The Good Life: Showdown (ch. 25) (Patreon)

This wasn't how I imagined this happening. For a variety of reasons, really. Like, I had always imagined myself facing the full roster of the Seven, and now I wasn't even facing half of their total number. And, as of late, I had imagined myself facing off with them with Robin and Yoruichi at my side.

As much fun as I was having, I could say that this was not going to plan in the slightest. I could feel the noose tightening around my neck as Homelander's and my attacks clashed in the space between us, an explosion of raw energy rippling out. Stormfront and Starlight threw their own attacks into the mix, and I couldn't even fanboy over how I had seen this exact shot in so many promos for movies and TV shows. It was the money shot.

I dug in deep, straining in a way that I never had before. Homelander's heat vision was intense. It was practically a concentrated sun in the form of a beam, and I would blow out my tank if I tried to meet it head on. Instead, I cheated. I leeched off heat from his heat vision, converting it to more electricity to empower my own attack, making us nearly even. Stormfront complicated things, but it was essentially the same deal.

Starlight, however, tipped the balance against me because I didn't have a hard counter to light. It wasn't exactly a form of energy, it was compressed photons that had gained tangible form. When she threw in a blast, the clash between our combined attacks exploded outwards like a bomb going off, launching all of us back. Well, most of us. Homelander was unbothered and I was the first to right myself, feeling the pressure as the battle began in earnest.

Kimiko leapt to Queen Maeve while Stormfront went for her… brother? Who grabbed hold of Stormfront with a telekinetic grip and flung her out of my Room. Starlight and Cinder, however, were both forced to contend with the Chimera as I swapped it with Homelander, and the massive collective of a hundred screaming and begging people lashed out in wild confusion.

Homelander seemed faintly surprised to be moved around – I didn't have the strength to move him before. He recovered quickly as I was on the move, swapping myself with a piece of rubble to take a swing at him. Homelander reached up and blocked the slash with a forearm, his costume the only thing taking any damage. "We've never actually fought, have we?" Homelander asked, sounding unbothered.

He might not be the hero I dreamed him to be, but goddamn, if my heartbeat wasn't ticking a few beats faster. I cut through men like they were wet tissue paper, and I couldn't even scratch the paint on Homelander.

"Nope. Excited?" I asked him, swapping myself with Queen Maeve as Homelander lashed out, his fist blurring and it would have reduced my head into a fine mist if it had hit. Instead, he just barely managed to avoid hitting Queen Maeve, who had been taken mid-attack. The Chimera wasn't doing too well as a fighter, but it was mostly just a distraction. Starlight was trying to calm the people inside it down while Cinder sprinted towards the boy that had been rescued from the Sage Grove Center.

I swapped him with Kimiko, who seemed vaguely prepared for it and met Cinder head on.

"Wouldn't be the word that I would use," Homelander replied, but there was a faint smile tugging at his lips. He was dialing himself back. Because of the cameras. All because people were watching.

That took the edge off the manic smile behind my mask. "Really? Because it's the word I would use," I told him. Stormfront came flying in, propelling herself with lightning. The moment she entered my Room, I stole it from her, adding it to the miniature sun over my shoulder and letting her drop to the ground. "I mean… how many times have you really been able to cut loose?" I asked him and I saw it. A flash in his eyes that told me all that I needed to know.

I had been more right than I realized with my initial impression of Homelander, back when we met for the first time. How boring must it be at the top? I couldn't imagine how torturous it must be to have all that power and to just keep it in check. I would go insane if it was me. And even now, he hesitated to take the gloves off because of… what? Property damage? Collateral? Fuck me. Talk about blue balls.

"It's not that simple," Homelander replied, a tightness in his voice. A yearning.

"Come on. Live a little, Homelander. Have some fun," I provoked him, even if it was in my exact opposite interests to do so. It just made my heart ache -- I spent so long looking up to Homelander that even a peek behind the curtain wasn't enough to change how I felt about him entirely. It sucked seeing your hero… shackled.

"Are you insane?" Queen Maeve asked me, the chaos growing all around us. Starlight wasn't having a lot of success calming down the Chimera. It was hard to reason with primal terror, after all. Stormfront was powerless as Kimiko's brother slammed her into the ground, and so long as she remained in my Room, it would stay that way. Kimiko and Cinder were fighting it out before I swapped a rock with the Sage Grove boy, who ended up jumping Cinder with little hesitation.

I really wish I didn't bother with a mask when I heard questions like that. "Do you really need to ask that question?"

Queen Maeve scowled at me, her gaze flickering to my sword. My sword, not hers. I stole it so it was rightfully mine now. All the same, she pressed the attack, darting for me, only to find herself replaced with Starlight. Queen Maeve promptly undid any progress that she might have made by completing the punch and disemboweling one of the torsos that made up the main body, making the head that it belonged to scream in agony, which set off all the others.

Starlight, to her credit, launched a ballistic blast at me, only to find it smacking herself in the face when I swapped places with her as I took another swing at Homelander. He blocked the swing again, completely unbothered by it. "You really want me to cut loose?" He asked, sounding like I was a genuine marvel.

"Why wouldn't I?" I asked him, leeching off the heat from the sun to create a powerful blast of lightning that I channeled through the blade. In an instant, fifty million volts exploded into Homelander and the only indication that he felt it at all was his hair starting to stand up.

Homelander lashed out with a fist, one that I easily dodged by swapping myself with Starlight. She ducked out of the way, half anticipating it even as she sported a bloody nose. Stormfront was still getting manhandled by Kimiko's brother, but I noticed that he wasn't actually doing much damage to her. She had some pretty wild durability. Cinder was faring alright in a two v one, while Queen Maeve was trying her hardest to calm the Chimera down without killing anyone else.

"You'd die," Homelander replied, cooking an eyebrow at me.

I couldn't help but to laugh. "Who gives a shit about something like that?" Everything in this world had consequences -- from action to inaction. One day, I'd have to pay the piper. There wasn't any doubt in my mind about that. But why worry about it? Why let death be something that prevented you from living? "So? How about it?"

Homelander's lips twitched ever so slightly, as if he was at war with himself… and then he moved.

My Room saved my life. In that moment of hesitation, all of my focus went onto Homelander, to predict his next move, and that was the only reason I was able to dodge out of the way when a fist swung through where my head was. However, the millisecond that I swapped places with some rubble, Homelander was there, delivering an uppercut that I barely managed to dodge. The third swing was every bit as close as the first two, but I caught the ominous red glow in his eyes before heat vision erupted from his pupils.

Every piece of media I had ever seen had the heat vision be about as wide as a pencil. That the heat of the beams could melt through anything -- steel needing a few seconds, at most. What erupted from Homelander's eyes was well beyond that. The twin beams were each the size of semi-trucks, and the heat that radiated off of them… Any trace of moisture in my Room vanished instantly and I could feel the sweat evaporating from my body. And I was as far away as I could get from the beams.

The intense heat sweltered the air, and I saw that the asphalt was starting to bubble while a massive hole had been torn through the building. Slag and molten glass dripped from it, revealing that the heat vision had burned through the skyscraper. And the building behind it. And the building behind that one. And all the way to the ocean, which steamed so much it was visible from here.

"Holy shit. How long have you been able to do that?" I asked him as he floated in the air. For the briefest of seconds, the fight stopped to gape at the display of awesome power.

"I don't know. I've never needed to strain myself," Homelander replied, and I heard it. That little thrill of excitement. The strongest man in the world just got a little stronger. And, even better, the heat I had managed to leech had been nothing short of apocalyptic. The sun over my shoulder grew three sizes over, burning brightly like a miniature… well, sun. I couldn't compress the heat any further, and I don't think I could prevent a bit of leakage if there was any more heat in it. It wasn't quite ready, but it was about as close as I could hope to get it.

"Awesome," I told him, plunging the blade into the sun over my shoulder. Instantly, the metal attempted to liquefy, but I managed to hold it together as I shaped the weapon to what I wanted. I had gotten a lot better at touching small things, such as oxygen molecules and electrons, but this time I touched something different. I touched the carbon in the metal and I fed it into the sun even as I withdrew the blade. Where carbonized metal had once stood…

Heat and pressure turned the metal sword into one of pure diamond. Heat from the sun. Pressure from the physical force of the heat vision.

The sword was incredibly brittle, which is why I kept it in a near liquid state, the high heat making it shimmer. Even still, I knew that the moment that it cooled, the flaws would be revealed. It was my first attempt at such a thing, after all. I had chosen a more curved blade -- a katana was for weebs, but it was a sword designed for cutting flesh.

With a swing at Homelander, I projected the cut, the intense heat of his own heat vision thrown right back at him. I marveled as the cut slammed into his chest with physical force, sending him flying into the building behind him -- my apartment building, the one he just burnt a hole through. The cut liquefied the glass, metal, and concrete. But even as his suit burned away, I saw Homelander look down at his chest. He brushed a finger over the red line running across his chest and I couldn't help but laugh.

"Not even a drop of blood, huh?" I realized. I gave him no greater than a cat swipe could manage. No, worse. Those cuts at least managed to draw blood. His durability was absolutely insane. Because, as I marveled at the fact he was virtually unharmed… the building began to slide forward. I cut it at an angle, after all. With an awful screeching grinding noise, the building started to fall forward and I was quick to react.

I grabbed everyone before bringing them out of the immediate impact zone. The building hit the ground and a million different noises joined together in a symphony to create a chaotic mess of noise that could only be described as overwhelmingly loud -- thousands of panes of glass shattering, chunks of concrete breaking apart and falling, metal screeching and groaning as it was twisted out of place, the constant screaming from the Chimera gaining an extra edge of panic before getting silenced by falling rubble... All of it happening at the same time as the building struck the one across the street with thunderous force. The materials holding it together gave out and they both began to fall.

It was absolutely glorious, I thought as the dust washed over me. I could only breathe because of my Room. And despite getting two buildings essentially dropped on him, I felt that Homelander was fine. Not sporting so much as a bruise.

"Well, how about this, then?" I said, not disheartened in the least as I focused. The dust in the air worked to my advantage. Reaching behind me, I took hold of the sun that had inflated to the size of a large beach ball, and I could feel the energy that it contained. Winding the pitch up, I flung it at Homelander with all of my might with a great big smile on my face. Seems I had totally missed my calling as an MLB pitcher, because it flew right at him like a fast ball and struck him in the chest.

The two falling buildings had been loud.

The miniature sun was more of a bomb going off. Not like a hand grenade, or even a missile. The closest thing I could compare it to was that factory explosion I saw that happened in Lebanon -- first, there was the shockwave, which erupted at the point of impact and rapidly expanded until I knew that it'd probably been felt across the city while it would be heard as far as  Washington DC. However, that was just the start. The fire ignited the dust in the air, expanding the explosion as it raced outward.

The concussion blast shattered every plane of glass in the city. It leveled the buildings in the initial vicinity, toppling them as if they were sandcastles. Half the city would be deaf after the explosion, I knew, feeling it wash over me. The heat was intense, enough to flash burn just about anything. The only reason why I wasn't reduced to ash, struck deaf, or got blasted away was simply because I was within my Room. And the only survivors of the blast were inside of my Room, because I protected them from the worst of it.

All except Homelander.

"I actually felt that," Homelander said, his words reaching me because I carried them to my ears. Through the smoky haze, I saw him.

His clothing was mostly burnt away and he was tying a makeshift sash around his waist made from the American flag cape that he wore. I already knew that his costume was padded, but I was a bit surprised to see how lanky he was without his costume. He floated through the air, zeroing in on my location and emerged through the smoke…

Completely unharmed. His skin was streaked with soot, his hair was disheveled, but beyond that he was just fine. Not so much as a single injury to show for it.

I had dropped the sun on Homelander and he wasn't even singed.

"Damn. Not even that did anything?" I asked him, simply in awe of his durability. I didn't think it would kill him, but I was expecting it to at least do something.

"My ears are ringing, and my blood felt weird for a second there, but that's about it," Homelander agreed. "Got anything else up that sleeve of yours?" He asked me, cocking his head.

I wish I did. All I had left was the rapidly cooling diamond sword that I couldn't actually hit him with. Not that it would do any good because he already ate a direct swing and a speedcharged 'cut' without much issue. I simply couldn't hit him hard enough to overwhelm his stupidly broken durability. More than that…

I was tired.

Manipulating things within my Room took stamina. Until now, I had never really pushed it to the point that I felt physically drained, but between the sword and the sun, I felt like I had run a marathon. My grip tightened on the hilt of the sword, my lips pulling into a thin smile as I considered my options. I couldn't Scalpel his heart out of his chest because I couldn't get past his durability. Emotional manipulation? Homelander wasn't feeling any emotion strong enough for me to register. And the only people alive were my allies and the Seven minus Black Noir, plus Stormfront.

They were afraid. Terrified, really. Could I use that? Harness their fear and inject it into Homelander? It was a possibility worth considering, but I'm not sure how I would go about doing it. I could touch strong feelings, but moving them around…

"... actually, no. I don't think I do. Seriously, have you ever been hurt before?" I asked him, unable to keep my wonderment out of my voice.

"I've felt pain before. When I was a child. My… caretakers wanted to see the limits of my durability." There was an ominous note in his voice that told me there was a story there. "The last time they tested anything on me was when I took a cruise missile to the chest. Got the wind knocked out of me, and they decided to call it there. Seems like I've gotten a bit tougher over the years." Homelander explained and I considered my options.

If the stakes were simply my death, then I wouldn't mind losing here. I started this game knowing that was a possibility.

However, Robin had been captured. Maybe Yoruichi could get her out. Maybe Robin could get out on her own.

But I wouldn't risk her freedom on a maybe. I'm the one that decided I was okay with death or capture. Not Robin.

"I-" I began, only to cut myself off when I felt someone enter my Room. Fast. Too fast. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been paying such close attention, looking for a way out as much as I was watching for an attack. I knew exactly who it was too, which made my gut clench as I reacted instantly. With a heave, I swapped places with Homelander, just in time for a speeding fist to punch him in the back of the head.

A-Train managed to pull the punch at the last possible second, but even then, when he came to a stop I saw that his knuckles were bleeding. He stood next to Homelander, who seemed more annoyed at the punch than he did getting a sun dropped on him… and A-Train looked at me with an expression of the purest hate I had ever seen.

He was drenched with sweat, dripping with it as his chest rose and fell rapidly. For a normal human, he'd be hyperventilating. I did the math and I knew that there was no way he could have done what I asked him to do. Honestly, I'm not even sure how he was here. Last I heard, he was in Nashville, some six hundred miles away. Even at his top speed of a thousand miles an hour, it didn't explain how he managed to reach New York so quickly. A teleporter?

No…

No, I just underestimated him, I realized. His shoes were scorched black and even as he stood, I saw that his feet were bleeding. He ran all the way here, probably shattering every record that he had set, all because he hated me that much.

I was almost flattered. "A-Train. Didn't expect to see you here," I remarked idly. I had felt him move in my Room before, and because of it, I had something I could compare his entrance to. A-Train had slowed considerably. Hate could only make up for so much endurance, it would seem. Still, it meant he was 'only' running at hundreds of miles an hour instead of over a thousand. He was still more dangerous than ever because, now… now he was going to use all his speed for the sole purpose of killing me.

"You really think that I'm that fucking stupid? That after all the shit that you've done, I'd believe a word out of your fucking mouth?!" He raged even as he gasped for air. And I fought off a smile as I lifted my sword up, letting it rest on my shoulder. A simple action that he wouldn't know the danger of. "Fuck you! Fuck YOU!! I'm not going to bail your ass out of the fire! I'm going to rip your throat out!" He snarled at me.

That was less than ideal, but I could still work with it.

My gaze flickered to Homelander, who didn't move a muscle. Hm. "Well, you got me there. I thought she'd be fine because she was a Supe, but… well… seems like the Riker prisoners hadn't seen a woman in a long, long time, and got a little too rough," I lied. Popclaw was still getting fucked even now, to my knowledge, but that didn't matter. A-Train saw red.

And like a bull, he charged forward right at me.

The cut that I had projected from the simple action of resting my sword on my shoulder had been left hovering in the air and A-Train ran right through it at three hundred miles an hour. At the very same moment, the shoddy construction revealed itself and the blade shattered into a dozen pieces as the cut sliced through his legs, carried by his own momentum, and at those speeds, he collapsed immediately. Swapping places with a piece of rubble, I watched as A-Train skidded off the ground like a skipping stone until he smashed into the remains of a building behind me.

It was a tough lesson to learn, in the end. I felt for A-Train as I watched him die. His heart beat a thousand times a minute, and with his legs severed, his blood pressure all but shot every drop of blood out of him. He probably didn't even realize he was dead when he smashed into a pile of concrete.

Hate without power couldn't accomplish a damn thing.

I looked to Homelander to see that he was completely indifferent to A-Train's death. Before, with Lamplighter, I had been convinced that there was some unseen drama going on between them. Now, I know better. Homelander didn't give a shit about A-Train. The same way I didn't give a shit about my organization. His gaze met mine and he tilted his head at me.

Then he said something I really didn't expect. "You should get going," he told me.

My eyebrows shot up, "You're going to let me escape?" I asked him, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. That was the last thing that I expected.

Homelander offered a small smile that was everything but kind. "Capturing or killing you is Stan's plan. I have a different one in mind," he told me, making a dismissive wave of his hand. "I'll still kill you eventually, but for now it works out better for me if you're around stirring up trouble. Let's call it payback for that advice you gave me. It helped a lot."

A small moment passed between us and I realized what this was.

Mutual respect.

I could fucking cry.

"Happy to help, Homelander," I told him with a smile in my voice. "And I have an iron in the fire that'll give Stan a heart attack. Let me know when it'd be convenient for you for him to have one." I told him and my childhood hero offered me a genuine smile.

"I appreciate it, Heartless." He told me and I could tell that he meant it. It was a moment that I never wanted to end…

But it had to.

…

Escape was simple, in the end. New York was in a state of absolute chaos with all the buildings being toppled and me dropping the sun on the place. So, no one noticed us moving throughout the city by swapping items or people here or there.

Which is how I found myself in a familiar basement-- the one where the Eight had been formed. And, as much as I poked fun at the Seven for it, I had some empty chairs around my table too.

"So, who in the hell are you two?" I asked the two newcomers. Kimiko began to sign at me, even though she knew I couldn't understand. However, the guy sitting next to her knew how to speak. He even knew English.

"My name is Kenji Miyashiro. I'm Kimiko's brother… and a member of the Shining Light Liberation Front," Kenji introduced himself. The name was vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place it. "I was sent here to extend an offer to you, Heartless. We have seen your successes in America… and we wish for your aid in repeating your success in the Philippines. And beyond."

Oh! I knew where I had heard that name before. They were a hold over from the Cold War, way back when the Soviet Union was still a thing. They had cells across the world committing domestic terrorism in the name of creating a communist utopia.

I'm not really sure where I fell on the economic spectrum. I hated corporate America, but I found the idealized version of Communism unbearably naive and downright idiotic. But, I suppose I didn't really need to believe in the cause to benefit from it. "Let me finish destroying America and we can talk," I replied.

Kenji was struck speechless, so I gave him a moment to look at the other guy. Pale, white, kind of lanky with curly brown hair. Handsome, though. He offered a hesitant smile, "Hi… I'm Sam? And I have schizophrenia? And super strength?"

Oh. Shit. Had Sage Grove been a legitimate mental asylum? I just kind of figured that was a cover.

"That sounds like a hilarious combination. Welcome aboard," I said, welcoming him into the Eight. He offered a hesitant smile but said nothing. I was saved from the interaction by my phone ringing. I recognized the number immediately.

The moment the phone was by my ear, I heard exactly what I wanted to hear.

"Found Robin. She's in quite the pickle.”