Arch Rivals (Super Hero Academy Book 2)

by Simon Archer

  “Okay, Callie’s yours,” I replied. I could only guess what she was going to do, but considering her advanced alien senses, especially the ability to see energy, I trusted Aylin implicitly. “Everybody else, stick to the plan.”

  The strangest part of it all was that other than that one bit of a plot, the Carter team didn’t arrange into any particular formation, and despite their fatigue and wear, they didn’t seem to be particularly worried about the fight ahead. Roger actually turned into a dog, curled up, and looked about ready to take a nap.

  “I don’t like this, Nick,” Andie called into my ear as she and Kara slipped back towards the defense target. “Something is definitely up.”

  “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it,” Kara replied, steel in her voice. “We’ve got this.”

  Matt roared and shifted into full werewolf form, and that was agreement enough. Kristen pulled out two spheres of metal from her pockets and charged them with a magnetic field before giving me a curt nod.

  Yeah, we were ready for anything. I eyed the start clock as it ticked down and reached out to the swirling ball of power inside me. I’d plow right up the main line, snatch Oliver’s smug ass up, and peel his armor off him. Easy as pie, and then maybe that would force his hand, have to use whatever his power is. We might even get some answers, but either way, without his suit’s immense firepower, we’d have a much easier time taking the match.

  Three… two… one…

  “And the final match of the rescue tournament is underway,” the announcer shouted over the speaker system, but his words blurred and slurred as I let the floodgates open, the power inside me filling me like a tidal wave. As my mind and body accelerated with a burst of super speed, I took everything, every flurry of activity that the start of the match triggered as I launched myself forward.

  In slow motion, both teams sprang into action… mostly. Roger the dog didn’t move a muscle, seemingly content to let the rest of his team carry the day. Callie did exactly what I expected, disappearing behind Oliver’s monolithic armor before, well, disappearing entirely as Sarah and Thurgood summoned up twin columns of fire and ice. Undoubtedly knowing she would be a target, Switch didn’t step through a portal into battle, but instead into the far backfield. Oliver himself seemed ready to stand his ground, his teal visor locked on me as Angela moved to his side.

  My friends moved to counter, of course. Aylin immediately took off, her eyes tracking something unseen, while Matt sprang forward to close the distance between the two teams, taking the best defense is a good offense to its logical extreme. Kristen and Eric weren’t far behind him, Kristen holding onto the steel spheres as she projected them through the air. Those two had practiced a few moves combining her setting up targets with metal for Eric to direct his lightning along, and I expected they’d put that into practice now.

  As for our defense, Andie immediately flattened out, her practice in expanding her elasticity stretched, pardon the pun, to its limits. She was practically a pancake, almost impossible to see unless you were close, and Kara simply disappeared from view as she engaged her cloaking device.

  Me, well, I went straight up the middle. Dust burst in my wake as I rocketed forward faster than the human eye could follow, right toward Oliver. Though I knew he couldn’t react, his armor’s targeting systems reacted far faster, his right arm charging up a massive blast of electricity. Carter had done their homework, after all, but I was prepared. I rolled left in mid-flight just as the tremendous bolt of electricity surged forward. There was the distinct sensation of shattering through a layer of last-ditch defenses: fire, ice, and glass all gave way before me, and then I was on the asshole.

  The thick plates of his armor crunched in as I impacted the dead center of mass, then I grabbed hold of his breastplate with one hand. It was thick, dense material, but it still crumpled like tin foil under my strength. The initial shockwave of my entrance threw Angela aside as Switch kept portaling back further away from the dead center of the battle, and if Oliver was expecting help from Sarah and Thurgood, they were now fully occupied as Matt pounced into their midst.

  “You should have let your team prepare for this,” I growled as I took Oliver and me both up into the air. “And you shouldn’t have lied about your powers.”

  “It’s not like we’re the only ones that have fudged the sheets a little, Gateon,” Oliver sneered back. “Doesn’t matter, because we’ll get what we want out of this.”

  I shut him up by ripping the gauntlet with the electric weapon off in one tug and tossing it aside. “Big words, Oliver. How about you come clean about what you can do and why you’re here?”

  A tremendous crack of thunder erupted somewhere to my right and behind me, no doubt Eric going to work. From the initial chatter in my ear, it sounded like things were going well for our team, even if we had lost track of Switch for the moment.

  Oliver still didn’t seem worried as he held up his last armored hand and pointed past me. “I’m here to win, just like you, and if you look over there, you’ll see that we’re just about to.”

  One of the advantages of super speed is that you can turn your head to take a look without giving your opponent a moment to trick you. So, I indulged Oliver’s attempt at misdirection only to see that it might very well have been arrogance on his part. He was pointing at an empty stretch of air… for about a second before Aylin streaked in like a comet from below and plowed into that empty space. Carter’s light manipulator let out a cry of pain as she reappeared, spiraling upward from the alien princess’s impact.

  “You really didn’t think that was going to work, did you?” I shot back as I planted my free hand deep into Oliver’s armor and tore off a good chunk of the torso. The thing really was built like a tank, a cocoon of armored layers separated by some bleeding-edge shock-resistant gel.

  Oliver laughed, a sick, twisted sound. “Not over yet, your arrogant ass.”

  Almost as if on cue, the sky exploded behind me with a blinding flash, if that word could do it justice. It was as if someone had touched off a miniature star of pure light in the arena, and screams of shock and anguish echoed through the arena as most of the audience was flash-blinded before the protective fields over the battlefield polarized.

  But they weren’t the only ones who screamed. While it was a small miracle that most of us were too busy with our own battles to watch the skies, Aylin wasn’t so lucky. She was point-blank to where Callie went nova and her enhanced vision… I could only imagine her pain as she let out a horrid cry, hands covering her eyes as she recoiled from the light.

  “I’m coming!” I called into the comms, about to throw Oliver into the ground and rush to her aid.

  “So am I,” Kara echoed from wherever she was, no doubt already flying with her anti-grav cloak, but somehow, despite the anguish Aylin had to be in, she managed to get something out over the comms.

  “No!” she cried, a deep-down strength edging through the heart-breaking pain. “I will not fail you!”

  As the two struggling aerial combatants faced off, one blind and the other battered, I caught the glowing patterns in Aylin’s skin surge with energy, and I knew at that moment she would do as she said. Aylin wouldn’t fail, and if I rushed off to rescue her now, I would simply prove the point of her own insecurities.

  “She’s got it, Kara,” I barked out. “Keep watching for Switch!”

  Oliver was still laughing, so I punched him hard enough to shatter his helmet into pieces, confident the shock absorbing goo would keep his head from being pulped. That definitely shut him up for the moment, and as his head snapped back from the shot, another burst of light sundered the air.

  I snapped my eyes back in time to see just how alike Aylin’s powers were to mine. Though still blinded by the intense light, she had done precisely what I would have in her situation, gathered up all her internal energy and burst it outward, just as Callie was about to send a pulse of laser light through Aylin’s chest. While the explosion of glowing force wasn�
��t as intense as mine would have been, it was still intense, and unlike Callie’s nova of light, Aylin’s power was more than a flash. Her’s was a wave of concussive force that slammed into the light manipulator dead-on.

  Already battered by Aylin’s initial attack, Callie simply crumpled under the blast, knocked utterly senseless as she plummeted toward the ground. When none of her teammates moved to help her, well, I did what a hero would. I threw Oliver towards the concrete floor with all my might before rocketing across the field to make the save. As I managed to catch Callie before she knocked her head open mere feet from the ground, the sound of Oliver’s suit cratering into the stone rang like music in my ears.

  Apparently, the Carters didn’t appreciate my care for one of their teammates one bit. While I set Callie gently onto the ground, a tremendous gout of flame burst overhead from the melee I had just left. Sarah must have decided to go for a cheap shot on the still blind Aylin as she hovered above the field, even going so far as to wait until I was occupied with saving the fire-wielder’s own comrade.

  But Aylin wasn’t defenseless… or to put it a better way, she had much more caring teammates. The white-hot flames parted around Aylin, intercepted by an invisible source that revealed itself a moment later. Between the wounded princess and the flames was a defiant Kara, her golden anti-grav cape billowing in the wind and a shield of hot-pink energy projected from her bracer.

  “These guys are all assholes,” Matt roared in his comms, his voice barely understandable in his full werewolf form as he took his own opening to jump Sarah before she could roast him with her flames.

  Kristen chimed in as she shaped a cage of metal around the ice wall Thurgood had erected to protect himself. “We need to put them down now before they get someone seriously hurt!”

  “Right,” I agreed as I launched myself back into the heart of the battle. “I’ve lost eyes on Switch, so Andie, get ready!”

  “I’m always ready, Nick,” she called back, and I couldn’t help but wonder how she could talk with how compressed her body was. The elastic redhead had, in essence, turned herself into a carpet under the force dome protecting our ‘hostage,’ ready to strike the moment someone made a move.

  Confident in her goal-keeping ability and reassured that Kara would keep Aylin safe until she could recover, I was back on Oliver before he could pull his broken suit back to its knees. Another bolt from the blue rained down courtesy of Eric as I yanked Oliver up by the twisted remains of his chestplate, ripping his helmet off with one yank as Eric’s blast homed in on Kristen’s metal bindings to shock the ever-loving hell out of Thurgood.

  “Before I knock you the fuck out,” I growled as I reared back a fist, “I want some answers. I’m no genius, but I know there’s something more going on, some reason you lied about your powers.”

  Oliver’s blue-green hair was a mess, his lip was split, and he had a hell of a shiner, but he still had more than enough asshole left in him to spit a bloody loogie at me. “Fuck off, Kid Inferno. You’d better use your time helping them instead of questioning me because our ringer is doing her job.”

  I didn’t even turn around, because I didn’t have to. I caught the flash of blue light that accompanied every one of Switch’s portals, and I knew where she had wound up. “Maybe your ringer should watch where she’s going.” My heightened senses also caught the distinct rubbery snap as Andie launched herself into action, as well as Switch’s cry of surprise. “You see, our goal was never defenseless.”

  “Huh,” Oliver muttered. “Neat, but you’re still going to lose, Nick.” With that, he raised his one armored arm, probably to fire a weapon of some kind, but I slapped it down with my free hand, the force of the blow hard enough to shatter the gauntlet… and that’s when the missile fired out of some still-intact launcher on Oliver’s back. I immediately moved to stop it, but it was barely out of the tube when it disappeared into a blue portal.

  I didn’t need to think about where it was going to. I simply flicked Oliver right in his forehead with a finger, more than hard enough to send him right to la-la land, and launched myself straight for our base.

  The situation was mostly as I expected it to be. Right outside the force dome, the slight, blue-haired teleporter was wrapped up in the coils of Andie’s elastic body like a mouse in clutches the world’s most beautiful anaconda. Though obviously on the verge of passing out from the pressure, Switch wasn’t under yet, and though Andie hadn’t noticed it yet, her opponent was glancing off to the side where another portal was opening up, no doubt to bring in Oliver’s missile.

  Sure enough, the short, stubby projectile blew out of the portal a split-second ahead of me. Andie did the only logical thing she could: pull herself off of Switch and spring away… but it wouldn’t be fast enough. Not that it needed to be, not with me there.

  Though I hadn’t been fast enough to put myself in the missile’s way, I caught up to it a split-second before it homed in on my Sun, snatched it by the thrusters, and pulled it up to my chest. I cocooned it as if I were jumping on a live grenade… which I suppose I was… and then it went off, the high-explosive warhead sending a shudder through my invulnerable body.

  “Like I said before, always in the nick of time,” Andie said with a sigh of utter relief.

  “But always taking his eyes off the ball,” Switch taunted back. Though she was panting and favoring her side a little, the little trickster had already opened a portal from under the force dome to the inside of it and was about to step through. “Bye, suck--”

  I blurred at her with my full speed to cut her off. With how fast I was moving, Switch shouldn’t have been able to track me as more than a faint blur, but I caught it, the twitch of her eyes that managed to follow me even if her physical reflexes couldn’t quite match up. No wonder Switch had been so hard to follow in this battle. Like Oliver, her entry into the World’s Finest had been a bit of a lie, but this one was one of omission.

  Switch had super speed… but it was only the speed of her mind, which is plenty when your portals are created by thought.

  She opened a portal to who knew where right in front of my charge, and if I hadn’t had my own accelerated mind, I would have barreled right through it. I managed to pull myself up just short of it and hovered back a stretch.

  “Clever move, Switch,” I said as I tried to shoot myself sideways to flank. I expected her to track my movements, but I had to test her, see if I could work a way around. Instead of opening more portals, the one portal she had opened instead yawned and stretched into an oval, and within a second as I flew clear around her, it was a wide ring to defend her.

  “Yeah, that’s because I am clever, Gateon,” she sniped back. “And here’s how it’s going to go down. I think so fast that none of your teammates have a hope in Hell of catching me, even the alien. Even you, Nick, are stalemated by me right now. Whatever you throw, I can redirect, and in a few minutes, you’ll power down, and I’ll win.” The smirk on her face ruined her otherwise cute pixie looks. “So, do you really want to waste everyone’s time here?”

  Switch wasn’t entirely wrong… but I already noticed her one flaw here. While her mind was indeed as fast as mine right now, she had to keep her focus on me. If she took her eyes off me for a moment, I could take advantage of it… and I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Out of the corner of my eye, Andie kneeled down as if in defeat… and the hand she planted to steady herself began to stretch and flatten ever so slowly along the concrete, creeping closer and closer to Switch.

  To back Andie’s clever play, I crossed my arms over my chest and puffed myself up, hovering higher into the air to force Switch’s attention to follow. “I don’t know. We’ve got all night, Switch, and the rest of your team is either down or about to go down. You’re smart, but do you really think you can outwit all of us? We do have a super-genius on our side.”

  The portal warped and shifted into a dome as I spoke, leaving only a small moving sliver of space for Switch to watch me through.r />
  “Sure, the Johnson girl could figure something out in time, but would she be fast enough to use it?” Switch snarked back. “I really doubt--”

  The blue-haired woman was cut off abruptly by Andie’s fist as it rocketed up from the ground and into Switch’s jaw, my distraction giving the elastic heroine more than enough time to snake it under the bottom edge of the portal. While Switch’s brain was super fast, her jaw was apparently made of glass as her eyes rolled up in her head from the single shot… though to be fair, using the springiness of her rubber body, Andie could hit like a freight train when she needed to. The big portal dome flickered out of existence as the thin girl fell to the floor, and Andie retracted her limb.

  “This is what happens when a girl is all talk and no action,” she scoffed as she dusted off her knuckles on her shirt. “Come on, Nick, let’s wrap this up!” Andie turned as did I, and as I took it all in, I grinned.

  “I don’t think there’s much left to wrap up,” I noted as I swept my hand across the field.

  Thurgood had been shocked into submission by Eric and Kristen’s last combination attack, while Sarah had thought that surrounding herself in a corona of flames would keep Matt away from her. She was dead wrong, because he simply plowed through the tremendous heat, regenerating each bit of his body that was incinerated by those flames before he simply clocked her with a knockout punch. Meanwhile, Aylin had recovered, and both she and Kara flew dead on into the melee, Kara’s shield deflecting a torrent of razor-sharp glass from Angela long enough to let Aylin soar past her to plant the glass manipulator into the concrete with a mighty blow.

  I couldn’t have done better myself.

  That was the moment when Roger finally looked up from his nap, yawned, and shifted back to his human form. As our entire team surrounded him and with his own comrades laid out around him, he simply grinned like the cat that ate the canary and raised his hands.

  “I surrender, dudes and dudettes.”

  And just like that, we had done it. We’d won the rescue finals, and in doing so, were one-third of the way to winning the World’s Finest. The crowd, recovered from Callie’s light nova stunt, erupted into a wild frenzy of cheers and applause, and I let that all soak in as my friends and teammates all joined them.