Running From Himself 3-22

As weird as they were, powers had their own relation to the laws of nature; physics, biology, chemistry, all that good shit. Not on the same line and not a parallel one either but something like a tangent…

Say you could clone yourself or something, odds were good that instead of another you just popping in out of nowhere, you probably just budded off another copy. That was just a really big version of mitosis when you actually took a good look at it.

The same went for something a lot easier like… flying.

Flying supes were a lot rarer till the 1940s, at least the ones like Homelander. There were even books about it and Reggie had read at least one of them; some guy called Richard Brinkerhoff even had a few out talking all about how most flying supes weren’t like the Flag-Man in the first place. No reactionless Newtonian flight for those guys — no, those guys needed wings or propulsion or whatever else that actually let them interact with physics to keep them up, up and in the air.

Reggie was no different.

His ‘powers’ were different from his ‘body’; and the way his body interacted with his speed powers were so much different that Reggie didn’t need years of college in his old life to notice how off it was. A-Train could almost hit a Mach number in the double digits if he had enough time and space to build up speed, but outside of that… A-Train couldn’t take a dive in lava for some reason.

Lifting and running; two different mechanisms too.

Weird, right?

Reggie really wished it didn’t work like that.

“Jesus Ch-!”

Reggie darted right as something hit the plaza grounds a good fifteen feet behind where he’d been, fire splashing in fat orange glob like someone had set off a propane tank. The shockwave caught him from behind, a thermal at his back throwing him entirely off-balance before he could land the next step.

Glass shattered everywhere, everything rattling hard around him as he went headfirst through a bus stop and even that barely slowed him down. Reggie came up and out of it, scrambling over the ground while shards fell from his hair. “He got bombs, Nate!”

“What?”

A hand ran back over his fade, the crispy ends of his own hair putting a frown on his face. “He got bombs! That’s new, man!” Reggie cut a hard left, cleats screaming against stone as another bomb tore through where he was. “That’s new as hell!”

“Police reports ar—”

“Nate!” Eyes went high up the building, Reggie sure sprinklers were going off in there. “Unless this is gonna help right now, I don’t need it, bro!”

“Fine. What do you need then?”

Need. Need… Those eyes narrowed. “How many people in the tower right now?”

“Reg, that’s…” A few more clicks sounded off. “I mean, it’s the middle of the day, man, and it’s Vought. We’re looking at an easy five digits, like…”

“Big Nate, a number!”

“Five… five thousand? Maybe?”

Five thousand roasting over an open fire. "Okay." Blue sparks crawled up him again, body humming as Reggie made up his mind. “A’ight. New plan then.”

“You had an old plan?”

“...yeah, Plan A was kick him in the face as hard as I could.”

“...” The clicking slowed to a stop. “...plan B prolly better then.”

You think? Reggie bit back a snort as he tracked the path in front of him.

The revolving doors were more slag than anything else, melted brass and a puddle of glass making it clear as day that the front entrance was halfway to an oven by now and the hundred-foot giant in front of it was definitely making it worse.

Fighting Diablo right now was just not gonna work, not when he was more fire-resistant than fireproof. The skeleton turned its head toward Reggie, jaw open way wider than a jaw was supposed to.

…a’ight.

So, Reggie went up.

Without a moment to waste, Blushift hit the tower's face at a dead sprint.

Feet planted, the speedster’s first step took him several floors up, speed and momentum carrying the rest of the way up the glass as gravity refused to pull him down. A blue streak made his way higher and higher, a straight lightning bolt aiming for the one spot of broken glass high up on his path. The flaming skeleton hadn’t even finished breathing its orange anger out before Reggie was already twice his height and on the thirtieth floor, a shattered window his entrance point.

A wall of black smoke met him, the air oily and thick as Vought’s people screamed all around him in cubicles and offices; paralyzed by the heat. Reggie glanced around him, mouth suddenly dry in a way that had very little to do with the actual heat.

“A-!” A guy in a suit scrambled back at the sight of Reggie, pure shock written all over his face before he recognized him. All of a sudden, several dozen wide eyes and open mouths were suddenly screaming his way. “A-Train!”

“Hey. Hey, look at me.” Reggie didn’t even bother correcting them, two gloved fingers pointed at the Vought employee in front of him. Those two were enough to get the man’s attention, his pupils sluggish even as they managed to follow Reggie’s hand. “How long you been breathing that in?”

"I…” The worker shook his head slow. “The alarm, the alarm went —"

"That's not what I asked, bruh.” He almost tapped his foot, impatience bit back as Reggie clipped his words. “How long?"

“T-three minutes? Four?”

Reggie nodded and glanced around, wincing past the smoke filling the space as he made a quick decision. “Be right back.” A handful of blinks was all it took for Reggie to make good work on that promise; one quick circuit of the floor had him standing right back where he stood. 

Not… not the worst. The thirtieth still mostly safe, compared to the lower floors at least, and most of the workers had already made their way close to one of the rear stairs. 

That still only made up one floor, though. 

And that one floor already had a good one-fifty people still screaming their lungs out. Cool.

“Alright, everybody look my way.”

They did.

“If you hurt or can’t breathe or you can’t move on your own right now, raise your hand.”

They did.

“...I’mma repeat this one more time.” Reggie narrowed his eyes. “If you hurt or can’t breathe or you can’t move on your own, raise your hand. If you got two working legs, I better not see that arm high.”

Four-fifths of those hands vanished.

“That’s what I thought.” Reggie’s gaze dropped to the man in front of him, clearly too much smoke in his system for him to do much of anything. “Okay…” One arm under his knees, Reggie picked the guy up with a sigh. “This gonna feel like a rollercoater for about a couple seconds and then you’re gonna be fine. Just…”

Reggie closed his eyes at what was probably gonna happen next. “Just try not to throw up on me.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“Godda-”

Reggie bit back the curse as he barely dodged vomit, another mouthful of the stuff nearly adding to the small mosaic staining the black of his costume.

It’s fine. Whatever. He set the retching woman down on the curb outside of Vought Tower next to a man still coughing up something black as emergency services came to take over another group from him.

“Thank you!” A salute from an EMT had him twitching, a couple cops following right after in a way he wasn’t sure how to deal with. “Thank you, A-Train!”

Not my name. The words didn’t even have the chance to leave his lips before he was already gone, loading door at the back of Vought Tower ripped open to make space for hundreds more running for safety.

Up the south stairwell, he dodged dozens running down on their own as he took it eight flights at a go — a bolt of blue in the periphery of so many eyes too scared to focus on the wind rushing the opposite direction. Everything above floor thirty was doing decent, a simple check upstairs showing no glass broken and no real reason to panic with the vents doing their best to filter the air. Everything below that needed a little more hands-on work but it was only by the time he got to the single digits that things really started getting worse to look at. 

First three floors were either empty or… a write-off.

Especially after the thing outside threw something at the base of the north side of the building, a huge chunk of the lobby going from half-baked oven to a Catholic Hell.

He couldn’t focus on that so he put his attention where he could.

That meant over a hundred people still stuck on floors four through twelve made it out in his arms in the next three minutes, so many more than that only needing simple directions and a cleared path to safety.

Most of them were just doing what scared people did in fires — or any emergency really — aka sitting down somewhere they hoped was safe and waiting it out. A bad move to make but he understood the instinct. Either way, Reggie kept finding more people all over the place; supply closers, bathrooms, and under desks.

Not the best places, but… instinct, right?

“Reg…”

Another tone of voice he didn’t like. “What is it now, Nate?”

“Your guy’s still growing.”

“He’s what?”

“Almost twice the size since you started, lil bro.”

Twice the size… The guy had already been big enough to grab cars and throw them before. Hell am I supposed to do about twice the size? Especially considering that made the fire bastard tall enough to reach some of the higher floors, like up to the mid-twenties. Where the hell is Homelander? 

“How bout you give me something I can work with, Nate?” he was already in and out again, fast enough that the last person he carried only had a moment to blink before they were breathing open air. “Talk to me.”

“Uhhhh…” Some more clicking sounded off. “I’m getting something off the service stair on the southeast corner of the twelfth floor. Somebody’s trying to jump.”

“Southeast.” He was already there. “Got it.”

The southeast was worse, considering it ran right past the elevator bank and those shafts were probably closer to chimneys than anything else by now; all the heat from the lobby climbing up the building. Sprinklers were still going strong all over but all that did was turn the whole floor into a steam room, water coming apart as soon as it hit hot air.

Reggie went through it at a jog, one hand over his forehead, because running full-speed through steam and wet floors was a recipe for disaster.

“Whoa!” He saw her before she saw him, a woman with an ID badge standing at a window she’d broken herself with the fire extinguisher at her feet, one leg already out. “Hey, hey!”

By the time she turned her head, she was already out and screaming at the top of her lungs.

Reggie caught her sixty feet down, his body twisting and turning as he held her tight and did his best to find a place to land. His knees took all the impact, the ground shattering and tearing beneath him as he skid; a planter going sky-high by the time he came to a stop.

She was still screaming though.

"Hey, hey, hey, you’re good. You’re good. Look, look at me… " Reggie got her upright, hands on both her shoulders as he looked into a pair of panicked blue eyes. "You're on the ground. That's the ground. Feel that?"

"I couldn-” She nodded at his words. “The hallway… I—"

"Hey, mama, you did what you had to." A hand between her shoulder blades sent her off to the EMTs at the corner. "Now, go that way and don't stop."

"Reg."

“Nate, this better not be some bullshit again.”

“...I…” There was something new sitting under his voice that Reggie didn’t like. "I can’t promise that 'cause... there's another one."

"Another what?"

“Another supe fight out in Queens.” Nate clicked away on that keyboard. “We lookin’ at multiple supes and it’s… it’s a lot of noise, man. Four different livestreams and another Stormfront sighting.”

Stormfront… Reggie’s attention snapped back to Vought, first fourteen floors venting smoke out of dozens of windows and sixty-eight more floors on top of that he hadn’t even touched yet.

“...yeah, fuck that.”

“Reg—”

“Nate, I got a two-hundred foot tall skeleton man with big ass horns and there’s—” He counted as best he could in his head. “There’s still thousands of people in this building. Get somebody else on that. Call whoever, the goddamn Coast Guard, man. I can’t leave.”

His big brother was quiet in his ear for a second. “Alright, man.”

Glass popped somewhere above Reggie, his eyes up and wide as the twentieth floor went orange behind the windows.