Snippet #2442801

The tug of gravity Jack felt was all it was, a tug. He felt his lightning being syphoned to something above him, but he had more than enough to power a strong enough magnetic field to anchor him to the ground, weaving haywire missiles, unguided rockets and bullets, taking a glance over his shoulder as he rolled and flipped over cars in his path to glance back at the man riding the mechanoid from hell pull out some new shiny gun. He turned forward, grinning as he used his heightened speed for a case of sleight of hand on the run, the particles of blood left in his wake too small and damaged by the ionic field around him to be useful for analysis of any kind.

And so when he felt something heavy enter his Crimson Gate area of effect, he did a move extremely unexpected. Reversing direction so suddenly pavement rolled and folded off the street at his feet, he launched himself like a organic missile at the projectile, flipping to slam booted feet against it and springing off right as it exploded with titanic force. He was caught in the detonation, flesh peeling off him and blood spraying liberally as he was hurled by the hand of a god through not one, not two, but four separate skyscrapers, at each one unleashing an involuntary pulse of extreme electrical surge the triggered gas mains, overloaded building power grids, and scorched to glass stoneworks, melting metal and glass.

But even more wrongly, Jack did not crash unceremoniously to the earth, a lifeless hulk. After digging a furrow in a parking lot and crashing through the front of a populated diner with a final tremendous burst that flash-boiled and popped the patrons, servers, and cooks like human popcorn, the maniac swayed to his feet, his gate flickering before stabilizing as he staggered out of the ruined diner. Torn flesh was mending at an astonishing rate, including the macabre regeneration of an eyeball after he yanked the metal support beam that had punctured it and tossed it to the ground. The fruits of Jack's labors in studying the processes that had spawned him, he possessed the heart of Jacks' One to Twelve, and he had consumed the Fourth's. Who's power was extreme speed, very high level regeneration. He only had five minutes of time, but for the distance he had gained over his pursuer's, in a flight like a hyper-ballistic human cannonball?

More than enough to get the drop on them. Was that his style? Hell no.

Less than a minute later, he boiled straight into an ambush no doubt set up for him had he continued down the main way, going completely against the logical new straight path to the spaceport. He simply landed from a leap from a building, slamming down in the middle of the police hard enough to ram a crater in the earth, and unleashed a pent up burst of electricity that would literally throw everything in a 200ft radius around him in the air and lash it with nearly a hundred million volts, and far too many amps to be survivable. Leaving the hellish scene, and his airborne pursuers' likely scrambling to catch back up to him, he once again bolted down the main avenue, again leaving the trail of arcing, chaining lightning coruscating like the path to a bizarre hell in his wake, fresh blood staining his form, flickering off his already saturated coat like the harbinger of madness and death.

To complete the picture, a rictus grin stretched across his face, and wicked fires danced behind those soulless eyes.

Now Jack Thirteen was enjoying himself.