Chapter 9

Whoops looks like I never posted Chapter 9, so I've got two new chapters here.

Chapter 9

It was Jigsaw that was the first through the door at the penthouse suite. He hadn’t been home in a couple of days, and it was glad to see the place had been nearly as he had left it. He quickly found his seat around the giant table in the middle of the room and waited for the others to arrive. He looked down at where his left hand was supposed to be, it was still back in Vicki’s purse, at this far of a distance he couldn’t feel his own hand, it was very disconcerting. Vibrator was the second to come through the door, he had woken up with a splitting headache but was glad to be out of there. He ran to the fridge and grabbed a bag of ice, he then quickly went to relieve himself in the bathroom. Vortex came third with Leo shortly behind him. When they closed the door Leo let out a loud yell, “Graaaaah!” He quickly found his seat as did Vortex and they sat down. Leo was the first to talk, “Well Jigsaw, I hope you’re happy! We saved you, but now our lives have become a lot more complicated.”
“Hey, let’s lay off on the blame here, at least we got out of there, the odds were stacked against us.”
Leo rubbed his face then more calmly began again, “Well at least you have information on them all, what do they call themselves?”
“The Fabulous Five.”
“Five? But there were six.”
“Yeah the bitch that has my hand is just a manager, as far as I can tell she has no powers.”
“What of the others, are they actually any threat should we come upon them again?”
“The only one I’d fear is Percy, he’s the one that convince people to do things they don’t want to do.”
“So why is he with those losers?”
“I don’t know, he’s pretty reserved for having such amazing powers, it’s almost like he doesn’t really care about them.”
“Well at any rate, I hadn’t ever expected seeing Harold again.”
“What is the story there if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Him and I were buddies, we both worked dead end office jobs, we met through a mutual friend named Johnny. When I first met Harold he couldn’t stay awake to save his own life. Then one day he doesn’t come to lunch, we call his place and there’s no answer, we figure he’s asleep but after a couple of days of hearing nothing from him we start to get worried, then Johnny gets a letter saying he’s in China or some sort of Oriental country and we never see him again, I was actually surprised to him so awake, I almost didn’t recognize him. A couple days after getting the letter I happen to find I have powers myself and I got rich and well, you know all that stuff.”
“Right, so uh, someone should check on Vibrator, make sure he’s alright.”
“I’ll do it,” replied Vortex who had been stoicly silent the whole time. He gets out of his chair and heads to the bathroom, he lightly knocks on the door and asks Vibrator if he’s alright.
“So anyways,” says Jigsaw turning the attention back to himself, “Who was this Johnny guy?”
“Just a friend, I haven’t seen him in some time either.”
Leo looks over to notice Vortex now banging louder on the door. “What’s up?”
“Vibrator isn’t answering.”
“Just open it then.”
“It’s locked.”
Leo looks towards Jigsaw, “Wanna lend your hand?”
“Fine,” says Jigsaw as he gets out of his seat and heads for the door. As he got there his remaining hand came off and fell to the floor, it slid under the door and jumped up opening the door from inside. As the door opened both Vortex and Jigsaw let out an audible gasp. The wall opposite them was missing, a clean cut done in a circle, it was large enough to take the bathtub out if someone wanted. Vibrator was no where to be found. “Uh, Leo, you better come take a look at this.”
“Alright,” said Leo as he got out of his seat, “I’m on my Waugh!” He let out a gasping yelp.
Vortex and Jigsaw turned to see Leo down on all fours with man that looked like a poor mans Indiana Jones who had a whip wrapped around Leo’s neck and had his boot pushing down on Leo’s back. The Man gave a smile then laughed and said to the two standing in the doorway, “Don’t worry guys, we only need this guy, and your buddy in the bathroom, we don’t have any use for either of you.”
“Son of a…” Jigsaw trailed off, his hand now back on his arm, he started for the man with the whip when a loud wrenching noise could be heard from in the bathroom. Vortex looked a moment too late as the bathroom sink collided with his head, properly knocking him down and unconscious. Jigsaw turned back to see what had happened when the man pulled another whip out with his other hand and cracked the end of it on the side of Jigsaw’s head, knocking him to the ground and unconscious as well. A sadistic looking fellow walked into the room holding the unconscious body of Vibrator over his shoulder. He was wearing a hunter’s outfit and his arms seemed to be melting. His left arm suddenly solidified and became a silver spike, he raised it when the man yelled for him to stop.
“Hunt! No killing! We’ve already drawn enough attention with your hole in the wall. Now let’s hurry and get out of here, we have what we came for.”
“I could kill you and them and our Boss wouldn’t care.”
“You know it gives me great comfort to know you mean what you say and that I can run away faster then you can attack.”
“Fine Bullwhip, looks like you’ve choked out your boy there.”
“Yeah I sure have, but of all people, I really didn’t expect it to be him.” Bullwhip grabbed Leo’s body and slung him over his shoulder. The two of them left out the front door.

Chapter 10

(After a long hiatus, I've begun work on my novel again)

Steve was just going to the store for his mother, bread, milk, eggs, that's all he needed to get, oh yes, and a bag of ice. Well Steve never would have thought getting a bag of ice would have such dire consequences. Steve opened the door to the ice box only to find a body lying across the ice. "Excuse me," said Steve to the masked man, "Could you purchance get me a bag of ice which is underneath you."
The masked man clearly had not realized where he was and this was the first thing he had heard since waking up, he looked at the kid's face and did the only thing he thought to do in that situation, he flexed his mind. To Vortex's dismay however, doing so in close proximity resulted in his clothes being covered in vomit. It was at this point Jigsaw came walking out of the store, only to find a sick kid lying on the ground and Vortex slowly making his way out of the ice cooler, covered in vomit. "Oh good, you've awaken, I didn't know what to do for you since you were knocked out from that sink, but I thought ice would help."
"So you dumped me in an ice cooler?"
"Pretty keen don't you think?"
Vortex stepped over the body of Steve strewn out on the black top and walked with Jigsaw who had taken out and was nibbling on a Charleston Chew. "So what is our next move?"
"Well our buddies were taken, and there's no sign of them. So I thought, we may need some help."
"Some help? But who would we get help from?"
"Well... That's where I thought we may need some gifts, so I bought a cake."
"You don't mean..."

Harold was the last to wake up in the infirmary. Vicki was overlooking his injuries as he woke up, "Uh, what happened."
"We had a bit of a tussle, it was alright though, not much damage, everyone's coming out of it fine, you're the last to wake up but I think it's more so cause you haven't been getting enough sleep lately."
"Oh, well what are we up to now then, are we pursuing those guys who came in?"
"No, I've scheduled everyone in for some much needed R&R. So there's not much you can do but to do that, you know you can't get out of my scheduling."
"That's why you're the Boss." He chuckled.
"So I've been meaning to ask you," Vicki said as Harold got to his feet, "What's the link between you and this Leo fellow."
"It's all about my past, I guess I haven't told you the whole story have I?"
"No, not as much."
"Well it starts back in college. I was tired all the time back then."
"You? Tired?"
"Yeah I know, hard to believe isn't it, but I had a boring job, a couple of friends and not much else to my life. But then one day I found the magic tea bag of power and I got my powers from that. Anyways, back in those days, I had two best friends, we would always go out to lunch and have parties and play video games and all that. Well right around the time I got my powers, Leo Richmond, one of the two guys started getting a little shady, he was telling us about all the things he would do once he had a lot of money, and that for him it was coming soon. We didn't think much of it until one day he actually won the lottery and we never saw him again, well that is I never saw him again until he came and attacked us."
"That is so interesting. What ever happened to the other friend?"
"I don't know, his name was Johnny Victor, I had gotten my hyper powers and had met Percy shortly after that, Percy had met Johnny once or twice before Johnny went on a business meeting to Spain, he wrote me a letter about a month later saying he had found his life calling being a conquistador and that he wasn't coming back any time soon. I wrote him a couple of letters after that but he never replied again."
"A Bull fighter huh?"
"Guess so."


When you're used to waking up on the best beds money can buy, waking up on the cold hard ground can be awfully frightening. Leo found that out first hand, he woke up to feel hard rock beneath him and bolted to his feet in a state of shock.
"Good you're awake."
Leo turned to look where the voice was coming from, and it was from a man sitting in chair behind some iron bars. It took Leo a second or two to realize who it was.
"Johnny?"
"Right you are there Leo, who woulda thunk that you winning the lottery wasn't just luck eh?"
"What on earth are you doing? Why do you have my locked up? Who you working for?"
"Now now there champ, calm down, it'll all come in time, you just give it time. All you really need to know is my boss is in need of your power and so I was sent to bring you in, I couldn't believe it was really you though, I thought I'd never see you again."
"What happened to you?"
"What happened to me? What happened to you, you just bolted when you got your money, left me and Harry all by our lonesomes, because of you I had to find something to do with my life, a new direction, and that's when I found Bull fighting. I became a full fledged conquistador, and I was damn good too, then you know how it gets you fall in with the wrong crowd and before you know you're working for an evil mastermind bent on world domination."
"No, I don't know what that feels like."
"Sure you do, all your money has gone to your head, you're soft now Leo, look, I just wanted to tell you that you better do what my boss says otherwise your life will be ruined. That's all, he has one of your buddies too, just in case you decide not to help him out, luckily he doesn't know I used to be one of your buddies, or else I'd be in trouble too. Good thing he wouldn't believe you if you said anything. But look, as I said, just do what he tells you and you'll be safe and sound, you got it?"
"Yeah, I got it, hey Johnny, it's good to see you."
"Yeah Yeah, he'll be in to see you in a little bit."
And so Leo waited and wondered what was going to happen to him.