Supervillains 2 Chapter 35 (Patreon)

Our superhero teams continued to destroy the giants as they came, but as we were whittling them down, the real challenge emerged.

The disruption was just a speck as a single super shot up from the prison, but then the surrounding air rippled and spread outwards. Glass shattered, and I threw up a shield around Angelina and I on instinct. It barely formed before the glass of our building shattered and sprayed the street below.

“What was that?” Angelina gasped, seeing the destruction before us.

“A sound wave, an extremely powerful one,” I surveyed the damage from the shockwave quickly. Heroes were falling out of the air, and people were lying on the street. The force had been enough to knock everybody out, especially those that were on the weaker end of power.

Melody. I began scanning quickly. When I didn’t see her immediately, I reached out with my power, trying to sense for hers.

When I found it, it was falling. Immediately, I ripped her out of the air and carried her over to me.

Angelina was on her in an instant. “Melody, wake up.”

“Ugh. Did you get the license plate on that truck?” She groaned, her eyes dilated heavily.

“I’m not a doctor, but I think she has a concussion.” Angelina reported.

Nodding along with her, I focused on my tablet, swiping comms to my team. “Everyone, report.”

“Fine.” Emerald grunted. “In the prison.”

“Feeling punchy,” Stella growled before I saw her take down another giant. She’d been completely unaffected.

Venus was last to report in, sounding winded. “I fled the blast. Ears ache this far out, but I’m fine. Returning.”

“My guess is that was just the opening salvo. Get ready.” I took a deep breath before swiping comms over to the other managers. “Report in.”

Victor came over my comms. “Only my speedster and Miss Point City are on their feet. The rest are down for now. We are extracting them.”

The other managers reported in similar situations. We’d lost a third or half of the heroes to the sound wave. Only one team had weathered it completely.

“Miles.” Pulsar groaned weakly behind me. “I’m good to get back in.”

I focused on her, pausing my comms. “No.” I pushed her down with my power. “You have a concussion. Going back in now is too dangerous.”

“Don’t coddle me.” Pulsar demanded, throwing her power against my own and failing to even budge.

I turned and scowled at her. “This isn’t a good moment to test me. I just had to watch you fall out of the sky. As I pulled you to me, I didn’t even know if you were going to open your eyes again. I’m beyond ecstatic that you are awake but lay the fuck down and let Angelina take care of you.”

Pulsar snorted, but Angelina gave her a glare that told her to shut up. “Fine.”

Angelina got on the ground with her, and they discussed something quietly.

I turned my attention back to the black dot, which was still falling. I glared at that little dot, and in a fit of anger, turned him into a red splash.

“Fuck this,” I grumbled and smashed half a dozen more giants with a wave of my hand. “So tired of pretending.”

“Do you need me to swap with you?” Angelina asked again carefully.

“I think so.” Focusing on Melody, I asked her a question. “If I leave and help as Void, are you going to try and get back in there?”

“No, I need to stick around and protect, Angelina.” Melody replied, and I could tell she believed it.

“You also need to lead our group. Keep Stella on task and give Mona backup when she asks. Emma… just let her do what she’s doing now.”

Melody nodded and took my tablet, while I kept my comms on.

“I’m sorry. After this is over, we’ll work on pushing your power further,” I promised, seeing the hurt on Melody’s face.

Angelina took it as her cue to shift, turning into a copy of me. “How do I look?”

“Like a handsome bastard.” I chuckled before I lifted my hand, and the world went black. I put a shell over the entire area.

Wrapping myself in midnight, I moved higher and higher, floating over the center of the whole mess.

The disaster zone now extended for several blocks in either direction, but so far, it was still relatively contained.

I let the light come back to the world as I floated over it.

I began running through tactics. The easiest and most efficient means of stopping the problem would be to just squish all the people down below, but it wasn’t that easy. Emma, guards, and other heroes were down there. And I wasn’t sure how Angelina would take to me killing the inmates she’d been working to help. Not all within the prison were evil.

So instead, I put on a show and flung my arms out to the side. I lifted dozens and dozens of the cancerous giants into the air.

My comms were abuzz with managers. Between everything, I had forgotten to hand it off. But Melody had her own comm to use to help Angelina communicate with the other managers.

“Is THAT VOID?!” Victor screamed.

“No way. I saw the reports, but that’s…” another manager spoke.

“That’s fucking unbelievable. He just picked up all of them.” Victor breathed in disbelief. “I hear he’s a guy. What do you think his power is?”

I chuckled. “Keep comms clear. He’s doing some of our work for us, but we need to stay vigilant.”

Though their words were amusing, I needed to focus. While I could hold the cancerous giants up, it was taking some coordination.

Pulling them all in, I brought all of them together over the prison, grinding them all together into one gigantic pile of bloody mush.

I canceled all vibrations on the communicator. I couldn’t have my words echo through it or I’d give myself away.

I amplified my voice to make it carry. “Cease your destruction of the city. This is your one warning.”

As I finished, I let go of the mass of crushed giants, causing a tidal wave of human goo to crash down on top of the prison.

I had a feeling Emma would not be pleased with me for that one. Cats did not like to get wet.

Letting my comms work again, I found it was eerily quiet. I wondered if it had shorted out before one manager spoke.

“How can someone so strong exist?”

“Better question is why isn’t he ruling the nine cities?” Victor was whispering, as if he was afraid Void would hear him.

And little did he know, I actually could.

Taking satisfaction in listening to them, I smiled and waited for the villain’s response.

And it didn’t take long. It came as expected in a barrage of ice, fire, and rubble from the prison, as lightning struck down from the sky above.

To any other hero, the combined hits would be a death sentence, but I had completely isolated myself from the world with a powerful barrier that redirected everything.

The barrage of powers hit me like bugs on a windshield.

I stared down at the prison, unsurprised that they weren’t willing to give up their chance at freedom. They’d been selected for their hatred of authority and desire to be free.

A few moments later, the attacks stopped. They seemed to be waiting to see if I was dead. Not giving them time to assess, I targeted a few dozen standing on the roof, where most of the attacks had formed. I smashed each one of them into paste. I had no time or need for subtlety.

Throwing a shell down over the prison, I prepared to go down and continue removing the threat.

As I moved, I pulled up short. A source of ki so potent it was like a second sun had come over the horizon. The only thing I’d felt before that matched it, was a titan, but this wasn’t a titan.

It was a woman.

Her hair floated weightlessly around her as streamers of purple cloth hung off her, dancing in the wind. The rest of her suit was purple as well, with a cowl made of feathers around her shoulders.

“Void,” She stated. Her voice seemed to jump the distance between us.

I isolated my comms again and scowled. “And who might you be?” I asked.

As she got closer, her beauty became clear. Her blond hair and wide blue eyes made her look like a doll, only dressed up for evil.

“They called me Cerberus, but I have always disliked that name. I choose to be called Daeva by those I consider friends.” She held out a hand to me, as if I was on her side.

“I’m a friend now?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Looking at her power, I saw something I could hardly believe. She had three powers, all of which were blazing brightly.

The smile stayed on her face, even with my question. “Like me, you are a rejected deity. One scorned from the world by those who cling to power. Those politicians knew what they were doing when they declared you the villain of the Fortress Incident. They were rejecting the birth of a deity.”

“You’re serious,” I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my tone. “You think you are goddess?”

“No. I’m a being that has enough power to rule over vast swaths of this world. I think that makes me a deity, but more akin to the pantheons of gods that people believed in long ago. Greek, Norse, Egyptian. Pantheons of people with such power they were worshiped for favors.”

“I’m not sure how that makes us friends,” I replied, continuing to scope her power, trying to figure out how she had three.

But Daeva smiled. “I should thank you. It is because of you that I was even created. Meeting you has been a goal of mine for a long time. Seeing you come forward when Libertech’s pet titan got loose, gave me an idea. I tweaked my initial plans with the hope that I could get what I wanted, and meet you.”

I was glad that she couldn’t see my eyes, because her words surprised me. Thoughts started swirling in my head, trying to figure out how her creation could be tied to the Fortress incident.

But her obsession with me was clear. She’d hoped to meet me during this event.

I reached out, wrapping her in a kinetic cage. I didn’t want her to get away before we had time to chat.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” I relaxed. “You know so much about me, but I know so little about you.”

Daeva smiled brightly and nodded. “I was experimented on after the Fortress Incident. I was raised in a genetic lab, funded by the military.”

She shifted slightly, hitting the barrier around her, and frowning at it. She stuck her finger out, poking it and confirming it was there before shoving her arms into it, shattering the barrier.

I froze for just a moment, before I tried to keep the conversation going. “That project was scrapped,” I replied, recalling the conversation with Kim and Pratt. “I can’t imagine you just walked away.”

“You know more than you are leading on,” She squinted, as if trying to see through the cloak of midnight I had wrapped around me. “But that’s okay. I’m sure you must have found some way to lead the city with the sheer amount of power you contain. You probably just didn’t want the limelight.” She giggled to herself with a  joke I didn’t understand.

“I want to offer you another option, though. Come with me.” She held out her hand again.

“To where?” I tried to gather more information.

“To my city, of course,” She gave me another brimming smile.

I frowned, running through the list of cities I knew about. If one was being run by her, I felt like it would have come up at some point. “Which city?”

“New Haven.”

That made me pause; there was no city named New Haven. I went to speak, but she interrupted me.

“You haven’t heard of it. It’s new. Built in the wilds. With my strength, I can do that, keep everything away. Though, The Pipers recordings also do wonders for drawing monsters away.”

Everything was starting to click. The speakers that had drawn the monsters to the city were also linked to her. It was all interwoven.

“Why not just come and smash the city yourself, if you have such an issue with it?”

Daeva shrugged. “How could I prove them wrong if they were dead? The leaders of the nine cities will bend to me when I offer solutions to everything. New Haven is a wonderful place. Come with me; we’ll bring all these new supers into place below us, and I’ll introduce all of you to New Haven at the same time.”

“You’re taking the villains?”

She giggled, shaking her head as her blond hair bounced. “No. I’m taking the people whose powers were too strong for society as it stands today. Rules were built up around those with dangerous powers, meant to keep them held down just because others were intimidated. It’s a broken system. I’ve fixed it with New Haven. There you’ll be rewarded for having large, dangerous powers.”

As she looked back at me, I realized she truly believed her words. She meant to reform the world, by putting those with the most power on top. Whatever the government had done to her in that lab, she had formed a new view on society. One that she was determined to achieve.

“I’m sorry. I can’t just let you take them all,” I replied.

Daeva smiled and raised her hand into a fist.

The rubble below lifted into the sky, exposing some villains underneath. The shape of it was the exact same as her fist, only thousands of times larger, the near skyscraper sized chunk of land boomed breaking the sound barrier.

I reacted the only way I knew how. Summoning a bead of destruction, I packed every kind of energy I could into it and blasted the fist.

The dark beam of multifaceted energy swallowed the fist made of rubble, disintegrating it.

But the flutter of purple cloth in the corner of my eye made me turn.

Daeva’s fist came at me hard enough to shatter cities. Her frown showed her displeasure at my move.

I wrapped myself in kinetic energy and struck back as her hit moved towards me.

Our fists collided, and the world around us exploded with a shockwave collapsing nearby buildings.

I cursed. I needed to end this. With a wave of my hand, I banished her power.

Daeva faltered for just a second before her powers came right back. She paused, considering me more seriously. “I knew it. You are something special.”

Shooting up into the air, I tried to get to an altitude that would prevent us from wrecking the city.

Daeva matched my speed, flying next to me with excitement in her eyes. “I knew you were my equal. Don’t run from me- join me.”

Taking a risk, I told her the truth. “I’m trying to not destroy the city with our fight, but I’ll fight you higher up in the sky.”

I kept flying higher, taking her above the clouds before I turned towards her.

Daeva’s eyes were filled with excitement. She likely had very few peers out in the world to fight, and the world she was envisioning ran on power. I was a shiny new toy to her. “Fight me with everything you have, Void.”

I kept a suit of kinetic energy around for my own protection and to enhance my physical abilities. It was clear Daeva had the strength to match even Fortress.

Given that she had three powers, she likely was as strong as Fortress, yet she two additional powers on top of that.

My mind swirled with the implications. Until now, I I had assumed another one of her powers was telekinesis in some form, but I wasn’t sure about the third.

This was the first time since Fortress I’d gone into a fight anxious about the outcome. I also felt a slight rush, likely similar to what she’d been feeling. I’d never gone up against a true peer. This was going to be intense.

Daeva had the power to fight me.

“You shouldn’t hold back either. I wouldn’t want you to regret anything,” I replied.

Her eyes shined. “I knew it. You’re like me. Too strong, to the point that only something like this can really get your heart pumping.”

She paused, staring down at her chest. Then her smile broadened as she looked up at me, batting her lashes. “My heart is beating so quickly. Blood is rushing around my body, and I feel flushed. Is this love?”

I would have discounted the seriousness of her statement, if she hadn’t said it with such sincerity.

“What the—" I replied, but she threw her hand forward.

I couldn’t feel the energy behind her telekinesis, but I felt the air part as a massive force flung itself at me.

I gathered my own power and hurled it in response.

Our powers collided in an explosion that parted the clouds and blasted the clouds and the air away, creating a vacuum.

The vacuum pulled us closer, our arms thrown back.

We clashed again in a thunderous strike that seemed powerful enough to shake the heavens.

I was smiling, I couldn’t help it. And Daeva was smiling in return.

“Again!” she screamed over the noise and raised her fist, moving to slam it down on me.

We connected once again, and a booming soundwave spread across the sky, emanating from us as she backed up to come at me once more.