Throwing strength, letting the Wretch loose

Anger and instinct fed into my actions, as I went with the flow. I wanted a weapon and I didn't even have the buckler or armguard. I patted pockets, found small change, and extended my hand. I let go of it, and it collected within the forcefield.

Then, just as easily, it escaped the forcefield. A mouth or other cavity yawned open. The change leaked out and found another invisible trap to fall up into, one or two coins being lost in the process.

I'd thought about this, a long, long time ago. As a 'what if'. In reaching for the change, I hadn't even consciously recalled the memory. It was only when I realized what was happening that I connected the thought.

The change moved, then disappeared.

I saw the violence, heard the impact of change striking car doors and icy road. I'd been plunging toward my caricature and now I changed course. My caricature was dead. A coin dropped from the top of the tallest building in the world wouldn't kill someone. A handful thrown with the kind of strength and force that could lift trucks had a treatment like a low-impact shotgun.

Fuck the 'wretch', I thought, the thought punctuating the full collapse of her body onto the road.

I blindsided Sidepiece's caricature, flying up close until the forcefield got a grip on her, then let the forcefield do its thing.

*****

"Holy," Sidepiece said, as I disengaged from her other self's remains. I reached for the Sidepiece caricature's lower rib, then hurled it at Gibbet, finishing the action before I fully realized I wasn't grabbing it with my hand.

It hadn't been my idea, I was pretty sure.

The rib detonated, more of a focused blast in two directions, that seemed to punch through a nearby bit of metal construction fencing by the side of the road. The rattle of it knocked Gibbet from her perch atop the tallest and sturdiest of the gallows, and she fell into the darkness beneath a sea of structures that loomed over parked, dark, and snow-colored cars.

From Within 16.4