Alex gripped the cable as tightly as he could, taking a deep breath as he prepared for what was about to happen.
If the pulsar generator in his suit had a voice, it would no doubt be screaming in agony as it desperately tried to claw his energy reserves back up after helping him perform a beautiful rendition of a golf ball going through a tumble dry cycle courtesy of Orbit. His legs felt sluggish as he climbed aboard the hovercart, the powered components of his armor noticeably slower than they’d been minutes prior, but thankfully the suit hadn’t locked up on him.
What did that leave that he could still run?
Lasers? Out of the question. He’d get off maybe a dozen shots before turning into a statue. Jets? There might be a minute of air time and a couple puffs left before he blitzed through whatever the pulsar generator could give him. Shields? Maybe half a second’s worth at the moment. Not exactly enough to be a central pillar of his gameplan. That left a dozen smoke grenades, two sleep cans (probably useless right now with the adrenaline in everyone’s systems and no doubt filters in both Reflecta and Orbit’s masks), and maybe six or seven concussive ones along with more cables than he knew what to do with.
Oh and of course: his gravitor gauntlets which ran on their own internal power source and had done so since he’d built the first one over a decade ago.
Since the first day he found the instructions to build them, Alex had almost religiously been following those to the point that he hardly needed to look up the source anymore. He’d discovered a NewVid back when that site still had its chunky grey borders, shot in the grainiest quality he’d ever seen in his life. In it, a Khandrini guy with an absurdly thick accent showed how to take apart a modern microwave to make these.1
The video, with its typoed name of “A cool glove I mad”, never ended up getting more than a hundred something views, with about twenty of those coming from Alex himself before he finally downloaded it. The old search feature used to show you stuff like this but now everything was overly polished and there were a whole lot of safety features for any DIY stuff after a few people ended up blowing up their homes trying to make superpowers. You just don’t get people making good super tech online anymore…
The creator of the video only made like four other NewVids before calling it quits back before the concept of actually making a career off the site was even a thing. His last video was a life update about how he’d been dealing with a toxic work culture and wasn’t feeling appreciated. Apparently he’d swapped to becoming a math teacher which he seemed to enjoy. His online DIY career was short-lived and probably not even something the guy thought about these days, but for Alex, “gadgetmaker972” had changed his entire life.
Over the years, he had tried tinkering with the design, but found that half the time it wouldn’t work right with even the slightest modification.
Remove the solid chunk of carbide seemingly haphazardly wedged into the coil and you’d lose those stupid spheres which everyone insisted were proof these weren’t miniaturized gravitor generators. Trade-off was that the beam’s strength plummeted to the point that it couldn’t create the imitation of kinetic force anymore. No orbs? No gravity shots. Flip the central coil when trying to mirror the gauntlet? The coil begins to overheat. Try and use the nanopolymer directional piping that full sized gravitor generators used? The pulse ion magnetron would backfeed into the vents and belch out what he was fairly sure was toxic smoke. Oh yeah, Alex had looked up how the big ones worked and knew his generators’ internals only barely resembled their big brothers but maybe the reason people kept claiming they were impossible to miniaturize was because that shit broke when you made it half the size of an Ameran Football?
Some experiments worked out. His overcharged beams were the result of him tinkering with adding rotating lenses to the emitter’s rear fixture to try and mimic the larger generator’s focusing array. The NewVid definitely didn’t cover turning these gloves into something that could demolish walls, having mostly been concerned with letting lazy people grab the remote from across the room and knocking over stacks of cups. Not useless but Alex had wanted something with a bit more punch. He’d also managed to further miniaturize the whole enclosure down by about a quarter of its total size with clever wiring and shifting the guide housing around. These things were chunky if you built them the way the video recommended.
So… did Alex know the exact science for how he had miniaturized gravitor gauntlets on his arms? No, not really.
gadgetmaker972’s video didn’t really cover that and Alex’s mostly self taught engineering skills didn’t really mesh with particle physics. When you can’t tell people how electric flow manages to result in gravitors vs antigravitors, no expert is willing to actually give you the time of day to prove your claims. Well… that wasn’t entirely true, but Alex was fairly sure that any scientist in his orbit willing to look his gloves over was the type to “discover” them shortly afterwards and have a suspiciously Alex-sized hole filled in their backyard that wouldn’t be able to argue otherwise.
But regardless of his lack of understanding on the exact “hows”, did that make him entirely clueless? No! Years of working with these things meant he understood the practical side of them.
Which is how he knew two very important things.
One: these gloves would be fine with him absolutely smothering them in cooling gel. Yes, it was going into the ventilation fixture and if he tried to fire the regular beam then the viscosity would disrupt the focus. But he wasn’t going to be using the regular beams and the rotating lenses would clear the way for the beam he actually wanted to be firing.
Bringing him to point two: This was going to fucking hurt. Even with remaining power to his suit and the underweave absorbing the shock and the G forces, max strength on these things was basically shoving an almost planetary amount of gravity or its inverse down your arm.
“Are you sure about this?” Val asked him, her worry written clearly on what little of her face Alex could make out.
As he balanced on the cart, coated in as much of the cryoterraga gel as the two of them could scoop up, and tied to several busted open drums of the stuff, Alex could understand her trepidation. The frustrated cries of their teammates as Orbit had slammed into the fight added a background track to the “bad idea” vibes this had.
“Depends on Dr. Celestial,” he said, mic deliberately left open.
“Not a doctor,” she muttered, her scowl audible in her voice, “and your systems were deliberately meant to not accept any patches wirelessly.”
“Then you really should address that next update,” he replied snarkily, his mouth getting away from him again. “Also, just lie. Doctor sounds better than Scientist.”
“This is revenge for the group chat, isn’t it?”
Alex didn’t confirm that as his visor flickered.
“Okay, that upped the sensitivity for your targeting systems. I hate to remind you,” she told him in a way that let him know she meant the opposite, “that regardless of what you think, your gloves aren’t going to work how you’re expecting, but if this will get you to finally call it quits and get T to scrub this, then go ahead.”
Like she said, Alex’s communication suites really weren’t supposed to let them do this, but they were deliberately taking advantage of the loophole that it would receive just about anything the lab would shunt its way in order to send some visual data that his actual onboard systems would pick up on. He’d need to talk to her later about her definition of “unhackable” but was willing to let it slide for now. He toggled his laser’s targeting systems but kept the actual emitters from warming up.
He was already getting some false hits from it and had to lower the helmet’s alert volume as it screamed at him about new targets, all the while ignoring Terrorantula’s cursing on the team comms as Orbit and Sun Light flung her around. As he stared at the stacks ahead of them, he smiled as one of the hits returned was exactly what he was looking for: he was now getting warnings about Orbit’s singularities.
“Alright, I’m ready,” he told Val as his hand practically became one with the cable holding him on, his thumb carefully avoiding the release latch until just the right moment.
The speedster nodded and gripped the cart’s handles.
---------------------------------
Lyn wheezed and glared daggers upwards at Orbit who was huffing and puffing himself, no longer able to float gently off the floor. As pissed as she was with Riftmaker for failing to keep him away, she had to admit that getting the hero to use his “ultimate” had taken a lot out of him, doubting she could’ve done better herself once the hero decided to let loose. Lyn had heard the noise from here and had cringed knowing that she either had to order Val to try and tackle the hero or deal with him herself.
In the end, she’d chosen to try handling it herself. Sun Light had been close to tapping out there, but she’d found a second wind shortly after domehead joined the fight. Both of the heroes were still worn out, sure, but Lyn wasn’t doing much better.
And now, she was stuck to the ground in the center aisle as Orbit focused a handful of gravity wells on her, multiplying her weight to the point that her upper body could barely hold itself off the floor with her arms. Spiderside was practically flat on the concrete.
She needed to call it, needed to order everyone to yank the ripcords. Sure, Reflecta was being handled, but with Riftmaker down and her pinned, this was a losing fight. Sun Light would recover and take out Devil and Turnaround. It was over.
And yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It didn’t matter that they’d emptied half the warehouse. It didn’t matter that they’d brought half of the Starlight Squad to their absolute limits. No, Lyn needed the win. She wanted this more than…
No… she wanted this as much as she wanted everything.
When Scarlet had asked her that first favor, she’d feared she’d be giving up her desires forever from their wording. The deal had initially left her numb when the sorcerer had taken the essence of that moment. But a single day later, that hunger had returned just as strong. She wanted to find Menace and maybe see if that would lead to anything. She’d wanted to eat everywhere she’d been denied for ten years. She wanted the bounty she knew was coming. She’d wanted that purpose Celeste had found. She wanted to call her parents for once. She wanted every shiny thing in the windows of the stores she passed. She wanted to steal every video game from Al. She wanted… Wanted. Wanted! NEEDED!
Her clawed hands balled into fists and she felt her venom begin to form in her fangs as her eyes narrowed on Orbit, the man denying her what she’d earned. He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and she felt the weight on her begin to increase. Despite that, her legs began to shift and begin to climb upwards.
“ORBIT!” a shout from across the warehouse broke the attention of both the hero and villain as they shifted their eyes down the aisle towards the front door.
The hero had to turn around to see it, and if Lyn hadn’t been so surprised at what she saw, she might’ve taken the opportunity to try and break free. But seeing Riftmaker standing on the hovercart, covered in blue goo while Val was accelerating him forward like it was chariot (or wheelbarrow more accurately) short circuited her thoughts. He’s out of his godsdamn mind, she realized. I need to call this now.
“What in the godsdamn…” Sun Light muttered as she floated over to see what was going on.
“I’ve got this…” Orbit muttered, pointing an arm towards the pair as they shot forward. “This guy just needs one last lesson.”
Lyn watched as several orbs of purple light began to form in the air between Orbit and the approaching villains. A loud boom preceded a wave of darkness that piled down the aisle, consuming every well that Orbit had just made. As it washed over Lyn, she felt herself momentarily begin to fall sideways, the gravity wells holding her down evaporating as Orbit’s focus was broken. The hero himself stumbling backwards a few steps. Sun Light’s leg was caught in the edge of it and suddenly she spun in the air like a windmill until she righted herself.
“How the fuck did he do that?!” Orbit cried out.
“How the fuck did he do that?!” Celeste’s voice came over the comms.
Lyn didn’t bother saying anything herself. Instead she managed to wrap her metaphorical hands around the thrashing serpent of her anger which wanted nothing more than to rip her fangs into Orbit’s neck while his back was turned. She wrenched it towards Sun Light instead. Enough of her brain was still working to let her know two things.
One: Riftmaker was definitely the right choice to keep duking it out with the gravity hero with the ace up his sleeve, while he’d definitely struggle with the Brick. Two: that cart wasn’t fucking stopping and she needed to get out of the way.
So she leapt with all her strength to grab the recovering hero and laid into her with as many punches as she could manage, rewarded with the cry of alarm the girl let out as the two of them crashed into the stacks.
---------------------------------
Alex heard the gel on his gauntlet angrily sizzle away as the blast went off and grinned as Terrorantula pounced on the other hero. He didn’t have much more time than that as his alarms blared a heads up that Orbit was throwing out more wells to yank the incoming cart off the ground with a pair from above.
At least he hoped it was going to be a pull coming. If Orbit was trying to slam the front of the hovercart downwards, then Alex’s countermeasure here was going to hurt a lot more than just his shoulder as he aimed at the forming spheres with the help of the overtuned targeting systems and let loose a blast. Alex’s shot would instantly decrease the gravity between the points, probably to a higher degree than Orbit’s wells would presumably be trying to increase it. If instead the hero was putting out something to smoosh him, then Alex would just be adding to the force.
He called the coin toss correctly, and the cart only lowered itself slightly as his blast won, making the hover components squeal and Val squeak as she dealt with the sudden moment of increased weight on the cart.
Orbit cursed and dodged out of the way, shouting “Nullifier!” as the cart barely missed him.
Not a terrible guess but try again, asshole!
Alex’s stomach lurched as Val spun him around and bled off the momentum as they exited the shelves, opting to go for a wide curve to pick up speed again with plans to race down the edge of the room instead of trying to pull a 180.
Alex reached back and tapped the handles, giving her the signal while scooping up a handful of cryoterraga to slather over the gauntlets as the outer layer boiled away. Steam flowed in wisps as the new gel came to a rest and Alex flicked the excess off his fingers before releasing the cord tying him down.
Val let go midway through the run and Alex pointed both arms to the ground and let two full blasts launch himself into the air. The cart barely managed to not spill over as the internal mechanisms howled and fought to keep it balanced. His visor threw out a lot of false positives but he noted with smug satisfaction the moment it pointed out Orbit’s attempt at a trap while he himself sailed well over its effect radius. The sensors picked up on the hero quickly afterwards and Alex used both arms to halt his momentum and launch himself downwards at the man, both booming shockwaves rattling his teeth and testing his underweave’s endurance.
---------------------------------
Orbit’s mind was racing. How in the hell was Riftmaker doing this?
He’d called out a warning to Sun Light about Nullifiers, either a power or a piece of tech meant to cancel out superpowers, as you were trained to do the moment those things popped up in a fight. You shouted that the moment you think someone’s breaking out a Null if you’ve got flying allies. But Nulls didn’t come with a wave like that. You’d need to be backed up by kinetic force throwers. And those didn’t feel like your feet were pointed the wrong way. He was too familiar with what caused that sensation.
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Is Riftmaker a Copycat? He worried. Is he another Zorb?2 Did me going full blast there let him absorb enough of my power?
At the thought of absorbing power, a chill crept down his spine. Was this the guy? The one that killed Maniacal?
No, if he was a Copycat, that probably meant he was absolutely excluded from that suspicion. Maniacal was killed by sorcery, and you couldn’t copy that with any known Copycat power.3 Plus, if he was like Zorb or most Copycats, he could only copy one or two powers at a time and didn’t really get anything from free-floating energy like the stuff Maniacal had gathered. Maybe increasing your baseline abilities but that just made Riftmaker as likely a suspect as the rest of the villains in this city.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the cart’s speedster empowered turn as it cut through the air to begin another approach. He bet that they were going to be scooting along the edge to let Riftmaker get another shot off on him or Sun Light and decided to prepare a well to pull it against the wall. He didn’t want it to crash at the speeds the two villains were running it. The speedster would probably survive that – they tended to not get hurt from momentum based snafus – but he was fairly sure that it would bisect Riftmaker. As obnoxious as this guy was, Orbit really didn’t want to kill anyone in front of the girl he’d helped raise.
His trap set, Orbit spun up another burst of his power to ready something to knock back whatever Riftmaker planned to unleash at him.
A loud bang presaged the appearance of the cart screeching down the side of the wall. While Orbit released his readied attack, his eyes bulged behind his mask as he caught up to the fact that neither villain was attached to the hovering platform. Had they simply thrown it forward as a distraction? He was about to turn around just in case they were running up behind him when two more warbling booms made his head wrench upwards to catch sight of the green and gold villain flinging himself downwards in his direction, one of the villain’s hands shooting forward at him. Orbit pulled his fingers upwards to adjust his gravity well’s power towards the threat, blocking another blast before his eyes flicked to something in front of him.
A small thumb-sized canister hung in the air in front of Orbit for half a second. Time slowed to a crawl as he took it in, the device held aloft by the fight between his power and Riftmaker’s mirroring force. He realized it was one of the explosives that Riftmaker had tried chucking at him several times earlier. A few heartbeats more and Riftmaker’s blast would fade causing Orbit’s power to push it away, but for the frozen moment, Orbit could see it in detail.
It was covered in blue slime, and that simple observation ate the few microseconds that his reaction time could’ve used to save him. Instead of forming a well behind himself to pull himself away or even futilely attempting to knock it aside (though the crates boxing him in would’ve made that impossible), his mind was fixed on the drops of cryoterraga clinging to the small explosive.
As the canister detonated, sending him flying back, his mind went blank, but the half-moment before the concussive blast went off, Orbit realized with shock just what was happening. He recognized the cooling gel he’d seen the villain keep applying to his gauntlets and it all clicked.
His brain managed to reset itself as his body tumbled end over end before slamming into the metal frame of the shelves roughly twenty feet away. His muscle memory took over and he immediately launched himself off the ground into the air. Zipping down the center aisle, he dodged a blast from Riftmaker as the villain fell to the ground while his mind raced.
Impossible... Just… Impossible!
The cooling gel forced him to acknowledge it. The technology in question struggled with miniaturization because typically at smaller sizes most fixtures couldn’t generate enough rotational force for the particle movement which created the gravity altering effect without overheating quickly. If you could get something to run fast enough, you’d run too hot to make stable beams for long.
But Riftmaker wasn’t running the beams long, just bursts quick enough to slam like a tidal wave. And he had cryoterraga to offset the heat.
No, there’s no way it’s that! We’re not fighting Overlab here, this is a bunch of random Victory City chumps punching a little higher up than they should. There’s no fucking way that’s an actual, honest to the gods, miniaturized-
His thoughts were interrupted as he saw his teammate through the gaps in the shelving. From what he could make out, Sun Light was peeling the giant form of Terrorantula off herself and attempting to keep her back with some of her light blasts. He called out to her and she immediately started her own retreat, allowing him to yank her along as he passed, leaving the spider villainess fuming as she swiped at thin air.
“Orbit?” she looked over at him and he winced as he saw the bruises starting to form on her.
“Just a bit of trouble,” he reassured her, knowing that trying to pitch calling for reinforcements was going to be a losing battle which he couldn’t deal with while also corralling her away from the fight. “We need to regroup and recover for a sec.”
She nodded and silently flew alongside him, giving Orbit the chance to glance backwards. His eyes scanned along the metal framing and crates around him, but he couldn’t spot the villains. Why weren’t they giving chase?
---------------------------------
Lyn let loose a primal scream of frustration as Riftmaker walked up to her. She glanced over and saw trails of steam rising in ribbons off both of his gauntlets.
“They’re getting away,” she growled accusingly. “They’re going to call for backup and keep us busy! We need to go after them!”
“One last push then,” Riftmaker told her, his voice that kind of desperate confidence that tells you there’s only so much left in them, but dammit if they’re not going to make it count. Despite that, he didn’t seem to make any moves to actually start running, instead calling out, “Val!”
“Already here,” she arrived, pushing the cart full of ruined drums up to the two of them, the blue contents sloshing out.
Riftmaker thanked her and hopped on the cart to submerge both arms in a barrel. To Lyn’s surprise, rather than ready himself to once again ride the cart forward like a battle sled, the man instead stumbled off the floating platform and trudged over to her, “I’ve got one more request. Mind giving me a boost to the top?”
“What are you planning?” Lyn demanded.
“I can see them waiting over there for us,” he pointed through the shelves, his visor apparently coming in handy. “We try and chase them and they’ll get the jump on us. Or they keep running and we end up tiring ourselves out. Or we end up playing to their strengths in the open ground.”
Lyn shook her head, “That doesn’t answer my question.”
Riftmaker turned to look at her and she could tell he was smiling behind the mask, “We got everything off these racks that we need right? Then let’s do what we do best, and be villains so they can be heroes.”
---------------------------------
“What are they plotting now?” Sun Light gave voice to Orbit’s worries.
Visual glitches were spiking across his visor, every flashing pixel actually a phantom villain which caused him to tense up. He was only half listening to his teammate as she nervously spoke, knowing her own eyes were darting around just as much as his.
Even though they’d gained some breathing room, Orbit knew they needed to call for backup. Sure, it was embarrassing but unless they could get Reflecta free from the two villains harassing her, the odds were stacked against them. Getting Sun Light to agree… Well that would be as hard as getting Commander Cosmic to.
“Sun…” he began.
“Yeah, I know,” she interrupted. “They’ve got a Nullifier. We need to even the odds.”
Pride bloomed in Orbit’s chest. The girl was going places, even if that meant she’d need to leave the nest soon. Still he felt compelled to set the record straight.
“It’s not a Nullifier. Riftmaker can just cancel out my powers with a similar ability of his own,” he told her.
She gave him a worried look, “You think that he’s got the same abilities as you or did he copy them?”
Orbit shook his head, hating to admit his suspicions but needing to loop in Sun Light, “No, this is tech, not super powers. Alright, let’s call this in.”
He activated his comms with a tap on the side of his helmet and pinged Amberheart, throwing an echo link to Wavelength who would hopefully break the news gently, “This is the Starlight Squ-”
A warbling boom announced Riftmaker’s next move. Orbit tensed up, his hand drifting away to get ready even though he lacked a visual, when all of the sudden the line went dead.
Dammit! That last blast must’ve messed up the signal!
He was midway through reconnecting when he heard the ominous creaking of metal and scraping of plastic and realized what the villains had done with horror.
The shelves were toppling over and headed right for them.
Both Sun Light and him acted on instinct honed from years of being a hero before either could rationalize it. They weren’t trying to protect P.H.O.T.O.N.’s storage, or trying to preserve the reputation of the Squad, or even trying to keep from being crushed as both of them immediately sprang into action to try and stop the final shelf from toppling over. Much like the mistake of grabbing for a falling knife just because your instincts were to not let anything drop to the ground, both heroes had been trained to stop collateral damage in order to save whatever civilian might be too slow to avoid a falling building.
Orbit extended his powers to gently lower crates as they began to fall from up high. His power was rapidly draining as he also stretched it to help Sun Light as she flew up to grab the top shelf by gently cushioning the fall of the entire rack even as it was being pressed down by rows behind it. The warehouse was exploding with the sounds of the slow moving crash, the smaller objects flinging themselves to the hard floor where no hero was there to save them. The two of them weren’t fighting to keep the collapsing rows upright or save everything but to try and mitigate the damage, their instincts driving them.
As Orbit’s conscious thoughts kicked back in as the adrenaline spike which had autopiloted his body faded, he recognized the trap for what it was, not quick enough to do anything about the rapidly approaching cart or the villain atop it. His eyes fixed on Riftmaker’s arms, the villain having held them out wide so that one pointed directly towards Orbit as he stood under the shadow of the descending storage rack while the other was held directly opposite as though he was stretching.
“Those are-!” Orbit called out, not knowing if he was doing so in hopes to warn Sun Light or just to finally voice his realization aloud.
“Gravitor! FUCKING! GENERATORS!” Riftmaker howled as he fired off a blast from both gloves, the one pointed away stabilizing him as he surfed atop the hovering platform.
Orbit heard Sun Light cry out as he went flying. The few boxes he was still levitating went clattering to the floor, his own bounces adding to the noise as the armored parts of his costume cracked against the concrete. He heard Riftmaker’s awful gloves go off again and his vision returned just in time to see the man rocketing towards him, using twin blasts of concentrated negative gravity to blast off the floating platform. The villain wound up a punch that was telegraphed from a mile away but Orbit’s body was too sluggish to properly respond. Instead he depended on what little his powers could give him.
He threw up a singularity behind the incoming villain only to watch as the man twisted in midair and fired off a shot that collapsed it instantly. How the hell did he see that one coming? Still, the distraction, as meager as it was, gave Orbit enough time to ready another burst, which he immediately used to increase the gravity between the two of them and stumbled forward into the pull. He hoped to catch Riftmaker off guard with this given the short distance left between them
If he was trying for a punch, then this should let me duck under it, Orbit’s thoughts crawled through the fog creeping throughout his brain. And if he was lining up a blast, that should cancel some of the gravitic differential.
As the villain twisted back around and raised his fist once more, Orbit heard the generator go off. Before he could celebrate predicting the villain’s move, he felt his body pulled forward even stronger rather than being hit by the weakened blast he’d been expecting. Worse, Riftmaker’s punch was swinging already and the momentary disorientation stopped him from dodging correctly.
A moment of blindness overtook him as the fist cracked into his helmet and he felt consciousness slipping away, but Orbit refused to pass out through pure spite, trying to lash out and grab the villain. Those gloves couldn’t hit him if he aimed the barrel away and he was willing to turn this into pure fisticuffs if it came to that. One arm slipped out of his reach, but he managed to grab hold of the other.
A moment later the pain that ravaged his hand forced him to let go, both combatants staggering away from one another with grunts and shallow breaths. Glancing down, Orbit saw the villain’s gauntlets shimmered as the gel atop them was visibly boiling as it wept off to the floor.
That heat had scalded Orbit through his own gloves. Even though cryoterraga’s thermal flow would be doing its damnedest to rush everything to the surface to let it dissipate, if it was that hot then the villain was no doubt only a few more shots away from melting those gloves to his flesh. Even another bath of the stuff probably wouldn’t help what temperatures the internal gel was about to reach.
Apparently unconcerned, Riftmaker surged forward to deliver a very slow and awkward haymaker. Still, it was all Orbit could do to dodge backwards. Both of them were flagging now as the injuries had stacked up invisibly underneath their costumes. It came down to one good final blow.
Orbit’s eyes shot to the leaning shelving the two were still battling beneath and saw his winning move: a crate that was just barely being held in place by the last fading strength of a tired cloth strap. He pulled on a little of his power to yank himself backwards and out of the way of the box’s path, risking opening himself up to a blast from Riftmaker. While he floated backwards, he prepared half of his remaining power, holding onto it to try and force a well to deal with whatever Riftmaker was about to send his way.
Nothing came, making him pause. The unexpected sight of the villain visibly relaxing, hunching to catch his breath while watching the hero as though he’d already won gave him pause. No, not at him. His helmet was pointed down at Orbit’s feet…
His boot knocked against something small on the ground and he turned to take a glance down at it.
Another fucking explosive. Fuck…
His gaze snapped up to the villain who had clearly tossed it while lazily throwing that last punch, either as a distraction or as the trap it turned out to be. Riftmaker disappeared into a wall of golden light and Orbit didn’t get the time to do anything else as his world went white once more.
---------------------------------
As Orbit sunk down against his flickering hardlight shield, Alex flicked it off, wincing at the 2% remaining power in the corner as the shield had basically eaten every scrap of energy his pulsar generator had managed to scrounge up over the last couple minutes. He bet it was probably awful to run the battery this low for this long, but he’d needed it for that last gambit. Alex could feel his arms cooking in the suit – not to mention the bruising all over his shoulder and chest from all the max power shots.
Tiredly, he bent down and grabbed the hero’s collar, thankful that the armor built into the costume made for solid handles as he dragged the man away from the descending metal racks. No point in earning a rep as a hero killer in the lamest way possible: letting them be crushed by discount circuit boards.
One of the crates slammed down nearby, forcing him to hustle. Looking back, he noticed it landed right where he’d been standing a few seconds earlier. Fuck, this fight really did come down to the wire…
Depositing the hero on the ground, he noticed with pride the stupid fishbowl helm was solidly cracked open by that last explosion. The concussive cans weren’t meant to inflict that much damage, so it was probably the shield that finally did it.
He didn’t get much time to savor the victory as he heard the shelf finally slam into the floor and Sun Light’s howl of rage as she obviously noticed how the fight had ended. Alex simply turned to face her, knowing she was about to bowl into him. He didn’t’ raise a fist to aim his gloves. He didn’t try to coax one last shield out of his much abused battery. He just locked eyes on her and accepted the impact that was to come.
He was spent. Nothing left in the tank to give. The last drops of adrenaline had left his system and an intense tiredness had crept in to take its place. He wasn’t numb, he just accepted he couldn’t do anything.
He let his body relax and awaited the inevitable.
Only to hear a scream as he watched Sun Light go tumbling across the ground, missing him by a dozen feet.
---------------------------------
Sarah screamed with surprise and rage as she fought back against Terrorantula’s grapple, yanking and twisting against the clawed hands that raked into her arms as the villainess fought her. She needed to help Uncle Bit!
“Get off me, you creepy bitch!” she exploded, summoning her power.
She couldn’t get an angle off with a blast, but she could let the energy charge up inside herself. She’d release it all in a pulse around her and send this fucking spider freak flying! Then she’d take care of that other villain and go save Aunt Flec. She’d-
No, she needed to call for help, like Bit had been doing before the villain had interrupted them. She needed to be smart. She needed to…
A growl brought her attention back to the villainess atop her. Her teeth were barred and a toxic green liquid ran down from her spiked canines. Sarah looked up at the woman’s pitch black eyes.
Except they weren’t pitch black anymore. Red pinpricks swam in the darkness, fixed angrily on Sarah.
At that moment, Sarah no longer felt like a hero. She felt like a scared little kid staring directly at the monster under her bed. She lost hold on her building power and it faded from her grasp. She yelped and tried to resummon it. Anything to keep her safe.
She wasn’t quick enough as the monster’s fangs descended and latched onto her neck. Her skin’s enhanced durability fought the spiked maw as she screamed in terror, trying desperately to knock that creature away. Then she felt the moment the teeth broke skin and the venom flooded her system as her terrified heart beat a thousand miles per minute.
Her vision went blurry and she saw the horrible face of the monster enter her sight once more, its awful mouth smeared in her blood. Then the world went black.
1. Modern microwave ovens differ from those first made with cavity magnetrons back in the 2000’s. They use modern pulse ion technology to more evenly heat food, forgoing the creation of microwave radiation. This makes their name somewhat antiquated and somewhat misleading.
2. Most “Copycat” powers struggle to copy every type of superpower they encounter. The villain Zorb was an exception, but he required being hit by the powers in question in order to mimic them, and would only be able to output the strength of a power with the level he’d been hit with.
3. Not entirely accurate, as spell mirroring falls under the category of “Copycat” abilities. But none of these abilities allow an individual that lacks “magical potential” to suddenly manipulate arcane energies, a requirement for spellcasting.
