El Tigre: Evolution
"Maria..."
-White Pantera
Chapter 13
El Tigre and Frida arrived at the school. It was clear that someone had already smashed through the front doors, so they made their way through and went onward to the library. As they ran down the halls-
BOOM! An explosion rocked the building.
"Mom! Dad!" El Tigre called out.
"No!" Frida cried. "Not the liberry!"
The pair burst into the library, which was in flames.
Frida coughed. "What went down here?"
"Is anybody in here?" El Tigre shouted.
They were answered by a downed bookshelf being raised up by the person under it. As the person heaved it off of him, they could see it was Mer.
"Mer!" said El Tigre. "Are you okay? Where is everybody?"
Mer started hacking, but stopped long enough to say, "Out in the courtyard… There's just two baddies, but they're tough…"
"Get him to safety, Frida!" El Tigre commanded. "I'll go help the others!"
He navigated his way through the rubble towards a hole in the library wall that opened up to the courtyard. He emerged to a standoff.
White Pantera, Plata Peligrosa, and Pulsera were facing off against the hitman from the hospital, Blitz, and what looked to be a relative of some sort, possibly a younger brother, El Tigre thought. The brother was wrapped in a cocoon of darkness, with shadowy tendrils waving about, lashing at the heroes threateningly.
Blitz was the first to speak. "You can't stand against the combined might of the Von Krieger Brothers!"
"Yes, we can!" El Tigre declared, announcing his presence. Blitz and the dark one looked over in his direction. Blitz grinned.
"El Tigre, eh? What do you think of that, Nacht?"
Nacht nodded somberly.
"We're gonna take you down!" El Tigre shouted.
"Bold words," Blitz said. "Can you back them up?" He clicked his gun. Nacht responded by slightly unraveling his cocoon, giving the impression he had a set of shadow wings.
"Bring it…" El Tigre's brow furrowed, "ON!" He leapt into action. Gunshots were fired, and darkness flailed around the sky.
It all resulted in El Tigre hitting the ground, hard. This infuriated Plata Peligrosa.
"You will not lay a hand on my son!" she cried before launching herself at Blitz. Blitz turned and fired his gun at her. In a blur of motion, White Pantera placed himself between Plata Peligrosa and Blitz and swept his Bronze Boot in an arc, using it to deflect the bullet. Sparks flew as they connected.
"What are you doing?" Plata Peligrosa demanded.
"I was helping you!" said White Pantera.
"I totally had that!" Plata Peligrosa countered.
Blitz stood there with a "What the-?" look on his face. This gave El Tigre the opportunity to ambush him from behind. He sunk his claws into his back. Blitz growled with pain, but suddenly started laughing. Nacht's shadow tendrils pulled El Tigre off of him. They held him suspended in they air as Blitz turned back to him.
"Thank you sir, may I have another?" Blitz laughed psychotically.
"How about one of these?" Pulsera barreled into Blitz. She had turned her ruby bracelet into a giant ruby fist, and was putting it into good use. But another gunshot sounded, and ruby shards went flying everywhere. Blitz had shot the fist pointblank. Pulsera staggered back, scratches on her face from the shrapnel. Blitz swept her feet out from under her with his leg and she went down. He got up and brushed himself off. When he looked up, He saw White Pantera and Plata Peligrosa charging at him.
"No rest for the wicked," he sighed. He threw down his gun, and drew a sword that he somehow managed to keep concealed.
El Tigre was still in the clutches of Nacht. The tentacles were beginning to pull him deeper into the darkness…
But then there was a bright blue light. It shone through the tendrils and freed El Tigre, dropping him to the ground. El Tigre looked to find the source of the light, and was surprised to see…
"Frida?"
Frida stood there with blue fire emerging from her palms. She was grinning from ear to ear. "Not too late, am I?"
El Tigre was amazed. "Whoa, Frida…how are you doing that?"
Frida shrugged. "Not exactly sure. I think that's what the training is for."
A pillar of darkness slamming down between them interrupted them. Nacht was on the offensive.
"I'll see what I can do about this guy!" said Frida. "You go help your parents!"
As El Tigre sped off, Frida smiled. "I've always wanted to say that."
El Tigre headed toward the battle between Blitz and Manny's parents. It was not going well. Blitz had managed to remove Maria's glove (Maria was currently in the fetal position and hyperventilating), and had White Pantera down on the ground. Blitz slowly sauntered towards the hero.
"You know," Blitz said. "I had a cousin who used to look up to you when he was little. Do you know what happened? He got older. You've gotten older. And now you're just a washed up, feeble, old-"
El Tigre was filled with anger at Blitz's disrespect toward his father, and was about to pounce, but someone beat him to the punch…literally.
"HEY! What's wrong with being old?" The golden mech swooped down from the sky and hammered Blitz with one of its claws. Blitz went flying, skipping off the pavement a few times. Puma Loco turned to White Pantera.
"Don't listen to him, mijo! This guy is coo-coo bananas!"
The revving of an engine interrupted this moment. Suddenly, a motorcycle came crashing into the courtyard through a window. No one was on it. The machine was piloting itself. It went to Blitz, who had his thumb on a remote control. He shook off the last hit, and hopped on the bike, brandishing his sword.
A growing mass of shadow rose over the scene. Frida was fighting it with her fire, but to no avail. She was ensnared, and darkness slowly consumed her body.
"Frida!" cried El Tigre, before having to jump out of the way of another dark tentacle. Tigre looked around. His mother and Pulsera were sinking in a pool of liquid shadow. His Grandpapi was fighting off little creatures made of pure night. His father stood in the path of Blitz, who was revving his motorcycle, and Nacht, who was floating in midair, covering everything in inky blackness. He himself was being surrounded by shadows. He called out to his father
"Dad! You can do it!"
"Believe in yourself, Rodolfo!" Puma Loco encouraged.
White Pantera locked eyes with Blitz. Blitz began speeding towards Pantera, while the hero began his own charge. They were headed for a collision.
…Until White Pantera went soaring into the air. He crested and came down…right on Blitz's face. He used the hitman's head as a springboard to catapult himself toward the writhing heart of darkness in the sky, Bronze Boot-first. Blitz swerved off and crashed into a wall.
"Luxe owes me…" Blitz mumbled groggily.
"WHITE PANTERA!" the hero cried, as he was about to hit his target. He began to glow with golden fire. Finally he pierced the penumbra. There was a moment of silence. Everyone held their breath. Suddenly, beams of light shot out of the dark. White Pantera burst out of the other side of the shadow with an unconscious Nacht at the end of his boot. As they fell to earth, the shadows dissipated. And just on cue, sirens signaling the arrival of the police drew near.
Frida sat up, coughing. "Did we win?"
El Tigre smiled and nodded. "Yeah, thanks to my macho dad!" He ran over to hug his father, who gratefully received.
"Thank you, mijo. I couldn't have done it without you."
"GROUP HUG!" Puma Loco came up from behind his family, crushing them in a celebratory hug.
Pulsera limped forward. "I hate to ruin this family moment, but this is only the beginning…Luxe is still collecting pages."
El Tigre gulped. Should he share the terrible news of how far along Luxe was now? He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a low sound.
It was laughter. Not happy and pure, but desperate and maniacal. It was quiet at first, but rose in volume. Everyone turned to the source: Blitz.
The hitman had fallen off of his motorcycle and was now lying on the ground, convulsed with laughter.
"You think…heh…I'm finished? I've got…one more…SURPRISE for you!"
Everyone stared at Blitz in horror. Blitz craned his neck to look at his brother, who was still unconscious. "I'm sorry, Josef. This is the only way…" He rolled onto his back and pulled out the remote control again.
"Screw Luxe! This city's gonna burn!" He pressed a button.
The motorcycle started to shift and change, and a large metal cylinder emerged from the engine. The cylinder had a timer on it set to one minute. Then, the countdown began…
"Bomb…" was all Pulsera managed to say. Maria started breathing into a paper bag.
"Can you disarm it, Grandpapi?" El Tigre asked.
Puma Loco shook his head. "I don't know. It's way more fancy than any other bomb I've seen."
"Just cut the red wire!" Frida suggested. "It's always the red wire! Or is it always the blue wire? Or maybe the orange wire with purple polka-dots?"
"Don't bother," Blitz called out. "In less than a minute it'll go off and half the city will be incinerated."
For a moment, time seemed to stand still. White Pantera looked around at the others. He saw their expressions of hopelessness, and knew what he had to do…but how? He turned and saw his answer off in the distance. Time resumed, and Pantera kneeled down next to Tigre.
"Manny, I want you to know, I may have been wrong to pressure you all these years. I'm sure your grandfather would say the same," He glanced over at Puma Loco. "You must make your own choice between good and evil, hero and villain. It is choice that defines us, and I was wrong to try to take that from you. Know that no matter what choice you make, I will always be proud of you, and I will always love you."
El Tigre rolled his eyes. "Dad, you're talking like…Dad?" El Tigre looked around for White Pantera, who had just left his field of vision. He heard everyone gasp, and whipped around to see his father wrenching the bomb out of its casing.
"What are you doing?" Blitz demanded.
"This old man's going to make a difference…" White Pantera stated. He then clicked his Bronze Boots and sped off at an inhuman velocity with the bomb in tow, leaving a trail of flames. The rest of the alliance rushed out of the school to see where he was going. They watched as White Pantera blazed a path through Miracle City.
Maria squinted. "He's headed for the drawbridge!"
"But it doesn't work!" said Pulsera. "It's stuck in the upright position!"
Puma Loco gasped. "He knows," he said in a low whisper.
White Pantera's eye's narrowed as the drawbridge loomed before him, jutting into the air. Without skipping a beat he ran straight up it, and when he reached the top, pushed with all his might. The superpowered momentum he had gained propelled him into the stratosphere. He let his body go limp. Surrounded by stars, he took one last look at the timer on the bomb.
0:03…0:02…0:01…
He held the bomb to his chest and closed his eyes. "Maria…"
A brilliant flash of light filled the night sky.
The following concussion cracked windows and shook the foundations of buildings.
When it was over, it was like a new, bright sun was hanging in the sky.
The alliance was speechless.
The police got out of their cars, pointing and gawking.
People came out onto the streets, wondering what was happening at this time of night, and what caused all the noise.
El Tigre looked up at the light with tears in his eyes.
"Dad…"