by Matt Cowper
He blinked, and I felt something cold and clammy sliding up my leg. I looked down, and saw the whole floor shifting. The slime that we’d been traipsing across was running towards me in tiny waves.
“Dak, conjure up a force field, or burn this stuff!” I thought-spoke.
“I…I cannot.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?!”
“My death-mate is in agony,” Dak said, in as soft a think-speaking voice as a God of Destruction could utter. “It is difficult to function in such a grief-filled time.”
The slime was up to my stomach. It felt like I’d been dunked into a tub of mayonnaise. But, while my flesh wasn’t sloughing off my body, I knew this stuff wasn’t as harmless as mayo. It was going to immobilize and suffocate me if I didn’t do something.
I couldn’t wait around arguing with Dak until the goo covered me. I bent my knees and jumped. It felt like a fifty-pound weight was tied around my waist, but I broke free of the slime’s suction and landed on Befouler’s giant life-support unit. I didn’t think the slime would stop trying to cover me simply because I was no longer on the floor, but this should still give me a few seconds to come up with a plan.
Pain ripped through my body. Every hair stood on end, my eyes felt like they were about to dissolve, my teeth felt like the most sadistic dentist in the world was drilling on them. I’m sure I screamed, but I didn’t hear it. I fell to the floor, smoking and shaking.
I should’ve known Befouler had rigged the thing up with all sorts of countermeasures. He’d nearly shocked the life out of me – and now I was on my back, and almost covered by the slime. I struggled, but an infant in the crib flailed with more strength than I did.
“Dak, quit bawling over Deathrain and help me!” I thought-spoke.
“Must I repeat myself? I am too melancholy. I…I am sorry, John Wagner.”
A God of Destruction, rendered ineffective by concern for a loved one. Any other time, it would have been comical.
Tendrils of slime ripped off my gas mask, and then tried to enter my mouth. I spat and jerked my head around, but I was only delaying the inevitable. This felt like being at the bottom of Jameson Bay, with Waverush gloating above me….
That was it! Nothing like jealousy to get a glum lover motivated.
“Dak, if Waverush were here, he would’ve saved Deathrain and beaten Befouler already,” I thought-spoke.
“That is not true!”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “He saved her from an Overdrive Juice-infused Captain Neptune, didn’t he? He didn’t mope around like you and let her suffer.”
“Bah! I will show you, John Wagner! Dakroth’gannith’formaz is better than the Rusher of Waves at everything! Look upon my power!”
I felt something exploding out of my God Arm, but the slime had my head pinned, so I couldn’t see it. I heard a hissing noise, like a steak being tossed on the grill, and the smell of burning rubber reached my nostrils. Dak was burning away the slime somehow; in a few seconds, I could move freely. I got to my feet as quickly as I could and looked at the exposed parts of my arm – they were bright green, and green liquid was shooting all over the lair.
“What the hell is this?” I thought-spoke.
“It is acid,” Dak rumbled. “The Foul To Make may think himself an expert on chemicals, but the God of Destruction can create substances just as corrosive. His slime is now useless.”
“What about me, Dak?! This stuff is going right through my clothes!”
“It will not harm you, if that is what you are worried about. And your clothes are of no concern. You needed new ones anyway.”
“I admit, I’m impressed,” Befouler said. “That acid must be quite strong to dissolve my Corrupting Slime. Your God Arm intrigues me even more.”
“You ain’t getting it off me, Befouler,” I said. “And…Deathrain? Where is she?”
I looked around frantically, but I didn’t see her, and I couldn’t hear the screams that had unnerved me.
“I put her somewhere for safekeeping,” Befouler said. “As I’ve told you, I don’t want your friend dead – or is she a lover? No matter. I only want her help.”
“That’s not the most civil way to ask for help,” I said. “What do you want with her?”
“I told you that, but you weren’t paying attention.” He shook his head, like a teacher dealing with a blockhead student. “I’m dying, and although I’ve exerted myself enormously, I’ve only been able to mitigate my deterioration, not stop it completely. This woman has a healing factor – if I find a way to replicate it, the world will not be robbed of my genius.”
“Arrogant much?” I said. The Corrupting Slime, as Befouler called it, kept moving towards me, but Dak’s acid melted it before it got too close. Although I was standing within a small slime-free circle, I didn’t feel safe; I knew this wasn’t the supervillain’s only defense.
“He is indeed possessed of a surfeit of hubris,” Dak rumbled, “and this comes from one who knows much about arrogance. Tell me where you have hidden Deathrain, or I will use this acid against you, Foul To Make.”
“Does anyone ever take your threats seriously?” Befouler said. “You are no god, but the figment of some absurd fantasy writer’s imagination. Yes, I have researched you both. I know your origin story – and I also know you were once the Daring Destroyer.”
I tried to keep on a poker face, but if this was an actual poker game, I was sure I’d lose all my chips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Befouler let out a laugh as dry as a desert. “Utterly unconvincing. But your alias doesn’t concern me now; it’s just a bit of trivia I’ve held on to.” He cocked his head, and a large cylinder clanked out of the side of his life-support unit. Metal flaps twisted and folded, and translucent wires glowed. The cylinder turned a few degrees, aiming its shining blue bore at me.
It was an ion cannon. I wiped sweat from my brow.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Let’s test that arm of yours in another way, Mr. Wagner,” Befouler said, rubbing his hands together. “Can this god of yours protect you from a close-range ion cannon blast? Or perhaps you will contest the beam with a beam of your own? I’m interested to see what tactics you choose.” The ion cannon’s glow intensified, in proportion to Befouler’s evil grin. “Prepare yourself, Daring Destroyer.”
“Dak, are you able to create a beam as powerful as that?” I thought-spoke.
“Of course,” Dak rumbled. “I can create beams that can slice planets in two, or that can implode stars, or—”
“Cut the god-crap! Can you do it, for real?”
“I…believe so. Let me muster my grand and devastating energies.”
“We don’t have time to muster!”
The ion cannon whined as it prepared to unleash a blue bolt of death at me. The air around me crackled, and the gloomy interior of the underground lair was suddenly awash in light. I could either stand there and hold my God Arm out in front of me, and hope it could absorb or deflect the blast, even though Dak was unprepared, or I could dive to the side, and hope I landed outside of the cannon’s line of fire. Option two seemed like a better choice. I crouched, and got ready for an Olympic-level jump.
Two things happened at once. First, the cannon fired; it shook the lair like an earthquake, and its light forced me to clamp my eyes shut. Second, something slammed into my side, driving me several yards to my right, until I hit the cold concrete wall.
I opened my eyes. A cat-girl in an orange leotard was straddling me – Felicia, or more accurately, the Fractious Feline.
“Felicia?!” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Can you use my superhero name, please?” she whispered into my ear. “There’s a bad guy like five yards away.” She jumped up, yanking me up along with her. “And some gratitude would be nice.”
“Saintly whore!” Dak rumbled. “Your presence is unwanted. Leave, now!”
“Shut up,” Felicia hissed, as only a cat-gir
l could hiss. “Let’s take this guy out, Johnny – then we can talk.”
“How did you know I was here?” I said. “Have you been following me?”
Her tail lashed through the air. “Yes, I have, OK? Can we focus on the evil megalomaniac right now? Or do you want to try and block another one of those?”
She pointed to the rubble the ion cannon blast had left in its wake. Dozens of cylinders had been vaporized, and large chunks of concrete had been ripped from the wall. The destruction trailed off into the darkness; the blast probably hadn’t stopped until it hit the wall where we entered.
“Point taken,” I said, turning to Befouler. “Ready for round two, jackass?”
Befouler looked more bemused than worried. “Ah, the Felicitous Feline – aka Felicia Kennicott.”
I glanced over at Felicia. Her poker face was probably worse than mine: she blushed, her tail twitched, and she blinked her eyes about fifty times in three seconds.
“It’s Fractious Feline,” she said, trying to sound proud; it didn’t come off.
“A new moniker, hm?” Befouler said. “Is that supposed to make the criminal underworld tremble in fear?”
Felicia hissed again. “I’m going to wipe that smug look off your face, Befouler.” She leapt into the air, landing a few feet from the villain. Before she could get closer, though, a barrage of lasers shot out of the life-support unit. For a normal person, this would have been certain death – for Felicia, dodging them was as easy as avoiding punches from a ninety-year-old man. She rolled, twisted, flipped, and bounced, and the lasers continued to fly by harmlessly.
Harmlessly for her, that is. I was nowhere near as agile. I ran to the opposite side of the corridor and ducked behind one of Befouler’s vat control panels. All this time, Dak continued to sling out acid to keep the slime at bay. Felicia, though, was hopping around right in the thick of it, and while she was moving too quickly for it to get a hold on her, one slip-up and she’d be caught, and those lasers would rip right through her.
“Felicia, be careful!” I yelled. “The slime—”
“I know about the slime!” she yelled back as she completed a double backflip. “How about you get rid of it?”
“Dak—” I said.
“I am not helping her,” Dak rumbled. “I hope she perishes, so I can insult her corpse, and then turn it to ash.”
“Dak!”
“What, John Wagner? Those are my feelings. I do not hide them. Why does the truth outrage you so?”
“Fine, OK…sorry…whatever…but she’s trying to help us save Deathrain!”
“While that may be true, her presence here means a love triangle, as you humans call it, will develop once we triumph. I have taken great pains to ensure a love triangle, or a love quadrangle, if you include Julia Anderson, does not happen.”
“Why couldn’t I have bonded with a normal god?” I murmured.
I couldn’t just sit here, though, and let Felicia dance around forever. I poked out my head, and a laser zipped by so closely it took off some of my stubble.
“Oh well,” I said. “This is suicidal, but at least the collection agencies can’t hound you in the grave.”
I took a deep breath, then ran out into the chaos. A laser singed my ear. Another put a hole in my jeans.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Dak rumbled.
“Just keep the acid going,” I thought-spoke.
Befouler’s life-support contraption had at least twenty wires of various sizes and colors running to it. While a lot of them certainly kept him alive, others probably connected him to all his tech and countermeasures; he’d said he could access this stuff mentally. It appeared he had a cranial jack like Netmaster and all the other Bootup hackers.
I was planning to toss some acid onto those wires. I didn’t know which wires served which function, and I didn’t care; destroying them would have to slow Befouler down.
“Johnny, what are you doing?” Felicia said as she came out of a double tuck. “Get down!”
“Just trying to help,” I said. “The score’s tied, it’s the bottom of the ninth, and Johnny Wagner is gonna steal home.”
I dropped down into a baseball slide, easily covering twelve feet. Of course, the floor was slick with slime Dak hadn’t melted yet, but it was still quite a feat. The kids – full-grown men, now – I’d played baseball with at the Bootheel sandlot would’ve been impressed.
I was now less than a foot from Befouler. He looked down at me with that bemused expression, and I knew he was about to focus some of those lasers on me.
“Sliding right into the maw of the lion, aren’t you?” he said.
“And he’s safe!” I said, slinging acid onto as many wires as I could. “Swashbucklers win! Swashbucklers win!”
“Enough with your baseball analogies!” Befouler said. “I hate the sport – what are you doing to my equipment?”
“Cutting your cords, Befouler,” I said. “Without them, you’re helpless.”
“Is that what you think, you insignificant oaf?” he sneered. “You don’t think I’ve considered the possibility that someone would attempt this very thing? I have triple-redundancies, protected back-up wires, wireless access to my technology through my brain-chip.”
Of course he did. This guy wasn’t some psychopath like Balderdash or some thug like Gale Force. He was a scientist, an engineer, a mastermind – and I’d slid right in front of his laser array.
“Take solace in the fact that I won’t kill you – not for a long while,” Befouler said. A half-dozen of the lasers started glowing red, prepared to cut through me. “Like your friend, I want to experiment on you first. I do believe I know a way to extract that God Arm.”
“Never!” Dak roared. “I will fight you with every godly breath I exhale! I will not let another puny mortal conquer me!”
“I will conquer you, if I decide to do so,” Befouler said. “You may be magical, but magic is just science pushed to its extreme limits…wait, what is happening? I feel…nothing. Someone has severed my connections!”
Every source of light in the lair had been snuffed, including Befouler’s lasers. I got to my feet and spun around stupidly, even though I couldn’t see a thing, afraid this was some trickery. After a few moments, I stopped and used my head for something besides a hat rack, as my old man used to say.
“Dak, some light, please,” I thought-spoke.
“Yes, I will destroy this darkness,” Dak rumbled. “I do not like darkness I cannot see in.”
My God Arm lit up whitish-yellow, like a giant candle, illuminating the area. Befouler was quivering in his giant metal chair, and the Corrupting Slime surrounding him was once again spread out on the floor in a thin, unmoving layer.
“Felicia?” I said, looking around. “Are you OK?”
“I’m here,” she replied. She burst out of the darkness, did a few cartwheels, and then jumped onto the life-support unit. She smiled down at me and twitched her whiskers. “Cat’s eyes, remember? I can see in the dark.”
Befouler looked up at her scornfully, and Felicia held out a small metal orb. “I didn’t want to use this, but you forced my hand. Thanks to this, nothing electronic will work in a five-hundred yard radius. Without your tech, you’re nothing. Give up.”
“Impossible,” the villain croaked. “My equipment is shielded. An electromagnetic pulse should have no effect.”
“It’s not an EMP,” Felicia said. “It’s an EDE pulse. EDE means ‘extra-dimensional energy.’ It’s one of Professor Perfection’s new superhero tools. Nothing’s been developed yet that can counter it.”
“Professor Perfection?!” Befouler gasped. “How does a peasant like you have dealings with him?”
Felicia’s whiskers twitched. “Give up. Now.”
“Without my tech…I will die,” Befouler wheezed. “Is that what…you want?”
“No,” Felicia said, “but you won’t die. You see, unlike an EMP, an EDE pulse is reversible. All I have to do is flick a li
ttle switch on this ball, and your system will boot back up.”
“Give me that!” He grabbed at her, but Felicia’s hands were far too quick for him to even come close to getting the orb. “I…am slipping. If you don’t reverse this….”
“I’m going to, don’t worry,” Felicia said. “But I want assurances from you first.”
“What…do you mean?”
“If I cancel out the EDE pulse, you’ll be able to attack us again,” she said. “Obviously, we don’t want that. I’ll have to reactivate the EDE, and we’ll have to do this all over again, and you’ll fade even more.” She fixed her green eyes on him. “I don’t kill in cold blood, but if the choice is between your life and me and Johnny’s lives, you know what I’m going to choose. So – if I reverse this, will you play nice?”
Befouler glared at her for a long minute. I was sure he was calculating himself, wondering if he could somehow salvage this situation.
“What’s it going to be, Befouler?” Felicia said.
The villain coughed, spat up something thick and ugly, and said: “I know when I’ve been bested. You have nothing more to fear from me.”
Felicia clicked something on the orb, and I heard a low hum. Several buttons and panels on the life-support blinked to life, and fluids started flowing through the wires I hadn’t destroyed. Befouler sighed. He already looked better – well, as better as a near-dead man could look. The screen behind him blinked back on, so I mentally asked Dak to dim my God Arm, since we could now see without it.
“Good choice,” Felicia said. “Better to choose life for yourself than to go down in a blaze of hate.”
“Go to hell,” Befouler rasped.
I stared at my ex-girlfriend. She’d always been good at superheroing, but not this good. “That was—”
“Amazing? Spectacular? Sensational?” she said. She gave me a saucy grin. “I’ve gotten better at all this since we…broke up.” She backflipped off the life-support unit and looked at me with her green eyes. “It’s all about planning, Johnny. You and that woman were walking around this place forever, not accomplishing anything, and then you walk right down here like you’re facing some fifth-rate bad guy.”
