Natalie – Scales

Natalie stood there, just inside the front doors, looking over the fight. Except, she didn’t look much like Natalie anymore. She barely looked human.

Her skin had turned a sooty black, and had a metallic shimmer to it like a snake’s scales. Her wings were out and were twice as big as before, easily twenty feet long each. They were the same charred black as her skin. Smoke spouted out from behind clenched teeth, mouth open and contorted in anger. Her eyes were glowing, each iris on fire. When she saw her sister on the ground, blood dripping out of her ears, Natalie’s dirty blond ponytail burst into flame.

Josh pulled the triggers on both guns, and time seemed to start back up again, twice as fast as before.

Aaron, still looking in Natalie’s direction, dropped to the ground. The two bullets took chunks out of his hair. The hero twisted as he fell, turning his back completely on Josh, and rolled backwards, pushing down with his hands to shoot up into a handstand.

Seth opened his mouth again, this time pointed in Natalie’s direction. She pumped her wings hard and shot into the air, barely clearing the bass punch that would have torn her apart. She responded in kind with a blast of white fire, being careful to keep it slim so as not to hurt any of her friends by accident. Seth leaped out of the way, but couldn’t escape completely. When he landed his pants were on fire, his shoes had been turned to ash, and his feet were badly burned. Teeth clenched in pain, he pulled himself into a corner and tried to beat the flames out. Natalie promptly forgot about him.

Josh kept right on firing, constantly keeping his arms in motion, trying to draw a bead on ‘Mr. Fluid’. Aaron smiled all the wider and danced his way closer and closer. He went from a handstand into a roll, bounced back up to his feet, and immediately shot forward at the villain in a no-hands cartwheel. One bullet grazed his cheek; another chewed through a pant leg.

The second he landed the cartwheel, Aaron jumped up and forward as hard as he could. At the apex of his leap, about ten feet up, he curled forward into a front flip, barely dodging another round, and covered the rest of the distance between the two of them. At the last second he unfurled his body and planted his feet, hard, into the villain’s chest.

The momentum threw Josh back, and suddenly he was falling. In the seconds before they hit the ground the hero stiffened one hand and chopped it into Josh’s right wrist. Josh grunted, and the gun fell from nerveless fingers.

Aaron grabbed the gun still held tight in the villain’s other hand and twisted it free, breaking a few of Josh’s fingers in the process. They hit the ground together, and the villain’s head smashed into the linoleum.

When the stars cleared Josh found himself staring into the barrel of his own gun. In the hero’s eyes there was no emotion, no smug look of victory. But the hand that held the gun didn’t waver, and Josh knew he was about to die.