There were four of them. The two at the front of the church were dressed in purple and orange. I knew their titles were Partymaster and Agent Orange respectively. The former had a Monarch power that incapacitated people near him, near as anyone could tell, while the latter seemed to have a precognitive power and a strange Disrupter power. Neither were active enough for the Regulation to have a comprehensive analysis of their powers.
Along the side, and climbing up to a window that had a sizable ledge outside it, was Tableturner. He was unique in that he was a Disrupter that affected living things as well as non-living things. As a Disrupter that only got to affect the non-living side of things, I was envious of his power, even if it was pretty underwhelming on paper.
It had been mixed in with the notes Voidling had given me weeks ago. The research papers and theories behind why so many powers seemed to work on living things exclusively, or only on ‘dead’ things. It was referred to as Felwyr’s Law of Effect. It proposed that powers as a rule worked on either living things or object, with no overlap. The paper I read went on to describe a number of convoluted ways that powers contrived their effects on objects in such a way that it could never work on people.
There were few exceptions to that rule, and I was technically one of them. My Ghost power worked on anything I touched, which included my own skin, and Madeleine’s unmasked face a week ago. But my Disrupter power simply refused to operate the same way.
Tableturner was another exception. He could make anything spin. His costume advertised that fact with yellow arrows arranged in circles covering the entire thing, and a big yellow circle covering the face of his mask, breaking over the mouth with an arrowhead on both ends.
The final supervillain was on the roof, and had a grey and yellow coloured costume, similar to Tableturner’s in design, but different in expression. There was much more grey in Reactor’s costume, and the edges were trimmed with yellow. She was an Enforcer, and her powers were much better analysed than Agent Orange and Partymaster.
Reactor took hits and kept them, then returned them back whenever she got her hands on anything she wanted to hurt. To top things off, she was naturally stronger than a standard person. She was one of the figureheads of the Collectors, an Employee gang of the Entrepreneurs.
Right now, Reactor was jumping on the roof of the church. Each jump was higher than the last. Each jump made the church shake just a little bit more.
There used to be a fifth member of the Collectors, but Satellite had changed that.
“This is the part where we leave.” I said. “Bad Valentine is fucked, those are the Collectors.”
Already there were shouts coming from within the church. Tableturner looked a bit silly standing on the ledge, staring inside, but he was undoubtedly using his power to maximum effect.
“What do we do?” Nathan asked, staring at the church.
“Weren’t you listening? We need to get the fuck out of here.” I grabbed his arm where his sleeve covered it and pulled, but for all my working out, I wasn’t stronger than Nathan. It was a problem that I could have solved with my power, but I didn’t want to reveal that right now.
“If this comes back to me-” Nathan cut off as Reactor jumped up to a new height and descended feet first, crashing explosively through the roof instead of landing and jumping again.
The sounds of the commotion coming from the building became louder as heavy things were thrown around, and a sound like that of a silenced machine gun firing kept intermittently joining the debacle.
Nick was torn between staying by the cars and joining the Beastmasters inside. He was stepping towards the entrance to the church and stopping repeatedly, his trepidation clear even from as far away as we were. Dreadnaught, for his part, had turned to face the action and was doing nothing.
If he really was the world’s strongest cat, this probably didn’t worry him too much.
“What if he tells them about me and they come after me?” Nathan asked.
“They won’t.” I told him. “You don’t matter enough.” Belatedly I added, “Please don’t take that the wrong way.”
Tableturner dived down from his ledge as the window shook and spontaneously shattered. The shards hovered, turned, then shot towards the villain on the ground. As the glass flew, Tableturner flicked his hands repeatedly. Each time one of the glass shards diverted away, with half of them going into the wall of the church, and the rest flying off in random directions.
The big ones were diverted first, but there were too many for Tableturner to turn away. The small shards hit Tableturner, causing superficial damage and not even drawing blood. The scuffed supervillain stood and started climbing to another window.
“I think I should stay, so I know what I have to deal with.” Nathan decided.
I touched his pants, then used my power to easily grab his Vphone. “Lovely that you think that, but you’re not thinking straight.” I opened it and bypassed the lock by going to emergency calls and dialing for the police. Nathan didn’t notice. Channel wasn’t here to realise a call was going through.
“He’s winning.” He said, slack jawed.
I glanced back up. Tableturner was gesturing aggressively, but hadn’t been made to move again just yet. There were glass shards that were impaled in the ground just outside the entrances to the church. All the windows had been shattered by now.
Reactor had been driven out of the church, but she’d been sent out through the roof. She was holding her arms protectively around her face as two dozen pointed shards of glass were pressing into her body, none of them actually drawing blood. The trajectory of her impromptu flight took her about three stories up before the force behind the glass shards faded and she started to fall. She landed in a lawn across the road, her legs sinking halfway into the dirt.
Unperturbed by the fall, Reactor pulled herself out of the holes and leaped back to the church with a single bound. She landed next to Nick and casually flicked him in the forehead, sending him sprawling to the pavement.
I have to admit, that was satisfying to see.
Reactor was giving Dreadnaught an appraising look as the call connected. I spoke over the operator. “I’m at the Doomsday Church in Duncan, you know the one about the Calamities?” The form of the Eclipse flashed in my mind’s eye, and I faltered. I wanted to keep talking to get the information across, but I settled to wait for confirmation from the other end.
“What are you talking about?” Nathan asked, looking and seeing me with his Vphone.
I held up a hand as I listened to the operator. “I can pull the address up.” They said. “What is the purpose of this call?”
“Supervillains.” I said.
“Hey!” Nathan tried to grab at his phone, but I got a grip on the front of his shirt and cheated to keep him at bay.
“Can you describe them?” The operator asked, now speaking more urgently. Good.
I hastily considered how to describe them, since I didn’t want to seem too knowledgeable about transhumans in front of Nathan. “There’s a woman that jumped through a roof, a man making things spin, and two more that I saw dressed in purple and orange. I think they’re fighting another one that has glass powers.”
“Dude!” Nathan disentangled himself from my grasp and made another swipe at the phone. While I wasn’t stronger than him, I was a bit faster. That combined with weeks of sparring let me avoid his grabs for the most part.
I realised I was kind of underselling it. “It’s a big fight. Buildings are being destroyed.”
“Keep your distance if you can.” The operator told me. “The heroes are being alerted and are on their-” That was all I heard because Nathan hit the phone from my hand and sent it skittering onto the road.
I looked at it, then back to him.
“Are you trying to fuck me?” Nathan demanded.
“No.” I responded flatly. “That was good, actually. Now they think a civilian is under duress. They’ll hurry up.”
“That’s not what I want!” Nathan ran a hand through his hair. “I’m so fucked, now.”
“Nathan.” I snapped my fingers to make him look at me. “You’re being ridiculous. The Beastmasters coerced you into working with them. If you went to the heroes with what you learned, they’d probably pay you instead of locking you up like you think they will.”
Nathan shook his head. “It’s not the heroes I’m worried about.”
“The Beastmasters?” I frowned. “They don’t want to care about you either. Weren’t you paying attention to that meeting? You were only brought in because of that green woman.”
The commotion in the church was quieter now. Not because it had toned down, but because it had moved further into the church. Despite how I was advocating for vacating the area, I kind of wanted to get closer. Bad Valentine had displayed a frightening degree of telekinesis over glass. I wanted to see it in action, and get my hands on a piece of glass he was controlling to pick at how it worked.
That was something that would have to wait until I was in costume. I had no intentions of getting closer with Nathan in play.
Reactor had talked briefly with Dreadnaught while I was on the phone, and apparently decided he wasn’t worth the effort. She had gone back into the church with the rest of the Collectors. Tableturner had since gone inside. Nick was on the floor. He wasn’t knocked out, he was moving in place, holding his head and probably moaning.
“Dude, I’m going to get so fucking grounded.” Nathan said.
I blinked. “Was that a joke, or were you being serious?”
Nathan deadpanned at me. “I know I have a reputation, but I don’t make that many jokes.”
“This is a stressful situation.” I said simply. “People crack.”
“Not you, apparently.”
“I cracked a long time ago.” I said, ignoring the golden hallucinatory form flying overhead. “What do you want to do about your phone? It’s still in the call. They’d have traced it by now.”
“Fuck.” Nathan said. “They’re gonna investigate that.”
“In which case, you should tell the truth.” I told him, walking over and hitting the hang up button. Vphones were made sturdy, there wasn’t even a scratch on the thing. It was a far cry from how Bad Valentine had made short work of mine not two hours before.
“Hey, Mike.” Nathan said, one hand patting at my shoulder.
I glanced over with his phone in my hand. He was pointing at the entrance to the church. I followed where he was pointing and saw a woman in an exquisitely made green and black costume. The colours were the same as what I used, but she used black as the primary colour while I used green.
Her mask had a sculpted feather that completely covered the right side of her head and curved back over it, Robin Hood style. The rest of her costume was similarly asymmetrical, with many short points and curves extending from the body on the right side, while the left was more utilitarian in design. She had two quivers on her back. One strapped over the right shoulder, and another hanging from her waist. Another, smaller quiver that held bolts instead of arrows hung from her left thigh.
Despite the arrows and bolts, she didn’t carry any bows or crossbows. She was Yearn, an Entrepreneur. She didn’t need bows or arrows. Yearn walked into the church, registering Dreadnaught’s presence, but not doing anything about it. Now it was five supervillain against Bad Valentine.
“We really should get the fuck out of here.” I reiterated. “Bad Valentine is a lost cause.”
Nathan glanced at me and I saw a lot in his face. He didn’t like the situation, how Nick had intimidated him into stepping into this mess. He didn’t like how things had so quickly blown up in our faces, and was torn between listening to me and acting so as to not provoke the bully more. At the same time, there was guilt in his expression. He wanted to watch the supervillains fight.
I sighed. “Fucking hell, Nathan.”
“You can go if you want.” He said. “This is my mess.”
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“I’ve already stepped in, it’s my mess too.”
“Michael-”
“If I leave, they’ll ask you where I went. Do you want that?” I asked pointedly. Nathan shook his head. “Then we leave together, or not at all. Actually, how about this?” I pulled Nathan’s attention away from the church. “If Bad Valentine wins, we go back to the Beastmasters and just resolve this as smoothly as possible. If Bad Valentine loses, we resolve this as smoothly as possible by leaving.”
“But what if they talk?” Nathan rebuked.
“Then it’ll be your word against the established supervillain’s.”
Nathan thought on that. “Alright…” And with that, it was settled that we would watch the supervillain fight. If anything, it would give me insight on how to fight these villains should I have to fight them in the future. As an afterthought, I handed Nathan his phone back.
There was a third alternative that I didn’t mention to Nathan. The third outcome being the heroes dropping in and breaking it up before the villains could resolve it themselves. In that case, I was intending on cooperating and using my status as a hero to make sure my side of things was given weight. Since there was a conspiracy surrounding me where my superiors thought I was a mole or something, I wasn’t totally confident things would turn out favourably.
But on the other hand, if they were keeping me close and hadn’t caught on to the fact that I knew, they might have to act to keep up the facade.
The yelling of an excited man relishing in destruction reached my ears as the commotion moved back into the church proper. Shards of glass were inadvertently being flung through random windows and several rapid thunking sounds punctuated each time Bad Valentine used his power.
The front door to the church opened and a very goth teenager stumbled outside. There weren’t any steps, but she simulated falling down them quite nicely. Nancy lay there for a moment before rousing herself and crawling forwards towards the cars. Nick wasn’t in a state to help her, but Dreadnaught walked over.
Dreadnaught then stopped and turned away a short distance from Nancy, making me frown. Why had he turned back? Joe was soon to follow Nancy out the door, similarly incapacitated, which was weird. Neither of them were wounded. There were a few cuts on them, but they were mostly superficial. They didn’t seem to have anything broken, why were they crawling on the ground?
Partymaster. I realised, catching a glimpse of the man in the purple costume from inside the church. He had a Monarch power that would do that. I hadn’t seen him do it, but the effect was clearly there. As if to punctuate the point, Nancy threw up and Joe started screaming.
The fight inside reach a new height as shards of glass started penetrating the walls of the church. Neat rows of clear spikes appeared on the outside, and shortly one of the walls came down as Reactor was thrust through it.
Reactor was bleeding now, but it was superficial, the tiniest of scratches. Even so, she had fallen from three floors up and walked it off without a scratch. That Reactor was bleeding at all was impressive and said a lot about Bad Valentine’s power. She was propelled through the wall, all the way to the next building. That put her out of the fight for the time being.
The hole left by Reactor didn’t lend much of a view inside. But the impact coupled with the shards impaled in the wall, already reducing its integrity, meant that side of the building was barely hanging on. One chunk of wall that was twice the size of the hole Reactor left suddenly shifted and twisted in place, trying to move towards the centre of the church.
Seeing that sent a chill down my spine. Yearn had used her power on the chunk. It now used something, Bad Valentine presumably, as the new source of its gravity. The wall dislodged itself and fell away from us, then was interrupted in its plummet across the ground as shard after shard of glass impaled itself on the other side of it. He was playing horizontal keepy uppy with it.
Bad Valentine wasn’t visible beyond the floating wall so much as his armour of glass was. Each time he flung out with his power, glass went from floating protectively to flying dangerously, and more glass was shed to replace what was lost. So much so that the supervillain had enough glass swirling around him that there was no seeing through it without it being cleared by Bad Valentine himself.
As the Beastmaster hurled volley after volley of glass at the chunk of wall, Yearn was moving to another chunk of wall and tugging it free. Once there was enough separation from the wall, she tapped it with her power and it also started falling towards Bad Valentine. Then Yearn started getting to work on another chunk of wall.
Now that we could see inside the church, we could see just how devastating the fight had been. The church, since it had barely classified as one, used plastic chairs in the place of authentic pews. All of them were destroyed in some fashion or another, ranging from ‘riddled with shards of glass’ to ‘shredded’. More shards of glass were riddling the entire building, making stepping anywhere treacherous.
Agent Orange and Partymaster were visible again, and both seemed at a loss as to what to do. Partymaster was hiding behind what cover he could find, which at this point amounted to the floating pieces of wall Yearn had made. At the same time he was cautiously making his way towards where Reactor was, carefully picking where he stepped so as to not impale himself on a sharp piece of glass.
On the other hand, Agent Orange had foregone cover in favour of simply dodging the attacks Bad Valentine sent his way. Now that he was focused on the glass filled walls gravitating towards him, he wasn’t having to dodge much. That being said, Agent Orange was holding back because of the swirling wall of glass between him and Bad Valentine.
Yearn was now touching parts of chairs and sending them into the blender. She touched a fourth piece of wall and sent it above Bad Valentine to the roof instead of the villain himself. The part Yearn touched had a window frame in it, and it kept its shape surprisingly well as it crashed into the roof.
The roof wasn’t meant to withstand that kind of impact from below. It was wrenched upwards enough that I could see the roof go up from the outside. There was a snapping sound as Yearn’s debris broke through, then it arced in the space above before coming back down on the roof from the top this time. While the first impact merely bent the roof, the second one snapped the weakened part of the structure, which caused both pieces of debris to start falling on Bad Valentine.
“Fuck!” Agent Orange cursed loud enough for us to hear
There was an incoherent yell as Bad Valentine cleared his wall of glass, sending it up at the falling debris at the last second. Half the wall hit it from below to slow the fall of the debris, while the rest impacted at an angle to deflect it away. At the same moment, all the discarded glass on the floor rose and pointed at the nearest villains that weren’t Bad Valentine.
The villains joined Agent Orange in yelling as each of them were riddled with glass. The shards weren’t so large that they killed the villains, their costumes took the brunt of the blows and they were left standing. But the aesthetic of the Collectors was suddenly changed as they were now covered by glass sticking out of their costumes, and blood was dripping from various places in each of them.
Seriously, they looked like mosaics.
Bad Valentine was laughing triumphantly. He wasn’t worried about the debris Yearn had gravitated towards him, having shot so much glass into them that the glass weighed more than the wall did. Now that Bad Valentine’s wall of glass was gone, I could see that he was more crystal than person. With the rapid and repeated use of his power, he had been growing more and more shards until only a part of his nose, forehead, and cheek were the places where skin was visible.
In one hand he held a flail, no doubt the medieval weapon Greenflame had asked for. I made the connections, looking at that. Waterlad had stolen the flail from the Heroes of Yesterday. The Racketeers had handed it off to the Collectors. The Collectors had set a trap for whoever came looking for it, but hadn’t expected the Beastmasters to come looking for it.
And Greenflame had suggested that the Courtesans were holding it, for some reason.
The flail clearly wasn’t just a flail. It was the macguffin all this was based around. Looking at it, I could see something dripping from the spikes. It was too far away to tell if it was dripping blood.
Reactor picked herself out of the building she had been thrown into and beheld the scene before her. As Reactor was picking herself up, Yearn had been acting. One hand went for arrows, while the other picked out several bolts. Both hands swept out, and half a dozen arrows and bolts arced through the air before turning towards Bad Valentine.
The Beastmaster noticed at the last minute and pulled glass from his hands and face to block the projectiles. At the same moment the glass in the debris that fell from the roof quivered, then shot towards Yearn. The attack came from the side, and came too fast for Yearn to see coming. She was taken off her feet and to the ground by the glass, hard.
Bad Valentine’s defence hadn’t been built up like it was before, and he only caught about half of Yearn’s projectiles. His glassy form worked in his favour, and some of the arrowheads were deflected by the glass protruding from him, deflecting what could have been a fatal wound, while others didn’t quite come in at the right angle. He still had arrows in him, but he wasn’t about to fall over.
The arrows he defended against rolled over the glass defences and dropped to Bad Valentine, where they rugged his pretty ruined jacket. Reactor took a look at him, then produced something from a pocket in her costume. Bad Valentine was turning towards Reactor as she crushed whatever it was in her hand and threw it at him.
Bad Valentine thrust out the hand with the flail, making it swing wildly as he flung shards of glass from the back of his hand and lower arm. At the same time glass from his other hand darted between the projectile Reactor had thrown and Bad Valentine, intercepting it and letting it fall.
Glass impacted Reactor, who half turned and raised an arm to shield her face. She lowered it, and gave Bad Valentine a calculating look. Then she vanished in a flash of dark light, leaving Bad Valentine in a ruined building of debris and glass, surrounded by Yearn and the other Collectors.
Then Yearn vanished in a flash of dark light, followed by Tableturner and Agent Orange. Partymaster had fallen somewhere outside of my view, but I assumed Boss evacuated him the same as the rest. Then Bad Valentine was left standing in the mess, something dripping from the flail at his side.
“Hey!” Bad Valentine was yelling at us. “Get the fuck over here!”
I really didn’t want to get closer to the guy who just decked five of Graceland’s most prolific supervillains, but now he was focused on us, and could probably hit us from as far away as we were. Nathan nudged me and started walking. I followed along, but slower.
Bad Valentine was talking to Dreadnaught when I entered earshot. “Can you fucking hold this?” Bad Valentine’s voice was more gravelly than before, and he was shedding glass, returning to a more normal appearance. “I fucking hate holding it.”
“No, that’s yours.” Dreadnaught told Bad Valentine. “She said the job was for your benefit. Not ours.”
“Fuck you. Your bitch of a boss told us the Courtesans would be here, not the fucking Collectors.” Bad Valentine gesticulated with the flail, which swung wildly. “The only reason I succeeded was because I’m a total fucking badass. Anyone else wouldn’t have made it out of there.”
“Congratulations.” Dreadnaught said, ‘impressed’.
“I can see why she wouldn’t want it.” Bad Valentine was holding the flail, looking at it and ignoring Dreadnaught’s lack of respect. Red liquid that really reminded me of blood continued to drip from it. “Thing’s fucking creepy.”
“Use it well.” Dreadnaught shrugged.
Nathan was approaching Nancy, but stopped about as far away as Dreadnaught did. “Uh... fuck.” He was searching for words.
“Stay away from them.” Dreadnaught told Nathan offhandedly. “A Whisper got their hands on them, so it’s not safe to get close. We should leave them for the righteous.”
At his words, Joe started screaming all over again. Now that I was closer, I couldn’t see anything wrong with him. He was just screaming.
“Okay.” Nathan stepped back from Nancy. Bad Valentine shot Dreadnaught a look, but didn’t challenge him on that.
“Who can drive the other car?” Bad Valentine asked.
Dreadnaught shrugged. Nathan looked at Nancy with a frown. I didn’t volunteer anything.
“I can driive.” Nick told us from where he was lying on the ground, now leaning on his elbows and slurring his words.
“Yeah. No.” Bad Valentine immediately decided, walking over to his car and unlocking it. “You.” It took me a moment to realise he was talking to me. “Can you drive?”
I nodded. Mom had been giving me driving lessons since I was old enough to reach the pedals. That had been one of the few family things she and I had done together, since driving was a valuable skill to have on a set.
“Wait.” Bad Valentine almost got in his car, but went over to Nancy’s and checked inside. “You drive stick?” Another nod, coupled with an eye roll. Obviously I could manual. “Good. Nick, get Nancy’s keys and toss them over.”
“I can dri-” Nick was cut off by a glass shard hitting the ground next to his head.
“Get. Nancy’s. Keys.” Bad Valentine told Nick while Dreadnaught casually got in the passenger seat of the villain’s car.
Nick started crawling towards Nancy, and paused when he reached the same threshold that Nathan had. Another shard of glass was enough to get his going again. Bad Valentine grabbed the shards revolving around him and handed them to me.
“Throw ‘em at him until he obeys.” Then he got into his car and turned the key in the ignition. Right at that moment, a police car came around the corner, followed by a white and yellow van. Bad Valentine swore. “Shit! You two, get in, now!”
I blinked as I stared at the van behind the police car. It was white and had two yellow stripes along each side. It was out of place following the police car, what was it doing?
In the meantime, Nathan had followed Bad Valentine’s orders and had jumped into the idling car. There was still some distance between them and us, and a lot of people were yelling at me. It took me back…
The sound of an engine revving brought me to the present as I watched Bad Valentine start driving away, and Nathan looking at me with a difficult to read expression as he slammed the door. They had to do a U-turn to move away from the cops, which let the police close the distance significantly. Still, they turned around and accelerated hard away from the danger as the cop car matched their speed, now with sirens. My friend now taking part in a police pursuit.
Nick meanwhile, had successfully retrieved the keys and was approaching me. When he reached the threshold distance I immediately felt like everything I thought or did had a delay. I raised my hand in front of me and clenched it into a fist. It took an extra split second.
In a display of wisdom, I stepped away from Nick and threw a glass shard at the ground next to him. These ones weren’t sharp, thankfully, so it was like throwing small rocks.
“You stay there.” I told him. Nick groaned, but listened. His head hit the ground and he stopped moving, keys still in his hands.
The white and yellow van pulled up by Nancy’s car and the side door opened, letting two people pile out and take in the situation. It was a man and a woman. The woman had a white and costume accented with orange, and a helmet of similar colours that had large insect like reflective lenses over the eyes.
The man had light combat armour on under a flowing grey coat. He had a lopsided belt on the outside of the coat that had a small pouch on the lower end. His metal mask had horizontal rectangular holes for the mouth and eyes, and looked medieval, almost. The mask was spray painted black, to go with his hair, and intent blue eyes were visible through the holes.
From how the two stood and carried themselves, I was expecting the woman to talk first. But it was the man who walked up to me, drawing a wooden sword that had no business fitting inside a pouch that small.
“What happened here?” He demanded, his voice controlled in a way that made me peg him as volatile.
“Hold on, Forsaken!” Another man called.
Forsaken didn’t look, but I did and saw a familiar blue and red costumed man walking towards us, a taser in hand but not raised. That was Risk. No doubt he just recognised me.
In that case, my cover was blown so I blacked my face and said, “Hey Risk.”
The woman gasped in amazement and Risk shook his head with a sigh.
“I was going to give you an out.” He said. “Less than a fifty percent chance you’d do that. Anyway, since that ship has sailed, Forsaken, Glitter Bomb, this is Lock. I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Sentry.”
I belatedly remembered to put grey in my eyes. “There wasn’t going to be a call, so I made one. Hello, you two.”
“How are the paths, Glitter?” Risk asked Glitter Bomb.
She pointed the way Bad Valentine had driven off, then her finger drifted to the left. “It’s getting further away.” Then she looked at the destroyed church. “Who did that!?”
“Lock, it is pertinent that you tell me what happened here.” Forsaken’s sword twitched in his grasp. “Quickly.”
Straight to business, then. “I’ll tell you.”