Revenge Fantasy

There's a lot John can say about Yumi.

As he's locked into this dire situation, left with only Shortcake by his side as swarms of androids corner him in a hallway, John knows that Yumi could easily take these androids down. He has full confidence in Yumi as an ally, albeit she has a problem with listening and a tendency to improvise everything she does.

That improvisation, however, is one of Yumi's best skills. When Yumi's not constrained by a plan, she's a powerful asset. With Ashford's failed escape and two individuals targeting her, their separation is necessary. John needed to send Yumi away. John needed to get Yumi to Ashford.

Now, John doesn't know Yumi's current condition, and—as he's being cornered and unleashing a cybernetic attack at full force—he feels regret for not having her stick with him. But this regret doesn't matter. John has full trust in her, for she's the only one who can get to Ashford in these circumstances. John trusts her to do what's necessary.

And this trust of his took the form... of Yumi's entire body crashing through the front doors of the diner.

Yumi's eyes were closed shut, and her right shoulder bore the brunt of it. The force of her sprint pushed through the glass of the door itself, breaking and snapping the door handles off. Every bit of glass from the door was sent flying out from the sheer force of Yumi, carelessly launched out in a storm of shards.

One second, Yumi stood ready to fight and beat down an android. The next, she's running straight through a door, breaking each inch of glass apart with sheer force.

It was astoundingly destructive.

This didn't go unnoticed.

The androids in the diner pick up on the sound and sight, directing their attentions to the door. The threat was outside, and their automated processes would have gone after Yumi. However, John flashing a searing light into an android's head and smashing it against the counter was enough to turn them away from Yumi, leaving her safe from their mechanical advances.

Meanwhile, Chouko was caught off guard by this sight. All she heard was glass breaking, and she felt shards of glass flying right over her. For a brief moment, Chouko thought the glass breaking was because of the sniper, and that the sniper fired a second shot from behind her. Every part of her tensed up in that moment, ready to succumb to her demise.

However, none of the glass hit her as every projectile shard landed far away from her. No bullet, no shard of glass, no lethal projectile whatsoever had penetrated Chouko's head.

Rather, she was left unscathed and had a brown haired woman crouching down next to her.

"Mmmh. Good trick with whatever you did, Ashford...!" Yumi told her, a wide grin on her face as she looked at Ashford's legs. "But I found ya!"

Chouko remained on the ground, tensely hyperventilating. "... y... you..."

"Ahh... yeah, me." Yumi sighed, her grin going away in exchange for a petty pout. "See, if you had stuck with us and let me grab you, you WOULDN'T be bleeding out. Now look at ya. This thing here's real nasty. Dang sniper's good..."

Almost to taunt Ashford, Yumi reached her hand out to playfully pat the gunshot wound in Chouko's leg. Her fingers lightly smacked and slapped against the bloody wound.

To Chouko, however, it wasn't light. Chouko winced at the bloody fucking gobshite jackhammering her leg. It was pure agony, as if her skin was crumbling to bits and pieces. It felt like rotting decay eating away at her, devouring cell by cell with just two playful smacks. Pure anguish formed on her face, as if she imagined an unimaginable pain.

If, by some slim chance, she gets out of this, then she will wring Yumi's neck with her own hair, and...

... wait.

Wait.

If you had stuck with us.

Is Yumi insinuating that she's on her side...?

That has to be it. Yumi came out to help her. At the very least, Yumi (and subsequently, John) has the incentive to keep Chouko alive. It must be correlated to the reward on her head.

The number of times that Chouko's life is her biggest advantage...

... and she can use this.

There's no walking around it: Chouko has a bleeding ankle. Any weight put on her leg will likely hurt like hell, leaving her unable to walk and at risk of breaking the bones in her foot. But with Yumi here, Chouko has a free ticket to escaping... yet another slim life-or-death situation. Chouko gained the assistance of a woman who can tear off metal arms...

Playing her options out with this in mind, Chouko began devising a new plan. Where once a hopeless situation lay out before her, Chouko found a glimmer of hope in the form of the physically powerful brown-haired woman beside her... in the form of a truce.

"... listen... the sniper is—"

Before she could finish that sentence, Chouko's eyes widened as she suddenly found herself in Yumi's arms.

One moment, she was collapsed on the ground. The next moment, Chouko was being held in a curious bridal-style carry, with Yumi's arms under Chouko's upper back and the back of her knees. She didn't even see the moment where Yumi picked her up, she was just instantly held by Yumi in the blink of an eye.

"Yeah, yeah, we'll get him," Yumi interrupted Chouko, looking away from the diner and searching for any good sniper hiding spots in the distance. "Guy's honestly insane, I still can't see him out there."

Chouko tensely stared, cautiously looking past the brown-haired girl and staring at the building itself. "No, no, Yumi, he's—!"

Speak of the devil.

Suddenly, the sound of glass shattering echoed out. A window broke on the third floor of the diner building, and a bullet was fired straight at the pair. Specifically, the bullet is headed straight for Chouko's head, a perfectly angled shot.

Chouko tensely clenched her teeth, seeing this. She had a full view of the bullet and didn't have enough time or energy to react. In the face of inevitable death, Chouko screamed out the last two words of her sentence:

"—BEHIND YOU!"

But before Chouko exclaimed that, Yumi had a single eye twitch, and her eyes flashed again.

Chouko suddenly gasped for air after shouting, almost choking a little as her position changed instantaneously. She was suddenly pulled into a one-armed hug, yet didn't see or feel a single movement. Yumi just started spontaneously holding her close with her left arm.

In that single split second, Chouko wasn't shot. Rather, Chouko was left in shock after noticing that Yumi stopped another bullet with her pinching fingers. Her other arm was reaching out over her shoulder, precisely pinching the bullet and completely stopping it in place.

"... behind me, I know," Yumi told Chouko, looking up at the third floor with a curious gaze. "Guess he's been in the building the whole time!"

Disbelief remained on Chouko's face. Chouko was getting a close look at Yumi's ability. The pieces were coming together.

From the moment she was shot, Chouko was juggling her thoughts to try and make sense of her situation. She thought extensively about herself, as well as the mystery of the sniper. But after seeing Yumi catch the bullet with precision, Chouko felt she needed to think about Yumi's ability rather than the threat of the sniper.

Yumi clearly had full confidence in taking the sniper down, after all, so Chouko had to prepare for the contingency that she needed to fight Yumi.

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Now, Chouko didn't fully understand Yumi's ability yet. Chouko was still new to the concept of real superpowers, and she was still trying to understand her own ability. Yet, she vaguely understood the concept... and was almost certain that Yumi's was related to teleportation.

By definition, teleportation is the transfer of matter from one point to another without physically traveling the distance. The most common use is in fiction, when a person wishes to teleport from their house to a restaurant. Normally, walking to the restaurant would take half an hour, and driving may take half that time. Teleportation, however, takes less than a minute, if not a few seconds.

In smaller cases, a person could sit in one chair in a movie theater, and teleporting could make them spontaneously sit down on the other side altogether. Even more specifically, an arm teleports if it's in one position, then it moves without anyone seeing it move.

Yumi's ability did this. Her entire body, and specific parts of her body, were teleporting. So far, Yumi caught the bullet at the table instantaneously, and Yumi teleported her arm to catch the second bullet. Yumi previously teleported forward to punch the android that restrained Chouko, and she likely teleported while running through the front door.

By all accounts, this had to be teleportation.

... but what if it isn't teleportation...?

"Well, then!" Yumi exclaimed, starting to run around the left of the building itself.

"...?" Chouko blinked a couple of times, briefly staring at Yumi as she ran. "W... Where are you going...?"

"Searching for a back entrance," Yumi explained while running. "If we go in the front, we'll only be met with a buncha androids that Pops's dealing with. Getting a back way's the best way."

Chouko thought about this sudden plan of Yumi's. It did make some sense.

... but Chouko tensely looked to the side, uneasily cautious of the windows passing by.

Unlike Yumi's ability, the sniper's theoretical ability was far simpler to understand. Chouko picked up on some correlating details about the sniper, where every shot fired so far had something to do with a window.

She didn't get a good look at which shot was responsible for hitting her ankle, but the shot from the tableside window and the shot from the third floor followed the same principle. A bullet fired from a window, breaking the window itself.

This correlation was too significant for Chouko to ignore...

... and Yumi was running past quite a few diner windows. Windows that have yet to break. Every passing window evoked caution from Chouko, who anticipated a shot from any one of these... only for no shot to occur.

Chouko had one hypothesis about the nature of these shots... that the bullets were coming from the windows themselves. It would explain the mysterious first shot from the outside, as well as the subsequent shots coming from the building itself.

But the lack of a shot brought Chouko to ask herself a second question, pertaining to the limitations of this "window shooter". Could it be that the sniper was waiting for the right time to shoot? Or could it be that the sniper simply couldn't shoot...?

... Chouko quickly relayed this information to Yumi, giving a slight advantage with her second hypothesis. "Get ready to use that ability of yours..."

Yumi raised an eyebrow while running. "Eh?"

"The sniper... will shoot in five seconds," Chouko cautiously told Yumi. "Get ready to use your ability to stop the bullet again. Three. Two—"

"Five seconds—?" Yumi stopped in place after this, staring at Chouko with a dumbfounded look before she could say one. "... the hell are you going on about?"

Chouko kept staring at Yumi, her red eyes narrowing as a result. Nothing happened.

Yet, Chouko... felt like she was on the right track. She counted further as she stared at Yumi.

One. Two. Three—

Suddenly, a gunshot echoed out on cue, just as Chouko made it to three. The sound of a bullet, accompanied by broken glass.

Chouko quickly looked to the side, immediately staring at the window and bracing herself for a window... that didn't break. None of the diner's windows broke. They all remained intact, the sound not coming from the building whatsoever.

"Woah! The sniper's over there, now?!"

Chouko blinked at these words, looking to Yumi... then looking at the bullet in Yumi's hand.

Yumi's eyes flashed once again, and she had a bold grin on her face... as she managed to catch a bullet coming from the opposite direction.

Chouko stared at the bullet, quickly examining the bullet and the possible direction it came from. It certainly was a sniper round, and it had to come from a window.

So... Chouko felt a cold sweat when she realized the shot came from her car.

The Mercedes-Benz.

The front windshield was broken, having a gaping bullet hole in the center with cracks spreading out. Just like the window of the tableside booth, the bullet came clean from the glass itself. It was a completely different location, one too far to reach from the third floor.

This confirmed to Chouko the nature of the ability, that it was an ability to begin with. The sniper didn't need to be at the locations to shoot... they simply needed some sort of glass to shoot from. Every bullet came from a window, inside and out, and Chouko now understood the ability.

... Yumi didn't get the memo, however. Her eyebrow was raised at that moment, and her words indicated that she believed the sniper was in the car, now.

Chouko picked up on this. "W... Wait!" she exclaimed, wanting to warn Yumi. "Yumi, the sniper's not in there, that's not where the—"

But it was too late. Yumi flicked the bullet aside and began running to the Mercedes-Benz, moving quickly to get to the spontaneously magic sniper.

Noticing that Yumi's arm was no longer holding her, Chouko quickly clung to Yumi as this sprint happened. Chouko's long hair fiercely blew in the wind over Yumi's shoulders. Her red eyes were wide, and she could feel the difference between this run and Yumi's other run.

Yumi eventually slowed down upon getting to the door, pulling her hand back with a tense look in her eyes.

One quick look, and Chouko could tell that Yumi had plans to punch the car. In the same way that she broke the glass of the diner's front doors, Yumi was preparing to shatter the window of the car door itself.

In response to this, Chouko needed to violently shout at the top of her lungs to stop Yumi, one arm still clinging to Yumi while the other rummaged quickly into her coat pocket. "D... Don't! Don't! Don't you dare!"

Yumi continued to wind up her punch, a determined look in her eyes. "Eh?! Why the hell not?! It's already got a busted window in the back here! No harm, no foul, I can just—!"

Beep, beep.

The car unlocked.

"... first, I have the keys," Chouko calmly explained, keeping her voice down as she glared at this woman with mild contempt.

Yumi stared back at Chouko, poker-faced and just... acknowledging this. She stopped winding the punch, and she went back to standing normally. "... oh. This is your car. Uh. Neat."

... Now that that's taken care of. "Second!" Chouko shouted, shaking her head and returning to an urgent tone. "I now know the sniper's ability! I'm absolutely certain of it. We need to take cover, away from any windows or glass!"

This prompted an eyebrow raise from Yumi. She tilted her head and stared at Chouko, trying to wrap her head around it. "Glass? The hell's glass gotta do with it?"

"I'll explain in a moment, we just need to find cover...!" Chouko exclaimed, looking around. They were in a flat parking lot, with only a few cars remaining... and Chouko parked the furthest from the diner building.

There wasn't enough time to get anywhere that was glass-free. Running any further would expose them and open them up to any shots. So, the only cover that could work, albeit a little risky...

... was right underneath the Mercedes-Benz.

Chouko, taking the time to think all of this as quickly as she could, looked to Yumi. "Yumi, we—"

Yumi was one step ahead, though, and stared back with a proud grin. Her entire head and body were covered in shadow, as she lay on her stomach.

"... are in cover, yes," Yumi proudly remarked with a chuckle. "Found it."

Chouko continued staring for a while, as she only then realized she was back on her stomach. The two of them were already underneath the Mercedes-Benz before Chouko even spoke.

Another case of Yumi's... teleportation.

"... right." Chouko looked away, staring forward and taking a deep sigh.

With the angle of the parked car, Chouko had a good view of the diner's first floor and no higher. She glanced further left and right, and she found some windows from which the sniper could shoot.

"If I've been counting the seconds correctly, we have about nine seconds," raising eight fingers and lowering one right after, "before the sniper shoots again."

"Nine seconds? Oh, wait, eight now..." Yumi mumbled.

"Six," Chouko interrupted.

"... dang. You sure about the seconds?"

"Indeed..." Chouko mumbled, squinting her eyes as she was down to three seconds.

Chouko continued thinking extensively about Yumi's ability, to try and understand it to its fullest. The two were enemies under a temporary truce, so direct questioning was not an option. Deducing Yumi's ability was the only course of action Chouko had while they hid underneath the car, as the key to surviving this struggle was to understand Yumi.

Continuing her brainstorm, Chouko returned to that... doubt. That Yumi's ability wasn't just teleportation.

Sure, it felt like teleportation, but there were many cases where it was more than that. It wasn't as straightforward as simple teleportation...

As Chouko thought to herself, Yumi stared at Chouko's fingers. Idly watching as Chouko lowers her fingers down to two... one—

And on cue, another gunshot.

Yumi's eyes widened. So Ashford DID know when the sniper would next shoot!

The bullet came from one of the leftmost windows on the first floor, fired precisely out at a low angle, headed straight for Chouko's head. No curving or moving... it was just a straight shot.

Immediately, Yumi reached a hand out, and her eyes flashed... before her hand moved slightly to the left.

Chouko watched this. Chouko stared as Yumi did this, and seeing that slight change as Yumi caught the bullet...

... Chouko began to smile.

It wasn't teleportation. Chouko had all the puzzle pieces now. She could see a clear picture of what it was. The quick reflexes, the spontaneous movements, every moment that required more information than Yumi had... Chouko understood what it was. She understood the ability!

And it was then, as Chouko felt confident that she understood Yumi's powers...

... that a bright light flashed through the diner.

A light that illuminated every window on the first floor, and a light that managed to spread out from the diner's sides themselves. This light managed to pass through brick and stone, shooting out into two bright spotlight beams.

Chouko quickly covered her eyes at the slightest glimpse of this light. The light didn't do anything to hurt her, specifically, but it was absolutely blinding, hurting the same amount as staring at the sun itself.

Yumi, meanwhile, let out a gasp at this light. She recognized it immediately, holding a hand over her own eyes and gritting her teeth. "Oh, shit...! Pops!"