Unheroic Life of a Certain Cape

183 Makes for a Great Show

I stared up at the sky for a long moment before I let my gaze fall back to Clock’s body. His head lay twisted at an angle no living person could survive. The air around him was already cooling. A part of me felt sick not from guilt, but from how familiar the whole thing felt. I wiped the tears that still clung to his cheeks, left over from the last moment he lived.

“Maybe I was too greedy,” I muttered. “That was… unpleasant.”

I hadn’t expected his memories to hit me that hard. I had seen enough tragedies to fill several lifetimes, yet something about his raw, uncurated suffering stayed with me. Maybe it was because nobody planned it, without any hidden mastermind to blame. It was cruelty for cruelty’s sake. A world that simply did not care.

Really, I was quite the villain. Only someone like me would say that and keep walking.

One person’s tragedy never outweighed another’s. They all held their own weight, crushing each person in different ways. But every burden was carried alone. His life had become mine for a moment, and I felt it settle in me like a stone. I didn’t need to dwell on it, but memories had a habit of sticking whether I wanted them or not.

I pushed the thoughts down and stepped to the ledge.

The wind rushed past me as I jumped. The ground hurtled upward, but just before impact, I stopped time around my body. It was an abrupt freeze of momentum. My descent halted a hair’s breadth above the pavement. I released the stop and landed lightly.

“Chronokinesis,” I said under my breath. “Interesting.”

It was easier to use than I imagined. Stopping momentum and suspending myself midair all felt almost natural. The raw power behind it was something I had barely scratched. Chronokinesis was rarer than my intangibility, and far stranger. Interpretations of it varied wildly: freezing matter, slowing the world, speeding through seconds, even glimpsing the future. Abilities like that required specific synergy to work with other powers. Mine leaned more toward momentum cancellation than temporal manipulation. Still, even a simple interpretation was too valuable to ignore.

I walked through the ruined factory until I reached Ironflesh.

“I know you’re playing dead,” I said. “You’ve been convincing, but that act only works for so long.”

The gunmen were gone, having fled the chaos. Cowards with bullets tended to scatter once their leaders fell. Ironflesh opened his eyes slowly, breathing hard as he pushed himself up. The null metal sheen momentarily surfaced from his skin and shortly receding in full, leaving him human again.

“I’ll bend the knee,” he said, voice hoarse.

“You hid that healing factor well,” I replied. “Convenient talent.”

A clatter echoed behind me. Keegan staggered into view, mask still intact but his kevlar hanging in singed scraps. He looked like he had fought a full battalion.

“Sorry, boss,” Keegan said, breathless. “Goblin got away.”

He spotted Ironflesh and immediately squared his stance as if he wanted a fight.

“Let me fight him,” Keegan growled.

“No,” I said.

Ironflesh raised both hands in surrender. “I’m not here to make trouble. And… I’m sorry. For back then. Albert got what was coming to him. I didn’t expect you to turn out like this.”

His words wavered. Through empathy, I felt the truth and the lingering bitterness. It was resentment, small, but alive. Telepathy, however, slid off him like oil on glass. His power interfered with mental readings, not fully blocking me but muddy enough to make the details fuzzy.

“And why,” I asked, “should I trust someone who used me to kill his rival?”

Ironflesh swallowed hard, aware I was referring to Clock.

“I’ll work for it,” he said. “I’ll earn your trust in time. Whatever’s left of it. I won’t pretend I don’t resent you a bit. But I’m more afraid of you than anything else in this world.”

I studied Ironflesh carefully. His breathing was uneven, but his eyes told me the truth. He wasn’t lying about bending the knee. Fear sat heavy inside him, raw and honest. And it wasn’t the cowardly kind. Instead, it was survival. He truly believed I could and would slaughter every cape he had if he brought them tonight. The memory of Seamark still haunted him. I couldn’t blame him. People tended to remember the day their ‘friends’ died screaming.

Keegan wiped some soot off his ruined kevlar and muttered, “Boss, is this really necessary? We could just kill all of them and invite capes from other city states, ones actually willing to be loyal.”

He wasn’t wrong. Ironflesh had made use of me. He knew Clock wouldn’t bend, and predicted it could play in his favor if he just played it smart. Clock came prepared too, dragging every cape he had, like a final plea for me to erase his entire faction. It was insulting in its transparency.

But Ironflesh had bent in the end. And the only way to know whether he had real value was to test him.

I extended my hand. “Let’s be friends then.”

Ironflesh stared at my hand as if it were a guillotine. He knew exactly what I was capable of now that his null metal wasn’t active. A single touch and I could sink him into the concrete. His expression twisted with fear, doubt, pride, and shame, all fighting in his face at once.

Still, he grabbed my hand with a firm grip.

“Good,” I said. “Your first job is simple. Swallow the Enders’ businesses within a month. We’ll meet after that.”

“That—” Ironflesh choked, his voice cracking. “That’s beyond my ability. My capes aren’t enough. And New Vanguard will intervene the moment they see a war this big.”

“That’s why I’m giving you a month,” I said calmly. “And I’ll handle the heroes.”

Keegan snorted. “And what about me?”

I glanced at Ironflesh. “Feel free to use the Brute.”

Keegan barked out a laugh and slapped Ironflesh on the back hard enough to make him stumble. “You heard the man. Don’t disappoint us.”

“Both of you can go,” I said.

Keegan nodded and jogged toward the shadows. Ironflesh followed, moving stiffly like a man unsure of my orders. I turned only to find someone standing where the dim streetlight met the darkness. Silver hair. Black mask. A sleek silver-and-black costume I didn’t recognize.

Promise.

She stepped forward with a lazy confidence that made the air tighten. “Can’t believe you had the guts to come back to Markend of all places.”

“How long were you standing there?” I asked.

“Long enough,” she said. “I saw everything.”

Her gaze flicked to the bodies behind me, then back to my mask. “I heard you earned a privilege.”

“I did,” I replied.

“Well,” Promise said, voice shifting cold, “that privilege doesn’t work anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve gone villain again.”

My empathic danger sense screamed.

I tilted my head just as a sniper round tore through the air. The bullet sliced past where my skull had been a breath earlier so fast it blurred like a streak of molten steel.

If that had hit me, I wasn’t sure I could have phased through it in time.

Sniper fire cracked across the rooftops again, each round sharper and faster than the last. I ducked behind a crumbling wall only for another shot to punch clean through the concrete, forcing me to phase backward and slip through the nearest building. Fresh chapters posted on novel{f}ire.net

Garuda appeared above me, wings spread wide. From the distance, his feathers ignited and fired like miniature meteors, each one encased in a spherical barrier snapping shut like traps mid-flight.

I raised my hand and breathed out, focusing on the new sensation lingering behind my eyes. Chronokinesis. I stopped time around the incoming feathers, freezing them mid-air like shards of glass suspended in a photograph. With tarot cards under my boots, I launched myself upward, streaking toward Garuda.

But I couldn’t kill him. If I spilled any more blood in front of the wrong eyes, the world would come crashing down on me. Let the media believe I was a pretender; it bought me time.

Not that New Vanguard believed it.

They prepared to kill me, not capture.

Another sniper round hissed past my cheek. I snatched my tarot cards back under my coat and killed my momentum with a burst of time stop, dropping straight to the ground without shattering my legs.

Promise appeared right in front of me in a blink of teleportation. “Stay down,” she said, and then unleashed a torrent of flame at point-blank range.

I stepped forward and phased through it, the heat rolling past me harmlessly. I grabbed her wrist and said, “I plan to reveal I’m the real deal. Just not today.”

I tried to phase her arm, intending to maim, not kill.

Her skin turned metallic. Null metal shimmered across her forearm.

My power slid right off.

So she copied Ironflesh.

Of course she did.

The flames died as she tore her arm free and leapt back, propulsion kicking underneath her boots.

New Vanguard… the ones who replaced the old guard that failed Markend. I was their catalyst. Markend didn’t have a legendary villain like me who thrive on kill or be killed scenarios. Other cities had their monsters. I became Markend’s. That hatred carried over to their successors.

No wonder they were trying this hard.

Promise hovered above me with a glow of layered powers spiraling around her. George had been right. She hoarded DNA samples, copying people’s powers from the inside out. I could imagine her utility belt was filled with all manner of ‘source’ to her power. I was tempted to snatch it, but clearly she’d been careful enough to not give me an opening.

She shot upward with a burst of flight as Garuda launched more barrier-feathers down on me. This time I didn’t dodge. I raised my hand and fired a surge of electrokinesis upward, scattering them before they could encase me.

I wanted to see who else was here.

And I got my answer.

The ground beneath me burst into gelatinous slime. My foot sank before I could react. Someone had set it well in advance.

The air shimmered.

A figure stepped out of invisibility with wide coat, wide-brimmed hat, guns spinning at his fingertips with showmanship I didn’t ask for.

He tipped his hat.

“Howdy, villain.”

He was probably the cause of the jelly on my leg.

Phantom Shooter. Cowboy hat, long coat, twin pistols twirling between gloved fingers, and a white phantom mask over his face. Word was he had photokinesis and a handful of enhancer ratings with good reflexes, good aim, and good speed. New Vanguard liked their themes.

And the rest? Rubby, formerly of Watch, now going by Static after their collapse. She’d made a name for herself picking at what was left of her old team’s legacy. I could feel her mind around, though she was invisible.

The jelly around my foot hardened in an instant. Not ordinary slime. Its structure rippled with the same oppressive feel as null metal, but worse. It was more hostile, and more absolute. When I tried to phase my leg, my power slid off it as if rejected.

Static’s elongated arm snapped toward me from nowhere, stretching like a rubber whip before clamping onto my shoulder. Lightning burst from her palm, coursing across her stretched limb as she hurtled toward me with shocking speed.

“That’s for ruining Watch!” she screamed as she threw a haymaker at my jaw.

I blocked, but the electricity bled through, patched right into that rubber biology of hers. It was a strange power combination.

I grabbed her arm and tried to phase her, but my hand slipped through her like my power was skating across oil. “Prepared thoroughly for intangibility capes, Eclipse,” she snarled, pulling her arm back and reshaping it.

With one foot trapped, she forced me into close quarters. I dodged most of her strikes, slipping my weight backward as she threw punches and kicks that crackled with lightning. Every one that grazed me delivered a sting sharp enough to bruise through my suit. With someone else’s electrokinesis, she should have been frying me. But mine responded instinctively, dampening her current before it could dig deeper.

Finally, I locked onto her forearm. I pushed my power into her skin, ready to phase her ribs out of existence, only for her limb to melt into a soft rubber mass that wrapped around my wrist. She stomped down on my arm, molding it into the debris beside me and pinning it with that same null-ridden jelly.

I exhaled. “I might’ve underestimated you too much.”

Static leapt back, her stretched limb retracting into a stump before reforming. Phantom Shooter blinked out of view, absorbing himself and Static into a cone of warped light as he bent photons around them. Garuda swooped overhead and rained more barrier-feathers, boxing me inside a shimmering cage of strange malleable forcefield. I pressed my palm against one; the field didn’t budge.

Promise teleported in front of me, her finger tapping lightly against my forehead.

Her eyes were cold. “Finally. I’ll have my revenge.”

A ripple passed through the alley as another figure floated into view, wearing black and purple spandex, mask smooth and gleaming, presence sharp as a blade. Leverage. One of the newer additions to New Vanguard but already with enough standing to speak against Promise.

She landed, arms crossed, glare sharp.

“Enough,” Leverage said. “We’re supposed to arrest him. Not kill him.”

Promise didn’t move her finger from my forehead.

Leverage had changed a lot since the last time I saw her in costume. She wasn’t wearing the blonde wig anymore. Dark hair framed her narrow eyes, sharp and cold, and she carried herself with a confidence she didn’t used to have. Still showy, still dramatic, but Promise had stolen the spotlight this time, whether she liked it or not. Judging by the way the two of them glared at each other, they weren’t on good terms.

Promise hissed, “It’s my decision to make. Just because the state wants you as the group’s new face doesn’t mean you get to take over leadership.”

Leverage didn’t even flinch. “I’m not taking anything over. I’m doing the job. If he’s really Eclipse, we can’t afford to screw around.”

From the looks of it, Promise’s reputation had taken a beating these past months, and Leverage had stepped into the vacuum left behind. That alone explained the tension.

Leverage put a hand on my shoulder. The gravity around me multiplied, heavy enough that even I wasn’t sure I could fully phase out of it in time.

Promise snapped, “Don’t use that! PR told you to wait until the reveal.”

“We don’t have the luxury,” Leverage shot back. “If he escapes, that’s on you.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Promise said as she grabbed my mask.

Garuda landed in front of her, golden wings flaring. “That violates his rights.”

“He’s a villain,” Promise spat. “He doesn’t get any.”

She turned to me, furious. “And why are you quiet?”

“Lights,” I murmured.

Leverage frowned. “What?”

“Camera.”

A news helicopter drifted into view overhead, its massive mounted camera pointed at the scene.

I smiled behind the porcelain. “Action.”

I dropped through the pavement, the ground swallowing me whole. I surfaced behind Promise and kicked the back of her knee. She reacted instantly, jerking her hand up and flinging me back with a blast of raw telekinesis. Even in panic, she tried to hide how wary she was of my intangibility.

Phantom Shooter flickered into view to my right, but a tarot card already waited where he materialized. The edge sliced clean through his fingers. His photokinetic invisibility was useless to me, since I could feel him like heat on my skin.

I grabbed left. Static. My hand wrapped around her throat as I pulled her in front of me, using her as a shield. Garuda’s feathers halted midair, filled with hesitation.

Leverage moved fast, flanking me. But Promise moved faster. She teleported in front of me, fingers outstretched, reaching for my head with telepathy flaring like a spear meant to burst my skull open.

Except I crushed her mind first.

Empathy bolstered my telepathy, smashing into her like a shockwave. Promise gagged, then vomited blood as the scream died in her throat.

Leverage finally reached me. She flicked her hand upward, and gravity yanked me into the sky, ripping Static from my grip. Garuda shot up after me, layering himself in barriers as he closed the gap.

I hit the switch inside my mask. Electricity surged from the porcelain, stored from earlier fights, and burst outward in a crackling wave. His barriers shattered like thin glass. Tarot cards rained downward, slicing into the forcefields below as I stabilized myself midair.

Two cards slid beneath my boots, humming with telekinesis, holding me aloft.

I lifted my head toward the helicopter.

My voice blasted through the loudspeakers.

“Is this all the heroes Markend has to offer?”

Wind whipped my coat. Lightning crackled along the cracked pavement below.

“Am I really Eclipse?” I asked. “Or just a pretender?”

Silence spread across the battlefield, leaving New Vanguard frozen and watching.

“If the terror of Markend is truly back…” I opened my hands. “Who’s next?”

I let the last words fall heavy and slow.

“Because everywhere Eclipse goes…” I paused. “…there will always be death.”