by Logan Jacobs
The water levels dropped again as the top of a head began to rise out of the pool.
“Ew, it’s like the pool is giving birth,” Beacon groaned.
I fired a shot into one of Morpho’s arms, and steam filled the room, but it didn’t seem to have any impact on the monstrously huge water elemental since she just recovered the damage with the excess water around her. At this rate, she was going to overpower us sooner rather than later.
“Okay, ready!” Norma’s voice chirped through my earpiece.
Finally.
But Morpho’s head had already emerged out of the pool, and instead of a face, she had a giant mouth lined with razor-sharp icicles for teeth. She was nearly out of the water, and as soon as she formed herself legs, that would be it for my plan, and the monstrous water elemental would be set loose on the city of Grayville.
“Miles!” Beacon yelled. “It has to be now!”
“I activated the drain, but this place is ancient, and it’s delayed for some reason,” Norma said through my earpiece. “You need to keep her there!”
“I will,” I said, and then I flicked the power to full throttle on both of my heat blasters and took several steps away from the pool.
It was probably a little early to test out my blaster’s capabilities in this way, but I’d floated the idea to Aileen and she’d informed me there was a very high probability of success. So I ran forward as fast as my suit-enhanced legs could carry me, and then I launched myself into the air right at the edge of the pool.
I wasn’t born a superhuman, and I didn’t have super strength. I couldn’t levitate naturally, I couldn’t leap over buildings in a single bound, and I couldn’t punch my way through rock.
But what I did have was a brilliant mind, plus two powerful heat-blasters of my own creation that were built into the palms of my suit.
I fired both blasters directly downward, and that sent my body higher into the air. I fired another blast, this time on the top of Morpho’s head as she continued to absorb the water in the pool for her new body. Another blast, and another, and explosions tore apart her body into jets of steam as I kept myself hovering above her from the force of the blasts.
Her body wasn’t normal, and she didn’t splatter apart into gore like an average human might if shot multiple times with double blasters, but it definitely did some damage.
As she let out a garbled, wet screech, the pool’s drain finally activated.
Immediately, the hydro-woman’s body began to swirl into a spiraled whirlpool not of her own creation. Bits of mist floated past my face as she tried to disperse herself back into a gaseous state, but she’d absorbed too much water from the pool to be able to shift back that easily.
As for me, I hadn’t figured out any kind of stabilizing system yet because I hadn’t expected I’d need to, and my arms were tired and sore from the recoil. I knew I couldn’t keep this up for much longer, so I tilted my final blast so it would let me land on the edge of the pool.
I managed to crash solidly on the side of the pool, and I rolled onto my back so I could strip off my gauntlets and let my blasters cool down. They had gotten pretty hot with all the continuous firing, and I would have to look into that if I wanted a stabilized flying mechanism.
But hey, it had been a pretty good test.
“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Beacon said as he stared down at the draining pool. “But, uh, she’s not dead, right? You hit her a lot.”
“Nope,” I replied as I pushed myself up to my feet again and cracked my neck.
Just at that moment, Norma emerged from the maintenance room.
“We successfully captured her in the pool’s water tanks,” she said with a grin. “I disconnected them from the rest of the building’s pipes like you said, so she won’t be able to escape through those. The tank she’s caught in should fit neatly into the prison van, so they can come collect her.”
“That’s good,” Beacon said, and he sounded a little distant.
I had to wonder how much he really believed in his mentor’s ideals now that he’d been directly targeted by a supervillain that had clearly been trying to kill him by literally sucking the moisture out of him, but now wasn’t the time to prod him about that. Still, I thought that time might come sooner than expected.
“Are you okay, Miles?” Norma ran over to me and held out her arms to try to support me.
“I’m perfectly fine,” I said as I waved off her offer of support. “But we couldn’t have done this without you, Norma.”
“Nah, I mostly just guessed,” my mousy assistant said as she blushed. “Their setup was ancient, and I wasn’t sure which pipe led to what, but it all worked out.”
“It did,” I agreed as I patted her on the head. “All thanks to you.”
Norma blushed again and flicked a lock of brown hair behind her ear.
After he went to check on Morpho in the tanks, Beacon came over to join us.
“Seems like she’s definitely alive in there,” he said. “Nasty bitch, too. Kept cursing and swearing revenge on me.”
“Well, all we can do is take her back to the prison,” Norma said with a nervous glance at me. “Like, um, the Shadow Knight wants.”
“Yup.” I shrugged. “That’s the deal.”
Beacon seemed like he wanted to say something for a second, but he ended up just nodding in response.
“Alright, call up a transport, Norma,” I said after I’d given Beacon ample time to comment on letting Morpho live.
Norma pulled out her phone and took a few steps away from us to make the call. As she stepped away, Beacon glanced between me and her and then cracked into a smile.
“You know, that was some really quick thinking you did back there,” he said. “Using your blasters to fly? Really clever.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about a way to make my suit fly for a while,” I replied with a grin.
Beacon’s smile grew into a smirk, and he leaned in a little closer.
“Yeah, but between you and me?” He glanced around. “The Shadow Knight can’t swim. He never would have dared to try that over water even if he could’ve come up with it in the first place.”
I laughed so loud that Norma glanced back at me, but I just shook my head. I’d definitely have to tell her that later-- it would make her feel a lot better about the fact that Slade always called her ‘Nora’ since he couldn’t be bothered to remember her real name.
“He’d probably sink with all of his heavy equipment, anyway,” I added.
Beacon nodded, and we fell into a momentary silence as we waited for Norma to finish her call.
“You know what, Miles?” Beacon sighed. “You’re alright.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Norma returned shortly after, and the three of us headed back outside to wait for the prison van to arrive. Then we’d drive back to my mansion to wait for the others to finish up. Hopefully they’d all be as successful as we’d been, and then we could divide up the remaining supervillains to capture.
So far, I didn’t mind being partnered with Beacon. He was friendly enough and had a competent head on his shoulders, and he was only lacking due to lack of sufficient equipment and knowledge about the equipment he did have, but that reflected more on the Shadow Knight than on Beacon himself.
With the rate his Silver Squires kicked the bucket, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Shadow Knight’s training was pretty abusive, but somehow I still was. The more I learned about how the crow-masked man operated, the more I started to dislike him.
More importantly, it was even clearer to me now that he was actually doing more harm than good to the city of Grayville.
Chapter 4 - Dynamo
After Miles, Norma, and I had changed into our supersuits, we split up into our respective groups. For me, that meant I was partnered up with Penumbra, an apparent failed sidekick of the Shadow Knight with the ability to levitate. I wasn’t sure how useful
she was going to be based on my short interactions with her so far, but she seemed nice and meant well. She wasn’t a fake bitch like some other girls I’d worked with in my short stint with the Wardens, so I was willing to give her a chance.
Aileen had sent us the tracking information on the Golem, so we took off into the suburbs on foot. Or, rather, Penumbra floated next to me as I ran down the sidewalk.
Apparently the Golem hadn’t gone toward the city like most of the other escaped supervillains, but instead, it had bumbled off in a completely random direction. That was good because it meant there were fewer buildings and people clustered together to get in its way, but bad because it was harder to keep track of because there weren’t nearly as many security cameras for Aileen to hack into to track it out in the suburbs.
Of course, it wasn’t too hard to find the trail of destruction it had left behind.
“Look!” Penumbra said as she suddenly floated in front of me.
I skidded to a stop on the sidewalk, and I had to fight to keep my cool and not snap at her for getting in my way while I was running at full speed. She was just so absent-minded, but I knew she didn’t mean any harm by it. It was just frustrating to have a partner as absent-minded as her when I was so used to working with Miles.
“Did you find something?” I asked.
She nodded and flew up ahead as her long blonde hair drifted behind her, so it looked like she was underwater.
My powers did not include flying, but with the help of the suit Miles had given me, I could jump pretty damn high. It wasn’t flying, but it meant I could keep up with Penumbra as she flew up to the tops of buildings. Miles constantly managed to impress me with his technological improvements, and I couldn’t even imagine what my life would be like without him at this point. Each new iteration of my suit allowed me to jump higher, punch harder, and absorb more hits. I was so much more powerful than I’d ever been before, and I was only getting stronger.
So when Penumbra flew up to the top of an office building, I just lowered myself to the ground in order to put my energy into my legs, sprung upward, and easily landed on the edge of the roof beside her.
I could tell that really surprised her, and she flitted around in the air excitedly.
“Your powers are really cool,” she complimented me, not for the first time.
“The power of flight is pretty useful, too,” I said with a smile, since I could tell that her compliment was sincere.
“No, not really,” she protested. “I can make it so my mass is really light, but it’s really not all that, um, not all that much… It makes my bones really, really lightweight when I do it, so I can’t, like, fly and punch very hard at the same time, or I’ll risk hurting myself.”
“Ahh,” I said.
That was a pretty huge limitation for a superhero to have, so I gave her a sympathetic look, but she just smiled at me and then flew across the roof of the office building to point below.
“There’s what I saw,” she said once I’d joined her over on the next roof.
I followed the way her finger pointed into the distance, and I saw a section of the street that looked absolutely devastated, as if a tornado had swept through it. The stop light was mangled and broken, and multiple cars had been flipped over and crushed with the people still inside of them. A few police cars had set up around the wreckage to redirect traffic.
There were ambulances around as well, and the civilians that had survived the Golem’s destructive rampage were being loaded into them. It wasn’t as many deaths as the Golem might have been able to cause on a crowded city street, but it was enough to bother me. We needed to catch up to him fast.
“I bet he went that way?” she asked in a way that seemed desperate for my approval.
“Looks like it,” I agreed, even though it was more than obvious. “Let’s go.”
I took a running start, leapt off of the roof, and landed gracefully on the ground. Penumbra flew after me, and now that she’d mentioned it, I could see that she did look a bit frail. She was incredibly thin and petite, with a slim build and no true muscle to be seen like those high fashion runway models who only ate gum and cigarette smoke. Her twig-like arms were the most alarming, since they didn’t seem to have enough muscle on them to let her open a jar, let alone knock out a supervillain. Her breasts strained against the fabric of her spandex costume, but she didn’t have the kind of curves that most of the Warden superheroines had due to her smaller frame.
I could see why Miles had assigned her to work with me, anyway. He was right that she’d make a good distraction, since she was capable of moving very quickly through the air. If it annoyed me, I couldn’t imagine how much it would annoy a supervillain that she was trying to distract. I thought that she might make a really good superhero someday, if she could become capable of cleverly utilizing her powers instead of relying on brute strength.
Of course, the Shadow Knight and his apprentices only seemed to care about brute strength, so Penumbra didn’t seem to fit in very well with his idea of what made a good hero, and I thought what she really needed was a mentor.
Once we’d found the first signs of the Golem’s destruction, it was pretty easy to follow his trail. He was barely a sentient creature, so he had no presence of mind to cover his tracks. We followed the trail of crushed cars and police blockades until we reached a bridge over a small river on the outskirts of the suburbs.
“I think I hear him up ahead, near that bridge,” Penumbra alerted me as she flew in front.
“Then let’s hurry,” I said.
Shortly after, I also heard the telltale stomping and crushing sounds of a destructive monster on a rampage, so I sped forward down the sidewalk and only slowed to a stop at the beginning of the bridge. The Golem was further down the length of the bridge, and the ground shook with each step of its heavy feet.
“It’s going to break the bridge!” I yelled.
“It’s not just that!” Penumbra called. “Look what he’s after!”
The Golem appeared to be chasing after something, and as we got closer, I noticed a school bus full of children whose driver was desperately trying to go fast enough to avoid the rock-monster’s clutches. There was nowhere to turn without falling off the bridge and into the water, so there was nowhere for the bus to escape to. With each thundering footstep, the rock monster closed the distance between itself and the bus, and the bus driver started to swerve as he panicked.
“It must be attracted to the bright colors,” Penumbra said. “We have to hurry!”
“Follow me,” I ordered as I pumped the muscles in my legs to move even faster.
“We’re not going to reach it before the Golem gets there,” Penumbra shouted from somewhere behind me.
I just kept running as I watched the Golem lunge itself forward and grab the bright yellow bus. The metal roof crunched under its powerful stone fists, and the rock monster grabbed the bus with its other hand to lift it up into the air. Even over the Golem’s roars, I could hear the children screaming inside the bus.
“What do we do?” Penumbra moaned.
“We need to distract it from the bus,” I replied as I looked around for something we could use, but the bridge was mostly deserted other than a few empty cars whose drivers had fled the path of the bus.
“What if you used one of those?” my blonde partner suggested as she pointed at one of the cars. “Like, fling it at him to make him drop the bus. You’re strong enough, right?”
“I am.” I glanced toward the Golem, and as he shook the bus full of kids, I knew I didn’t have the time to think of anything more sophisticated. We had to act now. “You fly over toward him and get ready to help the kids off of the bus to get them to safety.”
“Okay,” Penumbra said. “But I’ve never-- well, I’ve never tried to levitate anything other than myself before.”
“That’s fine, just do what you can and I’ll get his attention,” I replied. “Just go!”
She nodded again and flew
off toward the Golem in a wide arc that wouldn’t draw his attention right away. I would have time later to be annoyed by her apparent ignorance of her own powers, so for now I just let it go.
I lunged for the nearest empty car and grabbed it from underneath. My muscles strained under the weight, and there was no way it would have been possible without Miles’ suit that enhanced my abilities, but I successfully managed to lift the car up and over my head.
With a bit of backward momentum, I aimed directly for the Golem’s back and chucked the car forward with as much power as I could put into it. The car sailed through the air as it left my hands and collided into the rock creature’s upper shoulder with a screeching crunch of metal meeting rock. He stumbled forward and off-balance with a bellowed roar, and then he dropped the bus back to the ground.
He wasn’t done with it, though.
As he thrashed about in pain and fear from the impact, he kicked the bus toward the edge of the bridge. Then he continued to thrash along and roar, and he picked up empty cars along the way and chucked them off the bridge and into the water as he lumbered away.
“Dynamo, help!” Penumbra shouted.
The blonde superhero had landed on the top edge of the bus that teetered over the edge of the bridge, moments away from tipping over. She weighed next to nothing, and according to her, could only make her mass lighter, so even as she pushed against the side of the bus, it did nothing.
“Dynamo, it’s going to fall!” she shouted again. “I can’t catch it like this!”
If she’d had the ability to levitate other objects or make herself heavier instead of lighter, it would have really come in handy.
Children screamed inside the bus as I tore my gaze away from the Golem’s retreating back. We could catch up to him later. It wasn’t worth sacrificing the lives of an entire bus full of children, so I ran toward the bus full of kids and grabbed it from the underside. With a solid hold on the bus’ undercarriage, I yanked it forward and back down to the ground to pull it away from the ledge.