“I really hope this one doesn’t break…”

My hands moved to finish securing the action camera to the wood handled, clear glass handrail thing in the mall I was currently in. I was just humming a soft little tune while my face went down to stare into the shiny black iris for only a moment. Then I looked behind me, and back towards the lense. Okay, it seemed that the angles were right.

“Awright, hope ya’ll can see this right. Stormwave here, resident awesome fox o’ this city. This is my application for ‘extreme shoppers’. Today Ah’m goin’.... Ah think Jewelry shoppin’.”

Smile for the camera and break, looking down from the walkway. The mall below me was in serious needs of repair; much of it was under renovations. Most of the stores had the heavy metal gating down in front, though a couple of the larger and very old places had left their vaults or safes behind since they weren’t being worked on. Of course, that was the problem! Some ruffians couldn’t quite wait for the sales to start up and figured the ‘everything is free’ excuse would work when going for a large, designer store.

No class, really.

Jacket on? Check.
Goggles? Check.
Phone not in the jacket but safely on the ground by the camera? Check.

My right foot lifted and kicked off of the railing, throwing my body towards the air in a perfect arc. For just a moment, there was nothing. No weight, no gravity, thankfully no signs in front of me. I even turned in the air, giving the camera a follow up grin before that whole inertia thing settled in. Falling in style was a skill that was hard to learn, but masterful when you’re really quite the quick red fox. Even more when you only had something like twelve feet to fall.

Concrete was coming up fast. Twisting into a turn, both of my paws lifted and swept, pulling air currents into a strong blast below me. The sheer force pushed me upwards and into a perfect landing right on my feet. No heavy landings today, that trick only took a week to figure out. You know what else is a really good landing?

Bad guys. Especially these bad guys who wear the nice suits over their fur, ties and everything included. Really, you couldn’t ask for a better dressed opponent when crash landing on someone. Except this wasn’t really a crash, for me. For him it was. Totally a crash. But I was crouched down on his back with his feline face crammed so delightfully against the concrete. Thank god I don’t have super strength or this would have hurt much, much more.

Quick, though, I went into the checklist. Saw at least four people inside, two of which are guarding outside. Both of those guys, including my footrest friend, had heavier weapons than the rest. Assault rifles, or something like that. The other should be a little bit to my right, if every bit of my memory is serving right.

“Howdy! Doin’ some after hours shoppin’? Same here!” I kept my voice with the same thing I felt inside; elation. Happiness, excitement, energy. Fighting bad guys wasn’t something I did out of some deep seated sense of duty, at least not entirely. For this case? This was really just kind of fun.

To his credit, the hyena with a gun moved pretty quickly. The firearm wheeled about and tried to point at me. Problem was, there was something in the way. Something that looked a lot like my hand on the barrel, followed by my other elbow slamming against his face. Tug forward, knee upwards and into his face with enough force to, well, knock him out and we had two guys on the floor. A second kick to each kept them down, and the guns were tossed quite far away. Two down already, going pretty great.

So in I stepped, looking at the tarp covered shelves of jewels. Most of those were probably taken by the company, but we had rest of the crew looking at the back ends thick metal vault. A big drill was right between them as they kept it angled just right, trying to go past the locks and steal whatever was actually kept in this things. Wasn’t most money digital these days?

“Ya’ll know payday ain’t until friday, right?” Oh shit there were more of them. Some must have come earlier, but I could have sworn there was only four. Now there’s like, five in here alone. Oh well, better work pretty quick! That guy has a gun!

That guy being the wolf down on the right. Looks more like a pistol than the big pieces his friends had. Whew, that was a lot better. In I went, suddenly jumping up to a glass display case. Pushing all of my effort into my legs, I did what a fox does best; I pounced. Or leapt, rather, across the inland sea of the cashier’s counter and slammed my feet into the center of his chest.

The pistol clattered to the ground as he was pushed into the concrete wall, but one of his friends drew a knife. I think it was a knife, I could feel him moving to one side but not exactly what was in his hand. Only that it was moving towards my torso. That would probably not feel all that great. And his knife was fast.

My arm was a bit faster, slipping dense plastic forearm coating thing in the way, covered by my jacket sleeve. The knife turned and I reached up, grabbing him by that hilariously useless tie. Why would someone even wear that to a bank heist? The same movement brought it down with a sharp tug, slamming his surprised face against the covered up case to my, now, left.

“Hey, no need to get upset. I’m just browsing. You guys act like you’ve never had a customer!”

Tie guy was shoved forward and into his friends, giving me a moment’s time to step forward and throw a punch forward. The punch was light, distracting one guy so I could move my leg up, knee into the stomach before stepping back. Almost like a dance, my left leg rose again, cracking the shin guard against the lizards chin. Curl back, snap again into the stomach, and step forward to finish with another elbow drop. Down went the reptile, into a heap with some of his friends.

Obviously, these guys aren’t exactly masters of hand to hand combat. Probably some professional heisters who think they’re hot stuff. There’s been an awful lot of those lately.

Of course, there was one guy who suddenly got my attention. A big, burly man. Strong, barely fitting into the poorly tailored suit that bulged over each one of his muscles. Oh, he was a bear. And not like the ‘gay man’ kinda bear, but the actual ‘probably grizzly’ kind of bear. Maybe the gay male bear. Couldn’t confirm that part. But a brown bear, definitely not polar. No hair, just fur, so he probably shaved that.

“Anyways, ya guys do good work here. Ah mean it. Bu’ it’s time for ya’ll to take a nice little break.” And the bear stepped in, so I figured it was time to clock him out. A strong, snapping kick was given right towards his midsection, like the ones I’d been handing out like candy all day. Even the feeling of hitting those well toned muscles was rather satisfying.

Not that it did anything.

Or, probably, not that it did enough. I know that had to hurt, this wasn’t some weird comic booky world where people just ignored hard hits because their power levels were too high. He’s just finally someone tough! He must be the close range enforcer of his little squadron of jewel jackers.

So I threw another blow at him, this time a straight jab towards his face. My knuckles snapped against his short muzzle the first time, but the second one he reached up and blocked it with his forearm.

Clang.

“Damnit, what’re you made of, friggin’ metal?” That really hurt! it felt like my arms had connected with the vault they were trying to break into right now. Was he some kind of super? Durable body, super strength, punch immunity? All of those would be rather unfortunate to run into!

Answering my question, his sleeves went down to show some kind of metal gauntlets covering him from fist to elbow. The tech was very sleek, explaining why I didn’t see it before. That alone must have cost them a pretty penny, but also was probably going to make my job a lot harder.

“Well, that’s pretty co-” BAM! His fist suddenly connected with me, throwing me across the store and into the front window. Which broke, against my back. I hit the ground with a heavy crash, kicking up the dust of rebuilding a little bit. Oh, jeez, that was gonna leave a pretty big mark. But nothing was broken yet!

And out came the bear, slowly undoing his tie like some old style bouncer. HIs expression never changed away from one of disdain and annoyance, as if he’d expected to run into a vigilante. In this city? One could never be sure when a costumed hero showed up!

“Taking off jackets?” I commented, doing the same as him. My yellow and black jacket was pulled free, then tossed into the air behind me. Air which kicked itself up a lot, carrying the jacket away like some kind of overgrown wasp on the winds. My winds. My storm.

The electrical power still in the mall suddenly jumped from whatever sources it could; the air, the sockets, the transformers. All of it came to me in incandescent streams of pure charge, pulling into my costume’s conductive openings, then onto my body. From there it would arch about, creating a miniature rave all over me. Time to stop playing around!

The bear stepped forward and rushed in, suddenly slamming his mechanically enhanced fist towards my face. It was fast as last time, but this time, I was even faster. Like a flash, my body reacted, simply coming down to the left so his punch passed over my face. One paw went up, grabbing him suddenly.

“Ya know, you shouldn’t shop here. Ya look.. Short.” And boom, electricity followed the pun path right into his gauntlet. It sparked, flickered, forced his fist open and exploded. One piece plinked off my goggles, the others shooting all over. Sounds of glass breaking were easily heard as the handrail window things took a brunt of the explosion. Of course, the bear was gonna be in a lot of pain, what with the hot pieces of metal making his skin look much shinier.

He stumbled back. Off balance, one weapon, seemingly confused about what happened. That proves he didn’t build it, but who cares. I looked over my shoulder for a second, towards the thankfully still intact camera.

“Keep watching! I’m gonna do an awesome!”

Then I moved. Fast. Faster than they thought I could, faster than most anyone could. Erratic charges on my body made me move this fast, before moving to my arms. Boom, the fist slammed firmly into the bear bandits stomach, doubling him over. Then the electricity hit him stiffening him up. Then my other paw went up, gathering a lot of air into a small ball of tremendous pressure.

“Tell your friend you’re fired.” Before it pushed down, bursting a powerful blast backwards. The man went sailing, and I heard the most satisfying cry of shock when he hit into the last guy inside. Hopefully, that meant they were all defeated!

A deep breath, calming down. Electricity gone.

I went upstairs to get my phone and call the police. But my phone was ringing.

“Jade Fox Deliveries? Your order for” Oh shit I had a job to work on today. That’s why I was in town, totally forgot!

“… Oh. Why is it late?”

I looked down at the remains of the scene beneath me, giving my client a sigh.

“It’s a long story. I’ll be there in five minutes, okay?”

CRASH! Some more glass fell, including my camera, down a full floor to concrete. Another one gone.

“... Maybe ten.”

---

One more story, this time taking a small detour from the mind control. I hope you all don't mind, can't always be adult! I got some of that cooking up for you guys, though!

Art by the ever wonderful, always favorite,  fox-die who you should totally check out

Stormwave and the Extreme Shopping Channel are courtesy of me!

Tune in next time, more fox fun on the same fox channel