Free to simply appreciate Mindy from 25 feet away, Rick just sat up invisibly in the tall grass, and looked at her. The first thing he checked out was her condition. No blood was showing. No broken bones apparent. No big bruises. The street clothes he had seen her in this morning were merely disheveled, but they were scrunched up. Mindy did not look very uncomfortable where she sat tied to a tree, but he knew his wife was dieing to straighten out her top and pull, or even blow, the hair away from her face.
Despite his anxiety over this desperate unauthorized mission, and the huge trouble he would be in if the Lieutenant found out he was using the Bypass suit, Rick took another thirty seconds to look Mindy over again, and really “check her out”. Glad that she was not invisible, he admired her perfect figure and beautiful face, of course, but marveled all the more at her character. Even kidnapped, tied to a tree and with a rag tied over the mouth he knew so well, Mindy sat calmly, and continually scanned her eyes in Rick’s general direction; the only way from which rescue could come.
Now stifling a laugh, and mentally shaking his head lest a real shake produce some noise that would give him away, Rick said another prayer for help, and moved forward again.
Mindy’s two captors were sitting on a log another ten feet beyond Mindy’s tree, also facing Rick’s approach lane. The shorter clean cut looking guy had both hands wrapped around a shotgun laid across his knees. He looked tense and dangerous. The taller guy was hunched over and fiddling with his phone; maybe expecting a call back about the huge ransom payment, or maybe he was now tardily trying to turn off the GPS locator. If this job had included his regular partner, Rick would have had him call that phone at just the right moment and distract both thugs when Rick made his move.
“This stupid Bypass suit BETTER make me invisible,” he thought. “It’s the only partner I have today!”
Moving so slowly to avoid making any noise, Rick attached the front flaps of his bypass poncho to his wrists, fingered the triggers of both guns and stood straight up. The idea that he could still not be seen, as the light rays coming from behind him toward his targets were captured by the suit, rerouted through its fabric and sent on again as if they were totally uninterrupted, was now fully tested. The reprobates were only 15 feet away now, and Mindy only 5 feet away as he stood trying to overcome any nervous noisy motion he might make that would render the invisibility a moot point. But there he stood, with three people periodically looking right through him, so Rick relaxed enough to think about the next complaint:
“Damn, it’s hot in this thing,” he swore, only mouthing the words behind the Bypass mask.
Mindy suddenly stopped scanning the tree line 50 yards behind him. Her eyes slowly focused on his location. He watched in horror as Mindy looked right at his face, perhaps into his mouth, and winked! As cool as could be, her eyes smiled broadly but then turned again in an earnest attempt to spot some hoped for rescue yet to come across that field.
Rick’s teetering faith in his invisibility was shaken again, but when he watched the dopes on the log, one spinning and aiming his gun at a robin in the dry leaves, and the other flipping his thumbs a mile a minute, now clearly playing a game on his phone, he believed again and stepped forward yet again.
Both eyes were on the perps as he came to Mindy’s tree and deliberately nudged her left foot with an invisible toe. No, she wasn’t surprised at all and the only change in her “dire straights” act came when she took a long breath in through her nose. Rick forgot his task altogether for a moment and watched her as she tipped her head back against the tree and closed her eyes.
“The time to end this is now,” Rick said aloud, and swung both arms up at once. The bypass suit opened, Rick’s chest and two short pipe like rifles abruptly appeared out of nowhere and the two shocked men who had at least manhandled his wife, were both shot in the chest. At 10 feet the high velocity wad of compressed air felt like a heavy bowling ball, but Rick wasn’t sure if his sudden ghostly manifestation wasn’t what really took them out!
Splayed behind the log with the breath knocked out of them, shotgun and phone thrown wildly into the woods, both creeps were locked in real life, solid, and completely visible handcuffs long before they caught their breath. Another second and Mindy’s cords were cut and she found herself bound even tighter in Rick’s arms, half inside the draping Bypass suit. From the ground behind the log it seemed that Mindy’s legs were standing there alone and her arms and shoulders were floating above in a circle. Two would be kidnappers fainted dead away.
“You forgot to use the Odor-Cloaker didn’t you”, she asked. “I picked up your delicious aroma a mile away.”
“I was in a hurry; this being the most important mission of my career. And I was only 5 feet away when you smelled me,” Rick replied.
“No, you were five feet away when you started to sweat. It really stinks in here!”