Leopold’s expression changed, as if he hadn’t been anticipating what he was about to say. “Well, the thing is,” he began. “My people obviously want to speak with you, but they aren’t quite…convinced.”
I furrowed my brows as Selena and I exchanged a glance.
“Here we go,” Samantha said in my head.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Leopold took another sip of his tea. “They aren’t convinced that you’re going to be able to do more help than harm. Everywhere Tempest shows up, there’s always destruction and death. And over here, on this side of the pond, we’ve escaped all that mostly unscathed.”
I looked at him, dumbfounded. “Everything I’ve done has been reactionary. I didn’t cause Atlas to create a Legion of Supers and kill everyone in our government. I didn’t make him launch nukes at New York and Los Angeles.”
Leopold clapped his hands together as if he’d just had a brilliant idea. “Yes, that. That’s also a large concern. Atlas has nukes. We have the capacity to detect them before they arrive, and we’ll just get Ellie—oh, she’s one of the members of our team—to take care of it. But, still, it’s a concern.”
“Cut the shit, Leo,” Selena said. “What’s your point? Do your people want our help, or don’t they?”
“Yes. They do. However, they need you to prove something else to them first. They need you to prove that you can have some sense of…subtlety in your actions. That you’d be able to use your abilities and not destroy half of London,” Leopold said with a laugh, trying to defuse the discomfort.
I ignored his laugh. “So, what, they want us to do something for them?”
“Yes,” Leopold said. He drank the rest of his tea before continuing. “They have something that they want you to do first, to prove that our relationship won’t be detrimental to the general public.”
“They want us to audition?” Selena asked, not trying to hide her annoyance at all.
Leopold cringed. “I don’t like to call it that.”
“But you could?” I asked.
Leopold thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I guess you could call it that. They want to make sure they’re not going to regret this, so they want you to do something small for them. It’s a way to gain their trust. And once they have it, we can get down to the real work: destroying Atlas and the Legion.”
I sat back for a moment, processing everything. I hadn’t expected to have to jump through hoops to get some help from Leopold’s people. This was starting to get complicated fast.
“Kane, Selena, I and everyone here agree. We don’t have any other options. Just do this for them, and then we can move on to getting the help we need.” Samantha’s words echoed in my head. I looked up to Selena, who’d heard her words as well. She shrugged and rolled her eyes.
I sighed. “Alright, Leopold. We’ll help you with whatever you need.”
Leopold smiled. “Excellent news!” He stood from his seat. “Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ll explain the situation to you on the way there.”
15
A FAMILIAR VOICE
I followed Leopold down the street, Selena close behind me. I pulled my jacket tight, trying to stay as warm as possible.
“Again, I should reiterate the importance of subtlety. The people around here are understandably cautious when it comes to Supers, and if they knew that Tempest of all people was in town… Well, it could cause quite the panic,” Leopold said as we walked.
“Don’t worry, we won’t destroy Buckingham Palace or anything,” I said.
“Well, if you did, don’t worry about the royal family. They’re far, far away,” Leopold said.
I didn’t want to tell him that the president had been as well, but that hadn’t stopped Atlas.
“You think you can do that?” Samantha’s voice asked in my head.
“It’s possible,” I said under my breath so she could hear me. It always was difficult for me to say what I wanted to tell her in my head. I kept forgetting that she couldn’t read minds constantly.
“That instills a lot of confidence,” she said with a scoff.
I shrugged. “If that’s what it takes, we can do it. Ask Selena, and let me know what she thinks.”
We walked in silence as I waited for Samantha to report back with what Selena had said. I could hear Selena murmuring under her breath behind me, responding to whatever it was that Samantha had asked in her head.
“She says she knows she can, but you’d better keep yourself in check. I think she was joking,” Samantha said.
I looked over my shoulder at Selena, who met my gaze with a smirk. “Maybe. She’s the one who has a habit of throwing me through things.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Leopold asked, turning to look back.
“Don’t tell him about me,” Samantha said quickly in my head.
“Oh, nothing. Just kinda talking to myself. Processing stuff,” I blurted out.
“Ah, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I catch myself conversing with myself often,” Leopold said with a laugh.
I didn’t respond, and we continued walking in silence.
“So,” Selena said finally. “What’s this plan? Where are we going?”
“We’ll be there in just a few minutes. Basically, there’s a group of Supers who are trying to take advantage of the sort of…Super power vacuum, I suppose you could call it. They meet at a pub nearby here, and should be there right now. What we need you to do is go in there and apprehend the Supers,” Leopold said.
“Okay. Sounds easy enough,” Selena said.
“Yes, compared to what you’ve experienced in the past, it should be a cakewalk,” Leopold said. He slowed as we reached a narrow alleyway. “We’ll cut through here. The pub is at the end of this alley, across the street.”
We walked down the alley in a single file line, the smell of trash and booze wafting up to my nose.
“Oh, man, that’s a strong smell,” Samantha said, retching. “No, not here, Doug. I’m in Kane’s head.”
It was weird only being able to hear her voice and not anything around her. I kept forgetting that she was probably in a room with Doug and Drew at that moment.
Leopold held up a hand once we reached the end of the alley, signaling us to stop. He turned to face me. “Alright. You stay here. I’m going to run in and make sure our guys are in there, and that there aren’t any civvies. Sorry, civilians.”
I looked Leopold up and down. “How do you expect to do that? You don’t fit the type.”
Leopold held back a laugh as he took off his blazer and neatly folded it. He handed it to me. “Hold this right quick.” He untucked his shirt while I watched, Selena peering over my shoulder. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, revealing the white tank top he was wearing underneath. He folded the shirt up and set it on top of the blazer in my hands.
“You still look like you’re eighteen,” Selena said.
Leopold held up a finger, closed his eyes, and concentrated. His whole face scrunched up as he focused hard on something.
The bones in his face began to shift. His hair grew and turned brown. He shrank slightly by an inch or two. When he opened his eyes, I saw my own face staring back at me. “For the record,” he said in a voice eerily like mine, but not quite. “I’m nineteen.”
I stared with wide eyes, creeped out to no end that I was staring at the spitting image of myself.
“That’s weird as hell,” Samantha said.
“Okay, cool, so you turned yourself into a seventeen-year-old,” Selena said, not as convinced.
“Actually, eighteen,” I corrected her. I looked over my shoulder and saw her staring at me. “What? I turned eighteen today,” I said with a shrug.
“Well, happy birthday,” Leopold said, his voice still very much like mine. “I was just demonstrating my powers. As you can tell, the voice is the one thing I just can’t quite get, no matter how hard I try. It’s always a bit off.”
“Yeah, it’s giving m
e the creeps. Mind changing to who you’re actually going to be?” I asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Leopold closed his eyes, his whole body tightening up as he concentrated. His body grew by a few inches, and his muscle mass increased. When he stopped, he loomed a few inches above us, a hulking mass of muscle. His tank top was stretched to its limits, and the legs of his pants stopped a few inches above his ankles. “This avatar is just going to have skipped leg day,” he said when he opened his eyes, looking down at his pants. He voice was deep, but not as menacing as I’d expected. “Don’t want to create an embarrassing situation for myself!” he said with a deep laugh. “Sorry, I’m just a little nervous,” he added when he realized Selena and I were looking up at him, not saying a word.
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road,” Selena said.
“Right, okay. Stay here, I’ll be right back,” Leopold said.
He turned and exited the alley, looking both ways before lumbering across the street in an awkward run. He clearly wasn’t used to being in such a large body. He opened the door and disappeared into the pub across the way. It was an inconspicuous door at the front of a four-story building that was wedged in between two large structures.
Selena and I waited in silence for him to come back out of the pub. I held his blazer and dress shirt in my hands, running my thumb up and down the tweed blazer out of nervousness. I had no doubt that Selena and I could easily take down the Supers inside the pub; the problem was keeping them inside the pub. Every time we’d practiced with each other, we usually got carried away. Our whole mission hinged on our not making a mess of things, and doing this with “subtlety,” as Leopold kept putting it. The only problem was, I wasn’t convinced that “subtlety” could really be the Tempest and Holocene style.
A few minutes later, Leopold came lumbering out of the pub, looking both ways before he crossed the road. He transformed back into his normal self as he walked into the alley. “It’s all clear,” he said as he took his clothes back from me. “You can go ahead and do your thing.”
I turned to Selena, who looked ready to go. “Let’s do this.”
“Let’s do this with care,” Samantha said.
16
PUB STOMPING
As Selena and I entered the pub, our noses were assaulted by the stench of booze and smoke. A low house beat thumped in the background as the sounds of people murmuring reached our ears.
“Pulling back, Kane,” Samantha said, and the sensation in my head lessened. “I have a feeling this is going to hurt, so I’m just going to watch, not feel.”
“Good idea,” I said.
I took a step forward and scanned the room. In one corner, a couple of men were playing pool. Another was sitting at the bar, speaking to the bartender. There were booths along the wall and a couple of tables in the middle of the room that were sitting unused.
“Can I help you?” the bartender asked us.
Everybody in the room turned to look at us.
I eyed one of the pool cues in a rack on the wall across the room. I ran over to it, grabbed it, and ran back to the door. I slid the pool stick through the gap between the door handles.
The man at the bar jumped up, and the two guys playing pool stopped and began crossing the room, ready to take us on.
My eyes glowed, ready to begin.
The bartender produced a shotgun from beneath the bar. I sprang on him, reaching the bar an in instant, ripped the shotgun from his hands and pulled the bartender on top of the bar. I broke the shotgun across my knee and slammed it to the ground. With a small push on his shoulders, the bartender went flying into the liquor rack behind the bar, sending glass bottles to the floor.
I felt hands wrap around my shirt, and I was thrown backwards across the room. I slammed into the floor and skidded, taking out the legs of the pool table. The table slammed down onto me, knocking the air out of me and breaking at least one of my ribs.
The table was lifted off me as my rib repaired itself. A large man who looked as if he could’ve been related to the person Leopold had turned himself into was holding the table in both his hands. He brought it down onto me again, breaking more bones. It hurt like hell for a split second, but my healing powers repaired my injuries in an instant. Then the man brought the table down again, and again, over and over.
Alright, enough, I thought. I gritted my teeth, and once the remains of the pool table were back in the air, I got my feet beneath me and lunged backwards, and the pool table came down on the bare floor. It shattered into pieces.
I scrambled against the wall behind me, searching for the rack of pool cues I knew were there, not taking my eyes off my attacker. My hands felt the smooth wood, and I gripped it tight. I ran to the big guy, and with a shout, smacked the pool cue across his face.
It shattered, and while he did stumble for a moment, it didn’t seem to faze him any more than that.
I swung at his face with a punch hard enough to kill a normal man—something it was evident this person wasn’t. He grabbed my fist before it could reach its target and held it in his giant hands. He smiled, and then squeezed as hard as he could.
The bones in my hand practically exploded beneath the pressure. I let out a shout, and the pain lingered there for longer than normal. My hand couldn’t heal itself while it was being crushed in the grasp of my attacker.
I lifted my right foot, and as hard as I could in my state of pain, I kicked the man in the chest. He went flying backwards and slammed into the bar. My hand popped back into place, totally repairing itself before the man who had crushed it even hit the bar.
To my left, I saw Selena in a fight with a guy who was moving at incredible speeds. He and Selena were both practically a blur.
Out of the corner of my eye to the right, I saw a purple light begin to appear. I knew instantly what it was, and instinct took over.
I ran to Selena so fast the world around me moved in slow motion. Her battle with the Super now seemed to be taking place at normal speed, instead of the blur it had been just moments ago. I brought her down to the floor, the world returning to normal around us.
The purple light slammed into the speeding Super instead of Selena, and sent him to the floor in a convulsing heap.
I pushed myself off the floor, looking for the source of the blast. In the back of the bar, I saw a scrawny-looking man holding an Eximus blaster. He aimed at me, the gun glowing brighter as it prepared to launch another Eximus blast.
I crossed the room and kicked the gun from his hand, and it exploded into pieces from the force of my kick. I grabbed the man by his shirt and pulled him close, his feet dangling off the floor. “Where did you get that weapon?” I shouted at his face, inches from mine.
“I—I—didn’t—I—” he stammered, unable to speak.
“Selena!” Samantha yelled in my head.
I threw the man to the floor and turned. Selena barely dodged a hard punch to the face thrown by the big man who’d crushed my hand. An instant later, a hard right hook was coming at her, which she blocked, but it clearly took all her might for her to stand her ground.
She couldn’t see the left hook that was coming in fast. I ran to her side and blocked the punch just in time. The hit was a hard one, causing me to take a couple of steps back. The man grabbed Selena and threw her backwards towards the bar. She slammed through it and collided with the wall.
Because I was distracted by Selena, the man was able to get the jump on me. He slammed his fists into my side, sending me across the room, where I landed right next to Selena.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have destroyed that Eximus blaster so soon,” Selena said with a cough.
“Yeah, that was a little short-sighted,” I said as practically every bone in my body healed itself.
We jumped up, our bodies totally repaired, and began our assault on the man.
I ran forward and landed a punch to his chest, which caused him to slide back a bit. Selena came in right behind me, blocking a pu
nch.
While he was incredibly strong, he was nowhere near as fast as I was. I launched a flurry of punches at incredible speeds to his torso. My fists slammed against him hard and fast, and he began to stumble backwards, his incredible strength unable to match my strength and speed. When he swung his fists, Selena easily blocked him.
My fists moved fast and hard, and he continued to stumble backwards. I reached back, and with one final hard punch, I slammed my fist to his chest. His feet came off the floor as he went flying backwards. He slammed into the wall went straight through it, and flew across the street before slamming into a parked car. The vehicle exploded, sending a fireball high into the streets of London, causing all the nearby cars alarms to begin their screech for help.
“Well,” Samantha said in my head, sarcasm dripping from her tone, “that was subtle.”
17
HALF-TRUTHS
I turned around and walked to the back of the bar.
“Kane, what are you—”
Selena stopped talking when she saw me grab the man with the Eximus gun I’d kicked earlier. I picked him up by his shirt and pinned him against the wall. I didn’t have much time, and I wanted answers.
“Where did you get the Eximus weapon?” I growled in his face.
The man whimpered, holding his hands up in defense. “Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
I pressed him harder against the wall. “Tell me!” I shouted in his face.
There were many reasons the weapons could be in England: Atlas already expanding his borders, or the STF working with the government, which would be something Leopold had failed to mention. “You’re running out of time.”
“Okay, okay, listen. I know Atlas’ plans for England, okay? The b-big guy, he was working for Atlas,” he said, his words coming out fast and filled with fear. “He was bringing us the weapon. He said we could have lots of them if we joined the Legion. He said that he wanted us to take control of England. But I haven’t done anything yet. No one has, I swear! He’s still recruiting people here. Nothing’s happened! There’s moles, though. Oh, yes, lots of moles. Atlas has eyes everywhere!”
The War of the Supers (The First Superhero Book 3) Page 7
