ARCHETYPE (Slowburn Superhero Progression)

Thwoosh!

The tin cup had dropped onto the soft soil and all four of the sparring combatants burst into movement.

I had a half-second to make up my mind for whether or not I wanted to stay where I was and watch the fighting from afar, or to make an effort to keep up with them.

I chose the second option, and bounded after the others who had all broken off to the right.

Bramble and Emulsion-Man stayed close together, darting around trees with superhuman bounds between bouts of sprinting.

And Snap and Clang remained within arm's reach of each other and kept pace with their new opponents.

And then there was me, bounding along fast enough to keep up, but not to interfere.

Need to reserve the power I have, I thought, on the off-chance Bramble and Emulsion-Man can't be trusted.

There was also the possibility that Mice from elsewhere might suddenly turn up. Or police. Or the Pied Piper Task Force. Or gang members. Someone needed to stay fresh for any unexpected dangers and I figured it might as well be me.

But that's not the real reason you chose not to join the fight, I thought, You decided not to simply because you didn't feel like it.

True, I thought.

Admitting this to myself made me smirk a little, because it was another small reminder that I hadn't fully lost who I really was after all the substantial changes.

Clang made the first move.

He wasn't yet in his Tension state, which meant he was heavy-footed and slower than he would be otherwise. He bounded straight for Bramble, who also came to a stop and entered into what looked to me like a karate fighting pose.

Clang swung with a haymaker punch directly for Bramble's head.

She seemed to slap the punch off course and then in the same movement brought her knee into contact with Clang's chest.

Clong!

Clang took the hit, but it was clear enough the blow had shaken some of his initial confidence.

He swung at her again, and again Bramble counteracted the attack with a swift duck followed by an incredibly precise upward-driving-fist which connected with Clang's jaw.

Clong!

The blow was strong enough that it lifted Clang a few inches off the ground before he began to fall onto his back.

Clang snapped out of the momentary daze the blow had inflicted on him and with a great gush of steam erupting from his hands and back he was able to right himself and get straight back into the fight.

Just before Clang righted himself, Snap soared over him with a kung-fu-style kick that would have made a shaolin master jealous.

Emulsion-Man saw the attack coming and took the brunt of the kick against his forearms which were up in a boxing-style guard.

The force of the kick caused Emulsion-Man to slide backwards until the heel of his backfoot connected with one of the roots of the tree behind him.

Snap summersaulted backwards over the on-going fight between Clang and Bramble, so that when she landed she was on one side of the fight, and Emulsion-Man on the other.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The fight between Clang and Bramble in terms of mere fighting skill was readily apparent, because Bramble's fighting technique was by far the best I had ever seen. Every time Clang tried for a comparatively clumsy swing of his pseudo-metallic fists, Bramble counteracted the attack with yet another swift and devastatingly precise blow in the form of a kick or punch.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Every metallic sound was only from the blows Bramble was delivering to some part of Clang's body.

Come on, I thought, Can't you fight back better than that, Clang?

The truth of the matter however was clear.

Bramble was simply an order of magnitude better at hand-to-hand combat.

"Y-ah!" Clang rang out.

And as he did a great eruption of fresh steam burst from his skin all over. There was more than enough to act like a smoke bomb in the way that it completely obscured everything close to him.

"Tension! Times two!" Clang's voice rang in the night from somewhere within the quickly thinning steam-mist.

Throughout all this Snap and Emulsion-Man's fight had started again, having moved away from the sudden steam-mist to a nearby patch of the forest.

Snap had her nails lengthened to claws, and was busily swiping at Emulsion-Man.

The swipes were close, but none hit their target. Emulsion-Man kept his guard up, and ducked and weaved and at times bounded backwards out of the way of Snap's swipes.

Snap!

On her latest swipe Snap elongated her arm with rubbery stretchiness to clear more of the distance between her and Emulsion-Man.

"Ra-ah!" Emulsion-Man grunted, because Snap had successfully slashed her sharp claws across his guarding arms; the outer wrappings of tight-celluloid filmstock gave way to very real, and very human blood.

And then, somehow, impossibly, Emulsion-Man seemed to vanish into thin air.

Snap came to a stop, her anime-style eyes scanning the relative darkness of the forest – though her eyes like mine were able to see as clearly in the night-time forest as if it were daytime, albeit in shades of gray.

Two things happened then.

Snap, thinking fast about a counter-measure to Emulsion-Man's sudden disappearance, decided to heighten her sense of smell instead as a way of tracking him.

But even as she thought to do this, it was too late for her to avoid Emulsion-Man's next attack.

Snap's head thrashed to the side and spittle shot from her mouth from the force of the blow. What form the attack had taken wasn't clear, because Emulsion-Man was still, somehow, nowhere to be seen.

Snap tried to throw up her guard to defend herself, and even tried for a swipe. But then another blow to the other side of her face landed, and then yet another to the other side. And then another blow to her gut which knocked the wind completely out of her.

During this time I had trained my vision on the surrounding area around Snap to see if I could make out anything of Emulsion-Man. And then I saw him, or rather, a semblance of him in the darkness. He had, somehow, rendered himself near-invisible, with just the faintest shimmer of an outline as a sign he was even there at all.

I wanted to intervene, or say something to help, but I forced myself not to because doing so would undermine the whole point of the sparring exercise.

Snap and Clang had to pull through on their own.

It was then Snap began to giggle, and her eyes changed from anime-style to the much more familiar toon-like orbs I had come to know.

Emulsion-Man kept on the attack. This time however Miss Toontastic, who seemed to be the one in control of Xandra's body, was strangely ready for the assault.

But it was the way in which she avoided being attacked that was startling.

Her body was bending in what could only be described as a toon-like way. The blows from Emulsion-Man were either missing entirely, or were landing somewhat ineffectually because the way Miss Toontastic's head bent in tandem with the punch rendered the blow inert.

Like trying to punch a ribbon, I thought.

Miss Toontastic giggled the entire time in her racoonish squeaky voice.

"Oh! Oh! Missed me! Hehehe!" she squeaked.

A blow landed, but again ineffectually.

"Ooo! Hehehehe!"

Miss Toontastic closed her fists, and in turn bloody gashes formed at her palms. She got to her feet and, as she moved backwards, two beachball-sized bubbles of blood-rubber formed from the palms of her hands.

POP!

The blood-rubber burst, and enough of the rubber caught on the invisible Emulsion-Man who, in turn, suddenly lost what invisibility he had.

He was caught in the sticky ink-coloured blood-rubber as if it were a straight jacket.

Miss Toontastic fell backwards onto her butt and looked a little dazed.

I would too, I thought, if I lost a lot of blood all at once.

She could regenerate that blood, I considered, but it would come at the cost of her tapping into the power to make that replenishment possible.

Emulsion-Man's celluloid-filmstock wrappings appeared to heat up, as his skin bulbed with a bright and intense heat which made me think of when Daniel had become a figure entirely made of light back at the Wedder Gorge facility.

The blood-rubber cooked under the intense heat and, in combination with Emulsion-Man's strength, snapped loose.

Throughout all this Clang and Bramble's fight continued.