Natalie
threw a gunman down the stairs, the man tumbling head over heels until he hit
the bottom and laid there pitifully groaning. “Stairs are clear,” she stated
calmly into the radio despite the adrenaline pumping through her veins. What
they assumed was a simple apartment had turned into just that; it was the
complex underneath the building that they were currently fighting their way
through. Six levels down, Natalie thought she found the main laboratory.
Natalie
floated down to the doors, which were steel and locked from the inside. There
were no windows, and Natalie was not about to make the mistake of running into
an unknown room alone again. She heard the stairwell door open and footsteps
come down the metal stairs.
“The
upper floors are cleared,” Steve said with Marian smirking behind him. “GMA
agents are sweeping in to restrain and make arrests. I told them to stay clear
of this level and keep their mics open in case something happens and they need
to evacuate. We still don’t know what we’re going to find.”
“But
we’re doing it together,” Marian said, pounding a fist to palm. “Kicking ass
like a family again.”
Steve
smiled, but Natalie kept her face impassive. If she hadn’t somehow escaped,
they were about to fight an extremely deadly metahuman. Steve walked forward
and, with his immense strength, pushed the doors open. The swung open with a
clang and the trio ran in, making sure to avoid direct eye contact with any
enemies. However on this floor there didn’t seem to be anyone.
They
found themselves in a laboratory with long tables full of beakers, pipettes,
and other scientific glassware and supplies. Charts of information were tacked
up to the walls, and formulas were scrawled on a blackboard at the far end of
the room. The faint smell of chemicals was noticeable and they saw a few vents that
were turned off but supposed to be circulating the air. Scattered along the
tables were thousands of pages of notes, some of which had spilled to the
ground when whoever was here last hurried out.
Steve
bent down and picked up a piece of paper close to his feet and studied the
writing. On the top of the page were the words: Metahuman Compound “Fang” v.
2.0.
“This is where they were
researching Fang,” he said as he put the paper on a nearby table. The
handwriting looked so familiar to him…
“Steve!”
Natalie cried out, but wasn’t fast enough. A small wooden desk flew through the
air and collided with Steve’s shoulder, knocking him back but not down. All
three heroes looked towards a small doorway that had been closed until just now
and saw the woman standing there, her green eyes glowing and her red hair
slightly swaying despite there not being a breeze.
She cruelly laughed and spread
her hands, opening her skin-tight leather-clad body open to attacks. “Come on,
heroes. Come meet the Reaper!”
Natalie reacted fastest,
slamming the woman backwards into the little room and throwing the door shut.
“What’s the plan?” she asked Steve as he and Marian prepared for battle.
“Hit her hard and fast, and
don’t look her in the eyes.”
With a crash, the door was
kicked down and the Reaper charged out straight at Steve. Natalie
telekinetically grabbed her, allowing Steve and Marian to attack. Steve punched
her in the gut, while Marian leapt over him to deliver a solid kick to the
Reaper’s face. However the Reaper was completed unfazed, and continued
struggling against Natalie’s grip. The two heroes started pummeling the Reaper,
but to no avail. She seemed invulnerable to all attacks, and laughed as Natalie
started to lose her grip.
“How is she so strong?” Natalie
groaned, concentrating on keeping the villain still.
As if she heard, the Reaper
responded, “I have the energy of dozens of people. You cannot do anything to
hurt me!” With a wrench, the Reaper broke free from Natalie’s grasp and grabbed
both Steve and Marian by the throats. “Now your power is mine!”
“No!” Natalie screamed and tried
to throw the Reaper back away from her family, but she had already absorbed too
much of their energy.
“Nothing can stop me!” the
Reaper yelled as she drained both heroes’ life force from them.
“You!” From the doorway came a
duel voice, one desperate and one full of rage. The Reaper glanced over,
sparing Steve and Marian’s lives for the moment. In the doorway was Matt,
leaning against the frame and panting. From his body radiated shadow energy,
but his eyes still glowed bright. “You can take this from me!”
Matt ran towards the Reaper as
the shadows tried to hold him back. The Reaper tossed Steve and Marian aside
and turned to face him, her eyes wide open. Their eyes met, and for a moment
Natalie saw the two metahumans pause. Then a struggle began between two forces;
the Reaper trying to absorb Matt’s energy while the shadows tried to pull back
inside his body. From what Natalie could tell, Matt was trying to push the
shadow energy into the Reaper.
In between them, the shadow
energy began to form a sphere as it tried desperately to get back to Matt’s
body but was being forcefully pulled towards the Reaper. The sound of the
exchange was deafening, and the force began to shake the building. Glassware
fell, beakers were broken, and the lights began swaying. Still the two metas
fought, one trying to take the energy and the other trying to give it up.
“You’re making her stronger!”
Natalie called out, but her voice was lost amid the chaos. She pulled Steve and
Marian closer to her and threw up a force field to protect her unconscious
loved ones.
“Give it to me!” the Reaper
cried, “I want all of your life!”
With a push, Matt forced the
remaining shadow energy from his body into the middle of them. He looked at the
villain as she pulled the shadow energy closer to her body with an expression
of sympathy. “No one should have to bear this curse,” he said under his breath.
Matt began pulling the shadow energy away from the Reaper with the same
intensity as she pulled it towards herself.
Natalie was in shock. The shadow
energy began to tear apart and dissipate into the air under the stress of the
two metahumans each trying to absorb it. Just as Natalie thought the building
was going to collapse, the sphere of shadows exploded in a blast of energy,
knocking both Matt and the Reaper backwards.
The Reaper was thrown into
Natalie’s force field and fell to the ground. Before she could recover, Matt
was upon her. Placing a hand on her chest and using the other to hold her
steady, Matt started absorbing all the energy from her body. After a few
moments, the Reaper’s body stopped struggling, and then she fell limp. The
green light in her eyes faded before her eyelids fell shut and by all accounts
it looked as if she was sleeping.
Matt got off her and walked over
to where Natalie had Steve and Marian. Natalie put her force field down and
Matt used the energy pulled from the Reaper to rejuvenate the fallen heroes.
Soon they were conscious and standing, albeit shakily. Natalie looked over to
the young woman on the ground. “What did you do to her?”
“I took everything she had,”
Matt said, his body still glowing softly. “I figured you two could use the
boost.”
Steve thanked Matt, then, “What
happened to you, Matt? Earlier your actions were a bit unsettling.”
Matt sighed and looked away.
“Short version? I found where Sombra went after the big battle and stopped her.
But to do it I had to absorb much more shadow energy than I ever had, and I
couldn’t control it. I couldn’t get rid of it either, not after it formed a
sentience of its own. It warped me, the same way it warped Jasmine’s mind.”
“You mean to tell me you almost
became like Sombra yourself?”
“In a way, yes. It was close,
but when I heard this young woman could absorb energy, a part of me realized
she could pull the shadow energy out of me. I couldn’t let her have it, though,
and hopefully the force of us ripping it apart destroyed what was left.” Matt
knelt down next to the woman, whose chest rose and fell in a relaxing slumber.
“She saved my life. Saved a lot lives, actually, without even knowing it.”
“Well she took a lot of lives as
well,” Natalie said, and Matt could feel her telekinetically hold the woman
down. “I doubt she’s going to see the light of day for a while.”
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