Tolerable Cruelty - Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Chapter 28

“No… no… what are you going to do?” a wobbly Maria scooted backwards from the redheaded vindictive superwoman. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Maria fell to her knees and sobbed.

Piper said nothing but merely floated into the air.

“You can fly!?” Maria gasped.

A shot rang out. It streaked downward at an angle, shattered a glass window, and pinged against Piper’s invulnerable back.

She jumped at the sensation, more startled than hurt. It felt like an annoying tickle.

“They have a sniper. Annoying!” Piper spat as more gunshots headed her way. The bullets pinged against her prodigious breasts and smooth torso before falling to the ground, slightly squashed.

“PETER!!!” Maria yelled and bolted out of the room.

The wounded woman’s sudden outburst caught Piper by surprise. Even her superspeed reflexes couldn’t keep up. This attempted seductress, too weak to stand, was now miraculously on her feet and bolting down the hallway for… what?

Piper quickly flew into the hallway and witnessed Maria taking a bullet in her chest. Behind her was a limping Peter who had been making his way down the hall. The two crashed against the wall from the impact, Peter no worse for wear.

“Oh my god!” Piper flew immediately to their aid. With her telescopic vision, she could see the sniper looking at her through his scope in the middle of a tall building across the street where he’d set up. She could sense his accelerating heartbeat as her body came into view.

He was a professional. He immediately picked up his weapon and began to run.

Piper scowled. She was as angry at herself for not sensing the danger as she was at the person who had attempted to take Peter’s life. An enormous blast of energy out of her eyes, and she punctured two neat, cauterized holes in his chest. The two buildings she’d bored through with her lasers remained standing with only two tiny circular punctures burned through them.

“Maria! Piper, help her! She’s hurt!” Peter sobbed, touching the bleeding bullet hole on Maria’s chest. “All because of me again!”

Piper wanted to be jealous, but it was just so obvious her man cared about this woman. Not loved, not lusted after…

Cared.

Piper wasted no time now. She grabbed Maria by her slender neck and brought their faces close together. Placing her other hand behind Maria’s head, Piper brought Maria’s face close to hers. She felt Maria’s reedy, tortured breaths, her eyelids closing and heartbeat starting to fade…

Piper leaned forward and locked lips with the fatally wounded woman.

“Piper? What are you…” Peter asked.

A crackle of electricity surged through Piper’s lips and flowed through Maria’s body. Her power guided the dormant serum still being carried through Maria’s blood, teasing it, goading it, urging it to blossom just as Piper’s had.

She darted her moist tongue into Maria’s gaping mouth, reinvigorating the woman who had tried to steal, and then protect, her precious husband. Her fingertips, her breasts, her thrumming nipples began to vibrate as well as she gently enveloped Maria in life-giving energy, rubbing and infusing the latent potential out of every last drop of Peter’s elixir.

Maria moaned as she resurrected. Her honey brown eyes glowed with heated power as the wound closed up, leaving only smooth, flawless, lightly tanned skin. Once she regained her consciousness, she leaned into Piper’s kiss reflexively, returning the favor as her flesh swelled and firmed, transforming her into a second impossibly perfect and powerful beauty.

Finally, Piper broke the kiss as a trail of electricity lingered between their lips.

“Dios mio…” Maria gasped. “Piper?”

“Piper?” Peter echoed.

“I don’t know what other threats there are. Peter warned me of two agents. Please, take my Peter to safety. Please,” Piper whispered.

Maria looked at her savior and nodded.

“Come on, Peter. Let’s go. Piper’s orders.”

She leaned over in her tattered dress and gently picked up Peter’s bruised bulk. Standing on the spot for a moment, she puffed her cheeks and exhaled through her nose loudly.

She looked expectant… But nothing happened.

“What, you couldn’t make it so I could fly?” Maria asked. “So stingy! It would be really useful right now…”

“That’s Peter’s fault, not mine,” Piper smiled. “Now go. I hear people on radios. More snipers. And… someone giving the orders.”

“Okay, Peter. Hold onto me tight. But not too tight; Piper will get mad.”

Peter gulped and nodded as he looked Piper lovingly in the eyes.

And then they were off.

Piper zipped around the whole shoddy complex, finding a clumsy makeshift lab in one of their rooms. This must have been where Peter had been forced to surrender his secret.

She meticulously flipped all the tables over, squashed the refrigeration units and shakers under her feet and with her hands, and shattered all the vials by blowing them into the far wall. Tons of loose lab equipment flew with it, buffeted by Piper’s easy exhalation.

With all of the lab notes a huge mess and equipment squashed beyond recognition, all that was left was for Piper to make sure that none of the mystery liquid remained for analysis. A quick blink activated Piper’s intense electric eyes, blasting across the walls of the rooms and evaporating any residual fluid while burning notes and scarring walls and furniture. She pushed off the ground with her toes and hovered backwards through the doorway, completing a very thorough sweep of her lightning vision. The entire room was ablaze and crackled furiously from Piper’s cauterization.

Now floating back through the hallway, the familiar sound of sniper rounds being fired greeted her. She turned to face the bullets head on, flaunting her naked invulnerability to them.

The heavy bullets pinged off her from all directions, embedding into the surrounding walls and floors. She could hear them gasp in shock. Magnifying their terror, Piper looked at each of them, one by one, extended her open palm, and curled a finger as if to say “come and get me.” Her eyes crackled with power as she imperiously hovered forward, crashing through the jagged window as if it weren’t there. The large, sharp shards of glass fell outward and shattered against the gravel floor.

The sniper she was looking at—and approaching—panicked. His well trained instincts a distant memory, his usually steady hands shook like an epileptic’s as he lost his grip on his mounted rifle. When he saw the ominous glow of Piper’s eyes, he stood up straight, squeezed his eyes shut, and begged for forgiveness.

Piper heard his pathetic plea across the open field and immediately turned to face the second sniper. He gasped in shock at how easily she’d located him. His hands shook as he squeezed the trigger again in total panic, missing badly. Piper wasn’t even in his sights anymore.

He took his eye off the scope to wipe his brow with shaky hands. Placing his eye tight against the sweat-stained viewer once more, he recoiled once more when he saw that Piper had perfectly aligned herself in the center of his vision, tossing his squashed bullet up and down. Before he could react, she held it in the open palm of her hand and flicked it like a bean right back toward him.

It whizzed past his ear and dug into the wall behind him in his empty concrete room. He pissed himself.

“Get out! Get out! Do not fire on her! Fuck!” he yelled into his radio as he fled the scene.

Piper cackled as all but one of the snipers began to retreat. One of them was aiming in a totally different direction. He appeared to be taking orders on a different frequency. She followed the path of his gun, right to Maria and Peter.

He squeezed the trigger. Piper flew right at him, trusting Maria to shield her husband from harm, which she duly did. Maria caught the bullets in her hand and dropped them on the ground without breaking stride as she continued to streak across the abandoned warehouse complex with Peter in tow.

Piper crashed through the concrete headfirst, tackled the shooter against the wall, and waited for his recognition. As soon as he registered the impact and squirmed against Piper’s unbreakable embrace, she gripped him by the neck and snapped it. Shooting her was harmless. That she could forgive. Shooting Peter was a death sentence.

She dragged his corpse around as she rounded up all of the shooters in the building. They weren’t that far apart, especially not for her superspeed. Gathering them up one by one, she deposited them all in a central room and displayed the idiot who had dared to fire on Peter.

“You four. Speak of this to no one, and I’ll let you live. But if you come after me or my husband again… this is what will happen to you.”

She dropped the corpse unceremoniously to the ground and drove her boot into his chest. They all winced as the dead body coughed up blood.

“Got it?”

They all nodded in abject fear.

“Piper! There’s… someone here!” Maria’s voice rang out from outside.

“It’s Carter!” Peter yelled.

“I can’t… she’s too strong! Aahhhhh!” Maria cried.

Piper flew to the rescue. Only one final loose end to tie up.