Benny felt a powerful inner imperative to evolve in more ways than one. For a brief moment, the young metahuman saw a replay image of the bearded one-eyed man with a thunderous voice and uber-authoritative disposition that he experienced as a vision on the night of the Warp Event. He still had no idea what that terrifying and powerful image meant, but the deluge of emotions it triggered was quite evident.
Prompted by these strong feelings, Benny raised his right fist and lunged at Mac. The larger youth reacted as expected and ran to meet the attack blow-by-blow.
But as Benny approached within inches of his opponent, he didn’t throw the predicted punch. Instead, he utilized his enhanced leg muscles to leap clear over his challenger. Mac threw a cuff of his own, but it ended up connecting with nothing save thin air.
Landing behind his bulkier opponent, Benny took full advantage of the mighty lad’s momentary confusion by running towards him and slamming his entire upper body into Mac’s stone-hard back.
Pain inundated the brawny metahuman’s shoulders and arms like numerous bee stings upon the collision. At the same time, the force of its impact caused him to be briefly smashed up against the mesh of The Cage.
As Mac bounced off the flexible mesh immediately following impact, Benny charged forward and struck him hard in the side of his jaw. Mac was staggered by the unexpected power of the blow, as he never experienced pain like this since his metamorphosis to meta-humanity.
Benny then moved in and struck again, this time directly to his opponent’s sternum. This time Mac found himself sent clear off his feet and onto his back.
For a second, Benny moved back into a fighting stance, his self-assurance further boosted. But that was to be short-lived. The following moment, a very irate Brick sat up again, his olive-hued face almost turning bright red with anger. This being the first time he had ever been hurt since his transformation, he wasn’t going to leave this affront unpunished.
Uh oh, Donovan thought to himself as he moved a bit closer. The shit is about to knock the fan clear off the table.
Now having returned to his feet, Mac clumsily charged his smaller opponent like the Wild Bull of Thessaly did Hercules. His several swings proved incapable of overcoming Benny’s greater speed and reflexes, and the latter managed to land a reciprocal blow direct to Mac’s lower abdomen. The bigger contestant bowled over in agony but was still not taken out of the fight.
The robust youth with the rock-hard musculature retaliated by back-handing his challenger in the stomach. This brutal blow caught Benny off-guard and proved that his enhanced reflexes weren’t perfect.
Benny was again sent flying back into the mesh of The Cage. The Italian metahuman was stunned by the force, and he barely managed to regain his senses by the time Mac rushed at him again. Before the young man code-named Brick could make contact, though, Benny managed to shrug off this inflicted stupor just in time to lay a haymaker to the right side of his opponent’s jaw.
Mac was knocked back several feet by the impact of this punch. After he recovered his senses a moment later, he noticed a stinging sensation on his lower lip. Rubbing his hand over his mouth, he was astounded to see a streak of blood rub off on his fingers.
Mac was truly flabbergasted by the sight of his own blood. He didn’t think he was capable of bleeding any longer, as his skin had withstood being stabbed by knives and struck by baseball bats without having drawn blood, or even so much as a bruise being formed. This, coupled with the fact that the blood which flowed from his mouth was more a purplish hue than red in color, was highly disconcerting to him.
The large metahuman’s apprehension was quickly replaced with anger over this gross violation of a dermis he had previously taken for granted as being indestructible. Overwhelmed by these extreme emotions, Mac ran towards Benny with an enraged scream that a banshee would envy. Benny unleashed his own pent up wrath by responding in kind.
The two frenzied meta-youths met in the center of The Cage and grasped each other in twin grips of steel. Each had their respective hands on the others’ throat in an apparent contest to see who could strangle the other first. Both boys were exerting their superhuman levels of strength to the fullest, with each of them utterly refusing to give ground to the other.
Donovan couldn’t deny being fascinated by what he witnessed, as well as observing that the two metahumans seemed roughly equal in regard to sheer strength. Seeing these angry young titans clash, even under such controlled circumstances, was truly a sight to behold.
Nevertheless, an unfortunate development which he felt, in retrospect, that he should have anticipated sooner, proved quick to ensue.
Despite what appeared to be matching degrees of indignation and strength, Benny’s furious struggle to overcome his foe soon acted as the catalyst for something else. It began with the familiar, trouble-indicating glow of sapphire in his eyes. It predictably continued when it was swiftly followed by sparks of similarly azure-hued energy coruscating across his arms and hands.
As his fury grew over the next several seconds, so did the intensity of these arcs of energy until they expanded to a luminescence that fully encapsulated his body.
This all-encompassing glow delivered a continuing series of extremely painful shocks to Mac. His mighty superhuman body underwent what resembled intense spasms, is if he were subjected to an epileptic seizure of titanic proportions.
This grotesque tableau continued to escalate as the radiant blue Odic energy seared through Mac’s every cell. The degree of agony it produced caused him to scream with such reverberation that all present were worried that his larynx might burst.
As the force emanating from Benny’s grip continued to increase over the next several seconds, so did the tenor of his opponent’s pain-riddled bellows. By that point, Mac’s eyes were rolling back into his head, giving his irises a ghastly white sheen, while his wide-gaping mouth began to extrude copious amounts of foamy sputum.
Though Donovan wanted to intervene, the intense glow of the energy all but blinded him. Further, the sizzling of the air around Benny’s immediate vicinity stung his skin like hundreds of needle pokes.
This forced the all too human soldier to step back rather than proceed any closer. He knew Mac was extremely tough, but could he handle a cellular assault by such powerful energies? And would Benny regain sufficient self-control to stop before it was too late? Donovan silently cursed himself for thinking he had this under control.
Just then, however, he noticed that Mac suddenly released his rugged grip on Benny after a hugely stubborn effort of will to maintain his superhuman hold at all costs. Shouting with a fiery ire reminiscent of a djinn being released after centuries trapped in a bottle, the still-glowing Benny hurled his now limp opponent through the air with a single mighty heave.
Mac’s midair form smashed into the eastern end of The Cage’s metal shielding, after which it landed on the mat with a loud thud. He was still moving, but he appeared in no hurry to rise to his feet again. Instead, he just lay there writhing and groaning in distress, his stone-hard flesh being riddled with small burns and exuding wafts of steam.
Benny released another scream while the bluish glow of Odic energies continued to spark in all directions from his body, making him resemble a human-shaped neon flare. After all that energy and emotion was released from his system, though, he seemed to clasp his fists tightly and force himself to desist. Get a grip, Lonero…
The penetrating glow then began rapidly fading in its intensity. Within about a minute the few remaining arcs of visible energy burned themselves out of existence. In tandem, the azure candela of his eyes was replaced with their more familiar dark brown irises and surrounding white. The young man seemed to take a few deep breathes as he looked at Mac’s pain-wracked form wriggling pathetically on the mat.
As Benny’s composure returned, he couldn’t help but notice the concerned look on Donovan’s visage. He further noted the startled expressions on the faces of Helda and Sasheen, both of whom now stood a
few feet from The Cage with their taze rifles drawn. The victor of this metahuman contest wanted to kill the tension by saying something. When he opened his mouth to do so, only one question came out.
“This counts as a win, right?”
Chapter 11: If the Costume Fits…
“How long do you expect to stay at Craig’s house?” Grace Lonero shouted through her grandson’s cell phone, her tone saturated with the usual attitude.
“I don’t know,” Benny replied with grudging honesty to his grandmother. “Things were bad at home, and I had to get away…”
“Did you hear what happened at your school on Friday?” Grace interrupted nervously. “Some gang members or something beat two hockey players badly enough to put them in the hospital. Did you happen to know Mikey something or other, and that Woof kid?”
“Yeah, I knew them, but I wasn’t at the school when that happened. I was at Craig’s house discussing my staying there…”
“Your grandfather and I thought something happened to you when you didn’t come home on the same night those gang members broke into the school! Were those boys’ friends of yours?”
“He doesn’t have any friends at that school, Grace,” Benny heard Dominic Lonero mutter in the background. “Except for that screwball Craig, and that’s only because no one likes him either.”
“Shut up, Dominic!” Grace yelled. “You don’t need to be instigating this right now.”
“You shut up!” Dominic yelled back at her. “This is my house, and I’ll ‘instigate’ all I want! Let him stay there with that goofball! I was about ready to put him away anyways.”
“See what I mean?” Benny said, beginning to respond in kind to his grandfather’s resentful anger. “I need to get away from that house for a time, or… I don’t know what I might do. I can’t take it anymore. Craig’s mother is making lunch for us now, so I’ll call you back later.”
The embittered young man quickly hit the “end call” tab on his cell phone before he got angry enough to crush the device in his hand. He found himself thankful that Donovan insisted he stay at the Valis Institute. All he needed to do now was to call Craig and convince him to go along with the ruse.
Due to the nature of the last words he spoke to his best and practically only friend, the young metahuman wasn’t surprised that Craig didn’t call or text him all weekend. Benny sent him an apology text, along with a typically abbreviated request to call him immediately.
“I didn’t like your attitude when I last saw you, man,” were Craig’s first words to his fellow social outcast when he complied with the call request. “You’re lucky I didn’t punch you in the face right there…”
“I apologized, and I wasn’t exactly in a good mood that day,” Benny responded before his friend pushed the antagonism any further. “I’m sorry.”
“Look, don’t worry about it. I know I can be an ass sometimes too. Anyway, did you hear what happened to Judge and Wolfe? Could it possibly have happened to two nicer people?”
“Yeah. I did. And no. It couldn’t.”
“Rumor has it that the same thugs who did that broke into your ‘girlfriend’ Marissa Robbins’s house and attacked the bitch and her family. Some metahuman fracas went down around her ‘hood that night, so it may have been a coincidence. Who knows?”
“Yeah, I heard about all of that. But look, I have something else I need to talk to you about now. I was having problems at home, so… I’m staying at my Aunt Mary’s house right now. But I don’t want my grandparents to know about it, so I told them I was staying with you. Can you please go along with that for now in case they call you?”
“Aw, man, do you have to put me in the middle of your family problems?”
“Look, I already talked to them, and things have gotten bad enough there that I told them I would only be dragged back over my dead body. Or maybe theirs, to be a bit more realistic.”
“Ha! Benny the Badass. I’m sure your grandfather trembles at the thought of getting on your bad side.”
“Dude, stifle the sarcasm! Something else happened; something I need to discuss with you, but… not now, and not over the phone. We’ll talk about this when we get back to school. After we leave for the day, that is.”
“Okay, well, you know it’s closed until Thursday. Of course, they’re only going to close it long enough to get the blood stains off the wall in the locker room and fix the lock on the door, and not so much as a minute longer than that. Then again, if the hiatus went on any longer, they would only end up taking our Easter vacation away.”
“Craig, enough about that, okay?”
“What’s your problem? Why are you still in such a pissy mood?”
“Like I said, something happened, okay? But I don’t want to talk about it right now. Maybe I’ll come by your place on Tuesday if I can, and…”
“Benny, did you have something to do with what happened to Judge and Wolfe?”
The young metahuman suddenly felt as if he would choke. “What would make you think that?”
“I’m not stupid, man. You were acting weird before that shit went down on Friday, and you’re sure as hell acting weird now. And then you suddenly picked that night to run away to your aunt’s house/ On top of that, the mere mention of the incident at the school bothers you so much when you really shouldn’t give a royal screw about what happened to Judge and Wolfe. Especially considering, you know, how they always treated us like something you find buried in the cat’s litter box.”
“I told you, Craig. We’ll talk later, not now.”
“Shit, Benny. What in the hell is going on?”
“I’ll text you later, alright? I have to go now, so please don’t say anything to anyone about any of this. And remember what to say in the unlikely event my grandmother should call you, okay?”
Benny quickly ended the call before Craig could protest or ask anything further. He then backed up against the hard concrete wall of his assigned quarters before sliding to the floor, tossing his cell phone on his bed, and covering his face with both hands.
Oh, man, Craig suspects everything. So, do I tell him the whole story? Or do I just keep lying to him? Lying to practically the only friend I have is not the same as lying to everyone else. I know what Donovan would tell me if asked him for advice on this, but it’s not like I’m going to just mindlessly do every single thing he ever tells me to do. I have to learn to think for myself even when I’m following the lead of another.
Damn it. If only there was someone I could talk to about this who would be more concerned with me doing the right thing than the expedient thing…
***
Early Monday morning, Benny was back in the training chamber, with Donovan and a duo of armed security guards present as per usual. This time, though, he noticed that Gail Parker wasn’t among the two. The “vibe” he had gotten from her over the past weekend since the altercation at the Robbins apartment made him wonder if there was good reason for her reassignment. But that was yet another concern he had to put aside for the nonce.
The young metahuman found himself standing “at attention” in front of a huge, 300-pound cinderblock clasped tightly between a pair of solid steel clamps. It was just over fifteen feet from where he stood, which was described by Donovan as the ideal distance for the test that was about to supervene.
“Alright, Benny-boy, we’re now going to teach you to control the intensity of those nasty energy beams of yours,” the soldier-turned-drill-instructor informed him.
“So, you don’t want me to just try to smash that big ass cinderblock to millions of tiny shards?” Benny asked.
“No, no, I don’t. I suspect you’re fully capable of generating more than enough power to do that. What I want you to do here is see if you can willfully temper the power output so that the damage you inflict upon the block is minimal. It’s essential that you learn to control the power output of those energy beams. So that you can simply stun normal human beings, as well as fellow metahumans, without blasting t
hem to pieces; or causing a hell of a lot more property damage than any given circumstance may warrant.”
“’I shall try, master, I shall try,’” the young man responded in satirical imitation of the young genie from one of his favorite vintage fantasy films, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Having managed to catch the pop cultural reference, Donovan rolled his eyes while muttering, “Smartass.”
“Hey, being a smartass is much better than being a dumbass, right?” Benny retorted as he extended his arm and clasped fist in “firing position.”
As he began to concentrate, Benny felt the familiar tingle and rush of the incredible degree of Odic energies inundating his entire cellular matrix. Within a fraction of a second, he could feel these energies being “pushed” down the extremity of his arm and focused through his extended arm.
The bluish, crackling energy bolt was projected from his hand as initiated, its sheer intensity literally burning the air immediately surrounding its contours. The cinderblock was struck dead on, and it blew to pieces with a massive blast of force.
Donovan and the two security guards covered their ears in rapt discomfort.
“Geez,” one of the guards could be heard whispering.
“Whoa,” was all Benny had to say.
Donovan walked over to the smoking remains of the cinderblock and inspected it glumly.
“Impressive, huh, boss?” the youth said proudly.
“Impressive maybe, but way off the mark, kid,” the soldier replied. “I’m not sure how much concentration you put into reining in your power flow, but you still destroyed most of the cinderblock. That means if the beam had struck a human being full on, it would have been lethal. The person would likely have been cut in half or had a quarter of his body shredded into little bloody pieces.”
“I tried, Donovan.”
“Then it looks like you need to try harder. And keep trying until you learn to control the power flow. Because you’re not going out there into the field, so to speak, until you do.”
Centurion- Dark Genesis Page 13
