This was bad. No, worse. This was worse than the situation that lead me into this mess in the first place. I had been beaten up by a guy with no superpowers to speak of so badly, I’d been hospitalised for a week. The only reason I hadn’t been given any casts was dumb luck in the worst way. Now, I was up against a supervillain and I couldn’t even see him.
“Lucidity!” I hissed.
She didn’t respond. I was alone.
“Clear the hallway Cloud.” A commanding female voice penetrated the mist.
“Why would I do that?” A male voice - Cloud - responded indignantly. “We have the advantage while they can’t see us.”
“How am I supposed to tie anyone up without being able to see them?”
“Ah. Aha. Sometimes I forget that others don’t have the same sight that I do. And anyway, I would have thought you could sense them through the metal.”
A beat. Followed by a heavy sigh. “Cloud, how could I do that before attaching my metal to them? Clear the fucking hall.”
The whole time they were talking I was frozen in a flashback, staring stupidly into the white abyss while trying to think of what I should have done. When the mist started blowing past me I was shaken out of my head and raised my arms to protect my face, not that the mist was particularly damaging. After a few moments the blowing wind ceased, and I cautiously looked ahead.
Two figures were approaching at a leisurely pace, a guy and a girl, both in their villain costumes. The guy was wearing all white. A white balaclava, white unbuttoned trench coat, white shirt and pants, and squeaky white sneakers, with a reflective snow goggle visor covering the part of his face the balaclava missed. He had a metal pole he was using as a walking stick that gave an audible clang when it hit the floor now that the mist had cleared. The whole ensemble was billowing dramatically, with white mist pouring out of every gap in the clothing and flowing to the edges of the room where it joined with the mist permeating the area. His hands were wreathed in the same effect
The girl was harder to identify, mostly because Lucidity, or anyone really, hadn’t told me anything about the villains we might be facing. She seemed to be wearing a kind of homemade armour. It looked like chainmail, but was much tighter and neater, and clung close enough to her form that it was curvy and obviously feminine. Her mask was a metal plate that had holes cut over the eyes, nostrils and mouth, and had two impish horns that jutted forward. I could see her eyes through the mask and inadvertently made eye contact. Her focus was on solly on me.
So much for hiding.
“Oh? Another new one?” The girl seemed surprised. “That makes what? Two in two weeks?”
“Two in one and a half is what that would be.” Cloud casually corrected.
Something in my brain clicked. I’d brushed up on the need to knows of the Sentry and Sentinel in advance of me coming here, but that was definitely not where I stopped researching. There were a lot of Transhumans in Graceland, and villains outnumbered heroes somewhere around two to one. One of those villains that had recently emerged was a girl called Zipline.
Zipline was recent, so the news article I’d read on her was less than six months old. She had the power of metallurgy as far as I understood it. Any piece of metal she touched Zipline could morph and reshape as she saw fit. Mostly, she used it to create wires and tie up anyone that got in her way. Looking at her, she had no shortage of metal to play with.
“Doesn’t matter.” Zipline retorted. “You know what the client said: Extreme prejudice.”
That set off alarm bells in my brain. I needed a weapon, but there weren’t any around. No, wait, I had a phaser. I couldn’t feel it the way I could with anything else I touched. There were forces on it, but they were alien, disjointed, and nigh incomprehensible without looking at it. It was like feeling in a different language. The realisation sent chills up my spine. This wasn’t the time for figuring out my own power.
“Now hold on.” Cloud interrupted. Zipline paused and turned her head to glare at him. Three wires were extending from her wrist and wriggled as if alive. The wires turned with Zipline. “What say we ask him what his power is? We don’t want another Waterlad incident.”
“Fine. You there. Blackface. What do you do?” Zipline demanded.
Shit. She was talking to me. “Blackface is a terrible name.” My voice responded independently. Why did I say that?
“Then do tell.” Cloud prompted.
“…” This wasn’t good. “You have me at a disadvantage.” My voice continued. “How about we trade names? And what was the Waterlad incident?”
The two of them exchanged glances. There was a beat. Cloud tapped his staff and the white mist around us rushed in to surround us. As the mists rushed in from the sides I saw Cloud rushing towards me. I panicked and started running but didn’t get far, something wrapped around my leg and stopped me in my tracks.
My hands shot down and grabbed whatever got me: a wire wrapped around my leg. As I touched it my extra sense revealed a huge matrix of forces. Flustered, I pushed it down, homed in on that force and exaggerated it. In a moment, the wire slid down my leg and slammed onto the floor, allowing me untangle myself from it.
Unfortunately the wire had been digging into my leg, so it pressed into me the whole way down. Fortunately, the loop wasn’t a perfect circle, giving me some wiggle room and making the action less damaging that it could have been. The victory was short lived, however, as Cloud appeared in the mist and tackled me to the ground.
There was a flash. I was slumped against a wall. No, that wasn’t it. The mist had pulsed in blue light. Cloud had his staff pressing down on my chest, the fight wasn’t over yet. He was right on top of me and even that was far enough for the mist to diffuse his form.
“Wonder if the mask is solid.” Cloud muttered, then hit me in the face. Since my power only changed the colour of my skin, the blow went through unchecked and my head snapped backwards into the ground.
There was a muffled chuckle. “It isn’t. Now that would be good for me. Wouldn’t it.”
Damnit, this wasn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t any different from before.
As I turned my reeling head back towards Cloud, I focused on his coat. My hand shot up and grabbed the collar. The forces acting on the trench coat lighting up in my mind, I focused on a force going upwards and threw him as hard as I could. He gave a sound of surprise a moment before he vanished into the swirling mist. I scrambled to my feet and aimed the phaser in the direction I’d thrown him.
It occured to me I didn’t even know if this thing had a safety, so I aimed the phaser to the side and experimentally pulled the trigger. Blue light spilled from the device and shot out in a straight line. I didn’t get to see how far it went because of the mist getting in the way, but it was probably safe to assume the entire hallway was within its effective range.
I corrected my aim as best I could and let out another shot. When there was no response, I started cautiously stepping forward. The whole situation was crazy. I had come for a tour of the tower and a meet and greet with the Sentry, yet here I was fighting two villains. That meant I was breaking the promise I had just made to Sofiya.
I paused.
There was nothing I could do about that right now. My thoughts distracted me as two wires snaked through the mist and wrapped themselves around me. One on my arm, one on my leg again.
There was a quality of force that was difficult to describe in the wires that vanished moments after they ensared me. She had apparently learned from our previous exchange and tightened the loops as soon as they were on me, leaving me no time to react the way I had before. I pulled on one of the wires with my free hand, the one without the phaser and figured it out.
When Zipline had been channeling her power before, I had noticed a huge matrix of force present in the metal. That same matrix had been present in the wires when they attached to me, but now were curiously absent. No, they were still there, just lesser.
And before the strange forces had lessened, there had been another matrix on the other end of the wire. It had cut itself off before I could do anything, but I recognised the two points coming off of the head. This wire had been a part of Zipline’s armour. How had she found me anyway?
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The alien forces of the phaser continued to exist in my hand. Right.
As I mused on that, a man with a metal pole roared and came charging out of the mist to tackle me. While I was able to brace myself somewhat, the unfortunate experience of being tackled was twofold. One, I was a skinny kid being tackled by a larger guy. Two, I was anchored by wires on my arm and leg. I went down like a bitch, only my arm was still in the air thanks to the wire.
Cloud grabbed my torso and started to lift. The fact that my arm and leg were anchored interfered a little, but didn’t stop him. He was planning on doing the same move over and over again. The phaser was still in my hands, so I turned the device towards him and saw as he realised what I was doing. I pulled the trigger, a blue beam flashed towards his body and Cloud’s skeleton was briefly visible as his body shuddered and he fell to the ground.
That had been more firepower than I was expecting. Nevertheless, Cloud wasn’t moving. For all I knew he was down for the count, which freed me up to focus on the tethers that were impeding my movement. The wires were done up tight, now that I had a spare moment to think on it. So much so, that I was beginning to get tingles in the tips of my fingers and running up my leg. Looking at the loops revealed that the wires weren’t tied off, but melded together, forming a perfect circle around my limb.
I briefly considered using Lucidity’s phaser on the wire to melt it or something, and dismissed the idea as quickly as it came up. Metal was conductive, and Cloud had clearly been taken out with an electrical attack. The fact that I’d seen his skeleton couldn’t have been healthy. What I needed to do was break these wires, if not to release my arm and leg, then to return to them the ability to move.
Cloud was lying right next to me, and the pole he had been using as a walking stick had rolled conveniently into my reach so I picked it up. It weighed a fair amount, but it wasn’t giving my sixth sense any alien forces, which was refreshing. There was a black mark where he had been holding the staff which I pointedly ignored. I finangled the pole to above the wire and gave the piece of metal an incredible downward force. In an instant the pole vanished from my grip, hit the wire which refused to move, swung downwards and embedded one end in the floor. Vibrations from the impact of the pole hitting the floor ran up my legs, but there was barely any effect from wire and I was no closer to being free.
Out of curiosity I tugged on the pole. It was in deep and didn’t budge. The power sustaining this wire must be out of this world if that kind of force didn’t do anything. Which gave me an idea. I gripped the wire with my free hand. The matrix of forces on the metal was a swirling torrent in contrast to the simpler systems I was used to working with. For one, every force was tiny, which didn’t make sense because of the insane toughness of the metal, and while most forces were normally unified into easy to comprehend sizes, this was like looking at a colony of ants all moving in synchronisation.
Though, maybe that was the key. Maybe the wire was only staying still because of an immense amount of individual forces keeping the net force at zero. If that was the case, then all I needed to do was destabilize it. I picked one of the ants at random and turned it away from me. Instantly, there was a crack. A smile spread across my face, and I started turning as many of the tiny forces away from me as possible. Crack after crack appeared in the wire, and eventually the loop was riddled with flaws. The main problem I faced was that by the nature of my power, I could only interact with one force at a time. Another problem, which was arguably more immediately pressing, was that the wire wasn’t crumbling or letting me move any more than I was previously limited to.
So I opted for a more direct approach, and began using my power to pull the pieces away from my arm individually. Simply touching the pieces with a fingertip and using my telekinesis to move them. Soon I was getting relief in the form of pins and needles as my blood flow returned to my hand.
My arm was soon freed and I got to work on my leg. Another blue flash of light pulsed through the mist on my right, and was shortly followed by a pink one. That must have been Lucidity. Hopefully, she was holding her own better than I was. The thought occurred to me that I should finish up and go help her out. She would be screwed if Zipline managed to catch her like she had me.
“My staff.” Cloud’s voice was hoarse as he roused. The phaser hadn’t put him down for good. “Give it back.”
The zipwire on my leg still wasn’t off, and I was not looking forward to the prospect of being tackled again. So I pointed the weapon at him and pulled the trigger. Cloud’s skeleton flashed into view for a moment, and he hit the deck. This time he stayed still and the fog flowing off of him ceased, leaving me to finish freeing myself.
My full range of movement returned to me, I gingerly took a few steps, wincing at the tingling sensation that came with every second step. Once my leg had returned to normality enough that I could easily walk, I returned to the staff and put a hand on it. A tug revealed the magnitude the forces pulling it down. I simply matched it with an upwards force and lifted the staff like it was weightless. The pieces of metal that had restrained me were all still levitating in the air, I noted.
“Lockdown!” A soft voice barely pierced the mist.
“Is that Lucidity?” I called back.
“You managed to win?!” Her voice was surprised as Lucidity’s form came into view through the mist. A few of the devices she had made were missing from her bandolier, and she had exchanged her phaser for a large cylindrical device that honestly looked like a rocket launcher. I noticed I could see her from a little further away. Cloud was down, so it made sense that the mist would be dissipating.
“Your phaser managed to win.” I admitted. “I didn’t really do anything except pull the trigger.” And the fact that I let myself use my power. Last time my identity would have been put at risk if I suddenly started throwing things around. It was freeing to not have to worry about that. “And maybe shorten it to Lock.”
“Neat! Cloud must have underestimated you because you’re new. Is that his staff?” I nodded. “Keep it, Lock. That’ll make him soo mad.”
The youthful energy brought a smirk to my face. I gripped the staff and pulled, but it was stuck so I enhanced the force I was exerting until it was freed in an explosion of concrete.
“What about Zipline?” I asked. ”I saw a few flashes.”
“She’s down, probably out. I took a whatsit from Collage and put some pink in a flashbang.” Lucidity explained jubilantly. “And then I trapped her with this.” She held up the device in her hands. “Net gun.”
I processed that. “A flashbang of... love?” I carefully poised.
“Yup!”
I decided it would be best to file that away to address later. “What now? You’re in charge.”
“Yup! Oh, right.” Lucidity’s demeanour changed with the realisation. “We still need to go down. To the basement. I was doing a thing to open the… Right.”
Lucidity jumped into a wall and a moment later jumped back out with a phaser in hand, and a small disk with a flashing red light in the other. The net gun apparently discarded. She moved to an elevator door and put the device on it. The disk beeped, a red light danced around the rim, and the elevator door opened. She turned to me proudly.
“Door opener. Even works on locked oned.” She explained. “Right, I just realised you can’t get down there. Hold on.” And Lucidity vanished into a wall.
I took the moment of alone time to step towards the elevator shaft and look down. Cloud’s mist had cleared that I could see three or four metres ahead, so it was like looking into a white abyss. We were on a high floor, so chances were that the elevator was somewhere between here and the ground floor. That was what, twenty floors? Thirty?
“I’ve got hoverboards!” Lucidity announced her return. “They’re super intuitive or something because I made them that way. Orcus told me to say that.” She explained when I gave her a look.
Looking at hoverboards didn’t fill me with hope. They were shaped like a typical skateboard, but had no wheels and the board was flat, save for two oval indents where the feet were supposed to go. Lucidity dropped one on the floor in front of me and jumped onto another she had brought from beyond the wall. A ring of green light illuminated around the side of the board and it slowed to a stop before it went too far.
“I just step on it?” I checked.
“Duh.” Lucidity responded.
Expecting things to go wrong despite her assurances, I trepidatiously stepped onto the board. The green light lit up when both feet were on, but I didn’t go anywhere as a wire snaked out of the fog and wrapped itself around my leg. I immediately grabbed it and used my power to fling it upwards. I didn’t bother holding back, given that I’d only have a short time to act. My end barely moved. The other end of the wire wasn’t so lucky. I felt the horns penetrate the ceiling, no, the bottom of the floor above and stay there.
I winced. Maybe that was too much. Zipline wasn’t moving anymore, she was stuck up there.
“What’s wrong?” Lucidity asked, breaking the silence.
I replied distractedly, focusing on removing the wire from around my leg. “Zipline tried to jump me. So I put her in the ceiling.”
The young hero pouted. “I thought the lovebang would have lasted longer.”
“She’s been… Dealt with.” I awkwardly finished as I stepped back on the hoverboard. “How does this work again?”
“Just focus on moving in a direction.” Lucidity said.
I focused on moving forward and the board started scraping along the carpet. I tilted my head up and started gaining some air. “Oh, it’s just like snowboarding.” I realised. As an experiment I crouched a little and subsequently sped up. If you took away the snow, the cold, leg bindings, and safety equipment, it was just like snowboarding.
“We should go.” Lucidity reminded me. “You first. I’ll close this behind us.”
Impressed with how fast I was getting the hang of hoverboarding, I sailed through the opening and began descending. Lucidity pulled the disk off of the door above me and replaced it on the other side. Seconds later the door was closed. Seconds after that, my board came into contact with something and began listing dangerously.
It wasn’t the elevator, which was curious. I reacted and tried to move back up, but the board was anchored. It pivoted upwards and I lost my footing. Subsequently, I fell before I could get a word out.
All that happened so fast I didn’t have time to think up a way to finangle myself out of this mess. Fortunately, it turned out I didn’t have to, something broke my fall. It was difficult to see in the mist, but I was able to perceive the threads that caught me as soon as one touched my neck and stuck there. Cloud’s staff was caught at a weird angle and was wrenched from my grasp.
My fall had apparently been broken by a humongous spider’s web that spanned the elevator shaft. The only reason I knew being that I could sense the entire web through my sixth sense. It told me the web went down several floors, and also informed me of the myriad of creatures all skittering around on said web.
“Fuck this.” The words escaped my mouth as my thoughts turned towards fire.