I was out fishing at the lake, my emotions chasing each other in circles. I was mad at AEGIS for lying to me. I was mad at myself for handling it badly. I was sad because she was sad because I was mad at her. I was annoyed because she’d had me making trips to find her different materials just to build her damn drones. I was confused because she was flip-flopping between a hundred different emotions, which seemed totally unreasonable of her to do, except that was what I was doing now.

Meanwhile, things with Saga were equally messed up, if in a completely different way. We were getting along great, but I felt like we shouldn’t be. I was worried she was playing me for a fool, just using me to help her escape. I was afraid as soon as she left, she’d go on a rampage. And I was happy we were in some manner of accord on working together.

Altogether, I pretty much just felt like exploding. I pulled a fish up and watched it flailing and gasping for air on my line.

“Yeah, me too, buddy,” I sympathized, and killed it with a brief jolt.

It was almost a relief when I heard the telltale whine of an aircraft tearing through the sky, growing ever louder. At least I knew where things stood with Karu.

I cracked my knuckles and smiled. A little adrenaline was just what I needed to get my thoughts clear. Focus on what matters, dodging explosions and putting down the bad guy.

Unless I was the bad guy?

I shook my head. No, bad Athan. I can have an existential crisis later. AEGIS and Saga will help.

Karu descended as majestically as ever, wearing a new flight suit which looked even more armored than the last, in iridescent white instead of drab green this time. The weapons hanging off her arms were also all new, the old ones still being broken scrap in my house.

This suit was less form-fitting and more covered in protective plates, sewn into the suit on her arms, legs, and chest, anywhere that didn’t need to flex or move, and layered joints on top, giving her a passing similarity to a knight in a suit of armor, except with the same ominous glowing red visor.

“Hello, Karu. Nice day for flying?” I said, beaming at her.

“Insolent cockroach, you dare to mock me? Do you have any idea the hours I spend coming to this very spot to seek your demise? And what do I find waiting for me?”

“Uh. Someone who’d really rather you work from home and save yourself the commute?”

“Pathetic witticisms and snide, glib insults!”

“Look lady, if you wanted applause, you should probably go to a comedy club. Look, you’re already dressed like a clown…”

“How dare you. I will have you know this is the very cutting edge in resistive armor. Embedded null-cells, reactive dynakinetic coating, supra-insulative padding. Your powers will be nothing to me.”

“Wow. All that for me, and I didn’t get you anything.”

“How is it that you can be so close to death and simultaneously, so infuriating?”

“Must be one of my Exhuman powers. But hey, if you don’t like it you can just go away.“

She glared at me extra-special hard at the suggestion. “I will return as many times as necessary to end you, insect.”

“That’s stupid. You want to spend the rest of your life fighting out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“No, fool. I want to kill you and never see you again. Idiot.”

“Well if you never want to see me again, you can just go away. Not complicated. Dumbass.”

“Until when? When you show up on the front of a newspaper, under a headline reading: ‘Monstrous Exhuman Murders Millions?'”

“Millions of what, Karu? Trees? Rocks? Blades of grass?” I stooped and grabbed a handful of grass to throw at her. “Oh no! There I go again, killing grass!”

I was being an inconsolate idiot and I knew it. But, pathetically, I was also having a great time. Being able to cut loose and be an asshole, exchanging witty banter and getting into fights…it reminded me of my friends in high school. Much more than the sensitive but sweet AEGIS or the insightful but mentally-sick Saga, Karu and I were just plain jocks. And I was going to enjoy this exchange to the fullest, even if it killed me.

Which, given the shiny new guns and armor, was a definite possibility. But fuck it, so much better than arguing with girls.

“You think I’d believe you’d stay here forever?” She laughed. A very unpleasant, condescending laugh. “I know your kind. You lurk only so long as it is convenient, waiting for the eyes of God to look elsewhere before you strike the helpless.”

“Karu,” I said, holding up the dead fish on my line. “This is my dinner. I’m out here catching it and cooking it precisely so I don’t have to deal with crazy bitches like you over in civilization.“

She sneered and shook her head. “You’re Exhuman. Nothing you say can be trusted.”

“I turned myself in! I’ve lived out here for almost a month. I have hurt and killed exactly one person, and that was a moron who flew out here and wouldn’t leave and attacked me unprovoked.”

“‘The righteous hate what is false, but the wicked make themselves a stench and bring shame on themselves.‘”

“You’ve seen my powers yourself. The only people who die are people who are stupid enough to try to attack me.”

“Your attempts at deception are as pitiful as they are enduring. Truly, yours are the serpent’s lips.”

“God, listen to yourself. You’re like a damn broken record.”

“You will not say His name–“

“You don’t order me around, bitch.” At some point this had become a little personal and no longer fun. On some level, now I was just baiting her to attack, so I could work my stress out by beating the shit out of something. “Tell me something, Karu. When did I become so irredeemably evil that every, single, god-damn word out of my mouth become a lie?”

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“The moment you woke up with those powers.” She gave a haughty, condescending chuckle. “Everybody knows that.”

“Everybody knows that, do they? Let me tell you a few things I knew until very recently. I knew I had an english paper due that I was totally going to ace. I knew if we could keep up a good defence, we had a good chance of making the nationals. I knew the meatball sandwiches were the most edible thing in the cafeteria.”

“I knew the girl in front of me in second period had shampoo that smelled like pure happiness. I knew coach loved me like a second son, and talked about me to the point of being embarrassing. I knew my parents loved me! I knew the government would protect me! I knew I was safe at night, sleeping in my own house, in my own bed, with my own family!”

I felt hot tears running down the sides of my face. I was screaming at her now.

“Things everybody knows? If it’s such goddamn common knowledge, tell me where my life went, Karu! Where the fuck is it? Where’s the college scholarship I earned? Where’s the 19th birthday with my family and friends? Where’s watching my kid sister grow up and graduate? Huh, Karu? What else does everybody know that apparently I’m just missing?”

She shuddered, but in rage or what, I couldn’t tell. “You can’t play on my sympathies, Exhuman. You think your sorry life is suffering? You and your sports and your meatball sandwiches…you know nothing of what it is to have your whole world taken from you! You’re just a stupid boy who woke up one day and decided to make the world a little bit worse for everyone!”

“What the fuck is this to you? Some kind of competition to see who’s more fucked up? Is that all this is to you? Well you win! I concede. You’re way more fucked in the head than I am. Great job.”

I glared at her. “And furthermore, guess what, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care if you leave, I don’t care if you believe me or not, I don’t give a shit what you think. So do me a favor and just shut up and fight.”

She made a snorting noise and widened her stance, hovering a foot off the ground with her arms and legs outstretched. “Finally. May God have mercy on your soul.”

She’d learned from the last two fights, that much was obvious. No missiles or lasers, guns fired only to blind and disorient me so she could swoop in with a blade. She used her jetpack more for mobility than range now, dashing erratically this way and that, constantly trying to circle around behind me, to get behind my dangerous web of lightning blades.

She darted in, then to the side, then the other way. Unfortunately for her, my blades had great reach, and sweeping horizontally, I struck in both directions she was feinting, hitting her no matter which way she went. My blade cleaved right into her, scorching her armor and sending her reeling and shuddering, definitely still electrocuting her, but much less than in our previous fights. Even as she spun away, twitching and flailing, and making space to recover, I saw her grinning at me.

It really, really pissed me off.

I pulled out a bulb of lightning and threw it straight at her smug, condescending face.

She tried to evade, but her coordination was dulled by the lightning blade she’d taken earlier, and the bulb travelled fast, impossibly fast. It felt solid in my hand, but the second it left my fingertips, it jumped directly to the target, like…lightning.

The condescending smug was gone. Instead was a silent scream. I remembered the same expression on her face as she died and felt a wave of guilt. The bulb had exploded, making a twisting starburst, with lightning tendrils coursing out of Karu’s body in all directions. Gradually the bolts dissipated, leaving her smoking and hovering in the air, occasionally dipping as the jetpack briefly shorted. I wondered if she’d blacked out, but she landed on hands and knees and gasped for breath.

I advanced a few steps. “Ready to admit defeat?” I asked. I held up another bulb threateningly.

“…soldiers…” she gritted. As soon a I heard the tone in her voice, I knew there’d be no dealing with her. “…of God…never…surrender.”

“Karu, I really don’t want to have to jump-start your heart again. Don’t make me do this.”

She grinned an insane, maniac grin and made a motion at me and then slumped into a heap. No, not a heap, she was covering her face. I followed the arc of the motion she made and looked down at my feet.

The grenade beeped once and exploded. As it had blown, I’d lept back, not having the time or reaction to do anything else. I never felt myself land. Instead, my vision was pitch black, my ears rung like a bitch, and I felt like I’d been punched in the face. Somehow I was on my back, but it was hard to tell. It felt like I was still standing, or the world was spinning. I was completely lost and the complete blindness was not helping.

Certain that Karu was advancing on me to finish me off, I lashed out with my swords in all directions. With my panic or adrenaline, they felt even more charged than normal, or more numerous? Or maybe they were totally normal. It was hard to tell, disoriented as I was. I thought I heard a scream as I lashed out, but it may have been from me.

A few seconds later, my vision faded back into view, blurry and dark, but finally back online. I was on my back, that much I could establish. Thankfully, Karu had ditched the drab color, so her white blur in the distance stood out like a snow-capped mountain. A very, very blurry one, far away.

Far away? I couldn’t tell. I lashed out with my swords as far as I could. They did not connect, but she did jump back.

Far away.

I struggled to my feet, but the world felt unsteady. I needed to get my senses back or she’d huck another nade, and this one might not just be a flashbang. I decided to go on the offensive to push her back and buy myself some time. Fast as I could, I armed lightning bulbs in my hands and threw them at her. They streaked through the air, leaving a beautiful golden afterimage in my eyes. She rocketed into the air before one hit her, and they burst into shimmering stars in the distance. I kept throwing and kept her dodging.

It was a bit pointless, but she was unable to approach, so I guess it was a success. Finally I was able to hear the crackling of lightning over the ringing in my ears, and resolve her shape to a human form. The ground changed from a green-brown mess to distinct rocks and sticks and patches of grass.

Okay, so avoid the grenades. My shield didn’t block those. Maybe because she was just throwing them near me? I saw her throw something and decided to take the risk. I barreled forward full speed to intercept it. It soared towards my chest, and once a couple of feet away, was zapped into fragments by my shield. Awesome. So I was susceptible to them only as an indirect attack.

I looked up and saw the same awareness behind Karu’s visor. Maybe now was not the time to be determining the extent of my powers. This time, she threw two, one in each hand, on either side of me. I dove towards one, feeling like I was doing pass drills again, but as the grenade approached me, it vaporized. The other detonated far behind me, and I heard shards of metal whiz through the air above my prone body.

Great, she was packing frag grenades too. She must have started with a flashbang in case I’d somehow turned it around on her using my powers, but now that she knew what I could and couldn’t do, was going lethal. I had to end this fast.

I stood up and found a grenade rolling at my feet somehow. She was hovering there with a smug smile again, one cannon on her arms smoking from firing.

I didn’t have time to think or react, I just punted the thing as far as I could. Mid-air, it beeped once, and then deployed, in the air only feet away from Karu. She’d turned to jet in the opposite direction, but hadn’t gotten far before the shockwave of the blast caught her in the back and sent her face-first into the ground. She bounced once, her jetpack retracting instantly to save itself, and then laid very still.

Shit, not again. I rushed to her side and checked her injuries. Nothing I could see. Gingerly, I rolled her onto her side. Her face was smashed in, lips and nose dripping blood, visor cracked down the side, but she was breathing. She groaned and stirred. Not sure what else to do, I took her visor off, pulled as many grenades as I could off her bandolier and dumped them in the river and waited a few guarded steps back and for her to come to.

It was…longer than I expected. I might have had time to take off her arm-guns, but hadn’t wanted to risk being that close to her weapons when she woke up. I watched for maybe a minute while her eyelids fluttered and she rolled and moaned, fighting some internal battle.

Lazily, almost dreamily, her dark green eyes opened and she focused on me. For a few moments she laid there looking at me peacefully, before slowly shuffling to her knees where she sat, head downcast.

“It appears I find myself at your mercy again,” she lamented.