Diary of a Teenage Superhero

by Darrell Pitt

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  He flings the flame at me and I leap to one side. The ball of fire strikes the wall behind me. I hear Jones scream and see him race to the open door.

  “Run!” Twelve thunders at him as he disappears through the doorway. “Run and tell them a God has come to earth!”

  Oh dear.

  Twelve has been reading too many comic books.

  He leaps over a table and cartwheels over a bench. I can’t let him touch me. If he has everyone’s combined powers then he has Ebony’s transmutation ability. He could turn me to dust in seconds.

  I create a force shield between us and he collides with it. He points at me and a jagged band of ice tries to reach through the shield.

  Damn, he’s strong.

  “They will build a statue to me!” he snarls.

  I don’t care about statues. Instead, I focus on removing his air supply. Suddenly he finds out what life without oxygen is like. At the same time I leap over a table and through the exit door. While we’re fighting in the lab the others are in danger. I need to get him away from them and out into the open.

  Racing down the corridor I keep a shield up behind me, but Twelve doesn’t follow. Mr. Jones is already gone. I jump into an elevator and hit the button for The Cavern. There’s plenty of room up there. At least I’ll be able to maneuver –

  The elevator shudders violently. I look down at my feet. It took me some time to get used to flying. Is it possible that –

  A fist slams through the floor.

  Damn!

  Twelve’s enraged face appears through the jagged tear in the floor.

  “You will obey me, child! You will maneuver –”

  I send a wall of wind at him that takes out the entire floor. The elevator – or what remains of it – continues to rise. I destroy its ceiling and fly past the useless cable. Down below Twelve has fallen several floors and punched a hole in one of the walls to stop his descent.

  Zooming past several floors I reach ground level and force air molecules between the doors. A sound comes rushing at me as I throw myself through the gap.

  A ball of white hot fire screams up the elevator well and out of sight. I hear an explosion and screaming. The ground shudders. Sirens start sounding throughout the complex. Fire alarms come to life. I fly across a sea of machinery.

  Another explosion sounds from the direction of the shaft. Landing, I look back and see an enormous piece of machinery flying through the air. It slams into a number of scientists scattering for cover.

  No!

  I take to the air again. I’ve got to take Twelve out as quickly as possible. He is completely out of control. Whereas I have compunctions about taking a human life, he is clearly beyond caring about such trivialities. I build up a blast force of air, but before I can hurl it at him he fires a column of ice at me and I am instantly encased within –

  – a block of ice.

  Cold.

  It’s so damn cold.

  I am completely enclosed within a frozen coffin. Even before I hit the floor the block of ice has expanded so rapidly it has become several feet thick. It is almost worse than drowning; I am unable to move at all.

  Yet, that’s not completely true. There is the tiniest space between my body and the ice. It’s not even a sixteenth of an inch, but I think it might be enough. I focus on that tiny pocket of air. I make it search out for a weakness in the ice. It finds a tiny crack near my pelvis. It breaks into that crack and expands it and like a stone cutter smashing open a rock with a single blow –

  Cracckkk!

  The ice explodes into a thousand pieces. I’m just in time to see a look of astonishment on the alien’s face before I wipe away the expression with a blast of hurricane wind that knocks him flying.

  A hail of bullets ring out just as Twelve regains his feet.

  Damn.

  Fortunately they’re aimed at Twelve. Unfortunately, they don’t make a mark. Obviously his alien makeup also gives him some sort of super tough skin. How quickly we become obsolete. While Twelve is distracted I pick up a bench and decide to use it as a club. As I bring it around to take off the alien’s head, he swings about and grabs it in mid-air.

  He turns it to white powder.

  That’s a problem. Anything I hit him with is just going to dissolve into some chemical compound. Unless I throw so many things at him at once that he can’t focus on them all simultaneously.

  Within seconds I’ve got dozens of items flying through the air at him. I see a cut open up over his left eye. Okay. I’m getting somewhere now. His invulnerability is dependent on his focus. If he is kept busy, he can’t focus on protecting himself.

  A person races across the concourse toward Twelve. At first I think it’s a guard trying to attack him. Then I realize it’s Mr. Evans, Twelve’s receptionist. Don’t tell me he’s going to –

  “No!” I yell. “Keep back from him!”

  Through some misguided loyalty, Evans has decided to try to make Twelve see reason.

  There’s nothing I can do. The aide has already reached the alien. Twelve looks up to see the man and laughs. It is the delusional cackle of a madman. The expression on Evan’s face falters.

  “Get back!” I scream.

  Twelve steps forward. “I want to thank you for all your years of service, Mr. Evans.”

  He grabs the aide and turns him to a yellow powder. Sulfur. The person that was Mr. Evans splats to the floor. Now Twelve returns his attention to me.

  He blasts me with another beam of fire. I only just get my shield up in time. This time the heat is so intense I can’t concentrate on staying in the air. I hit the floor and curl up into a ball as I struggle to keep my barrier in place. Twelve is directing some sort of nova blast at me, a heat so intense it’s seeping through the barrier.

  I should have flown away, I think. Now it’s too late.

  At that instant the blast ends. The floor all around me is scorched and burning. I expect to see Twelve advancing on me, but instead he is lying on the floor about ten feet away. He is badly burnt.

  What has happened?

  A voice rings out from my right.

  “You take on one of us,” Chad yells. “You take on all of us!”