by Jamie Hawke
“Mirror,” Andromida said, coming up to my side.
“I can assume what his powers are,” I said. “How do we beat him?”
“Old-school style.” With that she grabbed me and we flew through the air, her metal shooting out from the ground, circling us and propelling us forward.
“What’s happening?” I shouted, trying to get my bearings.
“Kick his ass,” she replied, and then thrust me forward.
I was flying through the air and this Mirror bastard was back paddling, a look of worry on his face. Before landing, I almost pulled out my tempest power but stopped myself. Instead, I went rolling in front of him, just as three other supers moved in to attack me. But my team were on it straight away and took care of them while I charged Mirror.
He held his hands up to block his face, so I caught him with a shot to the body, then a knee, and turned with a tiger-tail kick that swept his feet out from under him. The combination of my upgraded strength and speed really worked well with my kung fu training—it was too bad most of the fighting in this super universe required powers, as this way was sometimes more fun.
I got into the zone, remembering days spent training, my hours in the dojo kicking the hell out of that bag and kata after kata. All of it came back to me now. This guy might’ve been tough if I was reliant on shooting balls of fire, but nah, this was all fists of fury. With one hit to the throat and a follow-up kick to the temple, the bastard collapsed, out cold.
Two who had been about to intervene backed off, and to my right there was a field of supers either kneeling on the ground groaning, or lying where they had fallen, either dead or unconscious.
The few remaining supers all turned as a whoosh sounded above, then pushed themselves up, moving out of the way. At first, all I saw were the clouds and strange-colored lightning.
But then I could see why—behind them, three more supers were advancing. At first I thought it might be Ranger, the way one had golden light streaming from him. But then I realized that it couldn’t be as it wouldn’t make sense for him to be with just two guards or whatever. If Ranger were here, he’d be arriving with his fleet, attacking in full force.
Everything about this man spoke of power. He floated in the sky with red robes floating out from his shoulders, moving similarly to the way Andromida did when she was about to attack. His armor glistened, gold with lines of red lights along it in a way that was in no way tactical, but I imagined did something crazy as far as boosting his powers. His face was covered by a mask that, oddly, was the only thing about him that didn’t feel extravagant. It appeared to be wooden, or maybe old bronze, but was hard to make out from this distance and angle, with rectangular eye slots and nothing else.
My team joined me on my sides, all of us ready for a fight. Gale and I had the best offense if you didn’t count Andromida, since she wasn’t technically part of the team yet. Twitch already had her screens up, boosting our stats and amplifying shields, while Shimmer created an illusion that made it look like more and more superheroes were stepping out of our ship and joining us. It wasn’t surprising, then, that the enemy was still watching, waiting. A shimmer of light showed Charm, crouching at my side, ready to charge in.
“On my signal—” I started, when a voice boomed out from the masked figure.
“No, on mine.” He floated forward, his guards behind him, blue weapons of light that resembled spears forming in their hands, eyes glowing to match from behind the faceplates of their helmets. “But there’s no need to fight, is there? Aside from you trespassing on our territory, attacking us without merit… we can be magnanimous. So explain to me, stranger, why we should be?”
“We didn’t come here for your generosity,” I shouted, eyes darting over to Andromida to see that she was ready. “And we certainly didn’t come to make friends.”
“I see.” His words were cold, his hands reaching out to the air beside him but taking no action yet. “Let me guess, you’ve come to try and challenge the leaders of Gurstrad? Hero types, right? Here to try and prove yourselves, to fight back against us and the Nihilists, to restore order to the Citadel?”
“Something like that.”
“The Elders are gone! The Citadel… untouchable to the likes of you, and soon it will fall.”
“I look forward to proving you wrong.”
He continued to float, his eyes likely glaring from behind that mask, or so I thought until he laughed. “I like you, which means it’ll be more fun to watch you die than to do it myself.” Turning to his followers, he flicked his fingers and they all seemed to grow in size, a red light surrounding them. “Come, minions, show us his insides.”
The supervillains charged, and we went out to meet them. Watching them go for our fake forces was a blast, but then we were in the thick of it and the fun vanished. All around us shots were fired, Andromida tearing through the enemy and making them vanish, bringing metals up from the ground.
I caught a glimpse of her going for the masked man, pulling spikes of metal from the pyramid, only to have it yanked back and for her to be thrown to the ground! My tempest energy shot out, slamming into a line of them, knocking them out of the way so I could get to her. Halfway there Charm tore past me, clearing out two more of the enemy who were in my path, and then blowing purple dust to turn more of them against their own.
She vanished from sight just as I jumped over a corpse, landing in time to blast another enemy away from where he was about to slam a glowing hammer into Andromida’s head.
“What happened?” I asked as I helped her up.
“This place gave me my powers,” she said, trying to pull herself together. “Took away my old ones, and made me who I am. It was stupid of me to think I’d be able to use it against them.”
Another enemy flew overhead with wide wings, shooting at us with his two rifles, but Twitch was looking out, I saw, based on the pink shield appearing momentarily. We returned the attack when the shield faded, and Andromida was charging through the enemy again, this time focusing solely on metal from the ground and fallen enemies’ armor. This meant she didn’t have as much power. The spikes that shot out of the ground would be limited, so she couldn’t build her massive tunnels as she’d done on the ship.
Still, she was tearing through the enemy.
The masked man and his guards, however, were watching intently, as if merely entertained by the battle.
“COWARD!” I shouted up at him, throwing blasts of electricity his way. The sky lit up to my left as well, as Gale’s attacks took out two supers attempting to make a move on me. She turned her attention to another group that was trying to find Shimmer and Twitch, as they were heavily weighting the battle in our favor.
My strikes, however, didn’t make contact. His guards had flown forward and connected their glow sticks, making me think of stupid jokes about crossing swords. Not the time, I told myself and charged toward them. Halfway there a group of the enemy moved into my way and threw all manner of fire and other attacks at me, but I hit the ground and traveled through it, coming up in the middle of them where I let my tempest burst in every direction.
Fuck those fuckheads. They were toast.
I sent another attack at the man above, but the crossing of glow sticks created a bubble around him that I couldn’t breach like this. It was a blue light, one that felt very familiar to me.
“Enough of this,” he said and shot forward, past his guards, hands directed toward me.
A burst of purple light like that of the Nihilists came for me, but a pink shield appeared. I prepared to attack when the shield couldn’t take anymore, but the light went right through it. Like a hammer to the face, it sent me stumbling back. Before I could recover I saw movement, another flash of light, and then Charm leaping into the attacker’s path. It hit, seeming to engulf her in that purple light, and then sent her flying into two more of the opposition, knocking them both down and out.
I ran to her, putting everything I had into my attacks on the man abo
ve—tempest, illusions to distract him, even the terror and insanity winds. When I skidded to Charm’s side, cradling her as another shot hit me, I clenched my jaw, trying to stay conscious in spite of the pain, and brought up my screen, hoping I’d leveled up and could try the acid rain on the fucker.
No such luck.
From the man above, streams of light like we’d seen in space rolled out, curling, twisting—not even going fast, I thought, but then saw that in fact everything else was in slow motion, and I couldn’t move. Even as strong and powerful as I was, I stood there like a helpless calf for the slaughter.
The strands of light connected and time resumed for everyone else, but not me. My scream surprised me, my body clenching again and again, as if he was letting me remember what it was like to not have pain only to bring it back tenfold each time. As the chaos of battle continued around me, I collapsed, unable to move, barely able to even think. I simply lay there, helpless, staring up at him as the attacks kept coming. Shots from Gale and guns from the others were going at him, but that damn blue bubble kept blocking everything.
Blue light formed around me, too, as Andromida came to my aid. That’s where I’d seen it before, the light that protected him. When she moved fast, her robes created some sort of effect that left this force field behind, and now she was doing that for me.
It was enough to give me a chance to roll back over to Charm, to see that her eyes were fluttering open, that her mouth opened as if to say something. No, not say something—breathe one of her charms.
I’d never seen this charm from her. It emerged as swirling red, blue, and then some orange, all twisting together and taking on a black smoke feel before hitting me. My body rocked back, my mind suddenly clear and, in spite of the pain, I felt I could take on the world.
Kick his ass, I heard a voice say in my head, and glanced down to see that Charm wasn’t speaking, but was giving me a half-smile. Go!
Still not sure what effects this charm would have on me, I obeyed. This wasn’t the time to doubt or ask questions, it was the time to do everything in our power to take this masked jackass down.
“Payback’s a bitch,” I grunted, running and leaping for him. It wasn’t that I knew what I could do, but that my senses were telling me what felt right. No, not my senses—Charm! She was with me, in my head, in my body, kind of. There wasn’t time to make sense of it, only to pull my fist back and, using my transport ability to move through the air as I was able to with rocks and metal, I appeared directly in front of him. My fist made contact. Now, when I say made contact, I don’t mean my knuckles simply connected with his face, I mean they hit with such force that the sky seemed to break around us, ripples flying outward, and he was thrown to the ground where he went skidding in the dirt and created a ditch behind him in the process.
He lay there for a moment as the whole battlefield turned to see this, and I floated back to the ground. With a convulsion that sucked the air out of my chest, various colors floated out of me and back to Charm, so that she was coughing and recovering a moment later.
Our masked enemy on the ground moved a hand, then rolled over, coughing. He turned to me, staring. The mask held for a moment, a crack running across it from my strike, and then half fell off, followed by the other half. Standing there staring at us was a man who….
“It’s him,” Andromida said, and I turned to see her kneeling at Charm’s side, helping her up. “Daos, you son of a bitch. I’ve come for you.”
“Welcome home,” Daos said, apparently her old mentor. He coughed again—blood coming out onto the back of his wrist. He looked at it, then to all of us, and added, “You want into the pyramid? A tour of our grand establishment? Well, then, by all means, follow me.”
The guards had landed at this point, glowing light crossed to protect him from further attacks. Not that their presence stopped Andromida from charging, or me and Gale from shooting out with everything we had. He pushed himself up from behind that shield, unfazed, and even Andromida couldn’t make it past, no matter what angle she attacked from.
With a sigh, he started walking toward the pyramid. Large bricks of metal moved outward, forming an entrance, and soon he had disappeared within. The other supers in the area stood by, not sure what they were supposed to be doing, and we walked away from them, eyes shifting, cautious. Shimmer and Twitch joined us at the pyramid’s entrance.
“There’s no way this is anything but a trap,” Twitch said.
“Of course,” I replied. “But we came here to get in, and this is a way in.”
Gale looked at it, eyes wide with fright, while Charm and Shimmer were watching the other supers for any signs of an attack.
“Fine,” Twitch said and went first, screens up and scanning for trouble.
12
In the pyramid, the first step we took was to have Twitch set up buttresses in the form of moving walls around and setting up energy fields, along with sensors to tell us when the enemy made it through. Shimmer put illusions on us so that to anyone but ourselves we’d appear like several of the supers we’d fought outside, and Charm worked her powers to give us all a calming but alert status—after a fight like that and then being trapped in this pyramid, we definitely needed the former.
Andromida took three steps into the pyramid and a series of lasers shot out in a crisscross pattern. If not for her metallic powers that twisted her surroundings momentarily, the laser would’ve sliced her in two. As it was, she only lost a slice of hair.
She screamed in frustration, then turned and thrust her hands out. Metal rippled, moved apart momentarily, and then thrust back in.
“Daos! Come fight me, you coward!”
A portion of the nearest wall transformed into a screen, one that seemed to be following him. “Name-calling, my dear Andromida? So unlike you.”
“Fucking show yourself,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I will, if you survive long enough. You see, if the pyramid doesn’t kill you, Ranger will. He’s on his way.”
“And what will he do when he finds out we’re still alive and that you’ve failed?” I taunted, hoping to rile him.
He laughed. “It won’t matter to you, because you’ll be dead. You’ll likely die long before that, but believe me, having been the one to capture you will earn me a place at his side. How ironic that all I had to do was open the door and invite you in.”
A glance around made me feel pretty stupid about the plan. At the moment, it was hard to think this was anything other than him holding all the cards.
“Don’t worry,” he said as if reading my mind. “We want to make it interesting. This place is a masterpiece, a work of art. We’ve been designing it for some time, and consider ourselves very lucky to have someone to test it out on. Enjoy your stay, as brief as it may be.”
“What do you think that means?” Charm asked.
“Who the fuck cares?” Andromida said, reassessing the passageway. “Let’s go get him.”
“Just a moment,” Twitch said, her screens up. I joined her, looking for other traps and ways to get around this one. My screen, however, seemed to think this was a simple hallway, nothing special to it. That or I was reading it wrong. Either way I let it disappear, turning to watch Twitch and hoping she’d found something else.
Gale leaned against the wall, hands to her mouth as she tried to get a hold of herself. Apparently she was freaking out.
“You sure I can’t get you some charm for that?” Charm said. “I can make you feel another emotion that might make you distracted, at least.”
Gale grimaced. “I… I don’t know. Don’t want to be walking around here all horny or pissed off either. Sorry, it’s just that tight spaces—not my thing.”
“Didn’t you used to fly for the Citadel?” Twitch asked.
“A ship is different,” Gale replied. “There’s all that space around you.”
I had to laugh. “Space… where you’d die if you were thrown into it without that ship.”
; Gale shrugged. “I never said it was logical.”
“Actually,” I interjected, looking through my screens. “What about this.” I’d been saving skill points for the acid rain, but having the team at their best was more important. Selecting the skill—a combo from having Gale’s powers overlapping with Charm’s, I was able to select a skill called Heavenly Light. It sounded hokey, but I accepted the upgrade and gave it a try.
A light, golden mist drifted down over us, landing on our arms and faces, tingling. Judging by their straightened postures and confident grins, it had the same effect on my team and Andromida as on me. It was like a paladin skill in this old castle combat game I’d played once, boosting the morale of warriors nearby.
My first thought was that this could be fun in the bedroom. My second was that I started to wonder if this made me like a paladin. A space paladin—that sounded fucking awesome! Nodding at my genius, I decided right then and there that I was going to be a space paladin from now on.
Righting wrongs, standing up for my ladies and being chivalrous and all that. I wondered if it was too late to change my superhero name from Breaker to just Paladin? Or maybe Breaker the Space Paladin! That was a title I could strive to live up to.
As the light faded, everyone turned to me, impressed. Everyone, that is, except for Andromida. She was staring at her skin in confusion as the blue faded along with the light, leaving her looking more like a regular human who hadn’t gotten enough oxygen. The color in her eyes showed as almost brown.
She blinked and turned to me, scared. “What’d you do?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” I admitted.
“I’m going to need my anger here, my powers. You can’t just take them away!”
Hands up in surrender, I took a step back.
“We have an army of supervillains incoming,” Twitch pointed out. “We need to get moving.”
“And what am I going to do against them like this?” Andromida snapped, lifting her hands to call on her powers. Nothing happened. She shouted, turning on me and storming over. One hand raised as if she were going to destroy me, the blue flaring in her eyes for a moment, but then it was gone again.