesn’t, our guy will make it good.”
“How do you know that?”
“I checked him out. He’s that kind of a guy, or else we wouldn’t be doing business with him.”
“What if he isn’t?” Tina asked uncertainly, sounding very young.
“What do you think? You’re freaking Bulletina. You took out a whole warehouse full of Poisoned Dragons. If he crosses you, he’ll be the last one. Your rep will be made. Nobody will mess with you after this job.”
“But this was supposed to be the last job,” Tina said.
“It was,” the woman said. “I promise. But if he doesn’t pay up, you won’t have anything to retire on, right?”
“…right,” Tina said, with some reluctance. She sighed. “I guess I’ll go back to the hotel.”
“No,” the handler said. “Don’t go back there. Go here instead,” she said, and she rattled off an address not far from where Tina was.
“That doesn’t sound very nice,” Tina said.
“You don’t have to stay there long. In twelve hours, you’re going to be on a plane to Europe.”
“France,” Tina said. “I want to go to France.”
“France is in Europe.”
“I meant specifically!” Tina said. “God, I’m not stupid! Change my plane. I want to go to France. I don’t want go to Switzerland.”
“The money’s going to be waiting in Switzerland.”
“I don’t care. It’s all electronic, right? You can get it to me in France. I want to go to France.”
“Tina, honey, I don’t think you…”
“I’m fucking Bulletina!” she yelled. “I just took out a bunch of fucking Toxic Dragons or whatever! If I say I want to go to France, that means I want to go to France!”
“Okay, okay,” the handler said. “I’ll get your new flight information, and I’ll have a courier…”
“Just do it!” the young woman screamed, and she tore the earpiece from her ear and switched it off.
“Excuse me,” a voice said from behind her. She turned to find herself facing an athletic woman in with dirty blonde hair, dressed in an alarmingly bright blue denim jacket with matching jeans. “Did you mean Poisoned Dragons, by any chance?”
“Hey, fuck off,” Tina said, wiping nascent tears away from her eyes. “Mind your own business, okay?”
“I just want to be clear,” Diana Peacock said. “See, I’ve been hanging around the neighborhood looking for somebody who knows something about the Poisoned Dragons, and, well… I’d just hate to pick a fight with the wrong supervillain.”
“Well too fucking bad,” the distraught woman said, fear and frustration transitioning smoothly into anger. She thrust her hands out to the side and grabbed. A pair of semiautomatic pistols appeared in her hands. “Because that’s exactly what you did, bitch.”
“Sigh,” Diana said, and she dove to the side as Bulletina opened fire with both guns, firing five times from each at the elusive form of the acrobatic Parakeet, who flipped and rolled and stayed ahead of the shots until the last one caught her with a grazing contact on her sleeve. The unexpected flare of pain caught her so off guard that she stumbled mid-flip and landed on her side on the pavement.
“What? I fucking missed?” Bulletina said, raising her guns and staring at them like they’d just insulted her somehow.
“Are you kidding me? You fucking hit me!” Diana said, looking at the line torn in the sleeve of her jacket. She looked up at the young woman, whose entire body was shaking except for the hands that held the guns leveled at her. “How the fuck do you shoot like that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even think about it,” Bulletina said. “It’s second nature.”
“As superpowers go, that’s pretty crappy.”
“I took out those Dragon guys, didn’t I?” Bulletina said, leveling her guns at her opponent.
“With your little guns, yeah,” Diana said. She focused her eyes on the shooter’s, willing her… daring her… to return her gaze. It was almost a form of hypnosis. Eyes on my eyes. Don’t watch what I’m doing. Don’t think about what I’m doing. She swung her legs and shifted her weight and got to her feet in a motion that was fast and fluid. “You’re going to be in real trouble when I take them…”
She’d barely said the words “take them” when she felt the impact and then heard the sound. An average human being wouldn’t have been able to make the distinction at that distance, but Diana was far above average. The sudden trauma kicked her reflexes into high gear, and so she had a tiny eternity to wonder “what the fuck?” before the sound of gunshots reached her keen ears.
Two gunshots. One in the stomach, one in the chest, right below her heart. Tina dropped her guns and they disappeared. She stared down in shock at the fallen heroine, and then she turned and ran.
Diana had not always been so adept at dodging bullets; she had been shot before. Certainly, she tried to tell her body, she’d had worse wounds before. This was nothing she couldn’t overcome. She focused her mind on her body and tried to isolate the wounds. One bullet lodged in the ribs; hadn’t gone far in. The other one had gone clean through. Could be worse.
It would just take a moment to focus her chi and she could get up and get herself to a hospital.
Just… a… moment.
A face came into view above her.
Oh, good… that’ll make things easier, she thought. Not that she couldn’t handle things on her own. She forced her eyes to focus… it was the old biker dude she’d passed leaving the crime scene. Seemed he’d stuck around the neighborhood, too.
“Hey there,” he said.
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