As Fursona dashed for the door Lady Lockless had opened, Kaiju Kid in hand, I fired another [Starlance] toward Stella-Lunar. She ducked it, but the delay let Fursona slip through to safety with the toddler. I sighed in relief, tension boiling off me. Now, the worst that could happen was…
Stella getting loose on the other Pro-Earth League supers. I couldn’t let that happen, but I needed a moment to get myself back together if I was going to keep fighting her.
In the seconds that it took her to decide her next move, I slipped away, riding my [Solar Wing] into the Hot Zone’s alleys and back streets.
[End of Act One: Act Two in Three Minutes]
I landed behind a dumpster, taking a deep breath. Okay. New goal. Get back to the fight as soon as I could, start hitting her from cover, and try to play keep-away. Hopefully, I could wear her down before she went Eclipse. If not? I didn’t know what I’d do. Probably lose—quickly.
That meant Lab Assistant was probably a trap unless I had time to set up a couple of mid-powered [Science has Rules?] weapons. The problem was that, yeah, I’d ‘won’ Act One, but I’d used too much firepower to do it.
Still, the plan came together in my head, even as Fursona reported that she was on her way to Tottergarten. I nodded slowly. “Okay. If you can switch suits to, I don’t know, Roo-Sona and get back here, great. If not, stay out of it.”
“Yeah, that wrecked Kaiju-Sona. I’ll need some time to put it back together. Pretty sure the cameras caught my face, too. Hopefully, Rocko still feels like editing that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, haha,” I laughed nervously. The secret identity thing had felt important when I was a kid, until Bee had figured mine out instantly. I’d cared about certain people knowing, too—like Su-Bin. Her figuring it out would be disastrous, even though I’d planned to tell her in hopes of making an alliance. But now that I was an active rebel, literally attacking my boss’s business…
The secret identity seemed more important.
Something exploded in the distance, and a second later, I got the Act Two message.
[In Hot Water: Act Two in Progress]
“I’ve gotta go,” I said. Then I headed Fursona off before she could say it herself. “I’ll be careful. Let Mrs. N know what’s going on, okay?”
“You’ve got it. Love you.”
“Love you too.” I used [Solar Wing] and rocketed up until I was near the top of one of the buildings dotting the Hot Zone.
Stella-Lunar was already busy firing a [Sunbeam] into a skyscraper where one of my allies was—I assumed—trying to corner an Ilneat. I’d almost expected the gorilla-otter hybrid aliens to fight back, but they seemed to be both running and ignoring the superpowers being thrown at them. As I watched, one vanished into thin air. A second later, Stella’s [Sunbeam] clipped the Magical Girl who’d been chasing the Ilneat.
I fired a [Starlance] and dove down the side of the building, trying to put some distance between myself and the major league heroine. A moment later, I got the hit message.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
The grin on my face felt feral and catlike, but a moment later, Stella-Lunar slammed through the building and appeared next to me. “Burn! [Solar Flare]!”
I ducked back into the building, firing another [Starlance] her way. “Nah.”
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
The look of fury on her face as the light exploded around her, only to miss me by inches, was super satisfying. She turned mid-air and zoomed after me, wand extended. A [Maximum Starlance] missed me by milliseconds as I switched to Rainy Day mid-air with [Quick-Time Change]. The frozen time worked to my benefit; I got myself turned around and used [Wind Front] to knock her off-course as soon as it started again.
[Flashy Fitting-Room! +1 Flamboyance Point]
[Steel Yourself! +1 Grit Point]
[Badass Move! +1 Badass Point]
This time, the building she crashed into creaked ominously, and she didn’t come out of it right away. I bounced into an office one floor down from where she’d crash-landed, building a [Thunderhead] for the biggest hit I could manage.
But she still didn’t appear. When she failed to come back after fifteen seconds, I switched plans to [Virga], letting the healing wash across me. Then, when she still didn’t show up, I slow-transformed to Understudy.
[Medic! +1 Cunning Point]
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[Rejuvenation Activated: HP 12/15]
I was almost full, with all my biggest powers still available. Meanwhile, Stella-Lunar was nowhere to be seen, but I hadn’t healed her with Virga. She was still up, and if she was still up…that meant she was after my teammates again!
----------------------------------------
When I caught up with Earth’s strongest hero, she looked a little worse for wear. I’d tattered her costume pretty well, but the switch to Sun Form had reset most of the damage. Still, she’d had the bad luck to run into Theseus, Gourmet, and Foamy Flash, and even though she’d clearly won, they’d hit her pretty hard.
From the burn marks and soot covering her costume, Gourmet had gone dragon. It hadn’t been enough, but I felt like I had a chance now.
“They keep getting away,” Theseus muttered from the ground. He’d been disarmed—literally—and he had a look of pure frustration on his face. “We couldn’t get any of them.”
Stella-Lunar sucked in a breath, turning toward me. “Going to take your shot now?” she asked. “See how it goes.”
I nodded, but before I could make a move, the watch Mindstorm had given me buzzed.
Well, shit. The feeling of dread that had been building inside me since Stella-Lunar disappeared redoubled. This was bad. Really bad. We couldn’t complete our objectives, the other cities were buckling, and Stella had just mopped the floor with three minor-league heroes.
I needed to buy time for us. No one else seemed to be here, other than some 3V1L henches that’d been promoted to V by The Agent, and the team had handled those okay. I hadn’t seen any around since Stella touched down. It was Stella herself that was the problem.
One big push it was, then.
I used [Power-Weaving] and started up an [I-Frame Transform]. As I shifted and the world paused, I rotated around to Stella-Lunar’s back, throwing myself into position just as the world started moving again. She fired a [Sunbeam] at the spot I’d just been, and faux-brick facade melted on an office building across the street.
[Flashy Fitting-Room! +1 Flamboyance Point]
[Steel Yourself! +1 Grit Point]
[Floating Points: 1 Flamboyance]
As I followed up the maneuver with a [Virga] that healed her—but healed me and my team more—Stella-Lunar jumped into the air and used [Solar Flare]. The damage exploded out, ripping over the whole street like a bomb going off. My healing made up for most of it, but not all. It did keep the other PEL supers up, though, so that was something.
[Medic! +4 Cunning Points]
[HP 9/15]
[Floating Points: 3 Flamboyance, 1 Grit]
Not that Theseus was going to be much help without any of his weapons. “You three, leave!” I yelled. Then, before Stella-Lunar could get any more distance, I used [Ride the Lightning] and fired the bolt at her as hard as I could. The tendril of electricity ripped into her, knocking her out of the sky.
[Electric Lightshow! +1 Flamboyance Point]
[Power-Weaving! +6 Flamboyance, 3 Grit, and 1 Cunning Points]
The hit rocked her, but she recovered with a series of [Maximum Starlances] that I couldn’t dodge. As they hit me one after another, I ducked for the half-melted office building, sliding across the carpet painfully to avoid any more beams coming my way.
[HP 3/15]
I couldn’t handle that kind of firepower. If I wanted to win—or even to stall long enough for my friends to get out—I needed to go back to the plan that had pushed her earlier. Another [Maximum Starlance] tore through the building, and I ducked under an Ilneat-sized desk. It promptly exploded, showering me in wood shards but absorbing Stella-Lunar’s hit.
I crawled under the desks and past cubicles that felt almost human, looking for a window—either one to escape out of or the opportunity kind.
Stella smashed through a wall, and I froze. “Where are you?” she said, walking past the desk I was under as I held my breath. One of the windows was opening up. The others were shattered from all the fighting. And a plan was coming together. I’d give her everything I had in one big burst, see what I could accomplish, and then run. Not skirmish. Not fight. Just run. If she followed me, great.
If not? I’d keep harassing and poking at her until she either turned to deal with me or lost. Either would be fine; Theseus and Gourmet could get out that way. We’d have someone to keep up the fight, at least until the Yorkston supers showed up and mopped the floor with them.
One deep breath later, I stood up and shouted, “[Limelight Barrage]!” I spun, firing the [Starlance] volley into Stella-Lunar’s back. They hit in a rippling tide of pink-and-blue energy that knocked her across the office and into a class-walled executive suite.
[Dramatic Damage! +5 Drama Points]
As she rolled to recover, I fired two more [Starlances] at her. The first hit, but she waved her wand, and a black hole absorbed the other one. Then, without waiting for her to pop back up—I hadn’t done enough damage, and I knew it—I started running.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
When I reached my window—the kind you jumped out of—I did exactly that.
Falling from an office building was a familiar feeling, but this time, [Solar Wing] activated and caught me when I was still twenty feet off the ground. I rocketed toward the alleys again. “Chase me, you bitch,” I muttered under my breath, both hoping and fearing that she would.
She did.
Overhead, something incredibly bright zipped by, nearly blinding me with its brilliance. It got in front of me, and I fired another [Starlance] at it before turning to run the other way.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
But instead of chasing me, Stella-Lunar simply appeared in front of me, slightly out of breath. I sucked in a breath myself and fired a [Starlance] into a nearby back door, then kicked it as she dashed down the alley toward me. The door swung open, and I ducked through before slamming it shut.
A moment later, it started glowing molten orange. She was melting it! I slipped into a storage room, then out into the convenience store I’d broken into. The windows were all broken, so I hopped through and used [Solar Wing] again, playing to escape. Not to win. Just to escape.
All the light seemed to suck out of the world.
Stella-Lunar stalked through the door, the white glow that had covered her costume almost invisible compared to the ink-black shadow covering her. Only an orange halo burning around her body showed me where she was; that glowed brighter and brighter, making my eyes water.
Stella-Lunar cracked her knuckles as the solar flares arced across her shoulders and down her arms. “Understudy, it’s time to show you what I should have done to Vigilant Vow. You took your shot. Now it’s time for me to take mine.”
She swaggered toward me, Iyago the owl spreading his wings behind her and her costume in full Eclipse.