Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. The stories contain mature sexual content and violence as well. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 25
“Somebody get Larry in here!” Maximus Savage yelled.
The gang leader sat on the edge of his bed, and could almost feel the steam pouring from his ears. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since his second showdown with Sapphire Angel, and his fury had not abated. She had defeated him. Again. And he had fled. Again.
The woman’s power was hard to fathom. She was strong. Superhuman. Stronger than him. That reality was difficult to accept. His fingers dug into the edge of the mattress as he ground his teeth.
Soft footfalls sounded in the doorway, and Savage looked up to see Larry Oberkfell, the man who was part scientist, part doctor. Oberkfell wore a dirty lab coat, and his sparse hair stuck out in all directions from his mostly bald skull. One of his eyes twitched as he stared at Savage, waiting for the gangster to speak.
“I’ve given it almost twenty-four hours,” Savage said, “and I haven’t changed my mind. I want the last two vials. Now.”
Oberkfell's stare morphed into a twitch of both eyes, and his hands shook. His voice cracked and trembled when he spoke.
“Taking both vials is a risk. And taking even one is a risk. You had your last dose yesterday. Even with one vial, I would need to space out the next dosage every —”
“I don’t fucking care!” Savage yelled, interrupting the man.
Savage felt his face go flush. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself stumble outside of Wayne Steele’s offices as the fire burst to life behind him. But he wasn’t thinking of the fire. He was thinking of the person who had caused him to flee. Sapphire Angel. How is one little girl stronger than anybody on the planet?
Savage glared at Oberkfell, who shrank away and looked at the floor. Oberkfell said nothing.
“Some risks in life are worth taking, Larry. So we’re going to do this. Understood?”
“Yes… yes sir.”
“Good. This had better work. I need to be stronger than that fucking girl in her little costume. Have you made any progress figuring out how we’ll know?”
“Yes… yes. I was on my way here to update you when I heard you yell for me. I have something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“Come, come!” Oberkfell said, taking a step back and giving a beckoning wave. The scientist buzzed with an uncharacteristic excitement. His worry was gone.
Maximus Savage growled and rose from his bed, following Oberkfell from the bedroom. They moved through the hideout’s large main room and turned down another hall. Oberkfell moved with an excited skip in his step, entering a small room. A weight machine, or what looked like a weight machine, sat in the center of the room. Oberkfell grinned and rubbed his hands together as he looked at the machine.
Savage frowned and raised an eyebrow as he looked at the contraption.
“This?” the gangster asked, pointing. “What is it?”
“It will measure you against Sapphire Angel, by using some of her past feats as a benchmark,” Oberkfell said, excitement flowing from him.
“How did you figure that out?”
“What I mentioned before turned out to be correct. I found video footage of Sapphire Angel performing various feats of strength. The rally wasn’t the only time people have caught her in action. People upload footage from their phones to YouTube and places like that.”
“Yea, people idolize that bitch for some reason.”
“They sure do. She seems to operate out of the public eye most of the time, so there aren’t many. But there were enough. And those videos go viral when people post them.”
“Bitch,” Savage muttered.
“I selected videos where it looked like she was about at her limit,” Oberkfell said. “Which was rare. In a few instances, I sent some of our guys out to retrieve items. For example, they fetched the same metal bars she bent a few months ago, to free a kid trapped in a burning building with no other exit. Those bars were almost the size of a tree trunk, and it didn’t look easy for her. Although I don’t know if an elephant would have budged them. Our guys needed some special tools to cut them apart so they could bring them back here. But once I had them, and a few other items, I tried to calculate the force needed to perform those feats.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this.”
“Yes, it’s pretty obvious. I put this machine together using those calculations. We can test you. You need to put as much force as you can into four maneuvers, using this machine. I can then determine, with rough accuracy, how you measure up to Sapphire Angel.”
“It’s ready now?” Savage asked, still skeptical.
“Yes! For the first test, just sit there. The first one is an overhead lift test. Sit with your back to the board, put your hands in those grips, and lift.”
Savage glanced around the room, making sure it was empty except for Oberkfell. He didn’t need his men watching if he failed. Which he might, if the previous evening’s fight with the superheroine was any indication. The room was empty, so he moved to the seat, sat down, and took the grips.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Oberkfell said.
Savage grunted, tensed, and pushed up, using the grips. His muscles strained, and his arms rose above his head, inch by inch. About six inches above his head, his arms quivered, and his upward movement stopped. He clenched his teeth, grunted, and tried to push harder, but it was to no avail. He lowered the grips.
“Okay, that test is done,” Oberkfell said. “Now three more.”
Oberkfell guided Savage through three other routines. Each involved Savage performing a different maneuver, which, as best Savage could tell, put a strain on a different muscle group. By the time he finished, Savage was sucking air. He rose from the bench, rotating his shoulders, as Oberkfell looked at a laptop screen.
“Well?” the gang leader asked.
“You are near her on one of the four,” Oberkfell said. “But not the other three. She actually exceeds you by quite —”
“Fuck you!” Savage yelled, stepping toward Oberkfell and wagging a finger in the man’s face. He knew he shouldn’t be mad at the man, as it wasn’t Oberkfell’s fault. But he couldn’t tolerate a reminder of Sapphire Angel’s superiority.
Oberkfell looked up at Savage, his face stricken with fear.
“Get the last two vials now!” Savage bellowed. “We’re not screwing around. I will be strong enough to crush that little blond bitch!”
“It… it will take a few minutes,” Oberkfell said, with no fight in his voice. “I’ll bring things to your quarters.”
Savage stormed from the room, navigating the labyrinth until he reached his room. He glanced at the television, which was broadcasting the local evening news. He noticed the personality sitting behind the anchor desk. It was Megan Lawlor, the television reporter that Rocco Lynch had snatched from the studio, and used as bait to lure out Sapphire Angel. The kidnapping had been Lynch’s downfall, as Sapphire Angel had rescued Lawlor and defeated the gang members.
Savage hadn’t expected Lawlor to return to work so soon. He studied her, noticing some blotchy skin under her makeup. She had spent a long time in the cold, and wasn’t fully healed.
The gang leader pried his eyes from the television as a chirp came from his bed, and he saw he had missed a call on his satellite phone. He grabbed the phone and glanced at the screen. Howard Vincent. Savage dialed the FBI man’s number.
“What?!” Savage snapped as Vincent answered.
“We have a problem,” Vincent replied. “Our lab has made some headway with the hard drives. They’ve recovered some scraps of data that could lead to your hideout.”
“Data? What data?”
“Your buddy Grim recommended a location to you before Rocco came to town. Grim had a note of that conversation in his computer.”
“Shit! The dumb ass put it in writing? The fucker deserved to die!”
“It’s not bad yet. They don’t have your location. Just some street names. But somebody might piece it together to lead to your spot.”
“Son of a bitch,” Savage muttered. The day was going from bad to worse. “Who has the info so far?”
“Aside from the nerds in the lab, who won’t do anything else with it, just Olivia Lockheed,” Vincent replied. “She’s in charge of the FBI investigation in town, so it would be up to her to share it with anybody else.”
Savage stared into nothingness, pondering how he might address the problem. He could move the hideout to a new location. But that would concede a small victory to the FBI bitch, and he wasn’t ready to do that. And he wasn’t ready to abandon all they had built here.
There was another answer. A more forceful answer.
“Find out where Olivia Lockheed is hiding with Rocco Lynch,” Savage said with a snarl. “I don’t care what you have to do.”
“That could be difficult.”
“You have more to lose than me if this all goes south,” Savage said. “If Lockheed has been communicating with your lab, they should be able to track her down. She must have left a trail behind it, even if she was careful. Find her, and then I’ll put an end to this problem.”
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
I feel like Maximus Savage’s hate of Sapphire Angel is pushing him to do things he might regret later. …..And Sapphire Angel’s repeated perceived “losses” against Maximus Savage (i.e., letting him get away) might also push her to do things SHE might regret later (such as potentially allying with Olivia Lockheed). Where Sapphire sees these encounters as failures, Savage also sees them as failures…..it’s like they don’t ever believe there’s a “winner” or a “loser” in these matchups, which is immensely interesting. I, for one, think Sapphire won both so far (regardless of what she thinks), because if she’d truly lost, Savage would’ve disposed of her thoroughly by now.
I also feel like the testing machine that Oberkfell put Savage through might’ve done more harm than good; the last thing Savage needs right now is a reminder of how inferior he is compared to her. On one hand, I’d find his gradual unraveling satisfying, but on the other hand, he’s a multi-dimensional villain and we’ve heard a lot about his past in prior chapters, so it’s not like we’re unclear on where he comes from and why he thinks what he thinks. At this rate, Savage will kill himself with the repeated drug doses before the silver-eyed man even has a chance to consider recruiting him as his “champion”. …..Or maybe that’s the silver-eyed man’s plan to begin with. (DUN DUN DUN!)
Maybe Larry Oberkfell can be the champion. He can be like N. Gin from the Crash Bandicoot series. xD
So Sapphire’s hurting majorly over her “defeat” (if we could call it that) with Savage, Lockheed’s (maybe) considering allying with Sapphire again, and Savage is trying to get his forces to hunt down and kill Lockheed. And Wayne Steele and the Justice Seekers are also still at work, too, though Sapphire already has one up on them at this point.
I personally want Sapphire and Lockheed to team back up; maybe the last straw will be that Sapphire saves Lockheed from the Savage Gang’s attempt on her life, and she becomes convinced Sapphire really is a hero or something…..? Could be an amusing reversal of what Savage actually has planned.
Let’s do this!