H.E.R.O. - Horde (20 page)

The tide began to turn quickly after that.  Once we split the five brutes off the other dark mutant blocking the one exit he was able to manhandle a red brute with vicious abandon.  He had to be as strong as I was; I’d noticed the red men being thrown away from him fully across the room at times.  As with me, he’d simply had too many of them on him at once to be able to fully attack one or two at a time.

Spartan was impressive to see, the red brutes had to be something like a brick-lite.  When he grabbed one it was all over in a punch or two.  He didn’t seem to be holding back, either – I felt the vibration from him hitting the guy on every hit.  Bones crunched under the power of his blows.

Black Tiger had run over to the left side of the room along with Rayna.  He’d brought a metal staff with him that made an odd whooshing sound as he swung it about, and then a dull metallic thud as he smashed it into a brute.

I hoped that Rayna was effective; she was on the far side of the L shape and didn’t have a loud weapon to let me know what she was up to.  I did hear her say, “Sic balls!” several times.  I grinned at the line just before a brute punched me in the chin and distracted me.

Hellshock came in when we had about half of the twenty or so down.  There were constant crackling and buzzing sounds as he created and threw balls of lightning toward the area Rayna and Black Tiger were on, although he stayed near the entrance, so I occasionally caught sight of him creating a basketball sized lightning ball and throwing it, the effects were unknown to me.

I saw one of the brutes get a great hit in on Spartan.  The brick stepped back a footstep, but otherwise didn’t even react as if the hit affected him. 

At one point Spartan said, “Dude!  Don’t kill them – these are normal guys, isn’t that obvious?”

The large dark mutant said, “They are murderers, and have been trying to kill me for the last 5 or 10 minutes.”

Black Tiger shouted from the far side, “A cure’s in the works to fix these things.”

Once we’d finished the group on the big guy, we ran around to the other side of the L where the mutants had been fending off a large group.  Several more mutants had joined their defense sometime during the fight.  The swords of one and tentacles with spikes of another didn’t seem to have done a lot of damage to them.  The additional hero forces had whittled the group down in size.

Spartan and I ran over to aid them; I noticed that the large mutant remained back by the doorway he’d been blocking the red brutes from entering.

Hellshock closed in as well and shifted to using lines of lightning from his hand to temporarily stun the brutes and allow Black Tiger and I to land better hits – he with his metal staff and I with my fist.

I wasn't certain that Black Tiger needed the red men to be stunned; the hero in black appeared to be exceptionally good with his staff.  The expanded hero group quickly took down the eight or so brutes and scanned the room for more.

I looked at Spartan, “Do you always punch at full strength?”

He shook his head, “We faced these last night.  They are incredibly tough – or armored.  After a while I found that only my full punches would really knock them out in a hit or two.”

“Ah, that makes sense; it takes me numerous hits as well.”

Black Tiger said, “You might want to get a weapon to amplify the force of your blows.”

I said, “What kind of staff is that?”

“It’s a tamping bar, used in gardening and such.  Sixteen pounds of metal, but feels lighter than my old wood staff does.”

“May I?”

“Sure.”

He handed the bar to me.  I stepped back from the group and took a few test swings.  He was right, even though it was a metal bar; it felt extremely light in the hands.  The metallic whoosh it made when swung sounded great. 

He slapped his head, stepped over to me and said, “You’ve never used a staff before, have you?”

“Not really.  Why?”

“Ugh.  Call me and see if we can set up a time to practice, you’re scary with that.”

“Scary good?”

“Umm … no.  But I could use a training partner with a staff who can take hits and is fairly mobile.”

Spartan said, “Hey, I’m mobile.”

“Dude, I’m not going to use the staff against a brick, it just bounces off you.  If I fight a brick I’m popping my claws and tentacles.  Training with him is more like fighting a mutant or good blaster.”

I chuckled, “I
am
a mutant.”

“Right – good point.”

One of the mutants kicked one of the red men and said, “Damn metalheads.”

I said, “How do you know what they are?”

“I’ve gone to the metal clubs enough times to see them.”

“Any club in particular?”

“There’s a circuit of them, just like the Goth clubs, probably more banger clubs around though, especially if you include the ones that only sometimes run metal bands.”

“What stands out on them that make them metalheads?”

“Check out the shirts, jewelry, tattoos.”

Black Tiger said, “That’s pretty much what the ones that attacked the Goth club last night wore as well.”

I looked at him and asked, “You said a cure is in the works?”

“Yeah, by our blue friends we met on Monday.”

“Ah, interesting.  I take it that something affected them, then?  I notice the clothing is all stretched, like they changed while wearing them.”

“Yeah.  Same thing last night too.  We don’t know yet if it is a power based change, chemical or what though.”

One of the mutants said, “These suck.  Since when does my sword not chop through nearly anything?”

I said, “There are types of body armor that our claws and such don’t work well on, they have it.”

"At least they aren't healing as fast as we do."

"No, they heal a lot slower than even a brick does."

Rayna said, "I've got the paddy wagons on the way."

A woman's voice said, "I've seen many mutants, these are definitely different."

I looked behind me, a beautiful woman with styled black hair and very pale skin had walked up.  Her eyes were the opposite of mine, where mine were all yellow hers were all black.  Her jewelry and dress told me she was very well off.

Next to her was another gorgeous woman.  Her beauty was marred by the pair of giant spider legs coming out of her torso on each side of her abdomen.

Black Tiger stared at the spider woman.  He said, "This is the second Goth club with you in it that these guys have hit.  What do they have against you?"

She stared at him with her star-shaped eyes and coldly stated, "I have no idea, but I intend to find out."

Rayna stared at the exit with the missing door.  She whispered to Duff, "Go, see if you can follow their trail, as those mutants just did."

I said, "You might as well speak out loud.  Nearly everyone can hear you fine."

Spartan looked at me and followed my eyes to Rayna in surprise.  His expression told me he hadn't heard her.  Rayna smiled at me slightly.

I looked back at the pale woman, "You have no idea why they attacked either?"

She replied, "Of course not.  As mentioned, these appear to have been metalheads.  That should be the first place to search."

The police arrived; as soon as the first came to the door Rayna met them and filled them in on the situation.  The officers stayed outside the building to prevent contamination of the scene.  With the H.E.R.O. agents on scene, they knew they didn't need to secure the interior.

The various people standing inside waiting for the H.E.R.O. and police investigators to arrive compared notes on the red brutes.  There was no doubt that they all came from the same place.  Apparently more had attacked Blacklight than the Lady's Web.  Nothing stood out as to whether that was intended or just happenstance.

Many appeared dressed to go out, wearing studded jewelry that they likely wouldn't have worn elsewhere.  They wore smashed rings from when they punched someone.  The general appearance was of the cheap rings found at mall specialty stores carrying the studded bracelets and such.

A woman's voice called out, "Heroes!"

Everyone in the room turned, a pretty lady with long blue hair wearing a one-piece swimsuit with a pair of big holes in the front stood there gesturing for them to come to her.  I recognized Watermane from our stint on the alien starship the other night.

The heroes walked over to her, while most of the mutants tilted their heads slightly to listen at a distance.

Rayna greeted her, "Heya Watermane.  You're too late; we took care of them all."

"I figured I would be.  I'm here for another reason, and I figured a batch of heroes would answer your event."

"Cool.  What's up?"

"Have any of you heard of any companies dumping chemicals in the river on the north side?"

Everyone shook their heads.

The blue haired heroine said, "Damn.  I think it just happened yesterday.  I was hoping someone had something to work off of."

I wanted to walk over and talk, but didn't believe that the mutants knew I worked with the heroes at times, and walking over would stand out to them.

She said, "If you find anything out let me know, okay?"

Rayna asked, "Where did they dump, roughly?"

"Pier 34, I think.  The water feels more contaminated there than elsewhere, though the current distributed quite a bit down the river."

Bricks in H.E.R.O. police-style uniforms arrived and carted out the many unconscious and few dead brute bodies from the large room.  The H.E.R.O. agents helped them.

All the mutants except for Black Tiger stayed near the two lady mutants.  While a third female mutant - one with pink hair - was with them it was obvious that she wasn’t a leader.  I stood near the group in an attempt to show loyalty to them.

In an effort to distance myself from the other heroes a bit more, when the police investigator came I gave him a statement right away rather than speak with the H.E.R.O. agent that appeared to always show up and go through the scene with the heroes.

I left as soon as I gave my statement – I didn’t want some of the heroes to stop over and act as though we were acquaintances in front of the mutants.

I flew quite a ways up into the night sky so my dark clothing and wings blended in with the sky and continued watching the scene below to pick out anything interesting.

Chapter 17 – Building Anger

Psystar’s Viewpoint

The girls finally packed up and headed out for the night.  The disappearance of the mindviews was welcome after a long day.  I was just out of range of the neighbor’s houses around me, so I didn’t even have the background chatter from people thinking.

Chrome had to work in the morning – her first full day of work as a security guard at the Metrocity Jail.  I was proud of her for taking that, even though it was clear from her thoughts that she really wanted to get back into making her jewelry again.  I empathized with her on that topic, having to stop doing something you love because you just can’t any more was depressing – I felt the emotion flow through her mindview several times when we got onto topics of hobbies.

Apparently, most of us were rather boring.  My biggest former hobby was working out, which I hadn’t been doing both because my body didn’t need it anymore, but also I was having issues of being so wore down almost every day from the telepathy that I couldn’t get enough sleep.

Silverlash had the most interesting hobby with her charity work, but she did say that she missed her singing days.  We made her sing for us, and even without any background instrumentation, she had a beautiful voice.

We’d had some interesting bonding – literally, with Silverlash tying us each up with the silver ribbons she created out of her hands.  Chrome was able to break out of a single band around her, but when Silverlash wound one around her multiple times even she was unable to break free.

Binky was almost always in someone’s hands, so I constantly felt the warm and fuzzy feeling of the bunny.

Silverlash turned out to be one of the people highly affected by my natural pheromones.  At one point she’d come up behind me in the kitchen, leaned past me and gotten a strong whiff from my hair, and then leaned against me while smelling my hair.  It was one of the few times someone had enough clear thought to want me to stay where I was.  Several minutes went by before the others wondered what we were doing and Diva pulled Silverlash off me.

Unfortunately she also had a habit of wishing that I’d lean over  when near her, so this routine repeated itself several times as she thought about me moving in, and then she would get caught up in the pheromones and we’d stay there until one of the others separated us.

Diva cried for a while about her agent.  The woman had been ticked off about her change – as if a super had any real choice over what they changed into.  It seemed like some people might have had some unconscious influence over the change or the powers, but nothing seemed definitive, and certainly not the archetype we changed into.

I felt how much she really wanted to be successful at modeling.  After being around her for a while, I began to feel like
I
really needed to get into modeling.  For some weird reason she didn’t just want to be a model, she felt a
need
to be one.  Even after hearing her thoughts I didn’t get the reason behind it, I was sure there was something buried in her past that had led to that feeling.

Both Diva and Chrome were immensely happy to be part of a girls group.  Chrome had more friends than Diva, but after her absolute rejection from her friend that apparently lived across the street she was afraid to see any of them.  At least the group in the room all understood the challenges that being a super brought along with it.

Tiriffa’s mind occasionally compared my old home with her own apartment type dwelling.  The look was a different style, but her people still had a conversation or relaxing area, bathrooms, and bedrooms.  The color scheme was completely different – most of her place was various shades of green.  One notable difference appeared to be that food was rarely made in someone’s abode, and instead they met in a common room on each level of the large building.