by Lucas Flint
“What is this?” said the Midnight Menace, turning to face her. “Girl, who are you and where did you come from?”
“Are you the Midnight Menace?” said Blizzard. I just barely managed to hear her, because she was speaking very quietly, even more quietly than usual.
“Yes, of course,” said the Midnight Menace. “Again, who are—”
Blizzard raised her hands, which were now glowing white, and unleashed a huge blast of ice cold air at him.
Before the startled eyes of every person in the Hall, the Midnight Menace was turned into a frozen statue. Even the Midnight Menace didn't get a chance to respond before he was completely frozen over, with his arms held over his face defensively.
Then Blizzard—as if she had not just done that—looked over at Omega Man, who wore an expression pure shock, and said, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear: “I did it, Omega Man … just as you told me to.”
Chapter Seventeen
The heaviest silence I had ever felt landed on the entire Hero Hall. Every single person, from the NHA and the INJ, was staring at Blizzard without saying a thing. My brain was unable to comprehend what I was even hearing and, based on the shocked expressions of Strike and Dizzy, even they didn't understand it. Dizzy even dropped her nacho plate onto the floor.
The leaders on the platform looked equally shocked. Omega Man, in particular, looked like someone had just punched him in the face. He seemed at a complete loss for words, which was surprising because I had never known him to not know what to say in any situation.
“Blizzard?” I whispered.
Like a spell had broken, the INJ leader in golden samurai stood up and, pointing at Omega Man, shouted, “I knew it! This was all a set up. You brought us all here just to kill our leader! You never intended to make peace with the INJ at all. This means war!”
“What?” said Omega Man, shaking his head. “I have no idea what Blizzard is even talking about.”
“Don't play dumb!” the golden samurai—who, if I recalled correctly, was named Samurai—shouted. He drew his sword, which was glowing with energy, and jumped at Omega Man with his sword above his head.
Samurai landed on the table in front of Omega Man and brought his sword down on Omega Man's head, but Omega Man caught it with both his hands, somehow holding it back through sheer physical strength alone.
As soon as that happened, all hell broke loose. People in the crowd started fighting each other, INJ members fighting NHA members, blasts of energy and fire being toss back forth, flying heroes clashing in the air above, and sonic bursts being met by thrown furniture. It was all so crazy that I was almost pulled into it, but Strike, Dizzy, and I backed up to the back wall away from all of the fighting.
“What the hell was that?” said Dizzy in shock, looking at all of the fighting going on. “Why did Blizzard attack the Midnight Menace like that? Is she the one behind everything that's been happening?”
“I don't know,” I said. I tried to look over the crowd to see Blizzard, but with all of the chaos and fighting, it was almost impossible to see whether Blizzard was still up there. “I need to find her so I can talk to her. Something is going on here but I'm just not sure what.”
I immediately raised my watch to my mouth and shouted, “Stinger! Shell! Treehugger! Talon! We need to find Blizzard, and fast!”
“No can do, Bolt!” came Stinger's voice from the watch, just barely audible over the chaos that had erupted all around us. “Shell and I are trying to avoid getting killed by this really angry guy who looks like a walking rock. Can't help!”
“Talon and I are stuck, too!” Treehugger's voice wailed over my watch. “Help!”
I cursed and said, “Don't worry, guys. You just try to survive and keep safe while I look for Blizzard. I'll get to the bottom of this and hopefully get the facts before this fight becomes any worse.”
I looked at Strike and Dizzy. “We need to get out of here and fast.”
“Sure,” said Strike, nodding. “We'll help you as best as we can.”
I nodded and then flew over the crowd, but I had to swerve almost immediately to avoid a chair that someone had thrown into the air. I flew up as close to the ceiling as I could and looked around the Hall, searching desperately for Blizzard through the chaotic battle taking place below. With so many people fighting each other, combined with loud bursts of sound and light, it was almost impossible to find Blizzard, not helped by the fact that I had to make sure I didn't get hit out of the air by debris or misaimed attacks.
Then I saw her. At the entrance, Blizzard slipped through it to the outside. I immediately shot after her and was soon joined by Strike and Dizzy, who were flying on one of the tables thanks to Strike's magnetic powers. A part of me felt guilty for leaving the others behind to fend for themselves, but I knew that the only way to stop this madness was to find and capture Blizzard and find out why she had done what she had done.
But when we got to the doors, we discovered they were frozen shut. Not that that was much of an obstacle for us, however. I just punched through them as hard as I could, smashing the frozen doors apart and allowing me, Strike, and Dizzy to run outside.
As soon as we left the Hall, we spotted Blizzard. She was running down the front steps of the Hall, but I wasn't going to let her get away. I shouted, “Blizzard! Stop!”
To my surprise, she did stop, but then she whirled around and fired twin beams of ice at us. I flew into the air, while Strike and Dizzy separated to avoid getting frozen.
Flying high, I landed behind Blizzard. She immediately whirled around again, raising her hands to freeze me, but I grabbed her wrists and twisted her arms in painful, unnatural directions; not enough to break them, but enough to break her concentration. Her hands stopped glowing as she cried out in pain, though her body kept generating cold air anyway.
Despite that, she still struggled against me, although due to the fact that she didn't have super strength her efforts were pretty futile.
“Give up, Blizzard,” I said. “Or I'll use even more force on you than I already have. I want to help you and I can't do that if you're trying to fight me.”
Blizzard finally looked at me, but her eyes were no longer normal. They were that same glowing white that I had seen back in the Training Room when the practice bots tried to kill us.
“Let me go!” Blizzard shouted. Her voice didn't sound normal; it sounded like an echo. “Let me go now!”
I felt the temperature instantly drop around me. Immediately, I let go of Blizzard's arms and jumped backwards just in time to avoid getting impaled by a huge ice pillar that shot out of the earth.
Skidding backwards, I said, “Okay, Blizzard. I said I was going to use force, so get ready for the pain!”
I prepared to run after her, but then Blizzard waved her hands and my feet were instantly frozen inside thick blocks of ice. The sudden appearance of the ice almost made me trip over myself, but I couldn't fall down due to how thick the ice was. And even worse, the ice was starting to crawl up my legs, which made me start to panic a little.
“Freeze,” said Blizzard, her voice never changing. “Freeze, freeze!”
But then, out of nowhere, twin laser beams struck Blizzard in the side. The blast sent her flying and she crashed into the street where she lay with a stunned look on her face, like someone had just slapped her.
I looked over to see Strike—his eyes glowing with charged energy—and Dizzy running down the steps toward us. Strike shot two more beams out of his eyes, which shattered the ice blocks around my feet and gave me freedom again.
“Thanks,” I said as they approached. “I was worried that I was about to become a human Popsicle for a second there.”
“No problem,” said Strike, waving off my thanks like it was nothing. “Blizzard is still conscious, though, so we have to stop her before she gets up again.”
I nodded and looked over at Blizzard. She was sitting up now, rubbing her head, but before she could do anything else, Strike said
, “Dizzy, make sure she can't stand!”
Dizzy nodded and focused on Blizzard. Immediately, Blizzard closed her eyes and put her hands on her head, moaning in pain. She tried to stand up, but she was clearly too wobbly to achieve that.
Seeing a moment to take advantage of, I zoomed over to Blizzard and pinned her to the ground. She cried out in outrage, but again my superior strength subdued her. This time, I put more pressure on her arms, hoping to put her in so much pain that she wouldn't be able to concentrate long enough to use her powers. Her skin was cold as ice, but I held her down anyway, keeping her from even sitting up.
“Okay,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level, but it was difficult because I was so angry. “Tell us why you're doing this, Blizzard. Have you been manipulating both sides for the past few weeks? Is this all your doing? Are you behind this insanity? If so, why?”
Blizzard didn't answer, but I did notice her hands starting to glow again. So I applied more pressure, twisting her arms just enough that she cried out in pain again and her hands stopped glowing.
“Don't even try to use your powers,” I said. “If you don't want to spend the next several months with your arms in casts, then tell us everything you know about what's been happening. Or else.”
Blizzard stopped struggling underneath me. She didn't say anything, which made me wonder if she was just going to stay silent or if she knew that my threat was serious.
That was when I heard a strange whistling noise nearby. I didn't know where it was coming from, though, until Strike shouted, “Watch out!”
I looked up in time to see a missile flying through the air toward us. It was coming too fast for me to dodge or deflect, but then Strike thrust his hands at it and the metal missile immediately veered off target. It crashed into the ground hundreds of feet away from us, where it exploded, sending a wave of fire and heat at us.
I immediately covered Blizzard with my body. My costume was heat resistant, so when the explosion passed over us, I managed to take most of it without suffering any injuries. All I felt was the intense heat and bits of debris hitting my back and my hearing was practically blown out by the sound of the explosion as it went off. Blizzard didn't even try to throw me off, probably because she didn't want to get caught in the explosion.
When the explosion passed, I looked over my shoulder and saw that all that remained was a smoking crater where the missile had crashed. I was amazed that we had survived it, which just made me even more thankful for my super suit.
But then I remembered that Strike and Dizzy were here, too, and looked over to see both of them lying on the ground unconscious. It looked like they had somehow managed to avoid the worst of the explosion, but they were clearly down for the count and would probably need medical attention to make sure they didn't suffer any serious burns or injuries.
“Strike? Dizzy?” I said. I looked at the sky again and said, “Where did that missile even come from?”
Then I heard the sounds of a jet engine and a large robot flew out from behind a nearby building. It flew over to us and landed on the ground in the center of the crater, where it towered over Blizzard and I.
Much to my surprise, this robot looked exactly like the Chaos bots that Master Chaos had used against me what felt like a lifetime ago now. Same general build, same limb design, same everything, which was shocking because I had thought that the government had retaken all of the stolen Project Neo weapons that Master Chaos had had in his possession.
But this Chaos bot looked a little different from the others. Its main body had been replaced by what looked like the cockpit of a mecha, but the glass was too dark for me to see through. I could tell there was someone inside it, but I could not identify the pilot.
Then the cockpit slowly but surely started rising open. I watched, tense, as the cockpit opened bit by bit, until soon I could see just who was siting in the cockpit of that mecha.
The woman sitting in the mecha's cockpit was a middle-aged Hispanic wearing a black body suit. The only part of her body that her suit left unexposed was her face, which allowed me to instantly recognize her, though I could hardly believe my own eyes.
“Maria Candle?” I said, not believing the words that came from my mouth even as I spoke them.
Maria Candle, the wife and widow of Master Chaos, smiled at me when I said her name. “Hello, Bolt … or should I say, Kevin Jason. It has been a long time since we last saw each other, but it doesn't matter because my face will be the last you ever see.”
Chapter Eighteen
I blinked several times, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but no matter how many times I blinked, Maria's face didn't change.
“No way,” I said, still keeping my grip on Blizzard, even though she seemed to be unconscious. “Impossible.”
“Impossible?” said Maria. She laughed. “If that were true, I wouldn't even be here right now. But I am pleased to see that you are shocked. It means that you never even suspected that I might be behind any of this.”
I couldn't understand it. The last time I saw Maria, she had been lying unconscious in the warehouse where Dad and I had confronted Master Chaos. I later learned that she had escaped during the chaos of our fight with her husband, but I hadn't thought I'd ever see her again. At the very least, I thought that the G-Men, who were looking for her, would catch her before I did. I hadn't expected to see her on Hero Island, of all places.
“What are you doing here?” I said. “And where did you get the robot?”
“I came here to watch the show,” said Maria. Her mecha gestured at Hero Hall, from which the sounds of battle kept emitting. “And to see your death. As for where I got the robot, I took one of my dead husband's robots with me when I fled that warehouse and then modified it to act as my mecha.”
“So you were behind everything,” I said. I rose above Blizzard, letting her go because I frankly didn't think she was going anywhere anytime soon. “Were you that woman who reprogrammed the practice bots to try to kill Blizzard and me?”
“Of course,” said Maria. “It wasn't as easy as it looked, though, because I had a hard time getting in and out of your base unnoticed. I am not a very athletic woman, so sneaking around was difficult.”
“How did you get past Carl?” I said. “That shouldn't even be possible.”
Maria chuckled. “I didn't just steal this robot from Project Neo. I took quite a few other devices I thought could be useful. One such device was an invisibility belt. Not only did it make me invisible to the naked eye, but it also cloaked me from most sensors. It did not, however, make me silent, which was why I needed to sneak around.”
“Then how did we see you on our security footage if you were using an invisibility belt?” I demanded.
“That was intentional, little boy,” said Maria. “If no one had seen me, then it would have been harder to complete my grand master plan.”
“And what would that be?” I said. “Are you trying to pit the NHA against the INJ?”
“But of course,” said Maria. “I am glad you figured it out, though a little surprised, because you aren't nearly as smart as your father. That INJ badge I wore was a fake, but I spent a long time making it, using pictures of INJ badges on the Internet to get it exactly right.”
“And it worked,” I said. My hands balled into fists when I heard what sounded like an explosion come from Hero Hall. “Right now, the NHA and INJ are fighting in Hero Hall, maybe even killing each other. It might even lead to war.”
“I know,” said Maria. She smirked. “I feel so pleased with myself. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I managed to pull it off anyway. Bernard would be so proud of me if your father hadn't killed him.”
“Why?” I said. “Why did you do this? I thought you hated me and my Dad, not the NHA or the INJ.”
“But I hate them, too,” said Maria, “or at least the NHA. After all, your father may have been the one to defeat Bernard the first time, but the NHA helped take him to prison. They
broke our family before it could even get started, so I will destroy them by having them get into a senseless conflict with the INJ that will help neither of them.”
“What about Blizzard?” I said. I glanced down at her. “Was she part of your plan, too?”
“Not originally,” said Maria, shaking her head. “But when I learned about her inability to control her own powers, well, I had to incorporate that into my plan, you understand.”
“Incorporate it into your plan?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I had to get her in the right position to use her powers to destroy the NHA and INJ,” said Maria. “I planned, at first, to have her freeze the entire island over, but I think having her assassinate the Midnight Menace is far more effective, because it now has the NHA and INJ trying to kill each other without risk of freezing myself.”
“How did you make Blizzard attack the Midnight Menace?” I said. “She would never do that on her own.”
“Another Project Neo device,” said Maria. “I sneaked into the House last night and placed a device in her head that gives me a little bit of control and influence over her actions. I even tricked her into thinking Omega Man told her to do it. I am so pleased with that.”
My hands balled into fists. “And were you behind the murders of those guys in the Cavern? And that giant lizard creature?”
“Of course,” said Maria. “I used that same cloaking device I used to sneak into your base to sneak into the New Heroes' little base and kill those two, leaving the NHA's initials as 'evidence' that your people were trying to kill their people. As for the lizard, I got it from an old friend of my husband's, one of his supervillain friends from back in the day who is just as eager to see the destruction of the NHA and INJ as I am. I was also the one who shot that dart into Muscle, which would have killed him if you and Blizzard had not gotten him the medical help he needed.”
