“Hide?” the reporter suggested.
“Wise sentiments. That, an’ we ought’a deposit our cars some place safe.”
Watching the forces about to converge, Jack shook his head. “No running, no hiding, and no parking elsewhere — we have to stop them.”
“How, kid? Got yer own private army corps tucked up in yer pants?”
“And we haven’t exactly got wings,” cut in Pretty Amazonia. “Don’t say you want us to join in this debacle — there’re only three of us.”
Gypsie-Ann glanced up at her sister. “Four.”
“Gee, whiz, I feel so much safer. What difference can a quartet make, one of whom is armed with an umbrella?”
“Five minutes with me and this brolly might surprise you,” the reporter muttered. “I’ve been brushing up on yubiwaza, the secret, amazingly easy art of self-defence that turns just one finger or your hands into a potent weapon of defence without any bodily—”
“Contact. And it only costs $1.98. For God’s sake, if you’re going to poke your head in anywhere, make it a gas oven rather than the classifieds of old comics.”
Jack breathed out, barely listening, stumped, considering the lack of options. This was a busy part of town. There were office buildings and stores all round, cars bumper-to-bumper, and a flood of pedestrians stopped on the sidewalks, rubbernecking impending doom.
“No choice,” the Equalizer began to say — but before anything substantial passed through his lips, a loud, rousing orchestral score drowned out everything. What the hell?
“Well, this’s surreal,” PA shouted above the ruckus, pointing to a speaker at the top of a nearby lamppost. “They’re playing a bloody waltz on the city’s emergency siren system.”
“I know the music,” bawled back the Brick. “It ain’t a waltz, it’s a polka —‘Hungarian Dance No. 6’, by Johannes Brahms.” He looked sheepish when he found the other three staring. “What? I seen a recital or three in me time.”
“Fair enough,” Gypsie-Ann said.
More proactively, Jack ventured, “Some kind of message?”
PA shook her head. “Some kind of pisstake, if you ask me.”
Which was when all hell busted loose, above and beyond the raucous music. The Brick was hammered by some kind of explosives charge, he toppled back onto Pretty Amazonia, and she lay flattened on her back, red in the face, pinned beneath portable cement-work.
“Get off me, you big lug!”
“Soz, dollface,” he muttered, trying to rise with Gypsie-Ann’s assistance. “Do me a favour an’ nail that bastard, junior.”
Down the street Jack spotted the culprit, some kind of armoured robot on four legs, two mechanical hands sporting three fingers on extensible arms.
“Is that bastard a person?” he quizzed the others.
PA, who’d dragged herself free of her concrete paperweight, was busy straightening her bows but spared a moment to look in the same direction — and then rolled her eyes. “Oh, for crap’s sake. It’s Otaku Fuchikoma.”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry. Inside all that fancy military hardware and futuristic armour is one exceptionally dim-witted Rotter. We haven’t got time for his annoying antics. Can you take care of this, hon?”
“Sure, I guess.”
The Equalizer pointed his arm in the direction of the machine and blew it back the way it’d come — just as lightning bolts zigzagged between buildings, gale force winds erupted, plasma arced across the sky, and Capes of all shape, size and colour started brawling in the air.
Straight after a shop across the road exploded, a telephone pole slapped down at the Brick’s feet the moment he regained them, forcing him to backtrack a few steps, while a crowd of people began pushing blindly past — screaming and shrieking as fire rained.
Sheltering both in the Brick’s shadow and beneath her opened umbrella, Gypsie-Ann looked reasonably dismayed. “Um…I hate to come across chicken-hearted, but have any of you given further thought to high-tailing out of here?” she shouted to no one in particular.
Her sister laughed without mirth. “P’raps you could use your parasol, Mary Poppins.”
“Crap that, and dispense with the jokes,” Jack yelled back, clearly annoyed by the loud music, “we have to help these people.”
Still dusting herself, Pretty Amazonia frowned. “This riffraff?”
“Now,” Jack urged. “Come on, guys. Move it — let’s get them headed down that street over there.” He pointed to a narrow avenue that was partially sheltered by the tall buildings to either side. “Probably the safest place in all this madness.”