Rael looked at Lance, “You okay doing this with your injuries?”
The huge hero nodded. “Doesn’t much matter, we’ve got a girl that needs rescuing. I’m doing it hurt or not.”
Stephanie pursed her lips for a few seconds and her eyes glowed more than normal. She asked, “Are you certain, Lance?”
“Yeah. This is what heroes do.”
She shrugged, “Okay then. I don’t think a submachine gun will get through your body armor anyway, so you should be good.”
Lance rubbed his palms together and said, “Got it. Machine weapons. Good practice for me. Let’s do it.”
Stephanie grabbed Rael around the waist and flew to the back of the building. Lance waited until they were over the rear of the building and leaped directly to the front of the garage.
As soon as Lance’s feet hit the ground he ran to the smaller service entrance and slammed his fists into the sides of the door. The metal door blew off the frame and flew into the room. It bounced off the floor and smashed into an old service desk. He barely had time to step into the doorway before a bola struck his left leg, wrapping around it and banging the other leg. The smell of ozone spread as it released a massive electrical charge. Lance’s leg tingled from the charge, but otherwise he barely noticed the effect. He grinned and surveyed the room.
Rael heard the smash from Lance's assault on the opposite door, and kicked in the rear service door. It flung open and he rushed in, trying to survey the room as he moved. A person mostly concealed behind a counter caught his eye. The man shot a bola at Rael as he moved toward the man.
Rael's eyes tracked the bola as it rotated through the air and with a slight jolt through his body found himself suddenly on the other side of it, about ten feet closer to the assailant.
Stephanie moved in behind Rael, but her reactions weren't in his league. When Rael somehow appeared on the other side of the bola, she became the next item in its path. It struck her around the chest, wrapped around her and the weights banged against her body as the massive electrical charge was released. She barely had time to think before her entire musculature seized up and she crumpled to the ground.
Rael saw Lance rush at a man near the front of the garage. Rael moved much faster than Lance did, and leapt over the counter at his target. His claws extended, he reached for the man as the kidnapper fell backward in an attempt to avoid the claws. Rael grabbed the man's shoulders as the man pulled the trigger on a small needler pistol. A burst of darts scored Rael's stomach as his body continued moving over the man. Rael flipped in the air, landing on his feet, and used his claws to dig into the man's shoulders. His own momentum allowed him to yank the man up above him and he threw the man over his own head. The man flew over thirty feet across the garage and slammed into the far wall with a loud thud.
Lance's opponent shot the hero with his needler pistol. The burst of darts were accurate, but failed to pierce the skin of Lance's torso. He felt his skin poked at in a series, and grinned at the thought of his body armor. He almost reached his opponent when he saw the man Rael threw fly past off to his right.
Lance yelled, "No killing!"
Rael smelled burnt flesh, and heard Stephanie fall. He knew that she was out of the fight at this point. He glanced back at her as he heard Lance's yell, and flashed his fangs in a snarl as he saw Stephanie collapsed on the floor. He noticed movement to the side, and sprang toward the motion.
Lance's foe lifted a canister toward him just as he arrived. Lance backhanded the man's hand, and the canister flew across the room and exploded against the wall. A cloud of purple gas expanded from the area. The kidnapper looked up with a surprised expression on his face as Lance lightly punched him in the jaw. Even the weak punch held a ton of force, and the jaw shattered as the man collapsed to the ground.
Rael noticed the room blurring in his vision and felt sluggish as he moved. A third man had been leveling a large rifle toward Rael when he reached the criminal. Rael grabbed the gun with his left claw, and the man's shoulder with his right. The explosion of the canister masked the sound of a bola going off further to his right, and as it struck both Rael and the kidnapper a massive charge surged through the both of them.
The man immediately went limp, followed by Rael a few moments later. His muscles tightened up, causing his claws to crush into the man's shoulder with great force.
The remaining kidnapper saw everyone down but Lance, and fled toward the exit behind Stephanie's still form. Lance narrowed his eyes and grabbed the nearest medium sized object - a tool chest. His massive fingers dug into the metal, and he flung the entire unit ahead of the man.
The unit smashed into the wall and exploded in a mass of metal parts and tools. The man dodged back from the thrown object, and was caught in the debris. He fell to the ground in an attempt to avoid injury.
Lance sprinted across the room as the man scrambled to his feet. He lightly dove at the man, tackling him as he would in football. They smashed against the outer wall, although Lance locked his arm to prevent the man from taking the majority of the impact or from being crushed by him.
The impact stunned the man. Lance grabbed the man's wrists with one of his huge hands and lifted him off his feet. He looked around for something to tie the man up with, and then noticed that the man had huge disposable tie cuffs on his belt. Obviously the man had expected to capture others.
Lance tied one of them around the man's wrists, another around his neck and through the tie on the wrists. He ran over to check Stephanie's pulse, and found it strong. A quick check on Rael found the same. He checked on the man with Rael's claws still embedded in the shoulder. The man was dead. He looked at the blood loss from the shoulder, it was minor. The man's heart had to have stopped from the electrical shock to keep from bleeding profusely.
Lance remembered that Stephanie was the one who had gotten a call on this task, so he slid her phone off her belt and marked the task closed. He also pushed the button to request medical attention for three people. Then he used the extra ties on the remaining two kidnapper’s wrists and ankles. Lance lined them up together to more easily keep an eye on as he looked around.
He quickly walked through the small office area. The business had to have been closed for a while, no office supplies, computers, or other equipment was to be found. He found one door that had additional deadbolts installed on the outside of the door. All were engaged.
Lance ripped off the deadbolts and opened the door to find a teenage girl lying on the floor, bound and gagged. She was unconscious. He couldn't fit his fingers into the tight wrist ties to untie her, so he carefully picked her up and carried her out to the others. She appeared to be more muscular than he’d have expected. She was much prettier than the pictures her parents had of her. Her arm muscles looked like she worked out quite a bit, that was odd in itself.
One of the men had a knife on his boot, so Lance took the knife and cut the girl free. He gently laid her next to Stephanie. He thought of calling the F.B.I. agents, though he'd forgotten to obtain their cell number while with them.
Details, Lance, details! Start carrying a small knife in the belt, too. Your mega-sized fingers can't get into these small places. Well, they could, but you'd have to crush the person's wrist to do it, and that'd be dumb.
He stood guard over everyone while he waited. He looked at his muscles, corded under the skin in his forearms and biceps as he held them crossed. Then he studied Stephanie's form. After she metamorphosed into a super, her body had become more tightly muscled as well. The same applied to Rael, although with Rael and Lance a fair amount of new muscle had grown and enlarged. Not much of that had occurred with Stephanie. He knelt down and gently felt Stephanie's biceps and forearms. He couldn't tell if her muscles were hard or not, he was too strong. Everything felt soft or crushable to him now.
The smell of the gas canister released on the other side of the garage extended far enough to become a concern to Lance. He didn’t know what it would do, so he opened the large garage doors on both sides of the building to let the air clear. He was glad the wind blew from the side with the people toward the other side with the doors open.
As he walked back to the injured friends and foes, he heard vehicles pull up to the building. Several black vehicles pulled up to the garage. The F.B.I. agents from the house exited the vehicles.
One of the agents walked near the remnant of the gas cloud, stumbled and fell to the ground. Everyone else ran back away from it quickly. Lance held his breath as he jogged forward, grabbed the man around his torso and moved him out of the cloud to the vehicles.
He glanced back at the criminals to ensure they weren’t moving. An agent he didn’t recognize stepped forward. Several other agents ran over to the downed agent.
“I’m Agent Willman, head of this operation.”
Lance stepped forward and held out his hand, “Good to meet you, sir, I’m Spartan." He pointed at the downed agent and said, "Sorry about that, I opened the doors to clear out the gas.”
Agent Willman shook his hand, glanced at Lance's huge hand and raised an eyebrow, and then said, “What’s the status here?” He'd noticed that the hero didn't close his grip, and the fingers felt more like solid rock than skin and flesh, barring the feel of the skin itself.
“Everyone’s unconscious or dead. The kidnapped girl has been freed, she’s out right now too. They’re back here.” Lance motioned, and then walked toward the far side of the garage. He gave the corner with the gas cloud a wide berth.
“Do you have armored gloves on, Spartan?”
Lanced grinned, he knew that the man was wondering about his hands. “No, my musculature is just that hard. Sorry about not shaking your hand like normal, I don’t close the grip out of safety.”
“No, no, I’m fine with that. It’s just, well, interesting I guess. I saw a news clip of you moving that locomotive up in Metrocity. That’s unbelievable.”
“You caught that? Cool.” Lance grinned at the thought.
“You’ve got some kind of blasting power too?”
“Huh? Why would you think that?”
“You glowed on the footage. I figured you must be able to blast out energy or something.”
“That’d rock if I did. As far as I can tell my, uh, energy glow is more like a type of adrenaline than energy that is blasted out.”
“Energy as adrenaline?”
Lance shrugged. “It seems like it. I’ve not had any chemical testing or anything like it done though. But then my entire metabolism has changed from what it was pre-super.”
“I suppose so.” He studied the hero standing next to him. The costume was tight fitting, and showed the massive muscles on the hero clearly. He felt like he stood next to a giant.
They arrived at the bodies of the injured. Agent Willman yelled, “We need ambulances here!”
Lance said, “I already called in for medical attention for three. I’m sure that Psystar and Black Tiger will shake off their damage shortly, and the girl appears uninjured. One of the men is dead. I left him where he died, and wanted to point out a few things to you.”
They were joined by Agent Dunsworth. Agent Willman asked, “How did he die?”
Lance replied, “Black Tiger had grabbed the man’s shoulder when they were both hit by one of these bolas. They put out a massive shock, like a super taser. I can tell his heart stopped bleeding before Tiger’s claws dug in much because there isn’t much blood on the ground. A pumping heart would have forced much more out.”
“I agree. Is that how they took out Psystar as well? They shocked her?”
“I believe so, though I didn’t see it from where I was. Her arms were burned where the cord wound around her though. I see that’s almost gone now.”
Agent Dunsworth asked, “What about these darts?” He slipped on a rubber glove, leaned over and carefully pulled out one of the darts embedded in Rael’s abdomen.