Chapter 5: Fast as f*ck boi!

According to the laws of cinematography, a static scene should now have begun, with the shooters aiming at each other, but no one daring to open fire first. Then, depending on the talent of the director, either intense dialogue in the spirit of Tarantino films or shooting at anything but the main characters.

Alas... we didn't get a very talented director, because even though there was a little hitch before the shooting, the tense dialogue boiled down to shouts of "throw it, you bastard!", "I'm gonna blow your fucking head off!" and "he broke my fucking nose!"

That last one was obviously from our loser for risking getting too close to the sheriff. He'd also managed to drop his gun, by the way, and was now trying to both stop the bleeding by pressing a bandana to his nose and frantically pick up the dropped weapon.

I used the seconds of hesitation to make the boys fall to the floor and topple our table sideways - the one sitting across from me, with his back to the place of the showdown, I had to yank from the chair and drag to my side. The table itself, of course, was not much protection, but it can save from a ricochet, it's not from the Kalashnikovs will shoot. But the main thing for me was that it would be much easier for me to act from this position than if we were still sitting in our seats-and I really hope I have enough speed to move beyond the perception of the human gaze. The time I accidentally caught my parents in the middle of their debauchery in the living room, Nolan managed to dress himself, dress my mother, and cover up the signs of the mess in the room in literally a split second, so that I didn't even notice anything. Only the unnatural gust of wind in the room and my mother's backward-facing T-shirt indicated a sudden attack of sexual hooliganism by my parents. But I'm not my father...

The sheriff decided to shoot first, soberly assessing that as long as one of the robbers was temporarily disarmed, his chances were best.

And at the same time as the police bullet went into the forearm of the ringleader, already clearly unable to react, the third criminal also lost his nerve... or he simply calculated quite cynically that standing almost behind the cop who aimed at his accomplice, he himself had almost no risk and could shoot first.

It's time!

I started moving at the same time as the cowboy opened fire on the jerk with the gold chain.

It was practically that scene from the superhero movies with the mutant spidsters that fans love so much, only in first person, which made it even cooler - for me naturally. Yeah, it's really quite cool to move in a world that's practically frozen, and to see a bullet slowly fly toward its target. Looks like my training has paid off after all, I feel like I'm already fast enough to outrun a bullet, a pistol bullet at least.

That wasn't really required of me, though.

I just knocked the gun of the firing bandit from below so that the shots went to the ceiling, took a quick look at the scene - no civilians seemed to be in danger, the ringleader was wounded, the third perp hadn't picked up his weapon yet - and turned back before the second hand on the wall clock had finished another step it had started at the same time as me.

This sheriff looked pretty confident, so I decided to give him a chance. After all, he's got a gun, too; if I'm just going to make sure his opponents are crooked, he should handle the rest on his own.

Another pained howl rent the diner as the ringleader took a bullet from the sheriff.

"What the..." At the same time, the other gunman stared in shock at his own hand, which had rebelled against his desire to shoot the cop.

And thus attracted the cowboy's attention. Turning at the sound, he quickly caught his would-be assassin in the crosshairs and, without hesitation, fired. This time in the chest, in the area of the left lung, dangerously close to the heart - a wound that might even be fatal. Now whether the guy turned out to be a felon or a corpse depended only on his luck and how quickly it was over so that the doctors could attend to him.

Some of the customers screamed in horror at the sight of what they thought was a dead body falling. The boys, too, were numb, their eyes fixed on the masked face, which was writhing in pain and desperately gulping for air through the bloodstained cloth that clung to his lips.

"He's really good," I couldn't help noting. "For a man, of course."

In just two seconds the man fired two quick but accurate shots, and then he laid another one on the poor man with the broken nose. He only had time to reach for his gun when the sheriff's boot flew into his face.

More importantly, no one seemed to notice that I was gone.

- "Turn around," Will shouted in my ear, and I hurried to do so.

"Oh, son of a bitch!"

The wounded ringleader grabbed the gun with his healthy hand and aimed it at the sheriff, while behind him the director of the Burger Mart had already swung the cash register - a surprise right there, I didn't expect him to be brave enough to do such a thing. Unfortunately the boss had no time to save the cop, the bullet had already gone straight to his head.

Already confident in my speed, I got up again and quite calmly caught the bullet right in the face of the cowboy, who had just started to turn in the right direction, and then went back.

There was a shot and the sound of the cash register hitting the bandit's head - I intercepted the bullet before the wave of sound from the shot reached us - and then the latter fell and was pelted with loose change from the opening cash register. And next to his victim the chief fell down, shocked out of his own bravery to the point of unconsciousness.

Well, that's it now.

"Huh?!" someone breathed in my ear.

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I turned around and met Wil's shocked gaze.

"You? It was..." I had to put my hand over his mouth before he could attract the attention of the others.

"Quiet!" I hissed, looking around to see if anyone had noticed, but no, the boys were still staring at the dying man, and the other visitors were too far away to hear us.

I put my finger to my lips in a scary face, demanding silence, and added in a whisper for reassurance, "not now!"

In William's eyes, as they would say in my old homeland, "five kopecks each," shock was slowly replaced by realization, and he flapped his eyelids for a second, coming to his senses, before he finally nodded, confirming that he understood me.

That was such a screw up! Of all people, it was Clockwell! No, better him than some random person I didn't know at all, but it was Wil-he's a good guy, but, to be honest, he's a codger... last time I was lucky that the person he told was Eve, who already knew about my secret, and not some random person.

And he was an adult then! And now he's fourteen, for crying out loud-it's the time when the rudiments of reason are just beginning to tentatively sprout in children's brains. How many fourteen-year-old boys do you know who are capable of keeping such important secrets? In real life, not in children's and teenage books and movies. Yes, there aren't any, and I need to make sure that Clockwell is going to be just like that; people's lives, and perhaps the fate of the whole earth, depend on it, damn it.

It didn't make me feel any better that we never got a chance to talk face-to-face after the incident. Immediately after the shooting commenced turmoil, the sheriff called the police and an ambulance, got two relatively healthy young men together, and began administering first aid to the man who had shot him in the back, while at the same time trying to somehow calm the frightened visitors and convince them to remain seated. He was not very good at it, either at saving the negro or at convincing the hysterical girls.

"Quiet!" I shouted at the whining woman, about five feet across, who wanted to leave the scene and yelled something louder than anyone else. "Look, even children are calmer and smarter than you! Have some pride and courage!"

I pointed at my friends and, naturally, myself. Ah, how nice it is to be a child yourself and be able to say what you think without the fear of being hounded into calling you an abuser, a racist, or some sexist.

While the cow was batting her eyes and trying to think of a response and a strategy to regain her lost dignity, I got up and walked over to the sheriff.

"Kid, what are you..."

"I took a first aid course," yeah, during my time in the Army and then in preparation for the space program. "You could use an extra pair of hands."

The man frowned at first, thinking of sending me away, but at that moment the patient under his hands once again began coughing up blood and blowing bloody bubbles from his nose...

"Then look for the first aid kit, even in a hole like this there must be one..."

"Sure," and I even know where it is, because I worked here in a former life.

***

Together we managed to keep the black guy alive until the arrival of the ambulance, which, as it was called, came very quickly, as did the police car. The battered gangstas were quickly packed up by the sheriff's colleagues and taken away to be treated and prepared for prison life, and the customers, the employees, and Lucas, the sheriff's name, to the station to testify. Our little gang went there, too, to await the arrival of anxious parents, who had been told by telephone that their children were in the middle of an armed robbery and shooting...

The arrival of the mothers was noisy, and the children themselves, feeling the pity and attention directed at them, could not stand it and began to discharge their emotional stress with tears.

We were the only ones who stood out... and by doing so, we aroused some suspicion in the adults-that the children might be psychologically traumatized. But Clockwell was so actively admiring the hero's coolness - and, though he talked about the sheriff, he looked at me with a meaningful glance, the conspirator of the dick - that the adults were convinced that the child had not realized the gravity of the situation and the danger to his life. I, with my parents' permission, testified as a witness and recounted my version of events - how I heroically overturned the table and chased all my comrades under it to minimize the risks, how I helped to stabilize the wounded man, and, most important: that this very wounded man was the first to open fire on the sheriff. The young and eager deputy assigned to me, *who, alas, saw me as a sensible and brave but still boyish boy, smiled and put all my words in the file.

Not just me, but my parents, our whole family, in general, were an island of calm in a mad kingdom of crying children and their parents who were worried sick about their offspring. And there seemed to be something in Nolan's gaze as he looked at me... a kind of pride, apparently, that my behavior in an emergency hadn't shamed the standards of his homeland.

The main thing is that he has no idea that I was not only sitting at the table during the robbery, and in general, for three months I am preparing to kick his ass. He doesn't know, does he?

After the testimony, my parents left their contact information with the police, and we were released in peace - after all, the main character of the day was that stray sheriff, who was indeed not from our town, but from Pennsylvania, and to him everyone's attention was riveted. And not only positive, he had violated something there by his actions, one of the bandits was dead, and besides, it was unclear who had opened fire first - the witnesses' statements were very confusing, and there were no cameras in the place. The fact that the bandits hadn't wounded anyone at all, that the sheriff was white and the robbers black - I can already imagine how the press might report all this, another manifestation of police racism, was not good for him either - and the last bullet was not found at all, although the fact of the shooting was confirmed by the check of the weapon seized from the ringleader. I guess I caused a few more problems for Lucas by my interference, but it's still better than finding that bullet in his brain, isn't it?

I didn't get a chance to talk to Will that day, because my mother had decided to give me extra attention and make up for the stress she'd been under by taking care of me. She almost had a birthday dinner, then offered to play a board game as a family, which we hadn't done in years, and finally even let me stay up late watching cable with my dad. But overall, she was pretty calm about what had happened, apparently affected by the experience of being married to a hero that risked her life every day. I remember when I got my powers in the last world, my mother didn't really mind when I started to get into various messes either, and only demanded to keep order and some rules in the house. Of course, the situation is different now - I'm younger and haven't confirmed my powers yet - but I'm still the son of Omni-Man (a man who can withstand a nuclear strike on his head)she subconsciously understands that such little things can't be a real threat to me. I even wonder what would have happened if I had been hit by a stray bullet, say, six months ago, when my powers were still dormant? I'm more likely to believe that it would have triggered an even earlier awakening of the Wiltrum heritage than it would have really hurt me.

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