Without any time to explain to Stumblebum what was going on, I had to simply trust him to pull me out of the fires when the moment was right. Not a second too soon or too late, because I was going in to finish it this time.

The power I had gathered at my fingertips wasn't nearly enough to knock out the rampager now, but it was sure to put me out of commission once used up. There would be no more second chances, and since I was the only one who had figured out this man's power, it had to be me to end it.

We'd merely caught our enemy by surprise with my first attack, I believed. Even though I could muster a devastating blast of pain right now, he had only to choose to endure it and stay invincible, then his revenge would be swift. This meant I had only the power of dissuasion at best, for however far I might push it.

The rampager had shown he possessed the power to remove his mind from his body at will. It was part of the trick he was playing on all of us. Yet, he had done it just as I was attacking, as if to feint a successful strike. Perhaps he’d acted a moment too soon?

He had feinted before, hoping I might waste the energy I had gathered. He had no way of knowing what my limits were, though, so there had to be another reason as well.

His eyes darted where he stood, considering everyone poised around him. Stumblebum was always within arm’s reach of my back, ready to remove us. Bombardment was above, ready to level the building if he saw his opening; and I was overflowing with waves of lightning across my entire body, waiting and ready to make him wish he'd never been born.

I had to use every advantage at my disposal here to reach the goal.

With my hands I could modulate the size and shape of my psionic blasts. It was not something I'd demonstrated before, and so it caught him by surprise as I launched out two sweeping slices of electricity horizontal to the ground. He had been waiting to dodge, but that was no longer on the table.

Both swaths of electricity slammed into the rampager at once, causing him to shake violently. Still, he did not lose his footing, and there was rage in his eyes and his aura. This was as good an opportunity as I was going to get, though.

Beyond all sanity, I waded in closer.

I blasted again; this time concentrated straight towards the chest.

The rampager stumbled back and stuck out his long grey arms to counterbalance. With his claws open like a hungry maw in front of me, every ounce of my body screamed for me to run with a primal craze.

My knuckle clinched white-fisted at my side, and I forced myself to overcome my instincts. I reached forward and took ahold of his wrist as tightly as I could. With skin-to-skin contact, our connection was closer than ever. If he thought he'd felt pain before, he was wrong.

The rampager's scream sounded out and continued to rise, strong enough to make me feel like my eardrums were bursting.

Now that I had a direct lay line into his mind and all my own senses were dialed to eleven, I was getting too much information. In all the random noise of his thoughts and intentions, one vision managed to come through. It was not the one I wanted, but it was the one I needed.

My eyes blurred to show me a single glimpse from the rampager's own. I saw Stumblebum fail to keep up with me as I had taken my step forward to grab the rampager. When the piercing sound went out, his foot slipped, and his hand fell away from my back. It would only be a few seconds, but there was an opening.

As I came back to reality, I sensed the rampager's free arm moving suddenly. He was stilted from the pain, but still faster than any normal human could hope to be.

I jerked my head back as he took a swing straight for it, aiming to turn it to mist just as he had with Stumblebum earlier in the fight. His reach well surpassed my own, and there was only one way to survive. I had to let go of my hold, setting me back to the start.

One of his claws brushed my forearm as I recoiled, knocking out a hunk of flesh as it did. My reserves were running on empty, but the drugs Wonder Boy had put me on remained strong enough to keep me focused. Another close call and I would be down for the count, regardless.

Stumblebum put his hand on my back, the distance between us and our enemy established again.

I must get my hands on him, I thought, and the arm isn’t good enough.

The rampager grimaced and spat out a mouthful of blood. "You made me bite my tongue," he said, almost petulant.

I tried to straighten out as much as I could and cut an imposing figure, but I quickly found myself swaying as spots filled my vision. My projection came through anyway, "You were ready to give up before, weren't you? But your timing was just barely premature. I can't think of any other reason why you might feint like you did. I think... yes." I ripped off my mask to show a defiant smile. "I think I know exactly how you work.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The monster's face slackened. He never intended for this fight to drag on so long. Though I hadn’t gotten the information that I needed yet, I had gotten enough to make him fear that I did. For all he knew, I’d just brought his entire life crashing down. He had been planning this attack for years down to the smallest detail, and this was meant to only be the beginning.

I moved my hand back and touched Stumblebum in the side, covertly. Through that connection point, I spoke so that only he could hear. "I don't care if takes everything you've got left. Get me in close behind him."

Going from shock to all consuming hate, the rampager stepped forward and clawed in a motion so quick that it would have been impossible to react to. Yet, his intention to kill me had been so intense that it practically screamed out of his skull, and that gave me all the forewarning that I needed.

"Now!" I shouted.

Stumblebum threw us first out of the way and to the other end of the roof. He could control our angle and momentum, and with his second slingshotting teleport, he put us exactly where I had told him to. He never questioned my decision, as it was my life to gamble with.

Finally, my hand went out and I grabbed ahold of the rampager's neck, instantly flooding him with pain. Placing a full grip on his skull then, I was as close as I was ever going to get, and my power dug me in deep. He was resisting, and it was my willpower against his.

Forcefully reading a mind like this was new territory for me. People would sometimes send me their thoughts; images, feelings, sounds, but only what they wanted to give.

No longer able to keep on his feet, the rampager's knees hit the floor and he foamed at the mouth. I could tell that he was attempting to pull his consciousness out of his body, but at this point he was so completely out of his mind with agony that he couldn't think at all.

This, I knew, wasn't his real body. It was a construct that he had created. One which he piloted safely from a distance using his power. He had never been in any danger this whole time. He had simply been enjoying himself like the psychopath he was, basking in carnage and his ten minutes of fame.

It was the perfect ploy. Heroes never looked too closely at a monster. They killed first and asked questions later, and he had used that instinct against us.

If we didn't stop him here and now, he would do this again. He would come back in a different form in another city and try to beat his high score. Again, and again and again, because he was addicted to the fear on all of our faces. He felt like a God. I could sense the utter self-love coursing through him now.

And the odds that he would ever run into someone like me who could see through his ruse again? They were practically zero.

This was meant to be, I decided. It was fate.

Tens of thousands of lives were in my hands right now. Even as the rampager fought with every ounce of his pride and egomania, my willpower didn't waver with that knowledge.

I pried away the barriers he created, and I saw what he most wanted to hide in all his mind's content. It was not a secret. It was close to the top of his consciousness, bubbling like froth on his mind, and he had held onto it with everything he had.

It was simply the view from his eyes. His real eyes.

Once I had what I wanted, I broke away and collapsed at last. Stumblebum caught me as I watched the rampager go limp. We were out of teleports and the world was growing black, leaving us with no way to run and no way to fight.

At first, I was sure the monster would stand back up and finish what he started. He had only to kill me with what I knew now, and he would get away scot-free from his rampage. Yet, that damn grey body lay right where it’d fallen, dead as could be.

It had been too much pain for him to think about returning, I realized. This kind of a narcissist was also a born coward, and that fact saved us in the end.

"Clear the way!" Bombardment ordered from far above. "I need a clear shot, goddammit!"

Zephyr flew down quickly and took me away. Stumblebum simply stayed where he was and saluted up to the man with all the guns in the sky. "Do it!" he said.

The two knew each other, and so the hero held nothing back, taking the monster and Stumblebum together in one strike. I fought to keep my eyes open and watch as another red plume of smoke reached for the sky. Deafened from the rampager's scream before, the cacophony of ordnance washed over me in a muffled blast. We rode its shockwave to a safe distance until at last we could stop.

Zephyr looked me over, checking for any fatal wounds and determining that I was okay to leave here. She was in a hurry as always, now to make sure that the fight really and truly was over for good. Just as she was about to take off, though, I found myself grabbing her leg. Half lucid, I stuttered out what I could. "C-clothes s-store... Fifth st-street..."

Over the last three years, I had one and only one hobby. In all my spare time I had wandered the sprawl of New Marion city. As a result, I knew every single corner and alley like the back of my hand. I knew them at a mere glance. There was nowhere that I was unwilling or unable to explore in the city I grew up in. And so, I’d known what I needed as soon as I saw through the rampager's eyes back there…

I knew exactly where his real body was.

Finding out his true location had been the point of all this suffering. As soon as I had realized how his power worked, I had to get in close, no matter the cost, because the fight was always going to end one way or another. In fact, he had been planning to seemingly ‘lose’ from the very beginning. To make it seem like these constructions of his could be beaten; to keep the heroes' hopes up for when he inevitably came back time and again for his fun. In reality, there was only ever one way to win against this rampager.

Zephyr said something to me that I couldn't quite make out and then she gracelessly peeled my hand away. She was not one to listen and think before acting, that much had been obvious. She wasn't about to start listening to me now, of course.

That would make it too easy.

Though I laid on the hot and hard ground for a few minutes, slipping in and out of consciousness, I had no choice but to force my limbs to move again. Little by little, I scraped myself from the pavement and tried to stand. I braced myself against a lamppost and worked my way up. My sandals had fallen off during the flight over here, leaving just my bare feet to walk over the glass and rubble.

Slowly but surely, I moved towards Fifth Street.

The same thought that had drug me out of that bunker in the very beginning repeated in my head now, keeping me moving when I should have been falling.

No one can do this but me.

This was the reason I had survived, all those years ago…