CLAIRE

It wasn't hard to find the source of the explosion. The big hole in the side of the local history museum was a pretty good indicator. Another good sign that that was our problem to solve was the figure emerging from the fire, wearing a mask that I'd only seen in the history books.

Well, it wasn't the same mask. It was similar, with the robotic gunmetal gray covering of the mouth and nose, and the little lights that blinked a sinister blood-red. The suit, of dark green, blood red, and black, it all painted the picture of the villain my mom had fought.

"Dark Titan?" I took a step back and shook my head. I wasn't able to comprehend what I was seeing.

"Close." The voice that came out was distorted, but there was something distinct male about it despite the robotic interference. I knew it like I knew the back of my hand—years of playing on headsets in multiplayer had trained my ears well.

"The name's Titanio. And I hope to someday be as great as Dark Titan." The villain tilted his head—I couldn't make out the color of his eyes, but they caught the lights of the city quite easily, giving off this glowing light.

"I'll enjoy testing my power against you, Psyche." A red light appeared in the palm of his hand.

The way the energy moved and flickered, I instinctively just knew, he had a power like mine.

I held my hands out, letting the silvery-blue light form a little web from my gloved finger-tips, preparing my defenses.

Titanio laughed. "So you have noticed, we have a similar skillset!"

He began to circle me. I turned—I wouldn't dare leave my cape exposed to him.

"What were you doing in the museum?" I slowly brought my hands horizontal, parallel to each other as that little silvery-blue web formed an orb of light, similar to the one in the palm of Titanio's gloved hand. "Don't you know better than to take what doesn't belong to you?"

"And don't you know better than to play the vigilante?" He raised his eyebrows. "We both seem to have forgotten important lessons. But that hardly matters now. Let's see what you've got!"

I spread my hands, and the light between my fingers formed a shield, just in time blocking his energy blast. It fizzled, my shield faltering against an equal but opposite energy.

I splayed my fingers, knitting back together the hole in my shield as he continued to circle me. When I met his eyes again, he stopped and looked down to his hand.

"Impressive." He then looked back to me. "I wonder how much longer that shield will hold up, however. Especially if you don't hold back."

"Give me your best shot," I snarled.

He threw his head back laughing. His laugh rang out like jagged notes from a broken synthesizer, discordant among the usual symphony of the city at night. "Bold—but I have a feeling you'll regret that."

He sobered, and he straightened his arm out toward me, placing the other hand over his elbow, as if he were stabilizing it.

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

In rapid suggestion, energy blasts tore through my shield, and the force of the last one hitting sent me flying back.

I scrambled to my feet as he stalked towards me, like a monster in a nightmare. He clenched his fist and red energy began to crackle around his arm, and it transferred to the other arm where his left hand connected to his right elbow.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

He pulled away his other arm—both now crackled with red energy around the gloves.

I remembered from the fight with Tenebrous that I couldn't keep up the shields forever—I needed to physically fight him.

I let him run at me, and at the last minute side-stepped him, grabbing his glowing arms. I started to try and toss him when the impact of his power finally hit me—my hands burned.

I let go just as I'd managed to flip him, and he skidded down the front steps of the local history museum.

I cried out as I looked to my hands. There was no sign outwardly of any burns—but I knew I'd have to check for the damage later, when the fight was over.

I looked up just to see a ball of energy headed straight for me.

Before I had time to even react, I felt a tugging at the back of my cape and I was yanked through a portal.

I stumbled out of the portal a few feet away, and nearly fell to my knees. The only reason I didn't was that Renegade caught me by the arms.

"Couldn't stay away, could you?" He asked as the energy ball soared past where I stood, and hit the museum, taking out one of the doors and amplifying the fire inside.

"I had this handled before you showed up," I muttered as I started forming a shield around us.

"Clearly." Renegade smirked, more amused than anything else.

"So what's our game plan?"

"I don't know." He shrugged and knelt down to touch the smooth stone platform. "You were here first."

"Well, I don't think aiding the property damage is going to help," I shot back.

"It does if it gives me ammo." He stood back, and shards of the front platform rose into the air, over my shield and towards the rising Titanio.

His other arm still glowed, while the one I grabbed didn't.

With a reaction time that would've made any gamer envious, he thrust out his glowing hand, and a thin shield of red light appeared in front of him, the shards bouncing off of it.

"Ah, so Renegade really is your partner—good, I'll enjoy facing off against both of you." He curled his fingers inward, creating another energy blast.

Renegade made large, sweeping movements with his arms, gathering the shards back around our shield.

"You keep him distracted, I'm going to use our powers to hold him," I said—I could hear the cop car sirens wailing.

"Got it."

He brought his hands close together as I blocked another energy blast, letting my shield fall away from us.

I had to concentrate, I had to be subtle.

Renegade thrust his arms out, and that was my cue.

As Titanio had his attention on the incoming meteor storm of shards of stone, I used my power to push him back into a street lamp, and wound that energy around it, binding him to it.

"Not bad," Titanio panted as the first cop car turned onto the street. "But not good enough."

I watched in horror, felt my grip on that energy fade away as it slowly turned red and dissipated.

I had no idea that was possible.

I realized that I didn't know much about my powers at all.

I then felt Renegade's hand on my waist.

"We gotta go—"

Before I could protest, I fell forward onto the rooftop of the same building that had the pizza parlor.

"You have got to warn me when you do that," I muttered after dry-heaving. "How do you handle the nausea?"

He shrugged. "I trained, got used to it."

I took in a deep breath and pushed myself to my feet. "We almost had him."

"And the cops almost had us." It was clear from his tone he wasn't sorry. He stood on the edge of the rooftop—-from up here, we could see the museum and the cops. Titanio had gotten away.

"I keep forgetting that you're the bad guy, sometimes," I admitted. "Most of the time you're just a regular pain in the ass."

"Such sweet words." He laughed, turning back to me. "And to think, you used to be scared of making me angry."

"I used to be scared of a lot of things," I admitted, crossing my arms over my chest. "I'm not that Claire anymore."

He met my glare, refusing to get upset back. Instead, he was leaning down, because apparently every guy in this city was infuriatingly tall.

That's when I realized, he was getting too close, I could see that his eyes were a dark brown with green and gold flecks—

"Stop—" I stepped back. "I—I have a boyfriend."

He blinked. Then his voice turned very strange, slightly louder than usual. "Oh, yeah, of course you do. Um. This is awkward."

"Whatever, I'm willing to forget this happened if you are." I turned away.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to my date." I climbed onto the fire escape ladder. "See you whenever, I guess."

He chuckled, and then I heard a portal opening. I didn't need to peek back up above the rooftop to know that he was gone.

When I returned from the bathroom, Tristan was there with the pizza.

"You okay?" He frowned. "You were in there a while."

"Lady problems."

That turned him as red as the lights in Titanio's mask and he was silent for a moment.

"Well, the pizza came—do you want to—"

"Yeah." I smiled, taking his hand. "Thanks by the way."

"For what?" He seemed confused.

"For being my boyfriend."

He smiled, even as he turned redder. Our fingers intertwined, and we got back to the Saturday night we were supposed to have.