by Brian Cody
“I’m just as confused as you are, Dave, but fighting won’t solve anything”, Shawn replied as he clasped the paper line with both hands and spread his legs.
“I say bull-crap to both of you!” David growled as he tightened his arms and spun. In a sonorous crack, the line was halved. The paper lasso squeezed along David’s hand like steel wire as he severed it, but, the moment after, its grip-strength was cut down by several orders of magnitude, and, as he flung his right arm, the item slipped off of his wrist and fluttered groundward in a more paper-like manner. David ignored the alteration in properties, however, and, looking to Nate, took his first step, while Shawn pointed to his severed lasso.
The chain of papers slithered across the ground before dispersing and piling around Shawn’s feet. “Dang it!” he grunted as he outstretched his arms and opened his hands towards David. “Sorry, Piekarsky, you leave me no choice.” David turned back. As he and Shawn made eye contact, hundreds of white papers erupted from Shawn’s sleeves, fluttered in front of Shawn’s hands, corkscrewed horizontally, and bulleted. David inhaled, and the bleached surge slammed into and engulfed him. Within a moment, the sheets dispersed into an undulating maelstrom around him, and, as the moments passed, the formation tightened, becoming more spherical and then more ovular until the documents came to rest as a pale-white cocoon, seven feet in height and a yard in width.
“Are those napkins?” Nate muttered as he analyzed the outlines of each sheet. Shawn started forward with an upright gait, his fists squeezed and his arms swaying as he pushed out his chest. He stopped in front of the cocoon, lifted his hands, and felt its edge. He then held his breath to listen for motion, but felt a tap under his hands. Shawn hummed, stepped back, and then removed his hands, and, in a thunderous pop, the side of his cocoon was pulverized, while, bounding from that mass of shredded papers, David emerged. Shawn grunted as David rammed into his gut, and Shawn gasped as he found himself speeding back. Shawn drilled his feet into the ground, slowed David’s drive, and then, after ten seconds, stopped him.
David inhaled as Shawn pressed his hands onto his shoulders, and David gritted his teeth while pushing off. Though the stony earth cracked and tore from David’s brewing drive, Shawn stood firm, pushing against David with his own legs outstretched. “Okay”, David grunted as his strained expression curved into a grin, “not bad at all.” A sharp crack sounded behind Shawn as the earth below his feet was displaced. Shawn grunted, and, as he looked on, David stepped. Shawn knelt and pushed harder, but David took his second step. Shawn slid an inch. David took a third, and Shawn slid six inches; his fourth, and Shawn slid a yard. With a guttural howl, David launched Shawn back, but Shawn pushed off of David’s shoulders and bounded, reaching twenty feet and then falling.
David slid to a halt and then spun back as he searched for the stomp that should’ve occurred from Shawn’s landing; Shawn, however, hadn’t landed, and, as David smirked, Shawn hovered ten feet over the ground while gasping. “Flight too?” David asked. “And I’ve never wrestled someone outside of my family who could not be mowed down in the first few seconds. It all makes sense now: you’re the real thing—you’re the one who was supposed to provoke me because the government knew you’d be able to put up a fight. Klinge is just the backup.”
“What backup!?” Nate blared as he flailed his arms. “Piekarsky, you’re freakin’ insane!”
“I honestly have no idea of what you’re talking about, bud”, Shawn interrupted as he adjusted his face-mask and lowered his hands. “I’ve known about Nate since freshman year, when I was able to correlate his leaving our room in the wee hours with the vigilante sightings, but I didn’t say anything, and you know why? Because I didn’t want to ruin my chances at a normal education at a school of my choosing, and, Dave, I’m gonna say this: I’m not gonna let you ruin it now!” Shawn squeezed his fists, pulled his arms back, and shot into whistling flight. David sprinted towards him and then pushed off in matching flight, and, in a booming collision, intercepted Shawn, with the opposing forces of their volitation sending them both into a perpendicular spiral. In a strident blur and a blast of pulverized wood, the duo drilled through the trunk of a tree and continued. As they plowed past trunks and cut past branches, they punched. Then, as the ground sloped, they crashed.
In a rearward lunge through a geyser of clay, Shawn reappeared, his facemask dented, his hands covered in bruises and blood, and his clothes nicked as he travelled uphill for twenty feet before landing. Before him, David reemerged in a pursuing sprint, his face layered in overlapping bruises, and his arms scuffed, but, while Shawn’s gaze was squinted and his hair disheveled, David’s gaze was sharpened, and, while Shawn gasped, David breathed extended and rejuvenating breaths. David lunged. With a gritting of his teeth and an angling of his body, Shawn jabbed. In the next moment, David’s fist hammered into Shawn’s gut, while Shawn, though his aim was shifted, smacked his roughened fist against David’s chin. Shawn lowered to one knee as he slid rearward and tried to gasp without furthering the sting of his bruise. He then clasped his stomach with his left, while David turned back with his head bobbing, and his confident glow held firm. “Okay”, David called uphill to Shawn. “Let’s play a game: one hit per person; no blocking.”
Before Shawn could voice his consent or produce the words ‘who made you leader?’, David charged, not as swift as his two previous rushes, but, as Shawn surmised, slow enough for him to react against. I’ll play your stupid game! Shawn jumped up as David pulled back, and he wound back as David swung. David impacted first, his fist slamming into Shawn’s chest, but Shawn kept his ground and hooked his right along David’s face. David slid backwards from the force of the blow, but then stopped, and, in the same breath, rushed again and fired. Shawn tensed, but then jolted as one fist drilled into his left shoulder. Before he could recoil, a second fist drilled into the right side of his ribcage, with the throws being swift enough to have appeared instantaneous.
“Now two hits!” David called. Shawn smirked and rushed for what was going to be an uppercut, but, as he shot his left, David swung. Shawn started to tense, but the knocking pulses of three blows resounded along his torso. “Too slow—three hits!” Shawn stumbled back and slid to his knees. “Five hits!” Shawn looked up as David came upon him and opened fire; in the next moment, he felt his head jolting from side to side as he spiraled backwards and then bounced along the earth. Though barely conscious with body aflame, he spread his legs and used his remaining momentum to rise to his feet. Then, looking to David, he inhaled and bulleted into low flight, an uneven roar speeding from his lungs as he sought to return the ten blows he still owed. “Ten hits!”—David rushed.
Shawn didn’t register David intercepting him or winding back; he blinked, and, in the next moment, found his pain augmented by a dozen times, his entire form burning as if he had been struck by a locomotive. His eyes spun, so he couldn’t pinpoint his location as he slapped onto the ground fifty feet from David.
“Okay, I got carried away”, David called as he lifted his hands and watched Shawn squirm, “that was actually twelve hits…” David watched as Shawn struggled to keep his eyes open, “…Shawn? …Albert? Maybe I should’ve gone up in smaller increments…seven hits…and then, depending on where you were, nine_” A screech pulsed in David’s ears and halted his words as it strengthened behind him. He spun as a projectile speared along the side of a tree and bulleted towards him, and he squinted to look past the gleam of the object, and to pick out a metal blade surrounded by an electric field. With a left backhand, David struck the projectile, and, with a grunting push, launched it away. He then followed the weapon’s trajectory and found Nate sprinting into view, his teeth clasped, and his hands bleeding with electricity.
Simultaneously, Shawn pulled himself to his knees, pounded his fists into the ground, and, with a hard growl, forced himself to his feet, limped, and soared for David. David spun back as he heard Shawn locking onto him and as Nate accelerated. “Not fair!” David ex
claimed as he cracked his fists, looked to Nate, to Shawn, and then back to a pouncing Nate. David slammed his palm into Nate’s chest, knocking him backwards before spinning to a diving Shawn, and hooking his left at Shawn’s side to send him to the ground. David turned back as Nate dragged himself to his feet and charged again, and, as Nate fired an electric blast, David rushed and palmed him backwards once more, while Shawn rushed from behind. David, with a half-revolution, fired a left jump-kick at Shawn’s chest, but, before he could run after Shawn, Nate jabbed an electrified punch.
David turned to him and palmed before spinning to Shawn and swinging, and, as the seconds passed, and as Nate and Shawn continued their assaults in an unspoken rhythm, David spun to them, driving them back, hit after hit, while holding his ground and moving with enough speed to react—swats and palms for Nate, whom David had ascertained wasn’t invulnerable enough to take more than a couple of his blows without serious injury—and kicks and punches for Shawn, who seemed more able to withstand him.
“Come on!” diverted David to Nate pouncing with an electric orb in the palm of his right hand. With a shrug, David leapt and head-butted Nate’s gut. Nate gagged, holding his breath to keep from vomiting as he was launched against a tree.
David landed and spun back, expecting to find Shawn somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters into his charge, but, instead, the young man in the catcher’s mask knelt, outstretched his arms, and fired, from the sleeves of his shirt, another burst of papers—napkins as David surmised. Unlike Shawn’s first barrage, that swarm of documents morphed within moments of rushing into view, unwrapping, folding, and taking the angular shapes of paper airplanes. David grinned as he pondered both the precision and the speed of the maneuver, but his face tightened as the barrage of shapes tripled in speed. With his fastest pull, he crossed both arms over his head before the points jabbed into him. The bombardment ended after a few seconds, with the papers flying past David before spiraling around Shawn. David lowered his arms and then looked to the overlapping papercuts adorning them.
“O-kay”, David muttered, “Is that all you can control?”
“What?” Shawn replied.
“Can’t you use something else to hit me with? Throw me into a tree with your mind, or throw a tree at me, or throw Klinge at me—that’d be pretty cool.”
“No, I can’t do any of that”, Shawn grunted, “trust me, Dave”, he began as he lowered his left and squeezed his right, “it’s enough.” The papers outside of Shawn, and scores more of the unfolded documents from within his shirt converged around his fist, unraveling, and then layering atop one another, and, over the course of seconds, forming a white boxing glove a foot in width.
“What is that…supposed to do?” David asked as Shawn flew for him and swung. David contemplated blocking as he watched the fist, but then suggested that Shawn’s blow would’ve been lessened by the added layering. He remained still as Shawn’s arm neared total extension with his fist inches from the left side of his face, and he blinked and opened his eyes. However, his vision was distorted as a tremor moved across his jaw. His eyes widened, but then squinted as the full force of Shawn’s blow resonated along his head. He looked towards Shawn and found a grin between the prongs of the catcher’s mask.
With an exhalation and a squeeze of his forearms, Shawn yanked his hand from the back of his impacting glove, and, as David watched, an exhaust of papers exploded from that opening, augmenting the glove’s force and rocketing David backwards and through a tree before dissipating as he slid along the ground. David rolled to his knees and coughed a wad of blood, with his vision unsteady and his hands tingling. He spun back as that sundered tree collapsed behind him, and he jumped to his feet as Shawn, once more, flew into view while spiraling another paper chain overhead.
Shawn harpooned the chain for David’s neck, but David jolted to the left and caught the line with both hands. David then inhaled and swung overhead, tearing Shawn out of stable flight and sending him speeding, head-first, into the ground.
David dropped the chain as Shawn flailed and kicked to dig himself out of his crater. Shawn pulled his head out of the ground, gasped, and tore off his mask as David spat another wad. “Okay, your paper powers are decent”, David spoke, while Shawn stood but then collapsed to his knees. “So…is that really all you can do?”
“That, and oh-so-much more”, Shawn replied with a liquid chuckle that devolved into a sanguinary cough.
“Such as?”
“You wouldn’t want to see”, Shawn replied as he wiped the blood from his teeth and grinned.
“No, I kind-of would”, David replied as he wiped the sweat-infused mud from his forehead.
“Nope, you’re wrong!” Shawn retorted as he tapped his palms against the earth, and then, in a downward shove, forced his upper body off of the ground.
“Shawn, freakin’ show me so I can hurry up and beat you and Klinge into the ground! It’s, what, four in the morning? I promised Clare that I’d meet her for breakfast at seven-thir_”—David paused, squinting as he glanced to Shawn and then looked back to where their battle had taken place. “Where’s Klinge?”
A stertorous peal was the reply from behind David. That cry was accompanied by a luminous flash and a tremorous blast. David started to look back at what he surmised was a retaliation from one or both of his opponents, but, before his neck could budge, he was battered by an electrified shockwave that cannoned him past Shawn and into a stone face. Shawn turned as David zoomed by, and he looked on as that tonnage of stone was fragmented, while the fragmenting projectile—David—collapsed to the ground, his clothes burning, and his skin colored a dull red. Shawn then spun to the source of that assault, and back to the scorched crater, where a column of lightning had landed behind David, and where Nate knelt while catching his breath and fanning the smoke from his clothes.
While rubbing his chin, Nate glared at David and then the shattered stone. “I…that…” he moaned as he shook his head, “I was going for a sneak attack. I was just supposed to take you by surprise, and then attack, but…that works too…” He stood, looked down to his hands, but then looked up to Shawn jogging towards him. “Uh…nope!” Nate exclaimed as he fired a bolt that struck Shawn in the chest and threw him down. “One”, Nate growled as Shawn coughed and rolled onto his back, “I was wondering why you only ever stirred in your sleep when I was waking up to leave at night; and two—I still don’t know what’s going on here! Just four hours ago, you were the roommate with the flat-screen television. Now, you’re the Norse god of Origami, and Piekarsky’s freakin’ Mr. Superhumanly-Unbeatable. Either you do yourself a favor and stay the h*** away from me, or you shut up and let me finish you off too!” Nate finished, while David rested on his knees.
“Are you kidding me!?” Shawn roared as he stomped to his feet and felt the burn on his chest. “There’s no ‘Shawn, we’re at a clear disadvantage, let’s team up and figure out why the h*** our good friend is so determined to beat us to the ground’, or no, ‘Shawn, I know we’ve had our differences, but let’s put them aside so we can live to see another semester as our good friend beats us to the ground’!? Fine, Nate!” Shawn roared as he stepped back and turned. “Fine, Piekarsky!” he bellowed as David stood and glared. “The balls are in your courts; if you really want to throw your lives away, be my guest!” Shawn outstretched his right, summoning another surge of documents from his sleeve which combined to form a baseball bat in his grasp. To Shawn’s left, Nate bent his elbows to ninety-degree angles, squeezed his numbing fists, and channeled a radiance of electric energy; to Shawn’s right, David spread his legs, wiped his hands over his eyes, and lowered them to his sides. “So we’ve given our answers?” Shawn asked.
“No, Shawn, we’re going to pray about it”, Nate humphed as he glanced to David.
“Klinge…holy crap, I am going to…” David slammed his mouth shut and grunted. “Yes, we’ve made up our minds! Let’s make it fair: we’ll count to three, and then we’ll charge!�
�� David proclaimed. “One!” David blasted while kneeling, while Shawn lifted his bat, and while Nate raised his arms. “Two!” David blasted while he tightened, while Shawn spread his legs, and while Nate inhaled. “Three!”
They charged. David had cleared the most distance, as both Nate and Shawn had predicted; and so they both turned to him, seeking to bring him down first, but also contemplating their next moves once attention would be diverted to one another. A millisecond passed—David had covered twenty feet, and was twenty more from the equidistance of the three starting points; he took his next step as he clasped his fists and concluded that Nate would be his first target, but, as he locked eyes with Nate, another glow appeared, an amalgam of bright oranges and deep reds that crashed before him and dispersed in lashing tongues—flames. All three stopped, while David, the closest to those flames, lunged back. He grunted as that flaming mass sped out as four walls, several yards in height, and cordoned off the contenders.
Another shape landed as David looked on: a heavier object, one of solid mass who slammed into the center of those flaming bastions and then reared up. As he did, the flames lowered to a yard in height, and, as those three warring factions looked on, that shape, the shape of a man around 5'7", looked to them, making eye contact with each one while gasping. His head, neck, and arms were covered in sweat as he stood in his white sleeveless, his cargo pants, and his sneakers, which were unburned despite the surrounding heat.
“Erik!?” Shawn called as his bat splintered into paper sheets.
“Garcia? Erik Garcia? Are you kidding me?” Nate asked as the electricity in his hands vanished. Erik looked to each opponent once, twice, three, and then four times. He gasped, while his hands fidgeted with the sides of his pants pockets.
“No!” David called, “first Klinge, then Shawn, and now you, Erik? I’ve lived with you for almost two years now; I’d notice something like this! I know almost everything about you, and I know that you’re normal and that you don’t have powers. Are you seriously_?”
