Supers - Ex Heroes 6

by Jamie Hawke

  We took turns standing watch to get some much-needed sleep, and then it was time to partake in the strategy meetings, or get some training in.

  “So, what can you tell us about this place?” Twitch asked Charm, as the three of us entered the training building, determined to do our best to stay fit and be ready for whatever came ahead. Shimmer and Aegriss were there waiting for us, while Andromida and Gale were already in a training session.

  Charm stretched, a sight not to be missed now that she was back in her tight pink and white outfit. I missed the red dress, but she had promised to keep it handy for special occasions.

  “Home, once upon a time,” Charm said, and then scrunched her nose at the thought. “The star map wasn’t specific enough, but my area was on Station Eshu. It’s a mobile space station at the edge of the Oram system.”

  “Which of the three guilds were you in?” Shimmer asked.

  “You’re familiar with the guilds?” Charm asked.

  Shimmer cocked her head. “I was… tasked with taking them out, once upon a time.”

  “Oh.” Charm frowned, then looked confused. “I guess you failed.”

  “I did, in a sense. My attack led to a counterattack by a guild ally… one supervillain we knew as Plague, now deceased by our hand.”

  I ran my fingers over my temples. “Wait, you attacked them. Plague and the others attacked your planet in retaliation, and then Twitch tried to help but accidentally sent your planet through a black hole-style portal… right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, it’s kind of your fault?”

  Shimmer glared at me, and I zipped my mouth, pretending to throw away the key.

  “Fucking stupid thing to say,” Twitch chided me, and I nodded, already feeling like an idiot without her adding that.

  “Point is, I’m familiar enough,” Shimmer said, turning back to Charm. “So?”

  Charm looked off, lost in a memory, then finally said, “I served under Council Amand.”

  A low whistle escaped Shimmer, and she looked impressed. “He’s one of the worst.”

  “Or best, depending on how you look at it.”

  “Best at being the worst, yeah.” Shimmer turned back to us. “Thing is, we might have an in with the others, but if Charm can get us in with this guy, that’s better.”

  “Last time I saw him,” Charm scoffed, “I was telling him to fuck off, or something like that. Us getting an ‘in’ because of me seems pretty unlikely.”

  “And your sister?” Lamb asked, standing in the doorway.

  “My sist…” Charm blinked, confused. “Isn’t she… I mean, I just figured.”

  “Dead?” Lamb continued, as the feline alien lady Feruz from Drew’s team appeared behind her. “We don’t think so.”

  At my look, Lamb nodded at Feruz and said, “She was injured. In sick bay.”

  “Sounds like I missed a lot,” Feruz mumbled in a disjointed way, then I realized it was her translator working.

  “Excuse me,” Charm interrupted. “Malina?”

  “Your sister?” I asked. Judging by the annoyed glance, I got the sense Charm figured I should know that. She folded her arms, glaring at Lamb. “If she’s alive, don’t you think that’s something you should’ve told me earlier?”

  Lamb shook her head. “When everyone was fighting for their lives, or…?”

  “The first time I was here.”

  “Ah. We didn’t know where she was, didn’t really know much of anything. But during the attack, while fighting here, we intercepted some coded messages. We think we’ve managed to break them. And…” Lamb approached Charm, pulling up a screen and then expanding it, turning it so we could see. “The image is scrambled, the message too. But the voice…”

  As it started playing, a feminine voice stating when and where they would join the attack, Charm’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s her! That’s Malina!”

  Lamb nodded. “I agree. The thing is, where they attacked—or meant to—that was Protial territory. Some of our strongest allies.”

  “The guild went up against Protials?” Charm asked. “What the hell made them think that was possible?”

  “The guild has strong allies of their own, these days,” Lamb replied.

  “Including much of my race,” Feruz interjected. “Why I wanted to come along, to meet you. You’re… nothing like Malina.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Feruz grinned, showing off her feline teeth. “I think you’re the pretty one, honestly. But more than that, when she came to our planet, she was already leading a large, intergalactic group.”

  “Wait, you actually met her?” Charm caught my eye and gave me a look like, ‘whoa.’

  “Oh, yes. I was there when the alliance was formed. Before Drew came along with his team and swept me off my feet.”

  “If that was in the last five or six years—”

  “It was… maybe two years ago?”

  “Shit.” Charm looked at me, the conflict clear behind those eyes.

  “Am I the only one who doesn’t know the full story, here?” I asked.

  The others in the room all looked as lost as I felt, all except for Charm and Lamb.

  “Go ahead,” Charm said, with a nod to Lamb. Then she pointed at Feruz. “You. I need a good workout.”

  Feruz licked her lips, claws flared, and said, “Me, too.”

  They approached the mats, catgirl versus kitsune, and I couldn’t help but watch as they went at each other, darting in and out like the animals they represented, claws restrained but tails whipping about.

  As they sparred, Lamb told us the story as she knew it. She told us how Charm had snuck into the superhero academy Supralines, on Juno. We knew that part, by now. It was where she had met Laurel and Harp. We knew other bits too, but she told us how Charm had been her most eager student and the one with the most promise, but she had known the girl was a fake and actually used her to get to a super they knew had come to Junos with the sole purpose of recruiting students for Ranger and the other supervillains to form a resistance against the Citadel. This was Malina, Charm’s sister. Charm had led them straight to her, resulting in a massive fight that even included Hadrian, and then there was that decision to send Charm undercover, to the prison ship. In that final battle, they had all assumed Malina was dead, along with the others they’d killed.

  “We even found Malina’s corpse,” Lamb said. “Or… so we thought.”

  “It was glamoured?” We turned to see Sam standing in the doorway, listening.

  Lamb glanced back and nodded. “It wasn’t until they found something strange during the autopsy and removed a small chip on the back of her neck, that the body changed to that of a lesser supervillain—a student from Rocadium, we understood. She had escaped, and tricked us all.”

  Charm had paused to listen, and caught a good kick to the face from Feruz.

  “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Feruz said, going to her to make sure she was all right.

  “It’s fine,” Charm said, stepping out of the ring.

  Feruz frowned, but Sam approached and stepped in with her, nodding.

  “I used one of those in my mission against the Redbacks. Droka, to be exact.” She cocked her head, then cracked it in a rotating move before removing her armor to be on equal footing with Feruz. “Best just the two of us spar, without help,” she added, cryptically.

  “Sure,” Feruz replied, looking at her with confusion.

  As they started sparring, Sam not quite so fast but damn good, Charm approached Lamb.

  “This is all so… fucked up.” Charm leaned against the wall next to Lamb, hands rubbing each other, tails folded up behind her for comfort. “So, all this time, my sister has been out there… continuing to further the cause of the enemy?”

  “Damn.” I went to her, hand out to comfort her, but she ever so slightly winced, so I let my hand fall. “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s not my real sister, anyway.” Charm’s eyes fell to the
floor, staring at it as if she hated it.

  “But, Charm—”

  “No, don’t baby me.” She pushed off the wall and stepped into the center of the room, watching as Sam blocked a kick from Feruz. Both of them turned to see her there, waiting.

  Charm stretched her arms behind her. “When I see the bitch, I’ll be the one to take her life.” She stepped into the ring and immediately went on the offensive against both women at once.

  19

  Charm’s tails were glowing slightly, light shining at her claw-tips, so she was clearly using her skills. We weren’t supposed to do so while training, but neither of her opponents complained. They went with it, getting trounced, but jumping back up to take some more each time.

  I turned to Lamb, who was watching, pensively. Approaching her, I said, “Tell me the plan.”

  “She might want to kill her sister, but…” She hesitated, Shimmer approaching too, then continued, “it might be better if you tried to get in with them.”

  “You want Charm to pretend to be a villain?” Shimmer asked.

  Lamb nodded. “Charm, maybe all of you. At least some of you. As far as her sister knows, Charm went bad. Ended up on a prison ship, survived, continued with a life of crime.”

  “And that’s the story we’ll tell,” I said.

  “They won’t see through it?” Aegriss asked, now in on the conversation, too.

  Lamb nodded. “Which is why Laurel will have to be there, to counter any mind-reading supers by planting fake readings with them.”

  I ran a hand through my hair, wondering how the team would feel about having Laurel back working with us. Which probably meant Harp as well. Maybe they had never left, and it wasn’t like what had happened had been their fault. Still, there was a clear unease in Shimmer’s eyes. That, or maybe I was perceiving something not there. I didn’t know.

  Before we had a chance to discuss it further, Drew entered with Threed and Sakurai, and let out a bellow of laughter at the sight of the two-on-one sparring.

  Lamb gave me a nod as if to say we would continue the discussion later, while Drew clasped me on the shoulder and said, “So, this is what you do all day? Watch the ladies fight while you gossip?”

  “Fucking Marines,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m here, waiting to see what you got.”

  He was about to challenge me, clearly, but Threed grabbed his package, kissed him, and said, “No need for a pissing contest just yet, boys, the ladies gotta whip ‘em out first.”

  Not sure how to take that, I watched with surprise as she ran into the ring, jumped, and landed a superman punch on Feruz. The impact knocked the feline lady to the ground, but she was all smiles when she tackled Threed in return—and then it became a free-for-all. Sakurai grinned our way, walking backward into the chaos, then dropped into a rolling backward kick that turned into a leg sweep on Sam.

  To my surprise, they were laughing! All punching and kicking and grappling, smiles on their faces as they called out for us to stop being scared and join the fray.

  Charm let out a whoop, then shouted, “I fucking love my life,” and connected with an uppercut on Threed. The crazy woman spun, dazed, and fell.

  “Heal her, will you?” Drew said, and then shoved Aegriss into the mix while he, too, joined in.

  “Another day, another thousand or so bruises,” Lamb said, chuckling.

  “You’re not getting in there?” I asked.

  She eyed me, pursed her lips, and then lunged. I barely moved out of the way of her punch but it was only a fake, and her knee caught me in the side. I laughed as the pain took hold, then grabbed her and flipped her around, only to be thrown over her shoulder and land hard on my back.

  “Getting in?” She scoffed. “I’m always in!”

  The high point for me came when my brother attempted to grab me in a headlock as he had done when we were children. A simple move, and he winked as he did it, letting me know he was fully aware this wasn’t going to end well for him.

  Even without using any special powers, we both moved extremely fast, so from the moment he lunged to the moment I twisted, pushed, and sent him flying upside down at the opposite wall must have been no more than a blink of an eye. He rolled out of it, laughing, and came at me this time with something a bit more original—leaping left, then right, and kicking at my leg before grabbing me for a knee. My thigh where his shin connected stung, but I used my forearm to block the knee, grabbing him in turn to swing him around and throw my own knee strike.

  He whooped, apparently loving this brotherly sparring as much as I was, and went for a takedown. For a moment, I realized the ladies had paused to watch, and in that instant let my guard down. A punch hit me in the stomach, hard enough to send me off my feet, and then my brother was there, catching me to slam me into the ground. I groaned but didn’t give him another chance to strike—even with the wind knocked out of me, I brought my right leg up to catch him with a shin across the side of his head, then rolled out of the way of a strike and pushed myself back up.

  Both of us were up and circling each other when Threed let out a war cry and leaped on my back, but Charm pulled her off.

  “Wrong man,” Charm said, indicating Drew. “On his back, come on.”

  “Chicken?” Drew asked, and laughed, wiping a line of blood from his lower lip. “I love it!

  Threed was on his back a moment later, both of us holding our women and charging at each other while the others in the room hooted and hollered. Both girls were doing a fine job, but in the end—and maybe it was because Charm’s tails helped her balance—we knocked Threed off. The other ladies joined back in, then.

  “Professor,” Charm said, holding her punch, only to catch an elbow to the jaw.

  “I told you, not anymore,” Lamb said with a laugh, coming in for another elbow. This time, Charm blocked it and caught Lamb with a knee to the groin.

  “Sorry, profe—I mean…” Charm stepped back, but Lamb was grinning, holding herself in pain but ready for more.

  More punches, kicks, and body slams. It was insane. It was amazing.

  Needless to say, when Gale and Andromida entered ten minutes later to find us all covered in sweat, blood, and welts, they stared at us like we were crazy. Every one of us was moving much slower, all of us glancing their way, likely wondering if this would be a good time for a break.

  “Hey, we suffered,” my brother said, standing and then reaching back to help me up. “But… now’s time to hit back.”

  “And that’s my favorite time,” I replied.

  “Hold on,” Threed said, gesturing to the pushup bar nearby. “There’s something I’m curious about.”

  “Being?” I asked.

  “Well, we have some strong motherfuckers in this room right now.” She stepped over and put a hand on the bar, as if it wasn’t clear, yet. “A test. Winner gets…”

  “A blowjob,” Charm offered. “Me for my man, you for yours.”

  “Fuck that,” Sam countered. “I don’t want any of your faces near my crotch.”

  Threed laughed. “That, and I think I might have a shot at winning. But as long as ‘blow job’ refers to a guy going down on me, cool. Or… maybe a woman?”

  She glanced in Charm’s direction, but Charm shook her head. “As much as I love you, dear, I don’t stray.”

  “For the purpose of a bet, is it straying?” Threed glanced my way.

  “Sorry, no help here.” I walked up to the bar, seeing that it was the fancy kind where you simply adjust the numbers on a panel and it takes on the weight needed. “The group is the group.”

  “Also, what the fuck?” Drew chuckled, but did look a bit annoyed as he stared at Threed.

  “Oh, relax, like you wouldn’t enjoy me going down on foxy over there.”

  Drew gave me a look that said he probably would, but then shook his head. “Winner gets the pride of knowing he or she won. Simple as that.”

  “Deal,” Sam said, taking the first spot on the bench. “Hit me.”
/>
  “Weight?” I asked, adjusting the numbers.

  “They are waiting,” Andromida said, irritation plain in her voice.

  “We’ll be fast,” I promised.

  “Yeah, this we gotta see,” Gale added, stepping in to get a better view. “I wasn’t aware the Shadow Mystic had enhanced strength.”

  “Oh, you thought?” Sam grinned, then laughed. “No, I was just playing. No way can I compete in this.”

  She hit zero on the bar and did a quick pump down and up, then put it back and stood. “About a million pounds, I’d say.”

  I chuckled, but Threed rolled her eyes and said, “This is the lady who was in the time warp thing for hundreds of years, right? That would explain the humor.”

  “Humor or no, I’ll slap the pink off your head,” Sam replied, but winked, hands up playfully.

  “I think the adrenaline’s making us all a bit silly.” I took my spot on the bench next. “So much so, that I’m going to try…”

  “What weight?” my brother asked, watching with interest.

  “Actually, I’ve never bench pressed before,” I admitted. “What’s normal?”

  “Before any of this, I’d have guessed you could do one-fifty, maybe two hundred pounds.”

  I considered that, then adjusted the bar to six hundred.

  “Fuck that,” Threed said.

  “To be fair, I’m an Elder, level thirty-five, and… am a genuine badass.” I did the bar at six hundred pounds. It wasn’t even a struggle, and I rose to cheers.

  “Hold on,” Drew said as I sat up. “You been putting all your points toward strength?”

  “Nope, but… enough.”

  He eyed the bar, stretched, but was pushed aside by Threed. “Fuck this, I got the—”

  Her voice cut off as she lifted the bar and it nearly crushed her. Charm was there with one arm grabbing it and pulling it aside, letting it fall and land with a thud that dented the floor.

  “Whoa,” Threed said, lying there in shock. “Guess… guess I’m not as strong as your little brother, Drew.”

  “Of course not,” I said, and laughed. “Sorry, but… you don’t even have enhanced strength, do you?”