“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” the Exhuman questioned me.

I jerked my thumb at the broken exosuit. “I’m crashing at her place while I sort out shit with my sorta-dead-sorta-girlfriend.”

She hesitated. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

I shook my head. “I fucking wish. I’m sure they gave you the line already, but you should surrender if you don’t want your ass completely kicked right now.”

“Hah!” she laughed. “I’ve already crushed four of your friends, you think you scare me on your own?”

“Three, technically,” said Jack, who appeared behind me, deploying a canister of medical gel into the cracks in the exosuit. “And Chariot, might I inquire, if not you, who exactly is in this suit?”

“It’s a long story. Let’s save it for after she surrenders.”

“I will never surrender,” she hissed. “I will defy you with my every breath. I will prove to you–“

I lit up my swords and her words fell away.

A full twenty-four of them, hovering and ominous, spread in an arc above and behind me like a halo in an illuminated bible. But they weren’t like my old swords, they weren’t just lightning trapped and waiting for me to will them to action. These crackled and poured out sparks with ferenic energy, these pulsed and seethed as though impatient to strike.

These were barely held together, burning hotter and brighter than my blades had ever burned before. I threw one straight at her like a missile, and though she jumped away at the last moment, when the blade shredded into my own personal little supernova, the heat of it still caught her, and I saw her patting down the burns on her legs in the air.

“You were saying something about surrendering?” I asked, taking a few casual steps towards her as my blades crackled around me.

“Never,” she hissed.

“Look lady, if you just wanted to be left alone and live in peace, there’s this place called New Eden–“

She cut me off by dashing straight at my face. My instincts with my powers were…nonexistent at the moment, so my blades just stayed floating uselessly behind me.

But I hadn’t spent the last few months training my powers. I’d been learning to fight, and seeing that fist fly at my face in both my normal vision and in my electric-sense, it was the most obvious windup I’d ever witnessed.

My head jerked to the side, her blade passing inches from my ear, and stepping through her attack, I elbowed the small of her back, feeling a weird sort of resistance where I hit her. The blow carried through, and it hurt my elbow a lot, but it also felt like I slid right off of her. And when she hit the ground, she slid too. Frictionless Exhuman, I guess?

“I hope it goes without saying, but avoid the blades,” Jack advised.

“Way ahead of you, buddy,” I said, stepping aside again as she jumped suddenly at me again. It might have been fast if she hadn’t tensed up in preparation for it so long in advance. Compared to Dragon, this was like preschool.

“Just who the hell–” she growled.

“I told you. Now surrender.”

“And I told you, never!“

She snapped her wrist out and sliced off a thick branch of a tree. With two more flicks, she’d pruned the branches off of it and honed the end. With a grin, she charged me again.

But she’d changed tack, dashing around me instead of head-on. I stood there, waiting for the inevitable. And sure enough, once she’d circled me once and was right behind me, she let the branch fly, a crude spear aimed at my back.

I let it hit my shield without even trying to stop it, where it exploded with a satisfying crack of thunder.

“Now, will you consider–“

A handful of pebbles joined the thrown branch in evaporating. And then a few hunks of metal, carved off of the exosuit’s forearm that Whitney and I had worked so hard on last night.

“Look lady, you aren’t winning this. Do you get that yet? Your powers are a fucking joke compared to mine.”

“I don’t care!” she screamed. “I’ve worked too long and too hard at this to be talked down to by some little brat! I spent months holed up in the dark like a rat, I’ve been hunted like some dirty animal, and I survived being buried by myself in the dark for a week! You don’t know anything about what I’ve suffered and endured, you don’t–“

“I don’t care,” I interrupted. “None of that makes you able to beat my powers. So just give up.”

“Oh, I’ll make you care,” she said, grinning maniacally. Something was broken in her head, and it probably was from one of the things in the list of grievances she’d just spouted off. Probably the dark in the week, I guessed.

And then I stopped musing as she poised to jump towards where Tower and Moon were sitting instead of coming at me again.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said, but it was too late. She’d bounded for them. They were watching and ready for her, but they were hurt and slow. They wouldn’t be able to fend off more than one or two blows.

I swore, and moved as fast as I could.

Her eyes went wide with shock as I got to them before she did. So did Tower’s and Moon’s.

As for me, every single fucking part of me just hurt. I felt bruises coming on in my legs as blood vessels ruptured and ligaments tore. It was like I just ran ten miles in a second.

But people run ten miles and endure. And I was still standing as she sailed in towards me, right between her and my friends where I belonged. I panted and had time for one deep breath before my blades crossed in front of me, and she crashed through them.

One by one, they sparked and went out as she somehow remained untouched. Mostly untouched. Screaming and flailing in the air, but not as cut to pieces as I’d expected. She landed in a heap at my feet and writhed. I pulled another dozen blades from the air and floated them ominously above her.

“Surrender,” I repeated.

She spat at me. And then I just shook my head as she pushed off the ground and bounded away again.

“Stop playing with her and finish it,” Moon said. “This is vile.”

“I’m not playing, I’m trying to get her to not die!” I shouted back.

“She seems uninterested. I recommend you meet her halfway and kill her.”

I took a few steps forward, my legs screaming and burning under me, trying not to show her how much my little burst of speed had cost me. “I don’t see the halfway in that, Moon. But if she doesn’t surrender soon, I might have to take your advice,” I said pointedly.

The Exhuman stood right in front of me, leaning forward, her muscles tensed with a current I could feel, ready to dash again. But she was afraid now. Afraid that no matter what she did, I’d stop her again and again.

Which was bullshit, of course. But it was very carefully constructed bullshit. I wanted her to think that so she’d fucking give up already. But maybe she was just too far gone, too crazy or damaged. Maybe I was wasting my time here and the best I could hope for was disabling her so she could be arrested.

I felt her weight shift as she turned towards Whitney and Jack, and before she could even think about going after them, I threw a fistful of lightning bulbs into the ground between them, blanketing the grass with angry snakes of current as I had on first arriving. She took one look at them and then snapped her gaze right back at me.

Good.

And then she charged me like a maniac again. Which was less good.

Honestly, I didn’t know how I was going to beat her, either. Everything I’d done seemed to cause her pain, but not any real damage. She’d crashed right through a wall of my blades and barely been singed. Something here was at play I didn’t get.

But again, I put a bunch of my blades through her and sidestepped her tumbling body as my swords fizzled out on striking her without much effect. She screamed and writhed and her skin was pink and angry where I’d hit her, but this was lightning. It made water flash evaporate explosively. This wasn’t first-degree-burn material we were playing with here.

“Uh, so what are her powers?” I asked.

“Body-surrounding barrier, and wrist blades. Light exosuit augmenting mobility,” Jack said.

“Oh. The barrier stops my blades.”

“Yes, but not heat. And Whitney believed she could manifest a blade within the barrier.”

The Exhuman roared and jumped towards Jack at his calm explanation, seemingly uncaring about the electrocuted ground between them now. She had a couple dozen feet to close, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to make it this time. I saw Jack’s face freeze in concentration as she charged in, trying to get him and Whitney both out.

But she was too fast. She swiped right through Jack, and at the last moment, he disappeared, leaving the exosuit helpless on the ground.

“Now–you surrender!” she shouted, facing me and pointing one arm in my direction, the other levelled at Whitney’s chest. “Or I’ll cut this guy into so many pieces, you’ll need a butcher to recognize her!”

“Now just calm down a sec,” I said, holding out my hands placatingly.

“No! I’m the victim here. You don’t get to tell me to calm down. You bastards showed up and violated my home, my safety, my sanctity, and the only time you’re willing to talk is when I have the upper hand. You’re disgusting!”

“Bitch, I have been trying to talk to you this whole fucking time,” I shouted back. She stiffened and pressed the blade closer to Whitney and I took a step back.

“Ahhh, haa,” she laughed. “That’s right. You understand how this works now.”

I wished I had my comms on me. I could coordinate with Jack to get Whitney to safety, but without them he was God-knows-where. If I knew him, he wouldn’t act without an opportunity though…even though he was probably the best candidate to create one. He tended to be a passive, reactionary fighter, despite the ambush potential of his powers. It’d be on me to make an opening for him.

I just hoped Whitney didn’t get hurt. I’d never forgive myself if she did, as I focused my powers, taking a few careful steps forward to get myself in range.

“Stop right there,” she said, and I did. “Put your powers away.” And with a thought, my array of swords winked out. “Good. Good. Tell that other guy to come out where I can see him. Now!” she screamed.

Jack melded out of nowhere right next to me, his hands up in a copy of my own. Not that his position mattered much, he could still move in the blink of an eye.

“What do you even want?” I asked her, buying myself time as I worked.

“What do I want? I want you gone! I want my own place where I’ll be assured safety from the likes of you bastards who think you can just show up and snuff me out when I become inconvenient.”

“New Eden–“

“I don’t want to go to prison, you idiot.”

“It’s not a prison. It’s a relocation facility. There are houses and food and holos–“

“And guns? And soldiers?” she scoffed.

“Well…yeah.”

She snorted. “Thanks but no thanks. I’ll just make my own home. Right here. And you bastards will tell the rest of the XPCA that I’m not to be trifled with. I’ve beaten the best of you, and I’ll do it again. So leave! Me! Alone!”

“Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “You know that’s not how it works. You can’t just be stronger than someone and take their shit. That’s not how society works.”

“Watch me!” she screamed, and then I tensed as she turned and slashed her blade sideways through the exosuit.

Through…where the exosuit had been. Her shock was apparent as she spun in place, seeing nothing there. She stood stock still for a moment, just staring at the grass.

Which was a moment too long to hold still in a battle. Jack appeared from nowhere, his knife jammed straight into her forearm through her palm in an instant, and the moment he disappeared, my bulb landed, electricity coursing up her legs, making her shudder and her teeth rattle as she collapsed.

I let out a breath of relief as I worked the electromagnets I’d woven to fly the exosuit over to me from where it sat levitating fifteen feet in the air. I had all the wounded in one place where I could defend them. The risk of something going horribly wrong this fight was way down.

“You okay?” I asked Whitney as she floated to rest.

“Yeah,” I heard her cough from deep in the suit, sounding anything but okay.

“We’ll get you patched up soon, I promised.”

“Sorry I couldn’t…do more,” she said.

I turned back to the livid Exhuman with the new hole in her arm, droplets of her blood dripping into her blade and disintegrating into a haze. She looked beyond words and reason now. As much as I didn’t want to, I think I had to take her at her word now. Surrender wasn’t in her vocabulary.

Anticipating the charge, I waved my arms and my blades reappeared on my back. The ground under me crackled with snaking tendrils of lightning. And all around me, white circles shuddered into being, drifting slowly away from me like balloons filled with tepid air.

Yeah, we had ball lightning now, too. Everything Whitney did, I could do better. I don’t know how my powers got over to her, but one thing was for fuckin’ sure. While she had them, was just a victim. I was a goddamn Exhuman.

The woman charged me again and again, growing increasingly rabid and frustrated with each failure. She went after me, she went after my friends, but always I was there to stop her, burning her more and more but never able to land a decisive blow. I’d taken Jack’s cue and focused on her hands, which were now black with charred pieces of bone sticking out, dead and vile, clenched to her chest whenever she wasn’t flailing at us with what must have been unbearable pain.

And yet she just bore it, screaming at me in no language humans spoke. Just rage and bitterness given voice. As her attacks continued and he frustration broke into tears, I asked, pleaded, begged her to reconsider, but it seemed the more I talked, the more she just wanted me to die.

Or maybe she wanted herself to die. I didn’t know. They weren’t exactly discernable at this point. Either way, it was piteous as fuck, and I felt a thin slice of guilt laid on me with every painful failure she endured.

Finally, she seemed at her end. Nothing had changed except that she wasn’t attacking anymore. She just stood there, hands out in front of her, blackened and useless, blades shimmering green and more functional than the mess they hung off of.

She just stood, and waited. Long seconds passed where I expected her to jump at me at any moment, but she never came. Her breathing was ragged and came in tortured tatters, her knees were infirm, her eyes were wild and unbalanced.

And slowly I realized what she’d finally accepted. She couldn’t beat me. She had given me her absolute all and come across something completely beyond her grasp. She had no idea what she was about to do, and neither did I. And that scared the crap out of me more than all of her previous attacks combined.

Still watching her, still facing her, I crouched and reached backwards, my fingertips finding the edge of Whitney’s exosuit and fumbling inside one of the holes in the arm where I knew by memory that there was a broken pneumatic shaft.

My fingertip found the clean-sheared edge before I knew it, and I felt a prick of blood which made me wince. But then I got to work unscrewing the shaft and liberating it from the rest of the wreck. After a few seconds, I had a little tube of a shiv in my hands, poised and ready.

I’d also figured out what she was going to do. And I knew she couldn’t be allowed to do it. I just had to pray I was wrong, pray that it wouldn’t come to this. But it was all she had left at this point.

Except to surrender. Fuck, why couldn’t she just surrender. Please. Please have a change of heart and just give up. Don’t make me kill you.

My heart sank as I felt her body tense. She’d made her decision. She knew what she was going to do. Almost invisible to my eyes but glaring as the sun to my senses, she raised one hand straight towards me, keeping me focused on it, keeping me at arm’s length…despite the twenty feet already between us.

While the rest of her body subtly turned towards the rest of the city. She was going to run. She was going to run into the evacuation boundaries and kill the XPCA there, and then carve her way through the unsuspecting populace beyond. Whatever her demented logic was, she would apply it to weaker adversaries until finally, exhausted but not defeated, she would be completely spent, and the XPCA would claim her and kill her.

There was no other way if that’s what she chose. It was just a slow death, and the deaths of dozens or hundreds of others. She couldn’t escape, she couldn’t win, but she could make the world a little shittier on her way out.

“Don’t do it,” I warned, holding my little metal spear pointed right at her. “I’m serious.”

She just hissed at me and tensed to spring away.

I felt…resignation as I fired my powers, my entire arm wrapped a crackling burst of electricity. I felt a huge kickback that threatened to dislocate my shoulder as the bolt leapt from my hand, the air cracking as it jumped past supersonic speeds in an instant.

It went straight through her hand pointed at me, straight up her warding arm, just under her shoulder and punched through both her lungs and her heart before it came to violent rest, visible poking out her side, trapped in her barrier with her. The sound hit me less than an instant later, of a dozen organs and bones breaking in concert with a sonic boom.

She gaped at me, not comprehending. She tried to draw a breath, but her lungs were already filling with fluid. The pain wouldn’t hit her for another few moments. She blinked, gasped, coughed blood, and then in desperation, did what her body was poised to do. She bounded into the air, thirty feet up and away.

I watched her shrinking into the distance as she tumbled and then landed with a slam in the middle of the street, flat on her back. The barrier in front of her face was visible now, splattered red with blood. Her disintegrated hands clutched at her chest and throat, and fortunately from here I couldn’t hear the noises she was making.

“Jesus, fuck,” Tower said, watching her sputter her last.

“How’s your arm?” I asked, turning to him. Any excuse to not watch the woman die.

“Destroyed,” he said, clenching his bad arm in his good, the entire thing an indecipherable mess of blood, bandages, and medical gel.

“And you’ll make it to your body?” I asked Moon. She nodded. “Then Jack…where’s Jack? There you are. Jack, can you radio central and get a medevac for Whitney and have regenerators primed for her and Tower? And let Cosette know that the target is down, I imagine she’ll be relieved to hear it.”

“I’d be happy to,” Jack smiled. But before radioing anything, he advanced on me and clapped me hard on the shoulder.

“What’s all this about?” I asked him. “Isn’t like you to…be too affectionate.”

“Perhaps not,” he said. “But I think all of us are just happy to have you back.”

I gave him a smile and turned back to the now-still body aspirating on its own blood in the street. I knew I’d be seeing this in my dreams for many nights to come, but the guilt machine inside me wouldn’t let me turn away. I owed this pathetic creature a few nights of lost sleep if nothing else. Her life could mean that much, at least.

“It’s good to be back, I guess,” I said.