Brent slowly lifted himself out of the ground. How far had he gone through the asphalt? A good eight inches? Shouldn't every bone in his body be shattered? He tasted blood, which was never good. How had he allowed Curtis to get the jump on him? He had ignored the feeling of danger; that was obviously not a good idea. "Curtis, why the heck did you follow me here?"
"Follow you? I knew you were coming here so I just came and found you. Now I'm gonna kill you."
Brent stood up. "Curtis, you couldn't do it before, what makes you think you can do it now?"
"Look around you, I'm not closed in this time." He was right. Their first encounter had been in a cramped office. Brent had the advantage. Physical strength was nothing unless he could get his hands on his target, but at a distance Curtis could flail radiation all day and keep a safe distance and never worry about being hurt. This was a problem for Brent, a big one.
"Can't fight me like a man then?" Brent's words were hopeful thinking. He needed Curtis close, close enough to punch. It was obvious he didn't have any strength, so Brent could hopefully knock him out quickly. That was, of course, if Curtis didn't blast him into next week first.
Curtis bolted at Brent without warning. He must have been waiting for Brent to stand, which made sense. You can't air tackle someone who's eight inches into the ground. He was coming at Brent rapidly, but Brent was ready. As much as it pained him he managed to jump into the air and allowed Curtis to pass under him. Curtis quickly stopped and turned in time to come at Brent again as he landed. "You little bitch!" Curtis yelled as he flew full speed ahead at Brent. Brent seized the opportunity.
As Curtis neared him Brent fell backwards to the ground, hitting shoulders first and tucking his legs against him. As Curtis passed over him Brent thrusted his feet up, landing a solid hit on Curtis' chest. Curtis' flight path was vastly altered. He flew straight up into the air while heaving for air. Obviously the last time Brent knocked the wind out of him hadn't broken him in to the feeling. "Bastard," he yelled in a ghaspy voice as he heaved for air. "I'm going to beat the shit out of you now."
Brent flipped up and sighed. He shot a bit of webbing, hitting a bullseye right on Curtis' mouth. "Do you kiss your mom with that mouth Curtis?" Curtis was about to freak out. It was obvious regaining your breath was difficult when only using your nose. His face began to glow green as Brent watched the webbing on his mouth dissolve. 'Great,' he thought. 'He's going to end up turning this place into a nuclear war zone. I need to stop him before he regains himself.'
Brent jumped into the air at Curtis. He wasn't sure how high or far he could jump yet, but he figured finding out wasn't a bad idea. To his surprise he was going straight for Curtis with quite a velocity, however Curtis noticed and moved to the side, still heaving and trying to regain his breath. As Brent passed him he fired web lines at Curtis, each one attaching to one of his feet. Curtis was finally regaining himself and able to make a somewhat intelligent decision. He quickly began to fly again, maintaining his height of about sixty feet and dragging Brent behind him.
"You know Brent," he said, his voice sounding normal again, "I think I was wrong about you. You aren't going to be the easiest one on my list, I give you props for that. That takes mad skill, because I know a few rough riders, but you have now definitely taken the top of the list. I have no idea what has happened to you or why you can suddenly kick my ass, but trust me when I say it ends here." Curtis suddenly dropped altitude quickly. His course was leading straight to a building, some kind of shop right off the main road. Brent held on, not thinking Curtis would fly through the building. He was completely right, but wrong in his thought that that meant he wasn't going to. Right at the last minute Curtis shot up and stopped, leaving Brent still in a forward motion. Just before Brent reached the end of the web lines that allowed him to hitch his ride Curtis flared up the radiation in his feet, dissolving the connection. Brent dove head first into the building.
Pain was already very much so present in Brent's body; he knew by this point that his little super hero package hadn't come with invulnerability. He could certainly take a much larger beating, but he wasn't Superman. He had physical limitations, and he was beginning to hate that factor. As he crashed into the tile floor of the store, bounced up, tumbled through a clothing rack, busted through a glass display case, and finally came to rest upside down with his back indented into a wall the only thought he could maintain was "ouch."
Before he even had a chance to move green balls of radiation started raining down into the store through the ceiling. The unsuspecting tourists in the shop ran for the exits screaming. Brent completely understood their desire to scream, but couldn't they hold it in until they got outside? His head was already pounding. He slowly stood to his feet as he watched the building begin to crumble under the extreme structural damage. Sticking around for the fall wasn't an option.
Brent stumbled to a hole that was made by Curtis and jumped up through it. He landed ungracefully on the roof and stumbled a couple of steps before he saw Curtis hovering over the building. Was this all seriously happening? Brent was having trouble comprehending the reality around him. It had to stop.
"I'm the one you want, not them. Stop firing around!" Brent's weight shifted as the building creaked and leaned a little. Taking this as a hint to move off, Brent jumped from it to the next building. How was he going to stop Curtis' pointless rampage? He needed to be up close and personal, but that was not going to be easy. Brent started running towards Curtis, ready to launch himself at Curtis again when he had to jump to the side to miss being hit by a ball of radiation. He quickly realized that this was the first of many in a volley Curtis was firing at him. As he ran Curtis kept the shots going, not easing up off the pressure on Brent at all.
As Brent ran across the roof of the building he could feel it shifting. "I can do this all day, but I'm willing to bet you can't," Curtis called down to Brent. He lowered himself down to street level and shot through the building a solid beam of radiation. Brent jumped straight up as the building collapsed, hoping to find something to branch from with some webbing. A quick survey of the area left Brent at a loss. He was falling, and certainly going to land in the rubble below. He could imagine a thousand piercing and jabbing things waiting for him down there in the cloud of dust. Just as he had accepted this fate he was suddenly hit in the back by a burning sensation, but the burning sensation had some blunt force behind it. He starting flying through the air, now registering the pain that this burning blunt force had caused.
'I can't keep going on like this,' Brent thought as he spiraled through the air. His entire body was pretty much in pain, with some parts experiencing multiple kinds of pain. Between scratches and bruises and now apparently burns Brent could keep an emergency room hopping like there was no tomorrow. He wasn't feeling very heroic at this point either. How many innocent people died in their fight? How many more would die in the conflict?
Brent felt another forceful blast of radiation hit him in the stomach as he was spinning through the air. This blast sent him flying even faster than the last, almost like it had been aimed to throw him in a particular direction. A grunt of pain escaped his lips as he went feet first through the ceiling of a building. He hadn't even seen what building it was in the chaos, but a strange but familiar smell filled his nostrils. Was it a costume store? Weird. He felt himself plowing through what was probably clothing racks before meeting a wall. His sudden stop was jolting and painful, but certainly welcomed. He had a moment to compose himself. He had been disadvantaged from the start. He decided the fight was going to go to Curtis right then.
Curtis fired his random shots into the store just as he had with the first, however this time Brent was ready. As the ceiling opened up above him like a sun roof due to the holes Curtis was placing in it Brent picked up an empty shopping cart. Destruction of private property certainly wasn't his goal, but he figured this would be better than allowing more innocent deaths. He held the cart in one hand and spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees. As the circle completed Brent released the cart, which was aimed to exit the building through a hole in the ceiling and strike Curtis. A smile came across Brent's face as he watched the cart fly through the air faster than he could have ever hoped and struck Curtis directly in the center of his body. Brent could not see the fate of Curtis from where he was, but that didn't matter; the building was coming down around him.
Before he could escape the building crumbled. Luckily for Brent the ceiling was certainly not that heavy to him and all of the screaming people in the store at the time had cleared the area. The ceiling did, however, have enough to knock Brent flat on the floor. Not so lucky for Brent was the dust that plumed and caused breathing to be a difficult task. Brent tried his hardest to breath slowly to try and not suck in so much of the dust, but he was simply way too exhausted and out of breath to maintain such a low amount of air intake. His lungs burned as the dust settled in them, but it was much better than suffocating. The weight of a ceiling and roof on him wasn't his main concern, it was getting out from under it before he did in fact suffocate that was.
Brent wasn't going to lie to himself; he was pretty tired. Exhausted. Ready to lay down and take a long nap. Something for sure, he wasn't used to this at all. He had the strength and endurance for it, but his mind was so tired of thinking through fighting. Fifteen year olds shouldn't have to think through fighting for their lives with a radioactive crazy person, that kind of stuff just doesn't happen and they certainly don't teach you how in school. With a grunt Brent pushed on the debris that was pinning him. It slowly but surely started to lift. He was straining, almost yelling as he lifted it, proving to him that he was still indeed human and not infinitely powerful. This was important to him and actually a comfort at this point, considering he'd thought up until then he was so far gone from humanity that he wouldn't even be able to be called a person. Freaks had a hard time finding dates to dances.
Finally, after much effort Brent was able to lift and move the debris off of himself. He slowly stood up and coughed, hoping some of the dust would be expelled from his lungs. Surveying the rubble he noticed no one was close, which was a good thing. It was still dusty, but a lot of it had settled. In the rubble he could see a lot of the inventory lying in the rubble. A black and gray costume caught his attention. He slowly walked over to it, lifted a piece of roof off of a portion of the costume, then picked it up. It was mainly black with some gray highlights under the arms going down to the thighs. The whole thing was lined with spider web patterns. It had a separate piece that tied on to give it two extra sets of legs; a spider costume. The mask was all black and had two glass eyes that could be seen through from the inside but not in from the outside. The whole thing was full body and made of a spandex like material. 'Can't keep busting off the shirt and tying it around my face every time I go into hero mode,' he thought as he pulled out some of the money his mother had given him and placed it where the costume had been, leaving behind the goofy leg attachment. 'This would be more appropriate.' A full mask, his body would be covered, and he would be identifiable, what more did he want?
He decided to get out of there before authorities started coming and asking questions. Curtis wasn't in site so Brent figured he needed to disappear too. He looked through the haziness and saw the forest line. Perfect. Brent took off running as fast as he could into the woods, not looking back. His energy tanks were definitely on empty but he knew he had to get as far away as possible. He may have been the hero, but the damage that had occurred was obvious and someone had to be blamed.
Brent trekked through the woods a good ways off from the city, hoping to swing around and somehow cross the street to get to the other side where his hotel was. He untied his shirt in the back, quickly realizing it hadn't lasted well for him. Apparently huge fights tore through clothes, great. Stupendous. There wasn't a clothing tree in the back yard. Oh well.
He reached the street just as he slipped the shirt over his head. How would he cross it? No one could see him, and by the looks of it there was a steady flow of traffic. Brent looked up and smacked himself in the forehead. The trees, duh. He approached the nearest tree and placed a hand around it, then reached up higher with the other. With a foot placed firmly on the tree about two feet up he pulled himself up, feeling an ease in the climbing. Not only were his muscles working together perfectly to climb, but his hands and feet were somehow sticking to the bark.
He climbed to about a hundred feet high, feeling such height was needed to make the jump across unnoticed. He looked across the road to the trees over there, picking out his target. Very carefully he positioned himself on the side of the tree in a crouching position to get the most spring from the jump. After a moment of wondering how he had gotten to this point in half a week he jumped. Brent cleared the gap easily and found himself worrying he may have jumped with too much force. As the tree approached he reached out, hoping to dull the impact with his arms. To his surprise he took the impact well, only feeling pain in already sore areas. His hands hit the trees, bent, and allowed him to swing his legs around and onto the tree. He then dropped from the tree and shot a web line towards the top, creating a bungee effect. At the lowest point to the ground, probably five feet or so up, Brent let go of the web line and gently dropped to the ground.
After a few more minutes of running Brent found his way back to the hotel. He entered his room, thankful he'd made it, and locked the door behind him. As he laid down in his bed he shoved the costume under it for safe keeping. Before he knew it he was sound asleep.
