Firestorm (Complete)

[Aidan Fox]

The anger of a good man is not a problem. A good man has too many rules.

Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many of them.

Madam Kovarian and the Doctor

As a rule, Los Angeles had mild summers, a pocket of perfect weather between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains of the California Coast Range. But on the inland flats where Los Santos stood, a boil of hot air had gathered under a cloudless, shiftless sky. It had stayed there for the past week, shimmering and searing during the day, heavy and suffocating during the night, until the grass shriveled up, the gutters filled with dust and dead pine needles, and the parks that usually swarmed with children were all but deserted.

The unrelenting heat had left Redención House quiet. It was early evening, despite the white-hot western sky, and Anna was attending some kind of community charity meeting, Tess was at work, and a handful of kids were melting over the family room furniture watching a Dodgers game. Aidan paused in the hallway to the kitchen, wondering whether he should just slip out unnoticed. But he thought better of it.

"Hey, guys," he said, "I'm heading out. I probably won't be back until after dark. Anna should be back in another hour, and Jake's upstairs if you need anything."

Ronnie tilted his head back over the top of the couch. "Sure. Where you headed?"

Aidan indicated vaguely with a tilt of his head. "Just over toward Compton. I've got a buddy who needs me to look at his engine. Could be a while. Enjoy the..."

The Dodgers' relief pitcher watched his fastball sail into the nearly empty right field bleachers, extending the visitors' lead to double digits.

"...game."

Aidan turned back toward the kitchen, snagged a loaded backpack from the floor, and disappeared out the back door to wheel his motorcycle out of the garage.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee watched Aidan roll his motorcycle out of the garage from where she was perched on a bit of roof. Heading out to places unknown at night... again. Not that Aidan was always skulking off - sometimes it was Jake. Occasionally it was both of them.

She'd only recently started noticing their nocturnal activities, mostly because her own nighttime trysts had increased. But Cameron was busy tonight, and she was bored. Aimee crawled down from the roof, down the side of the house, and decided she needed a car if she was going to follow him. Ducking into the kitchen she ran into Jim as Aidan started up his motorcycle just outside.

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim was inspecting a large sheet of paper full of sketches and hastily-scratched notes. It was angled towards the window, catching the last golden shards of light, one corner clamped between his shoulder and chin, the other held at length in his free hand. Pilfered blue coveralls hung loosely from his limbs and an impressive length of PVC tubing coiled around his arm; evidence of his latest industrious endevour, prompted by the news that the Dodgers game was about to begin. The convoluted diagrams spoke of magic and romance, a tale as old as time, featuring the love between one boy and his toolbox, and the old radiator from a Honda Civic destined to become an air conditioner.

When he lowered his schematic he greeted Aimee, and her unexpected appearance, with a startled shriek. The apple which fell from his mouth was caught without a second glance and large banana-coloured headphones were peeled away from his ears, spewing frantic electronica.

"A-Aimee!" he spluttered, clapping his work into untidy folds, "Wouldja not do that, p-p-please! What if I'd have been carryin' summin' hot or heavy or sharp, huh? Someone could get really hurt!"

[Aimee Connors]

"Sorry," she said, and then she lit up and grabbed Jim's arm. "Omigaw, you've got to help me. I want to find out where Aidan is going but..." outside the Harley revved up and then began to pull out of the driveway. "I don't have a car. Can you - do you think - could we? Please!?"

Aimee pulled Jim halfway out the back door by his arm before he could protest. "Maybe Ronnie's bike? Y'know you can do it! And aren't you curious about where Aidan's been running off to at night for the last few months? Please please please pretty please?"

[Jim Lewinski]

The bombardment of erratic disjointed dialogue fell upon Jim's ears like a Shakespearean sonnet. He followed Aimee's words to their logical conclusion and hesitated at the door, a glance over his shoulder, his thoughts dwelled on the old radiator, alone in the garage. Then he considered Aimee. Normally, Jim jumped at an opportunity to do something - anything - to pass the time, but the thought of abandoning his work to spy on Aidan raised red flags in the conscience and self-preservation departments. Another impatient tug at his sleeve. The deep chug of the Harley turned into a steady rumble. A sudden epiphany lit up his face like Christmas.

"I'll do it!" he declared, and with a knowing waggle of the eyebrows, added: "Provided you, uh- make it worth my while..."

[Aimee Connors]

"Argh, fine, yes, take apart my laptop, whatever you want." They were standing in the driveway now, and she turned to face him. "Uh, so, how does this work? Hanging on isn't a problem..." Aimee flexed her hands a little and slipped out of her sandals, tucking them into the waistband of her jeans.

"Bike? Piggy-back?" The latter was said a little hesitantly, and then she giggled. "Both?"

[Jim Lewinski]

"This is new territory for me too," said Jim, with a shrug.

He vanished, a blur of blue, and reappeared seconds later with a helmet and a pair of knee and elbow pads. Gone were the coveralls and obnoxious headphones, his trademark beanie had made a return, streamlining stubborn ears and unruly hair. He presented Aimee with the protective gear, all of it a magnificent electric green, and intercepted the inevitable protest with a strern raised finger.

"Safety first, Aimee! Don't worry - Aidan's not gettin' away!"

Righting the bike, he threw a leg over the cross bar, and waited for Aimee to take a seat.

[Aimee Connors]

"Oh, God." Aimee hesitated only a moment, and then strapped on the hideous safety gear. She hopped on the back of the bike, gripping with her feet on the frame as she half crouched behind Jim.

"Don't kill me," she muttered, throwing her slim arms around him.

[Jim Lewinski]

"Just hang on... tight."

The bike crawled down the driveway, burdened by the extra weight, but once they rolled onto Banyon Street it picked up speed. Steady at first, Jim allowed Aimee to get comfortable and secure herself against him. Then, as the distant Harley turned out of sight, his legs fired like hydraulic pistons. The acceleration was dramatic, turning the whipping wind into a turbulent roar, houses ticked by like seconds and soon enough, they were trailing their quarry.

[Aidan Fox]

As evening stretched the shadows of Los Santos from west to east, Aidan's Harley Sportster rumbled to a halt in a cul-de-sac bounded to one side by an ailing storage rental business and the other two by chain link fences and a rocky gorge that spilled down to a curved concrete sound barrier and the 101 freeway. Despite the wall, the din of traffic was as constant as the sky - hissing cars, screaming trucks and buses, the occasional whoop of a police siren. Everyone on the highway had better places to go than here.

Aidan put down the kickstand, dismounted, and felt for the pack of cigarettes in his back pocket, but he left it there and turned around to scope out the scenery. Behind him was one of the few dusty promontories in Los Santos that could justly be called a hill, with long rows of storage sheds and poorly kept parking lots lying crookedly on its haunches. Further up was a power substation and a cell phone tower blinking red against the pale sky.

"Okay," Aidan announced to the storage sheds, "I'm here."

A patch of shadow that was a little too deep for waning light slid out into the open street, then boiled into the hazy air like liquid nitrogen. Where the darkness had been stood two men, one of them lank and shifty like the shadows themselves, the other dark-skinned and so big it was a wonder that anything could have kept him hidden.

"What's up, hermano," said the first man, and he grabbed Aidan's hand in what wasn't so much a handshake as a test of strength. Aidan returned the favor, then nodded to the big man, who flashed him a huge, crooked-toothed grin.

"Hey, Shadow. Slim." Aidan looked from one to the other. "How's life treating you?"

"Like kings, man, like kings," Slim said through his huge smile. "Hey, I heard you and your girl were one the wrong side of the action in West Adams a while back. Hope it wasn't nothin' serious?"

"We made it out all right," Aidan replied. "No thanks to that Black Smoke mutant. You guys ever find anything out about him?"

Shadow shook his head. "No idea where the Onces dug up that crazy fucker. Nothin' stops him. Bullets, knives, cars, he just turns to smoke and it goes right through."

"Asshole gassed Trick last week, damn near killed him," Slim said. "Every time he shows up, we have to bag it. You gotta do something about him, man."

"Me?"

"You're the only one who can fight him one-on-one," Shadow replied. "Pedro, he can go stone and the guy can't touch him, but Pedro can't stop him, either. Either we take him out, or he's gonna take us out, one by one."

Aidan felt for his smokes again. "I'm no hitman," he said. "But I'll see what I can do."

[Aimee Connors]

They finally skidded to a halt, back end of the bicycle fishtailing in a bit of gravel as Jim slowed down to normal speed and then stopped abruptly. Aimee bit back a yelp, and hopped off the back of the bike immediately, her hands sticking a bit to his shirt before she could fully disentangle herself. "Oh wow, that was..."

Words failed her, and she staggered a bit, pulling her sandals free and hopping on one foot at a time to put them back on. From the looks of the area broken glass on the ground was likely. "Where is he at?" She'd had her eyes closed tightly after the first few exhilarating moments of super speed travel.

[Jim Lewinski]

"Keep it down, will ya?" Jim hissed, there was a note of anxiety in his voice, "We're close. Follow me."

He skulked away, wincing at the soft crunch of gravel underfoot, despite his exaggerated stealthy strides. They came flush with one of storage sheds, Jim sidled cautiously to the edge and peered around the corner. There was Aidan, shaking hands with a couple of strangers who both fell perfectly into Jim's definition of an unsavoury character, their voices were a low murmur against the ceaseless din of traffic.

"This ain't right. Don't look like no buddy with an engine problem, Aimee. Aimee?"

Jim glanced back to find his purple-skinned friend halfway up the side of the storage shed. He choked back a cover-blowing outburst, instead he grabbed her by the ankles and looked up with wide, pleading eyes.

"Whatcha doin'!? Are you nuts!? You're gonna get us... oh, freakin' hell, they might have guns! They look like they might have guns! I think- oh, shh-shh-shh- Aimee-get-your-purple-ass-down-here-right-now!"

[Aimee Connors]

Her eyes glowed as she looked down at Jim, hanging onto her ankles desperately, and she whispered, "Oh my God, Jim, I'm not stupid, they're not going to see me."

Aimee still climbed back down, relenting if only to spare Jim the aneurism that was about to explode in his brain from his panic. "You're the one who practically glows in the dark you're so white," she murmured once she was back on the ground, elbowing him a bit, and then following him back to the corner of the shed so they could peek and see what Aidan was doing.

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan fished a cigarette out of his pack and lit it with a tiny spike of blue flame. Shadow eyed it hungrily. "Hey, ese, hook me up."

Aidan raised an eyebrow at him through a puff of white smoke. "These things'll kill you, you know."

The skinny mutant laughed and showed a yellowing smile. "Yeah, and no smoking, no drinking, and no sex will make you a miserable old man."

Aidan shrugged and pulled out another cigarette. "So, any more news on the factory in West Carson?"

"We been staking it out all week," Slim replied. "There's vans in and out of that place every night, and there's always Tres Onces watching the fences. They're armed for a goddamn war. Ain't just guns, they got assault rifles, and the whole place is covered like fucking Alcatraz. When the hell did they get that kind of firepower, anyway?"

"Same place they're getting the nectar, I'd guess," Aidan replied. "The Tres Onces are just the middleman. We've got to bring that place down."

"And how're we gonna do that?" Shadow said. "You're the idea man, I'd just love to hear a suggestion."

Before Aidan could answer, the cell phone on Slim's pocket started thumping with a Latin beat. He fished it out, dwarfing it in his massive hand, and hit "receive."

"Hey, Marano. What, you serious?" Stonefaced, he put a hand over the phone's mouthpiece and said to his companions, "We were tailed, Onces are on their way."

"Shit, how much time we have?" Shadow said.

"Marano says--"

He was cut off by a jet of black smoke that blasted down from the sky overhead and erupted into a huge, choking cloud that covered the street. Blinded and suffocated, the three men bent double trying to find any untainted air, and they nearly succumbed before Aidan sent up a plume of blue flame that cleared a small pocket of air around them. "Get to cover!" he shouted, and they all stumbled through the fog into the cover of the storage sheds.

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim watched with equal parts fascination and horror as the cloud took shape. It spiralled on the air, condensed, and fashioned a man out of smoke. His first step trailing a wisp of inky vapor as he stalked his prey, wearing a smile like a razor's edge. Jim squirmed to catch a glimpse of Aidan and his friends, wild eyes tracing the ricochet of a thousand thoughts inside his head. An anxious murmur surfaced in the back of his throat.

"Oh, shit. Morpheus looks like he means business, Aimee. Whadda we do!?"

It was a conundrum. No matter the course of action: every road led to trouble. Jim had calculated as much and it looked like the shadowy menace had no intention of leaving room for consideration. He exploded in a tangle of black tentacles which billowed forth, consuming the trio of men. A burst of blue flame, and another, the smoke weaved and expanded as if it were something living, breathing, and snapped together, thick like tar, with a swipe of a shimmering knife. Over the roar of fire Aidan's voice rang out, it was strained, pulled tight with desperation... fear... rage? Jim wheeled around on Aimee.

"We-we-we-we we can't just stand here! Aimee, I- I'm goin' in!" he declared, a quick glance over his shoulder, "I think I'm goin'- I'm goin'..."

His train of thought was catastrophically derailed as a couple of familiar lowriders lurched into view, banking violently around the hill-hugging dirt track, and with a scream of engines, the Tres Onces entered the fray. Adrenaline struck Jim like a bolt of lightning, he darted for the bike, and called out to Aimee. Just as his fingers wrapped around the handlebar there was a sharp crack and a small geyser of dirt grazed his cheek. He dropped the bike with a terrified shriek and scrambled back to the cover of the storage shed as a second glancing bullet cratered the ground.

"Guns! They... they-they-they shot at me!" he whimpered, practically colliding with Aimee in the dark, "We gotta get outta here!"

[Aimee Connors]

Well, she thought, This isn't car trouble.

Aimee felt strangely detached from what was going on around her as Jim came dashing back to the relative safety of the shadows. "Three Elevens," she whispered, letting him pull her backwards and farther away from the commotion. After a moment she turned and ran with him, the pair of teens darting between storage sheds and trying to put distance between them and any flying bullets.

Collapsing on the ground with her back to a shed Aimee nervously pulled her fingers through her ponytail. "We should call the police or something. Or..." She looked back the way they'd come, just a few yards and flimsy buildings between them and where Aidan was presumably fighting for his life. "Fuck! I feel so useless!"

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan and the pair of La Raza mutants scrambled into an alley between two long rows of sheds as gunfire peppered the hillside. Shadow pulled a knife and disappeared into a veil of darkness while Slim pressed himself against an aluminum door and drew a pistol from his waistband. Aidan found himself scanning the ground in vain. It was all gravel with a few pathetic sprigs of dry grass shooting up here and there, not much fuel for him to burn. He dug in his pocket for the nylon pouch full of match heads. It would be enough for some defensive fireworks, but not enough to fight off the Smoke Man.

The plume of smoke arced overhead, rippling like a Chinese dragon, and plunged down into the gravel alleyway, billowing up into a roughly human-shaped column. Slim lifted his piece and fired two shots through the still-congealing head, but the ghostly face simply leered and filled in the bullet holes. He moved toward Slim like a wraith, and the big La Raza mutant stumbled backwards against the nearest shed.

Aidan squeezed the pouch full of match heads and burned almost half of them, and with his free hand he sent a gout of blue flame at the Smoke Man's feet, dispelling him like a bad dream, but the smoke swirled back together and reformed just a few yards away. Aidan torched him again, and he retreated another twenty feet and solidified, a tall, black man in a duster with a long, straight-edged knife.

Aidan and Slim both squared on the Smoke Man, Slim with his pistol, Aidan with a tongue of blue fire in his hand. "We need to get out of here," Aidan said. "He's just going to hold us here until the Onces surround us."

"No shit we need to get out of here," Slim panted. "You got any bright ideas?"

"The fastest way out is straight through. I'll keep him from staying solid, you and Shadow get to your car, and I'll deal with him myself."

"Hey, I ain't gonna argue," Slim said, "but I'd like to know what the hell the Onces are shootin' at."

Another shot rang out and pinged through an aluminum shed door somewhere in the next row. Aidan threw a harried glance behind him. There were no Onces in sight.

"I... I dunno," he murmured, and he felt a sickening pit open up in his gut. Every instinct he had told him something was horribly wrong.

"Shit, heads up!" Slim shouted, and Aidan snapped his head back to see the Smoke Man barreling toward them with his spectral knife swinging.

[Jim Lewinski]

"Fuck! I feel so useless!"

"Ya think!?" Jim snapped an incredulous gaze in Aimee's direction, "Whatcha think ya gonna do, freakin' cling em to death?"

For emphasis, his hands groped at thin air, until a sharp ping of metal had him ducking for cover again. Behind them, the garage door trembled and rang as another gunshot spoke out, scorching long menacing shadows into the hillside. Over the din, a cold voice barked orders, and the hapless teens scurried desperately out of sight, pursued by the bloodthirsty howls of gangbangers.

"Look!" Jim was pointing at a tall chain link fence visible through a break in the ranks of old storage shacks, beyond which the valley was illuminated by the strobed glare of headlights, "The freeway. It's a steep drop but you can make it! There ain't jack we can do here now- we- we gotta make a break for it!"

[Aimee Connors]

"I'll cling you to death," Aimee muttered, but she looked where he pointed. The concrete valley on the other side of the fence was full of scrub brush, and probably broken glass and bums. Not to mention the freeway. A zillion pounds of metal slinging around a ten lane track, with seventy-five percent of the drivers texting. She wouldn't last as long as Frogger.

She hesitated. "Are you going to run? Will you be okay?"

Jim nodded impatiently, giving her a little push toward the fence. Aimee took a step, and then they both ducked again, bullets smacking against the metal shed above their heads. The voices were much louder. "Now or never," she breathed, and started running.

[The Tres Onces]

On the far side of the 101 was another ridge that supported a couple sagging apartment complexes behind chain link fences. The parking lot was mostly empty, but parked on the edge facing the freeway was a sleek, black Mercedes sedan surrounded by four men who invited unfavorable comparisons to a pack of pit bulls. They wore suit coats and buttoned shirts, but they were baggy and loose so as not to impede movement. Two of them held rifles. One had a stockless shotgun.

The fourth man wore a tailored gray suit with the cuffs undone and the shirt collar hanging open to show off several loops of gold chains. As he watched the melee on the other hillside through a pair of binoculars, he curled his scarred lip.

"The fuck's goin' on over there..."

Julio scanned over the complex of storage sheds from the clash between blue jets of flame and black plumes of smoke and down the slope to the two shapes loping awkwardly toward the sound baffle over the highway. They were kids, scrawny and unremarkable, except for the fact that one of them was undeniably purple.

Julio put down the binoculars and dug a cell phone out of his coat pocket. "Check your fire, Nico. Those kids ain't La Raza, they're two of Fernandez's freaks. Change of plans. I think it's time to buy ourselves some insurance."