Summus Proelium

“Oh, don’t you even think about it! Don’t you think about going after that star. That star is mine!”

Even as I blurted those words, my fingers worked frantically over the controller. I shot a quick glance toward Izzy, who sat beside me in the game room (the one that was directly across the hall from our bedrooms, not the main one with the billiards tables and all that). “All I need is one more and this game is over! You’re going down, Little Missy Izzy!” I declared confidently.

That confidence took a pretty big hit a second later as I sent my character around the corner in the virtual maze only for them to trip over a wire that had been strung up. My yelp in real life almost matched the sound of the star that popped out of the character’s flashing body from the impact.

“Thanks!” Izzy called, as her avatar popped out of hiding and grabbed the star. She hadn’t been going after the one I thought she had been after all. She’d simply made me think she was and laid a trap. A trap that I had blundered right into, instantly losing my advantage. Now she had two stars and only needed to find one more. Then she’d be the one who ended the match.

Quickly hitting the buttons to get my character back on her feet, I glanced toward the other girl once more. We were both wearing a pair of special glasses. They had come with the game. One pair was red, the other blue. The gimmick was that what the red glasses let you see on the screen was different from what the blue glasses let you see. The screen itself was divided into two halves and when I looked at the half that was Izzy’s side, all I saw was a static image of her character that showed her current amount of life, how many stars she had, and a few other details. When she looked at my side of the screen, she’d see the same for me. It let us play a split-screen game without either of us being able to cheat by watching what the other person was doing.

Unsurprisingly, I hadn’t really gotten that far with either of my goals earlier. Tomas said something about how his dad was apparently going to be holed up in meetings inside his home office for the next few days with a bunch of other people. Snooping around that place in the best of times wasn’t going to be easy. If his father had other probable bad guys around? Yeah, forget about it. He was probably dealing with the aftermath of letting Paige get away alive and intact with the information she stole.

Either way, going over there wasn’t going to work right now. And as far as Paige herself went, I hadn’t had any luck on that end either. She’d disappeared shortly after the last class, and I hadn’t been able to track her down as myself or as Paintball. She might’ve been at her house, but the place was almost as big as ours and just as protected (and I didn’t know where all the cameras were there like I did here). I’d waited around a bit, but never saw her. I was going to have to try again another day. And didn’t the idea of spending multiple days actively trying to spend time with Paige Banners just fill me with absolute joy and giddiness? No. No, it did not.

Anyway, the point was that I couldn’t do anything with either of those at the moment. And I’d needed a break. More importantly, Izzy needed someone to spend time with her. I already felt bad about leaving her alone in the house for so long. Not alone. Worse, leaving her in a house that I knew for a fact was full of evil, evil people who were fine with killing innocent teenagers.

Yes, despite our many issues, I was still counting Paige as innocent. I didn’t know everything that was going on there, but I had no reason to think she was actually evil. A mean bitch who went out of her way to mock and insult me, sure. Someone I would gladly punch in the face? Undoubtedly. But not someone who deserved to be shot in the head. There were levels of bad.

So I was here, playing a game with Izzy. And currently getting my butt kicked as I was unable to catch up with her before she managed to grab the last star. As I groaned and fell onto my back, she dropped the controller and cheered while pumping her hands into the air a few times. On the screen, we could finally see each other’s sides, as my own character slumped and shook her head, while hers jumped up and down with the three stars spinning around her triumphantly.

“Sounds like someone’s having fun in here.” That was my father’s voice as he stepped into the room and smiled down at the two of us. “How’re we doing, girls?” he asked, giving a brief glance toward the screen. “Ooh, this one. You should see the next game, it looks pretty good.”

Izzy’s head shook. “The next one isn’t gonna be out for another few months, Mr. Evans.”

With a wink, Dad replied, “You’d be surprised what’s ‘out’ when you invested in their start-up ten years ago. But you’re right, it’s not ready for the public. Too many glitches. Just saying, you’re definitely gonna love it.” He let those words trail off teasingly while reaching down to rub the top of my head affectionately, his fingers gently stroking through the side that had long hair.

A memory flashed through my mind, the memory of hearing Mr. Jackson on the phone telling my father that he would handle the situation with Paige by shooting her in the head. While I haven’t heard Dad’s side of the conversation, he obviously hadn’t objected. Plus, I’d heard him talk with Simon about killing ‘me.’ Or rather, the person who had witnessed those murders.

It took everything I had not to freeze up or show much visible reaction as the wave of revulsion swept through me. It was joined by a rush of confused feelings. How could my awesome dad be like that? How could he be okay with killing people? How could he be a supervillain? All of which was combined with my feelings about the fact that the man who had been my favorite superhero for so long was both my father and actually a villain, an evil psychopath. Damn it, why? Why?! That was the single word I wanted to scream at him in that moment. I wanted to demand that he explain himself and it took everything in me to stay outwardly calm.

Swallowing back that reaction, I took a breath before turning to look up at him. Somehow, I managed to keep my voice from shaking or cracking too much as I slowly held up the controller. “You want a chance to try to beat the champion over there? Maybe you’ll have more luck.”

“Oooh, wish I could,” Dad lamented with a shake of his head. “But I’ve got too much to do right now. Got a meeting to run to. Just wanted to make sure you guys were okay up here. All good?”

A meeting? What kind of meeting? Was he going out to see Mr. Jackson? Was this related to the fact that Tomas had said his dad was going to be busy for the next few days? Or was my father going out as Silversmith? Hell, I wouldn’t even be able to tell for sure if I saw that Silversmith had been out later, considering Dad clearly had a way of having someone else appear in his place. And how did he do that, anyway? How was he able to appear on the roof at that party that Pencil had interrupted both in his civilian guise and as Silversmith? Was the fake Silversmith just a body double who didn’t actually have any of his powers, or had some kind of tech to fake it, or did Dad somehow share his powers with the other person, or… or… what?

Yeah, I had no idea. Somehow, I managed to tell my father good luck and he dismissed himself a moment later, heading out of the room with an added promise that he would be back at some point to beat both of us at the game. He said he’d take both of us on, so we should practice.

After he was gone, Izzy looked at me with a slight frown. She’d taken the glasses off and there was concern in her eyes. “Cassie?” she started slowly. “Are you okay? You seem a little weird.”

Shit, right. My father hadn’t been able to see my face from his position behind me, but she had, and had clearly picked up something in the split second before I had gotten control of myself. Thankfully, I didn’t think she’d noticed too much. I’d kept it together for the most part.

“Sorry,” I replied, forcing myself to smile just a bit. “Maybe I’m just hungry. You wanna go grab a snack real quick? Then we’ll get right back up here and play another game. But I warn you, it might get pretty violent up in here, so you better be ready. Suddenly, I feel like I really–”

*****

“–need to punch something in the face!”

It was a few hours later, and I was out as Paintball. The words that blurted out of my mouth were accompanied by my actual fist slamming into the side of a man’s mouth as I threw myself away from the wall where I had been clinging, watching him and his partner corner some poor girl in the alley. They had just shoved her to the ground when I made my presence known.

Yeah, I couldn’t do anything about the Jacksons or Paige just yet. But I could still do some good for random people. Hopefully, that would take my mind off of… everything else. That was the idea, at least. And right now, it was working. Hitting a couple thugs who were trying to rob (and maybe do worse things to) some innocent woman? Yeah, I could definitely handle that.

Thanks to the purple paint boosting my strength, the guy I punched was knocked to the ground with a yelp. His buddy quickly raised the pistol in his hand that he had been threatening their victim with, but I used a shot of red paint to yank it from his hand and tossed it down the alley. He let out a cry and lunged my way with a wild swing. As he did so, I used green paint to speed myself up, ducking under his arm and stepping behind him, pivoting before using the last of the purple strength to lash out with a kick into his back that knocked him down on top of his friend.

Still sped up by the green paint, I moved quickly while the men were tangled up with each other. Producing a pair of normal handcuffs I’d picked up, I clicked one shut around the wrist of the man I had kicked to the ground, and the other around part of the nearby dumpster to trap him.

The first guy was scrambling on his hands and knees towards the gun that I had tossed away. With a sigh, I used blue paint to throw myself into a leap, turning over in the air to land on the ground between the man and the gun, facing him. “Tell you what, dude. Let’s play red light, green light. Red light!” With that, I shot two bits of red to his shoulders, yanking him off the ground and toward me. As he was pulled my way, I blurted, “Green light!” Then I dismissed the red paint while simultaneously speeding myself up once more with green paint so I could quickly dodge out of the way just before the man slammed face first into the wall behind me.

Before he could recover, I used another pair of handcuffs on him. This was a set of stay-down cuffs, so he definitely wouldn’t be going anywhere. He lay on the ground groaning and cursing.

“Hey,” I informed him, “just be glad our red light-green light game didn’t involve an actual car.”

Turning away from them both, I stepped over to where the girl was. She looked to be a few years older than me, probably in college. Her eyes were wide, her breath coming in deep, rapid gasps as she stared up at me while working her mouth repeatedly. No sound was coming out.

“It’s okay,” I promised, extending a hand to her. “Trust me, those guys aren’t going to hurt you.”

Tentatively, she took my offered hand, letting me help her to her feet. Still, it took her another moment to find her voice. “I–you…they…” The girl finally managed before giving a violent shudder. Then she was suddenly hugging me tightly. “Thanks. Thank you so much. Oh, my God. They were going to–they were–and you were–but they–” Her voice cracked again, and she was hugging me even tighter than before. “Oh God, if you weren’t here, y–you’re amazing!”

A deep blush spread out over my face and I hesitantly returned the hug. What else was I supposed to do? Even as a brief flash of guilt about the fact that I still couldn’t do anything about my evil family washed over me, I pushed it away firmly. This girl didn’t care about any of that stuff. All that mattered right now, in this moment, was that she was safe. That was enough.

Once the girl was calmed down as much as I could manage, I used the doephone app to let the authorities know where to pick these guys up and what had happened. Then I waited with her for another few minutes until the patrol car showed up. As soon as the cop stepped out and the girl (her name was Macy, apparently) ran up to him, I excused myself, using a shot of red paint to yank myself all the way up to the roof of the building we were next to.

Clambering up onto the roof, I spoke immediately. “So, how did I do? Good enough to pass?”

A guy in a military camouflage suit (black and brown), along with a ski mask and heavy-looking gauntlets stood a few feet away. It was the Minority guy, Whamline. He tilted his head a little at my words, before curiously asking, “So you knew I was up here watching the whole time?”

My head shook as I admitted, “Not the whole time. I saw you looking down back when I jumped over that guy partway through.” Idly gesturing over my shoulder, I added, “Figured you were getting ready to hand out my score. So, like I said, how’d I do? Did the Russian judge screw me over on points again? I swear he never gives out anything higher than a five, the stingy jerk.”

Snorting a bit at that, the Minority Touched replied, “Looked pretty good from up here. You definitely saved that girl. I’m just still a little confused about the whole good guy or bad guy thing. Like I said the other day, you’re all buddy buddy with a few villains, but you’re also helping people. Most Star-Touched aren’t palling around with the people who are hurting the city.”

Oh boy, would he ever have been surprised. Or maybe he wouldn’t be. Honestly, for all I knew, he was working with my father and trying to sniff out what I actually knew. There was just no way to tell right now. I definitely couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust anybody. Look at what happened with the whole Tomas situation. I had thought that his family was at least somewhat safe considering they’d been out of the city for so long, and it turned out that his father was one of my family’s top enforcers or agents or whatever. So yeah, confiding in Whamline (or anyone else) right now just wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t worth the risk.

So, I just shrugged at the boy. “I help people who need help,” I informed him. “Blackjack’s daughter needed help. That girl back there needed help. I wasn’t going to say that Blackjack’s kid could rot in hell just because of who her father is. There’ll be other chances to bring him in.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Whamline agreed. “But you’re still a little confusing. I don’t know what it is, I just feel like there’s a lot more to this whole situation that you’re not talking about. And something tells me that something is gonna end up exploding in a lot of our faces. Not saying I don’t like you, or that you’re bad… just… something’s dangerous about you. About all of this.”

What was I supposed to say to that? He wasn’t exactly wrong. There was a good chance that, even if he wasn’t knowingly working with my evil father, the whole situation would still end up going bad. It was just… too fragile. Someone was going to get hurt at some point.

In the end, all I could do was reply, “I have my reasons, my own issues. But those are my issues. The point is, I really do want to help people. That’s important, right?”

He nodded once. “Yeah, it’s definitely important. And that’s what bugs me. Because you’re just… you’re helping people. But every time I look at you, I just get this… feeling that–” Cutting himself off, he sighed out loud. “I’m sorry. Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m just paranoid. I’m glad you’re out here helping people. I’m glad you helped Blackjack’s daughter, no matter who her father is. I’ve seen a bit of what Rot-Bone can do, and it’s not–no one should go through it. So, good job, seriously. And thanks for helping Way before, at the hospital.”

I assured him that it wasn’t a big deal, but he disagreed. Thanking me again, while still being clear in his body language is that he thought there was more to me, the boy held his hand out. A glowing energy coil shot from it to a nearby billboard and he used it to swing himself over to the next building. From there, a second energy coil lashed out to catch the taller building beyond so the boy could swing himself out and around it. Then he was gone.

For a moment, I continued to stand there, watching after his departing form. A long, slow sigh escaped me, as my head shook. Right. As much as I might’ve wanted to explain everything to someone, I couldn’t. Certainly not him. I had to keep all this under control. And, for the moment, I had to distract myself.

Maybe I could find another bad guy who needed to be punched.