Chapter 36 Fools.

Chapter 36: 36 Fools.

"Do not touch him!" Glacia roared, looking more pissed than I’d ever seen her.

Her voice wailed like a banshee’s as she rose off the ground, white light searing around her as she directed a ray of freezing cold at the speedster.

Blitz was ironically a bit too slow, shocked at the display of elemental might.

Dropping his attack and the rocks he’d been about to throw, he turned to try and run, only to be caught in Glacia’s assault.

Ice encased his legs and arms, freezing him in the midst of a dash, his face barely left uncovered.

"Nice one," I said.

I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye as Marvo came at me again, having recovered enough to make a bother of himself once more.

He tapped the rim of his hat and a bundle of tentacles that would have made Lovecraft envious burst from the darkness, groping in a slimy mass for me.

Uh! I recoiled as the writhing limbs grabbed my armoured arms and leg, metal creaking as they squeezed. Fuck! I fucking hated magic so goddam much!

"Fool!" the magician bellowed, grinning wildly while blood poured down his face from a cut in his brow. "My hat was a gift from powers more eldritch than you could dream! I can summon forces beyond your ken to my aid!"

"Yeah!" I said as I gripped the metal band around his hat. "Maybe next time use plastic."

I tightened my hold, and the metal ring contracted, squeezing the band of the hat shut.

The tentacles writhed for a split second, bulging along with a scream of some no doubt eldritch and horrific being in pain. But the constriction was too much, and the hat was squeezed shut, severing the writhing tentacles.

Ichor sprayed the stunned Marvo, the tentacles falling from me and flopping about the floor like dying fish.

For good measure, I gestured at him. "Glacia?"

With another spray of cold the magician was hurled backward, slamming against the far wall as ice encased him from the neck down.

"Leave them space to breathe," I instructed her.

"Sir?" she said, momentarily pausing in her vindictive cold front, but doing as I said all the same.

Truth be told, I didn’t really care if they ended up dead.

If someone came at me like these fuckwits had, I had no compunction about putting them in the goddam ground. But these were clearly novice streeters.

For God’s sake, they actually wore spandex without being a part of a brand deal. I mean I’d tried it as one of my first costumes and I could personally tell you unless you were actively getting paid for that rubber for attire, it wasn’t worth it.

And though I could very easily plead self-defence if I ever got caught, showing you at least tried not to kill a hero is usually enough to get the law and the other heroes to ease up.

They knew the game. Whenever I killed a hero, it was either them or me, and if possible I tried and do it out of sight so I could get rid of the body more privately.

These idiots, though, were probably just drunk off their power. But who the fuck told them about the heist to begin with.

A little frostbite should teach them a bit of discretion. Or at least not to fuck with me. Trauma was handy like that.

I’d heard some heroes who were on the receiving end of some of my ’lessons’ couldn’t even go near fridge magnets without gibbering in hysterics.

"Like I told you," I said as I dropped my hand, releasing my grip on the hat’s band. "Only kill if it’s you or them. And good work," I informed her.

"Thank you, sir," Glacia said, though she looked decidedly nervous.

And I was too. I took in the gallery hall with something approaching despair. The job had been well and truly fucked.

A few of the banners still whipped above us, but most were burning merrily or glittering with petrifying frost.

The crowds were completely gone, and odds were good the actual cops and probably some real heroes were on their way.

But I had no intention of hanging around to try and explain things.

As far as I was concerned, this was Lacey’s fault for not having adequate security to keep these idiots out.

"Let’s go," I said, heading towards the hole the streeters had made with their entrance. "We gotta..."

I trailed off, stopping. Through the hole in the wall a red glow had begun to build.

A sudden barrage of lighting sliced through the opening as Surge burst back inside, electricity swirling around him, lifting him into the air like a human conductor. Every strand of hair on him and us slowly lifting erect, but his face was utterly red with fury.

"Bastard!" he snarled, the crackle of static suffocating, beating into me like a physical force and making sweat bead my skin under my armour. "You’ll pay for this!"

"Will I?" I said, casually reaching out with my magnetic powers, willing it to grasp the brass dome above the check-in desk and begin to twist it free. "And how so?"

"You think a villain can beat me?" he shouted, the lighting around him spreading even wider, the ice that Glacia had formed across the floor and walls melting into steam by the sheer ambient temperature.

"Why not?" I said, playing for time. Fucking things up by monologuing wasn’t only the domain of villains, after all.

"Because I’m a hero!" he screamed, his hair flaring with his words. "I’m the one who beats you! I’m the one who gets the girl! I’m the one who fell into that nuclear testing chamber! I’m the one who got his atoms scrambled! I’m the one who wins! You can’t win!"

Someone clearly had a hero complex, would’ve recommended therapy or felt bad for him if he didn’t just try to fry me.

It was time to end this night.