​     Abby's father, Gramps, kicked at the inside of Kevin Klawmaker's knee, see if he could get it to buckle, but Kevin was fast and dodged in time. 

​     Gramps struck several areas of Klawmaker's upper body, see if he could spot any vulnerabilities.

     Nope.

​     No vulnerabilities that he could readily identify.

​     Physically,  Klawmaker was a perfect human specimen.

     Gramps took a punch to the shoulder so that he could deliver one of his own to Klawmaker's neck.

     Klawmaker stumbled back, furious.

     Then,

     POOF!

     Klawmaker disappeared.

​     Damn it, I was afraid he was going to start doing that, Gramps thought.

​     Klawmaker appeared at Gramps' right to pop Gramps one in the jaw. Then,

     POOF!

​     He appeared at Gramps' left to smack ​that side of Gramps' jaw. SMACK! Then,

​     ....to his right, in front of him, behind him. POOF! SMACK! POOF! SMACK! POOF! SMACK!

​     Gramps fell back on the training and experience he'd gained over fifteen billion years. He let his deepest instincts take over. He couldn't outguess Kevin as to where he'd POOF! next, but he could be ready for the micro-second Kevin...

     POOF!

​     As Kevin appeared at Gramps' left, Gramps power punched him in the nose.

​     "Yeow!"

​     Blood splattered everywhere.

​     POOF!

​     Klawmaker appeared on the other side of the room so that Gramps couldn't just hit him again. "How did you ​do that?"

​     "I just know how to fight is all."

​     "Yeah, well, fight this, motherfucker," Klawmaker said as he whipped his laser pistol out of its holster.

​     Whatever, Gramps figured. Just keep the fighting away from Anne. Gramps switched on the laser refractor the Azure had issued him years before. The refractor coated his body like an aura. Klawmaker hit him with a laser blast, and the beam refracted as it hit Gramps' body so that, rather than put a hole through Gramps, it filled the room with a blinding brightness.

​     Gramps waved a sensor on his belt. It called for his SUV to come get him, a "special" SUV that could fly and drive itself and was all but indestructible.

​     Gramps waved another sensor, this one on his chest. His refractor disappeared, to be replaced by an aura that allowed him to move at a speed roughly four times faster than any human. Gramps hated to use his time warper; it took him days to recover afterward. It was his ego, a part of himself that he'd cursed many times, that caused him to make that particular weapon choice. He could have just hit Kevin with a knock out dart, and that was always an option, but he stayed with the fisticuffs at first because he wanted to make a point. He looked like an old man, he really did. He looked like a human male in the last decades of his life. He chose that look as part of a promise he'd made to Abby's mother and because, at that point in his so very long life, the persona suited him. Nonetheless, in truth, he was an Adam, and Klawmaker needed to know, as soon as possible, that it was not a good idea to get into any sort of hand to hand combat with an Adam...

​     so Gramps pummeled him.

​     With his time warper switched on, it seemed to Gramps he pummeled Klawmaker for a good thirty seconds.

​     To Klawmaker, it seemed more like ten seconds, a ten count, punctuated by about a hundred blows to the body. Then,

     POOF!

​     Anne, Gramps' dear friend and one of the richest and most powerful women in the world, sat motionless in her chair four paces away like Gramps'd asked her to.

​     He made it just in time.

​     Klawmaker POOFed at her side. His intention, Gramps assumed, no, knew for absolutely certain. was to snatch Anne to POOF! her away with him somewhere.

     Only Gramps thought ahead and was ready for him. 

​     The instant Kevin appeared, Gramps whopped Kevin's skull with his hardest punch yet. The idea was to knock Kevin completely out, but that didn't happen. Kevin probably wished it had, though, because, after that punch, his jaw jutted at a very weird angle from the rest of his face.

     He could no longer talk, his mouth was so screwed up.

     He was on his butt on the floor, and he tried to scrabble away from Gramps, and he kept trying to yell at Gramps, but all that came out of his mouth was this loud, shrieky sort of bleat.  

​     Then,

     POOF!

     He was gone.

​     Gramps switched off his time warper, and his body immediately went into a series of spasms. It looked to Anne like he was having some sort of seizure, only much worse. His body contorted into what looked like impossible shapes, and the sight of it scared the shit out of her. "Gramps! What..."

​     "I'm fine. I...I've got a couple of time streams going through me at the same...I'll...I've already called my SUV. It should be here any second."

​                                                     CONTINUE