Ella shook her head mock sadly, “The illusions of youth.”
I laughed.
It was all in fun, playful banter of course. I was a little nervous and would stay sharp. Arrogance in a fight wasn’t a good thing, especially being outnumbered by one.
Not that I wouldn’t try to win, so I could rub it in her face.
Chris said, “We also finally have our own teleport system up now, so we can deploy you all directly just in case they have cloaked drones too. Simultaneously to Harmony teleporting the kid. They won’t see your approach if they do.”
Damn, he was really sexy when he talked tech, or I was just weird, but it was true.
“Anything else going on in that basement lab of yours?”
Chris shrugged, “A few projects, but nothing worth sharing right now. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.”
Aura interjected, “I was right. They went to another cabin, only a half mile from the last one.”
I nodded, it was going to be a long hour’s wait, but Ben was safe enough and it’d be best if we could take them by surprise. They’d all be keyed up right now and alert for any superheroes.
“We go in one hour, unless one of them threatens Ben, then teleport him out immediately and tell us, and we’ll go right after we’re set.”
Aura nodded and wagged her tail, “My pleasure.”
Good enough.
It was raining as we popped into place, about thirty feet up and twenty feet in front of the cabin. It looked old, and the roof needed some work. We didn’t hear any shouts of surprise or anger, so the kid must’ve been stashed in a room by himself, and they hadn’t noticed his exfiltration by teleportation yet. There was also an old brown van parked out front, which must’ve been how they’d stayed off the radar leaving the city.
The rain wasn’t too heavy, so visibility wasn’t all that bad.
Gabriel shouted in a deep voice, “You are surrounded, come out and surrender. You have thirty seconds. This is your only warning.”
We didn’t really expect it to work, but it was procedure without any imminent danger to bystanders, and we were isolated out here in the woods.
Aura said, “The energy wielder can expand his shields. He’s protecting the gravity wielder and coming out the front. The other three are moving toward the back door.”
That wasn’t the best news, and it suggested that he was probably as powerful as Ella. Ella put up a shield around herself and Gabriel, while I reached out and touched Lia’s shoulder and we teleported to the other side of the cabin.
A split second later the back door was thrown open and the three bruisers flowed out, split up, and ran for it. Flew for it, really. I really hadn’t expected them to run, but my mind immediately reacted and reached out and grabbed all three by the ankles, then twisted and smashed them together. It probably wouldn’t have worked if they’d been expecting it, I could only exert ten thousand pounds of pressure, but they hadn’t been flying with all their strength behind it.
Lia dove down, and she clocked one in the small of the back as hard as she could. The loud crack of vertebrae reached my ears as he slammed into the ground knocked out and temporarily paralyzed. It’d be a horrific injury if he wasn’t a super, our spines could heal just fine.
I used telekinesis to pull his arms behind his back and teleported a pair of suppression cuffs around his wrists.
One down.
The other two turned on Lia and it strained my mental grasp as I tried to keep them still. They were stronger than me, but not by much, which meant at least all the bruisers were average in strength, about equal to my telekinesis.
Lia dodged the one that tried to grab her around the neck, but the other got both hands on one of her arms and twisted hard. Lia cried out even as she twisted toward that one and kneed him in the nuts and slammed her forehead into his nose at the same time.
My heart slammed in my chest as I let that one go, and then pulled hard with my mind on the other. He resisted my pull a lot harder than the first time, but we both moved toward each other as I reeled him to about fifteen feet up. My mental grip split as he reached out to grab me. I smirked as his hands slid off my telekinetic shields. He should’ve punched instead of trying to grapple, and I stabbed him with a tight grouping of telekinetic energy in the neck, balls, and kidneys.
He screamed bloody murder as his face turned white, and he gasped for breath as my mind twisted him around, pulled his arms together, and slapped the cuffs on.
Ella’s scream reached my ears, as a flash of light lit up the night. There’d been a lot of those the last few moments as well as strikes of lightning.
Lia had hers pinned and knocked out, and was going for her cuffs, so I teleported to the other side and took in the scene with a glance.
Ella was down, with her left arm and half her shoulder missing, and she was passed out from pain. Gabriel was pinned against the ground face first with the flesh of his face stretching toward the ground, even as another lightning bolt blasted into the energy wielders.
The energy wielder had a cruel smile on his face as he raised his glowing hand toward Gabriel, whose shields had been spent.
I bounced teleported to Gabriel and grabbed his arm, and I felt horrific pain in my right leg as I bounced to Ella and touched her and bounced back to the backyard.
“Aura, get them out of here, now,” I spat in a pained voice tinged with so much anger I hardly recognized it. I barely took time to look at my leg, which was pretty much cut in half and hanging by a thin layer of flesh on one side by the knee. That bastard’s energy bolt had cut right through my shields like they weren’t there. Telekinesis couldn’t do anything against pure energy.
Aura got them out of there.
Lia said, “Where,” and then trailed off, and when I looked up where she was looking, I could see the energy and gravity wielder flying off in the distance.
I can’t verify this, but Lia tells me I growled at that point, like a wounded pissed off animal. But, whatever. All I remember was I felt hot, and my heart was pounding. My leg hurt so much I was seeing red. I also wasn’t letting those bastards get away. I knew my telekinesis couldn’t get through an energy wielder’s shields. At least, not directly.
My mind tore into the cabin, ripping a huge furrow through the walls and roof sending splinters flying in the air, as I mentally gripped the half-ton cast iron tub out of the bathroom and flew into the sky. I held my body still above the cabin and kind of flung it in an arc, then guided and pushed it with all my mental might once it was above me.
It slammed into the energy wielder at multiple tons of impact, given its momentum, and the tub had way too much mass for his energy shields to burn it all off.
Thanks, Grams.
His back cracked as his body bent in half where the tub hit him, and his shield snapped in toward his body. Perhaps an instinctual survival response, to pull all his power in around him. Whatever it was, it left gravity guy uncovered at that point.
Gravity guy turned and I felt like I suddenly weighed far more than I could hold up, but even as I fell toward the ripped-up cabin, I wasn’t too worried as I teleported out of his grip.
I froze for a split second as I reappeared, and saw Lia in a similar situation. She must’ve joined the fight when I wasn’t looking, and he’d grabbed both of us. Suffice it to say I knew I couldn’t grab her and fight the pull of gravity, no more than I could’ve for myself. He was too powerful for my telekinesis to counter his attack.
Lia was also about to be impaled on sharp metal pipes that I’d caused when ripping the tub out of the cabin, and I knew then there was only one thing I could do to save her. I didn’t even have the two thirds of a second it would take to teleport to her and save her.
Which is why I froze for a split second, taking the only option left available to me.
I wrapped my telekinesis around his head, and I twisted with ten thousand pounds of pressure.
Snap, the light went out in his eyes, an
d my stomach felt sick. These guys were trying to kill, and I was hurt enough already. I wasn’t taking chances and I was still in true danger of death in that moment. It was still a shocking moment, despite the rage and pain I was in. I felt that moment deeply, when I lost something in my soul, the first time I’d taken a life.
When the gravity field fell with his death Lia shot off at an angle and crashed into the trees, but I was sure she’d recover and rejoin me soon enough.
I teleported again, but not fast enough, and the energy wielder finished the job and blasted off the rest of my leg. The pain of it almost made me pass out as the world went blurry, but I struggled through it and maintained consciousness. I teleported a split second before another energy bolt flew through the suddenly empty space and slammed into the cabin, which exploded into match sticks and flames.
I was directly above him at that point, as he continued to look down for any signs of me. It seems despite me teleporting he hadn’t considered the idea I could’ve teleported above him in his blind spot. I used my power to pull every bit of metal from the cabin, be it copper pipes, steel knives, and pots and pans from the kitchen, and a couple of cast iron pots. Not to mention the oven and hot water heater.
He snorted, “That bitch is desperate.”
I said smugly from above, “Nope, just distracting you so you don’t notice my partner.”
His body spun around as he looked up in alarm, a split second before Lia blindsided him with a powerful swing.
She’d circled around, and she’d brought a tree with her. One of the ones that had been cut by the bastard’s own energy strikes in the beginning of the fight. Or maybe it had been her own body that had broken it, when she’d been catapulted into the woods by her own power and suddenly released body.
Regardless, the edge of the tree trunk hit him with a whole lot of force, and the end exploded against his shields as he went flying, but it took a toll on his shields. Between the tub, tree, and all the lightning strikes and energy strikes from Ella and Gabriel earlier, the man was on his last leg.
There was a nice point on the end of the tree trunk, and Lia tossed the tree after him, point first.
He blasted it with an energy bolt, and the tree exploded into splinters, and he had an arrogant smirk on his face as he powered up for another bolt to take us out.
Except, he forgot about the knives, oven, and all the rest. Sure, it’d been mostly a distraction, but still a danger.
His shield stopped most of it, until the oven hit him and finally took his shields down. His eyes went wide with shocked disbelief, as his back filled with dinner cutlery, and I hit him hard with a TK strike to the side of his head below his ear that knocked him out.
He’d probably live. Despite my anger I’d made sure none of the cutlery hit his heart, but I didn’t rush to fix him up either. I just pulled his arms together tightly, and Lia flew over and cuffed him.
Lia asked, “Are you alright?” her eyes staring down at the dead gravity supervillain with a little disbelief in her eyes.
“Aura, please ask harmony to teleport the four alive straight to jail and submit all the video. I’m not sure what to do about the corpse.”
Aura replied reassuringly, “I’ll handle it, Amber,” and a couple of drones decloaked, surrounded the body, and disappeared in a teleport.
Lia asked, “Amber?”
Right, I’d ignored her question earlier.
I think I was in shock, and my body started to shake as the adrenaline had no more fight to fuel, but it was still flowing through my body. The shock of taking a life even in self-defense was profound. I’d read my mother’s and grandmother’s accounts, even talked to them about it, but it was impossible to truly understand until it’d happened to me. I’d thought I’d been ready for the eventuality, and every superhero faced that moment at one time or another.
But it wasn’t something you can get ready for.
I shook my head, “Not really, no. But I didn’t have a choice. I will be, I think. I think I was cocky. We should’ve planned better. We all assumed they wouldn’t be that strong. He had murderous intentions, but if we’d planned better, I wouldn’t have been in that position. Let’s go home. Aura?”
Aura teleported us back to the house.
I was floating of course, with my own telekinesis, my right leg missing below the knee. It’d grow back in a few days. It hurt, but my super healing had kicked in and it wasn’t actually that bad anymore. It just… itched, badly.
“Where are they?”
Aura said, “In bed, sleeping it off. Both you and Ella will take a few days to heal, and you need to eat a lot of food to fuel the regeneration. Gabriel will be fine in a few hours, once he sleeps it off.”
Right, three hours was a full night’s rest for us.
Lia said, “I’ll help you clean that out. You have… splinters.”
I giggled, wondering how that’d happened. Probably my own fault, ripping apart that wooden cabin as I’d claimed all the metal in it.
She said, “It’s not funny.”
My giggle turned a bit hysterical, but I let her help even if I didn’t really need it with my TK, she needed it. Lia was a great friend, and I’d scared the hell out of her.
I wasn’t looking forward to telling Chris.
Chapter Fifteen
The next three days Ella and I recovered and were on light duty, and the inquest into the death of the gravity supervillain’s death cleared me. It’d been a righteous kill.
The fallout from that kill was a different matter, but I was slowly working through and getting past it. Between my mother, Lia, Uncle Jace, and of course Chris, I was both feeling loved and extremely smothered over those three days.
As if I couldn’t wash, cook, clean, and fight without half a leg. I could do it all with my mind, and I still had both hands. Yet, they coddled me until my leg was regenerated.
We did get another job over those three days, but one that Lia and Gabriel temporarily teamed up for. Simple guard duty for a government VIP, that was never attacked. Both me and Ella weren’t cleared for duty, even if her missing arm and part of my missing leg wouldn’t actually degrade our fighting ability one iota. It was… annoying.
I’d also been experimenting. I knew that was what the team was for, to watch out for each other and compensate for each of our weaknesses through the other’s strengths. But I was determined to figure out a way to face energy wielders. Everyone had weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I’d never be able to block one of their hits, but I did figure out a way around their shields. Sort of.
With Ella’s help I learned that I could teleport through an energy shield. Of course, that would only help against a villain with an expanding shield, that actually had it expanded in the moment. A normal shield power, or a projective shield power where the shields remained very close to the body, it wouldn’t help at all. I couldn’t teleport into their bodies after all, that’d kill us both, and my power wouldn’t allow it.
Still, if a supervillain had expanded shields, I could teleport inside their shield and punch their lights out with a TK blow. Something I heartily wished I’d have known in the last fight.
Another rather useful thing was tungsten balls about three inches in diameter. Tungsten was extremely dense, and it had a very high melting point. A ten-pound ball wasn’t much, except I could accelerate that ball past the speed of sound rather quickly, within twenty feet or so, which added quite a bit of force when striking something with that momentum. Far more than just the ten thousand pounds of force my TK alone was capable of.
I also had tungsten rods, and other options for when I got into a fight with someone my raw telekinesis wasn’t a match for. I worked with Aura on it and had my weapons stash in the basement. She could teleport anything I prompted her for straight to me, so I didn’t have to carry it around.
They were killing weapons, in a lot of cases, and weapons I could slam right through Ella’s shields like they weren’t there. Moving at the speed o
f sound, her power barely had the time to start disintegrating the dense tungsten before it broke through. As such, I wouldn’t be using it unless it was life or death, but it was an alternative if things went really wrong again.
It also wasn’t certain. My mother’s shields could stop it cold for instance, but then Lady Aegis was in a class by herself when it came to shields, given hers were projective, reactive, and extremely powerful. I’d never be on her level, but every little bit helped.
I spent every moment I wasn’t being coddled exploring my power. Speeding up molecules, slowing them, juggling multiple objects, and using it to cut with mono-molecular edges.
I also felt different, still myself, but less. Broken in some way, from taking a life. There was still joy in my soul, life was good, and what I’d done had been necessary to preserve my partner’s life, but there was a hole as well. I’d lost something precious, and I’d never get it back. Still, I recovered, and the loved ones in my life made me laugh at times, and the way Chris held me made my soul sing.
Life was good, and worth protecting, even if sometimes we had to take life to protect our own and that of an innocent. Those men could’ve surrendered, or tried to disable us and take us down, but they’d chosen to go for the kill with sadistic delight, and that forced my hand in one of their cases.
My leg was mostly back after three days. I was just missing half my toenails and that’d only take a couple more hours. I was more than done with the coddling when Aura called us down into the conference room. I did a double take, when our cute fox girl A.I. was dressed in a crisp military dress uniform. Just that visual clue, told me all I needed to know, and I flinched away from it as I steadied myself and sat down in a chair. I was the first one there.
Chris and Jace walked in, and Chris put a coffee in front of me as he sat down next to me.
I gave him a warm smile despite myself, and I took a sip of coffee before I kissed his cheek. It was the little things like that, things he did constantly to show I was on his mind, that made me melt inside.
Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Page 11