“How do you want to do this?” Her response was just about the loudest thing he’d ever heard. Sam managed to whisper, “power-up, off,” and his sense of hearing returned to normal, his power moving to his nose.
“Say that again,” he whispered.
“Let’s just wait for Zoe and Helena.”
“Good idea.”
A mischievous look came across Ozella’s face. “On second thought, we could send Dinah in…”
“I support that,” Sam said, matching Ozella’s mischievous look with one of his own.
“Power-up, on,” Ozella said, causing Dinah’s form to take shape and solidify. “Go in there and cause a distraction,” she told the excited ghost woman.
“This is going to be crazy,” Sam said. Dinah took off into a darkened hallway, toward a light at its end. The elevator behind them opened up, startling Sam and Zoe.
“What is it?” Zoe asked as she stepped off, still in her non-exemplar form and in the same matching blue shirt and shorts that Sam wore, as was Helena.
“Someone’s trying to rob the place, a heist of sorts,” said Sam. “We’ve sent in Dinah.”
“We just can’t get a break, can we?” Zoe asked, biting her lip for a moment. “Okay, fine, fine, power-up, off.”
The side of her face began to morph, whiskers appearing, the hair taking shape, her teeth growing in size, her eyes becoming more feline, her human ears melting into her while tiger ears formed, her tail pushing out of the top of her loosened shorts.
“How should we go about doing this?” Helena asked, just as the four of them heard a scream, the blast of a wrist guard, some other noises they couldn’t quite identify.
“How do you think? You and me, now.” The hair on Zoe’s face was standing to attention a little, the size of her forearms growing as her claws took shape. The two took off, Sam and Ozella moving in behind them.
It was crazy, exhilarating, and to think that they had already fought a battle tonight only to be moving yet again into another.
But there were lives at stake, someone had already been killed, and if someone didn’t do something about what was going on, then the criminals would get away.
And these were no ordinary criminals, especially if they were willing to just kill a security guard in cold blood.
It turned out that the light at the end of the hallway was more than a light, it was actually an opening into a larger space with a big bank vault in its center, the space taking up two stories of the tall building.
Sam skidded to a halt when he saw what was going on. Dinah was latched onto a beefy strongman type, her asshole and the pink of her vag visible as he tried to buck her off, the blue ghost trying to wrap her legs around him.
Helena engaged a woman with incredibly long hair that had formed into several serpents. She moved through sideways cartwheels as the woman’s hair grew in length, the serpents turning into spikes, each one trying to pierce her flesh.
Meanwhile Zoe was going for a guy with two wrist guards, the man not at all prepared once she closed the distance between the two. After dodging a punch, she grabbed him by the neck and slammed him into one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, a crack spiderwebbing outward.
There were some hostages as well, five non-exemplars, each gagged and scared shitless as they watched Vigilante Justice move into action, Sam only wishing he had his wrist guard so he could take out the strongman’s legs.
An idea came to him.
As the strongman struggled to get Dinah off him, even trying to jump back and flatten her, which never seemed to work because she came back to life every time he stood, Sam raced over to the man that Zoe had taken out, and unfastened his wrist guards.
Zoe moved on to the snake-haired woman that Helena was taking on, the tiger girl flanking the woman and coming around with her fist drawn. One solid punch to the back of the woman’s head was all it took, and even though the woman’s hair tried to fight back, latching on to Zoe, spinning her, trying to gag her, it soon gave up as the woman passed out, taking her power along with her.
“Call Centralian law enforcement, now,” Helena told the hostages. “And you didn’t see any of us.” Helena’s right eye began to spin, the red bullseye forming as she looked at the hostages. “Wrap it up, everyone!” she called over her shoulder. “I’m calling Lance!”
The strongman finally managed to get Dinah off, flinging the tangible ghost woman into Zoe, both of them smacking into the glass.
Figuring out how the wrist guard worked was relatively easy; all of them were built the exact same way. What Sam didn’t know was which settings the wrist guard had, and with no time to fiddle with it, he decided to take a shot that would cause the least amount of lethal damage.
Aiming at the strongman’s feet, Sam triggered the weapon. A large explosion beneath the muscled villain’s feet tossed him backward, blowing his toes off as well, blood misting the air.
“Shit!” Sam shouted.
Zoe leapt onto the man’s back and wrapped her claws around his head, pressing her fingers into his eye sockets until he screamed for mercy. It was only a second or two later that Lance, the hired teleporter, appeared, golden sparkles indicating his arrival.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lance said as he took in the mayhem unfolding before him. “Okay, but I’m definitely getting paid overtime and a half for this one. The four of you, and… um...” He glanced to Dinah.
“Her too!” Ozella said, grabbing Dinah’s hand.
“Overtime,” Lance reminded Helena once the team gathered around him. “Overtime and a half.”
Chapter Three: Blackmail
(What starts as a pretend fight ends in a real fight.)
Zoe Goa Ramone was up the next morning before everyone else, warming up in the gym with some of the stretches that Helena had taught her. She wanted to get the stretches done before Helena woke up; she didn’t need the smug heiress doing her holier-than-thou routine once she saw Zoe actually taking her exercise advice.
In truth, Zoe knew that she owed a lot to Helena, quite possibly her life, and even if there was still some tension between them, Helena had done the right thing by having a vote to keep Zoe in the group.
And Zoe planned to do right by her, regardless of the fact that Helena had sort of stolen her boyfriend.
Well, not really, but sometimes Zoe felt that way.
At least she was sort of back to her old self. The prospect of being able to turn her face and body back to normal for one hour a day reopened some doors for Zoe that she had assumed were shut and locked.
She had already sent a mental message to her agent, letting the woman know that she was available for modeling gigs again, but that she had a very limited timeframe per day in which she could model.
The cosplay model known as Tiger Lily was back, in a limited way, but back nonetheless.
After stretching, Zoe positioned herself in one of the handstands that Helena had shown her, changing the flow of blood (or whatever), and enjoying the feeling of being upside down for a moment.
Even if she had added a new warm-up ritual to her routine, Zoe’s workout ritual wouldn’t be the same without honing her fighting skills. Which was why she approached some of the punching bags after being upside down for a few minutes, taking a few quick jabs and practice swipes, careful not to actually touch the bags when she bared her claws.
She’d done enough damage, and she knew that.
Growing even more comfortable in her skin, a skin that she would have for twenty-three hours a day, Zoe did an aerial into a kick, nearly tearing the punching bag off its chain once she followed up with a punch that would have shattered someone’s ribs.
While she didn’t like her face in this form, she loved her agility, her body able to move in ways that she had only dreamed of before.
She was so much faster too; Zoe knew that if she continued to train in this form, she would be an even more formidable opponent, able to take her enemies down before they could even get a wea
pon up.
And that was important to her; clearing the distance between her and an opponent would be the way Zoe had to operate sometimes, especially if they were aiming something at her.
So she practiced some sprints, back and forth, stopping as quickly as she could, practicing quick stops coupled with throat punches, swipes with her claws, a roundhouse kick that took an invisible opponent off their feet.
It was around this time that Helena entered the gym, shaking her shoulders out. She hopped up and down for a moment, nodded at Zoe, and began her own stretching routine, both women ignoring each other for a good twenty minutes as Helena loosened up.
“Care to spar?” Helena asked once she was done, already putting boxing mitts on.
They got into position and started up, Helena challenging Zoe to move faster, to strike more fluidly. At first Zoe hated Helena’s coaching, but she knew that the combat dancer was merely trying to look out for her, and it was helpful.
So she eventually loosened up.
Zoe still couldn’t make eye contact with Helena, not fully. The guilt was still there, but she knew it would fade one day. When she spoke to Helena she looked just past her, sometimes to the left or to the right, cordial, but clearly kowtowing to Helena’s influence.
“I hope we can go back to a sauna one day,” Zoe said as they finished up.
Helena returned the boxing mitts to their proper place, and Zoe got behind one of the punching bags, encouraging Helena to step forward, to practice some of her rapid-fire kicks.
Zoe trusted that Helena wouldn’t kick her in the face, but she came close a few times, Zoe’s hands tensing when she did, her claws appearing.
“We will eventually,” Helena said, a little breathless now. “It’s just our luck that someone was trying to rob one of the floors below. I’m just glad we got there in time.”
“I guess that is what Vigilante Justice will be all about: getting there in time.”
“Likely so,” Helena said, driving her heel into the punching bag. “Because of the nature of our powers, and the fact that we aren’t registered, we will always have to be a step ahead of real exemplar teams. But we also don’t have to go through the same security protocols they have to go through, which may give us an edge.”
“It’s a damn shame, too,” said Zoe, Helena’s foot again coming within two inches of her face as the heiress kicked the living shit out of the punching bag. “We need more training; I’m not cocky enough to think that we don’t, but we have the potential to be as good as any of them.”
“I don’t disagree with you there,” Helena said, performing a swift chop.
While Zoe was sometimes jealous of Helena, she couldn’t deny that the woman had worked her ass off to get where she was, at least in terms of physical fitness.
Zoe didn’t know much about Helena’s situation as head of the board of the Knight Corporation, and she rightly assumed that it had been a position handed to her by her parents.
But in terms of physical fitness, Helena had earned every bit of her speed and power.
Her grace too, that was something that continued to surprise Zoe, something she knew she would never be able to replicate. Helena made it look easy; she literally looked like she was dancing half the time, performing even, her hands in the air, her legs poised to demonstrate a ballet appropriate move.
It was almost uncanny.
Not that Zoe was about to give out any compliments; no, that wasn’t Zoe’s style, so she simply held the punching bag, allowing Helena to show off a little, the woman coming up onto one arm and lightly tapping the top of the punching bag with the tip of her toe.
“Bravo,” Zoe said under her breath, her ears twitching as she heard some movement in the hallway outside.
Zoe looked to the door just in time to see some mist coming up from under it.
“Something’s wrong,” she told Helena, releasing the punching bag, her claws forming. “Get ready for some action.”
***
Several of William Bottorf’s clones exploded through the gym door, spinning their batons, the clones scrambling over anything in their way as they advanced toward Zoe and Helena.
“Oh no they fucking didn’t!” Helena said, kicking the first clone to reach her, and using her forward momentum to come around her other foot, connecting her heel with a different clone’s chin.
Zoe wasn’t being so nice.
The tiger girl started cutting down clones and clawing them to pieces just as soon as she could reach them, a furious look on her face as the clones surrounded her.
Zoe kicked some of the punching bags in their directions, avoiding the bags when they came back around, and advanced toward the parallel bars. She lifted herself onto the bars and brought her knees onto the shoulders of one of the clones, clawing him in the face as he went down. Zoe landed hard on her knees and hopped back to her feet.
“Do not resist,” a few of the clones said, and it was at this point that Helena pointed her finger in the air and yelled, “power-up, fire!”
Everyone in the vicinity including Zoe saw flames billowing into the room, enough fire to scare even a clone, mostly because William was part of this group, and they were reacting the same way he would.
“We have to get to the others,” Helena said, her pupils two spinning bullseyes. “Close your eyes, don’t worry about the fire, and trust me!”
Zoe did as she was told, even though closing her eyes wasn’t stopping her from feeling the heat, the fire spreading up her flesh. It was an incredible thing to ignore, but she did so as they moved to the hallway, where Helena swiftly deactivated her power.
They found more mist in the hallway of the mansion, Ozella crying out as Dinah tried to protect her. The sound of a firing wrist guard met their ears, a hole blasting through the wall of Sam’s bedroom.
“I cannot believe they came to my house like this,” Helena said, more furious than she had ever been before. “I do not consent to a telepath!” she cried out into the mist. “Stop the fighting now! My lawyers have already been contacted!”
The mist swelled up until it formed a single, towering man. Mister Fist wore his mask as usual; MindLenz was suddenly next to him; the exemplar known as Plume also in the hallway; and the real William Bottorf was behind them all, his baton still at the ready.
“Is the fight over?” Sam asked, looking through the hole he had blasted in the wall. “I… I’m sorry about this,” he started to tell Helena.
“It’ll be fixed by the afternoon,” the combat dancer said.
“No, Dinah, no!” Ozella said as Dinah jumped onto MindLenz. “Power-up, off!”
And as soon as she said the words, Dinah dematerialized, letting gravity pull MindLenz to the ground, the masked woman landing with a hard thump that caused her to mentally scream in everyone’s head for a moment.
“What is the meaning of coming to my home?” Helena asked as soon as the shriek stopped.
“We’re here to arrest the four of you for impersonating exemplars last night,” said the group’s leader. “Do we really need to recap what you did? Or how you blew the toes off an alleged criminal robbing an investment firm?”
“We were just there for the sauna; shit happened, we responded,” Zoe spit back.
“You should have waited for the proper authorities to arrive.”
“And let innocent people die? They had already killed a security guard,” Sam said, shaking his head at Mister Fist. “I don’t know about you, but if something happens and you’re there, and you’re able to do something about it…”
“I have specifically instructed the four of you not to get involved in any more of this type of work. We have given you two chances now.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “What-the-fuck-ever. Look, Fisty, I think it’s about time that all of you mind your own fucking business. That or step your game up,” she said, her claws still extended.
“I do not take kindly to threats,” Mister Fist said, his eyes narrowing on Zoe.
&nb
sp; “The attitude’s not going anywhere, and if you want to go back to mist form and bring it, then feel free to do so,” she said. “You might have already forgotten, but let me remind you that we saved your asses less than twenty-four hours ago. You would all be superpowered vampires by now, doing whatever the hell it is that the Fang is up to, if it hadn’t been for us.”
“We are a registered exemplar team,” Plume told the tiger girl. “Now, I know you like to parade around here like you are some type of hero, but you have not been licensed, and in that case, you are in our jurisdiction. All four of you are under arrest. There is no debate about this. You either come quietly, or we burn this house to the ground rounding the four of you up.”
“Interesting. Breaking and entering; threatening our lives; threatening my livelihood considering this is one of my family’s real estate investments; assault and battery…” Helena shrugged. “I’m sure my lawyers will be able to cook up some other reasons for the judge to drop all charges.”
“You have to hand it to them,” Plume told Mister Fist, “they are tenacious. Foolish in the way they don’t quite understand that we have jurisdiction over everything they do, but tenacious. It makes me wonder if they’re even listening to us at all.”
“Hey, fire lady, no need to fucking patronize us,” Zoe said, taking an aggressive step forward.
“We were just trying to help people,” Ozella said. “We want the exact same thing you do. We want to help, that’s all. We were just at the sauna to relax after yesterday’s fight. What were we supposed to do?”
“Wait for the proper authorities to get there,” Mister Fist said. Sam’s nostrils flared open for a moment and he caught a scent from Mister Fist that kicked his mind into high gear.
No way… He thought, as what he had just discovered was immediately erased from his mind.
“Breathe out of your mouth,” MindLenz reminded him, interrupting the argument happening between Plume and Zoe. The telepath wore a black mask similar to Mister Fist’s, hers with a white circle stitched over the entirety of her face. While he couldn’t quite make out where she was looking, Sam could tell by the way she stood that she was practically drilling a hole through his head.
We Could Be Heroes 2 Page 3
