by Kirk Twyman
I headed back to the console. It was now or never. I powered down the shield. Now the Supers outside would have nothing preventing them from gaining entrance aside from concrete and rebar, and they’d chew through that in no time.
I took one final look around the safe house. This had been my base of operations, my sanctuary, for years. But like my brother, like Blaze, and like a lot of other things tonight, it was time to say good-bye.
But there was one last good-bye I had to make.
“You’ll kill us all!” Izuki said. “At least we’ll die together.”
I stood over his broken body and regarded the once mighty Black Assassin with clinical detachment. I could see the desperation in his eyes. He so badly wanted to understand what was happening, and at the same time, he wanted to find some value to our shattered relationship, and by extension, his own life. It made it even easier to twist the knife one last time.
“You got the first part right,” I said as I sat in my chair. I hit two buttons on the keyboard. “But not the second. Good-bye Izuki.”
The floor before me shifted and gave out as a makeshift glass bubble covered me. A command console sprung out of the floor while my computer chair reclined into a pilot’s seat. The transporter just a convenient way of coming or going as well as an excellent means of dispatching my allies far and wide, but it was never my only option of escape. Orion himself had crafted an escape pod into the command console of the safe house.
“You bastard!” Izuki yelled. Or at least, I think that’s what he yelled. It was hard to hear over the transporter as it tore itself apart, or over the roar of the jet engines I had just engaged beneath my escape pod. The back wall encircled into an opening, as did several more before it, as my escape plan came into view.
Right on schedule, Orra tore through the door, with Mucus Man and Strength Supreme tripping over themselves to be the second person through the newfound hole in the way. I had a feeling his two lap dogs weren’t going to be feeling that way in a few seconds.
I waved to Orra as the escape pod engaged, blasting through the back walls out into the sky. The sudden acceleration produced G-Forces that pushed me deep into my seat. I could see Orra and company launching towards me, not noticing the blinding white light behind them as the transporter finally went out, producing a sub-atomic explosion contained within the base. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the explosion rip through the base, engulfing Izuki’s broken body and then Super after Super, ending with Mucus Man and Strength Supreme before it finally claimed Orra.
The Zoranian roared at me in a hateful frustrated snarl before finally being claimed by the light.
As my escape pod lifted into the air, I could see my base now a twisted and ruined wreckage of its former sanctuary. Now it provided safety for no one. It had killed Izuki and almost certainly all but the toughest of the Supers accompanying Orra. I had no illusion it had killed Orra himself though. If I had learned anything tonight, it was that the Zoranian was tough son of a bitch. But it had bought me some time, and time was the most valuable commodity in this coming war.
As my escape pod soared away from the smoldering sanctuary to the blue sky ahead. Orra would survive, that much was clear. He would regroup. It was time I did the same. I had one advantage over Orra, who required only the strongest and most powerful to serve beside him. Perhaps Inferno would stand against Orra, or perhaps not. It didn’t matter. The time for Super heroes was over.
All I required was the common man or woman. Orra had an army. It was time I had one too.
