by Simon Archer
Perhaps worst of all, the fury, the beast that kept pushing me forward, that I relied on in every fight of my life, was gone. There was only the fear and worry and inadequacy left.
I could deal with the physical pain, even if it weren’t healing, and I did so as I tried to push myself to my feet, but everything else? It was like a tremendous weight slamming down on my spine, and I almost collapsed again, then and there.
“Woooooow! This is awesome!” Akemi’s voice rang in my ears, but it wasn’t her normal voice. Even with my diminished hearing, I could tell it was deeper, rougher, and when I managed to turn to see her, she was already shifting, growing larger as teeth and claws sprouted. Her wounds were already healed, and she let out a howl of triumph. “How were you ever such a chump with powers like these? What a loser!”
She started to lope towards me as the beast fully took her over, the fur coming in golden blonde as opposed to the black-and-red dyed hair. “And the senses! I can smell everything, hear everything. The scent of your fear, the grinding of the bones in your broken arm… Oh, Lord Inferno will enjoy every moment of this… even if it is going to be very… short.”
I tried to think of something to say, some clever dig to counter her with, but my brain was a swirling mess. She was right in every way, but… I couldn’t give in. As afraid as I was, as much of a screw-up as I was, I promised Nick… I promised everyone I wouldn’t give up. Somehow, I found the strength to square up a fighting stance as I tucked my bad arm to my chest. It was a forearm break, thank God, so at least I could try to protect it.
“What’s this?” Akemi started to giggle, and it sounded more like a laughing hyena than a wolf. “Little Boy Barbur still wants to fight?” She raised up from all fours now, towering a good foot and a half over me as she raised her claws. “Fine, but don’t worry. I won’t kill you at least.” Her wolfish snout twisted into a sick grin. “I am a hero, after all.”
And that’s when I felt it, Kristen, still in my head, urging me to fight, to focus. I could still feel her, our connection still intact, and that’s when I realized it. Akemi had stolen my powers… but our link transcended just me. Which meant… I could still tap into Kristen’s magnetism.
But could I actually control it?
Calm flooded me as Akemi took her time, stalking forward step by step ready to cut me down. Some of it was Kristen’s feelings pressing into me, but the rest… Kristen had always said that it took calm and focus to bend metal, to control magnetism, and I was never calm. But now, I was. Without the beast raging in me, I might have been afraid, but I could see clearly what was holding me back. It brought clarity and introspection, and at that moment, the tingle of Kristen’s power flowed into me. Then I felt it, the steel and mechanisms I had smelled below us.
Akemi smelled something too, but it wasn’t the steel. It was the shift in my emotions as I began to grin. She flinched back a moment, twisting her lupine head to one shade and shaking her ribbons. “Huh. Maybe there’s more to you than I thought. Being brave at the last minute.” She giggled. “Well, at least you’ll go down with some dignity and--”
That’s when I hit her. Not with my fist, but with all the metal mechanisms I ripped up from underneath her. Turned out that all these sections of tile were pillars planted in the ground, adjustable terrain like I had thought, and they were controlled by steel pistons inside them. Steel I had focused Kristen’s powers into ripping up, the pillars along with them.
The sudden eruption of stone underneath her threw the Brand girl head over heels backward, but after she hit hard, she tumbled back to her feet. “But… but… I stole your powers!” she howled. “You shouldn’t be able to take your sister’s!”
“Akemi,” I breathed out as I held my arm to my chest, “you’ve got a lot to learn about my sister and me… and I’m about to give you a lesson.”
I had to give the bitch this much, she didn’t flinch, and she didn’t falter. Akemi let out a battle howl and charged me, hoping all my beastly strength and speed would take me off-guard, but I knew my powers. I knew what she could do, and I wasn’t surprised one bit. Her charge was met by two thirty-foot baseball bats made of stone-wrapped steel.
I didn’t pull my punches, because I knew how much someone with my powers could take. The two tremendous blows broke bones and smashed flesh, sending a spray of blood flying as Akemi hurtled backward to land in a broken heap. Then, before she could fully regenerate, I simply stacked a layer of pillars two deep on top of her, only supporting them with Kristen’s magnetism.
Pain still wracking my body, I hobbled my way over to the pile, to where I could still see her squirming through the cracks, trying to get free.
“Look, Akemi,” I said plainly without a hint of malice in my voice, “I’m going to be honest and say that I might pass out from where I bashed my head on the tile, so if you want to not be trapped under a giant pile of stone, you might want to surrender now.”
There was an ear-splitting howl of frustration, one last vain push against the unyielding tons of weight, then a final giggle from the wolf-girl.
“Well, whaddya know?” Akemi mused, the anger gone like a flip of a switch. “Guess you’re not such a wuss, Barbur. You might be worthy to stand at my young Lord’s side, after all.” There was a moment of silence. “Oh, yeah, right. I yield.”
“Fantastic,” I grumbled as I flexed Kristen’s power… our power one more time to hurl the stones and steel away from her. As I dropped to my knees from pain and exhaustion, I got to hear something that I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever hear on my own.
“In a surprise upset, your winner of this first-round contest is…” There was almost pain in Patty Brownstone’s voice as she spoke. “... Matthew Barbur, representing Valcav Academy and Alexandria. Cheer for him or something, I guess… if you want to.”
Though I hurt like a son of a bitch, I smiled in satisfaction as the force field above opened, and the roar of the crowd cheering for me washed over my body. Most of all, even with my dulled senses, I could pick out Kristen’s voice loudest and clearest of all, chanting my name.
28
I flexed my arm where White Lioness’s claws had cut through me and marveled at how fast Kara’s artificial skin had worked its magic. The wounds only ached faintly, and there was just a faint pinkness to the healed-over skin to show that there had even been an injury, to begin with. I looked up from her work and smiled at my Moon as she eyed the result critically.
“I don’t have the formulation perfect yet,” she said with a faint frown, “but I’ve been working on it with Ms. Jones, and if anyone is a medical expert around here, it’s her.”
I nodded. The fact was that Adelaide was pretty much an expert on everything, one of the advantages of having dozens of duplicates that all shared the same knowledge and memories.
“Well, to be honest, I think it’s perfect.” I smiled and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Thank you for being my nurse today.”
The strangest part of being in this blind tournament was the sequestering. While I could see people in between rounds, it was they who were cleared to see me in the spartan dressing room/infirmary I was pent up in. In addition to Kara, Andie and Aylin were both here, my Sun curled up beside me on the infirmary bed as Kara worked, while my Stars were floating back and forth, having apparently picked up Gemma’s penchant for pacing.
“Having to watch that was kind of horrible,” Andie mused as I pulled away from a beaming Kara. “I mean, it was also really cool, you did awesome, but at the same time…” She frowned a hair. “Before, if you were hurt, I could be there, fighting alongside you, right? But here, I had to watch.”
“I feel sympathy for you, Andrea Baker.” Aylin’s voice was soft as she stopped and turned to face us in mid-air. “Though I was confident in Starlight’s victory, I too felt a pang of worry when she cut your arm. Not that I thought you would lose, but it is more about when you are forced to unleash your might, is it not?”
“You’re right, Ayl
in,” I noted as I gave Andie a comforting hug. “There are two more fights left, and they won’t get easier. Your shield bracer is awesome, Kara, but there’s going to be a time when I’m going to have to cut loose…”
“And if it’s before the finals…” Kara’s voice trailed off as she bit her lip. As she tucked back a lock of red hair, she let out a sigh. “I only wish I had a full battlesuit design ready. I’ve been experimenting with heavier weaponry and robotics these past few weeks, but I don’t have anything I would consider safe and fully functional, at least not that I would risk your life in this tournament with.”
“Hey, honey, it’s okay.” I scooted over a bit and patted the space on my other side. Kara took the hint and sat on the bedside so I could hug her as well. “I appreciate all your help, and I don’t think I would have beat Lioness on my own without my powers if not for that help.”
Kara blushed a bit and nodded. “I’m glad, Nick, I really am.”
“Indeed, Kara Johnson, you should be proud!” Aylin said with surprising fierceness as she smacked a fist into her palm. “Indeed, I am magenta with envy that I cannot do the same.”
I sat up, bringing a reluctant Andie with me. “Don’t worry, Aylin. I know you and Andie are up there cheering for me, and that helps more than you might know.”
I kissed first Andie then Kara on the foreheads before scooting off the bed. Aylin drifted down to meet me, and I gave her a kiss as well. While it was always a treat to kiss any of my girls, with Aylin, there was always that electrifying dance of our powers connecting that added something extra to it. It was just another special trait, like Andie’s fire and Kara’s caring, that pulled me into their orbits.
“You three should get back up there,” I suggested. “As much as I love your company, Matt could have his match at any time, and you need to root for him too.”
Andie sprang to her feet and slung an easy arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nick, we won’t let you or him down.” She glanced at the other two. “Shall we, ladies?”
Aylin nodded firmly, and Kara grinned as Andie slipped away from me, wrapped an elastic arm around each of the others, and led them off back to the stands. I was already cleaned up from my first fight, the girls had seen to that, so I was in a strange position of having nothing but time.
I meditated, stretched, spend some time thinking back on the week and all the craziness, and in general prepared myself. I was racking up on the promises to win this thing after all, and I wasn’t going to let anyone down. I would give it my all and then some, and at that moment, the only acceptable loss for me would be to Matt at the finals.
About forty minutes passed in total. I had no idea if my match had been near the start or near the end, the lack of time limits on the fights meant that there was no way to be sure, but when one of the Colosseum attendants knocked on my door, I was ready and raring to go.
The remarkable thing I noticed the moment I stepped back through the doors to the arena floor was how pristine it was again. Considering how much damage Lioness and I had done to it, I imagined that every fight had done a number on the place, what with the power levels of the competitors and their desire to do anything they could to win. And despite all that, it was immaculate and whole once more.
I didn’t even waste a moment looking around or up into the stands. I simply fired up the shield bracer and settled back into a fighting stance to wait and see who was up next.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait for long. A few moments after I stepped through, faster this time than with Lioness, the opposite doors slid open, and the silhouette of a short woman with a pixie-bob hair cut sauntered through.
It could only be Switch, a fact confirmed a moment later when the doors shut closed behind her. The all-black uniform of Carter Academy clung to her girlish figure, but she carried herself with all the swagger of a woman twice her apparent age. Upon seeing me, a grin split her cute face as she hooked her thumbs on her belt.
“Hey, Gateon, how’s it hanging?” she chirped as if we were old friends, something we certainly weren’t. “Ready for round two? Should be fun, you know, without your girlfriend to back you up.”
“Switch,” I stated curtly. “I’m ready all right.” I flashed a grin of my own. “Speaking of stalemates, you know you can’t win this one that way. No time limits.”
Switch began swaying from side to side as she leaned forward to stick her tongue out at me. “You’re the one who should be worried about that. Trust me, I’ve got something in my pocket that’ll deal with you just fine if you don’t use your powers… and equally as fine once they’ve run out.” The air around her blossomed with blue rifts in space. “Time’s on my side, just like I told you before, and space is too.”
I wasn’t going to let her finish, firing off a blaster shot in the middle of her little speech, but as fast as my normal reflexes were, Switch’s mind and thus her portals moved at super speed, as fast as I was powered up. A portal just big enough to envelop the blast opened in its path, and while I immediately threw myself back in expectation to have it redirected at me, I found myself falling through glowing blue space instead.
The portal dumped me out unceremoniously on my back, not two feet from where I had been. I furiously tried to scramble to my feet, clicking the bracer over to shields in the process. Good thing too, because as I tilted my head up, I got a perfect view of my blaster shot ricocheting through a network of portals before one opened right in front of me.
The force shield rippled as it took the shot without buckling, but the force threw me back down, more a hit to my ego than my health. Across the room, Switch was laughing up a storm as I scrambled back to my feet. She was playing with me, utterly confident of victory just like she had been last time.
The problem was she might have the right to be this time.
“You’re a laugh riot, Gateon,” Switch taunted as she began to stroll toward me idly. “You think some cheap-o piece of tech from your other girlfriend is going to save you from me? I’m the queen of space with a brain like a super-computer.”
Portals began to open with each of her steps, small ones the size of her fist, and she threw jabs into each one, resulting in blows peppering my shield from all sides and angles… inside the radius of my shield. Switch wasn’t very strong, but her technique was solid, so the first one that caught me off-guard stung. I managed to duck and weave back from the next two, but trying to defend myself from all sides and directions was exhausting. I wasn’t going to win this way, not one bit.
“Come on! Do it, daddy’s boy!” Switch turned around and slapped her little ass at me. “Break out the big guns and kick my ass, if you can… or have you already popped your cherry and you’re all tuckered-out? Boo-hoo!”
“You know, Switch, you talk way too much,” I shot back.
While she had a brain as fast as greased lightning, she wasn’t physically enhanced, so her blows were limited by that. More so, while it was clear she was trained, she didn’t have near my level of hand-to-hand skill, I could tell. In a fair fight with no powers, Kara alone would have Switch begging for mercy. What that meant for me is that her lack of training meant she would probably fall into a pattern of strikes.
As she growled at my defiance, she started another methodical series of punches through portals, and yep, I saw it. I saw the pattern of angles and blows. To throw her off, I took a few shots, playing up how much they hurt, and then, as she threw another one, I didn’t just dodge her fist coming through the portal.
I grabbed the offending hand as it appeared right above my head and yanked down hard, squeezing with all my might as I did so. The bones in the slight girl’s hand popped and crunched under my superior strength, and the effect of it all was a mix of comedy and agony. Switch yelled out in pain as she was yanked forward in mid-air, and another pop from her shoulder dislocating as her body hit the ‘lip’ of the portal was music to my ears.
I was about to maneuver Switch’s arm to do some serious damage when my
instincts screamed to get away. A split second later, another portal opened in my field right above my heart, and I didn’t bother seeing what it was Switch had managed to do amid her pain. I simply let go and dived to one side.
Good thing too. The twin jolting prongs of a hand-held taser thrust out where I had once been. It wasn’t some cheap civilian weapon either, I recognized it from one of our law enforcement liaison lessons as a top-of-the-line police model, the kind powerful enough to put down even most powered beings. I rolled back up to my feet on my guard as Switch pulled her limbs back through both portals, her eyes welling up with tears of pain.
“You asshole!” she screamed at me. “I was going to just play with you, humiliate you until you gave up, but now, now, I’m done playing.” With a final glare, she opened a portal… a big one, a perfectly measured dome that wrapped around her like armor. Unlike our fight in Alexandria, she didn’t leave an opening, not a crack, and that could only mean one thing.
Whatever she was about to do was so big, she didn’t need to see to aim it. I looked up in time to see another massive portal yawn open, covering the entire circumference of the arena just below the force field protecting the attendees. There was a rush of wind before dirt and small stones began to rain down, plinking off my shield, but I could hear the immense cracking of stone coming from above.
Then the jagged boulders began to rain down. I had no idea where she was pulling this from, but from what I was seeing of her true power, it could be from anywhere. Hell, maybe this was a broken asteroid from deep space for all I knew. She was safe from the portal around her, no doubt feeding anything that came close to striking her back down into the rain of doom on my head. The only thing I was sure of was that if I didn’t use my power, I wasn’t just going to lose.