Authors: Ben Bequer
He actually faced me off, confident that his martial skills, while diminished by age, were greater than whatever fighting style I might have. He was certain that he could move faster than I, and smiled, waving Shivver’s dagger in my face in taunting fashion.
I took a second to study the weapon, because it was doing something peculiar. Apogee and my blood slowly soaked in, as if it was absorbing the fluids into the blade.
“Too bad we had to scar such a handsome face,” He said motioning to his cheek with the dagger.
Then he slashed out, faster than lightning, catching my forearm before I could flinch back. It was only a scrape but he must have caught a vein because a thick stream of blood flowed almost instantly. He was slowly going to cut me to pieces until I couldn’t stand anymore. Then he would slit my throat and finish Apogee, all the while having a first-row seat to the end of humanity.
I had to stop him; I had to figure something out.
I looked at the weapon again and this time I noticed something else. The blade was fat and wide, with a slight curvature, and Zundergrub held it underhanded. It had no channels to release blood in case you stabbed someone. I could only notice that because the blade was now pristine, having absorbed all the blood that coated it. The importance of those channels was paramount; it meant it was only a slashing weapon. Most combat daggers intended for stabbing, like bayonets or stiletto had a thin indentation down the length of the blade in order to release pressure when they penetrated deep into an enemy’s body. Lacking these channels, a weapon would stick in a target, kept in place by the body’s internal pressure, and I knew Zundergrub wasn’t strong enough to pull it out.
So all I had to do was get him to stab me.
A brilliant plan, made all the more difficult by the fact that he was perfectly content with slashing me with a dozen tiny cuts to bleed me out.
He moved in, not giving me much of a chance to think of a plan, and I jabbed at his face. As he neared, he dissolved into darkness, avoiding my blow. Zundergrub reappeared again to my left, slashing across so quickly that I couldn’t escape his blow. I moved laterally, away from him, and threw up my left hand to keep him off me, but his slash caught me across the palm, again drawing more blood.
But I noticed something else. When he did his ‘shadow-port’ thing, he reappeared in the same relative facing, so he had to turn to reacquire me. That was probably the reason he didn’t port behind me, in fear of giving me his back. I also noticed there was a slight delay between the moment he reappeared and his next action. It was as if it took him a half a second to regain his bearings, disoriented.
One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to beat him by sitting back. He would shadow dance around me slashing away. The problem was that he was porting all over me when I went forward. And his shadow-step move was so fast, I couldn’t react fast enough.
Maybe that was it. Don’t react. Act.
I charged forward, readying a combo of blows. He ported, swallowed up by darkness, and I threw a jab with my left to where I thought he would appear without even looking. This time he appeared to my right so I had guessed wrong, but I flailed out my right arm and caught some fabric. I swung his fragile form in front of me, lifting him up, and he had no other recourse, but to stab downward. I timed it perfectly, bringing up my forearm in the way of his motion, and caught the dagger right through the fleshy part of the muscle.
I screamed in pain, letting him go, and fell to my knees. He twisted the weapon, my blood now staining his hand and coat red, and laughed.
“A little more pain, Blackjack,” Zundergrub spat. “It will all be over soon enough.”
Then he tugged the weapon and it held fast to my arm.
It was my turn to smile, ripping my arm back away from his grasp and leaving him weaponless. I roared as I pulled the dagger out, and held the bloody weapon in my hand. I threw the dagger, sending it soaring across the chamber.
“Oops!” I said and jumped at him.
Zundergrub dove away, but I caught a handful of his dirty lab coat, and pulled him closer to me.
“Children save me!” he shrieked and his army of shadow imps appeared out of nowhere. In an instant a thousand clawed hands and teeth tore at me, swarming and overwhelming me. I kept my grip on the man’s coat, but the imps tore at the hem, ripping him free while pinning me in place.
I tried to swing, but it was like trying to beat off a swarm of piranha. Some of the demonic imps were large, enough for me to grab and crush, but most were tiny, an annoyance mostly, but enough to keep me in place, tearing at my skin and clothes. Beyond them, I could barely see Zundergrub approaching Apogee.
And in his hands was the dagger again.
I had only thrown it across the chamber, nowhere far enough for him to retrieve it using his teleportation powers. He knelt beside her, and dipped the tip of his index finger into the pool of blood where she lay. I roared, scaring some of the imps, but Zundergrub made another imp appear. A massive red demon I hadn’t seen before.
“Get your hands off her,” I roared, coming free of the swarm and making slow progress to her.
Zundergrub regarded her as one would a child, then reached back with the dagger and stabbed her again. She doubled over, howling in pain with what remaining strength she had, holding her new wound in her abdomen. Apogee’s hands came up in defense, weak attempts to push him off, but he used his left hand to try to clear her arms for another stab.
A powerful red hand pawed at me, grabbing through the throng of black imps, and reaching for my midsection, slowing my motion towards Apogee. I roared in frustration and rage, turning and punching the beast. I hit it squarely in the chest, and it flew across the damaged structure, crashing into the ruined metal beams and almost falling through the huge hole.
Zundergrub saw me break free, and come running at him at full speed. He had plenty of time to escape into his shadow world, but he looked at me, his face calm and composed, and instead of avoiding me, he stabbed Apogee once more, leaving the weapon jutting from her stomach.
She screamed as I reached Zundergrub, ripping him off her and slamming his frail frame into the massive wall behind. I felt his chest cavity partially give with a snapping of bone and cartilage, and he screamed in pain as I pinned him into the wall.
“You idiot,” I roared. “Retcon is going to kill everything in the planet.”
He coughed and dug his hands into my chest. “Good,” he managed and we both noticed a pounding on the other side of the wall. The remaining heroes were trying to break in, but the walls were so strong that even Epic, Captain Miraculous and Superdynamic’s greatest blows were barely audible.
It distracted me long enough for Zundergrub to fade into the shadows beneath us, leaving me gripping only his lab coat. Behind me his red imp neared, only now it was gargantuan, and still growing.
“Nothing can stop it now,” Zundergrub cackled from the nothing. “Humanity will be washed from this world, like a grain of sand on a wave.”
I dodged a sweeping blow that left a long trio of scratches on the wall from the beast’s massive claws, but it reached down with its other hand and grabbed me.
“And you’re right, Blackjack,” he continued. “You’re right. Most life will die.”
The creature threw me across the room, far from Apogee, where I bounced off a metal beam and slammed into the hard wall. It didn’t let up, lashing out at me with its tail, pounding me at the wall again.
“But Earth will replenish itself. At first it will only be single-celled organisms, but life will return, freed of humanity’s deadly touch.”
As I came to my feet, it loomed over me, crouched above me and readying a massive bite that would end my life.
“Not if I can help it,” I managed, and caught the beast’s locking jaws as they closed around my frame. Between my blood and the creature’s spittle, keeping hold proved difficult. With one hand, I gripped a huge canine on the upper jaw and with the other I grasped the gap between two teeth on the opposing mandible. The red imp exerted incredible pressure on its jaw, and I felt myself getting enveloped by its mouth. Its noxious breath was a heinous mixture of burned flesh, flaming charcoal and death.
I could see the fleshy membranes fluctuating inside its mouth with each breath and I knew it was struggling with me. But big and strong as it was, and injured as I was, it was only a matter of time until my grip slipped.
“No,” I snarled, refusing to be a meal to Zundergrub’s construct.
The jaw’s natural motion was to snap closed, so I strained to push the beast away far enough that when they clamped shut I was out of range. Then I threw a punch with all my strength at the creature’s face, catching it under the jaw and smashing its face into a pulp. The blow was so powerful that it hurled the beast backwards in the air, like if it was made of papier-mâché. It sailed into the Telluric energy field around the machine, as Retcon channeled the force the machine released upward into an arc around him and down to the planet.
It fizzled, popped, and exploded in a bright flash of light, emitting a harrowing scream as it faded from existence as if it had hit an oversized bug zapper.
I fell to my knees, spent, tired and covered in blood. I had fought the Sentinels, Epic, and now Zundergrub and his monsters. I had been fighting for hours it seemed, and the exhaustion was overtaking me. My mouth was parched and knees weak, my heart pounded in my chest. And I had lost a lot of blood. The smaller scratches had clotted up somewhat, but my face was a mess, and blood still trickled down my cheek and neck.
“I think I can help, Blackjack,” said a small voice near me.
“Huh?” I all I managed, my breathing was so heavy. “Mr. Haha?”
“Yes,” he replied, as a metallic tendril travelled up my arm toward my torso. I reached down to fight it, but Haha went around my grasp and up my shoulder to my head. The tendril reached my ear and deposited something inside. I panicked, fearing that Haha was in league with Zundergrub and dug at my ear to tear out whatever he had put there.
“Sorry but I’d rather if Zundergrub didn’t hear us,” I heard Haha’s new voice from what was obviously an ear bud speaker he had jammed in my ear canal.
“Where were you all this time?” I complained.
“Watching,” he laughed. “What a hell of a fight, huh? And me without my cameras.”
I joined in his laughter.
“Just you and me now, Rabbit-face,” I said.
“And I think I can help. I can track him, Blackjack. He’s not hiding in shadows; he’s visible, utilizing his mental powers to make us believe a new reality. The shadow imps, the big red monster, they are all illusions.”
Then I understood how his power worked, why he needed the dagger to physically hurt us. With his mental abilities, he could alter our perceptions; make us see what he wanted. But he couldn’t bring me down altogether.
“Where is he?” I said lowering my voice to a whisper.
“In front of you,” Haha responded in my ear so only I could hear. “Six meters ahead, crouched on the floor, and crawling towards Apogee. He’s reaching for Shivver’s weapon.”
I launched myself forward, at the empty floor before me, and crashed right into something. Grabbing at it, I felt clawing hands stabbing at me from the nothing, and then I punched with my free left, and in a flash he was there. Zundergrub was in my grasp. He screamed in pain, but there was still some fight left in him. A second later, it was Apogee I was holding, her form unmarred by the horrible wounds.
“He’s behind you,” She screamed, looking past me, but I wasn’t fooled. I grabbed his arm and squeezed, feeling the radius and ulna snap in my hand. The illusion faded, as Zundergrub screamed again, the pain making it too hard for him to remain as Apogee.
Behind him, a few paces away, was the fractured concrete line, ending the flooring, and beyond that was the long fall to the planet’s surface. He followed my gaze down and looked back at me, a faint smile on his face.
“I guess you win this one, Blackjack,” he managed, gritting his teeth to hide the pain of his broken arm. “I surrender.”
When I brought him closer to me, his face inches from mine, images flashed through my head. I thought of Influx dead in a pool of blood, of Apogee, soon to join her. Though I never saw the slaughter, I managed random flashing images of the dozens and dozens of dismembered oil rig workers. I recalled Zundergrub behaving like a coward on Shard World and remembered when he mind jobbed Apogee and sent her after me. And I saw Cool Hand’s last few moments.
He had been playing us all along, pretending to be on our side, while waiting for the right moment to forward his anti-humanity madness.
He smiled further, I suppose from seeing my anguish, the difficulty of my position. Zundergrub had always thought of me as a man out of place, not belonging to the group. He saw me as the odd-man out pretending to be a villain. He may have been right, but by the same token, I’m no hero.
“No,” I whispered and hurled him screaming through the chasm.
* * *
I rushed back to Apogee. Her face was pale, her body in convulsions, and her eyes wandered wildly to and fro. I dropped beside her, knee-deep in the pool of her blood, and grabbed her hand. She saw me and smiled faintly, reaching with her left hand to touch my chest, leaving traces of crimson from her fingers. Her other hand shook uncontrollably, as did her both her legs. A quiver came across her face and she strained to speak.