Chapter 9
*(Look, I know — I actually believe — that most of my readers are sensible, reasonable people. We've got a good crowd here. But do me a favor: lock the voice of reason in a box for this one, okay? Superhero logic. Just go with it.)*
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Power. That was what mattered most. Maxwell Dillon held this belief with the quiet certainty of a man who had never been seriously challenged on it. He ran a hand through the hair of the small journalist currently positioned between his knees. He'd had this gift since birth — a staggering, extraordinary ability that eclipsed the vast majority of other so-called chosen individuals.
Max could command lightning. The raw, devastating embodiment of a natural force. Unlike the stupidity of enhanced strength, stretchy limbs, and similar garbage, Electro — as he had chosen to call himself — was something categorically greater.
They'd predicted a career as one of the greatest heroes of his generation. He'd entertained the idea himself, imagined stepping onto the top tier, perhaps alongside Phenomenomen or that magnificent blond with the spectacular backside whom Dillon would very much have liked to get his hands on. But honestly?
Why would he want any of that?
Money, power, opportunity — these things pulled at him far more than the enthusiastic cheers of the masses or his face on a billboard. Besides, you didn't need to be a hero to have your smile on an advertisement. Max knew that from personal experience.
*The pay is terrible anyway. Mostly government-issued supplies. And supers get taxed at a higher rate than ordinary people.*
Reality is full of disappointments, Electro believed. When he'd discovered just how many restrictions, licenses, regulations, and flat-out rules and conditions heroes were expected to follow — he'd only become more certain that heroism was not his path to success.
"Use your tongue more. Like you're on camera." The mild criticism was met with an injured sound, but Maxwell didn't particularly care. "Good girl."
Away from the cameras and the public, he could drop the performance. He didn't have to hide what he actually thought of ordinary people without powers — of the weaklings who barely merited his attention.
Contempt mixed with lust and mild curiosity — that was what he awarded to the girl diligently working at his feet. He tightened his grip on her hair. She'd been a student not long ago. He pressed her head down until her nose was buried against him.
She resisted for a few seconds before surrendering to the superhuman. With one hand he could lift a grown man by the neck without effort — a small girl didn't present much of a challenge. She didn't even have the jaw strength to do anything about her situation.
He watched the tears forming at the corners of her eyes with evident satisfaction, then let his attention drift to the television flickering in the living room. It was showing an interview with the superhero who irritated him most.
Colorful cape. The smile of the star student in a class full of underachievers. Enormous walrus mustache. Phenomenomen was the living embodiment of every clichéd fantasy people had ever projected onto the idea of a superhero. Strong, brave, agile, skilled — a genuine marvel, arrived from another planet.
This overgrown muscle-bound idiot was beaming at the news anchor, answering questions in that warm, earnest way that made everyone watching feel safe and cared for. Maxwell wasn't listening to the words. He was staring at the figure itself.
The anger got away from him. He crushed the remote in his hand, reducing it to fragments, and with his other hand shoved the journalist down harder, forcing her to struggle in his grip, her air slowly running out.
"God, you infuriate me," he said toward the screen, clicking his tongue at the ceiling. Finally, he released the girl, letting her collapse sideways at his feet, gasping, dragging tears and snot across her face. "Go clean up. Then we'll continue."
She nodded eagerly, scrambling to her feet with the anxiety of someone afraid of losing a tenuous advantage, and disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of running water followed shortly. Dillon watched her exit with approval, then returned to the television, already regretting that he'd broken the remote and would have to keep looking at Phenomenomen's stupid face.
"Go save the world from kaiju or something," he muttered at the screen. A moment later, one more irritating smile pushed him past his limit, and in a burst of irritation he sent a bolt of lightning into the television — extinguishing it permanently. "Shame that doesn't work in real life."
Rain was beginning to fall outside the window, despite the rays of sunshine still visible in the distance. He didn't give it any attention. He glanced with displeasure toward the bathroom, where the girl was taking her time. He needed to work off the edge somehow. Two minutes of Phenomenomen content had wound him up so tight he could barely stand it.
"What's she doing in there — filing taxes?" After another minute passed with no sign of her, Max was about to get up and retrieve her personally, when the door opened and a flushed face peered out. "What took you?"
"Getting ready," she answered simply, running her hand down her hip until she caught herself at the curve of her backside. The single gesture was enough to lift Electro's mood considerably. Maybe the girl had more to offer than he'd initially estimated. Maybe he'd give her something better than the usual envelope of cash and a non-disclosure agreement.
"Smart girl. Now come—"
He was anticipating this, already rising from the couch, when he never finished the sentence.
The windows exploded inward.
A massive torrent of water crashed into the apartment, sweeping Dillon off his feet and slamming him against the wall. The volume of liquid was extraordinary — the hotel room, in a modest middle-class neighborhood, transformed into an aquarium in seconds.
The pressure didn't let up. Water forced its way into his nose, his mouth, his ears, as if alive and trying to get inside him. Somewhere in the background the girl screamed, but Maxwell barely registered it, fighting with everything he had just to stay upright against the current.
"*ENOUGH!*" The moment the pressure began to ease, Dillon erupted in rage, tore himself free, and sprinted for the window — sparkling naked, electricity already crawling up his skin. "*Son of a—*"
He didn't get far. A second torrent came from above, catching him at the fifth floor window and hammering him straight down — directly onto a parked car below. He punched through the flimsy roof, and before he could push himself upright, something heavy and solid landed on his back, driving him deeper into the ruined chassis.
"Remember me?"
A hand in a rubber glove seized him by the top of his bald head and yanked it back. Then, from the right, a metal pipe connected with his face.
He didn't need to see who was standing over him. He spat blood and recognized the voice immediately. His face split into a furious, predatory grin.
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"You litthle thit!" Maxwell lisped horribly, his front teeth contributing nothing to his dignity, and tried again to charge his body with lightning — but another series of blows from my improvised weapon rained down on his head, targeting his face specifically. I was trying to break his jaw. Even with enhanced strength it was proving extremely difficult. And I had no interest in making direct contact with his skin while he was still active — I didn't think even dielectric gloves would save me if his power discharged up close.
The pipe was doing what pipes do after prolonged abuse: bending. I'd known it wouldn't hold forever. A kitchen knife would have snapped on first impact, and I'd had neither the time nor the opportunity to steal something sturdier — a fire axe, say, or anything that might actually hold up.
On the next swing, the metal finally gave. It buckled partway through and threatened to leave me holding half a weapon, which would have been deeply inconvenient.
Not that losing the weapon was my biggest concern right this second. I'd hesitated one beat too long, and that beat was exactly what Dillon needed. Lightning surged back across his body.
I threw myself into a sideways roll, eyes wide, not caring where I landed, clearing the electric discharge that went off in every direction at once.
No looking back. The quick-and-clean approach had failed, which meant falling back on Plan B. I ran, hard, toward the underground parking garage, where his advantages would shrink considerably. I made it with exactly one second to spare — the stone column behind me detonated into shrapnel as a massive branching lightning bolt drilled through it.
Electro was furious. Plan minimum: achieved.
I kept running, weaving between parked cars and support pillars, steadily pulling him deeper and away from open space, away from the sky where flight was his greatest weapon against me.
"You can't HIDE!" The raging, lisping howl was getting closer. Electro in full bloodlust was incapable of seeing anything except the single point of focus in front of him, which appeared to be — based on subsequent commentary — my backside. Not that it changed my situation materially. Amanda had once mentioned, after months of swimming and training, that I'd developed the kind of glutes you could crack walnuts with. Still.
My entire lower body clenched involuntarily.
I turned onto the next level down, dropped to one knee, extended my arm toward the entrance, and when the blazing projectile that Dillon had become came through — hit him with a concentrated stream of water, cutting it off a fraction before contact. It wasn't a powerful blast, and I had no reserve liquid nearby, but it was enough to knock him off course and send him face-first into the nearest wall.
He landed too far away for me to press the advantage safely, and I wasn't going to risk closing the distance with a man getting back to his knees, so I kept moving, wincing at the grinding sound of teeth behind me.
One more level down, cleared at speed. But to my genuine surprise, I seemed to have lost him — either I'd pulled too far ahead or he'd broken off the chase entirely, which was not part of the plan.
We'd finally reached the arena I'd picked out. If this bastard had decided to leave, I was going to have serious problems, because I absolutely did not have the nerve to attempt this a second time—
The ceiling came down.
In a cascade of lightning and debris, doing his best impression of Zeus, Thor, and several other divine-adjacent figures, Electro executed a textbook superhero landing — one fist and one knee to the ground, carving a crater in the concrete, burning his gaze into me with pure hatred and anticipation.
"…Damn."
"I'm going to enjoy killing you… very… thhhloooowly…" He rose to his full height, electricity rolling across his body in waves, his skin streaked with dirt and blood, and fixed me with one final look from under his brow before his raised arm unleashed a bolt that would have done any Sith Lord proud.
The hit was fast enough that only the rubber padding across my chest kept me conscious. The smell of burning hit my nose; my lungs ached with new pain layered over old. No time for it.
My back hit a steel barrel. The metal gave and tore around me, and water began trickling slowly from the puncture.
Another roll. I wished there was a campfire nearby for the full effect. I got behind a column just as the next discharge tore past, filling the air with ozone. Electro's insane lisping laughter echoed through the garage, occasionally cutting through even the lightning itself.
He was playing. He was savoring my helplessness, narrating with enthusiasm and apparent creativity — though the exact content was difficult to parse, given the notable absence of his two front teeth and the considerable quantity of blood in his mouth.
Overall, though, things were going better than expected.
My cover couldn't hold indefinitely, which kept me moving — a frantic, looping circuit around the space, gradually circumnavigating my opponent. It was not a subtle strategy, and unfortunately he noticed.
"STOCKED UP ON WATER?" He spat blood and lifted himself half a meter into the air on his power, beginning a slow aerial drift with occasional lightning bursts from his back and hands. He tilted his head at the very obvious moisture seeping off my entire body, and adopted a tone of exaggerated pity — the kind adults use on small children. "WHAT HAPPENED? YOU THTCARED?"
"Yeah, something like that." I reached up and pulled a small diving mask down over my face. "It's genuinely frightening, if I'm being honest."
I won't pretend otherwise. When you command water and the man across from you is basically Raiden from Mortal Kombat — your nerve holds, but it holds while shaking. It was a minor miracle I hadn't left a trail of literal bricks behind me during all those laps around the parking garage.
"Don't worry… you won't die… FATHT."
The most aggravatingly smug smile. Maxwell Dillon had finally decided to stop playing and attack in earnest — but he was a fraction too late. My water had mixed with the water already on the floor, which meant I could work with all of it. Someday I'd be able to do this without the setup. Today was not that day, and that was fine.
I threw both arms up, mirroring his own dramatic gesture, and clenched my fists.
A dome of water rose around us — less than six meters across, barely a sphere, cramped and inelegant. But exactly sized for what I needed. In the same motion, straining hard enough that I genuinely worried about something prolapsing, a flat water shield formed between us — simple, barely stable, but functional.
A branching electrical arc hammered it.
The shield splashed apart. A light mist of droplets hit my face.
"WHAT?! HOW?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!" For one instant, his face ran through a whole sequence — surprise, confusion, and at the very end, something entirely ordinary and human. Fear. I'll admit: that was satisfying to see. "TELL ME!"
I didn't answer. I walked toward him.
I shook out my hands as I moved, shadowboxing loosely, no hurry, and built simple constructs in the air in front of me — catching each frantic discharge before it reached me.
Lightning hit the shields one after another. Each time: a splash of water.
By the time two steps separated us, Dillon had completed his emotional journey and arrived at trapped-animal fury. He swung from both hands, throwing increasingly wild configurations of electricity at my continuously rebuilt shields, and nothing happened.
The final meter I covered in a jump, putting my full weight into a straight right hand across his face, and listened with genuine pleasure to the crunch of his nose.
"Not so impressive without your electricity, are you? Maybe you should have learned to fight. That's for my grandmother—" A body shot to the solar plexus folded him at the waist. I clasped both hands together and brought them down hard on the back of his neck, putting him on the ground. "That's for Amanda. And this—"
I turned him over with my foot. I began coating him — slowly, thoroughly — in a dense layer of distilled water, head to toe, leaving only his face clear. Then I sat down on his chest, and proceeded to hit him.
Simple, straightforward hitting.
The soft sounds of impact carried through the lowest level of the garage. For the first few seconds Dillon tried to say something. After that, he just made weak sounds without much meaning, and eventually stopped trying to throw me off.
Nearly a full minute. I kept going until his perfect profile was swollen and lopsided and would require either years of expensive corrective surgery or supernatural intervention to repair.
When Maxwell finally stopped moving — just breathing, labored and ragged — I stopped.
I was still holding my fists at chest height, knuckles slicked with blood. I tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling with completely unhinged eyes.
My lungs were burning. My heart was playing something with no recognizable time signature. I stood there like a monument to myself, barely processing what had just happened.
"I won."
Even saying it, I didn't quite believe it. I climbed off Dillon's unconscious body and drifted toward the exit on autopilot, picking my way through the destroyed levels of the parking structure. I was almost out when I turned around one last time, still not entirely convinced by reality.
"Holy hell. I actually won."
"Correct," said a voice behind me. "You assaulted an industrialist and caused several hundred thousand dollars in property damage."
My heart went straight back down to my feet.
I turned around on legs that had stopped bending properly, and found myself facing an enormous shape — my forehead nearly meeting a steel chest plate.
Blue light flooded the parking garage. Brilliant, cold, and carrying a distinct suggestion of consequences. A glowing blade extended from the robot's arm — the kind of warning that required no interpretation.
The robot stood at combat readiness, its visor fixed on me, not leaving any room for ambiguity.
"Mecha Man?" The name hit me like a rush of memories, impressions, and years of accumulated reverence. A hero. A real one — who had done extraordinary things with nothing but himself. Not just the original Herman's hero. Mine too, for what it was worth.
"That's right, kid." The voice that came through the speakers was rough and not notably warm. "How about you just surrender on your own. I don't have time to deal with you while Shroud and his associates are still loose."
"Uh — okay?" My hands went up before I'd finished processing the situation. When your idol tells you to do something, you do it. "I surrender."
"Hm." A flicker of something that might have been amusement ran through the hero's voice. The lightsaber-adjacent blade powered down, and now I could actually examine the figure in front of me more clearly. But the next words he said knocked me so far off balance that it took a full second to actually hear them. "…You have the right…"
"I'm sorry, sir — I missed that." I smiled sheepishly, fighting down a completely inappropriate blush. "Could you repeat it?"
"You're under arrest."
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