I hung outside on Miss Martian's Bioship with my claws buried into the chassis as it sliced through the air above Berlin. My Eye of Insight sub-skill from Seventh Sense reduced the entire city into see-through grids with hundreds of thousands of moving pieces, most of them non-magical.
There was the odd artifact and building that glowed with magical energy, but none of it blazed quite like three hidden figures behind a small Curtain attached to a swanky hotel.
"Eyes on them," I sent telepathically to Miss Martian, relaying the general directions with some trepidation. Giving somebody access to my head, however limited, made my insides turn.
"Roger," Miss Martian said.
"Deploying now," I announced as my biology shifted and my claws retracted.
I fell, my body going limp. The city rushed up to meet me. I flexed Body Control and Bone Manipulation, a pair of skills stuck at level 9, and accelerated my descent, reaching terminal velocity in seconds and pushing past it. My leather and bone armor appeared around me, pulled from my Cursed Inventory. Then, and only then, did I allow myself to use Expanse.
My fingers and toes glowed red briefly before the air shattered four times. I was above the city in the blink of an eye, directly over the Curtain. The world around me slowed down as I pushed my perception and Psi-Clarity into overdrive and called on Sever, my ace in the hole. So far, I hadn't run into something I couldn't slice through, and this was no different. I rained down a dense weave of katana-length slashes on the structure, weakening it before I wrested back control of my physical body and drove my heel into it, shattering it like glass.
The situation behind the Curtain was dire. A clone had his hand wrapped around Priya's nearly unconscious body. A sorcerer stood with him, watching with a perverse sort of pleasure. He was raven-haired and wore his hair a little too long for my tastes. It would've been so simple to remove his head with a single Dismantle, but that was not the plan.
The clone snapped in my direction and fired his heat vision. I still couldn't hope to keep up with a Kryptonian's speed, but what I had in excess was muscle memory. A dark portal opened in front of me, and another opened facing the direction of the sorcerer.
Cursed Inventory Extension: Bridge.
It took me three whole days of getting my ass kicked by Superman and Captain Atom's ray to figure it out, but after I did, nothing short of a fucking bombardment could overwhelm me.
The sorcerer teleported, barely dodging the beam that ravaged the lowermost floor of the hotel, punching through several walls and cremating corpses. He appeared behind me, clutching the sky of all things, ready to bring it down on my head.
I clapped, switching myself for the clone, and let him take the hit for me. The sky shattered like glass, the shockwave impacting the clone's face directly. Blood gushed from his nose as he hit the ground behind me hard enough to form a crater.
The sorcerer stared at me, surprised, then outraged. Artisan must've told him about me. He was just about to teleport when a fist dug into his liver, flinging him straight into a lightning-wreathed dropkick that spiked him into the asphalt. I heard bones break upon impact. He bounced off it once before he found himself collared and pumped full of injections expertly applied by Nathan.
The clone shot at me, fist cocked back, and I received him with a waiting palm. The blow struck with a dull slap, Inverse soaking in enough kinetic force to level the fancy hotel beside me. In the microseconds he spent blinking in confusion, I acted, stepping back and clapping once again. He was transported to the containment chamber the Justice League had prepared beforehand in the jet shadowing ours. An inconspicuous piece of curse energy-infused rock dropped onto the asphalt.
And just like that, it was done.
Objectives completed, all without mayhem.
I gave the area one more quick once-over. Priya was recovering quickly; the captured sorcerer was dazed but still awake. A briefcase lay on the ground not too far from her body. Shelim was standing on a street lamp, doing the same thing I was doing, and George was in the air, while Nathan was smiling, happy to finally be faster than somebody.
"Everyone okay?" I asked, more out of routine than any real interest.
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Funny you should ask me that," Shelim spat. "I had this awful nightmare that I risked my life to save a no-good turncoat who probably sold our secrets to the biggest criminal cabal on Earth."
He'd been especially salty when he heard about Priya's betrayal, even though we technically knew about it for weeks. She'd vanished after she helped Alex, and Shelim had heard through the grapevine that she had a new employer now.
It wasn't too hard to guess who they were. I, too, of course, was upset about the whole thing. She saw me use Boogie Woogie, Earth Manipulation, Shrine, Blood Manipulation, and Inverse. She could basically arm Luthor and the Light with everything they needed to capture us, but after our collective training, we were working with old information.
Everyone had improved since we started training with the Justice League, myself, Nathan, and Gina especially, but the regular Blockbuster Venom-enhanced sorcerers were better too.
Plus, I had a new ace up my sleeve. I'd chosen another technique to fill out my reward for reaching Special Grade, and I planned on picking up a few more.
"You'll get over it, Shelim," I said. "You're resilient."
I clapped several times, transporting George, Shelim, Nathan, and the hostage up first, switching them with mundane, CE-soaked objects we'd prepared beforehand, before I slowly walked over to Priya's box and stored it in my Cursed Inventory.
On a hunch, I looked at the building Priya escaped from. I hadn't caught anything while I was up in the air, but maybe Priya got in a fight before she exited the hotel...
Her attackers might be wearing concealment talismans.
Looking up at the building she'd just come from, I focused my senses on it. Turns out, I was right. I found a fading signature on the 10th floor. It belonged to a dead, headless girl. Judging by the energy she was giving off, she could've been First Grade or even higher. She probably had a hell of a technique to go with her reserves.
Don't mind if I do.
I swapped her body for a pen I produced in my hand and filled with cursed energy. She went into my Cursed Inventory.
I wondered what Cursed Technique Artisan had armed her with.
I teleported back to the Bioship just before the first of the police cars arrived.
Read ahead on Patreon.com/artandcreativewriting