Chương 36: Stand And Bang

I only knew Jairo for a week. There was no bond between us. But he didn't deserve to die. So why was he the one impaled? If I acted now, maybe that wizard lady who healed me and Chris could heal him. I had no way of knowing. I did know one thing, though: No one else was going to get to him in time. Just me. And God damn it, I wanted the payback for myself. Had to get there fast. The last time I tried kicking off of dirt, it didn't work. But I had the stage scaffolding right there.

I wasn't the most graceful, but I had to act. Hopping onto the stage again, I brought both legs into a crouch, before extending with every ounce of force in me. I didn't know I could move this fast. The landscape flew by me, and that robotic cunt was already in arm's reach. My arms struggled to reach in front of me in an attempt to tackle him.

There was an underestimation of how much force I was putting in, as I simply blasted through the machine, and a mid-air rotation caused me to slam into the ground, carving a divot through it as it slowed my fall. Pushing back onto my feet, I could see the upper half of the thing just floating in the air. I took out his legs, but those were already piling themselves back together. Across from him was Jairo. The best thing I saw was that he wasn't fully impaled. Just his right side, gouged out.

Too much for him, but he had much better odds of surviving that. But not alone. I grabbed a loose piece of scrap from the robotic demon's legs and hurled at him as I sprinted. The little piece of metal was reduced to yellowy ashes again by those beams. He fired another. Some measure of instinct in me gave me that half inch of movement to avoid the worst of it, but I felt hairs singe. If I were even a second slower, I'd be dead. He could kill me. This was a villain that was entirely capable of killing me.

And with what it did to Jairo, the fucker was willing. My hand reached out for the extended arm that shot the beam, crumpling it into his torso. Another arm shot out from the same torso, striking me in the stomach. There was that buzzing in my legs again, but this time it seemed to linger in a far more unpleasant fashion. Like it was ringing around inside me, pounding off of my organs. It hurt. Blunt force that hurt me. How? I didn't have time to think about it as that same limb snapped out towards my face.

The memory of Tancred pulling the same move, and Chris pulling a similar move on that ADU goon, struck my mind. They fed those same instincts in me to grab the arm, yanking it free and swinging it into his side. Jairo seemed to have recovered from the pain at that point to shove the self-alleged "technofiend" off of him, forcing us into a triangular position. He faced the two of us. I looked towards Jairo." Run!" I shouted out, full chest voice.

"No!" The swarm of hornets in him were loud. They were tensed together to the point I could understand him.

"Wanted a strong fight! My whole life!" Those words rang out in me. For me, it was a justification for my strength.

"Trained for it!" For him, it was his calling.

"This bug took it from me!" The hornets strained to get past a fourth word, but Jairo was trying. His life ended with his powers too.

"Getting it back!" There was some kind of pride in me. He was bleeding out his insides, but his body was coiled into that boxing stance I saw before. Fists up close to his face. Even through that helmet, I could feel his gaze set on the villain.

"With! Him!" The buzzing of the hornets combined from a chorus into what almost sounded like a roar. That was the monster in him. The predator found prey." OH, THE ARROGANCE OF BEASTS! ALLOW I, TECHNOFIEND, TO FINISH YOUR EUTHANIZATION!" The technofiend's body was already put back together. Its wings were gone. In its place, two pairs of arms. It approached, slowly, arms spread to welcome a fight.

"He heals from everything we do!" I warned Jairo.

"Hit faster! Than healing!" He croaked out.

"You sure!?"" HERCULES!" He roared out, practically making the ground shake before me." STAND!"" AND!"" BANG!" This kid was younger than me by a year. He acted like he was five years younger every time I interacted with him. And here he was, calling me the fuck out like I was the brat. I felt my heart beat like thunder. Turning to face the machine, I took that bladed stance I'd been practicing. It fit me like a glove.

The machine approached, and between the three of us, for about thirty seconds, That land was Armageddon. Jairo's hands moved like lightning, every time I thought I saw one punch thrown, there were upwards of four dents knocked into the machine's chassis. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it The technofiend's lower two arms were dedicated entirely to moving our punches out of the way, and it failed to keep up with the hailstorm of strikes Jairo was sending out.

My own strikes were far slower, but I could see entire chunks of him being taken out with every blow. I'd never had to throw so many punches before. They were sloppy, they were being pushed around. But every blow was taking more and more of him. He wasn't taking it standing, however. Those other four arms were dedicated to hurting us. Punches, slaps, trying to jam his fingers into us for another impale. Seems whatever he pulled on Jairo the first time was just a lucky dirty trick.

This time, we were aware of what he could do, and were barely avoiding exposing our insides. But the punches still hurt like a bastard. He figured out how to ring my bell. No one else could. Sledgehammers, bats, a fucking hydraulic press, nothing could press on me. But this guy was punching hard enough for me to feel it. Was it a power? Was he just hitting hard enough? I just wasn't sure.

All I could do was tense up when I felt a hit coming, and that softened the blow a little, but at one point or another, in an exchange of blows like this, you just had to admit the truth. The hits weren't stopping until he was on the ground. I gave up on the bracing. Every hit struck through me. I felt my lungs swell and tense. Things inside me cracked. It was purely tactile. Physical sensation. There was not a single drop of pain among it. I was forgetting how pain felt.

I didn't even know how long we had been going at this point. My hands were almost numb, the only sensations they noticed through the gloves were impacts against metal, and the feeling of metal flooding over them. The answer was too long. The air had fully evacuated my body. All that was left was this fire inside me that burned like I was some kind of engine. But it kept me going. No matter how raw my lungs felt, I could breathe through it. No matter how raw my throat was, I could keep going. Raw throat.

Why was it raw? Oh. I had been screaming this whole time. Just a wild yowl, more noise than I'd ever put out in my entire life. It came in sheer instinct. I just felt I was doing it, I couldn't hear anything at this point. Whatever senses were shut off by blocking the pain out included sound. The quiet of all of this would have been haunting if I were in my right mind for any of it. I could feel the flooding of metal across my hands slowing. Something about this was good. I couldn't remember why anymore.

I was shitting on two super... heroes? for a sloppy fight. Something along those lines, I think. But exchanging blows like this? Getting hit hard enough to hurt? Hitting something with everything you got and getting a chance to follow up? The truth was this: It was like a drug to me. I felt high on the ability to strike like lightning upon the threat in front of me. Amazing was the only way to describe it. I fully understood them now.

And I understood why if just this felt good to me, any villain who was even an ounce like me was a threat. Whatever a villain was. So I took that joy, I let that fuel me. My vision started to return to me at some point, I don't know when it left, but someone standing next to me and I were tearing some thing in front of us apart. Three of the six arms that thing had formed were gone. His torso was a mostly skeletal frame. His lower "jaw" was hanging off loosely.

Me and whoever this was were ripping this thing apart faster than it could fix itself. I couldn't remember what it was. It didn't matter. Everything in my head had been dedicated to one thing and one thing only: Break it until it can't be put back together. The tension in my throat stopped. I think the screaming I might have been doing was over. Likely destroyed my voice. Didn't matter. I'll go mute if it meant this thing was gone. No, wait, there it was again. One last yell.

Me and whatever was standing next to me screamed and roared something as our fists collided with the thing in a final blow, sending its upper half flying off of its lower half, going an easy twenty... whatever the things were away from us, splayed out. The legs in front of us limply fell down. Then it all came flooding back to me. Sight. More than just shapes. I remembered what colors were as they showed up in front of me again. The green grass, the black and silver and red of this machine.

The blue sky with its grey clouds. Smell. Ozone, blood, and the greatest aroma of all: Fresh, cold air shooting right down your lungs. A direct injection of life that woke me up from the daze. Sensation. My throat burned like I swallowed lava. My hands rang and buzzed. My insides felt like they were melted. If I moved my legs at all they'd fall out from under me. My eyes felt as though they were full of needles. Sound. A constant ringing in my ear. The chirping and whirring of that thing's body. The sound of...

cheering. People yelling and whistling and shouting and crying. Some voices I recognized, I think. Sentiment. Things returned to their place. I was Leo Holt. They were calling me Hercules. I was fighting next to Jairo, who called himself Teiú. We were fighting some thing called Technofiend, that nearly killed him. We were something called superheroes, fighting a supervillain. And we won. But that memory led my eyes over to Jairo, who was sprawled out on the ground, blood pouring from his side.

My gaze wandered up, as I saw two other familiar faces. May, calling herself Spectroma, and Christian, calling himself Flowstate. Christian rushed up to me, holding me on my feet as May dropped to Jairo's side. The open wound on Jairo's lower right torso was starting to darken in spots as she seemed to focus heat into it. Cheap cauterizing of the wound. Smart. I felt like a box of fine china that was thrown down the stairs. I couldn't find words.

My sense of language returned to me as I started to understand voices again.

"-tay on your feet, Herc, come on!" Easier said than done. I couldn't even bend my knees, because I knew if I did they'd buckle and I'd be kissing grass. Wait, no I wouldn't. My mask is still on. It took all of that. What the fuck did it get made out of? Oh yeah. Doctor Way made it. No, Dr. Way. She didn't like 'Doctor' for some weird reason. That's right. My head throbbed. Light was making it worse.

Even with the lenses in my mask working kind of like sunglasses, just being out in the sun was making a dull sensation expand like my skull was about to crack open. The fucking clown. That son of a bitch was here too. What happened to him?

"Where..." I wheezed out.

"... Clown?" A hand rested on the side of my head, before turning it to my left. There I saw another face I had forgotten. Agent Abichail Tancred. Piece of shit who got me here. He was walking with purpose, covered in shiny colorful paper and glittering material. Oh right, those clowns did that. In one hand, he was dragging a clown by its bright red hair. Its body was slack, but a labored raising and lowering of its chest told me that it was breathing. The agent spoke.

"I tell you all that I shouldn't even be coming out, and you know what I find in my trailer? A clown sneaking in trying to put fucking dynamite in it. Damn near killed the idiot until I realized it was a supervillain. How are our lunkheads?" May replied for the rest of us.

"I'm doing my best to cauterize Teiú's wounds, but I think his power doesn't really like the heat so it's not working well. We need a hospital and fast." Chris added on.

"Herc's standing, but I think he's flagging." Was doing more than flagging. Vision had only just come back to me, but it was already beginning to give out. And I just let go............... Light. Ceiling of a hospital. Same one was the last time. Two people in the room. Tancred, and the other auditor. Magic one. La-something. Tancred spoke first, smoking out of the magical auditor's pipe.

"You owe the government a lot of fucking money, bud," he sniped, taking a long drag. His other hand lobbed a water bottle into my lap, the cold of it waking me up.

"Drink your water and get your bearings. You're hopped up on enough painkillers to lobotomize an elephant." Sitting up, I quite frankly just ripped the cap of the water bottle off instead of twisting it free and sucked down the entire thing. The cold rejuvenated me. Muscles flared.

"Damn, wish I still had that vitality. I sound like bubblewrap when I get out of bed." I spoke, my voice hoarse and weak, like it was extending past its reach.

"How long has it...?"

"Four hours. With the drugs, plenty of rest time. Now come on, get up."

"Why?"

"Because you and the others have a press conference to do."