“I’m a kraken, hello. Anyway, who’s the chameleon here? Shut up. Let me think.”
Think? I gaped at Freddie Calamari but managed to calm myself down. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry I yelled. Maybe you’ll be able to get us out, anyway. Can your tentacles break these things open?” I rattled my cuffs.
“I don’t know. I can try. Hang on.” He moved a couple of his unshackled tentacles, and I watched in horrified—and grossed out—fascination as they felt around my cuffs. I tried not to put too much thought into the horrible sensation of something cold, wet, and slimy moving against my hands.
After several seconds of this, Freddie withdrew his tentacles with a tired sigh. “I can’t,” he said, and his gigantic squid-head-body-thing drooped on his table. I seriously had never seen a squid look so despondent before. “I need fingers to work on your cuffs.”
“Okay, that’s—that’s cool.” We shouldn’t panic. I reminded myself of that as I tried to think of other ways of escaping. “I mean, if you want to try out other mythological animals, go ahead.”
Oh, great. To distract myself momentarily, I thought of Peter. “We’re in a warehouse somewhere,” I said in a near whisper. “I hope your enhanced powers mean super-duper-hearing as well. Peter, if you can hear me, Freddie and I are kind of in trouble. I wish I knew where the place is, but maybe you can track us down somehow.” I paused and grimaced. “And if you can hear us and track us down, do you mind making it quick? I really, really need to go take a leak.”
There was another flash of light, which was accompanied by a “Yes!” from Freddie. I waited again until after the brightness faded and dared a glance in his direction.
“What do you think?”
“Um, you’re that…dog-thing.”
“Cerberus, man. I’ve always wanted to see if I could do it.”
I rattled my cuffs. “Quit playing around, Freddie! You’re not helping!”
“I can take on the Trill’s thugs like this.”
All three dog heads broke into big, broad grins, their tongues hanging out as though Cerberus was Fido, and he was waiting for me to throw him the Frisbee from Hades. His front paws were still cuffed, unfortunately, and so were his hind legs. It didn’t seem to discourage Freddie the Monster Pup, though. Lying on his stomach, his limbs stretched out, he continued to grin at me while wagging his tail—which was a big-ass snake, by the way.
“Wait a second,” I said. “How’d you end up on your stomach? Aren’t you supposed to be on your back? Come to think of it, when you were a squid, you were on your stomach—or whatever it is squid have under their head-things, where their tentacles sprout.”
“Dude, I don’t know how I ended up turning over when I transformed. I told you—I’m still mastering my powers. These all feel so random. God, I’m lucky that I manage to get all my body parts in the right places.”
“You know, if I end up going to a shrink after this, I’m suing you,” I said. “And you’re still shackled. What part of ‘small hands and feet’ can you not understand? Can’t you shrink yourself some more? I mean, I can deal with the three heads and the snake tail, but we really need to get out of here.”
Freddie snorted. “What, do you think I didn’t know that? And, no, I can’t. I can only limit shrinkage to my real-life size. It doesn’t matter how big the original whachamacallit is—I can miniaturize it, but only until it’s about my human size.”
“You mean, it doesn’t matter how many times you transform, we’ll always be tied down like this.”
Cerberus pouted. He did. Really. “It looks like it,” he said, sighing.
“And here I was, wondering if you could turn yourself into a baby Godzilla or something. I mean, the fire blasts from Godzilla would be pretty useful right now.” I paused and had to backpedal. “Well—that is—as long as you don’t roast me alive, anyway.”
Freddie’s dog heads scowled at me, and, no, I’d never seen a dog—or a three-headed dog, for that matter—scowl before. “Listen, you. I’m trying, okay? Unlike some people who just lie around like some kind of romance novel heroine…”
“I’ve been working my butt off the last eternity or something, trying to zap my way out of my cuffs! Don’t you get all bitchy on me!”
“Hey! Pot, kettle, black!”
I narrowed my eyes at him. It was seriously surreal, snapping at Cerberus like that. “Okay, whatever. I don’t have time for this. You win. I’ll shut up. Let’s just hope we get rescued soon before I go crazy from bladder failure.”
“Huh. You’re already crazy.”
“Yeah, well, takes one to know one.”
“I can whup your skinny ass, and you know it.”
I laughed. “How? By turning into a Cyclops and blinking me to death?”
Freddie, apparently too worked up and at a loss for words, started barking at me. What the hell? With all three dog heads going at the same time, God, he made the most horrible, annoying noise. Even his snake tail started hissing at me.
I didn’t know how long we stayed that way, arguing—in Freddie’s case, alternately hissing and barking—mocking, and threatening ultimate destruction on each other, the Trill, the warehouse, and the whole damn world. We eventually stopped.
Well, not that we wanted to. We had to.
A sudden explosion ripped the air, and crates from one end of the warehouse flew in every direction, most of them in pieces. There was a loud yell, a low, guttural howl that made my skin crawl even as I struggled against my cuffs and turned my head in a lame attempt at avoiding any debris that was about to crush me and Freddie. In the midst of my confusion and horror, I still recognized the howl as the Trill’s voice. It sounded like a war cry from a psychopath who’d transformed in the worst way and was just throwing himself full-on into the fight.
I also heard Freddie shout, but I kept my eyes closed the whole time, frantically mustering whatever pathetic amounts of my powers were left to me. There was no way I was going to be able to protect both of us from getting crushed by falling objects with an energy bubble.
Another explosion ripped through the warehouse, and judging from the confusion of noise that followed, more crates and boxes flew up in disintegrating pieces. I continued to strain but felt the energy surge through me in weak waves. Even within the last half hour, my powers had diminished more quickly.
“Oh, shit! Come on, come on, power up…”
I could feel the initial pelting of wood and nails and other bits of material as I struggled. Then something blew around us: a crazy blast of air that sounded like the rumbling of a really strong wind, almost like a tornado.
I felt a massive rush of cold, violent air sweep over and around me.
Chapter 18
“You got him?”
“Almost!”
“Hurry up! I can’t hold this back much longer!”
I barely heard those words being shouted back and forth in the middle of the awful noise and chaos around me. I continued to feel the world turn in rapid spirals, my stomach twisting with it. I felt my cuffs shake and then snap. Then the pressure of restraints vanished, my hands and legs flying out as I was picked up by the wind, and I forced my eyes open, shouting as I tried to find something to grab.
“Damn it! I lost him!”
“No, I can see him! Behind you! Quick!”
“Help!” I yelled as I tumbled in the whirlwind.
Something dark emerged from the crazy swirl of air and debris. It was really like being caught in a tornado, only more make-believe-like because I felt as though I were in a cartoon gone haywire. I tried to defend myself with blows, but I couldn’t throw my fists properly. Okay, I couldn’t really move properly, being swept up in a violent spiral like this.
“Easy! Easy! Don’t fight!”
Something warm wrapped around my waist, and I was pulled against something solid. From somewhere nearby, I heard Freddie shouting as well, and he eventually appeared through the blur, looking his normal self, but flailing and frantic like me.
>
“I got you guys! Now stay still, so I can get you out of here!” the voice—a familiar one—yelled above the din. “Spirit! I got them!”
“Althea!” I gasped, grasping what I could of Magnifiman’s costume—well, cape, seeing as how grabbing hold of spandex in a death grip wasn’t possible.
“Awesome! Go on! I’ll take care of this!” Althea called out from somewhere. I didn’t know where she was, but it seemed like she was the one responsible for this freaky wind storm type of thing, and I’d no idea how she’d done it.
I felt myself moving again, securely held against Magnifiman’s side as I clung to him. We flew into the funnel and broke through, though not without quite a few bruises and possibly cuts from flying bits of wood, glass, and twisted metal. I got pelted several times in the course of my rescue, but I didn’t care.
Once we were all in calmer air, Magnifiman slowed down, and I felt us descend. We were gently deposited on safe ground, and without anything more than a firm “Stay there,” Magnifiman flew off and abandoned us, speeding right through the spiraling winds and vanishing inside and beyond it. I blinked and watched in shock at the wind storm—there was no other way for me to describe it—throbbed and then reshaped itself, shifting from something like a tornado to a gigantic shield, almost.
Suddenly I didn’t need to pee anymore. My bladder had just been shocked into a coma or something.
Everywhere, debris hit the wind-shield and flew out and landed harmlessly on the warehouse floor, many shooting farther out from the force of the winds to crash against walls and other stacked crates.
Before the giant wind-shield stood Althea as I’d never seen her before.
She was dressed like the rest of them, but in all black, shiny, leather-type stuff—her face partly covered not by a mask, but by something like a pair of 19th century goggles rimmed with something like an antique gold. She also wore gloves and boots of the same material as her suit. She stood braced, her arms bent, her fists clenched as she concentrated. Her goggles’ lens-type things flashed white and color, and more happened with them, I was sure, but I was too far away to see more detail.
Off to the side, a good distance from Althea, stood what appeared to be a huge, battered machine. Like an ancient computer, it had buttons and knobs and levers everywhere but with monster-sized propellers on top of it.
The machine rocked violently as it blew massive winds at the area we’d just evacuated, the propeller blades rotating so fast, black smoke started to rise from different points.
There were other similar machines around the general area, all of which had come to life—through Althea’s powers, I was sure—and were working together to create this bizarre wind-shield inside the warehouse. I couldn’t recognize the machines. All I knew was they appeared to be rickety and outdated, and they were likely used for production purposes, but they looked so foreign. I could only gape.
From what I could see, Althea’s evolution involved an independence from touching keyboards, though I was sure she could still do it. From where she stood, she could possess more than one computer at the same time, willing it into action, forcing them into doing things they weren’t meant to do—or maybe things that were only possibilities until she took over. Maybe she could access an internal computer somewhere, something more modern, which somehow linked her to outside machines that were older, and she possessed them that way. I couldn’t say for sure, but it was crazy.
She kept that wind barrier going. Beyond it, more explosions rocked the warehouse, and parts of the roof began to fall in. Metal sheets and wood beams tore off their places and tumbled inside. The Trill’s howls could be heard here and there—frightening, half-desperate and half-triumphant. The debris that flew out with the explosion was effectively cut off in mid-flight by Althea’s wind-shield, and our side of the warehouse remained safe.
“We’d better call the cops,” I breathed, scrambling to my feet and not daring to take my eyes off the scene.
“Jesus, I’m spent,” Freddie said. “I haven’t regenerated since yesterday.”
I turned and saw he was lying on the ground, his face ashen. Since he had on a T-shirt, I spotted cuts up and down his exposed arms. There were also tears here and there on his shirt and pants. When I dropped to my knees beside him, I saw he also had a pretty nasty-looking cut on his forehead.
“Damn it,” I said. “Freddie, I gotta get you out of here. You’re hurt.”
“Screw hurt! I’m tired! I can barely move!”
I grew aware of sharp, stinging pain on my body as well. I looked at my shirt, which was sliced open all over the place. Under those holes, I spotted small wounds. I was sure my face also sported bruises, if not cuts. I shrugged off the discomfort and turned my attention back to Freddie.
“Come on, buddy. You need help. The heroes need backup.”
Freddie raised his head and peered out at me through fogged eyes, flashing me a wan smile. “I’m sorry, man. I should’ve done more back there. I’m supposed to be a goddamn superhero.”
“You are, and don’t kill yourself over this. You’re only starting out, but you’ll get there soon. Here.” I wrapped my arms around his chest and, grunting, pulled him off the floor until he was sitting up. “Jeez, you’re heavy! Come on, you gotta stand up.”
He said nothing—only yawned loudly. I felt his arms come to life and tighten around my shoulders as I stumbled to my feet. He was not only taller by at least a couple of inches, he was also heavier by God knew how much. I thought I burst a kidney from the strain of raising him up. Freddie leaned on me as I paused to look back at the destruction that was going on behind me.
Althea continued her possession of the machines, protecting our side from the mayhem that was going on beyond her shield. Fire was now spreading, and with it came the sounds of gunfire—several rounds. They didn’t sound like the tommy guns that the Puppet’s dolls used. The Trill’s men were now fighting alongside their master, but I still didn’t know where they were, exactly.
“Eric!” Althea suddenly yelled, her back now facing us. “If you’re still here, get the hell out! This place is going to blow!”
I quickly turned away and, holding Freddie securely, hobbled off to the nearest door I saw. It was slow-going the whole way, the occasional explosion rocking us on our feet though we managed to stay upright. We soon staggered out, the feel of a gray day lending us more energy, and our pace quickened. We were surrounded by a bunch of other warehouses—all massive, decaying, and old—and I chose a fairly clean and open spot several yards away for Freddie.
Once he was safely sitting on the floor, his back resting against a wall, we took a moment to gather ourselves and watched the warehouse we’d just abandoned. Bright flames shot up to the sky, and black smoke flowed out in thick columns through broken windows here and there.
Gunshots broke through the silence of the outdoors, but I heard no more explosions.
“Let the good guys take care of everything,” I muttered, drawing a hand across my forehead in shocked relief.
I knelt in front of Freddie and examined his injuries. They appeared to be very mild like mine, nothing more than cuts and bruises. His transformations had drained him, though, and he looked like he was about ready to faint.
“I gotta call an ambulance for you,” I said.
“No, I don’t need one—just sleep.”
I looked around me. “You can’t sleep here! The Trill’s men might find you—maybe even the Trill himself!”
He smirked. “Heh. If the Trill’s alive, you mean. I’ll bet you Magnifiman crushed him—Magnifiman and your ex, anyway.”
I felt around my shirt and pants and could find nothing that I could use as a knife. I needed something sharp, so I could cut fabric and use it to stanch the blood from the wound on Freddie’s forehead. In the outside semi-light, the cut appeared to be worse than I thought. It was one of those large, gaping, ugly kinds that might need stitches.
“What’re you looking for?” he asked,
his voice fading along with his strength.
“Something sharp—a knife or scissors.”
“I don’t carry any, sorry.”
My hands sported cuts, which discouraged me at first from tearing fabric without a knife. I quickly pulled at my shirt where a tear was and ripped off a sizable piece. Ignoring the gunshots, the muffled shouts, and the occasional wail behind me, I wrapped Freddie’s head with it, securing it with a double-knot and hoping it would stay. I didn’t even know if I’d done it right.
“Listen, I need to get help,” I said, and he nodded. “Just—try to stay awake, okay?”
I glanced back in time to catch something fly out of one of the windows: a dark streak that cut through the air at breathtaking speed, flying off to some distant point, leaving a trail of howling voices in its wake. Peter, I thought, and the dark streak reappeared within seconds, zigzagging past poles and warehouse roofs to crash through another window of the burning warehouse.
When it flew out again, it vanished in the direction it first took, once more leaving a trail of hysterical screams in its wake.
I could only shake my head in amazement as I tried to figure out what was happening. Peter was transporting the Trill’s men to safety—hopefully, I thought, in the waiting arms of the police. It was impressive beyond words, watching his progress. I couldn’t say if his speed was more than before, but the sight of his dark figure being that shapeless streak that tore right through the air was just incredible.
Wade and Althea were still inside, and I hoped they’d abandon their posts soon. A crash followed, and a huge chunk of the roof fell in. I didn’t know where Magnifiman and the Trill were, but that wasn’t my concern at the moment. I cussed silently for letting myself be distracted.
“I’m off,” I said, resting a hand on Freddie’s shoulder. He nodded again and patted it reassuringly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, chuckling.
I ran off in one direction, not knowing where it was going to lead me, but I tried to make sure I remembered Freddie’s location. I turned a couple of corners and finally spotted what looked like a really beat-up, unused street past rusty wire fences.
Ordinary Champions Page 14
