Dr. Mays’s advertisement sputtered to a stop, and for a split second, nothing moved except my [Starlance]—which slammed into a wall and fizzled out—and Dr. Jackson. She walked toward Dr. Mays, grabbed the hand he reached out toward her, and slammed him into the ground face-first.
The First V moved immediately, hopping toward Kaiju-Sona as my partner roared and rushed The Agent. A pair of shots rang out, but the bullets bounced off her plushie hide. Not-Springlock was already pulling back for a self-sling into the battle, and Fake Lord Destructo slid between The Agent and me like a bodyguard blocking his VIP.
Under normal circumstances, that’d be too much to handle, but I had a trick up my sleeve. Activating [Power-Weaving] and [Quick-Time Change], I moved out of Not-Springlock’s way and shifted to Super Girl Spotlight Star.
[Flashy Fitting-Room! +1 Flamboyance Point]
[Steel Yourself!]
[Meter’s Running: 9/10]
The trap’s second part was closing around The Agent, but he didn’t realize it yet.
I unloaded on Fake Lord Destructo with everything I had, using [Limelight Barrage] at point-blank even as Not-Springlock hit the wall behind me with a surprised whump. The [Maximum Starlances] shredded the Temp Super’s armor and whirled him around—and a second later, he turned that spin into a massive hit with his mace!
[Dramatic Damage!]
[Meter’s Running: 8/10]
[HP 1/15]
That was the last move Fake Lord Destructo made for a bit. I fired a combo-empowered [Ride the Lightning], and the massive lightning bolt threw him into the wall. He wasn’t out, but he was definitely down. When the thunder stopped rocking across the room, I used [Virga] to top my team off.
[Electric Light-Show!]
[Power-Weaving!]
[Medic!]
[HP 6/15]
[Meter’s Running: 6/10]
Fursona was handling the First V just fine; she didn’t need my help. Another shot rang out, and something pressed against my head, but [Fursonal Furcefield] took the hit instead of my superhero damage. Still, The Agent wasn’t my problem yet; we had a plan for him.
Instead, I leaped forward with [Pouncing Panthers] and slammed into Not-Springlock mid-air. She tried to redirect herself, but she wasn’t Springlock, and we crashed into The Agent’s desk even as he whirled and pulled the trigger again. The desperate shot went wide.
[Badass Damage!]
[Meter’s Running: 5/10]
I hit her with a [Doom Ball], scratching the hell out of her back and arms with cat claws that materialized, then disappeared. When she didn’t go down, I followed it up with [Cat-Scratch Fever] and disengaged. With blurry vision and a brutal damage over time effect, Not-Springlock wasn’t going to be making any—
WHAM!
[Badass Damage!]
[Meter’s Running: 4/10]
[HP 4/15]
“Ooof!” Fake Lord Destructo’s mace crashed into my ribs and I buckled around it. Then it smashed me into the floor. He raised it over his head, bellowing a war cry.
“Not her! Take out Jackson!” The Agent screamed from the middle of the chaos.
The mace spun around as Fake Lord Destructo turned to follow his boss’s orders. I never gave him a chance, though; a [Maximum Starlances] hit him between the shoulders and lower back, and he went down again.
[Dramatic Damage!]
[Meter’s Running: 3/10]
That left Not-Springlock, who couldn’t see anything and wasn’t much of a threat, and the First V. Fursona could handle that; my job was simple now: pressure The Agent.
He pulled the trigger again, and a bullet hit me. This time, it punched into my superhero damage, knocking me to dangerously low levels—thankfully, it didn’t affect me the same way it did Dr. Jackson—but I kept on my feet and rushed the meta-powered villain.
[HP 1/15]
If he shot again, I’d be out of the fight—if I survived. So many ifs and no way to tell what’d happen. Fursona vomited fire across the room, and tapestries burst into flames as she panned it over the First V and The Agent. At the same time, I fired another [Maximum Starlance] his way.
[Dramatic Damage!]
[Meter’s Running! 2/10]
“Emergency teleport for Thornberry, now!” The Agent shouted.
Time seemed to stand still again.
----------------------------------------
A dozen things could have gone wrong. Things we hadn’t thought about, or that Dr. Jackson hadn’t seen. But so far, everything had gone according to plan—and that made me even more worried as The Agent shimmered and started vanishing.
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We’d perfectly executed the trap, cornering him in the same place as Dr. Mays before springing Dr. Jackson on them to counter his first ace in the hole. Then, the fight had gone perfectly; Fursona countered her double and then some, and two fresh-ish Temp Supers couldn’t stop Super Girl Spotlight Star.
But at the end of the day, the whole plan came down to whether we could trust a villain to do what she had to do—and even though we’d trusted her before, I couldn’t quite shake that feeling of panic as The Agent grew more and more transparent in what felt like slow motion. His evil smile was the only thing still fully there—that and his hand pressed against the nametag on his chest.
Then another hand darted up to join it, and he solidified suddenly.
The trap’s final step was sprung.
Lady Lockless’s power could open any door—that made her one of the best supervillain thieves out there, and made keeping her locked up an almost impossible challenge. The power was tailor-made for a villain, and especially a less combat-oriented one. But a lesser-known side effect was that she could lock any door, too.
Just like she’d locked The Agent’s teleporter.
A teleporter was a door if you thought hard enough about it. Or didn’t think too hard—I wasn’t sure. The point was that Lady Lockless thought it was, and that was good enough.
He looked at her, dumbfounded, and batted her away with the pistol; the impact knocked her across the room, and she crumpled into a corner. The gun clicked in his hand, and the sinister smile disappeared from his face, but I knew exactly where it had gone. It was plastered on mine.
“Agent, it’s time for us to renegotiate our contract.” I cracked my knuckles.
He knelt and grabbed something from his abandoned briefcase—a pair of magazines for the pistol. “I think you’ll find my terms disagreeable,” he said, but there was a hint of discomfort there. I had him off-balance, and I had a couple more tricks up my sleeve.
“Fursona, Hannibal for Lady L, cover Dr. Jackson,” I said. She moved instantly, scooping up the busted-up supervillain and waiting for Dr. Jackson to get to the door. The plan was still running, and I still had exactly the right number of moves left. “Get the henches out if you can. I’ve got The Agent.”
I used [Grounding], letting the electrical bindings root me to the shattered concrete floor, and started charging [Wallshocker]. The power coursed through me—the full power of a top-tier major league’s [Wallshocker], not the mid-minor power my mom had used to flatten a bank. As the lightning rippled through me, building in my heart, my stomach, my brain, I focused almost entirely on it—and on holding the charge.
[True Grit!]
[Meter’s Running: 1/10]
Someone ran out of the room, following Fursona. Then another one. But I couldn’t spare an ounce of focus for them. My allies were clear—that was what mattered.
That and the bullets bouncing off me, their energy either dissipating down the [Grounding] wires or getting absorbed by [Fursonal Furcefield]. The Super Girl Spotlight Star Costume was coming apart—I’d maxed out my powers and then some—but I had to hold on to the [Wallshocker]. Just a few seconds more…
No. The Costume wasn’t going to hold. I felt the electricity slipping away as bullets hit me—now, one of them hit me through the fraying Grit powers, knocking my last point of superhero damage away.
I used [Quick-Time Change] and switched into Dark Girl Shock and Awe. As time started again, the maxed-out [Wallshocker] exploded outward, rippling out and shaking the lair’s concrete tunnels. Stone and dirt collapsed around me, and The Agent dropped his gun and lunged for the only safe spot in what, a second ago, had been his lair—the few inches around my feet that [Grounding] protected.
The air filled with dust and rubble—worse than the Elementalist V’s dust—and everything went dark.
[Meter’s Running: 0/10]
[Flashy Fitting-Room!]
[Devastating Damage! +5 Flamboyance Points]
[True Grit! +1 Grit Point]
----------------------------------------
[Episode Finished!]
[Episode: Power War: Cell Theory- R]
[Penalties: 0x Rating Warnings - No Penalty]
[Episode Finished! +3 of each Style Point]
[Winner Winner! +3 of each Style Point]
[Role Focus: Grit + Drama - Goal Partially Met: +10 to Drama]
[Alias - Understudy] [Archetype - Magical Girl] [Community Rank - 49/523]
[HP 1/15]
[Styles and Skills]
►Archetype Skill - Transformation Sequence
►Combo Skills - Power-Weaving
►Badass (30)
►Cunning (28)
►Drama (94) (Skill Roll Available)
► Limelight Barrage 2
► Starlance 2
►Flamboyance (27)
►Signature Skill - Adaptive Armoire 3
►Stored Costumes: (Rainy Day, Copy Cat, Lab Assistant Panic, Lucky Star, Shock and Awe)
►Solar Wing 2
► Quick-Time Change 3
► Improvised Ovation 1
►Grit (36)
► Freeze Frame 2
Water poured down around us as my [Grounded] wires retracted and the dust cleared enough to see. [Quick-Time Change] threw me back into Understudy, and I activated [Solar Wing].
The fight was over; The Agent’s suit jacket was torn and shredded, his leg was twisted in a way legs shouldn’t go, and his neck lolled awkwardly as I dragged him up and onto my sailboard. The whole tunnel was filling with water from the damage I’d done to The Agent’s inner sanctum, but I couldn’t worry about any of the henches, the Vs we’d beaten, or even Fursona.
I took off into the sky, gaining altitude even as the fetid, half-treated water rose under us. Part of me—a huge part of me, probably most of me—wanted to drop him. For all I knew, he was dead already, and if anyone was going to be my first kill as a superhero, The Agent was the best villain I could think of.
But I didn’t drop him, even though every fiber of my being wanted to. He was an attempted murderer, a toddler kidnapper, and probably a dozen worse crimes, too. But I’d beaten him. We’d beaten him.
“Fursona, are you okay?” I asked into comms for the dozenth time. Hopefully she’d gotten the henches out, but more importantly, hopefully she’d gotten out herself. If she didn’t answer—if I didn’t catch up to her by the time I got to Tottergarten—I was dropping him off from the fiftieth floor and going looking—screw the consequences.
“Understudy, we’re okay. Just got out of the subway,” Fursona said a minute later. “You must’ve won, because we got the end of Episode that we were winners. Did you kill him?”
“Not yet. I haven’t decided whether it’s a good idea or not,” I replied. “And I’m not even sure he’s still alive.”
“He has to be. Dr. Jackson says that if he’s been working with the Ilneats, he’ll know how to get to them—and where they are. So don’t kill him. Mrs. N can get something out of him for sure. And if not, there’s always the Anti-Nap League.”
“That’s vil shit,” I said, echoing something Sara-N-Dipity had told me a long time ago. Then I looked at the battered, broken Agent sprawled across my sailboard. He’d deserve it, but dammit, I wanted to make the world a better place, and killing him or letting the toddlers—or worse, the retired villains—have him? That wouldn’t help anyone. “We’ll let Mrs. N have him, but not Kaiju Kid, and definitely not the Anti-Nap League.”
“Got it. Dr. Jackson’s working on getting us a car. We’ll meet you at Tottergarten in an hour. Love you,” Bianca said, letting herself come through the mic for a second instead of Fursona.
“Love you too,” I said back. And, with that, I pressed the sailboard to fly faster. The Agent’s limp arms waved in the wind, a wad of paper blew out of his pocket and floated away in the wind, and I squeezed the name tag in my hand as tight as I could—so tight I could feel the name ‘Thornberry’ pushing into my palm.