Striding through the glass doors of the pizzeria, the bell jingles and few people turn their heads. There aren’t many patrons being served at the moment; a handful of groups sitting around a four seated table, all with varying numbers in their groups.

Although, there’s one or two loners. It’s not much of a surprise to see most of the chairs are empty, the place is pretty much established in a cold, deserted area and likely doesn’t have such a good health rating if that smell is what I think it is.

These patrons are more than likely to be regulars, here since the start and thereby immune or impervious to the stench leaking out from back in the kitchen.

It has all the regular things you’d see in such an establishment, except, not as maintained. For example, they’ve got a fridge for refreshments where anyone can walk up to and purchase the items they need or have the waiter bring it to them.

But the fridge has next to nothing in it. It’s got the shining logo of the energy drink corporation that sold it out but ironically none of said energy drink; just water and what looks like someone’s half eaten sandwich.

Their display for pastries is also very empty and in a strange manner, it’s far cleaner than the rest of the Pizzeria.

The establishment has certainly been falling on hard times, I’m not sure if this is because they won’t pay Rey and his people, and Rey’s taken to hurting their market, or if this is just one of those grooves businesses fall into when they’re just about dying.

Either way, the debt still stands and with the bell announcing our entrance, we have the attention of half the patrons with the glaring yellow we wear. Of course, most eyes are on Rex, he looks pretty silly in that bright yellow jacket.

The waiter – or perhaps the owner himself by the middle-aged weary look on him – walks up to us, notebook and pen in hand.

“Hello gentlemen.” He greets. Up close the man falls around the same height as I, it’s a bit encouraging.

Looking up to Rex he smears a grin across his face like he’s about to hear the silliest joke ever as he asks, “What brings you here today?”

Rex, to his credit, does not falter in delivering his line. “Are you Ramon?”

“Ah yes, yes I am.”

Tilting his head Rex looks as sceptical as I, “You’re the owner of this establishment? Not the waiter?”

Ramon smiles, spreading his arms wide as if to say ‘It is I’

Rex nods, “Alright, well, you should know why we’re here.”

“How could I? I can’t read minds, or can I? I’m not sure yet, the latest age for the meta gene to bloom is seventy and I’m at a healthy fifty.”

I can’t help but chuckle at the joke, for the most part I can relate immensely to that thinking; clinging onto statistics while hoping that sometime in my future, when I’m older I’d be able to handle my powers and give Neil the beating he so deserves.

Turns out I didn’t really need to wait, Steve helped me out dearly on that front, although, now I’ll never get to know if it would have happened, if I could have controlled these powers at an older age better than I could when I was young.

“Ahhh, he gets it!” Ramon cheers, his elderly, wrinkled grin in place.

Rex gives me a disapproving look causing me to reel.

Is he…is he trying to say he’s disappointed, the guy who couldn’t even speak to his damn cousin? Why I oughta-

“We’re here for the tax, you owe Rey and by extension, Invincibill five months of unpaid tax.” Rex declares, by now most of the patrons are watching our interaction at the edge of their seats.

Leaning forward and over to compensate for the height difference, Rex says to the grinning mans face, “Fork it up already old man.”

Now the atmosphere begins to get stuffy. The man’s grin doesn’t seem so hearty any longer.

“What are such young and promising young men like you doing in a gang, hm?” He starts, not inching back one bit despite Rex breaching his personal space. With his eyes wide open he speaks as though there isn’t another person’s face in his right now.

“Come work for me, you’ll make honest, clean and good money. Every pay check will give you a soothing feeling, I can guarantee it!” He says, snapping his fingers excitedly.

Rex straightens up after an embarrassingly long time of being ignored and hisses, “Don’t play games damn it! I don’t want to have to hurt you!” Whipping out his gun and pulling back the slide he heaves, heavy unequal breathes.

An action that causes more than a few terrified screams from our unwilling audience.

Aw shit, here we go again, he’s spiralling.

Must be something in their blood, Rey and Rex. The two just seem to go off the handle at the slightest thing.

“Rex, relax.” I try to calm him down, tapping his hand but he shoves me away almost immediately.

“Shut up! This is it; this is what you got me to sign up for, Vern!”

Ramon chuckles, “I don’t want to have to hurt you either, dear boy. I think we can come to a compromise since we have such common values.”

This man must be either really prepared for death or is actually as dangerous as the list implies.

“Fine then,” Rex yells, “You made your choice.”

In the moment he raises his gun to aim it at the old man my eyes widen terribly as I get my answer in mere moments.

Ramon’s eyes begin to glow, spark even. Perhaps it’s a side effect of my powers but everything seems to move slowly; the fall of Ramon’s cherry smile, the rise of Rex’s hand and the electricity arching through the air from Ramon’s eyes.

And then the slow effect stops.

In a clean, swift and precise movement Ramon ducks under Rex’s raise arm and violently palms his chest. Electricity burst out violently through his palm and courses into Rex, blasting him out the glass door at speed terrifying, deathly speed.

“Shit!” I involuntarily yell.

Ramon, eyes still glowing yellow and with power turns to me, “Shit…is right.”

***

Austin’s yelling over Rex’s certainly limp and unconscious, if not dead body doesn’t make my predicament any easier.

Ramon has turned on me, his eyes glowing gold and all elderly mirth and calm has been thrown out the Pizzeria along with Rex’s body.

He takes a step toward me, blocking my view of all that’s behind me, but that’s what tells me...the Patrons…they knew this was going to happen.

The few gathered about four-seater tables and the handful of loners, I can hear them, hear them snickering at Rex and I. Suddenly, in a burst of clarity, sound makes it through my adrenaline filled head and I can hear some of them even cheering.

“Get them, Ramon! Show these loco’s who’s bosss!”

“Fuck them in the ass good! Woohoo!”

“Light them up like medium rare fucktards!”

Among other profanities.

Neither of the sounds I hear help me one bit.

I take a nervous step back, my foot crushing the broken glass from Rex’s violent exit and my back slamming onto the last bit of glass in one piece.

“Do you want me to blow you through that glass?” Ramon asks, his voice in more of a concrete state than before.

Naturally, I don’t answer, fortunately I don’t think he was expecting and answer, “I can’t afford another glass you see.”

“I’ll pay for it all Ramon!” One rather obese man with four empty pizza boxes on his single table and a large chicken lap in his hand hollers, barely able to keep standing.

Ramon manages a humble smile and a bow to his loyal, ecstatic patron. “Thank you for the offer, David.”

He turns back to me and instantly loses the manufactured smile, “While the bill is paid for, I’d like to give you an option since I don’t rightly take pleasure in blasting kids like you out of the glass doors of my humble establishment…not so good for the uh…optics.”

I nod mutely and take in a deep breath.

“Good, looks like you’re regaining a bit of your reason, though, I’d have liked you stricken with fear a bit longer…makes the decision-making process…speedy.” He claps his hands together and a spark of lightning streaks across the room until it gets grounded.

“Now then, do you want to be blown out, or do you want to walk out of here in one piece and help your friend who may or may not have just had a heart attack?”

The smug on his face could be scooped off like ice-cream and several layers would still remain.

I shake my head and stand up straight, my eyes scanning the room full of insanely bloodthirsty, chaos thriving patrons. I wonder if they’ll jump in…I should consider that.

Factoring a potential new entrant from the enthusiastic patrons I let my eyes land on Ramon.

He sneers, “I see…You’ve chosen otherwise.”

He needs no words from me to understand I’m not giving way, I tell him, “You should really re-evaluate what you think the social roles in society look like now, Rex wasn’t the meat, I am and like he said, I’ll be needing that five months tax, Ramon.”

“Will you now?” He hisses, his eyes lighting up once again, lightning arcing from palm to palm as he prepares a charge, “A sham-”

Pause.

He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence nor the launch he was about to subject me to. Completely frozen in time he looks as though he’s just off staring in the distance, or rather, glaring.

The same goes for the patrons, I think perhaps all of them are stuck in time, proof of this is the fact that the fatso from before has stopped shoving his face with more and more calories.

I breath a sigh of relief. The range of my pause does not reach over to Austin however and I’d like to be done with this before he realizes I’m not dead yet.

Setting the goal, I take out my gun and pull back the hammer and just like before I press the barrel against Ramon’s more vulnerable areas…his knee for example.

Bang!

And his elbow. Bang!

Blood and perhaps a bit of bone by the clicking sound it makes as it hits the floor splatters all over the place.

It’s extremely difficult holding back the urge to empty out my stomach at the sight of Ramon’s now demolished left elbow and right knee, even worse is the completely unaware look he has on his face.

Still in the middle of a sentence, still glaring at where I was a second ago.

He’s completely frozen in time, not a single feature has moved in reaction to his joints being blown out across the floor of his establishment.

It’s unsettling how easy this is.

“Hey!” A voice barks at me. More shocking is that said voice is coming from within the Pizzeria.

Panic races through me as I ask myself, how is she still moving!

Across the wide space for the patrons and behind the cashier’s counter is a woman, or a girl by the looks of it. Like Ramon she’s got on an apron but unlike him her hair is tied back and stuffed into a net, and her hands are covered in…dough?

Shit. Is the kitchen out of my range?

“What…what have you done to them?” she stutters, waving a hand over the faces of the grinning, eating and laughing patrons. Pinching many of them even.

Her eyes rise and fall on Ramon and then they fall on me. In a flash I see it; lightning.

“Rragh!”

Her ‘attack first ask questions later’ attitude is more or less rewarded as I involuntarily let go of my grip on time, barely dodging the streak of lightning she blasts out from her eyes.

From her fucking eyes!

It’s an immediate burst of chaos as I hit the floor almost the same time Ramon’s body registers it can’t keep itself upright with a knee blown to oblivion.

He screams and bleeds like a cow, “Ahhhhh!! What the fuck! What the fuck! W-why? Why!!”

My luck is not all shot to hell though, even as I stick to the floor crawling under a table as fast as a chipper monkey with my gun raised to fire at the girl should she make her way to me.

Instead of hunting me down under the table she goes for Ramon, “Dad! Dad!”

Shoot, he is her father.

Ramon’s only response to her calls are his screams of agony.

She’s distracted. I have to…I have to take her out...Shit!

I don’t want to. She’s…she’s just like fucking Paige.

Except deadly and with what you’ve done to her father she’s more than willing to kill you.

The voice in my head is right. I need to end this before I’m ended.

Gathering my courage, I start to step out from under the table when.

Ding Ding!

The bell chimes as someone enters.

Bang!

“Ah!” I gasp.

Bang! Bang!

“Good job kid.” Austin mutters, the barrel of his gun still steaming. “I can get her to our medic outside Ramon…the wound is fresh and not immediately fatal, she can and will survive.”

“Arrghhh!! Selena!”

“Just pay what you owe and your daughter will live.”