by Logan Jacobs
Norma had swapped to a different style of martial arts that I didn’t recognize, and apparently the Shadow Knight didn’t recognize it either since he couldn’t figure out how to fight against it. Norma moved like a dancer as she jabbed her fists into his side, and then she jumped backward to avoid his retaliation.
“Hurry, Miles,” Norma gasped into the comms. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up!”
“Just a little longer,” I said.
I knew that since Norma had an average amount of stamina to match her abilities, that meant the Shadow Knight had more stamina than she did, since he had enough stamina to last as long as he needed to.
Well, it might have been stubbornness more than stamina, but either way, Slade had a fucking lot of it.
While Norma held off the Shadow Knight for now, I made my way back to Elizabeth, and as soon as I reached her, I reinforced the webbing again. If we didn’t deal with Slade soon, I was definitely going to run out of web solution, and then we’d lose the bus for sure.
I glanced around the bridge to try and figure out some other kind of solution for this, but the Shadow Knight had thrown a massive and debilitating wrench into our plans. We could hold up the bus for now, but that was all. Elizabeth didn’t have the kind of power to pull the bus up on her own.
“We’ll both pull it at once,” I said as I grabbed onto my own bundle of webs. “We have to. There’s nothing else we can do.”
It was my original plan, and it would have to work. I knew if we both put all of our power into it, we should be able to pull up the bus, but it depended on if Norma could keep the Shadow Knight distracted.
“If you’re sure,” Elizabeth said as she adjusted her stance.
“I’m sure,” I replied. “It’s the only way.”
We both gripped all of the remaining webs that I’d been able to attach to the bus, and then we started to take slow and steady steps backward as we pulled.
In slow, precise movements, we began to make progress.
“It’s working!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
I could feel the bus slowly rising back up as we pulled on the attached webs, and with each step, we made another inch of progress. I put all of my suit enhanced super strength into my efforts, and I could see how Elizabeth’s muscles strained as she gave it everything she could.
“Miles!” Norma shouted.
I glanced at my screens to see that the Shadow Knight had successfully flung my assistant to the side, but he didn’t follow up with a finishing blow. As soon as she was out of the way, he ignored her, and now he was headed straight back to Elizabeth and me.
If he hit both of us, we would lose our grip on the bus, and it would be all over for them.
“Elizabeth, hold on!” I passed my webs to her.
The extra weight made her stagger, but she dug her heels even further into the cracked asphalt, and she managed to keep the bus steady. I fired two more strands at the bus just to give her a little extra to hold onto, but when I tried to fire a third strand, I realized that I was out of webbing solution. All I could do was hand her what I had made and hope that it would be enough.
Once the webs were all in her hands, I moved away from my girlfriend, and the Shadow Knight changed his course to come after me.
“I think you look more like a villain here,” I said as I turned to face him with both of my blasters raised again. “What will the people of Grayville think? You nearly caused an entire bus full of people to die, and it’s all recorded!”
The Shadow Knight lifted his head to eye the news drones, and then he pulled a feather-shaped shuriken out of his utility belt.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
Slade flung the shuriken up toward the drones, and it collided with one of them. The drone started to spin out of control, and just a few seconds later, it fell out of the sky and dropped into the water with a quiet splash.
“Do you think that will help?” I laughed. “Now they even have footage of you destroying a news drone! You’ve gone off the deep end.”
“As soon as I bring you in, everything will go back to the way it was,” he snarled as he flung another feather-shuriken at me.
I fired my blaster at the shuriken, and it exploded before it could hit me.
The Shadow Knight just threw more of them at me, and I deflected them with another blast. As he continued to send a flurry of shurikens at me, I made sure that my efforts all looked as defensive as possible.
I noticed that even more drones had started to appear in the sky to record our battle, and I wanted them to see that their beloved Shadow Knight was clearly the aggressor here.
The optics were good, as long as I could live through this.
“Miles, I’m here!” Norma staggered over to us now that she’d recovered from the Shadow Knight’s blow.
We both circled the crow-masked man, but even with our combined strength, I knew that fighting him in hand-to-hand combat would wear us down much faster than him. Slade had an inhuman amount of stamina left thanks to all his training, but I could feel how tired I was, and I saw that Norma was already limping, so I knew her stamina was just about completely drained, but she still stood stubbornly at my side with a grenade grasped in her hand.
I was wary about using such lethal force publicly against the Shadow Knight, and I also didn’t want to cause any collateral damage, but we were running low on options. I had no webs left to help Elizabeth, and I could see in my helmet screens that the webs were unraveling again. It wouldn’t be long before they snapped entirely and made Elizabeth lose her hold on the bus.
The only way that Norma and I would be able to go help her was if we killed the Shadow Knight.
We both dodged to the side as he lunged forward with a punch, and I turned just in time so that his fist only glanced against the side of my helmet. If I hadn’t been wearing anything protective over my head, that punch might have done a lot of damage, so I was glad I’d decided to perfect my design for this fight.
“There’s no coming back from this,” I shouted as I ducked beneath another punch and fired off my blaster.
“Once I reveal you to the world, they’ll all understand why I did this,” the Shadow Knight said as he dodged backward to avoid the blast again.
“No one will understand why you sacrificed civilians,” I growled.
“Miles!” Elizabeth shouted. “The webs are snapping!”
“I’m out of web solution,” I told her. “Just try to hold on!”
We’d have to get far enough away from Shadow Knight that we could set off the grenade, but he was so fast that I wasn’t sure how we would do it.
Instead, all I could do was raise my palm blaster again, but the Shadow Knight knocked my arm to the side before I could even fire it.
He suddenly froze as something in the distance caught his attention.
I used that as my opportunity to put some distance between us, but as I turned to run toward Elizabeth and the bus, I froze too, and I felt myself grin at what I saw in front of me.
The bus was lifting up by itself in shuddering, jerky movements as it floated up into the air. It rose higher and higher until it was on the same level as the bridge, and only then did I see the slender blonde woman who floated alongside the bus. She was dressed in a short black dress with an eclipsed moon emblazoned on the front, and she gave a little wave when she saw us.
Penumbra.
“I saw the news!” the blonde called out as she levitated the bus back onto the bridge. “I thought I could help, so here I am!”
She continued to lighten the mass of the bus so she could move it around, and then she slowly let it grow heavier as she placed it back onto the road where it belonged.
I would definitely have to thank her later, but right now, we had other things to worry about.
Now that she was freed from the bus, Elizabeth charged toward Norma and me, and she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us as we faced down the Shadow Knight. The black-haired woman was
breathing heavily, and she seemed exhausted from her efforts with the bus, but there was a cold fury that radiated off of her as she stood protectively next to me.
Norma stood at my other shoulder, and I noticed that she still had a tight grip on the grenade in her hand. As she narrowed her eyes at the Shadow Knight, a movement overhead made me glance up to see that Penumbra had now floated over to us and hovered right above me, so I was protected on all sides.
“You’re dead to me,” the Shadow Knight barked at Penumbra.
“I don’t need you,” she replied.
“Back off, or we’ll make you back off,” Elizabeth added.
Even if we were exhausted from the battles we’d already fought, there was no way the Shadow Knight could fight all four of us. He knew that as much as I did, just like he’d known it when he had tried to confront me in my mansion. He had thought I would be vulnerable on the bridge since Elizabeth and Norma were both occupied, but now I could see his mind racing as he tried to think of a way out of this.
If any part of me had thought that he still wanted to be Grayville’s hero, that was definitely gone now. He’d become nothing more than a single-minded, feather-wearing villain.
“This isn’t over,” Shadow Knight snarled.
“Promise?” I smirked.
Norma flung her grenade forward, and it hit the ground with an explosion that rocked the bridge. It was nearly enough to throw me off of my feet, but I kept my balance and aimed my blaster forward at the smoke. The Shadow Knight had been knocked backward, but now he was holding a grenade of his own as he leveled it on us.
But he didn’t fling it at us, and instead, he just tossed it directly at his feet, and as it hit the ground, smoke erupted everywhere.
A smoke bomb, so he could escape like the coward he was.
I didn’t want to deal with the Shadow Knight any more in a public place where the cameras could record it, so I let him leave without giving chase. It was much more important to me to deal with the civilians who’d been trapped on the bus anyway.
Grayville needed a better protector than the Shadow Knight, and I would give them one.
“I thought he was really going to attack for a second there.” Penumbra floated down in front of us and dusted off her hands. “But… I’m glad he didn’t. We need to free the people on the bus.”
“We do,” I agreed. “You really saved us there, Penumbra.”
“I said I wanted to be a serious heroine, and I meant it,” she said with a flush of pleasure at the praise. “When I saw the news and I saw Dynamo struggling to lift the bus, I knew I couldn’t just leave her. So I rushed over to help.”
“I’m glad you did,” Elizabeth said with a grateful smile. “I’m sure everyone on the bus is thankful, too.”
We headed over to the bus in question so I could remove the webs from the door. Some of the people inside had fractured bones and bruises, but there was no one in dire need of medical attention. The police had already called over an ambulance to handle civilians that had been injured during the initial chaos, so we left the group on the bus in the hands of the police.
“We need to go back to regroup,” I said as we made our way through the chaos back toward my van. “Penumbra, how about you come with us?”
“Really?” The blonde clapped her hands.
“You helped defend Miles from the Shadow Knight,” Elizabeth said, “so Slade will probably be after you, too. It’s safer if you come with us.”
“I don’t even care if I’m dead to him.” The blonde shrugged as she tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “He looked like a lunatic on the news.”
“We should go look over the reports when we get back,” Norma suggested. “To get an idea of what they’re saying.”
“It’s nothing good,” Penumbra laughed. “You guys will get a kick out of it.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but we should go back to come up with a new plan. I don’t want something like this to happen again.”
I knew it would probably be amusing to see the Shadow Knight railed by the media, but I also knew that was likely to make him even more desperate. If Penumbra hadn’t shown up, we would have lost the whole bus of civilians, and we couldn’t let that happen again.
Of course, if a whole bus of civilians had died, that would have taken care of any hesitation that Elizabeth had about actually killing the Shadow Knight. Still, we’d managed to save the bus this time, and even though Slade was clearly a villain instead of a hero now, I didn’t want to make his execution a public spectacle.
And that meant we needed to come up with a plan.
But for now, we had plenty of other things to take care of. It hadn’t been our fault that Bogdan had escaped, but even though the Shadow Knight was responsible for that, I still wanted to make sure that the swamp monster was dead before we tackled Slade.
It was a matter of pride, if nothing else.
“I’ll come with you,” Penumbra finally agreed. “But I don’t think Slade would come after me on my own, anyway.”
“Well, we could use your insight on the Shadow Knight’s behavior,” Norma said. “Maybe we should give Beacon a call, too.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But for now, let’s just get back home.”
“What about Bogdan?” Elizabeth asked.
“Well…” Norma hesitated. “I sort of, well, attached a tracker to his core.”
“You did what?” I grinned.
“When I was fighting him, I just waited until he was distracted for a second, and then I snuck in real close and planted it on him,” my mousy assistant replied.
“That’s incredible!” Penumbra gushed.
“I assume this is all part of your master plan to hunt him down?” I teased.
“Well, yeah… I mean, I think he sheds or molts or exfoliates or whatever a lot,” Norma said as her cheeks turned pink, “so it probably won’t stick to him for very long, anyway.”
“Good girl,” I praised her. “You did a great job, Norma.”
Her cheeks turned from pink to bright red, so I figured we should all get home before her face absolutely melted off in embarrassment.
All four of us piled into my soccer mom van, and as I glanced in the rear view mirror, I was pleased to see that even though Penumbra already seemed much more confident in her powers, the blonde still wore the gauntlets I’d given her. Her abilities were unique enough to make a pretty useful addition to the team, so I didn’t mind if she wanted to stick with us for now.
And the more I could turn the Shadow Knight’s entire team against him, the better.
Chapter 5
Once we arrived back at the mansion, I switched on one of the screens in the living room to the news report of our fight against Bogdan and the Shadow Knight on the bridge. Then I settled down on the couch next to Elizabeth, Penumbra perched herself on the back of the couch, and Norma headed into the kitchen to make us all a little lunch.
“And here, you can see that it looks like the Shadow Knight actually attacked the masked hero and caused the bus to fall!” an aging male news reporter commented on a looped version of the bridge footage. “If it wasn’t for visiting superheroine Dynamo and her unknown allies, all those people might have died. What do you think of that, Diane?”
“I think it looks like the Shadow Knight made a very poor decision,” a pretty newscaster with platinum blonde hair responded. “He endangered the lives of innocent people to attack this masked hero.”
“Maybe he just can’t handle some superhero competition,” the male news broadcaster joked.
“Could be,” Diane replied. “Up next, we’ll have an interview with the police commissioner who might be able to shed some light on the situation.”
I flipped channels to shift through the other news broadcasts. They were all saying similar things about the Shadow Knight and his ability to protect the city. A lot of the headlines were sensational, but they also made me laugh. My favorites were “Shadow Knight Threatened by Superior Hero?” and �
��Civilians in Danger: is the Shadow Knight a Villain?”
I certainly thought he was, and it was remarkable to watch the city turn against him. Most of the broadcasts were showing the same footage of when the Shadow Knight knocked me away when I’d been in the middle of saving the bus, but a few of them also showed footage from the news drone that he’d shot down. The more sensational stations declared that meant the Shadow Knight knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t want it recorded, and that made him a villain for sure.
Some channels had even started to review his past acts of heroism to try to figure out what kind of ulterior motive he might have had.
I knew they wouldn’t find anything in his past because at one point, the Shadow Knight really had put the lives of his civilians over his obsessions, but that was no longer the case.
I was actually surprised by how quickly the city was willing to turn against him, but I knew he deserved it for everything that he’d done on the bridge. Like the news stations, I was going to have to view him as a villain to understand his mindset and the course of action he might take next. After all, he had demonstrated that he was happy to put civilians in danger if it meant he could take a shot at me.
“You were right,” I told Penumbra. “I definitely got a kick out of this.”
“The city really turned against him fast, didn’t they?” Norma asked as she carried over a plate of sandwiches and placed them on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“Well, like, he did almost get a bunch of people killed,” Penumbra said with a shrug. “And he even tried to attack the cameras! What was he thinking?”
“He was thinking that Miles was the bigger threat,” Elizabeth replied as she picked up a caprese sandwich from the platter. “He was willing to put the people on the bus in danger because he probably assumed that he would save more people in the long run if he captured Miles.”
“So glad to hear that he still thinks he’s looking out for his city.” I rolled my eyes and grabbed a prosciutto sandwich for myself. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. After today, I think he’s totally lost it. There’s no coming back from that.”