by Jamie Hawke
“I’m certainly not complaining about the way their powers work,” Threed said. “Could be worse.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Well, imagine if your powers increased based on how sexually frustrated you were.” Her face went pale. “Or worse, based on how sexually frustrated you made those around you.”
“He’d be getting some powers from me right about now,” Sakurai whispered to her sister, but loud enough for me to hear. Judging by the seductive look she gave me, that wasn’t an accident.
“Focus,” Sacrada said, then turned to the Blue Lady. “Let’s get this son of a bitch.”
“About damn time.” The Blue Lady looked to Nyoka, cocked her head, and said, “You’re able to lead us to him?”
“Without a doubt,” Nyoka replied.
“Then do it.”
Nyoka bowed as if to a god, and when she rose her eyes were glowing as they scanned the horizon. As I’d already suspected, her finger rose to indicate the tall building where the mechs had emerged from. We had our target—now it was time to attack.
5
Moving with the Blue Lady made our travels much easier, because instead of having to go back down there and fight our way over, she simply held out her hands and waves of metal unfolded from the building beneath us, bringing us toward it. Additional metal rose up from the forces and other buildings beneath us, swirling around us before doing her bidding. Even the mechs were thrown off balance, though her powers weren’t able to strip them of the suits as I’d first hoped when we saw them coming our way.
Tunnels formed, protecting us as the barrage of attacks came our way. I glanced back to see Navani with a stunned expression, then Threed with her legs spread and hands out as she wore a smile like she was riding the greatest roller coaster of her life. The other three didn’t seem to know what to think, but all that really mattered was that we were making great time.
“Get ready,” Nyoka shouted and we all saw what she meant two seconds later.
Ahead of us, forming at the edge of a rooftop, was a line of men and women with weapons aimed at us. Navani threw up walls of force fields, but the bullets came through thick and heavy, penetrating wall after wall until thrusts of the metal we were riding in were forced to come up and defend our advancement. When they saw the bullets weren’t doing any good, they switched to heavier weapons. A blast of a rocket hit nearby, sending a chunk of the metal out so that Sakurai nearly fell, and Sacrada actually did take a tumble in the process of rescuing her.
It was a sacrifice worth making, since only she had wings. Soon she was sweeping back up and going around to attack the rooftop from another angle. I wish we’d taken the time to amplify my hype ability and blast me with powers, but meanwhile we were fast approaching the rooftop and my normal powers would come in handy soon enough.
Sakurai drew swords from the metal and charged, leaping ahead of the tunnels just as they pulled back and thrust the rest of us out onto the rooftop. Now the fight moved to hand-to-hand, combat as to do otherwise would mean shooting their own. This was my specialty, so pardon me if I laughed as a large man tried to punch me and instead I punched his fist, breaking it. He pulled back in a yelp, but I wasn’t there to tease my prey, so swung and connected with my blaster upside his head. Dropping him, I let off one blast into his head and ended it, then was up just in time to see Sakurai behead two of them in one fluid motion. Damn, she was hot, yet terrifying.
I charged past Nyoka as she transformed into a python and moved about her fight in a different style. Navani was doing her best to shoot at close range, and throwing up shields to protect us at the same time, but a winged woman rose up behind her and it wasn’t Sacrada. This woman had talons instead of feet, and in place of her mouth and nose was a gnarly beak. She flew naked, but it wasn’t anything you wanted to see, not with all those feathers anyway.
“Down!” I shouted and put a blast into the flying woman’s chest, then ran and caught Navani as the talons nearly took her over. Instead, they left a nasty gash in Navani’s shoulder.
“Behind you!” she warned, and I spun to see three attackers—two with blades, one with glowing white hands.
Hoping the effects of my last bit of fun was still with me, I pulled back and let my fist fly to meet the super—and hit his arm with such force that bone broke free from skin. The reaction was like a door to an airplane being torn off. Wind pulled at us, throwing attackers from the roof and knocking others down. It was like he’d been holding up an elemental power in his hands, but breaking the bone had set it free and now it was out of control. As he shouted in pain and confusion, others scrambling about to find a way to recover from this, I spotted the Blue Lady circling the enemy with her tunnels, new ones appearing with red glows and arms reaching and snagging her enemies, tearing them out of thin air and vanishing with the tunnels that caught them. Another super was pushing toward her, fighting the winds, and his eyes were glowing bright. Suddenly, he thrust his hands forward.
There was no way I could reach him in time, but I could block the strike. Hell, that was my forte—throwing myself in front of oncoming traffic, in a sense. A burst of light lit up from his chest, extending out from his eyes, mouth, and hands, and boy did I regret my decision. Too late though, because there I was, giving him my worst war cry as the blast came in my direction. Every time that I happened I wondered if it would be my last. My last breath, my last noble deed.
Not that day.
My body felt a brief, excruciating pain, and then it was gone, the power absorbed into me, and I was laughing. Laughing as I stepped forward, slow and deliberate with that wind pulling against me. I thrust my hands forward, calling upon his power to throw it back at him. And then all hell broke loose. Fire was raging through my skin, glowing. Then it burst out and flowed in a circular pattern around me, catching on anyone within range. Panic took hold of me and then, in a massive explosion, everything flew outward and the building started to collapse. People were dead or burning, jumping for their lives, while Sacrada worked to fly our side out of there.
Four of the enemy were on the Blue Lady and I saw a look of panic in her eyes as her powers refused to respond, so I ran to her. Even as the floor gave out I was throwing the remains of the fire power onto our enemies, blasting them from her, and then it was gone, and it was just me and her… falling.
6
We plummeted through floor after floor as the building collapsed around us. My arms flailed, reaching to grasp anything I could, but it was all dust and carnage. The Blue Lady was at my side, reaching but in a different way—she was attempting to call upon her powers, but still they weren’t responding.
At one point I saw a flash of gold and then caught a glimpse of Sacrada trying to reach me, but she dove away as a chunk of cement nearly took out her wings, and then the image was gone again. Flashes of metal and light surrounded me. So many times in the Marines I had imagined my death, saw myself charging through a battlefield and falling to my knees, hands raised to the air as a pursuing army riddled my body with bullets. I had imagined enemy warriors slitting my throat in my sleep or going after my family.
Was this going to be the truth of it? The final moments of me, Drew Chessen, ended in an explosive sacrifice?
Thanks to the powers of the Blue Lady, death’s touch would not come for me yet.
As the ground sped up to slam into us, those flashes I saw revealed themselves to be the tunnels of metal, finally responding to her call. They tossed us and caught us, slowing our fall and, finally, bringing us out of harm’s reach and into the next building over.
We had stopped moving. My body ached, my mind spun, but I pushed myself up to see rigid tunnels of metal forming our way, more spiraling in the remains of the building—bits that had attempted to respond to her calls, but not been fast enough. Other than that, the building was a pile of rubble. My ladies were out there, somewhere, possibly buried, and I stumbled to my feet to charge out there and find them.
But the Bl
ue Lady appeared in my path, knocking me back. “Their Leader isn’t dead.” She moved to my side. “If he was, I’d know.” She stared at me, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared. She almost looked pissed that I’d saved her life. But then, unexpectedly, her expression softened and she nodded, as if accepting something someone was saying to her. “To save me is to further my quest.” Her voice was distant, not quite herself. “Therefore, I am eternally in your debt.”
“No, it’s not—”
“When my people were destroyed,” she went on, as if not even hearing me, “it was the worst situation imaginable. All of that pain and suffering bottled up inside of me, and new powers came to me, powers I’d previously never seen. The red arms terrify me. You’ve seen them, no?”
I was about to answer when an enemy soldier rounded the corner. His eyes went wide and he charged us with glowing hands extended. The Blue Lady simply held up her middle finger toward him, and then he was sinking as a tunnel opened into the ground. Red arms appeared, grasping him, tearing at him. I had to look away when the blood and screams started, and to my surprise, so had she.
With a wave, she dismissed the tunnel. It, the arms, and the would-be attacker were gone.
“I don’t know where they come from, but they don’t feel right. Like they’re evil, grasping out from my darkest reaches, from within me to do things… the dark things we all imagine but never act on. Not me, not anymore—I act, and thanks to you, I will continue on. Do you accept my gratitude. My debt?”
In spite of the fact that she had saved me too, I felt I had no choice, and had never been presented with such an awkward question, so simply said, “I do.”
“Thank you,” she replied. In a flash, her rage had returned and she was up again, metal carrying her in tunnels where it was available, harsh metal, thrusting itself out around her as she went forward to pursue her enemy. “Now we find your friends and end this.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d gotten myself into. Every limb resisted as I rushed out after her, but there was still no sign of Navani and the others.
A burst of gold light appeared from the rubble, and then wings thrust out, throwing blocks of cement and more to the side. From that spot burst out Sacrada, the others following close behind, and I joined them to face the oncoming army. That’s when the darkness took the sky in patches, when the Nihilists showed up, moving away to our left.
“They have him,” Nyoka said, looking in the same direction the rest of us were and indicating a ledge of another series of tall, metallic buildings. “The Leader, there!”
“He’s escaping,” the Blue Lady hissed, seething, her voice barely a whisper.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Navani said. “Drew seems unfazed by the Nihilists—at least, not like others. We need to get him up there.”
The Blue Lady turned to me, cursed, and pulled me in for an intense kiss. Her hand moved along my cheek, to my neck, and across my chest, then pushed me away.
“Is that enough?” she asked.
I blinked, confused, then realized she meant to get my hype power going. To test it, I punched the air and felt the swoosh of a near sonic boom coming on. With a grin, I turned back to her and said, “Yeah, that did it. More’s always welcome, but—”
“Shut up and go stop them!” she shouted, pushing me toward the enemy.
If there was anything I could do, I certainly would have. For that kiss, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do, honestly, but even with the hype, my speed didn’t seem to be enough. I was charging across the battlefield, sprinting and leaping up a set of stairs.
It should have been a burst of light welcoming me to the rooftop when I kicked open the door and emerged, but it was all darkness. The leader stood there, only a silhouette visible as Nihilists floated nearby, their long, black cloaks flowing in the wind, their dark energy encircling him.
Even as I charged and prepared to attack their energy became too much. Like someone had shut off the lights in a windowless room, I could see only darkness for a moment. Then blue sparks and an explosion as metal thrust out of the ground beside me. Light returned and a tunnel formed, spewing forth the Blue Lady. She shouted at the empty air where the enemy had been, and thrust her arms out so that the metal building beneath us warped into jutting patterns.
“You let him escape!” she screamed at me.
My immediate response should have been that maybe I could’ve caught up if she’d given me a hand job instead of a simple kiss, but that wasn’t true, and just mean. Instead of saying anything, I clenched my jaw and glared at the spot where they’d vanished.
“Wait,” Navani said, walking up to us. “Didn’t you say something about Nyoka’s powers being able to see where someone is?”
“That’s what she said,” the Blue Lady replied, and we all looked down to see Nyoka, who was returning to human form as other supers retreated.
“My vision allows for a bit of hunting as well,” Nyoka said.
Navani nodded, intrigued. “And if we understand how the transition to their world goes, the group will only be able to travel one level at a time. If we can find a way to get to that level before they move on, we might be able to stop this guy.”
“And how would we do that?”
Navani took a moment, then turned to me. “We have to go back.”
“Back to where?” I asked.
“The Citadel. We’re going back to the Citadel.”
7
My mind was still trying to process the fact that we were heading back to the Citadel. Not only was it the first place I’d been pulled when taken from Earth, but it was where I’d witnessed so much that had changed the way I viewed life and my role in this world. During all of this fighting, they’d been telling me that this would eventually be my home, the place where I’d set up shop as a possible Elder of these Supers, once I’d proven myself.
Now we were returning there, to apparently find a way of going after the Nihilists. Threed noticed my tension and took me in one of the storage rooms for a quickie, but when it was over I learned that Navani had set the ship on autopilot and called me and the Blue Lady up to the viewing room.
I jogged off to meet them, barging in to find the two ladies glaring at each other.
“I miss something?” I asked, out of breath.
“Nothing more than the two of us learning we should always wait for you,” Navani said.
“Your friend’s still trying to convince me that I’d be doing more for the universe by letting you fill me with cum,” the Blue Lady said bluntly. “I told her I have no interest in your cum. Only in seeing justice done against those who harmed my village.”
“I… see.” Getting used to this sort of talk wasn’t something that would happen anytime soon. “That’s what we came here for?”
“No,” Navani admitted, waving off the comment. “Actually, I thought this was a good time for you to tell her about our past interaction with the Nihilists. Everything that happened.”
So I explained how I’d touched one of them and had been able to go into their dimension, where they were surprisingly weakened. Or at least, it seemed that way to me. Apparently they had superpowers of a sort, but those powers worked for all of them the same, and in our dimension they were sort of like wraiths. In theirs, less so.
“Maybe it wasn’t that they were ‘weakened,’ then,” the Blue Lady countered. “But that they were more whole.”
“Like with each jump they take to get to us, their makeup changes?”
“At the time I thought we were in the same location, just seeing a different version of them,” I admitted. “But yeah, all of this about traveling…” I shrugged, not fooling anyone. What did I know? “Makes sense to me.”
Navani gave me an amused grin, but nodded. “Working from that assumption, I believe the Dais of the Citadel will be the key here. That, with Nyoka’s hunter ability and my vision, and of course Drew’s ability to somehow latch onto the Nihilist’s to go back with them.”
The worry was that the enemy knew we might be going back at some point, according to Navani, and therefore would have an ambush waiting. Regardless, this was the only course of action for us to learn more about our enemy and for the Blue Lady to pursue her target, so we set course.
Flying through space was a welcome relief from the recent action. More than anything, I wanted to lay back and take a nap. Navani agreed that it would make sense for us all to get some rest, but as I headed for my cabin I passed the Blue Lady sitting in her room with the door open. She was cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed, hands folded in her lap.
“They have meditation up here?” I asked, instantly regretting that I’d just interrupted her.
She opened her eyes and her gaze tore into me. “What is this… meditation?”
“Where you sit like that, focus on your breathing and your internal chi or something. Honestly, I don’t know the details. Was never into it.”
“Then no, I don’t think it’s the same,” she said. “I was focusing on finding my enemies, tearing them limb from limb, and maybe bathing in their blood.”
“Shit.”
She smiled, but it was a taunting smile. “Maybe it’s a different type of meditation.”
“Sure, sure.” I lingered, debating whether she wanted to be left alone or not.
“You have something to ask, or just wanted to watch me?” she asked.
My nervous laugh made her frown, so I said, “Sorry, no. I mean, yes, but… This might not make sense up here, but back home we’re taught about revenge and the dangers of letting yourself become overwhelmed by it. Don’t you worry that you’re too obsessed with finding these people? Maybe you could live a happier, healthier life if—”
“I’m going to stop you right there.” She moved to the edge of the bed, preparing to stand, but then apparently decided against it. Instead, she patted the spot beside her on the bed. “Have a seat.”