Published at 12th of August 2022 9:16 pm

Book 2: Chapter 115: Look, In the Sky!

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Waning sunlight trickled through the hole in the sky as lightning bolts danced along the borders of black clouds. The storm raged around this new eye, torrential wind and rain drowning the city below. The caped figure floated freely for another moment, suspended between clear sky and deadly clouds, before an errant arc of electricity snapped out and made a connection. An explosion of light and sound, and Dan was forced to look away.

Thunder rolled down the sides of the building, rocking it to its foundations. Dan pressed his hand against the wall, and felt it sway. His ears were ringing, his eyes were filled with spots. Rain battered at him through broken windows. The officers beside him could barely stand, much less relocate, and one was still unconscious.

“Time to go,” Dan decided, turning away from whatever was happening above the city. It was obviously a fight of some kind, but the shockwaves alone were wrecking parts of the city. He wasn’t about to stick around and get buried or pulped.

He reached the unconscious pilot and scooped her into a fireman’s carry. His veil was already scouting a path through the storm. The hurricane had only intensified, so they would need to move quickly between buildings, preferably the broad, squat, reinforced edifices that the city seemed to favor. The one they currently occupied had taken some damage from the crashed Peregrine, and was entirely too close to the battle in the sky.

Dan grunted as he lifted the unconscious officer. He turned to his two companions and frowned as they stared upwards, seemingly spellbound by whatever was happening in the sky. Another flash lit the sky, and the floor shook. Bits of sheetrock rained down from the ceiling, and Dan worriedly investigated with his veil. Nothing he found indicated any sort of lasting stability. The building was coming apart.

“Time to go!” Dan repeated, more insistently this time. He hooked his passenger’s limbs in a single arm, then used his free hand to shake the shoulder of the least injured officer.

The man jerked back, turned to face him. Dan couldn’t see the man’s face through the matte-black visor, but he could almost feel the anxiety rolling off the officer. His head tilted as he roamed Dan’s face, his cargo, and the quickly deteriorating room. Finally, he nodded.

“Time to go,” he agreed, grabbing his partner by the arm.

Dan called in the situation as he led them through the dark building. The emergency power had failed, but it was only a quick walk to a nearby wall. Dan’s veil made a hole, then another in the building sitting almost flush with their own. They pushed through the burst of wind and rain and made it inside.

“SPEAR Team retrieved,” he said through gasping breaths. “Three officers, all injured but alive. The situation here is getting pretty bad, though. We’re relocating, and I suggest you divert our backup elsewhere. Not much they can do while conditions are like this.” He tried to keep the next bit lighthearted, despite his own growing worries. “Oh, anyone else notice the parting clouds and hole in the sky? Because I saw someone floating in the middle there, and I’d really like to know whose team they’re on.”

“We have matching reports across the city of a hole in the sky,” his radio confirmed. The voice was different, back to Dan’s old operator. “You’re the only one who has reported a possible cause. Can you describe this figure you saw? Or, better yet, identify them?”

Dan couldn’t supply much more than, ‘Dude was wearing a cape,’ so he repeated the question to his traveling companions.

“Enemy Natural,” the less-concussed one grunted.

Dan ripped another hole in the wall. They stepped into an alley, and were almost immediately swept off their feet by the rapid floodwater. Dan’s veil swallowed that, too, and the officer kicked open the door of the next building over. They sprinted inside, hounded by the howling storm, and Dan nearly collapsed against the floor. The officer hurriedly shut and barred the door, slumping against it in relief.

Panting, Dan said, “I thought you weren’t fighting that one?”

“We weren’t,” the officer replied after a moment to catch his breath. “They were fighting each other. We got caught in the crossfire.”

Dan’s veil darted out to map his surroundings. It took in the state of the building, and Dan judged it stable enough for now. He looked around, quickly realizing it was a convenience store. He laid out his burden on the counter, before collapsing on the hard tile below. He took in heavy, heaving gulps of air as he regained his equilibrium.

The third officer was still nursing a concussion. He knelt, swaying slightly, both hands pressed against his temples. Dan didn’t bother asking if he was okay. Instead, he thought over what he’d learned. These officers had flown into a battle between… who? The Naturals who had caused the storm?

“They?” Dan prompted. “How many did you see?”

“At least two,” the less-injured officer said. “The one with a cape, and whoever he was fighting. I can’t think of any reason why he’d repeatedly throw lightning at himself, only to dodge it. I can only assume that he must have been fighting some unseen comrade.”

“Why were they fighting?” Dan asked.

“No idea,” the first officer replied. He shrugged, leaning his back against the door as he slid down to the floor. “Dissension in the ranks?”

“And you guys just, what, stumbled into them?” Dan asked.

“We identified the origin of the storm as an off-shore oil rig,” the concussed one revealed in an unsteady voice. “Alpha squad was dispatched as a first strike. We lost contact with them, and were dispatched as reinforcements, but our sensors picked up a battle within the storm. The Peregrine is rated to withstand Cat-Sixes, so we moved to investigate. We assumed it was Alpha. It wasn’t.”

“I don’t know if the caped one even noticed us,” the first picked up the story. “We tried to get a closer look, and got swatted out of the sky by a bolt of lightning the size of a skyscraper. Jordan’s upgrade had her linked in to the Peregrine, and it fried her senseless, so the landing wasn’t even a controlled one. Whoever is fighting above, they’re obviously not friendlies.” The man paused and canted his head slightly, as if in remembrance. “We got a look at the caped one, if only for a moment. He was dressed like one of those old-timey vigilantes. White spandex, red cape, some kind of mask.”

Dan dutifully reported these details back to the stadium command. The ground had stopped shaking, though the storm continued to howl outside. The lightning was no less frequent, but the thunder was more distant now. The fight had moved away. Maybe even outside the city.

A thought occurred to Dan, then, one that he couldn’t help but voice.

“What if it is a vigilante?” he asked.

“What?” one of the officers grumbled.

“The guy with the cape. You said he was dressed as a vigilante,” Dan reminded them. “What if that’s what he is?”

Dan could hear the scowl in the officer’s voice. “Then it’s even worse than if he were a villain. At least a villain is upfront about the harm they want to cause. You can never tell with a vigilante, what damage their blundering might bring about.”

“He seemed pretty powerful,” Dan pointed out. Somebody had punched a hole in the sky, and he could only assume it was the guy in the middle of it. The fact that Dan could still hear the sounds of battle, distant now though they might be, meant that the caped Natural was surviving what had brought down this SPEAR Team in mere moments.

Dan looked outside the window of the front door with a frown. The sky was still dark, the wind was still blowing, and the rain pounding, but…

“Does the storm seem to be waning to you?” he asked the two officers. They’d been recovering for maybe ten minutes. That was a very long time, given that conditions outside had previously been deteriorating by the second. There was a shelter a few blocks away, and Dan had expected to have to fight for every inch. The outside was in no way calm; there was still a hurricane out there, but now it seemed to have reached an equilibrium.

Dan keyed his radio. “Central, what’s the estimated wind speed? Is it still increasing?”

“Negative.” the reply came quickly. “We’ve seen an abrupt drop in the past few minutes. Wind speed is clocked at around one-thirty miles per hour and holding steady.”

“Do we know why?” Dan asked.

“Best guess is that our SPEAR Team succeeded in their mission,” the operator replied optimistically.

Dan eyed said team’s reinforcements with a dubious expression. He wouldn’t bet on that guess. In fact, he had a sickening sense of surety growing inside him. He knew why the storm was fading, but only time could confirm his suspicions. He checked the conditions outside one more time. The wind had decreased, but the water level was still rising. They needed to get to a proper shelter, especially if this lull in the storm was a temporary thing.

“Let’s move,” Dan said. To his relief, nobody questioned him.

He shouldered the unconscious officer once again, and they made their way to the distant shelter. Dan stopped ripping holes in people’s property. The storm was no longer so fierce that it was necessary. Instead, they sprinted from building to building, weathering the storm with stubborn tenacity. It was a hard, painful slog, and by the time they reached the shelter Dan’s body was screaming at him.

The shelter they arrived at was occupied by a number of volunteers, many of whom lacked the ability to safely navigate the storm at its worst. Dan gratefully handed off his burden to them before collapsing in a corner and closing his eyes. The situation in the city had mostly stabilized. He was no longer desperately needed, and he could take a moment to simply rest.

The storm raged above, but it was passing. Dark clouds slowly gave way to night sky. Water filled the streets, flooded buildings, carried away cars. Houses were either water-damaged or wind-blasted down like desert mountains. Over the course of an hour, the hurricane withered and died. Evening fell over a quiet city.

It did not last.

Dan was probably not the first to see it. Even still, he felt like he’d been waiting for the sight, all along. The sun dipped its feet into the horizon, sending its golden tendrils dancing across the sky. Grey clouds dissolved into brilliant orange mist. In these final moments before twilight, a final shadow made its way across the city. The shape of a man crossed the sky, trailed by whipping cloth. His white clothes sparkled in the last dregs of the day, and his cape wrapped around him in a brilliant, victorious red.

The vigilante made a slow flyover of Galveston Island, obvious as the evening sun. As he passed by, Dan got a good look at the emblem on the man’s chest: big, bold, black ink on white spandex. A circle with twelve inward facing tines.

In the distance, Dan heard the sound of sirens.

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