CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Midnight Madness, Part 2

In his mind’s eye, Sam saw the green HP bar that helped him determine just how much of his life force he was sacrificing to heal Officer Schmidt. It decreased by a fourth of its total by the time Sam finished healing the internal injuries on the officer’s chest along with the bruising on his face. He made these the priority to help the man breathe better, and it was a relief for Sam to see Officer Schmidt’s chest fall and rise more easily, almost like a heavyweight had finally been pushed off it.

You have leveled up!

Sam didn't even have time to feel ecstatic over this notification as he was wondering just how much more life force he was going to sacrifice for the other injuries.

“Alright, just the broken bones left,” Sam said as he blinked away the sweat that dripped down his left eye. “Come on, Crow-Man… beat this guy already.”

Sam spared another brief glance at the fight, and he was just in time to watch Crow-Man duck down so that the Shadow Crow hiding behind him could catch the villain off guard and graze the side of his right cheek.

“You and your little birdie are as violent as ever, Crow,” he said while he licked at the blood that dripped down to the corner of his mouth. “It’s why I enjoy fooling around with you so much!”

“If you liked that,” Crow Man jumped forward, his hand rising in time to catch the Shadow Crow as it passed, “Then you’re going to love this, Trickster!”

As his fingers grasped the bird, the shadows that made up its body fell away, revealing the feather-shaped throwing knife in Crow-Man’s hand. In one swift motion, he sent his blade slashing down on his enemy’s face — and hit nothing but air as the villain’s body disappeared in a shower of shimmering sparks yet again.

“Wait… he was bleeding. That was real,” Sam frowned. “So how did he—”

“A trickster never reveals his secrets,” a high-pitched voice whispered into Sam’s ears.

It was instinct that caused Sam to roll to the left and dodge the flash of metal that swung at the air where his neck was only a moment ago. Then Sam scrambled to his feet with Cranium Smasher secured in his right hand only to discover that the villain had just taken his hostage back.

The bald man in the maroon suit and the colorful polka-dot tie knelt over Officer Schmidt with the tip of his serrated knife pointed down at the officer’s chest.

“Apologies, but you seemed so defenseless that I couldn’t help myself,” he chuckled while his eyes darted between Sam, Crow-Man who was running toward them, and then down to Officer Schmidt’s chest. “This is an impressive job you’ve done, Mr. Healer.”

Sam wanted nothing to do with the compliment thrown his way, and the deep frown on his face made that very obvious. “Your trick…is it teleportation?”

He knew that the Wardens’ power system considered even the weakest form of teleportation a gamma-level power just for the sheer convenience it brought its wielder. However, teleportation was incredibly rare, and the Wardens strictly monitored all those who possessed this gift.

“No, he can’t teleport,” Crow-Man answered as he arrived at Sam’s side. “The Trickster possesses beta-level illusion powers that he's tied into a substitution ability that allows him to switch places with a material of similar mass to him.”

“What...” Sam’s face fell as he turned toward Crow-Man, “what did you just call him?”

Crow-Man barely spared him a glance as his concentration was fixed only on their adversary.

“Trickster,” Crow-Man repeated. “A psychopath with a rap sheet as long as a giant’s arm.”

“That’s…that’s impossible,” Sam reiterated, his free hand balling into a fist. “The Trickster died in an explosion at Alchemex Labs three years ago…”

Hearing Sam’s words caused one of the long eyebrows on the Trickster’s face to arch up.

“I doubt anyone apart from Crow there knows about my sad little origin story and the chemical accident that kick-started my rebirth…” The Trickster gave Sam a curious look, one that preceded the grin that crept up his face. “I wonder how a nobody like you discovered—hold on—I know you!”

The Trickster pointed a finger in Sam’s direction.

“You’re the dupe from last night, aren’t you?” he said, his eyes gleaming maliciously. “Saved me from suffocating in my own mess, you did.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. And not just because the Trickster had admitted that he was in fact the same villain Sam met years ago. “You tricked me.”

“Well, tricking people is generally what I do,” he replied. “Although it still doesn’t answer my question…”

He lowered the tip of the blade to half an inch above Officer Schmidt’s heart. A bead of dark liquid dripped down the blade and fell onto the unconscious man’s skin, and a red rash grew where it landed.

Hades' bottom! That knife’s coated in poison, kid, the master warned.

“Stop!” Sam yelled while Crow-Man threatened the Trickster at the same time with, “Don’t you dare, Trickster!”

“Oh, that’ll depend on our new friend here satisfying my curiosity, Crow,” the Trickster turned malicious eyes on Sam. “You tell me how you know my story and,” he glanced down and caught sight of the name tag, “Officer Schmidt’s story won’t have to end tonight.”

Sam didn’t really have a choice but to give in to the villain’s demand, and so he told them about his past run-in with the old Trickster and how he thought his old mentor had carelessly taken the villain’s life. The trickster had tried to interrupt at that point, but Sam wouldn’t let him. There was one more thing he wanted to say. It was a thought that nagged at him the more he looked at this villain. And so Sam ended his tale with a question of his own. “If you really are the Trickster, then how did a zeta become this powerful?”

More than anything, this question grated on Sam’s nerves because he thought only Triple-A could help a hero evolve their power. He had to know if that really wasn’t the case.

“How did you get this strong?” Sam asked again.

The Trickster’s face turned contemplative for a long moment before he answered. “I died. Then darkness took me… and I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead… and every day was as long as a life age of the Earth. But it wasn’t the end. I felt life in me again.”

For a brief moment, Sam could almost see the villain whose passionate message he couldn’t help but resonate with this new adversary in front of him. But then the Trickster’s last words struck another chord with Sam. They called forth a memory from back when he was a child and squished on a comfy couch between his parents while they watched a movie on the TV.

“I’d been sent back until my task is done,” the Trickster concluded with a flourish of his free hand.

“Satyr-shit,” Sam snapped. “That was Gandalf’s line from when he came back in the second movie of the Lord of the Rings… and you just blatantly stole it!”

There was no way Sam would have missed those lines as he’d watched that classic trilogy over and over with his parents because it was one of his dad’s favorites. His mom had even called his dad out on being a huge ‘Tolkien nerd’ for knowing stuff from the books that never showed up in the movies.

The memory of his dead parents sent a pang into Sam’s chest because one memory was never enough. There was always a flood of them waiting right behind the first that made him want to look back on better days. But now wasn’t the time for reminiscing. There was a villain to stop, and this one, with his tongue sticking out at Sam, was just begging to have his face crushed by Cranium Smasher.

“You got me there, Mr. Healer,” the Trickster laughed out loud. “But, as I said, a trickster never reveals his tricks.”

Then, in a flash, he plunged his knife into the unconscious Officer Schmidt’s gut.

“No!” Sam dashed forward, his hand reaching out toward Officer Schmidt’s latest injury.

Crow-Man had also thrown his knife at the Trickster, but it sailed through nothing but air as the villain disappeared in a shower of sparks yet again.

This time, however, Sam clearly saw the heavy chunk of charred stone that had replaced the villain. It fell to the ground with a loud thud just as Sam’s hand closed over the blood-gushing knife wound on Officer Schmidt’s stomach.

“Healing Hand!” Sam willed as much of his life force as he could pull out into the tips of his fingers and then pumped it into the wound as quickly as he could, but the blood continued to rush out of the hole whose jagged corners were beginning to turn a sickly green color. “Why isn’t it working?”

That psychopath pierced him with a poisoned blade, and your power isn’t adapted to removing poison from a wound, the master explained.

“Apollo,” Sam prayed to the god of healing, the very same god who’d blessed him with his gift. “Please help me save this man from an untimely death...”

Maybe you could rhyme it, the master suggested. He likes it when people pray to him in verse.

While Sam attempted to wrestle Officer Schmidt’s life away from death once more, he could hear the sounds of growing intensity in the battle between Crow-Man and the Trickster.

“Master, what’s going on over there?” Sam asked as he couldn’t tear his concentration away from his patient.

Crow-Man’s getting his butt beat, the master answered. Hades’ balls, that had to hurt.

“What?” Sam asked again.

He was just about to look up when the sound of something heavy smashing on the ground to his immediate left forced his gaze to turn that way instead. What he found there was Crow-Man struggling to his feet. Blood dripped down the side of the hero’s mouth.

“I honestly didn’t come back to the Met expecting such a thrilling fight,” the Trickster’s gleeful tone forced Sam to face forward.

Sam breathed. “Styx…”

“Sadly, all good things must end…and alas, I must finish the job my explosion couldn’t finish.” The Trickster was standing next to the statue of the Bow of Heracles while his hand patted the statue’s thick bronze thigh. “The Delphic Chronicle lit up like a firework, but this stubborn, handsome, and shamelessly nude muscle man just won’t burn properly… I supposed I’m going to have to get creative.”

What made Sam’s eyes widen though wasn’t the Trickster’s big revelation of why he turned up in the Met that night, but the things floating in the air behind him.

“Those are just illusions,” Sam reminded himself. But then he spared a sideways glance over at Crow-Man, who was still on his knees and looking like something heavy had knocked the wind out of him. Then, as his gaze switched back to the Trickster, Sam had to ask, “Those are illusions…right?”

The eight shimmering hands floating in the air around the Trickster like he was imitating the likeness of a many-handed god balled into eight shimmering fists, and about half of them were pointing in Sam’s general direction.

The thing about a beta-level illusion, kid, the master’s disembodied voice sounded anxious, as long as the wielder’s self-belief is powerful enough, then the illusion stands a chance of turning into the real thing too.