I know most of the people around me do. They just won't just up about it - always going on about how amazing I am and how I'm going to defeat the evil Morpheus and save the world. Here comes the Destined Hero with his mighty sword and his party of loyal friends, here to save us! He's so sefless and heroic he'll do whatever we ask of him with no complaint, and he'll solve everyone's problems because he's nice like that! Save us, Destined Hero, and make your ancestors proud, for fate has chosen you to bear their burden for the good of the world!
Let me tell you why that's bullshit.
-------
It was fair to say that Samuel Baker, code-named Nicodemus for reasons he still didn't grasp, was annoyed long before he'd reached this current situation.
Here was yet another pleasant suburb in the United States of Europe that couldn't simply solve it's own problems. In this case, the nameless German township was having a small problem that involved people and belongings going missing, and the mayor was concerned enough to shut down the roads between it and every other town it linked to, but not quite enough to think about sorting it out himself. Oh, no, that's what the Destined Hero and his brave companion are there for, and could you go sort it out for us, pretty please, have some free beer? It was a wonder the warrior hadn't chewed off his own face by the time the flabby moron had stopped talking and directed them to the nearest inn.
It had been late at night when they'd got in, so Nicodemus' first recourse was to get completely shit-faced - his natural defense mechanism against the searing waves of retardation projected at him by the universe at large. The next morning, after waking up and being assured that no, he'd hadn't chopped anyone in half with his ridiculously oversized gun-blade, had been spent trekking up forested slopes nursing a massive hangover as Denise nagged his ear off about his drinking habits for the fiftieth time. Blah blah blah, not becoming of a hero, blah blah blah, ought to be setting an example, blah blah blah, oh shut the fuck up and pass the painkillers.
Thankfully, before they'd left (or was it before he'd got drunk?) the duo had been told that the majority of the people there already had their suspicions as to whom the culprit was. For a while, it seemed, there had been one among them whom had been rejected by the town for some idiotic reason or other, who soon left after he couldn't stand any more of their taunts and thrown stones. To Nicodemus, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable motivation to live out in the forest away from people, but since everyone in the village (much like 98% of the world) was an idiot, he'd had no choice but to accept the offer to hunt this man down and take him in by any means necessary.
Yes, he was already pretty annoyed.
And trying to reason with a masked man with a sack was only making him even more annoyed.
"I'm telling you, it wasn't me!" the man snapped back, clutching protectively at the large hessian sack he'd been carrying over one shoulder. Of course, the fact that the sack was even present was a massive blow to his argument, something that Nicodemus felt should have been obvious to him. But then again, it wouldn't have surprised him if he'd been drinking the same brain-cell killing herbal tea everyone else in the village seemed to like.
The young blonde man heaved a sigh of irritation, biting back a bad word."In that case," he responded, idly swinging Grandius - his sword - by the hilt, "you won't have any trouble about showing me what's in the sack, then, because it's obviously not gold or body parts!" For this he was rewarded with a sharp glare from the stranger and a elbow in the ribs from the short, brunette girl beside him.
"Nicodemus!" hissed Denise, glaring up at him. "Don't be so mean!"
"Well, pardon me for breathing, Denice," retorted Nicodemus, rubbing his side. "But how can we take the word of a guy we've never met - who hides his face in old washcloths, no less - that he's not the guy who's been abducting and possibly killing people? And how do you account for all the missing gold, unless that village has some kind of really elaborate insurance scam going on?"
The stranger chose this moment to pipe up. "Okay, so I've stolen bread and milk. But that's it, that's all I got! You can't expect a man to live on bugs and acorns alone!"
"Then open the damn sack," snapped Nicodemus, rapidly losing patience. And for good measure he lifted up Grandius, the blade humming in an ominous way the young man had never quite worked out the source of.
That was enough for the masked man. With an odd cross between a groan and a whine, he trust the bag out in front of him and yanked it open, exposing it's contents to the light of the morning sun. Peeping in, both warrior and his companion saw that it was, indeed, full mostly of food - loaves of bread, some fruit and vegetables, and a large hunk of cheese on top of it all. The odor of the latter struck Nicodemus' nostrils like a hammer blow, and he reeled back with a hiss as his hangover flared up once more.
"I know, I know," was the stranger's response on seeing his facial expression. "But it's actually quite good on some Jacob's crackers."
"See?" trilled Denice, almost triumphantly. "He was innocent all along, Nicky! That's what a Hero does - they help innocent and find the guilty?"
The stranger frowned. "Hero?"
Nicodemus groaned and put a hand to his temple. Here we go again.
"First," he growled through clenched teeth, "I'm not a 'Hero' - that implies that I'd willingly go along with this contrived bullshit without batting any eyelids. Also, don't call me Nicky. Secondly, we still don't have any proof that he didn't do all those things - for all we know, he could be hiding a bunch of gold up his jacket. Third," he added dangerously, stepping towards the masked figure, "what I am going to do is bring this man back to the village and get this whole damn business over with, so I can get back to bed."
"I'm not going back there!" cried the man, standing up straight, and Nicodemus was surprised by how tall he actually was. "Do you know what they do to guys like me?"
Nicodemus rolled his eyes, "No, but please tell me any-"
"This!"
Nicodemus was uncertain of a few things. One was wherever Grandius had dropped from his hand as the rocky plates suddenly burst from the ground and snapped shut around him. Another was wherever any of his bones had cracked or just generally pulped; he suspected the agony that fired through his body as he was crushed from all sides didn't really care for specific details. The last one, as his face was unceremoniously squashed against the stone, was if his tailor was going to accept this as an excuse for the state his jacket was going to be in. Not that he cared about something that looked like it had been designed by throwing Picasso paintings into a centrifuge, but there was no way he was going to take any more of her lip this month.
What he was sure of was that it hurt. A lot. And it was also very dark, very stuffy and very cold on his skin.
And that didn't help his annoyance at all.
What also didn't help was the muffled sounds of Denise's cry of shock and anger, followed by footsteps retreating at a very fast pace. So not only had their target sprung a surprise attack, but was also using the window of opportunity he'd gotten from it to try and make an escape, no doubt to his secret hideaway where he kept all the loot and bodies. There was no doubt, either, Denise was going to try and pursue him, which would more than likely have far more fatal consequences than becoming a stone sandwich - the girl had all the fighting power of a wet rag, and was just as threatening.
But then again, that was the thing about being an Uber. Even when you got the short straw when it came to powers...
Nicodemus wiggled, grunting past lips pressed against rock as he shuffled his limbs into position.
...you could at least rely on brute force.
The cracking noise as the Destined Hero parted the stone slabs like the petals of a flower was quite cathartic, as was the fact that he still had Grandius. It dulled his annoyance somewhat to know that things hadn't gone completely belly-up, and the rush of air into his lungs as he gasped in effort was also quite soothing, too. It cleared up his head sufficiently to take stock of the situation - namely, that the bandit responsible for his humiliation was now quite a distance away, and getting further and further with each passing moment. And, as he suspected, Denise was jetting through the air after him, the air behind her hazy with the helium gas spurting from her wrists.
Now he knew what he was dealing with.
"A Geokinetic," he growled, spitting out blood. "Fucking brilliant."
Hoisting Grandius up over one shoulder, he gave chase.
-------
I grew up in a little farming town with no name. It wasn't glamorous by any means - sticking your arm up a cow in labour never is - but then it wasn't the kind of poverty-stricken starvation that drives little kids to steal from rich gentlemen, either. I was only doing my job when I knocked out those goblins who were trying to torch the town hall - they were drunk, too, and I can't decide if this makes it better or worse - but the Royal Guard posted there saw the whole thing and... well, long story short, I got roped into a whole year of training from the depths of Hell itself and now here I am. The Destined Hero, ready to fight the evil forces of Morpheus wherever they appear.
Here's the thing, though. I'm only a Class E Uber - enhanced strength, durability, athleticism and that's it. That's good enough for the Ultralympics or being a professional skydiver, maybe, but compared to the Class B's and A's who fart fire and time on a daily basis it's laughable. Even a Class D has more going for them than I do, flying around on helium or making neon light shows. What's so special about being able to lift a car over your head when your next door neighbor can pick up his own house because he can manipulate the earth beneath it? I might as well have no powers, for all the publicity and circumstance those people get.
I'm basically a nobody, by my world's standards. But apparently the Destined Hero is supposed to come from humble backgrounds, so it seems that's all they needed.
-------
Surprisingly, it was Denice who caught up with the mystery man first, swooping in front of him and cutting off his retreat.
"Going somewhere?" she hissed as she drew her rapier from it's holster.
The man responded by lifting his hand with a roar. The pillar of stone that shot up from the ground, whilst impressive, did little to aid him, as the young girl back-flipped out of harm's way with surprising speed, landing deftly on both feet before raising her weapon, the end pointed meaningfully at her enemy. Before the taller fighter could properly recover, Denice shot forward with even greater speed, ducking down under the wild hay-maker she knew was coming, before jumping upwards with a strike to the midsection that caused him to stagger backwards. But even as the girl somersaulted through the air, the Geokinetic twisted round, using his momentum to yank the rocky slab from the earth and bringing it down like a hammer.
But by the time it smashed against the ground, the end exploding into fragments, the girl had zipped behind him, and he felt the breeze of her passing too late. As he turned, she struck at his unguarded side, lashing the entirety of that side of his body with a flurry of blows that tore clothing and bruised skin. An onlooker would be surprised to note the lack of cuts or blood from wherever the weapon struck - either the man was made of the same stone that he was able to manipulate, or he'd been hitting the gym pretty hard in his spare time. But it still hurt, and the stranger cried out in pain at the stinging blows that rained down upon him like a violent storm, cutting his cloth mask apart and exposing his face to the flashing blade.
With a snarl past gritted teeth, the stranger forced himself through the onslaught as he heaved at his oversized weapon, swinging it around towards his foe. Realizing she was too late to dodge, Denice simply and reflexively raised her arms in time for the pillar to smash into her, taking the brunt of the impact on her forearms as she was shoved back a fair distance, kicking up leaf litter in a cloud. Lowering her arms, the girl looked to try and guage the distance between her and her enemy...
...and leaped to the side with a squeal as the pillar came down again. This time, the force of the impact shattered the stone column into fragments, filling the air with a veritable pea-soup fog of dust that hid all that was inside it. So it was by mere luck that Denice saw her opponent come screaming from the cloud, fist raised to strike, and dodge the swing aimed at her way.
But the man proved faster, and lunged in with a vicious uppercut to her jaw. The cracking noise may have been bone under stress or just the sound of the impact itself, but the girl had neither the sense nor the time to ponder it as she rocketed upwards into the air, her weapon flying from her hand to clatter to the ground somewhere in the bushes. Dazed and spinning head-over-heels backwards, the younger Uber had no way to retaliate and not enough time to recover as the Geokinetic launched himself into the air in pursuit, then brought a fist into her gut that sent her flying downwards, creating quite the muddy crater as she hit the ground with a resounding boom.
With a cry of triumph, the Geokinetic lifted one fist-
*schwing*
-and gasped in surprise as a shape launched itself from the trees to cut him off, and his intended clashed against metal as something shoved him backwards through the air.
Nicodemus's face came into view over the blade of Grandius.
"Sorry, I don't know why it makes that noise," he explained.
Reflexively, the stranger went for another punch to try and retaliate, but found that one to be parried with just as equal force, his skin stinging from striking against the massive sword that refused to yield to his attacks. On top of this, the sudden change in momentum found him being carried backwards through the air, towards the top of the rocky cliffside that overlooked the township, taking him away from his previous target. Now he was on the defensive as Nicodemus began striking out with his blade, the man having difficulty parrying the calculated swings that threatened to cut off a limb or worse.
Neither of them noticed Denise, recovering from her plummet and impact, pick herself up and follow.
Both fighters landed on the jutting outcrop of rock, still shoving against each other, before a wild punch from the stranger jarred through Grandius and up Nicodemus' arms. The pain of that forced him to jump back to clear some distance between them, whilst the other man leaped backwards onto a higher protrusion, the sunlight illuminating the frustration and anger on his face at being cut off.
"So tell me, Geo," called Nicodemus from where he stood, hefting his blade up again. "How good are you at digging holes?"
The man's eyes narrowed. "How did you-?!"
"I mean, besides the one you've already dug yourself into!"
It was a low blow, and the blond swordsman knew it. But it did the job - with a bellow of anger, the mystery Geokinetic lunged from his outcrop, another fist raised for a directed punch to the skull of his enemy. The tell for his attack was so obvious, however, that Nicodemus, rolling his eyes as he went had time to perform a completely unnecessary flip in the air as he parried it. Knocked off balance, the man fairly stumbled as he landed, and only barely juked aside as Grandius swept through the air, dangerously close to his head.
Then blade and fist clashed again, and both fighters were at an impasse once again. So a second fist came hurtling towards the blond's face-
*snikt*
-and hit metal again.
"I don't know why it does that, either," was the only explanation.
The stranger stared at the knife in Nicodemus' hand, and the fact that the hilt of the sword was a lot shorter. Then the two leapt apart again, this time on the warrior's violition as she shoved himself away from the mystery man and forced him to rebalance himself. Dust billowed as each man landed, whipped up by the wind that billowed around them and carried away to someplace unimportant.
There was a suitably dramatic pause as the fighters faced off.
-------
What I really hate are those people who try to classify me, like I'm a character in a storybook. "Oh, he's so handsome and charming!" "Oh, but he's so brooding and troubled!" It's pretty damn inconsistent, too - one minute I'm a quiet but determined genius, like when I solved that water dispute in Brackenfield, and the next I'm a radical lone wolf, like... Whitestone. I don't want to talk about Whitestone. But they always, always love to pull out the "troubled past" card at some point, especially when I'm telling them to go stick their head in a bucket of scorpions. As if that's a viable excuse for me being surrounded by complete morons.
And you know what makes it worse? I still don't know how this Morpheus guy figures into all this, even after the King blabbed my ears off about it. Something about how he used to be a nice guy, but then went mad and sent Chakravartin, the creator of the world, into an eternal sleep or something. But why should I care? Even if it did happen, which I highly doubt, it was thousands of years ago and we're not living in mud houses and whipping peasants for food. And on top of that, I haven't even seen anything that proves his "evil forces" are in action, nor why it justifies me having to mow somebody else's lawn on occasion.
But no, some fuckbend sealed him away and the legend passed into tradition, so I have to go and uphold that legend by dressing like a circus ringmaster.
-------
"Well?" asked Nicodemus, after a moment's pause. "You gonna do something?"
The man, surprisingly, grinned. "You asked for it."
And then he jumped, high into the air. Time seemed to slow as he hovered, fist raised higher than his head, ready to come crashing down on his opponent's skull.
But Nicodemus' brain was already calculating things. He's exhausted already, I can tell it in his posture, the way he's holding himself. He clearly hasn't fought for real, otherwise he'd have twigged that punching the flat side of the sword all the time wasn't getting any more effective since the last few times. And he wasn't expecting to fight at all - well, neither was I, but when you try and turn me into a rock sandwich then I get ready pretty quickly. And why doesn't he just use his Geokinesis again? Obviously this is clearly a big desperate attack looking to put me down, which means he's frustrated and looking to get this over with.
Join the club, buddy, we've got jackets.
The blond knew he didn't need to dramatically sheathe the knife back into Grandius, then twirl the sword above his head as he waited for his opponent to drop. It was just part of his job, that was all. People expected a lot from the Destined Hero, and among them was the prerequisite that he try to make fighting look as effortless as possible - a tricky task, considering that most fights consisted of him being batted back and forth like a ping-pong ball on a pinball table. So it was expected that he do things like that, even if to his mind they made him look like a ponce.
What the stranger didn't expect was for Nicodemus to jump back as he dropped towards him, lifting up his blade as it folded in half and exposed a gun barrel.
"Have a blast, pal!"
The laser struck the man dead in the chest, flashing green light and throwing him backwards, clear across the cliff and over the edge. Nicodemus waited until the ringing in his ears had stopped and the boom had finished echoing, and then flicked the switch on the side of Grandius, letting the two halves of the blade slide back into position with a decided click. Planting the sword on the ground beside him, he leaned on it for a few moments, slowly getting his breath back whilst staring intently at the long drop which his enemy has just gone down.
"Chakram above," he muttered after a short pause, "that was tortured."
And then, to no surprise on his part, the stranger reappeared.
Except he was being dangled in the grasp of Denise, hovering in the air on her helium jets as she carefully maneuvered herself over the cliff to keep him away from the edges. Whilst most people would be relieved to see their companion was okay after taking bone-breaking punches to the face like that, Nicodemus decided not to bother with that. instead merely picking up Grandius and walking over towards her as she dumped the gasping, frightened man onto the ground before landing herself.
"Aren't you going ask if I'm alright?" Denise asked, tilting her head.
"Would it give you any satisfaction, when the answer's plainly obvious?" was the response.
"Well, my clothes are all muddy."
"It'll wash out." Nicodemus turned his attention to the postrate man, who was looking up at him from where he lay on the floor with an odd mixture of awe and resignation.
"Okay," he panted out at last. "You beat me, fair and square. Now what?"
Nicodemus grinned. Victories weren't as frequent as one would think for a man with his reputation, so this was a rare opportunity. And he was going to savour it for as long as it lasted, and then nurse the self-satisfaction that came with it via the medium of alcohol. Oh, but it was good to have a laser-shooting sword, sometimes.
"Firstly," he began, "I'm going to-"
-------
And then there's the actual work. If it's not menial tasks from some Darwin-defying fuck with no concept of self-worth, then it's being the Human Cat Toy for an hour or two. I've been punched, kicked, stabbed, bitten and burnt more times than I can count. I've been thrown through skyscrapers, off cliffs and into spikes of varying descriptions. I've been impaled, crushed, strangled, submerged, poisoned, shot and even whipped, like abusing by body is going out of style. And what do I have to show for it, other than a massive hospital bill and not even a slice of cake to thank me for it? I like cake. Come on, guys, take the hint.
So no, being a hero is not fun. It's the most thankless, painful job one could ever wish to have, short of being an actor in a snuff film. But some poor sucker has to be roped into this farce once in a generation for the sake of making some cosmic entity's balls feel big, like a perverted game of Russian Roulette.
And guess who ended up biting the bullet?
-------
And then the rock gave way beneath him, and with a resounding yell of "FUCK!" he vanished into the gloom.
Denise stared at the gaping hole, eyes wide. Then she turned to look at the stranger, who seemed equally as shocked by the whole turn of events.
An awkward moment passed
"That wasn't me," was all he could say.
-------
That's right. Me.
Hope you're happy, Destined Hero. You selfish dead bastard.
"I'm telling you, it wasn't me!" the man snapped back, clutching protectively at the large hessian sack he'd been carrying over one shoulder. Of course, the fact that the sack was even present was a massive blow to his argument, something that Nicodemus felt should have been obvious to him. But then again, it wouldn't have surprised him if he'd been drinking the same brain-cell killing herbal tea everyone else in the village seemed to like.
The young blonde man heaved a sigh of irritation, biting back a bad word."In that case," he responded, idly swinging Grandius - his sword - by the hilt, "you won't have any trouble about showing me what's in the sack, then, because it's obviously not gold or body parts!" For this he was rewarded with a sharp glare from the stranger and a elbow in the ribs from the short, brunette girl beside him.
"Nicodemus!" hissed Denise, glaring up at him. "Don't be so mean!"
"Well, pardon me for breathing, Denice," retorted Nicodemus, rubbing his side. "But how can we take the word of a guy we've never met - who hides his face in old washcloths, no less - that he's not the guy who's been abducting and possibly killing people? And how do you account for all the missing gold, unless that village has some kind of really elaborate insurance scam going on?"
The stranger chose this moment to pipe up. "Okay, so I've stolen bread and milk. But that's it, that's all I got! You can't expect a man to live on bugs and acorns alone!"
"Then open the damn sack," snapped Nicodemus, rapidly losing patience. And for good measure he lifted up Grandius, the blade humming in an ominous way the young man had never quite worked out the source of.
That was enough for the masked man. With an odd cross between a groan and a whine, he trust the bag out in front of him and yanked it open, exposing it's contents to the light of the morning sun. Peeping in, both warrior and his companion saw that it was, indeed, full mostly of food - loaves of bread, some fruit and vegetables, and a large hunk of cheese on top of it all. The odor of the latter struck Nicodemus' nostrils like a hammer blow, and he reeled back with a hiss as his hangover flared up once more.
"I know, I know," was the stranger's response on seeing his facial expression. "But it's actually quite good on some Jacob's crackers."
"See?" trilled Denice, almost triumphantly. "He was innocent all along, Nicky! That's what a Hero does - they help innocent and find the guilty?"
The stranger frowned. "Hero?"
Nicodemus groaned and put a hand to his temple. Here we go again.
"First," he growled through clenched teeth, "I'm not a 'Hero' - that implies that I'd willingly go along with this contrived bullshit without batting any eyelids. Also, don't call me Nicky. Secondly, we still don't have any proof that he didn't do all those things - for all we know, he could be hiding a bunch of gold up his jacket. Third," he added dangerously, stepping towards the masked figure, "what I am going to do is bring this man back to the village and get this whole damn business over with, so I can get back to bed."
"I'm not going back there!" cried the man, standing up straight, and Nicodemus was surprised by how tall he actually was. "Do you know what they do to guys like me?"
Nicodemus rolled his eyes, "No, but please tell me any-"
"This!"
Nicodemus was uncertain of a few things. One was wherever Grandius had dropped from his hand as the rocky plates suddenly burst from the ground and snapped shut around him. Another was wherever any of his bones had cracked or just generally pulped; he suspected the agony that fired through his body as he was crushed from all sides didn't really care for specific details. The last one, as his face was unceremoniously squashed against the stone, was if his tailor was going to accept this as an excuse for the state his jacket was going to be in. Not that he cared about something that looked like it had been designed by throwing Picasso paintings into a centrifuge, but there was no way he was going to take any more of her lip this month.
What he was sure of was that it hurt. A lot. And it was also very dark, very stuffy and very cold on his skin.
And that didn't help his annoyance at all.
What also didn't help was the muffled sounds of Denise's cry of shock and anger, followed by footsteps retreating at a very fast pace. So not only had their target sprung a surprise attack, but was also using the window of opportunity he'd gotten from it to try and make an escape, no doubt to his secret hideaway where he kept all the loot and bodies. There was no doubt, either, Denise was going to try and pursue him, which would more than likely have far more fatal consequences than becoming a stone sandwich - the girl had all the fighting power of a wet rag, and was just as threatening.
But then again, that was the thing about being an Uber. Even when you got the short straw when it came to powers...
Nicodemus wiggled, grunting past lips pressed against rock as he shuffled his limbs into position.
...you could at least rely on brute force.
The cracking noise as the Destined Hero parted the stone slabs like the petals of a flower was quite cathartic, as was the fact that he still had Grandius. It dulled his annoyance somewhat to know that things hadn't gone completely belly-up, and the rush of air into his lungs as he gasped in effort was also quite soothing, too. It cleared up his head sufficiently to take stock of the situation - namely, that the bandit responsible for his humiliation was now quite a distance away, and getting further and further with each passing moment. And, as he suspected, Denise was jetting through the air after him, the air behind her hazy with the helium gas spurting from her wrists.
Now he knew what he was dealing with.
"A Geokinetic," he growled, spitting out blood. "Fucking brilliant."
Hoisting Grandius up over one shoulder, he gave chase.
-------
I grew up in a little farming town with no name. It wasn't glamorous by any means - sticking your arm up a cow in labour never is - but then it wasn't the kind of poverty-stricken starvation that drives little kids to steal from rich gentlemen, either. I was only doing my job when I knocked out those goblins who were trying to torch the town hall - they were drunk, too, and I can't decide if this makes it better or worse - but the Royal Guard posted there saw the whole thing and... well, long story short, I got roped into a whole year of training from the depths of Hell itself and now here I am. The Destined Hero, ready to fight the evil forces of Morpheus wherever they appear.
Here's the thing, though. I'm only a Class E Uber - enhanced strength, durability, athleticism and that's it. That's good enough for the Ultralympics or being a professional skydiver, maybe, but compared to the Class B's and A's who fart fire and time on a daily basis it's laughable. Even a Class D has more going for them than I do, flying around on helium or making neon light shows. What's so special about being able to lift a car over your head when your next door neighbor can pick up his own house because he can manipulate the earth beneath it? I might as well have no powers, for all the publicity and circumstance those people get.
I'm basically a nobody, by my world's standards. But apparently the Destined Hero is supposed to come from humble backgrounds, so it seems that's all they needed.
-------
Surprisingly, it was Denice who caught up with the mystery man first, swooping in front of him and cutting off his retreat.
"Going somewhere?" she hissed as she drew her rapier from it's holster.
The man responded by lifting his hand with a roar. The pillar of stone that shot up from the ground, whilst impressive, did little to aid him, as the young girl back-flipped out of harm's way with surprising speed, landing deftly on both feet before raising her weapon, the end pointed meaningfully at her enemy. Before the taller fighter could properly recover, Denice shot forward with even greater speed, ducking down under the wild hay-maker she knew was coming, before jumping upwards with a strike to the midsection that caused him to stagger backwards. But even as the girl somersaulted through the air, the Geokinetic twisted round, using his momentum to yank the rocky slab from the earth and bringing it down like a hammer.
But by the time it smashed against the ground, the end exploding into fragments, the girl had zipped behind him, and he felt the breeze of her passing too late. As he turned, she struck at his unguarded side, lashing the entirety of that side of his body with a flurry of blows that tore clothing and bruised skin. An onlooker would be surprised to note the lack of cuts or blood from wherever the weapon struck - either the man was made of the same stone that he was able to manipulate, or he'd been hitting the gym pretty hard in his spare time. But it still hurt, and the stranger cried out in pain at the stinging blows that rained down upon him like a violent storm, cutting his cloth mask apart and exposing his face to the flashing blade.
With a snarl past gritted teeth, the stranger forced himself through the onslaught as he heaved at his oversized weapon, swinging it around towards his foe. Realizing she was too late to dodge, Denice simply and reflexively raised her arms in time for the pillar to smash into her, taking the brunt of the impact on her forearms as she was shoved back a fair distance, kicking up leaf litter in a cloud. Lowering her arms, the girl looked to try and guage the distance between her and her enemy...
...and leaped to the side with a squeal as the pillar came down again. This time, the force of the impact shattered the stone column into fragments, filling the air with a veritable pea-soup fog of dust that hid all that was inside it. So it was by mere luck that Denice saw her opponent come screaming from the cloud, fist raised to strike, and dodge the swing aimed at her way.
But the man proved faster, and lunged in with a vicious uppercut to her jaw. The cracking noise may have been bone under stress or just the sound of the impact itself, but the girl had neither the sense nor the time to ponder it as she rocketed upwards into the air, her weapon flying from her hand to clatter to the ground somewhere in the bushes. Dazed and spinning head-over-heels backwards, the younger Uber had no way to retaliate and not enough time to recover as the Geokinetic launched himself into the air in pursuit, then brought a fist into her gut that sent her flying downwards, creating quite the muddy crater as she hit the ground with a resounding boom.
With a cry of triumph, the Geokinetic lifted one fist-
*schwing*
-and gasped in surprise as a shape launched itself from the trees to cut him off, and his intended clashed against metal as something shoved him backwards through the air.
Nicodemus's face came into view over the blade of Grandius.
"Sorry, I don't know why it makes that noise," he explained.
Reflexively, the stranger went for another punch to try and retaliate, but found that one to be parried with just as equal force, his skin stinging from striking against the massive sword that refused to yield to his attacks. On top of this, the sudden change in momentum found him being carried backwards through the air, towards the top of the rocky cliffside that overlooked the township, taking him away from his previous target. Now he was on the defensive as Nicodemus began striking out with his blade, the man having difficulty parrying the calculated swings that threatened to cut off a limb or worse.
Neither of them noticed Denise, recovering from her plummet and impact, pick herself up and follow.
Both fighters landed on the jutting outcrop of rock, still shoving against each other, before a wild punch from the stranger jarred through Grandius and up Nicodemus' arms. The pain of that forced him to jump back to clear some distance between them, whilst the other man leaped backwards onto a higher protrusion, the sunlight illuminating the frustration and anger on his face at being cut off.
"So tell me, Geo," called Nicodemus from where he stood, hefting his blade up again. "How good are you at digging holes?"
The man's eyes narrowed. "How did you-?!"
"I mean, besides the one you've already dug yourself into!"
It was a low blow, and the blond swordsman knew it. But it did the job - with a bellow of anger, the mystery Geokinetic lunged from his outcrop, another fist raised for a directed punch to the skull of his enemy. The tell for his attack was so obvious, however, that Nicodemus, rolling his eyes as he went had time to perform a completely unnecessary flip in the air as he parried it. Knocked off balance, the man fairly stumbled as he landed, and only barely juked aside as Grandius swept through the air, dangerously close to his head.
Then blade and fist clashed again, and both fighters were at an impasse once again. So a second fist came hurtling towards the blond's face-
*snikt*
-and hit metal again.
"I don't know why it does that, either," was the only explanation.
The stranger stared at the knife in Nicodemus' hand, and the fact that the hilt of the sword was a lot shorter. Then the two leapt apart again, this time on the warrior's violition as she shoved himself away from the mystery man and forced him to rebalance himself. Dust billowed as each man landed, whipped up by the wind that billowed around them and carried away to someplace unimportant.
There was a suitably dramatic pause as the fighters faced off.
-------
What I really hate are those people who try to classify me, like I'm a character in a storybook. "Oh, he's so handsome and charming!" "Oh, but he's so brooding and troubled!" It's pretty damn inconsistent, too - one minute I'm a quiet but determined genius, like when I solved that water dispute in Brackenfield, and the next I'm a radical lone wolf, like... Whitestone. I don't want to talk about Whitestone. But they always, always love to pull out the "troubled past" card at some point, especially when I'm telling them to go stick their head in a bucket of scorpions. As if that's a viable excuse for me being surrounded by complete morons.
And you know what makes it worse? I still don't know how this Morpheus guy figures into all this, even after the King blabbed my ears off about it. Something about how he used to be a nice guy, but then went mad and sent Chakravartin, the creator of the world, into an eternal sleep or something. But why should I care? Even if it did happen, which I highly doubt, it was thousands of years ago and we're not living in mud houses and whipping peasants for food. And on top of that, I haven't even seen anything that proves his "evil forces" are in action, nor why it justifies me having to mow somebody else's lawn on occasion.
But no, some fuckbend sealed him away and the legend passed into tradition, so I have to go and uphold that legend by dressing like a circus ringmaster.
-------
"Well?" asked Nicodemus, after a moment's pause. "You gonna do something?"
The man, surprisingly, grinned. "You asked for it."
And then he jumped, high into the air. Time seemed to slow as he hovered, fist raised higher than his head, ready to come crashing down on his opponent's skull.
But Nicodemus' brain was already calculating things. He's exhausted already, I can tell it in his posture, the way he's holding himself. He clearly hasn't fought for real, otherwise he'd have twigged that punching the flat side of the sword all the time wasn't getting any more effective since the last few times. And he wasn't expecting to fight at all - well, neither was I, but when you try and turn me into a rock sandwich then I get ready pretty quickly. And why doesn't he just use his Geokinesis again? Obviously this is clearly a big desperate attack looking to put me down, which means he's frustrated and looking to get this over with.
Join the club, buddy, we've got jackets.
The blond knew he didn't need to dramatically sheathe the knife back into Grandius, then twirl the sword above his head as he waited for his opponent to drop. It was just part of his job, that was all. People expected a lot from the Destined Hero, and among them was the prerequisite that he try to make fighting look as effortless as possible - a tricky task, considering that most fights consisted of him being batted back and forth like a ping-pong ball on a pinball table. So it was expected that he do things like that, even if to his mind they made him look like a ponce.
What the stranger didn't expect was for Nicodemus to jump back as he dropped towards him, lifting up his blade as it folded in half and exposed a gun barrel.
"Have a blast, pal!"
The laser struck the man dead in the chest, flashing green light and throwing him backwards, clear across the cliff and over the edge. Nicodemus waited until the ringing in his ears had stopped and the boom had finished echoing, and then flicked the switch on the side of Grandius, letting the two halves of the blade slide back into position with a decided click. Planting the sword on the ground beside him, he leaned on it for a few moments, slowly getting his breath back whilst staring intently at the long drop which his enemy has just gone down.
"Chakram above," he muttered after a short pause, "that was tortured."
And then, to no surprise on his part, the stranger reappeared.
Except he was being dangled in the grasp of Denise, hovering in the air on her helium jets as she carefully maneuvered herself over the cliff to keep him away from the edges. Whilst most people would be relieved to see their companion was okay after taking bone-breaking punches to the face like that, Nicodemus decided not to bother with that. instead merely picking up Grandius and walking over towards her as she dumped the gasping, frightened man onto the ground before landing herself.
"Aren't you going ask if I'm alright?" Denise asked, tilting her head.
"Would it give you any satisfaction, when the answer's plainly obvious?" was the response.
"Well, my clothes are all muddy."
"It'll wash out." Nicodemus turned his attention to the postrate man, who was looking up at him from where he lay on the floor with an odd mixture of awe and resignation.
"Okay," he panted out at last. "You beat me, fair and square. Now what?"
Nicodemus grinned. Victories weren't as frequent as one would think for a man with his reputation, so this was a rare opportunity. And he was going to savour it for as long as it lasted, and then nurse the self-satisfaction that came with it via the medium of alcohol. Oh, but it was good to have a laser-shooting sword, sometimes.
"Firstly," he began, "I'm going to-"
-------
And then there's the actual work. If it's not menial tasks from some Darwin-defying fuck with no concept of self-worth, then it's being the Human Cat Toy for an hour or two. I've been punched, kicked, stabbed, bitten and burnt more times than I can count. I've been thrown through skyscrapers, off cliffs and into spikes of varying descriptions. I've been impaled, crushed, strangled, submerged, poisoned, shot and even whipped, like abusing by body is going out of style. And what do I have to show for it, other than a massive hospital bill and not even a slice of cake to thank me for it? I like cake. Come on, guys, take the hint.
So no, being a hero is not fun. It's the most thankless, painful job one could ever wish to have, short of being an actor in a snuff film. But some poor sucker has to be roped into this farce once in a generation for the sake of making some cosmic entity's balls feel big, like a perverted game of Russian Roulette.
And guess who ended up biting the bullet?
-------
And then the rock gave way beneath him, and with a resounding yell of "FUCK!" he vanished into the gloom.
Denise stared at the gaping hole, eyes wide. Then she turned to look at the stranger, who seemed equally as shocked by the whole turn of events.
An awkward moment passed
"That wasn't me," was all he could say.
-------
That's right. Me.
Hope you're happy, Destined Hero. You selfish dead bastard.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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