Summus Proelium

Pencil hadn't gotten as far as he had by relying solely on his power or that teleportation tech to get him out of trouble. He was remarkably quick, able to sidestep out of the way as I threw myself at him. His foot came up and collided with my stomach, knocking me sideways into the nearby table. I crashed into it and rolled aside just as he screamed out a curse while driving a knife down through the surface. The knife had to have been Touched-Tech, because it cut right through the thick wood like it was butter, leaving the thing to fall apart in two halves. Even with orange protection, I probably didn't want to get hit by that thing. That would end this fight pretty quickly, and badly.

Painting my fist and arm purple while rolling off the table and back to my feet, I lashed out to punch the man in his own stomach. He didn't react at all. He was immune again, somehow. Did his invulnerability recharge that quickly?

While those thoughts flashed through my mind, I used blue paint to boost myself off the floor and away from him. On my way up, my foot lashed out to kick him in the torso, trying to double the man over. Yet again, there was no reaction. Fuck! It couldn’t be that bad, could it? If I had to work my way through all those invulnerability charges all over again after he was finally able to be hurt, I was going to scream.

Still, I had to keep trying. To that end, while flipping myself over on the ceiling, I hit those two table halves with red paint along with another spot behind Pencil while he was still looking up to find me. The twin table pieces went flying at him, one after the other. The first bounced off harmlessly. But the second slammed into the man and knocked him staggering.

That, the image of him stumbling when that second table piece crashed into him, was probably the most beautiful thing I had seen in a very long time. It meant his invulnerability hadn't completely recharged after all. He was getting charges back, but not all of them immediately. Did that mean I just had to keep hitting him before he could regenerate those charges? I wasn't sure, but it was the best plan I had. And to be honest, ‘hit Pencil a lot’ felt like a solid plan in general.

Even as he was staggering, the bastard sent several blind shots toward me. One bounced off my shoulder as I activated the orange-blue penguin symbol on my lower back and dove toward him. He didn’t react at all to the damage reflection from the shot. Nor did he react to both of my feet colliding with his shoulders. I simply bounced off and fell toward the floor, where I had to roll out of the way as he fired two more wild shots at the spot where I had been. A purple snake appeared on my leg before I drove that foot into his leg. Again, nothing happened, and I had to roll back to my feet. I caught a glimpse of his arm coming down with the knife, and quickly activated a green tornado on my chest so I could step into the blow. My hand caught his extended wrist before he could drive the blade into my back, and I slammed my helmet into his face.

Oh, that worked. A bellow of pain escaped the man as he recoiled from the blow, and the knife fell out of his hand. I’d hurt him. I actually hurt him. Quickly taking advantage, or trying to, I drove my foot into the side of his knee as hard as I could.

Nothing. He gave no reaction at all. Worse, the delay gave him time to recover. With blood from a probably-broken nose covering his face, he snarled and brought his fist around toward my head. No, not just his fist. A weapon appeared in his hand, some sort of club or something, like a baton. He was so quick, I didn’t have time to renew the orange paint before the club collided with the side of my helmet.

Wren did good work. The helmet was supposed to stand up against bullets without orange paint. Which was good, since whatever sort of Touched-Tech that baton was, it clearly would have taken my head off without her efforts. Even with them, I was still knocked to the floor by the blow, my ears ringing. The baton definitely had a concussive boost to it or something. It had hit me like a freaking freight train.

From my sprawled position on the floor, I caught the barest glimpse out of the corner of my eye (it was more like several glimpses given I was seeing double or triple in that moment) of Pencil raising the club up before bringing it down toward my head once more. At the last second, I managed to get a hand up to shoot two quick splotches of red. Even as dazed as I was, my aim was still perfect. The first hit the club, while the other hit the ceiling above both of us. An instant before his weapon would have slammed into my visor, it was ripped from his grasp and sent flying upward.

While he was still reacting to his hand whiffing through the air, sans baton, I heaved myself back a bit and brought both feet up before kicking out. One hit the man’s stomach while the other hit his face. I felt the air rush out of him from the first, but he gave no reaction whatsoever to the second. It did, however, give me an opening to roll out from under him and pick myself up.

Okay, okay, what? The foot to his stomach just now had hurt him. The second of the two table halves to his side had hurt him, even after both a punch and a kick hadn’t done anything. And just now, even though I’d seen a bullet graze his head and leave that bloody mark and managed to hurt him with a headbutt, a kick to the face had done nothing.

Wait, hang on. I knew this. I knew what was going on. My kick to his face had come after he hit me in the helmet with that baton. After he’d done damage to my head. And he’d become immune to that earlier punch and kick to the stomach after he kicked me around the same area. After that, he was still immune to the first half of the table, but the second half hurt him.

Charges. He didn’t regenerate charges over time, he regenerated them by doing the same thing to others. Or close to the same thing. He hit one general area of the body and gained a bit of immunity for that same place. That was it, right? It had to be. It was the only thing that made the last few moments make any sense at all, and it fit with everything else we knew. I could fight him, I could actually hurt him. But every time he hit me, he would get several invulnerability charges for that part of his body.

Right, this was going to be complicated. And not easy. But I could do it. I could hurt him. I could beat him. And, as the two of us stared at one another, I made a point of painting a green smiley face across my helmet.

“What…. are you… grinning about?” The evil piece of shit snapped that demand while summoning two more of those concussive batons from the… whatever hammer space he was pulling all these weapons from, one for each hand.

“Me?” I cracked my neck, reapplying several more paint images in rapid succession all across my costume. “Not much, I guess I just realized something.

“I’m gonna kick your ass.”

A snarl of anger and disbelief escaped the man. “You think so, self-righteous little shit? Why don’t you come try it?”

Taking a running start while still on my skates, I watched Pencil’s batons while each step brought me closer. With four steps left before I’d be in range of him, my right hand rose and pointed to one side. With three steps left, I sent a shot of red paint at the edge of a still-intact table. With two steps left, I activated the paint there and on my glove. With one step left, the table was yanked over toward me. And in the very instant that I came within range, I canceled the paint. The table slid to a stop directly in front of the man, while I dropped into a slide to go under it. The momentum from my wheels carried me onward, even as his descending baton collided with the table. The blow was still enough to blow that apart, sending splinters in every direction. But I was safe, sliding between the man’s legs while he recoiled reflexively from the table shattering right in his face.

Meanwhile, I came back to my feet and pivoted, spinning on my wheels. The baton he’d hit the table with was out of sight, but he was holding the other one out to one side. Before he could react, one shot of red hit the weapon, while another ripped it from his unsuspecting hand and sent it flying off out of the way to bounce off the distant wall.

He was still unbelievably quick, of course, spinning around so fast it was like his entire body had simply inverted direction instantly. One second I was looking at his back, and the next he was facing me, jabbing his remaining baton at my chest. But I was ready for that, having already activated a large green tornado symbol I’d put across my chest, giving me enough immediate speed to pivot inside his jab. At the same time, my right fist snapped up to collide with his chin, followed by an even faster punch from my left fist to the opposite side of his face. Only then, after hitting him twice (in addition to the kick I’d hit his face with a few moments earlier) and accomplishing nothing, did I activate the purple snake image I’d created on my arm, before once again lashing out with my right fist. Please let me be right, please let me be right. Please God let me be right.

I was right. And oh boy did he feel that one. The first two punches accomplished nothing, as usual. But when the third made contact, his head snapped backward and he staggered with a yelped curse. He stumbled back a step, raising a hand to his face before staring at me incredulously.

Once again, I made a green smiley face appear on my visor. My voice was flat. “Gotcha.”

Things went wild then. With a scream of rage, Pencil lunged at me, swinging that baton. I ducked under it, but his foot was already rising, colliding with my helmet. It wasn’t enough to hurt, but something told me it didn’t have to be in order to count for his power. But I already knew what to do, sending a wide spray of paint that way while rolling with the impact from his kick before he could follow up.

In this case, what he was trying to follow up with was a bullet or ten, having summoned yet another gun into his free hand so he could fire off several shots in rapid succession right where I’d been when he kicked me. But I was already rolling backwards, and before he could adjust his aim, the man was struck in the side of the head by something. Then another something, and another. That wide spray of paint I’d sent out while in mid-roll was red, hitting about a dozen of the random bits of debris from the table he’d blown apart with his baton. The other spot of red was on the far wall, above and past Pencil. So all those random bits of wood were flying right at his head. About half missed entirely, but several struck home, colliding with the man’s temple and face. And just when he finally yelped as one piece of wood managed to hurt him, I was already back up and swinging. Yes, I was a good ten feet away by that point. But I’d painted my arm purple and pink, so it stretched. My arm extended all the way across that ten foot distance, just enough for my fist to slam into his newly-vulnerable face. That made his head snap sideways, even as he managed to get that gun up enough to fire three rapid shots right at me. The first two went wide, but the third ricocheted off the side of the helmet. Yet another reason to hug Wren as tightly as I could once this was all over. As if I needed more.

Still, even with the protection from the helmet, the impact of that bullet was enough to snap my head back. My arm snapped back as well, while Pencil closed the distance between us. His eyes looked wild and crazed in the brief glimpse that I had just before his hand closed around my throat. He’d dropped his other baton at some point, instead choosing to start choking me with that hand while shoving his pistol up under my chin. But an instant before he could pull the trigger, I drove my arm into his wrist. The pistol went off right between us, firing into the ceiling before the bullet went rebounding around the room thanks to the forcefield.

He'd given himself a few more invulnerability charges when his bullet hit my helmet, but he hadn't managed to hit my torso yet. He was too focused on choking the life out of me, his hand gripping me even more tightly while he fought to push his gun back into position. With both of my hands against his wrist, he couldn’t get the gun where he wanted it, but he did manage to press it against my chest. His next words were spat hatefully. “Remember the camera? Wanna say bye bye to anyone who gives a shit about you? Oh, what’s that? Nothing to say? Cat got your tongue?” His hand tightened more and more against my throat, while he inexorably pushed his other hand with the gun hard against my chest, despite my efforts to push against it. “At what point do you think the news that’ll show this footage later is gonna cut away? Think they’ll show this bit right here? Think they’ll show my finger getting closer to the trigger? Think they’ll--what?”

That last bit came as the hand that had been squeezing my throat abruptly snapped shut completely. He wasn’t gripping flesh and bone anymore. He had been squeezing what amounted to Play-Doh. Pink Play-Doh. His hand just tore some of my throat away harmlessly. And as for the gun that he had been pushing into position under my chin, I hadn’t actually been fighting to stop him from moving it closer, I had been very subtly adjusting his aim, listening to what my power was saying about exactly how to direct it. When he reflexively pulled the trigger in surprise, the bullet went all the way through the small pink spot on my chest and back, rebounded off the wall directly behind us, then narrowly missed my ear on its return trip before striking the man right in his still-vulnerable shoulder.

That was enough to make him howl, recoiling as the gun dropped from his hand. Already, I could feel the bits of pink… me that had been ripped away by his grasp on my throat, or by the bullet through my torso schlooping their way back into position. He was bleeding, he had been shot right in the shoulder, by his own bullet. And he was absolutely not happy about that.

Well he was about to become even more unhappy. I was already launching myself that way, activating a pair of purple dumbbell images on either shoulder before driving my fist into his stomach. At the same time, my other hand used red paint to summon a broken metal table leg to it. As he doubled over, I drove the jagged end of that bit of debris as hard as I could straight into the exact same spot as that bullet wound that had already been gushing blood. Then I twisted that while his bellow filled the room. I felt the chair leg stick on something inside his shoulder, and yanked downward to keep him in position while my other fist collided with his face once, twice, three times, and on the fourth I felt blood, as I finally broke through his defenses and hurt him again.

His flailing hand struck my side. No, not his hand. He’d managed to summon a knife and it actually cut me, though not nearly as much as he was trying to. Still, I felt a shock of pain along my own shoulder, just as his other fist collided with my opposite shoulder as hard as he could to make me stumble backward, the table leg clattering to the ground while his wound closed.

Before he could fully regain his footing, I ignored the pain from my own bleeding shoulder and punched him once in the chest to no avail, then in the shoulder, then the stomach. On the third one, the air went whooshing out of him, the blow making him slump. Which left his face in prime range for me to put my other fist into it, an instant before my purple paint ran out.

He was hurt, dazed, and angry. And I made it worse with a quick, “You know, I thought you were taking this fight seriously, but if you’re just here to dance the Polka…”

Confused, Pencil looked down, following my gaze. Only to find the front of his shirt covered in a couple hundred randomly scattered tiny yellow dots. Polka dots, of course. Throughout these last few moments, I had been carefully applying all of them to him one after another. And now, I activated them. Not all at once, but one after another after another. I’d activate one, disable it instantly, then the next, and the next, while he was still figuring out what happened.

Finally, all the dots were gone. Those two hundred or so tiny, almost imperceptible splotches of yellow had vanished. But they were replaced by a new one, a much larger spot of yellow that I shot right across his chest. And when I activated it, his rising hand suddenly slowed.

It worked. I had eaten through whatever he used to give himself immunity to my slow paint (I really had no idea what he’d done for that) by simply using a couple hundred dots of yellow. Too small to have done much, but enough to chew through his defenses.

“You think they’ll edit this part out,” I asked as Nick watched his own arm rise unnaturally slowly, “or just pause it so everyone can get popcorn?”

Rearing back, the man swung wildly at my throat with his knife. But as slow as he was now, I ducked under it, then popped back up and punched his jaw with my left hand. Right before contact, I activated a purple dragon breathing orange fire across my back. The impact of that blow knocked his head sideways, right into my other incoming hand. That one knocked two of his teeth out, his wild, manic expression somehow worse with all the blood. So I decided to help out by adding a little more red, specifically painting his nose with it.

“Jeez, so rude when all I’m trying to do is help you!” I snapped those words while side-stepping his wild, still-slowed kick before hitting him twice more in rapid succession, a left fist colliding with his cheek before the right hit his already-broken and reddened nose. “You want people to think you’re scary, right? Clowns are scary!”

He flailed even more wildly, coming nowhere near me as his fist sailed over a foot wide of my face. Though I did take the opportunity to hit his knife with a shot of red to yank it away from him, sending it flying. “I mean, they’re not, but clown would be a step-up from what you are right now. You’re nothing but an asshole with a gimmicky power. And trust me, if there’s one thing I know--” My purple-pink painted hand snapped out several feet like a whip, catching hold of another piece of shattered table before snapping back to slam it into the side of his head, the impact staggering him. “--it’s gimmicky powers.”

Even slowed as he was, the man still managed to shoot me in the face, then the chest. I recovered and evaded the next two shots and hit him in the chin, the cheek, the nose, then the cheek again all in rapid succession. He swung again and I twisted around to evade it, driving my elbow into his stomach twice before pivoting back to punch him in the same spot. With all three of his brief immunity charges gone, I quickly boosted myself with a couple large green winged sneaker images on either side of my helmet before spinning around into a kick that drove my foot into his stomach as well. He tried to grab my foot, but between him being slowed and me being sped up, there was no chance. I was already pivoting back around, using the momentum to slam my right fist into his eye, then my left into his cheek. Then a right again, then a left. All before he had even finished registering the first blow to his face. I hit him again, and again, and again, as many times as I could.

As many times as it took.

We stumbled away from each other, Pencil slumped and growling while swaying a bit woozily, like a man who was incredibly drunk. I felt my own exhaustion acutely, panting hard as I managed, “You think terrifying people, torturing them, killing them is gonna get you in the history books? It’s not. You keep this up and you’ll only go one place.”

“Yeah?” Pencil growled the word, sounding almost more like an animal than a man as he slumped almost all the way over, “where’s that?” Even as he asked that, the lanky figure was already rising back to his full height, hand having grabbed one of his fallen batons. In the next instant, he was launching himself off the floor, swinging the baton at my head.

Or at least, he tried to. But I had done one small, almost imperceptible thing while I’d been up close. I painted his shoelaces red. And in that moment, as he went to throw himself at me, I activated that paint. His shoelaces immediately snapped into one another, as if they’d been knotted that way. He went to lunge forward, but his shoelaces were tied together. The momentum of his lunge, however, had to go somewhere. In this case, it went toward slamming him face-first into the floor.

And just like that, with something so simple, the great and terrifying Pencil was out for the count. He lay there, sprawled on the floor, while I tilted my head and stared down at his fallen, beaten body. “You know, I guess I was wrong.

“You didn’t go anywhere after all.”