Chapter 1
I sensed him well before I could see him, but I knew he would show soon enough. When you're in my line of business, you grow eyes on the back of your head, and you learn to respect every random anxious feeling.
But this guy has the subtlety of an angered boar, and powers to match. Powers, yes, super powers. That's what I'm talking about.
No sooner had I come outside to the balcony of my Malibu home to take in the sunset and down a cold beer than the entire landscape changed, from the warm purple/orange of the end of a summer's day, to darkness, swept through by shadows, as a whole storm front moved in far too fast to be a natural occurrence. The slight breeze turned into a gale, and the clouds above coalesced into the outline of a wickedly grinning face, eyes illuminated with white-yellow lightning.
I dropped my beer and threw myself through the sliding glass door as the first crackle of lighting tore into the balcony, wood, glass and nails exploding me inward with the force. I was like a rag doll, floating through the air amidst a cloud of debris, hurled through a wall into the kitchen and coming to a rest atop the shattered remains of the center island.
The very air crackled electrostatically, and my lungs burned as every breath felt like a surge of energized air. I came to my feet and glanced over my shoulders through the wrecked wall at the wide chasm that lay beyond the smoldering balcony. I shook the glass and dust out of my face, and noticed the hairs of my arms standing on end as he gently flew in, carried aloft by his god-like powers, and after looking around, settled his stern gaze upon me.
I blinked my vision clear, but the world still had a bright white tinge. It illuminated him, like an angel as he touched down into the remains of my living room. He was tall and dark, wearing ridiculous blue and yellow tights. He calls himself Atmosphero. Yes, Atmosphero. My name is Dale, but I’m known as ...
“Blackjack,” he said “fancy meeting you here.”
I should have jumped out of the way, or maybe I did, but he was faster, and hurled his horrible powers at me, through the hole I had made in the wall, raw lightning crackling through my body. I screamed, overcome with rage, impotence and pain, watching him destroy the remnants of the wall in front of me, and shattering the entire kitchen around me. Light exploded in the back of my mind, and I thought bitterly of the sunset I enjoyed not a minute before.
The lightning lifted me off the ground, like an overgrown marionette, racking my body with spasm and contractions, like a thousand pulled muscles all at once. Then he hurled me across the room, into the dual steel refrigerators, destroying them and spilling their contents on my form as I fell to the floor. Caked in milk, juice and flour, I was momentarily out of sight, and that was the only chance I needed.
See, I have powers too, maybe even greater than that leather and spandex bastard that decided to ruin my evening.
He was out of sight, hidden by what remained of the wall between my living room and kitchen, but I could feel where he was, and imagined him strolling forward casually to finish me off.
I buried my dislike for the peacock and flung a huge piece of the shattered marble counter at him through the wall. It was effortless to me, like flinging a huge rectangular Frisbee. It tore through the kitchen entryway like a tank rolling downhill and I smiled, thinking I had him.
Hopping through the wide hole, I saw him standing there, unharmed, the marble countertop fragments floating in the air a few feet from him. His mocking smile dripped with disgust, as if he expected more of a challenge from me.
He flung the countertop back at me and I threw a punch that shattered it into a thousand tiny fragments. I rushed forward, but he took to the air, my hairs standing on end as he charged up again.
"Come down here, asshole," I roared. "And let me give you a proper welcome."
Atmosphero just ignored me, safely out of my grasp. He glanced around my shattered house.
“Damn man, that’s rough. I guess no subletting this one. I heard the walls in San Quentin are a bit sturdier, though.”
I rushed him, but he was quicker than me again. My fingertips almost latched onto his cape as he flipped over me and flung a powerful electrostatic charge of air that heaved me out of the house through the damaged balcony. I crashed through rock, brush and dirt, bouncing a half dozen times until I came to rest on the soft sands of Malibu beach a hundred feet below my home.
Bruised and battered, I came to my unsteady feet and looked up, expecting the next bolt of lightning to finish me off but Atmosphero just hovered over my home looking down at me. Maybe he was surprised I was still on my feet, or perhaps he was unsure what to do next when I motioned him down to join me, but he got an idea fast.
Summoning up his storm powers with a great cast of his hands, a tornado formed beneath my house, a great howl of wind and sand that lifted the structure, ripping it from its foundation and wooden struts and raising the whole thing into the air.
Then he hurled it at me.
It came so fast, a whole house hurling headlong at me, that I had no way to avoid it, nowhere to go. I could only let out a faint chuckle before the house crushed me. The sheer weight of the thousands of tons of concrete and masonry forced me down, collapsing atop me and burying me deep in the sand. But I lived, and started to dig myself out.
Atmosphero helped, noticing the movement in the wreckage. He lifted a whole wall section off me, casting it aside like a child in anger. Still stuck under some of the structure, I could see him floating above; feel his mighty wind powers lifting whole pieces of the house.
Above me lay the bent and twisted remains of the garage door, and when he flung it aside, I struck, hurling one of the destroyed refrigerators at him (how the fridge ended up in what was essentially my garage, I'll never know).
The heavy metal object struck his chest dead on, surprising him, and pinning him long enough for me to run over. I picked up the fridge, lifting it off him. Atmosphero was stunned, bloodied, and when his eyes settled on me, they were filled with a mixture of rage and fear.
"Hey asshole," I said, and slammed it down with my full strength back on his face, then lifted it up again. "Thanks for fucking up my house."
And I slammed it down on him once more, now shattering the wobbly aluminum and plastic frame.
Now it was my turn to rip through pieces of metal to get to him, and his turn to surprise me.
He cast what remained of the refrigerator aside, and raised his hand at me knocking me back a few paces with his wind powers then came to his feet. At the same time, he summoned a vortex of wind that spun just around us, whipping up shreds and pieces of the destroyed home like a wall of death pinning us in.
"Time for you to learn a valuable lesson," he spat and came towards me, slugging me with more strength than I had imagined he had. But this was what I wanted. A standup fight. A chance to put my hands on him, and end the fight once and for all. A valuable lesson, indeed.
Except my body didn't cooperate. I just stood there, semi-paralyzed, as he powered fist after fist into my face. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t focus my thoughts, could barely stand. My arms were heavy and the pain was intense. I merely staggered back, then down on to my knees, and received my punishment.
The rub is he’d get away with it because he is the hero and I am a scumbag villain.
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