Now, Manila

Cal shot out of the crumbling chamber like a cannonball. He flew through several walls before finding himself out in the sun. He rose up until he was high above the senate building.

A large section of the building resembled a crater after a meteorite hit. The senate chamber was buried in rubble, pressed inward as though with a giant invisible bowl.

He lent more weight to the tons of building material with telekinesis.

This wasn’t a true fight. He didn’t need to win, only delay.

Admittedly, he was wagering a lot on Eron being dissuaded from his terrible idea by their father’s disapproval.

He hadn’t really thought about what he could do if even that failed to force his youngest brother to see sense.

Well… that wasn’t entirely true.

There were things he could do. Like, say, trapping Eron in a mindscape prison of sorts until he came around or forcing him to go to sleep. Hell, he could probably make Eron forget that the baby even existed.

Only problem with those methods was that they were all betrayals of the family bond. They would never forgive him if it came to light that he had tampered with their thoughts and memories.

The rubble began to shake.

Cal grit his teeth and pressed down as hard as he could. He imagined holding a volcanic eruption down.

Eron erupted from the rubble.

Fast.

Almost too fast for Cal to follow without speeding up his perception and reaction times. The problem was that there was a physical limit to how quickly he could move his body.

Good thing his mental abilities could be wielded at the speed of thought.

A telekinetic shield appeared an instant before the loud crack in the air that signaled a chunk of rubble breaking the sound barrier.

Much of it crumbled before it got close to Cal. What remained shattered against his bubble.

Cal’s eyes couldn’t track where Eron flew. All he could barely catch were the chunks seemingly shooting at him as fast as bullets from all directions.

The air was soon choking with a cloud of dusty debris centered on Cal inside his telekinetic bubble.

Boom!

A heavy impact from behind threatened to fracture his bubble and by extension his head.

Cal dropped the bubble then dropped straight down.

The instant he cleared the dust cloud he struck the edges of his gauntlets together. He captured the spark with telekinesis and shot it straight up.

Cal’s hearing and vision went dark for a split-second as the Threnosh helmet automatically protected him from the blinding and deafening explosion that seemed to fill half the sky.

The blast wave propelled him toward the ground, but he never got close.

Eron swooped out of the fire in the sky, unmarred. The only hint of the wounds that had been on his bare torso were patches of slightly discolored skin.

Cal pushed at his brother with telekinetic force.

Eron slowed, but kept coming.

Cal’s body was too slow to physically react to Eron’s speed, but his mind wasn’t.

He raised a telekinetic shield around him, just before Eron landed a fist to his helmeted head.

Boom!

A second explosion sent a shock wave through the air.

Red lights filled Cal’s faceplate.

Boom!

Cracks appeared.

Desperately, he sent an indiscriminate wave of telekinetic force in front of him.

Eron might’ve been a blur, but if he was anywhere in the general vicinity he’d take the hit.

Luck was with Cal as the blur turned into the distinct form of his brother tumbling away into the sky.

The cobwebs in his head were slow to clear as he zoomed down toward the partially ruined senate building. He knew that Eron had already righted himself and was flying after him.

He zipped past the rubble and picked it up in his wake, shoving the pieces at Eron.

He knew that wouldn’t do much to Eron, but he just needed a distraction.

He grasped the thread into Eron’s mind and pulled.

Cal watched Eron plummet out of the sky and hit the street, taking out a row of cars in the process.

What he saw with his non-physical eyes was quite different.

----------------------------------------

Eron blinked.

He had been flying through a debris field— hadn’t he?

Now—

He sat on a couch.

An old, fat TV was in front of him on the other side of the living room of his parents’ house. The screen showed a pair of pixelated sprites facing off against each other. A blond guy in a red karate gi versus a black-haired guy in a white one. The former was frozen mid flying uppercut with his fist in flames, while the latter was crouched while blocking.

“You can’t just pause while I’m in the middle of a combo.”

Eron turned his head to the speaker.

Cal was at the other end of the couch.

Eron stared at his brother.

“Are you spacing out, man?” Cal raised a brow. “It’s just a game. I mean, I’m kicking your butt, but no reason to get into an existential crisis over it.”

“Game?” Eron muttered. He noticed a controller in his hands. The thin shape of gray and white plastic. The d-pad under his left thumb, the purple buttons, a lighter shade for the top two and a darker one for the bottom, under his right thumb. He clicked the two shoulder buttons with his index fingers.

“Are we going to get back to this or what?” Cal said.

“Uh… yeah…”

“Alright, then. On three.”

Cal unpaused the game.

Eron blinked in confusion as he mechanically moved his thumbs while he watched his character battle Cal’s on the grainy screen.

Japanese words… names of the moves?

He knew this, but didn’t at the same time.

Dreams?

He was dreaming, but it seemed so real.

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that his brother beat him quickly.

“Perfect!” Cal grinned. “That’s one for me. You’re going to need to focus if you want to even touch me. At least do some damage this time.”

“Right…” Eron didn’t want to lose to his brother.

That feeling was real.

Everything else seemed… less, somehow.

He wanted to win, needed to win in a way that scared him.

He focused as the timer counted down to the start of the second round.

Fight!

Eron tried harder this time. He knew all the moves. Blue fireballs, uppercuts and hurricane kicks.

Except, Cal was better.

His brother’s character attacked with multi-hit combos, 3-hit, 4-hit and more. He hit with 2-in-1’s, a punch straight into a fireball or an uppercut, a kick into that spinning kick that hit several times.

In the end, Eron did some damage, but still lost.

“Bullshit!” Eron snapped. “This game sucks! The graphics are shit! You’re a cheater! What the fuck even is this controller?”

“Huh?” Cal stared at him with an open mouth.

Eron blinked. He thought he had caught something flash in his brother’s eyes. Like a twinkle, as ridiculous as it sounded.

He regarded his brother sitting lazily on the couch.

“Standard Super Nintendo controller,” Cal waved it with his left hand. “Don’t blame it for your shortcomings.”

Eron stared at his brother’s hand.

Three fingers. Thumb, index and middle. The smallest two were completely gone.

“It wasn’t fair,” Eron said flatly.

“Fine, I’ll let you pick my next character,” Cal sighed.

“Not what I meant… I never played this game. At least not this version. I was too young. I vaguely remember watching you and Remy. Your Super Nintendo was in a box in the garage by the time I was old enough to game. Ergo, this is one of your mindscapes,” Eron crushed the controller in his hand. “You’re wasting time.”

Cal straightened as the easy smile left his face. “That’s exactly the point.”

Eron felt anger at his brother’s tricks. It was a burning heat inside of his body. He focused on that because he knew that it was real. He extended it outward.

The air around him distorted from the waves of heat.

“Don’t,” Cal warned.

The couch, the coffee table, the walls and pictures hanging on them burst into flames.

“I don’t really know how your mindshit works, but you’re looking uncomfortable, bro,” Eron said, “if you won’t let me out then I’ll burn my way free.”

“You might hurt Lilah and the baby out in the real world,” Cal said.

“You’d never let that happen.”

Eron definitely saw a twinkle in each of Cal’s eyes as everything faded to white.

----------------------------------------

Cal observed the bay hundreds of feet below him boil.

“Christ… I’ve seen some things, but that’s… something,” he muttered.

He glanced back to shore and the buildings on fire.

All just from being in proximity to his brother’s body.

It had only taken seconds to telekinetically bring him to the ocean, but that had been enough.

He couldn’t put the fires out, not while Eron was waking beneath the roiling waters.

“At least I don’t have to worry about him drowning.”

A darker thought shot through Cal’s mind.

A near drowning might’ve been a good way to take the fight out of Eron, at least for a few minutes.

Time was precious.

He had been fighting with Eron for less than two minutes.

He risked pulling his full attention away from Eron to stretch his thoughts out across the city.

Lilah and the baby were more minutes away from his dad, who was covering a lot of ground with super jumps.

He had a rough idea of how long he needed to keep the former two obscured from Eron and he didn’t like his chances.

As if to punctuate that thought a portion of a container ship rose out of the bay, perhaps a fourth to half of its rear end shot toward him.

“That’s just dangerous,” Cal said as he seized the hulk of rusted metal with invisible hands and sent it back to sender.

It crashed into the ocean and sent towers of water splashing. Enormous waves rippled out, swamping the islands of derelict vessels in the bay and demolishing structures several hundred feet from the shore.

Cal didn’t have time to worry about that as a loud boom sent him tumbling through the sky.

A blur zipped past him with another.

Then another.

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Cal spun in the air.

The hard impacts jarred him in multiple directions.

He couldn’t visually track Eron, but he still had a thread into his brother’s thoughts.

He used it to plant a telepathic attack. He imagined a small ball spikes in Eron’s mind.

He imagined it expanding violently and was instantly rewarded with a loud curse.

Eron slowed.

Cal’s cracked faceplate revealed the intense temperatures in and around his brother.

“A migraine! You hit me with a migraine! You’re only supposed to do that to bad guys and monsters!” Eron roared like a petulant child.

“Stop acting like one.”

“I— I’m trying to prevent one from coming back!”

“I’m repeating myself, but the taking of innocent life can never be anything except… bad,” he couldn’t, wouldn’t call Eron evil. “Why can’t you just believe your own eyes and ears?” he pleaded. “Your own super senses are telling you that he’s just a regular human baby. There isn’t a speck of supernatural anything in him.”

“And I’m tired of repeating myself,” Eron said flatly. “It’s called magic, bro. All that you say is true, but that doesn’t mean anything. It could change in an instant. Then… it’s soul-stealing fog time. So, what’ it going to be?” he spread his hands, “you going to keep attacking my thoughts? Give me brain damage? I mean, that’s possible, right? Telepathic attacks probably have a similar effect to physical ones? You can give me a psychic concussion? You’re the only one who knows how that all works.”

Cal raised a hand toward his brother, who floated motionless in the sky.

He wrapped Eron in the telekinetic version of shrink wrap.

Invisible, physical force equally pressed on every part of his brother’s body.

No gaps, except for ones at Eron’s nostrils, mouth, eyes and ears.

“This is a new one,” Eron frowned.

“I’m not going to explain, since that’ll give you ideas. You’re going to remain there, immobile. Maybe think about what you’re going to say to Dad.”

“You’re putting a lot of your hopes on him. How do you know he’ll be able to stop me?” Eron said.

“Because I don’t think you’re that far gone in this craziness that you’d fight him to kill a baby.”

“And you’re so sure that he won’t agree with me,” Eron said.

“I’ve always thought of myself as the one most willing to do… bad things, out of our entire family. You were a distant second or third to that. Dad’s way down the list just ahead of Mom.”

“Well… this is lame. You’re just going to keep me here while you wait for Daddy to come fix your problems. Too bad that you’re not the only one with new tricks,” Eron said. “You should’ve kept out of my line of sight.”

Cal read Eron’s thoughts, but wasn’t capable of reacting fast enough.

Twin lines of scorched air connected Eron’s eyes to Cal’s armored chest.

Urgent red flashed in his faceplate and blared in his ears.

The temperature spiked in an instant.

He dived desperately as Eron tracked him all the way down to the surface of the bay.

Distraction.

He lost the perfectly even telekinetic force around Eron’s body.

His brother used that to break free.

He glanced down at his armored chest as he flew through the water. The paint had been burned off to reveal melted metal and scorch marks on the dull gray surface.

He caught Eron’s thoughts and cursed.

Cal flew out of the ocean in pursuit.

It seemed that Eron had decided that if he couldn’t find Lilah and the baby, then all he had to do was find his father. Then he could just snatch the baby out of Lilah’s arms before anyone could react.

Cal was very disappointed at the callousness in his brother’s thoughts.

----------------------------------------

Eron was forced to fly much slower than he was capable of. He had no idea were Lilah was and he wouldn’t risk showering her in shards of broken glass if he broke the sound barrier, nor would he risk her getting caught up in his wake like all the cars, bus stops, trash cans and other things.

Judging by the loud boom from above, flying slowly had allowed Cal to catch up.

“Damn it.”

He wasn’t enjoying fighting his brother.

He had scared himself when he had partially melted the alien metal protecting his brother’s chest.

He could’ve really hurt Cal then.

He realized that punching him in the head was dangerous. Misjudge his own strength and—

He couldn’t risk accidentally losing control in a fight.

A bus flew up in front of him.

He punched through it, but found himself cocooned in twisted metal.

“This is Remy’s deal,” he muttered.

He couldn’t see where he was going so he stopped moving forward and took a few seconds to tear himself free.

He emerge only to take a car to the face that knock him into a building.

“This again.”

He felt the car and the rest of the building pressing down on him.

Lilah and the ba— thing aren’t anywhere near if Cal’s not holding back, he thought, which means I don’t have to either.

Instead of fighting against what felt like dozens of tons of force, Eron went with it and punched straight through the ground.

Rocks and dirt opened up into a sewer. He was thankful that the smells weren’t bad, but guilty because of the reasons why.

He listened and found Cal’s approximate position above the street through the sound of breathing and the heartbeat.

Eron flew up through the street with an eruption of dirt and asphalt.

Cal was slow to react despite the fact that Eron knew that his brother was messing with his mind, making him slower than he should’ve been.

Cal’s arms moved in slow motion as he tried to raise them over his face.

“Too slow,” Eron muttered as he punched his brother in the faceplate.

He watched as Cal spun up in the air before crashing into a high-rise building.

“That should slow you down.”

Eron listened and reacquired the sounds of his father leaping across the city, a few miles away.

He looked back to the bay and was surprised to see that it was closer than he had expected. He had been under the impression that he had covered more distance before Cal had caught up.

“What’s real and what’s not?”

As if in answer, Cal appeared to stand just inside the hole he had made in the side of he building.

Eron opened his mouth to shout at his brother for being a dick, but found that it remained shut.

He noticed a second later that he couldn’t breathe.

Dick, he thought as he raised both middle fingers up at his brother, I can hold my breath forever. He turned to fly toward his father. Cal would have to reveal Lilah and the baby at that point. Then he could finish it.

No, I don’t, Cal’s voice spoke in Eron’s head.

Shit! He’s only blocking them from my perceptions.

Yeah, I have no idea why you thought your plan would work.

I can still use Dad’s presence to find the ba— the thing, Eron fired back.

Maybe… I should’ve done this from the beginning. Huge mistake on my part.

Dick hole! Eron thought at his brother when he realized that he couldn’t hear his father anymore.

“And you’re a festizio,” Cal said.

So immature. I’m ashamed for you. I didn’t really want to hurt you, but you keep pushing me into corners, he thought with sadness and resignation. He felt something similar return from Cal.

“Didn’t want to hurt you either. Should’ve done this from the beginning. You can hold your breath for awhile, but eventually you’ll pass out and we can get this properly sorted out.”

You’re going to sleep first.

Eron flew at his brother with fists forward only to pass through air and into several walls before stopping. He looked back.

Cal was gone.

Mindfucks… are bullshit! he shouted in his thoughts. Where are you?

Laughter rang out in Eron’s mind.

Why would I tell you that?

“Fine, I’m just going to look around and if you happen to get in my line of sight then that’s on you.”

Don’t ruin this building!

“Too late.”

Eron let the heat behind his eyes loose. From his point of view all he saw was a slight distortion of the air surrounded by small bursts of flames in a spiral pattern around the thin cylinder of his sight.

Honestly, it was a little disappointing. He had expected his own version of eye beams to look cooler.

Eron spun, tracing burning lines through the buildings interior walls.

In a matter of seconds he was surrounded by flames.

“Oops…”

He had specifically kept the heat within himself after accidentally setting several city blocks on fire.

The building began to shake.

“Uh oh—” Eron choked.

Cal appeared at his back, with one arm around his neck and the other pressed on the back of his head.

“You just set everything on fire and managed to completely slice through everything, every wall and pillar. We’ve talked about being careful… about avoiding unnecessary damage,” Cal hissed in Eron’s ear.

Eron couldn’t answer as Cal squeezed and cut off the blood supply to his brain. His brother was augmenting physical strength with telekinesis. That was the only explanation for why Eron couldn’t pull Cal’s hand from his head

“Just go to sleep, so I can put this out and figure out how to keep the top half of this building from falling off,” Cal said.

The edges of Eron’s vision grew dark.

He let the heat out.

He could hear the faint beeping of alarms coming from Cal’s helmet, yet his brother stubbornly clung to the choke hold.

New flames joined the old ones as much of what was inside the office space caught fire.

“Are you going to burn down everything that you’ve worked so hard for?”

Cal had a point.

Eron put on a burst of strength, trying to shake Cal loose by slamming him into the ceiling.

He flew Cal through several floors as the building continued to break even as his brother didn’t.

They kept going straight up.

Eron could feel his brother trying to press them down.

Nope, he thought at his brother.

Daylight and beyond.

Eron kept flying until they were several thousand feet above the tallest skyscrapers. All the while Cal’s armored arm kept squeezing.

Haven’t blown your muscles out yet? Eron thought.

“You’ll go out before I do that,” Cal grunted.

I’m glad you comprehend why I have to do this.

Eron released a burst of solar energy from his bare torso.

Cal cursed as he was blown away.

People from many miles away saw it in the sky. High and impossible bright. It defied explanation even in a post-spires world.

For a moment a second sun blazed over Manila.

----------------------------------------

When the light faded and his vision cleared, Cal found Eron floating high above him.

His younger brother was framed by what appeared to be a faint aura around his body, like the sun’s corona. From lower angle his brother looked to have a halo behind his head.

“Well… that’s kinda cool…” Cal said, then he shrugged and grabbed the falling third of the building with telekinesis.

The weight of six, maybe seven floors strained his already tired brain, but he was able to send it flying at Eron with decent velocity.

Eron caught it and moved so that he has holding it above his head. The structure immediately began to crumble down on him. Bits and pieces, along with the furniture inside rained down.

“Doesn’t work if you don’t have the powers to keep its structural integrity intact!” Cal shouted up to his brother.

Eron cursed. “You threw a building at me!”

“You sliced it off in the first place!”

The two brothers bickered for a few seconds, hurling blame and expletives at each other.

A particularly large chunk fell and hit Eron on the head. It bounced off and crushed a car down on the street.

“You just going to let that thing demolish more of the city? Thought you wanted to protect it,” Cal said.

Eron flew toward the bay.

Cal didn’t want to destroy more of the city than he already had, so he secretly held the crumbling section of building together until Eron got close enough to hurl the tons of material far enough into the bay that there wasn’t a repeat tsunami.

Cal took the time to check on Lilah’s and the baby’s progress toward his dad.

Still too far away.

A rush of wind and the next thing Cal knew was the sensation of slamming into the street and through it.

An instant… he took his focus off his brother for just an instant.

“Welcome to Encounter Challenge: Subway Station 5.”

The spires’ voice came from nowhere and everywhere.

Cal was on his back inside a train car.

The sun shined a spotlight on him through the hole in the street. Beyond the halo was near pitch black.

He switched the helmet to low light mode and was greeted by dozens of shining eyes all around him.

Pale, almost white-skinned humanoids lurked menacingly just outside the light.

Bald, misshapen heads with an over-large jaw, mouth with sharp, pointed teeth. Wiry muscle rippled in long, spindly limbs that ended in clawed fingers and toes.

He flashed back to many years ago.

A girl turned into a monster because of his negligence.

He had killed her rather than saved her.

“No…”

He reached out with his telepathy and scanned the creatures.

Relief washed over him.

No once-human thoughts were in their heads.

These had always been monsters.

The entire station shook and sent dust and debris falling to the ground like snow.

Eron appeared a moment later in his own spotlight a short distance away. The light emanating from his body sent the monsters scattering.

Cal seized their minds and kept them from retreating deeper into the tunnels. He had use for them.

“So, what do you call that attack? Solar Flare?” he said. He wanted to keep his brother distracted to waste more time.

“I don’t name my attacks,” Eron said.

“You should. It’d be cool to shout them out while doing them.”

“No. No it wouldn’t.”

Cal shrugged. “Was it just heat and light? Or more like solar radiation?”

“Isn’t that like basically the same thing?” Eron frowned. “I release the energy I get from sunlight, so probably really close to that.”

“So, you just bombarded me with intense solar radiation… if you just gave me cancer…” Cal feigned worry.

“Can we even get that? We’ve got super everything. I haven’t been sick since then. I’d bet you’re the same. Hell, you spent years on an alien world. Did you get sick there?” Eron snorted.

“Didn’t actually cross my mind.”

“And your fancy armor probably has all kinds of environmental seals, filters and shit.”

“This is, like, the basic model and you’ve cracked and damaged it.”

“Okay… enough time wasting. Time for you to go to sleep,” Eron floated toward Cal.

“Why aren’t you generating anymore heat?”

“You were right about one thing. I’d rather not damage the city too much because it’ll be more work for me to fix later,” Eron shrugged.

“One last thing,” Cal raised a finger.

“What now?” Eron said as he continued to moved toward Cal.

Cal cleared his throat. “Yes… we will face the boss of this encounter challenge immediately.”

“Oh… you fu—” Eron got out before a loud roar echoed through the dark tunnels. “That was him!” he jabbed a finger at Cal, “not me!”

“I don’t think the spires cares,” Cal smirked.

He sent one command into the thoughts of the dozens of ghoul-like monsters surrounding them.

Snarling and screeching they launched themselves at Eron as if of one mind… Cal’s.

The monsters burned as they got close to Eron.

Heat from his eyes scorched their pale bodies.

The boss monster appeared behind Cal.

He forced the same command into the massive thing’s simple brain.

It charged past him to tackle Eron.

Cal didn’t stay to watch. He flew up through the hole in the ceiling and toward the bay.

That should’ve pissed Eron off enough to chase without needing to tamper with his thoughts.

How much time would the monsters buy?

Not much as it turned out.

For the second time in as many minutes.

Cal was flying one moment and the next he was spinning through the air to crash into the ground.

“That’s it… I’ve had enough of your cheese strats,” Eron hovered a few dozen feet over the small crater Cal’s armored body made in the ground.

Cal saw many small stars in his vision with one big, bright one in the center, which fell on him like a meteor.