Fluff

Chapter Thirty-Two - Garage

Homie wasn’t much of a runner.

He wasn’t in bad shape. His diet was a bit crap, and his exercise routine... non-existent, but he was thin with a great metabolism and the drugs he took did wonders for his gut.

The fact remained though, that he hadn’t actually run for the sake of running since high school, and that was a few years back.

He was running now, running faster than he’d ever run before, all thanks to the motivational push that came from having a two ton grizzly bear roaring after him.

The bear roared some more and redoubled its speed. All Harald could think was that nothing that big should have been able to move that fast.

And then he came around a corner and his salvation was in sight. A garage, old and rather decrepit, with a couple of used cars parked out front. Its front door was wide open, and he could make out the rough shapes of a pair of mechanics tinkering on the underside of an old pickup.

It wasn’t just any old garage though, it was one he had frequented in the past, one that paid protection money to the boss, one that he had spent hours in while changing oil and fixing brakes while in his normal identity.

It wasn’t one of his safehouses, or one of the places he knew well, but it was a place he’d spent some time in, and that was enough.

He zigged and zagged around a few parked cars, darted across the street to the sound of someone honking at him, then bolted across the parking lot before the garage and into its poorly lit interior. “Move!” he shouted.

The guys working within took one look at him, some of them looking like they were going to complain about his entrance. He could see the moment they saw the bear running after him.

They left with no protest.

He had all of thirty seconds to let his power run loose. Usually it was a slow thing, like a seeping, invisible miasma that enveloped everything in a room and filled his mind with a hyper detailed image of where everything was and what it was meant to do.

Now he let loose the floodgates and swamped the room with his power. The moment it reached the controls near the door he tugged at them and the electric motor near the ceiling came to life.

It was far too slow. The bear hardly had to duck to slip into the garage. Still, now it had oil drums and stacks of tires in its way.

Homie swung an arm around and made a tire tip off its pile and fall towards the bear only for it to bat it out of the air. His power had barely been able to lift that much. He had to stall for time.

“Come here, ugly!” he called out as he tucked the laptop and its bag atop a tool chest.

The bear complied, rushing over tool trays and knocking over parts as it moved across the garage. Homie kept pushing at his power as he ran a circle around the back end of the room. There were a couple of cars parked there that served as great cover that the bear couldn’t weave around as quickly as he could.

As his power finally started to fill the room in full and become more concentrated, he began pushing back against the bear while searching for something, anything, he could use to scare the creature off.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any loaded hunting rifles tucked away for him to use.

The bear was getting a lot closer than he wanted when his power brushed up against something that he thought might help.

Each side of the lift holding up the truck in the middle had emergency release valves on it. They were big heavy things that would spill out the fluid in the hydraulic jacks, but they needed to be undone by wrench.

There were plenty of those around.

Homie jumped onto the hood of a car, hopped over a swiping paw, and ran towards the far end of the garage while two wrenches flew across the room, unnoticed by the bear, and started to undo the hoses.

He ran under the pickup, grabbed a random tool from a rack, kicked a safety stand out from under the truck, then flung the tool back with a bit of guidance from his power so that it rapped the bear on the head.

“Come at me!” he roared.

By then the mechanics were long gone, though there was someone panting and bent over double by the little office to one side.

The bear smiled toothily at him and charged across the room.

The wrenches finished their work and the hoses came loose just as he pressed the down button with his power.

The bear’s eyes went wide a moment before two tons of rusty old pickup came crashing down atop it.

“Boom!” he cheered.

The bear roared again, but it was pinned down nice and good. Still, one surprisingly long arm came out from under the truck, and if it wasn’t for his power telling him it was coming, it would have swiped him off his feet.

“Yeah, you stay there,” he said. The bear didn’t sound happy with that, but it didn’t have a choice.

Even better, if it could turn back into a little girl, it would still be pinned under the truck.

“See you later,” he said as he swaggered off. Then he saw a canister filled with oil off to one side.

He still had a Ippo lighter in his back pocket.

New Quest!
Removing the Competition
Reward: +3 Skill Upgrade Points and +1 Skill Slots Per Powered Enemy Killed. Blackguard +3 per success!
Accept? Refuse?

The bear had been trying to kill him.

“Accept,” he muttered before tipping the canister over. His power found a few gas cans at the back and helpfully flipped those over too.

Soon the entire garage was smelling like gas fumes.

There was still one person left in the garage, hiding away in the office, but he could tell them to run off at any moment.

“Bye bye, bear girl,” he said as he flicked on his lighter and let it fall.

The fire was... rather anemic. Just a small puddle on the floor that was far from impressive. He flung a few rags onto it and nodded satisfactorily when the lit up and the fire started to spread around a bit.

The bear started to rumble and shake under the truck. He almost felt bad for it.

Grinning to himself, he moved over to the spot where he’d ditched the laptop, then he pulled into the garage’s lobby and office space to tell the last idiot waiting around to get the hell out of dodge.

And then he ran into another mask.

It was the tall blonde girl in the gangster uniform he’d seen earlier.

“Where’s Teddy?” she asked. Her voice was a quivering mess, and her hands trembled.

“She’s a bit busy,” he said. “Just like you’ll be in a moment.”

He found that he still had some anger to work out.

She looked past him, then her eyes widened. “There’s a fire,” she said.

“Your bear friend’s in the middle of it,” he said. He rather enjoyed the way her eyes widened in horror. “Maybe you’d like to join her?”

He moved to the side, towards the desks at the front lobby. His power had tickled up against a bat under the counter that he could put to good use.

“You, you bastard,” she said.

“Terrifying,” he replied as he reached over the counter.

“Sisterportation,” the girl said..

He looked over his shoulder, wondering what in the world she meant.

“Sisterportation... Teddy.”

And then the bear was in the room with him, its fur matted down by hydraulic fluid and a bit burnt on the edges, but it didn’t seem to mind that at all, not judging by the anger in its eyes.

“Oh shi--”