So, I decided to write about superheroes for a bit, see what's that like since I haven't written about them since Prometheus Academy. Anyhow, here it is. Enjoy!
Henry's voice piped up from her headset just as she finished tying up the last of Reverb's unconscious goons. "Got the doors open, Dov. But you better move fast, he'll have the backup security system up soon."
"Thank Henry. And the police?"
"They're still waiting for reinforcements. The local department's not really equipped to handle him...they say the whole place might be rigged to blow." A comforting thought. "Ugh. Well...I'd rather deal with him on my own anyhow. And I doubt this signal will carry past the doors, but assuming I don't get exploded I'll contact you as soon as this is sorted. Thanks again, Henry. Over and out."
"Take care of yourself."
Dove Casona nodded grimly, shutting the headset off and jogging toward the reinforced steel doors of the bunker. The tall, athletic woman with her dark shoulder-length hair and olive skin had been quite popular with the media before the incident a few years ago. Dubbed Firebird--she could neither fly, nor do anything involving fire, but had an iconic photo from her first public appearance to thank for that--she'd come out of nowhere and had a quickly ascending career defeating criminals with her powers in flashily photogenic, nonlethal ways, dressed in obnoxiously bright summer colors and always quick with a smile. Today, she wore black, and was not smiling at all. Reverb wasn't a normal criminal, after all. And this was personal.
"Time for round two," she muttered to herself, still in a bit of outraged disbelief she was having to deal with this again. The doors slid open at the push of a button, and taking just a second for a brief visual scan of the hallway beyond, she sent a bright orange spike of energy down its length. When it ricocheted off the wall on the far end and there was no other movement, she rapidly followed its path with a burst of energy beneath her heels to send her skidding along. Quickly tossing up protective burst shields as she rounded the corner and as she continued on, opening each door she came across, Dove made good time through the hideout and hadn't yet encountered any resistance, though Reverb couldn't possibly be ignorant of her presence here and was likely waiting for her.
Her instincts proved correct when she entered a large, circular chamber, dimly lit and filled with unfamiliar machinery and shelves of equipment. "Well well, if it isn't little Dove. Been looking forward to meeting you in the flesh, brief as your remaining time will have to be," his mocking voice filled the room, seeming to come from every direction as it bounced off the walls and ceiling. Spotting movement out of the corner of her eye she whirled, arms half raised in a defensive gesture, making a frustrated little noise under her breath as she saw Reverb slowly, calmly approaching with a rifle leveled at her--or rather, about sixteen copies of him.
So his powers were still exactly the same. Biting her lip, her gaze darted from one to the other, then she narrowed her eyes and abruptly jerked her hands outward, bringing to mind a referee calling a time out, flinging flat squares of glowing orange from the center of the illusion outward in both directions.
The spikes of solid energy connected with the real Reverb when it reached the third from the left, and he was sent staggering back, cursing and firing a shot that went wide before she brought a hand down in a sharp slash, spiking the gun from his hand and then charging forward to close the distance between them.
Almost immediately she was drawn up short by her opponent whipping out an energy pistol which blazed in his hand with a buzzing hiss, the first shot fanning out into a dozen more. Knowing where it had originated from, she was able to sidestep the actual beam and ignore the illusionary ones, but the several rapid fire shots that followed confused the matter and she had to dodge and scramble as she threw up one burst shield after another. The nature of a power based on kinetic energy meant that any forcefield she created had a way of wanting to move, and anything strong enough to stop a bullet couldn't be held in place for more than a second or two at a time without extreme concentration.
"You've learned a few new tricks," Reverb said, finally relenting for a moment. "The old man would be so proud. If you hadn't murdered him, I mean. And ah-ah! No sudden moves!" he warned her, leveling the gun back in her direction, his finger on the trigger. She squinted at it, trying to catch her breath. Was it empty? She had no way to be sure.
"Yes, you've come a long way for sure," he went on. "Firebird, is it now? It was so strange seeing you on the news all the time. I still think of you as that screaming, snot-nosed little girl who came home one day to find mommy on the floor."
The image rose unbidden to her mind; the vibrant red of her mother's blood, undimmed by the fog of time. The anguished face, unseeing eyes, body riddled with bullet holes. And Reverb, standing over her, wisps of smoke still coiling from the barrel of his gun. But the emotional block placed in her so long ago by the ERA telepath still held. She viewed her mother's corpse, the others closing in to drag the child away, and the six years of painful experiments that followed from afar, as detached as if they'd been characters in a movie. Dove had had her share of conflicts with the Emergent Rehabilitation Agency in the years since, but after her rescue they'd undoubtedly put her shattered mind back together and allowed her to function more or less as a normal fifteen year old, and even now their questionably legal but effective methods meant Reverb's attempts to upset or unsettle her simply wouldn't work.
"Give it a rest," she spat. The gun had to be empty at this point. This was all a stalling tactic. Maybe. "Unless your next words are 'I give up' followed by 'Here's the names and addresses of the people who created me', then I don't want to hear it. I already went to jail for killing you once, I don't think they can arrest me for doing it again." She'd killed Reverb and the old scientist he'd worked for both in the same moment. They'd been heading toward a helicopter to escape with all their research on Project Dragonsteeth, and she had, in Henry's words, 'Whirlwind sprinted across the roof and Fus Ro Dah'd the motherfuckers right off a thirty-story building' earning her the nickname Dovahkiin with him and a few others, and two counts of manslaughter from a federal judge.
The ERA, having by that point gone underground, shuffled around a few chairs, and reemerged as the government-backed Department of Emergent Assessment and Response, had actually come to her rescue a second time, pulling strings and putting on a contortion act with the law to get her released after only a brief amount of time served. She was told by a man in a suit only that it was time to let bygones be bygones and that she would simply 'owe them one', and had been waiting uncomfortably for the other shoe to drop ever since.
And now she had this damn clone to deal with. It unnerved her that with all the researchers the authorities had rounded up, and with all the files she'd so painstakingly destroyed, someone, somewhere, had still managed to get ahold of and implant Reverb's memories, meaning Project Dragonsteeth still had supporters hiding in the shadows. "Drop the gun, or they won't be able to scrape enough of you off the wall to fill another test tube," she demanded, drawing a breath and preparing to strike with crippling force.
He sighed. "All right, all right, you win. Just calm down..." Starting to lower the gun toward the ground with one hand, the other slipped into his pocket. "Hey!" Dove caught the movement and thrust her arms forward to let fly an energy spike that would crush him against the wall.
Nothing happened.
She stared at him for a startled second, then attempted a shield. Again, nothing.
Reverb was laughing, holding a remote and gesturing at a machine that had now come to life. She was suddenly aware of a low thrumming sound in the air, and a prickling sensation as the hairs on her arms stood up. "Power dampener. What will they think of next? The field on this one covers the entire building, so, no more shields for you."
Shit. She had heard of those, but they were ridiculously expensive, and used restricted technology, so she had never seen one in action. "Your powers won't work either. And I'm not nine years old anymore," she pointed out, shifting into a combat stance. She'd had a little training. Maybe she could take him in straight fight.
"Ah. But I think you're forgetting something," he said. And shot her in the heart.
Dove reeled back, stumbling against the wall behind her and sliding to the ground, one hand clamped over the searing wound, a neat little hole about the diameter of a pencil drilled right through her. She felt herself slipping, and closed her eyes.
"Now it's empty," Reverb helpfully informed her, tossing the pistol aside. "And now that you're out of the way, there's no one left who knows enough details to pose an obstacle to the Project. Though that does remind me..." he continued in a conversational tone, walking over to a computer. "I need to find out what friend of yours has been screwing around with my security systems. Wonder if they've got any children?"
Behind him, Dove drew a ragged breath, then another. She teetered on the edge of unconsciousness a moment longer, then her eyes snapped open and fixed on the rifle her enemy had held when she originally confronted him, still lying where it had landed after she knocked it from his hands.
Gritting her teeth, she crawled toward it. Reverb himself had moved partially behind a shelf, but the power dampener? She had a nice clear shot, and with a sharp crack, it went up in an impressive explosion, shattered glass and chunks of machinery with bits of melted wire still attached showering the room. Managing to put up a weak shield and hold it in place, just enough to cause the air around her to waver, she crawled to her feet. Reverb was nowhere in sight, but after a moment she heard his echoing, angry voice. "How in the fuck are you not dead?" he asked, once the cursing stopped.
"Nice question, coming from you. But do you think all those experiments only had to do with my powers?" she asked, as she slowly scanned the room for any movement but the flickering shadows cast by the burning machines. "For a couple of years there, I think I spent more time on the operating table than off of it. He was making me into the perfect soldier, remember?" Her insides had been rewired, replaced...added to. Dove could feel the frantic thumping of the surgically implanted second heart--a small heart, a child's heart--within her as she spoke. It wasn't quite as up to the task as the main one, but since the instant cauterization from the laser shot had prevented blood loss, she hoped she could manage for long enough to end this. "Guess you were always off kidnapping kids and too busy to pick up on little details like that."
He had fallen completely silent now. Damn it, she needed him to move and make a noise.
"You know what? Fuck it, I'm done trying to take you in. Why shouldn't I just kill you? You kidnapped me, you murdered my mother for trying to protect me. Why should any version of you get to keep existing?"
Suddenly that laugh again, echoing across the room. "You think she cared about protecting you? Do you still think she was really even your mother?"
Dove paused at that, struggling to follow. "What do you mean?" Her voice was suddenly cold and unamused. "Actually, you...never mind. You're just trying to distract me. It's obvious."
"I mean it. She carried you in her womb, but she wasn't your mother. Not biologically. The old man had hit upon a genetic pattern for high emergent potential. But he wasn't going to limit himself to just a few children from that pair. He hired dozens of carriers. Your mother was one of them. She tried to alter the deal, threatened to go to the police if we didn't comply. Sorry if this ruins your tragic backstory, but don't kid yourself in thinking you were ever anything but a bargaining chip to her."
The words bounced off the walls like poisoned darts. Dove took a deep breath, struggled to respond. Reverb was lying. It couldn't be true. From the files she'd seen, sure, there had been implications that some of the victims' parents had been complicit...but...her mother...
Just the faintest whisper of a fabric behind her, and suddenly Reverb slammed into her, the blade of his knife just barely deflected from her back by the shimmering shield she'd managed to reinforce there, raking across her arm instead. Dove flung her arms backward over her head, hissing from the protests of her wounds at the motion and feeling a spatter of blood from the fresh one as she sent a pair of energy fields billowing behind her like wings. A grunt from Reverb, and she knew it had connected, even as she spun and delivered another slash of force like a karate chop to his midsection. He doubled over, and she brought both hands together and brought them down hard on his back, striking him physically for the first time as well as using an energy spike to drive him to the ground with brutal, bonesnapping force.
He lay there, groaning, and she roughly rolled him over with her foot, ignoring his gasp of agony and look of fear as she raised a hand in preparation to deliver a final, crushing blow, staring down at the hated face of the man. The original Reverb had murdered her mother, and she had murdered him. But now, in a sick twist of fate, here was another with his face and his memories, who...if what he'd said was true, had as good as killed her a second time, tainting every cherished memory and belief.
If anything, the man lying here was the spitting image of that monster from her past even moreso than the Reverb from their last confrontation, without yet the touch of grey or added lines on his face. This was Reverb, and her every instinct screamed for her to destroy him.
And yet, it wasn't really Reverb.
A moment of silence stretched into an eternity, and she finally lowered her hand, expelling a slow breath. "Fuck it. I won't kill you. You didn't kill my mother, you didn't kidnap those kids, or work with the old man. You're just somebody's lab rat, as much as I was." She took out a power containment collar, bent and snapped it around his neck. "How long have you even been around, anyway? Your memories, I mean, not his."
