Still trying to keep up the pace I have for this week. Here's my special, the big reveal I figured would be so obvious I call it the Anti-Reveal!
Franky found the Flea lying in a picnic area in the midst of the greenhouse jungle. He had landed on a table, which lay crushed beneath him. His suit leaked hydraulic fluid, a calf servo was torn out, and his right arm was twisted in an unnatural direction. A lizard more than a meter long clambered over the fallen trooper, clearly in a hurry to be elsewhere. "What happened?" Franky shouted.
"I wanna drive tha tractor," the Flea groaned.
The Tick burst onto the upper balcony, at a corner that came close to the sloped glass. He found the girl named Willow in the crosshairs of his 3 cm automatic grenade launcher. "There you are," he said. "Hands up. What did you do to my partner?"
"I didn't do anything," Willow said. Her lips pouted and her eyes visibly widened. "You wouldn't shoot a little girl, would you?"
The Tick tilted his head. Her reflection was visible in the glass behind her. She held a crowbar behind her back. "I would with this," he said. He pointed a forearm 43 mm grenade launcher. A gas grenade launched at the level of her chest, and sprayed a cloud of pink smoke. She leaped first, straight over the exotrooper's head. He instinctively fired a volley of massive buckshot canisters from his main weapon. A shower of glass rained down on him, followed by a blast of wind.
"That wasn't nice," Willow said. "I'm telling Daddy." As the smoke dissipated, he looked back at the window, now cracked. He saw his own multiplied reflection, and behind him, what looked like a floating apparition. He saw that it was a smile and dotted eyes in a yellow circle. He squinted, and made out the outline of a figure clad in a black uniform.
"Jebanje jebac," he said. He started to pivot, too late. The oncoming attacker slammed him into the glass, and through it. He slid down the sloped surface, scratching desperately with his climbing claws. He finally tumbled over the edge of the 200th story roof.
Franky's secondary arms extended. Each bore at least one weapon. All fired in unison at a dark figure swinging through the canopy. The figure dropped down. He stared in shock as he suddenly found not four arms, but three. He fired again, directly overhead. Then there were two arms. "Who are you?" he shouted.
"He is the Prince of the Ill Wind!" Willow called out. "He is my Daddy! And Mother told me all about you! She says you are a pervert!"
Franky turned in an arc, firing continuously. Vines were shredded. Tree trunks toppled. Glass shattered. A whole section of the middle balcony collapsed. Finally, the weapons started to run dry. Franky quickly worked the controls to load his reserve munitions. He manually loaded a hundred-round drum into a machine gun on his right forearm. He swiveled as a dark form dropped down. Before he could fire, he was struck across the helmet by the severed arm of his own exosuit.
A full dozen blows fell before Franky blocked one with his upper left secondary arm. He ejected the hopelessly damaged limb as he finally fell back. He examined the Prince. The suit he wore looked like black leather, though Franky did not doubt that it held some kind of body armor. The perverse smiling mask gave no hint of emotion. Willow leaned over the railing of the lower balcony. "Finish him, Daddy!" the girl shouted. "He is a bad man and he tricked Mother!"
The Prince seized a fallen railing and bounded forward, holding the shaft like a lance. A burst of fire from the forearm machine gun failed to catch the assailant before he was within its arc. Franky swung his left arm backhanded. He exulted as the blow caught his foe. The Prince was flung back. The railing clattered to the floor. His mask landed in two pieces, spattered with blood. "Yeah, what do you think of that?" Franky said with returning smugness. "Whoever the Hell you are, I'm made of metal and you're made of meat!"
Willow screeched. "You horrible little wart!" she said. Her hurled crowbar lodged in Franky's right shoulder servo. He swore, then looked in the direction the Prince had gone. There was blood where he had landed, but no sign of him. He looked up again, to see the girl leap down. She landed in a pond, then leaped out with enough force to create a second gout of water behind her. She came down again behind him. With a shriek, she drove a sharpened metal toe of her shoe into his shin. He swore again in pain as he struggled to keep his balance. He managed to pivot to face the Prince of the Ill Wind. He froze at a surreal sight. The Prince had cast off his upper garments, revealing a massive torso. Atop it was a face that made Franky stare.
"Are you kidding me?" he snarled. The specter hefted a strut longer than he was tall. Franky pointed his remaining weapons, ready to fire. But then Willow leaped onto the back of his suit. In a matter of a moment, she seized the embedded crowbar and struck Franky's visor, scrambling his targeting. She continued tearing at hydraulics and servos as the Prince rushed in. A single blow from the strut knocked Franky's helmet right off. At last, he fell, his arms raised to shield himself from a continuous rain of blows.
Franky finally raised his head when the pounding stopped. He beheld the Queen in full armor, the Prince and the girl at her left and right. Over one shoulder, she carried the lizard or one like it. "Yes, darlings, that will be enough," she said. She surveyed the mezzanine. "My, my, you all really made a mess."
Again, Franky stared at the Prince. "You see my Prince," said the Queen. "When the man I thought I loved would not even reject me to my face, he taught me what it is to love and live. When I was a shadow in a world of shadows, he made me flesh and blood. By my love, I remade him. He does not have one face, but many. Do you like the one I chose for him?"
The face was that of Twilight, not the aged Loid Forger but the much younger man who had pulled an Ostanian deserter from the gutter and turned a con artist into a legendary agent named Nightfall. The one difference was the reddish-brown eyes, the same as the girl's. "I know who you are," Franky said. "I know who you all are."
The Prince hauled Franky's crippled exosuit upright. Willow tore open the torso assembly, allowing the Prince to lift Franky up for the Queen's inspection. "Franky, Franky, Franky," she said. She gave the lizard to Willow, who cooed over her new pet. There was a pneumatic hiss as she undid the seals that held her helmet in place. As she lifted it, coil on coil of platinum hair spilled out. Her pearl mane reached the ground as she leaned in to look him in the eye. "Of course I knew you… the most degenerate and despicable informant who ever sold to both sides. I warned you, never come looking for me."
She took Franky by the throat with her gloved right hand. With the other, she pulled back locks that obscured half her face. Franky stared into a face like porcelain and eyes like the pitiless void of space. "And let's get this straight one last time, you son of a dog-lover," she said as the first jolt of electricity ran through him. "I never `went out' with you!"