Chapter 26:

“Coming out now!” Ben said quickly into his earpiece as he ran towards the hole in the wall, his heart thumping in his chest and his left shoulder still burning in pain. Lighting danced around him as he applied twice his maximum to himself to enhance his speed. It would drain his main heliodor even faster but things couldn’t wait and now was not the time to be frugal. Five minutes would have to be enough for the rest of this fight.

Part of him yelled at himself for having wasted time and not gone after the cube. But he forced that down and focused on what he needed to do now. And that was to help Katie and Resolve and possibly just flee after. As for the cube, it was still being tracked. He could get it later.

Ben rushed out of the hole in the wall, ready to dodge any sudden attacks. Thankfully nothing came at him as he moved to the side, out of the line of sight of the hole in the wall. While Flamelium didn’t seem like she had it in her to attack someone from behind, it was better not to give her the chance. Hopefully, she’d be busy with taking care of her downed teammates.

With no immediate danger to him, Ben took a second to take in the whole scene outside. And what he saw filled him with worry.

Things were not going well.

Somehow dozens of Katie’s drones littered the loading area of the warehouse. None of them were overly damaged but they were all out of commission and didn’t move. Katie was dodging and weaving away from the strikes of one of the metal ape-like monsters Mononoke created with only a handful of drones supporting her. There seemed to be something wrong with her as well. Her movements were jerky while she dodged the massive paws of the monster.

Mononoke watched a dozen feet away with another one of the 8-foot-tall Metal Apes by her side, crouching next to her protectively.

Around them, Katie’s surviving drones were still dealing with the rest of the monsters but we're slowly getting whittled down as they were close to parity in number with the dozens of projected monsters. If something wasn’t done soon, they’d be wiped out and the rest of the monsters could all gang up on Katie or Resolve.

Meanwhile Ben could only get glimpses of what was happening with Resolve. Patches of darkness would appear around Blitz and a darkness-covered Resolve would jump in trying to attack him. There would be the sound of clashing steel as Resolve’s sword met Blitz’s machete. Then Blitz would run out of the darkness, which couldn’t keep up with him and Resolve would be forced to pursue. If she didn’t then Blitz would be able to help Mononoke with Katie and overwhelm her.

But Resolve didn’t come out of these confrontations unscathed. Despite having lost a hand—which was somehow no longer bleeding—Blitz was still incredibly fast and a higher Rank to boot. Resolve also couldn’t maintain her darkness forever, and the cut to her side was proof that she couldn’t keep this up. The wound went right through her suit and she was holding her right side as blood seeped from the wound.

Seeing all this took Ben just a quick moment and then he acted.

Blitz was too fast for him to deal with, and the metal ape monster and Katie were moving too erratically and close together for him to do much either. So, he decided to go for Mononoke. If he destroyed the projection protecting her, then maybe she’d be forced to call back the one attacking Katie. If not then he’d get her with heliodors. Either way, Katie would be free and then the two of them could help Resolve.

Then they could get out of here. And maybe still bag Blitz.

“I’m going after the projector,” Ben said into his earpiece, resisting the urge to shout. “Gonna go all out with KE.”

“Okay!” Katie replied through their communicators even as she fought to keep from getting squashed by the metal ape. “I’ll try to disengage and my drones will keep the monsters busy. Resolve go to Shock. Things are already going to shit and Warp is a teleporter. They already got a message out and he’s on his way. We need to leave now!”

Resolve shouted something in disagreement but Ben ignored it for now.

Instead, he focused on taking out seven black-painted quartz from his inventory. Each one was full and when all that energy was released the resulting explosions were like half a stick of dynamite each. And he could launch them all like bullets.

Normally he wouldn’t go all out like this, but a B-Ranker required quite a bit more firepower than he normally used. And given Mononoke was giving Katie problems, and Katie could handle this kind of damage, he really had no choice. He’d just have to aim for the projection in case Mononoke couldn’t defend as well as she could attack.

Using his right hand as a reference again, he aimed at the metal ape protecting Mononoke, the gems each floating in a line in front of his palm.

Mononoke seemed to notice and she hid behind her projection, while several of the other monsters started heading toward him. There were two metal-capped pigs and some kind of lizard wolf.

Ben ignored them for the moment and fired his gems. Each one blasted forward with all the speed double his maximum amount of kinetic energy could accelerate them. Faster than a bullet they slammed into the monster. They all shattered against its metal skin, but then a second after that the shattered remains of the gems unleashed their full payloads.

Seven explosions rang out in the loading area while Ben redirected his attention to the charging monsters.

Ben un-inventoried three more quartz and blasted the three monsters that Katie’s drones hadn’t been able to keep back. Each gem shot into their targets before exploding, shattering them into light as they died.

A bit overkill, but with the inherited energy in the gems from Zelter and the relative inexpensiveness of quartz, it was worth it to finish things quickly.

Ben turned his attention back to Mononoke, seeing her being grabbed by her metal ape and pulled away. Ben frowned at the sight for just a moment, before he noticed Katie was free from her attacker. His barrage of explosives must have destroyed the ape protecting the purple clad Villain and she’d recalled the other one. Good.

With her newfound freedom, Katie took to the air, though seeming slower than usual, and launched several stun bolts from her gauntlets at the Villainess to keep her busy.

Seeing that was handled, Ben looked to Resolve and saw she was still stalemated with Blitz. However, she was sporting another cut on her arm and blood continued to trail behind her darkness-covered form.

“Come on, Resolve,” Ben said into his earpiece, even as he took out his four remaining spheres with heliodors in them from a pouch on his belt. He started to levitate them around himself, making them orbit him. At the same time, he pulled out two of his last black-painted heliodors still in his inventory and kept them floating just in front of his right palm as he aimed in the direction of Blitz. He really should have brought more of those. “I don’t think the two of us can take him like this. He’s too fast. We need to go.”

“No!” Resolve hissed in anger, her voice low but audible through their comms. “I’m not letting him get away again!”

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

“Well too bad!” Ben whisper-shouted as he desperately tried to get a bead on Blitz. But the man moved too fast, and the fast paced—sometimes unseeable—battle between him and Resolve made it too risky for him to start shooting. “You obviously can’t beat him like this and you're bleeding out. Bot’s having trouble with Mononoke and Warp is probably gonna pop up any second. Get over here! I’ll recharge you, we teleport out and then I fly us both away.”

“Fuck no, I can—Wait that’s it,” Resolve said, cutting herself off as she dodge the blur that was Blitz before darkness exploded out around her in a sphere covering both Blitz and her. “I’m coming over. Recharge me and give me a sphere. I can finish this. Bot make sure to stay in the air cause Blitz might be freed up for a second. ”

“Wait what?” Ben asked but before he could say more, the darkness expanded in his direction rapidly and he heard the sound of her boots on the pavement.

Soon darkness enveloped him too. Resolve got near one of his orbiting spheres, letting him know where she was. Then she grabbed his shoulder. His injured shoulder.

“Argh, Damnit, Resolve!” Ben bit out. “My shoulder’s hurt. Don’t grab it.”

“Sorry,” She said, her voice coming out of his earpiece and right beside him as she let go. “But just charge me up and hand me a sphere. Set it for 30 seconds and we’ll take him out. Please! I can’t let him get away again!”

Ben gritted his teeth before he bit out, “Fine! Give me your hand.”

Arguing would only slow them down and he really didn’t want to be here when an angry A-Rank Villain appeared. Not while being injured and with Resolve injured as well. And especially not with Katie having lost so many of her drones and having a diminished flight speed.

He quickly stored away the heliodors he’d been levitating in front of his palm. Then he felt Resolve take his hand.

He pulled her hand closer to his chest, where his main heliodor was. It only had about a minute's worth of energy left but it would still be better to use it than his other heliodors. It was his only natural crystal as he hadn’t had the time or cash to go get some more.

If he’d known this would have gone to shit this badly he would have made the time and just borrowed the cash from Katie.

But it was too late to regret it so he just focused on applying what energy was left into Resolve. He focused on recharging her abilities, and because of something about natural crystals that synthetic ones lacked, it worked more efficiently than it would have otherwise. Ben still wasn’t sure why that was the case, or why it only seemed to matter for less straightforward applications of his powers and didn’t do much for kinetic energy, but it did.

It was why he used this heliodor to enhance himself.

Just like that time sparring with Katie and Resolve, it took only moments for Resolve's teleport Skill to recharge. When it did, Resolve took her hand away and grabbed one of Ben’s floating spheres.

“Okay, set this for thirty seconds and I’ll finish things,” Resolve said, shoving the sphere at him even though it was unneeded as it was still under his control. “Once he’s down, come to me and I’ll grab onto your back. Bot, do you have enough drones to grab Blitz once he’s out?”

“Kinda!” Bot said over her communicator, sounding annoyed and strained. At the same time, both through the communicator and from outside the darkness, there was what sounded like a bunch of messed up bird caws. “Still a little busy here! There’s enough to move him but not fast. Shock will have to help with his power to get him out fast enough.”

“Alright, that works,” Resolve said before she pressed the sphere to Ben's chest. “Now come on, thirty seconds. Right now.”

“Fine,” Ben said, setting the gem inside the sphere to release its lightning in thirty seconds. “Done.”

Resolve replied to that by turning off her Skill and all the darkness seemed to disappear at once, making Ben wince as the light returned. Then she rushed off in the direction of Blitz, who had been looking up at Katie.

As Ben watched her go, he quickly grabbed one of his remaining spheres and latched it back to his belt before applying lightning to himself again to boost his speed. It wasn’t as good as with the heliodor on his necklace, maybe half as good, and the heliodor wasn’t full, but it would hopefully last just long enough for them to escape.

Once Blitz noticed the rapidly approaching Resolve, he rushed towards her in a blur. “Bitch!”

Resolve, with darkness exuding from her body, somehow managed to parry the Speedster's machete with her sword. Then as he tried another swing, darkness enveloped the two of them again.

Ben activated his anti-grav pack as he watched the sphere of darkness and flew up several feet as he waited.

At the same time, he could see three of Katie's drones nearby waiting too, while Katie herself and her remaining drones fought with a dozen flying monsters in the air. Mononoke was still on the ground being carried by her metal ape and occasionally dodging stun bolts aimed at her.

Then a beam of black came out of the sphere of darkness and hit the ground just outside the sphere and Resolve appeared. There was the familiar sound of lightning cracking from inside the sphere along with a shout of anger and pain.

Then Resolve rushed back into the sphere and there was the sound of a meaty thwack.

“Got the fuck,” Resolve said as the darkness dissipated all at once. She stood over the form of a sprawled Blitz and was injecting him with the tranquilizer. His body still twitched a bit from getting shocked but didn’t otherwise react, even as she restrained him with some reinforced cuffs around his ankles. She must have knocked him out with a hit while in the dark. “Get over here and let’s get away.”

Ben rushed over, accelerating himself with kinetic energy. He’d gotten a lot of flying practice in since his first flight, and he stopped on a dime right next to the prone form of Blitz as the drones came down as well.

Resolve quickly got behind him and leaped onto his back. She was careful not to jostle his shoulder as she wrapped an arm around his neck, and her light weight didn’t even make them wobble.

The drones went around the splayed form of Blitz and then created a combined force field scoop under the man. Then they slowly lifted him up and Ben sent over a full black painted quartz with Gem Control. He applied kinetic energy to accelerate him upwards and reduce his weight to around a tenth of what it should be. That would hopefully be enough to let the three drones carry him.

“Okay, he’s lightened,” Ben said over the comms as he started to accelerate up. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

As he did, he kept glancing over to Mononoke and her monsters to make sure she wasn’t sending anything after them. Strangely enough, despite glancing over at them occasionally, she didn’t seem all that inclined to do anything and focused on directing the battle against Katie in the air and dodging the occasional barrage of stun bolts aimed at her.

Ben still kept an eye on her, but as they lifted off into the air, higher and higher, the tension in his body started to drain.

“Okay, we’re good,” Ben said into his earpiece. “Are you okay, Bot?”

“Just peachy,” Katie said, sounding pissed but she disengaged from the monsters and left her remaining drones to keep fighting. “Just lost a shit ton of drones cause of this bitch. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Alright,” Ben said and sped up. He kept the drones holding Blitz within his 8-foot range of his Gem Control and left the quartz lying on top of the man as he continued to lighten him. He also continued to look back towards Mononoke but she seemed content finishing off the drones. None of the other Villains inside the warehouse came out either.

They quickly made their way away from the warehouse, turning onto another street at the next intersection to break line-of-sight. Katie caught up to them quickly as they crossed multiple intersections. Ben started to slow down for her but she shook her head and sped ahead of him. He soon accelerated to match and they made their way away in silence.

It seemed whatever had been wrong with her flight was better now.

“Should we head up higher to avoid any reinforcements?” Ben asked as they crossed another intersection.

“No,” Katie said, shaking her head. “Warp Master’s an A-Ranker and his teleportation seems based on line-of-sight. He could pluck us from the air if we go too high.”

“Alright,” Ben said, taking a look behind him just in case they were being fo—

Shit!

Ben reacted with barely any thought as he saw the form of a familiar costume on a distant roof. He spun around so Resolve was facing Katie and he was between the both of them and the figure. He backed up towards Katie as he pulled Resolve’s arm from his neck.

“Resolve let go! Katie catch her, Warp is—”

And then just like that the world shifted around him. The feeling of Resolve on his back disappeared.

And a fist appeared right in front of his face.