Author's note: You guys seemed to enjoy reading the last chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it, so I spent a little more (like five times as long) time on this one.
PS. Once again, sex is at the end ;)
~
Even as she was sliding down the side of the bathroom stall into a naked heap I knew something had changed within me. My body felt
etched
in, smouldering tendrils of
something
rooting out from my spine.
I watch passively as the foremost goon, holding a crowbar, reaches for me. The smouldering tendrils flare into full flame in an instant, taking control.
On instinct alone I close my eyes, a deep calm surging through me. I form the entire scene in minds eye, my focus flitting from detail to detail without any conscious effort, my brain harvesting the patterns, combining facts to deduce and conject more information, my subconscious chewing it all up and digesting it. I feel it happening, yet at the same time have no control over it.
Then it's done. In the space of a moment my subconscious spits out a complete model of the entire situation and its implications, my choices, and their applications. In that second I see the whole moment in a way I've never seen anything ever before, a level of understanding so high that I feel like a god. Everything is painful in clarity.
I open my eyes. I first note that world is tinted. I can't tell what color. It doesn't matter. Not even a second seems to have passed.
His hand still travels toward my chest, casually, with violent energy of a person far too experienced in the application of pain. I follow it with my eyes for a fraction of a second, then, acting more on the model still present in my head than my sight, I move.
I move through them as though in a dream, eyes glazed, biomechanics utterly efficient, arms, my legs, my body twirling in patterns pre-choreographed, not in reality but in my head. His right hand grasps empty air as my shoulder instead finds a comfy home in his balls. The crowbar clangs against the ground as I lift him up with strength I never knew I had, rising to my feet. For the first time in my life I truly comprehend the power of my body when using competent torque application in my joints, translating the force of my legs efficiently into my spine and upwards.
I twist violently, holding his legs tight to smash his head into the wall opposite Jasmin, before dropping him off my shoulder in a ducking motion to escape a haymaker flying through the air my head had previously occupied, the owner of which grunting mid-strike, suddenly finding himself toppling over into the toilet as his right knee is snapped inward, the right kneecap displaced by my flat palm. I slip through his spread legs as he falls to fire my left foot forward into the shin of another giant as he lunges forward. I hit it at just before his foot finds purchase on the ground, with enough power that his entire upper body catapults forward as a result of lower body flying back, his face, accompanied by the funny look of surprise, whipping into the tile and cracking the floor. I smoothly regain my feet, the body of the mammoth man twitching on the floor in front of me. Blood leaks from his head, staining the blue and white with red. I'm not even out of breath. I feel like I should be scared, but the feeling of fear is weirdly absent. I feel like that should scare me more than anything, but it doesn't.
The final man leans against the wall, naturally, casually, not quite as large as the others. He watches me as I watch him, not acting, but assessing.
My subconscious strains to pop something into my conscious thought.
Danger
it warns.
Wow. Real helpful.
I shoot back. I run a rake of a glance down my final adversary.
The man is muscular, but not overly so, more the build of a superhero than a steroid user. His suit stretches somewhat against his body, tailored to fit. I catch the tail of a tattoo at his wrist, something black, before he pushes himself off the wall in a one sudden, elastic movement, the way in which shoots a spike of worry through my calm. He tilts his head at me, his eyes asking an unspoken question. Then he starts to move. Almost like a dance.
I dance with him. He's fast, extremely so. I sway to the left, to the right, avoiding blow after blow, but unlike the others he converts the energy of one into the other, not giving me the time to counter, to attack. He cannot hit me, nor can I hit him without getting hit. But he's fighting a losing battle, slowly running out of energy. Despite this my feeling of calm is beginning to run out, and I realize it was a product of the model from which I had the certainty of a plan to deal with each possible circumstance. The model is fading, the clear path fading into obscurity, but I press on, it being my only option.
Then he clips me.
I see it happen, unbelievingly watching his fist fly upward ten times the speed of his already, extremely fast pace, and it
barely
grazes my chin, yet I feel as though I've been hit in the head with a shovel.
Fuck.
My vision flashes red-white, and I stumble back. He sneers at me through my teary vision, his eyes flashing dangerously. His face tells me he discovered the answer to his question, and he likes it.
Not a moment's respite passes before he follows me, flowing at impossible speeds through impossible combinations. I shell up, instinct guiding me through his assault, an almost mechanized movement of muscle and bone. Real dangerous pain floods my senses for the first time in a long time as he lands strike after strike, and the tendrils, the etchings which were fading before...pause.
Then they burn brighter.
As I continue to get my ass beat, a certain... foreign rage floods my system without my control, like a red, unactivated goo, inching its way through my veins. The detachededly aware self within myself, watches my body flood with with that weird unactivated rage (take your time to figure that one out). It's almost like a sensual potential energy, a safeguard on its activation.
"...?"
The feeling of a question slams into my consciousness, at which point I realize it wasn't my original subconscious doing all the behind the scenes work of my fight choreography but something completely separate, though similar. A system created within me as a concequence of fucking Jasmin that now sends me messages and makes me scarily badass, if only for a few moments.
Gotta love STDs.
The question, no, the
request for
permission
remains in the back of my head, and I have the distinct impression it's eager to be let loose
I think for a moment amidst the fireworks of pain, and my desperation outweighs the sane part of my brain. I
feel
myself give permission.
The rage lights up in a wave from center line outward, down my limbs, and they tingle. My tinted vision grows darker. I look up from my guard to notice that the previously machine gun-like blows have slown down. They've slown way down.
No wait. Instinctually I know that's not right.
I sped up.
I drop my guard, relaxing, now able to slip through the flurry, moving only a fraction of a second faster than the man, but it's enough.
My fist finds his jaw in the space of a second and the last thing thing I see in his eyes is a flash of fearful acceptance, as if he knew he was playing with fire, before he drops to the ground.
I stand, bleeding, battered, but still on fire, above a pile of men.
Then the fire goes out.
Ohhhhh fuuuuuuck.
My body sags to the side and white and blacks spots flood my vision. The weird tint leaves, and everything suddenly seems a little lighter in color. Once again, no time to comprehend what the hell just happened. I stumble over the bodies toward Jasmin. The guy I crushed the nuts of groans on the floor.
We gotta bounce.
I shake her, but she just flops around limply. Not a lot of time, but I can't just carry her out in her current state. She's pretty fucking naked. I'll have the cops called on me in an instant.
Think goddamn it!
I pull the blazer off one of the mountain men (struggle all on its own) and throw it on her to mask her form. No sense in bothering with the panties nor the bag, she'll just have to survive with a bra and blazer for now. I pick her up to leave, and realize I'm only wearing my underwear.
Ah, fuck it.
I kick the one dude's head for good measure, then head out the door with Jasmin limp in my arms, wrapped in a blazer meant for someone three times her size like a blanket.
I glance down the hall. Customers are already looking our way, probably because of the noise (gee, really?), and I glimpse an employee heading from the counter our way. Shit.
I move quickly, my body creaking in protest, shouldering my way through a door marked 'employee only'. I half limp, half stride down a short hallway past a storage room to the back entrance, hearing yells behind me. Ah. They must've discovered the bodies. A small, somewhat dark laugh escapes me. Wonder what they're going to print in the newspaper. Four injured muscle men discovered around a red pair of panties in a coffee shop bathroom? Let them make sense of that.
I call an uber once I'm a block away.
For once in my life I'm lucky and get an old indian guy who barely speaks english. He takes one look at Jasmin and gives me a raised eyebrow.
"Alan?" He questions with a heavy accent.
"Yes." I reply, extremely aware of the fact that I'm carrying a beautiful girl clothed only in a blazer and bra asleep in my arms. And I'm looking pretty sketchy myself in just my underwear. Oh and the blood trickling down the sides of my face. And the bruises everywhere. And my limp. Ah but what is life without a crazy hot woman in your arms and a few unconscious thugs littered behind you? I open the door and set her gently in the backseat, before rounding around and entering the other side.
"She has narcolepsy." I offer as an explanation.
Ah shit. I lied. What happened to trying not to do that?
The whole car ride feels surreal, and faintly deja-vu ish. When I'm not doubting my sanity, I'm expecting to wake up out of this nightmare. Then I glance over at Jasmin's naked curves hidden under the blazer and confirming that,yes, I did indeed fuck the most beautiful girl I've ever seen senseless and proceed to murk four solid blocks of protein, all in the middle of a mens bathroom, so maybe things could be a little worse.
Or who knows, maybe you're just tripping shrooms for the first time.
Then another wave of pain wracks my body.
Yeah no. That couldn't hurt this bad.
A buzz emanates from under Jasmin's pristine new blazer. I move the flap to the side carefully as not to expose too much and realize the buzz is coming from inside her bra. Eh... Vibrating tits?
Rational thought prevails as I realize it's her phone. I check to make sure the driver isn't looking before I grab it from her bra.
Kayla
followed by a heart is calling. To answer or not to answer? I mean, it is followed by a heart, right? Ostensibly that means she trusts the caller. Ostensibly.
I go with my gut and click the green phone icon.
"Jasmin you better tell me where the fuck you are." An angry female voice.
