Volume 8: Telophase
Issue 2: Terror of the West
Jannette Adrian Churchwell
By Nova
“Red Queen on my position!” FBI guy screamed into his radio as Red Queen’s aura-wreathed hand reached towards him. “I need immediate support! I repeat, Red Queen! She’s here!”
The spell that had been over Ripple, Mr. Mystery, and myself suddenly broke. Ripple darted forward, the ground beneath her feet shattering as she lunged toward Red Queen. She crossed the distance between them in an instant, and—before Red Queen could touch FBI guy, where he lay on the asphalt—Ripple slammed her spear into the villain’s side with an ear-splitting crack. Red Queen stumbled backwards from the blow, and Ripple quickly followed it up with another strike, then another.
Without looking, Ripple kicked FBI guy backwards and, as he rolled—screaming, toward us—she shouted, “Get him out of here!”
I was by his side in a moment, lifting him with all my strength over my shoulder. My muscles ached in protest as I hefted him, but my powers immediately repaired the damage. Still, I must have looked slightly comical as I rested him—a man almost twice my size—onto my shoulders.
Mr. Mystery snapped his fingers, and a van-sized purple rectangle appeared on the ground in front of me. I stepped onto it, and the pavement bent beneath my feet like I was stepping onto a trampoline. “To the rooftop!” Mr. Mystery shouted, pointing to the dollar store. I nodded, and—jumping as high as I could while carrying a large man in full combat gear—bounced off the purple rectangle into the air. We came to a gentle landing on top of the dollar store.
“A-are you alright?” I asked FBI guy, setting him on the rooftop. He didn’t say anything, but nodded frantically as he looked wide-eyed down at Ripple and Red Queen locked in battle. Ripple still wailed on Red Queen with her spear, but—while the ground shook with each impact—she only forced Red Queen to take a few steps back at best. Red Queen, for her part, was taking a few half-hearted swipes at Ripple, but so far Ripple was staying out of her aura’s grasp…
I turned back to FBI guy. “H-hey, what’s your name?” I asked.
His eyes finally went to me. “R-Robert McDowel, you don’t remember?”
He sounded so indignant that I almost laughed. “S-sorry,” I murmured. “Look, y-you need to get out of here…”
He nodded, and—as I turned to face the battle once more—I heard him scampering over the rooftop and away. I hoped that FBI guy… Robert, would get somewhere safe.
Honestly, I hoped we could all get somewhere safe.
“Enough of this stupidity,” Red Queen said, her voice shrill and clear over Ripple’s cracking blows. The crimson aura clinging to her right hand suddenly extended out, warping into a long, thin blade-like shape. Without warning, in a quick flick of her hand, she swung the blade out toward Ripple, who rose her spear up horizontally to block the blow.
I expected a clash; the two powers facing off to see which physics-defying force would overpower the other.
Instead, Red Queen’s crimson blade sliced straight through Ripple’s black, metal spear—like it wasn’t even there. The ground shattered beneath Ripple’s feet as she leapt back in an attempt to dodge Red Queen’s strike.
But it wasn’t enough. I saw a flash of red. Ripple screamed. She went rolling backwards, away from Red Queen, splattering blood across the parking lot. The two pieces of her spear fell to the ground.
“Ripple!” I shouted, leaping from the top of the dollar store. I heard bones crack as I rolled to the ground, but I didn’t care. My feet pounded against the ground as I ran, my powers undoing the damage to my bones with each step. Mr. Mystery was already at Ripple’s side by the time I reached her. He snapped his fingers, and a blue, rectangular shield appeared between us and Red Queen.
“How is she?” he asked, his voice strained.
Half her costume was downright coated in blood as I grabbed hold of her. My powers traced through her body and I breathed a sigh of relief. “She’s okay,” I told him. A deep cut had raked up her torso and into her cheek, but hadn’t hit anything important.
“Don’t feel okay,” Ripple groaned, breathing heavily. “H-haven’t hurt this much in a long time.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said, immediately getting to work on sealing her wounds. But it didn’t make sense. Ripple’s powers rendered her practically immune to kinetic energy… which was pretty much everything.
Unless…
I wondered if Ripple had realized it, too—that, since Red Queen’s aura didn’t really interact with matter and physics, this included kinetic energy. Matter was pushed aside by her powers, and if she made her field sharp enough… Theoretically, she could push between atoms…
Which, of course, meant Ripple was as vulnerable to her as any of the rest of us.
I looked up from Ripple just in time to see Red Queen’s crimson blade slice straight through the middle of Mr. Mystery’s shield. It shattered, splitting into ten, a hundred, a thousand pieces… radiating into the air in a cloud of blue sparks.
“Shit,” Mr. Mystery cursed. He snapped his finger again and another shield appeared in front of Red Queen, who shattered it just as easily. “I-I can’t hold her!” he shouted.
“Ripple, can you get us out of here?” I asked, sealing up the last of her wounds.
She nodded, weakly, staggering to her feet. “I-I think-”
But, before she could finish, Red Queen darted forward. Mr. Mystery dived out of her way with a cry, and, as Ripple turned to me, she tapped my stomach. I was thrown backwards by the sudden force of Ripple’s powers. I tumbled on the pavement, the rough blacktop ripping up my skin. I could barely make out Ripple rolling backwards—just in time to avoid Red Queen’s blade—which ripped through the ground where we were just standing.
Red Queen halted abruptly, and turned to look at me as I came to a crumpled rest. “You…” she said, glaring at me through her devilish mask. “You were the one who beat Sasquatch…”
Blood rolled down my face as I stared back at her, my eyes wide. “I’d beaten him before,” I quietly said.
“No, no, no… You’re the one who got that Fed taskforce organized… Because Sasquatch was stupid enough to lose to you.” A sneer crept into her otherwise shrill voice, and I thought I saw the aura blade grow another inch as she pointed it at me. “You forced our hand early.”
“T-that was more of a team effort,” I squeaked, scrambling backwards on all fours from Red Queen as she advanced on me.
“Then it’s a shame the rest of your team isn’t here to see-” She stopped, looking up.
Before she could say anything else, there was a booming crash. Red Queen vanished into a cloud of dust and pure white feathers.
Debris rained down on me as I crawled away—not even looking back, dreading what I would see. Booming impacts sounded behind me, ripping shockwaves through the dusty air. I started crawling faster, trying to get away. To get away from her.
The impacts ceased. “Oh daaarling,” a sing-songy voice called. I turned back just in time to see two white wings sweep the dust aside. They flapped rhythmically, carrying a woman in a flowing white robe out of a deep crater in the pavement and into the air. Her skin was still flawless, her blonde hair immaculate…
And when she looked down on me, smirking, I felt sicker than while Red Queen was trying to murder me.
“Seraph,” I spat.
“No ‘thanks for saving my life?’” Seraph asked, chuckling. “You know, I’ve done that a lo-”
“Your confidence is undeserved…” Red Queen interrupted. She emerged from the crater, apparently unharmed. “That was almost impressive,” she continued, looking up at Seraph. “But now I have both of the heroes who took down Sasquatch. Thank you.”
Red Queen leapt into the air, moving so quickly she was a crimson blur against the smoky sky. She reached Seraph in an instant—before she could react—and lashed out with her blade. Seraph recoiled, her white robes dyed red.
“Shit,” I gasped. Red Queen’s powers discounted Ripple’s—which is how she was able to cut through Ripple’s normal invulnerability—but Seraph was physically tougher, to a preposterous degree. If Red Queen could draw blood with her blade, just how ludicrously sharp was it?
Seraph struck Red Queen hard in the face, knocking her away with an impact that shook the ground underneath my feet. Red Queen hurtled downward. As she skidded through the parking lot, she carved a trail of devastation in her wake; marking the asphalt underneath her and slamming through signposts. Seraph followed close behind her, diving low…
Then, suddenly, she dropped to the ground—grasping at her side.
“Damnit,” Seraph hissed. My eyes widened as I saw blood oozing between her fingertips.
In the years I had worked with Seraph—fighting the Gentleman, Sasquatch, Sutre, and so many others… I’d never seen Seraph bleed before. She was the one who spilled blood.
This didn’t happen.
Red Queen was already back on her feet. She strode, leisurely, toward Seraph.
Seraph flapped her wings, and rose a few feet into the air before falling back to Earth. She gritted her teeth and clutched at her bleeding side, desperately looking around herself. For a moment, her gaze passed over me. A shudder ran through me; although she looked toward me, it was like she only saw something invisible. The moment only lasted a split second. Then, like a wounded bird, she flapped over to a nearby abandoned car. She grabbed its bumper, and hurtled it with one hand at Red Queen.
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Red Queen didn’t budge as the vehicle flew toward her. She only raised her hand—her blade sliced the car cleanly in half, and she stepped between the two pieces as they whizzed past her.
The halved vehicle smashed to bits on the street behind Red Queen. Her hair billowed in the burst of air from the car’s wake, but she didn’t turn away from Seraph. She didn’t stop. It wasn’t good enough.
We weren’t strong enough.
The shadows had lengthened as the sun crept beneath the horizon. The red sky above us began to fade into a smoky black. In the growing dark, Seraph cast me a look I didn’t recognize. Something like… desperation. She opened her mouth—like she was going to say something, but she didn’t. She only bit her lip, grasped at her side, and looked back to Red Queen.
“Pathetic, each and every one of you,” Red Queen said, barely ten feet away from Seraph.
I heard the pavement shatter as Ripple leapt over the rubble of the parking lot. She swung her fist at Red Queen, striking her with a blow that cracked the ground under her feet. “Get the fuck back!” she screamed. At who, though? Red Queen? Me and Seraph? Mr. Mystery, wherever he was?
But it didn’t really matter. I took the opportunity to scramble backwards, diving for cover behind an abandoned SUV. Seraph stumbled after me, her eyes locked on me. She joined me behind the SUV, staring at me, with a hungering sort of look… like she wanted something.
Slowly, it dawned on me. As the booming impacts from Ripple’s fists shook the ground around us, I nodded slowly. “You… want something? I asked, glancing down at the bloody gash on her side.
Seraph’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. Despite the battle raging around us, I smiled beneath my mask. It was all so clear. “Too proud?” I giggled; the laugh sounded unexpected and strange coming from me, but I couldn’t hold it in. “Too fucking proud to ask for help…”
“We have more important things to worry about, darling,” Seraph said, glaring at me.
I laughed. She was right, of course. I was being so stupid. The longer I drew this out, the more likely it was that Ripple would get hit, or even killed, by Red Queen. If I had an ounce of sense, I would reach out, seal Seraph’s wound, get her back in the fight. Maybe together, Ripple and Seraph could even bring down Red Queen…
But this fucking bitch… I spent four years as her tool. Now she needed me…
“Say the fucking magic word,” I said to Seraph, smiling beneath my mask.
“Oh, you bitch…” Seraph muttered, taking a step closer to me. She loomed above me, her wings spread wide. “You want Ripple to die? What about your… girlfriend… That Asian girl you’ve been hanging around with?” She smiled, darkly, my direction. “Be a shame if no one could save her before those dinosaurs got to her…”
My mouth dropped. The giddiness I had felt just moments ago drained out of me entirely, replaced by a sickening sense of dread. She knew about Holly? How… It’s not like she was my girlfriend or anything… But I did my best to keep my life as Stitch and my life as Jannette as separate as possible. Was she following me? Just… watching me and Holly hang out? When? At Aesop’s, playing Icons? The other night when we had gone to the movies? Had Seraph been there, hovering in the clouds, when we walked home together?
The dread gave way to a rising fury. It surged through me with a force that seemed louder than the clashing of Ripple and Red Queen before us. “How fucking dare you!” I shouted.
But Seraph kept smiling. “Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on you, or else you’ll just keep stumbling into monster dens, burning buildings…” Her smile widened. “…a Yakuza dive bar?”
I looked down, my blood running cold. The sounds of Ripple’s fists and the cracking asphalt grew more distant, somehow. “You really are quite helpless,” Seraph said.
“Fuck you,” I muttered. A brief thought flashed in my mind, that I could reach out, touch her brain with my powers, give her a stroke or an aneurysm…
I could kill her.
I glared up at her. “Fuck you,” I said again, reaching out to grab her arm. Like lightning, my powers traced through her every cell, and I set to work sealing the gash in her side. It would be so easy to waver; to misalign an artery, miswire a nerve…
But Seraph was right. The thought of Holly being torn apart by some… Velociraptors or whatever was a more nightmarish image than I could take.
More nightmarish, even, than Seraph.
I heard a cry from behind us. I spun around, peering through the shattered windows of the SUV. I saw Ripple rolling backwards… her right arm spinning off in a different direction. Blood gushed from her shoulder, and she collapsed to the ground.
She wasn’t moving.
“Seraph,” I snarled, but she was already in the air. She hurtled a few feet above the pavement at Red Queen, striking her before she could reach Ripple’s inert form, and knocked the villain back ten or twenty yards. Not wasting a moment, Seraph dived down toward Red Queen and unleashed a flurry of booming blows against her.
I took my chance and rushed to Ripple’s side. Her breathing was shallow when I got there, but she was still breathing. Her skin was pale though, and I didn’t need my powers to tell she was losing a lot of blood. I grabbed hold of her and immediately sealed what was left of her right arm, leaving a blood crusted stump in its place.
“Ripple, can you hear me?” I asked, she didn’t say anything, just moaned incoherently. I leaned in and whispered, “Lin, I’ll get you out of here.”
“Dear Lord,” I heard Mr. Mystery gasp, as he emerged out from behind a chunk of rubble I thought just slightly too small to conceal him. “I-is…”
“She’ll live,” I said. “Where the Hell were you?” I asked.
Mr. Mystery shrugged, sheepishly. “I would be a liar if I said I was waiting for my chance to defeat Red Queen…” He cast his gaze back toward the brawl between Seraph and Red Queen. Seraph was circling the villain almost too fast for my eyes to follow, every now and again striking her with an earth-shaking blow.
I shook my head. “I get it.” I really did. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said. I motioned to the dollar store’s rooftop.
Mr. Mystery nodded, and—with a snap of his fingers—the purple rectangle appeared again on the pavement in front of the dollar store. I heaved Ripple onto my shoulders and, together, we bounced off the purple blacktop to the rooftop. Carefully, I laid Ripple down and cast my gaze around Redding’s burning cityscape, searching for a potential escape route.
But the sky was dark, now that the sun had finally set, and it looked like half the city had lost power. In many places, the only light I could see were from the burning tongues of distant fires, raging apparently uncontrolled. Overhead, I saw helicopters flying in circles above the city, and the sounds of jet engines roared in the skies above. Gunfire cackled through it all, punctuated by the occasional booming explosion.
“Do you happen to remember whether or not there’s a nearby safe zone?” Mr. Mystery asked, looking over the same vista.
“I remember something about a high school to the south…” I muttered.
“Good enough,” Mr. Mystery said. He looked back at Ripple, “If you were to wager a guess… How long would it take for you to get her back on her feet? Regrow her arm?”
“Depends on how useful I need to be later…” I looked back at the battle between Seraph and Red Queen. The so-called hero had resorted to throwing debris at Red Queen to keep her distance. But it wasn’t doing much good. Red Queen easily dodged most of Seraph’s projectiles, and the few that hit were just shattering harmlessly off the villain’s crimson aura.
We were all just playing for time, and unless a miracle happened…
“Wait,” Mr. Mystery said, pointing into the dark, smokey sky. “Look there. It’s her.”
I turned my eyes to the sky and saw it: a small, violet comet streaking high into the air… toward us. It moved with tremendous speed and, in moments, had crossed what must have been miles. The comet stopped, suddenly, a few hundred feet into the air with a bang. Wreathed in a corona of violet light was a woman. She wore a tight, purple costume, and her eyes flashed a burning violet. Above each shoulder floated six points of light—miniature violet stars—and her long brown hair billowed behind her in the wind. It was Asteria, leader of Starlight, greatest hero of the new millennium…
And maybe the only one of us strong enough to take Red Queen on and live to tell the tale.
“Stand clear!” she ordered, her voice stern and commanding. It carried over the sounds of battle below, clear above the cracking impacts and crash of debris. Seraph’s eyes went wide as she saw Asteria in the air above, and pulled away from Red Queen in a sonic boom.
Red Queen, for her part, finally seemed impressed. “Asteria!” she cried from the ground. “We meet again.”
Asteria didn’t respond. Instead, three of the miniature stars above her shoulders lanced forward in beams of brilliant violet energy. They struck Red Queen dead-on, knocking her backwards and forcing the villain into the ground between two of the fast food joints. The bright beams of energy almost seemed to intensify as they focused on Red Queen, driving her deeper into the ground. I couldn’t even see the villain as the light burned bright, and the pavement around the point of impact began to glow a brilliant white, melting like ice on a hot day.
All at once, the beams cut out. Three stars had disappeared from Asteria’s shoulders, but she still had nine left. Down on the ground, in a crater full of molten pavement, I saw Red Queen rising to her feet, apparently unbothered by the burning heat around her. But Asteria didn’t seem bothered either. “Nomad one, two, engage,” I heard her calmly say.
I didn’t know how I didn’t hear them before, but—a moment after Asteria’s command—two black military helicopters roared out from behind a line of oak trees half a mile away. Each bristled with weapons, and two racks of missiles jutted out from the cockpits like stunted wings.
Without saying anything, one of the stars above Asteria’s shoulder whizzed down in front of us and unfolded into a wide, transparent, rectangular shield. I watched the helicopters warily as they flew toward us. After a moment, both let loose a flurry of rockets, which ripped through the air in a deafening stream. Explosions burst around Red Queen, her figure consumed by fire and smoke filling the air.
Shrapnel and shockwaves pounded Asteria’s shield in front of us, but it didn’t crack. I looked up at Asteria just in time to see her fire off all her remaining stars, which whizzed through the air and exploded with the rockets. Violet blasts joined with orange until, after what felt like ages, it suddenly stopped.
Me and Mr. Mystery glanced at each other before carefully walking to the edge of the rooftop. The smoke was still clearing, but I could make out the ruins of the two fast food joints Red Queen had stood between. Craters covered the area—which now looked more like the surface of the moon than a street—and fires still burned in the rubble.
But I didn’t see Red Queen.
My heart rose with the hope that Red Queen, the terror of the west, had finally been brought down. But Asteria didn’t seem as convinced. “Search the area,” she said, though I wasn’t sure if she was talking to us. “She must be somewhere.”
The two helicopters rose above us now, and flicked on spotlights which illuminated the ground below us. Asteria joined them in the sky, scanning the ground below her for any signs of movement.
“Do you think they got her?” Mr. Mystery asked.
“Explosions like that… wouldn’t leave a body…” I answered, somewhat breathlessly. I was, admittedly, distracted by Asteria’s arrival. Seeing her floating above the battlefield… It was like something out of a movie. And seeing her in action like that was almost unbelievable. The closest our paths had ever come before was during the press gala after the New Mexico Meltdown… and even then I hadn’t gotten this close.
“You may be correct,” Mr. Mystery said. “But, if it is all the same to you, I’d rather err on the side of caution.”
“You think she survived?” I asked, tearing my eyes off Asteria to look toward Mr. Mystery.
He nodded. “Ripple and Seraph hit her with all they had… and it didn’t even crack that field of hers. I would wager nothing short of a nuclear device would.”
“Don’t give them any ideas,” I muttered as I saw Asteria turn back toward us. My heart caught in my throat as she neared. “I-I don’t w-want a repeat of W-Wichita,” I managed to stammer out.
“Agreed,” Mr. Mystery said, just as Asteria came to a stop, floating off the edge of the dollar store’s roof.
“Did you see what happened to her?” Asteria asked us.
We shook our heads.
“Damnit,” Asteria cursed. “Alright, she may still be somewhere around here… Best case is she’s running…”
“Y-you don’t think she’s dead?” I managed to ask. Seeing her up close was even more awe-inspiring, let alone talking to a living legend like her.
Her glowing eyes met mine. “I’ve been fighting her since the nineties, nothing I’ve seen would suggest she’d be killed that easily.” She turned away from us and started to float back toward the burning rubble. “If you can’t find a body, it means they aren’t dead…”
Before either of us could say anything else, Asteria rocketed into the sky, leaving us behind. “I really hope she’s wrong,” Mr. Mystery muttered.
I nodded, returning to Ripple’s side. She was still unconscious, but her breathing was stable now. “I-I agree but… Well, she knows Red Queen better than us.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Mystery admitted, “but if she’s right, this,” he motioned to Redding’s burning cityscape, “is just the beginning.”