“Alex?” Birgit’s voice broke me out of my thoughts. I opened my eyes and looked straight at her face. A few small bits of frost were still on her cheek, and her face and eyes seemed to be slightly red and puffy. I didn’t respond for a few moments, and I felt her grip on me tighten slightly. “Alex? Please tell me you’re okay?”
“Yeah, just tired. And a little shocked I guess,” I said. Truth be told, I was definitely more than a little shocked, but that was neither the time or the place to discuss that. What mattered then was the fact that we were all safe and sound.
As if on cue, a small rumble went through the ground, and cracks began to form at the aforementioned ice mountain. I forced myself to stand up, barely managing to do so. I had to rely on Birgit, who had her right hand on my back and the left on my chest to keep me standing. My entire left side was practically glued to her cool body.
“That’s due to my power,” said Therapeftria, “Don’t worry, you should be fine as long as you get a proper night’s rest and a good breakfast tomorrow.”
I knew that of course. Being a hero fanboy was one of the two things most people knew about me, and it was for good reason. Therapeftria’s power heals its target but it could lead to tiredness and lethargy. I supposed that since I was-I was in such a bad shape it took more out of me than I’d expected.
“Do not move children,” said Aiolos as he turned his head back at us. “He likely protected himself in a cocoon of his own muscle tendons, he’s pulled that move before. We need you to remain near. We can’t face off against someone like him alone.”
“And you want us to help?” said Maria, shouting so loud that I was sure people on the other end of the island had heard her. “These two wrecked themselves and it appears to have done nothing to him!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snorted Atroti without turning to us. “We’ve made a couple of calls, and let’s just say that you’re just the beacon to get the backup here.”
“What do you-”
“Enough!” said Aiolos roughly. “We have a job to do, and we can’t afford to fail or wait for backup. God knows how many lives will be lost if we do that.”
Birgit’s hold on my chest tightened and she muttered something in Danish I couldn’t hear well enough, or have enough knowledge of the language, to make out.
The ice mountain shattered completely, and bits of ice and what looked to be ripped blue muscle tendons flew straight at us. Aiolos’s eyes and tattoo glowed white, and the very air around us shifted, just a tiny bit. He turned around and got into a fighting stance, his right arm drawn back while his left was stretched forward, fist clenched shut.
The American man swaggered closer to us, smirking as if this was a game to him. He was completely shirtless at that point, and I could see that his arm, the one I had used my power on, was swollen from the elbow below, oozing blood and pus as it lay limp at the overly confident man’s side.
“You’ve got quite the lethal reputation among the hero community big guy. But you made a big mistake coming here on this day,” said Atroti calmly in English as she took a few steps forward. “I don’t peg you as the type to exchange witty banter with, so I’ll be blunt: stop, or there’s a very good chance you will suffer irreversible bodily harm.”
“Oh, trust me lady, you ain’t got nothin’ close to what I’ve seen,” he said and, truth be told, I believed him. What he just went through was, for any normal human being, a physically traumatic ordeal and he just walked it off like no issue.
“Last chance,” said Aiolos in English. He opened his hand and a powerful gust of wind that nearly took me off my feet was condensed into a sphere in his left palm, but he made no move to actually strike the man.
The American said nothing, but his muscles bulged notably, making a disgusting squelching sound.
Before he had the time to do anything else however, the sphere of air decompressed and morphed into a blast of air powerful enough to shoot any rubble its way in the buildings behind it, crashing their windows and damaging them–something that the city and the hero’s agency would presumably pay for.
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The man barely moved however, his muscles bulging outward once more, with blue muscle tendons wrapping themselves around his whole body barring a few bits of his face and the part of his right arm I had used my-my power on. The two seemed to be stuck in a stalemate, pushing against each other until one of them would give up.
The problem with that was that Aiolos’s arm was already trembling from the force he was exerting. He rarely used big attacks like this, mostly preferring to outmanoeuvre his opponents using his power and striking only when he was certain it would yield results. To go so off script–something more was definitely going on here.
And we were all useless at that point. I watched the situation unfold, going to mess with my gloves, as I had grown somewhat accustomed to during these years and I hadn’t realised how much I relied on that to relieve some of my stress in times like these. I was ansty, anxious, and I just wanted to do something with my hands other than holding on to Birgit for dear life.
Atroti put her arms in front of her face in an X shape, setting her sticks flush against her forearms. “Backup can’t seem to get here fast enough, eh Aiolos?” Her tone of voice was light, and she even turned back to us, smiling in a reassuring manner and winking before turning back to Aiolos. “How about we try to pull off what we did in Athens, at Exarchia, when we were there for that event.”
“That foe was a-” Aiolos let out a scream before taking a deep breath and continuing. “That foe was a one trick pony, and had zero-zero-” Sweat was pouring down his face, and he was shaking from head to toe. “Fine. Let’s just hope this works.”
He closed his fist shut, sending a large wave of air in the man’s direction, throwing him back to an electronics store that was behind him, wrecking it and the apartments above it. He brought his left arm back and brought the right one forward in a circular position, a current of air being led by its movement.
Atroti was picked up by it, and shot forward like a bullet when Aiolos spread his right hand open, which seemingly increased the pressure and power of the current. The man broke out of the building’s ruins but before he could do anything else, Atroti blasted into him, once more throwing him to the messy rubble, blue muscle tendons flying out of it.
“She-She did it?” said Therapeftria, sounding awed by the accomplishment.
Nobody answered, and the next few moments got eerily quiet. I felt Birgit tense against me and she looked up at me, a look of desperation and fear in her eyes. “Vi skal løbe!” she said intensely, and while I couldn’t understand a single word of what she said, I suspected it might be some sort of variation of ‘We need to run!’
“I don’t know if you remember Birgit, but I can’t understand Danish,” I said to her in Greek. “Don’t worry though, Greece doesn’t slack when it comes to its heroes. These guys here are an internationally recognised team.”
And it was at that moment, due to some higher power’s twisted sense of humour, that Atroti was thrown back at us like a ragdoll, only saved by Aiolos messing with air around her to make her landing softer.
She still managed to land at her feet, holding on to her shoulder with small cuts, scrapes and bruises all around her body, her weapons missing and bits and pieces of her suit torn away making it look like a two piece summer outfit. “We can take him.”
“I don’t mean to be rude Miss Atroti,” began Energiakos reluctantly as he looked her up and down, “but if he managed to do this to you, maybe we’re better off waiting for backup.”
“He hit me six times with all his might to get a few bruises and a dislocated shoulder while I ripped out most of his muscle tendons when I hit him. Not to mention…his power level seems to be much higher than what has been recorded as normal for him.”
I noticed Aiolos tense up slightly. He turned to us uncertainly, humming as if he wasn’t sure whether to speak with us present. He looked at Energiakos and Therapeftria, before turning back to the wreckage.
The American burst out of it, his body having almost completely covered by a mess of blue muscle tendons.
Only his mouth, nose, eyes and damaged arm–which looked almost comically small compared to his massive frame–weren’t completely covered by them. He had so much mass that he struggled to keep himself upright, eventually falling forward on all fours, threes to be more exact, looking more like an animal with each passing second.
“You want witty banter?” he snarled in our direction. “I will crush all you puny herro wannabes and get what I deserve! How’s that for witty banter you arrogant slu-”
“Big talk for someone like you,” said Atroti lightly in English as she once more stepped up to face the man. “A third rate failure of a World Power Wrestler that invested everything in your career, never even thinking about an alternative, but backed out when it got tough. You were too much of a coward to see it through.”
I could feel the venom dripping from Atroti’s mouth with every word, which I was sure was a part of some sort of psychological trick or whatever, but I certainly felt a pang of sympathy for the man. I tended to follow WPW, not as religiously as heroic news, but I’d never heard of him, meaning he must have bombed hard, and never recovered.