• • The Wolf Pack
• December 3, 2023

The Wolf Pack (Chapter 32)

The Strongwoman

ESPADA

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“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!”

I killed him, I killed the Hood. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to do any of it! They made me.

I should have flew after him, I shouldn’t have let him leave and believe the terrible things he said about himself. He believed it, and died believing it.

He died.

Chink. Chink.

He’s dead, and now I’m alone, surrounding by them, and their preying eyes. They’re not my friends if they ever were. They were forced to be around me, and now they’ll be forced to kill me.

I bet they’ll at least get to enjoy it.

My tears are streaking down my cheek, but I’m not going to get the chance to finish crying.

BOOM!

They know I’m not under mind control anymore, and they attack me. Tommy throws a fireball at me, but that doesn’t hurt me.

It’s all moving slow motion, and I’m stuck in place. The ice, the fire, the laser beam. It would all hurt, it should all make me flinch, but I can’t feel anything.

All I smell is the smoke, all I feel are these light taps, all I hear is sonic screech of a laser beam, and all I see is his corpse…

… dangerously close to the flames.

I rush to blow away the flames, but that’s not enough to protect what’s left of him from turning to ash. I throw my body atop of him, protecting him from the flames, ice, and blasts that are being hurled at me. My punishment for not being strong enough to save him, to save Clay.

It’s not enough, it’s not a worthy punishment when I can barely feel it.

“Emily,” I hear a weak voice say from under me, and for a moment I don’t believe my ears. I ignore my ears, they can’t be trusted to tell me the truth. “Emily, please listen.”

“No,” I can’t help but cry and mutter, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for what I did.”

“I know, but it’s easier to explain when the fire doesn’t drown me out,” the voice says. That’s when I realize it isn’t my guilty conscience trying to talk to me and break me down. It’s not me going crazy.

I look down and I see the Hood’s head move to look at me. “Get us out of here,” he orders, and without hesitation I grab him and fly us forward. I carry him away from the flames to the end of the hall. This frightening hall filled with chambers out of future nightmares.

I place him against the wall and look him over to see how he’s even alive, or if I’m going mad. I see the burns on his arm and the hole in his chest, and I see what I never expected.

They’re healing, and not like the slow scabbing over of a papercut. His skin is rebuilding itself, somehow creating new skin to replace the lost sections from the fire, his leg bones moving back into place, the cuts over his body sealing, and the hole in his chest closing. The ice is the only thing not going away. I bring my hands to his arm and use super speed to heat it up and melt it away.

FLUME!

I hear fire coming behind me, so I grab him and fly away. I fly around, low to the ground to hide behind a giant tank. I need to avoid them.

I need to find out how the Hood is alive.

“Since when could you heal?” I demand to know from him.

As his arms finish healing first, and the hole in his chest follows, he pushes himself up against the tube and zips up his jacket. “Since I was a child,” he answers me, and I notice how different his voice is. I notice that everything he’s wearing is different now that I have the chance to think and notice.

He’s wearing a jacket, pants, a literal hood. Even his helmet itself is different too.

The important difference, once his arms heal and I can see them, is that they’re missing the scars that line Clay’s.

“You’re not Clay, you’re not the Hood,” I growl. I almost lost my mind thinking that I killed Clay, but this is an imposter. I grab this one by the neck as he wraps his hands around my wrist. “Who are you?” I demand to know.

“Your friend,” this imposter chokes out, “that’s why I’m trying, to free you.”

That’s… shit that’s right.

I put him down, rest him against the container on his feet. I can’t apologize fast enough, “Oh my god, that’s right, I’m so sorry, my, my mind it’s just-”

He holds up a hand to stop me, and assures me, “Don’t worry, I’ve been on the wrong end of mind control too. Messes with your head, I’ll get over it.”

“Who are you?” I ask, “Do you know my Hood? Can you fight like him? Are you… like… his protege?”

“Slow down with the twenty questions here, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re the only one of your team that’s not mind controlled,” a statement that stops my questions short. He quickly answers as he stands up straight, same height as me and the Hood, “I’m the original, the one that inspired your friend. I’d loved to tell you who I am, but being that I don’t trust this place, I’d appreciate if you’d hold your questions till this is over. It’s going to be a long night.”

He… he’s definitely less secretive than Clay. He actually promises me answers.

Let’s see if he keeps that promise.

But he’s the Hood from almost a hundred years ago! It does make sense with the healing factor, one that far exceeds Tommy’s fast-mending bones. In any other circumstance that would be amazing, but right now we have a job to do. We have to free my friends.

I look him up and down to see if he’s ready and able to fight, but then I notice his arms and hands. One is completely free to see from Tommy burning his jacket. It reveals his hand, they’re… how to nicely put it… more petite, taken care of with a file. There’s also the leftover red markings of nail polish.

“You like the color red on your nails, or is that blood?” I ask him.

He looks at his hand, and brings it up between our faces. “Red went really well with the dress I wore last night, didn’t get the chance to remove it all,” she says.

 “So, the true crime fanatics were right?” I ask, uncontrollably floating above the ground, causing the Hood to tilt his or her head. I clarify, “That you’re a girl?”

“I’m a little old to be called a girl,” she answers, her static voice doing a really good job hiding her voice, “but yes, you punched me in my boobs.”

“Ah,” I gasp, realizing the true pain. “I’m so sorry.”

Now I get why she zipped up her jacket so fast.

“Make up for it by paying attention,” she says, which strikes me as an oddly specific request, until she points behind me and points out, “because you didn’t notice Pyre this time!”

I stop listening specifically to her, and listen to everything else as I hear the fire being hurled at us. I spin around and slash with my hand to disperse the fireball coming at me. I see Tommy burning up above me, bringing some much-needed light to this dark and damp place. I’m going to have to apologize later for the thump he’s going to find on his head.

I’ve flown through fire before, but never Tommy’s. Let’s hope that it isn’t too special.

I fly faster than he can shoot fire and wrap my arms around him in a bear hug. My suit doesn’t burn and neither do I, which means I have him trapped. I mean, seriously, there’s no chance he’s breaking out.

It can’t hurt to try and talk to him, snap him out of it. He and the Hood aren’t the best of friends, and there’s a healthy amount of doubt in my mind that he knows it’s someone else under the helmet.

But Tommy and me, we’ve been friends for a long time, and close friends in recent months. The idea of hurting me might snap him out of it.

I try talking to him, “Tommy, I’m sure you’re in there, it’s- what are you doing?” but I stop when he reels back his head. When I see fire pooling in his mouth, I realize he’s developed a new trick, and it’s going to hit me in the face. I try to warn him, “Tommy, don’t you dare-!” but it falls on an empty head.

“Raaaaahh!” I can hear him screaming as the fire pools from his mouth and engulfs me all around. Little did I know that the boy could suddenly breathe fire too.

I have my eyes squeezed shut, holding Tommy firm in my arms. He may be blasting me with fire, but it does nothing to free him from my hold on him.

When he’s done his face softens a bit, like he realizes that all he’s done is piss me off. “Screw helping you,” I tell him, right before I fly away, release him, take his head, and lightly tap it against the neighboring tube.

Okay, it wasn’t a light tap, but it didn’t break the glass so he’s fine, just a headache in the morning I’m sure, and a minor concussion. I mean, he has a minor healing factor, that’s more than the rest of us can say. I’m sure he’ll be fine.

My hair on the other hand, a strand of it is smoking right in front of my face, and for a moment I think I might have to kill Tommy now. My hair may be smoking, but it turns out, it’s fireproof too.

I plan to let Tommy down, but I turn and see the Hood get ambushed by Ken. I figure if she’s anything like my Hood, she won’t want any help. But it becomes pretty clear that as she fails to deflect or dodge a trio of Ken’s hits — even takes one from his metal fist to the head — she needs help.

I fly down and set Tommy on the ground before heading straight for the brawl that’s happening between the Hood and Ken. Ken has her on the ropes, missing no blows, dodging all counter attacks, but I have the jump on him.

At least I think I do until Ken turns around to face me, metal arm out and powering up. He turns so fast, so quickly, it’s like he knows what I was going to do. His timing is impeccable, right in time to stop me, and by God he does.

PYOW!

His beam moves much faster than I do, hitting me right in the face, blinding me. I scream and fall to the ground, tumbling towards them. I rub my eyes as I roll, needing to blink before I get a semblance of the dark shadows in the room yet. I do see Ken flip over me though, and I feel the Hood when I barrel into her.

“Goddamnit!” she screams as we skid on the ground, and by we, I mean her with me on top.

We stop with a lot of feet between us and Ken, but said martial artist is already raising his beam to shoot us. His arm’s palm lights up to hit me with the blinders again just as I regain my vision. I don’t want to go through that again so I cross my arms to block, and Ken responds with powering down his arm.

I would have taken the shot, but I realize why I’m not the strategist when I feel the cold on my shoulders. I should have expected the ice fist that whacks me in the back of the head.

WHACK!

It hurts like a bitch too. It reminds me how hard Marie’s ice can be. I turn around to throw a punch, but Marie was always better at fighting too. It’s not like she can see the future, but she ducks and uppercuts me all the same.

I realize I’m being double teamed when Ken blasts me in the back, tumbling forward into Marie’s ice bat. It shatters against my noggin, turning me around right into Ken’s metal fist, because apparently that hurts more than fire too.

I’m not a skilled martial artist, I’m barely a halfway decent fighter without my powers, but it should only take one punch to stop these two from beating on me like there’s no tomorrow. With Ken, I try to reach for him, but he always knows where not to be.

So I try to catch Marie by her elbow as I try to hold my hands up to protect my face. Her elbow tends to meet my face instead of my hand.

The Hood comes up behind Marie to help me out, and wraps her arms around her icy waist. With Marie, she manages to complete an icy suplex. That leaves me with mister-I-can-see-the-future.

Seriously what else could it be? That or Spidey-sense? That wouldn’t let him know when he should hit me.

He decks me in the face, and it is not lost on me that he only punches me with his metal hand. Thank God, he isn’t strong enough to break my jaw or knock out my teeth though, because both know it would have happened by now. Not to mention that after getting punched so much, it’s really starting to piss me off enough to scream.

When I feel my voice in the back of my throat, I feel this weird vibration too, something just oozing out of my esophagus like when I snapped out of the Savaage’s control. I’m nervous to let it out, and try to go slowly, but at that thought Ken takes a step back. He knows he doesn’t want to be too close, so I let it out.

“Aaaahhh!”

On paper it would sound like any normal scream or yell, same vocal sounds, but it’s so much more. What comes out of my mouth is amplified, so much so that I can feel the waves coming from my throat, and I can see light bend from the waves that follow.

Ken is thrown back, pretty far actually. He flies like I flew into the Hood, and he brings his hands to his ears to try and keep the sounds out, but it doesn’t matter.

Couldn’t predict that I bet! Or maybe, it’s more like it didn’t matter, it’s not like he could realistically dodge it.

“Little help!” I hear the Hood call behind me. I turn around to see the Hood holding her own, blow for blow with Marie, but I have to be honest, I expected more. My Hood could easily hold his own with Marie. Is the original not really that well trained, or maybe the suit is better than a healing factor?

No, now that I watch, I see how she blocks and evades Marie’s blows, and is trying to grab and hold Marie down. She has ample opportunities to throw a punch, but she’s not, she’s holding back.

“Burke!” she yells at me again, and I realize that she was calling for my help. I fly with superspeed as Marie lands a nice one across the Hood’s face, and plants her hand into her chest. Right before she can freeze it, I grab a hold of the Hood, and plant my hand on Marie’s chest. With a push I send Marie through a container.

This Hood somehow knows, “She’s not done, with her armor that won’t knock her out, and unless you want to risk giving her brain damage from within, I have an idea.” She points to where we had come from, and orders me, “Find my gun, that should get through her ice!”

“How do you know that?” I question her.

“Ice is water, and water is a conductor,” the Hood condescends to me, which means some things don’t change.

I apologize and affirm, “Sorry, I’m on it!” I fly up and above the containers, between the tubes that come down from the ceiling, and I can’t help but think that I know someone with a gun that shoots electricity.

Flying around the container I see the floor freezing over before I see Marie, and I see the icicles being thrown my way too. I hear it go…

WHOOSH!

… as I dodge, and say, “Whoa!” on reflex. I know ice isn’t going to pierce my skin, but I’m sure the cold chill isn’t something I want to deal with.

It only takes a second to see Marie on the ground, summoning forth a ball of ice between her hands to throw at me, and I can’t help but comment that, “I get that your name is Icicle, but do you really have to?!”

She lets loose icicles in response and I put my cool new power to use, by screaming.

I have the privilege of seeing it happen in slow motion with my ability. The blurring of light that follows my soundwaves hits the icicles in layers, the first wave making them crack, the second making them shatter like glass, and the third blows them away into sparkling crystals, beautiful like snow.

The wave hits Marie and knocks her to the ground, and causes her armor to crack. She’s struggling which means I’ve really hurt her, and that tells me that I’m wasting time instead of freeing her.

She shoots a stream up at me, but I’m gone before it gets even halfway to where I was floating. I scan the room, looking between the rows until I find what looks like the Hood’s weapons. I fly to them on the ground, grab the sword, and pick up the gun, which looks really familiar.

I try to think of who these weapons belong to, and it makes me wonder, do I know this Hood?

In this darkness and mayhem, I didn’t think to take a good look at anything other than what I wanted to see. I should take another good look at her.

“Rakaas,” I think I hear, this random whisper that doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard. I start listening and it’s a good thing too, because I barely move my head in time to dodge the sword that goes through the floor. For a second, I feel something wet on my cheek, and I bring my hand up to touch it.

It’s red, it’s been a while since I’ve seen my own blood from an open cut.

In the next second I hear the sounds of more incoming projectiles, and I dodge one, then another, and another, and I fly across the ground as swords plant themselves in the ground in my path. I fly up and over containers, and I turn around to see the swords go clean through them, so using them as protection isn’t an option.

I decide to look up to see where these are coming from, and I regret it, so much.

Above me, taking up the ceiling is this darkness. It shines and flows like a cape, but defies all physics by flowing freely from the ceiling. At the ends are billowing tips that look like they’re going to reach out and grab me, with chains slipping out from under them.

In the middle of it all is a face, whose white eyes are covered by a hood. A face that’s cold, and who’s frightening demeanor is enhanced by the effect of being mind-controlled.

I don’t who this scary lady is, but I’d rather not see her.

She must sense my fear, which gives me a chill, because the chains immediately come after me. I fly away, as fast as I can while controlling where I’m going, but no matter which direction I’m going they turn and follow.

I make a sharp turn across the ground and I feel the cold of metal graze my foot, and with a quick glance that makes my heart stop, I realize that I was almost snatched by a chain I didn’t see.

At this point I pull out the stops.

CRACK! CRASH! CRUMBLE! POP!

I fly through the containers, smashing them to pieces, not risking getting snatched by those insane chains. No, no way am I facing that demon by myself, especially not when her sword actually cut me.

Jesus Christ, if I hadn’t moved my head in time, maybe a millisecond slower, I’d be dead. I’ve never almost died, I’m supposed to be invulnerable! Dying is not supposed to be a thing I can do!

I look behind me and see that the chains aren’t following me anymore, and that let’s my inner mind stop screaming and let me fly back to the others.

I enter from the opposite end of the Hood, in time to see Tommy rousing with his new headache. I hope it worked, knocking him unconscious. I think it did based on how he rubs his head like he usually does, but it’s when he looks at me confused as can be that I know my Tommy is back, and not the asshole who tried to give me a bad tan.

That still leaves Marie and Ken to take out.

“Tommy let’s go!” I yell as I fly past him.

He lights on fire to fly up and follow me, prompting me to slow down as he calls back, “What’s going on? Why do you have a sword?” Does he not care about the gun? “And the Director’s gun?”

Oh, shit, this is the Director’s gun.

Oh shit that is the Director’s gun! That means… fucking Claire?!

“I’ll explain later! Stop Marie!” I tell him.

“Why you gotta give me the hard job?!” he complains, little does he know, Ken’s more than just a martial artist now.

We come back in time as Marie and Ken are about to jump the Director, and Tommy flies even faster ahead of me to tackle Marie to the ground. As they roll and struggle on the ground, his fire meets her ice, with puddles and steam starting to form around them.

With Ken, I have to be fast enough that whatever precognitive ability he has, no longer matters. He knows I’m coming and tries to aim his metal hand at me, but I spin away from where he’s aiming, and land on the ground before he can even fire. I know he’s still predicting me, because his eyes follow even when his body can’t.

His metal arm is the only thing that packs a punch against me, so I drop the sword on the ground and I grab his arm to point it up, and hold it there as it shoots. Ken tries to kick my other hand but I hold the taser-gun too far away, and he just hangs under my grip. His foresight tells him that he can’t escape, at least not yet.

The Director drops her guard, almost keeling over from the exhaustion of having to fight two people, one being a better fighter and the other having powerful abilities. When she looks up, I’m holding her taser-gun towards her.

The second she reaches out for it, I pull it away.

“Um, what the hell, Director?” I question, letting her know that I know who she really is underneath her helmet.

She hesitates, and for a moment I wonder if she’s going to lie and deny it. Her head tilts, gesturing towards me as she responds, “Can you not?”

“I can’t believe it’s you!”

I can’t help but yell, twisting the mind-controlled Ken around. I mean, how can I not be full of questions, like, how does an ex-vigilante get her own section of the U.S. government? How about how said vigilante from the freakin’ 1920s is still around and kicking, not looking a day over 25? Then there’s her connection to the Hood, what the hell is she doing here, where the hell was she when everything was going down, and by when I mean throughout history, not just when the Savaage attacked me.

I make it clear to her, “You have to explain this all later!”

Instead of congratulating me on my discovery — though this is the Director — she snaps at me, “Can you shut the hell up?” I’m almost offended, at least until she points to Ken and reminds me, “We have someone trying to kill us!”

“Sorry!”

She has a good point, but I can’t help it, all these strange revelations are hitting me one at a time, and I can’t help but think about it and want answers. Who wouldn’t honestly, but she has a point. We need to free Ken, we need all the help we can get to take down whatever that demon girl is, especially when she can actually hurt me.

The Director wanted to use her taser-gun, it would knock him unconscious and break the connection. Kind of a better option than me giving him a permanent concussion. Somehow, I doubt that metal arm repairs any part of his body.

I take it to aim at him, but then I realize that it has settings. She has one that use to make me stumble, and would cause some serious damage to Ken if not death.

I ask, “Is it set to stun?”

The Director responds by ordering me to, “Give it here!” and doesn’t even wait for me to pass it to her. This is when Ken decides to strike.

He lifts his leg as I’m passing the gun to her, and kicks it free of my hand. I reach around to grab him, but when I turn, he’s gone and I realize that I’m carrying a lot less weight. I look in my other hand to realize that his arm has detached, which apparently is something it can do.

I swivel my head to see that Ken’s shoulder is covered in metal only over the bump, and the rest of it is in my hand. He and the Director both dive for the taser-gun, but he punches her in the stomach as they do. He skids across the floor, which must give him a wicked rug burn, and he grabs the taser-gun while the Director stops short of him.

The second he grabs it I’m there holding his own arm against his neck. I know it seems oddly cruel to use a man’s prosthetic against him, but it was on instinct, I didn’t realize until it happened.

Now I wonder why he would bother going for the gun when I was going to grab him again, at least until he takes the taser-gun and shoots me in the shoulder.

The electricity causes my muscles to seize up, can’t even scream.

I let go of his arm to grab the gun from him, and the moment I grab it his metal arm magnetizes back to his shoulder, with his blaster aimed at me. Jesus, people who know how to fight, know how to fight.

PYOW!

He blasts me in the face, sending me for a loop as I slide across the floor. Goddamn, what the hell is that blaster packing?! I look back at Ken and the Director as my eyes cross. He blasts the Director as she was moving to aim at him, but she get blasted in the chest and flies away.

Ken is really making a mockery of us, and it needs to end now before someone hurts him. If he blasts me, I have to barrel through and take the pain, for his sake.

I shake my head and try to center my eyes as Ken goes to blast the Director again. Note to self, shaking my head does not center my vision, it makes it worse.

Oh well.

Ken goes to blast her again, and that’s one too many times. I fly straight, or try to. With my head thrown out of whack, I find the world spinning, and by spinning I mean that I’m spinning like a tornado, the world revolving around me. Ken is upside down in my vision as he moves his metal arm towards me, and I see it lighting up as I’m about to crash into him.

It’s like flying through a brick wall meters thick, but I keep flying forward, even as his blast blinds me.

Thud.

I collide with him, with my eyes still shut after being blinded. He raises his knees and punches his fists to try and escape me as I wrap an arm around him.

There’s another slam, and he’s against the side of the container. I don’t know how I didn’t crush him, it was natural, lowering my power so I don’t crush him like a bug. I would feel proud of myself if I didn’t feel his metal fist smack my chin. The pain is alright through, because I got his arm.

I hold his arm against the container to keep him still, doing my best to keep him from hurting anyone else, himself, or me. I’m not succeeding that well at the third thing, my eyesight being the only thing that’s recovering.

I see Ken gritting his teeth as he struggles against me, his eyes still as empty as before, still under the Savaage’s control. Minutes ago, that was me. If I were still under their control…

Thank God, I thought it was the Hood, or else this situation could be so much worse. It’s pretty clear that Claire isn’t what she used to be, if not in skill definitely in coldness. She would never admit it, but I could see it.

She doesn’t want to hurt Marie. Ken, well, she couldn’t hurt him if she tried, if the knee to my stomach wasn’t readily apparent.

ZAP!

I see an electric ball hit Ken right in the head as I’m holding him, causing his body to shake and convulse. I turn to see the Director holding her gun trained dead on.

“You shot him in the head, are you trying to kill him?!” I yell at her. I feel his body go limp and I rest him nice and easy onto the ground. While I’m glad the fight is over, the whole reason we were taking time to knock him out was to avoid seriously hurting him. Not to mention that we’re probably going to need his help to defeat that creepy, emo, demon girl. I think I’m getting meaner towards her the more I think about her.

She lowers her gun, staring at me with this cold empty stare. “He can take it,” she responds. I think she’s bitter, definitely like the Hood.

I don’t have much time to berate her though, because there’s still Marie, and Tommy is holding her off.

“Whoa!” I hear him yelling as he goes flying past me, so I guess Tommy was holding her off. He flips in the air to right himself and looks down to see that we’ve gotten Ken. “He really took the both of you?”

“I’m not trying to hurt him!” I remind him as I fly up beside him.

Ice is shot right at us when I’m not looking, and Tommy moves in the way to meet it with his own fire. As the flames overflow around him, he holds his own against Marie’s stream of ice.

Somehow, he decides this is still the time for him to make small conversation, judging me, “Seriously? You had no problem one-punching me.”

While that is a true point, I do hold that, “You heal faster than a normal person,” and he tried to incinerate my hair, I mean that’s a cheap shot. Anything is fair game after that.

“Sure, that’s why, how about you save me the trouble of healing and… I don’t know, knock her out?!” Tommy yells just as the fire pushes him back, which means Marie’s overpowering him. That’s not normal, while Marie’s armor is much better than the fire covering Tommy, she can’t push out the cold more than he can the heat.

As the ice overpowers him and blasts him back, I move out of the way, making sure to inform him, “The only reason you’re having this problem is because you’re holding back!”

I don’t mean it as a joke, he’s like the Director, they’re holding back, but unlike me they don’t have the strength to accidentally break them in half. Now I have to risk hurting Marie.

I fly around her stream of ice as I make my way down to her, but her spread is larger than Ken’s, and I spend more time avoiding her than actually moving closer. It’s alright because the Director is rushing her, which means she’ll either get the jump on her, or make her poinr her hands in opposite directions, which means she won’t continuously freeze me solid.

The Director comes up on her and shoots her from point blank in the arm, not the headshot she gave Ken.

The electric ball doesn’t take Marie down, doesn’t even disable her arm, but it stops her from blasting me. I fly straight towards them as Marie makes an ice sword to decapitate the Director’s head, but the Director barely leans back to dodge, and flips backwards to kick Marie in the face. When Marie’s face up, I bring my arms down on her shoulders, cracking her armor, making sure not to break her.

Before she gets up, I grab her by the shoulders and put her into a choke hold so the Director can take shots at her. The Director puts two in her chest, but it only slows Marie down before she brings her hands to my face and freezes me.

I have to let her go to scratch at the ice encased around my head. My fingers slip across its surface, barely scratching it as the ice cuts off my air supply. I can hold my breath for a long time, but that’s only when Marie isn’t kneeing me in the stomach, and by de facto kneeing the air out of my lungs.

I think about flying upwards, breaking the ice by slamming my head on the wall until the ice turns orange and yellow. Fire melts the ice away as Tommy finishes blasting me to save me. I turn around to finish what I started but Marie is gives me a good wallop across the face. Marie’s probably the second strongest considering how she makes me stumble.

Tommy’s hot hands grab and throw me back as ice comes my way again. With his back to me, he tells me, “I got this.”

It’s hard for me not to doubt him until he goes one-on-one with Marie, him flying and her on the ground. He goes to kick her, but she ducks and it seems like her superior fighting skills will make this battle easy for her.

When Tommy grabs Marie by the arm before she uppercuts him, I see how his touch melts her armor to the point of making it water. He’s can melt it away so the Director can knock her out.

Tommy tries throwing punches and spinning in the air, but Marie is naturally better, grabbing his arm and bringing him to the ground, but ends up losing the armor over her hands. She lets go before he burns her, but in that retreat, he kicks her knee, bringing her to her knees. In a nice follow up, Tommy brings his legs together and drop kicks her before she can react.

Tommy once again, avoids hurting her when it’s easier to not hold back. As Marie rolls away, Tommy flies right at her so he can grab her by her hands as she stands up. As soon as the ice over her hands melt, he dulls the flames to not burn her. This gives her the perfect chance to freeze his hands.

I hear him grunt in pain, “Aagh,” and I know it’s time to finish this. I superspeed to the Director and take her taser-gun, then I fly to Tommy and Marie. I grab Tommy by the shoulder and throw him back so I can grab Marie’s wrist. I squeeze it to break her armor, and before she can freeze me, I fly up with her to keep her off balance.

I bring the taser-gun to her wrist and start squeezing the trigger until I see her shake like Ken did. Problem is my finger is still pulling the trigger one more time, and apparently this gun overheats, and when it overheats it shocks me. I drop her and the gun.

As Marie falls, her ice armor falls apart too. It cracks and splinters like glass from a window, and before I can move to catch her, Tommy is there. He powers down as he collides with her, and falls to the ground with her body on top of him with a hard smack.

I fly to them on the ground as Tommy is still hugging the unconscious Marie close to him. “Are you alright?” I ask him, but he snaps at me.

“Alright? No, no thanks to you! Why did you drop her?!” he yells as he moves carefully to set her down.

At the same time, he winces from the pain he must feel from when he landed.

That being said, “The gun overheated and shocked me, I’m sorry I don’t have the power to see into the future!” I raise my arms as I yell back, so I’m sure he can tell I’m much more angry than sorry.

He doesn’t try to argue that, and instead looks down at Marie as she lays unconscious, her arm draped over her stomach. He goes to hold her hands and lifts them to see if they’re okay. He’s making sure he didn’t burn them, until he looks at the one, I grabbed and sees the small burns from the taser.

Tommy turns his head back to me with a stern frown on his face. I anticipate the scrutinization before it even comes. “Why did you get between us? I was trying to make sure she didn’t get hurt.”

I try to spare his feelings. “Tommy, you weren’t using your head,” I tell him. There’s no doubt he means well, but he was putting himself in danger. “You were going to let Marie hurt you, and she would have felt a lot worse, especially considering she was kicking your ass.”

Tommy sucks in his lip because it’s true, and picks Marie up bridal style. “I would have healed,” he grumbles.

I know better than to keep pushing, he could care less about getting hurt, so it’s better to just leave things where they lay. Now we have to defeat that girl of darkness, and it would be nice to have Ken and Marie’s help.

“Tommy!” the Director yells, “bring her over here!” She directs us next to Ken where she lays him against the container. We fly to meet them.

Realizing now that Tommy doesn’t know who he’s talking to, I try not to laugh as I hear him say, “Hey, Hood, why are you wearing that? What happened to your armor?”

The Director’s helmet tilts up to stare at Tommy with the same empty gaze the Hood gives him when he’s annoyed. I lean behind Tommy and inform him, “That isn’t the Hood, that’s the Director.”

His eyes go wide as the rest of his face freezes. “I have so many questions.”

“Shelve them, we don’t have time for that, we still have one more person to free and then we got to go help the Hood.” She grabs Ken’s arm and raises it to Tommy to order him to, “Burn him.”

“What?!” Tommy yells as his already shocked face becomes a different kind of shocked.

“We need to wake him up, Tommy,” she reminds him, taking Ken’s arm with both hands to push the limb towards him, “we need all hands-on deck so wake him up.”

Tommy shakes his head, stating that, “I’m not going to hurt him!”

I flick Tommy’s arm, which probably feels like a punch considering he yells in pain and rubs his arm.

I try to level with him, “Listen to me, I don’t want to hurt our friends any more than you do, but a small burn is a small price to pay so we don’t get demolished by the demon girl two rows over.”

I point to the scratch on my check, something neither have noticed yet, so I inform them that, “That girl sent swords at me, and it actually scratched me. I can’t just fly in and knock her lights out, she can take my head off, so wake Ken up.”

Tommy stares at me, taking in the seriousness of fighting someone invulnerability means nothing to. He turns his head towards Ken, his face still thinking. I don’t know which would be worse, that he’s psyching himself out over demoness, or hurting Ken.

Tommy holds up two fingers and lights them on fire. He raises his eyes to stare dead on into that helmet, a warning to go along with the words that comes out of his mouth. “Only a little burn.”

The Director doesn’t care for his pussyfooting and orders him, “Hurry up, we have to wake Marie next.” Tommy realizes that and purses his lips, making this all that much harder. He still lowers his hands towards Ken’s arm, and at first the burning only makes Ken stir.

As Tommy burns hotter, the Director tells me, “I figured you’d have to be vulnerable to something.” My eyes twitch and I’m staring at her helmet where her eyes should be. “The girl, she uses magic, powerful magic, the kind that’s far beyond the simple portal we used. I’ve been told that magic affects everyone equally, makes sense that it cuts you all the same.”

It’s hard not to squint my eyes at the information the Director seems to have forgotten to mention. “Thanks for the info, would have been really useful as the swords were coming at me.” Thank God it’s a reflex to dodge an incoming sword.

As Ken wakes up from being knocked unconscious, Tommy takes his fingers off of his arm. Ken is hissing in pain as he instinctively goes to touch it, but stops himself. The martial artist opens his eyes to see us huddled around him.

He looks between us, and doesn’t ask but already knows, “The Savaage got you too.” He tries to sit up, his hands going to his head. “Fuck, my eyes hurt.”

The Director asks him, “I know this isn’t the best time but what powers did-”

“Foresight,” he interrupts, stopping her from asking about his powers I guess.

“I thought he didn’t have powers,” Tommy says.

The Director informs me that, “The Savaage only wanted superhumans, and from the Stoneman we know that they can give people powers, which must be what they did to him.” Speaking of whom, she turns to ask him, “What is this foresight?”

Ken holds his metal hand over his right eye, and looks at us with this face of nausea. “I, I can see into the future a few seconds ahead, it’s, it’s nauseating.” This explains how the hell he always seemed to always know where I was going. “I’m seeing one thing with my left eye, and then it happens for real through my right, ugh.”

“That,” the Director starts, right as she brings her hand to her chin, “could be really useful, though maybe not against that sorceress and her chains.”

Ken is quick to ask, “Sarem?” informing us that the girl has a name.

“Know her?” the Director asks.

Ken nods his head. “Met her a few years back while traveling the world, you could say she’s a sorceress or warlock, but she doesn’t need to rely on will power for all of her magic,” he informs, some facts that just sound great. “Where is she?”

“Your friend is floating above us, a couple rows back, mind controlled like you were,” I inform him, certainly not bitter at the odds stacked against us.

Ken’s eyes widen, I don’t know what over, but he seems to be quick to catch onto the situation without much explanation. He looks at me and asks, “Could you see her whole body?”

“No,” I answer. I tell him all the grimy details of how she’s stuck in the ceiling as this creepy demoness of darkness and whatnot, and it all seems familiar to him. I hope that’s a good thing.

“Her powers must be fighting the mind control, ensnaring her, protecting her as she fights to be freed,” Ken informs us as he ponders it to himself. “She’ll be fighting with the source of her power for control of her body, and I bet the Savaage’s mind control probably helped out whatever demons are already in her head.”

By the way she looked, I’m willing to bet there are many more than just one.

That being said, Tommy is thinking what I’m thinking when he asks, “Will she free herself?”

Ken shrugs as he moves to stand up, telling us, “It’s possible, but as everyone should know, you shouldn’t fight yourself, you always lose. We need to help Sarem.”

I don’t want to go anywhere near that, but as much as I don’t want to risk getting my head chopped off, I’m sure she’s innocent. I guess I have to deal with being vulnerable like everyone else. By the way Tommy nods his head, he doesn’t even hesitate at the idea of fighting/helping this Sarem, though he didn’t see her. I’m sure he’ll regret a lot when he sees her chains coming after him.

“Hopefully,” I grumble, crossing my arms as I gather my wits so to speak, “she’s nicer than she looks.”

“Heh,” Ken chuckles, “she’s really not.”

“Oh, that’s just perfect,” I complain.

The Director points to Marie, and orders Tommy to wake her up. “Get her next.” When Tommy gives her a good glare, she jabs her finger at him. “Don’t pussyfoot around here, Rodriguez, we got work to do now.”

Tommy glares for a second but brings his hand to Marie’s. Burning her palm would be stupid.

Oh, he’s not going to burn her.

The skin under his hand lights up because it’s only warming, not burning. I go to place a hand on his shoulder but he raises his own to stop me before I say anything. He mutters to Marie, “Come on, I know you’re not going to let a little pee-shooter knock you out much longer.” His hand closes around hers to give it a sense of warmth, wasting time.

“Pyre,” the Director warns, but Tommy ignores her.

“Give her time,” Tommy says.

The Director is about to snap at him, I can tell by how she dips her head like a predator on the hunt, like the Hood when he’s annoyed to his wits end. The Director doesn’t because Ken holds his hand before her to stop her, and she looks up at him. At first, I’m confused as what he’s thinking, but with his discolored left eye uncovered I can guess. Something in the future.

Tommy continues to hold her hand, and before too long some water drips down from between them, and Marie’s skin has this blue hue that develops under it. Her eyelids twitch, and flutter, and her eyes open to Tommy holding her hand.

“You are so lucky that didn’t make me piss my pants,” she mutters, squinting at him as he chuckles, “the warmth could have done it.” As she groans and sits up, she misses Tommy giving the Director a sideways glance, likely feeling pretty full of himself.

When she looks up at Tommy, he jokes, “We were waiting for you, you know.”

Marie rubs the back of her head, already anticipating the bad news. “For what?”

“Oh, just a magical sorceress that doesn’t understand the definition of invulnerability.”

She freezes to stare at Tommy like he randomly spit in her drink. She looks away only to look at the rest of us to see if he means it, and when none of us tell her he’s joking, she leans her head back and groans, “Fuck.”

Tommy gives her a hand standing up, and the Director tells her, “Suck it up, we’re wasting time.”

Marie looks the Director up and down and asks Tommy, “Why is the Hood wearing that?”

“Not the Hood,” he informs her, trying not to laugh at the look of confusion on her face, “that’s the Director.”

Marie’s whole neck twitches and twists back and forth between Tommy and the Director, trying to fathom what the hell he’s talking about. Instead of asking, she comments, “Eh, I like the other suit better.”

I can feel the Director fuming from under the helmet.

We follow her as she sheathes her katana onto her back. We need a plan before we attack this Sarem head on, and I’m willing to bet she’s got one.

“Ken,” the Director says, snapping his attention to her, “you know Sarem pretty well, any weaknesses in the state she’s in now?”

“Not particularly,” he admits, which is obviously inspiring, “it’d be more accurate to say that she’s not as overpowered as she seems, she can’t use more than one spell at a time when her cloak is surrounding her like that, or at least I think so.”

“That means she can’t come at me with the chains and swords at the same time,” I realize.

The Director, cementing a Hood’s ability to kill all positivity, points out, “She can still send swords and chains after all of us, and whatever else she can summon.”

“She has a form of telepathy, she’ll show you your worst nightmares, there’s telekinesis, paralyzing eyes, ooo, she has blasts of death,” Ken lists out, and we all stop to look at him, because blasts of death is not only vague but certainly terrifying.

“I mean, it’s not instantaneous, and it’s only from her eyes, and it takes a lot of power so she probably won’t use it.” ‘Probably’ isn’t the defining word anyone wants to hear.

“So, with all that out loud, boss,” Tommy says, turning our attention back to the Director, he asks, “Do you have an idea?”

The Director looks up, and after taking enough shit from a bunch of annoying kids, she takes off her helmet, revealing her long black locks. She brings her hand to her chin as we all watch her think, and she smirks. “I think I do.”