5 The Mob Boss

I scrambled back from the ledge as silently as I could.

He was going to kill children?

It was times like this when I wished that one of the things I had built was a radio set, that way I could have just sent a message to the PHA. As it stood, I was completely on my own.

I hadn't built myself a utility belt yet, though the ideas I had for such a thing were immense, right down to compartments that were bigger on the inside, but I did have a couple of extra items stowed away in my hoodie pocket.

After building my gauntlet there were a few leftover parts that had allowed me to throw together a rudimentary stun baton. That's all it really was. A big stick with a taser on the end.

Against someone like Phet, it would be useless, but against the countless mooks of the Mob, it would no doubt prove incredibly effective.

If I'd thrown together a radio instead I would have been able to alert the real heroes about the danger, which was apparently the Coventry Mob hunting down and murdering children.

Well, that seemed to be the case anyway. A part of me couldn't believe it. Phet was a gangster, sure, and if a kid got in his way somehow then I had no doubt that lethal force was something he would consider using. But to hunt kids down to murder them? It seemed barbaric on levels that I'd never expected.

I could see why my Mum had always wanted me to stick to the main quarter.

In any case, what was I supposed to do here? With no radio to call for backup and no idea where the closest radio was, I didn't have many options available to me. It was a major oversight on my part, and if I was ever going to do something like this again it was one that I was never going to repeat.

Phet barked an order, one I couldn't make out now that I had backed away from the ledge, so I carefully snuck forward.

The group of gangers, around ten in total, had started moving south and past my building.

In all honesty, I was out of time to consider what I was going to do. I was going to have to do something now, or I was going to have to let them go and get about their business… which was apparently killing kids.

If I let that happen there was no way that I'd be able to live with myself.

Even if I couldn't completely incapacitate Phet, I'd be able to distract him and his minions to the degree that they'd hopefully miss their window to murder whatever children they were hunting down. Sure, it would put me in mortal danger, but at least then I'd be able to live with a clear conscience… if I lived at all.

I crept back over the roof of the theater, making sure that I avoided the glass that was scattered across its surface, and ducked back down the ladder into the building.

My gauntlet had a wide beam setting that would emit a pulse of electrical power strong enough to disrupt the neural pathways of a normal human, causing them to become incapacitated for a short while.

It likely wouldn't work on Phet, who had his biology bulked up by his ever-present flow of drugs, but it would be enough to take out the mooks that were surrounding him. I'd have a better chance of escaping if it were just one Powered that I had to worry about.

I dipped out of the hole in the wall and back into the alleyway. I snuck to the corner and risked peeking my head out, the group was still suantering down the street, weapons in hand. Just in the effective range of my gauntlet.

I twisted the dial that surrounded the emitter in the palm of the gauntlet until it clicked into the wide beam setting and then let a charge grow throughout the diodes.

I couldn't turn back now.

I ducked back behind the wall and stuck my hand out, palm facing the direction of the gangsters that had walked past, and discharged my first attack.

A flash of light erupted from the center of my gauntlet, with a force so powerful it felt like my arm was going to be wrenched out of its socket.

But I got the result I was looking for as I heard the bodies of the gangsters collapse to the ground.

I peeked out around the corner once again and was surprised to see that Phet had been brought down to his knees by the attack. Not knocked out, of course, but he had been affected all the same.

Unfortunately for me, my gauntlet's solar cells only had enough juice in it for one attack like that. Any other strike I used throughout the night would feel more like a tickle in comparison to the blast that I'd just delivered.

"What the bloody hell was that?" Phet mumbled, shaking his head slightly. "Can't bloody think straight…"

Okay, so my gauntlet's attack might have been a little bit harder than I thought on the short Powered. I couldn't help the grin that came over my face at that. But I wasn't out of the danger zone just yet.

Phet was bad news, one of the most powerful Powereds the community had to offer, and if a blast like that could completely take him out then people would be blasting him all the time.

No, even before my very eyes I could see the tubes that were connected to his neck pouring more of his crafter made drugs into his system, no doubt boosting his healing factor to unscramble the damage that my gauntlet had done.

Phet turned.

His eyes met mine and turned steely cold.

He got up from his crouched position, unsteady at first, but getting stronger every second.

I'd hung around too long, and now he'd spotted me.