DN - Bulletproof

“Hey, man, are you okay?” I take a step forward.

The robber rolls over, swings his gun up, sprays me down with hot lead. The burping roar of his submachine gun is astonishingly loud in this narrow brick canyon. The alley’s gloom vanishes as a foot-long muzzle flash leaps out at me. A line of explosions ripples up my chest, neck, face. The shock of it drives me back a step. The noise, the thudding, stinging impacts, the unexpected heat and light—it’s all so much, so fast. I should be dead. A burst like that at this range should zip me open and leave me as a cooling bag of meat on the ground.

But I’ve got superpowers, so it just smarts like hell. There’s a moment of silence as we both try to process what just happened. I recover first.

“Dude! Not cool!”

I can see the fear seize him. He’s older than I thought he was at first, and his face is rough and lined. Thick salt-and-pepper stubble covers his chin, and when his lips pull back in fear I can see crooked, rotting teeth. He’s holding one of his hands tight to his stomach, and three of his fingers are badly broken. For a moment I feel pity for him. Nobody ends up looking like this if they have an easy life.

But then I remember he just shot me about thirty times in the chest and face. That clerk he was holding at gunpoint doesn’t have bulletproof skin like I do. What would this guy have done if he thought the cash wasn’t coming fast enough?

- Dreadnought, Chapter 17