We Could Be Heroes

by Harmon Cooper

  Sam looked down and saw that there were five or so vampire ninjas moving toward Zoe, some of them crawling sideways on a wall, the others scurrying on the ground.

  “Let’s get down there,” Helena said, clipping on her other wrist guards so she now had two energy blades.

  “Sam, take this other one,” she said, handing him the one that was meant for Zoe.

  A deep breath in and Helena leapt to the ground floor below, extending both her blades at the same time, the light from the energy weapons catching the vampire ninjas’ attention.

  “Shit, shit, shit…” Sam said as he finished clipping on his own energy blade. He ran to the stairs, Ozella falling in line behind him, both ready to do whatever they had to do to protect Zoe.

  ***

  Sam had never stabbed a person before, but technically, vampires weren’t people, and they were technically already dead, so he didn’t really have a problem with running up to the nearest vampire he saw and knifing her in the back.

  Sam’s energy weapon tore through the woman’s torso, her body pressing against his knuckles as she hissed and tried to bite at him over her shoulder.

  He kept his blade in, moving it up, tearing through her insides and finally getting to her heart, the woman sizzling as Sam lowered her to the ground.

  “Dinah, help Zoe!” Ozella shouted, pointing at the fallen figure in the room.

  Dinah floated through the skirmish happening between Helena and two vampires, and descended upon Zoe, where she immediately started reviving her.

  Sam was just about to blast away one of the vampires engaging Helena when he was tackled to the ground by a muscular man with razor-sharp teeth, the man’s fangs growing as he prepared to bite down on Sam.

  Triggering his weapon, Sam blasted through the man’s chest and followed this up with his energy blade, the vampire starting to melt and sizzle, crying out in anguish, his body still over Sam, his musk berating Sam’s nostrils.

  The guy’s history came to him almost immediately, a non-exemplar, a former mobster.

  Sam kicked the man off, and took a moment to catch his breath, adrenaline surging through him.

  Zoe was just coming awake again when a vampiric ninja burst through a wall, spotted her, and immediately moved to engage the tiger girl. With a loud grunt, Zoe brought her energy blade forward, pressing through Dinah’s form. She met the man head on, literally, her blade pressing through the front of his face, and out the back of his skull.

  She threw him to the right before he could slide down her blade and bite her hand. Even as Dinah tried to heal her, Zoe got to her feet, stumbled over to the vampire and drove the blade into his chest.

  It was only a few seconds later that Helena brought down the final vampire. “I believe Mister Fist could use our help.”

  It was clear from their vantage point that the action happening outside had taken its toll, the area still covered in mist, fewer clones moving in and out, blips of fire, shouts between the team.

  “So we go out there?” Sam asked, shaking his hands out.

  He could feel that the blood had left his extremities, likely something to do with the adrenaline and his body’s natural response to protect its core. He figured that shaking his hands would do the trick, loosen them up some, let his body know that however fucked the situation may have seemed, Sam was actively involved in it.

  “Yes,” Helena said. “Ozella? Zoe?”

  “Yes,” the two said at the same time.

  “They may arrest us after this,” Sam reminded all of them, even though the four, five including Dinah, had already turned to leave.

  “That’s just something we’ll have to deal with later,” said Helena. “Heroes don’t run, and if Mister Fist and his team practice the same philosophy, they will fight until they are unable to do so. If one of the vampires is able to turn them, MindLenz especially, we will have a whole different problem on our hands, as does anyone in the vicinity who she encounters.”

  “So we go. We save an exemplar team.” Zoe triggered the button that elongated her blade again, the energy weapon flashing. “Who wants to lead the charge?”

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Shadow Lurkers and Old Foes

  (Someone should have seen this coming…)

  Heroes Anonymous were too preoccupied with moving to the main battle to notice that a teleporter had appeared behind them, a woman named Scarlett, Dr. Hamza Grumio at her side.

  And no, Dr. Hamza didn’t have some advanced Eastern tech that allowed him to track them; the clever man had come here through other means, and just so happened to stumble upon the four that had continued to be the bane of his existence.

  His tipoff came in the form of a mental message from Mia, the beast woman who had crippled him. The message simply stated that someone had taken her and that they planned to use her beast form tonight, at this very location.

  At first, Dr. Hamza believed it to be a trap, something that Mia had put together to call him out in the open, to finish the job.

  But she could have just as easily gone to his home to finish the job, so he disregarded this thought, realizing that there may have been truth to what she was saying.

  And Mia didn’t respond to the subsequent messages he sent her, which he took to mean something had happened.

  Now standing in an abandoned home to the left of the main fight, Dr. Hamza took everything in at once, his Type E classifying power coming alive as it normally did, providing him with more information than anyone could possibly hope to process.

  He’d been able to ignore the information at times over the last few days, and was getting better at focusing on it only when he needed it. A wrist guard strapped to his arm just in case, he crouched before one of the sizzling vampiric ninjas, more chemicals coming to him, substances that Dr. Hamza had never come into contact with before.

  He reached into his lab coat and grabbed a plastic glove. Once it was on, he opened the man’s mouth, running his fingers along the man’s gumline. The man wasn’t entirely mush, and looking around, Dr. Hamza believed that their bodies didn’t completely fizzle out when they were bested.

  “We need to get out of here,” Scarlett told him, her arms over her chest now and a worried look on her face.

  “I am under the impression that this will end soon, Scarlett, and I need you to stick around for just a little while longer,” Dr. Hamza told her.

  “What are those things?” she asked.

  “I believe they are vampires.” Dr. Hamza took a small knife from his belt, and cut a piece of the man’s lip. He kept it on the knife as he went for a vial he kept in a hidden pocket, dropping the sliver of flesh in and capping it.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Take a look around,” he said, waving his hand at some of the bodies lying in the room.

  “How did you know about this?” Scarlett asked, suddenly too afraid to start poking at the corpses.

  “I have my sources, and my sources should be arriving soon.” Dr. Hamza looked straight ahead to a battle that was now peppered with green bits of light, signaling energy weapons had entered the mist.

  “This is bad…”

  “I can’t disagree with you there. For now, let’s just stay as far away from the main fight as possible,” he told her as he stood, took off his glove and stuck it back in his pocket, inside out this time. “And stay close, just in case if we have to go. It’s important for us to see how this plays out.” A smile cut across Dr. Hamza’s face. “For research purposes.”

  ***

  Mister Fist was likely the first to notice the addition of Heroes Anonymous, considering they had to breach his mist to start cutting down vampires, but it was William Bottorf who was the first to say something, or perhaps it was one of his clones.

  “What the shit are you doing here?” Bottorf asked, turning to Sam just as he drove his energy blade into the chest of a female vampire ninja.

  “Saving your asses!” Sam told him, Helena flipping past, springboarding into the air and
coming down into a small pack of approaching vampires with both blades drawn.

  William grunted and flung his baton back, catching one of the vampires in the face. Sam moved in next to spear this one in the chest, the vampire’s form sizzling, the man coughing as his teeth grew in size.

  “You have to take out their hearts!” Sam shouted. “Tell Mister Fist to take his actual form, he may be able to knock some out and give us time to spear them!”

  As if the mist had heard Sam, it started to shrink toward a center point, reforming into a costumed Mister Fist, an annoyed look on the masked super’s face.

  But the generally grumpy strongman didn’t say anything at the moment, his focus on the number of vampires that the fake superhero team had already taken out.

  Once Mister Fist relayed what was going on to MindLenz and Plume, Plume backed away to let Heroes Anonymous take out as many vampires as they could without feeling the heat.

  William’s clones came in handy too, the clones leaping onto the nearest vampiric ninja, and holding their legs and arms down giving Helena, Zoe and Sam free rein to drive their energy blades into their chests.

  As clones moved MindLenz closer to the others, Ozella saw that the female telepath was winded, blood trickling down the side of her forehead.

  “I’m going to heal you,” she said, stepping into the protective ring of William’s clones.

  “You do not have healing capabilities,” the telepath started to say.

  “Shut up and let me do my job,” said Ozella, instantly looking away from the woman, ashamed that she had gotten so sharp with her.

  She nodded Dinah over, the ghostly female moving through the mayhem toward MindLenz, where she stuck her neck out, locking her lips onto the telepath’s exposed shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” MindLenz asked, true fear in her eyes as she wasn’t able to read Ozella’s mind.

  “I already told you…” Ozella lifted her wrist guard and pointed it at an approaching vampire. She waited for her opening and fired over William’s clone’s shoulder, which caused the clone to turn and give her a crazy look.

  “Careful,” the clone said, “I’m not actually a clone!”

  “Sorry!” Ozella told the real William Bottorf as her blast cut a ninja vampire off his feet, giving Sam the time he needed to drive his blade into his chest.

  Zoe was on all fours now, zipping around and attacking her opponents from her low vantage point, lifting off her heels, activating her blade, and driving it into the chest of any vampiric ninja she could reach. She tossed an occasional cherry bomb too, adding more chaos to the fight and giving her cover.

  Helena wasn’t far off either, her combat dance skills on full display as she gracefully cut down ninjas and avoided some of their attacks, cartwheeling just in time to miss a fireball from Plume.

  The heiress used some of the same techniques that Sam had seen her use before, whole body attacks that left her somewhat prone if not for the force she put behind them.

  Still, she was effective, and the only person taking out more vampires than Helena was Zoe.

  Helena deactivated her blades for a moment, shaking her hands out, letting her weapons cool as she sidestepped one of William’s clones, the clone cracking his baton into the head of a female vampire ninja who was just about to blast Zoe with red energy from her open mouth.

  That was a new style of attack, something Sam hadn’t seen before. Which only went to tell him that the group they were fighting were both exemplar and non-exemplar, meaning that the vampire who had turned them didn’t discriminate regarding the minions that were created.

  As Sam moved toward MindLenz and Ozella, bringing his blade into the back of the vampire approaching them, a new portal opened up, this one directly in front of the warehouse.

  A spiraling vortex of crackling teal energy formed, the man known as Donovan stepping out of the portal alongside…

  Sam brought the vampire down, the man’s body sizzling as he clawed at the pavement.

  Joining Donovan was someone Sam hadn’t thought he’d ever see again.

  The towering woman had scaly metal skin, dozens of razor-sharp teeth, glowing orange eyes, and as she gnashed her jaw, Sam saw her canines starting to grow.

  “Mia?” Ozella asked.

  “Oh great,” Sam said, bringing his energy blade to the ready.

  Chapter Fifty-Six: Dead

  (Full circle never felt so round.)

  “Call them off!” Mister Fist told Donovan.

  Similar to the last time Sam had seen him, mohawked Donovan had a black streak across the front of his face, his eyes crimson, the man wiry and deadly in the way he stood, clearly from the Southern Alliance with his red tattoos and overall aggressive demeanor.

  “My employer isn’t happy about your interference,” Donovan said, a sneer on his face. “After all, when you take away the creature’s ability to eat, they tend to lash out, to turn fierce. And you wouldn’t like my employers when they’re irritable.”

  “We don’t give a flying fuck about your hangry vampire employers,” Zoe said, bringing her fists to the ready, the end of her tail hooking like a candy cane.

  “Let us handle this,” said Mister Fist. The big man stepped forward, his lower half starting to turn into a mist.

  “New heroes or old, it doesn’t matter who gets in our way, we will crush you,” Donovan said. “Mia, you know what to do.”

  “You four need to get out of here!” Mister Fist told Sam and the rest of his crew. “This is going to get ugly.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, we just saved your asses,” said Zoe, her eyes still locked on Mia and the other vampires.

  “We may need them,” said Plume, who floated in the air now, her legs and arms on fire.

  The ninjas moved in first, Helena and Zoe going to meet them.

  “We’ll sort this out after,” William Bottorf added, his clones gathering around him, MindLenz behind him as well.

  Flapping her wings, Mia rose above the fight, allowing more ninjas to pass beneath her, Donovan too, the kinetic energy user punching his hands together and sending a ripple of energy in Mister Fist’s direction.

  By this point, the strongman had turned to mist, and Donovan’s attack cut straight through him. Plume sent a wave of fire in his direction.

  Ozella darted to the left, her eyes tracking Donovan, her skirt flapping in the wind.

  A ninja burst out of the mist; Sam took him down just in time, protecting Ozella with a blast that went a little wide. “I’ve got this!” Sam shouted as he ran forward with his blade drawn, driving it through the vampire’s chest.

  “Where are you going?” Sam called over his shoulder at her.

  “Trust me,” said Ozella. “Just trust me.”

  “I’ll cover you!” Sam told her, firing his concentrated energy beam at a ninja crawling on the ground.

  Donovan continue to send kinetic blasts into the mist, not giving two shits where his attack landed. He had no idea that he was about to enter a world of pain. Dinah now stood behind him, her hair in her face, her hands lifting as she jutted her neck forward and latched onto the back of Donovan’s mohawked skull.

  Mia swooped down, Plume racing to meet her, her flames doing practically nothing against Mia’s thick metal scales.

  Plume was faster, but Mia was larger, more rabid, unpredictable in the way she pressed off the ground, flew back into the air, her wingspan seeming to increase as she reached Plume and swatted her down.

  The fiery exemplar’s body slapped against the pavement, leaving a crater. William’s clones immediately moved to protect her, Zoe also moving away from Helena so she could help the Williams.

  It was a dumb move, Sam knew it, but he needed to give William enough time to get Plume to safety.

  Lifting his arm into the air, and aiming his wrist guard, Sam fired a concentrated blast of energy at Mia, which threw her off balance and only made her angrier.

  She was on him before he could even get his ar
m down, her claws digging into his shoulders as she slammed him to the ground. Her wings coming up and over, her teeth enlarging, Sam was practically paralyzed by the sudden impact.

  Somehow, Sam managed to swipe his energy blade to the left, cutting off a small portion of her wing, which only made the enraged monstrosity even angrier.

  Mia was just about to lower her teeth onto Sam’s neck when a huge fist appeared out of the mist, connecting with her jawline, the bottom half of her jaw twisting to the right, definitely dislocated.

  “Get out of here!” Mister Fist shouted as the rest of his body appeared, tackling Mia and pulling her off Sam. “Now!”

  “Screw that,” Sam managed to say, still not sure of how he was still standing considering Mia’s claws had done a number on the muscles between his neck and shoulders.

  “Sam!” Ozella grabbed his arm and pulled him away, letting Mister Fist and Mia go at it.

  “We can’t stop now!” Sam shouted, drunk on adrenaline, not noticing an enemy approaching in the shadows to his left.

  Ozella fired on the woman, the vampiric ninja hissing and snarling as she was cut off her feet, her face cracking against the pavement, a halo of blood forming.

  But she wasn’t dead yet.

  Sam brought a knee onto the female vampire’s back and slipped his energy weapon in inches away from his knee, his mind not able to process how quickly he had reacted.

  He held strong as the woman fizzled out.

  A teal portal appeared, a vortex of spinning energy.

  Donovan saw it and tried to crawl away from Dinah, but the translucent woman followed him wherever he went.

  “We need to stop him from leaving,” Sam said, pointing at Donovan.

  His finger was almost cut off by Mia’s sharp wing as she flew by, meeting Mister Fist, both of them tumbling over to the right as the strongman did everything in his power to stop her from biting him.

  “Helena!” Zoe shouted, just as a brick hit Helena in the back of the head.