Powers

by Lucas Flint

  Instead, he was terrified, because if this woman was here, then Shell knew that he was about to get into huge trouble.

  “Who are you?” said Eli, who, based on his tone, clearly had no idea who this woman was or why it was such a bad idea to demand that she identify herself.

  “My name is Shade,” said the woman. “I’m with the government—specifically, the G-Men—and I am here to arrest you and take that box.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  This was not how the plan was supposed to go. This was not how the plan was supposed to go. This was not how the plan was supposed to go.

  Blizzard kept telling herself that, but it didn’t really help her much. She still repeated it, if only because it was the only thing that kept her from killing her sister.

  The plan had been pretty simple before it all went to hell. When she, Shade, and Rebecca had emerged from the shadows behind the building where the transaction between Eli and his mysterious buyer was supposed to take place, Blizzard was supposed to use her ice powers to distract as many Unwanted members as possible, perhaps even draw them away from the building if possible. Meanwhile, Shade would slip into the building, locate Eli and his object, steal it, and then leave. Then Shade would let Blizzard and Rebecca know about her success and they would escape through the shadows again. As for Rebecca, she was supposed to just stay hidden away from the fighting and not make a sound.

  But, of course, the plan went off the rails almost as soon as it was put into practice. First, Rebecca—for reasons known only to God—had dashed out from their hiding spot before Blizzard was ready to set up the distraction. Blizzard still didn’t know what had possessed Rebecca to do that; perhaps her sister had a death wish or maybe, in her jealousy, she thought she could distract the guards just as well as Blizzard, if not more so. Blizzard didn’t know and she didn’t really want to know, either, given how annoying Rebecca was.

  As you might expect, that certainly got the attention of the guards, who started shooting at Rebecca as soon as they saw her. Miraculously, Rebecca somehow managed to avoid getting riddled with bullets, but she had still collapsed onto the street, screaming in fear and rolled up into a little ball, forcing Blizzard to jump out of her hiding place and start throwing chunks of ice at the guards. The first guard went down when her ice chunk slammed into his skull, while the second guard had started firing at her until she knocked the gun out of his hand with a well-placed ice bolt and then knocked him out with another.

  By that time, however, more guards came from the building, about half a dozen. They were clearly not professional security guards, because most of them wore jeans and t-shirts, but each one was armed with a gun and their combined firepower had forced Blizzard on the defensive. She had created a huge, thick ice barrier around her and Rebecca; she would have moved Rebecca to safety, but Rebecca was so overwhelmed with fear and shock that she didn’t seem capable of getting up and moving and Blizzard just wasn’t strong enough to throw Rebecca over her shoulders and take her away that way. Hence, Blizzard had decided to just create an ice barrier around herself and Rebecca to protect them from the hail of bullets.

  Unfortunately, Blizzard was only just now starting to realize why that was a bad idea. Although the barrier was thick enough that most of the bullets just bounced off its icy surface, thick cracks were already starting to appear in the barrier and were getting thicker with every bullet shot. In addition, the interior of the barrier was extremely cold; not a problem for Blizzard, who loved the cold, but Rebecca was already starting to shiver due to a combination of her thin pajamas and her own lack of experience with exceptionally cold weather. It didn’t help that the barrier was too thick for Blizzard to see through; she could see the lights from the back door, as well as the vague shapes of guards shooting at her, but without a clear view of the guards, Blizzard couldn’t effectively fight back.

  Granted, I’m only supposed to distract them, not fight them, Blizzard thought, wincing every time a bullet hit the ice barrier’s exterior. But unless Shade steals the object quickly, I will have to fight them. With Rebecca by my side.

  Blizzard wished that Bolt was here. He would probably have defeated and disarmed all of the guards by now. Blizzard was tempted to call Bolt right now and ask him to come, but she was too busy focusing on maintaining the barrier to call up Bolt; plus, she still didn’t want him to know that she had sneaked out of the house without him knowing. She was, however, starting to curse herself privately for stupidly agreeing to go along with Shade’s dumb plan.

  This is why Bolt always says we shouldn’t work with the G-Men, Blizzard thought. They string us along like this and then leave us on our own to die.

  Shaking her head, Blizzard knew that she couldn’t let herself get distracted by her thoughts. She looked around the barrier, trying to come up with an idea that would allow her to fight back against the guards, but between Rebecca’s whimpering and the constant put, put of the bullets as they struck the ice barrier, it was hard to think of what to do. She increased the thickness of the barrier, but she knew that sooner or later the guards’ bullets would pierce the barrier and then she and Rebecca would be in trouble.

  Think, Blizzard, think, Blizzard told herself. If you don’t think of something quickly, you can kiss your and your sister’s life goodbye.

  All of a sudden, the bullets stopped hitting the barrier; furthermore, Blizzard could not hear anyone on the other side, with the only sound being Rebecca’s whimpering behind her. She listened closely, but it did not sound like the guards were outside the barrier anymore. She wondered if they had run out of bullets; unlike in the movies, real guns didn’t have limitless ammunition, after all. She was tempted to open a hole in the barrier and take a peek, but she worried that that would just give her enemies on the other side of the barrier a chance to shoot her.

  All of a sudden, a fist smashed through the ice barrier and grabbed Blizzard by the collar. Blizzard was pulled out of the ice barrier and thrown over someone’s shoulder. She spun through the air for a moment before landing on the street hard enough to go rolling backwards a couple of feet before she came to a stop, her head spinning and her back aching from the impact. It didn’t help that her cape was now wrapped around her body, but she managed to untangle her limbs just as a shadow fell over her. Looking up, Blizzard saw a large man standing over her, his arms twice as thick as hers, his small, beady eyes looking down at her with disgust.

  “Got you,” said the man with a twisted grin. He raised a fist above his head.

  But Blizzard rolled to the side, narrowly evading his fist as he brought it down on the street where she had been lying mere moments before. Rolling back to her feet, Blizzard backed away from the man, who turned to face her, his huge fists balled at his sides like jack hammers. Blizzard glanced toward the back of the building, but the guards who had been shooting at her barrier were nowhere to be seen; she figured they must have gone back inside, but she didn’t understand why, given how they had the superior numbers. Maybe they didn’t want to shoot their friend accidentally.

  Not that it mattered why the guard was gone, however, because the big and ugly man (who Blizzard now realized was only slightly shorter than herself) looked more than capable of beating her to a pulp with or without backup.

  “You’re with the government, aren’t you?” said the man. “Eli said that the government would come after us.”

  Blizzard grimaced. “Government? No, I’m on my own, thanks. But I guess you’re one of the Unwanted, right?”

  “The name is Chip,” said the man. He punched his fist into his other hand. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I am going to make sure you don’t get anywhere near Eli.”

  “When did I say I wanted to get near your leader?” said Blizzard. “Maybe I just like distracting you from something else.”

  “It’s the only logical explanation,” said Chip. He raised his fists. “Normally, I dislike beating up women, but I can always make an exception for women who thr
eaten the safety of my leader.”

  Before Blizzard’s startled eyes, Chip’s whole form vanished. It was like he had teleported into thin air, causing Blizzard to whip her head back and forth in an attempt to see where he had gone. But she couldn’t see him anywhere. She wondered if he had turned invisible or something.

  But then Blizzard heard something heavy flying through the air and then felt something as solid as a rock smash into her lower jaw. Blizzard immediately collapsed onto the street, only to receive a kick to the gut which sent her rolling across the street again. She slammed into a dumpster, which caused her to come to a stop, but it didn’t stop her head from spinning. She also felt blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t have time to worry about that, because she could hear Chip running toward her, even though she couldn’t see him. It sounded like he would be upon her any second, but instead of running, Blizzard slammed her hands on the warm street and sent a wave of ice flowing across the street in all directions.

  The wave of ice rapidly covered the street and then she heard the disembodied voice of Chip grunt in surprise, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the ice, leaving a cracked surface where it fell. A split second later, Chip himself appeared on the ice, lying there with a stunned look on his face.

  Blizzard rose to her feet and smirked. “Got you.”

  She thrust her arms forward. Ice appeared on Chip’s arms and legs, freezing his body to the ground. Chip gasped in pain and struggled to break free, but Blizzard made sure that the ice was too thick for him to break. She figured that he may have had the ability to turn invisible, but he clearly did not have super strength.

  In seconds, Chip was pinned to the street. He didn’t stop struggling against the ice, but based on how the ice didn’t even crack under his efforts, it was pretty clear that Chip was not going to be a threat again anytime soon.

  Wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth, Blizzard was about to call Shade to see how she was doing before she heard a terrified shriek—Rebecca’s shriek—from over at the ice barrier. Blizzard whipped her head in that direction and the sight she saw caused her heart to sink.

  Two of the Unwanted—large, burly Hispanic men with bandannas covering their mouths—had pulled Rebecca out of the ice barrier. One of the masked men was pointing a gun at the back of Rebecca’s head, while the other stood in front of him as if to protect him from Blizzard. Rebecca herself was shaking and crying, albeit silently, perhaps because she was afraid that they might shoot her if she made any sounds.

  “Rebecca!” Blizzard shouted. “No!”

  Blizzard took a step forward, but the first Unwanted jabbed the barrel of his gun at the back of Rebecca’s head, while the first Unwanted said, “Take one more step closer and you will get to see the girl’s brains all over the street. Don’t think about using your powers, either.”

  Blizzard stopped. Despite the Unwanted’s warning, Blizzard was trying to decide if she could get away with using her ice powers to take out both of the Unwanted. Unfortunately, she realized that she was not fast enough to prevent the Unwanted from shooting Rebecca in the back of the head; while she could probably freeze the gun’s trigger from a distance, it would not freeze fast enough for her to prevent the gunman from pulling it.

  So Blizzard lowered her hands. “Let her go. She’s just an innocent girl. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  The second Unwanted shook his head. “No. We saw what you did to Chip. We know you are trying to harm us, harm Eli, and we can’t allow that. We’re going to hold this girl hostage for a little while longer. She doesn’t seem to have any powers, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a threat.”

  Rebecca was no longer crying silently; however, she still looked terrified. She looked at Blizzard with pleading eyes, causing Blizzard’s heart to tighten with helplessness, because she knew there was nothing she could do to save Rebecca right now. However annoying Rebecca may have been, she was still Blizzard’s sister, although that didn’t help her come up with a way to save her.

  At the same time, however, anger rose within Blizzard. She didn’t step forward, but she did glare at the gunmen and said, “You monsters. Let her go and fight me like men. Then again, if you have to resort to threatening the life of an innocent teenage girl in order to win, maybe you aren’t as manly as you like to appear.”

  “Shut up,” said the second Unwanted. “We’re not stupid. We know you’re trying to bait us into giving up the only thing keeping us safe from you. If you want the girl to live, then get on your knees, put your hands behind your head, and don’t move a muscle.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” said Blizzard. “Shoot me?”

  “Eli will decide what to do with you once we have you chained up,” said the second Unwanted. He gestured at the kneeling Rebecca behind him with his head. “The longer you stand around trying to look all tough, the more impatient my friend’s trigger finger here gets. And impatient trigger fingers have a tendency to slip.”

  Blizzard bit her lower lip, but at this point, she knew that she had no choice but to comply with the Unwanted’s demands. So she carefully got on her knees and put her hands behind her head, making sure to look as nonthreatening as possible so that neither of the Unwanted would suspect she was trying to get them to lower their guard.

  The second Unwanted walked over to her. He immediately grabbed her wrists and put some thick metal chains around them; nothing Blizzard couldn’t break with her ice powers, but then the Unwanted shoved the barrel of his gun against the back of Blizzard’s neck, making her freeze.

  “Good girl,” said the second Unwanted. “Now, we’re going to take you and the other girl inside the building. We’ll also let Eli know that the problem has been dealt with; I’m sure he’ll be very interested in finding out why a couple of teenage girls chose to attack our base in the middle of the night.”

  Blizzard said nothing. She just looked over at Rebecca, who looked like she was on the verge of despair. Blizzard herself felt a flurry of emotions inside her body at the moment; anger at Shade, anger and worried about Rebecca, but mostly angry at herself for getting herself into such a dumb situation in the first place. If she had just said no to Shade’s offer earlier that day, neither Blizzard nor Rebecca would even be in this situation tonight.

  “Carlos!” the second Unwanted shouted at his ally who was pointing a gun at the back of Rebecca’s head. “Call Eli and let him know that we’ve defeated the attackers. He’ll be pleased to hear that, I’m sure.”

  Carlos nodded and pulled a smartphone out of his pocket, making sure to keep the barrel of his gun focused on Rebecca at all times. But before Carlos could dial Eli’s number, something flat and disk-like whirled from out of the darkness of the nearby alleyway straight toward Carlos. The second Unwanted yelled at Carlos to dodge, but it was too late. Carlos had just enough time to look in the direction from which the disk came before it slammed directly into his face. Carlos collapsed onto the street, dropping his gun at the same time, while the disk landed next to Rebecca, who cringed at the metallic clang of the disk. From the light over the back door, Blizzard could see that the disk was in fact the lid of a trash can, but she had no idea who had thrown it.

  The second Unwanted, meanwhile, whirled around to face the alleyway from which the disk had been thrown. “Who’s there? Another teenage girl who doesn’t know what she’s up against?”

  A familiar laugh came from the shadows of the alleyway. “No one’s ever called me a teenage girl before. Good joke, my dude, but I’ve heard better.”

  The second Unwanted apparently was not going to take any chances, because he pointed his gun at the alleyway, clearly intending to shoot whoever had just spoken, but then an arrow flew straight and true out of the alleyway and jammed itself inside the gun’s barrel. The impact of the arrow landing inside the barrel caused the gun to fall out of the Unwanted’s hands, but he quickly produced another gun from his holster and started firing.

&nbs
p; The loud blasts of the gun so close to Blizzard’s head made her wince, but it apparently did nothing to scare off the mysterious assailant from the shadows, because above the sounds of bullets being fired, Blizzard heard laughter. Then something—no, someone—came rushing out of the shadows of the alleyway, expertly dodging each bullet fired at it by the increasingly terrified Unwanted. The person moved so fast that Blizzard almost thought it was Bolt or White, but when she didn’t see a white or black blur, she realized that it was someone else entirely.

  The speeding person knocked the gun out of the Unwanted’s hands, sending it falling somewhere off to the side. The Unwanted desperately tried to punch his assailant, but his attack missed as the speedster dodged the attack. The momentum of the punch sent the Unwanted staggering forward, but one punch from the speedster later and the Unwanted lay on the street as still as a rock.

  Blizzard—who had been kneeling very still, with her head down, the entire time—raised her head slowly. At first, she did not see anyone else in the street aside from herself, Rebecca, Chip (who was still frozen against the street), and the two unconscious Unwanted. She almost thought that their salvation must have been some kind of miracle before a figure suddenly appeared before her, a large, muscular man wearing nothing but a toga and sunglasses.

  Blizzard couldn’t help but gasp in recognition of the man. “Radicles? Is that you?”

  Radicles gave her the thumbs up. “That it is, my dudette. And like yesterday, I am here to save the day. Well, technically the night, but you know what I mean.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Shell gulped. His hands felt sweaty. His knees weren’t quite shaking, but he could already feel sweat starting to appear on his temple. He scrambled to his feet, but he knew that even on his feet, there was no way that he could beat Shade. He didn’t have as much experience with her as Bolt did, but he had seen Shade defeat a giant Pokacu robot once before as if it had been nothing. He still wanted to stand, however, if only because it would be easier to run away on his feet than on his back.