=== CHUCK ===

I couldn’t hear what was happening, but Kari could and she was getting amped up. Even through her new emotional mask, anxiety, excitement, and apprehension were coming off of her. Cold rage was coming off of Bion. Jenny was excited and pure giddy. Techmaster was nervous. People were going to die today. Criminals, sure, but people. I grimaced and swallowed. We were pulling up over the garden the ceremony was happening at. I extended my senses and wavered a little bit. There were so many people there. There was a complex mix of emotions. Jealousy, lust, adoration, hunger, hatred, joy, apprehension, fear, and love. The love was strong. It was coming up from the front and I didn’t need to see them to know who it was. It was definitely Curtis Reese and Buck Cherry. There was another source of love, not quite the same that was radiating off to the side of those two giant flames. Romantic love feels different than platonic love and this was definitely platonic.

  I felt almost bad for what we were about to do. We were about to destroy the happiest I had ever felt Curtis. Once we were overhead and nothing happened for a moment, Kari blasted down and broke through the glass ceiling of the greenhouse, and crashed down to earth. I started to float down with Bion and Jenny.

  “I do. I object!” Kari shouted. Fear spread through the crowd. People started screaming and running, trampling over the unconscious bodies of their fellows. Some fell and some kept running. I shot out things to apprehend them. Techmaster did the same. Little machines flew forward and started grappling people and pinning them to the ground. Bion landed next to Kari and aimed a laser forward. Esvanir and Buck Cherry were already in motion. He dived forward and disappeared. Cherry sank through the floor. Her usual tactic. I tried to limit what my emotional and mental senses would tell me so that I could keep the constructs going. If I got too distracted, I wouldn’t be able to maintain them. But when Curt reappeared next to us, his rage and hatred almost blinded me.

  And there was something else. Someone was pushing on my emotions. Depressing them. I tried to focus but it was hard. I just felt numb. I felt nothing. I felt something slam into me and I jolted with electricity and collapsed. Kari was already in action. So was Bion. He shot forth a series of missiles which Esvanir redirected at all of us. Jenny shot forward and tried to crash into him. He jumped out of the way and she slammed into Bion and kept going. Andrew toppled over her and landed heavily on his back. Cherry came up from underground and pulled him down with her, causing him to convulse all the while. She then appeared before Kari completely naked. There was blind rage radiating off of her just as potent as Curt’s. Maybe more so. She was going to try to kill Kari. “You ruined my wedding, you fucking bitch.”

  Cindi Drei tried to tackle her, but Kari just stepped out of the way and slammed a fist down into her head. Cindi went flying from it but managed to catch herself midair. Then collapsed to the ground, squinting hard. The rage lessened some, but I think that was less from calming down and more from being hit by Smash Gal. She struggled to her feet and was immediately tackled to the ground by Kari who started punching her. Not at her full strength. Kari was trying to arrest them. Not kill them. Thank the Gods for that, I thought.

  Cherry grabbed Kari’s head and screamed. Kari struggled to keep up as all of her muscles convulsed violently. She collapsed onto Buck Cherry who phased through her and stood wobbly. Her ribs had been broken and she was bruised and when she tried to walk she collapsed. Curt, who was dodging the lasers of Techmaster, was struck in the shoulder by one of them. He rolled with the blow and grasped at his burning shoulder.

  Bion burst through the ground and crashed straight back down coughing heavily. I flew forward and started to generate a construct but I was overwhelmed by his rage and it faltered. I watched him open a portal in front of a laser shot from one of Techmaster’s little machines and it slashed into Bion’s suit and he screamed. Then Esvanir kicked him in the head and he rolled over and slashed up at him with boiling plasma. He barely managed to dodge out of the way, his tuxedo burning off of him as he did. I tried to focus on helping Wan. To help him. To help everyone here. This was a disaster. But everyone’s emotions were too high and I couldn’t keep them out. Not like this. I concentrated and changed my suit. Something that would cover my head more. Help me focus. I watched him open a portal and then watched as Bion slashed himself. His armor melted out of the way and blood spurted forth and he collapsed. I could feel his pain and it broke me. Cherry’s pain. I had to shut myself off from it. Everything had gone from numb to a thousand times worse and I created a wall around me and another and another until I was completely separated from the events. This was too much.

=== CURT ===

“Mind, Bion, whoever the rest of you idiots are. Leave now!” I shouted. My entire body was shaking. “Take the wounded and go. This is your only chance. If you’re not gone immediately, you’re all going to die.”

  This was not a threat. Threats are for people who don’t know how to act. I had already started calculating exactly what I was going to do. Kari was going to die today. I was going to make sure of it. Professor Mind was hiding in one of his constructs and I opened a portal and a bomb dropped into my hand and I threw it at the construct. A pink blur rushed forward and caught it. It exploded in her hands and she stood in front of me. “So is this who you are? In addition to being a thief, you’re a murderer? Is that really what you want, Curtis?”

“Don’t! Don’t you ever fucking say my name again!” I screamed. She charged forward and I tried to dodge her punch but I couldn’t. I started to go flying, but she grabbed me and started punching me again and again. I tried to block but she wouldn’t allow it. My mind started to go blank. But I caught sight of Cindi in the edges of my vision and I focused again. I opened a portal and slammed both of us with a bazooka blast’s worth of water and we both went down, but I rolled onto my back and kicked her off of me. She landed on her feet.

  “You can’t win, Curt. Just give up. Please. I don’t want to do this,” Kari pleaded.

  “Y-you,” my voice shook with pain and rage. “You don’t want to do what, Smash Gal? Ruin my wedding? Take the happiest day of my life and make it about you. Take the only thing good in my life away from me? Is that what you don’t want to do, Smash Gal?”

  “I-I . . . You’re a criminal! You have to be stopped! So does she.”

  “I’m the criminal in this case?” The quavering in my voice faded away. I could barely speak above a whisper. While this was happening I cycled through all of the teleport points I had all over the world. “You invaded a country with no extradition to destroy the lives of people who weren’t hurting a goddamn person. You have made yourself judge, jury, and executioner! And I’m the criminal? Smash Gal, you’re a monster. You’re not some valiant hero doing good in the world. You’re a fucking bully who forces your goddamn nose in places where it doesn’t belong. You teamed up with murderers. You teamed up with a war criminal firing missiles at peaceful guests just to fuck over someone who beat you once. Someone who won against you. And you couldn’t handle it.”

  “You think this is about our fight? Oh my God! Curt! You’re so fucking conceited. You’re a criminal!” She screamed at me.

  “I told you, Smash Gal, keep my name out of your fucking mouth,” I said in the most even tone I could manage. I opened a portal and dumped a slew of boiling magma, now lava, onto her. She screamed in pain and charged forward. I teleported behind her and did it again. The grass and dirt under our feet caught fire. But I couldn’t be bothered to care. She screamed again and spun, throwing lava everywhere. Some landed near Cherry who was still unconscious and without thinking, I teleported over to her. Tears stung my eyes. I tried to blink them away. She was broken again. And it was Kari’s fault. I opened a portal and let her go through to a bed somewhere where hopefully nobody would be watching. Kari charged forward but I closed the portal before she could go through it. She slammed her fist into my head and the world spun. I staggered on my feet and managed to stay standing, but only by the skin of my teeth.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Surrender!”

  “Fuck you!” I responded. It was not my most poignant response. “Go ruin someone else’s life! Take away someone else’s happiness!”

=== KARI ===

I stopped in front of Curt. He was shaking and bleeding and was barely conscious. He couldn’t catch me with that same trick. Take away someone else’s happiness? I couldn’t even comprehend what he was saying. “Why do you think I’m here, Curt? I’m not here to ruin your life. You . . . You did that yourself. When you became a criminal.”

  “Post hoc justification,” he slurred. He stood up straighter. Even though he was bleeding out, even though he was barely standing, he still put it in the most infuriatingly technical terms. I threw a haymaker and he did manage to teleport out of the way. He slammed something into my back and electricity jolted through my body. I grabbed his little toy and crushed it, my hand shaking. I swung on him but he wasn’t there. Instead, he was sitting in one of the chairs not far away, breathing heavily. His eyes were barely focusing. I could see it under that ridiculous mask he was wearing. He was running out of steam.

  “Curt, just surrender. You’re done. Tell me where you sent Cindi. We’ll get her help. You’ll go to jail, but you can rebuild. Rehabilitate yourselves. Maybe even become heroes. It’s not over. You’re better than this.” He glared at me.

  “Are you really that fucking stupid?” I staggered back as though he had hit me. Those eyes were focused again. And his face was set in stone. He looked down at his bloody hand and then replaced it on his side, groaning.

  “Curt, please. I don’t want to have to hurt you anymore.”

  “Then don’t,” he spat back.

  “You’re a criminal. Don’t make me do this. Just surrender.”

  “No. I’m not living on your terms anymore, Smash Gal,” The way he said my title . . . I . . . I wasn’t Kari to him anymore. I wasn’t anything. We weren’t friends. We were just enemies. “I’m not going to jail. I’m not going to join your little collection of murderers, war-profiteers, and tights-wearing Barbie dolls too stupid to see how the world works.”

“You can’t win.”

  “You’re probably right. Whatever you’ve been doing for the past couple of months has sanded off the edges. Now you’re a more dangerous, more capable weapon of mass destruction than you ever were before. I probably couldn’t stop without doing something really insane.” He stood up, wobbling. “But I will. So, I’m going to give you one chance. Leave. Now. Take Bion or he’ll die. Take Professor Mind-Destroyer, too. I think he’s trying not to have an aneurysm. Or stay. And I’ll kill you. All of you.”

I shook my head. This is just pathetic. A pathetic bluff from a man on the ropes. I stepped forward and he held out his other hand and something dropped into it. A jar.

  “Did you know I can teleport things inside of things? It’s hard and there’s a lot of math involved. But I can do it. Even if I can’t see what is inside. He tossed the jar to me and I caught it and turned it over. Cherries. My eyes widened and I looked back at him. When I was nine, we discovered that I was deathly allergic to cherries. My throat closed and they had to do an emergency tracheotomy before getting me to the hospital. “Kind of poetic, don’t you think? You’re allergic to cherries and you tried to take mine away. Not to mention I think she’s one of like three people that ever took you down. Twice now.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Why not? If I don’t, my life is over. All because you value property more than human life.”

  “What if I’m not allergic anymore? Allergies come and go sometimes.”

  “Come now, Smash Gal. Do you think that’s my only contingency?” He snapped his fingers and a hole opened in between us. Chuck’s head stuck through it and he looked around nervously. The portal constricted around his throat and A little bit of blood leaked around it. “I’m sick and tired of this fight. You are stronger, faster, and now a better fighter than I am, apparently. So, I have to become what you think I am. A villain. A true villain. Just as nefarious as the rest of the cape-and-tights squad. I was content just to do an occasional bit of thieving. Steal some from people like Wan over there who is literally so rich that he could never notice anything was missing if he wasn’t such a petty bitch. Give most of it to people who need it more than he or I do. But you kept pushing me. Farther and farther. And this is the second time you’ve tried to kill her.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill her!” I shouted.

  “When you show up, you force people to make decisions! You are stronger and faster than anyone on the fucking planet! Your very presence is a threat! And you’re completely and totally unaccountable to anyone! I’m just leveling the playing field. Except it’s still not even, because you’re willing to team up with people like Captain Brainwash and General Warfare over there.That is a decision you made to take me down. You teamed up with a murderer to take me down. A murderer and Bion. The world’s foremost weapons manufacturer. And you think what I do is bad? Do you have any idea who you’re in bed with? I’m just a thief. I would have to throw entire cities into volcanoes to approach the damage that those two do.”

  “I can’t stop chasing you.”

  “Why?” He asked, deflating.

  “Because what you’re doing is wrong!”

  He sat back down on the chair and coughed up some blood. “Haven’t you taken enough from me?”

  “I haven’t taken anything from you.”

  “Do you honestly believe that!?” He shouted, glaring up at me.

  “I haven’t!”

  “You’re trying to take away my freedom! You already took away my privacy! You tried to take away the woman I love! You took away my fucking wedding day, Kari! My goddamn wedding day! Do you know how much I want to kill you right now for that? Do you have any idea how much you personally have hurt me? Because of these asinine morals that you’ve decided are more important than I am!”

  “I wasn- I didn- I-I . . . That wasn’t what this was about!”

  “But that’s the fucking result! You decided that Smash Gal has to save the day from someone who isn’t fucking hurting anyone! And anyone in your way be damned!” He raised his voice. “And I’m left clinging onto whatever I think is right! I don’t kill people except in self-defense and you make me want to kill you because you keep destroying everything. Under any reasonable definition, what I’m doing here is self-defense!”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  “Because! I know you! You could choose to use your powers for the good of society if you could just remove your head from your ass for five whole fucking minutes! But instead, you team up with a goddamn war-criminal! You have all of the power in the world and the rest of us are just clinging desperately onto this fucking rock as we panic and hope that we don’t fucking get crushed under your fucking boot!”

  “I help people!”

  “You get cats out of trees and then sit by as he blows up the Middle East.”

  “He’s a hero! He’s saved the world!”

  “And profited from it every step of the way! He’s a worse criminal than I ever was! And so is he!” Curt pointed to Chuck.

Chuck grimaced and looked away, blood leaking down onto the ground from his neck.

  “I . . . I’m done with this. I’m taking you in.” I charged forward but I heard Chuck choke and I stopped, fist raised. I looked at PM, whose eyes were bulging. He was coughing up blood. Curt just looked at me, blinking slowly.

  “NEXT TIME I SEE YOU, I’LL JUST DO IT. TO ALL OF YOU. YOU ALL ARE TOO MUCH OF A THREAT TO USE THESE KIDS’ GLOVES ON.” HE SAID. THEN HE DISAPPEARED. I SPED FORWARD AND SLAMMED MY FIST DOWN ON THE EMPTY SPOT HE HAD OCCUPIED. I SCREAMED. I KICKED THE CHAIR AND IT EXPLODED FROM THE FORCE. I LOOKED AROUND. THE GREENHOUSE HAD BEEN DESTROYED. THERE WAS LAVA BURNING UP THE PLACE, DESTROYED GROUND, SCORCH MARKS. I HAD SEEN WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE BEFORE. I HAD RUINED HIS WEDDING. AND HE SPARED ME THIS TIME. WOULD I HAVE DONE THE SAME THING?