Chapter 11: Be a Hero
The HIVE's machine flashed as Jinx started to scream, the Directors looking on expectantly, the Mistress's beady eyes gleaming. Kid Flash didn't know exactly what was going on here, but suddenly that didn't seem to matter any more- he knew he needed to get Jinx away from that thing no matter what, and that was enough. Darting forward, he slammed into Fourth and sent her stumbling against the other Directors, knocking them off balance, and before they could recover he dashed forward to the base of the platform the terrible chair was mounted on. Quickly scanning around the base, he couldn't see any obvious controls or mechanical parts, and decided it would probably be best to just improvise.
He brought one hand up and slammed it into the platform's side, vibrating it like a jackhammer as he quickly bored through the encasing armor towards the more sensitive machinery inside. Yes- there was a wire, or a bundle of them. Wrapping his hand around them, Kid Flash pulled- and was blasted backwards by the force of a defensive electrical surge. Even as he was thrown back to land near the feet of the Directors, he'd felt the wires come free in his hands. Whatever he'd just done to the machine, it almost certainly hadn't been good for it.
Groaning, he looked up to see the circle of cloaked figures looming over him. "What is the meaning of this, Seventh?" Fourth demanded, shoving her way to the front. "Have you gone mad?"
"No, he hasn't," said First. "Did you see how he moved? This isn't Seventh- we've been tricked!" Bending down, he yanked the Director mask off, revealing Kid Flash's face. "The intruder didn't escape- he's been here with us all along!"
"Then what happened to Seventh?" Fourth asked, sounding mystified. "He wasn't out of my sight long enough for the switch."
"It doesn't matter," Second snarled, climbing down from the platform and shoving his way forward. "He damaged my machine, and he's going to pay dearly for it." The cruel Director raised his hand and clenched it into a fist, electricity playing along the glove.
Agony such as she had never known filled Jinx's body. She could feel the HIVE's invention as it sent tendrils of pain shooting throughout her entire being, reaching for that which connected her to the energy that let her shape probability and siphoning it off to revitalize the evil old Mistress and do who knew what else on top of that. She wanted to shout defiantly at her captors as they leeched the powers away from her, but all that she managed to do was scream.
Then something changed. The agony seemed to sputter and then diminish, as though the machine was having difficulties of some sort, and the power-draining process ground to a halt. Jinx opened her eyes and looked out- she saw the Directors gathered in a circle around one of their own who'd apparently fallen, while the HIVE soldiers looked on. Then First pulled off the fallen Director's mask, and Jinx could make out a familiar shock of red hair. Between the unfamiliar circumstances and the lingering pain it took her a few moments to process what was going on, and then her eyes widened. Kid Flash!
Anger and fear shot together through Jinx's mind. Between the threat to herself and now the danger to Kid Flash, something seemed to give way inside her, and all the pain and uncertainty of the last few days vanished, replaced by a single, absolute determination- that neither of them was going to die today. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Mistress's gaze turn towards her, eyes narrowing in concern, but she ignored her. Jinx reached deep inside herself, deeper than she had when she'd unleashed her power against the Fifth Director, and pushed. The headache came back, harder than it had been before, but she ignored it, focusing through the pain on her determination to save both their lives.
Finally something seemed to snap, and then the power shot out of her in pinkish-purple waves on all sides. Some of it passed into the machine, but it was far stronger and more raw than it had been designed to handle. Jinx felt herself smile as bad luck infected the entire nightmarish device, and suddenly everything that could possibly go wrong with it was. The restraints holding herself in place snapped open, and she leaped up and ducked as the chair itself shivered and exploded. The platform remained standing, but she could hear sounds from deep inside it that made it clear things were not well with the sophisticated machinery.
The Mistress's chair was blasted off the platform by the force of the hexes, but the jets underneath it activated and managed to stabilize it in midair as it drifted down behind the Directors. The Mistress herself looked up with an inscrutable expression on her face, at once angered and intrigued, as if someone had just made a move against her in a chess game that she hadn't anticipated.
Jinx pulled herself back to her feet, framed in the light from the smoldering wreckage of the chair, energy crackling around her hands and eyes glowing. "Sorry, guys," she said down to the Directors. "Looks like your luck just ran out."
Second whirled away from Kid Flash to stare up at the power-transfer machine as it spectacularly self-destructed. The speedster smiled as he saw the Mistress go flying while the Directors watched in horror, and the smile broadened as Jinx appeared on the edge of the platform, looking down at them all with her plainly intact powers crackling in the air around her. "That's my girl," he muttered happily.
Second wheeled back on him, eyes blazing in fury. "You!" he snarled, raising his hands. "You did this! I will make you suffer!" Energy formed around his gloves and blasted towards Kid Flash, but the speedster was no longer there. Second's eyes widened in bafflement, and then a finger poked him on the shoulder. He turned to find the intruder, having apparently pulled off his bulky Director's robes to reveal a gaudy red-and-yellow costume beneath, leaning casually against the platform. "How?" the Director asked.
Kid Flash shrugged. "Fastest guy alive," he said. "It'll get you out of some tight spaces."
"Not for long!" Second raised one hand, palm out, and a beam of energy lanced from it. Before it could strike, however, a hex shot down from above and knocked it from its course so that it dug deeply into the steel floor, but didn't harm Kid Flash. The Director looked up to see Jinx leap lightly from the platform to stand next to Kid Flash.
"You're mine," she said. "Let's see how well you do against someone who isn't tied up and helpless, eh, Second? Bet you won't like that at all." She looked over at Kid Flash. "Second and the Mistress are mine. Think you can handle the rest of these clowns?"
Kid Flash looked around at the HIVE soldiers raising their weapons and the remaining five Directors, who clustered together around their Mistress's chair. He gave a roguish grin. "I don't think that'll be too hard," he said. He and Jinx looked at each other, nodded, and smiled before moving to confront their respective targets.
Jinx knew the Second Director's type well. He was a bully at heart, and like all bullies he feared nothing more than coming face to face with someone who didn't fear him and was strong enough to stand up to him. Unfortunately, with the destruction of his machine he was now backed into a corner as well, and that made him extra dangerous. There were few kinds of people who'd put up a tougher fight than a coward who didn't have anything left to lose.
"You destroyed my creation," Second hissed. "You ruined our plans to save the Mistress, and you have humiliated me in front of the entire HIVE." Both his hands were now pulsing with power- Jinx didn't know what those weapons were that were built into them, but they certainly looked nasty. "For all of that, you will pay."
"Yeah, well you were the guy who beat me up back in my cell when I was helpless, invented the machine that I'm guessing probably would have killed me, and tried to kill my b- my friend." Jinx's eyes were hard. "I think this is pretty personal on both ends."
Second suddenly snarled and brought both hands together in front of him. The crackle of the energy bolts around them intensified, and then he thrust both hands forward. A massive ray of energy shot from them, far more powerful than anything he'd used before- and aimed directly at Jinx.
She managed to cartwheel to the side, but she could feel that heat from the blast and decided it was far too close for her comfort. Jumping back to her feet, she thrust her own hands forward and sent a stream of hexes racing towards the cloaked figure. Second only smirked behind his mask and deflected them with his gloves- apparently the same power that fueled the weapons also provided a convenient shield.
"All right, then," Jinx muttered. "Let's do this the hard way." She took a run at Second, leaping midway through and aiming a kick directly at the blank mask she had come to truly hate over the past few days. He darted to the side and caught her by the ankle, sending electric agony coursing up her body from his gauntlet. She collapsed to the floor as he let her go, clothes still smoking.
Jinx coughed and looked up, wincing through the pain. Second towered over her, gloves activated and eyes alight with malice. "And so it ends," he said. "You should have known that you- a child- could not defeat me, one of the most powerful men in the most powerful criminal organization in the world. You lost before you ever began."
"Tsk, tsk," Jinx said weakly. "Brother Blood would have been so disappointed in you just there. Maybe you should have attended HIVE Academy."
"What is this babbling?" Second demanded, taken aback.
Jinx leaped to her feet, the most terrible pains from that attack having been feigned. Lunging forward, she caught Second in the ribs with a kick, sending him stumbling back, and then followed up by seizing his masked face and releasing a hex. There was a brilliant flash of purpled light and the mask was blasted off, revealing the brutal features of a man who seemed a few years younger than the Fifth Director. His eyes bulged hatefully as residual energy from the hex played around his face, and then they rolled back in his head as he collapsed to the floor.
Jinx dusted off her hands and stood over him. "You clearly didn't get one of the Academy's first lessons- never gloat or monologue until you're certain the other person's down hard. Otherwise, it'll blow up in your face." She looked down at him and shrugged. "Literally, in your case."
Raising her head, she looked around the base-turned-battlefield. Most of the soldiers and some of the Directors were tied up chasing something that moved with blurring speed and was presumably Kid Flash, while some of the other Directors were nowhere to be found, apparently having decided to cut and run while they could. But the Mistress was still seated in her throne-like chair watching the fight intently, with the First Director standing in front of her like an honor guard.
Jinx smiled and began to walk towards them.
Kid Flash darted among the HIVE soldiers, easily dodging the blasts from their beam rifles. Every so often he'd stop to snag a weapon, thwack the back of a helmet, or make a witty insult, effectively sowing chaos throughout the ranks. That was one of the advantages of superspeed, so long as you kept your head- since you were next to impossible to hit or catch, tearing apart the order of large groups of enemies was quite easy and, in Kid Flash's opinion, fun.
A wall of force suddenly slammed into him, leaving him sprawling and gasping on the ground. Looking up, he saw the Fifth Director standing over him, holding the metal staff that was projecting the force-field. Fourth stood just behind him, her hands encased in weapons that somewhat resembled the sonic cannon Kid Flash had seen Cyborg use. "This is for fooling me, spy," she snarled, bringing both cannons up. "Payback time."
Both weapons pulsed, and then unleashed twin blasts of compressed sound. Kid Flash barely managed to duck aside as they dug into the floor, twisting the metal into two long grooves. Snarling in fury, Fourth fired again, and suddenly he found himself on the defensive, darting back and forth to avoid the female Director's blasts.
That, Kid Flash decided, just wouldn't do at all.
Dodging her latest blast, he turned straight towards her and launched himself into a charge. Leaping over Fifth's force-field- surprisingly, he did nothing to prevent it- Kid Flash landed directly in front of fourth and grabbed her wrists as she brought the cannons back to bear, quickly crossing a few wires in each of them. Her eyes widened in horror, and Kid Flash pulled back as the cannons began to vibrate intensely and then shattered with enough force to send Fourth sprawling on the floor, unconscious.
The sound of slow applause sounded from behind him, and he turned to see Fifth clapping with his staff under one arm. "Well done," he said. "Fourth has a genius for weapons, but she is a fool otherwise- I knew it would be no contest between you." Suddenly the staff was back in his hands and being twirled with expert ease. "Our battle, however, should be far more interesting."
Kid Flash shot him a cocky grin and rushed forward, determined to grab the staff out of Fifth's hands before he could use it to make a force-field again. As his fingers wrapped around the metal, however, a powerful jolt shot through his body and sent him stumbling back, wincing and rubbing his hands. Fifth shook his head. "Foolish boy," he said. "Did you really think I'd leave my primary weapon undefended? And just in case you're getting any clever ideas, my entire suit of armor is protected in the same manner. You cannot touch me."
"You're the one who's wrong there," Kid Flash pointed out. "I can touch you. I just won't like it. Big difference."
"We shall see." Fifth brought the staff up and lunged forward, energy trailing off the weapon. Kid Flash dodged easily, but he could still feel the sparks in the air as the staff passed by. Finally he simply gritted his teeth and grabbed hold of the weapon, wincing as the energy shot up his hands and into his arms. Fifth struggled to maintain the hold on his end, but Kid Flash began to shake his fingers extremely quickly, causing the entire staff to vibrate. It slid out of Fifth's hands, and the speedster thrust it forward, taking the Director in the chest and knocking him to the floor.
Kid Flash darted forward to stand over his fallen foe. "Looks like you lose after all," he said.
"Only in your mind, my young enemy," Fifth replied, apparently completely unconcerned by his situation. "You may have defeated me in combat, but you cannot prevent my escape."
"What do you mean?" Kid Flash asked, suddenly on his guard.
Fifth chuckled. "I was never here." Wondering what he could possibly mean, Kid Flash grabbed the fallen Director's mask and yanked it off- only to reveal, rather than the face of Dr. Stevens that he'd been expecting, but the cold metal features of a robot.
"How?" the teen hero whispered under his breath. Fifth must have dressed the robot in his uniform before even arriving in this room with the rest of the Directors but why would he have done that unless he knew something was going to go wrong? Then Kid Flash saw the beeping red light in the robot's forehead, and he barely had time to leap back before the metal man exploded in a brilliant flash of fire and light. When the smoke cleared, the mechanical double was gone, and with it whatever secrets it might have held about the true location of the Fifth Director.
Jinx stalked towards the Mistress, eyes glowing and determined. The old woman watched, expression and posture still unconcerned, while in front of her the First Director stood, a beam pistol in each hand. "Don't come any closer," he warned. "We still require your powers, and I do not want to kill you, but if you attack you leave me no choice."
"Somehow, I don't think that's how this is going to work out," Jinx said. The Director raised his weapons, but before he could fire a hex struck both from his hands. A second blast caught him in the body and sent him flying, where he crashed against the central platform and fell to the floor, unmoving. Ignoring him, Jinx stepped forward to face the Mistress.
"That battle occurred much as I expected it to," the Mistress said. "I awarded First his position for his loyalty, not for his combat skills. It appears I may have chosen poorly."
"Y'think?" Jinx asked. "But I don't think any of the others would have done much better- you saw what I did to Second back there. Now it's just you and me. Looks like Kid Flash and I took down the whole HIVE by ourselves. Probably not what you had in mind when you set the whole thing up."
The Mistress laughed softly in her dry voice. "Foolish girl. You fall into the same mistake Second did- do not gloat until the battle is won!"
"Yeah, well I don't think one dried up old woman is going to give me that much challenge," Jinx said. Raising her hands, she launched a powerful hex directly at the Mistress's chair- only to have it rebound from the force-field that shimmered into existence there and strike her directly in the chest, knocking her to the floor and the wind out of her body.
"Did you think I would leave myself defenseless?" the Mistress asked. She quickly pressed a series of keys along her chair's armrests, and then it lifted into the air, force-field expanding into a sphere that protected the entire conveyance. Rotating weapon turrets extended from the tips of the arms, the top of the canopy, and along the bottom. All of them trained themselves on Jinx.
"You thought you could defeat me," the Mistress said. "Child, I have been a part of the criminal underworld for almost ten times the span of your entire life, and I have faced challenges to my power that you cannot hope to compare to. I am the Mistress, founder and guiding light of the HIVE, and you are nothing more than an arrogant, foolish little thief who thought she could be so much more.
"You might still be of use to me, however. Your power is indeed formidable- with Second's help I could rebuild the machine so it would do you no permanent damage other than transferring that power to me. The resources of the HIVE are at my back- I could give you anything you desired, even your friend Kid Flash, so long as you submitted yourself willingly to my plans. I could make something meaningful of you at last. What do you say?"
Jinx looked up at her, eyes hard. "You're wrong," she said. "I left the HIVE behind, and for the last few months I've been trying to make something better of myself. But that's not going to come from joining you. Do you honestly think after I got out of your little operation I'd want back in? I've found better friends, better people to look up to and want to be like. Kid Flash helped me find the way. You want to know what I am? I'm a hero, and I'm not going to lie down and give myself up to you."
For a brief moment the Mistress's face twisted into a hideous mask of rage, but then she was calm and controlled again. "Very well," she said. "You chose your own fate." The chair's weapons lowered into position, and the old woman flipped another switch on her armrest. The weapons burst into life, and Jinx readied herself to defend with hexes- but before the blasts struck, a blur shot through the air, and when it cleared she was gone.
"What?" the Mistress breathed, uncertainty crossing her withered features. "What happened?"
"Teamwork," Kid Flash said from where he stood with Jinx directly beneath the chair. "Something you wouldn't know about."
The Mistress snarled and her chair spun in midair, weapons reorienting on the two teens. Jinx shot her a feral smile and then leapt into the air, forming hexes around her hands as powerful as she could make them and slamming them into the underside of the force-sphere. Energy bolts crackled through the air as the two forces did battle, but finally the sphere shattered into a thousand shards and evaporated. The hex energy continued up into the underside of the chair, shorting out the drives that kept it aloft and the weapons that defended it. When the Mistress realized what was happening, she abandoned her control- a high-pitched scream sounded from the chair as it crashed to the floor.
Jix fell from beneath its underside, but before she struck the ground Kid Flash was there, catching her and carrying her away from the debris. When he stopped, she looked up at him and smiled. "Nice save," she said.
"Any time."
Jinx leapt out of his arms and hurried over to the wreckage of the chair. It lay on its side now, components twisted and damaged beyond repair. In front of it lay the Mistress, crawling on her hands and knees, looking strangely pathetic as she stared up at Jinx with fearful eyes. "It's over," the girl said to her. "You're defeated, your Directors are down, and your soldiers all look like they scattered when they saw their bosses go down. In a few minutes, we're going to call the law, and when they get here, the HIVE will be finished."
"So this is how it ends," the Mistress rasped. "It has been a fine game, though admittedly not one I expected to lose." She met Jinx's eyes, expression unwavering. "To the victor goes the spoils, then. I am helpless- finish me. I know you want to."
For a moment, Jinx was tempted, and then she shook her head. "No. I'm not like you, and I'm not going to give you an easy way out. You're going to stand trial, and then you'll be locked away for whatever's left of your life, powerless. Is that what you're afraid of? It's what you deserve."
The Mistress made no reply, and Jinx turned away from her, walking back over to Kid Flash. "Well then," she said, "I guess that's the end of it. No more Mistress, no more Directors, no more HIVE."
"Guess it is," Kid Flash agreed. He stepped forward and put his arm around her shoulders, and they looked out over the ruins of a criminal empire.
"Just one question, though," Jinx finally said. "Where's Fifth? That guy and me still had some unfinished business."
Kid Flash's expression suddenly went uncharacteristically dark. "I think there's something you need to know…"