by Matt Cowper
“What's going on, Carrion?” Nightstriker asked. “I thought I was going to be tied down until I gave in. Change of plans?”
The Judge glanced at him and frowned. “You could say that.”
He returned to his work, and in a few minutes Nightstriker was free of the constraints. The Judge and the guards stepped back and watched him. Nightstriker moved his limbs carefully, working out the stiffness.
The Judge tossed the parcel onto the bed. “There's your uniform. Put it on, and be quick about it.”
Nightstriker sat up, the movement causing a burst of pain to slice through his head. He touched the bandages wrapped around the self-inflicted gunshot wound; like President Lancaster had noticed, there was a deep gash, but not deep enough to cause permanent damage.
He opened up the parcel, and sure enough, there was his black spandex, looking like it'd just been washed. His utility belt was even included in the bundle.
“I admit I'm not often perplexed,” Nightstriker said, “but this is very irregular, Carrion. What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” the Judge snapped. “This isn't a game, Nightstriker. Hurry up and put on your costume, then follow us.”
“No,” Nightstriker said, tossing the spandex and belt on the bed. “I will do nothing until I get some answers.”
The Judge lunged forward and grabbed the front of Nightstriker's thin gown. “You arrogant bastard! I should murder you right now! Rip out your eyes, shove them down your––”
“Yo, Judge,” one of the guards said, stepping forward. “Remember what the President said. We need him.”
Slowly, the manic look on the mass murderer's face faded, and that odd mix of fear and anxiety returned. He let go of Nightstriker and patted him on the shoulder, only half-mockingly.
“You're right,” the Judge said. “I can't...explode like that. It's unprofessional.”
Nightstriker only arched his eyebrows and stared at the three men in front of him.
“You want answers?” the Judge said. “Fine. The breaking news: your little buddy Blaze got his powers back, and he's heading here right now.”
A slow smile spread across Nightstriker's face. “Well. Then this farce is nearly over, Carrion – though I still don't understand why you've freed me.”
“You will,” the Judge said. “You see, Blaze's powers didn't just return – they increased to unheard of levels. He just incinerated a four-hundred acre block of woodsland near Cape Covenant, and from what we can tell, it didn't cause him any difficulty.”
Nightstriker laughed, a deep, satisfying laugh that intensified his headache. He kept laughing anyway.
The three men shifted uncomfortably, and the Judge muttered something Nightstriker couldn't catch.
“So now he's truly a Class S,” Nightstriker said. “I regret the loss of that forest, but if that's the price that has to be paid for Blaze to rise to the next level, so be it. Though I am curious: what triggered this event?”
“That's the issue,” the Judge said. “Midnight found Blaze, along with his parents, their dog, and another superhero named Mr. Flexible. He teleported in Breaker, and they fought. Well, Mr. Flexible fought; the rest couldn't do much, being at that time powerless. But then....”
Nightstriker gripped the edge of the bed tightly. “And then what?”
“Breaker...killed them. Mr. Flexible. The dog. Then Blaze's parents. And Blaze...he went nuclear. Incinerated that forest. Melted Midnight. Critically burned Breaker, then evidently melted his head off. Left the headless body behind, probably as a warning.”
“You did...what?” Nightstriker said icily.
“We didn't know...we thought he was helpless. And even if his powers returned, we didn't expect––”
Nightstriker was on them before the two guards could even move their fingers to their guns' triggers. Two savage chops to their throats sent them gurgling to the floor.
The Judge didn't fall so easily. Nightstriker landed two jabs before the Judge's close-range expertise kicked in. He matched Nightstriker blow for blow – for about ten seconds.
Nightstriker's fury could not be stopped, not even by a being of pure lethality such as the Judge. He kicked, punched, scratched, and headbutted, until the Judge slipped on one of the straps that had held Nightstriker down.
Sensing a brief advantage, Nightstriker tackled the villain, then sent a hailstorm of blows down on him. The Judge covered his head with his hands, but Nightstriker kept pounding, finding the gaps in the Judge's defenses, trying to yank his hands away.
“You monster!” Nightstriker roared. “You heartless piece of––”
“Stop it!” the Judge shouted, spitting out a mess of blood. “Don't you...ugh...get it?! Blaze is now the most powerful...person on the planet, and he's insane with grief! He could...kill everyone in the city...in the country....”
Nightstriker stopped punching the villain, though he'd never before wanted to crush someone's face so badly.
Blaze had already killed two immensely powerful Patriots, apparently with ease – and he was coming here to finish the job. Nightstriker had little doubt he could beat the rest of the Patriots by himself. The Judge's reaction alone told the story of Blaze's unleashed power; the killer was not one to give in to fear, yet here he was whimpering like a child.
While Nightstriker was glad to be rescued, and he wanted to defeat the Patriots and President Lancaster as badly as anyone, the Judge was right: this was an extinction-level event. If they couldn't calm down Blaze, everyone would burn.
He stood up, leaving the Judge groaning and wiping blood off his face.
“You will pay for this,” he growled. “Do not try to run or hide. No matter where you go, or what you do, I will––”
The entire room shook, as if hit by a once-in-a-generation earthquake. Nightstriker was knocked off his feet, and his bed toppled onto the two guards.
A harsh rending noise, like metal being sawed with a blunt edge, caused him to wince. It was followed by strange dripping and bubbling sounds, like a large pot of water coming to boil.
The Judge stared at him, blood dripping into his wide eyes. “He's here.”
Nightstriker ripped off his gown and threw on his costume and utility belt. In his rush, it only took about ten seconds, but considering the gravity of the situation, it felt like ten minutes.
He considered knocking out the guards and the Judge, but decided against it. That would waste even more precious seconds. Finding Blaze was the top priority. He raced out of the room, wondering how he'd find the young hero in the vastness of the prison.
He didn't have to look long. Almost as soon as he stepped out of the room, he nearly fell into an enormous hole. Nightstriker stood gaping. For only the third time in his superhero career, he felt his knees buckling.
Blaze had melted a path all the way from the roof of MegaMax Prison down to the level where the rest of the Elites were kept. The hole was nearly the size of a football field, its edges rapidly-cooling slag. Up above, Nightstriker saw blue sky and puffy clouds. All around him, the various cells and cafeteria of the prison, impossibly exposed. Down below, the Elites and the Patriots, all of them as stunned as he was.
And in their midst, an entity that burned like a star. Something so bright he had to squint just to look at it. Something putting out so much heat, his body was already drenched in sweat and his throat already parched.
It was Blaze unleashed.
He'd just blasted through one of the most secure facilities in the world, as if he'd been igniting kindling for a campfire.
All those ultimatium walls, gone. All of the prison's many robust defenses, useless. Perhaps the most deadly “superhero” team in the country, the Patriots, quaking in fear.
“Blaze!” Nightstriker shouted. “Stop it!”
He jumped down to the next level, then the next, trying to avoid the hot spots. He brushed against some melted metal, burning off a strip of his costume around the elbow, and a fair bit of flesh, too, from the fe
el of it, but he didn't stop.
In a few moments, he'd reached the level where everyone stood gawking at Blaze, almost dizzy from the heat and his head wound. As he landed, everyone momentarily glanced at him, before returning their attention to the literal human star in front of them.
“Blaze!” Nightstriker said again. “Can you hear me?”
The light dimmed some, and Nightstriker could make out the figure of the young hero, though fire still spewed from him as if he was bleeding lava.
“Nightstriker,” Blaze said, his voice incongruously cold for someone so fiery. “Are you OK?”
“Injured, like everyone else, but otherwise fine,” Nightstriker replied. “So – your powers have returned?”
“Yes.”
“I heard what happened,” Nightstriker said. “I'm sorry, Blaze – Sam. This shouldn't have happened. If I'd––”
“It did happen,” Blaze said, “and now everyone responsible is going to die.”
“Is that right, kid?” It was Crimson Tiger – though despite his words, he was shaking uncontrollably. “We'll see about that!”
With a primal scream, he jumped at Blaze, swiping his razor sharp claws at him.
Blaze didn't move. Tiger's strike hit, there was a sizzling noise and a puff of smoke, and the animalistic villain tumbled down, his scream now a wail of desperation.
His hand had been incinerated, the wound instantly cauterized. He clutched his forearm, staring at the stump like he couldn't remember where he'd misplaced his hand.
“Did you really think you could hurt me, stupid cat?” Blaze said.
He raised his hand, and fire rushed out. Flames of orange, red, green, and blue. If the circumstances weren't so dire, Nightstriker would've thought the display was beautiful.
When Blaze closed his hand, there was nothing left of Crimson Tiger except for a tiny pile of ash.
“Blaze, control yourself!” Nightstriker said, moving closer, though the heat pressed against him like a hurricane-force wind. “This isn't you!”
“It is now,” Blaze replied.
His eyes glowed even brighter, and he looked at each of the cages holding the Elites. The doors to the cages melted like someone had simply erased them from the picture.
Next the chains and nullifier manacles that held the Elites melted, exactly like the doors. Nightstriker was again stunned; not only were nullifier manacles made of ultimatium, they had properties that negated a superhuman's powers. But Blaze had melted them as easily as he melted everything else.
But though the Elites were now free, no one rushed out of their individual prisons. Quite the opposite: they held back as if trying to escape their doom.
Gillespie was the first to speak: “Sam, your power...it's....”
“It's damn frightening, is what it is!” Buckshot shouted. “Kid, you need to tone it down! You're singeing my facial hair!”
“And my rocks are hot,” Slab said. “Feels like the time the Power blasted me with his eye-beams. And look at that damn hole! How are you doing this?!”
“Because my parents are dead,” Blaze said. “They thought that would ruin me. It didn't.”
He raised a white-hot arm towards Code, who had formed a green translucent forcefield around herself. Besides the Judge, she was the only Patriot left.
“Stay away from me, you murderer!” Code yelled. “Stay away, or your girlfriend gets erased!”
She pointed a glowing hand at Metal Gal, who was still morphed into the large gray box, unable to move or speak. Code twisted her hand, and the box began to melt, like it was a sugar cube disintegrating in someone's coffee.
“No,” Blaze said. “I've lost too many loved ones today. You won't take her too.”
Instead of blasting the villainess from where he stood, he burst at her like a comet, shattering her forcefield like it was made out paper. She skidded on her butt across the slick floor, coming to a stop at the wall.
“You...you won't get me, Blaze!” The tech expert's features twisted into an even more grotesque mask of rage and hatred – and hopelessness. “I still control every piece of technology on this island, and I control your girlfriend! I'll––”
Another dangerously beautiful display of flame, and Code was ash.
Now freed from Code's control, Metal Gal morphed back into her normal silvery female form. She shook her head, holding it like it was about to burst, then apparently calmed her mind or rebooted her data bank.
But when she saw Blaze, it looked like she was again about to have a paroxysm.
“Sam?!” she said. “Is that you?! Your...your heat! It's off the charts!”
“Yes, it's me, Gal,” Blaze replied. “Don't worry, everything will be OK.”
“But...what's happened? Code had me locked up, couldn't even think...this hole! I can see...the sky?! Did you do this? Where are the Patriots? And Nightstriker?! You're here?! But I thought––”
“Yes, I did all this,” Blaze said. “The Patriots are defeated. Well, everyone but the Judge, but he won't be a challenge.”
“You did this...by yourself?! But how, Sam?”
“They...killed my parents.” Nightstriker thought he saw flaming tears run down his cheeks. “They killed Mr. Flexible, who was only trying to help us. They probably killed a woman named Bonnie, a kind person who also helped us. They killed Achilles, our dog. They killed them all.”
His light intensified again, and Nightstriker shielded his eyes. “But they didn't kill me. So I get to kill them.”
“Kill them?” Metal Gal's eyes flashed blue. Was she scanning Blaze? Yes, she was, Nightstriker realized. Clever woman; even now, amidst all this pain and destruction, she was trying to find a weakness.
Nightstriker doubted she'd find any way to stop him, or even to irritate him. They were all practically helpless, now that he'd ascended to the status of a demi-god.
Unless...unless Nightstriker activated Project ICE.
“Yes, Gal,” Blaze snapped. “Kill them. Burn them to ash, like I just burnt Crimson Tiger and Code.”
“You mean...President Lancaster, too? His Cabinet members?”
“Yes. Whoever turned this world into a dystopia, and whoever stood by and let it happen.”
“But that includes just about everyone!” Gillespie shouted. Like the other Elites, she was edging out of her cage, though the heat also bothered her. “Are you only going to spare those people who visibly fought Lancaster's policies?”
“No, I...dammit, stop trying to extinguish me!” Blaze said. A stray flame whipped towards the wall, cutting a deep gouge. “I'm going to make this right, but I'm not going to let murderers and hate-mongers go free!”
“Listen, Blaze, no one loves frontier justice more than me,” Buckshot said, “but right now it's time to take a breather and consider all the angles. I'm sorry about your folks – we all are – but now you're more powerful than all o' us put together. Why not just sit here awhile, just talk with us? We're still your friends, ain't we? You know we ain't gonna lead you astray.”
“Is that right?” Blaze said. “Not lead me astray? Like when you and Slab and Gillespie insisted Nightstriker step down as leader? And Nightstriker voted against himself to keep the team from falling apart? And you all got trounced in your first battle with Gillespie as leader?”
“We did what we thought was––” Slab began.
“If Nightstriker remained our leader, my parents would still be alive!” Blaze shouted. “We would've won long before all this happened!”
“Blaze, no one can know that,” Nightstriker said.
“No, they can't, but you know it's likely!” Blaze said. “And you, Nightstriker...you created this debacle, with your God complex and your idiotic self-sacrificing ways....”
“First you were praising my abilities, and now you condemn me?” Nightstriker said. “Which is it, Blaze? Are you just lashing out at everyone, without a thought to what you're saying?”
“I...I don't....”
His light dimmed
, and again Nightstriker saw the fiery tears. They were reaching him, pushing past his sorrow and anger. If they kept chipping away, kept listening to his ranting while still trying to calm him down, they could avert further death and destruction.
But then a red beam slammed into Blaze, rocking the room and scorching the floor around him.
The Judge stood a few levels above them, near the area where Nightstriker had been restrained. He held a massive cannon on his shoulder, a piece of advanced tech, possibly alien in nature. Red energy seeped out of its barrel, and it hummed like a nest of bees.
The Judge had likely rushed to the armory and grabbed this weapon, hoping against hope that he could take down Blaze.
He hadn't. The shot had done no noticeable damage to the fiery young man. It had only caused his to again surge to max power, blinding everyone and jacking up the heat to near-fatal levels.
“No, Blaze!” Nightstriker shouted. “Stop this carnage, please!”
But if Blaze could hear him, he didn't reply. Instead, he raised his hand, unleashing another torrent of colorful, impossibly hot fire. It snaked upwards, consuming the Judge and his powerful cannon. The Judge let out a brief, pitiable scream before joining his teammates as ash.
The Patriots were dead.
Blaze turned back to the Elites. “I'm done talking. I'm ending this – now. Don't try to stop me.”
He burst into the air, through the giant hole he'd burnt into the prison.
Outside, Nightstriker could see a dozen or so flying superhumans peering down at them. They had to be the turncoat superheroes, or supervillains repackaged by Lancaster's minions. They all flew at Blaze, but he soared past them like they were gnats, knocking them in all directions. One “superhero” crashed down to them, banging on several of the prison's levels as he fell.
“Sam....” Metal Gal said. Generated tears ran down her metallic face. “He's...he's gone. He's someone else now....”
“No, he is not,” Nightstriker said. “He is still Sam Boyd. Still our teammate and friend. No matter what he's done, no matter how much he brushes us aside or threatens us, it's our duty to bring him back from the dark valley he's trapped in.”
