by Logan Jacobs
I couldn’t help but wonder what their fights were like, but I knew it didn’t really matter since Slade was about to find himself in an entirely different kind of fight.
One that he was going to lose.
I nodded at Elizabeth, adjusted my position, and then jumped over the steel railing. As I fell, I activated the thrusters in the bottom of my boots so that I slowed down and landed perfectly on Slade’s right side. Elizabeth jumped immediately after me and landed solidly on Slade’s left.
“You!” Slade snarled as he whirled toward me. “What have you done with the Maniac?”
“You shouldn’t be so worried about your enemies, Slade,” I laughed. “What about the warehouse workers?”
“They’re-- well, they’re not--” Slade spluttered and then exhaled through his teeth before he continued. “This warehouse has obviously not been used for several years, so clearly, there’s no one else here.”
“But you still showed up,” Elizabeth said. “You’re a disappointment, Slade.”
“I’m glad you brought her,” the Shadow Knight told me without turning toward Elizabeth. “This makes my job easier.”
“What job?” Elizabeth demanded.
The Shadow Knight pivoted toward my girlfriend at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for him, whipped out a canister of gas from his utility belt, and immediately exploded it in Elizabeth’s face before she could react.
Elizabeth gasped and stumbled backward with her hands over her mouth, but Slade had moved so fast that there was no way she hadn’t already breathed in the gas.
“M-Miles,” she stammered as she continued to wobble backward.
“Dynamo!” I shouted.
Slade swung his fist toward me so I couldn’t run toward my superpowered girlfriend, but as soon as I dodged one blow, he swung at me again and again so I couldn’t go to help her.
All I could do was watch as Elizabeth staggered toward a wall. She reached a hand out to steady herself, gave me one pleading look, and then slumped down to the floor.
She didn’t move, but Elizabeth was too sturdy to be killed by a poisonous gas. At worst, she would be knocked out for a while, and I’d be left on my own against the Shadow Knight. It had been an effective strategy to make me face Slade alone, but he would fucking pay for whatever was in that canister.
Even as I dodged another punch and darted away from the Shadow Knight, I started to think about what kind of helmet or mask I could give Elizabeth to make sure this kind of thing wouldn’t happen ever again. I didn’t want to fully cover up her face, but maybe something like a mask over her mouth and nose so I could still see her bright, turquoise eyes…
I activated the thrusters in my boots and shot into the air to avoid another punch.
“You’re a coward, Slade,” I called as I landed on the other side of the warehouse floor. “What kind of man knocks out a woman like that?”
My words were a bit of a misdirect, since his strategy was rather clever, and I just wanted to make him feel bad with the hope that making him talk might buy some time for Elizabeth to recover.
“Would you prefer that I punched her in her pretty little face?” the Shadow Knight growled as he charged at me.
“I’d prefer that you actually fought both of us, but I guess I understand,” I scoffed as I blocked another punch, but this time I used the razor-sharp blades on my gauntlets to deflect.
Slade slammed his fist directly into the spikes on my forearm and jumped backward with a snarl.
“That’s a cheap trick,” he said.
”Says the man who gassed my girlfriend,” I snickered as I fired off a blast from my palm.
The Shadow Knight skidded off to the side to avoid it, but it clipped the side of his torso and tore a hole through his suit. He winced and grabbed the wound with his hand, but it didn’t slow him down for long, and when he renewed his attack, each of his punches felt like they were faster than the last.
Slade had trained his entire life in close-combat styles, had designed his suit to enhance his world-class martial arts abilities, and I hadn’t done either.
I was at a clear disadvantage.
Slade landed a solid punch against my bladed forearm again, but this time, he seemed prepared to take the pain. The hit rattled through my bones as I stumbled backward, but I quickly rolled to the side to avoid a punch straight at the side of my head. I felt the wind rush past me as I just barely avoided the hit, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to dodge him for much longer.
I didn’t think I’d be able to dodge him for much longer, but I also knew that I couldn’t take many more of his punches.
The Shadow Knight’s knuckles were visible through the gloves of his suit, and even though they were torn and bloodied thanks to my bladed forearms, Slade continued his attack on me with a crazed look in his eyes.
Now that he had me alone, he would stop at nothing to kill me.
“So I’m the only one you’ll break your code for,” I said as we circled each other on the warehouse floor. “I’m flattered, really.”
“You’re the most dangerous criminal I’ve ever met,” Slade growled. “If I break my code one time, it will only be to kill you.”
“I already said I’m flattered,” I scoffed, “so you don’t need to compliment me more.”
The Shadow Knight took a second to try to think of a comeback, so I took that second to charge forward as I fired off another shot from my palm blaster.
It exploded directly into the Shadow Knight’s shoulder, tore apart his suit, and scorched the flesh underneath with a satisfying sizzle. But Slade continued after me like he’d barely felt it, and I wasn’t able to get out of the way in time before he slammed his fist directly into the side of my head.
And fuck, he hit hard.
My helmet splintered and cracked in a jagged pattern that shattered one of the screens I used to see my surroundings. One of the horns cracked off completely and clattered to the floor, and I knew immediately that I needed to come up with a new plan if I was going to defeat the Shadow Knight without Elizabeth.
I activated the thrusters in my boots again and leapt up high into the air to land on the steel rafters that criss-crossed above the warehouse floor. I had an idea of what I could do, but I needed to contact Aileen, and that meant I needed to see how long the signal jammer had left before I could reach out to her.
“Are you going to run away, Miles Nelson?” Slade taunted me from the floor.
“What a pompous asshole,” I muttered as I glanced down at the signal jammer.
We had been fighting longer than I thought, and that meant I only had about half a minute before I would be able to access my comms again. That also meant Slade only had half a minute before he could call on his remote vehicles, but I didn’t actually think he would this time.
He seemed so confident in his ability to defeat me that his escape vehicles didn’t seem to have crossed his mind. And if we only took our physical prowess into account, Slade was probably right. I wouldn’t be able to outlast him in this kind of fight, no matter how much strength-boosting tech I had plugged into every nook and cranny of my suit.
But I didn’t fight with brawn alone.
“Will you abandon Dynamo, like the villain you are?” Slade called again.
“Why don’t you fly up here and stop me?” I shouted down. “Last time I checked, crows were supposed to be able to fly!”
The signal jammer turned green in my hand, and I shoved it back into my utility belt at the same time I switched on the link to my AI assistant.
“Aileen,” I hissed. “I need you to hack into the Shadow Knight’s suit.”
“Can you clarify, Creator?” my android asked.
“I can get close enough to him that you should be able to hack into the closed circuit signal that his suit uses,” I said as Slade paced around below me like a lion waiting for its food. “And as soon as you’re in, I need you to use the signal jammer to disable it.”
“Unders
tood,” Aileen replied. “Once you get close enough, I will do so.”
Before Slade had time to think of another insult, I launched myself back over the steel railing and down toward the warehouse floor. I aimed the thrusters of my boots downward to try and cause some damage on the Shadow Knight, but he saw me coming and avoided it.
Instead, I just landed firmly on my feet and engaged him in hand-to-hand combat like I hadn’t just come up with a brilliant new plan. I might not have studied martial arts for my whole life, but I did at least have blades and spikes in my suit so every time I blocked a punch that rattled me, I inflicted a little bit of damage back on Slade.
Slade lunged at me with a sweeping kick, but since I wanted to stay close for Aileen, I didn’t roll to the side and instead, I rolled forward and slammed my body into his other leg. It dropped him to his knees for half a second, and by the time he stood back up, Aileen’s voice crackled in my earpiece.
“I am in,” my robotic assistant said. “I have connected to his suit and hacked into it. But his suit is protected.”
“What does that mean?” I growled as I took a step back to avoid a high kick.
“His suit will restart itself immediately to kick out invaders,” Aileen explained. “It is a failsafe. I can shut it down with the signal jammer, but only for a moment.”
“Alright,” I muttered. “Wait for my signal.”
All I needed was to find a single moment to get in one final hit to kill him, but as long as his suit was active, he could dodge everything too quickly, and I’d never be able to wear him down.
And I was already feeling pretty run down myself.
I launched my body backward with the rocket thrusters in my boots to give myself some space away from the Shadow Knight. I breathed in to try and recover some of my strength, and then I glanced over to where Elizabeth still remained slumped against the wall. She hadn’t moved throughout our entire fight, and even if she did manage to wake up, she wouldn’t be strong enough to help me anyway.
I raised my hands in front of me again, but Slade charged me and slammed his fist into my abdomen before I could block it. I gasped as the air fled from my lungs, and as I staggered backward, I had a hard time staying upright. Only the stabilizers in my suit kept me on my feet.
“You can’t protect her,” Slade growled as he started to circle me again.
“And you think you can?” I raised an eyebrow inside my cracked helmet.
“No,” the Shadow Knight said with a Maniac-like grin. “But Optimo can. I'm giving her to him after I deal with you.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I groaned but then immediately raised my spiked forearm to intercept a hit.
But this time, the Shadow Knight didn’t pull away. Instead, he kept his forearm braced against mine, even as the spikes tore into his suit and caused blood to drip down his arm. He leaned in closer to me and began to back me into one of the concrete walls.
“Once I kill you, the world will be right again,” he snarled.
“You’re insane,” I said. “Especially if you think you can trust Optimo.”
“All he required from me was that I bring him your little girlfriend,” Slade taunted. “Once I do, she’ll rejoin the Wardens, and your entire legacy will disappear.”
“And Grayville will be yours again?” I scoffed. “Give me a break.”
I flung my fist straight at his temple, but the Shadow Knight grabbed it out of the air and then slammed it into the concrete wall behind me.
“That’s right,” Slade ground out. “Everything you’ve done will be reversed. I’ll fix it all back to how it was, and no one will even remember you ever existed. You’re insignificant. You always will be.”
“And that’s why you’re breaking your code to kill me, huh?” I laughed. “Because I’m so insignificant?”
“I’m killing you because it’s necessary,” Slade replied. “I’m killing you because if I let you live, you’ll continue to disrupt everything.”
“Yeah?” I stalled him. “Maybe it should be disrupted. Maybe this world fucking needs someone to make the difficult decisions and to make sure criminals stay dead, instead of running wild over your shitty, crime-infested city.”
The Shadow Knight slammed my whole body back against the concrete wall hard enough to make my vision blur.
“You’re a criminal, Miles Nelson,” Slade growled. “I’ll relish your death.”
“Now!” I shouted to Aileen.
There was a spark of electricity, and then suddenly Slade’s hands felt a lot less powerful where they held me against the wall. I twisted out of his grip, brought both hands up to eye-level, and then fired off both palm-blasters directly at his arm.
The blasts ripped his arm free from its socket, and the limb thudded to the floor in a spray of blood and tissue. As the ruined mess oozed out more gore across the ground, the scent of burning human flesh filled the air.
Slade just stared in horror at the empty wound that used to be his arm.
“I’ll enjoy this,” I said and then grabbed the Shadow Knight’s head between both of my hands.
“Y-you’re just killing superheroes now,” Slade slurred as his horrified gaze turned to meet mine. “You’re worse than any supervillain, Miles Nelson. You’re pure evil.”
“An Evil Genius, maybe?” I replied and then fired off both palm blasters into the sides of Dan Slade’s head.
His head popped like a grape from the force of both my blasters, and blood and brain matter splattered across my helmet and even coated the cracked screen inside it.
As I stepped back from his body, it flopped to the ground with a sickening squelch beside his missing arm, and his exposed skull cracked a little further from the impact. What used to be Dan Slade was now just a puddle of meat, blood, and half a smoking skull.
His body and teeth were still intact, so someone would be able to identify him, and I doubted there were any other feather-caped crusaders in Grayville that he might be mistaken for. His crow-mask had melted into his brain, so it was now hard to tell what was gray matter and what was melted feather, and I guessed that would have been poetic, if I’d cared about that kind of thing.
I mostly just thought it was funny.
As I stared down at him, I wasn’t really sure what else to think. I didn’t want to make a habit out of killing superheroes, but the Shadow Knight had brought this on himself, and he’d decided I was his enemy first.
I’d tried to work with him to the best of my ability, and I’d even tried to push him in the right direction of what a superhero should be. I’d been able to convince both Beacon and Penumbra that I was right, but Slade had been far too stuck in his ways.
He had also clearly been too threatened by me to ever change.
Still, I didn’t like that whatever deal he’d made with Optimo involved Elizabeth. It meant that the insane leader of the Wardens was still after her, and so he wasn’t likely to leave us alone any time soon.
I left Slade in his gory puddle and hurried over to Elizabeth. I half-raised her in my arms and checked her pulse, and as I smoothed the black hair away from her face, she slowly started to stir.
“Miles?” she gasped as her turquoise-blue eyes fluttered open. “Is he… is he…”
“Yes,” I replied. “He’s dead.”
“You managed it on your own,” she said and laid her hand on my cheek. “I’m so sorry, I--”
“Don’t apologize,” I cut her off. “I’ll just have to make you a helmet for next time.”
“Next time,” Elizabeth chuckled as she struggled to sit up on her own. “Already thinking ahead, are you?”
“Always,” I replied with a grin and then offered her my hand. “Come on, let’s get you up. We should really get out of here.”
“How did you do it?” my dark-haired girlfriend asked as she let me pull her to her feet. “How did you kill him on your own?”
“I had a little help from Aileen,” I said.
“I shou
ld have guessed,” she groaned.
“Not jealous of her, are you?” I snickered.
“Of course not.” Elizabeth shook her head. “She’s perfect, and I’m not the jealous type.”
“Oh, really?” I asked as I wrapped my arms around her.
“Mhm,” Elizabeth purred into my ear. “Once her skin is finished, the two of us can test her out together.”
“Oh, my,” I snickered. “I think you are still addled from the gas.”
“Then let’s hope my buzz lasts until you can fix her skin.” Elizabeth chuckled.
“Then I have some good news for you,” I laughed. “But, for now, let’s just get you home.”
“What about all this?” Elizabeth asked as she managed to stand without my support and then looked all around at the carnage of our fight.
“We already set up the warehouse to look like the Maniac’s hideout, so the media will just assume that he killed the Shadow Knight,” I said.
“I guess they’ll also figure out that Dan Slade was the Shadow Knight,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sure they’ll run dental records.”
“Definitely,” I said, “but that’ll make his stock go even lower, and I told Aileen to buy up as much as we need as soon as news of his death breaks.”
“You really think of everything, don’t you?” my beautiful girlfriend sighed.
“Yes, I do,” I snickered. “Oh, but I do want to grab some of the Shadow Knight’s tech before we go.”
“Like that gas canister?” Elizabeth asked. “I feel really weird, so I’d really like to know what was in there.”
“That could be helpful,” I said. “Something capable of knocking out supers is definitely something we could use.”
“You plan to fight more superheroes?” she asked as she rubbed at the side of her head.
“Unfortunately,” I sighed as I reached down to grab the utility belt from the Shadow Knight’s corpse. “Optimo’s deal with Slade involved you.”
“Me?” Elizabeth frowned. “So that means Optimo…”
“Yes, he’s still after you,” I said as I finished taking everything I wanted off of the Shadow Knight’s body.
