Alice, her house. 6 days later.
It had been 6 days since Alice got her powers, and she had discovered some strange stuff. She could duplicate anything from nails to people. The copies would last for a couple of hours at a time, but they worked just as well as the real deal except for copies of humans. Human copies looked like the original but lacked that human spark. They weren’t sentient. They just followed whatever orders she gave them. Strangely they didn’t follow vocal commands, only mental ones.
In the days since getting their powers, Donald had stepped up his game as the Steel Sentinel. Every day he invented a new version of his power armor, funded by money he stole from drug dealers. It was a risky move, but he claimed he needed more raw materials for his projects. He was also constructing a suit he called “The Master Suit”. He said it was a culmination of all his improvements. It was only made of parts he had already perfected, that is to say, it was probably still a total of three pieces.
Donald's super intelligence worked in a strange way. He would get strange obsessive episodes where he was forced to build whatever he was thinking of. He tried to resist it before and failed miserably. Now he just gives into it. Thankfully school was now out for thanksgiving break so he would be able to rush off and build whatever he wanted without worry since they didn’t have any holiday plans. None of their families celebrated thanksgiving, and why would they?
Alice was from Britain, they don’t have it there. Dexter’s family was from Ireland and they don’t have it there either. John’s father was from Mexico and didn’t care for any American holidays with the exception of Halloween. As for Freya and Donald's parents, they didn’t celebrate anything except Christmas. Besides, why would people celebrate the exploitation of a native population that ended in their massacre? Hence why Alice preferred to call the holiday by its more accurate name, Thankstaking.
This left them with plenty of time to master their powers, Alice tried to get Dexter's help but when he wasn’t out doing something he was sleeping. When she asked Dex about it, he said it was just because he was sick, nothing else, but she didn’t believe that. Something else was going on, Alice just knew it. But whenever she asked him about it Dexter always found a way to dodge the question. Then he would have a conveniently very important task come up and he would leave.
In the days leading up to the break, Dexter would skip his classes yet no one seemed to notice. The only reason Alice even noticed was that she came in late one day only to find him gone and everyone acted like Dexter was there.
“Does he have powers?” Alice wondered. “No, he said he didn’t. Even if he had powers, why would he lie to us?”
Maybe it had something to do with Samuel's sudden disappearance. In elementary and middle school, Samuel and Dexter were close friends. She didn’t see them together much anymore, but she doubted Dexter would sit around and do nothing if one of his old friends went missing. On top of Samuel's disappearance, the gangs seemed to have all but disappeared.
Donald hit them hard on an almost hourly basis, but the gangs never retaliated. They didn’t even prepare countermeasures against him. Donald described them as “zombie-like” because they would mob him all at once. Not wanting to permanently hurt them in any way, Donald often had to attack them from the sky. It was concerning behavior, to say the least. Something was brewing in the slums, something big.
Suddenly, Alice's phone started buzzing as Donald called her. “What's up Don?” Alice said.
“Get the others! I need backup! I found someone else with powers!” Donald exclaimed into the phone as the sounds of explosions nearly drowned out his voice before the call was cut out.
Samuel, 10 minutes earlier. The Slums
Master's powers were getting weaker, he could feel it. With every line of cocaine, he could feel his influence slipping and his powers growing. However, while his powers of telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and electrokinesis grew, his power of mind control grew weaker. The Master didn’t know he could use them, and he never would because he would never ask. Samuel still couldn’t disobey him, yet. He planned to capture his Master once he was weak enough, but currently, the Master had more than enough strength to kill him easily and Samuel didn’t want to die.
Samuel was currently following his Master's orders to recruit more people and was searching for one particular group of people. That's when Samuel spotted the van he had been looking for. For the past hour, he was searching for some old friends to add to The Community but they had been avoiding him.
Every remaining criminal in the Slums had heard rumors of some sort of new crime boss who took control of people's minds, but no one ever said anything. Those who did got a visit from Samuel and were dealt with. Master thought Samuel was simply scaring them off after roughing them up, but he never got to the scaring-off part. Samuel's playthings broke before he could get to that part.
The Master told him to deal with those who resisted how he saw fit, and he saw fit to kill them. It was so much easier than scaring them off. Samuel approached the van, his hands raised as he prepared to hijack the minds of his old friends. Approaching the black van’s tinted windows, Samuel drove his fist through the window pane, glass dug into his hand like razor-sharp needles, but he didn’t feel pain anymore. The Community assured he felt none of it.
“Join us,” Samuel said to the terrified passengers. Soon they would learn the beauty of community, being one with his mind. They would be free, they would be powerful, and they would be-
BANG!
Samuel fell backward as a bullet struck him in the chest. At the last moment, he managed to stop it before it did any serious damage.
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“You are immune, this is good,” Samuel said as he rose to his feet.
“Samuel! What the fuck is wrong with you?” the driver asked, his name long forgotten to Samuel.
“If none of you can join, then you all must die!” Samuel said, ignoring the question as he raised his hand, white electricity arcing off his fingertips.
BOOM!
A bolt of white lightning stuck the van in enough force to send it tumbling across the street.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Samuel felt pure glee as he tormented the occupants of the van, he didn’t often get an excuse to use his powers, and it felt good. The side of the van began to melt away from constant hits, it reminded him of the time he used a blowtorch on the pots and pans his father used to make meth in his kitchen to see the globs of melted metal stick to the floor.
ZOOM!
The sound of a jet engine roared in Samuel's ears as a man made of metal tackled him to the ground with a pair of cuffs in his right hand. Samuel tried to lift him away, but something pushed back.
“Odd,” Samuel said. He may not be able to lift him, but he could still push him. Waves of white energy flowed from Samuel's hands and sent the metal man hurling backward as if he was shot out of a cannon.
He could feel that this was going to be fun.
Steel Sentinel, the Slums
Sentinel couldn’t believe it, the rumors about a new mob boss with mysterious powers were true, and it was the most unlikely person. Samuel stood in front of Sentinel, his right hand all sliced up and he had a bleeding hole in his chest. He looked more like a wild animal than a human, his blond hair was dark with dirt and the bags under his eyes were as black as coles. The pupil of his eyes looked like someone who popped the yolk of a sunny-side-up egg. Black sloppy lines of liquid flowed from his iris and spread all over his eyes like it was some sort of corrupted roots.
“Steel Sentinel, I was hoping to meet you,” Samuel said, his voice sounded like someone took a knife to his vocal cords and sliced them up. Constantly changing from different scratchy pitches. “Please do keep me entertained!”
Samuel made his open-palmed punch toward Sentinel and a ball of fire shot out of his palms at the speed of a bullet. The paint on nearby cars began to bubble from the heat and the air was sucked away as the raging fireballs greedily consumed it for fuel.
“ARHG!” Sentinel's armor wasn’t designed to take fire that hot. Just two fireballs were enough to make his chest plate steam with heat as it began to warp and glow.
Before he could recover, the car Samuel had been shooting with lightning was thrown at him by an invisible force. As quick as he could Sentinel activated his thrusters and jumped over the top of the car. With a burst of speed, he shot toward Samuel.
POW!
A blast of concentrated energy from his wrist-mounted concussion blaster sent Samuel careening backward. Moments before Samuel hit the ground, the crazed junkie stretched out his hands and slowed himself to a stop with a push of telekinesis. Samuel then retaliated with a blast of lightning. Its searing white light was so bright it would have blinded Sentinel if it wasn’t for including a vision option on his visor to make him resistant to flashbangs. Gamma took over Sentinel's armor momentarily as Donald was too slow to react to the lightning. Controlling the armor, Gamma forced Sentinel to dodge out of the way and then handed back control.
POW!
Sentinel sent out another concussive blast, but an invisible wall stopped it dead in its tracks.
“What the…”
“Let me analyze it. Keep attacking,” Gamma said.
“Right!” Sentinel said.
POW! POW!
POW! POW!
Samuel slowly began sliding back across the ground as Sentinel let loose concussive blast after concussive blast. No matter how hard he tried, Sentinel couldn’t break the shield.
“The railgun will have enough force to penetrate, or at least take up all his concentration. Make sure to go for his legs. His barrier is the weakest there,” Gamma said.
With a thought, Sentinel's right gauntlet switched to railgun mode and shot at Samuel's legs.
BOOM!
The metal projectile rocketed towards Samuel at several times the speed of sound. Samuel screamed with effort as his barrier barely held back the projectile slowly inching towards his right leg. His barrier was powerful, but it appeared to only slow things down, not grab them. Sentinel could work with this. With a final cry of effort, red flames flowed from Samuel's hands as he attempted to melt the projectile.
“No way…” Sentinel said as the railgun bullet turned to magma. That projectile was designed to take 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit of heat. Samuel just melted it in seconds.
“He’s distracted, go for a concussive blast,” Gamma said.
Not needing to be told twice, Sentinel shot a concussive blast from his left gauntlet toward Samuel.
CRACK!
With the sound of splitting wood Samuel's shield shattered. Fragments of glass-like energy dissipated into the air as Samuel stumbled backward in surprise. Sentinel quickly switched his right gauntlet back to concussion blaster mode and shot another blast of energy. This one was the most effective. Samuel shot backward and crashed into a car, but he protected himself with some sort of barrier at the final moment and crushed the car.
“Damn, that thing regenerates quickly,” Sentinel said.
“Scans indicate it's significantly weaker than before. His vitals indicate that forming a new barrier quickly drains his stamina. Keep the pressure on so he can’t retaliate,” Gamma said.
“Not b-bad,” Samuel said as he coughed up blood. “But I can do better.”
Samuel swiped his hand and tripped Sentinel with an invisible push. With his other hand, Samuel made a crushing gesture. Suddenly, every car on the street was brought toward Sentinel as if they were the ends of a rubber band snapping back into shape. Sentinel dodged the first car, but a second one from behind clipped his shoulder sending him off balance. A third car stuck him in the chest and the fourth crushed him from behind. A fifth car hit Sentinel from the left as a sixth rapidly approached from the right.
“Stop throwing cars at me!” Sentinel exclaimed as his left gauntlet changed to railgun mode.
BOOM!
The sixth car exploded in a shower of metal, oil, and gasoline as the metal projectile hit it with the power of a missile, breaking it into dozens of smaller pieces. Using his suit's enhanced strength, Sentinel violently pushed the cars crushing him away with enough strength to flip them as if they were made of foam. The metal exoskeleton inside the suit screeched with protest as it threatened to break, but the metal just barely held.
Switching his right gauntlet to missile mode, Sentinel shot a silver missile the size of a bottle rocket at Samuel. The junkie smirked as he created his barrier, but he wasn’t smirking for very long.
KABOOM!
Samuel exploded in a Hollywood-style ball of fire, but it didn’t last. Sentinel watched in horror as the explosion moved in reverse. The orange flames and metal shrapnel were drawn towards Samuel's outstretched hand, condensing itself into a ball of fire and molten metal.
“That hurt,” Samuel said, his clothes scorched and his face red with burns. “Let's see how you like it.”
“Shit,” Sentinel said as the explosion in Samuel's palms grew in size as he fed it telekinetic fire.
He tried to retaliate but Sentinel was hit by a car from behind and completely missed his concussion blast. Another car piled on top of Sentinel as street lamps floated towards him like he was a magnet.
“I can’t do this alone,” Sentinel thought.
“Gamma call Alice!” Sentinel said.
“On it,”
“What's up Don?” Alice said.
“Get the others! I need backup! I found someone else with powers!” Sentinel exclaimed into the phone as the sounds of explosions nearly drowned out his voice. Before he could explain what was happening, Samuel released his explosion and the world went dark.