'Hail.'
'Hail!'
'What's the matter with your head?'
'Yeah.'
'Hail.'
'Hail!'
'What's the matter with your mind and your sign and-a, woah oh oh?'Bobbing gently to the beat of the song, Sam sprayed another layer of soapy water on the glass counter and wiped it clean with a rag. The radio continued playing, seated where it was on his chair behind him. Breakfast was over, and the immediate drama of the early morning lingered in his memory. After the whole debacle, the cops had hauled away the young punk for theft, while he'd accompanied the lady (whose name he now knew as Robinson, married of course) to the nearby cafe for the breakfast they were both due for. He even took care of paying for her meal! After they'd eaten, she'd waved him a friendly farewell while she went off to work, and he did the same. How could he refuse a fine missy a helping hand, eh? Nobody else seems to bother, he thought to himself as he scrubbed at a pesky stain on the corner of the glass case, so I guess someone's gotta do it.
The day itself was an average day, just as usual. He'd opened roughly five minutes ago, and normally no one came in until the late afternoon, after working hours were over. This gave him plenty of time to clean up the shop and work on what little repair jobs he had, stuff he could actually do in the span of a few hours but held off on in favour of keeping the regular customers...regular.
As much as he hated to admit it, business wasn't exactly that regular. It was slow. Very slow. Most days he spent idling in the shop, watching reruns on the tiny television set mounted to the top corner of the shop walls, listening to his old childhood tunes on the radio and maintaining his stock of firearms. Occasionally someone would come in with a job; a handgun with a stiff trigger, or a hunting rifle with a broken bolt. These he accepted gladly, and though his years gave him plenty experience in remedying most common problems, the truth was he was getting too good at doing so. He solved their issues and they left, never to come back. This left him bored quite a lot, and often he found himself daydreaming and wishing that his heydays would return. Those were the fun days, shooting for sport and for fun, not to mention profit, and the days where he actually had things to do. Being stuck in a rut like this? Mind-numbing.
Today was much the same. Radio on, TV on but muted so he could just glance at it without the noise distracting him, guns in their cases and not much else to do other than give the shop floor another sweeping. Earlier he'd noticed that suddenly the TV image, instead of the late morning news and traffic reports, had switched to this weird image of a snake eating its own tail. Barely caught his eye, it did, but without sound he'd paid it no mind, and the channel resumed its regular business after a few minutes. Some weird interruption, probably some stupid marketing ad for some weird company with too much money on its hands. What did he care?
'Hail.'
'Hail!'
'Nothing's the matter with your head, baby find it, come on and find it.'
'Hail!'
Then suddenly the 'Breaking News' banner appeared at the bottom of the screen, flashing a bright red as the camera footage changed to a view of the Square. Intrigued now, Sam grabbed the remote from the shelf to his right and upped the volume, watching the grim scene unfold. On the screen, the camera focused in on a group of people, seemingly floating in midair, orbiting around a lone man, who appeared to be in the spasms of something foul. One of the people, no, bodies, was ripped in two, crimson splattered all over the pavement. Local police forces were already on scene but were way too scared to even approach...whatever that was. As the cameraman zoomed back out a lady stepped into view, microphone in hand, obviously the reporter that was quickest on scene.
'This is Emily Wong with CP24, here live at Nathan Phillips Square with a breaking news report! A man, now confirmed to be a Hyperhuman, has, with no rhyme or reason, trapped several people and even killed one of Toronto's finest in what appears to be gravity wells that have appeared in the air around him! Local police officers were quick to respond to the alert after eyewitnesses saw him lapse into a fit of coughing before everything went horribly, horribly wrong. The scene you see behind me is still unfolding, and if I'm not wrong, according to the officers on scene, S.H.I.F.T. is being called in to assess the situation...'
"Well blow me down."
He muttered to himself and leaned elbows on the recently-cleaned countertop, entranced by the unfolding story. A Hype in the Square causing havoc? What was the world coming to these days. He couldn't say much either, being a Hype himself, but he couldn't imagine unleashing a world of chaos and misery around himself. That, he left to the evil villains of the old fantasy stories he read at night. He was so distracted by the news that he didn't notice when three young men strode into his store and spread themselves out, seemingly trapping him behind his counter. Only when one of them spoke did he snap out of his trance.
"Hey! Gramps!"
The lead man spoke, clad in a simple hoodie, jeans and a beanie. Did he...was he growling? Sam wasn't sure, but he did give the man his full attention.
"Yeah son? You looking for a firearm?"
The man sniffed and wiped his nose with a finger, bobbing gently on his feet. Sam saw past that, into his eyes. They were bloodshot and veiny.
Hmm. Drugs? Maybe. He was no stranger to crack addicts, they looked just like that.
"Nah man, I'm looking for you."
He stood straighter and smiled his best, friendliest smile, hoping that he could possibly make them relax.
"And what might you need with me, young'un?"
The young man sniffed and wiped his nose again.
"You, uh, run into anyone today?"
That jogged his memory, made him scramble to search for something that fit.
'Nothin' the matter with your head'
'Baby find it, come on and find it'
'Hail, with it baby'The morning.
'Cause you're fine,'The young man.
'And you're mine,Mrs. Robinson.
'And you look so divine.'These young men were friends with the guy? That was the only thing that stood out today, and today wasn't even half done yet. Grudgingly, he made the connection and nodded.
"Yeah, maybe I did, what's that to you?"
"You just sent my best friend to jail, pops! He'll be gone years for that shit!"
Sam shrugged and raised his palms to the ceiling.
"Hey, he decided to rob that poor lady, and if he was a crackhead just like you jerkoffs are, he deserved it."
All three young men drew arms. Pistols, obviously, brand spanking new semi-automatics. All of them were pointed at him.
"Old bastard. No one's gonna miss you when we're done here."
Sam held his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. He had to do something, otherwise he'd end up as a third-page mini report past the blaring headlines on the front of tomorrow's newspaper. So he did what he didn't want to do.
He considered the numbers.
For him, time seemed to slow. In reality, his brain was taking seconds to process information and plan a strategy, something that would've taken any of these youths a few minutes to do, which is why time seemed to slow down whenever he went to the numbers.
Out of all these three, he figured, the man to his left was the least likely to fire his gun. His stance (with gun sideways like a true imbecile) was the least accurate and stable, judging that he had the thing more for show and to strike fear in people, rather than to kill. His other two friends were holding them better, not sideways like a douche. Left Man would be his last target. He made a mental note of that. With nothing to physically incapacitate him or take him down, Sam simply settled on affecting the mechanics of his gun. Since this was a brand new gun, chances were that the young man had never even fired it before. Assuming it loaded, Sam fiddled with its probabilities and made sure that, once the youth pulled the trigger, the gun would instantly jam and backfire, disabling the weapon and disarming the youth. Problem solved. Onto the next one.
Now, the Lead Man. He was aiming straight at him, so if he fired, he'd be a dead man. But there was something that he could mess with: he was hopped up on crack, and Sam knew that cocaine, if taken too much of or if it affected the wrong things at the wrong times, could play serious hell on the human body. Not knowing the exact details irked him, something he couldn't remedy now, but he settled on simply maximising the chance that everything that could go wrong in a chronic crackhead's body would go wrong. Whatever those were.
Lastly, Right Man. There seemed to be nothing wrong with him at all. Problem. Sam's eyes sought out something, anything that he could use against him, and his vision settled on his television. It was anchored right above him. Lucky enough for him, even he couldn't have gambled better odds than that. Sam knew that the bolts and ties that anchored the TV (and its frame) to the concrete ceiling were old, rusty in places too. With the right manipulation, he could maximise the odds that, at that very moment, the bolts all gave way simultaneously, dropping the set and its heavy steel frame right onto his head. Probably wouldn't outright kill him (he hoped), but at least it'd knock him out, or at the very least knock him down.
So he had his plan. To the trio, it must've seemed like barely a moment passed, but in that moment Sam had plotted and planned to maximise the minute probabilities that their revenge plot would go wrong. Still with hands raised, he backed up a step.
"Now now, young'uns, those things are right dangerous. Why not you put those down and maybe we can talk things out?"
"Shut up old man!"
The lead guy waved his gun about and stepped closer.
"It's cause of you that everything's gone to shit!"
"Woah now, calm down son, I didn't do jack-"
"You ruined everything!"
'Come and get your love!Sam saw the young man's body tense. With his years in firearms, he knew that was the signal that he was going to fire. Now was a good time than never to manipulate those odds. Which he did.
The lead man's body suddenly spasmed. Unbeknownst to Sam, the odds that he'd pushed to succeed were odds that determined if today was the day that the youth had a big ol' seizure, which he was now in the throes of. Unable to even clutch the firearm, the young man crumpled to the ground, mouth foaming and limbs stiff as boards as he spasmed and twitched on the floor. First gun out of the picture. This set off a minor panic in his two companions, even as Sam moved on to his next target, his gaze moving from the downed youth to his friend on the right.
With enough time, he was sure that those rusty fixtures that held his TV aloft were going to fail someday, probably putting him in the same position as the unfortunate young man to his right. All the same it happen now than later, right? Sam made it so. The bolts holding the frame up gave way and their heads snapped off, loosing the whole thing as it tore away and fell straight down. The man beneath it had barely a moment to look up before it crashed, screen first, onto his face and head, the only thing preventing it from following him down onto the floor being the cables that were attached to its backside, leaving the television set bobbing up and down gently like a yo-yo.
Right, that was number two dispatched, now for number three. Sam directed his gaze to the third man, his last target, who was shaking where he stood. Obviously the way his two companions went down was no mere coincidence, he wasn't that dumb. The poor young man stood there and trembled in his shoes as Sam gazed at his pistol and, diverting from his original plan, simply made the locking mechanism in the grip fail, which made the magazine fall right out of the gun. Too stunned and frightened to move, Sam got out from behind the counter, approached him, and plucked the pistol right out of his hands, racking the slide back to eject the last round within the gun, before stowing the thing in his waistband. He gently laid a hand on the youth's shoulder, stern faced, like a father disciplining a child.
"Now son, guns aren't toys, and they are very, very dangerous. I suggest you leave yours with me, and I'll take the other ones your friends have."
Under his talking, Sam noticed the youth mumbling under his breath. Barely discernable.
"Y-y-y-you're a H-H-H-H-H-Hype."
He clenched his jaw and shrugged.
"You make your own assumptions, partner."
That said, he left the youth be, going over to his friends to pick up their guns. The lead thug, the threatening one, was finished with his seizure, and as he got up and looked around, mind still in a daze, Sam was already over at the other corner of his shop, the last pistol safely in his hands. The youth that got clobbered by his TV set was unconscious, shards of glass embedded in his cheeks and forehead; nothing deep, but he was bleeding. He took his time ambling back to the counter, depositing the three handguns (plus the magazine he picked up from the floor) on a chair behind it. Then he grabbed his cleaning rag and tossed it at the unconscious young man, before returning his gaze to the other two.
"Ya'll better make sure he don't bleed out from those head wounds. 'N ya'll also better git 'fore the cops show up."
"Why you-!"
The lead guy struggled to his feet and made to charge, but his friend restrained him.
"N-n-n-no dude! Don't do it!"
With a look of absolute bewilderment, the leading man stared at his friend.
"Why the hell not?!"
"H-h-h-he's a Hype, dude, he's a motherfuckin' Hype."
Suddenly the rage in the young man's face dissipated and was replaced by dawning comprehension, and followed immediately after with horror. The two young men picked up their fallen friend, who by now was slowly coming to, and hightailed it right out of his shop. Sam sighed. And here he'd thought his day of interesting events was over. As he went back behind the counter to get a broom and dustpan, his gaze fell on the guns the trio had. A thought formed in his head, one that made him smile and sigh disappointedly.
Why hadn't he simply made their guns fail, instead of scaring them stiff?
Guess it was just the sudden rush of adrenaline that made him think like that. His life was in danger, and he had to retaliate by grasping whatever came to him at the moment. The careful thought came after. It's what he hated the most, seeing the simple solutions to his problems after having solved them the hard way or the difficult way. He could've done so with the morning's robbery, maybe made the guy's shoelaces untie themselves or made him trip and sprain his ankle. He could've retrieved the purse and not made trouble for himself after. Now he had a mess of broken glass and blood on his floor, a TV dangling from the ceiling by wires and a broken fixture that he'd probably spend more than he wanted to in its replacement.
"Ah well, no use cryin' over spilt milk." He said to himself as he went to his phone and dialed a number. The man on the other end picked up after three rings.
"Say, Charlie, d'you happen to know any, uh, people that can put a television mount back together? I had a, uh, mishap. Thing fell all of a sudden 'n scared me half to death."
