“This is always how you are!” Prof shouted. “No thought! No concern for consequences! Don’t you worry about what will happen? Don’t you ever think about failure?”
He teleported in front of us as we tried to flee, but a second later a rock wall created by Megan separated us.
“This isn’t working,” she said.
“Well, technically it is. I mean, my plan was just to run.”
“Okay, I revise: this isn’t going to work for very long. Sooner or later he’ll trap us. What’s your endgame?”
“Make him mad,” I said.
“And?”
“Hope…um…that makes him afraid? We were desperate, scared, frantic when we faced our weaknesses. Maybe he has to be in the same state.”
She gave me a skeptical look that—reflected through all of her shadows—was even more formidable than usual.
The wall near us melted away to powder. I gathered the energy of the tensors, preparing to be attacked by a series of forcefield spears, but Prof wasn’t behind the wall anymore.
Huh?
He crashed into existence behind us and seized me by the arm with one hand. With the other, he tried to vaporize the motivators on my vest. I yelped and let out a blast of tensor power—directly down, carving out the rock beneath me and dropping me lower a few feet. The sudden motion lurched me out of Prof’s grip and made his blast pass over my head.
I vaporized the ground below him, and by reflex he created a forcefield to stand on, so I wriggled through the dust underneath him. He had to twist to see me, but that left him open to Megan. Who, of course, shot him.
It didn’t have much effect; he was protected—as always—by thin, invisible forcefields around his whole person. Her shots did distract him long enough for me to crawl out from underneath the disc on the other side. There, I raised my handgun and started firing as well.
He turned on me, annoyed, and I hit him with a blast of tensor power, dissolving his forcefields. Megan’s gunshots began to chew chunks out of him, and he cursed, flashing away.
Megan stepped up to me, her face blurred by a hundred different identities. “We don’t have the weakness right, David.”
“His own powers could hurt him,” I said. “And the tensor leaves him able to be shot.”
“He heals from those shots immediately,” she said, “and getting hit with tensor power doesn’t disrupt his abilities as much as it should. It’s like…we have part of the weakness right, but don’t grasp the entire thing. And that’s why he’s not turning—confronting the powers must not be enough.”
I couldn’t argue. She was right. I sensed it inside, with a sinking feeling.
“So what now?” I asked. “Any ideas?”
“We have to kill him.”
I drew my lips to a line. I wasn’t sure we could do that. And even if we could kill him, it felt like in so doing, we might win the battle but lose the war.
Megan glanced at my gun. “You’re reloaded, by the way.”
My gun suddenly felt a bit heavier. “That’s convenient.”
“Can’t help thinking there should be more I can do than reload guns and replace walls. I can see so much….It’s overwhelming.”
“We need to pick one thing for you to change,” I said, holding my gun and watching for Prof to reappear. “Something very useful.”
“A weapon,” she said, nodding.
“Abraham’s minigun?”
She smiled, then that smile became an almost girlish grin. “No. That’s thinking too small.”
“That gun is too small? Woman, I love you.”
“Actually,” she said, turning her head to look at something I couldn’t see, “there is a very close world where Abraham ran ops for our team….”
“What does that have to do with guns? You—”
I cut off as the cavern shook. I spun, then stumbled back as the entire wall of the tunnel—dozens of feet along—turned to dust in an incredible burst of power. Prof stood beyond, and he’d been busy. Hundreds of spears of light hovered around him.
We’d been talking. He’d been planning.
I shouted, thrusting my hand forward and releasing tensor power as the spears came for us. I got the first wave, and most of the second, but my blast ran out as the third bore down upon us.
They got caught in a reflective, silvery metallic surface that formed a shield in front of us. Megan grunted, holding the mercury steady, blocking the next two waves of impact.
“You see?” she said, now bearing the glove that controlled the rtich. “In a world where Abraham leads the team, someone else has to learn to use this.” She grinned, then grunted at another impact. “So…we going to bring him down?”
I nodded, feeling sick. “At the very least, we need him afraid. That’s the path that led us to change—we were terrified, facing death. Only when we were in serious danger did confronting our fears work.”
It felt wrong, like I was still missing something, but in the chaos of the moment it was the best I could do.
“Time to be a little brash?” she said, holding out the rtich in one hand, gun in the other.
“Foolhardy,” I agreed, hefting my own gun. “Reckless.”
I nodded to her, took a deep breath.
And we attacked.
Megan lowered her shield, letting the rtich crawl back up her arm. I sent out another wave of tensor power, and we ran through it, firing like madmen. The guns seemed mundane compared to the deific powers spinning about us, but they were familiar. Dependable. Solid.
We interrupted Prof in the middle of raising another wave of light spears. His eyes widened and his jaw lowered, as if he was befuddled to see the two of us coming right at him. He swept his hand forward, summoning a large forcefield to block us, but I crashed through it with a tensor burst, and Megan followed.
“Fine,” he said, pounding his hand into the ground. Rock vaporized around it, and he pulled out a large rod of stone. He stepped forward, slamming it toward Megan, who caught it on her arm with the rtich.
The mercury ran down onto Prof’s arm, holding him in place as I arrived to send a burst of tensor power at him, intending to follow it with a few shots to the face. Prof, however, matched my invisible blast with one of his own. They canceled one another out, crashing together with a sound that made my ears pop.
I skidded to a halt, then shot him in the face anyway. I mean, it had to be distracting, right? Even if the bullets bounced off? Maybe I could get one stuck in his nose or something.
He growled, yanking his fist free of the rtich and shoving Megan away. He swung his bar toward me, but I managed to vaporize it. Then I dumped about half a ton of dust on him from the ceiling, making him slip and stumble.
When he righted himself, Megan came in with the rtich coating her hand, arm, and side to give power—then slammed her fist into his face. Even with the forcefields, Prof cursed and stumbled backward. Megan came in, and he vaporized the ground in a deep hole that must have emptied into a cavern far beneath us, but Megan formed the rtich into a long rod and caught herself with it spanning the hole.
I slammed into Prof shoulder-first, sending him skidding through dust. I knelt, giving Megan a hand, and yanked her out of the hole.
Together, we went at him again. She’d apparently reloaded our guns, because I didn’t run out of bullets. And when Prof vaporized my gun, she tossed me another one, almost identical, that she’d pulled from an alternate dimension.
She was amazing with the rtich, commanding it along her body like a rippling second skin, blocking, attacking, bracing herself at other times. I kept Prof’s footing uneven and—when I could—vaporized his forcefields, letting us pound him with bullets.
The fight felt strangely perfect, for a time. Megan and I working side by side—voicelessly, each anticipating the other’s moves. Incredible powers at our disposal, weapons in our hands. Together we forced a much more experienced Epic to retreat. For a moment I let myself believe we would win.
Unfo
rtunately, Prof’s healing powers kept spitting our bullets out. We weren’t negating those, not well enough. Megan shot for his head, not holding back, and I didn’t stop her. But that attack failed like the others.
We ended up in one of the main chambers, dust dribbling around us. I withstood an assault by Prof’s spears, grunting as one stabbed me in the shoulder. My motivator-aided healing powers let me recover. Megan stepped in, shielding me, but judging by the sweat dripping down her face, she was wearing down. I felt it too. Using the powers like this was taxing.
We braced ourselves, waiting for another attack from Prof. My gun clicked as Megan reloaded it, and I looked to her.
“Another attack?” she whispered.
I wasn’t sure anymore. I tried to force out a reply, but then the ceiling caved in on us.
I stumbled, looking up, but Megan managed to turn the rtich to stop the sudden torrent of stone and dust. Garish sunlight streamed down out of the hole Prof had made, as wide as the entire cavern. I blinked, unaccustomed to the light, and looked at Prof, who had stepped out of the way of the downpour and now stood under the lip, in shadow.
“Fire,” he said.