by Hayes, Drew
Such a thought was not great comfort to Vince as he surveyed the landscape, however. Virtually anywhere he went, any step he made, he risked shredding his feet. Maybe if he absorbed the kinetic energy while he walked it would keep him from sinking down on the spikes. It was a technique he’d never tried though, and this didn’t feel like the best time to find out if it worked. Not to mention that being in a state of perpetual absorption would leave Vince virtually incapable of offense.
A spike fired out of the ground, on track for Vince’s hip, and his reflexes screamed at him to dodge. Barely keeping control, Vince instead absorbed the force of the spike, halting it just as it made contact and left a small hole in his uniform. Another came seconds later, this time aimed for his left shoulder, and at the same time one shot out from the right, targeting his spine. What was more worrisome was that the first spike hadn’t vanished yet; it was still there, pressing against him, even as others formed a short distance away from Vince, ready to strike. Conrad was trying to pin Vince down, taking away his ability to maneuver while surrounding him with traps. The shoulder spike had gone high and turned in mid-air, halting when pointed downward, inches from his flesh. If he jumped again, Vince risked impaling his shoulder in the process. Rather than abandoning his tactic from minutes ago, Conrad was modifying and fine-tuning it, working to find a way to breach Vince’s defenses while keeping him from running amok. An aggravating tactic to face, but no one could claim it didn’t fit the ideals of a Hero.
More spikes hit, more stopped stones staying carefully against or near Vince’s skin. The lone exception was one that struck him near the ribs, which hit a minor obstacle it had to drill through: Nick’s good luck gift, the playing cards, were nestled into a pocket in that very spot. If they were supposed to save him from some sort of unexpected attack, they’d failed spectacularly at their job. Then again, how would Nick predict something like that, especially since he wasn’t using his power? It couldn’t be something that simple. That wasn’t the way Nick worked.
“Go on, blast them away. Or run across my spikes. Or jump into the air again. I’m starting to get a sense of what you can do, Vince Reynolds, and it’s only a matter of time until I beat you. I’m the best Sizemore has to offer, the best of this entire year’s Hero Certification Program. Do us both a favor and just give up before I have to make you look bad.”
The best that Sizemore had to offer. The King of their class. Someone at the absolute top of their game. And now all that Lander had left was their fourth pick, the one who’d barely made it in. The man who was only default King because everyone else had lost.
“Nick didn’t say I was the King.”
“Well, that certainly sounds like insane babble. Did you crack?” The echo seemed almost concerned, as well as perhaps a bit uncertain. This probably wasn’t the reaction that Conrad had braced for.
“In my sophomore year team, we use a playing card analogy. The best fighter we have is the King. The top of the class. The pinnacle we all strive for.” Vince was wracking his brain now, trying to figure it out. It didn’t matter, or it shouldn’t in a situation like this. Yet all the same, Vince couldn’t stop pulling on the mental thread. “But Nick didn’t call me the King. He said maybe, like he was unsure. Nick’s never unsure. I’m the one who doesn’t understand things.”
“Oh? Perhaps I can teach you a lesson then.”
The floor around Vince began to rumble. His entire corner of the cell sank down just as dozens of sharp stones grew into a dome overhead. They kept growing, forming into a ceiling, yet the spikes nearby weren’t moving. Conrad was combining his favorite techniques, trying to seal Vince in while preparing half-dozen attacks to strike the moment he stopped absorbing. With a ceiling in place, Vince wouldn’t be able to jump his way to freedom; at best he’d just get knocked back down here, at worst he’d seriously hurt himself.
As the stones moved into place, closing Vince off from the artificial light of the cell, the situation seemed more and more dire. Yet in spite of that, Vince lowered his head as the last bit fell into place. He set his jaw in determination. He got it. Vince thought he understood what Nick was trying to remind him of. Even if he’d gotten it completely wrong, even if there was no meaning to the cards, it didn’t matter. Vince had realized what he needed to see, and that meant the cards had worked.
The massive blast tore apart the stone spikes, shattering the ground for several feet in all directions and completely collapsing the still-forming ceiling. When the dust cleared, it revealed Vince Reynolds kneeling, his fist pressed firmly against the ground that had since been turned into a massive crater. Before Conrad could reform the trap, Vince had leapt once more, soaring through the cell. When he was at the top of his arc, Vince held out his hand, creating a crude hammer of orange energy that stretched down and smashed into the spikey floor. It was gone before he landed, his attention back to absorbing so he didn’t break a leg. He turned around to face the shattered corner where bits of debris were still tumbling down.
“How… how did you create that much force?” Conrad didn’t sound so sure of himself now, and it was hard to blame the man. Vince had never used that kind of power in a match, certainly not here in Intramurals. The hole he’d left when fighting Grave Robber was less than half of this one’s size.
“I did what Roy would do. I put my power into a single blow and smashed my way out by destroying the foundation your spikes were built on.” Vince stepped forward, a small blast of kinetic energy from the sole of his foot flattening the spikes on the floor the moment they touched his skin. “There are a lot of people to draw inspiration from in my class. See, we’re different, you and me. I’m not the King of my class. I’ve had to fight against so many strong people to make it this far. I’ve had to counter them, to learn from them, to steal power from them, and grow from my losses to them. My best friend helped me see the two things I needed to make this fight a real challenge. The first is that none of this matters; it’s just my fight against you. So long as I don’t go into lethal territory, I don’t have to hold back.”
Vince kept walking, flattening the floor and scanning the walls. He had an idea for how to draw Conrad out of hiding, but it centered on putting Sizemore’s champion on the defensive. While beating the last trap was a solid start, he needed to put more pressure on Conrad, make him unsure about what was coming next. “Honestly, the idea of that still scares the hell out of me, yet oddly I also find it somewhat freeing. But that was only half of it. See, it’s not enough to just come at you with everything I’ve got. That wouldn’t be enough. That’s probably why Nick gave me the cards, in the hopes that I wouldn’t get in my head and forget the basic core of my ability: I’m not just me. I’m an absorber, in more ways than just what my power does. Fighting with only my default tactics is just going to lead to another Lander loss, and I’m more than that. I’m everything I’ve learned and stolen and seen in these last four years. Be it power, lesson, or technique, I’ve got something from everyone in my class with me today.” Flexing his fingers, Vince took a deep breath and got ready to turn this into a real match.
“You might be the King of Sizemore, but I’m Lander’s whole damn shuffle.”
291.
“That’s a cute line, but nothing about your situation has changed.”
Conrad was right and wrong. The situation might not have changed, but Vince had. He’d stopped thinking about how to endure the next few minutes and started focusing on how to win. The first step was a very simple one: Vince had to figure out if Conrad was still physically human under all the stone. Until he knew what he was fighting, it was going to stay impossible to plan an appropriate strategy. Luckily, humans had many noticeable differences from rocks, the most relevant of which was a higher natural temperature.
Theoretically, it was just like tracking people when Vince absorbed light. Of course, he wasn’t trying to find them through layers of rock in those situations, so the tactics might not be directly comparable. That didn’t mat
ter, though. Win or lose, this was the path he had to walk. If he couldn’t do it, then he went down trying. If he could… well, Vince would cross those bridges as he came to them.
Weeks at Lander East had taught Vince a lot of things. Releasing larger bursts of energy was certainly one aspect of it, but he’d also focused on faster absorption. In truth, he’d never reached the point where he could flash freeze a large area, not even in the months since then. Of course, that didn’t mean Vince hadn’t been improving; there was a wide stretch between perfection and incompetence. Reaching out to the ambient heat all around him, Vince began to draw it in. Not just letting the heat through, like he once had; Vince was greedier this time, drinking in as much as he could. Water in the air turned to frost on the stones, which were starting to move as Conrad put together the context clues that Vince wasn’t absorbing kinetic energy anymore.
The rocks were a little slower this time, whether because Conrad was feeling cautious or the sudden dip in temperature made them more brittle and harder to control. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. By the time Conrad was moving again, Vince had already gotten what he needed.
“Upper left corner of the ceiling, under one of those spires you like creating so much.” Vince was already pointing up by the time the first rocks bounced ineffectually off him, breath turning to fog in the room’s chill. Switching back to kinetic didn’t return all the heat Vince had leeched, and while he did have to suppress a shiver, he felt no inclination to warm the air back up. With it this cold, he would only need to absorb heat for a few seconds to pin down Conrad’s location again. “Looks like you’re not a full-shift manipulator after all. That, or stone-you still puts off an awful lot of heat.”
“You froze the room to hunt me?”
“It’s what Mary would have done, except I used heat instead of thoughts to run you down.” Vince started to move now, flattening more chunks of ground as he did. The small spikes shattered easily – too easily in fact. All the shifting of the rocks Conrad was doing must have been weakening them. They were formed into unnatural shapes that didn’t hold together well. Once he’d gotten a little distance, Vince pointed upward and let loose a brief torrent of flame. It wasn’t quite at the spot where Conrad was hiding; that would put him at serious risk. Instead, Vince focused on the stones below him, turning up the heat as much as he could. The shot barely lasted a full second before stone spikes shot out and Vince had to absorb their blows. No doubt about it now: Conrad’s attacks were definitely a little slower post-freeze. Whether it was the cold itself or the necessity of splitting his attention to deal with attacks was a discussion for minds smarter than Vince’s. He didn’t especially care why it was working, only that it was.
Another round of heat absorption showed him Conrad moving through the walls, shoved along by his shifting rocks like an automated tunnel. It was tempting to send another blast of fire, but Conrad was wising up: he’d picked a new position with plenty of stone spires in the way. Well, he wasn’t the only Super who could change a battlefield.
One of the unexpected advantages to knowing where Conrad was hiding was that Vince also knew where Conrad wasn’t tucked away. That meant he had a very clear idea of which parts of the cell he could attack without risking lethal damage. Doing a horizontal leap, Vince flung himself at the nearest stone spire in his way. Landing at the base, he was barely there for a second before his fist slammed into the bottom of the massive spire, snapping it off at the root and sending it tumbling down. He was gone before it landed on another spire, shoving both into a section of still-spikey ground. It was a mix of Roy and Alice, brute force combined with altering the battlefield. Flecks of broken rock bounced off every section of the cell. Vince had to make Conrad afraid, force him to go deep. That was the only way to end this safely.
“This is insane, how much strength have you stolen?” A new flurry of rocks shot toward Vince. He absorbed the force in time, but these moved slightly faster than the last batch. One way or another, Conrad was recovering, and Vince couldn’t allow that to happen.
“It was given freely, actually, and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of how much raw power Roy was able to impart. That man has strength to spare. Which means so do I.” Risking a quick switch to absorbing heat, Vince double-checked Conrad’s position and then picked a totally different spot on the floor. Dropping his fist to it, Vince let out enough of Roy’s force to form another huge crater in the ground. “See, if that had been you, I’m guessing you’d be feeling pretty rough at the moment. Don’t worry, though. I’m not going to come after your real body like that. Not until I’ve figured out exactly how much power it takes to cave in the stone and wound your body without killing you outright. No lethal damage, you know.”
If Vince had been facing someone from Lander, they would have never bought it. His classmates knew him too well. A move like that was inherently risky, no matter how sure Vince might be about the necessary force. But Conrad didn’t know the real Vince; he only knew the student who’d won through achieving deathblows on two of his opponents. He knew the Vince that was tearing apart the cell with seemingly reckless abandon. Conrad knew was he fighting someone who could see through his supposedly perfect hiding spot and punch through what was meant to be unbreachable armor.
Sure enough, another brief heat absorption confirmed that Conrad was burrowing deeper, probably nearing whatever border the cell had. That was the moment Vince had been waiting for, when Conrad was covered by enough rock to have solid protection from the heat.
There was no time to waste. Vince smashed his way across the battlefield, taking down another spire in the process, before he arrived at Conrad’s hiding spot. Not slowing for a moment, Vince put a few craters in the ground encircling Conrad, then summoned the biggest, hottest blast of flame he could manage and sent it roaring into the floor. Within seconds the top layer of stone started to glow. Conrad’s counter was swift, two stone spikes shooting up on a crash course with Vince’s shoulders. This time, he didn’t change energies. Keeping the fire going, Vince stepped to the side, managing to avoid one of the strikes. Unfortunately, the other caught his left arm, cutting a slice in his triceps. Gritting his teeth, Vince ignored the pain and focused on the fire. A little more. A little more. He could see the glow spreading. The rocks were reaching the limit of how hot Vince could safely make them.
Another set of spikes were in route when Vince dropped the flames, barely turning to blast them away before hurling himself at the ground that seemed on the verge of boiling. Hand outstretched, Vince took back his flames, reabsorbing the heat from the rocks as fast as he could pull it in. As the stones cooled, far faster than nature had ever intended, cracks began to form throughout. Between Conrad playing with their structure and the sudden dramatic shift in temperature, the rocks were turning incredibly brittle. By the time Vince landed atop the crumbling floor, he was grinning from ear to ear. He might never be up to snuff on the more advanced physics of his abilities, but even he knew what happened when someone dropped a hot dish in cold water.
Conrad was trying to escape, his heat signature flopping about as he struggled. The brittle rocks around him weren’t as easy to manipulate, however, and passing through Vince’s craters meant risking temporary exposure. He still had to potential to get away though, so Vince didn’t hesitate. Pressing his hand to the top of the floor, Vince summoned up the some of the little that remained of Thomas’s energy. An orange tendril appeared, slamming and slithering its way through the fragile rock, drilling to the bottom faster than it could have ever moved through normal stone. The digging grew harder as it went deeper; Vince purposefully hadn’t torched the top long enough to penetrate all the way down, lest he cook Conrad alive. Ready for this moment, Vince widened the orange tendril into a massive cone, shoving away the rest of the rocks and dropping deep into the pit he’d created.
Spikes and stone hands shot out at him, but Vince didn’t absorb them this time. Instead, he took a cue from Thomas’s energy suit, a
s well as his own previous escape in the match, and let constant kinetic energy surge from all parts of his body, shattering the attacks as they hit. While it was true that the rocks left wounds as they made contact, it was far better than being skewered. Plus, this method had the upside of still allowing Vince to blast offensively, and that was exactly what he planned to do.
Attacking through an entire floor was much too risky for the person being hit, but this close, Vince could work on a smaller scale. He tore apart the ground beneath him, ignoring the steadily increasing torrent of strikes leaving cuts across his side and back. Pain was a good method to stop a lot of Supers. Just not ones from the Class of Nightmares.
Slamming a fist through a layer of rock, Vince caught sight of Conrad’s leg. His real, human leg. At last, there was finally a proper opponent before him, and Vince was ready. He wrapped a hand around Conrad’s ankle and turned up the kinetic force considerably. The bones were hardy, clearly improved endurance was an aspect of Conrad’s power. But Vince had the strength of the son of Titan running through him, and in moments the ankle snapped, eliciting a soft howl of pain from Conrad.
Vince didn’t let go when he felt the break. He dragged Conrad out, dodging a half-hearted attempt at a punch before leaping out of the pit with Conrad still in his grip. They tumbled through the air, breaking apart by inches just as they landed, with only one of them absorbing the force of the fall. Conrad started to sink immediately, but Vince was already there, jerking him back up.
“Go ahead. Seal us.” Vince threw a kinetically-enhanced punch that Conrad blocked, though it shattered his forearm. “You’re just locking yourself in there with me.”
Now that they were out of the hole, Vince noticed that perhaps he’d been taking those attacks more casually than he should have. Blood was running down his limbs and back, staining his white costume wherever it went. Conrad had taken notice too, though his eyes seemed more wide with fear than hope.
