Miracle's Touch

by J. A. Cipriano

  And with one last rending of steel and stone, I pushed the twenty-some-foot tall thing over. A toppling tower of metal and deviant technology, it crushed dozens of our faceless foes, even as some sort of electrical chain reaction set off another half-dozen fires up and down the length of the thing. A massive dust cloud blew up as lubricant and robot pieces flew everywhere.

  For a moment, dead silence pervaded the room as I let myself drop to the mill floor below, panting as I landed on my feet.

  From across the mill, the quiet was broken by Ballista. “Holy …” he gasped. “She’s amazing!”

  In counterpoint, Professor Peril called out from the opposite end of the mill, where Robert had been, “What delightful heroics, but pointless as I’ve already taken the king!”

  Over my mental link to Robert, I felt something I never thought I’d feel from him. Pain. Sheer, physical pain. My eyes snapped across the carnage of the mill, through the fire and smoke, to see the mad professor, encased in some bizarre robotic exoskeleton studded with crystals, breaking into maniacal laughter.

  At her feet, Robert, the world’s most powerful superhero, was sprawled out, twitching in agony even though he didn’t have a scratch on him.

  I could feel panic ripple through Ballista, and even Fortress’s resolute soul was taken aback. Maybe I should have been afraid too. That would have been the rational, logical feeling to have.

  But no. I was just angry. Peril had killed innocent people, ravaged parts of the city I called home and most importantly, she had hurt one of the men I loved

  My fists clenched in fury as I tensed. “Game’s not over yet. Let’s see if you take the queen!”

  30

  “Oh crap,” Professor Peril squeaked as I threw myself across the wrecked steel mill with terrifying speed.

  I had sworn to Robert that I would protect him, and there was no way in the world I would break that pledge. The mad professor threw her armored arms over his face just before my fist would have slammed into her nose. With all the power I had running through me, I should have punched right through that exoskeleton and sent her flying.

  Instead, purple telekinetic force flared from the armor’s crystals, the immovable object to my unstoppable force. There was a cracking sound, not of bone but of stone, and one of the smaller stones of Peril’s suit shattered and went dead. My knuckles throbbed, my muscles quivered, and though the professor skidded back a couple of feet, it didn’t even seem to hurt her.

  Peril peeked through her still-raised forearms, blue eyes wide, and then she started to giggle maniacally. “Oh, did I forget to tell you?”

  Undaunted, I was already moving to close the gap and push her back further away from Paragon when Peril threw out her arms and that neon glow burst out in a radial wave from her body. Already moving forward, I wasn’t braced at all, the wave of mental strength crashing into my chest and throwing me back, along with everything else around the professor. Debris, robots, shattered machines, everything went flying.

  Robert was trying to rise, completely overwhelmed by the alien feeling of pain in him, only to be crushed by the force back into the ground. As I tumbled back, Ballista’s cry echoed as I heard his body hit something hard. The only thing that didn’t get thrown around was Fortress, to my surprise. The ground around his feet shattered as if under a tremendous weight, but the Implacable Detective didn’t so much as slide back an inch, his arms shielding his face and eyes from the debris.

  Biting back the groan in the back of my throat, I picked myself up to the tune of Peril’s cackling. “I take more than the minds of those I feed on. My psychic powers grow, even if it fades after a time, and I’m freshly fed from Hardware’s brilliant if corrupt brain. With this delightful psi-amplifying war suit, not only can I crush your minds, but I can also break your bodies!” She kicked Robert in the ribs, something that barely moved his mighty frame, but he flinched and covered up as if someone had just broken two of his ribs. “See?”

  Gritting my teeth, I felt the intense spike of pain from Robert in my gut. Peril wasn’t injuring him at all, that much I could tell, but … it was obvious! She was feeding him the impressions of pain telepathically, firing off nerve endings and pain centers that had never been used before. It wasn’t much compared to what someone like John had endured, but it was mostly alien to Robert’s indestructible body.

  From outside, our battle with Peril had gained John’s attention and worry spiked in him. I had to stop this before he was in danger too.

  “You’re not breaking anything,” I growled as I dug my hands into the rubble. Maybe I could distract Peril like I did with the kitchen sink, get in while she defended herself. “You can’t actually hurt Paragon, not really, can you?”

  Robert groaned and still tried to rise, still the hero despite the unknown agony lancing through his body. Peril smirked at me as she loomed over him and raised a fist, the garish purple glow intensifying into a vaguely rectangular shape the size of a boulder that mimed her hand movements.

  “Do you wish to test that theory, Miracle?” She let out a gleeful snicker. “Let’s give it a go!”

  “No!” I flipped up the hunk of concrete in my hands as I rose to my full height, sending the hundred-pound slab spinning end-over-end at the villainess. The shout was intended purely to catch her attention, my faith resolute that she still couldn’t injure Robert. Still, I wanted to stop her before she could cause him more psychic harm.

  Peril feigned surprise, but only for a moment, her lips curling into a smirk as she deftly smashed the rubble with her telekinetic fist, throwing out her other hand as she did so. Her eyes blazed with psychic energy, her mental talons digging into my brain before I even took a step towards her.

  I wasn’t alone. Fortress had started to make a move himself, blending into the shadows to try to surprise Peril as I held her attention, and I knew that Ironclad was already rocketing towards the mill. All of that ceased in an instant as the professor extended her telepathic hold, and we all screamed in unison. Fortress fell to his knees, the concrete floor cracking under him, and John plowed through the wall of the building, out of control as he clutched his head, the Omniarmor itself writhing along with its master. Ballista and Paragon both let out cries from their respective crumpled heaps, their efforts to get back into the fight cut short.

  The only one that didn’t fall immediately was me. Though it felt like someone was driving white-hot spikes through my skull, I gritted my teeth and pushed back, trying to focus all of my own empathic power to shield myself from it. It was like gathering up clouds and water, the ever-flowing stuff of emotions, to hold back the focused thrust of pure logic. For a split-second, I began to falter, dropping to one knee as Peril started to laugh in triumph.

  But then, my fall stopped. My legs locked and I closed my eyes against the onslaught. My voice was a hoarse whisper as I told myself, “No, you can’t fail them, Christine. You just can’t. They need you, they all need you.”

  “What are you prattling on about now?” Peril mocked as I could hear her boots clacking on the stones approaching me. “You can’t win. You lost. You’re a loser. Just admit it and die already!”

  The air filled with the hum of power and I could feel that tremendous psychic force bear down on me. Around me, the screams of my lovers and allies filled my ears … and that was what did it. My hands, flat on the floor to keep me upright, flexed, fingers tearing through the stone, and something inside me opened up. It was like moments ago when I had toppled the machine, but more so.

  I opened myself up to the whole of New Harbor. I felt Jackson in his office, the girl I saved from those rapists in mid-jog, Benedict worrying over the breaking news of the battle, the homeless man I had sparked with hope, and so many others I knew and didn’t know. From them, I felt the weight of responsibility, the will to carry on, and the strength of my determination to save them.

  I had to be their miracle.

  With a cry of effort, a scream of righteous fury, I tore my mind f
rom Peril’s clutches and forced myself up, opening my eyes to see her look of shock as another, larger crystal on her war suit shattered. Her grasp weakened on everyone else even as it broke on me entirely, and it weakened more as I slammed an uppercut, backed by the emotion of the entire city, into the murderess’s chin.

  A burst of emerald light, the glow of my own power, mingled with the surge of purple light from Peril’s telekinetic shield right before she rocketed up toward the ceiling from the force of the punch. The pain in my hand from the titanic clash was a small price to pay as she slammed into the roof and through it, as I fell to my hands and knees again, panting as I felt that tremendous surge of strength fade as quickly as it came.

  Even as Peril came back down, crashing through the roof as gravity took hold, even as I tried to regain my strength, the real goal of that all-out attack came into reality.

  John’s mind started to clear over our link, even as I heard him gasp, “Ohm, psi-dampers!” Out of the corner of my eye, the ex-Marine rose like a phoenix, debris falling off of the gunmetal gray Omniarmor as Ohm solidified. My link to him stuttered and faltered, dimming but not entirely shutting off as the Omniarmor shielded his mind.

  With a grunt of pain and a shake of his head, Fortress pushed to his feet, his mind and spirit as tough as his body seemed to be. “Ballista, old friend, get up. We have to take advantage of the moment Ms. Miracle just bought us.”

  “Come on, boss, just five more minutes,” the young hero groaned, but he forced himself upward, revealing remarkable resilience I hadn’t felt before from under that joking exterior.

  I forced myself up too. I wanted to collapse, take a nice long nap, get a good massage, then take both Robert and John to bed, but I couldn’t. We weren’t done yet. Across from me, maybe ten feet at most, Peril likewise was stumbling to her feet, half of her armor’s crystals shattered and one of her arms sitting at a funny angle, no doubt broken in multiple places. Between us, Robert struggled to rise, his nerve endings still on fire.

  His mind was still in her clutches, and that wasn’t going to stand.

  “Damn, woman,” Peril growled as she spit up a bloody tooth, “why are you so damn stubborn?” She staggered towards Paragon. “Fine, let me kill him and be done with it. That’ll break your spirit.” Summoning another telekinetic fist, she let fly with no more preamble, her eyes now the cold dead stare of a killer.

  She never got close. At that moment, we all came together to act as one team. I closed the distance in one leaping bound, not striking Peril but catching Robert by his stupid, adorable cape and throwing him to one side. I was more than ready to take that hit for him, even if it might kill me, but I didn’t have to.

  Fortress threw his broad, powerful frame in the way, arms up in a block, the air rippling around him as he sunk abruptly into the floor. The blazing fist of psychic force slammed into his arms, the air rent asunder by the impact. The detective let loose a grunt of pain, but he didn’t waver, only sliding back a few inches.

  Meanwhile, Ironclad caught Paragon out of mid-throw, tendrils from Ohm snaking over his bald head. There was a spark, and then, like the light of dawn, clarity shot through Robert’s heart. The pain cleared even as my own perceptions of his emotions dimmed with static.

  “Snap out of it, Bob,” John cajoled as Ohm’s psi-dampers shielded Robert as well. “We’ve got a bad guy to beat.”

  Even as the world’s mightiest hero regained his senses, Peril screeched with frustration … only to have that triple in intensity as Ballista appeared out of thin air behind her, launching two electrode-tipped taser bolts at her blind side. Each one hit with pinpoint accuracy into the largest crystal set on her back and exploded with electrical energy.

  It was like lightning struck the mad scientist. Her war suit spasmed as sparks ran through the actuators as the crystal flared brightly and shattered, apparently overloaded with energy. With a few twitches, Peril staggered back a step before swaying, crashing to one knee.

  “So … so close,” she whispered through gasps, clutching her broken arm. “I was so close.”

  Fortress helped me to my feet as Paragon, one arm clutched around Ironclad’s shoulders in a brotherly embrace, raised a hand towards the villainess. His voice was still wracked with pain but picked up surprising strength as he said, “As close as any has come, Professor. It would be an achievement to be proud of, if only you fought for the side of justice.”

  With that, a pulse of his awesome powers disintegrated the remainder of Peril’s war suit, blowing it into so much dust and ash.

  Smiling at Fortress, I stepped away from him, nodding thankfully to Ballista who had his crossbows trained on the beaten villainess. Turning my eyes to Peril herself, I walked up to her, fully realizing the kind of hero I was. Some heroes are merciless avengers, some are fearless adventurers. I was something else.

  I thought of how this started, how Becca Blair’s intentions had started out pure. She had just wanted to make the world a better place, but everything had gone wrong for her. However flawed her methods, she had started out a victim in this mess, twisted more by the lethal aspect of her powers. There had to be a way to find that kernel of goodness, fix that fatal flaw, and use Dr. Blair’s fantastic mind for good. As I looked down at Peril, she turned her head up to meet my gaze, eyes no longer glowing but her look defiant.

  “You’ve done a lot of evil things, Becca, but you can reform,” I said softly. “Paragon is right, in a way. If we can find a way to cure your hunger, as you call it, think of the wonders you could do.” I held my hand down to her. “Let us help you, and we can fix all this.”

  I was the hero that offered a chance for redemption, that fostered hope, that would try to lead the way by example. For all the horrors Peril had spread, she deserved a second chance if only she would take it.

  She answered me with a spasm of mocking laughter. “Fix me? Fix me? You’re a naïve fool, Miracle.” Her eyes went wide with pain as she managed to twitch the thumb on her broken arm, hitting a button on her glove. “This isn’t over.”

  A near-silent, very familiar whump started from the center of the facility, somewhere underground. Robert heard it before even I did and assumed the smart thing: that it was a final deathtrap from the mad scientist. In a blur of white and gold, he had swept up Fortress and Ballista both, even as I was already forcing my body to move, leaping with all my might away from the building. Ironclad, well, he wasn’t a war hero for nothing. Those well-honed military instincts fired, and he was rocketing away from the impending implosion, all thrusters at maximum power.

  I only managed one last look back at Professor Peril as the entire steel mill pulled in on itself. Her burning blue eyes never wavered from me, even as her form was sucked into the heart of the implosion. And then, she was gone.

  31

  The moment we touched down safely at the far end of the lot, the steel mill just a crumpled ball of wreckage along with the last of Peril’s army, I turned to Robert and John, throwing my arms around each one and pulling them close to me. I felt their love, their strength despite the trails they had just endured, and I fell in love with them all over again as they enclosed me from both sides with their warmth.

  “Do I get a hug too?” Ballista quipped, letting out a laugh of relief. “Maybe a kiss where I cracked my head on that wall?”

  “Old friend,” Fortress said with a wry chuckle, “let them have this moment.”

  I kissed first Robert, then John in rapid succession, savoring their tastes despite the sweat and dust, before abruptly pulling away to snatch Ballista up into the hug he desired. His look of surprise made it worth it, and that he melted into it even better.

  Setting him back on his feet, I grinned at the young hero. “There, satisfied?”

  John laughed, crossing his arms over his chest. “From the goofy look on his face, he’s more than satisfied. Kid might need a cold shower, though.”

  Ballista blushed a little as he laughed nervously, shaking his head. “
I’m not going to confirm or deny those salacious rumors, Ironclad.”

  “Christine.” Robert’s tone was low, edged with pain and filled with emotion. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger.”

  We all turned to Paragon, the mightiest hero in the world, his head lowered. For once, the only person who didn’t have something to say was Ballista, no joke to break the moment on his lips. The rest of us all started to say something at once, but the others quieted to let me speak first.

  Laying a gloved hand on his chest, I tilted his chin up to look me eye to eye. “Robert, you have nothing to be sorry for. Yes, she hurt you in a way no one ever has, but you never stopped trying to fight. I saw you, felt your agony,” – I kissed him on the forehead as I went up on my tip toes – “but you still tried to rise. What you endured today is more than any of us could imagine, all that pain after a lifetime of not knowing it.”

  John’s hand fell on Robert’s shoulder, Fortress’s on his other. The ex-Marine nodded slowly. “That’s the definition of a hero, Bob. When the chips are down, they keep trying. I’m proud of you, man.”

  “Ironclad is correct,” Fortress added. “I’ve been your friend for years now, Paragon, and while I have never held you in any less than the highest regard, at this moment, you showed me why you hold your title as the world’s greatest hero. Thank you for that.”

  Robert clenched a fist, and I could feel the dark recriminations, the self-doubt starting to wash away under the light of our support. He cracked a smile a moment later, nodding to the two men. “Thank you. I … I lost myself for a moment.” Turning his warm hazel eyes back to me, his smile grew brighter. “And thank you most of all. I think Fortress is wrong about one thing. Maybe that title should belong to you.”

  My eyes teared up with joy, seeing the light fill my lover again, and I wiped at my eyes as I waved off his compliment. “Oh, I’m fine simply being Ms. Miracle. And I’m just happy we made it through that.”