by Matt Cowper
A dart had flown by Buckshot and lodged into a nearby tree. It was likely a tranquilizer, or filled with some other debilitating poison.
“Ha! You missed!” Buckshot sprang to his feet and started firing off his pistols. “My two pals named Colt wanna talk to ya, buddy! Come out, come out, wherever you––”
More darts whizzed through the air. Buckshot danced around like he was being swarmed by angry hornets, and most of the darts sailed by. Most, but not all – he couldn’t keep up with the barrage, and a few of them smacked into his legs and arms, and he stumbled and landed face-first onto the moist earth.
“Goddamit,” he wheezed. “Cheatin’, lyin’, son of a motherless whore….”
“You have no one to blame but yourself,” Nightstriker’s voice boomed. “You stood out in the open instead of seeking shelter behind the literally millions of trees around you. And you fired off your pistols pointlessly, creating a racket that prevented you from using your precise hearing effectively.”
“Fuck…you….” Buckshot’s eyes slid closed, and his body went limp.
“Two left,” Nightstriker said. “What will Slab and Blaze do now?”
“You better have bigger bullets than those if you wanna take me down, Nightstriker!” Slab shouted. He stomped the ground, shaking the nearby trees. “If I get my hands on you, I’ll––”
“Stop it!” Sam said. “We’re still acting like idiots! What are we accomplishing by standing here yelling at the jungle?”
“Well, you got a plan, kid?” Slab asked. “We can’t find shit without Metal Gal’s scanning stuff and Buckshot’s hyper-senses or whatever they’re called. Nightstriker’s gonna win, anyway. We might as well just knock down a bunch of crap, have some fun before the inevitable happens.”
“No, we need to treat this seriously,” Sam said. “Even if we lose, we can still go down fighting, and maybe learn something.”
“Oh brother. You’re buying into this hardcore training crap?”
“What choice do we have? Nightstriker is right – we got trounced yesterday. Why don’t we at least make an effort to get better?”
“Ah, whatever. If you wanna be one of those pain-in-the-ass tryhards, fine” Slab punched a tree, knocking it down and creating a chain reaction as it fell groaning to the jungle floor. Several more trees toppled, irritating the monkeys overhead. “But I’m still waiting for you to tell me some master plan.”
Sam was still waiting on that master plan himself. They could pick up Buckshot and Metal Gal and flee, but to where? And for how long? Buckshot could be out for hours, and Metal Gal didn’t look like she could purge the nanotech from her body by herself. They’d just be limping along until Nightstriker found them and finished them off.
Sam and Slab could take the fight to Nightstriker, if they could find him. Doing that seemed nigh-impossible. As Slab had noted, their two trackers were down.
“How does it feel, Metal Gal?” Nightstriker’s voice said. “How does it feel to be violated by billions of tiny machines? You say you don’t feel pain, but surely you feel something.”
“I will…I will….” Metal Gal stammered.
“You will…you will…what?” Nightstriker mocked. “You will do nothing but lay there and suffer. You are too weak-willed to overcome the nanotech. Ever since you killed Keith, your mind has been as fragile as a piece of porcelain, liable to break at the first sign of difficulty.”
“I did not…kill Keith!” Metal Gal said. “You…take that back!”
“Stop it!” Sam said, the flames around him intensifying. “Are you training us or torturing us?”
“Your hysterics serve no purpose,” Nightstriker said. “Weren’t you supposed to be coming up with a plan, oh eager Blaze? Or will you simply nuke this entire jungle to try and draw me out? That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? But you hold back, because you think I’ll criticize you for such a reckless maneuver. Why don’t you concern yourself with winning the fight instead of my approval?”
“Ouch,” Slab said. “Nice burn, Nightstriker – no pun intended.”
“And you, Slab,” Nightstriker said. “You were not even smart enough to finish high school. If your powers hadn’t developed, you’d be working at some dead-end job and living with your parents. Oh, but I forget – you’re trying to better yourself. You read Shakespeare, Homer, Hemingway, all the classics, because you think they will give you the keys to the kingdom. But try as you might, you barely understand those great books – because you’re an idiot, and you’ll always be an idiot.”
“That’s it,” Slab said, pounding his rock-fists together. “If he wants me angry, he’ll see me angry. I’ll tear this whole jungle down to get you, you manipulative douchebag!”
“No, wait!” Sam yelled.
But Slab was already punching everything in front of him. He was a one-man logging operation: trees fell left and right, and the canopy opened up, illuminating the jungle floor. Birds flew around wildly, and the monkeys became even more agitated.
A tree fell towards Sam, but he threw a few fireballs at it, turning its top half to cinders. Metal Gal and Buckshot couldn’t defend themselves, though. He considered slinging one of them on each shoulder and flying away, but he knew he wasn’t strong enough, nor could he control his Fire Shield well enough to not injure Buckshot. Turning off the Fire Shield wasn’t an option; without its protection, Nightstriker could knock him out of the sky just like he’d done before.
Instead, he dragged Buckshot to a small depression in the jungle floor, hoping it would be enough to protect him from the collapsing trees. Then he picked up Metal Gal’s damaged body; while his Fire Shield would burn Buckshot, it would likely only cause minimal damage to Gal if he toned it down a bit and hurried to get her to safety. His injured shoulder resisted her weight, but he gritted his teeth and flew back to the open sky.
“You should…leave me,” Metal Gal said. “Those trees…wouldn’t hurt me.”
“We don’t know that,” Sam said. “That nanotech might weaken you even more.”
“You got…a point,” she said. “Thank you, Sam. And…this is not the best time…but I really am…sorry for last night.”
“Yeah, I…I know. I’m sorry too.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he clamped his mouth shut before he had a chance to put his boot in it.
Down below, Slab was slowly but surely carving a path through the jungle. It looked and sounded like a tank battalion was rumbling through. Sam spun around, trying to find a good direction to fly towards. But all he could see was treetops, mist, and blue sky.
He swooped back down under the canopy. They’d stayed too long in the open before, and Metal Gal had gotten rocked by a missile. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Again he flew into the open sky and quickly looked around, but there wasn’t a giant blinking sign that said, “GO THIS WAY.”
“We shouldn’t…have left behind Buckshot,” Metal Gal said.
“I couldn’t carry both of you,” Sam said defensively.
“Oh, OK. But…you should still set me down…and go get him. Besides, you’re…wearing yourself out…carrying me.”
She was right, of course. All his talk about making an effort and plans and he had no clue what he was doing….
Then some of his father’s words hit him: “Think outside the box.” It was a cliché, and Sam had hated hearing it growing up, but his dad did try to follow that mantra. He’d always given Sam puzzles and brain-teasers to challenge him, make him “discard that straight-line thinking.”
Of course, when it came to joining the Elites, Sam’s dad had set his opinion in stone, but all parents had blind spots when it came to their kids….
“Think outside the box.” They were fighting in a box, literally; this was a small room. It just so happened that it could transform into something limitless, which made things more than a little difficult. But it was still a room, still governed by technology, which was in turn developed by i
mperfect humans.
This wasn’t a jungle. It was a program. All he had to do was turn it off, and they’d all somehow be compressed back into that empty room. Nightstriker couldn’t hide then. He’d have to fight them face to face.
But Nightstriker had locked the program when they started. Sam decided to try to end it anyway, hoping he’d get lucky.
“Computer, end program,” he said.
“Program locked,” a computerized voice said. “Speaker not authorized to override protocols.”
“Crap,” Sam muttered.
“Oh, that was…a good idea, Sam,” Metal Gal said. “We should’ve thought…of that earlier.”
“Thanks. It was something that…wait! You can mimic voices, right? You mimicked mine last night. Just copy Nightstriker’s voice and end the program!”
“Wow! That is…you’re something else. Set me down…and I’ll see what I can do.”
Sam quickly landed, setting down his teammate between four thick, vine-covered trees that had grown close together. It was as good a protective spot as any. Sam rubbed his arms and shoulders, relieved to no longer be weighted down by Metal Gal.
“Let me see,” Metal Gal said. “Testing…testing. Shit! I sound the same as I normally do! I can’t, Sam! With this…nanotech in me…I can’t do much of anything.”
“We’ve gotta get it out of you, somehow,” Sam said. “I think there’s a river nearby. Do you think we can drown them?”
“No, that wouldn’t work,” Metal Gal said. She smiled at him and patted him with a shaking hand. “You know…what you have to do.”
“What? Oh. No, I can’t do that! If I blast you with my powers, I’ll destroy you as well as the nanotech!”
“No, you won’t. Most of the nanotech is…around my data bank. Screwing up…my mind. The rest of my body is…clean. If you just…melt the area around my data bank…you’ll kill all the really bad stuff…and I’ll be able to flush out the rest.”
“But…this is like surgery. If I miss, you’ll––”
“I trust you, Sam,” Metal Gal said. “And I’m right here…to guide you. We can do this.”
Sam took a deep breath and formed a fireball around his fist. Focusing, he altered it into a footlong blue flame, like a welding torch. He didn’t know the exact temperature of this torch, but he’d used it to cut through steel beams before.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Ready Freddy!” Metal Gal winked and blew him a kiss. “It’ll be like…last night…should have been. Crap, there I go again. Bringing up…that drama when we’re fighting our demented leader. OK, here we go. My data bank…is located in the center of my chest.”
She traced a circle where it was located, but the nanotech prevented her from maintaining it.
“You got it?” she said. “Just melt…the area…about six inches around that spot.”
Sam moved his hand over the spot, then hesitated. His torch-hand bubbled Metal Gal’s flesh, and he felt bile in the back of his throat. It wasn’t real flesh, he knew that, but….
“C’mon, Sam!” Metal Gal said.
Wincing, he plunged his torch-hand into her chest. Her gray metal was instantly incinerated, and Sam’s hand went all the way through her until he felt the flame scorching the ground. Slowly, he circled the area Metal Gal had traced, creating a large gash.
“Quicker!” she said. “The nanites…detect danger. They’re moving!”
She grabbed Sam’s hand and pushed it across her body faster. Her own hand was still shaking, and Sam worried she’d slip and hit her data bank. He tried to keep steady, but still move as fast as possible.
A few more seconds, and there was a circular outline burned all the way through Metal Gal’s body. Sam could see black earth where he’d torched, and the circle that contained her data bank sat there like a blob of pudding.
“That was hot,” she said. “In more ways than one.”
“You…your voice….”
“Yup, I’m back to normal. Or nearly normal. Most of the bad stuff is gone. Give me a sec to get the rest.”
Her whole body shook like she was having a seizure, and Sam jumped back and snuffed out his torch-hand. Was the nanotech mounting a last-ditch assault? Should he melt more of her? But then Metal Gal jumped to her feet and smiled. She’d repaired the hole in her chest, and she seemed as stable as a morphing human/robot hybrid could be.
“Thank you, Sam,” she said. She leaned into his Fire Shield and gave him a peck on his cheek before he thought to turn it off. His fire melted her lips and jaw, but she quickly reformed them. “Now let’s end this stupid program.”
She closed her eyes. “Computer…no, that’s not quite right. Let me play around…there them thou that go bow slow dough extreme dream keen…there we go. That’s Nightstriker.” She looked up at the sky, and said in a voice indistinguishable from their leader’s: “Computer, end program.”
“Program ended,” said the computerized voice.
Slowly the jungle around them faded, like a fog was settling in. The temperature fell, and the humidity decreased to indoor levels. All the sounds – the energetic monkeys, the wind in the leaves – were silenced. In less time than Sam would have thought possible, the jungle was no more, and they were back in a relatively tiny metal room, staring at each other.
“What the hell?!” Slab said. He’d been walloping giant trees, until the trees disappeared and he was swinging at empty air. “The jungle…someone nixed the program?”
There was Buckshot, still unconscious on the floor, and there was Nightstriker, crouching a few feet away, a rifle slung over his shoulder and a cylinder-shaped object in his hand. Probably the gun he’d used to shoot Buckshot, and the voice enhancer he’d used to ridicule them. They were all much further apart in the jungle, but thanks to some process Sam didn’t understand, they’d been “sucked” back into the tiny dimensions of the room.
“Well, done, Blaze,” Nightstriker said. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “That is the sort of lateral thinking we need. Many supervillains simply use blunt force, but just as many use mazes, puzzles, or illusions to confuse us. Seeing through these traps, or turning them to our advantage, is crucial.”
He stood up and pulled some orbs out of a pouch – probably some sort of grenade. “But this training session isn’t over. You’ve found me, but you haven’t defeated me. Even in this––”
“Fuck you!”
The expletive jolted Nightstriker out of his lecture. Now he was surprised, as were Slab and Metal Gal. Sam was surprised, too – because he was the one who’d cursed the legend.
“What was that, Sam?” Nightstriker asked, his eyes boring into Sam’s skull.
Sam knew the mature thing to do would be to tone down his rage, be a good little team member. That’s what Nightstriker and his teammates expected. Blaze was the earnest kid trying to do the right thing; everyone else was supposed to be cynical and anti-authority.
But seeing Buckshot hit with a tranq dart, seeing Metal Gal twitch helplessly as the nanotech ravaged her, seeing his hand burn away her body…and now seeing Nightstriker standing there calmly, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened….
He’d had enough.
“You heard me, asshole,” Sam said. “I said: fuck you. And I mean it. This isn’t a training session. It’s torture!”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” Nightstriker said, “and you need to––”
“I don’t need to do anything,” Sam said. “You’re the one who needs a reality check. You shoot at us, poison Gal with nanotech, force me to…do that to her…and the whole time you’re mocking us, humiliating us! Is this supposed to inspire us?”
“It’s supposed to make you tougher,” Nightstriker said. “Supervillains will do all I’ve done to you, and more. If you think otherwise––”
“If it’s so important to be tough, why aren’t you in here training with us, instead of against us? You keep talking about team this, team that, but you’ve set yo
urself apart from the very beginning! You wanted to fight those three superhumans alone, you wanted to interrogate that rune guy alone, you want to hide in a jungle and pick us off, and then lecture us! You’re not a team leader. You’re a…a tyrant!”
Did doubt – or even sadness – flicker across Nightstriker’s face? “Sam, calm yourself. Your Fire Shield is expanding rapidly. It will––”
“Screw my shield!” Sam shouted. But Nightstriker was right. Flames now extended at least ten feet from his body. Even Slab had stepped back, and Metal Gal had picked up Buckshot and carried him to a corner of the room. Sam had never created such a large Fire Shield; creating one half this size exhausted him after only a few minutes. Now, though, he was maintaining the shield effortlessly.
Such was the power of rage, but he didn’t want to hurt his teammates – even Nightstriker. He closed his eyes and forced the flames to subside, and then turned off the shield completely. Without the roaring flames, the room was eerily quiet.
“Wow, kid,” Slab said. “I felt that heat in my rocks, and that takes some power.”
“And I felt it through my body,” Metal Gal said. She did not, however, look aroused, but frightened.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “Sorry for letting my powers get out of hand. I’m not sorry for what I said, though. This isn’t what I signed up for. If you don’t change how you do things, Nightstriker, I’m done with this team.”
Nightstriker didn’t reply. He only stared at Sam, like Sam had just stabbed him in the back.
Sam shrugged and walked to the exit. He wasn’t going to argue any more, or put up with any more of Nightstriker’s mind games. He was going to – do something. Probably fly away from the Beacon and blast some stuff.
“Sam – er, Blaze!” Metal Gal said. “Wait up!”
“I don’t want company,” Sam said, not looking back.
The door closed behind him. He ignited his Fire Shield and flew down the corridors at top speed, again scattering the astonished staff members.
