by Lucas Flint
“You figured that out quickly,” said Holes. “Unfortunately, knowing even that much won’t help you stop me.”
A hole opened up underneath Holes, who fell into it out of my sight quickly.
“Holes?” I said, looking around in confusion. “Where did you go?”
All of a sudden, through the static in my head, I heard TW say, “Look out behind you!”
I looked over my shoulder to see a black hole—identical to the one that Holes had just fallen through—appear on the building behind me. Without warning, Holes leaped through it and kicked me in the jaw with feet as strong as steel. I immediately crashed down to the street below again, hitting the pavement hard enough to crack it. My body aching all over, I pushed myself up and looked around again, but Holes had once more disappeared.
“Hey, where are you?” I called out, rising to my feet slowly due to how much pain I was currently in. “Show yourself, you coward!”
A deep chuckle came from above and I looked up to see Holes standing on top of a nearby truck trailer. Though I couldn’t see his face, it was clear to me that he was extremely amused by my inability to fight back against him effectively.
“Coward? I’m no coward,” said Holes. “I simply know how to use my powers to their limit. Nothing ‘cowardly’ about that, though you can keep crying about it if it makes you feel better for being such a loser.”
I was so angry I didn’t even say anything. I just drew three silver disks from my pouch and threw all three of them in different directions. The disks bounced off the streets, buildings, cars, and everything else, moving so fast that even I had a hard time following their trajectory, but I knew that if I could barely follow them, then Holes likely couldn’t see them at all.
Soon, the disks bounced one last time off different surfaces and went straight toward Holes. But to my astonishment, the three disks entered three different holes in his body and emerged from three other holes. One of them even came at me, but I jumped out of the way before it could hit me.
“You still haven’t figured out that you can’t hit me unless I want you to?” said Holes. “Truly, you must indeed be a different Trickshot, because the original Trickshot was well-acquainted with the limits and abilities of my powers. You, on the other hand, are so ignorant that it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so depressing.”
“I’ve never fought you before,” I said. “How can I know the limits of your powers if this is the first time I’ve met you?”
“Easy,” said Holes. “You can’t.”
Holes suddenly fell into a hole on top of the trailer and disappeared from sight again. I whipped my head this way and that, looking for him, but Holes did not appear to be anywhere. He seemed to have vanished into thin air, though knowing his general strategy, it was clear to me that he was probably going to pop out of a hole and strike me when I least expected it.
“J-Jack?” said TW in my head suddenly, his voice slightly buzzing. “Are you th-there?”
“TW?” I said aloud, not caring if anyone overheard me. I kept looking for Hole. “Where have you been, buddy? I’ve just been getting static this whole time.”
“My a-apologies,” said TW in a shaky voice. “I’m n-not sure, but I seem to be experiencing some sort of t-technical iss-iss-issue.”
It was hard to understand what TW was saying due to the static occasionally overlapping his words, but I said, “We’ll figure it out later. Right now, I’m fighting some guy who can make holes everywhere and—”
“Holes?” TW interrupted. “Do you mean the supervillain?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You heard of him?”
“Heard of him?” said TW. “I f-fought h-him with Gregory years a-ago. He’s s-supposed to be in jail.”
“Then what’s he doing, well, not in jail?” I said in annoyance.
“I don’t k-know,” said TW, “but you s-should beat him anyway. His p-powers are tricky to deal with, but the trick to taking him out is—”
Something hard slammed into the back of my head, temporarily diverting my attention away from TW. I staggered forward from the blow, stars flashing in my eyes, but managed to turn around in time to see Holes disappear into another hole before I could stop him.
“Get back here!” I shouted, running over to the spot where Holes had been standing. “Stop running like a girl and fight!”
“It’s not going to work,” said TW. “Holes doesn’t care about honor. He j-just c-cares about winning. Which is why you n-need to listen to me and take my advice before he strikes again.”
“Shoot, man,” I said, once again looking around to find him. “I’m all ears.”
“V-Very well,” said TW. “Holes’ main w-weakness is—”
Abruptly, TW’s voice was replaced by more irritating static, only this time it was even louder than before.
“TW?” I said. “TW, are you there? TW? Hello?”
Unfortunately, it seemed like I had lost my connection to TW again. And just when he was about to tell me how to beat this guy, too. Just my luck.
But I had no time to whine about that. Right now, I needed to focus on figuring out where the heck Holes was going to pop up again next and what his weakness was.
Before I could do that, however, I was kicked in the back, the blow sending me staggering forward again. But I turned around and grabbed Holes’ arm just before he could disappear into another hole.
“Gotcha,” I said, tightening my grip on his forearm, a wolfish smile on my face. “Can’t get out of this, now can you?”
Holes, however, just pulled his gun out of his pocket and pointed at me. He pulled the trigger and some kind of dart shot out of the gun and into my shoulder.
Gasping in surprise, I accidentally let go of Holes, who quickly disappeared into yet another hole. But I didn’t pay him any attention. I grabbed the dart and ripped it from my shoulder, grunting under my breath after the brief surge of pain followed the removal of the dart.
“Damn it,” I said, clutching the hole in my shoulder where the dart had once been, “what was that all about?”
Suddenly, I began to feel tired and sluggish. I leaned against the lamppost again, doing my best to fight my drowsiness, but it was a losing battle. I didn’t feel like I was going to fall asleep, exactly, but I felt as though all of the strength had been sapped from my body, making it very hard to move.
“Jack!” said TW, his voice breaking through the static again. “Holes injected some kind of sedative into your muscles. It won’t knock you out, but it will make your muscles relax.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” I said, doing my best not to let my relaxed knees let out underneath me. “Tell me something I don’t know, like Holes’ weakness.”
“Right,” said TW. “Holes’ weakness is—”
Static once again interrupted TW’s sentence.
“Dang it!” I screamed. “This isn’t funny anymore!”
I quickly shut my mouth, however, and tried to calm down. Getting angry would not solve anything. I needed to remain calm and rational in order to stop Holes. At this point, it was pretty clear that I was on my own insofar as I needed to defeat Holes. I couldn’t rely on TW to help me, given whatever his technical issues were.
But how? Holes’ power was unpredictable. He could appear seemingly anywhere at any time for any reason he wanted. There was no rhyme or reason to his tactics, other than he liked to sneak up on me, but that was not very helpful information. I guess I also knew that he had a gun with some kind of sedative laden darts in it, but that would have been useful to know before he shot me the first time.
Thinking fast, it occurred to me that Holes could apparently only open two holes at one time: One for him to enter, the other for him to exit, not counting the ones on his body. Maybe if I could force him to use up his two holes trying to redirect one of my attacks, I would be able to get a good hit on him. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one I had.
Pushing myself off the lamppost again, I shouted, “Hey, Hole
s! Your glorified game of whack-a-mole isn’t fun anymore! Think I’m going to go home now and find something more fun to do, like telling my friends how lame you are!”
“Lame?” said Holes behind me. “You haven’t hit me even once, you little brat, and you see fit to talk to me about—”
I whirled around and punched Holes in the chest. As I expected, my fist went into his chest and came out of his face, but I ducked my own punch and slammed my other fist into the white space between two of the holes on his body.
Holes cried out in pain and staggered to the side, causing my arm to pop out of his chest. He clutched the spot where I’d punched him tenderly, but I wasn’t about to give him a chance to get away. I threw another punch at him, striking him in the other side of his body. He nearly fell this time, but instead just backed away up against a nearby car, his breathing heavier than before.
“You may not be the original Trickshot, but you certainly hit as hard as he did,” said Holes, his voice slightly strained as he clutched his stomach. “Maybe even harder.”
“Definitely harder,” I said, slamming my fist into my other hand, “though mostly because you pissed me off and I’m not in a particularly forgiving mood today.”
I ran toward Holes again, about to deal the final blow, but I only got a few steps toward Holes before a hole suddenly appeared on the car behind him and he fell into it backwards. I rushed over to go after him, but by the time I reached the car, Holes had vanished again.
CHAPTER THREE
“Holes!” I shouted again, rotating on the spot to look for him. “Holes, show yourself! I know you’re still around here! Stop this stupid game of hide and seek and fight me like a man!”
But no matter how loud I shouted, Holes did not reappear. I looked in every direction, but as far as I could tell, Holes had finally retreated.
“H-He seems to have run away, Jack,” said TW in my head again. “I c-can’t sense him anywhere. Perhaps he’s l-licking his wounds.”
“Like the coward he is,” I said with disgust.
“A-Actually, this is typical of him,” said TW. “Holes always knew when to give up. P-Presumably, you turned out to be harder than ex-expected.”
“So what?” I said. “He got away. I had him on the ropes, but he escaped anyway.”
“A-At least you got Aeolus,” said TW. “He hasn’t escaped, as far as I—”
A loud laugh from above made me look up. Aeolus flew past overhead suddenly, a powerful gust of wind following him. The wind knocked me down on my butt, and by the time I got back up to my feet, Aeolus was long gone, leaving me standing all alone in the now-empty streets of Rumsfeld. I thought about taking off after him, but decided against it, because I was too sore and too depressed to think about going after him right now.
“What were you saying about Aeolus not escaping, TW?” I said, frowning.
“N-Never mind,” said TW. “I—Look at these shoes!”
I looked down at my feet, though I actually wasn’t wearing any shoes because my full-body costume went down to my feet, though the feet of my costume were padded underneath to keep my feet safe. “What shoes?”
“My apologies, Jack,” said TW, his voice back to normal all of a sudden. “Seems like I somehow picked up a radio signal, a commercial of some sort from a nearby radio—Now available at your favorite retailer! Better get them now before they sell out!”
“TW, I think you should go quiet for a while,” I said. “Getting seriously concerned about you, buddy. Let’s get back to base and talk there. You need to tell me more about this Holes guy and his past with Grandfather, okay?”
“O-Okay, Ja—Call now to receive an EXCLUSIVE training DVD today!”
I wasn’t sure what was more disturbing: That TW was trying to sell me training DVDs or that there was clearly something wrong with his programming. The latter was probably more disturbing, but either way, I still realized that things were about to get a whole lot more complicated for me.
-
My ‘base,’ if you could call it that, was a small bungalow located well out in the country outside of the Rumsfeld city limits. It had originally been owned by a lady named Margaret Rumsfeld, a descendant of the original Harold Rumsfeld who founded the city over one hundred and fifty years ago, but when she passed away last month and it fell into the hands of her granddaughter Ashley, Ashley had allowed me to use it as a base of operations for my superhero career. I’d taken to calling my base Target Practice 2, because there was also a makeshift range behind the house which I could use to practice my skills, in particular my aiming skills.
Landing on the other side of the gate, I was immediately greeted by loud barking from Sammy, Ashley’s Saint Bernard, who ran out from behind the house and tackled me to the ground before I could do anything. Instead of ripping my face off with his teeth, however, Sammy just licked me happily, which was a big departure from how he had treated me the first time I came here. But as I found out since moving here, Sammy was a big softie and easily made friends.
“Okay, Sammy, okay,” I said, pushing the big dog off me. “Nice to see you, too, but right now I need to get into the house. We can play catch later, all right?”
Sammy barked a couple more times, this time more happily than before, and followed me back to the house. He sat down on his bed next to the door, while I unlocked the door and entered, closing the door behind me and turning on the main lights at the same time.
As soon as I closed the door, TW materialized before me in his blue hologram form, only he didn’t look nearly as stable as before. His holographic body kept flickering on and off, its transparency was lighter than normal, and he looked like he was about to simply blink out of existence entirely. His face—which normally resembled Grandfather’s face—would occasionally be replaced by a blank blue screen, which was every bit as creepy and disturbing as you’d expect.
“TW?” I said worryingly, looking at him with concern. “Are you okay? You look like you’re glitching out.”
TW’s form suddenly stabilized, though based on his expression, he seemed to be holding himself together through sheer willpower alone. “Sorry. I am not quite sure what just happened, other than I appear to be experiencing some kind of glitch. It disturbs me as much as it does you, by the way, perhaps even more so because of the implications behind it.”
“Implications?” I said. “What do you mean?”
TW folded his hands behind his back. “Do you recall how, when we first met, I told you that I didn’t have much time left and that, unless the Trickshot Watch was repaired, I would cease working entirely at some point?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding. “I remember. You said it was because you were old.”
“Right,” said TW, nodding. “I thought I had more time than I did, but it appears that my degeneration is accelerating. I believe that it may be partially due to Holes’ powers, though I’m not sure how, given how your grandfather had to deal with Holes’ powers many times before and yet they never affected me negatively.”
“I see,” I said. “Is there anything we can do about it? Anything at all?”
TW shrugged. “You would need to find someone who can repair the Watch, but there aren’t very many people like that due to the Watch’s unique nature. Your grandfather developed me himself, so he could fix me, but I’m not sure anyone else could.”
I bit my lower lip. “And Grandfather, of course, is still imprisoned on Icon’s island base. Which is why we need to go there as quickly as we can, not that we need more reasons to hurry, of course.”
“Exactly,” said TW. “I’ve been trying to make contact with people on the coast of Texas who could take us to the island base, but I haven’t received any replies yet, not even from Gregory’s old friends. But I’m still trying, so don’t worry about that.”
I nodded, but TW and I both knew that that wasn’t the main reason I hadn’t left for Icon’s base yet was because of my parents. I was still just a teenager who lived with his parents. Y
es, school might have been out for the summer and I might have had a lot of free time because I didn’t have a summer job or anything like that, but that didn’t mean I had the freedom to just up and go to the Gulf of Mexico for my final showdown with Icon without telling anyone. My parents would wonder where I was, maybe even outright panic. Considering how they reacted the last time I disappeared without telling them where I was, I didn’t want to know what they would do if I disappeared for a week or longer.
The best way to avoid panicking my parents about this would be to tell them that I was Trickshot and that I was going to save Grandfather. But that would be difficult, mostly because I didn’t know how they would respond. They both seemed to like Trickshot okay, but if they knew that their one and only son had secretly been practicing superheroism for the last couple of months without their knowledge, I didn’t think they would take it very well. They especially wouldn’t take it well, I thought, if they knew that I was going to break into the base of a powerful, secretive organization that had already displayed a willingness to kill, especially one that had kidnapped them once already.
But I had to save Grandfather. I knew where he was now, thanks to the coordinates given to me by my uncle Josh last month. At this point, it was only a matter of time before I went to Icon’s island base and rescued him. Yet I needed to figure out an excuse I could use to leave town without raising any alarms. And I needed to do it before school started up, too, because once school started back up, I would have very little time to head down to Icon’s base and save Grandfather.
But I pushed such thoughts out of my mind for now in order to focus on TW. “Well, I hope you hear back from someone soon. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that Icon will do all sorts of horrible things to Grandfather.”
“I know,” said TW, “but I think we have a more urgent problem at the moment. Namely, Holes.”
“Oh, right,” I said, nodding. “What is that guy’s story? You said he was an old enemy of Grandfather’s and he was supposed to be in jail, but you didn’t elaborate on what you meant by all of that.”