When the sun sank below the mountains on the other side of the valley, an immense shadow swallowed all the Ponderosa Pines and dry southwestern dirt around the overlook. That really shifted my mood. Sure, it was still a nice beautiful orange evening up on the eastern summit, but down in the trees it was time to watch for shiny eyes and listen for breaking twigs.
“Time to move,” Ten said. He hopped down and sent his ride off to park itself somewhere underneath the nearest barge. I wasn’t impressed. My neighbor’s Tesla could do that two hundred years ago. Kind of. I was going to say something about that, but my memory glitched on the neighbor’s name, so I just bobbed along behind Blackbird on my effervescent life preserver quietly trying to remember.
It was Karsten, not that it matters now.
All four barges powered up and announced themselves as we embarked, and that did impress me. Take the roar of a mighty Atlas Lion and mix in a pissed off eagle. Now just apply a few filters to the track... NASCAR, vengeance, and synthwave. Can you hear that? I could hear it and feel it, and it was like my personal heaven for a whole three seconds.
Obviously the deck dampeners took that sweet symphony down to a mere hum the second we were onboard, because nothing good ever lasts. I was still recovering from the disappointment when we finally gathered near the stern railing.
“Steel or spandex?” Blackbird asked Ten, continuing their conversation.
Ten shrugged like the answer shouldn’t alarm anyone. “Probably both.”
I was alarmed. My baby gazelle vibe was fading, and I was becoming less curious and more alert. More steel meant centipedes. I honestly didn’t want to know what spandex meant, but my imagination involuntarily cobbled something together from The Thing and Friday Night Lights. The image was so terrifying that I flinched when Blackbird lifted one finger on her free hand like she was going to count off.
Amiable is the best way to describe Blackbird, or maybe accommodating. She looked concerned and slipped her hand back into her jacket. “We’ve rescued hundreds of people from these places, and dozens of levitators. We’ve never run into a full nest of bugs, or a cyborg...”
Ten leaned back against the railing while reaching one hand behind his back into his cape. He left that hand there, too, which seemed a little obvious to me. He was trying too hard to act casual. Things got even more conspicuous when Eighty Three noticed it and more or less copied him. I could tell something was about to happen.
Blackbird kept going until she noticed them too. “...and Team Spandex never bothered, either. Hey. What’s going on?”
Ten nodded too casually at something behind her, something near the gangplank. “Shades is already here.”
Blackbird was visibly stunned. She blinked, switched off the bubble coil keeping me afloat, and dropped me right on my ass. Apparently it was time for the lioness to hunt. “How long has he been here?” she asked.
I offset myself to rub the pain out of my tailbone, but I wasn’t about to lose track of the conversation. Everyone looked really tall from the deck. Even Blackbird, and she’s barely two inches over five feet. I was starting to worry that this was my new permanent view.
“Not sure,” Ten said. “He tried creeping up on me in the lab. I pretended not to notice."
In case you're wondering, Shades isn't as fast as Blackbird flying at full speed, but wherever there's darkness he's still a missile. As far as anyone knew, he could have been skulking about some seedy layer a hundred miles away waiting for dusk when he heard me screaming. Or he could have been the one who initiated my rapid awakening.
“He doesn’t know your cape yet…” Blackbird said, more for her own sake than for Ten’s. “He doesn’t know you can sense him. You could vector me right onto him and he would never know what you were up to.”
“You mean us, right?” Eighty Three asked with tightened fists. “He could vector us, right?”
Blackbird softened up for a second when she answered, just like she did when she found out about him letting the levitator of the box. “Definitely not. You two are staying with Kevin. I'll take Shades.”
"You guys do know Centurion is here, right?" Ten asked.
Blackbird wasn't as soft this time. "I said I'll take Shades."
Ten made a fake sniffle, faked rubbing his nose, and pointed. “Well now’s your chance, since he just creeped his way up the underside of the ramp.”
Blackbird tensed up like a yellow lab waiting for someone to throw the tennis ball. “Well?”
Faster than a blink, Ten took a snapshot with his rifle to direct her, and then he and Eighty Three were in front of me with their shields and helmets up again. I slid back away from them as legionaries swarmed around me ready for action.
It took some time for my tired brain to sort through legs and shields, but eventually I caught up to the action and found Blackbird coiling a pair of bubbles around a distorted man shaped shadow. The shadow broke free and spun toward her like an inky tornado. In mid flight it transformed into a trench coat and spandex clad man wielding a pitch black sword roughly shaped like a katana.
One look at Shades’ face was all I needed to despise him. The guy was like a living steal your girl song that’d been stuck on repeat for about ten years.
Blackbird reeled her bubbles in around herself and parried the sword with a forearm. Her voice sounded strained when she demanded the legionaries stand by, but they listened anyway. Shades used a two handed grip to lever her arm down and stab at her face, but Blackbird was too fast. She flashed her parrying arm down and sidestepped, causing Shades to drive through unbalanced. He recovered acrobatically and went for a backhanded slice, but the sword swished over her head and she cracked his jaw with an uppercut. The impact of that punch caused their polar energies to explode into thousands of tiny electrified yin yang shards that dissipated almost instantly.
After those impossible fireworks cleared my line of sight, I saw that the fight was almost over. It’s far more difficult to restrain an enemy than it is to kill them, but apparently Blackbird had found the margins. Her bubbles were vibrating more intensely this time as she coiled them around the creeper, and the extra output was paying off. Shades still managed to work an arm free and stab at her face again, but she ducked that. Then she picked him up overhead and spiked him to the deck so violently I thought the whole barge would come apart.
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Stunned, Shades lost control of both arms completely as the effervescent pythons twisted down on him. When he recovered and found himself pickled, he threw a tantrum with his head since it was the only thing that could still move. It was both horrendous and hilarious at the same time. He snarled and frothed and swung his head in chaotic circles, flickering in and out of his shadow form rapidly in an attempt to slink away into the dark. For all that, he just ended up on his knees.
A dampened sonic boom heralded Centurion’s arrival. He glided down behind Shades and strolled up behind the flailing idiot with a double edged purple energy ax in hand. For once his cape didn’t seem to know where I was.
“Hi there Shades…” Blackbird said when Shades was finally too exhausted to resist.
“Fuck you, b-” Shades started to say, but he froze when the edge of Centurion’s ax slid in under his jaw. “Okay I’m done!”
Blackbird’s voice gave away a smile so big I could picture it even from the wrong side. “The Council misses you, Shades. You don’t stop by anymore.”
“Ahhhah, yea...” Shades said slyly. He was panting, but I didn’t think it was physical exhaustion. It was all emotional stress. I couldn’t see his eyes, because somehow his magic sunglasses had settled back into place after Blackbird’s epic uppercut, but I could tell he was nervous. Little beads of sweat were running out of his fancy frosted faux hawk, down his tanned forehead, and soaking his dark brown eyebrows. “That was all just a misunderstanding, remember?”
Blackbird tisked him. “I remember Sunspot saving your cape for you.”
Shades answered with a nasty little angry teenager smile, an incredibly unpalatable look for a guy in his thirties. “Yea that’s right. She did.”
Blackbird was all salt, vinegar, and anything you might pour into a wound. “I don’t see her now. Where is your mommy?”
“Hmm,” Shades said facetiously. “Where could she be?” He lowered his voice for effect. “On her way maybe?”
Centurion’s voice was so calm it cut through their private moment like a hot knife through butter. “Why would she come here, Shades? I thought she banished you from Precious Palace.”
Shades showed his teeth when he heard the name Precious Palace, but he still answered. “She wants to have a little chat with him.”
I was not amused when I realized he was looking at me. “Oh come on…. Get off my boat, Gollum!”
Ten disengaged his helmet and looked down at me with newfound respect. I still think he was giving me his official seal of approval, but that isn’t how he always remembered it. In hindsight, it wouldn’t have been all that big of a compliment anyway. They all just really hated Shades.
Blackbird put the screws to the creeper. “And why would she want that?”
Shades grunted and cursed as the bubbles coiled tighter, but he refused to answer. When she finally let up, he laughed and hacked up a lung. He really did remind me of Gollum, but something else came to mind when his stupid sunglasses settled back into perfect position again. More on that in a second.
Centurion interrupted again, this time with a warning. “Shades… You’re worth no more than an answer.”
“To you or your wife?” Shades asked, adding on an explicit mmmph at the end.
“Is Sunspot coming here tonight?” Centurion asked, somehow keeping his cool.
Blackbird was keeping her cool too, but there were stress lines around her eyes giving her away. I couldn’t believe the look on her face. She had been my gentle hero lioness three minutes ago. “Why were there so many bots here, Shades? Were they following you?”
“Are you working with them…..” Centurion added. “Who woke up the levitator?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Shades asked, snickering to himself as if it were a real comedic kill shot.
Blackbird rolled her eyes. “Well we did ask, idiot.”
“And like I said…” Centurion noted, pressing his ax blade in deeper and causing Shades’ shadow form to flicker more furiously. “You’re worth no more than the answer.”
Shades’ face did all kinds of disturbing things. “Cut me then! I want you to! DO IT!”
That seemed to put Centurion in a conundrum. His cape was folding into little knife like fringes all along the bottom, which made it obvious what he wanted to do. It was also obvious that he couldn’t do that. Shades had called his bluff.
Bit of a side note. My best friend growing up had this Vietnam veteran stepdad with a Rottweiler who liked to piddle all over my shoe whenever I came around. I guess I was the dog world’s idea of an autonomous drone delivery system, mark me and you mark the whole neighborhood. The stepdad always told me, after having a good laugh, to quit whining and learn how to talk the dog down. Eventually I did. What I'm saying is, sometimes you have to speak with authority, even if you don’t have a pinch of power.
I took a deep breath and used that tone. “Hey! Dollar Store Neo…” That got everyone’s attention. Even Centurion gave me one of those slow motion looks, like he just realized I was there. “Tell me what you know about me before I have these two break your legs and throw you off the boat.”
Shades choked down a dismissive laugh. “Who, these two?” He looked Ten and Eighty Three over, and then jutted his chin at Ten. “Eh… Pop can… I take it you’re the one who spotted me?” He was clearly offended when Ten didn’t respond, because he snapped his teeth at him. Then he started growling at me just to make a point.
I understood that point in my own way. He wasn’t just some happy rottweiler, a little chunky on Beggin’ Strips and pizza crust... He was a complete asshole.
I wasn’t ready to let my bluff die, though. I was so tired of new enemies, new names, new rules, and new physics, that I said what I said next like I really could, because I really wanted to... “Maybe I’ll just do it myself then.”
Obviously I knew that wasn’t possible, but Shades stopped growling and leaned away from me a little. Three deep wrinkles formed across his forehead. He wasn’t sure if I could or not.
Levitator, some voice in the back of my mind whispered.
“At least tell me what it meant,” Shades pleaded suddenly. “I have to go back. She has to take me back. Tell me what you meant so I can tell her.”
“We’ll take you back, Shades,” Blackbird offered. “If you give us your cape.”
Shades’ panting grew more frenetic, but he controlled it well enough to speak. He had clearly gone through something like this before. “You can’t have it…” he said through clenched teeth. “Kevin. What did it mean?” he asked me again.
He knew my name. I huffed and shook my head. How was I supposed to know? “What did what mean?”
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Don’t say that! Don’t lie to me! We all heard you! We saw you in our dreams! Just tell me what it meant!”
I spoke slowly this time, to make sure he understood me. “I... Have no idea... What you’re talking about…”
Shades erupted into another tantrum, throwing his head around and flickering madly between shadow and man. He kept screaming liar at me, over and over, until Centurion was finally done waiting to hear something useful.
“Restrain him,” Centurion commanded.
One by one the legionaries marched over and tapped Shades with their shields, and the shields became bindings that cinched automatically. All the while, Shades kept screaming things like that isn’t fair and I’ll cut out your tongue at the top of his lungs, and it was mostly directed at me. After a dozen or so bindings had been added, Blackbird laid Shades flat on his stomach. Centurion ignited a purple shield and tapped to add his own bindings as a gag and a hogtie.
Blackbird powered down significantly, but she stood vigilantly over her nemesis. Ten, Eighty Three, and Centurion all approached me somewhat urgently. I caught Centurion’s cape billowing jealously at me.
Centurion stopped at my feet and tried to wave me up with his hand. When I didn’t stand he looked to Ten for an explanation. Ten shook his head to let him know that I wasn’t getting up anytime soon. The chromed out Legion boss didn’t react to that, and he didn’t condemn my frailty like I expected, he simply asked his question. “Can you wield telekinetic force?”