Blackjack Wayward

Chapter Twenty-Two

I walked to the front door and stepped outside, Aussie following close behind. There were over a hundred villains crowding the horizon, more than enough to take the two of us down.

I took a long look, studying the gathered villains, trying to identify whomever I could. It’s what I do; it’s what gives me an advantage. They might outnumber me, but I was going to give them a fight they would long remember, and once I identified their leaders, I’d have a target to strike first. Maybe if they were demoralized and leaderless, I would have a chance.

Standing in the middle of them all and in full leadership pose was a statuesque blonde woman, wearing winter garb of blue, the blue/white gem encrusted on her forehead the same color as her eyes. Her matching robes would have been more at home in a colder climate, and I didn’t need to see her wielding her eponymous staff to know she was the villain White Staff, a witch who hailed from the Nordic regions and considered herself a throwback to Viking times.

Standing beside her was companion and lover, Modi. Named after the berserker son of Thor, this fellow was so large and bulky that he made Aussie and me look small by comparison. He wore a horned helmet, compressing his long blond hair and beard around it as if it were exploding from the bottom edge of the armor piece. The massive man fought with a pair of metal claws forged directly into his arm, which replaced his hands and were larger than most swords. Other than that, and a pair of boots to protect his feet, he was completely naked, his rippling pale form exposed to the Australian sun.

On the other side of White Staff was Slicer, a formidable cage fighter from the streets of Chicago, who wore a purple and yellow leather suit and a pair of daggers that were large enough to be officially classified as swords. For a guy his size, the things were tiny. He smiled, revealing two rows of gold-capped teeth. His hair was dyed shocking yellow and eyes covered by lenses, but the most ominous feature on his face was the twin scars that formed an X across his face, mementos from a long-ago lost fight.

Behind them I saw a trio of armored fighters, their power suits so garishly red, they looked straight from a console game. In fact, their names were Scout, Trooper and Heavy, and each had increasingly heavier armor and weaponry. They were mercs for hire and, to the best of my knowledge, former inmates at Utopia. Apparently Zundergrub hadn’t killed everyone.

Another fellow who caught my attention was the villain Dreadlord. He was a walking corpse, the armor and stitches that wrapped his body the only things keeping him together. Dreadlord was a tough one, though, able to syphon the life force of others to power his abilities. I felt a chill, looking at him and thinking of the things I’d done with Claire.

Next to him, and standing as a stark contrast to Dreadlord’s dark demeanor, were two figures. One was Bright Boy, a bare-chested guy with long, blond hair, who would have looked more at ease on a beach, surfing, if not for the fact that his hands were strange, pliable contortions of flesh, muscle, and bone twisting and reforming into claws, weapons, or whatever he needed.

The other was the pixie Charisma, in her full-sized form, dancing and swaying as she played her flute, surrounded by all nature of woodland creatures and a host of butterflies that moved to the rhythm of her song. It was curious that everywhere she stepped, her bare feet would leave behind small tufts of grass amid the arid, sandy ground of the Outback.

Around them were four or five dozen others, some flyers, a few in hover vehicles or space boots, surrounding me in a semi-circle: a Mexican standoff from Hell. There were so many that they blotted out the horizon. I was sure there were more behind and around the house, making sure that we wouldn’t make a run for it. I shot a glance upward and saw a few more flyers above us, silhouetted against the bright sun.

Among the main throng were others that I could recognize, such as the massive voodoo warrior fellow called Gris-Gris, who wore simple brown robes. I saw the famous adventurer/explorer Slipshod, though it was clear he wasn’t interested in a fight. Sky Angel wanted a brawl, though, and she jostled with the twin villains Senka and Bioshock to get into the front row and shoot me with her twin blasters. There were a few giants as well, though they lingered back to give others room to surround me. One that I could recognize was the Japanese Oni Demon Jigoku, towering over the crowd with bovine horns jutting out of his forehead and deadly cat-like claws and fangs that were the size of a normal man. The demon wore a tiger-skin loincloth and wielded a huge Japanese peace bell on a long chain. Another of the big ones was Odyssey, a twenty-foot-tall mechanized robot with massive, weaponry-laden arms and a fusion reactor rhythmically pulsing within a golden sphere where his head should have been. The last of the larger villains was Fenris, a mammoth-sized black wolf, with crimson eyes and blood-caked fangs. Atop him rode a young feral boy with long black hair, grabbing the beast’s fur to make up for a lack of a saddle. The boy looked gaunt, almost spectral, and indifferent.

There were also a few heroes in the bunch, probably mind-jobbed just as Zundergrub had done to Apogee. The most dangerous of these was Athene, a powerful Greek warrior-goddess, who wore striking silver armor, shield and a sarissa just like a hoplite of the City-state era. She was as strong as anyone here, maybe even stronger than Aussie and I, and damned near indestructible. But I could see confusion in her azure eyes, and from her body posture. Unlike the other heavy hitters, she wasn’t itching for a fight.

Another hero, just as dangerous as anyone here, was Rikishi, a young Japanese kid, with a coif of black hair held down by a back-turned baseball cap and wearing a wild t-shirt that had spray paint pattern on it. He held a microphone that, when he spoke a specific word into it, would turn him into Rikishi, a hundred foot-tall warrior, straight out of an anime. If that thing got going, the whole party would be arbitrary – he could beat everyone on the continent. Thankfully, Rikishi kept far to the right, almost as if hiding in the crowd.

The most noticeable player on the field, standing front and center before me, was Nevsky, a Russian national hero in the same mold as Robin Hood, except this guy was a real bastard. Muscle-bound like me, he was even more impressive than Modi. Nevsky had permanently dyed or tattooed his skin red, to honor his country, and with his high-topped, jet-black hair, he had a demonic look. He stared at me, but I didn’t bother giving anyone eye contact. No one was special here; I was going to have to beat them all. Nevsky wanted my attention; he wanted to take down the guy who had dropped Epic. He strode forward, waving the others back, and stopped halfway to the house.

“You are Blackjack,” he said with a strong Russian accent.

I was too tired for this, tired and hungry. A cold shower and some eggs were a start, but I needed sleep, rest, months of it. I’d gotten a half hour, maybe, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it. I wasn’t going to talk my way out of this, or negotiate, and I couldn’t expect anyone to come to my aid. Even Major Aussie, who seemed to like me, was rattled and ready to make a run for it.

“I’m not letting you get away,” Major said, completely misunderstanding what was happening here.

I laughed.

“I don’t care what happens, mate. I’m not letting you get away.”

“You think Zundergrub sent these guys to save me from you?” I said.

He blinked, looking at the swarm of villains, then back at me.

“Does that look like a bunch of rescuers?”

The Captain was slowly starting to realize our predicament.

“Come down here, Blackjack and we have a little talk,” Nevsky shouted, starting to lose his patience with me.

“F*ck me dead,” he said, rubbing his head. “So what do we do?”

“Your friends,” I said.

“They’ve all gone,” he said. “Except Walt and Nelly. They’re still upstairs packing.”

“Ok. Anything gets past me, you make it dead.”

He took two steps to the door and paused, looking back at me bashfully, as if he wanted to come back and shake my hand.

“Go on,” I said turning away from him and stepping off the porch and toward Nevsky and his horde of villains.

Once we were standing in front of each other, it turned out that we were about the same height, our eyes roughly at the same level. The big difference was the extra four inches of high top radiating outward from the base of Nevsky’s crown. It must’ve taken him 10 cans of hairspray to keep his “do” that way. It reminded me somewhat of the guidos from that New York City fight against the Superb Seven. Thinking back to that day, I couldn’t help but think of Apogee. She wouldn’t be very proud of what I was going to do today, because this was going to get really messy. This was going to be ugly.

Some of this bunch was tough – they could handle themselves – but among them were others who were marginal powers. Some of them were afraid, and they had good reason to be worried. In the middle of the fight that was coming, I wouldn’t have time to regulate myself. I wouldn’t have time to pick and choose my targets and to measure my strength against each enemy. No, I was going to have to go all-out. If I planned to live, I was going to have to lay into them with no mercy. And the more I thought about it, the angrier and angrier it made me to think that I’d gotten myself into this mess all over again.

I stepped into Nevsky’s personal space, making him raise his head back and to the left as if to recoil from my presence. His eyes were wide behind the shades, surprised and taken aback at the same time, but unwilling to admit to the fear that was scratching at the back of his neck, bristling the hairs at its nape. He was more afraid of letting everyone else see his apprehension, to know what I already knew. Nevsky was outmatched. We hadn’t traded a single blow and he was already beaten.

His intention was to beat me, to steal my hard-earned reputation as “the guy who beat Epic,” and wrap that around his waist like a World Championship. He wanted to be the man and had stepped forward to take his shot, but staring hard into my eyes, he knew that to do that he’d have to beat me, and I wasn’t a man angling for pride, or my virtue.

I didn’t care anymore.

Not about what happened today, or in the future. I had no care for reputation, or what others would say, or how this day would be perceived and misunderstood. I didn’t even care about the bevy of villains surrounding us, waiting for their turn, for Nevski and me to finish so they could rush me and tear me to pieces. Nor did I give a damn that I had been Earth’s savior, that at one strange moment in history, I had stood between the planet’s survival and damnation and I had saved everyone, even this sorry bunch. For that I had been punished as harshly as humanity could envision in their eagerness to channel their wrath, to give a complicated situation a clean and easy-to-understand conclusion for public consumption.

No, all I cared about right now was this poor bastard standing in front of me; I channeled all my anger, all my frustration, and aimed it at Nevski. My face felt like a corded mesh of flesh and muscle, much like a tiger’s death mask, moments before it plunges the long canine into the carotid and feels the flush of warm crimson as the death throes begin.

In fact…

Without giving him a chance to recompose himself, or to say some wicked shit, I lunged forward, grabbing his head and forcing it closer to me, ignoring his surprised grunt. My jaw flew open and I clenched down on him, biting at his cheek with every ounce of energy channeled through my body, from my calves and thighs to my arms and back. My reward was a splash of metallic blood spraying into my face and mouth and the loud, crooning howl of pain as Nevsky pressed against me to escape our embrace.

I released him, his pained cry stilling on his lips as he collapsed, and looked around at the throng, reveling in the fear and disgust. He clasped his blood-streaked face, cowering from me with a mixture of rage and shock as he realized I had ripped off a part of his face with my teeth.

I spit it back at him, a two-inch-diameter bit of his skin and flesh, letting the blood dribble down my face, and flashed a wicked grin at the others, taking the wind from their proverbial sails in one gesture.

“No surrender,” I sneered through blood-clenched teeth.

And it was on.

I didn’t give him a chance to recover; though when you think about it, what man could effectively fight with a chunk of his face torn off?

I rushed him, grabbing his long hair with both hands, and powered my knee into the side of his head with everything I had, crushing his skull like a ripe watermelon. Before his lifeless body collapsed to the floor, I grabbed the back of his belt and hefted his bloody frame over me, then looked among the horrified host to see where to hurl my superhuman missile.

The obvious choice was White Staff, as she was probably the most experienced of the bunch, and if allowed, would lead them to victory. But I knew if she went down, her boy, Modi, would enrage and nothing could stop him if he went berserk.

Fine, f*ck it.

Nevsky flew from my hands like shot out of a Howitzer, and she didn’t have time to look surprised, or even flinch, before my 350-pound cannonball bowled her and everyone behind her over in a loud “thwap!” of breaks and fractures.

I heard a loud roar and expected the bad guys to swarm me right there and then, but the scream came from me as I rushed Modi, red face twisted in rage. His attention turned to me as knelt beside his beloved’s crushed form. He was twice as tall as me, and each one of his legs was easily the width of my waist, like a pair of massive tree trunks. I hurled myself, linebacker-style, into one of the knee joints. My left shoulder exploded in pain from the impact, and his knee bent backward. With a loud howl, the big man went down.

The enemy host, surprised by my attack on Nevsky and my charge on Modi, would only stay out of it for so long. They opened up on me, with a dozen energy projectors and firearms specialists firing at my and Modi’s bodies with plasma bolts, flame spouts, and high-impact shells. Another super grabbed me from behind, but he got caught in the indiscriminate hail of fire, peppering me with his blood. The fusillade was brutal and mindless, catching friend and foe alike, and I noticed that Modi flinched in pain with every flame and plasma bolts that raked his huge body. Yet, he was more concerned with his agonizing demolished knee, thrashing about like a soccer player on the pitch. I reached over and grabbed the leather-corded boot of his good leg and pulled back against his straining muscles, trying to spin him around me.

It was like moving a mountain by grabbing its peak, all the while being blasted to hell by the combined wrath of all the ranged villains. I dragged him along the sand in a half-circle before my circular motion lifted him off the ground. Once off the ground, his momentum increased dramatically as I spun around. Some of the flyers held their fire, finding higher ground to avoid my next hurled victim, but as I oscillated, I noticed one figure moving toward me.

Dreadlord had nothing to fear from the bullets and plasma beams that peppered the area around me, as he was already dead. Will, the desire to consume and destroy, kept his desiccated body animated, and as he advanced on me, I could tell he was hungry. His lips and eyelids long gone, he glared at me malevolently with milky yellow eyes, and his face was ripped apart into a permanent rictus grin, as if he knew his powers were the antithesis to mine: my strength would only feed him and make him more powerful.

As I rotated, I spun Modi in my grasp as I brought him behind me; pivoting my arms and hips, I drew the huge man over my right shoulder and down onto Dreadlord, obliterating him in a thunderous crash that shattered the hard earth and formed a crater as wide as a football field.

Modi still breathed once the dust began to settle, but beneath him there was no sign of Dreadlord, save for a disembodied arm that had flown off with the impact.

This changed the whole setting, as the earthquake-like devastation left an impact crater almost ten feet deep and tossed about everyone to the ground. I was one of the first to get to my feet, but it was only because I was helped by a few villains who had recovered faster than I. Two guys I couldn’t recognize held my arms and others jostled in front of me, hurling blow after blow at my head and face. Each punch reverberated through my skull, like the sound of hammer crashing on my cranium. I looked over and saw Slipshod, laying into me every chance he could, despite being much smaller than some of the bruisers who held me. I couldn’t take much more ducking my head from each punishing blow, and I saw the feet of one of the guys grabbing my right arm. I raised my foot and stamped down, burying my heel into the man’s foot, and heard the crackling of bones and a painful cry. They were all pressed against me now, pushing and shoving, but when he released my right arm, I got enough momentum to stem the tide. I ripped my arm free from the grasping paws of a couple of bastards and swung a hard right at Slipshod, catching him in a brutal downward blow that he was too penned in to avoid. He tried slipping back, but the bodies didn’t let him move more than a few inches, and my powerful punch caught him in the chest, caving in every bone. In his death shriek, a gallon of blood exploded out of his mouth, raining on me and the others.

I reached over and grabbed at the hand of one of the guys holding my left arm as one heavy blow after another slammed at me from my right. I clasped a finger and bent it back, but the man wouldn’t let me go, even when the bone snapped, so I lunged in and clenched the broken finger in my teeth and severed the whole thing. He finally screamed and let go; I spun, throwing a crushing blow into his face, driving a fist through his skull. The man next to him, also holding my left arm, released me, so I reached over and grabbed broken-finger-guy’s corpse by one of the legs. Jumping up in the air, I slammed the body down to give me a few feet of room.

“I want him,” yelled Slicer, moving through the throng as they formed a small circle around us both. “I’m going to cut you, motherf*cker,” he said, motioning to his blades.

I smiled, knowing what I looked like, feeling a welling of blood – my own and others’ –swirling among my teeth, dribbling down my face, spattered across my chest.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said, intending to say more mean villain shit, except I charged him.

Slicer flashed his blades, whirling them in front of him like a shield I had to overcome, and as I came closer he dipped under a planet-killing haymaker and stabbed me under the ribcage. His daggers pierced my skin, but I’ve been stabbed before. The pain may have been agonizing but was a distant whisper against my burgeoning rage. I roared, more in anger than affliction. Standing straighter and opening my arms wide, he did as I expected, digging the dagger deeper, not realizing what I was about to do until the last second. I swung my arms back, channeling all my teeth-clenching rage into the twin blows. My fists hammered into the sides of his head. His final facial expression was an equal mixture of impending anguish and supplication for mercy, but there wasn’t an ounce of mercy in my soul, and a split second later his head exploded, raining blood, brain and bone.

Something kept his headless body standing – maybe it was how he clenched in the last instant’s realization – but I put my foot on his ooze-dripped chest and thrust him back into Scout, Trooper, and Heavy, who were moving closer with their weapons leveled at me. Heavy was too slow and I took him out with the human missile.

For a moment there, the enemy paused. Some of the weaker villains stood around, probably wondering what they could individually do to me, when their strongest had already fallen. They still had more than enough fire power and raw force to finish me, but they couldn’t reasonably channel that force in my direction without getting in each other’s way. In that one respect, their overwhelming numbers worked in my favor. I waited for one of them to try to rally the others, to make an effort to coordinate them. But there was only fear, a palpable feeling that if I got my hands on one of them, they would end up like Nevsky, Modi, or Slicer.

There were a few big ones still standing, like Odyssey and Jigoku, and the great beast Fenris was circling around, someone’s blood dripping from his massive jaws. I guess I didn’t have to wonder what was happening to the people I was putting down.

“Run if you want to live,” I said, knowing that I had one moment of advantage and that if I could get a few to run, I might have a chance. “But if you stay, you die.”

“Motherf*cker,” someone shouted from behind me, and I turned to catch Powerstaff mid-air, his namesake weapon raised and ready to bring down on me. I waited until the last moment before he landed and then side-stepped, avoiding his blow by a miracle. Around me, others were charging in, so I moved into Powerstaff and threw a full-force uppercut into his chest, sending him flying high into the air and out of the scrum. I don’t know why, but at that moment, I remembered a similar fight from Shard World, when Apogee and I had fought an overpowering horde like this one. She would hit one enemy and spin, ready for an attacker from her rear, and there someone would be. I matched her moves, staying behind her in a half-assed ballet of death. Her strategy had been to strike and turn, and strike and turn, always spinning, never letting anyone behind her, and with me covering her back, we soon left a field of bodies surrounding us.

So I turned, just in time for a big fellow to almost reach me, his arms back in a Jim Kirk downward double powerfist. I lashed out with my boot and kicked him in the chest, stopping all his momentum and doubling him over to land at my feet. I left him there, turning again with a ready haymaker at a target I didn’t yet see. As if on command, two guys were charging me and I released the punch with all my strength. It caught the first guy in the temple, cracking his head aside into the second. Their forward motion carried them into me, but I pushed their slack bodies down to join their buddies.

I spun again, my fist leading the way, and caught another jaw, the head spinning to a bone-cracking halt. He crashed into my chest and I grabbed him, hurling him at several others behind me. The crowd was pressing harder as the next throng of villains had decided to work in concert. I pulped one’s face, kicked another guy in the chest, collapsing the ribcage, and elbowed a third across the face, sending his eye flying out of the socket, but by then, I was overpowered by the sheer humanity. Men grabbed at me, at every possible inch, at my hair, at my balls and pecker, but I didn’t stop fighting.

In such close quarters, I could only slip an occasional elbow, butt my head, spit at someone’s eye. I powered a knee into a villain’s midsection, hearing a cracking of bones in his torso and getting a spray of blood in my face.

“Die!” I screamed, heaving the scrum back enough to release my left arm. Hurling back, I caught one of the guys holding me, the ferocity of the blow tearing his head from his body. The guy next to him vomited, the warm fluid running down my back, and that grossed out another villain who was holding my midsection. As they both eased back, the front bunch of the mass pressed back at me. I rode the wave, opening my arms and grabbing vomit-boy in a bear hug. He was an ugly guy, rough and tough, with a severe scar that dominated the right side of his face.

“Die,” I said, inches from his face, squeezing his upper body in my arms. His eyes blanched with distress, and he let out a little cough that spittled a dot of vomit onto my face; I flexed my arms tight against my chest. Others punched me from behind and grabbed at me, trying to split me from my target, but no one was going to take him from me. He clawed at my arms as I denied him any air, and just as he was fading out, I heaved with all my might, destroying his chest cavity. His ribs snapped and crackled, now jagged spears impaling his torso. He tried to scream, arching his body back, but managed only to let out a slight whistle as a fine mist of vaporized blood steamed from his mouth.

Someone grabbed my face, pulling me back, and adjusted his grip into a chokehold. He was strong, but I was stronger. I let go of the dead guy, pushing him out against the flock of bodies in front of me and pressing my attacker and me backward. As I had expected, the bunch thrust against me, pushing me forward again. I grabbed the guy’s arm just above the elbow, digging my fingers into his flesh and hearing him scream. I rose for a second, taller than the man who held me, making him lose his footing, and used the momentum to bend over hard. He flew over my head but kept a tight hold on my neck as he landed on some of the men in front of me. His guys held him in the air, so he was aloft, upside down, still grabbing my neck. I had to stay bent over, and began to worry about my predicament. Maybe this guy’s super power was that once he held something, he never let go? More reason to worry was that I was bent over, and villains from behind me were punching me, stabbing me; though their weapons weren’t piercing my skin, the blows were accentuated by it being stretched out.

But then I felt something at my ribcage. His head.

He had held on as I had spun him off my back, and he had landed on his mates, who now kept him in the air, his back perpendicular to the ground. But his head was right at my midsection. I reached over and grabbed it, wrapping my left arm around the back and pressing his face into my armpit. He let out a muffled scream and let go of me, but I straightened my back out, exerting all my strength against his neck.

Suddenly there was a pop with a splash of blood across my chest. I flew back into several villains, knocking them on the ground. I landed on my ass, and the guy’s severed head plopped on my lap, facing me. His face moved, lips and tongue trying to speak in vain. Blood pooled at the base of the neck, and I grabbed the head by a scruff of hair and raised it high as I stood on my feet.

“Who’s next?” I screamed, letting the villains pull back so that they formed a circle around me again. I noticed several moving through to the back, having enough of me, and waved the disembodied head around at the others, letting them know what was going to happen to them.

Littering the floor around me were a dozen bodies, many unidentifiable and in various styles of dismemberment. Some I knew I was directly responsible for, but many others were just dead from being near a guy that took a hard blow, or from catching a flying body part, and some had asphyxiated in the scrum. Many more were dead by the indiscriminate fire of their companions who sat back and fired away from range. In all, I could estimate about two dozen bodies lying at my feet.

The third wave was now forming up, and I saw Gris-gris standing right in front of me, unimpressed with my bloody handiwork. He was bouncing a small bag of powder in his hands and a sly grin played on his face. Beside him were Senka and Bioshock, summoning the courage to rush me.

Far behind them there was another fight with a few dozen villains jumping the mind-controlled Rikishi. He defended himself as best he could against a posse of enemies; many were lifelong nemeses who were using this opportunity to defeat the hero. I wish I could have gone to help the little guy, but there was nothing I could do help him. He was swarmed and someone had taken his microphone away. In moments, they’d take him apart.

A few flyers were inching back, knowing they could easily escape, but no one left, not a single person, until Charisma and her host of butterflies took to the sky and soared away. Another flyer or two took off, and I imagine a few of the fellows ringing the back of the throng were also making a quick escape.

Even then, I had seventy or so bad guys to fight through, and the numbers were on their side. I had to think of something or I was dead.

Then again, if this was the end, then at least I was going to be free of Zundergrub, and I was going to take as many of these f*ckers with me as I could. If they won, if they got me, then at least I could sleep.

It should have been fine by me, to go out in a blaze of glory, to leave a gory stain in the Australian outback that every villain would remember in the years to come. But the truth was, I had unfinished business. I had to find Zundergrub; I had to make sure Apogee was okay. More importantly, once I found the doctor, I had to end him. I wasn’t going to be creative or try to arrest him; I was going to kill him.

But to do that, I had to get through this sorry bunch.

I gazed around, wiping the blood from my face. The strongest guy I could see was Demolition, with his team of five or six villains – the Big City Wreckers. He had let the eager and stupid tire me out, and now he intended to claim me as his prize. Odyssey was still back there, though I had felt the punch of his power-pack cannons on my back during the fight. Most of the baddies were B or C-level guys, deferring to Demolition, Bioshock, and Gris-gris, eager to get into the action, none willing to be the next for me to get my hands on.

“Time to die, Blackjack,” said Gris-gris, beginning to chant something as he lifted his magic leather bag over his head, letting the drifting magical dust trail off into the wind.

That was it, his bag. It wasn’t just the source of his power, but also a terrible curse that ate at his body, leaving him as emaciated as a corpse. The thing ate at him much like Claire had used her power to preserve herself. But instead of taking from me little by little, Gris-gris had to be judicious with the pixie-dust shit that shimmered out of the bag. Summon too much power too fast and things could get dangerous.

Some of the bad guys were getting antsy, and the throng was slowly inching closer, emboldened now that Gris-gris was preparing a spell to roast me. It was now or never.

I picked up the head at my feet and broke into a run, throwing it as hard as I could at Gris-gris. In his magical trance, he didn’t see it coming. The impact knocked him to the ground, and I was on him a moment later.

Time seemed to slow down as Bioshock raked my body with his blue-green bioelectric power and Senka drained my energy with her yellow vortex powers. Odyssey opened fire on me, as did Machinegun Guy, one of Demolition’s posse, spraying me with the Vulcan cannons embedded on each of his arms. Fighting through the ranged assault, I reached Gris-gris just as he was recovering from the impact. Bullets and plasma bolts raked my back, but I ignored the pain, reaching for his magic bag and tearing it from his hands. A black, powdery smoke wisped from the open end of the pouch, forming into row of rising souls, their faces nightmares of teeth and rage. Sigils that were traced along the leather glowed bright through my fingers, their magic tearing at my skin.

“No!” Gris-gris croaked, but I put my knee on his chest, keeping him in place, and grabbed the back of his neck with my free hand. My hand sang with the pain, like lava bubbling my skin, and I could smell the wafting odor of burning flesh. The dark spirits surrounded me, readying to attack, but I stuffed the voodoo bag into his mouth and slammed my hand hard against his jaw to force it closed. Gris-gris eyes widened and he tried to let out an agonizing scream as his mouth and tongue were roasted by the burning power of the magic bag. The spirits slashed at me, then spun a vortex of power sucked into the black hole-like maw that was forming around the voodoo man’s mouth. The nearest villains, Senka and Bioshock, stopped their assault on me and stepped back, knowing that something was going terribly wrong.

Gris-gris tried to say something, and the world erupted in blackness.