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- John remains untouched by the effects of a flux fog:
- The flux fog surged forward, filling the street, and I opened my arms to it, embracing the bitter, tingling mists as they rolled over me. A reckless, stupid thing to do; but the restlessness was so great in me, I felt a desperate need to do something, anything, out of character, just to prove to myself that I was still in charge of my life. That I was still making the decisions. The mists felt hot and clammy, like the steam in a sick-room, where the fever burns like madness and inspiration all at once. Shadowy shapes skittered all around me, like sharks circling a body in the water; and somewhere far away a great bell made of ice tolled the hours before dawn.
- And then, just like that, the fog was gone. The street was back, in all its wild and gaudy details, the clubs and bars and private establishments as loud and raucous as ever. The bright primary colours of the neon signs blazed as sleazily as ever, and the huge oversized Moon shone coldly in the clear night sky. People spilled back out onto the pavements, once again intent only on tracking down their own particular heavens and hells, their very own private rewards and damnations. Nothing had changed, least of all me. I lowered my arms, feeling faintly foolish and obscurely disappointed. The flux fog hadn’t touched me. Perhaps because of my not-altogether-human nature; perhaps because it was afraid of me. Or perhaps because it wouldn’t deign to touch anyone who wanted it... -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- One of the things he can do while "staring someone down" is control the substances in their bodies. Here, he looks a man in his eyes and forced every last bit of drugs he's ever done out of every place he's ever injected himself:
- So I stepped forward, grabbed his bony head firmly with both hands, and held his gaze with my own. He tried to break away, but there was no strength left in him. He tried to look away, but I had him. I concentrated, and he cried out miserably as all the old scabs on his forearms broke open, and dark liquids oozed out and trickled down his arms. Everything he’d ever taken, every last nasty drop of it, ran out of him, and he cried like a baby at the loss of it. When I was finished I let him go, and he fell in a heap before me.
- “There,” I said. “You’re clean. Free as a bird. So you can leave, or you can stay; it’s all up to you. And don’t say I never did anything for you.”
- I left him there and headed for the elf. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- John still likes that bullet-stealing trick of his:
- Someone in the front rank spotted me, and I saw a ripple pass through the ranks as my name worked its way back. They all swapped their truncheons to their left hands, and drew their guns with their right. Heavy, long-barrelled pistols, loaded with dum-dums if they had any sense. I smiled, a little. Walker must have told them about me, but they clearly hadn’t listened. So, time for my party trick. I raised my hands, called on an old well-rehearsed magic, and took all the bullets out of their guns. The bullets fell in streams from my upraised hands, to jump and clatter on the ground at my feet. As tricks go, I couldn’t help feeling it was getting just a bit predictable, but I think people have come to expect it and would be disappointed if I didn’t use it at some point. Sometimes I’m a victim of my own reputation. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- And he still knows how to use variations on it, like so:
- Ms. Fate was breathing hard, the leather over her fake breasts rising and falling, but her gloved hands were full of shuriken, and her cowled head was proudly erect. Screech wasn’t even breathing hard. He flicked drops of blood from the tips of his elegant fingers and glared arrogantly at the approaching troopers. But there had to be a good sixty armed men heading right for them, and the odds weren’t good.
- So I got up off the bonnet, walked casually forward to join Screech and Ms. Fate, waited till the charging troopers were almost upon us, then used a variation on my bullet-removing trick to rip all the fillings, crowns and bridgework right out of their mouths. The troopers skidded to a halt, clutching at ruined, bloody mouths, making quite distressing and pitiful sounds of pain and horror. Screech and Ms. Fate looked at me inquiringly. I explained what I’d just done, and Ms. Fate got the giggles. Screech nodded approvingly, as though I was a rather backwards pupil who’d finally done something right. I stepped forward, and cleared my throat loudly to get the troopers’ attention.
- “Yes,” I said cheerfully. “That was me. Now, be good little shock-and-awe troopers and trot off back to Walker, or I’ll show you another disappearing trick, involving your testicles and a series of buckets.” -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- In one of his most impressive moments, John finds "all of the things that can go wrong with a motorcycle" , then enforces those possibilities on a group of forty-plus Neanderthal bikers:
- I looked back again; even more Hell’s Neanderthals were coming. Walker must have press-ganged every rogue Neanderthal in the Nightside. I counted forty before I gave up, and more were joining the chase all the time. I was beginning to grow somewhat annoyed with Walker. Time to show him what I could do when I really got annoyed and put my mind to it. I concentrated, firing up my special gift. My inner eye slowly opened, my third eye, my private eye; and my gift made clear to me all the things that could go wrong with a motorcycle. And then it was the easiest thing in the world to reach out, find what was nearly wrong with each motorcycle, and push them all over the edge.
- Some bikes crashed, some exploded, and quite a few went up in balls of flame, burning fiercely bright against the night. Neanderthal bikers were thrown through the air, roasted with their machines, or blown apart into scattered pieces quickly churned up by the passing traffic. In a few moments the whole pack was gone, nothing left behind but bits and pieces of wrecked machines and ruined riders. I sank back into my seat, closing my eyes. Using my gift so widely really took it out of me.
- “Hardcore, John,” said Ms. Fate. I couldn’t tell from her voice whether she approved or not, and I didn’t feel like looking at her. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- Another example of John sending his third eye upwards to look at everything at once:
- Ms. Fate needed directions, and I was way past the point where I could do it from memory. So I fired up my gift again and sent my mind soaring up out of my body, to look down upon the Nightside from above, and See the whole dirty mess stretched out below me. Walker’s roadblocks and barricades showed clearly in the night, and I sent Ms. Fate running this way and that to avoid them. We were making progress, but the Osterman Gate was still a long way off. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- John gives a werewolf a beatdown:
- The werewolf loomed over me, snapping its long jaws mockingly. Up close, it smelled really bad, a harsh, rank mixture of musk and blood and wet dog. And then it must have got something of my scent, because it hesitated, and lowered its wedge-shaped head for another sniff. Because of circumstances not easily explained, I have some diluted werewolf blood in me. Not enough to make me were, but enough to accelerate the healing process. The werewolf could smell it on me; and while he was trying to figure that out, I punched him in the throat, hard enough to feel cartilage crack and break under my knuckles. The werewolf fell back, fighting frantically for breath as it scrabbled helplessly on the ground. I rose painfully to my feet and kicked him hard in the balls and in the head, to give him something else to think about. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- John changes the ultraviolet frequency of the moonlight, forcing several werewolves out of their were forms:
- Ms. Fate was still spinning and kicking and lashing out with the silver shuriken in her hands, but she was getting tired, and the werewolves surrounding her weren’t. Screech danced and pirouetted gracefully through the heart of the mayhem, but for every wolf his elven strength put down, more rose up to take its place. He was strong and he was magical; but he wasn’t silver. Ms. Fate and Lord Screech were fighting well and fiercely, but the odds were stacked against them.
- Which meant, as usual, that it was all down to me.
- People say that werewolves only fear silver, but that’s not strictly true. There’s one thing they fear even more, because it rules their lives. I concentrated again, raised my gift, and reached out to the oversized Moon that hangs over the Nightside. It took me only a moment to find the right ultraviolet frequency in the moonlight and change it subtly; and just like that, the whole damned pack howled and shrieked as the change raged through them, stripping them of tooth and claw and fur ... and suddenly the street was full of naked men and women, running for their lives. Except for those who didn’t react fast enough and got the crap kicked out of them by Ms. Fate and Lord Screech. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- John finds a man's spiritual weakness, then capitalizes on it:
- I was tired, my head hurt, and I could still taste blood in my mouth, but I needed my gift again. If only so I could stop Screech killing people who might yet be salvaged. So I concentrated, forced open my reluctant inner eye, and fixed my Sight on Dr Fell. Everyone has a secret fault, a hidden weakness, a spiritual Achilles’ heel, and it didn’t take long to find Dr. Fell’s. I reached out in a direction I sensed as much as Saw, and found the mirror that Dr. Fell had stored there; the original mirror he’d looked into, with his new Sight. I brought the mirror to his court, and placed it right beside him, a tall, standing mirror in a simple wooden frame. Dr. Fell’s head turned slowly, almost reluctantly, to face the mirror; then he screamed shrilly as he Saw again the thing that had made him burn out his own eyes and banish the mirror rather than See it again. He stood up sharply, the bone chair falling backwards as he faced his reflection. Everyone in the court stood very still, watching him with their own eyes.
- I could see Dr. Fell’s reflection looking back at him, and it took me a moment to realise what was different about it. The Dr. Fell in the mirror still had his eyes. And as we all watched, the reflected image reached out of the mirror and grabbed Dr. Fell. He shrieked horribly as the long arms wrapped around him, and he kicked and struggled with all his strength as the reflection dragged him slowly, lovingly, into the mirror. In a moment he was gone, his screams suddenly shut off, and all that remained on the raised marble dais was an overturned chair and a mirror—with no-one reflected in it. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- John finds a Timeslip and forces it to open near his location:
- I had no choice but to raise my gift again. It was like trying to lift a murderously heavy weight that got heavier with every attempt, but I did it. I reached out with my gift, searching for the spell that kept the carpets flying; only to find there was no individual magic involved, but rather a complex web of spells that would take me ages to understand and undo. So instead, I did what I should have done at the beginning, and used my gift to find the nearest Timeslip that could transport us directly to the far side of the Nightside and the Osterman Gate. I’d put off doing it because there were so many dangers involved. Timeslips don’t always go where you think they do; the time differentials are so complex you could come out the other end days or even weeks in the future. Worse still, there are all kinds of things that live inside Timeslips and prey on those who pass through. Only damned fools, certain extreme sportsmen, and truly desperate people ever enter a Timeslip by choice; but I needed this road trip to end, and end soon, before my gift burned me up completely.
- I yelled a warning to Ms. Fate at the wheel, and Lord Screech on the roof, concentrated all my remaining strength; and a Timeslip opened up before us. Nothing subtle or complex about this one, only a great rip in space and time, and a huge glowing tunnel for Ms. Fate to steer into. The Fatemobile roared forward into the savage rotating energies, and, just like that, the Nightside and the pursuing carpets were gone, and we were hurtling down a shimmering corridor with no beginning and no end. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
- Larry Oblivion uses his wand to stop time, yet John can still see and think, and makes note of that fact:
- He whipped out his magic wand, and just like that Time slammed to a halt. Every sound was cut off; everyone stood still; everything was struck motionless. The very atmosphere seemed to hang in the balance, caught between one moment and the next. Even the impaled neon sign was caught in mid flicker. Larry put his wand away, then moved swiftly through the crowd, beating the crap out of every last one of them. His unfeeling dead hands rose and fell, dispensing brutal punishments. He punched heads and chests and sides, and the sound of breaking bone was crisp and sharp on the enforced quiet. No blood flowed—not yet. And no matter how hard he hit them, none of the bodies stirred or reacted, or even rocked in place.
- I saw it all and heard it all, because even though I was frozen in place like everyone else ... I could still think and observe. Perhaps my special gift protected me from the wand’s magic, or maybe my unnatural bloodline. Like it or not, I am still my mother’s son. Either way, I decided to keep this to myself. Larry didn’t need to know.
- And I might need to use it against him sometime. -The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny
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