by Lucas Flint
“Right,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”
As soon as I said that, I suddenly saw a tiny dot in the sky. At first, I thought it was just a bird or maybe a plane, but as it grew larger and larger, I realized that it was the missile that Valerie had just told me about. And even worse, no one seemed to have noticed it yet.
So I hopped up from my seat and ran over to Omega Man, who was busily clapping along with everyone else. In fact, he was clapping so much that he didn’t even notice me until I shouted his name and he looked down at me in surprise.
“Bolt?” said Omega Man. “What’s the matter? Did you see something?”
“Yes,” I said. I pointed up at the sky, directly at the missile falling toward us. “Valerie just told me about a missile coming straight for us. We don’t know what it is, but we can’t let it land.”
“A missile?” Omega Man repeated. He looked up at the sky as well, his eyes narrowing. “You’re right.”
The rest of the crowd must have started to notice it as well, because less and less people were clapping and more and more people were looking up or pointing at the incoming missile. More than a few looked ready to take flight to stop it, but I wasn’t sure how many of them had the super strength that would also be necessary to stop it.
“We need to stop it before it lands on Hero Island and explodes,” I said.
“Of course,” said Omega Man. “There’s no time to shoot it down, which would be unwise if it turned out to be a nuke. We’ll need to stop it ourselves.”
“Ourselves?” I said, looking at Omega Man in surprise. “You mean you and me working together to stop it?”
“Of course,” said Omega Man. He smiled. “What, afraid you can’t keep up with an old geezer like me?”
I just smirked back. “Nah. I was actually worried that you wouldn’t be able to keep up with me.”
Omega Man chuckled. “Then why don’t we get started?”
Then Omega Man launched into the air, flying so fast that he became a blur even I couldn’t follow. The air from his flight actually knocked me back, but I recovered quickly and zoomed after him into the sky, eventually catching up to him, but I had to push my limits to keep up with him. Soon, we were both flying side by side toward the massive missile in the sky.
And when I say ‘massive,’ I mean massive. From a distance, it had looked pretty small, but as we drew closer to it, the missile became ridiculously huge. I estimated that it was twice as big as the House and it was shaped like a spear, with a huge missile head that looked as big as a car. I had never seen a missile like this before, but I didn’t stop to analyze it. I just looked at Omega Man, who nodded at me once before returning his attention to the missile, which we were rapidly drawing closer to with each passing second.
We slammed into the missile; not enough to make it explode, but enough to severely slow down its trajectory. And good god did it take almost everything I had to do that; the missile was flying hard and fast, pushing against us, the flames from its rocket exploding behind it. Even Omega Man struggled to hold it back, and he was much stronger than me.
Still, we managed to keep it from getting closer to the Island below. I had no idea what we were going to do with the missile once we stopped it, but I could only assume that Omega Man had a plan. Maybe we would throw it into the sea or something.
But then a panel just behind the missile head slid open and a laser cannon rose from within and aimed at us. It immediately started firing yellow lasers at us, striking both of us and sending us flying away from the missile. The lasers hurt and even made me feel strangely weak, but I managed to regain my balance in time to see the missile rocket past us, still heading toward the crowd of superheroes on Hero Island below.
Shaking my head, I flew after the missile and was soon joined by Omega Man, who was now scowling. More lasers fired from the missile, forcing us to weave and dodge to avoid getting shot. But this also forced us to slow down, which made it impossible to reach the missile.
“Bolt!” Omega Man suddenly shouted, pointing at the laser cannons that had risen out of the missile. “Take out the laser cannons while I try to stop the missile! Use your lightning powers!”
“Sure!” I shouted back.
I increased my speed and shot toward the missile, with Omega Man shooting past me and going underneath the missile to intercept it. More lasers fired at me, but I fired several bolts of red lightning at the cannons, instantly causing them to explode, although I missed a few, which continued to shoot at me.
But their focus, at least, was entirely on me. Omega Man had gotten to the front of the missile again and was trying to stop it once more. This time, he was actually succeeding. The missile was visibly slowing down, but it was still falling and would likely reach the Island soon anyway unless we could actually stop it for good.
Omega Man must have come to the same realization as me, because he shouted, “Bolt, destroy the rocket!”
I nodded again, destroyed the few laser cannons I’d missed the first time, and then zoomed over to the missile itself, which I landed on even as it pushed against Omega Man. The heat of the rocket was almost too much even here, especially with the wind raging around me, but I looked for a fault line or crack I could take advantage of to break the rocket off from the rest of the missile. Of course, I was also deeply aware that if I hit the wrong spot, I could blow both me and Omega Man straight out of the sky with the missile.
I slammed my fist into a part of the missile that looked weak. Immediately, large cracks started running along the missile’s behind and the rocket even sputtered, but it was still connected to the missile and still pushing it toward the ever closer crowd below.
So I raised both of my fists and brought them down on the rocket as hard as I could. My fists smashed through metal, but it wasn’t just metal. There was some kind of weird blood and organic tissue underneath the plating as well, even appeared to be intertwined with the metal and wiring, but I didn’t get a good look at it because the rocket exploded off the end of the missile.
The explosion was enough to send me flying off the missile, hurtling uncontrollably through the air. But I managed to regain control of my flight quickly enough and stopped in midair, though I was covered in icky soot and a weird green liquid that looked kind of like blood but smelled like crap. Still, I didn’t seem to have suffered any major injuries, so I thought I was going to be okay.
Then I remembered that Omega Man was still trying to stop the missile and I looked down to see that, though the missile no longer had its rocket, it was still falling toward the earth and pushing Omega Man with it. But I could tell that it was already slowing down, thanks to Omega Man’s strength and its lack of a rocket, although he clearly couldn’t stop it on his own entirely.
So I shot down and joined Omega Man at the front of the missile. We used all our strength to stop it, but a quick glance over my shoulder told me that we were still getting closer and closer to the ground with every second.
But the rest of the superheroes were already scattering, leaving us a good space in which to land the missile. So, slowly but surely, Omega Man and I carefully lowered the missile down onto the ground, where it now lay very quietly. It didn’t even explode, though I didn’t relax right away.
Taking my hands off the missile, I wiped away the sweat that had accumulated on my hair as Omega Man said, “That was a close one.”
“I’ll say,” I said. I looked at the missile again. “But what is it? And is it … bleeding?”
That was the best way to describe it. The back part, where the rocket had been, was smoking and oozing that disgusting green blood that had gotten all over me. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen, and I’d seen plenty of weird things in my time as a superhero.
Omega Man’s eyes widened. “Oh my god. I think I know what that is.”
“You do?” I said, looking up at him in surprise. “What is it?”
But Omega Man didn’t answer. He looked around at the crowd o
f assembled superheroes and shouted, “Everyone! Get as far away from this thing as you can, before it blows—”
Without warning, the missile suddenly exploded.
Chapter Two
The massive explosion of the missile unleashed a thick cloud of yellow gas. It knocked me, Omega Man, and every other superhero standing around it to the ground as the gas cloud rapidly expanded around us, obscuring our view of the sky and the sun and making everything much darker than it had been just seconds ago.
As I lay there, stunned by the blast, I suddenly started to feel weaker. And it wasn’t from any wounds I’d sustained; no, it was like my power was being drained from my body. It was a familiar sensation, but at the moment I was too stunned by the impact of the blast to recall exactly when I’d felt like this before.
Nonetheless, I managed to rise to my feet, but it was a lot harder than before. I felt utterly exhausted and sleepy, like I had pulled an all-nighter and had been living off coffee for the last week. Despite that, I looked around at my surroundings to see if anything had changed.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t see as much as I would have liked. The huge, thick gas cloud around me made it difficult to see very far or very much. The missile itself was still there; apparently it hadn’t actually exploded, but instead had opened up and unleashed the gas. I was afraid it might actually explode if I touched it, but it looked pretty stable, so I didn’t worry about it.
I was more worried about my fellow superheroes. Everywhere I looked, I saw superheroes lying unconscious or possibly even dead on the ground. Due to the thick yellow gas, it was impossible to tell who had been knocked out and who had been outright killed.
All I could tell was that the entire area had gone eerily quiet. I didn’t hear any screams or shouts or even movement. It was like someone had shut off all sound in the area, except for the beat of my heart, though even that sounded strange in the cloud.
I looked down at Omega Man. He was just unconscious; his chest rose and fell, which meant he was breathing, at least. Not that that meant much, given how awful this gas tasted. I almost wished I wasn’t breathing, if only because the gas was so awful.
I knelt beside Omega Man and said, “Omega Man, are you awake? Can you hear me? Hello?”
Omega Man’s eyes flickered open. He looked up at me with dazed eyes. “Bolt? Is that you?”
I nodded. “Yes. How do you feel? Are you hurt?”
Omega Man groaned and rubbed his forehead. “Oh my aching head …”
I gulped. Omega Man was normally nigh indestructible, yet if he was groaning about pain, then that was bad news. “Can you stand?”
“Not sure,” said Omega Man. “That blast … surprised it didn’t kill us outright.”
“It probably would have been worse if we hadn’t stopped it,” I said. “But earlier, before it exploded, you said you knew what this was. Can you tell me about it?”
“Yes,” said Omega Man, nodding. “I’ve seen this before, even experienced it. It’s—”
Omega Man was interrupted by the loud sound of engines roaring in the sky above us. I looked up just in time for a powerful gust of wind to blast through, scattering enough of the yellow gas for me to see exactly what was making that noise. And, I have to admit, when I saw what was hovering in the sky above us, I could not help but feel powerful dread.
Hovering above us was an absolutely massive space ship of some sort. It didn’t look like something NASA built; it was incredibly alien in its design, like it was from another world. It was shaped kind of like a whale, complete with gigantic flippers. It looked big enough to hold the whole House and was equipped with huge cannons that probably shot nukes. What was worse, however, was the strange ‘lights’ on the front, which moved and blinked like eyes. And those lights were looking down directly at us.
I had no idea what that thing was, so I looked down at Omega Man and shouted, in order to be heard above that thing’s engines, “What the hell is that thing? Have you seen it before?”
“Not that one in particular, no,” said Omega Man. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head as he stared up at the massive space ship. “But I’ve seen ones like it before. It’s a Pokacu space ship.”
Suddenly, my memory clicked and I looked around at the gas around us. “If that’s a Pokacu space ship, then this gas—”
“Is powerless gas, yes,” said Omega Man. He looked down at his own hands in depression. “And every superhero in this area just got hit by more of it than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life.”
My spirits fell. “Then does that mean … we’re all powerless?”
Omega Man nodded again. “Yes. Which means we won’t be able to handle whatever the Pokacu choose to do next.”
I looked down at my hands. I tried to summon my powers, but I couldn’t feel anything. I just felt tired and sluggish … no, I felt normal, which, under these circumstances, was the absolute worst thing to feel like right now.
I looked up at the Pokacu spaceship. The Pokacu were an alien race that had attacked Earth once before, about fifteen years ago. The first invasion had been stopped by a combined effort of the Neohero Alliance, the Independent Neoheroes for Justice, and the G-Men, though it was also successfully defeated thanks to the help of the alien Nicknacks, who gave us advanced warnings of the invasion beforehand and gave us plenty of time to prepare for it. I had only met one Pokacu myself, about two months ago, but he had escaped Earth and I hadn’t expected to see any more Pokacu after that.
But given that that particular Pokacu had said he was going to return leading a new invasion force, I probably should have seen this coming. Then again, I’d just assumed that that guy had died somewhere out in the middle of space without reaching his people and wasn’t coming back, so it made sense that I didn’t expect this to happen.
Then I remembered my team and looked over in the direction of the stage. Unfortunately, the cloud was too thick for me to see through, so I couldn’t tell what had happened to Blizzard and the others, although I could see the Justice Statue, which was tall enough to rise over the gas cloud. They were probably hit by the same powerless gas as us, so they were most likely powerless and maybe unconscious at the moment.
I stood up to go and check on them, but then Omega Man suddenly pointed up at the sky and said, “Look!”
I looked up at the Pokacu space ship just in time to see its underside opening up. Once it opened up completely, three smaller Pokacu spaceships—which looked just like the one that the Pokacu in the sea had had, although these ones looked like they were in much better condition and a more stylized, upgraded form—flew out of the underside of the massive ship. They were coming straight for us, so I got ready to fight, even though I couldn’t do much with my powers temporarily negated.
But then the three separated, going around the three corners of the area. As I watched, the three ships formed a triangle around the area. Then one of the ships fired a blue laser at one of its allies, which connected with the other, which then fired a similarly colored laser to the next, and finally the triangle was completed by the third ship firing a laser into the first one.
Once all the lasers were connected, walls of bright blue light crashed down onto the ground from the lasers. They were tall, too tall for me to jump over, and there was certainly no way I could climb over them, since the walls didn’t appear to be solid.
But I didn’t know what I was looking at, exactly, until Omega Man said, “Triangle Prison.”
“What did you say?” I said, looking down at Omega Man.
“Triangle Prison,” said Omega Man. He looked back up at the spaceship above us. “It was a common tactic of the Pokacu during the first invasion. Three ships would form a triangle formation in a particular area and then create an impassable wall of energy to trap whoever was unlucky enough to be caught in it at the time, usually to trap large groups of enemies in order to eliminate them easier.”
“Is it possible to go through the walls?” I said.
; “No,” said Omega Man. “The energy used to make the walls is a thousand times hotter than the human body. Even just touching it could instantly vaporize your hand. I should know, because I saw more than a few neoheroes suffer that fate during the first invasion.”
“Can we fly over them, then?” I said.
“If we still had our powers, yes,” said Omega Man. “But, as you know, the Pokacu took away our powers, so we’re effectively trapped here until the powerless gas wears off … or the Pokacu kill us.”
I gulped and looked at the ships that had formed the Prison. “Do you think we’re screwed, then?”
“Never say never,” said Omega Man as he stood up. “But I can’t say that I’m very—”
Omega Man was interrupted when a huge laser beam shot down from the massive spaceship above us. At first, I thought it was aimed for us, but then it hit the ground in front of us and vanished, leaving a small team of six Pokacu in its place. They wore strong-looking battle armor and carried huge arm cannons that I remembered could shoot blue glue, a type of substance that was capable of solidifying around and trapping anyone unlucky enough to be shot with it. It could only be dissolved with a special type of red liquid that, as far as I knew, was only available to the Pokacu.
The six Pokacu immediately aimed their arm cannons at me and Omega Man. I raised my fists, even though I knew I was no match for these guys without my powers, while Omega Man took up a fighting stance as well.
But then the lead Pokacu stepped forward and said, in a voice distorted by the helmet he wore, “Masked human? Is that you? Kevin, I believe you called yourself?”
I paused. “How do you know me? We’ve never met.”
“But we have, though it was sometime ago,” said the Pokacu. “In fact, if we had not met, I would never have been able to escape this wretched world and return at the helm of a much more powerful and effective Pokacu army. I should really thank you for your help, though I will probably kill you instead.”