H.E.R.O. - Horde (38 page)

No one else remained in the large room.  I stomped toward him as he walked toward me.  Damn, this thing was ugly.  It looked more like a reptile-man than a human.  Small fins came out of the back of his arms, legs and head.  His mouth was as wide as his head, with big ass sharp teeth filling it.  I wondered how many I'd be able to knock out....

He was a lot slower than the first mutant was, but he did block the first punch.  The second scored an awesome hit and he flew back through a few tables and into the wall.

He didn't appear to be overly fazed by the hit, and immediately charged back at me.  I punch at him as he reached me and we hit each other.  I saw him fly off to the side as I was thrown off my feet several dozen feet back.  Tables and chair crashed to the sides and I landed halfway in the bar counter.

I swung my arms down to hop up.  He rolled to his feet and rushed at me again.  I made a backhand swing at him as he approached, but he grabbed the arm, spun and flung me across the room into the far wall.  I felt some of the bars bend slightly out of shape; I was actually taking damage from this fight.

I again climbed to my feet as he walked over.  I feinted with a left jab and swung up with my right arm.  The swing caught him in the chest and he flew up into the black ductwork near the ceiling, denting a section and dropped back down to the ground.

I charged over to him as he fell and swung my right arm down, but he turned and caught my forearm.  The metal began bending and crushing under his grip.  He grinned.

I yelled, "
Hey
!"

Startled, he looked up at me.  His eyes searched for a face or eyes to lock onto.  I slammed my left arm down into his head.  He appeared stunned for a moment, but didn't fall to the ground.

I grabbed him around the neck and began squeezing with my left hand.  He reached up and began crushing the framework of that wrist as well.

Then I heard a woman's voice yell, "Stop!  That is enough!"

I looked off to my right - the pale, vampiric woman walked toward us.  As with last night, she again wore an elegant evening gown and looked quite beautiful and exotic with her completely black eyes.

I growled, "No - tell me who these red men are."

"I will tell you everything I can, Greg.  I foresaw this, although you came sooner than I expected.  Kindly release Basilisk and I will gladly speak with you."

The reptilian guy - apparently named Basilisk - said, "Screw that, I'm going to tear his head off."

She replied, "He doesn't have a head, Basilisk.  The man just died yesterday, cut him some slack - he's bound to be angry."

He immediately stopped crushing my arms when he heard that.  He glanced at her, and then back up at the rough area a head ought to be on the robot.

He asked, "You're dead?"

"My body is.  So is one of my best friends, and someone's going to pay for that."

He said, "I didn't know.  All right, I'll back off if you will."

I released his neck and he let go of my wrists.  It was probably for the best, if I hadn't been able to knock him out fast, he might have bent the entire hand structure out of shape.  The metal bars where he'd been grabbing my wrists were already badly bent.

The beauty walked up in front of me and looked me over.

She said, "My sympathy for your loss, both for yourself and your lady friend."

I asked, "You said you knew this would happen?"

"Yes, I knew it when I touched you last night."

"Why didn't you stop it from happening, then?!"

"It doesn't work that way.  I know things will occur, not always when or how."

I heard the crackling sound of electricity and felt a tingle through my body.  It had no effect on me other than to make the speakers squawk. 

Lady Celeste stepped to the side so she could see Hellshock behind me and said, "Enough, hero.  He isn't attacking me."

I turned and looked at him, though I wondered why I had to turn when this robot had no head.

Hellshock climbed to his feet.  He put his broken glasses back on as he stood.

Fortunately, the extraneous damage he'd caused to my speakers didn't actually damage them enough to not function.

I said, "Sorry about that, Hellshock.  You were in my way."

"That's never an excuse, uhh, what's your name."

"Call me Borgz."

"Why did you attack Blacklight?"

"I want information on the red brutish looking men that were here last night."

"Yeah, but they attacked Blacklight too, they didn't come from here."

"It's my only lead.  Obviously someone key here at Blacklight pissed them off or has a feud, and I want to know who they are."

Lady Celeste put her hand up and said, "Hero, let me speak with him."

I turned back to her.

I asked, "So why
did
they attack?"

"We don't know.  I have many people out searching for someone responsible.  At this point we have little information."

Hellshock said, "Borgz, let the heroes deal with it, we've got people looking into this as well.'

I turned toward him and shouted, "
No
!  They will pay for what they did!"

"Dude, calm down, you're the one attacking this place."

"Yes ... I ... I am sorry for this.  I did not believe I would be taken seriously without a body.  And without a body my money is about to be stolen from me - as are my possessions - because the law will state that my body is dead."

He opened his mouth, closed it and scratched his chin.  "That's a new one."

I turned back to Lady Celeste and saw the red-haired woman with the spider legs from her sides walk into the room.  Next to her walked a gorgeous, golden-haired woman wearing mostly chains rather than clothing.

"You must know something more.  Who hates you?"

"More than the general populace?  There are many individuals who loathe mutants, and many who dislike the Gothic culture.  However, we know that two of our clubs were attacked in the last two nights.  We believe both were from clubs not far from ours, and that they are clubs catering to heavy metal bands."

"Why would they hate you?"

"In general they do not.  There is a crossover at times of clientele.  Nor do we hate them.  However, more of the mutants who are anarchists go to the metal clubs and the punk rock clubs than to the Gothic clubs."

"Why's that?"

"I believe we have more structure."

"Do these red guys hang out at the metal clubs?"

"Prior to the last two evenings I'd never even heard of them."

Hellshock said, "They aren't natural.  It sounds like something chemical based - maybe a new drug on the street is changing people."

The mutant I'd swung around and whom Hellshock had inadvertently struck with lightning finally stood back up.  He looked around and walked over to the women, giving a wide berth to Hellshock and I while watching me closely.

Lady Celeste glanced at him and held her palm up to him, apparently letting him know to stand down.

I growled, "That's it?  All we know is that it
might
be some new drug being passed around at the metal clubs?"

"We have dozens of people out tonight searching for information."

"When you find out, I want in."

Hellshock said, "Ah, guys, that's our job.  We don't need some kind of turf war going on."

Lady Nocturne said, "Twice our people have been attacked, and still the person behind it is free.  Try to deal with it as you may, we will not stand around and wait for you to act."

He looked at her, "If you let us know what you find out we can act that much faster...."

"Pfah!  There is no guarantee action will be taken, and you may hinder our own efforts!"

The scantily clad beauty walked over to Hellshock.  "Come now, Nocturne.  We can work with the heroes.  You want to help us, correct, hero?"

Hellshock's head tracked her every movement.  I couldn't see his eyes behind the large glasses, but it was obvious that she entranced him.

I said, "I just want in.  Someone needs to pay for killing Aimee."

Lady Nocturne nodded, "And more than a few of our people."

Hellshock didn't even respond this time.  He continued staring at the woman in front of him.  She reached up and stroked his cheek, looked back at the others and smiled.  I hadn't realized that she had a pair of gold bat-like wings on her back.  It was so easy to get distracted looking at the rest of her that they almost faded into the background.

Lady Nocturne looked back at me and asked, "I am willing to call you when we have more information."

"I don't have a number - they took my phone with my body."

The initial man I'd knocked around said, "Buy a temp phone, one of those without a contract."

I clenched my mechanical fist, "I can't exactly walk into a store and buy anything now."

The vampire lady turned and looked at a woman that had been nearly out of sight - the same pink-haired woman that had been with her last night.

Lady Celeste said, "Sharae, give him your phone, and then go retrieve his phone for him.  His name was Greg Paffen."

Sharae said, "But you need protection with so many gone...."

"Do it.  The others are with me tonight, we do not need another.  Should the red brutes surface we will know from our spies well before they reach us."

The pink-haired woman nodded and said, "Yes, milady."

She walked up to me and held out her phone.  I rotated out one of the human hands and took it.  Then she walked past without speaking as she walked out into the night.

Lady Celeste looked back at me, "She will obtain your items for you and you can then exchange phones.  Is that acceptable?"

I wanted to nod.  "Sure.  Don't forget, I want this guy.  I don’t care who you
knew
that died,
I
died. 
Me
.  Aimee too."

"I'm certain you'll have the opportunity.  You may wish to take the time to strengthen your arms."

"Yeah.  I'll go do that.  Thanks, I look forward to ending our mutual enemy."

I turned and began walking out, but stopped near Hellshock.  I reached out and grabbed him around the torso, and then left Blacklight.

I heard the beauty say, "Aww, I wanted to have fun with him...."

Thus the reason I took him.

I was halfway to my truck when he shook off whatever she had done to him.  I set him down when he started moving much.

He said, "What the hell?"

"You apparently like the beautiful woman with the gold wings."

"I ... yeah - man, she looks similar to Psystar."

"The new heroine?  I guess they do.  Psystar doesn't have wings, does she?"

"No.  Exact same color hair.  At first I thought it was her, just without the clothes."

I chuckled; the pair of speakers did a beautiful job of making the sound with deep bass.

"Apparently being dead keeps me from being affected by her."

"Listen, I'm guessing they aren't going to press any charges - but you can't go smashing your way into buildings and fighting people."

"I suppose not - I doubt they would have responded to me walking in nicely and just asking."

"Doesn't matter - you can't do that."

"Let me know when you find a good career for a robot without a valid social security number."

"Yeah, I do sympathize with that, and I don't know of a good solution.  But my point holds - find another way, all right?"

"I'll try.  At least in anything not to do with the red men."

Then I turned and stomped away from him.  When at the parking lot with my truck I turned to see if he was watching.  Hellshock was gone.

I walked up into my vehicle, shifting into the truck, closed the back door and then shifted into my mannequin and drove to the nearest junkyard I knew of.  I needed to replace the arms with heavy gauge steel....

Chapter 29 - Sweat & Steel

Lance's Viewpoint

I got up at my old time on Friday morning.  I'd noticed that Tina had been at the gym regularly the last few days when I went in to help with the construction of the addition.  Yesterday Stephanie made it into the gym as well, and if she were going to make the effort then I'd be there for the girls.

I woke Rael up with a booming clap of my hands - he actually leaped completely out of bed and did a flip in the air before landing.  That was impressive ... and I laughed at him.

He said, "Dude, what the hell?"

"Get up, you loafer.  Both the girls are hitting the gym in the morning, you can too."

"Pfft, it doesn't do anything for me."

"Then help me with the construction of the addition.  The sooner it's done then the sooner you'll have a place to workout.  Besides, your carpentry skills would be useful."

"Is the concrete poured?"

"That was days ago.  We have the walls up and yesterday the roof went up.  You could work on framing for the interior walls today.  Well, unless it's too hard and might tire you out...."

"Sure, I'll help.  It'll be nice to see Tina as well."

"Steph came in yesterday; I'm hoping she makes it this morning again."

"Really?  I'll be ready in a minute."

I quickly got ready, ate a few power bars and hopped to the gym.  Rael arrived just after me on his cycle.

I waved to Mia and said "good morning" before checking how far the guys had gotten in the afternoon.  Rael walked around checking on the progress and looked over the plans on a makeshift table in the center.

I glanced out one of the new windows they'd put in and caught the glint of light off something in the sky.  It took me a second to lock onto a woman's figure flying through the sky.  The light reflecting off her gold hair was beautiful in the very early morning light.  Her clothing was dark - she must have worn her workout spandex.

I watched her fly in and land.  I realized that her hair didn't blow back much in the wind, it was a little strange to see.  I walked back into the main building to meet her.

I studied her as she walked in.  It was less than two weeks ago that we changed into supers - her body had changed less as far as the body build went, but also more with the change in color of the eyes and hair.  Seeing her in an old spandex half-top and shorts, but with the gold hair was a little jarring to me for some reason.