Chapter 15: 15: Helmet of Bronze

What was I gonna do? What was i gonna do? What was I gonna do? Shit. I stood in the center of my room in a cold sweat. My heart kept doing this thing where it would erratically pause for a beat, then hit me with a huge slam of a beat to make up for the missing one. Dimly, I was aware that I was shaking, and I could feel my breathing speeding up and slowing down randomly.

Moving without understanding at first, I rushed to my closet and grabbed a duffel bag I kept for the camping trips I had been forced to go on as a kid. I went straight to my dresser and started shoving things into it. My girl clothes went first, they were precious, and then anything that I could think might be useful.

I was running on some sort of panicked autopilot, not really thinking about an end game other than getting myself and the things I cared about to safety. Once the clothes were in the bag, I threw my shoes in, then turned and surveyed my room. Looking longingly at my desktop, I realised that I wouldn’t be able to take that. I felt a physical blow to my gut on this realisation. That thing had been my lifeline to happiness for so long I couldn’t imagine being without it.

I’d have to settle for my little aging laptop, which was thrown on top of the clothing, cushioned and protected. Next went my documents and any other little things that I might need, like my phone charger and the like. I stared at my room with a sense of anxious urgency pounding through my mind and body. It was awful, picking and choosing what to take with me that might be useful. How do you choose between so many cherished belongings? Speaking of cherished belongings, I threw my switch into the bag, as well as its dock and charger.

I did a check, and realised I had everything I could realistically bring… but now what? Was I just going to storm out of here? I moved to sit on my bed, only to stop. Yes, I was going to storm out of here. I squared my shoulders and prepared for what was going to happen next.

As mentally prepared as my poor battered mind could be, I carefully unlocked my door again, hefted the duffel bag and pulled it open. Instantly I could hear raised voices downstairs. I could hear panic from my mother, rage from my father, and outrage from my aunt and uncle. The verbal combat downstairs caused my resolve to falter like a wind whipped flame, and it was all I could do to keep my feet moving.

The stairs had a landing where they curved back as they descended into our main hallway, and when I rounded that corner I saw the scene. My two cousins were standing near the main entrance, while both sets of parents had a heated argument that seemed to be centered around my supposed “homosexuality”. Vivian was yelling about how my parents had let a “homo” near her children, and Tony was saying something along the lines my parents being failures for raising me to be gay.

My parents were in a frenzy, denying they had known one minute, then denying I was gay the next. Funny thing is, I wasn’t gay. Not the way any of them meant it anyway. I was a Lesbian. Similar, but if we’re talking definitions… shit it doesn’t matter.

Leon spotted me first, “Hey there he is!”

You could see the glee on his face, he was obviously enjoying the drama, as was his sister.

“Coby!” my mother screamed, “Get back up those stairs this instant!”

I ignored both comments, moving towards the group of people with wavering determination to get past them. They would let me past wouldn’t they?

Wrong.

Dad pushed past mum, marching towards me with flared nostrils and white knuckles. He moved fast, reaching with a grasping fist towards my front. I felt my power twitch, and I blocked his grab, using my forearm to deflect the lunge to the side. I don’t know what it was about it, but his gross hairy arm scraping across my arm, taking my sleeve with it was what released my control over myself.

His eyes widened when he saw how I’d brushed him off, and his other fist came forward, although… this time clenched into a fist.

“You’re not my son, you… it’s fucking wrong,” he growled, his voice reverberating with hot anger.

My full power unleashed itself as his fist barrelled towards me through the air. Time slowed slightly as adrenaline surged through my system, and I felt my body change. I transformed into Elsie in front of possibly the six people I least wanted to know about it. As my body was changing, it was also moving. I ducked, still with the bag on my shoulder, and jabbed a hand swiftly up into his diaphragm. His breath left him and he stumbled back, but not for long.

Our awful audience stood there staring at the girl before them, the girl I really was, and possibly had always hend secret within me. I was panting, although not really from the exertion, it was mainly just my body pumping itself up on the oxygen it might need to fight. Shit this was happening… I’d just punched my father.

“You fucking… what even are you? Disgusting!” Tony spat, his face scrunched in a look of almost nausea.

“You’re one of them,” my father breathed, fear colouring his gaze for the first time.

“I-I’m leaving,” I said, my high feminine voice wobbling with emotion, “If any of you t-try to stop me, I’ll put you through a wall.”

“Leaving to where?” my mother’s shrill voice demanded.

I ignored her, leaving a now compliant father in my wake, walking onwards down the hallway. When I neared my mother, she made a grab for me, but I was ready. I danced, performing almost a pirouette to escape her hand. I heard her make a desperate sound of frustration as I moved past her.

My aunt and uncle had already retreated to the living room doorway, and watched with expressions of disgust as I moved past. Hazel pressed herself against the wall ahead of me, but Leon stood cocky and sure of himself directly in my path. Acting on a hunch and pure instinct, I bent space slightly, causing him to stumble as gravity suddenly increased to his right. He fell to the wall as though the house had tilted forty-five degrees. I felt an involuntary smirk briefly grace my face as I saw fear and realisation dawn in his eyes. At least he was smart, he’d figured out I could crush him right now… if I was as awful a person as he and his family were.

The front door opened, swinging inwards as I unlatched it. I stepped out into the night, and realised I’d left my board behind. Shit. It’s funny what little thoughts pop into your head in the most stressful of times. Looks like I was going to be getting that upgrade I’d been thinking about.

“If you leave, you’re not coming back. You understand me Coby? You will not be allowed back through that door!” my father yelled, his voice high with choking hateful emotion.

I didn’t react, stepping further out into the night. Fuck him.

****

There was a chill in the air now that promised Fall would be hitting harder than usual this year. Just what I needed when I was homeless. I was stood outside Brook’s house, repeatedly dialing her phone and getting no response.

“Come on Brook! Pick up…” I whined to myself. I could feel myself shivering despite the big hoodie I’d thrown on after I left.

I’d walked aimlessly, trying to figure out what I was going to do. I’d briefly considered going to a shelter or something, but then I realised I was a young girl now. Even if I could defend myself while I was awake, sleeping would be a whole other ball game. I shuddered for an entirely different reason. No way, no shelters.

Eventually, through my post confrontation haze, I’d remembered Brook’s offer to let me stay at her place. I’d caught a bus to her place, and now here I stood trying to get hold of her. Damn it Brook! Now is not the time to go mysteriously missing!

As the minutes ticked by, I watched the clock approaching half past eight. Did I have an alternative? Was there anyone else I could ask to take me in? All my friends were really just Brook’s friends. I made my way through a list of them in my head and came up empty. None of them would give enough of a shit to allow me to stay at their places right? But they might know where Brook was, so maybe I should ask them.

I swapped through the apps on my phone looking for ways to contact them, when I received a message on discord.

Madeline: No coming online tonight?

Oh no… what should I say? It seemed like it would be rude to just dump my problems on her. Maybe just play it cool? Okay. Play it cool.

Elsie: No… I can’t. No access to my computer at the moment.

Madeline: How come? Isn’t your computer in your room?

Elsie: Yeah it is. I’m just out.

Madeline: Oh I know you’re out ;).

Elsie: No I’m not! I mean… like… you know. Outside. Not at home.

Madeline: I know I know. I was teasing you silly!

Elsie: I am deeply intimidated by the new maddy.

Madeline: Oh! Shit! Sorry! Um I’ll stop!

Elsie: ...Now who’s being teased ;).

Madeline: Ooohh. You’re good.

Elsie: I’m good at a lot of things these days…

Madeline: OwO???

Elsie: Yeah anyway…

Madeline: So what’s going on?

Elsie: I’m standing outside Brook’s place but she’s not answering her phone.

Madeline: Why are you at her house?

Elsie: Uuuummm.

Madeline: Are you two seeing each other?

Elsie: Nooo non onono. Just friends.

Madeline: So what’s up then?

Elsie: I um… I got kicked out.

Madeline: Of home????

Elsie: Yup..

Madeline: Come to mine!

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Elsie: Come to you?

Madeline: Wooooow. I’m offering you a place to stay and you’re getting all lewd!

Elsie: Okay okay, I’ll come.

Madeline: facepalm

Elsie: Hehehehe.

Madeline: So do you want to stay at mine or what?

Elsie: Yes please! I’m so fucking cold you have no idea.

Madeline: I’m 155 Kirkbride St. It’s just me in this place.

Elsie: I’m on my way!

Madeline: Oh, not coming? ;).

Elsie: Omg.

Well, she was still in hyper flirting mode, but at least I had somewhere to stay.

The bus I needed was the same one I’d taken to Brook’s house. When I hopped on it, I stayed near the front, hoping the driver would intervene if some random tried to annoy me. It was weird how since I had become a girl, I was suddenly hyper aware of how small I was compared to people. I had my powers, but so did other people, and theirs might be more powerful than mine.

The bus ride was slow, I couldn’t wait to get to her house. Far out and the bus smelled awful. I think someone had vomited in the back. I was really hoping that I could take a shower at Maddy’s place too because the fear I had felt at home had caused me to sweat a bit. Gross.

In the distance I heard a loud boom, followed by a crack that shook the bus. The driver slowed and I could see his eyes turn wide with fear. All five people on the bus looked over towards the explosion. We couldn’t see anything in the dark, and the night had gone eerily quiet. Then we saw a light growing larger.

Pain. Flying shards of glass. Steel tearing through the air with gut wrenching speed.

My body felt odd, as though my power had filled me completely, there was no room for anything but swift economic movement. I looked around, the bus seemed to be on its side and where the top of the bus had been was a torn jagged hole. Whatever had hit us had almost turn the bus in half. I looked around and saw the other occupants of the bus were all… oh god. They were dead… not just dead, they were torn apart. They hadn’t been able to handle whatever had just happened.

The bus driver was limp in his seat, still hanging by his seatbelt where the force of the impact had crushed his ribcage. His cold dead eyes still staring out the front window. Across the remains of the bus I saw all the other passengers in various awful angles and positions. They were without a doubt dead. No one could survive having their forms contorted like that.

My power had saved me, that was for sure. I looked around and found my bag was lying on its side, although it looked to be completely fine. Shit had my powers saved that too? I stumbled over across what had once been the wall of the bus and picked it up. I had to then step over the twisted corpse of a passenger, and it was all I could do not to throw up. These poor people… their lives, unique and interesting lives each one, had just been snuffed out.

I shoved the thoughts of empathy from my mind and exited the bus through the huge hole in the roof that was now a wall. I found myself in someone’s front yard where the bus had landed. How far had we gone? Holy shit.

I moved around the bus to get a view of the street, but stopped when I saw the house that owned the yard I was in. The house had been obliterated. A hole had been burned through it with just… massively excessive force. It seemed like overkill. Why had the bus been targeted like this?

Suddenly there was another boom, and something impacted the street on the other side of the bus. I knew this because I was showered in small chunks of asphalt that stung as they buzzed through the air. My powers kicked in again and suddenly I was dodging and weaving through the falling debris. When I got a look at the street, I saw a crater in the center of the road and cars rapidly backing down the road.

Something in the crater moved, and I heard a groan, “Fuck. That was not fun.”

I swear I knew that voice…?

Rising out of the crater was a figure made of intricate interlocking plates and I realised with a start that the armour was made of ice. The woman, which I was only guessing so because of her voice, stretched her back with a groan and looked up into the sky. She was searching for something. I saw another light begin to build, but it wasn’t in the sky. It was down the street, where the ice woman wasn’t looking.

I acted instantly, warping the space in front of me and leaping forward into the path of whatever was coming with a call, “Watch out!”

A beam of fiery energy lashed out towards us, and I bent the space in front of me at the last second to shield us. The torrent of searing energy hit my shield of gravity like a surging wave against an outcropping of rock. The asphalt before me cracked and erupted, flying into the air only to be instantly superheated into lumps of molten stone and tar.

The heavily warped space in front of me halted those molten chunks of road just the same as the blast that had created them. I was unable to see through the shield I had created, light seemed to be having trouble passing through it.

“Wow, nice save there little lady,” I heard the cold confident woman behind me say.

“T-thanks,” I squeaked, terrified that I had just stepped into a battle between Emerged.

“Drop the shield and we’ll see what we’re dealing with eh Els- girl?” she said.

Wait, did she almost say my name? Did she know me? I turned to look at her, but all I saw was a mask of ice and two eye holes. Who was it under there?

She placed an ice encased gauntlet on my shoulder and nodded towards my barrier. Oh right. I dropped the shield and felt a gasp escape my lips.

The road had surged up in a molten wave around my barrier. It was beginning to harden again in the shape of the shield I had created. What had caught my attention though, was the being who floated a few feet off the ground in front of us. I could only just tell that they were male, at least in build, but any more details than that were impossible.

He glowed like the sun, the yellow white light he emitted from his body all but blinding. Around him was a corona of orange light that periodically burst forth with a small arc of brilliant orange gold energy. I realised that this person was a man-shaped star. A sun, complete with coronal mass ejections and everything. Shit, and the heat was almost unbearable.

He spoke, but I couldn’t understand what he said. It was like his voice was distorted into a different spectrum. It was the voice of a roiling inferno, and I suspected nothing short of a god would be able to parse what was being said.

The ice woman beside me sighed, “He does this. Tries to do a villainous monologue or whatever, but we can’t fucking understand him, and I don’t think he can understand us either.”

“Why is he doing this?” I asked tremulously.

“Dunno little lady, but I have to go and try and stop him. I want you to get to safety okay?” she asked, her voice soft and caring.

“But…” I started, frowning as I realised she was going to take this guy on alone.

“No buts. Off you go,” she said, her voice unable to conceal the smile she must have had under that ice.

“Okay,” I said reluctantly, trying to move back to the relative cover of the bus.

I didn’t get very far, a narrow beam of white hot energy searing through me. Or rather, where I’d been standing. The beam had been instant and deadly, and I wondered for a moment how it had missed me.

I looked down at myself in wonder and found something strange. My veins seemed to have been lit up with a white energy, wisps of blue hinted at around the edges. I crackled with power, and below my feet the concrete began to ripple with strange patterns. The fundamental geometry of the ground a foot around where I was standing kept shifting uncontrollably.

My head jerked up when the man who was a star spoke, and I could understand him, “I see you. The key. The missing piece that halts the inevitable reconstruction.”

“What?” I asked, a sick fear permeating my body as I looked into the now visible sunspot eyes of my attacker.

“It will come for you, and I will laugh as it tears the essence from your being, from reality,” he said, joy almost radiating like heat through his voice.

I couldn’t say anything, I just stared. What the fuck was going on? This night was wild and crazy and awful. I wanted it to end. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but he was hit by a shard of ultra dense ice right to his face. His head snapped back and steam exploded from the strike as the ice flash boiled. He raised his arm, aiming at my icy companion and I saw energy gather.

Reacting with preternatural speed, I crushed the energy beneath the weight of intense gravity, earning a howl of anger from the man.

“Sunfall. You will cease this at once,” a commanding voice called from above.

More Emerged? What the hell was going on?

I watched as a woman I most definitely recognised descended through the dissipating mist. She was wrapped in linen robes that flowed around her, and I could see through the folds of cloth that she was wearing bronze greaves to match the bronze bracers around her forearms. Her face was hidden behind a shining greek style helmet that sported a huge gold plume extending from the top. It was Mystrix Pallas. The hugely powerful hero was right here in front of me.

She seemed to weave her hands through the air, and I saw strange swirling lines of energy gather before her, knotting and weaving together into an intricate pattern. The man who I now realised to be the hugely powerful villain named Sunfall, began to build energy in his fist once again.

When he shot it forward at Pallas, she didn’t flinch or attempt to dodge, and it seemed like she would be obliterated just like everything else Sunfall had blasted. My instincts were wrong, the energy slammed into the strange construct of energy that she had formed. Sunfall’s power was trapped, spitting and crackling with awful energy inside a net of graceful lines.

The armoured and robed woman made a subtle gesture with her hand, and the web shifted. The stream of energy reversed course, slamming into Sunfall with a boom that shook my chest like i was next to the speakers at a concert.

He stumbled, forced to the ground by the torrent of his subverted power. I saw his body flare even brighter, energy sparking off him at an increasing rate. As fast as that had begun, it reversed, his energy flowing inwards towards his form at speed. It was like he was sucking in all matter around him, pieces of the road thumping into him and converting instantly to a plasma.

I knew what was happening. He was going nova. He had too much matter within him, whatever stood in for his core unable to stand up against the weight of its own gravity.

Shit! I put all my effort into creating a corridor of compressed space straight up. The effort of creating and maintaining this much force bringing me to my knees. I collapsed further onto the warm ground, looking up into the sky. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was a bright flash of light high up in the atmosphere, pushing the clouds away in a wave of energy.

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