"What?" She didn't know whether to feel relieved or to get angry when they laughed. "You're letting me go?"He took off his police cap. "Of course not, anyone who sets up sound equipment that efficiently deserves a place on Cadence. And you're delightful." Ben winked. Victor looked perplexed. "What?" "Stone, you'll get in trouble with the media if you don't cop on." "I'm sorry, Mark, that was just too good.""Cadence?" Artemis said. "So you're just a couple of low lives with no principles and nothing better to do?" Artemis braced her hands on her hips. "Whoa there. It's a gimmick." Ben said."We're trying to sell It." The third guy chimed in."On Independence Day." Mark added."Sell it? Gimmick?" Irma said re-registering their words. She brushed her eyes. "We apologize for our misdemeanour. We'd like to make you an offer to be our cover girl. You know for marketing and stuff?" "No pressure." The brown-haired guy passed her a flyer. "We'll leave you with our contacts. We'll be t
He wasted no time building up a fireball in his hands. "You're burning and I'm about to put your lights out." Maks felt the flames singe his eyebrows and crouched. "That doesn't even make any sense." He said hanging on a light pole. Heat rose from the ground as Igneous powered up and he aimed ember attacks on them. The fire spread to the library and anything flammable. He breathed harshly when it swallowed up oxygen. Irma coughed lurching through the flames. Igneous was trying to hedge them in. "I don't suppose you have a plan before he cremates us." She said running while he hovered with a raven's body and his human head intact. "Gee Irma, how am I supposed to stop what I can't touch!?" He said mildly and ducked the fireballs. "I feel like you're rubbing it in." He flapped his burning feathers off and dropped to the ground running. His skill reversed and he had a raven's head and his human body. His arms were red like severe rashes. His eyes were calculating, the fire was s
Mister Gunderson glanced at him and he fooled around reading posters and walked past him. "Morning sir.""It's afternoon." He said. "It was a military greeting but good to know." He retorted and pursed his lips leaving."Anderson." Mister Gunderson watched the bee beelining toward him and onwards. "I'd be careful if I were you."...He hobbled along after that, it was his last shift for the week. The sun was setting and gardeners worked on the shrub hedges, cutting out the flowers and one of the staff stopped a kid from snatching apples from a tree. He stretched after a hard day's work, staring at the remainder of bees stalking, he took slow deep breaths, Mister Gunderson was acting a little stranger than he was before. Drifting past them, he glanced up at the sky and saw a thick black smog moving in one specific direction, which was toward him. He took cover and his system closed in on them, calculating. [ Africanized honey bees: known for their aggressive nature, though few death
Maks zipped out and picked up running. They mimicked his speed running too, he overlooked how creepy it was to be fighting himself and he nudged them off his side counting, enraged that he was getting multi-maimed, the road stretched out in front of him, he didn't have to outrun them.[...19...20...21...] If he was able to make the clones burn out then he just might slow them down before they could do any more damage. He got a sense of his environment, he reached a sunny boulevard of trees, blue sky and clean apartment buildings with brick red bases, he braced himself before 23 and he leapt up to a tree. The copies slid past him uncontrollably surpassing 23 seconds and they died of exhaustion. He stayed aloft with a raven's aura on him. He held on to a branch. The flight of the raven felt more like antigrav than flight, he had no wings but all the same, he turned himself over and latched on to a thick branch and pulled himself down, he touched his shoulder, huffing and watched them
And the oppressive sun. The trees wafted the hot breeze. There were no promises of fall this August."Nothing as bad as you in Bermuda shorts." Victor snorted and rolled his eyes grinning."I'm going to go change." He said and trudged to one of the large stalls and disappeared. He bit his lip. "Me too." He said grinning. The adults were keeping company with the kids in the paramecium pool. Victor shoved a tuft of sand. The grass looked scanty and dry. Teen slid on a mat covered in oil and they tried to beat each other's speed record. He cleared while one sailed into a tree groaning. He wondered where Maks went. He stayed by a pine tree with a fibrous rope around it and sloped."Boo!" He appeared with his human face, the body of a squirrel and cute antlers.Victor fell over and his expression dulled while he chuckled. "Too much?" He said. Victor sighed. "Nice try, but I refuse to be terrorized by one wittle creature." He gave him one affectionate chuck under the chin. "Touch me l
Polymorph touched his face and ran over to the distance he split up ten times over. Each with elemental and sub-elemental powers. He wouldn't get lazy. "I need more." Reyna, their leader with firepower bounded in shooting projectiles at them. He escaped and she rushed over to where Streak lay. Her eye watered at the bloodstain on her stomach. "Why does this always happen to me?" She said in a strained voice.Her chest heaved. "You're a soldier, it's what you signed up for...Artemis, don't do anything rash."Her lips thinned. "They're gonna get to P.A.S.S. Who knows how many people he's cloned.""We'll figure this out." The other lookalike Huli jing, the youngest in the group lurched after him, drawing water. They made simultaneous hand motions and the waves swerved and caught them in a sphere. Polymorph struggled in the current. The first clenched her fists and the water toughened up like cement. "Any time now." She said to the second who lifted them off the ground. He grew gills
The awakeners stepped away while the glitchy ones came after them. "Enough already." The impatient one said and they paused. "We can't fight back.""More for us." Martha said with brown tails. Maya held up gallons of river water by her side. "It's those little demons again.""We just met." They flinched while the water drilled past them to the polymorphs. The awakeners fought back and a guy conjured pieces of metal and turned the sharp edges firing into several of them."Don't let them touch you." Maya said."Screw this!" He conjured destructive power and they went out of him like razor-sharp rings. Beheading others.... Maks detected the hunks of flesh moving amidst the crowd splitting, he witnessed two of them replicate a melee fighter and he shot at them before they shuffled, they roared and slid on the grass smoking up to nothingness. He nocked two arrows and shot at the gooey creatures. He found a blind spot where the girls used to sit."Huh?"He paused when he saw a co
"Yeah, me too." Artemis said. They had little time left before they would become goddesses and their tasks would be over soon."That's good." She added. ... He could not overlook the minor patients that were making a lot of commotion at the ward, he would have to be patient, he read to a bunch of three year olds. The others jumped over beds, fought on chairs with rubber tubes like pirates and they made snappy comebacks, trying to suppress each other, he wondered where they were getting all that energy from. The nurse opened the door and fumed at them."As much as I'd prefer you bubbly little bugs, right about now but do you mind!?" She looked around when they paid no heed."QUIET!""You're no fun." One of them said and they giggled at him.Her lip pursed. "And get to bed, it's almost time for your siesta. If you want to get stronger, you kids may as well sleep right so your conditions don't get worse." They muttered their protests retiring from their squabble and Maks chuckled."T