Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  Flamestrike was still on his feet, licks of flame dancing around his chest and arms. “I told you, Primal.”

  “Where are the others?” I said.

  “Still waiting on your word,” she said, her fists glowing purple. “I went rogue.”

  “I had it.”

  “Of course you did.”

  Primal stepped forward, “We only need him,” he said, gesturing toward me. “Restrain him and the rest will surrender.”

  “Villains are always so stupid,” she spat.

  I keyed my comms. “Templar, when you’re ready.”

  A crimson line sliced into existence just to my left, stretching about two meters. One of Primal’s guys was in its path but was too dumb to move. Templar’s expanding portal cut the villain clean in half, blood and guts spilling from the bisected ends. Poor schlub didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  I peered around the edge of nothingness and saw the inside of the Cicada as Battle hustled through the portal. Superdynamic, Moe, Ruby, Ricochet, Focus, and Templar poured into the room, along with Vector and Battlestar, both recent additions. I was also a member of the team, nominally, in the background. Very far in the background.

  I wasn’t on the website.

  Superdynamic took flight, the tall ceiling giving him plenty of space to work. The suit was a new iteration of the one he had been wearing forever. Skin tight, but capable of manipulating light on all levels, it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen built by human hands. The eyes were always covered though. He preferred all of the data processed and rendered for him through the suit. In his mind that kept everything clean and free of artifact.

  Moe ignored the villains entirely, swallowing me in a hug that ground my spine against my ribs. He was built like a house, large enough to lift me off the ground without trouble. He put me down hard enough to buckle my knees, then turned towards the bad guys. “You good, muthafucka?”

  I nodded. Apogee was giving us the side-eye, trying hard not to laugh.

  Ruby moved to flank me, a high keen piercing the air that you could only pick out if you knew her or had sensitive hearing. At that level, her sonic powers presented themselves more as a feeling than a noise, a hum that permeated the room. Focus joined her, falling into a fighting stance. Apogee dwarfed her, but Focus had put me on my ass more times than I could count. Bad guys always underestimated her. Their mistake.

  Vector lifted off, joining Superdynamic in the air. Ever the micromanager, Superdynamic insisted the new guys have a buddy. Vector was a flier who could shoot energy beams and was super strong and tough. Frankly, the guy was a fucking monster. I had fought with and against him on multiple occasions and had always been impressed. I had saved his life once, and in a strange turn of events, he had actually repaid the debt.

  Battlestar sidled next to Moe, his clunky armor thumping the ground with each step. Superdynamic and I spent the first couple of months trying to convince him to use the tower’s engineering bay to update the armor to something a little more modern. He insisted the old tech was more than enough. He was ex-military and carried that ingrained rigidity around like a badge. I could tell it annoyed Superdynamic to no end, but I could empathize. Half the time, I wanted to shoot the bad guys with arrows.

  I could never look at the guy without laughing a little. Battlestar was old school, though not a major name in the hero game. He had tangled with a villain friend of mine, Black Razor, and I guess after a few years, they struck up a weird friendship. When I first met Razor, he insisted I was Battlestar, and we had a laugh at his mistake. Razor was a psychopath, but he laid out for his friends. I’m pretty sure he died saving my life. Part of me hoped I was wrong because he was my friend, and I had lost too many already. Another part shivered at Black Razor with all that power and instability out in the wind, doing who knew what.

  Ricochet stood next to Ruby. His suit was sky blue and also out for its maiden voyage. We worked for weeks trying to get all the math right. He had actually become a pretty adept engineer, though untrained. He needed to quit Battle and go to college. It would never happen. This life was a drug. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He took a deep puff and blew smoke out into the room. Ruby’s face pinched in disgust. Shaking his head, he plucked it from his mouth, tossing it onto the castle’s floor. Primal actually flinched at that, and this time I did laugh. If that bugged Primal, I couldn’t wait for him to see how we opened the fight.

  Templar was the last through, using the tip of his sword to close the portal. The giant blade seemed to drink the crimson light until the air was normal again. A menagerie of tattoos writhed along his bare chest and arms, mixing and merging in patterns that were almost erotic. He had taken some time away recently, which was part of the reason Vector and Battlestar were added. We assumed it was a vacation, but when he came back he had the dead-eyed stare and exhausted posture of someone with PTSD.

  He ignored the remains of the dead villain, stepping into formation with the rest of us. My goggles identified him as Shredmaster, popping up in split boxes, one for each half. The villains got to their feet. Taking up their own formation, though not as clean as ours. Pairs and triples formed based on respect or strength. They still outnumbered us, but now we had some heavy hitters. Now it was a fight.

  “Task Force One is collecting the ones who surrender,” Superdynamic said. “Some of them are fighting, but so far, no fatalities.”

  “Primal, it’s not too late,” I said, knowing it was a lie.

  Primal started to say something but Apogee interrupted. “Fuck the monologue,” she said, charging forward. My eye didn’t register any motion until the flash of purple energy exploded near Primal’s chin. He flew backward into the deep recesses of the room, arms and legs dangling limply in the air. It was a good move, knock out the heaviest hitter first. Prison logic at its finest.

  Apogee’s motion halted with the punch, but she still vibrated. A momentary quiet settled on the room, then Apogee was engulfed in flames. Flamestrike’s cackle was lost in her scream. I lunged at him with a snarl, tackling him around the waist, bearing us both to the ground. Superdynamic was shouting orders into the comms, but they were lost on me as I dug a fist deep into Flamestrike’s guts.

  Using his forearm to ward me off, he grabbed my forearm with his other hand. I began to sizzle, and though the pain was bearable, I knew it was a probe. Raising at the waist, I dropped my full weight behind an elbow that drove through his forearm guard and caught him in the forehead. I heard a hollow thump as his skull cracked against the castle floor.

  I prepared to do it again, ready to end his afternoon, when I felt pressure building in the space between us. A whooshing sound overwhelmed my senses followed by the sudden sense of weightlessness as I hurtled away from Flamestrike. I went limp, ready to activate my rocket boots when gentle hands scooped me up, ending my momentum.

  “Are you ok?” Vector asked as we hovered a couple of feet from the vaulted ceiling. I faced the fight in Vector’s grasp and saw that Battle had engaged a crew of villains that outnumbered them two to one. Apogee zipped through the room, trying to thin the numbers, but playing more of a disruptor role.

  Moe and Battlestar tackled the brutes, taking the brunt of the attacks and peeling when they could. Battlestar’s style was wild, flailing away with hydraulic powered punches that the baddies struggled to avoid. It wasn’t skill, but ferocity and I understood how he and Razor could have come to an understanding. The crazy thing was that the occasional stray blow would catch Moe, and it took me a second to realize it was intentional. Moe absorbed kinetic energy and the force of Battlestar’s punches was probably topping off his tank, even as the big guy created a pile of broken villains at his feet.

  Ruby, Ricochet, and Templar fought in a triangle, holding six of them at bay. Focus moved through the fight like a dervish, redirecting blows, landing strikes of her own that were nowhere near as flashy as anything I could do, but nearly as devastating as my best shot. Superdynamic flew above it al
l, firing beams and coordinating. Solid light objects flitted into existence at intervals, utilizing angles and space to give his team breathing room. It was a war of attrition though, and eventually one of us was going to take a loss.

  “Superdynamic, ping pong?” I said

  “Ahh fuck,” Ricochet said over comms, his voice strained with effort.

  “Let’s try it,” Superdynamic said, sounding like he was in the middle of a back rub at the spa.

  “Ruby, do it,” I said.

  “Been waiting for this, luv,” she said.

  Ruby took a step away from the pair she was fighting. They tried to collapse on her, but Focus took up Ruby’s slack with a lithe beauty that drove me a little nuts. The villains expected Ricochet to close ranks. Instead, he stepped deep into the guys he was fighting leaving himself vulnerable, and being dumb villains, they took the bait. At the last second, Ricochet took a small hop and curled into a ball. Ruby’s sonic blast was all force, no fury, again, unless you had extremely sensitive hearing. In that case, it was a sonic boom.

  There was no visual cue for the blast, but the result was immediate. Ricochet’s power was similar to Moe’s, but instead of absorbing the energy and storing it, his body reflected it. Mr. Newton did the rest. The angle of Ruby’s blast, combined with the force behind it sent the kid flying. The two guys directly in front of him were flattened and he bounded between them, with a force commensurate of his motion. Again, math. They wouldn’t be getting up.

  Ricochet’s biggest problem was control. All the gyros and angle deflectors we built into the suit still couldn’t compensate for the fact the kid was basically free of gravity. It was nearly impossible for him to maneuver himself. Superdynamic handled this part, hard light walls popping up at angles so perfect I was a little jealous. Every bounce increased his momentum exponentially. With Superdynamic’s direction, Ricochet lived up to his name, rebounding around the room, leaving destruction in his wake.

  Flamestrike got to his feet, stepping out of a puddle of melted rock. I saw his eye following Ricochet around the room. “Let’s get him,” I said.

  I don’t know what Vector thought I meant, but twisting his hips he hurled me in Flamestrike’s general direction. Let me repeat, Vector was strong. I wanted to use the rocket boots to give me more speed, but before I could tap a toe, Flamestrike was there. I settled for throwing my fists forward in a double punch that caught him flush in the back. He doubled over as I flew over his shoulders, throwing my legs around and using the boots to stabilize my fall.

  I hovered a second, turning in place to see Flamestrike on the floor, the force of impact enough to create a spiderweb of cracks in the floor. He got to one knee, shaking his head. “I was wondering how this would go,” he said.

  “You’re not going to like it,” I replied.

  He flung a wall of flame and heat at me that was unavoidable. It washed over me and every single inch of my body hurt at the same time. Complete synaptic overload. I tasted melted plastic in my mouth and felt it sludging into my ears as it burned down the canals. I ripped the whole headpiece off, and it felt like grabbing unfloured dough. Pieces of it stuck to my skin and hair as I whipped my hand back and forth to shake it loose.

  My head free, I smelled charred flesh and hair mixed with the oily tang of melted plastic. My hearing was dulled, the plastic starting to cool the second the heat subsided. Flamestrike poured it on, sending waves of heat and flame at me. My suit was made from the same stuff as Superdynamic’s, so it hadn’t melted yet, but my organs were boiling into soup.

  We decided a bow was too much, but I built a wrist launcher into the gauntlets. Biting back a scream, I found it destroyed, but the spike was still intact, the attached high tension line still spooled into its spring-loaded cassette. Ripping the spike loose, I flung it at Flamestrike. He didn’t even have a chance to react as the spike tore through the meaty part of his thigh. I yanked hard on the length of unspooled line, and though I didn’t hear the barbs engage, I felt it as a resonating pop along the line.

  The barrage stopped, my skin lapping up the cool air like a thirsty man who just found water. I knew the pain was real, because Flamestrike’s menacing glee faded, his face twisting into something rabid and angry. He grabbed the spike, but before he could pull it out, I whipped the line hard, twisting my body so that it settled on my shoulder. I half expected the spike to tear out, hoping it would because it would cripple him, but I felt his weight flying my way. Skidding to my knees, I barely avoided him, his elbow clipping my shoulder as he tumbled over me.

  He landed awkwardly, skidding along the floor on his belly, arms and legs splayed around him. I felt the line start to go taut and pulled with all my strength. He screamed as the spike came free with a wet tearing sound. Most disturbing was the sizzling as I realized his blood was akin to magma, pooling around him and melting the floor. Dark blue fire flared at his eyes as he clutched the wound.

  The slagged remains of the spike clattered towards me. I tore the spool cassette off my wrist and let it fall to the floor. Flamestrike howled in pain as he tried to stand, his shredded leg incapable of bearing weight. I thought he might lash out again, but he put both hands over the wound. A geyser of flame sprung up from beneath his clasped hands. He didn’t scream again, but I could see his anguish. The geyser disappeared as if it had never been there and Flamestrike passed out.

  The larger scrum had taken a turn in our favor. Most of the bad guys were down. Apogee was fighting two guys, Sauvage and Blacksaber. Her suit was torn and she had a dozen tiny cuts, but her smile was feral. Vector and Superdynamic flitted through the room, using their ranged attacks to finish off opponents. Ricochet bounced across my view, his speed slower, but still bruising, Templar trailed him, his sword dancing through the air, portals opening to catch Ricochet’s victims, sending them who knows where.

  Battlestar huddled on the floor in the center of a ring of unconscious villains, indifferent to the myriad of fluids that dripped and dribbled from his armor. I had no way of knowing if the man inside, a guy named Jake, was ok, but I started to move that way to back Moe up when the first sonic wave hit me.

  My eyes went wide as I saw Focus laying in a boneless heap. Ruby was focusing all of her power on Anura, a hybrid frog-man who had been created in a lab somewhere. I didn’t know much about the guy, but he was pushing through the wall of pure sonic force Ruby was projecting. There weren’t many supers out there with the juice for that.

  Apogee ditched her pair and struck the villain, but the beast slapped her away, as it inched closer to Ruby and Focus. Ruby was struggling, panicking even, her power was having a limited effect on the huge monster. It seemed like Anura was absorbing the force, or ignoring it altogether. The fight was still going on around me, Moe having to do double duty as more villains poured into the room. Blacksaber and Sauvage closed on Apogee who was back on her feet if a little wobbly. Superdynamic and Vector turned on Anura, but I waved them off. “Help Apogee,” I said. “I got this.”

  I didn’t have time to play games, though. If frog-boy got to Ruby, both she and Focus were dead. The numbers were already tipping away from us, though I’m sure Superdynamic had radioed for reinforcements. Firing up the rocket boots, I barreled towards Anura, but just as I got within hands reach, Ruby’s force wave stopped me cold. I opened the throttle and moved an inch. I reached for Anura and grasped air.

  I landed beside Anura, a bit behind him, but was instantly hit by Ruby’s power. She was hurling raw waves of sound to keep the big-ass frog away. It wasn’t working, though, as the beast was using its sticky hands and feet to keep from flying off. I had no such luck. The waves hit me and I rolled away like a kitten in a hurricane. I thought to fire the rockets, but I was flipping all over the place. I worked on stopping the roll by opening my arms and flopping on my stomach.

  Ricochet roared past but Ruby’s power sent him flying back towards me. I came to my knees and caught him. Ruby was in full panic mode. She floated six inches off the g
round, vibratory waves rippling the air, but Anura was within a foot of her. I don’t know how Anura endured. The ground had cracked into a crater around them, the roof above was shattering and dismembering the structure.

  Battle had gone full defensive as the wake of Ruby’s onslaught shook the entire room. Even the other villains had forgone the fight, instead choosing to take cover or run through one of the growing cracks in the ceiling. Superdynamic and Vector pushed against it, dodging truck-sized chunks of debris, but even they couldn’t get closer. They fired energy beams at Anura, but Ruby’s barrier absorbed them.

  Apogee was back, but couldn’t make any headway, even at max speed. She simply had no way to move at full speed against the expanding waves of sound. I thought about chucking a rock, but Anura was a foot or two from laying hands on Ruby.

  “We need to get closer!” Ricochet said. He scrabbled at the floor, on the verge of panic himself. He couldn’t find purchase. There wasn’t anywhere to get a grip.

  Grip

  “Hold on,” I screamed at him, punching down into the stone ground, creating a handhold. Ricochet looped skinny arms around my neck as I grabbed the jagged rock and forced myself forward. Yeah, this was going to work. Instead of punching into the rock, I dug my clawed hand, making grips by boring my fingers into the stone.

  And slowly we made progress.

  I wasn’t too far from Anura, but he was far closer to his target. The sound waves grew stronger as we pushed forward. I angled myself so I was directly behind the huge frog, and as I had hoped, his body was a sort of barrier against Ruby’s power. The room was starting to fall apart, the ground was shifting, giving, and there were no more walls to the structure Primal had constructed. We were in the middle of a hurricane, sound waves walloping us all about like ants.

  I looked around and saw no one standing. Templar had struck his sword into the stone floor, creating a shield that protected Battle, Apogee and some of the villains. Primal stood near the back of the room. He could have killed all of us, ended Anura’s threat with a thought, but he stood alone, unaffected by the maelstrom. He stared at me with a big, creepy smile on his dark face. He lifted his arms and made stairs that burrowed into the earth, stepping out of view with a little nod.