It is terribly difficult for me to not look off in the direction where Amelia is exploring.

  Though hearing her random chatter through the coms is definitely helping me not go off and follow her. Though I don’t know what she means about the rush of the wind whipping by her?

  “I thought you said you weren’t up to flying yet?” I interject, stopping on a nearby rooftop as I try to reorient my mental map so I can continue going in the correct direction. One day I’m going to actually memorize the city so I won’t get lost.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to face plant any more than I have to while I’m playing with my new toys.” Amelia agrees; her enthusiasm infectious. “But propelling my snowboard at high speed down the empty streets? That’s way easier.”

  “Just don’t hit any cars.” I laugh as I jump off the roof, aiming to land on a patch of grass to soften the landing.

  “I’m not going to hit any cars.” Amelia denies. “I’m just doing classic superhero patrol at the moment. What could be easier than this?”

  “Flying, apparently.”

  “I don’t want any lip from you since you also don’t know how to fly.”

  “Is this what it’s going to be like every time I check in on the coms now?” Asher asks, his voice breaking through the banter.

  “No, sometimes I will be significantly worse.” Amelia laughs. “Do you think I’m going to fight someone today so we can really test the armor or am I just going to be on patrol?”

  “I don’t really fight people that often on the nights I go out, not even half the time,” I point out as I run.

  “Yeah, well, maybe the supervillains in the lab decided to start selling criminals out there, and I’m going to get to fight lots and lots and become famous,” Amelia disagrees.

  “Alias, by any chance, do you have something wooden near you?” Asher asks quietly.

  “Nope, everything looks to be stone and metal here.” I reply mournfully. “Unless you want me to go up and knock on someone’s door.”

  “Nah, don’t do that. Guess we’re just going to hope we’re not cursed after that,” Asher waves off, giving up on having a good method to defeat the curse Amelia is trying to drop upon us.

  “Buzz off, guys. It’s not like something like that is actually going to happen. If the universe was out to get us, we would have had something happen by now,” Amelia says.

  “Are you close to the address I sent you?” Asher asks, turning his attention back towards me.

  “Yeah, I’m close. I got a little bit turned around, but I think I’m heading the right way,” I respond, climbing up another building.

  “Alright, update me when you’re there.”

  One quick running montage later, and with a strong wish that I could have some kind of actual movement power like true super speed or teleportation, I’m perched on top of a neighboring warehouse looking at my target.

  “I have eyes on it.” I relay as soon as there’s a break in the conversation. “Trying to see if there’s anything odd before I go in.”

  “I’m beginning to get bored; all of the news articles and videos make it look like being superheroes is nothing but big explosions and dramatically saving damsels in distress.” Amelia complains. “There’s not even little kids to gawk at me and point at their parents saying hey look, there’s a real hero.”

  “That’s just a habit of Jason being nocturnal.” Asher points out. “We can do stuff during the day for you?”

  “No, I’m the nocturnal one; he's the one who goes to bed before midnight and gets up early in the morning,” Amelia disagrees.

  I tune them out as I push my awareness out, canvassing a wide area in my perception, giving me a little bit of a look everywhere.

  Between my eyes and this hopefully, I can figure out just what is going on.

  The warehouse at a glance doesn’t look? particularly notable. It’s a little bit nicer in appearance than the ones I see down the way a bit, but what is that supposed to indicate?

  On the ground floor, there isn’t even that much for me to note either. The lower floors are what ?give me pause.

  Mostly because I don’t think I should be feeling a vast underground complex beneath me, but maybe that’s the new trend everyone gets an underground base of doom.

  “There’s definitely something odd.” I relay scaling down the wall and stalking towards the building. “Not feeling any movement, but I’m moving in.”

  “Are you going to go dark?” Asher asks, the sounds of keys hitting the keyboard echoing through his mic.

  “Why does he get the power to go dark and not have a conversation with us while you and I are stuck doing it the old fashion way of just hanging up on people?” Amelia complains with a harrumph. “It seems like blatant power favoritism to me.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of it. There’s nothing moving, and I’m not the most fragile.” I say finally, both feet firmly planted on the normal ground.

  “Whatever you do, please actually give a warning if you mysteriously vanish in the wind.” Amelia pleads. “Just yeah, please don’t.”

  “What Fractal said. If you have to fight or start using your powers, please warn us; otherwise, we have to figure out how to do an impromptu rescue,” Asher says also on the side of me warning everyone what’s going on.

  It’s not as if that requirement bothers me. “Of course I’ll keep you both in the loop, promise. Just might not talk too much if the atmosphere makes me quiet.”

  “So why don’t I get to do stealth missions?” Amelia asks, changing the subject.

  “Because you’re a seven foot tall Valkyrie covered in ice at the moment and about as subtle as a battering ram?” Asher supplies.

  “Oh yeah, that’s a good point.” Amelia agrees. “Do you guys hear that?”

  At that question, I tilt my head to the side and phase my helmet to see if I can hear anything, but beyond the normal sounds of the city at night, I don’t hear anything.

  “No, I don’t,” I admit once the helmet is back to normal.

  “Well, yeah, aren’t you off in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Fractal, I don’t physically hear anything, but from what I can tell, a fire alarm went off in an apartment complex near you; could be the firetrucks heading over,” Asher relays.

  “Miracle, give me directions, stat! A fire is no match for me,” Amelia says as I imagine her rocketing off into danger.

  “Did you just say stat?”

  “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to tell someone to give me something stat.”

  “Whatever powers your magical snowboard, I guess,” Asher chuckles as he begins relaying instructions to Amelia as the two of them bounce ideas off of each other on how to best stop the fire.

  Mentally tuning out of the conversation, I enter the warehouse and faff about before giving up on the idea of finding any conveniently placed light switches as there don’t seem to be any available to me.

  With not being able to see in pitch dark and not wanting to use my own lights on the off chance it’ll be discovered, I roll back my mental awareness till it’s going about thirty feet in any direction from me.

  Hopefully, nobody is going to have the combination of: night vision, a ranged attack, and a propensity to hit me.

  Any combination of those three, I could probably manage, though night vision would be the most irritating. But meeting someone with all three would be incredibly irksome.

  Slowly I go up and down the warehouse, making sure that I don’t miss anything on the ground floor. Just because from a general check I didn’t feel anything of note doesn’t mean that it’s not going to actually be there now that I’m looking closely.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Upon being thoroughly convinced that there’s nothing here, I finally take the chance and start moving down.

  I tune back in to check and see how Amelia’s doing, and it sounds like she’s comforting people as she puts out the fire, so everything is going all right over there.

  “I’m going downstairs, so I am going to be phased at least for a little during the initial scouting,” I whisper before letting my power activate.

  The more I get used to having powers, the more I realize that I have exactly zero interest in using stairs for things anymore. It’s so much easier for me to just fall through something and arrive at the floor I want.

  Once my full body is clear of obstruction, I return to a solid state, touching down not particularly lightly.

  My mind boggles at just how much space there is between the two floors. While I can feel the ceiling, I can’t feel the surface of the main floor. It's too far for me to detect.

  “Miracle, can you hear me still?” I ask, not wanting to get randomly cut off.

  “Uh yeah I can, is something wrong?” He asks, confused.

  “No, it was just farther than I thought, dropping down to the next floor.” I say, trying to shake the odd sensation.

  “Odd enough that you think super powers were involved with the structure?” Amelia asks, sounding excited at the idea of finding some kind of super-made compound.

  “Uh, probably?” I say, pulling out a flashlight and turning on the light, bathing a small cylinder in fluorescent light.

  The fact that the first bit of room that the light reveals looks like what I’m thinking is dried blood is less than ideal.

  “There was a fight here.” I mumble to myself as I wave the light around. Why there’s a bunch of closets around is beyond me, but the bloodstains are more than a little bit concerning.

  Not every closet has a stained floor, but a few of them do, as if someone exploded in the closets.

  Checking the floor and the walls, it looks like whatever did pop like a red-colored water balloon wasn’t that high up; none of the dried liquid on the wall goes higher than my knee.

  And when I check the other closets, it’s more of the same.

  Methodically, I continue to check, going from spot to spot, going faster, checking even the ones without the obvious bloodstains.

  As the visual stimulus changes and rapidly increases, the rest of my senses catch up with me.

  The blood pounds in my ears as I run around checking everything, looking for any sign of what actually happened.

  This place smells like rot and decay.

  I don’t know if the fact that there’s nobody here and there are no remains is better or worse for how I’m taking it.

  It just feels like there’s supposed to be something here that I can work with. There’s gotta be something that I can find.

  However, no matter how much I look, there’s nothing to be revealed.

  “Jason, are you okay?” Amelia practically shouts, breaking me out of my obsession of having to find something.

  “I…” I take a deep breath, the air filling my lungs. Just the simple act of breathing helps me focus. “Lots of people died here. But I’m not finding any bodies.” I explain with a whisper.

  “Are you okay do you want me to come over? I can be there in a little bit. I’m done with the fire, so I don’t have to stay,” Amelia says her words tumbling over themselves.

  Leaning against the wall, I click off the flashlight just so that I can be in the darkness of my own mind.

  Sure, I can still feel everything to some degree, but I can’t see the blood, and if I breathe shallowly, I won’t have to smell it.

  “I’m okay. Used to all this stuff old hat, you know?” I joke, forcing false but hopefully cheer into my voice. “Just forgot to relay information to you all.” I lie.

  “I don’t particularly believe you, but if you’re going to say that, I’m going to tentatively believe you,” Amelia says.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m in the clear here, so I don’t have to worry about it and can focus on doing whatever I have to tonight.

  “You and I are going to have words about this when we get home and after B is asleep so we can have this conversation in private though,” Amelia tacks on right as the relief has finally finished settling into my bones.

  “Fractal, there’s a lot of police radios moving westward could you go take a look at it?” Asher asks either coming to my rescue or there actually is some kind of disaster going on that is coming to my will for a different reason.

  My head jerks to the side as I feel something enter my mental range. There shouldn’t be anything near me.

  Something is slowly moving into my range, and it feels like an oddly textured wall.

  The decision on whether or not I want to turn the light on to figure out what is going on or just move around and get a better idea of what is going on with the mind.

  The light blares back to life, and I swing it over in the direction of where I feel the wall moving towards me.

  On the bright side, I find the bodies that were missing, or at least that’s what I have to think the giant oozing monster is.

  It reminds me of some of the horrifying fan art I’ve seen of stuff like flesh golems. It’s like the things very existence is made of the random scraps of whatever could be found in this place. Though golem might be a bit of a stretch, it’s not as if the thing is humanoid looking at all.

  Closer to a giant blob-shaped thing that has a bunch of pseudopod tentacle things that have wicked bone spikes.

  Quietly, I edge away from the blob horror, hoping it’s not going to come for me.

  That lasts ?until a warbling cry, and it speeds up, racing towards me.

  Dropping the flashlight, I charge towards the thing, fists raised. No idea if it’s sentient or not, but I generally doubt that giant flesh monsters should be released into the general populace. If it’s being controlled, I’ll rip out the device.

  If it’s just a mass of instincts of uncontrolled power, hopefully I can take them out before they hurt anyone.

  My fist sinks into the blobby mass all the way up to my elbow before coming to a stop.

  Bracing my feet against the beast, I pull back, trying to free my arm via brute strength.

  When the geyser of who knows what liquid blasts me back, I phase as I pass through walls, more than happy to leave mysterious liquids of who knows what behind me.

  I let myself go solid as I slam into the last wall, not wanting to get stuck going who knows where and starting a cycle of falling.

  “That sounded like it hurt a bit,” Amelia says, and it takes me a second to realize she must be referring to whatever sound made through the mic when I crashed into a wall at not irrelevant speed.

  “Anyway, whatever is happening to you aside, do you have any ideas on how I’m supposed to fight someone who’s like animating their tattoos or something beyond just I don’t know hitting them over and over again?” She asks.

  I blame Amelia for saying something about exciting times. I do not want to live in them.

  “A bit busy, Fractal.” I cough, pushing myself out of the rubble. “Best of luck with all that stuff you two are doing fighting now.” I rasp, locking my mind on my target.

  Amelia and Asher say something to me, but I don’t hear them as I dart forward, letting my power saturate my body.

  I hold back just enough that I don’t start to phase. Gotta distract this thing, right? It’s big enough that they’re already in my detection range, lumbering after me. How they know I’m here despite my vanishing through the wall instead of splattering is a wonder.

  Oh, it could've heard me crash into the final wall. I suppose that would have been more than enough to alert me.

  My second idea is a lot scarier.

  As I run around in a wide circle doing my best to keep quiet, I realize pretty quickly that it is in fact still following me somehow, and since whatever liquid it blasted off is gone, it must have some kind of detection ability like I do.

  If the thing is made of the scrap parts of all the remains that should be here, maybe it can just detect human enough biomass?

  Guess at least to this blobby thing I’m still human.

  It’s also detecting me while I’m still phased at least, I think so. Which is weird, but maybe supernatural powers don’t always just beat each other, though that does come with the question of if it can find me while I’m phased, does that mean it can hurt me?

  Now in a more open area, I focus my mind on testing the internals of this blobby thing. If I can find a vital part of some kind, it could be a lot easier for me to hurt the damn thing.

  It’s odd. Despite visibly being one solid mass from what I saw when I look at it like this, there are so many seams.

  Oh, shit, that’s going to be really gross if I fight it the way it’s meant to be fought, isn’t it? “Asher, have someone ?sent over to look over the place that isn’t us and warn them I might have a superhuman for them to detain.” I relay as I vault over one clumsy swing before going with a simple jab.

  This time at least there was no explosion of goo, just me not doing anything.

  Now that I’m looking at it though, as the body warps from the force of my punch, I can make out the seams with just my eyes.

  Avoiding another slam, I place a hand on the monster, exerting my power over it, and phasing one chunk that I can feel all the seams for.

  There’s a hint of resistance. Not as if I’m approaching my weight limit but that there’s something trying to resist me ever so slightly.

  Regardless the chunk of flesh and muscle sloughs off the monster.

  I dance backwards in case it’ll do that weird goop attack and to see if it does anything in response.

  And then one tentacle grabs it and places it back the body, stitching back together as if whatever I just did to it never happened.

  Battle of endurance? I can do that. I’ve phased multiple objects at once tons of times. Just got to see how many bites at the apple I need till I get to the core.

  On an apple that is healing. And is trying to bite me back. And because it’s being phased at least chunks of it will be able to hit me.

  I make the best decisions.

  With a surge of power, I land on ?top of the beast and begin phasing chunks as I tear my way downwards. With both feet and a hand to stabilize me, it’s slow going, but being able to throw the chunks any which way is more than worth it.

  As I begin sinking into whatever weird juices and mass that makes up this monster, I begin to see more with it being less cluttered, and what I’m finding makes me really glad I haven’t eaten today.

  There’s some kind of shriveled-up creature in the center, curled up in a ball writhing within its cocoon of a monster.

  Once I’m close enough, I reach a hand through the monster wrapping it around the emaciated arm of the tiny thing and rip it out holding it high up in the air so that it won’t be in contact with any of the pieces of who knows what it had been using to power itself.

  The creator shrieks and writhes, trying to break out of my grip and grab the pieces of flesh, but I hold it steady as I make my way upstairs.

  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened.

  As I’m walking up the stairs, my prisoner in hand, I feel something enter my range that I easily recognize.

  “Fractal, what are you doing here?” I ask with a sigh as I step out of the warehouse.

  The ice armor looks at me, and I can imagine the smirk easily enough. “Well, I was looking for damsels in distress and thought that I might find one here.”

  Discord

  Patreon