The Ongoing Adventures of Stupendous Girl!

Götterdämmerung (Part 4 of 7) – Page 2 22 Oct 2009

For all of his desire to be close to her power, and his glee at the prospects of this going even better than planned, the (unknown to him) fact that she currently held none of that massive power and that she intended to give it up forever had not even entered his thinking.

“Well, you and I have known each other for a long time, but it’s only been recently that I’ve realized how much we… okay. I’m assuming here on your part, but I think I know how you feel about it… how much we depend on each other.”

John nods solemnly, but inside he is all smiles at how this is going.

“I guess it took losing Lewis for me to realize how much the people who are still around me matter. And in thinking about that, it just struck me that…”

Without warning, in the middle of her sentence, Irene had noticed John toppling over to fall awkwardly in the sand. She trails off, not believing her eyes at first. She hadn’t seen or heard anything to suggest what would have so toppled him, or why he showed no signs of getting back up, and that worried her. For all her life, she heard things before they happened, was more aware of her surroundings than anyone else, and not having that ability was disorienting when something inexplicable happened. So she stood shocked next to John, watching mutely as he stayed on his side in the sand, wondering why he’d fallen, why he didn’t get up, why the back of his sweater was soaking up an ever-growing stain of darkest crimson and…

oh God oh God oh God he’s been shot.

While Irene kneels over him, asking if he’s okay, panicked and trying to figure out what to do in a world just as dangerous as before (but one in which she suddenly feels wholly incapable and naked), John’s mind is racing a million miles a minute.

She hadn’t heard the shooter. That said very bad things either about his capabilities, or hers, or both. Something was wrong. His life or death was mostly out of his hands at this point, depending on how quickly his bodyguards could get to him and, then, on the doctors’ intervention. Her life, however, and her death – that was very much up in the air. Since all of his plans depended rather obviously on still being alive, and hell, perhaps even because some little residual slice of humanity and genuine affection resided in him, he realized the best thing to do was to convince her of what, in her heart, she must already know needed doing. With all the will he had left, he began to shout a single word, a directive – no, an imperative – at her.

“Run.”

“Run!”

“RUN!”

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