The water began to swirl around the mace head, as if they circled into a drain. Soon the pool across the floor became a tumultuous whirlpool that thrashed against the mall infrastructure like a riotous stampede. When the mace finally swung up, it bashed in Zhang’s face with the weight of the ocean, tore him off the horns, and launched him four floors to bust through ceramic tiles, soar in the air, and crash land on a hello kitty kiosk whose busted organs threatened to bury him in gumballs.
He was fitted with more advanced implants than the rank and file. Whatever pain or dizziness he should have felt was being suppressed, and the wound in his leg was already healed. This endoskeleton supported a body frame that was meant to withstand 1,000 bars of pressure at his best. The surgery had to be conducted after he ended a drought to tire him out enough to be vulnerable.
He needed pause to collect his mind. That mace was no ordinary weapon. It not only destroyed the water that Zhang controlled, it seemed empowered when it drank from them. When it struck him, beyond the blunt force trauma, his soul felt like it was mauled. Despite his offensive power that cracked tanks in twain, he barely put a dent into the Bull’s hide. On top of that, it can reshape itself and even force the user's body to make unnatural, unpredictable movements.
When he looked to his side, as much as he hated to admit, he was confronted with the fact that he wasted energy on GalvanGal. When an Orca landed from above and a Bull lept from the depths, as much as he hated to admit it, he was confronted with the fact that victory was faint against all three at once. The fugitive chose to fight because it knew it had no chance of escape; even now, she could snatch it up with them helpless to stop her. Given that, why didn’t she?
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GalvanGal has been hit way harder than that, but the sonic scream discombobulated her enhanced hearing long enough to crash land here. A look to the side told her Zhang was not doing too hot either, and whoever did that to him just jumped up to join the fray. The gargoyle armor was the oil she sensed and only given to full-blooded Immortals. To top it off, there were still people caught in the crossfire between police forces and triads. While she would definitely win against all three at once, every second counted when innocent lives were on the line.
“Zhang,” she called out as she lifted into the air, “how’s about we switch partners yeah?” He looked at her confused before he responded.
“Works for me,” he said as he spun off his back, “watch out for his mace, I think it absorbs energy. Besides that, he’s just a thug.”
“That one has sonic attacks. Besides that, it’s nothing special.”
Zhang rode a wave toward the Orca fugitive. The Orca opened its jaw but its scream was drowned in its throat and a boot shut its mouth.
The Bull raised its arm to swing and GalvanGal cleared the distance in a flash to plant her in his chest. Black goo enmeshed her glove to hold her in place; at least, it tried to, as the goo, and the rest of the armor, had voltage course through its veins and permeated to shock the wearer inside. The concentrated voltage made the armor start to unravel, which revealed…
“This was about what I expected, Tony,” said Hannah.
“It’s Shushu Tony right now. We’ll have to catch up another time.”
He brought his mace down and GalvanGal thought she avoided it but the head landed in his own chest. The venous voltage was siphoned out by the mace and the armor reformed up to the tips of bloody horns. With that weapon on top of the armor, he was undoubtedly a high-ranking Immortal. Garrick said he was a sadist but involving civilians, from the bombs to now, was not something the Immortals usually did.
He swung out again, the chained head careened like a meteor past GalvanGal, past Zhang, through the back of a water shield, into the Orca. The head clung to the Orca like a leech as it drained at the very essence of the monster host.
GalvanGal launched a jab that knocked the shaft a half dozen stories out of Tony’s hand, then struck Tony with a thunderous hook to the jaw, and grabbed him by the throat to carry him into the air. But without Zhang’s water shield, the Orca’s next scream discombobulated her mid-flight before a kick shut its jaw again. She released her grip and Tony recalled the mace shaft to him, along with the chain that reeled on the chain, and landed to catch her stomach on his mace. The electricity that danced through her nervous system was dragged out screaming into the mace in a way only one other had done to her before.
Zhang did not have the same hearing as her, but the scream battered him from the inside out all the same. The Orca beast was one accustomed to water and was not slowed by the streams that flowed against it. The river rapids that flowed with Zhang’s flurry of strikes, however, was more than enough to wash over the clumsy strokes of a mindless monster.
Zhang sensed the Bull charge from behind once again and flipped around to counter, only to find the mace swung over him into the Orca in a brutal blow that mangled its throat.
“That was getting annoying,” said Tony. When the mace swung back at Zhang, his honed reflexes betrayed him, as the water he summoned to slow the attack only fed the ravenous weapon into a strike that bludgeoned his arms, blew his defenses wide open for a fist that slammed into his face all the way to the ground. “I was worried he was going to wear down my prey,” said Tony as he raised the mace like a guillotine.
Every mace blow sapped energy that it could unleash to make the next exponentially more powerful. That part Zhang’s body remembered clearly as his natural adrenaline flowed over his implants. Now, that mace had drunk from Zhang, the Orca, and GalvanGal. Even if he was allowed to live through the next strike, it would only be for Tony to make good on his promise to string up Zhang’s broken body. To escape would require his most desperate technique, inspired by what he had been shown from his ultimate rival; whatever rumination he had over his identity as a human being would have to be abandoned for this battle, and every battle to come, for the good of the people and his own survival.
Zhang splashed away in all directions before the mace could fall; he was right to abandon his corporeal form and cybernetics, for this blow carried a tempest that boomed across the entire mall to shatter all glass and lashed out with lightning ribbons that carved bloody gashes into the structure. The soldiers and gangsters that had been fighting in the mall took pause when ribbons cleaved through and the cracks spread around them. The gangsters turned tail to run, leaving the police forces to guide the civilians out, the ones that did not themselves break to flee at least, and the pandemonium of roof and floor collapsing all around threw out all sense of cohesion.
The whole building was about to crumple when amethyst yarn stitchted together the cracks and pillars of lightning held up every floor up to the roof. GalvanGal had spread her sparking shimmy to stabilize the structure so that everyone could evacuate. For good measure, she neutralized the guns with zaps that reached even those already outside. Doing all this was like having acid in her veins, but it was the only way to protect everyone.
It should have been, but with the energy she used to protect the city earlier, her reach was limited. She held up the roof with pure energy, but not what was on top of it. The ferris wheel above had its supports knocked out by the blood ribbons, and she only noticed when she saw it about to fall onto the skylight. She bolted up throught the glass to stop the ferris wheel with her bare strength but that was only enough to hold it back. It took all her magical power to hold the building together, and if something like this crashed to cave the roof in, the stitches and pillars that were strained to their limit would be overwhelmed and the building would collapse into a bowl of dust and death.
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The water reformed into Zhang who had to dodge a mace swing and next concrete debris as the roof began to collapse. Not with the deft of a martial artist, but with the scramble of an injured animal. Zhang continued to dodge every swing his way but stumbled off rhythm when they suddenly stopped.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“You can’t reach your objective by just running away now can you?” said the Bull.
Zhang was confused, a confusion that was cleared when the Bull charged in the direction of the Orca that had limped away. The official mission was to capture a runaway fugitive. The unoffical objective was to defeat the Yao Guai while doing it. With the Orca weakened, he could at least carry this operation on the tide all the way back to Shantou.
The red gashes that were carved into the mall were stitched together by amethyst yarn. That his surroundings became an amethyst concert could only mean that she was back on her feet—no, she rocketed up through the skylight to hold up the ferris wheel too. She is able to hold onto large objects by spreading her strength, but she already spread her magnetism across the building. There was no way she could do both at once and either way the whole building would collapse. Zhang could survive even without losing his form again, but almost everyone else would die.
He looked to exit where the Orca was headed with the Bull barely slowed by the debris that he barreled through. He looked up at GalvanGal who faltered as the ferris wheel bent over her brace. He looked around at his comrades, some desperately fleeing, some guiding and carrying out civilians.
He looked at himself, his form severed across the broken glass before him.
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Without a solid layer of sparking shimmy, the metal of the ferris wheel creaked around her fingers. She had strength to spare but none of it mattered if all the pressure was pushed against the hub. At this rate, the spindle would tear off as the rim crashed into the mall. This was a weight only she could carry and all she could do was buy as much time as she could.
Condensation pooled on the hub pooled into a high pressure pond. A rapid river formed around the rim. The ferris wheel felt lighter until it lifted off her palms and was drawn downstream to land gently on the street.
Now that she was freed up GalvanGal raced across the mall to help those trapped by debris. Zhang rallied the broken ranks to lead them and the civilians out of the building. Once it was all clear, Zhang encased the mall in a bubble so that GalvanGal could let it die without damaging the surroundings. All the emergency responders in the city had converged at this point so they tended to the survivors. The Bull, drenched in gore as he was inclined, tapped his dripping chui mace on the pavement, and raised the Orca head high to the horror of civilian and soldier alike.
“Your mission here is over, little snake. Slither back to your mistress. Hannah, you’ll still be in town for a while. Whenever you're free, I can take you to the best bar in the city.”
“This was just a fling. It’s not me, it's definitely you.”
“Well, my numbers always open regardless,” said Tony.
“How can you speak to this monster?” said Zhang, “Look at what they do, they’ll destroy everything to beat the future into their design.”
“This was all your fault. Blind pride led your men to their deaths, and those still waters will be the death of the old world. My master's will is to not let you drag the future down with you.”
“You dare say that even as you spill rivers of blood?”
“He’s right,” said GalvanGal to Zhang’s shock, “You came in reckless every step of the way while too weak to back up any of it. If I wasn’t here, all of you would be dead,” she put one hand on his shoulder and the other to wave at their surroundings of scared innocents and ruin, “when we are the last line of defense, the results are all that matters, without backup or excuses. If you want better results, you have to be strong enough to reach them and smart enough to know what you’re reaching for.”
“I… you are not what I was told about… none of this was. We will… return home… and learn from this. Thank you for giving me the chance,” said Zhang. He gathered the remains of his unit to return to the port.
“Thanks for the assist babe,” said Tony before he was catapulted into the Luzon Strait. A small satisfaction given the circumstances.
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“No, you’re not allowed to kill him,” said Garrick over the phone the morning after.
“I thought you trusted my judgment.”
“I trusted you to protect lives. This was a Chinese attack on Taiwan; technically, we would be at war on the side of Taiwan, which effectively would be a war on the side of the Immortals. Having you there to ‘mediate’ the situation has satisfied any other stakeholders from escalating further. We’re taking that as a win.”
“He had the right idea. Every day, the Immortals are getting stronger. All of our cooperation with them has been at gunpoint. It feels like we lost and are just waiting to die.”
“We lost because we weren’t strong enough, that’s why we’re under these circumstances. However, I’m not sure I’d say the Immortals are any better,” said Garrick. Hannah sat up in her bed.
“How?! Don’t they have countries and armies under their belt now?”
“That’s their problem. They do well when they can concentrate their soldiers in rapid attacks or when they are arming proxies, but now that they have they have to spread their forces to defend and manage their territories. They can station a handful of agents to support the locals and hold things down in case they need reinforcements, but they can’t be everywhere. The recent incident has raised two possibilites: that they want to stay a step ahead of the escalation ladder to deter encroachment attempts, or Xiu Chen does not have as much control as she wants us to believe.”
“What makes you say that? The second part, I mean.”
“Ms. Chen is a business woman at heart. She can sell product and build development, but when you ask the Immortals, the true believers, who they follow and what unites them, all they have is a dead man that wanted to slash and burn. She pulled out when Deimos died, but what about those who did not want the war to end, who wonder what could have been? It may be a crack now, but those cracks could grow into a schism,” said Garrick. Hannah fell back into bed.
“Sounds like wishful thinking. And if people like Tony take power, we might regret it.”
“Maybe. We’ll have to find out more. For now, just focus on the project you went there for.”
With that, Garrick hung up the phone. Tony’s identity was not public knowledge but he was the only one who posted the pics on Bouldr. *Exclusive*; *Who is that?*; *Will this one last?*. Hannah’s doomscrolling was interrupted by a call from her bestie.
“Why?” said Aaliyah.
“Garrick said it was either boys or alcohol. He didn’t say boys but you get the idea.”
“You guys could come to church sometime.”
“That didn’t stop you now, did it?”
“Mine lasted longer than literally one day.”
“No, but the wind up hit way harder, now didn't it? I do not need this right now. How’s New Orleans?”
“It’s not the way I wanted to see the city, but the Pantheon ensures that the recovery happens a lot better than last time.”
“That’s… nice… I just hope we can do more than recover after the damage is done.”
“Now you know how I feel. Just gotta do what we can one crisis at a time. Speaking of, got to go, talk later.”
Reassuring as ever, there’s a reason her dad handles the sermons. At this rate, Mr. Folious is gonna be giving alotta speeches about how crises bring people together. If it works it works; right now, Hannah could use something that works.
“Hello?” said Mr. Vandimion.
“Hey dad, things have been rough lately.”
“Ye-yeah, I saw. I thought you’d be busy with… work.”
“Well, the fight’s over, and the coast is closed today so…
Hey dad, what was it like… to raise me.”
“Well, it was expensive for one thing! They don’t make insulated strollers or pajamas for super strength, that has to be custom made.”
“I bet. It must have been hard to do it… alone…”
“Well, anything worth doing is going to be hard, otherwise, someone else would have already done it. And I want you to know, no matter how… hard… it got, there weren’t never any doubt that having you as my daughter was worth it.”
“Thanks dad, that’s all I needed to hear. In fact, you just gave me a great idea,” said Hannah.
“Of course. Hey, can you get me a stamp while you’re there?”
“First thing I did. Love you.”
"Love you more."
After the phone call ended, she picked up the other conversation that was cut short.
“Sorry about that-” started Aaliyah.
“I want to have a baby.” stated Hannah.