CHAPTER FOUR
Crow-Man’s Fight
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Despite her efforts, Bethany’s telekinesis only had enough strength to drag the elevator up to the 3rd sub-level.
“I’m… sorry…” Bethany tried to catch her breath while she pulled her hand away from the mechanism that manually activated the elevator’s engine. “But I… need a break… before—”
The elevator door slid open and revealed another circular hall. However, unlike the massacre on the 4th sub-level, this room was full of activity. The Crucible’s security team was firing heatsink rounds from their elemental cannons at the villains who were attempting to escape to the elevator that had just opened up. The security team had assistance though. Help in the form of a familiar blue-haired Asian woman in a blue jumpsuit.
Crow-Man recognized her instantly as, “Miracle Girl!”
Miracle Girl—the beta-level healer who’d been part of the recently failed raid of the Endless Maze back in Kansas—turned her head in the direction of his voice.
“Crow?!” she called back. “What are you—”
The villain in front of the young heroine flung four of his eight fists at her, forcing Miracle Girl to bob and weave out of each attack’s path.
“Hey, I’m talking here!” Miracle Girl pulled back her glowing fist and then hurled it into the gut of the eight-armed villain who accosted her. “Here’s some medicine, pal!”
A fist coated in a ball of energy that shone like a sea of stars on a clear night sky wasn’t as mighty as Sam’s Mortal Fist, but it was strong enough to knock the eight-armed villain out in a single hit.
“Hold the line, Jin Oppa,” she told the slender man in the light gray coat standing back-to-back with her. “I’m gonna go get us some backup.”
“It’s Ice Brand, MG,” the man sighed. “At least use my moniker when we’re surrounded by villains who would kill to know our real names…”
Ice Brand’s plea fell on deaf ears though because Miracle Girl was already wading through the few remaining members of the Crucible’s security team to get to the elevator they were all protecting.
Inside it, she found a kneeling Crow-Man sticking a hypodermic needle into a pumpkin-haired villain in a straight jacket.
“Fancy meeting you here, old man,” Miracle Girl said.
Although their purposes for visiting the Crucible were different, it was a stroke of luck that they were both in the prison during this disastrous prison riot.
“Help Warden Carlyle get her stamina back,” Crow-Man growled.
Miracle Girl looked like she wanted to complain but thought better of it. Everyone in the biz knew Crow-man’s orders weren’t something one could just brush off. Even Superion couldn’t do that.
“Fine, but you better help send these psycho inmates back into their cells afterward,” she grumbled.
Miracle Girl stepped into the elevator and moved to stand next to a haggard-looking Bethany who had her back pressed against the elevator wall while sweat dripped down her brow.
“You look half dead,” she noted.
“I feel… like I ran… two marathons,” Bethany huffed.
“Must have been bad… whatever it was you were running from.” Miracle Girl unslung the canteen strapped to her belt and offered it to Bethany. “Here. My Energizer-X’s filled with my ‘Miracle Power,’ and it’ll fix you right up with just a few sips.”
“Thanks,” Bethany took the canteen gratefully, although she did inspect its contents before taking a sip. Interestingly enough, the water inside was like a pool reflecting a night sky filled with stars. “Cute naming sense.”
As she tipped the canteen to her lips, Bethany wondered if all healers had such peculiar naming senses. This made her think of Sam, who she’d learned from a report she read before Crow-man’s arrival had successfully captured a high-profile villain that even the likes of Superion couldn’t catch. And, while she drank her fill of Miracle Girl’s ‘Energizer-X’, she wondered what he was doing now. Was it possible that Sam might already be on his way here to the Crucible? Because where else would they take a villain as feared as Apex?
“Thanks.” Bethany passed the canteen back to Miracle Girl who noticed that it was considerably lighter now. “That did help.”
She certainly looked better. Her breathing was back to normal too.
“Told you,” Miracle Girl replied. “Now, how about you—”
“Crow-Man~~n!” roared a voice vibrating with rage.
A lean-looking man with olive skin, chin-length curly hair, and eyes as black as onyx gazed angrily at the open elevator from his spot between the broken halves of the wall of ice that Ice Brand probably conjured up to coral the villains back into their cells.
“Jackal,” Crow-Man whispered.
One of Crow-Man’s high-profile rogues—a former celebrated hero who’d been driven insane by the god he served—was climbing over chunks of shattered ice shards with a gaze fixed solely on the former ally who’d brought him down.
“You and I have a score that needs settling!” the Jackal howled.
“Bethany”—Crow-Man glanced over his shoulder—“get the Trickster out of here… now!”
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Knowing full well what they were up against, Bethany was quick to take the unconscious Trickster out of Crow-Man’s hands.
“Are you really planning on fighting the Jackal alone?” Bethany asked concerned.
The stories of their battle across the rooftops of Manhattan had been one for the history books, and despite winning in the end, Crow-Man had gone on sick leave for a full year to recover from injuries that his one-time friend had given him.
“Jackal’s a distraction… The Trickster’s our priority.” Crow-Man pulled out a pair of his throwing knives from his belt while glancing in Miracle Girl’s direction. “You go with her and make sure Bloodfyre doesn’t get what she came here for.”
“No way. I can’t just—”
Miracle Girl’s complaints were drowned out by the sound of gunfire. The Jackal attacked a nearby security guard and stole his elemental cannon while knocking him unconscious with a well-placed elbow in the face. It was this same cannon that was now firing a hail of heat-sink bullets in Crow-Man’s direction.
He dodged the incoming bullets with the help of ‘True Sight’ although there were far too many of them to avoid completely. A graze to the shoulder or leg by bullets that burned through his armor was a necessary sacrifice for Crow-Man to hurry across the hall—pulling security guards out of the line of fire while he was at it—to get to where the Jackal waited for him. To bridge the last bit of distance between them, Crow-Man leaped toward his enemy with knives raised high.
“Jackal!” he roared.
“Crow-Man!” the Jackal roared back.
He must have been out of bullets because the Jackal flipped his cannon over so that he could swing its thicker butt-end at Crow-Man’s head, although Crow-Man saw this coming like he saw most attacks when his gift was active.
Crow-Man ducked underneath the Jackal swing and then stabbed the villain in his right thigh with one of his knives. The Jackal was quick to react though. He flexed the muscles of his thigh so that the fabric of his pants tore open, showing off the thick muscular shape of a thigh that had been hardened so much Crow-Man’s knife couldn’t penetrate past the skin.
With this thicker thigh, he sent his knee up at Crow-Man’s head, and Crow-Man just barely managed to pull away. A follow-up push kick forced Crow-Man back some more, creating the distance the Jackal needed to throw himself at Crow-Man while the hero couldn’t dodge. He bit into Crow-Man’s forearm with the fangs of a mad dog that pierced through the armor and into skin and bone underneath.
Crow-Man didn’t scream, but he was forced to let go of his knife, which the Jackal caught in his free hand.
“My turn to stab you”—he drove the knife into Crow-Man gut with enough strength to penetrate through the suit’s feather-shaped scale mail and into the flesh hidden behind it—in the back, friend!”
Despite the pain flaring out of his side, Crow-Man didn’t fall back. He replied to his enemy’s vicious assault by stabbing his other dagger into the villain’s neck, forcing the Jackal to back away with a painful howl.
“I was trying to help you!” Crow-Man growled.
Blood seeped out of his wounded arm as he launched a fist at the villain’s face. One, two, three, four—these were a combination of punches that would have knocked a lesser man out, but not the Jackal. His expression hardened with each new hit. As if to say he could barely feel Crow-Man’s fists over the rage that boiled inside of him.
“I told you to kill me!” the Jackal roared.
He launched an elbow at Crow-Man’s chin, whipping the hero’s head back, and then fired a combination of punches aimed specifically at Crow-Man’s injured gut.
“I wanted to die rather than live with the shame of what that bastard, Set, made me do!” the Jackal howled.
His fifth punch—a left fist that was aimed at Crow-Man’s throat—was blocked by Crow-Man’s right palm. Crow-Man tightened his grip on the Jackal’s fist before pulling his arm forward at the same time as he twisted his body in a clockwise direction. The momentum allowed him to slide the Jackal over his left shoulder and throw him down onto the obsidian floor.
“You can’t right your wrongs if you’re dead!” Crow-Man snapped. “There’s no redemption for you if you just give up… and the bastard who twisted your brain will just get away with it!”
Crow-Man had a lot more words to say to his old ally—to explain why he’d spared the Jackal’s life instead of killing him as he’d asked—but the rumbling of the ground stopped him. A moment later, a column of blood exploded out of the floor in the center of the round hall. Thick, bloody tendrils coated in flames so hot everyone around it was forced to pull away.
“Godsdammit,” Crow-Man cursed. He picked the Jackal’s arm up and dragged him out of the way of the falling drops of burning blood.
“What are you—”
“There’s no redemption for you if you die now,” Crow-Man grunted.
He used his feather cape to cover himself and the Jackal from the rain of blood spilling out of the column of bloody tendrils that continued to extend upward like a giant red beanstalk. It broke through one ceiling after another—creating huge, gaping holes in the 3rd, 2nd, and administrative sub-levels—and then ripped past the obsidian rock and metal scaffolding that led up to the landing platform rising out of the center of the volcano’s crater.
Even covered in his cape, Crow-Man could see Bloodfyre make her appearance on the 3rd sub-level. Her body—a voluptuous form peeking out of the loose folds of her half-burned robe—was wrapped around several tendrils of blood that connected her with the rising red pillar. These were the same tendrils she manipulated to snake toward the Trickster’s unconscious form inside the elevator. They wrapped around him before Bethany or Miracle Girl could stop them and carried the Trickster out of their reach.
“No!” Crow-Man yelled.
He was about to chase after their floating forms, but the Jackal’s hand tightened on his left ankle.
“We’re not—”
A coating of ice appeared on the Jackal’s cheeks. It spread across his face and traveled down the length of his body, encasing him in a thin sheet of frost that kept him temporarily immobile.
“My ‘Cryo-Freeze’ won’t hold them for long,” said the man who arrived to help Crow-Man back to his feet.
He had short, wavy white hair framing a small, oval face with long eyebrows, slanted eyes, a straight, small nose, and thin lips. Underneath his gray coat was white armor reminiscent of freshly falling snow.
“Ice Brand,” Crow-Man nodded in greeting.
“Glad to help, but”—Ice Brand’s gaze followed the last bit of blood tendrils snaking up through the hole Bloodfyre’s pillar had created in the ceiling—“I don’t think this fight’s over.”
“Crow-Man!” Bethany yelled from the other side of the chasm that separated their two sides of the floor. “She took the Trickster!”
As if losing the Trickster wasn’t enough of a problem, Crow-Man also noticed that many of the villains who’d been caught by Ice Brand’s powers were already beginning to stir. It wouldn’t be long before they would attempt to escape through the hole Bloodfyre created. Unfortunately for the heroes, their support was slim. Many of the Crucible’s security team had been caught in the blood splatter of Bloodfyre’s pillar and were now unconscious from a combination of blood loss and burn injuries. The few who were still standing looked just as battered and bruised as their fallen comrades, and Crow-Man realized they would soon be swallowed up by a tide of villains.
He gave the large hole in the ceiling one final, glare before shifting his gaze to the two heroes and one warden who were still standing.
“We save lives first,” Crow-Man insisted. Then he knelt to pick up the unconscious guard closest to him. “Time to go to work.”
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A mile away, from their shared window on a transport plane flying across a cloudy morning sky, two passengers caught sight of a glowing red column rising out of the crater of an island volcano.
“Isn’t that—”
“Where we’re taking Apex,” Thunder confirmed.
“Styx…” Sam’s gaze followed the red column as it disappeared into the clouds. “What kind of trouble are we getting into now…?”
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TO BE CONTINUED IN LEVEL UP HERO, VOLUME 3: UNDERWORLD
Releasing every Friday and Sunday, same as the Tapas release. Next chapter's out on Sunday. This one was supposed to come out Friday, but I wanted to time it with my new novel's release too.
Read The Greatest Trick Ever Sold — OUT NOW! — Just click the link in the pre-author's note or this one: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/98929/the-greatest-trick-ever-sold