SERAPH-29: Reach vs. Flexibility

  It was like a scene straight out of an old action movie.
  First the window exploded as a chair came flying through it like a bullet, ricocheting off the opposite building before crashing to the road beside the waiting van as a crumpled heap of torn fabric, shredded foam and bent plastic.
  It was followed soon after by the massive form of Titan, who charged out through the window with Cat right behind him.  Titan turned in midair and fired at Cat's head point-blank, sending him flying back into the office building.
  His arm then jerked from his waist before up to shoulder height; it looked like he was throwing something to the six people in the van below, but none of them could see well enough to know what it was...
  It was then made perfectly clear to them what happened, when the entire second storey exploded.  The windows were blasted out by a thunderclap-like explosion, and the ceiling ballooned alarmingly before collapsing a heartbeat later.  A billowing cloud of black smoke and orange flames reached out of the windows, briefly lighting up the night before dissipating into thin air.
  Then the entire second floor collapsed!
  It simply caved in and disappeared into the first floor, vanishing in a cloud of dust and dirt--
  CREEENCH!  Titan landed on the roof of the van, which crumpled under his immense weight; two boot-shaped impressions about thirty-centimetres deep appeared just above Jackie's and Maddy's heads, but the roof held.  Titan dropped to his knees from the force of the hard landing, but was unharmed by the fall; he reached over the side and slapped the side of the van twice.
  "Hold on up there!" Alex shouted from inside, putting the van in gear and gunning it.  It pulled away fairly quickly, but not quickly enough; after five or so seconds, Cat pulled himself out of the wreckage and gave chase...

TITAN
  The sliding door on the side of the van rumbled open, and a second later Maddy's head poked out.  She looked behind us, and her eyes widened.
  "Look out!" she shrieked.  I turned, and grimaced as I watched Cat gaining on us; he was rocketing along, chasing the van down on foot.
  "Punch it Alex!" Maddy shouted.
  "Obviously, I'm trying!" I heard Alex snap back.  It was no good; the van didn't have enough grunt to outrun Cat.  I grabbed my pistol from its holster, snapped it open and reloaded it with my fourth-last round.  I took aim, and--
  BLAM!  Cat jumped at the last second; the bullet smashed into the road, kicking up a geyser of destroyed concrete, but left Cat unharmed.  I snarled in anger, reloading and aiming again...
  Cat bent over as he ran, his fingers wrapping around a...
  BLAM!  Cat held up his improvised shield, a manhole cover, on an angle; the shot glanced off it and smashed into a shop-front.  I reloaded faster this time, but it did no good; one powerful leap launched him from the road, and brought him onto the van roof.
  He swung at me with the manhole cover, but I blocked it with my left forearm; the metal circle jarred my arm painfully, but it didn't hit me in the side of the head like Cat was hoping.  I pistol-whipped him, and he stumbled, dropping to all-fours to keep from falling off the van; as he did, I raised my pistol--
  WHACK!  His foot snapped out, knocking my right leg out from under me--
  BLAM!  The bullet carved a chunk out of the back corner of the van and nearly took two of Cat's fingers off, but missed him regardless.
  Cat came back to his feet and swung at my head; I ducked and punched him in the chest, shunting him right to the edge of the van.  He almost lost his balance, but caught my arm in a tight, vice-like grip.  He pulled himself back on, adding force to a punch to my temple; a knee to the stomach and punch to the ribs came quickly after, but they barely fazed me.
  I pirouetted as he danced around me, catching him in the head with my elbow.  I brought the same elbow back, elbowing him in the other side of the head before aiming at the same spot with my other fist; he deflected the blow, however, and landed a solid jab to my left cheek.
  Growling, I threw a right hook--
  THWACK!  He caught it in his left hand, throwing a right jab that hit me in the eye.  Another came fast, but my left hand came up--
  THWACK!  I seized his left wrist in my arm, forcing my fingers through his slippery shields until I had a firm grip on his metal bracer.
  Cat braced himself and put all his weight behind his arms, pushing against me with everything he had.  It bent me back slightly, but I curled my lips into a grimace as I put my strength against his.
  I won.
  He bent back like a blade of grass until the back of his head was hanging out over the back of the van; I put one leg between his before sweeping it back through his leg.  Cat lost his balance and hit fell onto the van; I put one knee on his stomach, pinning him down before tearing my fist free of his grip.  I laid into his face-guard with my fist, smashing him five times in rapid succession before he put his knee against my chest and shoved hard, standing me up.  He leapt up and struck my face with a left fist, following with a backhand square on the nose; the blow brought tears to my eyes, more from shock than pain.
  He moved towards me, winding back his arm for a punch before striking with powerful fo--
  BLAM!  A bullet struck his fist, knocking it to one side; I seized on the opening, grabbing his forearm and pulling him forward and downwards.  He stumbled, off-balance, and I landed a solid left hook that sent him flying off the van and into a shop; he crashed through a glass display window and vanished.
  I rolled onto my back, chest heaving in exhaustion as I looked at my saviour; Maddy was hanging out of the side of the van, her right arm gripping onto someone holding her from inside the vehicle and her left hand holding a smoking shotgun.
  I nodded my thanks, and she nodded back--
  CRRAASH!  I rolled to one side and stood--
  CREENCH!  Cat's knee smacked into the roof right where my head had been; he came at me with a furious flurry of powerful metal-clad punches, elbows, knees and kicks.  His anger was like a shot of adrenaline, and coupled with his superior speed it was compensating for his lack of experience; I was barely holding him off now...

ALEXANDER
  I could see the whole exchange in the wing mirror, and it was going badly for Titan; that metal thing was a lot faster than the big dude, and the nimbler machine was all over him.  Maddy rushed up beside me, ducking through the gap between the two front seats and sitting down in 'shotgun' with a twelve-gauge in her hands.
  "Buckle up!" I said, only half-joking; I knew I had a reputation for being a bit reckless behind the wheel.  Maddy, although well aware of my reputation, declined.
  "We need to get that thing off the roof!" she said.
  "I know; Titan's not going well," I said, glancing to the mirror in time to watch Titan take a painful-looking uppercut right under his chin.  He countered with a hook that the mech dodged, before it planted its metal fist right in the small of Titan's back; Titan snarled in pain, but kept fighting regardless.  I looked to Maddy.
  "Your power; how long do you need to touch someone for it to work?" I asked.  Maddy shrugged as she boosted herself out the window, standing on the seat as she fired twice at the machine; in the mirror I saw it buck, catching both sprays of pellets in its back.  The brief distraction left an opening for Titan to elbow it in the face before planting his knee in its stomach; it stumbled back, but came back with a vengeance.
  "Umm, about a second, maybe less; why?" she asked when she sat back down.
  "Hold on," I said as we went around a corner onto the highway; I was going way too fast, and the van flicked out sideways.  We drifted briefly, before the bumper smacked into a traffic light, correcting our slide.  Once we were back on a straight, I held out my hand.
  "Shotty please?" I asked.  I could her confused expression in my peripheral vision, but she passed it to me regardless.  I kept the tips of my toes on the accelerator, keeping the wheel steady with my knees; my hands free, I lifted the shotgun and fired three times into the windshield, blasting it off.
  The van wasn't flat-faced; a larger, more powerful engine had been bolted into this thing, so a larger engine bay in the front had to be added to compensate.  While precarious, you could potentially stand on the bonnet while the van was in motion...
  "This has got to be right up there on your list of stupid ideas!" Maddy shouted.  I gave her the shotgun back, taking the wheel again.
  "Feel free to speak up when you think something better!" I said back.  Maddy rolled her eyes and tossed the shotgun to someone in the passenger bay, clambering up onto her seat before putting one foot on the dashboard.
  "Keep it steady.  Because, if I die, I'm gonna haunt your butt until the end of time!" Maddy grumbled...

MADELEINE
  I took it as fast as I dared, which wasn't very.
  I put one foot up on the dashboard, then grabbed a section of the roof where there wasn't any broken pieces of windshield still sticking out of the frame; once I had a firm grip, I put my other foot on the bonnet.
  This is a horrible idea, I thought.
  I then stepped fully out onto the dashboard; the wind whipped and tugged at me as I lifted my head, dragging my eyes away from the road below.  Titan stood toe-to-toe with the machine, trading blows with it; Titan, I could see, was on the receiving end of most of them.
  Here goes nothing, I mentally whimpered...
  I pushed off the bonnet with my feet, pulling myself up at the same time; I half-ran, half-crawled over to the two fighters.  As I did, Titan took a knee to the gut that drove him to his hands and knees; at the back of his neck was a tiny gap between his balaclava and the throat-protecting collar of his combat fatigues, where a sliver of bare, pale skin was visible.
  I reached out and pushed my fingers into the gap; Titan's skin was hot and sweaty under my hand, but I didn't really notice it over the massive rush of energy that surged into my body from the contact.  I felt my skin grow as hard as iron, and every muscle in my body hardened and expanded, until my clothes were stretched to the limit.
  It was the power that came with this rush, though, that made me just want to tip back my head and cackle.  I was by no means the toughest member of our group, or the fastest, or the most coordinated; what I had going.  But all of those traits belonged to an entirely different person.
  The scrawny little black-haired klutz was gone; she'd spontaneously "hulked out," turning herself into six-feet of pure killing ferocity.
  I vaulted over Titan and hit the mech in the face with a two-footed kick, which sent him stumbling back to the very edge of the van.  I landed on the roof and advanced, grabbing it by the throat and headbutting it; the cracks in its visor lengthened, but it held for the moment.  He lashed out, hitting me in the eye with his fist; I shrugged off the blow, grabbing his arm before he could hit me in that side again.
  "Get off me, you bitch!" the machine shouted angrily, hitting me in the side of the head with his other fist.  I was fazed momentarily by the blow, and he seized on the distraction; he drove his elbow through the arm that was holding his neck, tugging his throat out of my grasp.  I threw a backhand which he ducked under, before landing a jab to my stomach; I lashed out with my elbow, but he sidestepped the blow...
  But I was quicker than Titan, which he didn't anticipate.
  I pirouetted and brought my hand around, slamming it into the machine's metal neck; this time I met no resistance from his shields, which must've been depleted.  I smacked the machine about the face viciously, slapping then backhanding then slapping then backhanding; I hit him almost a dozen times, before pulling him close, glaring straight into the crimson display on his visor.  Barely visible beneath was a pair of angry, yet weary, eyes; so, this thing was definitely human.
  "TO ME!" I heard Titan growl from behind me.  I pulled the machine closer.
  "I'm not a bitch; my name is Madeleine Wayne," I snapped at him.  Then I lifted him clear off the van; he struggled, punching and kicking at me, but I ignored the blows.  Some of them stung but I blocked the pain, tightening my grip on his neck; his hand flew to his throat as he tried to claw my fingers away, but he wasn't strong enough.  Titan and, by extension, I were stronger than he was.
  "Now, get the hell off my van!"
  With that I turned and threw the machine at Titan.  The burly soldier was ready, landing a devastating uppercut that smashed the mech right in the centre of its chest; I saw its chest-plate crumple around Titan's fist, before the force of the blow launched it into the air and about fifty metres back down the street.  It landed heavily on its back, and didn't get back up for several seconds; when it did, it only tiredly propped itself onto one elbow.
  Titan shouldered past me, standing right at the back of the van as he stared down at the shrinking form of the machine.  Then he began to raise his arm...

COPYCAT
  I watched them drive away as my blood began to boil like lava; I was tired, and my armour was battered and the visor was malfunctioning, courtesy of that bitch's flurry of blows to my head.  I was, therefore, definitely in no condition to continue fighting them.
  Which only made it worse that all I could do was sit and watch that arrogant bastard on the van's roof give me the finger as they drove away.