8.2
Jelani turned and faced the bright yellow sun, which was still hanging high in the autumn sky.
What can I do against bullets? he wondered. He didn't have much time to think, though, as his life could be taken at any second.
Staying within the mediocre cover of the house, which had approximately 2.5 walls still standing, he sought an answer.
Echo can use some invisible force to stop bullets in midair, but I definitely don't have that power. So how can I do anything?
He'd been able to create an effective barrier against bullets when he'd sealed both himself and Echo inside a thirty-foot thick capsule of wood, but that wasn't a very practical solution when the situation required him to move around.
Why are bullets dangerous? He began his thought process, searching for a logical solution to the problem. It's because they move so fast that they can pierce through almost anything. In other words, I can't afford to be hit by one.
That leaves two possibilities: I either dodge it, or I block it. I might be able to dodge a bullet by predicting when and where it'll be shot, but, even if I improve my explosiveness, it's unrealistic to think I could do that consistently, especially if there's more than one shooter.
If I wanted to block it, I might be able to use growth to sprout a tree in the bullet's path, or something… but that solution has the same problems as the first one.
BANG
He cringed at the impact of a bullet sinking into his hip.
"Tch."
He couldn't waste any more time.
As he looked down at the fresh blood spurting from his wound, the sun reflected off his steel knuckles and into his eyes.
Echo's words from days before, just after he'd obtained the weapon, came back to him.
"You need to make a habit of reinforcing them," she'd said. "'Cause we're not going back to get new ones if they break."
What she'd been referring to was his authority of strength. Every time he punched something, he had to concentrate his focus on the steel in his hand, willing it to become stronger so that it wouldn't crumple under the force of impact.
These could probably stop a bullet, he reasoned, examining his weapons. And I haven't even tried thinking about them in the same way I thought about those trees.
Jelani was remembering the visualization he'd created of the world around him when he'd targeted the trees with his authority of growth–the 3D mental simulation of every atom and its components that made up the organisms.
I could probably increase their strength way more…
Suddenly, the obvious solution came to him.
In fact, he'd been subconsciously doing it to a certain extent already; otherwise, his body itself would have crumbled under the force of every punch.
Ahh. There's a third way to beat a bullet: I just have to be bulletproof.
When the river of blood pouring from his hip began to slow, he stepped out from behind the cover of the house's crumbling walls.
He closed his eyes, and an invisible world materialized.
The first time he'd accomplished an atomic visualization, he'd focused on the world as no more than a collection of particles and dissolved the boundaries between objects–even the boundary between himself and the rest of the universe had become meaningless.
This time, he poured his focus inward.
There was a clear boundary between internal and external, and he could see the authority of strength pumping through his veins. He directed its flow outward, allowing it to nourish the entire exterior of his body, reinforcing every layer of skin to an extreme degree of ductile toughness.
He tried to take a step forward but stumbled, nearly falling as he staggered to maintain balance.
The strength he'd added had restricted his skin's mobility, disrupting his typical walking pattern. He either needed to find a tolerable balance between strength and movement, or he needed to find a way to adapt to the new tension that was constricting his body's entire surface.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
Every ounce of his energy and focus had been poured into directing the flow of strength throughout his skin, and he desperately fought to maintain that focus as he introduced the complexity of visual processing to his brain's workload.
One step, then another. Like a newborn deer, he teetered across the cracked street beneath him. It took everything he had just to move.
BANG
The bullet collided with the skin of his stomach; he felt it clearly. It pushed against the iron barrier he'd formed, making a deep dent as it pressed onward, practically aching to pierce through his organs.
But metal clanged against pavement.
Jelani looked down, unable to believe the sight of a small, shining projectile rolling innocently at his feet.
The corners of his mouth pulled outward, and a fire lit in his eyes.
After all, he'd done the impossible.
He'd beaten a bullet.
As far as Jelani was concerned, he had solidified his position as inhuman, but he still had one problem to deal with: he could barely walk.
The longer he remained out in the open, the more rogues he would attract, so speed was critical. He needed to retrieve a pair of elements of healing as quickly as possible, ideally before he ended up with an army as his opponent.
Anyone who wasn't extremely knowledgeable on the nature of rogues would certainly be wondering, why was he getting shot at in the first place? Rogues are nothing more than animals, so what business did they have firing bullets at passersby? Jelani himself would have been wondering the same thing if Echo hadn't explained it to him the day before their operation began.
There is a sub-category of rogues–one that sets the largest cities apart in terms of danger.
They are called Deviations.
The defining characteristic of Deviations is their physical form, one whose anatomy grew to become significantly altered in the midst of the bloody chaos of the apocalypse.
Anything is possible. A beaver with seven legs, metal armor on half of its back, porcupine-like spines on the other, and a gun sticking out of its face is the sort of thing one has to be prepared for.
However, in the case of rogues that use guns to fight from long-range, they are nearly impossible to ever spot–those who venture too near to Portland are often killed without ever learning what took their lives.
Jelani and Echo, as well as Yumi and Sasha, had traveled in such a way that they had almost exclusively encountered these long-range rogues, but there were many other types of Deviations crawling the city.
Lacking any better course of action, Jelani simply stumbled in the direction that the bullet had come from, hoping he would cross paths with its source. This was, of course, not going to happen as long as he continued to move at two miles per hour.
Nevertheless, he took one step after another.