Gx the Space Gremlin/Fastball Special

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

"Ready or not, here I come!"  Gx the Space Gremlin yelled to his teammates, hoping they were ready to take advantage as he scampered around the expansive lobby of the office building with infuriating swiftness, bounding from a potted plant to launch into a short run across the wall, landing on the receptionist's desk then springing up to the chandelier before flipping down into the mass of Freakshow whose fire he was drawing.  He landed with pinpoint precision on the shoulders of one of the Mad Freaks in the middle of the rampaging group and with a quick snicker-snakt of his slicers removed the electrical prongs from the neighboring Stunner that had been such a nuisance the whole fight.  Before his landing point could drop his shotgun and try to throw the gremlin off, Gx hopped and pistoned his feet off his head, knocking him out as he sprang back out of the melee, hurling a handful of electrified caltrops behind him.  Skidding as he hit the floor, he spun about on all fours, tail whipping around above him, to watch the Freaks jerking about trying to avoid the charged spikes.

Up above him two Kheldians in their nova forms, one dark and one light, zipped through the air hurling powerful bolts of Kheldian and Nictus energy from their excitedly wriggling tentacles down into the scrambling Freaks, sending several more into unconsciousness.  Gx hooted victoriously as the Freak numbers dwindled and leapt back into the fray, thudding knees first into an already toppling Slicer and flailing fists across his face as he rode him down.  When they hit the ground, Gx rolled through a space the caltrops had been scattered from in the chaos and pressed off the ground on his palms to shoot feet-first into the chin of the last standing lieutenant of the Freakshow raiding party, taking him quickly out of the action.  Flipping to land on his feet, Gx thrust both hands in the air and cheered, and kept his hands raised to offer high-fives to the two Novas as they drifted down from the ceiling.

With simultaneous explosions of dark and light energy, the two alien shapes metamorphosed into grinning human children who eagerly slapped Gx's palms, then each other's.  The Peacebringer wore a colorful, ornate suit of red and yellow, while the Warshade wore purple and had a huge "A" emblazoned across her chest.  They were two fellow Misfits, the 9-year-olds Bright Dawn and Awesome Kid.

"That was great!" cheered Anne.  "We were--"

Alex interrupted on cue: "AWESOME.  But Neb thinks you should've skipped the 'trops, it made them try to scatter before we had our blasts lined up."

Gx looked at Awesome Kid and directed a raspberry at her, or more accurately at her Nictus symbiont.

Alex scowled and rubbed her face on her sleeve, "Hey, don't splatter the messenger."

Anne grinned, "Yeah, say it don't spray it."

Gx had just opened his mouth to defend himself when the ground shook ominously.  The three of them went still and looked around the lobby for the source of the vibration, only to hear it come a second time and then a third in quick succession, growing louder.  Again and again the ground shook, and an angry cackle reached their ears from just outside the building.  The three of them exchanged worried glances, then yelped in unison as they realized what was incoming, "TANK!"

On cue, a hulking Noise Tank stomped into view out front of the building and turned to face them, and a wave of sound thrummed from his enormous shoulder-mounted speakers to smash through the large panes of glass in the entryway.  Jagged shards of shattered glass shot through the air towards the trio of Misfits.  Gx and Alex bolted for cover into the area behind the receptionist's desk, while Anne turned her back to the glass, exploded with light and reformed into her dwarf form, providing additional cover for them as the storm of glass tinked uselessly off of her glowing carapace.

The Noise Tank smashed through what was left of the entryway and laughed, "Where's the kiddos givin' my boys trouble?  C'mon, I wanna see what you can do!"  After issuing his challenge, he twisted a knob on the side of his cyborg body, and a low drone began to pulse from his speakers.  Anne whirled back to face him and didn't wait, charging to meet the Tank with thundering footsteps of her own.  As she neared, however, the slams of her feet came further and further between -- he was putting out some kind of sonic barrier that kept her from closing the distance, buffeted her with sonic waves that pushed her back even as she charged.  The tile of the floor tore beneath her feet as she got within ten feet of him and tried to push closer, and then she saw what he was carrying in the hand that wasn't an enormous steel claw.

The Tank brought a massive Quantum Rifle to bear, though in his hand it might as well have been a pop-gun.  Nevertheless it was unmistakable, and Anne twisted around to run back the way she'd come.  The force of the sonic barrier's pulses threw her off-balance and she stumbled as she ran, propelled by the barrier faster than her feet were going.  She heard Gx and Alex yell out to her and tried to get up, then the scream of the rifle behind her drowned out their voices and she cried out and slammed to the ground, losing her control over her shape and reverting to her own human form.  "Aww, did the little girly get a boo-boo?!" roared the Tank in merciless glee as the rifle charged again.  Anne got back to her feet and whirled around with a startled, angry look, and started to summon Kheldian energy into her hands but was interrupted as a swirling vortex opened beneath her feet and she plummeted into the floor, only to drop out of the air and land roughly on her rear end on the floor behind the receptionist's desk next to Gx and Alex.

"Are you okay?" Gx alternated between clutching the top of the desk to peer over and looking back worriedly to Anne.

She nodded.  "It was way worse than a tickle, but it hurt Mirzam a lot more than me.  We'll be okay in a minute."

Gx nodded, then barked "My turn!" as he yanked on the edge of the desk to launch himself over and into the air.  As he flipped through the air he rummaged in the pouches of the tactical bandolier he wore under his bright blue leather jacket with both hands, and as he landed on an elaborate, abstract metal statue in the center of the lobby he whipped his hands out to brandish several sharp shuriken between his fingers.  With an instant to spare he leapt away as the burst of energy collided with the top of the statue, and spun as he descended, throwing the metal stars one after another at the Tank in an attempt to sabotage the speakers on either shoulder.  It proved fruitless however, as the sonic repulsion field slowed the stars so much that they fell uselessly to the ground several feet from him long after they should have made contact.

"Nice try, squirt!  I can do that TOO!"  The Tank laughed hatefully and swung his massive cybernetic claw through the air, a spring-loaded KCHUNK! sounding as he launched a huge whirling sickle-like blade from it.

Gx yelped in surprise and launched into the air, backflipping back to the safety of the reception area behind which the girls crouched as the blade slammed into the ground, ringing out a tone the gremlin felt in his teeth with the vibrations of its impact.  Panting nervously -- his hyperanalytic neural subnet had almost miscalculated the trajectory of the incoming blade, failing until the last instant of calculation to factor in the additional speed the repulsion pulses provided -- Gx slumped down with his back against the desk and looked from Anne to Alex, "This guy's a meanie."

Alex didn't wait an instant, leaping up and transforming once again into her nova form before gravity could pull her back down, and shot up to the ceiling to use the chandelier for cover.  She darted out to either side, tails whipping towards the Tank and hurling churning bolts of Nictus energy down towards him from on high.  Each time the bolt streamed towards him with precise aim, but as it hit the sonic field he was generating even her entropic bolts were dispersed into a thin purple haze that seemed to irritate the Tank as it finally settled over him, but did little to damage or disrupt him.  "Bad squidling!  Go to your room, hahaha!"  He blasted the chandelier to smithereens with a wide-spread burst from the Quantum rifle and chased her back into hiding with a follow-up fusillade.

Alex reverted to her human body as she dropped down behind the desk and huddled down next to Gx and Anne, looking from one to the other.  "Neb says we concur with Gx."  She nodded firmly to punctuate her assessment.  "What are we going to do with this guy?"

Anne dared to peek over the desk, the ducked down as another huge sickle-rang shot inches above her head and embedded itself in the wall past the desk, the crunching thud it made giving them all a shudder.  "We have to smash his sound things, otherwise we can't get close enough to hurt him and can't get away fast enough if he starts shooting at us!"

"I tried, but it slowed my ninja stars too much!"  Gx sounded frustrated, but nevertheless eager to find a way to beat the bad guy.  "I need a speed boost so I can hit!"^[1]

Alex chewed her lip in thought, "'Cos you can't throw them that hard!  You'd have to be real strong to get anything moving fast enough that it'll still do some damage when it gets all the way through to him..."

Anne and Alex exchanged glances over Gx's head, realization dawning.  They both looked down at the space gremlin.

"...NO!" he yelped, as he realized exactly what they were thinking, and scampered away to the opposite side of their safe zone, "You always spike me, and it hurts!"

Anne frowned, "I never have!"

Alex piped up defensively, "I've been practicing!  I'm a lot better now, I promise!  Neb'll tell me when to let go so that doesn't happen again!"

Gx shook his head vigorously, "Nuh-uh!  You guys throw like girls!"  They exchanged glances again and gave him a duh look.  "You know what I MEAN!"  Gx huffed and crossed his arms defiantly.

Anne scooted across the floor towards him, "Gx, have you got a better idea?"  An energy bolt from the Quantum rifle tore through the lobby and seared the wall above where Gx huddled.

He thought long and hard, trying to come up with any other option, but he was drawing a blank.  Reluctantly he sighed and shook his head.

Alex double-pumped her fists, rubbed her hands together and grinned.  "We've gotta make two goes, he's got one on each shoulder.  Anne already ate a blast, me and Neb'll try to distract him this time and hopefully you guys can get him before we get blasted!"

Anne shot her a look.  "Okay, but be careful.  And be ready after we go, if one of them's still going it'll probably propel him like it did me when I tried to get away, so he'll be coming in fast."

Gx rubbed his face and tried to psyche himself up.  He really wasn't thrilled with this idea but all their usual options were turning out to be useless.  Alex and Anne exploded once again into their hulking dwarf forms, earning a renewed fit of cackling from the Noise Tank as he saw them both rising up above the desk.  Alex leapt up and waved her arms and charged right through the desk, running to the side to draw the Quantum rifle fire away from Anne.  The Tank obliged, and Alex ducked behind a pillar to protect herself from the first blast, then as she came back into view and the rifle charged again, she wormholed well across the lobby and materialized on the sidewalk outside, roaring to reacquire his attention.

Meanwhile, behind the desk, Anne stooped down and laid one massive lobster-like clawed hand against the ground in front of Gx.  "C'mon, we gotta be quick or Alex is gonna get fried!"  Gx looked hesitantly at her hand, then mustered his courage and leapt on, holding onto her thumb to brace himself as she rose and lifted him.  He huddled down in her palm into a tight little ball, and Anne began to stomp around in place, turning and turning and building speed, holding her arm out and turning it.  As the speed of her turning increased, Gx felt himself pressed into her palm by the speed and held his breath, tensing.  As soon as Alex materialized outside and the Tank turned his back to the other two, Anne let out a loud grunt and hurled Gx with all her dwarf form's might right at the Tank.

Gx pumped his legs to add force to his launch, then tucked his legs back up into a tight ball as he soared across the lobby far faster than he could propel himself.  As he breached the Noise Tank's sonic barrier, he felt himself begin to slow at once.  Instead of cutting through air it felt as if he were gliding through gelatin, but he was moving far faster than his shuriken had been able to thanks to the force of Anne's throw.  As he closed on the distracted Noise Tank, he snapped his body out into a straight line, extended his fists forward and popped out his foot-long razor-edged interface slicers from between his knuckles.

Gx SMASHED through the speaker arrangement on the Tank's right shoulder from behind, a shower of sparks and debris exploding around him and into the Tank's face, eliciting a cry of outrage and anger from the Tank, who was momentarily too distracted by his damage to take a shot at either Kheldian. And as Anne had predicted, as soon as he passed through to the other side of the Tank, the repulsion field was no longer fighting him but propelling him, launching him even faster towards the waiting Awesome Kid, who put up both enormous hands excitedly in a way that would in no way intercept his flight.  Gx began to flail worriedly in mid-air, but Alex realized her bad positioning an instant before disaster and snagged Gx out of the air, clutching him to her stomach like a goalie catching a soccer ball.

"See, was that so bad!!" dwarf Alex asked chipperly, before hefting Gx up to her shoulder in one of her hands and...turning to stomp across the street?

"That wasn't the part I was worried about!...what are you doing?"  Inside, Anne had taken over distraction duties, throwing chairs and pieces of the smashed receptionist desk at the Tank.  It looked like he was biting.

"Getting a running start, duh!  Spinning like that just makes me sick."  Gx held on for dear life as Alex began to stomp back towards the office building lobby.  "Just tell me when we get close, okay?"

"What do you mean tell--ALEX!  Can you even SEE right now?!"

Gx's jaw went slack for an instant before Alex began chortling delightedly and he realized the girl, blind without the aid of her former Nictus symbiont, was just toying with him.  Rather than answer his question, as she picked up speed charging across the street Alex released a loud bellow, almost a war cry: "LOBSTERHINOCTO-PUUULT!!"  When she neared the edge of the repulsion field she thrust her arm forward and launched Gx back the way he'd come, this time with a pass over the Noise Tank's intact shoulder apparatus.

Gx flinched reflexively, half expecting her to overextend her arm and send him hurtling into the sidewalk, but this time she nailed it.  Throwing him so close to the edge of the field, already weakened by the loss of one bank of emitters, meant he lost a lot less speed before breaching it and he rocketed almost unslowed slicers-first through the second, letting out a victorious whoop as the speakers exploded around him and the pulsing hum was silenced utterly.

Gx flipped in mid-air and twisted around as he came down, the natural claws of his hands and feet skittering for purchase on the tile.  Without wasting a second, as Anne and Alex charged in, he scampered forward, sprang up and with a series of slashes turned the Quantum rifle into so much scrap right in the Tank's hand.  After that, clean-up was a cinch, and moments later the formerly well-equipped Tank was off to the Zig with the rest of his crew.

Anne & Alex returned to their human forms and another round of high fives and celebratory hugs were traded among the trio.  Gx jumped around excitedly until his heart stopped racing from being thrown around in their crazy game of catch, then looked between the girls, who grinned at him expectantly.

"Okay...I wanna do that again!"