Larry Correia: Hard Magic

There was a shout and a gunshot. Sullivan's concentration dlipped, just a bit, and the real world came suddenly flooding back. The Power he'd gathered slipped from his control and the elevator gate was sheared from its bolts and slammed flat into the floor under the added pressure of ten gravities. A passenger screamed as his foot was crushed flat and blood came squirting out the top of his shoe. "Sorry, bud." Sullivan turned in time to see one of the G-men tumbling down the stairwell, a grey shape leaping behind, colliding with Cowley and Purvis and taking them all down, "Aw hell," he muttered, then spun back in time to see Delilah's lovely green eyes locked on his.

"You were trying to smoosh me, Heavy!" she exclaimed, eyes twinkling as she ignited her own Power. She grabbed the big man by the tie and hoisted him effortlessly off the floor, even though he was almost a foot taller. The tie tightened, choking him as he dangled, and she finally got a good look at her assailant. "You! Well, if it isn't Jake Sullivan. Been a long time."

Then she hurled him. Suddenly airborne, he flew across the waiting area. Instinctively, his Power flared, and he bounced softly off the far wall with the force of a pillow. Jake returned to his normal weight as his boots hit the floor. He loosened his cheap tie so he could breathe again. "Hey, Delilah."

"You lousy bastard." She stepped out of the elevator and cracked her knuckles in a very unladylike manner. The other passengers had no idea what was going on, but they knew that this was not where they wanted to be. They took off at a run except for the one with the crushed foot, who hobbled as fast as he could. Every normal had the sense to stay out of this kind of fight. "I'd heard you'd gone all Johnny Law now," Delilah said.

"Something like that," he replied slowly. "Bounty hunter."

"Hypocrite."

There was the sound of several quick blows. Off to the side, the grey shape rose and took on the form of a man in a long coat with a nightstick in hand. The G-Men were down. Purvis moaned. The man in grey stepped off the fallen agents and took a wary step away from Sullivan. He was short and tanned, with a pointy blond goatee and nearly shaved head. He picked his hat up and carefully returned it to his head. "Delilah Jones?" he asked quickly. Cowley started to rise and the stranger kicked him in the ribs, sending the agent back down.

"Who's asking?"

"I'm here to rescue you," he stated with a German accent, "from him." He nodded in Sullivan's direction. "No offense, Mein Herr."

"None taken, but I'm gonna give you an ass whoopin', you realize that, right, Fritz?" Jake stated calmly. He checked. The majority of his Power was still in reserve and he began to gather it.

"I can take care of myself, buddy," Delilah told the stranger. "Were you planning on arresting me, Jake?"

"If I don't want to go back to prison, yeah," Sullivan answered, glancing back and forth between Delilah and the new threat. Delilah was a known quantity, the other guy, not so much. "That's kinda the plan."

"Too bad," she answered as she grabbed the heavy metal luggage cart, picked it up as if it weighed nothing and threw it at him.

Sullivan reached out and increased the pull on the cart. It slammed into the floor, digging a divot through the tiles and coming to rest at his feet. At the same time the stranger hooked his shoe under Purvis's shotgun and kicked it into the air, smoothly caught it, and turned it toward Jake's head. Sullivan barely had time to Spike, gravity's pull changed direction, and the stranger was jerked off balance to the left. A round of buckshot harmlessly shattered a window. The Power twisted him again, pulling the German in the opposite direction, as if he were in sideways freefall.

But rather than collide with the wall, the stranger turned blurry and passed through the concrete as if it were water and was gone. "Damn, Fades," Sullivan muttered, turning his attention back to Delilah, just in time to see that she had crossed the room and her fist was flying at his face. He ducked and the concrete wall exploded into dust overhead.

Delilah had gotten faster over the years. Sullivan leapt back as she just kept swinging. He'd boxed in the service, but nothing like this. He went between her fists and slugged her in the face with a brutal hook. Pain crackled through his knuckles, down his bones, and through his torso as he drove all his considerable weight forward. The blow was hard enough to topple a gorilla.

She blinked. "I think you smeared my makeup."

He barely had time to Spike himself dense before she hit him in the chest. Mass increased, his boots cracked into the floor, and she still managed to shove him back ten feet in a cloud of broken tiles. His back hit the wall and shattered a mirror, leaving a cracked indentation of his shoulders in the concrete. He stepped out, shrugging off the broken glass.

It was not something that a normal Heavy could do, but apparently Delilah didn't have the time to think through the philosophical implications. "I've punched trains that were softer." The Brute paused and shook her aching hand. "You've learned some new tricks!"

"You too," he answered, breathing hard. "Too bad you took to murdering innocent people."

"Innocent?" she sputtered, reaching down and grasping a wrought-iron bench and ripping its bolts out of the floor. "You've got a weird take on innocent." She swung the bench like a baseball bat and Sullivan barely had time to throw himself to the ground as it whistled past.

Sullivan rolled aside, finding himself staring up Delilah's dress as she brought one foot down to stamp him through the floor. Distracting as that was, he managed to focus, Spike, and Delilah suddenly fell up. "Son of a b-" she shouted before crashing into the glass ceiling, twenty feet above. Sullivan held the pull for a moment, but he'd burned through too much of his reserve, too fast, and lost control. Gravity returned to normal, and Delilah fell in a cloud of broken glass, screaming to the ground.

She must have used her own Power, as she slammed into the floor hard enough to shatter the tiles in a six-foot circle, but immediately rose, unharmed but angry, dusting off her dress. She'd lost the fur stole and the fancy hat was stuck in the ceiling. Delilah picked at the shredded red dress in disgust. "You know how much I paid for this thing? It's French!"

Sullivan was still on the floor. "I hate France," he said as he drew his Colt.45 from his belt.

"That's because last time you were there you were running alongside a tank," Delilah said, slowly raising her hands. "It isn't polite to shoot a lady."

He snorted. "You're no lady, and you're mostly bulletproof, but this place is surrounded by thirty bulls with choppers, and you ain't that bulletproof." He swiped the thumb safety off and aimed at Delilah's chest. He could feel his Power scattered. It was going to take a moment to gather enough to use it again. Good thing he always packed a heater. "So I guess you're coming with me."

She tried to look innocent, and failed miserably. "Come on, Jake, let me go, for old time's sake. I'll make it worth your trouble."

"Tempting, but I've got the law outside. It's over." For both of us.

"Yes, it is over," the German stranger said, materializing as he placed the muzzle of a pistol against the back of Sullivan's head. "The policemen will not be a problem. My crew made sure of that. Don't try anything stupid, Heavy. Magic is always slower than a bullet."

The Spiker calmly raised his big.45, put the safety back on, and let it dangle from his trigger finger. "I never did like you guys that could walk through walls. That don't hardly seem fair."

"Life isn't fair, friend," the stranger said. A wooden nightstick slammed brutally into Jake's skull, hard enough to knock any normal man senseless, and he flopped to the floor.