The First: EVO Uprising (63 page)

“
It was too!” She got louder. “I was moving too fast for you to see it!”

“
What the hell is an IMP?” an irritated Abe asked.

“
Infinite Mass Punch,” Erica and Adrian recited in unison.

“
Dude, you did a RFB and you know it!” Akram jumped in.

“
An RF what?” Rogers cocked an eyebrow.

“
Remove from battlefield,” Erica and Adrian recited in unison again.

“
All right!” Rogers threw his hands up. “You two knock off the acronyms! Young lady, what did you do with the Draugr?”

“
He’s either headed to the moon or Mars,” she shrugged.

The answer made Erica crack up laughing in her cockpit.

“
Good riddance,” Adrian chimed in.

“
Now where’s my…” Kimberly started to ask again.

The sound of thunderous shockwaves shaking the heavens answered her unfinished question. Kimberly’s new keen eyes and Erica’s headset were the only ones to view Sophia trading godlike blows with Peace as they streaked across the skies jockeying each other for position.

Kimberly advanced to take off once again, but Rogers quickly grabbed her arm.

“
Whoa,” he asked with a forceful tone, “where do you think you’re going young lady?”

“
I’m going to help my mother.” She turned to him with a bass filled voice.

“
I think you need to sit this one out,” he advised her.

“
I think you need to let go of me,” she returned.

Her eyes surged brightly revealing her emotions, Erica decided to step in before everyone witnessed the Sarge embarrassed by a little girl.

“
You can’t go dressed like that,” Erica interjected. “Jennifer, take her to the Warthog to get the spare gear. It should fit her just fine.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Jennifer nodded. “Come on, super mini me, let’s get you suited up.”

Rogers reluctantly released Kimberly. She did not give him a second glance as she broke into a run following the android back to the Warthog. Abe turned disapprovingly to Erica for usurping his command.

“
Don’t give me that look,” she fired back from her cockpit. “You weren’t going to stop her on your best day. We also need the extra muscle to end this quickly. Peace and Dennison are too evenly matched, and judging from my readings, if we don’t end their fight quickly, a lot of people are going to die, and we might not have a planet left when all is said and done.”

CHAPTER 25

Goddesses warred on high shaking the blue sky itself as they continuously clashed with one another searching for an opening and a blow to fell the other. This was Sophia’s first actually aerial hand to hand combat fight, especially with one who was her equal, and possibly stronger than her. Although she had six years to become a natural flyer, pulling from countless resources depicting feats of flight and fighting. Peace was also a skilled aerial combatant. As she charged to deliver a blow, Peace strafed to avoid it coming back with a punch of her own to take Sophia’s head off. She would not be there as well using her version of an aerial flash move to evade her attacks, a tricked she picked up from watching anime cartoons with a thought she could execute powerful bursts of speed.

The times they were lucky enough to land a shot, wasn’t enough to knock the other out of the sky, as they would quickly recover and return to attack again.

Sophia realized during their fight that Peace possessed all of her physical attributes on a greater level but none of her mental. A relief which gave her some type of edge. With that knowledge she decided to get creative.

Sophia brought violent thunder claps to the skies over North and South America as she executed a series of flash bursts around Peace. As she expected, it was enough to overwhelm and frustrate her. Sophia found a big opening. Enough to deliver a seismic right cross.

This time Peace would not recover as she spiraled out of the sky crashing in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. Sophia cursed herself wanting to avoid any further destruction, but there was no way of containing this fight like before. She dived to where Peace fell. Her mind raced with still no clue on how to stop her.

Before she could even land, a recovered and enraged Peace knocked her out of the sky and through the top floors of a JW Marriot hotel. Her recovering time was truly far superior to Sophia’s.   

Her other edge was her total disregard for life or property as she tore a bigger hole through the hotel to get to her.

Residents and tourists ran through the streets screaming for safety as they crash landed through the second floor of an office building. They went through the floor exploding out the front window of a restaurant located on the bottom floor on the opposite side of the building.

Sophia, on her hand and knees, shook the cobwebs out before springing to her feet. She had no time to process how insane this fight was. She shut out the cries and screams around her to focus. Peace had figured out how to employ her own version of Sophia’s flash step hitting her with a powerful forearm that she barely blocked. The force of her blow pushed her two feet backwards.

Sophia retaliated with an arsenal of strikes she pulled from all three Ong Bak movies, as well as “The Raid: Redemption.”

The ground shook and trembled at she unloaded a barrage of elbows, forearms, knees, and shin kicks with the force and intention of breaking bone. The shots she got in could total a tank. Peace, however, was her physical equal and not without a fighting style of her own which also consisted of forearms, elbows, knees, and, when all else failed, picking up something heavy and hitting her with it.  

First she picked up old dirt bike, clobbering her with it. She went to hit her again, but Sophia swatted the bike out of her hand opening herself up to a kick to her chest drilling her back first into a car. Peace charged going on the offensive. Sophia managed to sidestep her barreling through, using her momentum to slam her face first into the roof of the car. She did it a repeated three more times, caving in the driver side of the vehicle with her face.

Peace stopped the skull-bashing by using her forearms to block the next hit. She spun around delivering an elbow to knock her off. Sophia rolled with the hit gripping the driver side hood of the car. Lifting the entire vehicle up, she swung it with ferocity. In the split second before it connected Peace fired an eyebeam blast cutting through the car which ignited the gas tank blowing it up in both their faces.

Flames, smoke, and shrapnel was all Sophia saw for a couple of seconds, forcing her to spin around. It left her wide open for a chokehold crushing her breathing. Feeling Peace’s legs attempting to wrap around her, she widened her stance to keep from being pulled down knowing that if she succeeded it would be over.

Her first thought was to take to the sky and shake her off, but she would have to bring her legs together to achieve flight. Right now, between fighting to keep her chin tucked in, keeping her stance, using one arm to prevent a scissors leglock and the other attempting to pry one of her arms from around her neck in hopes of slipping out, Sophia was in very bad shape.   

As she continued to struggle to break free of her Earth crushing grip, she felt intense heat generating near her face. The inside of Peace’s semi-clutched right fist began to glow as she focused on channeling raw energy in the palm of her hand.

“
Science question for you Doc.” She seethed. “How much nuclear energy do you think is needed to blow up this dirt ball of a planet? Let me give you a hint, an estimated fifty thousand kilotons times sixteen thousand. Now the next question is how long you think it’ll take me to generate that amount of power.”

“
No!” Sophia groaned.

She began to violently thrash around fighting to break free, but each move allowed Peace to cinch in her rear neck body scissor choke even tighter. She could feel the energy she was channeling increase with intensity as her arm moved from the side of her face near the back of her head. Sophia gurgled and fought to stay on her feet, as she struggled to grab her hand harnessing raw Earth killing energy, while attempting to keep Peace’s arm from sinking into her neck.

“
Now… now,” Peace growled, “you can’t have both. You can’t stop me from finding an opening to tear your head off, and save the planet at the same time. You have to choose. Personally I’d choose the one I know I’d probably survive in the next sixty seconds.”

Sophia’s eyes became blurry. Her body trembled as her neck was losing the battle to stay tight. Her heart quickened as she realized in a couple of seconds if she did not stop struggling, everyone she loved and cared about would be dead in a flash. It was the opening Peace needed to finally slither her arm around her neck like a python, and clamp down around her with her body scissors lock. She dispersed the energy in her fist so that she could focus on pulling. On the first tug, Sophia’s mind went semi blank as she gasped at the immeasurable force she was using to rip her head from her torso.

Her body went into a violent seizure as she fought to remain on her feet through the ordeal. The only thought echoing through her mind was that she regretted wishing to die back in 2008. She wanted to live. Three days was not enough time, she needed more time.

“
You know why I chose to exile you instead of killing you on the sand of the Sahara?” Peace snarled. “Because as crazy as this may sound, you were the only semblance of
family
I had. Whether you want to believe it …that nuke bonded us. All you had to do was stay gone. Now, this only ends one way.”

Sophia squealed as Peace continued to pull. Her eye began to flicker as she felt her neck about to snap in two.

 “
And just so you know, this little sacrifice of yours saved no one.” Peace whispered to her. “I intend to pull real slow…so I can hear you die screaming. And then I and your pretty little head will be making family visits… and my first stop will be…”

Her words were silenced by the shaking of the Earth and the sound of exploding glass. It was as if a fighter jet was flying at street level. She turned to see the source of the mayhem coming right at her. The topic of her unfinished sentence.

She became so transfixed on what she saw, her grip loosened, not bothering to evade what was coming at her. A screaming Kimberly delivered her version of the Infinite Mass Punch connecting with the side of Peace’s face. The entire area detonated with a seismic blast that shattered windows and brought down already weakened structures.

Peace sent flying lost her grip of Sophia. She crashed through several small buildings racking up mileage before slamming into the side of the Sugarloaf Mountain. A landslide of rubble buried her.

Sophia laid out on her side, curled up into a ball trembling and groaning as she clutched and cracked her neck while severely stretched vertebrae and torn muscle fiber began to heal. Kimberly landed and then ran sliding to her mother’s side to check on her.

“
Mom! Mom! Are you okay?” she frantically asked.

Sophia, realizing it was her daughter, forced herself to sit up. She grabbed her looking her up and down and then into her eyes with rage and fright.

“
Oh my god,” she screamed. “What did you do? What did you do to yourself! You promised!”

“
I came to help you!” Kimberly responded with a hurt look.

“
I don’t need your help!” Sophia screamed back. “This is not a stupid game or comic book!”

“
I know that!” a frustrated Kimberly screamed back.

“
Then you need to get out of here!” she sternly ordered her daughter.

“
Mom, no!” Kimberly refused. “Let me help you!”

“
I said to go!” she roared back at her daughter, “get out of here now!”

“
Mother, no! Listen to me, dammit!” Kimberly screamed back at the top of her lungs.

Sophia fell quiet as Kimberly’s white glowing eyes blazed, mirroring her emotions. In that moment she saw anger and determination. She saw herself.

“
Mom,” Kimberly calmed down a bit, “when this is over you can treat me like a little girl all you want, but right now I have to be your equal. If we don’t work together to stop Peace, a lot of people are going to die, and the planet might not survive. Your fighting could eventually destabilize the planet destroying it. Lady Tech told me this.”

Kimberly’s words brought Sophia to her senses. She turned to where a buried Peace laid. She figured they had less than a minute before she busted out. She realized her daughter had similar bracer gear to her own. Quickly she grabbed her arm sliding open the compartment revealing another personal computer.

“
Did Lady Tech show you how to set this up?” she feverishly asked.

“
No she…” Kimberly began to explain.

Sophia cut her off with a hand wave opening up the compartment to her own computer.