• • The Wolf Pack
• February 11, 2024

The Wolf Pack (Chapter 34)

The Savaage

ION

---

THUD!
PYOH!

SMACK!

THUD!
CRASH!

My little team bashes him around the room, the five of them ganging up on the mortal vigilante. It really does tug at my heartstrings.

“Ion,” my Hundress calls for me, “are you going to participate?” She stands beside me, the cyborg that’s grown more machine than woman. She wants me to join in, risk my life, as if a gun-toting psycho could fell me.

No reason to not answer her honestly with a little twaddle of my hand, “No, I’m going to let all the kiddies have their fun.”

Admittedly, to anyone with higher expectations for the so-called supervillains, they aren’t doing as well as they should be, but I didn’t expect much. They don’t work well together.

Shadow Mask, in that spiffy suit and mask of his, goes toe to toe with the Hood, matching him blow for blow and even out matching him in evasion. The shapeshifter dodges incoming bullets mixed in between the boy’s strikes. He gets around the Hood’s neck only for the Stoneman to barrel into them, knocking them both to the ground.

Now the Hood’s lovely cantorium suit absorbs the fatal impact, but when the mercenary is a snake he feels it all. 

The Stoneman doesn’t fair too poorly, exceeding my expectations the most. He’s untrained, unskilled, and no tactician, but he’s not completely inept. He presses his punches forward, he doesn’t just throw his weight around, but when he should, he does more than he doesn’t. The Hood is simply good at evasion and recovery, dodging the Stoneman’s attacks especially to his face, and taking the body checks.

The Hood is a smart cookie, but more than that, he’s perceptive. He notices Automata climbing the walls, waiting for the moment to strike with one of her mechanical tendrils. He has his repulsor discs in his hands as his own fists attack the glass over the Stoneman’s face, prepared for Automata. She thinks he can’t evade, but he doesn’t have to.

She shoots her tendril straight for his back as the Hood brings the Stoneman to his knees with a well-placed punch. He takes his repulsor discs to the Stoneman’s back, not taking him to the sky, but barely in the way of the tendril.

THUD!

… is the sound of the stone meeting the floor.

I don’t know if it’s ironic or natural for the weakest to work together the best. Don’t get me wrong, Saint Lucifer and Dr. Magician are my favorites, not the smartest nor the strongest by any means, but they have these quirks that I respect. They do each have one quality that sets them apart from the others.

Saint Lucifer, he hates the Hood, more than anyone else in this room, and he’s going to let it all out. That much is clear as he uses his upgraded equipment to fly and float above the Hood, raining down his rays like the hand of god that he thinks he is, roaring in delight, and then rage. He’s realizing that his rays are fueling the Hood’s suits. All the Hood has to do is stand firm to not fall from the force, and watch for the others.

Dr. Magician, his quality is that he doesn’t play to win, he doesn’t even play to look the best. In his words, he’s just ‘looking to not get my ass killed’.

He cracks me up. Still, even as the Saint blasts the Hood to all hell and yells for the thief to, “Fuck off,” because apparently, “he’s mine!” Dr. Magician won’t have it.

The illusionist brings his gauntlet before his face to charge it, and then blasts it forward to mess with the Hood’s eyesight.

The thief tells the Saint, “Get over yourself, you saw him beat the other two! We need to work together!”

“Who said I’m beaten?” Automata questions as she moves on the wall to bring her tendril straight down on the Hood’s back, pinning him there.

“Nice job,” Shadow Mask groans as he finishes putting his organs in place.

See, all they needed was teamwork, Saint Lucifer to distract, Dr. Magician to blind, and any of the other three for the final blow. Now they can just beat on him for as long as they like.

But they can’t kill him, more out of respect than necessity. They need to know who holds the leash, and that I am to be entertained as I hold it. There’s to mention that pesky bloodline of his. If I’m going to kill him, that demon can’t know I did it, I don’t exactly feel like having that fight.

I might lose.

Automata wants to keep him all to herself, the greedy spider that she is, grabbing hold of him with her tendrils. She hangs him by his arms for all of her comrades to see, taunting him while she’s at it.

“What? Nothing to say? Surely there’s something you want as your last words while you’re still able to speak.”

The Hood remains silent, I see something in his mind about how to manipulate them into rage, trying to decide between words or silence. I see how this recovering psychopath thinks, but just barely. His helmet is… rather protective. I know that he knows when talking to Automata, silence bothers her more than any words he could say, it’s the lack of recognition she assumes she has earned.

So when he refuses to speak, her head tilts. It appears as if she is curious, but I see the nuts and bolts turning in her head, heating up and turning red. That’s why I’m not surprised when she slams him to the ground without warning, slamming her other tendrils over his ankles. The Hood doesn’t scream, but the pain receptors go off.

Saint Lucifer laughs as he walks over the Hood’s helpless body, laughing at how Automata lost her cool. “Here I thought the pretty egghead practiced the three C’s, calm, cool, and collected she is not.”

As the would-be priest squats down over the Hood’s head, Automata is sure to tell him, “If you really believe that, I wouldn’t be making comments if I were you.” The threat in reality is hollow. It impresses me that Mr. Kendrick seems to know this.

The priest only looks up at her and smiles, conveying with that look that if she doesn’t kill him, well, he wins, that part is pretty self-explanatory. If she strikes him down, then he’s right, so he wins too. He doesn’t care what she says, he’ll taunt her all he wants, but right now he wants to taunt the Hood first.

“Whatever you say,” he mutters, turning his eyes to the silent Hood below him. Saint Lucifer holds his hand over the boy’s head, his gloves charging with the new blue and improved lasers. He can’t help but rub it in the Hood’s face how he finally has him at his mercy. “I think it’s about time that we taught this dark, black hole in our lives, what it’s like to lose.”

The Hood doesn’t stay silent for the priest. “Yeah, I imagine you’d be an expert at that by now. You’ve had a lot of practice.” This pushes the button that the Hood wants, causing a face of malice to come over the priest’s face.

“Why you piece of…” Saint Lucifer doesn’t finish the sentence as he raises his hand to blast down on the Hood.

“Now hold on,” a voice comes as a fly shifts into a man and grabs Saint Lucifer’s hand. Shadow Mask wraps his arm around Saint Lucifer’s neck and pulls him back as the priest growls at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Kendrick growls.

Shadow Mask chokes him a little out of spite.

“I’m stopping you from powering up his suit,” reminding the priest of the mistake he almost made, and reminding him of the personal relationship that the mercenary has with the Hood. The mercenary offers instead, “We don’t want him popping your head off now do we?” He releases his hold and closes Saint Lucifer’s fingers into a fist. “Punching him will be so much better.”

Saint Lucifer smiles at the suggestion, and his power gloves light up to punch instead of blast. It takes only a moment for them to come straight down on the Hood’s chest.

THUD!

“Oh, I like this,” Saint Lucifer hums, “I like this a lot,” so he continues to beat on the Hood, who can do nothing but hold in his growls and grunts to not give us the satisfaction. He’s not stopping us.

But the girl might have shot at it…

RUMBLE!

… certainly for the priest.

He stops beating on the Hood as the building shakes again, and throws up his arms to complain, “Alright, what the hell is that?!”

“How the hell should we know?” Dr. Magician asks him, the poor human not able to sense and logically figure out exactly what and who it is.

Maybe the next few shakes will jog their memory.

RUMBLE!

The whole room shakes, Hundress and I manage to stay still but the others topple and fall. Saint Lucifer and Dr. Magician fall over to the ground, with Automata’s tendrils slipping from their place in the walls. The Stoneman struggles as he clings to the floor. Shadow Mask shifts into a bird to avoid the shakes altogether.

Automata figures it out first and goes to move against me. She raises her tendril as the shakes get worse to finish the Hood off as fast as possible. She frees one of his legs but that’s not enough for him, and it’s evident as he tries to boost away only to stay where he is. She brings down the tendril to crush and rupture his chest, in the hopes of her ionium arms overcoming his cantorium breastplate.

CRASH!

When she flies and appears in a blur, she breaks a hole through the floor, with many holes through the building below her. First, she swats Automata’s tendril to the side, then she flies to float right in front of the scientist’s face.

Automata is face to face with Espada, their faces only inches apart.

“Oh shit,” Automata curses.

WHAM!

That is the only acceptable onomatopoeia for Espada’s fist connecting with Automata’s face and burying her upper half into the wall. Espada frees the Hood to sit on his side, but he needs time to recover, time others don’t want to give him.

Saint Lucifer is raising his blasters to the Hood, not learning from his mistakes, and Dr. Magician charges the Worldbender to its max to blind her like before. Unlike the priest, this heroine learns, and has a new ability it seems.

She flies faster than the two gadgeteers can fire, and stands over the Hood’s body to protect him, letting loose her scream at the same time, “Get away from him!”

The sonic wave emitting from her throat sends them flying away, clutching their ears. I thank myself that I made sure Saint Lucifer couldn’t blast himself or else he would have lost his head. Dr. Magician was not so lucky.

Shadow Mask and the Stoneman aren’t as slow on the draw, the two of them attacking from different sides to avoid that scream. The Stoneman rushes her from the left, their previous encounter sparking her fear of his powers, with Shadow Mask shifting into an elephant to fall and crush the Hood beneath her, underestimating her strength severely.

Shadow Mask comes down first, the strategic error, because Espada grabs him by the face, procuring a shocked look on the elephant’s face. His underestimation of her strength is why she holds him by the trunk with one hand as he is trying to contain the piss in his pants. She uses the elephant form to swat the Stoneman. The mercenary is lucky that he hits the superhuman’s side instead of his fingers, sending them both tumbling away.

The rage that Shadow Mask instills in her from their meeting in the Palace, and the need to protect her friend, seem to outweigh her fear of death, but how long will that last?

As the people around them try to gather themselves back together, Espada doesn’t pay me or Hundress a second glance. She kneels by the Hood’s side to help him sit up. She grabs him by the back of the head and across his back, having him look up at her. There’s no trading of concerns or yelling about things now past, there’s only a simple, “Hey,” as her eyes scan his helmet for signs of consciousness.

All he says is, “Hey,” back, and the two staring longingly in that way sappy teenagers do now and then. It takes a few seconds for the Hood to ask, “Since when could you scream like that?”

“Since I thought I killed you,” she admits, sending a flurry of emotions through his system, even though his body doesn’t twitch. It makes me want to barf. She lifts him to his feet, putting his arm over her shoulder and telling him, “We’re getting you out of here, the others are waiting to help.”

“The others,” the Hood mutters, feeling a sense of satisfaction that his friends have been freed, while I feel quite insulted.

“Excuse me, young lady,” I grunt as I cross my arms, gaining her attention and wide eyes, “what am I, chopped liver?”

She’s speechless at the sight of me, which I admit is much more pleasing to my ego than the basic confusion I saw in the Hood. Even her lip quivers at the sight of me, having no idea what I am.

The Hood deigns to inform her, “That’s Ion, he’s the leader of the Savaage, and he’s going to kill us if don’t get help!”

That’s rude, I wanted to talk first, then I was going to kill her, if need be. As I said before, I’m not messing with the demon by killing its heir, with either of them.

Hundress moves to rush and stop them, but Espada sees her coming and takes the hint the Hood gave her. She turns around and flies straight through the wall besides Automata, just as she’s removing herself from it.

I start walking to the wall as it collapses, showing the volume manipulating technology in said wall. I walk past all of my pet villains getting themselves off the ground as I watch Espada fly the Hood over Adds Circle, just where that sorceress Sarem floats with the rest of my desired puppets and batteries.

I stand over the edge of the building, Hundress at my side, Automata hanging onto the side of the building, and the others standing up behind me. I see all the prey, all the children with powers reuniting as Espada slowly lands and starts telling the regular folk to get away.

I turn to my supervillains, and I ask them, “What do you think you’re doing? Get down there before I reconsider considering paying you!”

I already paid Shadow Mask and Dr. Magician, but they don’t need to know that. Never skimp out on the check for a job dealing with death.

At my insistence, all of them except for Hundress and Dr. Magician make their way out. Automata begins climbing her way down the building. The Stoneman runs and leaps off to fall several stories down to ground level. Saint Lucifer uses the added hover boots to fly down with Shadow Mask at his tail as a vulture.

Hundress needs separate orders to leave my side, and Dr. Magician, well, he has no way down.

“Umm,” the thief mumbles, “I can’t fly, I don’t, I don’t how I’m supposed to get down there.”

I gesture to my side with my fingers, assuring him, “Don’t worry, I can give you a lift old sport.”

“Old sport? Alright,” he questions and forgets, and with a flick of my hand, the cantorium that makes the sleeves of my clothes changes to the same bright energy that makes up my body. It changes into two discs, a small one for the doctor, and one large one for me and Hundress.

He steps on and I begin floating us down to meet the children, and I float Dr. Magician ahead of me for the lineup.

The children huddle around their injured friend, Sarem being the only exception. She floats high and away from the rest, her focus squarely on me. I hope she knows it’s in her best interest to not try and distract me.

Espada floats down to the ground where the Hood sinks to his knees. Before anyone else can speak to him, the original is on her knees to look him over, in a way that clearly confuses the others. It’s like a mother fawning over her damaged child.

“Are you alright?” is all she asks.

All he tells her is, “I’ll live.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she responds.

Pyre points behind them, towards the bird that flies and shifts into the mercenary they all wish they weren’t familiar with.

“I’d say we have company, but I pretty sure no one invited them,” he says, at the same time lighting himself on fire and stepping in front of his friends.

An admirable quality, to step forward to be killed first, but stupid when one of them is near invulnerable. The rest who are capable, being Espada, Icicle and Ken, all move to stand with him. They all have a bone to pick with Shadow Mask. Icicle can barely control herself seeing the shapeshifter, an icy mist emitting from her.

The mercenary lands with a hand to the ground, slowly moving to stand straight as Saint Lucifer lands behind him and the Stoneman comes running. When the  Stoneman stops a few feet behind the mercenary and the gangbanger, I see the fear rise in both Pyre and Espada. When Automata moves and hangs higher than the trees, Pyre’s remorse cascades over his fear. The poor boy believes that there’s hope, even without reason.

With Dr. Magician landing last, his cowardly presence incites a glare from Burke, remembering how he separated her from her Hood, and made a fool out of her when they first met.

It’s such a fascinating sight, to look down at them from above, slowly looming closer just above the trees. Besides for the observant Sarem, they haven’t noticed me yet with Hundress. They’re too busy paying attention to Shadow Mask do what he does best, get in their heads.

“I was hoping to finish with the Hood, but I guess we can include the rest of you too,” he taunts, shrugging his shoulders.

The original Hood is infuriated at the threat, not only to her team but to her blood. She pushes past her team with her sword drawn, and threatens him directly, “You’re going to pay for laying a hand on him.”

“Hmm,” Shadow Mask mumbles as the others step to his side, “that sounds like blatant favoritism, I don’t see you caring about Pyre that much.”

The Director, probably easier to remember her by that, points her sword at him to threaten, “Why you-?!” but she stops, as she looks up, and sees me for the first time. Her sudden pause distracts the others and soon, they all look upon my magnificence altogether.

 “Why the fuck is a blob of playdoh dressed like Hugh Hefner?” Icicle blurts out, severely offending me. I don’t look like Play-Doh. I know she means it too, she’s not just trying to get under my skin.

“And here I was thinking it was only polite to introduce myself,” I saw them, making sure they know how hurt I am by the Play-Doh comment, “but now I don’t think debasing myself is worth it.” Crossing my arms is enough to confuse them, which is not what I had in mind. I just want to get to the fighting now. I wave my hand at the team of villains and ask them, “What are you waiting for? Kill them!”

Shadow Mask can’t help but comment, “And here I thought we would get some interesting conversation.”

He doesn’t get to finish that thought, because the Director comes at him with her sword, which he blocks with a knife he pulls from his sleeve. She growls in his face, “You won’t be speaking when I’m done.”

“Oh, I’m so scared,” he taunts back, shifting into a snake to zip away from her.

Before we started, I had assumed that the odds were stacked in my favor. Sure, I knew that this team of supervillains wouldn’t be able to work that well together, but with their superior firepower and abilities, I thought it was “in the bag” as they say.

As Shadow Mask taunts the Director into a slice that hits nothing but the air, the Stoneman is there with his arms raised over his head. It’s going as planned, then he swings down.

Thump.

The young, hypocritical, inconsistent, mind-numbingly annoying Emily Burke decided to just… blow up all the fun I planned to have by being there.

She catches both of the Stoneman’s wrists over her head, holding his dangerous fingers where they can’t touch her, and using her superior strength to keep him from hurting the Director as she tries to roll back.

Now, this is when I see most of my other pawns jump at the chance to jump Espada, but they aren’t faster than fire.

Pyre’s hands are out and blasting before anyone can say anything. The Director rolls out of the way with the fire still burning her jacket, but the real target is Espada. The fire consumes her and the Stoneman and bounces off the two of them towards the rest of my ignoble lot. 

They nearly all get burned, but Espada barely shrugs it off.

While she’s consumed by flames she can see through but can’t be burned by, she pushes the Stoneman’s arms back of his head and gives him a good wallop.           

Bam!

He goes flying out of the fire, and that’s when I first get a taste of it.

I made a mistake in my plans.

Rather than the fist you never see coming, the would-be Jack the Ripper comes out guns blazing. The villains didn’t see him coming, and as he unloads his submachine gun on them, my pawns scramble.

The superhumans do well enough, Automata protected by her armor, and Shadow Mask shifting into something too small to shoot, but Saint Lucifer catches more than a few stray bullets. 

Dr. Magician, despite not getting hit… falls to the ground and starts rolling as if he’s on fire.

He is not. 

Did the Worldbinder backfire on him? Poor fellow, he should get that checked out.

The rest of the children don’t sit on their laurels as the fire lives on its own. The boring one, Icicle, comes out around the fire, spraying a path behind as she skates over it. She uses her momentum to weave between Saint Lucifer and Shadow Mask, hitting the thug with a lariat, and forcing the mercenary to continue his retreat. 

But neither was her target, and that eats at her. 

Her fury and lust to maim the mercenary nearly drives her to change course, but she bites it down and speeds toward the scientist. 

With a flick of the wrist, she sets herself off to skate around Automata’s tendrils as she sprays ice with the other freezing them to the ground.

“Please don’t tell me you expect that to stop me,” Automata taunts the child as she easily rips her tendril from the ice. 

I can see Icicle smile under her armor.

“She doesn’t!” 

Automata turns right into Espada’s fist. The boom shatters the rest of the ice forcing Icicle to leap to the ground. That only means she’s there in time to freeze Automata as the scientist faceplants into the dirt.

Yee-YOW!

Icicle is blasted in the side as soon as she tries. Before she can make an ice shield, the rays of Saint Lucifer drive her back.

As fast as Saint Lucifer was to strike Icicle, the Hood is even faster to put a bullet into his arm soon after. 

“Aahhh!!” he screams as the bullet finds the perfect chink in his armor. 

His screams are silenced by Ken’s surprise metal fist to the face.

Bamk!

Ken can’t help but look down at him and grin. “I see the quality of supervillains is pretty low around here.”

Saint Lucifer only growls in response, before getting up to fight him.

Automata, the supposed backbone of this group, struggles to lift herself back up. Her suit shrugs off the ice and absorbed most of Espada’s blow, but the sheer fact that her head was in the shit with her ass up in the air was a blow to her ego that she couldn’t stand.

Her growling is little more than an animalistic snarl, even as she hears, “Andrea!” being screamed from the fire.

The second Pyre flies towards her, her tendril goes for his head. He blasts fire toward the sky to push himself down and duck below her blow. He hits the ground and another tendril is there. 

He screeches as he has to dive out of the way. “Andrea, stop!” 

As soon as she stands back up to her feet, her tendrils lift her high off the ground. She pulls back her tendrils to strike and defend, but there’s nothing to defend against. Pyre may be on fire, but he’s not coming after her.

He’s just sitting, certainly not waiting for an attack that he knows is coming. 

No seriously, Andrea, just because he’s being stupid in trusting you, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t swat him!

Automata’s mask pulls back then to reveal the arch in her brow. “Did you forget that I’m trying to kill you?” 

With a scratch behind his head, the child retorts, “Really? I didn’t notice considering how you still haven’t caught me, and deliberately missed my head,” and then he remembers that he just hit his head, “the ground doesn’t count.”

Automata stares at him with an expressionless face.

Then sends a tendril after him. 

It’s a half-hearted attack. He’s gone and up in the air long before the tendril strikes the ground. He doesn’t fly right up to her, he stays his distance, but he insists on this… talking. Since when was that a viable strategy?

“Andrea, we’ve been fighting for a couple of minutes now, and we can keep doing it, me flying away, you chasing after me, destroying millions of dollars in private property together…. Or we could not. It would take both of my hands to count how many times you could have taken me out already.”

Her tendril goes to snatch him out of the sky, and with a burst of fire he’s quickly out of the way. 

Her eyes narrow him, the only sign of feeling on her face. I have to admit, her poker face is pretty good, and I don’t have a face most mortals can see. Luckily, I don’t have to guess, I can see the thoughts going through her head.

She’s using that good old psyche degree to figure out how to best hurt his feelings. 

“Maybe you don’t give yourself enough credit,” she compliments him, which puts a grin on his face, “but then again everyone has their moments.”

Grin disappears, but he’s far from dismayed. Rather, he crosses his arms and looks down at her like she’s the child and not nearly twice his age.

“Congratulations,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and a burst of fire to dodge, bob, and wave, “you’re whittier than the bully who tormented me in the third grade! You should be proud,” 

Then Automata starts speeding up, and I start to see what she’s doing. 

She’s stabbing her tendrils at him, her extended arms coming so close to touching the sun but never do. It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t by design that the mere mortal should never touch something like a star.

And the star calls to her, trying to tell her between her attacks, flying closer and closer to her. “You and I both know that you aren’t as bad as you try to be! You don’t belong with these criminals!”

“I’ll give you that, the drug dealers, the hired help, and even the big bad over there,” that’s me, “are just a means to an end.” 

Eh, I expected that.

I also expected Pyre to spin over and under Automata’s tendrils, getting too close for her tendrils to safely go after him without hitting her. And just as he gets close, he doses the fire on his upper half, just as his face gets close enough to hers that she can see the blue of his eyes.      

“Why are you doing this?” he asks her.

She doesn’t answer, she just grabs his throat.

“Ack!”

His eyes open wide as her armors shows off a kind of superstrength he didn’t know it had. He tries lighting himself on fire again, but her mask closes over her face to protect her as she squeezes down his neck and her tendrils point them down.

She slams herself and him into the ground, threatening to crush his throat from their combined wait.

As he struggles to breathe, she tells him exactly what she’s about to attempt to take his life. “I want freedom and the power to do what I want, Thomas, and I can’t do that with you running around.”

Hearing her words, his eyes open wide. They don’t see red, healthy suns don’t actually burn red. 

They burn white.

Heat warnings show up on Automata’s mask as Pyre turns up the heat. When her armor can protect her from the force but not from the feeling of wrapping her hand in a hot stove, she has to let him go. 

She tries to pull back, but he’s in her face, slamming his fist against her hard armor, hurting them both, but he clearly doesn’t care. He’s too busy screaming to care how much his knuckles hurt.

“What are you talking about? No one wants to keep you from your work!”

Automata smirks under her mask and crosses her arms to defend herself. She may be on the defensive as her arms try to pull her down and away from him, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that from his face.

“You still don’t get it, do you?! My work necessitates risks too great for the world to handle, too threatening to society.” 

He goes to punch her across the jaw, but she uppercuts him, sending him flying back.

As he’s sent up into the range of her tendrils, they pounce.

Snap.

Snap. Snap.

The tendrils close in on his arms and legs, leaving one leg free as they pull him spread eagle. 

 “Feel what I can do, Thomas,” she taunts him as she pulls him apart, finally hurting the kid. “Do you really think the world would let me keep these?! They’re equalizers for everyone, and the second I made them you came knocking on my door!”

Through the pain of his limbs being pulled apart, Pyre yells out, “That’s because you were working with the Savaage!”

She pulls him in close, she taunts him all she likes without needing to yell, and without actually… Jesus Christ, can she just fucking kill him already? Can I just get them to kill one of these goddamn kids before I have an aneurysm? 

Is it ego? Are they just losers?

Why is she yelling at him still?

“Because only the Savaage had the resources I needed!” she’s still going on, and it’s become clear, maybe not to them, but to me, that she cares about what he thinks as much as he does her. “You should be proud, it’s not like I didn’t do anything terrible like build a death machine! I gave a screwed-over man the chance to live again and screw them back!” 

Okay, she can tell herself whatever she wants, helping David Sanchez was not an altruistic endeavor. It was to help me make an army, but more on that later. Automata is a compulsive liar, to herself that is. She does whatever suits her, and she comes up with a reason to justify it.

“You think you did something right by helping the Stoneman?!” Pyre screams back into her face, his face contorting with actual anger. He’s realizing that the woman he’s trying to save has already saved the object of his worst nightmares. 

Automata smiles, thinking that Pyre has lost his cool and become far more judgmental than her. “He has a name, Thomas, it’s David,” she condescends, trying to put herself on this moral platform so she can kick others off.

Pyre breathes fire in her face. She has to pull back so the heat doesn’t burn her, but it shocks her to see him do something out of rage. It’s what she wanted, but it was shocking to see it, and over David no less.

Then again, as smart as she is, she doesn’t know.

“David?! You want to judge me for not calling him ‘David?!’ David happens to be the man who attacked my family, and mutilated my sister, so please, tell me how there was anything good about helping a man like him?!”

Automata is a lot of things, but one thing she is not, that every other of her allies is, is a killer. 

Yet, there’s still time.

But Andrea Ray has never taken a life, it’s why she missed Pyre so many times as he said she did, and it’s why she’s only caught him. She may have been perfectly willing to kill the Hood, but she doesn’t see him as anything more than a shell of a man anyway, and still, she hesitated then too.

This is why the fact that she’s helped a killer get his life back, shocks her. 

Knowing that, learning that… she slowly starts setting him down.

“I… I didn’t know,” she tells him. 

That stupid fucking woman.

Do you know how you deal with a useless pawn like this woman is choosing to me? You call in an idiot man, like one who calls himself the Stoneman.

He had been struggling to put his mind back together after getting thrown for a loop by Espada and then trying to get through the haze that is his own head.

I look to where he is in the dirt and lift him. I clear the haze that is his mind, and I point it on Automata and the boy he hates more than anything.

“Rodriguez,” he mutters, before he stands up and starts ranting and screaming like a wild animal, repeating the name, “Rodriguez!”

Okay, I’ll admit, I may have pushed down his personality a bit. I don’t need intelligence or a personality, I just need a wild animal to kill one of these kids.

As Pyre hears him calling him, the Stoneman is gaining momentum, and racing towards him. 

Automata may have had some guilt for helping the Stoneman, but it clearly isn’t that strong as she immediately gets herself out of the Stoneman’s way.

The look of betrayal on Pyre’s face is laughable. What else did he expect? His lingers so long that one would think he was suicidal, but the rage that follows only fueled his sudden turn.

He looks towards the Stoneman and points his hands at the Stoneman to let loose the flames. 

If only the Stoneman wasn’t the only one who could not give less of a fuck about the fire. This boy isn’t that smart if he thinks his pining flames will save him.

Lucky him, his friend agrees.

Pyre blinds himself to the Stoneman, hoping to stop his attacker, but Espada sees that he hasn’t slowed him down one bit. 

She stops trying to catch the cowardly Shadow Mask shifting all around him and flies to save her friend from losing his life. 

Espada body checks Pyre out of the way, sending him flying just as the Stoneman comes racing through the fire. 

Like before, she manages to catch his wrists in her hands. 

Unlike before, she can’t stop his momentum. 

She can feel the beginnings of on-set arthritis as her knees lock up and she’s forced back at sprinting speed. Her boots drug up dirt as he forces her several feet a second, towards where the normal plebians who were stupid to run now do. 

She grunts and growls as she tries to outmuscle him, but the Stoneman is roaring and grunting so loud she can barely hear herself think.

Then her gloves start to turn to stone, and she can’t form a thought, let alone hear her own terrified whines or notice the incoming tree behind her.

Espada needs a lifeline. Lucky, for her, the ice one is coming to be it.

My god… I can’t get anything. Is this going to be a waste of my time? I mean, sure I got their DNA but I wanted the mind-controlled slaves or to kill them. Is this just a wasted day?

Icicle is skating towards her, calling her by her hero name, “Espada!” But then the girl sees the terrified look on her friend’s face and calls her by her name. “Emily!”

Espada’s eyes flicker, letting her ally see the sheer wide-eyed terror for a brief moment. The sight of her friend coming to help her cuts down her fear. 

They don’t have to speak the words, Icicle ices the ground behind Espada and makes a throwing motion for the strongwoman. As soon as ice hit the back of Espada’s legs, she fell back and the Stoneman went over her head. 

Espada didn’t know Icicle’s plan, but she figured it out fast enough, quickly brought her feet to the Stoneman’s chest, and kicked him at full power into the tree behind her.

Well, there goes all the work I did, messing with his head.

I don’t know why I’m so annoyed, I did it with a flick of my finger and some thought power. I didn’t even have to get down from my floating platform. 

Why haven’t any of them attacked me yet? I guess that’s the good part of having minions. The kiddies are too busy kicking their ass for me to have to kick their ass.

Espada is on her hands and knees looking at the Stoneman, trying to convince herself that he’s not on top of her anymore, trying to kill her. 

Icicle is racing to her to help her, but she’s hit by a blinding light and psychedelic vision as she does so. She ends up running and tripping over Espada because of it. 

Espada snaps back into action to rush to Icicle and see what’s wrong, only for the blinding light to hit her too.

Dr. Magician, my saving grace, throws his fist in the air and yells, “Yeah, got ‘em both!”

I’m ready to throw my fist in the air along with him, then Ken appears out of nowhere to punch him in the face.

Dr. Magician screeches, less out of pain and more out of fear. He looks up at Ken in surprise, shakes his head, and looks up at him again. “Leave me alone!”

Dr. Magician turns his back and tries to run away, only for Ken to sigh and blast him in the back. 

“Could… could they seriously not find a better henchman?” Ken complains. The only saving grace for me is that due to Ken’s foresight powers, he has to be annoyed twice. 

As annoyed as he is, he doesn’t waste time moving to Espada and Icicle’s side, the dutiful young man that he is.

Wait, what happened to his friend? The sorceress we kidnapped? 

I try to sense her magic fraying the molecular structure of the air, but all I find are the traces of what she left behind when she skedaddled on out. 

Young Kendall needs better friends.

Speaking of the young man, he’s getting his orders from– 

Ooh, Icicle tells him, “We need to get the regular people out of here!”

“Regular people?” he jokes.

“Not now,” she snaps at him, which makes him gulp. “I need ideas on how we can do this in the next minute. If we don’t contain this fight better, it’s going to spill out of the park and into the city, and I don’t want the Stone-fuck or Shadow dirtbag wreaking havoc.”

“I can start picking up and flying people away,” Espada suggests, and I must admit, I expected more resistance. 

Is she willing to take orders from Icicle? Here I would have thought a Burke would never take orders from a plebian.

Icicle even shoots down her plan. “That’ll take too long and doesn’t contain the fight.”

Ken comes up with a plan before Espada can even make an angry face. “Start making an ice wall starting behind the Stone-guy’s crater and then around back towards the Savaage’s building. Espada can super-speed people out if they’re on the inside.”

“You’re sure that’ll work?!” Espada questions, the dirt already levitating as she gets ready to fly.

Ken smirks at her as his left eye begins to glow blue. “I’ve already seen it.”

That’s enough for them.

The two girls get to work with Icicle icing the ground in front of her and quickly making haste to speed around where the Stoneman lays in the dirt, and then she lets loose. 

One hand makes a path in front of her, while the other starts forming a wall of ice a story high. She’s moving as fast as she can, faster than regular people can move out of her way. 

The girl twinges as she cuts off a parent from their child, but before the early childhood trauma can set in, Espada is a blur grabbing the parents by their shirts in one hand and someone’s family dog in the other, and placing them in front of the kid.

As Icicle starts cutting people off, this grey blur keeps flying up and over, moving them to safety where many of them throw up but live to see another day. People run, scared of the safety they are actually being offered.

As Icicle tries to push herself and do her job faster, she has to trust Espada to be fast enough, to get people to safety. She has to trust in her teammate to save them, because if she looks back, she slows down, and that could be someone caught by the stray blasts Saint Lucifer is firing, of the debris Automata is sending around.

Who she fails to think about is the mercenary, who is lining up a shot of her with a- when did he get an assault rifle? Oh, who cares, he’s about to pop her dome from under the shade of trees.

Before he can attempt to pull the trigger a sword comes down the gun, cutting the barrel.

The katana makes a clean cut, and as Shadow Mask dodges, the Director makes another flash, just barely cutting across his chest.

The mercenary must think he is pretty quick with a gun as he pulls it out on the Director as she shifts to block.

Pop!

Cling!

Okay, I guess that’s cool.

She deflects the bullet meant for her head with the flat side of her blade, and before he can curse to himself, a fist comes and cracks the glass on his gas mask.

As the Shadow Mask rolls over in the dirt, the Hood is on him. 

“Lucky you,” the Hood taunts him as his hands come down on the mercenary’s shoulders.

Shadow Mask shoves the Hood back to gain some space only to get grazed by the Director’s sword. “You get two Hoods for the price of one!”

“God, did you two coordinate-?” He couldn’t quip as the Hood’s foot kicked him in the face. 

He’s turned around and left open for a slash against his back, one that cuts through his combat vest and draws blood. 

The mercenary shifts into a snack to wade through the grass, and immediately both Hoods take out their guns and start blasting. 

The mercenary narrowly avoids bullets and electricity long enough for his ally to surprise his attackers. 

As the Hood’s guns need reloading, he hears the sound of laser beams above him. He doesn’t stop to look like a moron — as much as I wish he would — he immediately dives and rolls with his grandmother, avoiding Saint Lucifer’s attack from the sky. 

They both roll to their feet, looking up and expecting to see another attack coming their way, but they assume the wrong person is the distraction. 

The snake snaps from the grass. The Hood spins as he pops out his knife, but he soon realizes that he’s too early. He cuts nothing as the snake is still shifting into a man, one with a knife and an open shot to stab the Hood in the heart.

When the mercenary goes for it, he hits flesh-

Shunk!

-but not the Hood he was targeting. 

The Director narrowly gets in the way, taking the knife to the shoulder as the Hood catches her in their fall. In the same moment, he raises a gun he reloads during their roll across the grass and fires at Shadow Mask.

Kikt!

The bullet shatters the left side of the gas mask, sending glass into the mercenary’s eye as he narrowly dodges a headshot.

“Fucking shit!” he curses as the other two roll away.

If he thought the glass hurt, I can’t wait to hear what sound he makes when the fire gets him.

Plume!

A fireball hits him in the side, exploding on contact and sending him skipping over the ground like a quarter across a pound. It would be sickening to most others to see how his head bangs off the ground.

I think it looks neat.

Saint Lucifer tries to find Pyre before he’s next, but he never sees the fireball coming. Despite living in Aegis City, where people are known to fly, as he is flying, the dummy never looks up.

Plume!

Another fireball sends him to the ground, but thanks to his armor, he barely feels it. 

He’s getting up as the Hood runs at him. 

Saint Lucifer raises his hands, charging up his blasts to shoot the Hood down, but when Pyre lands right behind his target and lets loose an inferno, Saint Lucifer has to cover his eyes.

The inferno must be pretty bright to mortal eyes as Saint Lucifer struggled to keep his open. He didn’t even see the black mass racing towards him as his shields protected him from the flames. No, he didn’t see him at all until he was leaping out of the fire…

… a mad beast, roaring with both claws out.

The Hood sinks both knives into Saint Lucifer’s biceps, their cantorium properties absorbing the energy shields I gave the nincompoop, and twists. He does his best to make sure that the thug’s arms can’t be used to hurt others again. 

To finish him off, the dead center of the Hood’s chest starts to light up with all the energy it’s been storing up since the fight started. Naturally, Lucifer’s armor funnels its power to where the blow will come, and it’s almost not enough.

Zeee-YOOOOWWWW!!!!

The blast that comes from the Hood’s chest twists the light in front of him and behind his target. 

Saint Lucifer goes flying to what looks like a spacetime abyss from which nothing can escape. His shields are vaporized, his armor shatters, and he’s lucky that only his ribbed has several hard, not-so-clean breaks.

But hey, there’s a chance he survives to live on in agony.

Saint Lucifer lands on his back with a lifeless thud and continues rolling until he stops on his side, facing away from his attackers.

The Hood sees that they’ve defeated one enemy definitively, and lets out a sigh.

Big mistake.

Clank.

Automata’s tendril threw him for a loop, smacking him in the side of the head and sending him to the ground. 

This really is just one person getting jumped after another. Probably should have expected this when I threw two groups of people at each other when they don’t all use guns.

Should have given all my guys guns, might have made this go by faster.

Then again, I wouldn’t get to see Automata pick the Hood up by the legs and slam into the ground while the Director fails to help him. 

Slam! Slam!

Oh shit, his body smacks against the ground like water in a balloon that won’t pop. 

Slam! Slam!

The little mortal psychopath hangs from her grip like a limp doll, and just like that, it seems like we have our first win. I’m sure the Director is screaming profanities but I’m not here to listen to her cry and whine. 

That’s finally one down. I should give Automata a raise, or I would if I paid her. I should put her payroll for giving me this image.

The Hood hanging upside down, not a single breath in his chest, and his hands are completely free of his guns, with no strength left to hold him.

From the Director’s point of view, he would be hanging right in the way of the sun as if he was cut in the saddle of a horse and just finished being dragged to death like the sack of shit he is.

Then Automata adds insult to injury and spots Icicle and Espada saving what remains of the civilians. She winds him back as the Director is laying into her suit with electric shocks that don’t do shit, and then flings him at them.

The Director’s screams warn them of their incoming friend who looks like he should be dead… but I can’t really tell with that suit of his. Can’t see into his head or his heartbeat but come on…

He’s just a man.

Icicle stops and starts making a snowstorm in his direction. I must say, she’s grown pretty skilled in controlling the form her ice takes. The plume of snow cushions him and controls his fall toward her. 

She manages to catch him and roll with him on the ground, but it doesn’t matter. He’s gotta be-

He gives her a fucking thumbs up.

“Are you kidding me?!” I scream from my platform. “How have you two-bit corny shitbags not killed one of them yet? How is he not dead?!”

I can hear Hundress sigh behind me.

“How are you not dead?” Icicle asks the Hood.

“I swear,” he grunts out as she helps him to his feet, “if I have to explain how this suit absorbs energy, I’m going to blow my own brains out.”

Well fuck him, I wasn’t there for that conversation.

Espada flies and stops to see that her friend is okay, and turns her rather menacing wide-eyed stare towards Automata as she smacks around their Director. Then she sees Pyre heading straight for Automata.

“Let’s try this again,” she mutters to herself and flies full speed ahead.

Automata sees Pyre coming a mile away and sends a tendril to intercept him as she looms over the Director. 

This time, with how fast he is going, he’s too slow to dodge the tendril heading straight for him. It’s about to take off his own so useless head when-

Cronk!

Espada backhands it away. 

Before Automata can finish saying, “Oh shit-” Espada is already knocking her upside the head. Tendrils try to catch the strongwoman, but she’s a blur when Automata gets the chance. 

“Don’t make me fight you, Andrea,” Pyre warns her, as he lets his fire flow all around him, consuming all they can see…

Is this like his go-to move now? Blind the enemy while the others see through the flames? I mean it works, but what is this, the third time he’s done it?

Automata’s small spark of good dissipates and the eyes on her mask grow red as the light of the flames burns brighter and brighter.

The metal in her suit is keeping her from dying, and he’s not trying to cook her, but she can’t let down the mask to let him see the rage in her eyes. Lucky her, he can see her malice in the mask and she doesn’t even know.

“You think you can win?” she mocked him. “You couldn’t beat a drone to save the old man.”

Pyre’s teeth bite down on each other, grinding them so hard sparks of fire come from his mouth. “I really wish you wouldn’t bring that up because now I’m going to make this hurt that much more.” 

Automata responds, “What does that me-” 

Pyre pulls back the flames, absorbing them all at once so Automata’s eyes are left momentarily blinded, needing to readjust to what is going on around them now. 

She has to rely on her other senses, feeling the rush of the wind behind her before she hears the sound of superspeed. She prepares herself for Espada to throw her for a loop, but instead, she feels the weight of two men on her back.

“A wise man once said, ‘all war is deception,’” Ken says as he hangs onto Automata’s back just as Dr. Magician is stuck over his shoulder, “but I don’t think he meant it so literally.”

Then Ken forces Dr. Magician’s hand over Automata’s mask, the one with the Worldbinder on it, and makes it go full blast in the scientist’s face.

Automata screams as she finds herself floating through space before the literal sun, unable to see or hear anything. When Pyre turns back on the flames, unknowingly assuring that she feels what sees, her control over her arms collapses and begins to crumble towards the ground.

Espada flies in to catch Ken and Dr. Magician before they fall, but Pyre goes to catch the screaming and squirming Automata.

He underestimates just how much she weighs in that suit and her ability to struggle as she clings to the touch of something she can’t see.

They twist in the air and Pyre, the young fool that he is, tries to take the fall impact, letting the scientist fall on him.

“Tommy!” he can hear Icicle yelling at him as she and the Director carry the Hood back to the group.

“Yeah, yeah, I know!” he says as he tries to break free of Automata’s death grip on him. “Stupid idea to catch her!”

“As long as you know,” the Hood says, his chuckle making him groan in pain.

“Don’t talk, if you want to hurt yourself,” the Director warns him.

Icicle and the Director let him go to help Tommy and at the same time, Espada lets Ken down gently and throws the unconscious Dr. Magician to the ground.

Before they can truly regroup and help Pyre from where he lies trapped, they hear the stomping of the last powerhouse they have to defeat. Then they hear him call out Pyre’s name. 

“Rodriguez!” the Stoneman screams as he starts charging towards the ground.

“Everyone wants a piece of you today,” the Hood tells Pyre.

“Not the time!” Pyre yells out as makes a mad struggle to free his arms from Automata’s grip, turning himself on fire to pressure her to let go, but the feel of the heat to match the sun, only makes her hold tighter. “Guys, I need serious help!”

They look to Espada, expecting her to rip Automata clean off Pyre, but she’s frozen. She’s drifting back towards the ground, watching the Stoneman run at them. How many times today has she come close to being turned to stone only for him to get back up?

When her feet hit the ground, she falls over to her back, her strength fading as her mind tells her it’s pointless. She keeps trying to take him down and nothing works. It’s just a temporary solution, and the more they try to fight him, the more likely is that he’s going to turn them into a statue they can’t get free of.

And they expect her to go first, to be turned to stone first… 

To die first.

Except they don’t and run to face the Stoneman when she can’t.

Icicle steps to the plate first, sprays her ice at him and his feet, and nearly cuts him at the knees. His momentum stops just so he can keep from falling. He has to stomp down and dig his feet into the dirt to keep from falling and make headway moving forward. 

The team starts turning to each other as if they’re going to have the time to come out with a plan, but Ken is the first to warn them to, “Look out!”

Ken points their attention to the Stoneman before he even gets the chance to lift his foot, but those extra seconds where the Hood and the Director start running at him aren’t enough. 

He stomps down breaking the ice, and sending a shockwave that shakes the ground. The Hood leaps as the Director stumbles and rolls. He lands on the Stoneman, his knife and stabs down into the superhuman’s shoulder blade.

Clink!

It doesn’t get in.

The Hood leaps away only to get backhanded, and for the Stoneman to get full sprays of fire and ice hitting his face. The ionium in my suit holds up just fine but… ah, yeah, the sudden influx of high and low temperatures is not good for metal. While there’s just about no location where one could go from hot to cold and then hot again fast enough to affect ionium… uh, these two superhumans might be it.

I can see the metal of the Stoneman’s suit contracting and expanding, and since it was made to fit tightly it’s crushing him in places he does not want to be crushed while freeing him up in others.

Then again, who wants to be crushed?

The two let up just as the Director comes with her sword and brings it down the Stoneman’s shoulder.

Slick!

“Aaahhh!!” he roars in pain as she draws blood. Her cut isn’t deep, but poor little David’s not exactly an experienced fighter.

Smack!

He knows how to pimp slap though, backhanding the Director enough that she spins completely around, losing her sword and landing face-first into the ground. 

It’s a pretty sight.

The Stoneman keeps trying to come after Pyre again, this unstoppable force that won’t quit no matter how much they throw at him, and the one who could stop it is broken in fear. How wonderful.

Pyre and Icicle try their team attack again, but with Pyre in an even worse position under Automata, it barely keeps the Stoneman from trotting forward with his arms moving to protect the glass over his head.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Ken goes against sane judgment and aims his arm straight at the Stoneman and fires. 

“Why didn’t you do that earlier?!” Pyre yells at him.

“Because I knew it wouldn’t work!”

“What about now?!” Icicle asks.

Ken doesn’t answer, he just fires, helping them hold the Stoneman back. The Hood barely pushes himself up to his knees as he watches the chaos ensue.

His helmet gives him an uninterrupted view of the flames and ice mixing into a mist that trails behind the Stoneman. It’s like the world is being destroyed behind him as the forces that fail to strike him down.

The red light of Ken’s beam only adds a rather menacing tint to their attempt at murder, and colorfully adds to the Stoneman’s rage and his encroachment towards the Hood’s allies.

The Hood watches them, unable to do anything with his batter and broken body failing him. All he has that’s not causing him pain in his eyes, but they see the solution.

He calls to her. “Emily!”

Despite being able to hear flies three floors below her room, she can’t hear him now.

“Emily!”

Despite being able to hear planes flying past the city a mile out, she can’t hear him now.

“Emily, please!”

The third time’s the charm as Ken increases the blast on his laser as the Stoneman approaches where the Hood lays.

Funny, I don’t think the danger posed to his own life even passes through the Hood’s mind. Only the thought of how the Stoneman is aiming to kill them, and how Emily has to get up.

She gets up slowly, cowering, her heart beating like a drum in her chest. Even with the sounds of roaring fire, ice, and a beam of kinetic energy, all Emily can hear is her own breathing and her heartbeat.

When she was first learning how to control her senses, hearing was the hardest, but the trick the Director figured out for her, was to focus on herself. It was an easy concept for the eldest heir to the Burke fortune, and not it had become her go-to when she was afraid. 

Since having her powers, she had only been truly afraid once before. 

There’s a common denominator between that last time and now: the Stoneman.

A superhuman who was lifting his foot, threatening with a stomp that could put a permanent end to her friend. That’s when she realized that destiny had arrived, and she was failing to heed the call.

When Ken’s beam overheated, failing to hold the Stoneman back, Espada was blurring past him, heading to tackle the problem straight on. 

But she’s too late.

THUM!

She barely gets to the Hood in time to pull him up to his feet and shield him from the shockwave that sends her team tumbling. 

The ground ripples enough that it breaks apart the ground, causing the onslaught to end and the Stoneman’s attackers to stumble like a gaggle of children. 

Ironically, it finally frees Pyre, but that means little as Espada is too slow to react.

The Stoneman already has a hold on her boot before she can do a thing. 

She doesn’t register herself screaming as he lifts her over his head, and she doesn’t register who she’s holding onto as he slams her back down. 

BAM!

She faces plants into the dirt, but not before dragging the Hood with her, and seeing him slammed down into the ground too. 

Just before the Stoneman lifts her again, she lets go of his arm, feeling his own fingers fall their hold on her. 

She doesn’t get the chest to look for some rise and fall in his chest before she’s slammed back down on her back.

BAM!

God, it’s like a cartoon as he doesn’t again as her foot is encased in stone.

The others come to help her but he hits them with Espada, one by one, bruising their bodies and souls before throwing her down flat on her back.

The dirt flies up and covers her like the nicest blanket. The Stoneman stomps that blanket and her when he walks over to her and kneels on her chest.

She tries to call out but he forces the air from her throat.

She’s forced to look up at her impending doom, the fate worse than death that’s had her so afraid. 

The Stoneman’s hand is coming and she wonders for a second if it would have been better to be a coward. A coward would get to live, a coward who is facing an immortal state of dying, unable to truly live but unable to truly live without being shattered.

For so long, she felt invincible, and all it takes is one man to ruin all of that.

The look in Espada’s eyes as she realizes she’s going to die, is a look most only witness once in a lifetime, if at all. 

Then he grasps her neck, and the hope dies in her eyes. 

She hears muffled cries of her name, her friends wanting to help her, and wanting to save her, but she doesn’t listen. In this sense of complete defeat, she finally accepts it. 

She finally accepts… death…

For a few seconds… and a few more seconds… and not anymore… 

Now it’s a look of realization, on both Espada’s face and the Stoneman’s.

God fucking dammit.

His uncovered fingers are grasping her uncovered neck, and she’s not turning to stone. 

She is truly invulnerable… 

“God. Fucking. DAMMIT!”

Espada has been afraid of him all this time, and she’s immune? I can’t even laugh at it because her not dying is the closest thing I’ve ever been to being cockblocked in my entire fucking life! 

While I’ve been kicked in the nuts, this must have been a real kick in the stomach for her, maybe more to her than me, but not to Mr. Sanchez, because he realizes one thing, “Oh fuck.”

Espada realizes that she has made herself a fool, and does not come to it slowly or calmly. The Stoneman sees it firsthand as her look of terror twists into malice, and he’s unsure of what to do, he lost his chance at winning. Espada doesn’t give him a warning, she just screams. 

“Raaaahhhh!!” The sonic waves are stronger than any other yet, though she’s only just got it. 

Her screech is so powerful that sends the Stoneman high above the trees. All that runs through her head is how stupid she is, a coward for letting fear get in the way of carrying out her duty, her mission, her dream. 

Dreams die when people do, but Espada is invincible, why would she ever die?

Espada can’t inspire anyone, help anyone, or do anything while cowering underneath a common criminal. Espada can’t be a shield or a sword if she’s worried about connecting with another weapon. 

Now she remembers when the question is asked if something can kill her, just assume no.

She’s fast too, before the Stoneman reaches the apex of his fall, Espada flies up from the ground, hands clasped together over her head, and slams him back to Earth. She does that a lot.

BAM!

PLOOM!

The Stoneman isn’t stuck in the ground this time, he’s in the middle of a house-sized crater, laying spread eagle, staring up in realization and what looks like horror. 

No, it’s not fear that causes him to stop fighting back, to stand to his feet. He realizes that he’s not going to win, and that’s worse than being scared. To think, I had so much faith in him.

Okay, not that much.

“To think,” Espada mutters to herself, floating slowly down towards the Stoneman, their eyes locked. She doesn’t finish her sentence, her words replaced by ragged breaths. “To think,” she repeats, thinking about how all this time, all this anxiety and fear of death that she has built up was, “for nothing.

“I feared you for no reason, but no more, no more fear. Of all the things you creeps and criminals should think when you see me, is that I have nothing to fear from you, but you tricked me. No more.” 

As she floats a mere few feet above him, Mr. Sanchez’s arms creep closer to his body. “For the rest of this, how about we take the gloves off,” and she does just that. She removes the long gray gloves from her hands, revealing her pale skin to her forearm. Her white knuckles turning red…

And being used to beat him.

Bam! Bam! BAM!

In her rage, she becomes like me. Overzealous, sure of herself, and prone to mistakes. 

Thud! Thud!

Mistakes such as murder. She does oh so love the fact that she isn’t one of those, at least for a little while longer.

Bang! Bang! BANG!

Slick!

Then she finally draws blood, and the world learns that there is still a man beneath that hardened shell. The blood from his broken face flies up at her. It paints her face, and she stops beating him. 

She didn’t register that she broken through his helmet, and her eyes still don’t quite register that now. 

The wet and warm touch of someone else’s blood on her cheeks and her forehead stop her. It’s a familiar feeling to drowning while you can breath just fine.

Then she feels an arm wrap around her. 

“You didn’t kill him,” the Hood tells her, “you did fine, you’re doing fine, just…” 

She feels his hands lay on top of her fists and pulls them away from the David’s face. 

“Remember, you don’t do this sort of thing, you said so yourself.”

When she looks into the pitch black darness of the mask, it centers her on reality. I imagine others normally experience some sort of dissociation from looking into a mask that’s a bargain bin version of my face. She’s probably looked at it so much, spent so little time looking at other people that it has the opposite effect.

What that must say about her.

Espada is not quite all there yet, but enough of her mind is her own that she’s able to rest his arm over her shoulder and help him walk back to the group.

As they help each other, they take inventory of their villains. 

Saint Lucifer was maimed and unconscious.

Dr. Magician was knocked out and unconscious. 

Automata was traumatized and unconscious.

The Stoneman was beaten and unconscious.

There only remains…

“Where is Shadow Mask?” Icicle is the first ask, and the first one to want his head. 

The Director is there rest her hand on her protege’s arm and tell her the hard truth. “He’s the slippiest bastard of the bunch, and since he’s halfway smart, he would have escaped at some point during the battle.

“Kind of like our own sorcerous,” the Hood grumbles to himself.

“This wasn’t her fight,” Ken reasons with him.

“We’ll…” The Hood tries to answer, but the pain in his ribs slows his tongue… for a moment. “We’ll remember that.”

“Then did we do it? Did we win?” Pyre asks the group as his excitement seems to grow infectious.

Espada, Icicle, and Ken all start grinning and look ready to throw a party, ‘We beat the supervillains and the day is saved! Hooray!’

Thankfully, there’s a buzzkill ready to point out the biggest problem. 

The Hood points to me and Hundress still hovering in the air. “We still have to deal with him.”

I look down at them, put on my best smile, and wave hello.