Summus Proelium

The very first thing I did, without any hesitation, was pivot to put one hand each on Paige and Sierra’s shoulders. Activating purple and orange paint I’d put on there earlier, I gave them a quick push. “Poise, Style, get the Prevs!” Yes, the two Fell-Touched were more intimidating single threats, but ignoring the guys with guns was probably a bad idea. Besides, I wasn’t sure anything these two could do would hurt Silbón or Thugdumb. I didn’t know whether or not the latter’s ‘make people stupid’ defensive power would do anything to their computer minds, but now wasn’t the time to test it. Especially given the stakes of what was going on.

It didn’t matter how many of those armed guys there were, those two could handle them. Which left Hobbes, Calvin, Alloy, and me to do something about the two Fell-Touched. Oh, and Alloy was working under a handicap, since she only had six marbles total. Two of them (black and white) were being used as her armor at the moment, while another three (silver, gold, and purple) were acting as the wall to stop anyone from getting into that store. So she only had one, the bronze marble, to use as a weapon right now. She’d turned it into a shield that was hovering in front of her.

“Oy!” Thugdumb shouted, “why don’t you all do yourselves a favor and back off? You’re going through all this trouble to defend a psychopath killer? What sense does that make? Why would you try so hard to save her life? You don’t honestly think she’s telling the truth about being forced into the things she did, do you? Tell me you’re not that naive. You should just turn around and walk away. We’re doing everyone a favor by putting the crazy lady out of the whole city’s misery, and you know it. If you stop us and she ends up getting away to kill more people--and she will--how’s that gonna make you feel?” He and Silbón had both stopped nearby, clearly waiting to see if they could talk us down rather than fight it out, which was… interesting.

“Probably pretty upset,” I allowed. “But you’re not exactly a legal executioner, Mr. Dumb. We can’t let you kill her just because it’d make things easier for everyone. Where does the line get drawn in that case? You’re a Fell, you hurt people too. Maybe not as brazenly or as horribly as she has, but still. It’s not your place to walk in, pronounce judgment, and kill her. You don’t get to make that call.” I was leaving all the reasons we really needed her alive unsaid, of course.

I couldn’t see the man’s expression, since he was wearing a metallic silver facemask under the old-style fedora. But I was pretty sure he was amused by that. While the fight continued to rage around us (including Poise and Style making sure their Prev backup regretted ever stepping out of their vehicle), he regarded me and gave a very faint chuckle. “Last chance. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have any personal problem with any of you. Walk away now, let us handle this our way, and everyone comes out the better for it. No one else gets hurt. No one aside from the one who really deserves it.”

In answer, I straighted up a bit, with Alloy right behind me and Calvin and Hobbes to either side. My voice was as firm as I could make it. “You’re not getting through those doors.”

Both men reacted to that. In Thugdumb’s case, it was a simple, seemingly regretful, “What a pity.”

Silbón, on the other hand, had a more… direct reaction. He whistled sharply, sending a blast of concussive force our way that was centered right on Alloy. Fortunately, we were ready for that. With my hands behind my back, I had already subtly sent a spray of blue and green paint at the other girl’s feet. The second the blast of force came, she and Calvin were both sent rocketing upward. At the same time, Hobbes and I dove in opposite directions.

Thugdumb came running straight at me, the big guy like a charging freight train. Meanwhile, Silbón’s gaze snapped upward as he made to send another whistle toward the airborne duo. But just as he did, Calvin grabbed Alloy by the arm, making a quick snapping motion toward Hobbes to activate the suit’s teleportation power. Instantly, the two of them vanished, reappearing next to Hobbes, who had taken cover behind an overturned cop car to get all three of them out of the way.

Rolling along the ground, I left my hand against the cement long enough to create a five-foot-wide pink square before using two bits of blue, one against my foot and one on my palm, smacking both against the ground to propel myself upwards so I could flip over and land on my feet.

Unfortunately, Thugdumb didn’t fall for it that time. He grunted while jumping over the pink square, landing right in front of me. His fist lashed out, going for my face. At the last second, I jerked myself backward, feeling the air from his punch brush right past my throat. His other hand snapped forward, trying to grab me, and I ducked under it before grabbing hold of the extended arm. God, I really hoped his power didn’t interpret holding onto the man as hitting him. I definitely didn’t need to lose my mind and go off on some ridiculous and convoluted ‘plan.’

Not that I knew anything about ridiculous and convoluted plans, no sir.

Using the man’s arm as a sort of gymnastics bar, I hoisted myself up, using blue paint on my shoes for an added boost to get fully vertical for just a second, my feet pointed toward the sky while my hands were tightly gripping his arm. While he was still reacting, I pointed at the ground with both index fingers, without letting go of him. A spray of pink left one finger, while black left the other. It was a new combination, one I’d practiced with a little bit but never used in public. I’d been waiting for the right time, and this seemed to be as good as any.

The second the black-pink spot was made on the ground, I put blue on my palms in order to send myself flying upward away from the man just as he went to grab onto me with his other hand. Then he had other problems to deal with. Namely, the black-pink circle I’d put under his feet.

Pink made objects sort of fragile, of course. Or just malleable. They were like soft foam or whatever. It softened things so you could break or reshape them. But when black was added into it, it seemed to break the objects down even more. Instead of simply being malleable, they were some midway point between solid and liquid. The affected objects acted more like quicksand than play-doh.

Quicksand which Thugdumb was standing on. And before he knew what was happening, the man had already managed to sink up to his knees, giving a yelp of surprise in the process.

“Boy,” I blurted while already flipping over in the air from being launched upside down off his arm, “you really took sinking to my level literally.” In mid-flip and mid-comment, I was already using a shot of red to yank myself over toward Silbón, who had just used a (literal) sharp whistle to shear the cop car that Calvin, Hobbes, and Alloy were ducking behind in half. I had thought about trying the same black-pink quicksand trick with him, but unlike Thugdumb, making this guy stationary didn’t really do much about his threat level. Instead, I called out, “Did you always have five gallon lungs or is that a special allowance of your power?” Even as the man’s head turned to send a quick whistle my way that was apparently empowered with fire considering the nearby small bush it incinerated, I was already using blue paint to bounce up and to the side with a quick. “It’s just too bad it didn’t come with the ability to carry a tune. Cuz, you know, the dull whistling gets a little old after awhile. It’s like you’re a TV that’s about to die or something.”

By that point, he had almost hit me several more times with his burning whistle, turning it my way repeatedly. But I kept moving, bounding up and over a different car before using a red-blue circle to slide under his next attempt. That carried me in a full circle all the way around the man before I pivoted, making a show of breathing hard, as though I couldn’t go on like that. Panting, I held one hand up, palm out. “Wait! Wait, wait, wait, maybe we can negotiate!” Plucking a piece of paper out of my pocket with the other hand, I held it up. “You want Cup, we just want what’s on here in exchange.” While the whistling man stared at me, I crumpled up the paper and gave it a toss that way.

Silbón hesitated slightly, then leaned down to unfold the paper. His eyes took in what was written on it, which was just one word, written in connected letters of alternating purple and black. It simply said ‘Sucker.’

His whistling faltered then, seeing that single word. And that, of course, was when I activated that purple-black paint, muting the area around the man so he couldn’t whistle again.

Before he could even start to recover from that, I launched myself at him, fist colliding with the side of his face through that gray cloth mask. I’d used just enough orange and purple to allow myself to make the guy reel as I hit him. I also saw his mouth move in what probably would have been a yelp of pain if he wasn’t muted, and I was pretty sure he’d bit his tongue.

“Dude! I cannot believe you fell for that Bugs Bunny shit. That’s amazing. You’ve gotta be Elmer Fudd’s long lost nephew. Can--” I sent two quick shots of red past the guy, then two at the ground right between us. “--I get--” He was even more confused, but only for a second. That was when one of the halves of the car he’d sliced with his whistle hit him in the back. Yeah, it wasn’t going very fast, but I’d managed to hit the thing with red paint and pulled it this way with the spots on the ground. The impact was enough to knock him forward and down onto his hands and knees. Immediately, I hit both hands and the road with red paint to keep him there for a few seconds. “--your autograph?! I figure it’ll be worth something soon when you wander off a cliff because you were chasing a roadrunner or something.”

On the subject of ‘a few seconds,’ that black paint would obviously run out eventually. Before it did, I called, “Hey, wanna see what I can do?” As he looked up from trying to jerk his hands free, I gave a loud whistle of my own while pointing that way.

Alloy was ready. That last marble she had went zipping under the car piece that had slammed into the guy, then shot upward and went right into his exposed mouth. A second later, it transformed itself into a thick plug-shaped gag. Good luck whistling now, jackass.

“Honestly, I’m sick of fighting people with immunity powers. Can we mix it up a little?” Even as I said that, not really thinking about the words, my eyes were already snapping around to take in the situation. Poise and Style had the newly-arrived Prevs handled. I couldn't see how Way, Wobble, and the Syndicates fighting Yahui and Coverfire was going since they were out of sight behind the building. But I did see Raindrop and Fragile down the street with Nasty between them. The tar-oil figure was trying to create more of her circle things, but Izzy kept washing them away with blasts of water. Meanwhile, Fragile was gradually encasing the woman in glass. She had to bring more and more glass in to keep her contained, since Nasty kept slamming herself into it, putting more cracks in the structure. Worse, there were several Prev troops heading that way to back her up.

“Calvin, Hobbes, give them a hand!” I blurted, gesturing that way before using a bit of blue-green on my feet to launch myself into the air. I wanted to help Izzy myself, naturally. But we had no idea what was going on in the alley or inside the shop itself, and if Cup died… fuck.

Practically flying over the roof of the shop, I glanced down in time to nearly take a metal trash can lid to the face. It came rocketing up at me, forcing me to jerk my head sideways at the last second. Only then, as I came down on the opposite roof, did I see the source of that makeshift frisbee attack. It was Yahui. She was still in that rhino-scorpion-bear form, and the tail of the scorpion was what she’d used to fling the lid at me. She was also holding Wobble up by arm with one huge bear hand to repeatedly slam him into the brick wall, so hopefully his armor was protecting him a bit. The Syndicates were on all sides of her, avoiding getting stabbed by her tail by switching which of them was solid long enough to dart in and hit her.

I went to dive that way, just before Wobble sent a blast of his power into her face. As she recoiled, he dropped, rolled, and hit her again with both hands. That one took visible effort, but also staggered her.

“We’ve got this, help Way!” He shouted at me while sustaining his blast. His head jerked a bit to show a hole in the wall that had clearly been burned there by Coverfire. He’d made it into the shop where Cup and the last of her escorts were. Which was just completely freaking fantastic and definitely didn't make me start cursing so rapidly the words all blended together into one long string of syllables. From the brief doubletake one of the Syndicates gave me, he was probably considering shoving a bar of soap in my supposedly-thirteen-year-old mouth.

Without wasting another second, I pushed myself off the edge of that roof and painted the bottom of my shoes blue and green before slamming them against the wall there. The impact rocketed me forward and down on a perfect trajectory for the holes that Wobble had pointed out. I hit the thing at full speed, ending up inside the shop before rolling along the carpet. In the process, I nearly collided with an overturned rack that had a haphazard pile of shoes scattered across it. Half the rack and the shoes themselves were melted, as though Coverfire had just walked right through it.

And speaking of him, I heard the man before I saw him. He was cursing very loudly in Spanish from somewhere off of the far side of the shop. Cursing was good. That meant he was angry, and if he was angry, he clearly hadn't been able to get at his target yet.

Just as I had that thought, a blur of motion came crashing out from behind one of the intact shoe shelves and through a circular metal rack with shoelaces attached to it. Way, using her super-speed. She skidded to a stop at the sight of me, snapping a quick, “Can't get to the bitch to teleport her and the escorts out, they deployed an emergency forcefield and can’t take it down. Coverfire’s trying to overload it and I keep distracting him. Have to keep him away from the damn thing!”

“Can’t we let him break it and then teleport them out before he does anything else?” I quickly put in, even as I was hitting her with a few shots of paint.

Way shook her head. Rather than simply tell me why we couldn’t do that, however, she grabbed my shoulder and teleported back that way. That was when I saw the problem. The ‘emergency forcefield’ wasn’t exactly roomy. Cup and her two escorts were pressed in very close to one another within its faintly blue glowing confines, almost in a tight embrace. If we let Coverfire break through the shield, he'd melt them before we could teleport there, grab them, and teleport again. It wouldn't be pretty. And naturally Way couldn’t just grab him and teleport away, because his power would melt her.

As for the man himself, he was just reaching for that forcefield, still cursing. There was something in his violent diatribe about how we should all get our heads examined for fighting this hard to save someone like Cup. And honestly, he kind of had a point. If only there wasn't a really good reason for it. I mean, I’d almost certainly still try to stop them, but I wouldn’t feel quite so panicked about the prospect of failing.

Taking in the scene briefly, I hesitated for just a second. That force field around the three could fail any moment, so there wasn't exactly a lot of time to waste. Unless I wanted to try to get the cure to save my parents, Irelyn, and all the others out of a pile of ashes. If I thought Cup was difficult to get answers out of now, wait till her body was like ten thousand degrees fahrenheit.

I had to stop that from happening, and a possible way jumped into my head right then. “Got an idea,” I muttered toward Way, giving her a quick whispered explanation before grabbing a nearby shoe off the rack as I started sprinting that way. Amber, meanwhile, ran a different way, around the spot where the man was.

Coverfire saw me coming, shooting a dirty, somewhat exasperated look my way. Not only were we refusing to just let them kill someone as bad as Cup, but we wouldn't even take the hint that we couldn’t actually hurt him and just leave the man alone. No wonder he was annoyed. And, well, I was pretty sure people in Oscuro didn’t like me very much anyway.

Obviously, I couldn't paint the man himself. It would melt before getting anywhere near him. Instead, I made that shoe I’d grabbed white and green. When I was still about five or six steps away from the guy, I gave the shoe a quick underhand toss toward his face. Before it could be burned up by his shield, I activated the paint, turning it into a bright flash for just a second, which made the man recoil slightly with a curse, reflexively putting his hand up in front of his face. At the same time, I launched myself to the ceiling, flipping over in the air to land with my feet against it while sending two quick shots of red and blue paint at the floor behind the man. He stumbled backward just a single step, which put him on that slick spot.

As expected, he instantly slipped. Because the bottom of his feet weren’t covered by his superheated forcefield. Of course they weren’t, or he’d melt through the floor.

Normally, that wouldn’t matter too much. He flailed a bit and brought one foot up slightly off the floor in an attempt to catch himself. But that was all we needed. In that instant, Way used her superspeed, having positioned herself so she could run back that way with it active. She was a blur, zipping right up to the man. Rather than collide with him, she slid on her knees, using both hands to grab just the bottom of the man’s raised foot as he tried to catch himself. I was already activating all the orange paint I’d put on her, just in case. Before Coverfire could recover, she caught the bottom of his foot, the only part of him that wasn’t covered with a burning forcefield, before giving a hard shove upward and back.

It worked. Coverfire tipped over backwards, flailing and shouting. Then he hit the floor with his shield active, and instantly melted through it. A hole appeared in the floor, as he fell through it. A second later, there was a loud crash as he landed in what I was guessing was some sort of basement below. Apparently he’d managed to turn his shield off by then. Which was another thing Way was ready for. She vanished from sight, having teleported down to grab him and get him out of here while his power wasn’t active. I just hoped she’d manage to get her hands off him before he brought it back up.

In the meantime, I pivoted toward Cup, still held in that shield. “You know what?

“You’re a real fucking pain in the ass.”