Hey there! I took advantage of my winter break at college to try to get as much done with this story as possible now that we're so close to the end. So here I bring you the final confrontation we were waiting for! I hope you enjoy it.
I received a lot of questions regarding Lucy and the inspiration behind The Omen. My main inspirations were Raven, naturally, but also Cloak (from Cloak & Dagger), Doctor Strange, and Tokoyami (from My Hero Academia). She's the result of combining different elements from all of them. In future stories, we'll explore more of it and see what she gets from each of them.
As always, special thanks to those readers that leave a review.
wollyworld: Thank you! Nice to be back.
Jeff: I surely hope so!
Kokomo: Thank you so much! Bobby will probably be okay lol And I'm happy to hear you liked Lucy, it was super fun to write her.
STR2D3PO: She might learn it soon!
El Dragon.
The rising smoke in the distance forced me to speed up my flight. I let out even more energy to travel the sky like a shooting star, parting clouds on my path underneath the falling Sun that announced the upcoming sunset. I stopped above the burning toll station, away from the smoke, searching with my eyes between the medics and the policemen until I found the one that seemed to be in charge.
"How long ago?" I yelled from the heights, trying to catch my breath.
"An hour or so," she replied, making herself heard over the chaos around us.
"Were they three villains?" I asked.
"I don't know. They were in some kind of tank. Only one of them got out. They left in that direction."
She pointed at a roundabout, specifically Interstate 69.
Right towards Royal Woods.
I didn't even thank her. I propelled myself through the air with the desperation of a scared sister. "Before the end of the day", the Omen said. With how close to the horizon the Sun was, they could have been ravaging the city right then and there. I clenched my fists and increased my traveling speed. I should have left earlier. With less energy, but much faster. Ideally, I should stop them on their way to Royal Woods, stopping them from ever reaching the city.
A tank. It couldn't move too fast, right? Would it give me the time needed to catch up to them with an hour of disadvantage? I couldn't know for sure, but I had to try. The interstate accompanied the terrain, respecting the unevenness and the slopes, bordering hills, and finding straight paths. I followed a straight line instead, gaining height when necessary, my eyes wide open, scanning like a hawk for its prey.
With no sign of them anywhere, I managed to reach the outskirts of town when the sky found itself colored orange and yellow, and shadows stretched long on the ground. Desperately, I entered the city through the Interstate, now turned into the Underrated Avenue. My eyes hurt with how fast they moved, trying to look into every alley, every building, every nook and cranny for a tank, any of the three villains, or any sign of their misdeeds.
And then, just when I was beginning to worry about how tranquil and ordinary it all looked, a flash of light on the other side of town caught my eye. I stared in that direction.
Fire.
Small, but definitely some kind of fire. Without wasting a second, I flew in that direction. What were they doing over there? Had they not entered the town from the main avenue? Did they change course to provoke a surprise attack? What was their objective? It didn't look like a commercial or industrial area, were they starting on the residen—?
The sound of an object propelling through the air was the only warning I got to generate a layer of protective energy around me. An instant later, a missile detonated right in front of me, sending me on a free fall directly against the streets below. The explosion stunned me. I had to close my eyes and move my jaw like I was chewing a giant candy to get some of my hearing back. I stood up as soon as I could, without allowing myself time to worry about losing my phone, my bag, and my extra clothes.
A few people gathered around me, scared, asking me things I couldn't understand. I yelled at them to run away as soon as possible, hearing my voice as if I was speaking through a phone line.
I shook my head and focused. Turning around a corner, with a smoking cannon on the side, a giant vehicle approached me, with six wheels and a scale motive on the bodywork. There was no doubt: that was the tank the sergeant saw.
The battle was about to begin. The vehicle began to accelerate in my direction, and they shot two more small missiles at me. I couldn't let them destroy the town, or allow them to escape, or even surround me. I needed to end the threat as soon as possible. I extended both hands over my head, creating a ten-foot sphere of energy, and threw it with all my strength at the villains.
The rockets blew up in small explosions when they touched the energy ball, which continued advancing in a straight line toward the tank. At impact, the vehicle exploded, flying up in the air and creating a column of smoke and fire. Had it all gone my way, that would have been the end of the supervillains, but alas, it didn't take long for me to notice the heavy figure of La Tortuga escaping the explosion with a mighty jump, carrying two people on his back.
He landed like a meteor near me, destroying the street, shaking the cars parked next to the sidewalks, and provoking the terrified screams of civilians. His cold, murderous gaze met mine, and he gave me a sadistic smile.
Jumping over the colossal back of La Tortuga, La Cobra ran to me like a bolt of green lightning. His horrible and disproportionated mask caught my eyes with its yellow orbs, but I knew by now that I needed to focus on the fang-like blades on his wrist. I launched several beams of energy to try to intercept him, but the swift villain gracefully dodged them.
"Die!" He yelled on his last jump, ready to sink his blade into my heart.
My precision wasn't as good as his dexterity, so I stopped trying to land precise shots and instead took a chance with area attacks. I quickly gathered energy in the palm of my hands, stretched my arms horizontally, and then smashed them together with a powerful clap a second before La Cobra reached me.
The energy spread on a blue wave that, while lacking the devastating power I'd preferred, managed to land in La Cobra, sending him back to his brothers.
"Have you not learned your lesson yet?!" La Tortuga yelled, catching La Cobra and throwing him back to me in a single movement.
La Cobra twisted his body in the middle of the air to stabilize himself and ready a kick in my direction. I gritted my teeth and kicked the ground to my right, jumping to my left. When La Cobra flew past my side I tried to throw an energy beam at him, but he caught a lamppost with his tail and used the centrifugal motion to kick me right on the arm and toss me across the street.
I used my powers to push me back on my feet. I began to throw punches to the air in front of me, like practicing with an imaginary punching bag. Each punch sent a small burst of focused energy in the shape of a tiny arc, depending on how I moved my arm. La Cobra began to dodge them once again, getting one step closer to me each time.
"You're doing it wrong."
"I can't hit you! You're moving too much!" I complained, trying to catch my breath.
"That's because I react faster than you," Spade patiently explained to me. "I see your attack and move accordingly."
"Then there's nothing I can do," I replied, resignation in my voice. "I'll never be able to hit you, not if you can react faster than my attacks move."
"That's where you're wrong. How do you think I managed to stop Guldo, the Time Thief, capable of jumping seconds in time?"
"I don't know. I never studied that case."
"You should, it was so epic," he told me with a smile, before returning to this teacher mode. "Had I attacked where he was at any given time, I would have never caught him. When you face enemies like that, or villains faster than you, you gotta predict their movements. Figure out their behavior patterns and anticipate them. Attack not where your enemy is, but rather where they'll be by the time your attack reaches that position. Guide them into a trap. Just like chess."
"I hate chess."
"So do I, but we can still learn from it."
Right, left, horizontal arc. La Cobra jumped to his left, to his right, and crouched. I repeated the pattern once again, and he dodged it. Right, he jumped. Left, he jumped…
This time, I did an upwards swing, creating a vertical arc that took La Cobra by surprise, hitting him square in the face and torso, sending him straight into a brick wall.
I would have loved to take advantage of his stunned state to finish him off, but the shadow of a car about to land on me forced me to focus on surviving. I stretched my arms and caught it before it smashed into me or the store behind me.
"You're so annoying," La Tortuga said before his two hands shredded the bodywork in half, stepping right in front of me. He raised an arm to smash me into the ground like a fly, but I maneuvered fast enough to dodge the attack.
Remembering the way he'd taken Bobby by surprise that same morning, I managed to anticipate the quick swing back he did with his arm. I jumped over it, and gathering energy in my left leg, I landed a strong kick on his snout that managed to send him a step back.
"The head's your weakness," I said aloud, feeling confident. "I noticed it this afternoon. You're not so tough up there."
"And your weakness is the same as every hero's," he rudely replied, rubbing his nose. "You can't survive if I tear your heart out."
"It doesn't count as a weakness if it applies to everyone. Is that the best you have?"
"My brothers are the best I have."
I thought he was having some weird philosophical revelation, but I noticed in the corner of my eye that La Cobra launched himself at me once again. With no time to run away, I had no other choice than to surround my forearms with a blue glow and defend myself from the swift, powerful strikes he threw at me.
"You're strong," the villain acknowledged, making me take a step back with every slash he tried to land on me. "None of the weaklings in Great Lakes City could stand up to us this way. You have my respect, Nova."
"Wanna know where you can shove that respect in?"
"With a grunt, he did a low, sweeping kick that caught me in the ankles and made me fall on my back. He prepared a deadly stab to the heart that would have ended with any hero that lacked the ability to fly through propulsion. A flare of blue flames emerged from my palms, pushing me away from La Cobra and hitting him in the chest.
"You're just delaying the inevitable!" La Tortuga yelled, jumping high to negate the distance between us. He threw a punch I could barely block with my forearms. The impact shook my entire body, sending me across the air and the street, rolling on the coarse pavement until I hit a car. With my head spinning, I forced myself to stand up, ignoring the pain in my arms and knees.
La Cobra approached me once again, with a meandering sprint that prevented me from figuring out his next movement. I decided to borrow a move from La Tortuga, picking up the dented car I had just crashed into and throwing it at La Cobra like a barrel in an eighties arcade game. The slender villain stopped, and though I thought I'd taken him by surprise, I soon realized it was a combined effort.
La Tortuga had thrown a lamppost that, like a javelin, pierced the air and the cat, stopping them both in the middle of the street. La Cobra used it as a platform to jump straight at me.
"You don't have super resilience," I warned him as I maneuvered from side to side to avoid his fast thrusts. "I could kill you if I land a strong blow."
"It's hard to attack when you can barely defend yourself!" He mocked me, snapping his arm so fast I had to turn my head to keep the fang on his wrist to stab me in the eye.
I felt the burning feeling and heat of a fresh wound, and blood pouring out of a cut in my cheekbone. With a scream, I let energy pour from my whole body at once, creating a small explosion that caught him by surprise and hit him full-on. Furious, I flew towards him to land a clean punch, but right when my fist was ready to hit him straight in the face, La Tortuga got in the middle.
My wrist twisted at a painful angle that made me scream. That very well could have been my end if La Tortuga decided to pound me to the ground, but instead, he grabbed me by my waist and threw me like a ragdoll against another parked car.
I could feel the air leaving my lungs and my strength abandoning me. When I opened my eyes, I had double vision, everything moving around until I could regain focus. I didn't care. I stood up once again. I spat away the metallic taste of my blood and raised both arms to defend myself. La Tortuga and La Cobra approached me, one slow step after another. The implacable behemoth and the swift assassin.
There was a chance I could face them individually. Together? It was only a matter of time until I made a fatal mistake and died. My only advantage was my attack range. As long as I could stay away from them, I'd still have the possibility to resist and survive.
I rose to the sky, preparing a strategy in my mind, when reality reminded me of an important element I'd forgotten about.
"My turn," a deep, gritty voice said behind me, making the hairs on my neck stand up.
A first connected with my face up there in the sky. I began to fall, stunned and in pain, but someone grabbed me by an ankle and after throwing me in circles to gain speed, they tossed me into a building's terrace. I bounced on the concrete slab, feeling the impact on every muscle and bone.
I supported myself on my forearms and looked up. With the orange firmament in the background, I saw for the first time the terrible figure of El Dragón descending on me like an angel of death. His armor of warm tones reflected the sun's light, and his yellow eyes glowed underneath the shadow of his mask. He glided through the air, the tip of his toes barely stretching the surface of the terrace until he finally landed a few feet in front of me. He looked at me with disdain, keeping silent as he allowed me to stand up.
"So… you're El Dragón."
I stumbled, almost falling to my knees, but I managed to stay up. I wiped the blood off my lips with the back of my hand, and let my cosmic energy surround my body to try and tone down the pain and tiredness.
"In the flesh," he replied, taking steps around me, evaluating me. "And you're Nova. Protector of Royal Woods. And now, for messing with things that didn't involve you, you're also their destroyer."
I stretched both palms out, holding them together in front of me, and I let out a powerful beam of energy. El Dragón flew, moving in a spiral around my attack and cutting the distance between us enough for him to land a powerful blow on my stomach.
"You have no idea how much I crave to see you bleed out," he told me with uneasy sincerity, grabbing my hair as he punched my face.
Even though each hit hurt me deeply, I found some relief in noticing that he didn't seem to have either La Cobra's inhuman agility or La Tortuga's unstoppable strength. With that in mind, when El Dragón tried to hit me again, I focused my energy on one hand and managed to catch his fist before it landed on me.
"You should send one of your brothers instead if that's what you want," I said before I charged into him and propelled myself through the air, dragging him along.
He tried to free himself, but I held on tight, ready to fly through a building with him in front of me just like I'd done with La Cobra the first time we fought.
However, I heard him blowing hard, and then the sound of sparks, like a lighter. Merely on instinct, I let him go, just in time to stop him from releasing a blaze on my back. The fire flew in my direction, and I raised my hand in the air to create a barrier of energy that kept the flames from hitting me.
We stopped in the air, face to face, thirty feet apart.
"How come you fly with no wings?" I asked, catching my breath. "What kind of dragon has no wings?"
"Chinese dragons," he replied matter-of-factly. "In the West, dragons are seen as a symbol of evil, a beast, devil incarnate. In the Far East, dragons are sacred creatures, benevolent, bringers of fortune and protection."
He laughed out loud, shaking his head. He then spread his arms, palms up.
"Hero to some, villains to others. Do you understand now why I picked this name?"
"Aside from spitting freaking fire?" I said. "Sorry, you're clearly a villain, pure and simple. No matter how much you try to justify yourself."
"You see what you want to see. You ignore anything that may compromise your childish, stupid view of the world. You won't even accept the possibility that there's a truth beyond your prejudices."
"I saw you killing your own goons! Try to kill innocent people! Who's the one that's denying reality?!"
A barely visible gas escaped his throat, and an instant after his tongue cracked and produced sparks, he shot a fireball in my direction. I threw a burst of energy to intercept his attack. They blew up on impact, halfway between us.
I took note of how his fire seemed to be able to stop my energy beams.
I launched myself at him, ready to strike him, but a grunt below alerted me of how La Tortuga had just launched La Cobra like a missile against me. I stopped my flight just in time to dodge him and threw a beam of energy at La Tortuga, who merely covered his head with his immovable arms.
Above, El Dragón maneuvered to catch his brother and let him use him as a platform to jump at me.
"Oh, come on!" I yelled, focusing.
I managed to grab him by his wrists, but then he wrapped his tail around my body, destabilizing me. We began to fall.
"The constrictor embrace," he hissed with a sadistic smile, tightening his hold on me until he squeezed the air out of my lungs.
"Now you're a boa? Pick a species!"
We crashed into the street. The impact, at least, stunned La Cobra as well. Seizing the moment, I increased the energy around me and tossed him away. I stretched a fist and let out a beam of energy that would have knocked him out of the fight, but yet again, La Tortuga put himself in the middle, tanking my attack like it was a gentle breeze.
"I won't let you hurt my family," he spat, punching his chest like a gorilla or a prideful player after scoring.
"I won't let you hurt mine either!"
I gathered energy in my body again, rising several feet off the ground. La Cobra got himself together and stood beside La Tortuga, and El Dragón descended from the sky to stand in the middle of the two.
"Don't you see we're not all that different after all?" El Dragón asked with a smile. "Deep down, all we want is to protect our loved ones."
"You're murderers!"
"And what do you think would have happened to Cobra or me if Tortuga hadn't saved us from your attack on our car? Neither he nor I have super resilience. Your attack would have killed us. What would that have turned you into?"
"Don't try to put us in the same bag," I warned him. "Not everything is the same. I would never kill an innocent person."
"Not even to save your family?"
"Of course not."
"Lies," he simply said. "You would if you were forced to do it. Of course, someone like you could never understand what we've been through. The way society turned its back on us. The sheer contempt we faced since childhood. What can a hero girl know about pain? You don't know what it is to only have your brothers, to face alone a world that likes to pretend you don't exist."
I would have loved to yell at him that of course I knew about it, that I'd been suffering from it for a long while, especially since Spade died. But he'd taught me that I should never give any kind of information to villains.
"Any other sad background detail you want to share with me before I finish you guys off?" I asked, allowing the blue flames to flare up around me.
El Dragón laughed, La Tortuga cracked his knuckles, and La Cobra hissed in disdain.
"There will be time to chat when we see each other in hell," El Dragón said. "For now, it's time for you to die."
The three charged at me.
I dragged my back on the bark until I ended up sitting on the cold grass. I threw my head back and tried to catch my breath, but all I could feel was pain in my muscles and a general sense of tiredness that surrounded every fiber of my being. Leni didn't even make it to the tree next to me, instead falling face down on nature's green mantle.
"Hug me, grass," she said, "I want to sleep."
"Don't do it, Eclipse. We still gotta get back home," I reminded her, feeling even more tired just thinking about flying all the way back to our apartment.
"Come on, it wasn't that rough."
We both turned our heads to give an angry look at Ace Savvy himself, standing proud with a smile on his face as if he hadn't spent the past three hours mercilessly kicking our butts over and over again.
"Alright, maybe it was," he ended up admitting, shrugging his shoulders. "But you two chose this path. If you wanted an easy life, you shouldn't have convinced me to train you to be heroes."
"It doesn't make any sense," I said, shaking my head, "how come we can't even touch you?"
"I've got decades of experience under my cape, young grasshopper."
"I know, but… Eclipse and I have powers. Why is it so hard for us to get to you? How come even after months of training we're still so… so pathetic?"
I didn't find it a pleasurable experience to expose my insecurities and doubts so openly, but I couldn't stand it anymore. Ace Savvy had no powers. Two heroes, one with telekinesis and the other with the power of cosmic radiation, we should be able to deal with a single hero with no powers, no matter how extraordinary he was.
Ace sat in front of us, and I saw in his eyes an understanding and empathy that eased me and bothered me at the same time. I hated to feel like a little girl in front of him. I needed to act like a hero, a warrior.
"Very well, I think it's time to answer some of your questions," he sincerely said.
Leni turned to look at him, and I stopped thinking about the pain to pay attention to each of his words.
"There are several elements to your question. One, as I said, is experience. I've been protecting this town for decades, and I've faced countless enemies stronger, tougher, faster, and even smarter than me. I know how to act in a variety of situations, and that's something you only get from experience, unfortunately. It's only natural for me to have an advantage over you in that regard."
I nodded. As much as I hated to admit it, that was the reality. I couldn't deny it.
"Secondly, you just haven't clicked as a team yet. You're both fighting against me, but each of you does it on her own. On more than one occasion, you end up bothering each other rather than complementing your efforts. If you keep trying to defeat me without working together, I'll keep the advantage."
I saw in the corner of my eye that Leni looked at me, but I didn't dare cross my eyes with her. I knew this was all my fault.
"And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I'm a hero," he simply said. "That's why I have a secret weapon that won't ever let me lose against you."
"What does that mean?" I asked, though I really wanted to say "I'm a hero, too!"
"Heroes fight to protect. My goal with these training sessions is to prepare you for the real world, to fight villains that won't forgive your mistakes and that will try everything in their power to defeat and end you. If I don't prepare you for the worst of circumstances, if I don't do a good enough job, someday I might lose you. I don't want that to happen, so I give it all out every single time, every night. These sessions are life or death to me, and I do my very best because I want to protect you. That's what makes us heroes unstoppable. Villains fight for themselves. We fight for everyone else. And that's the motivation that lets us push past our limits, overcome the impossible, and do the unthinkable just to protect. You'll never be able to defeat me, because your desire to win can't possibly surpass my will to protect you."
Somewhere in his speech, his mentor tone morphed into a more personal, emotive one. A paternal tone that left me speechless and soon had my eyes filled with tears along with Leni's.
Ace smiled, taking out two napkins from his utility belt and offering them to us.
"Congratulations, you've made me use the utility napkins after five years in my belt."
"Give up, Nova, and your death will be much quicker and less painful than this."
I threw a beam at El Dragón, who dodged it with an elegant twirl in the air. I would have pushed forward with my assault if it wasn't for the fact that I had to fly away to avoid a mail post thrown at me by La Tortuga, and immediately after began exchanging blows with La Cobra.
More and more cuts appeared all over my arms, a testament to just how hard it was for me to keep up with him by now. I couldn't react as fast as I needed to. I couldn't think or move like before, and the tiredness and wounds just added more stress to my body.
In a desperate attempt to save myself, I let one of his attacks cut me deep in the forearm in exchange for the possibility of closing my other fist on the fang he used as a weapon and destroying it with a mighty squeeze.
"God damn you!" He spitefully hissed, but as I still held his wrist in my hand, I tossed him straight to a wall.
El Dragón managed to catch him, as La Tortuga charged against me. I dodged a stomping foot and rocketed up, connecting an uppercut to his chin. The colossus took a step back, and I took advantage of his dizziness to grab him by the spikes on his carapace and, with a flare of blue energy, pushed hard enough to make him fall back, shaking the windows around us. I gathered whatever excess of energy I had —not a lot, I must confess—, focused it on my fists, and began to punch him over and over again in the face.
"Go… To… Sleep!" I yelled in between blows, snapping his head from one side to the other with each impact.
I raised my fist once again, but the whooshing sound of fire forced me to fly up in the air.
Unfortunately, La Cobra had expected me to do so, and with a tremendous jump, I managed to land a direct hit to my chest that sent me crashing down.
I tried to recover, using my forearms as leverage to raise my head and look at where my enemies were. La Tortuga stood up, seemingly recovered from my attacks, if they had even damaged him in the first place. La Cobra and El Dragón flanked him, and the three took slow steps toward me.
"An effort worth remembering," El Dragón said, stopping along with his brothers. "Part of me feels tempted to ask you to join us. With someone like you on our side, our rule over Great Lakes City would be undisputable. On the other hand, your death and the destruction of your city will assure no more meddlesome, obtrusive heroes will threaten our survival. And I will always prioritize family over power."
With blood pouring out of my many wounds and cuts all over my body, I could barely lift my body a few inches off the ground before falling face-first again. I needed to catch my breath. No. I needed to keep fighting. I needed to stand up, no matter the pain, no matter the fatigue, no matter the consequences.
"Put an end to her calvary, Cobra."
"Asss you wish."
I covered my body with a layer of cosmic energy to try to stand up, but my power flickered, turning off for a moment like an old neon sign. I saw La Cobra approaching me at a slow pace, practically licking his remaining blade, ready to stab and kill me.
Images of Leni began to flash in my mind. My adoptive parents. Spade. I began to push myself up, against all odds, but I knew it wouldn't be enough, and tears of resignation began to fall down my cheeks.
Right then, La Cobra squinted his eyes, looked up above me with a grimace of disgust, and performed two quick swings with his blade in the air to deflect two projectiles.
Two steel sheets in the shape of poker cards with green edges that blew up into smoke screens with the impact.
And then, falling in between La Cobra and me, the young Ace Savvy, Night Vigilante, made his heroic entrance. He stood up, his dark blue cape waving in the wind, and staring at him from the ground, my tired and agitated mind overlapped his image with Spade Nifty.
"Sorry I'm late," his childlike, innocent voice said, "I didn't mean to miss the first hand. Ready for a redraw?"
I recognized the old, hackneyed phrases of my mentor. Why did he imitate his fascination with poker? To help himself believe he was on the level of the original Ace Savvy?
Or did he do it because he wanted others to feel the same joy and hope he'd just given me?
He turned to look at me, and though his eyes couldn't hide the worry my current state caused him, he never stopped smiling as he offered me a hand.
"I was on my way out of town to inspect what Eclipse told me, but then I thought, 'wait a minute, since when do they have a radar?'. I had a bad feeling, so I came back as soon as I could. The explosions helped to guide me."
Though my heart felt an immediate relief, a part of my mind still managed to think clearly, and reason screamed at me to not let him participate in this fight.
"Ace," I said, calling him by his hero name without that ugly taste in my mouth I used to feel, "you shouldn't be here. They're very dangerous villains."
"I know," he replied, examining my wounds. "I've been reading about them this afternoon, after watching the news about your fight with La Tortuga."
"Then you know they won't hesitate to kill you if you give them the chance."
"That's why I won't give them one. Now, will you give me a chance to help you, or would you rather have me fight them by myself while you recover?"
He offered his hand once again.
I shouldn't have sighed. I shouldn't have smiled in resignation. I shouldn't have raised my arm and let him help me get back on my feet. I shouldn't have leaned on him as I caught my breath. I shouldn't have said:
"Thanks, Ace."
"No worries. I doubt my cards can do anything against La Tortuga. What does El Dragón do?"
"He flies and breathes fire."
"Huh. Should've guessed that," he said, scratching his chin. "Well, in the meantime, take a breather while I deal with La Cobra."
"He's too agile. He has superhuman reflexes," I warned him, grabbing him by his shoulder when he tried to walk away from me.
He put his hand over mine and smiled at me.
"Trust me, I've been training with a sparring partner, and she's much faster than him."
And after that cryptic phrase, he separated from me and began to walk to meet La Cobra. He took a metal rod from his utility belt and with a strange move he extended it until it became a battle staff practically as tall as himself.
"Another child hero that wants to die with honor," La Cobra said with contempt.
"Another villain with a terrible sense of fashion."
La Cobra hissed. "There was a time when my soul ached for having killed some child. I'm not that person anymore. I won't shed a single tear for you."
"You will when I beat you, snake eyes."
With a snarl, La Cobra ran straight at Ace Savvy, but he waited until the last second to take a step to the side and counter with a lateral kick. La Cobra jumped to avoid it and, twisting his body in the air, tried to connect a hit using his tail as a whip, but Ace used the staff as a support to push himself over the villain and throw a blue card at him.
A strong electric current ran through La Cobra's body, tensing his muscles and forcing him to fall face-first to the ground.
La Cobra jumped back up and he and Ace Savvy began to exchange blows and ripostes with a speed, grace, and precision my eyes could barely follow, like a choreographic dance of violence. Ace received a hit on his chest that send him flying towards a wall, but while still in the air, he used his grappling-hook gun to rise to a lamppost just in time to avoid a slash from La Cobra, and then he countered with a red card that exploded right next to the villain, sending him straight to a concrete bench, causing him to yell in pain.
"Gonna cry?" Ace provoked him.
"You wretch!"
As I witnessed their fight, I focused my energies to take deep breaths. Spade had taught me that controlling my breathing was the best way to recover my energies in the middle of a fight. The cosmic radiation in the air could enter my system more effectively through the lungs than my skin. Indeed, although the pain remained nearly unbearable, a single minute to relax had me back on my feet, my aura shining brighter by the second.
Little by little, La Cobra began to find himself cornered by Ace Savvy's movements, who seemed to match him in reflexes and dexterity, but also had many tricks and tools to sneak around and catch him by surprise. Perhaps a product of his desperation, the villains' attacks became more violent and feral, until one of his lounges managed to snap Ace Savvy's staff in two.
"I got you now!" La Cobra roared, victoriously, ready to deal a finishing blow now that Ace didn't have his weapon to deflect the villain's fang.
However, the young hero didn't let the pressure or anxiousness bother him. He used his forearm to ward off a blow from La Cobra, and taking advantage of the opening, he landed a straight punch on his face to stun him, a sweeping kick to throw him to the ground, and with a somersault to gain speed and strength, he landed a descending kick with his heel to destroy La Cobra's remaining blade.
"Tortuga, help him," El Dragón suddenly ordered.
La Tortuga began to run at Ace Savvy, picking half a car and throwing it in his direction.
The boy seemed ready to use his grappling-hook gun to avoid the danger, but I decided not to bet everything on his reaction time, and instead launched myself like a rocket, throwing an energy blast that destroyed the vehicle before it reached Ace.
"Thanks!"
"Don't thank me yet!"
La Tortuga walked through the burning remains of the car and threw a punch to crush Ace Savvy, but he rolled back. I began to run in circles around La Tortuga, throwing a continuous beam of energy, trying to hit him in the face or any other weak spot I could find. Ace followed my lead, and as we dodged the villain's devastating blows, he threw a barrage of cards of all colors at him.
La Cobra appeared out of nowhere, jumping to intercept me, but an electric card hit him right before he could close his hand around my throat. Right then, La Tortuga stomped the ground hard enough to create a crater and send Ace Savvy flying through the air. I maneuvered fast to reach him, offering a hand. He got the idea, grabbed it, and then I threw him at La Cobra, he'd prepared a flying kick that hit the villain square in the chest.
"Enough!"
La Tortuga spread his arms and then clapped in front of him, just like I'd done a while back to stop La Cobra's advances. Only this time, with no more energy aside from his muscles', he managed to create a shocking wave that destroyed every window in the street. It hit me in the middle of the air, sending me into a free fall, and it also hit Ace after La Cobra kicked him up in the air.
Slightly stunned, we took a second to recover, enough for La Tortuga to get to me with a first held high, ready to squash me.
He would have succeeded in doing so, if not for the burning remains of a car that raised from the ground and flew at him, hitting him right in the face. La Cobra hissed and began to dodge all sorts of scraps and junks of metal and rubble that crossed the air in his direction, hitting him now and then on the shoulder or shins.
I looked up to find the beautiful sight of golden locks of hair floating in the air, swirling in gentle waves that defied gravity. I got worried when I saw her there, but I can't deny it was only then that I truly began to think we could win that battle.
"Eclipse!" Ace Savvy yelled, getting to La Cobra to resume their melee fight. "Just in time!"
"I'm sorry!" Leni replied, flying over the battlefield to grab every piece of rubble she could find to throw at La Tortuga. "A store was burning on the other side of town and I went there first!"
That explained the fire I saw when I first reached the city.
"Don't get distracted!" I said, shooting an energy blast to intercept a trash can La Tortuga threw at my sister.
"How many more scums will try to stop us?!" The giant roared.
"We don't need more," I replied. "You'll learn why you did wrong by facing Royal Wood's heroes."
Leni rose in the air just in time to dodge a fireball aimed at her, but she was too busy trying to weave a lamppost around La Tortuga's legs to pay attention to how El Dragón flew in her direction.
"Oh, no you don't!" I screamed, flying as fast as I could to intercept him.
We crashed in the air, but my speed was greater than his, so I managed to drag him away from Leni. I grabbed him by his wrists, stopping him from slashing me with the claws on his armor.
"I won't let you touch her!" I yelled at his face.
"Ah," he said with an evil grin, "so she's the family you're trying to protect."
I hated myself. I'd just given him more information than I should have. I tried to knee him in the stomach, but he managed to lean back far enough to avoid it and then headbutted me so hard that I almost passed out.
"I'll make sure you don't die!" He roared, grabbing me by my leg and throwing me higher in the air before flying up and punching me in the abdomen. "I'll wait 'til you're bleeding out on the ground, and then I'll kill her right before your eyes! So you spend your last moments regretting messing with the Reptile Triumvirate!"
The blue flames surrounding my body flared up, stopping me in the air and pushing him away from me.
"Today you'll pay for everything you've done in Great Lakes City!" I promised him, before putting both hands together in front of me and releasing a beam of energy against him.
He breathed in, almost comically so, curving his entire body back, before he leaned forward and let out a fire so immense and strong the sky seemed to turn even more red. My energy managed to fight off the flames for a couple of seconds, but soon it became evident that I wouldn't be able to stop it. To keep that fire from reaching me or someone else below, I turned the beam into an explosion that managed to dispel El Dragón's attack.
The villain began to laugh.
"You thought I was the weakest of my brethren, didn't you? I don't blame you. That's what everyone thinks. That's how I was born, with this curse."
"Curse?" I asked.
Not because I cared to know his backstory, but rather because allowing him to monologue was my best chance of getting some precious moments of rest to replenish my energies.
"My lungs produce a gas that I can ignite into flames more powerful than any other heat source on Earth," he explained, flying in circles around me. "Unfortunately, my body took almost fifteen years to get used to the gas. I spent my entire childhood sick, bedridden, weak, always on the verge of dying. My parents couldn't handle having mutant, deformed, sick children. They abandoned us. Had it not been for my brother's care, I would've died. And yet, here I am. I survived rejection. I survived the condition I was born with. And that made me stronger. Strong enough to pay my brothers back, and take care of them, protect them, guide them into what we are now."
"What kind of brother would let his family turn into criminals? Guide them into becoming assassins and thugs? How can you say you're protecting them if you've led them to this life?!"
"A life where we have each other. Where we're not alone. Where we don't depend on some stranger's kindness that will never come. Where—"
Feeling sufficiently recovered, I flew first-first straight at him. He rose to avoid my attack and breathed fire on me. I covered my body with a thick layer of energy, and that protection saved me from burning alive right then and there. The fire not only enveloped me, but it also shoved me in the air, feeling more like my energy than regular fire.
But much, much hotter. In the few seconds I remained within that fireball before I propelled myself out, I could feel every inch of my body ready to be set on fire, protected just by the energy that absorbed the heat. My open wounds stung and sweltered, making me scream in pain. When I finally escaped the scorching grip of the flames, my suit smoked and my hair felt dry and about to break like hay.
"I'm not the helpless child I once was."
El Dragon's voice behind me startled me. I turned just in time to cross my arms over my chest, blocking a punch that sent me across the air.
He cut the distance between us short and got ready to throw another punch. I managed to block once again, but when I prepared a blow of my own, he used his momentum to turn around and land a kick on the side of my abdomen.
"I turned myself into a warrior."
He threw a fireball practically three feet away from me, which I barely dodged by pushing myself with the energy in my hands to the side. Unfortunately, El Dragón seemed to have expected that move, and by the time I realized what was going on, he was over me, hitting me in the head with both hands, sending me into a free fall.
As I tried to stop my fall, I scanned the battleground. Ace Savvy and La Cobra continued tangled in close-quarter combat, moving around the street like two whirlwinds. La Cobra's giant mask was parted in two, revealing the much smaller and proportionate head of the villain, but Ace Savvy's suit had many cuts of his own.
On the other hand, I saw Leni, standing on the sidewalk, her entire body shaking as she stretched her hands forward, with a painful expression on her face. Forty feet in front of her, La Tortuga wiggled and shook his arms desperately, his entire body suspended eight feet off the ground, with nothing to hold on to and nowhere to go.
The villain must have weighed several tons, more than Leni could manage to maintain. I needed to finish El Dragón off while Leni kept La Tortuga out of combat.
Unfortunately, my opponent had the same realization. He stopped his chase after me, breathed in, and threw another impossibly powerful curtain of fire at my sister.
"No!" I yelled, unleashing whatever energy I could conjure to rocket myself to meet the hellish attack. I began to turn around on my axis, like a corkscrew, my blue flames growing and expanding with the effect of the centrifugal force.
The more speed I gained, the more energy I released, and when I landed straight into El Dragon's attack, the force and movement of my energy managed to dispel and undo the infernal flames.
It was time to end the fight. Leni was doing an impossible effort to neutralize the villain who undoubtedly presented the most threat to our group, considering our powerset, but doing so left her in an incredibly vulnerable and disadvantageous position. El Dragón had just shown he understood the danger she posed to them, and wouldn't hesitate to take her out if possible. For Leni's sake, I needed to act fast and defeat El Dragón as soon as possible.
I flew to meet him, with the clear intention to win to protect my sister.
"Cobra, stop the other child!" The leader of the villains screamed, meeting my attack with one of his own, our forearms clashing in a mighty duel.
We began to exchange blows, and I had to focus entirely on defending and countering his attacks, so I couldn't run to help Leni. Luckily, I heard La Cobra hissing in pain, and a confident Ace Savvy saying:
"No folding now! You're fighting me!"
With that weight off my shoulders, I began to release more energy with my punches, forcing El Dragón to retreat.
"You're wrong," I said, punching him in the arms so hard I broke his defense and connected with his chest, sending him flying through the air.
As I flew in his direction, I sent two punches in the air to throw energy shockwaves, hitting him hard enough to keep El Dragón from stabilizing himself and preparing a counterattack.
"Maybe it's true you've gone through some bad times," I continued, reaching him just in time to strike him twice in the chest, "but don't think for a moment that it serves as an excuse to justify what you've done!"
He tried to sneak away to the side, launching a mighty kick that managed to land on my chest. However, I closed my arms around his leg and began to turn in circles, dragging him through the air until I let go, tossing him once again.
"You had your family, just like I have mine. And that's enough for me. Is the world against us? So be it!"
As soon as El Dragón managed to stop himself in the air, he breathed in and then blew his breath in a focused stream. Less of a giant wall of fire, more like a torch.
I arched my arms back, leaning my entire body, gathering my power in the palm of my hands, and then I countered with an energy beam of my own.
The two attacks clashed in the air, the orange of his flames mixing with the blue of my energy in a flashing eruption of purple that went on for as long as we maintained the energy flowing.
"I only need my family! As long as she's with me, I won't stop fighting, overcoming whatever obstacles the world wants to throw my way! But I'd never become a monster like you, causing the same pain the world caused you!"
The intensity of El Dragon's flames grew, but although the clashing point where our attacks met advanced several feet in my direction, I didn't give up, and continued channeling whatever energies I had left.
"The only thing you've done is to perpetuate the cycle of senseless violence! That's not how injustice ends, by imparting pain on others! It'll end when we all do our part! Because we're never truly alone!
Images of Bobby flashed in my mind. La Tormenta, los Casagrandes. My neighbors, Richard, Sam, Kaylen, Eva, Mister Howlett. The new Ace Savvy. Spade.
As I expected, after a while, El Dragón started to run out of breath. He couldn't keep blowing forever, after all. His fire began to dim out, and that's when I gave it all out, my attack advancing dangerously fast toward him.
"There are other people out there that suffered just as much as we have! People willing to help us, even when it seems no one ever will! That's what sets us apart! I didn't give up on the world!"
At last, his fire ran out, and my beam of energy advanced like a blue torrent to El Dragón, hitting him square in the chest and sending him on a free fall to the ground.
After taking a few deep breaths, I rocketed to catch him before he crashed on the street. I grabbed him by the collar of his armor and gently slowed us down until we ended up suspended three feet from the ground. His orange suit was now dented and burned, just like the fractured dragon helm that revealed the tired eyes of an out-of-combat villain.
"You… You're—" He began, though he stopped when he began to suffer what seemed to be some asthma attack.
"A hero," I replied. "Nova, of Royal Woods."
He tried to raise an arm to attack me, I suppose, but he was too busy coughing and trying to control his breathing to cause me any damage.
Still holding on to him, I glanced around the battlefield just in time to see La Cobra snatching Ace Savvy's cape in the air, ready to forcefully shove him back. The cape, however, detached from Ace's back with no issue, and taking advantage of the villain's confusion, the young hero bounced off a nearby wall to gain height and fall with a backheel kick that hit the top of La Cobra's head.
The intimidating figure of the villain stumbled a couple of steps before it fell face-first to the ground, unconscious and defeated. Ace sighed, and he let himself fall back as well to catch his breath.
"YOU SCUM!" La Tortuga yelled, jolting around in his suspended state.
"Nova!" Leni called me, falling on her knees as she kept a single shaking hand up in the air to keep the villain in place. A trail of blood fell from her nostrils. "I can't hold on much longer!"
I dropped El Dragón aside, knowing there was nothing he could do. I took a look at the sun, still peeking above the horizon. I focused, and energy began to pour out from the depths of my body. Every fiber, every muscle, every cell began to expel whatever cosmic radiation I held in my system. The flames around me grew in size and shone brighter than ever.
"Eclipse, lift him as high as you can!" I yell, before flying to La Tortuga.
She raised her arm at the same time I grabbed La Tortuga from one of the spikes at her back, pushing her to the sky with my sister's help.
"LET ME GO!" The villain screamed, trying in vain to get to me with his arms. "MY BROTHERS! IF YOU DID ANYTHING TO THEM, I SWEAR I—!"
"Let this be a lesson," I said, feeling the warmth of the setting sun on my back, gifting me with the last ounces of energy I needed before releasing my ultimate attack, "to help you understand just how far we're willing to go to protect our family."
When Leni's powers reached their max range, we were hundreds of feet away from the ground, closer to the clouds than the city. With the beautiful sunset as a background, I maneuvered until I positioned myself right in front of La Tortuga.
He moved his arm to hit me, but he stopped when he noticed how my entire skin, hair, and suit glowed with a bright blue, with energy sprouting from me in the shape of small electric arcs. It all seemed to stop for a second, as I pulled my arms and legs near my torso, turning myself small. When I opened my eyes, I saw true terror in La Tortuga's eyes.
I stretched my arms and legs, roaring to the sky as I released my Supernova.
The nearby clouds vaporized, winds began to whirl around the epicenter of the explosion, and for an instant, the sky was painted blue, like a summer morning.
The flash of light would look like a second sun in the videos the media recorded, as well as in every phone from the citizens that managed to capture the fight. I couldn't see with my eyes what kind of damage I caused La Tortuga, but I could hear his muffled scream before it all went quiet.
And then, everything began to turn around, and when I opened my eyes, I realized I was falling to my doom. I tried to stop myself, but I barely had enough energy to slow down. Beside me, the smoking body of La Tortuga fell past me like a meteor, seemingly unmoving. A few seconds later, I heard a thunderous thud.
I closed my eyes and focused, trying to conjure whatever strengths I had within to suspend myself in the air, but every muscle ached, and although I knew I had enough energy left in me to fly for a while longer, my body needed time to recover after the Supernova.
Minutes I wouldn't have if I crashed on the ground and died right then.
Just when it looked like my ending was near, I felt a soft, gentle force that pushed me from below, like a caring hand that helped me stabilize and stop my fall, until it delicately left me standing on the sidewalk.
"Thanks, Eclipse," I told my sister, who kept a stretched hand in my direction.
"No… problem," she said, before falling unconscious.
I would have loved to be able to do the same. Unfortunately, the sound of something heavy moving put me on edge.
La Tortuga dragged his body on the ground. Pushing up with his arms, it slithered his battered body. He seemed to be trying to stand up, which seemed like the worst news anyone could have given me right then when I struggled to stay conscious.
"Miguel… Miguel, breathe," I heard La Tortuga softly say. "Breathe deeply. Please, Miguel… Gabriel… Gabriel, stand up."
Ace Savvy approached me. He looked as ragged and wounded as the rest of us, and he walked with a hand closed tight on the side of his chest.
"So, were the news channels right?" He asked. "Are they siblings?"
"They're villains," I clarified.
"I know. Believe me, I know. But that doesn't change how they feel, does it?"
La Tortuga began to stand up, his back still facing us. When he finally turned around, ever so slowly, I noticed not just how hurt he looked, but how his gigantic arms carried the unconscious bodies of his brothers.
His bloody, burned face, with an eye closed, didn't look like that of a villain. Aside from the grotesque differences, I saw in it the same emotions I saw a couple of hours ago in La Tormenta.
He looked at Ace and me. He then turned to look at the barricades the police had placed up a few blocks down the street, keeping civilians away from the battle. He stared at his brothers, and then back at us again.
I saw the desperation in his eyes.
"Take them," I said, loud enough for La Tortuga to hear me but not the police. "Take them and never return. If you do, you'll force us to stop you once and for all. You wanted the world to give you a chance? This is it."
La Tortuga took a step to his left without leaving his eyes off me. Like he was trying to test whether I'd keep my word or attack him as soon as he turned his back on me. One step followed the next, and soon he limped away, gaining speed as he began to run.
The police sirens turned on, but there was little they could do to stop the villain.
"That was very compassionate of you," Ace told me, sounding impressed. "It felt like something Ace Savvy would do. You know, not me; the real one."
Hearing someone comparing me to Spade filled my heart with joy.
"It seemed like the right thing to do. Besides, I don't have the strength to fight him right now," I admitted, shrugging with a grimace of pain. "He'd end up killing us rather easily."
Ace giggled. "Yeah. My cards couldn't even slow him down. But your supernova was great! Like a seventh-level spell!"
That sounded like nerd talk, not my area of expertise.
"By the way, don't say stuff like that."
He looked confused at me. "Well, I mean, I didn't want to say ninth-level, that sounded like a bit too much."
"I mean that thing about 'the real one'. You're a real Ace Savvy, too."
His mouth fell open, and the glow in his eyes made him look even more adorable than usual.
Ugh, thank goodness Leni wasn't conscious. Had she read my emotions right then, she would have thought I was treating him like a little brother or something like that, instead of the nosy, yet indubitably courageous twerp he was.
I thought about Leni and approached her. The bleeding on her nose had stopped, and she hadn't received any other wound. She had simply passed out from the effort of keeping something as heavy as La Tortuga suspended in the air for so long.
"Is she okay?" Ace asked, kneeling beside me and looking worriedly at my sister.
"Yeah. She needs to rest."
I took her in my arms and lifted her. My entire existence hurt, and now that the adrenaline began to wear off, I was very aware of every bruise, every cut, every burn, and scrape on my body.
"Get her somewhere to rest," Ace Savvy told me. "I'll deal with the police and the press."
I hesitated.
"Don't worry, I won't steal all the credit," he assured me with a smile.
I smiled back. "Don't even think about it, twerp."
Focusing my energy, I managed to rise off the ground, carrying my unconscious sister with me. Before flying away, I turned one last time to the young hero.
"Thanks. I couldn't have done it without you."
The bastard winked at me. Oh, so conceited. One day I would turn him into a human pretzel. How dare he make me care about him?
I struggled to fly. I traveled across town at a low height, sometimes not even going over buildings, but rather going around them. Gravity pulled on me with overwhelming strength, and more than once I felt on the verge of losing whatever energy remained in me and falling straight to the ground. My vision became blurry, but every second got me closer to my destination. Taking advantage of the twilight darkness, I rose high into the sky when I was less than a mile away, so no civilian could follow me to the end.
Finally, I relaxed my energy, little by little, to descend almost vertically and without any shining aura around me to give me away. I continued to descend until I finally planted my feet on the terrace of our building. I felt my insides cramping, but I kept moving, opening the door. Step by step, I walked down the stairs carrying Leni with me.
When there were only a few steps left, however, it all went dark, and my legs gave up. I managed to turn around so I would hit the ground and Leni would fall on me. It was a painful fall, but my body was so hurt and tired that I barely felt it.
With my stunned senses, the last thing I noticed before I fell unconscious was some fast steps and a few voices calling me by my name.