Ex Heroes 5 - Chapter 5

Blasts went off ahead and Drew called back for us to split up, for us to find a way around. Some of us split left, others right, and I found myself with Charm and Andromida—not a bad duo to be with in a fight. 

Charm gave me a thumbs up, then moved behind as she cloaked. I figured that meant she’d be keeping watch on the rear. Not a bad choice in a situation like this. But Andromida wasn’t her normal, revenge-ridden self. Instead she moved slow, eyes looking around as if for answers. 

“Can’t you just rip through these ships?” I asked. 

She glanced my way, frowned, then turned back and shot out her hands. “The metal responds, but there’s some sort of force in them. A super power keeping me in check?” 

I nodded, rounding the corner first, checking to ensure we were clear. Andromida moved past me as if in a daze, the cloth that hung at her waist swaying gently. She reminded me at that moment more of a willow over a pond than the thunder storm she usually was. For the second time since arriving, it hit me that she was distracted. 

“Where’s your mind?” 

She turned to me, looked about to say something, when a shimmer of the cloaked Charm went dashing past us. Her growl confirmed it was her. Her hand appeared in a flash of white light, swinging out and she had something, the enemy! Apparently, a figure had been cloaked, waiting to strike not more than two paces ahead. Damn. 

The two rolled, grappling, and a slice of a sword shone as it appeared, then the whole thing—one of those Dex creatures, with its death look and Charm barely avoided it as the blade descended. Then Andromida was there, metal of the floor twisting to try and hold this creature down, but the Dex moved in a flash of darkness, suddenly at my side. 

If it thought I was the weak prey here, it had another thing coming. I hit it with a shot of my Heavenly Blast, the bolt of light striking him in the chest. Normally that would’ve taken an enemy out, but with him it did something very weird—while the Dex seemed unharmed at first, when it tried to do its quick movement thing the light shot back out of him, stalling the movement, and so Charm had him as she sucked in her breath. 

Her claws moved at double-time, tearing shreds that floated away like ash, and then she came in with a burst of shield-light forming around her fist. The strike went right through the creature, creating a horrid sucking sound, and when she pulled back, it collapsed… wheezing… dead. 

Three more figures appeared down the corridor—two Nihilists with purple and balls of energy forming before them like my tempest energy had. 

Drew came out from our right, Navani with him throwing up a shield of purple energy that blocked a blast from one of the Nihilists. 

“Archers,” Drew said. “Basically. And you just took out the tank. They often travel like that, but will sometimes have random others. The best way I’ve seen is divide the team to focus on taking out archers while fighting the tank. Luckily for us, you already took out the tank.” He indicated the dead Dex lump. 

“Piece of cake,” Charm said, grinning. 

“The archers are the relative piece of cake,” Drew said, then charged, shooting with a blaster as he went. “We’re on their level here, so our attacks do normal damage.”

Sure enough, he caught one with a good shot to the face and it fell back, staggered, and then collapsed, while Andromida took out the other two with a tunnel and help from another shot by Drew. He staggered back as something hit him, his shield fizzing and sending whatever it was lurching away, lighting up blue with bolts of electricity as it went. 

Apparently it was another Dex, because a moment later it was back on us, with two blades flashing. Charm still had her hands glowing, and this time when she shot forward with an attack the bubbles formed around her hands and extended out like her claws, so that she managed to tear through the Dex with claws of light. 

Pretty badass. 

Another attack from the Dex caught Charm on her suit, her shield barely deflecting it, and then she was pressing the attack. I tried hitting it with one of my Heavenly Blasts, as Drew and his team turned to fight another group of Nihilists and one more Dex who had found us. 

The first Dex caught Charm with a sword to the ear, but I shouted and pulled out with my Heavenly Vengeance, so that the life force of this being shot into her. Only, then I said fuck it and just kept pulling, draining the thing as much I could until I noticed Navani limping back toward us. I pulled some more for her, too. 

A strange thing happened as I used the skill like this—was it because I was getting greedy? Because this was, in a sense, the corrupted though much stronger version of my old Redemption skill? Whatever it was, while my team was instantly healed and looking more lively than ever, I felt a creeping coldness take over, like ice spiders crawling over my skin and even up from inside my stomach, working their way out. 

“Stay with me,” Andromida said, suddenly on me, pinning me to the wall. It didn’t make sense, until I noticed the blasts of scorch marks around me, the burn marks on her face. 

“Wha—what happened?” 

She stared into my eyes, then nodded. “Laurel, is he good?” 

Laurel was at my side too, hand on my head now, and nodded. “Clear.”

“What the fuck happened?” I asked, only then processing that the fight was still going on around us. 

“Tell him,” Andromida said, leaving us to join back in the fight. 

Laurel held my arm, making eye contact as she said, “Whatever you did, caused you to sort of black out and start attacking anything nearby. You need to be careful, understand? Opening a gateway to these powers is just that—you might be better at cultivating your inner self and accessing this power, but you haven’t yet learned how to use it properly.” 

“And… those?” I nodded to Andromida’s face. “Those marks were because of me?”

Andromida felt the side of her face as if only just now noticing. “You’ll heal me when this is over. For now, we need to get back in there.”

“Are you with us?” Laurel asked.

I nodded. “Of course. Yes.” 

“Good, then—” A blast hit, knocking us back, and we turned to see Charm hitting the last Dex with a double-handed stroke, bringing two of her energy balled-fists together a second time, now sending a shock wave through it in a way that floored the bastards. 

This time, when Charm turned to look at her tail there were two there, and the second didn’t fade. While the others cheered at our victory, I was still trying to get over the shock of what I’d done. Charm, meanwhile stared for a long moment at her second tail, waiting, then looked up at me with confusion. Her eyes moved to Laurel, then back to the tail. Both tails swayed, the second then going back and clearly she was moving them to see what her level of control was. 

“Wow,” she said, pursing her lips. “This is…?” 

Strange, I almost said. Good thing I didn’t, because she suddenly looked up with the widest smile. 

“This is awesome!” She ran over and hugged me, then Laurel before jumping up and down, tails waving about, even doing a spin behind her like helicopter blades, for fun. 

“What’s happening?” Shimmer asked, confused.

“Is this an illusion?” Gale asked, looking from me to Shimmer. “One of you are doing this?”

We both insisted we weren’t, and Charm grinned even wider, if that was possible. 

“Why’re you so happy about it?” Aegriss asked. “I do not understand.” 

Drew’s team was looking at us like we were a bunch of nut jobs, all except Threed who was smiling wide, but seemed to only be doing it to see if she could match how big a smile Charm wore. I wanted to believe her crazy smile meant she was over the connection of us to her sister’s death… but ultimately had to pass it off as her simply being nuts. 

“All my life I thought I was some freak,” Charm explained. “I thought I was just another super, but one who had this strange mutation. If I remember correctly, Laurel’s theory—back at Supralines during the like three days I went there, yeah… I remember that now—anyway, her theory was that…” Charm stopped, scratched her left ear and pulled on it a second, then shrugged. “You tell it.”

Laurel nodded. “I’ve still thought it true, after all this time. Recent evidence reinforces my belief.”

“Which is?” Drew said, glancing around. Apparently we had to get moving, but everyone was far too wrapped up in this. 

“Aliens, right? Well, there are all manner of them, and I’d read about the old gods and other myths, and my thought was that maybe they had visited Earth once, that maybe we had all these stories and myths for a reason. It wasn’t just random. Kitsune were one of the main areas of interest for me, in my readings, because they were so spiritual, sensual… sexy.”

She blushed, clearly not having meant to say that last part. 

“I agree,” I said with a smile. 

“What I’m trying to say is that… it’s entirely possible there were actually kitsune, and other beings, who would visit Earth from time to time. Some are still around to this day, out there in the universe… and somehow one ended up in our midst.”

“All eyes turned to Charm,” Charm said in a silly way and waved at us with her tails, hands folded in front of her. “Isn’t that cool? I mean, me… a spirit, or alien, or something cool—something so much cooler than just a freak? Yay!”

“Threed laughed and nudged the cat woman, Feruz.” Nothing wrong with freaks, am I right?”

“As she said, though,” Feruz replied, “alien disqualifies me from being a freak. You? You’re out of luck.”

“Fuck that,” Threed replied. “I wear the freak title proudly. Like that crazy team with Ezra, calling themselves the ‘Psychobitches,’ I say we get a team name and call ourselves something freaky, like…” She stood there awkwardly for a moment. “I got nothing.”

“Later then,” Drew said. “We’ve taken up too much time as it is.” 

The rest of the teams started to move toward what I guessed was the front of the ship, but Drew held out a hand to Threed and me. 

“Threed,” Drew said, and Threed glared at him, then turned to me, glare deepening. “Threed…”

“Fine, whatever.” She stepped up to me, arms folded. “Drew thinks I shouldn’t hold resentment over something that you really had no control over. It wasn’t like you had a choice, I get that. Plague made her bed and all that shit.”

“So… we’re cool?” I put out a hand. 

She stared at the hand, a line of green starting to trace hers. 

“Threed!” Drew pointed. “Don’t fucking poison my brother.”

“I wasn’t gonna,” she countered, pouting. “Just… a subconscious reaction.” The green faded and she shook my hand. “We’re cool. But if you ever kill anyone else in my family, you’re a dead man.”

“Can you give me a list, just to be sure?” I said, instantly regretting the snark. 

But she grinned, putting me at ease, and then gestured around. “You’re looking at them.” 

I looked over at who she was indicating—Drew and the other ladies of their team. Sacrada stood like an angel protecting my brother, Sakurai on the other side of him like the playful demon who’d whisper for him to ignore his conscience. It was almost humorous. Then there was Navani, who reminded me of Shimmer in some ways, but had more of a purple thing going on, and darker skin. Add Lamb and the cat girl, and I had to smile at the team my brother had formed. “We won’t ever have a problem again, I’m happy to say.”

“Fucking right,” she said as if it was a threat, but the smile took over again. “Truthfully, my sister was the biggest bitch around. I’m kinda glad she’s dead.”

“What?”

“Shit yeah. You know she once put ground up glass in my juice as a joke? Fucking hurt, and if there hadn’t been a healing super nearby—I assume she knew there was… Well, if there hadn’t been I’d probably be dead.” She stared at me a moment longer, then her eyes went wide. “Fuck, she tried to kill me, huh? I mean, there was that, but this other time I thought she was playing around with this toy guillotine and I put my head in it… Nearly took off my neck, but I saw it coming and broke the damn thing in my escape. Always thought it was this horrible mistake and not her fault.”

“I…” I looked to Drew for help, but he shook his head. What was that supposed to mean? That he wasn’t going to help, or that I shouldn’t say anything? I went with the latter. 

“Shit, now I kind of wish you hadn’t killed her so I could,” Threed said. “Damn.”

“Well, that’s done with,” Drew said, nodding to Threed, so that she got the hint and walked on. When he grinned at me, he asked, “Leveled up, right?”

I checked to be sure, only now vaguely remembering flashes of a level up screen that I hadn’t processed at the time, too caught up in it all. “This high, I figured I’d reach the point where leveling up would take ages.”

“It should,” he admitted. But here, against them? It’s different.”

“You mean…” I frowned, not sure where to go with that.

“You talk XP and nerd talk?” Drew scrunched his nose, still not allowing himself to realize nerd meant cool up here. “Yeah, if the other guys were worth like ten experience points, these fuckers are worth one hundred, the guy with the crystals? One thousand.”

“Damn.” I took a second to process this, then frowned. “If I didn’t have to get to Earth, I’d say we go find more of them and level the fuck up.” 

Drew laughed at that, nodding. “I’m needed here, but trust you can take care of our home. Don’t let me down.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

He clasped my shoulder, then nodded for me to follow him to the others. “Now we get back to business, taking this ship for one of our fake routine movements. Now it’s time to really make it one of our own and prepare for battle.”