(A/N) Hey guys, sorry about the huge delay since the last chapter, but we're finally back, here with another one for you all now, which I hope makes up for the wait! Another one of mine, this time, as we come back to X-Ray after the duo's brief battle with the Corpirate, and…well, hey, maybe I should just stop before I spoil it for you guys! Updates should be more regular from now on, we're down to about half the writers we started with at the moment, but I'm hoping to draft in some more talent over the coming weeks.
As always, enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Nine - #2Spooky
Ray Narvaez Jr / X-Ray
Written by NicKenny
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help."
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
Time to wake up, hero. I'm not allowed to let you die, not just yet anyway, so rise and shine! Seriously, dude, open up your eyes. You're not dead, and the bruising will totally fade after a couple of days.
A moment passes.
Okay, this is getting annoying now; I'm going to administer a little "wake up call".
X-Ray opened his eyes, coughing the water out of his lungs as his body thrashed about as agonising pain wracked through it.
You're welcome, douche.
He sat up after a few seconds, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his suit, and then wiped the water out of his eyes. What the fuck happened? he wondered to himself for a moment, before remembering the Corpirate punching him through a metal container and into the ocean.
He stood up slowly, a thin whistling noise escaping from his lips as his muscles protested, but he overruled them. He had washed back up to the docks. From what he could see, there was no sign of Vav, or the Corpirate and his men, which was just as well. X-Ray was in no condition to re-enter a fight at this point.
Still, better to be safe than sorry, he mused, activating his x-ray vision, and taking another look around. Still no sign of anyone else, though a huge fight had clearly taken place here, given that parts of the dock were currently on fire, the vehicles that the bad guys had arrived in were totalled – one having apparently been torn in half – and the various shipping containers nearby where either heavily dented or had gaping holes in them.
X-Ray winced slightly as he glanced at the one that he had been thrown through, remembering the pain clearly, the throbbing on his back increasing to match the memory. His brain seemed to be trying to tell him something, because he couldn't shake off the uneasy feeling that someone had been with him before he had woken up, but from what he could see no one was anywhere nearby now.
Too spooky, he thought, and shrugged, dismissing the sense of unease that had fallen over him. It was time to find Vav.
He raised his hand to his earpiece, trying to speak as clearly as possible despite the chill that had settled into his bones. Apparently, nearly drowning would do that to you.
"Vav?" he asked, hoping to receive an answer, but all he got was static in return. Evidently the earpiece had been damaged during the fight, or his time in the water. He pulled up his suit's tracking device, which displayed a holographic map of Achievement City in front of him, a small red blip depicting both his and Vav's positions.
Vav was about three miles away, moving erratically, quite possibly still locked in combat with the Corpirate. X-Ray had deactivated the tracker, and was about to send out a call for his motorcycle, Dirk Dirk, when something plummeted from the night towards him, its size difficult to make out due to the darkness, but it was certainly much, much bigger than he was.
Quick as a flash, he raised his hand to his glasses, firing off a powerful optic burst, but this barely seemed to slow the creature, whatever it was, and it fell on top of his, huge claws reaching out and snatching him into its grasp, and X-Ray, caught between the creature's talons, felt his feet leave the ground as his assailant took off into the air once more.
He struggled in the creature's grasp for a moment, his arms pinned to his sides, unable to reach his glasses. After a minute or so of fruitless struggle, he gave him, and instead began to throw his head forward, trying to shake his glasses off.
The creature, somehow, appeared to realise that something was wrong, and its head – a dragonlike face, snout and all, with bright purple eyes – swung around to look at him. He grinned back at it, and shook his head one final time, his already beginning to glow as the glasses fell, falling into the black abyss beneath them.
"You picked on the wrong guy, you ugly sonuvabitch!" he yelled, before letting loose with a devastating optic blast, red energy streaming from his eyes, unchecked, unstoppable, burning into the creature's face.
It wailed in agony, and swung away, its head moving out of X-Ray's field of vision, so his instead looked upwards and directed the beams into the dragon's unprotected stomach. It wailed again and began to descend rapidly, injured, and X-Ray took the opportunity to glance downwards, burning the claws that held him.
The creature's grip loosened around him, and then let go. Now he was free falling as his injured attacker flew away, retreating, and he shut his eyes, not wanting to accidentally injure any innocents beneath him. He grabbed the side of his cape and held it out behind him, smiling grimly as it caught in the wind, allowing him to glide down to the ground safely. Thankfully, while his optic abilities meant that, without his glasses, he would have to keep his eyes shut, his x-ray vision allowed him to see through his eye-lids to some extent. It wasn't as clear as he would have liked, but at least he was able to avoid any buildings around him.
However, he heard a roar behind him, and looked back to see the outline of the dragon, evidently having gotten over its injuries. It swooped forward, its talons darting out to snatch X-Ray from the air, but he turned to avoid it. The claws, rather than catching him, slashed through his cape, and he fell about forty feet, looking down to see the earth nearing him at a fatal speed. He turned off his x-ray vision, wanting to look away before impact, when he was caught mid-air by the creature once more.
He screamed wordlessly for a second, having been sure that he had been about to die, and, reactivating his x-ray vision, glanced back up at his attacker/saviour, just before it let him go once more, and he sailed through the air, smashing through a reinforced glass window, and lay groaning on the floor.
Damn, this was turning out to be one helluva night.
He pulled himself to his feet once more, thankful that his suit had stopped the glass from tearing him to shreds, at the very least. He reached into one of the back pockets of his suit, unsealing it and withdrawing a miraculously unbroken spare pair of glasses, putting them back on with a sigh before opening his eyes. He had barely enough time to react to having been attacked by a giant black dragon – certainly one of the most bizarre things that had happened to him that week – before he looked around and realised where he was, and why his travel sickness hadn't stopped after his brief trip with Evil Monster Airlines had ended.
He was in a train car, alone, moving rapidly along the tracks towards the lights of Achievement City.
X-Ray grabbed a nearby railing, using it to lift himself to his feet, and slowly limped towards the end of the train car, where it connected with the next one. He passed, slowly, through five empty cars, and began to realise that something very, very strange was going on. Too spooky, he thought, for the second time tonight. I'm going to have to tweet that when I get home tonight.
He eventually reached the end of the last car, blasting the door which connected it to the driver's car off its hinges, and stepped forward, through the smoke. As the smoke cleared he could see that the car was laced with bullet holes, the windows smashed, evidence that someone had seized this train by force, and that the driver had put up some kind of fight.
No body, he noticed, somewhat thankfully, though the bloodstain on the floor hinted that the driver may not have escaped the fight intact, or indeed, even alive. X-Ray stepped forward, scanning the controls, before reaching for the lever marked "EMERGENCY BRAKE".
Nothing happened.
X-Ray glanced down at the other controls, helplessly tugging at the brake with a defeated sullenness. "It has no breaks," he murmured weakly to himself, looking around for some other option to present itself. "The fuck train has no breaks…"
He trailed off for a moment, his eyes unfocusing and then refocusing with a sudden snap. He slapped the side of his face, shaking his head from side to side. "The fuck train has no breaks," he murmured again, but this time the bleakness in his voice was slowly transforming into a vibrant energy.
"The fuck train has no breaks!" he yelled, thumping the controls with all his might. He raised a gloved hand to his temple, activating his earpiece, and contacted Vav, praying that he'd be able to get some kind of connection to his partner. If not, he'd have a harsh word to send Iron-Ryan's way, after the cyborg had updated their gear. Well, that was providing he made it out of tonight's events alive.
"Vav!" he yelled, over the noise of train's wheels, the wind whipping by through the broken glass panels around him. "I need you to get him onto the train tracks! Can you hear me? Get the Corpirate onto the goddamn tracks!"
"X-Ray? Get him…tracks? Can you…repeat…X-Ray?"
The message crackled through his earpiece, and X-Ray ground his teeth together in frustration, as it was evident that Vav connection was just as bad as his own. At least he could hear him though, which was a positive, and was more than he had beforehand. "GET HIM ONTO THE TRACKS!" he yelled into his mike, and waited, agonisingly, for Vav's reply.
"Got it…see…soon."
He would just have to hope that Vav really had heard him, he realised, given that he didn't have much other choice. He looked around the controller's section for a moment, before shrugging, as there really wasn't a lot more that he could do here. The breaks were shot, after all, and it's not like you could steer this thing. He glanced back over to the shattered windows, and shrugged. Hell, better out than in, right?
The wind rushed by him as he balanced precariously on top of the train, wobbling slightly as the train rushed around a small turn, and he sighed internally. How the hell was this a good idea? he mentally asked himself, as the train jarred a little on the tracks beneath him and he almost fell over for about the hundredth time in the past five minutes.
The tracker on the arm of his suit indicated that Vav was on the tracks about a mile ahead of him, and X-Ray smiled in satisfaction. Evidently his partner had gotten the message, and had driven the Corpirate right into X-Ray's rather unconventional, and highly unlikely to be successful, plan. But hell, it might work, and that five letter word had taken X-Ray a long way over the last few years.
His enhanced eye-sight allowed him to see far further than a normal human, and with that, he could just make out the two figures on the tracks in front of him – one dressed in red, white and blue, and the other in what had formerly been a crisp black business suit, but hadn't fared well beneath the assault that had been laid down upon it, standing next to an empty platform, which bore the signs of the fierce battle that had no doubt raged upon it.
However, he frowned a second later, as the realisation of Vav's predicament dawned on him. The Corpirate held Vav's body in his arms, lifted high above his head, clearly about to bring Vav crashing down onto the tracks beneath him. Remembering the punches that the villain had thrown in their earlier fight, X-Ray had no doubt that the crash would be powerful enough to shatter even Vav's superhumanly strong bones.
He had to do something.
Focusing his vision, he raised his hand slowly to the side of his glasses, locating the button gingerly, waiting for the right moment to fire. The shot was nearly impossible to make, but if he missed, Vav could die, and that wasn't something that X-Ray was prepared to let happen. His breathing slowed, and for a brief second he wondered if Vav, with his superhuman reflexes, felt this way all the time, as he got the smallest glimpse into the slow-mo world at his friend's fingertips as streams of adrenaline rushed into his system.
He took the shot.
The blast burst forward, leaving the train far behind, slamming into the Corpirate's chest and knocking him down, his back smashing down hard onto the tracks. Vav, now out of the Corpirate's clutches, sailed into the air, pulling off a smart back flip and landing next to the downed villain. Reacting instinctively, he knelt down next to the Corpirate, one hand pinning him down, the other fist smashing repeatedly into his face.
He stepped off the track, onto the adjacent platform, just as the train began to near, and the Corpirate, clearly injured, struggled to get to his feet, noticing the train's progression at the last minute, but it was too late, too late.
"Hey!" X-Ray shouted, grinning triumphantly as the Corpirate's gaze flicked up to him. "The fuck train has no breaks! Choo-choo-fuck you!"
He leapt off the train just as it connected with his target, landing on the platform next to Vav, his cape whipping out theatrically behind him. Behind him, he heard the thud of a body connecting with metal at approximately seventy miles an hour, and winced despite himself.
"Wow," Vav remarked, looking over at his teammate, about to make the understatement of the century. "Guess we really fucked that dude up."
The train passed through the station, jerking and clanging as it passed over the body now beneath it, and the heroes turned to look at their fallen foe, when a sharp groan caught their attention.
"No fucking way," X-Ray murmured, as they turned to see the Corpirate trying to pick himself up, groaning almost…mechanically as he crawled off the tracks. "That dude is dead. There is no way anyone survived that."
"X-Ray," Vav whispered, backing away slightly. "I'm scared. What the fuck do we do know?"
"Ugh, grow a pair," his partner shot back, but he had to admit, he was a bit freaked out himself. If someone could take a train to the face and still survive, how on earth were they meant to be able to take him down? Nothing human, not even something super-human, could have survived that.
Which meant that the Corpirate couldn't be…
"Vav," he whispered, pointing forwards towards their foe as the moon peeked out from beneath the clouds. A thin ray of light shone forth, gleaming silver across the platform and the nearby tracks, and glinting off the Corpirate's face as he turned to them.
The skin has been torn away from the left side of the villain's face, but instead of bone and living tissue, metal gleamed in the moonlight, and his left eye blinked red, just as Iron-Ryan's did.
"He's a fucking robot," X-Ray hissed, already raising his hand to his glasses in preparation of the Corpirate launching a new attack. However, their foe barely seemed to acknowledge them as it pulled itself up off the tracks, its right leg mangled from the train's impact, its body leaking various fluids that X-Ray could only guess the function of, but it sure as hell wasn't blood.
The Corpirate looked at them, and though its jaw was clearly broken, it managed to bark out a single sentence.
"This…Isn't…Over…"
With that, he stood up straight, and the heroes felt the air part above them, the wind whistling in their ears, as a giant black shadow seized the Corpirate, grabbing him in its talons as it passed by, and took off into the night. X-Ray fired a blast off at the dragon-like creature, grazing its right flank, but it took no notice and soon had disappeared from sight.
He turned to Vav, who was staring out into the night in shock. "What the fuck was that thing?" he asked, shaking his head slowly, shuddering.
"The Corpirate, or the dragon-monster?"
A brief pause, as Vav leant over a nearby railing, and dry-heaved several times. He turned back to X-Ray, wiping his mouth on his glove, and shrugged. "I don't know, both?"
X-Ray just turned away, glancing over into the heart of the city, the sound of police sirens clear in his ears, interrupted by bursts of gunfire, somewhere far off into the distance.
"I don't know, man," he replied, shaking his head wearily. "But I don't think tonight's weirdness is over yet. Sounds like there's a lot more work to do."
"The Community?" Vav asked, frowning over to his partner, who nodded.
"I didn't see any sign of the police back-up we sent for, when I came to, back at the docks. I have a feeling something turned up and gave them more pressing problems, and if the Community aren't behind it, then my name isn't X-Ray."
"But your name isn't X-Ray," his partner pointed out instantly, his frown deepening. "And mine isn't Vav. Those are our superhero names, not our real ones! You sure you're not concussed, I can check if you'd like?"
X-Ray just turned away, shaking his head wearily. "God, you just have to suck the fun out of everything, don't you?" he replied, and began walking away, already signalling for Dirk-Dirk to make its way to his location.
As his partner fell in beside him, ordering his own bike their way, he couldn't help but add one final remark.
"I almost drowned, by the way. Thanks for, like, saving me. I would have been pissed if you just left me to die, you know?"
