Chapter 27
"Waterboy, don't rush — damn it!" The moment the redhead crossed the invisible perimeter, his signal cut out instantly. Whoever had planned the attack on a Team Z member had used some kind of EMP equivalent to black themselves off from the rest of the world. "Invidiva, Golem — when you reach the intersection, stop. That's roughly where my coverage ends."
"Stop?" The invisible girl expressed genuine confusion, applying a tap to her living transport to slow him. "Or we could go help our Romeo — and keep him from turning the people who jumped his girl into kebab. You know."
"Waterboy wouldn't do that—" Robert said, with a trace of doubt, watching the satellite connection loading bar with impatience.
"He absolutely would," Golem bass-rumbled, cracking his knuckles in preparation. "He's Team Z."
"In plain language," Invidiva translated, "he's unhinged. Like—" Through the intersection camera, Mecha Man could watch her begin examining her nails in the streetlight with critical attention. "I once saw him cut through a concrete beam with a water jet. With rebar inside it, Robert. And you know why he ended up in prison, right?"
"Someone attacked him and—"
"And his friend. And his grandmother." She looked directly into the camera and smiled without warmth, then shifted her gaze toward the port, where a particularly loud explosion had just gone off. Even through the noise-cancellation on Invidiva's earpiece, the sounds of people carried. "Our sweet little ginger boy — with all his stuttering and freckles and genuine feelings — beat a man to death with his bare hands."
"That was a state of affect—"
"Sure. Same way me hitting people in the crotch is affect. And Golem stealing women's underwear is affect—"
"Wait, what—" The clay giant stirred indignantly, but she ignored him. For a moment she thought she heard Blond Blazer's voice reacting in her earpiece, but shook the thought away. Their boss couldn't possibly be monitoring every minute of this.
"My point is — affect is lifting a car to save a child. Killing someone who attacked you in an alley." She kicked her legs in the air, watching the explosions bloom on the horizon with the detachment of someone discussing weather. "Preparing revenge, temporarily neutralizing an opponent, then beating them to death — that's not affect. So what's happening in there right now, I'd rather not imagine."
She gave a theatrical shudder and produced a cigarette.
"Alright, I take your point. But I think you're overstating it." Even as he said it, Robert completed the satellite connection and zoomed in to find exactly the scene Invidiva had been describing. "Oh hell."
"I'm guessing we shouldn't have waited?"
"Most of them are actually alive." One frame caught a criminal body, under a powerful water current, being driven into a billboard and left embedded in the crater it had made there — an armed man carrying automatic weapons could not have been anything else. "Well. Mostly."
"Are you ready to give orders, Eagle Eye?" Invidiva tucked her legs beneath herself in a lotus position, rocking gently on Golem's back. The large figure beside her was stacking pebble fragments into a small tower.
"Right. I've roughly located Waterboy. Malevola was near the same position when we lost her signal." He marked the coordinates and transmitted what he had on enemy numbers — it was the only thing he could actually contribute right now. He rubbed his face with both hands. "You're not exactly rushing to get there."
"After kicking him in the region and not properly making it up to him?" She hopped off Golem's back and walked toward the port, pulling from her inhaler. "Would you? Given a choice, I wouldn't get within cannon range of that situation—"
---
A fresh torrent of water left my palm and drove a pair of the gunmen who'd been actively shooting at me for the past two minutes into the nearest wall. I hadn't wanted to deal with them — my real opponent had been waiting for exactly this kind of distraction — but there wasn't a choice.
The moment I turned from the stone-armored one and cleared the two foot soldiers, a massive chunk of rock connected with my ribs. The crunch traveled through my whole chest as I went airborne, through the corrugated wall of a warehouse hangar and another ten meters of rolling before my spine found a weapons crate. Another crate. The port had enough armaments to equip a small nation.
Outside, footsteps. Somewhere further, the familiar sound of a portal opening and slamming shut, followed immediately by Mal's voice.
Almost there. Just the small matter of five idiots dressed in the long tradition of Village People backup dancers, plus several dozen armed associates who were apparently on the leash. Given the costumes and the general dynamic, that phrase possibly applied in the most literal sense.
Save the girl, claim the traditional reward, and finally — finally — say the thing I'd been building up to, now that my body seemed to have forgotten it was afraid.
Excellent plan. Currently going a different direction than intended.
It had started well enough. I'd hit the port perimeter, identified where the action was heaviest, and gone straight in without waiting for Robert's objections — letting my power run.
Water went in all directions. A thin thread simultaneously bored through the asphalt looking for drainage lines to the ocean and its unlimited supply.
I'd even caught a glimpse of Mal from a distance, injured but fighting — sword moving in tight defensive arcs against multiple opponents. That image had shoved me forward without hesitation, knowing Invidiva and Golem were already running behind me—
And around the first corner I'd walked directly into a stone fist that nearly resettled my molars. Nose exploded. Jaw cracked — held, somehow. Ten meters of air time, landing hard.
He'd brought backup. Native American, which delighted some demographic and baffled others, dressed in traditional ceremonial wear that may have been genuine or may have been lifted from the nearest casino gift shop. His superpower was the feathers growing from his skull in place of hair, which he threw with more velocity and accuracy than the Bullseye from the bad Daredevil movie.
The other four were still occupied with Mal. I caught glimpses on the periphery — until one member of the boy-band villainy was launched in my direction, landing nearby in two separate pieces with an expression of terminal stupidity. Cowboy outfit, shoulder cutouts, speed-release lacing. Naturally.
Civilians with guns — pistols up to small machine guns and underbarrel grenade launchers, all compensating for the absence of powers.
The flashback sequence ended when a fan of feathers shredded the hangar walls and almost my head. I rolled to redirect a stone burst through my water shield — it ate most of the force, turned a chest-crusher into a hard shove — and then I pulled the dispersed water back, shaped it into a whip extension of my arm, looped it around a structural beam, ripped the beam free, and sent it back at the stone armored one.
While he was tracking the beam, I hit the feather thrower with a barrage of fingertip water bursts — small, weak individually, but far outnumbering feathers — soaking him thoroughly, creating a puddle, and skidding forward on my knee to duck under a stone spike aimed at my side.
Palms down, teeth locked from the strain, heart absolutely insane — I gathered all the water connecting me to the feather thrower and compressed it into a spinning cocoon. He thrashed against the walls until he ran out of air and fell still.
Stone-armor was already moving. I had no better idea than pointing both arms at him and opening everything I had.
The sound of it hit like standing inside a waterfall. The water stripped chunks of stone from his body. He roared, fighting against it. Then the roaring stopped, replaced by thrashing and something that sounded like pleading.
I knew he'd reconstitute the moment I stopped. I didn't stop. I pushed forward on my knee and drove him back, step by step, until I got him to the railing.
"No — please—"
For a moment we made actual eye contact. A brutalized, desperate face. It moved me about as much as the wall beside him.
On my feet with the last of it, I sent him across the road and into the billboard, where he left a man-shaped impression and stopped moving.
"There." Nothing left. A full day, then a sprint here, then supers and their hired guns. I was completely empty—
The thought didn't finish. The hangar had been losing structural integrity for a while, and a particularly violent explosion nearby removed the last structural argument. The roof began to go. The wall near the struggling feather-thrower buckled and came down fast, taking the rest of the frame with it.
"Oh no no no—" A burst of water shoved me sideways, just enough velocity to run, and I cleared the collapsing building in the style of every terrible action movie from 1994, tumbling into a lane of shipping containers—
Broken ones. Split ones. Exploded ones. The chaos around me was absolute. Fleeing mob soldiers scattered under the orders of their leader — charismatic, mid-thirties, expensive suit, light stubble — who was flanked by one of the remaining super-criminals in a leather biker outfit that left very little to interpretation.
A chunk of the mob had run toward the direction I'd come from. Invidiva and Golem had apparently attracted significant attention — a lot of armed angry faces were moving toward them at speed.
And slightly off-center from everything, somewhere between piles of debris and groaning bodies, Mal was having a lightsaber duel with a Black man in a costume that featured badges where nipples should have been.
I pinched my eyes, rubbed my face. The superhero world served up genuinely unhinged imagery sometimes.
Probably why I didn't notice the last of their crew closing the gap.
A kick to the ribs expelled what remained of my breath. My water shot didn't do much — the soldier in military fatigues had a face like it had been poured from concrete and took the hit without blinking, then came forward with an enormous knife. His uniform was shredded in multiple places. A demon-sword-sized wound showed through his chest, which apparently didn't bother him.
On my back, hand locked over the screaming side, I rolled off a container fragment on a water slick — the knife missed my chest by centimeters.
The movement attracted every remaining set of eyes, and automatic fire opened up on the yellow-blue glow of my water, while the mob leader's voice rose with new orders.
"Get her! She can't teleport! What are you waiting for? And the red-haired—" His voice was the kind that probably worked very well on women without any particular effort. "Finish him. Last thing I need is the SDS involved—"
The orders were interrupted by a pained shout from Mal's opponent. I got my head up in time to see her extract a short straight blade from her own midsection with contempt and discard it. The man who'd put it there was already under her foot.
And Mal—
This was not the first time I'd understood I was in love, and it wasn't the last. But it was the moment I understood it most clearly.
Sword over her shoulder, minor wounds glittering, shoes gone somewhere in the fight — she was walking barefoot across blood and ash and broken glass without appearing to notice, pulling attention from every remaining enemy by simply existing in the space. Sweat along her neck. The tail moving at the edge of the ground. Every line of her under strain. The breathing through her slightly parted mouth.
"You okay, Herm?" She stopped near me, planting the sword in the earth. The soldier tracking me immediately stepped back toward his employer.
"I'll live." I took the offered hand, pulled upright, and couldn't quite stop looking at her. She caught it, gave me a warm look, and without discussion used the tail to pull me behind her. "Hey — I thought I was supposed to be the hero here?"
"You are," she said, eyes already moving across our remaining enemies. Behind us, a pile of containers collapsed inward as Invidiva and Golem punched through and took their positions, ready — Invidiva having demonstrated this by spitting blood on the ground and wiping her cut lip. Golem had gone almost black. Burn marks covered him in several places, but he was moving solidly, and had already absorbed a pile of debris into his right arm for ammunition. "And I'll thank you for it properly."
Several seconds of nothing — until the mob leader clicked his tongue. He ran his hand back through his hair and waved his people down.
"We're leaving. This time."
"Your father and grandfather said exactly the same thing." Mal showed him the finger and laughed, quiet and rough. "Run while you can."
Then she made a show of glancing upward — and right on cue, a small sun flared overhead. The air warmed immediately. Flambé had apparently been waiting nearby for his dramatic entrance moment.
"Damn—" The boss gave the ground one contemptuous spit, turned, and moved for the exit under cover from his people, the two remaining super-criminals backing away without taking their eyes off us until they cleared the wreckage.
The moment they were gone, the tail around my waist went slack, and Mal dropped straight to the ground with a sound that was half exhaust and half pain. I barely caught her, pulling her close and starting to check for damage.
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