by R. J. Ross
Cheval just lets her rant, looking for a good reflective surface. She sees a rather shiny store window and starts for it, grateful that she’s wearing a mask. “What are you doing? Is now REALLY the time to be admiring your reflection?” Ms. Mace asks, jerked out of her complaining. “Weren’t we going to the Hall?”
Cheval steps into the reflection, pulling the woman behind her, much to Ms. Mace’s shock. “If I was going to check my reflection it would have been before Voltdrain left,” she says, starting through the Mirrorlands. “We are going to the Hall. They’ll have a nice little chat with you and you can tell them all the horrible things that he’s done. You’ll be excellent proof that Walter Colleck is a super. Once we take care of that, we can go on to do other things, like deal with anything you might have done while working for him. If it was merely acting as a secretary, well I hardly think that would be a problem. You’ll have to be registered as a super, and I’m sure they’ll want to put you to work. A teleporter is quite useful.”
She stops as she hears a phone ring, and looks over at Ms. Mace. “Is that yours?” she asks.
“He’s calling again,” she says. “He’s going to find me. I should have destroyed it, but he has other ways of finding me, so what’s the point? Where are we?”
“The Mirrorlands,” Cheval says. “There are only a handful of supers that can get in here. You’re safe here, and you’ll be just as safe in the Hall.”
The phone keeps ringing, until abruptly, it clicks on without Ms. Mace touching it. “Do you really think that I’ll let you get away from me, Zera?” a man asks. “Do you really think the only thing I can do with your tracker is find you? Oh, and if you think that little chip under your skin is the only one, you’re sadly mistaken. I have your DNA in my system, girl. I can find you, no matter where you go, no matter what you make yourself look like. Now, are you coming, or not?”
“Don’t—” Cheval says as she sees the blood leave the woman’s face. “We’re here. We’re going to step right into the women’s restroom at the Hall, now. You’re safe with the Hall, Zera,” she says, keeping her hold on the woman’s arm and pulling her through a mirror. “You have to believe me. He won’t be able to do anything to you, now that we’re here.”
“Until they get tired of me and send me out, again,” Ms. Mace says, looking around the restroom with a scowl. “Until they no longer need me to testify, and if it isn’t him that chases me down, it’ll be his son. I know all about that family, Cheval. The blood always tells. Sooner or later, the son will be just as ruthless as the father is. But… maybe… maybe I can risk it…” She twists her arm and jerks, using the second that Cheval’s hold loosens to teleport away.
Cheval groans, wondering how she’s going to explain this to Voltdrain. There goes her second date, she thinks darkly before leaving the restroom to find a black suit. She’s going to need another of their super trackers…
***
“There,” Skye says, pointing at a strangely familiar looking building. We dive, as we have a few times, only to catch nothing. One time when I tried to grab him, he made the air solid again, and I slammed right into it. A second after that he disappeared completely, to the point where even Skye was wondering if he was dead, only to jump off of Nico’s back and race away, after him. His non-solid form is hard to track. I mean, I see a bit of his energy blowing in that direction, but I’m not sure what happens to the rest of him. Maybe he goes underground. That would explain how that water we just went over turned into gas in front of our eyes, or the sinkhole that opened up on that empty street. But when Skye tried following him into the ground, she couldn’t find him.
“That’s his old house, isn’t it?” Nico says. He drops to the ground and heads inside, ripping the front door off instead of bothering with the lock. “Penski! We know you’re here! You need to calm down. You’re going to kill yourself if you keep going like this.”
The walls shake as I enter. I jump out of the way as one wall turns to ash and topples over, leaving a gigantic hole in the side of the house. “He’s downstairs,” Skye says, sinking through the ground. I start looking around wildly for a stairway, but Nico doesn’t bother, he just punches a hole through the floor and drops down, just in time to see Skye and Penski facing off. Penski is holding a familiar looking clay doll.
“You’re going down, Penski,” Skye declares, posing. “And now that you’re a super, I can actually do something about what you did to me! Well, I can’t do it NOW, of course, but I can make sure that JIMMI does it, and you get thrown into the Cape Cells for it!”
“C… lay,” Penski says, starting upwards with the clay doll. I jump for him, only to hit nothing as he goes insubstantial. “Clllaaaayyy,” Penski says again, going straight through the roof. The ceiling changes color, turning into dust and debris and falling in, right on top of me. I shove it off and take to the air, only to stop and look around in confusion. Penski is nowhere to be found, and the houses in the neighborhood are starting to drip, just like the house we’d flown over earlier.
“He changed this entire area in a second, while he escaped my grasp,” Nico says. “He’s getting more powerful and he’s fast as well as erratic. Skye?”
“I think it’ll turn back to normal soon, but if we take the time to fix it, ourselves, we’ll never find him,” she says, starting to run.
“It’ll turn back to normal?” I ask. “Like back to how it was, before?”
“Oh, not exactly?” she offers. “But instead of liquid parts of house on the ground, there’ll just be solid parts of house there!” she explains. “Basically, you can change the molecular speed of physical things for a short amount of time, only. It’s sort of like water, you know? It can be turned into ice or gas, but sooner or later it turns back into water, as long as it’s not placed into a different climate, like someplace really cold. Does that make sense, or do I need to call it magic, again?”
“No, that makes sense,” I admit. “But does that mean that even if he turned something to gold, it’d just turn back to lead?”
“Mmmm, probably, yep,” she says. “We can try it sometime to be sure! I’ve always wanted to do a mad science fair! Hey, Nico! Nico, can we have a mad science fair?”
“Sure, Skye, it sounds like a good school thing,” Nico agrees.
“I’m going to WIN!” she declares.
“But you’ve already graduated,” I say, “so I’m not sure you can even enter… but you could be the judge, right?” I ask, knowing she’s going to throw a temper tantrum the moment the words come out of my mouth.
“Ooooh, I’d be a good judge,” she says. She falls silent, watching the earth below us as it goes all wonky and wrong. “They’re going to blame this on me, aren’t they?” she says.
“You’ve never done that,” Nico says.
“But it’s my power,” she says.
“They don’t realize that,” he tells her. She looks at him, shocked. “Really, Skye, nobody would think of the fact that you change things other than yourself. Like you said, most of them buy the magic line, especially since powers are nearly impossible to explain, in the first place. Supers have been around so long that only a few people even bother to try and explain how it works. You can thank our dad for a good chunk of that.”
“That’s true!” she says. “I’ll give him a BIG hug after this is all over.”
“We’re crossing another border,” I point out. “And it looks like he’s heading somewhere in particular. Where do you think he’s going?”
“I was hoping I was wrong,” Nico says. “Girls, as fun as it is to watch him melt the world, we need to grab him, now.”
“We can try,” I say, rushing forward. Skye looks at Nico before nodding and joining me in my rush for the running super. I barely touch the flowing energy before he goes insubstantial again. I hit the ground, but I manage to twist, coating my hand with my energy and grabbing a strand of his. The air around me starts to swirl, and his face appears in front of me again, his mouth open
, his hands grabbing my shoulders. I grab his arms, trying to hold him. The air is getting hard again, and I feel him pulling on my energy, much like the machine that Colleck built had. I bring up my knee, trying to distract him by hitting him in the stomach. He’s not solid enough to actually hit like that, so it doesn’t do any good.
I roll, trying to pin him to the ground. Every second that goes by makes it harder for me to breathe. I need to do this quickly, but it’s like a game of tug-of-war, he wants my energy more than I want his. I just need to take enough to make him faint.
“I can help if I don’t actually hit him!” Skye says, diving into the ground.
I barely manage to jerk back as I see Skye’s hands come up from beneath him a second later, grabbing his head and pulling him downward. If he’d been a norm, or even a regular super, that would probably stop him, right? Unfortunately, all it does is drag him fully into the ground. He tries to pull me along with him, but I jerk back as hard as I can, breaking his hold on me. Skye comes up again, pulling him along, but the second she takes solid form, he disappears, escaping her hold. We both look around, searching for any sign of him. The longer he keeps my energy, the less I can pick up on it. It’s like he’s changing THAT, as well as everything around him.
I look at Nico, who’s floating with his hands held out as pieces of metal float around his head. A car motor is in the midst of all the objects, and I raise an eyebrow slightly. “Did you steal someone’s car?” I ask.
“It was half of a truck left in the field over there,” he says. “It’s more like I did a free disposal job than stealing.”
“Shame,” Skye says, “CAN we steal a car? It’d be good for my super villainy reputation!”
“Sorry, Skye, not this time,” Nico says. “We need to lull him into showing himself, girls, so take ten.”
“What are you doing?” I ask as I sit down on the road, stretching my legs out in front of me. I’m really tempted to go over to that power line and juice up… I don’t see any houses around, so no one would notice it, too much, right? I get up and head for the pole, jumping into the air and grabbing the wires.
“I’m never going to get used to seeing that,” Skye says, shaking her head. “Oh, hey, he dropped the doll!”
I look down, seeing the clay doll that she picks up. Without thinking, I let go and drop to the ground, heading over as well to stare at it. “That’s…” I say, seeing faint traces of… something…
“This is the same creepy stuff that attacked us at the restaurant,” she says. “You know, when the girls and I went city golfing over in Louisiana with Carla.”
“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say,” Nico says grimly.
“Didn’t he get shipped out to space?” I ask.
“Not all of him, apparently,” Skye says, shaking the doll and then poking her finger straight through the head. “Bam!”
“This isn’t good, is it?” I say.
“Not good at all,” Nico agrees. “But on the other hand, it gives us an idea of where he’s trying to go.”
“Into outer space?” Skye offers. “Shouldn’t he have just gone straight up, then?”
“He’s heading for Central, Skye,” Nico says.
“Is he going after Sunny’s spaceship?” she asks.
“We’re going to find out as soon as I finish this.”
***
*Walter Colleck’s EX-Mansion*
“I must apologize, but we cannot allow you to get closer to this site,” Century says to the norms that surround the area. Vinny couldn’t care less about the reporters, but the sight of the medics glowering at his boss makes him feel guilty. He’d come to help Jimmi, but Jimmi is gone, and they need supers here. Voltdrain pulls to a stop over the scene, a frown on his face. Vinny jumps into the air to move to his side.
“Why can’t the medics go in?” he asks quietly.
“You cannot see it?” Voltdrain asks.
“See what?”
“Jimena’s energy is filling the land,” Voltdrain says, motioning slightly. “If there are survivors, there is a chance that they will be affected as well. If we allow the norms…”
“They might get boosted by accident,” Vinny finishes as he sees the grim look on Voltdrain’s face.
“Correcto,” Voltdrain says.
Several poofs come from below and they both look down, seeing all of the healers in the school teleporting in. “Wait, should we warn them?” Vinny asks. Voltdrain nods and Vinny drops to the ground.
“Spread out,” Aubrey says, her hair already floating.
“Be careful,” Vinny tells them. “There’s a good chance that you’re going to be boosted when you dig through this stuff.”
“I’d think you need to worry about that more,” Aubrey says. “Don’t burn down the ashes, Fire Hazard,” she tells him, grinning slightly.
“What if I turn people into kids?” Bobby asks, worriedly.
“Just do the digging, don’t grab the norms,” Aubrey tells him.
“We’re going to need your help with the clean up, anyway,” Vinny agrees.
“What good am I going to do?” Kirsten asks.
“You can help clean up and assist with any trauma patients,” Vinny says. He turns, looking into the distance and wishing he could go after Jimmi. He shakes it off and goes to work digging. Nico is with her.
***
*Somewhere in Earth’s Orbit*
The planet formerly known as Clay is thinking. Oh, most planets don’t think, of course, but this one is different. This one is more of a… planet-like being than an actual planet, but really, by this point in the story, you already know that. Either way, Clay (since no scientist has put in a generous donation to rename him after their estranged wife, yet) is in the middle of two different, and rather interesting, situations at the moment.
“It seems that Penski’s gone and made himself super,” he says to his new favorite human. “He grabbed my clay doll from his old place.”
“And what is he going to do with it?” Herold asks. “Invite you home to make a new league of villainy?”
“I don’t think he even understands what’s going on, completely,” Clay says, faintly amused by that fact.
“What powers has he gotten?” Herold asks.
“It seems a lot like Skystep’s. He probably messed up the atomic converter that we were working on,” Clay says, checking with the traces of his own “space dust” that he’d inserted into the man’s energy streams, “and it’s mixed with a good dose of super energy. I’m not as familiar with that part. Something electric mixed with bioluminescence… power boosting capabilities, I think…”
“How do you know this?” Herold asks.
“Because it was easy enough to add a bit of my dust into his body, the way it is right now,” Clay explains. “He dropped the doll, which could cause us some problems, though. Technico has it.”
“You said Technico already had suspicions about the dolls,” Herold says.
“Of course he does. I’m just waiting for the moment he notices the one you have hidden in your room,” Clay says. “Or the one in his wife’s greenhouse.”
“Thanks for that,” Herold retorts.
“He’s so busy chasing the supers in the outside that he hardly pays attention to you depowered ones,” Clay says. “I only get checked up on once a week by his kid.”
“How do those meetings go, anyway?” Herold asks.
“Oh, they’re not too bad. The boy’s little space ship comes up, he asks me some questions, patches more through for Mastermental and the other Hall leaders, and then he drops off a bunch of space trash that he’s collected to help me grow.”
“Seems like you have no reason to help me out, anymore.”
“Oh, I do,” Clay says. “Penski has stolen my sister’s abilities, and with him like this, it’s the perfect time to finish him off.”
“And that has what to do with me?” Herold asks.
“You’re the one I’m sending him to
,” Clay says. “Right now he’s running on instinct, and his instinct is telling him that I’m the one he can trust to fix him.”
“He has terrible instincts,” Herold says.
“Yes, yes he does,” Clay agrees.
“And what will this do for me?” Herold asks.
“That bioluminescent power? I think you’ll get a kick out of it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Finally,” Walter says as Ms. Mace appears in front of him. He’s staring at his watch. “Do you know how troublesome it was when you didn’t show up the first time? I had to act. I hate acting. I might be a genius, but that is one area where I am extremely lacking.”
“I was…” she starts out, only to give up as he walks over, looking at her.
“Where is your vest?” he asks.
“The Hall tried to take it and it teleported back to the lockdown,” she says. “They believed you would track me by it.”
“Hah, how naive,” he says. “Now, take me to the E.R., Zera. I need to see how my son is. Once we’re done with that, we need to recuperate our losses. Tell me, are you certain that you got all of the venom that the elves had?”
“I believe so, sir,” she says.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” he complains, slipping her arm into his. “The E.R., if you would, my dear. Ah, and land us somewhere discreet. I would hate for my future wife to question why I’m so close to you.”
“Sir…” she starts out, only to shake her head almost imperceptibly. “Yes, of course,” she says, teleporting them. A second later, he looks around, and then up, staring at the statue right in front of the South Branch Hall.
