As our story opens, Bob X is tracking down a killer, something he rarely does, as he’s more of a kaiju rassling/meteor catching hero than a crime-fighter. But when he started seeing reports of mysterious deaths in a certain Latin American country, he felt obliged to break his pattern. He had a sinking feeling that the killer was a super-powered friend of his. Thus Bob is flying over that country’s capital city, using his super-vision to scan for a familiar energy signature. Finding it does not make him happy.
The trail takes Bob to the basement of a building in a densely-populated neighborhood. The basement would seem completely emptya norm, but Bob’s elvish eyes can tell that there’s actually an “invisible” energy field filling it, of a color he privately calls violet. Within the field, and of a slightly different hyper-violet shade, are a woman he recognizes (walking around free) and a d half dozen well-dressed men, all bound with similar energy fields. The woman makes a gesture, and hyper-violet guillotines appear around the men. Then she notices Bob.
The woman’s name is JESSICA MARA. She’s a super-powered FBI agent with the the power to turn invisible and create force fields. Bob and Jessica have worked together on several cases. On the last one, while Bob was busy fighting an army of giant shapeshifting robots, she saved his adoptive daughter from a smaller one. (They even used to be fuckbuddies; the relationship fizzled for the same reason all Bob’s romances do–the fact that she was getting older but Bob is stuck at 25.) They haven’t seen one another for a year; Bob had thought Jessica had retired.
Jessica’s shield is opague to sound, so Bob motions for her to lower it. She shakes her head. He sighs.
“What are you doing, Jessica?” Bob asks in ASL.
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Bobby,” she replies the same way.
“So I guessed right. You’ve been murdering the cartel bosses.”
“No, I’ve been putting down rabid dogs. You know why.”
And he does. The men Jessica has bound are the bosses of a crime syndicate who, in Bob & Jessica’s next-to-last case together, were abductng and selling women and children as sex slaves. Bob rescued a group of American abductees, then enlisted Jessica’s help in gathering evidence that would send the bosses to prison. She did a great job, but it ultimately didn’t matter; the bosses’ money and connections spared them from prosecution. Since then they’ve had the sense to stay out of the US, but their operation continues in their own country.
“You can’t do this, Jessica,” Bob signs. “It’s murder.”
“No, what these guys do to their slaves once they’re used up is murder,” Jessica signs back. “This is justice. And don’t give me that look. Didn’t you kill a mob boss a few years back to keep him from hurting your daughter?”
“It was the only way to save Lynn’s life. This is not the only way to stop these guys.”
“Bullshit. We’ve tried to corral these guys through the system multiple times, and it didn’t work. They own half this country and have the other half cowed. The only way to stop them is to separate their heads from their shoulders, which I will do after I rest up–unless you’re gonna be a hypocrite and stop me.”
"That’s another thing,’ Bob signs. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be doing force shields any more after te thing with the Deceptibots.”
The “thing” is the aforementioned transforming robot battle. Jessica suffered a brain injury during that fight when a robot-cum-tank blasted through her shield. Bob was with her when the doctors told her to avoid using her force shields in the future; another such incident would orobably kill her.
“Nothing’s changed,” Jessica signs. “That’s my problem. We both know my shields can’t stand up to your punches. But you don’t have to throw one, either. It’s on you whether to kill me for doing something you yourself talked about doing once–whether you want to be a hypocrite. Decide.”
Jessica is right; Bob did consider killing these guys, but ultimately decided that he hadn’t the right. And she’s also right that he can’t break through her force shield without killing her. All during this conversation he has been scanning her shield, looking for weaknesses and devising scenarios. His laser vision is visible light and so would be deflected by the light-bending properties of her shield; his other non-muscular attacks would be likewise defeated. The only way to stop the killings in time is the sort of massive super-strong, super-fast punch that will kill his friend
What should Bob do?