by Jamie Hawke
Now they were looking at me in a different light, and I was staring at my hands in confusion. I knew something would happen, but not that. It was a weird experience, always learning on the go.
“Supers,” the lady said, and somehow that word triggered a thought. Why hadn’t my blocking power worked against him? It had worked not long ago against the Nihilist in the hallway. Hoping they wouldn’t notice, I pulled up my screen again and saw the symbols for powers—something that looked like a blast of wind for Gale, a heart for Charm, and a screen with a code on it for Twitch. Nothing else, which meant, I had to assume, they had faded away.
My best guess was that powers vanished with time. I wasn’t sure but decided that would have to be an experiment for later.
So when the man motioned to the woman to step forward and attack, I thought I’d try my tempest energy again. This time when it shot out, the metal wasn’t present at all. Instead, a ball of bright light formed in my hands and then shot out, blinding the enemy while the ground beneath them split and gave way. Two of them fell into a sinkhole, while the rest cursed and stumbled around, unable to see, starting to throw out attacks blindly.
Twitch pulled me down as a series of blades went past my head, while Gale attempted an attack that managed to pull as it had in the hallway, this time throwing two more into the sinkhole.
“Let me guess, the power blocking is gone now?” Twitch asked.
“Afraid so.”
She nodded, then pulled up a pink screen on instinct, pausing to clench her jaw. “It’s not worth the risk.”
A blast of lasers caught the building nearby and sent chunks of it raining down on us, but Gale pulled on it with the wind, so that the falling stones landed between her and us.
“I want to try one more thing,” I said, standing and attempting my illusion power, one I’d kind of received from Charm before and had upgraded. Instead, it projected a copy of me forward, just as one of the enemies seemed to be able to see again. He swung for my copy and went right through me, losing his balance and falling into the sinkhole.
That left the tall one and the woman.
“Not bad,” Gale said, seeing what I’d done.
“This place changes our powers, but it’s not a horrible thing—” I started, but then a blast nearly hit me, and would’ve if not for Twitch shoving me again.
“Apparently my power here is to be able to shove and pull you out of the way of danger,” she said with a grunt. “Now shut up and deal with those last two.”
They had both squared up against us, so I assumed they could see again. Only, it wasn’t me—it was the copy of me. So as they started to send their attacks, I charged, using the power of my suit to throw the hardest punch I’d ever thrown. As I pulled back to strike the suit formed gloves, and then I connected with the side of the man’s face, dropping him instantly. The woman turned to me in confusion, did a double take with my replica, and then fainted.
“That works,” Gale said, stepping up next to me.
“Guys!” Twitch shouted, and we turned to see she was motioning us back over to the barricade. When we were at her side, we saw why.
Running at us, not even bothering to cloak anymore, was our little foxy lady. Her face was in panic mode, her tail down and almost tucked between her legs as she ran.
“Charm,” I said in almost a whisper.
She had apparently spotted us, waving and running our way. She was yelling something but was too far away for me to hear. Then I realized that she wasn’t waving at us. No, she was waving us away.
“RUN!” her voice finally hit me, and then I saw why.
Behind her, moving in pursuit, was a black cloud. Only, it wasn’t exactly a cloud. While it moved in like one, billowing and reforming as if a storm would break free at any moment, there were eyes—many eyes, and then I saw tendrils, reaching. At that moment, I was damn sure I was going to die.
You know what? It’s true what they say about your life flashing before your eyes at that moment. Only, since my life had become what seemed to be about ninety percent all sex lately, I saw images of Charm’s pussy spread, saw green hair and large eyes as Twitch went down on me, and Gale’s massive breasts shaking as she worked my cock like a sex goddess. The images that flashed through my mind were numerous, and I swear I was somewhere between death and a wet dream when Twitch knocked me aside in her rush to get to Charm, and the images faded.
There I was, left with only my heavy breathing from the fear, and my massive erection, still damn sure I was about to die.
But seeing her charge forward like that—Twitch, who essentially had no powers in this place—gave me courage. I pulled myself together, ignored the pressure in my pants, and prepared for a fight.
4
Darkness permeated our surroundings, the cloud forming along all the walls. Twitch had Charm, the two of them charging toward us as beings formed from the tendrils above. More of those damned Nihilists, and people in the city were screaming, running, evacuating their homes.
A Nihilist appeared behind Charm, but Twitch spun and did something with her pink screen. A crash sounded, then the ground broke in two and they were thrown sideways, smacking their heads into the wall, but at least they hadn’t been touched by the Nihilist. New supers appeared, all wearing those horrible brown outfits like kung fu students, and they came charging at us as well. Gale met them halfway, unleashing a can of whoop-ass on them. They were tough, but this lady knew her business. When they threw punches, she countered with kicks to their legs and then joint locks, or in one case a quick snap of the elbow.
Three moved past her, using bursts of light from their powers to distract her, but by then I was in the mix, sweeping out the first one and coming up with an uppercut to the next guy’s chin.
I sent a copy of myself to fight next to Gale, confusing her new attackers as another couple ran up to join the fight, then I turned and caught my closest opponent with a back kick. When three more came up from behind, a Nihilist among them, I tried my light tempest on them—only the Nihilist was nearly upon me when I got it off, and all it did was serve as a quick explosion that sent the Nihilist off and distracted the others. It was enough, though I was very confused as to why the proximity of the Nihilist would have that effect.
With two quick punches and a neck snap, I ran over to connect with Charm and Twitch. Halfway there, Gale saw the plan and came to join us. We weren’t so far from the side of the hill we’d come down from the hotel, and saw the old woman again, waving us over before ducking into the shadows.
“It’s our best bet,” Twitch said, turning to see I’d had the same idea.
We all took off, Charm yelling about how she was never serving as the distraction again, about how freaked out she was, when one of the Nihilists was flung forward by powers from two of the supers. It was as if a great darkness had fallen over us and I turned in time to see his shadowy face—as if light had simply ceased to exist in that oval spot—and watched with horror as his hands wrapped around Charm, pulling her back.
Somewhere in that darkness I swear there was a smile, and then the figure was gone, taking Charm with him. Both simply vanished.
“Fuck!” I shouted, spinning back, looking for them. The supers kept charging, more too, and this time Twitch was at my side.
“Where…?” she asked, eyes searching, desperate as Gale threw out gusts of wind that pulled our enemy forward, knocking them off balance.
“She’s gone, taken!” I shouted. “Do something!”
“I… you know I can’t.”
“TRY!”
Twitch looked at me with her normally strong, firm gaze now desperate and scared. I blocked a punch and knocked a guy on his ass before stomping on his face and ignoring the screen that popped up, notifying me I’d gone up a level.
“Now, Twitch,” I said, turning to fight some more.
Twitch shouted, pulled up a line of pink screens and started working on them. She grunted as the Earth shook, as rocks turned to w
ater and then liquid metal, bubbling, creating a river between us and our attackers that then shot out, the metal no longer metal but acid, and it burned through the enemy. A stream came at me and I dodged, Gale cursing and pulling back at my side.
“Twitch…” My voice rose. “What the hell!”
“It’s not working,” she countered. “I’m doing the best I can, I’m trying!”
I shot out my powers, turning the light bursts to the sky, hoping they’d somehow give us a clue about Charm’s whereabouts, but nothing.
“We’re not leaving here without her,” I said as another movement from Twitch began sucking the air out from around us, starting with one of the enemies so that he was instantly unable to breathe. The cloud was still there, the Nihilists forming a line as they came for us.
“Sorry,” Twitch said, swiping away the screens and turning to me. “We have no choice.”
I couldn’t believe it, but she’d given up! She was already running, shouting for us to fall back, and Gale stared at me with disbelief, but we knew it was the only option. We charged after her in retreat, hating ourselves for it but seeing that we had no other choice.
More powers shot after us, some hitting and fizzing off of our shields—at least those still worked! As we drew close to the tunnel, the woman held out a hand as she gestured urgently with the other for us to hurry. A ripple of energy passed through the air from her, and we felt a momentary confusion, but then we were back at it, charging into the tunnel and she was running too. In fact, she was running too fast! I was in a land of supers, sure, but someone her age shouldn’t have been able to move like that.
Equally as strange, the supers behind us had given up the chase, it seemed, as they all peered around, apparently perplexed. The Nihilists flew up and down the rock wall in a flurry of what looked like bewilderment.
“Keep moving, stranger,” the woman said, gesturing us on, and for the first time I saw that her wrinkles had faded, her gray hair looking more somewhere between blonde and stark white, and she was more slender than I’d realized at first.
“Illusions,” Gale explained at my confused look. “Not overly rare in supers, but enough for her to be able to hide us like that against all of them…”
“Damn powerful,” the woman said. “Yes, I am. But if you keep talking you’ll make me lose focus, then the illusion will break, and they’ll find us. So mind shutting your traps?”
No argument from me. We ran back through the tunnel, lines of glowing rocks lighting the way. She stopped us in the middle of it waving her hand along the wall, and a side tunnel appeared. When we entered this one, it was dark, but a bright light shone from the other side. My mind instantly jumped to the conclusion that I was dead, that I was going toward the light. Going with three attractive women wasn’t the worst way to go, but I couldn’t leave Charm behind.
It wasn’t our time yet, thanks to this woman. This woman who, I now noticed, wasn’t bad to look at. Even with that thought, though, I had to admit to myself that I was so exhausted and emotionally drained that anything more than appreciating her beauty was, at the moment, beyond my capabilities.
The light wasn’t a light at all, or not light in a room like I thought it was, but a glimmering portal of gold. Gesturing for us to go first, the woman smiled.
“It’s the only way,” she said.
I stood my ground. “We’re not leaving Charm behind.”
“This is the only way to get her back,” the woman replied. “Trust me.”
“Based on what?”
She stared, nodded back the way we’d just come, and said, “For saving your asses. I could’ve just left you to the Nihilists.”
Before another word of argument could leave my lips, Twitch stepped up, put her arm through the portal, and laughed. My response was a confused stare, to which she smiled and said, “It’s fine.” She turned to our new friend. “Where does it take us?”
“Not far,” the woman admitted with a look of embarrassment. “One of our supers has the portal power, but is tier three. Same planet, but not here.”
“We’ll take what we can get,” Twitch replied, and stepped through.
I wasn’t happy, and I almost called out or leaped for her, but Gale was smiling and I felt like I’d missed something.
“It’s not a trap if that’s what you’re thinking,” the new woman said. “I’ll prove it.” She stepped through next.
For another moment I stared in confusion and disbelief, but Gale took me by the arm and together we walked through, closely followed by Twitch. It was as if we’d simply stepped through a door. One minute we were in the room back there, the next we were outside, in a clearing with angled trees on the ridge above us bent by the wind, jagged rocks sticking out nearby, and the ground gave out in three different directions ahead of us, in what appeared to be more tunnels.
The woman was there, standing with arms folded, waiting.
How that all worked was way over my head, and it took me a moment to get my bearings. When I finally understood what had happened, I turned back to see the portal was still there, though muted out on this side.
“How does this help us?” I asked, turning to the woman.
“Shimmer,” the woman said.
“Excuse me?”
“My name,” she said. “Shimmer. And to answer your question, you’ll have to speak with the chieftains.”
“The… chieftains?”
She motioned to the tunnel on the far left. “Stay with me, I’ll explain.” We started walking, as she continued, “We’ve been forming a way to fight back, gathering any supers we can who might be persecuted by the Nihilists or their followers. We have an army, though it’s nothing against the enemy. You, it would seem, have reason to fight back.”
“You could say that,” I replied.
“Good, you’ll fit right in.”
“We’re not sticking around,” Gale said. “We have to get back—”
“You and all of us,” Shimmer said with a small scoff.
“What do you mean?” Twitch asked.
Before Shimmer could answer, another woman appeared from the darkness ahead, standing guard. She had a rifle at her side, a bandana around her face and goggles on her shaved head. She gave Shimmer a nod, glanced over each of us, and froze at the sight of Twitch.
“Green witch,” the guard said, lifting her rifle to aim it at Twitch.
Before she could pull the trigger, I was there, shoving the rifle aside. The blast went off, a string of bullets tearing into the tunnel wall, and Shimmer had her hands out, cursing. It was like only she and I remained, only I could hear everyone’s voices.
“Don’t protect her,” the guard said. “Do you know who this woman is?”
“What the hell is happening right now?” I asked.
Shimmer turned her eyes to me and frowned. “Everyone’s here, but you can’t see each other until you calm down. It’s okay, nobody was hurt.”
“Speak for yourself!” the guard spat back. “My whole planet was victim to her! Tell them what you just said, see what happens!”
“This is… her?” Shimmer asked, and suddenly we were all back, staring at each other and ready to leap into action.
“What’s going on?” I asked
“I think,” Twitch said, cautiously craning her neck to better see the guard. “By Oram, can you really be one of them?”
“One of the many people whose lives you destroyed by throwing our planet into the portal that day!” The guard spat on the ground. “If you had any idea—”
She was cut off as Twitch leaped forward, faster than she could react, and threw her arms around the woman.
“The fuck…?” the guard said.
“I’m sorry,” Twitch said, pulling away and beaming. “You just don’t understand. I thought I’d killed you all. I mean, that sounds worse. It wasn’t on purpose, I should say.”
“What?”
“The whole thing!” Twitch looked at us with her wide smile, as if we w
ere involved in the situation. “I was there to take out the bad guys, tried throwing them into a black hole, but it all got out of control. Holy shit, I was thrown into prison for that, and here I was thinking I’d destroyed you all, hating myself for it. But… wow!”
The guard shoved her back but didn’t raise the rifle. “You should hate yourself for it. Because of you, we’ve had to suffer under the Nihilists.”
“I didn’t have any way of knowing I’d sent you to their world—”
“Not their world,” Shimmer interjected. “This is my people’s world, my people’s galaxy that the Nihilists took over years ago when they came through their portals and conquered us.”
“If they have portals and we have people who can make portals,” I said, thinking this through, “couldn’t we just go to their dimension and fight them?”
“There was a plan in place,” Twitch said, nodding. “I’d heard about it when I was at the Citadel for a stint. Had to do with portals and travel, but it would take seventeen years to get there even with everything we have. The Nihilists have been planning these invasions for a long time.”
“Seventeen years,” I said, trying to comprehend how far that was, what with their FTL travel capability combined with superpowers.
“I’m still not over this,” the guard said, frowning. “But… this is for real?”
Twitch nodded. “We’re making a move against them. They have a supervillain, Ranger, and his minions. If we can defeat them, I think that will clear the mission to start the invasion of their homeworld.”
“Others won’t be happy to see her,” the guard said to Shimmer.
“Then I’ll have to explain what’s happening,” Shimmer said, turning to us with a look of increased interest. “Here I was thinking I was just bringing new supers to be recruited for the cause. Little did I know I had Twitch the Destroyer in my hands.”
“They don’t call me that…” Twitch looked at me with horror, then back to Shimmer.
