NOVEL NEXT Issue 73 – Rightful Respect V
The three Spiders were sent at me, one after another.
Gwen was first, and so introduced them to the fact that they couldn’t web me. The webs she fired at me slid off and over me as I glided aside... except the webs were useful to grab and counter-toss at her while she was in midair, while I calmly sniped away the panic-line she flipped out to jerk herself aside.
The net she’d meant to catch me in swallowed her, and she shouted as it got into her hair and everything. I tightened it down professionally, turning her around three times as I pulled here and there, and she was left in a tightly-webbed ball on the ground, totally helpless.
“Oh, this sucks,” she muttered as I crouched down next to her.
“So, do you carry something that allows you to get out of your own webs quickly?” I asked archly.
She glanced at me from inside her wrappings, and grimaced. “Uh, no. Pretty stupid, huh?”
I sighed, sent a spark arcing between two fingers, and used it to cut through the webbing around her quickly and efficiently. Head down, she slunk off, clad in tattered webs that would take a while to dissolve.
---
Silk stared at me as I stood there casually, clearly debating on whether or not to try some web-tricks of her own. She tried some stick-me-to-the-floor tactics, which I allowed and casually stepped out of, obviously not considering them worth dodging.
The twenty pulses of electricity I sent out at her in a half-second, on the other hand, had her trying to twitch and turn and dodge in ten different directions at once, only five of which worked. She shouted as she fell half-paralyzed to the ground, and before she could move, my foot slammed down next to her head, sizzling with voltage.
“Ranged electrical attacks, remember?” I told her, patting her shoulder. “They’re kind of hard to dodge when even I don’t know exactly where they are going.”
“Damn! And you even showed us first!” she swore, as I pulled her effortlessly back to her feet.
---
The lad in red and blue tights piped up, “Hey, why are you wearing normal clothes all the time?”
“So I don’t look like a superhero in tights when I go walking down the street, of course.” I tilted my head at him as he scampered sideways. “Not going to attack, Spidey?” I asked.
“Well, uh, that didn’t seem to work too well. I’m probably better off just avoiding you.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, and then I shot him right in his center of balance with a Bite beam. His Spider-Sense gave him no warning, and spider-reflexes didn’t match up to energy pulses wielded by someone who also had spider-reflexes.
He went flying backwards, skidded, rolled, and managed to cling-drag himself to a stop. He looked up just in time for my foot to land on his neck pointedly.
“You were watching when I demonstrated that earlier, right?” I offered, standing on his back calmly.
“Uh, yeah, but I kinda forgot about it,” he admitted. “Ouch!”
“I could’ve hit you with two,” I smiled as I stepped off him, and he just sighed.
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Here's another hit!
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Luke Cage had the expression of someone who knew he was about to get his ass kicked, but he still came forwards with his hands up in the manner of a boxer, ready to see how long he could last.
I let him, and he was a bit shocked at how close I let him get. He started throwing punches, and I idly watched them ghost past my face and chest, unable to hit me as I shifted casually around him.
He tried sweeping a fist, which I crouched under calmly, and then he tried a low spinning kick.
Without much effort, I grabbed him with one hand, tugged him off-balance, slapped another hand on the back of his head as he power-fell, spun once as I lifted him completely off the ground, and whipped him out and away as if he didn’t weigh near three hundred pounds.
He shouted as he flailed, and ran into the steel wall of the track right there head-first, barely getting one arm up in time to help protect himself. The rest of him hit, he was grunting as my feet landed on either side of his head, and the electrical discharge blew him right back off the wall.
“Ugh,” he mumbled, his close-cut hair smoldering a little there on the ground. “Uncle!” he admitted, looking at me above him, standing sideways on the steel wall exactly parallel to him. My Bites also happened to be aimed right at his face.
“You seriously have to be a lot faster and learn some heavyfoot,” I told him, stepping down the wall, bending as I did to stay fairly level with my head. I offered him my hand, and he sighed and took it. I pulled him up without the slightest shift in my balance, stuck my other hand to his chest midway through, and lifted him right up off the ground as he gawked at me from an arm’s length, his feet a foot off the ground.
“It lets you do cool things, like lift things much too heavy in very awkward positions without too much problem, and prevents people from tearing you off the ground.” He grabbed onto my arm instinctively... and his hand kept sliding along my arm, unable to close on it as I Repulsed his fingers. “Now, from this position, I have a clear shot at your heart. A lightning bolt going through it would give you an instant heart attack, which you might not survive if your friends aren’t really quick to administer CPR.”
He stopped kicking and hung there haplessly. “Girl, why can’t I grab your arm?” he complained.
“Repulse, same effect that lets me skim above the ground.” I set him down only a little hard, and disengaged my hand from his chest with a few sparks. “Opposite of the Attract that lets me stick to you, of course.”
“I couldn’t lay a hand on you...” he sighed again, heading back to the line.
---
Iron Fist regarded me extremely warily. I was relaxed as I faced him, one hand up, my forefinger and thumb curled.
“You may be taking me too lightly,” he warned me as he approached carefully, clearly ready for me to take a shot at him.
“You’ve got a dragon’s chi-shadow on you. It’s not one of the Seven Dragons, so Oriental in origin. None of the mainland sects have decently developed chi-usage, let alone a Branding Mark like you have left so conveniently exposed for me to study. That means you’re from one of the Hidden Cities, despite your ancestry. Given the classical chi-style you’re using, I’m guessing the most conservative of them, K’un’lun?” I asked archly, shocking him.
“You know about K’un’lun?” he gasped.
“Please. We aren’t all as dumb as Staters about stuff. Since the Golden Hag established the Seven Dragons, there’s been a lot of lore about the Hidden Cities out there.”
His blue eyes flickered. “Are you familiar with the Iron Fist?”
“The chi-using variant? The normal variant is just physical conditioning, fusing the bones of the hand into a weapon of callus and flesh. But it has a problem.”
“What is that?”
I glided forwards without moving my feet, extended my hand, and thorked him firmly on the nose. I withdrew my hand, and his startled block caught only air.
“Whoa!” Ryder, Jessica, and Cage exclaimed together, having only seen a flicker of motion. The others had enhanced reflexes, but being able to do that to Rand clearly was impressive... and daring.
“It has to hit its target.” He flushed as I tilted my head. “You’re facing a superhuman who has seen profound fighting styles, is experienced at fighting, is faster than you, and is stronger than you. Plus, if you hit me, you’re going to electrocute yourself. I’m not going to give you time to charge up that Iron Fist if it requires more than a half-second for you to do so.”
He stared at me for a moment, then relaxed slightly. “If I may test my techniques, then?”
“Oh, by all means,” I agreed politely.
Therein followed about ten minutes of relentless attacks of various kinds, coming in astonishing variety and style, a truly thorough foundation in classic Oriental fighting styles.
I dodged them, blocked them, pushed him this way and that, bolloxed up the execution of his attacks, interrupted him with bumps and rushes, took away his feet a couple times, and tossed him around acrobatically a few more.
He sighed as he finally got up, and bowed deeply to me, ending the match. “Thank you for the lesson, teacher.”
“No need to thank me, young master. You’re far better than I am at fighting skills, that’s pretty obvious. I just have an absolute overwhelming physical advantage over you. It’s not worth calling me teacher over,” I waved off the compliment.
“Is a chi-user able to grow to rival you, Dynamo?” he asked quickly.
“Oh, of course! But to do that, that little ball of chi inside you has to become a blazing sun, not the little fireball it is now.
“I suggest going down to the Tribal Consulate on your own time. I’m sure they have someone down there who can give you proper instruction.”
His eyes lit up at the idea. “I will do so!” he promised, now having a goal before him. “We will fight as equals one day!”
“That’s the spirit!” Which was all and well totally possible. Fighting wasn’t my main shtick, after all.
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“Yo, Parker! Got a question here.”
Practice time was over, and the kids were heading home. There were multiple exits they could leave through, the businesses on the surrounding block being all fronts of one kind or another.
The guys had broken down and given me their names after I gave them mine, not that Luke Cage was trying too hard to conceal his. It was still a school day tomorrow, and they had homework to do.
Not extracurriculars, however. This was their extracurriculars.
Peter waved the others off and fell back to me in front of the stairs. “What’s up, Dynamo?” he asked eagerly.
“Two questions. First, why were you asking if I worked in the Baxter Building? Two, did you truly invent those webshooters, like you said?”
“Um...” he scratched his head in embarrassment. “Well, Dr. Richards is a big inventor always coming up with stuff, and I thought it would be cool to see what he is working on. And, uh, yeah, I did invent the webshooters.”
“Would you be open to making a binary setting pair for Jewel to use, with some Earth-Energized components to the fluid?” I asked him directly.
“Uh...” He was a little wide-eyed. “I... don’t really have the tools to do that...”
I waved that off. “A yes or a no, not an excuse, please!”
“Well...” he scratched the back of his head, “I suppose I could make a pair for her, sure. She doesn’t need them for webslinging, so just to make nets?”
“A ranged attack, since SHIELD doesn’t want you all shooting around bullets and force beams and the like.”
He eyed my wrists. “They’re letting you...” he pointed out.
I wagged a finger at him. “Remember, I’m the weapon. The bracelets just help me control my shots. They’re hardly going to look down on that, right?”
“Oh, right,” he nodded again. “Well, sure, I can work on something...”
“Good. I do work in the Baxter Building, that’s how I knew Mr. Grimm. List out the stuff you need to work with, have it with you, and I should be able to get it in time for us to head over there Saturday after training.”
His eyes nearly popped out. “For real!?” he blurted out.