Incandescent Guardians Read online

  Which was just Latin for repeating fire. A stream of much smaller plasma balls were formed in an eerie red light over my palm and launched at him. Much less damaging than the first, but I was shooting around three a second and it all added up.

  The details of the show were important, for all I knew there was a reporter down there with a rifle mic and a high-speed camera.

  It was his turn to be buffeted like a leaf in a hurricane, as he desperately tried to dodge as the small explosions jarred him in different directions three times a second. I’d hit him about thirty times, over ten seconds, before he screamed in rage.

  He stopped trying to dodge at that point, and he aimed at me and took off like a missile. He got four plasma explosions in his face for his efforts, but he also sent me spinning away again with a hard punch that made me dizzy. His second punch almost made me pass out, as my trajectory was violently changed from going almost straight up to straight down rattling my brain.

  Enough of that shit, at this rate I was going to get a concussion.

  I teleported again to avoid his next hit, then said, “Scutum inspiratione!” while I surrounded myself in a red nimbus with my power. The Latin words simply meant blasting shield.

  He raced at me again, rage on his face, and I just let him hit me. That time however I used my telekinetic power to simply absorb the hit, even as the part of the shield he hit exploded outward and blasted him with a heavy dose of plasma. It took a lot more power to take a hit standing still, but it was possible if I needed to expend the extra energy, and it kept me from being rattled again.

  He finally looked hurt by that one, and I finished him off.

  “Cere opprimere igni,” which loosely translated was crushing fire prison.

  A red fire appeared around him and I crushed his body with telekinesis until he passed out, then immediately let up. With his invulnerability exhausted I’d have killed him otherwise. It was a finishing move, and not one I could use until they were beat down. Mostly, because it would bring up too many questions. I wasn’t actually sure that it wouldn’t work, and that I couldn’t hold someone still and drain their power that way. I just knew most spellcasters wouldn’t be able to do it that way. A fresh opponent would break through their spell.

  Sometimes, the whole cover thing was a pain in the ass.

  “Not bad,” said a familiar sensuously warm voice tinged by bitchy sarcasm, “I was kind of hoping he’d knock you out too, so I could finally put your ass in prison where it belongs.”

  I whirled to see Venus smirking down at me, from about twenty feet up and behind me.

  She was so damned hot. And I mean on drool-worthy levels. It really was a shame she was such a bitch. Damn, my head must be more rattled than I’d thought. I mean, she was beautiful, a perfect ten with a body built for sin, but she was so ugly inside I hadn’t been attracted to her at all for almost two years.

  “How long were you there?” I asked coldly.

  My attention to detail had just paid off, I never knew if I was being watched so I never stinted on the details of the show.

  She smirked, “Long enough, I didn’t want to interrupt your fun. I even got video to post of you being bitch slapped and sent tumbling away.”

  I tried to think of a suitable return insult, but my brain wasn’t working well in that moment.

  “Well, as long as you’re here, you can bring him in,” the return insult finally crystallized, “Go fetch.”

  I released the fire prison, or the telekinetic effects that appeared to be that, and Steelfist dropped like a stone. A bit childish perhaps, but in my defense my head felt like it had air in it. It also hurt, in a pulsing stabbing kind of way.

  Venus cursed, and dove to catch him.

  “Good girl!” I praised in a condescendingly insulting manner, as if I was praising a dog for fetching a thrown stick.

  I snickered as I teleported away.

  It took me about two hours before my head started to feel clear again, and before I could stomach the idea of eating food. Supers tended to heal a lot faster than humans, but not super-fast if they didn’t have an invulnerability power. I suspected I had gotten a concussion, but it had cleared, and I was eating a late lunch right before two.

  The crazy Monday wasn’t done with me yet, however.

  Chapter Eight

  From what was believed of the alien energy trapped in the core of our planet, the meta-energy radiation it gave off was harnessed to make changes and empower any that could use it. Of course, humans were far too primitive to do so consciously. People of sixteen years of age or older would quicken with power if they were ever threatened with a life and death situation. That age was a guideline, it obviously had to do with the changes in a person’s body as they finished puberty.

  Not all, but a lot. It was a primitive instinctive response, and the energy was mostly arranged to give powers by the subconscious mind, the selfish ID, in a way a person believed possible deep down in their core, and by their subconscious desires.

  In humans, that meant very few people looked like a freak show contestant after quickening. Often the opposite happened, it was why supers were so attractive in the main. I hadn’t changed much at all, but I did lose a few pounds, and my musculature toned up a bit. For some like Venus, they changed a large amount, but for some like Lady Lightning who were happy with their body and looks, it merely cleared up any skin problems and things of that nature.

  Point being, it wasn’t our intelligence that did it, it was our survival instincts, and quickening was not limited to human beings. Sea creatures, animals, could all quicken as well. Except, animals didn’t give a crap about their appearance, all they wanted was to be successful predators and to live. They also had no concepts of the impossible either, so they were invariably extremely tough, and extremely large.

  It wasn’t uncommon for quickened sea creatures to wreak havoc on a coastal city, trying to get at all the tasty humans inside the buildings.

  It was close to four in the afternoon, when one such creature crawled out of the Atlantic and into Miami. It was the kind of threat all heroes that could respond to responded, legal or not, and as a teleporter I included myself on that list no matter where it happened. It was a serious enough threat that there was an unofficial moratorium on taking down any vigilantes that showed up. Even the government turned a blind eye.

  Sky said, “Miami is under attack by a sea monster, which appears to originally have been a Manta Ray.”

  “Appears?”

  Sky said, “It’s a half a mile wide, and roughly shaped that way, but has thousands of those stinger tails along the edges of its body almost fifty yards long. It also has multiple mouths, one for each spiked tail to drop prey into. Lady Lightning and Elegant Prodigy are suiting up and already have active comms.”

  “Turn on my comms, but not the GPS until I leave the building.”

  Sky said, “Of course. Done.”

  I got back in my suit, and then teleported over midtown.

  “I’m over mid-town.”

  Lady Lightning said, “Be right there,” there was a flash, “I’m here.”

  I snorted, “Hello, my lady.”

  I mostly called her gorgeous, but a play on her name happened every once in a while. I also wasn’t entirely sure about the flirting thing, now that I was officially dating Amber, it felt a little wrong to flirt with Lady Lightning right next to her as Elegant Prodigy. It would feel disrespectful, even if Amber didn’t mind, which my male brain told me was extremely unlikely.

  The problem was I’d been doing it for two years, it would take a conscious effort to stop.

  She smirked, “I caught that video, it went viral. Steelfist is no joke, and Flytrap is a bitch.”

  I laughed, “Flytrap?”

  She shrugged, “Just trying it out, see how it feels out loud, for next time I see Venus.”

  I sighed, “Fine, I won’t use it then.”

  She giggled, “Are you alright? You looked a little off.�
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  I replied sarcastically, “Thanks.”

  She just grinned, and I added, “I’m fine, I did have a concussion, but that’s healed now.”

  Silver and black streaked our way, and Elegant Prodigy arrived. She looked fantastic as usual in that body hugging black catsuit that left little to the imagination. Her silver belt and shoulder straps were loaded up with silver devices around her waist and on her back.

  “Hey Ele, that rifle looks scary. We ready to go?”

  She had a silver rifle over her shoulder, it was big, and extremely deadly looking. It was also humming ominously. Most of her devices were smaller, and quite effective even at a small size.

  Elegant Prodigy said, “Ready. The rifle is new, I’ve been waiting for a sea monster to try it out. It’d be a bad idea to use it on a person.”

  I reached out with my mind as I muttered my teleportation word, and left behind three blasts of golden light, and sent out three more as we appeared over the coastline above Miami at about a thousand feet.

  There were only about twenty of us so far, the local heroes and a few other teleporters who got here fast. Most heroes had to fly the distance, and it took time for them to get there. Adamantine from Silver city was already hurting it badly, and the White Witch was casting a spell. Along with them was an A.I. with a conjured body, and another telekinetic, a very young redhead.

  It was that latter one that made me keep my distance, if anyone was ever to bust me and see through my show, it’d be another powerful telekinetic. That hadn’t happened yet, and I’d faced a few, but better safe than sorry. Fortunately, though perhaps not for Miami, the creature was a half mile wide and there was plenty of space to share above the thing.

  There were some heroes on the ground as well, but as they ripped off the tails and tried to cover for running citizens, the damned things grew back quickly.

  Lady Lightning started to send down bolts of lightning, which made the creature flinch and scream. Others were sending down plasma, various types of energy bolts, fire, and more lightning.

  I used the same spell from earlier, or appeared to, and started to rain down small plasma balls, three a second, which were blasting off the tails at the base.

  In truth, we were all there just to slow the thing down and save as much property and lives as possible, while White Witch gathered enough power in a long spell to finish it off in one blow. As far as I knew, she was the only Titan class in the U.S.

  I turned my head curiously as Elegant Prodigy pulled the humming silver rifle off of her shoulder, and then aimed down the sights. A thin bright orange beam left the thing, and it poked a tiny hole in the vast monster. She moved her sights up, and another thin orange beam sliced into it. Then again, and again.

  It really wasn’t all that impressive, it’d be like trying to kill an elephant by poking it with a needle over and over again.

  She walked a line of holes all along the creature from the head of it to the tail, then she hit the big glowing red button on the side of the rifle.

  I so owed her an apology for thinking the weapon unimpressive, when all down the line of the creature a series of plasma explosions went off. Plasma explosions that were far more effective than anyone else’s, because they happened from inside the creature, not against the creature’s tough exterior where most of the force was wasted. Blood and guts flew up hundreds of feet into the air, the parts that weren’t instantly burned to ash anyway, and the fifty foot tall creature was cut in half by the explosions.

  It immediately tried to rejoin the two quarter-mile wide and half-mile long pieces, and some parts of its body did reconnect, but only in a few places did the flesh flow back together. Too much of it had been cauterized killing cells deeply into both sides. It also stopped moving at all, except for its tentacles, which meant it couldn’t reach or lunge for any more human victims.

  She put the rifle over her shoulder, and I could tell by her posture she was blushing furiously, as absolutely every hero present froze and turned to stare at her with awe. The creature was basically neutralized at that point. It’d eventually heal even that much damage and go back on the offensive, but not nearly fast enough considering how brightly White Witch was glowing. She was almost done with her spell.

  Elegant Prodigy said, “The beam doesn’t just cut into flesh, it’s also a transport medium for small pea sized tactical plasma explosives using fusion. The beam is really just an injector, like a thick energy needle.”

  “That was incredible. I’m… kind of turned on right now.”

  She giggled, and I could hear the blush in her voice, “It was a good test. I need to tweak the parameters though, more plasma escaped than I’d anticipated. Though I suppose the area it hit was already wrecked by the monster anyway.”

  Lady lightning said teasingly, and a bit breathily, “I’m kind of turned on too.”

  White Witch finished her spell. A beam of blinding white light struck the creature dead center, where the bright beam split into a foggy white aura of sorts that slowly creeped and enclosed the entire creature. Once enclosed, the creature just sort of turned to dust, as if the white light killed every cell contained within it, and then removed every ounce of liquid from those cells and then burned the remains to ash.

  It was a new spell I’d never seen her use before, and sort of impressive, no long cleanup of a huge dead carcass. It was also sobering, Titans were scary. If she hadn’t been a hero, and had chosen the supervillain route, she could do that to a whole city of people, all at once.

  Of course, we’d just gotten started. The sea monster’s death was not the end of it. A half mile swath of Miami’s coast was in ruins, and there’d be people trapped down there in the rubble. We all flew down to lend the emergency workers a hand.

  Elegant Prodigy was particularly useful, she saved anyone close to death with health nanite infusions that would keep them alive, and to accelerate their healing. Any that would survive the trip to the hospital and recover normally she left to the EMT’s and other heroes.

  More and more heroes started to show up at that point, flying in from other cities to assist.

  Despite all that, we weren’t gods. We’d saved thousands, but we’d lost hundreds of lives, if not more. I did my best to focus on the ones I could save, but damn if it wasn’t it a kick in the gut to find dead children clutching toys.

  It was several hours later when I teleported the three of us back to Chicago.

  Elegant Prodigy said, “Mystic and I need to talk to you.”

  Lady lightning replied, “I’m already late for a hot date, but I have a few minutes, what’s up?”

  We were late for our own date, it was close to seven-thirty, but since we were dating each other I was totally off the hook. No stupid excuses or flaking out required.

  She smiled shyly, “So are we, late for a date I mean. Umm, I kind of figured out who Mythic really was, his true identity, and he knows mine.”

  Lady Lightning frowned worriedly.

  I interjected, “Not because of our team up, or the technology. It was something else that tipped her off, and she felt she needed to make things even between us. We just wanted to let you know that, we don’t expect you to join in on the risk or anything. It just seemed wrong to hide it, especially since that date we’re both late for is with each other.”

  She grinned as she replied, “I see, I’m happy for you then.”

  She’d gone for a chipper tone, but she didn’t quite make it. I could tell the fact Amber and I were now dating had just made her jealous and a little hurt, even if she did have a girlfriend and I could never be hers anyway.

  She added, “I guess that explains why you cut down on the flirting today.”

  I frowned, “That, and all the blood and death.”

  She winced, and replied, “Fuck, that was stupid of me. Sorry. I need to think about it, but I don’t think anything needs to change between us. I know you both have my back, and I have both of yours. It doesn’t really make sense to ri
sk yourselves further, or myself, by joining in and revealing who I really am.”

  Elegant Prodigy said in a smoky questioning voice, “But you sound worried.”

  She bit her lip, “You two dating changes the dynamic, but we’ll figure it out. I’m not that selfish, and I really am happy for you both. I really do have to go, we’ll talk later.”

  She disappeared in a flash of lightning. A moment later Angel’s sweet voice told us Lady Lightning had disabled her comms and GPS tracker.

  Elegant Prodigy asked, “Was she jealous?”

  I shrugged, “Maybe a little. But I think it’s more about the fact our friendship and easy banter might be changing in the future. I really can’t say for sure, women are complicated and men aren’t built to understand them. Not completely anyway. I’m guessing whatever is bothering her is more complicated than that. She might just be worried she’ll lose her good friends, or feel like a third wheel.”

  Elegant Prodigy shook her head, “You picked up more than I did.”

  I nodded, “She also needs time to think, what we told her was pretty big. We’ll have a better idea how she’s taking it tomorrow.”

  Elegant Prodigy said, “I don’t mind if you flirt. I kind of enjoy watching you two do it, actually. Does that make me weird?”

  I shook my head, “No. Everyone’s different. I’m not sure how I feel about it though. We can play it by ear, but if I do flirt with her and it bothers you, let me know and I’ll stop. The last thing I want to do is hurt you or make you feel disrespected.”

  She bit her lip, “I know. I will. To be honest, I already know it won’t. If you cheat on me, I’ll run another experiment with this rifle, but you two flirting… by kind of enjoy it, I meant it warms me up.”

  Oh, wow. I supposed that was all the green light on flirting I needed, at least with Lady Lightning.

  “That sounds painful, good thing I’m not a cheater.”

  She smiled, “I know, just setting the boundaries. Which by the way, is intimate physical contact.”

  I said, “Same for you, I don’t cheat because I won’t tolerate it myself. I’ll see you in ten?”