Ex Heroes 5 - Chapter 4

 (UNEDITED)

The Nihilist let out a yelp and turned to run, but before it could go anywhere Drew ran past me with a grin and said, “You know how this part goes, no?”

I grinned, watching my brother charge into action. Yeah, we’d been through a bit of this at the fortress where we’d been reunited with Charm after the Nihilists had stolen her. Seeing him like this put a new feeling into me, one I wasn’t used to—competition. 

“Let’s not let him have all the fun,” I said to Gale at my side and ran out, using my new paladin skills to prepare to go hardcore on them. First, I activated my new paladin armor. And yes, it was every bit as badass as I thought it might be. This was one of the paladin transformations that I’d gone through with my last upgrades and Twitch’s recoding of my skills. Plus, the adapted version from having slept with Andromida. 

As soon as I activated it, my armor bulked out in what felt like a sort of mech-exoskeleton but looked more like a gleaming suit of white and gold paladin armor. I shot out Heavenly Blasts as I charged up next to my brother, and he laughed. 

“Still a fucking nerd, huh?”

“Always,” I replied, and in that line he had no idea what a nerd I was. 

One of my blasts caught the nihilist from behind, knocking it to the ground. Drew leaped, coming down hard with a punch that splattered Nihilist brain. 

“Here, they’re just like us,” he said. 

“Even though they’re in our galaxy on another plane of sorts?”

He nodded. “Yes, because the Per-Neter allowed us to access the same plane.”

“So they’re fucked.”

He stood, motioning me on as our team caught up and prepared for more. “Not exactly, because in groups they’re still pretty badass, and we’re not only facing their kind here.” He motioned us to move quietly and we moved up the next hall. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen out there, you’d know. They’ve got some nasty monstrosities on their side, I can tell you that.”

The hall was dark, the walls etched with patterns that glowed in spots, clearly not anything like the ships from back home or those of the Citadael. I had to wonder if it all was related to the Supratech we’d seen in the past. 

Before I could ask, however, the hallway gave out to a descending ramp where, in the middle of three pillars, a group of tall, mechanical looking men turned to see us. They were basically cyborgs, but with blue and green skin in the areas not replaced with metal. 

“Shit,” I said. 

“Their cannon fodder,” Drew explained, stepping aside for Sakurai to take the lead here, the one with the demon horns and glowing face tattoos. “We call them the ‘Refurbished.’” 

“Because they’re made from corpses,” Threed said with a cackle as she darted forward to join the fight. “Watch this!” 

Sakuria had a sword drawn, slicing it around and creating a dragon of light that almost acted like a whip with a slight amount of its own will, tearing through bodies like a laser blast. Meanwhile, Threed was on one hitting it with green blasts from her fists, but then rolled off and pointed. 

“See,” she said, “poison doesn’t do shit. Because they’re basically dead. Fucking refurbished.”

“Fucking nasty,” Gale said, and then blasted the now-green glowing one next to Threed with an ice spear. The ice slammed into its head, slamming it into the pillar behind and creating sparks that made the ship shake. 

“Oh, and don’t hit those,” Navani said. “Power source.”

“Now she tells me.” Gale shrugged. 

“Let us clear the room,” Sacrada said, the one with wings folded up and an angelic look to her. The way her eyes glowed gold as she activated her powers kind of freaked me out, reminding me a bit too much of Ranger and Muerta. I remembered learning on that many supers took on similar powers to each other, and like classes in a game they’d share some techniques and capabilities, and thought that maybe the golden eyes was a clue in that regard. 

She frowned my way, then sent out a golden ring of light from her head, like a halo that expanded outward going through nearby walls. 

“Four more in the next room,” Sacrada said after a moment, while Sakurai cut down the last two Refurbished with strikes that severed their heads. 

“You want the next ones?” Drew asked. 

“Mostly lethal strikes to heads or decapitation?” I asked, and he nodded. “We can handle that.”

I nodded to Gale and Shimmer, since Gale had her projectiles and Shimmer had her big fucking gun, or BFG.  We charged in first, only lightly aware of the fact that Sacrada was calling after us about more incoming due to the noise and power interruption. 

My Heavenly Blast took one of the Refurbished in the head, Gale did the same, and then Shimmer opened up with her BFG, destroying the last two. 

“My man,” Drew said, following behind and clapping me on the shoulder. “And team, of course.” 

Gale scoffed. “Fucking right.”

Shimmer looked at me and laughed. “Sorry, just—didn’t see the armor with everyone else in the way back there.” 

“This is badass, grade-A paladin armor,” I replied. 

“I hope you all knew what a nerd my baby brother was before you hopped in the sack with him,” Drew said teasingly. 

Before I could think of a counter, Shimmer said, “Oh, we know and love it.”

“The perfect matches then,” Drew said with a laugh. He turned back to Navani, who was scanning the walls with her eyes glowing bright blue. “How close?”

“Two rooms over, moving in fast. And they have a worm.” She stopped, her eyes returning to a light glow, which seemed to be their natural state. 

“Let’s ambush these motherfuckers,” Threed said, smiling wide. 

“Sure, but let Breaker and team do the heavy lifting here,” Drew said. “This is for them, after all.”

“Aw, thanks,” I replied. “Making up for all those Christmas presents you forgot to send?”

“Fuck, that’s cold. I actually feel bad now.” He winked. “Just get out there and show me what you’re made of. Worms are rare—they’re going to try to sap your powers, but don’t respond well to bursts of light or shields. Your team can deal?”

“Watch us.” I nodded to Shimmer. “You got the light?”

“Sure, just… warn me, okay?”

“When they get here?”

She shook her head. “When the real pissing contest starts, so I can jump clear and avoid splatter.”

I laughed. “Me and Drew aren’t like that.”

“Well, we never were before because I was always more badass,” Drew said. “Now you have that armor on, I don’t know. Oh, and did I tell you I met a team out there who called themselves Arthur and the knights?” 

Between his compliment and going nerd-talk on me, I was almost too distracted when the first of the enemies stormed into the hall opposite us. Twitch had her screen up and made a shield as a shot came at us, purple light that exploded on the shield and nullified it, but then Shimmer lifted her hands and shouted, causing the enemy to pull back, shouting in rage. 

“What the hell was that?” Sakurai asked. 

“Illusion of light,” Charm explained from behind me. 

“Shit, the worm is to the right,” Navani said, and Sacrada stepped forward to get it, but Shimmer knelt and spun, already throwing out more illusions. The light illusion actually showed in the reflections, which was discombobulating, but even worse was the stringy creature that fell form the wall when the false light hit. It wasn’t so much a worm as a mechanical centipede, but who was I to argue. 

“Hit, score!” Threed said, punching the air and then turning for a high five from Charm. 

Charm shrugged, high fived her tenderly, and said, “Can we fight them now?”

“Go for it,” Drew said, and then the wall behind the worm fell open. 

“Shit, blocker!” Navani shouted, and one of the half-spider people emerged, its spider body as large as the hood of a car, and it had the upper body of a very ripped man, nude but for crystals that seemed to grow form his skin. 

“All hands!” Drew shouted, and the tone of his voice wasn’t playful anymore. 

Honestly, I was looking forward to the challenge, instead of a simple training mission. Drew and his team had automatically turned to target this newcomer, their projectile attacks such as a blast from Sacrada and the dragon light from Sacrada fell short, fading as the spider-thing’s crystals glowed, so I diverted my attack to the left, where the other attackers were past the shield now, recovering from being nearly blinded. 

“Get around him,” the cat woman shouted, leaping from walls and then pouncing at the blocker, while Navani worked to throw up shields and block the other attacks form hitting us. I turned and charged, blasting at what I saw now was one Nihilist and two Refurbished, and Charm was close by, moving at almost the same speed so that we crashed into the first two at the same time, even working to slam their heads together. Next I changed my hand shape to try the Heavenly Blast in a different way, and was glad to see it form a bit of a repeated short blast from my hand—so fast that it almost looked solid and was kind of like a light saber. Nerd me was fucking loving it, even if another weapon would’ve been more befitting my paladin look. 

I swung and cut right through one of their arms, but the next Refurbished over had me with one arm, raising its other to shoot at Gale before an ice spear took it in the neck, sending it back into the Nihilst. A purple ball of light hit me, but my paladin armor flashed and the strike evaporated. My status bar popped up to show that the armor was now at eighty-five percent. Not bad! The armor could apparently take a few hits. But no use in letting that happen. 

Ducking from another attack, I jammed what I decided to call my Heavenly Saber into the Refurbished bastard’s skull, dropping it, and then turned to the Nihilist.  

I pushed forward, dodging as Gale made it with another strike at the next Refurbished and Gale went for the Nihilist, so that I was able to sneak past it and slam my saber into the back of its head. 

It collapsed and I was moving on, darting around one corner and then, turning right to find that I’d managed to flank the other enemy group. Except, to my annoyance, my saber faded. Apparently, it now needed its recharge. 

Gale was there with a blast of ice and I tried my light, but the saber had used up the ability to shoot, also. Fine, I had other powers. I was almost tempted to drain their life force as I’d done before, but after losing the ability to control myself last time, I thought better of it. Instead, I rolled and shot, and made impact! The blast hit the Blocker in the back of the neck, sending it sprawling forward, choking on its own blood. Fuck yeah!

Only, then one of the Refurbished had me and its grip around my leg was impressive as it picked me up and tossed me into a wall. I hit and my armor shattered falling off around me like an energy shield when depleted. To my relief, it hadn’t actually affected my normal Lamb-gifted suit, so I wasn’t lying there buck-naked. 

A series of shots rang out and I rolled as purple shields appeared that may or may not have saved me, but then I was sick of this shit and saw my brother charging in. No way was he going to have all the fun. I was up, running, and watched with horror as one of those purple blasts hit him right in the chest! 

Apparently, I’d forgotten about the first time I’d seen him get hit at that bank so long ago. Was it that long ago? Just like then, the shot absorbed into him and he refocused the blast into his fists. He let out a victorious roar and shot forward, slamming that energy into the Nihilist in front of him. 

Before I could get to the one next to him, Sakurai cut of it head with her blade, and then another was to my left, so I grabbed it, wrestling it to the floor and commencing to beat the shit out of it ground and pound style. 

That was fucking invigorating, and when it stopped moving, I looked around for more in time to see our teams doing their damage. 

Only one Nihilist left, it looked at us… and ran. 

“How many more?” I called back to Drew and his crew, knowing now that apparently Navani and Sacrada both had certain ways of seeing this. 

A second later, and as I had already started to run, Sacrada called back, “Just the one!” 

“Fucking A,” I said, laughing at the fun I was having and running after Charm. Damn, she was hot in the zone like this. The thought made me once again think about this strange situation with Laurel, and glancing back I saw her near the rear with a blaster, and had to wonder how much use she was in these situations. She instantly turned to me, glaring, and I waved in an apology before ducking around a corner after Charm. 

There was a thunk and then she was on the Nihilist, clawing with those extended light claws. It threw her back though, then pulled out a device that it threw—in a blast of light, we were sent flying away and then hovering, only countered by Twitch manipulating the power with her coding. 

I was up again, Laurel charging in and checking on Charm, then we moved into the next room. Charm breathed in to replenish her extra power, and again a flash of a second tail appeared on her. I stumbled, unsure if I’d seen it. A hand caught me, and when I looked up I saw Laurel, staring at me in a curious way.

“You saw it?” I asked. 

“I’m not sure what I saw, but…” She looked back toward Charm. “Yes.” 

Pursing my lips, I stared at her, waiting. 

“We have to catch up,” she pointed out. 

“I’m not a stranger to mythology,” I said, pointedly. “Something tells me you know more about this than you’re letting on, too.” 

She frowned, looking back at the group, and then leaned in, speaking quickly. “I’ve never met another exactly like Charm, okay? And I don’t just mean her addictive personality, I’m talking about the nature of her mind. There are other supers and aliens with animal characteristics, but this is different. I don’t believe she’s merely a human colonist turned super.” 

“Kitsune?” I asked. 

She bit her lip, then nodded. “Maybe? I don’t know if they really exist, but legends often exist because of a related truth. And now the glimpses of a second tail…”

“Let’s talk more, after,” I said. “And maybe include her.” 

Laurel looked uncertain, but nodded. “I think there’s more than that the three of us need to discuss, but—”

“You two,” Charm said, having returned for us. “Planning a sordid affair here? Come on!”

I chuckled nervously, curious what Laurel felt needed discussing, but shrugged and jogged over with her to catch up with Charm.

“Seriously, you two okay?” Charm asked as we all three ran to catch up with the others. 

“Have you been noticing anything… different?” I asked. 

“Of course, we’re on a fucking Nihilist ship, my memory from over five years ago just unlocked, and—”

“He means about you and your powers,” Laurel cut in. 

“Oh, that.” Charm frowned, slowing to a brisk walk and inhaling so that the rainbows of light flooded in and her hands took on that glow I’d started to see. “It’s starting to feel like second nature now, and for once I have an attack power that’s more than just breathing on people. Pretty great, if you ask me.”

“Can you, I don’t know, try an attack?” I asked. “Just in the air, to show us how intense you can get.” 

She looked at me like I was nuts, then grinned and winked. “All this fighting turning you two on, huh? Fighting over me. No need, I have plenty of love to go around, I promise.”

“Just, can you?”

Laurel was blushing, and I had to admit the shy look was cute on her. 

“Right, sure,” Charm said, and she shook her ass once, playfully, tail following in a weaving way, and then she ran, jumped to leap off of a wall, and lunged across to the other side with a series of insanely fast punches that left a blur of white light behind… along with a flash of that extra tail when she landed.

It was only there a moment, almost like it could’ve been a light spot of her tail, in the way that sparklers left impressions in the night. But when she stopped, turning to us with pride, it was there, forming fuller now, and she spotted it too. 

The second tail vanished, but its effect hadn’t. All of us were staring, and her proud smile had fallen into an open-mouthed expression of confusion. 

“Right…” Laurel looked to me, then to Charm. “Why else would that happen?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. 

“What—what’s going on?” Charm asked. Her eyes lit up as she turned to Laurel. “Wait, not… not this kitsune stuff again?” 

“They were said to gain more tails as they became more powerful,” Laurel argued. “And you kind of just unlocked a new power, so it stands to reason—”

“Myths. Storybook silliness.”

“Think so?” Laurel shook her head, approaching Charm and caressing the spot where her lower back gave way to tail, running her hand along the base—an action that caused Charm to close her eyes and do her best to hold back a moan. “I’m not convinced.”

“Aliens were only make-believe until they weren’t,” I said. “Or, were known to exist by some but not accepted until… well, you know.” 

“They were, but not anymore,” Drew said, walking back toward us. “The rest of the team is waiting. What’s the hold up?” 

“Coming,” I said, but as we jogged to catch up, it hit me what he’d just said. “What do you mean?”

“About aliens?” Drew sighed, shaking his head. “I only just found out. And it’s a lot to take in.” 

“Try us,” Charm said. “Hell, I just found out I might be growing a second tail or something. Nothing you got will top that.”

He looked at her with skepticism, then to me. “We ran into a Marine out there, before… well, long story. He told us what the military has been up to, that they’re keeping a secret from humanity, and much of their mission and the reason for the setup in Oram with colonists was all part of this grand conspiracy.”

“Get to it,” I said. 

He breathed out deep, stopping and turning to us, him in the lead so that we all had to stop. “Earth was invaded by a massive force, back before the Oram and other colonization efforts.”

“Other?” Charm asked. 

“I assume,” he said. “Hell, many of us weren’t even aware of this. Why?” 

I scratched my chin, confused about that. “You’re right, actually. Fuck.” 

“Fuck is right. They modified history books, set about doing worse—affecting our minds. I’ve been asking around, and Hadrian had some insight. Back in the twenty-second and early twenty-third century, they still had cases of these diseases that affected people’s minds, right? Like extra kinds of proteins on the brain or something, and certain organizations started experimenting, seeing if they could manipulate our minds with similar, controlled techniques.”

“Let me guess, they found a way and it affected memory.”

“Not only that,” he said, shaking his head, eyes full of intensity. “They learned how to control people, but yes, change memories. They started all sorts of experimentation, genetic modifications and engineering. They tried to create super soldiers…” He looked my way, letting that sink in.

“The early supers,” I said, trying to process all this. “Wait… but—an alien invasion?”

“What we know as World War Three. Total bullshit.” 

“Fuck.”

“I don’t get it,” Charm admitted. “All of this, I mean, basically the Earther government lied to humanity?” 

“Lied, set up agreements with allies to keep set up a barrier from which they could ensure the aliens never returned. Only, now it’s happening. Somehow.”

“The Nihilists found a way,” I said. 

“Except…” 

“He doesn’t think the Nihilists are aliens,” Laurel said, surprise clear in her voice. 

“That’s right.” Drew held up a hand, like we needed to pause to process this. “Some of us think they were supers, supers who were corrupted. And through them, the alien force has found a way back.” 

I put my face in my hands, my mind feeling like it had spun upside down and was clenching up into a little ball. “When I came to the Citadel, I thought I’d have a nice reunion, maybe some fucking pumkin pie that you all had figured out how to import from Earth. Not this.” 

“Silly brother.” Drew clapped me on the shoulder. “Have you forgotten? If I were going to bring in any pie, it would’ve been one-hundred percent pecan.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“What, that it’s overwhelming? No shit. Our whole world—all the spinoff worlds—have been lied to. 

“And don’t forget,” Charm said, holding her tail and stroking it with those glowing hands with colored bubbles floating up from them. “I might be getting a second tail.”

We both turned to her, and Drew actually laughed. 

“Is that funny?” Charm asked, glaring.

“No, but it’s fucking awesome.”

“He’s right,” Laurel said. “All of this, and you’re powering up and maybe proving to be something I’ve been thinking you might be for some time, something that kind of transcends everything else we’ve dealt with, if you think about it.” 

Charm’s frown turned into a look of puzzlement. “Aren’t you alien, anyway?” 

When our looked went back to Laurel, she pursed her lips, shrugged, and said, “No idea. Officially, no. Unofficially, probably. One of these groups that was an ally with Earth, I’d imagine.” 

“Feruz is an alien too,” Drew said. “The cat-like one. But she’s on our side. Let’s not confuse alien with enemy, but know that the Nihilists and certain groups they’re working with certainly are our enemies.”

“I don’t know if all of this answered questions or just transformed my questions into a thousand new ones,” I said, and laughed. “But I know I’m ready to find answers.”

“Like a Hydra on amplification power,” Laurel said, grinning. “You know, the head gets cut off, and in this case a thousand new ones grow.” 

“Another alien we have to fight?” Drew asked, concerned. 

I laughed. “Bro, read some mythology. You’ll have fun and maybe learn something.” 

“Especially since it turns out it might not all be as made up as we thought it was,” Laurel said with a nod to Charm. My lover grinned, shrugged, and pulled her tail tighter, like she was hugging a stuffed animal for comfort. 

“Any day you all!” Gale’s voice echoed down the hall, followed by the sounds of fighting. 

“Back to it,” Drew said, charging off to the fight, us close behind.