The ooze undulated, like a slug stretching its shoulders, and gel rolled forward, rising in spikes and cutting off the path of the man. The cape reached up and ripped free one of the string-locks she had for hair, twirling it in a loop by her hip like a lasso. The string grew as she manipulated it, whip-length now. The girl wove it in ever more complex shapes through the air to stop it touching the ground. Behind the string trailed blue-white light. She was carving shapes in the air.
With a flick of her arm the string lashed out and stuck to the gel. Her strange hair spasmed with energy. Blue-white light passed along the string. The ooze froze in place, shuddering, as if it were having the Lumin equivalent of an epileptic fit. The girl stood, straining on the taught string, face twisting with strain. She gestured towards the ooze and immediately the light in the air flew forward and ate into the gel, reducing the mass of the ooze by about half, to the size of a dog.
Cautiously she reached up and flicked something around her neck: a small bell. A quiet note rung out.
“Need back up on bridge one. Got a—”. There was a crashing sound. Mateo spun around.
Another ooze had flown through the window behind them.
The cape glanced over. “Two zymes on the lowest bridge. I repeat, two zymes on bridge one. We’re penned in. Requesting D-type support. Where the fuck is-”
Her string snapped. She gasped, falling backwards. The ooze started moving immediately, crawling forward, lengthening into a thin, sausage shaped barricade that slowly sunk into the floor. The window frame behind it crumbled and fell away. There was a large rent behind it, where the window had collapsed along with part of the floor.
The girl was already swirling another string. This time, she whipped the ooze rather than sticking it, and her strikes carved wounds out of the gel. The blue-white light hung continued to collect around her in the air, thicker this tine. Her strikes splashed gel all over the place, and where it fell it burnt through the bridge, raining down. She walked slowly back and joined the group, gesturing them out of the way, then turned and started beating back the second ooze with her counter arcs. This one had spread out like a sausage as well. Both simply lay in place, dissolving the bridge. There was a crash. A third ooze came through the first rent and slid into the first ooze, fusing into it. The young FR member swore.
The bell rang again, a strange voice forming out of the music.
“We hear you, Snapse. Members currently engaging the flinger beneath you. Once it’s dispatched they may rise to aid but don’t expect them. There’s been another incursion in Sedum. We’re paper thin.”
The girl swore. Her lashing was hardly making a dent in the Lumin, but it was certainly beautiful. Mateo watched in awe as she flicked out a piece of string, hooked the mans briefcase—abandoned on the floor—and flung it into the first ooze. It stopped sinking into the floor, digesting the object. She continued her barrage. With a crunch a fourth ooze flew through the window ahead of them, then a fifth. Both slithered slowly towards the first ooze. The cape shook her head. She gestured and the light, which had been coalescing in thickening shapes as she attacked, flashed, then surged towards her, attaching at the ends of her strange, string like hair. The hair stood on end and shook, and the cape flicked the whip, attacking in a blur. The ooze behind them shrunk under the shredding barrage of her whip. She zipped over to Mateo, a blur of blue light left in her wake.
“You guys need to go back, try to edge around the zyme.” She spoke hyper-fast, sped up. “It might attack, just dodge it and run, get down the building and—”
There was a large bang and the ground beneath them shook. The bridge cambered to the left, tilting down. Everyone slipped and caught themselves, standing and leaning back at an angle. One of the girls screamed, the other whimpered. The boy stopped crying. A bell chimed.
“Snapse they got about seven zymes on the girders underneath that bridge. It’s going down. Evacuate.”
In a flash, she zipped to the window, looked out, and returned.
“Can’t, Fryer. We’ve got civilians.”
“Triage, Snapse.”
There was another bang. The bridge rocked and shuddered. It felt like something on the far side had detached.
“Can’t do it Fry. Fuck off now please.”
Her voice had slowed back down, and she was moving more conventionally again, still lashed at the oozes. About half the original light floated around her. Mateo turned to the man next to him. There was only one ooze blocking their escape.
“Pick up your son and run. I’m going to distract the Lumin. Okay?”
The man looked blankly back at him. Mateo slapped him in the face, then picked up the small boy and gave him to his father, who accepted the child on autopilot. Mateo pointed a finger at the ooze behind them and shot it. A large chunk of gel was hacked out of the ooze. It rolled slightly up, as if cringing. The cape glanced at him, surprised.
He pointed at his smoking finger with his other hand, then lay a hand on the man’s face and said, with exaggerated slowness, “RUN.” The man nodded, turned and dashed. Mateo continued to shoot, while the cape shot at the mega-ooze assembling in front of them and chewing through the bridge. The man made it over with his son first, then one of the girls. But the second girl tripped, falling on a slick batch of corrosive gel, and when she fell the ooze darted forward with surprising mobility and smothered her. Mateo watched her struggle from within the gel briefly.
He shot her.
It was just him and the cape now, side by side. He turned around and shot at the mega-ooze, but there wasn’t really any point. The corridor had already been divided. There was a loud bang from below and the far corridor-half slipped further to the side. It was hanging by a thread.
“You’re very calm.”
He jumped. The cape had spoken to him. She was smiling faintly.
“Yeah?” said Mateo. He didn’t know what to say. He shrugged.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Mateo shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m in the Response, buddy, I don’t care if you’re a Crete.”
“Cool.”
Her face soured.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Eugh. Nothing worse than fresh fucking capes, I swear.”
Mateo went to shrug again, then stopped himself. “I’m not joining FR so don’t bother.”
Her smile didn’t come back. Mateo gestured at the oozes.
“You got these things?”
She shook her head.
“No. Do you?”
“Don’t think so. I need vitals to shoot. They don’t have any.”
“Can you run?”
“I’ll have to.”
The cape thought about something.
“I can lift you down,” she said.
“Nah. I got something to do. If you’re good I’m leaving.”
There was a loud wrenching sound, then a vast boom and crash, and the far half of the bridge fell away. Wind slammed into the now open corridor. He watched the bridge fall, turning slowly, then flinched as it crashed, sending up a cloud of smoke and demolishing the playground. He turned around and walked towards the single rear ooze, shooting at it regularly to beat it down, and slipped by it. When he turned, the cape was gone.
Again he took the stairs. There were fewer people now. Sounds drifted up from bellow him: wind blowing up the stairs, detonations and zings of energy, large slapping sounds and stomping sounds. He tried to shut his ears to it and focus on his breathing. He felt jittery, like he wanted to fight or have sex or go dancing, like there was too much energy in his system. He reached the second lobby and the second bridge and found it deserted except for a strange, yellow light.
Mateo jogged down the corridor of the bridge, glancing around. Something felt out of place. He barely even noticed the floral stench. Why was it empty, and what was the source of the peculiar light? He soon had his answer, less then half way along when the first slug fell on top of him.
He didn’t see it fall, only felt its wet slickness as it wrapped around his neck. Flinching, he immediately reached up and grabbed the thing, sinking his fingers into the thick gel and hooking them around a hard ridge at the centre. He tugged it off of him and flung it down the corridor, where it landed with a splat. His fingers were coated in gel. It burned—a sensation which, as a rhata, was unfamiliar to him. The slug was the size and shape of a lung. It started to inch towards him. He swore and shot it and it exploded. As he did another fell, just to his right. He looked up. His stomach flipped.
The ceiling was coated with slugs, suckling, writhing on top of each other. More started to fall, a steady rhythm of them, hitting the deck and slowly wiggling towards him. But he wasn’t looking at the slugs.
He was looking at their mother.
The strange arachnid creature unhooked its legs and fell, flipping through the air and landing. It was the same Lumin he’d seen down bellow: like a spider with the torso of a man. Where the head should be it had only large pincers and a set of eyes on stalks. It stood, watching him, and another slug fell from the aperture in its abdomen, slick with a slightly lighter yellower gel. He felt, more than heard, its strange keening call.
The slugs started to rain from the ceiling.
It was all Mateo could do to dodge them, jerking each way and firing at the nearest. They crawled slowly, and only took a single shot to dispatch, but there was so many—all slowly crawling towards him. The mother tip toed forwards, trying to get a sense of him. Mateo shot it, the projectile sloughing away a large chunk of gel in its thorax. Then it charged.
Mateo backed up and shot it twice more, aiming for the head. One shot missed and the other took it in the thorax, blasting away another portion of gel. It was hard to tell if he was damaging it. He shot again and it jerked its torso to the side and dodged, increasing its speed. Mateo ran backwards. His foot fell on a slug. He slipped and fell over and before he knew it, the slug was on his chest, wriggling its gel and making for his face.
He breathed fire and it burnt to cinders.
He jumped to his feet, loosing off shots regularly at the spider thing and, with his other hand, hosing down the corridor with fire. It was an effective tool: the slugs burnt up after less then a second of the super heated flames he vented from his palm. But then the spider was on him, swinging a foreleg. He dodged and it came down with its mouth, snapping shut pincers. He ducked and they snapped above his head, and he let fire flow from his palm into its body.
There was no visible effect.
If he looked closely (difficult as he swung and rolled, dodging the legs and mouth of the Lumin while regularly shooting at it with his finger), he could see that the gel of the mother Lumin had a richer, darker hue. It must be more fire resistant. The Lumin swung again at his head, almost connecting. Mateo focused on the fight.
The spider-thing was slowly backing him up against the wall. Another slug fell on him. This time he didn’t hesitate before breathing flames over his own shoulder. Both his jacket and his body were totally resistent, after all. But it distracted him enough that, ducking a leg swipe, he fell for the feinting mandibles. The Lumin twisted its thorax unnaturally, the mandibles turned vertical, and it bit into his shoulder, one pincer piercing his jacket and cutting up under his arm. He felt the organic blade slice though his flesh, expecting it to cut his arm off and surprised when it stopped about half way through the bone.
The spider-thing lifted him and charged forward, slamming him into the wall. He watched in wonder as gel flowed up the creatures body and collected around the mandibles, shoving aggressively into the wound, widening it and filling his shoulder with screaming agony.
Mateo took his free hand, placed it against the ‘head’ of the Lumin, and let rip a messy, unfocused shot.
The head, mandibles, and upper thorax of the creature detonated in a huge wet splash of gel. It slumped to the floor, dead. Mateo slumped down besides it. Strange music rose from the body of the creature. It floated in the air around him, like a hallucination, and started to flow into his body. He let it, wondering if anything would happen. Nothing did. Occasionally he vented fire and incinerated a slug as it got closer.
Mateo couldn’t really say how long he sat there, but eventually he stood, thoughts of his sister bashing against the pain and fatigue. He turned and surveyed the damage. The body of the spider-thing had entirely disintegrated, and there were only a few slugs left. The corridor was a wreck of fire and corrosive slime. He turned again and jumped back, startled.
Floating in the window was a helmeted FR, arms crossed, blue cape billowing in the wind. His helmet was a single sphere of plain black material, his suit the typical white with blue sash, although heavily armoured. Mateo recognised this figure from somewhere… But he couldn’t remember where. He watched Mateo silently, as if appraising an interesting product in a shop. Then the FR reached into the sleeve of his combat shirt and withdrew a card. He flicked it and it drifted to the floor, landing at Mateo’s feet. Then he took a small, nozzled canister from his belt and threw that down too. The helmet flickered, and white text appeared. A simple message:
We ask no questions.
Then the text flickered and switched to a winking face. The suited figure cracked his neck and disappeared. A feather replaced him and drifted, seesawing down.
It had a long way to go.
Mateo picked up the card and glanced at it. It was a contact card with a number and an address. He slid it into his pocket, shaking his head to clear it. He considered, then put the canister in his jacket. He’d think about that later. It made sense that FR would try and recruit him, they were always so desperate for capes. But for now he had other priorities. He jogged down the corridor, running around the slugs, and when he reached the end he looked up the stairs before climbing them. They were clear.
Five minutes later he got to his sister’s apartment and found the door was shut. He wondered if this was a good sign, banging against it. There was no reply. He called out, banged, and called again.
“Raia! Sevit! It’s me! Open up, you’ve gotta get out of here.” There was the sound of steps, then scraping on the other side. The door opened and Raia stood there. She was ghostly pale and shaking. She ran out and flung her arms around him, then leant back.
“Mateo, your arm!”
“Seriously, Raia, we do not have time to talk about it. We’re leaving, where’s Sevit? The building’s not safe.”
Sevit appeared behind her, holding a large duffel bag. He pushed Raia gently on the back and she moved forward, still holding on to Mateo’s jacket and staring wide eyed at the bloody mess he had for a shoulder. The pain was slowly starting to drift in. He ignored it.
He led them down to the ground floor without complications. The building was nearly deserted now. It seemed like those who ran, had run, and the rest where hiding in their rooms. The fight outside was still booming, but it was on the far side of the building. They paused in the doorframe and watched as a huge phoenix made of blue fire or energy flew up from a small mushroom cloud, then dived the ground. There was another boom. Sevit shoved them though the door and they ran outside, greeted by a pair of Beetles in windbreakers who rushed them across the street. An evacuation zone had been set up under large, police issue pavilions, with tea and biscuits and medics on hand. Raia frog-marched her bloody brother to the medic tent, and sat him in the queue for attention.
He fainted and sprawled on the ground.