by Logan Jacobs
“Speaking of plans,” I said and looked over at Norma, “how are we going after Bogdan?”
“The tracker appears to be in some kind of thicket,” my mousy assistant said as she zoomed in on her tablet to show satellite pictures of the swamp. “He doesn’t just sleep or repair himself out in the open, obviously, so based on the tracker, his den should be somewhere around this area.”
“So the plan is that we just track down his den and, uh, kill him in it?” Penumbra asked as she did a quick spin against the high ceiling.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Ideally, we could strike before he wakes up and notices us, but I doubt we’ll get that lucky. We’ll probably have to fight him first.”
“Norma managed to hold him off on her own for a while, but I’ve prepared a few other weapons so we can make this a quicker fight,” I said. “I’ve made an upgraded gun that shoots a highly flammable oil so we can coat him with it before we ignite him. It’ll clear out the foliage in the swamp, too, and that way, we can have a better line of sight.”
“What if Bogdan tries to go underwater?” Norma asked. “His den is by a swamp, so he could potentially escape that way.”
“The oil is phosphorus-based, so it’ll keep burning even if he tries to go underwater,” I explained. “Now, if everybody’s good, then we better go. I don’t want it to be dark out when we get there.”
“We have a couple hours before it’s totally dark,” Norma said as she glanced out the window toward the late afternoon sky. “But, yeah, we should still hurry.”
I suited back up but before we headed out the door, I glanced at Penumbra, evaluated part of my plan that I hadn’t told any of them yet, and then shrugged. It was worth a shot.
“Hey, Penumbra,” I said finally, “why don’t you levitate us there?”
“What, me?” Penumbra blinked. “Uh, I mean, like, well, I guess I probably could?”
“I’d rather not have to drive through a swamp,” I said. “My van isn’t exactly equipped for that, but it also doesn’t sound like a fun trip on foot. You carried Elizabeth when we all split up last time, didn’t you?”
“That was just one person, but…” the blonde heroine trailed off and then squared her shoulders. “Um, yeah. Okay. I can totally do that.”
“You don’t need to levitate us too far off the ground, just enough to get us to the swamp faster,” Elizabeth assured her.
“Yep, that works,” I said. “The swamp is pretty far from here if we take the roads, but if you levitate us, we can take the shorter route.”
I nodded at Norma, and my assistant held up her tablet so Penumbra could see the quickest route to the swamp. The blonde studied it for a few seconds, bit her lip, and then nodded.
“Okay, I can do that,” she repeated. “Like, definitely.”
I was glad that Penumbra had really started to develop her powers. Her control over her abilities wasn’t perfect, but ever since I’d given her a pair of strength-boosting gauntlets, she had gained a lot more confidence in herself. I’d learned just from Norma and Elizabeth that a lot of superpowers tended to be based around self-perception, and all it took was a little bit of confidence to really boost them to their full potential.
One day I hope Norma would be able to figure that out, too.
As if to test her powers, Penumbra focused energy from her hands into Norma’s tablet to cause it to levitate in front of her, and then she looked up at me with a grin.
“Ready,” the blonde said.
“Then let’s do this,” I replied.
We headed outside into the cool night air so Penumbra could focus some of her power into Norma, Elizabeth, and me. It was a lot of pressure to suddenly put on Penumbra, but I was curious to see how she’d handle it. Besides, it would be incredibly useful if we could harness her levitation power for travel in the future, since it was way more convenient than a car or a van, and my suit’s flight capabilities hadn’t been perfected, yet.
Of course, if we started to use her powers as transportation, we would need to find a different way to transport extra technology or equipment with us. That was the main value that my van had, and it ensured that I was always prepared for any situation that was thrown at me.
It sounded like I’d just have to give my suit some more upgrades.
“It’s obviously safer if I can hold onto you while I float with you, like I did with Elizabeth,” the blonde explained. “But if we stay close to the ground and we take breaks every now and then, we should be okay.”
“You’ll do fine,” I said. “Now, come on, we’re burning daylight.”
“Okay, okay,” Penumbra mumbled.
She touched each of us to channel her powers, and at first, it didn’t feel like she had even touched me, but as the blonde closed her eyes to focus, I started to feel a strange tingle in the soles of my feet and then I felt myself lift steadily off of the ground. Since I had thrusters in the bottom of my boots, I wasn’t worried about a possible fall, and I also wasn’t high enough in the air to be nervous about an accidental drop, but it still felt strange to float freely in the air.
Well, not entirely freely. I couldn’t really move myself around other than to adjust myself upright.
“Eek!” Norma squeaked as she lifted into the air and tried desperately to right herself.
“Just relax,” Elizabeth tried to reassure her as she lifted into the air beside my assistant.
“Let’s go,” I told Penumbra.
Penumbra nodded and turned her attention to Norma’s floating tablet in front of her. While the blonde studied our planned route, Norma struggled to keep herself upright, but Elizabeth floated quite naturally beside her. Of course, my superpowered girlfriend had already had time to adjust to Penumbra’s powers during the time they had worked together, so it didn’t feel as strange to her.
As soon as Penumbra figured out where to take us, she flew on ahead of us toward the swamp, and the three of us just floated along after her.
I adjusted my position so I felt like I was flying with my own suit. I wondered if it would be possible to reverse-engineer the way Penumbra’s powers worked to put some of her levitation capabilities into my boots or my palm blasters, so I could fly like this on my own without the need of her assistance. It was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure about the exact mechanisms of her powers, so I made a mental note to look into it later.
It would be just one more thing I could address after we’d finally dealt with the Shadow Knight.
“You know, this is kinda fun,” Norma said as we floated along after Penumbra. “As long as she keeps us close to the ground, anyway.”
“Try not to enjoy it too much.” I smirked at my assistant. “We’re on a mission.”
“I know that,” she huffed. “It’s my fault Bogdan got away in the first place, so I want to make sure we kill him this time.”
“It’s not your fault,” I growled. “It’s Shadow Knight’s fault.”
“Okay,” Norma sighed.
“So, is there anything we should know about Bogdan’s den?” I asked. “Other than the fact that it probably stinks worse than the swamp itself.”
“We didn’t find anything about his den itself,” Elizabeth said. “Right, Penumbra?”
“Right,” Penumbra said as she glanced over her shoulder at us. “But we will have to keep an eye on the ground itself. He can link up his vines to the swampland and control parts of it.”
“So we need to keep his vines from reaching the ground,” I said. “Norma, you can be in charge of that.”
“My swords can cut through his vines pretty easily,” my bloodthirsty assistant agreed. “I’ll make sure he never gets a chance to link up to the rest of the swamp.”
“Good,” I said. “Then this should be simple.”
I’d outfitted my own blasters with a small upgrade to turn up the thermal energy on them, so they’d burn through the plant-like material that made up Bogdan’s body. With my blasters, Norma’s swords, Elizabeth’s super-st
rength, and Penumbra’s levitation support, we should be able to take out the swamp monster pretty easily. And luckily, his den was located in an empty swamp, so unlike the situation on the bridge, there was no risk of civilian casualties here.
And since Beacon was busy with the Shadow Knight, there was also no risk that Slade would interrupt us again.
“It’s right up ahead,” Penumbra said and then lowered us to stand on a firmer part of the swamp.
It wasn’t exactly a true swamp, but it was the closest word for it. It was more of a heavily wooded area next to Grayville’s Ashen River, but the ground was mostly marshland. It was also covered in tall grass that made it difficult to see what we could stand on, but it also made it easy to make out the huge thicket of twigs, vines, and grass that was perched like a lean-to off in the distance.
“That’s his den,” Norma said. “Based on my tracker, he’s still asleep in there.”
“It seems a little small,” I said. “But I guess he’s not much smarter than an animal, so he doesn’t need a big hideout or anything complicated.”
It did feel more like we’d hunted down a wild animal than any kind of sentient supervillain, but even though that was a little bit disappointing, it was also never a bad thing to have one less villain to worry about.
“How do we… start?” Penumbra asked as we all stared at the lean-to.
“With a bang.” I shrugged and flipped the switch on my palm blaster to let it charge up, and then I fired it off toward the lean-to.
It erupted into an explosion of flames, and Bogdan roared as he burst out of his ruined den.
“Norma, he’s digging his vines into the ground,” I said as I felt the ground tremble beneath me.
My assistant grinned and ran forward with her double swords already drawn. Every time Bogdan attempted to burrow his tendril-like vines into the swampland, Norma slashed at them with her double blades, and the monster roared with each cut.
As he focused all his attention on Norma, I fired off another heat-blast at the creature. Flames erupted all along the length of his tendrils, and the force of the impact made him stagger backward just before the burning tendrils turned to ash and fell away from his main body.
“Penumbra, see if you can find something heavy to hit him with,” I said.
“On it,” the blonde said and then darted away.
“And Elizabeth,” I said, “you can--”
“I know,” my girlfriend said through gritted teeth. “Beat him into a pulp.”
Elizabeth threw a punch to a solid block of vines that made up Bogdan’s head, but the dark-haired superheroine’s blow didn’t do much damage to the tangle. She landed another heavy punch to the other side of the mass, but his head seemed to just absorb the impact, so my girlfriend slid back across the mud toward me.
“I’m useless here,” she groaned.
“You’re not useless,” I said. “We just need to get through to his core.”
I fired another heat-blast toward the vines that Norma hadn’t gotten a chance to slice through yet, but Bogdan was a lot faster than he had been on the bridge, and this time, he dodged my heat-blast. He wasn’t able to get away from my next round, but another vine just sprung up to replace the one that I burned away.
Norma, Elizabeth, and I continued to hack away at the swamp monster, but the creature regrew himself every time we damaged him. We pulled off his vines, sliced through them, incinerated them, and even crushed them, but each fallen vine just grew back again until I swore in frustration.
“I didn’t expect him to be this quick,” Norma gasped as she used her sword to block a hit from one of Bogdan’s vines.
“Now, Norma!” I fired a blast from my heat-gun to scorch the vine into ashes so Norma could back up.
“I guess this is why the Shadow Knight never chased him here,” Elizabeth grunted. “He seems a lot more powerful than he did on the bridge.”
“That’s true,” I said, “and that’s why we could really use a levitation specialist right about now! Where the hell did Penumbra run off to, anyway? I thought she was supposed to be getting something to throw at him.”
“She wouldn’t just run away,” Elizabeth said. “She’s not like that.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to be here,” I replied as I wondered briefly if we should have trusted her after all.
“Wait, look!” Norma pointed one of her swords at the sky.
A giant tree floated toward us, and it had clearly been torn right out of the ground since it was intact all the way from its topmost branches to its huge tangle of roots. And right behind the tree, Penumbra floated along with her hands raised to control its path.
“Something heavy like this, right?” Penumbra asked with a grin.
“Exactly,” I snickered. “Crush him!”
Bogdan might have been stupid, but he was smart enough to see that we had all suddenly looked up at the sky, so he followed our gaze and saw the giant tree that now floated above the swamp. But instead of running away, the creature just threw a vine toward it, looped it around the trunk, and started to pull it out of the blonde heroine’s grasp.
Penumbra just grinned like she had planned this all along.
“Back up!” Penumbra shouted.
As soon as the three of us had backed away from the swamp monster and the floating tree, Penumbra placed her palm against the side of the tree, and I immediately realized what her plan was. She was going to increase the mass of the tree so that when Bogdan pulled it out of her grasp, it would smash into him with more force than he could ever have anticipated.
The blonde opened her eyes, gave one final little tap to the trunk, and then let the tree crash down on top of the swamp monster with all the weight of half a dozen semi trucks.
There was a little splatter of dark green ichor like there would have been from a squashed spider, but otherwise, Bogdan was so completely crushed against the ground that he was beyond all recognition. I couldn’t even see any brain matter or bones, but instead, there was only a tangle of vines underneath the solid trunk, plus the gooey center of his core that had started to leak out from underneath the tree.
“That’s one way to do it,” I laughed as I wiped droplets of green ichor off of my mask.
“That was what you were thinking, right?” Penumbra asked as she perched on top of the tree to strike a pose. “I just changed the mass of the tree so it was, like, heavy enough to crush him!”
“You definitely crushed him,” Elizabeth groaned as she looked at the squashed body of the swamp monster.
“Congratulations on your first supervillain kill,” I said as I offered Penumbra my hand to help her down from the tree, even though I knew she didn’t really need it.
“It felt pretty good, actually,” she replied as she accepted my hand with a little smile. “He was basically just a monster, so it didn’t really feel like, uh, like I was murdering someone.”
“All supervillains are monsters.” I shrugged. “It’s not really murder to get rid of them.”
“Maybe…” Penumbra trailed off.
I knew that Elizabeth probably thought otherwise, but she didn’t say anything, and even though Penumbra might not fully agree with me just yet, I didn’t push it. In time, they would all see things the way that I did.
“Well, good work, team,” I said with a grin. “We can probably just leave it here. Anyone who comes across it will just assume a tree fell over and killed him that way.”
“We don’t have to report it?” The blonde heroine frowned. “But shouldn’t we tell someone?”
“There’s not really any need for that,” I said. “We don’t want to have to deal with a full-scale police investigation anyway, since that would draw the Shadow Knight’s attention. He’s pissed enough already.”
“Yeah, plus you did such a good job of making it look like, um, a natural death,” Norma said.
I wouldn’t really call being crushed by a flying tree a ‘natural death’ for Grayville’s generally mode
rate climate, but I doubted anyone would question it. Besides, we were in such a remote area that it would have been a miracle if anyone even found his body before it just decayed and became part of the swamp.
I let Penumbra have a few minutes to rest after she’d used her powers so much. Apparently, increasing the mass of something took more effort than lightening its mass or just levitating an object.
“So, I decided,” Penumbra announced as she stretched out her arms. “It does feel way better to kill a supervillain. It’s like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, you know?”
“Good to know,” I said with a grin. “Because you’ll be doing a lot more of that with us.”
“I know how you feel,” Elizabeth told the blonde. “It’s sort of difficult to come to terms with at first, but it does feel like we’re really improving the world this way.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Penumbra said. “Like we made a difference. I like it.”
After the blonde had rested enough, she lifted the three of us up, and we all floated our way back to the mansion. We hadn’t taken as long as I’d expected to kill Bogdan, so the sky had only just started to turn dark by the time we touched down at the mansion.
Elizabeth and Norma made a bee-line for the kitchen to start on dinner, but I lingered in the living room to turn on the news broadcasts. I wanted to check the progress of my project with Aileen to ruin the Shadow Knight’s reputation.
“Um, so is there a room I can sleep in?” Penumbra asked as she hesitated between the kitchen and the living room. “I don’t really feel safe going home yet.”
“There should be a spare room you can stay in, sure,” I said. “We can set that up for you later.”
“Thanks, Miles,” she replied with a flirtatious flutter of her eyelashes.
Penumbra had really toned down her flirting with me, but it was obvious that she was still interested. I smiled slyly at her in response, but I made no moves of my own-- not yet, anyway.
I didn’t think that the Shadow Knight would go after her, but I certainly didn’t mind if Penumbra wanted to stick around. After all, she’d proven herself to be very useful, and the more superpowered women that wanted to stay with me, the better.