They found their next battle not long after. Cartman was right again- the sound of their voices brought company, and this time, there was more than one. A man and a woman barreled around the corner, the woman packing more of the blue snaky lightning and the man holding a knife. It seemed almost mundane next to its counterpart.
Kyle stepped forward and looked behind him, at his cluster of friends. "Guys?"
"Come on, dude," Stan implored, sounding much the way he sounded when they were playing Xbox and his mom told him it was time to wash up for dinner. "Don't make us do it."
"You promised!"
Stan sighed. Seconds later Kyle heard a muted buzzing sound and his ears popped. If he turned he knew he would have seen Butters's force field surrounding his friends, shimmering like a white gossamer balloon. But he didn't have time to turn.
The duo was gaining on him fast.
He lifted his hands and tried to freeze them, just for the hell of it. The male froze completely. The woman slowed down a bit, moving as though she were underwater. Good enough.
Do it. Do it. You have to try.
His hands shot out in front of him.
His explosion landed on the left wall. The female regained enough speed to leap away, but as luck would have it, she leaped right into her male companion. They sprawled into a pile on the floor, sliding into the opposite wall with such force that the water broke into several mini tsunamis.
Kyle didn't stop to think about how much he was sweating, how fast his heart was beating.
He raised his hands again.
His next explosion parted the bricks above the demons' heads. Bits of brick and dried mortar showered over the demons, coating them in a fine mist of white.
A lightning ball shot out of the pile.
"Look out!" Stan shouted.
Kyle jumped aside, landing hard on his back. He watched in horror and fascination as the electricity ball struck the surface of Butters's force field and ricocheted off, heading back toward the tangle of demons.
The woman pulled herself out of the pile just in time. She managed an elegant side roll to the left, but her male companion was not so capable.
The lightning ball struck him and exploded. He disappeared in an electrified cloud of smoke and body fragments.
"You little shit!" The woman shrieked. She threw a lightning ball that narrowly missed Kyle's flank.
"Kyle!" Stan cried again, pressing his hands against the inside of the force field.
"You promised!" Kyle repeated.
Even as the woman advanced on him, Kyle waited a few seconds for a disturbance in the air that might indicate Stan had left Butters's force field. When he didn't hear it, he propped himself up on his elbows and raised his hands to his chest.
Come on.
He spread his palms apart. The light overhead exploded, showering them in sparks and darkness. What little light remained showed the woman's silhouette as she crept closer.
A lightning ball began to grow in her palm.
I can do this. I know it.
His next explosion struck the force field. He heard the muffled screams of everyone within and, though he knew they couldn't be hurt, felt a brutal stab of panic. What if they hadn't listened to me? They'd all be dead, and it would be my-
The woman threw the lightning ball.
No time to roll away.
He shielded his face with his hands. The lightning ball paused millimeters from his nose, frozen. The woman must have expected this because she barged forward, another lightning ball primed in her palm. He flexed his fingers.
The explosion didn't hit her dead center. In fact, it barely hit her at all. But it grazed her head in such a way that it took some of her brains with it. Her eyes widened as pieces of reddish-gray sludge flew from her skull and splattered the wall. Kyle covered his eyes.
He waited to hear her body hit the floor.
When he didn't, he cracked open an eye and peered between two fingers. The lightning ball still floated in front of his face. Beyond it, nothing. The woman, along with the pieces of her brain and her male partner, was gone.
"Kyle, get out of the way!"
His ears popped. He felt a shove against his shoulder and he was suddenly sliding across the wet, slippery stones. He looked up to see Stan standing outside of the force field, arm still raised from the telekinetic throw he had used to move Kyle.
"Hey!" Kyle cried, outraged. "I told you not to-"
The electricity ball unfroze and plowed through the space Kyle's head had occupied not one second before.
He closed his mouth on the rest of the sentence.
XXXXXXXXXX
Defying Kyle's worst fears, everyone left the force field intact. Butters looked a little haggard, but it was hard to say whether it was from the efforts of maintaining his force field or his typical, everyday worrying. He had knocked his fists together so hard that his knuckles were bleeding.
"You still can't aim for shit," Cartman pointed out. "But I guess you did all right."
"Cartman." Wendy hissed.
Cartman only shrugged. Kyle knew he was right. He was trembling beneath a cold sweat, replaying the battle over and over, thinking about how many times he had aimed for that bitch and missed. And then, worst of all, the moment his explosion hit the force field. The way everyone had screamed.
He was awoken by a hard clap on the back.
"That was badass!" Stan said, clapping him three more times, each one harder than the last. "I told you you had it in you!"
Kyle knew he should tell him to keep his voice down. But he couldn't muster the energy to do it. And it didn't matter now, did it? If those explosions hadn't alerted the other demons, nothing would.
Stan leaned over and looked into his glassy, faraway eyes. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I am."
"You look really pale," Wendy supplied. "Want me to heal you?"
Kyle shook his head. If he had any injuries, they weren't physical.
"I don't know how to describe it," Kyle said instead. "I feel . . . kind of . . ."
He ransacked for the word. His mind gravitated to one: Excited. Did that make him a sadist? Probably, because he couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. And that wasn't quite right, was it? Maybe excited in the way a lion felt when it zeroed in on its prey. Maybe excited in the way Stan had felt a few nights ago, when he'd thrown Wendy's assailant to a swift and certain death.
"Rattled," he said instead. "It was like . . . I had no discretion anymore. I couldn't stop until she was dead."
"I can relate." Stan said, surely referring to the times when his eyes glossed over and things started to fly.
"But if you guys hadn't have been inside Butters's-"
"Don't worry about that," Stan interrupted. "She was coming. You killed her. End of story."
Kyle could have said many things. Chiefly among them, what if they all didn't have time to get under the force field before that feeling came over him again? His explosions wouldn't discriminate between friend and foe. When he felt like that, he wasn't sure if he even could.
These are things I could have addressed ahead of time, had I not been too much of a coward to use my power, he thought wearily.
"Butters was pretty awesome too," Kyle said, for the sole purpose of filtering his thoughts away from his rogue power. "I'm glad my explosion didn't reflect back at me."
"Yeah," Butters laughed. "Me too."
That nervous laugh was a sufficient explanation for his bleeding knuckles.
"This might be easier than we thought, huh?" Butters asked.
Kyle expected Stan to pipe in with something positive and leaderly, an "of course!" or maybe a "yes, but we can't let that cloud our judgement." But he stayed as quiet as the rest of them.
XXXXXXXXXX
The other demons came.
Not all at once, as they had dreaded. They came in clusters. Two here, five there. It was little trouble to pick them off without a single explosion. Some were the kind that Kyle could freeze in place. Others were the kind who became easily distracted by Cartman bouncing all around. Whatever their weakness, Stan's telekinesis was an efficient way to finish them off.
For the rare ones that would not be deterred by Stan's telekinesis or Kyle's freeze, Butters's force field went up. Once everyone was safely nestled within, Kyle practiced.
The first explosion was always preceded by shaking knees, sweaty palms, stomach aches. After that it was as if the explosions couldn't make their way out of his body fast enough. He had to dodge a lot of energy balls. He quickly developed the habit of lingering behind Butters's force field so any stray energy balls would reflect. More than one demon lost its life that way. It seemed that their own powerballs were just as toxic to them as Kyle's explosions.
By the time the third cluster of demons attacked, he noticed he was aiming better. By the time the fifth cluster attacked, he hit one of his targets with the first explosion. It wasn't a direct hit. But it didn't seem to matter anymore.
I'll be fine, he thought, allowing Wendy to heal him in the vain hope it would cure the twitchy, anxious feeling that wouldn't seem to leave him.
It'll be fine, as long as everyone stays out of my way.
XXXXXXXXXX
"This is it," Stan said.
Kyle squinted. His eyesight wasn't the best, but this looked exactly like any other hallway they'd gone down today.
"How do you know? " Cartman snapped, before Kyle could voice his own confusion. "Didn't you say you couldn't see when you were here before? Don't tell me we've wasted all this time when you could have just-"
Stan walked forward. Everyone followed, stopping the rest of Cartman's grievance in its tracks.
Stan stopped a few feet away from a large hole in the bricks. He pointed. "That's where Bitchy hit the wall." He whispered.
There was no reason to ask who "Bitchy" was- they'd all heard the story. And there was no reason to ask how Stan knew without a doubt that this was the location. The destruction of the bricks here was unmatched by anything they had seen thus far. Stan had clearly been very angry at the person who'd created that hole.
"That's where the man with the cigar was." Stan whispered, pointing again. His trembling finger was aimed at a doorway a few feet ahead, on the opposite side of the hallway.
They all stared, nobody moving, nobody saying a thing. Now that they were here, it appeared there was a glass wall in front of them.
Kyle felt the flaps of his hat tapping lightly against his cheeks as he trembled. Those feelings of invincibility were long gone. Gone, when he needed them most.
A voice punctured the air.
"Well well, kiddo. What a surprise."
Kyle turned. Standing in the once-vacant doorframe was a man so tall and buff that he nearly plugged the entire doorway. His white wife beater was stretched so tightly across his massive pectorals that a thin tear parted the material over his chest, flashing a nest of glistening black hair. It was impossible to see his eyes due to the huge, black-tinted shades that covered them. Somehow, that made it worse.
In the corner of his mouth, hissing out a thin pipette of steam, was a cigar.
OK, sorry that took so long! But I have been realllly busy, and I will be even busier next month . . . so it might take me a while to get to the next update. But trust me, I will get there! Because it's the GRAND FINALE!
I hope this wasn't disappointing. I got major writer's block after I wrote the first scene, so I just added what felt appropriate.
Please drop me a review to let me know what you think. I hope to end this in a way that everybody finds satisfying!
Love,
-Aub