ALEX: Alex snorted. Tory was many things—a bright personality?
He supposed he could be. But it was more like he was bold and brilliant. He could change the mood of the room just by stepping into it, as if his footsteps dragged in either storm clouds or sunshine.
Bright just wasn’t the right word. Effervescent, perhaps. Being with him for all of this time was like chasing a spotlight that he couldn’t fully grasp.
“In fact, the mayor herself will be gracing us with her presence tonight to talk about how Everlux rescued her son from Vent. She may even be granting him an award—perhaps another key to the city? Exclusively in our very own studio?” Gary beamed with delight. “How many do you have now, Everlux? Four?”
“I have four, yes,” he said, nodding. He didn’t seem particularly thrilled by any of this.
It must be boring to be awarded a fifth key to the city when you haven’t earned any of them, Alex thought. It was a huge assumption, really—he had no idea what the circumstances were for the other keys. He just supposed that they were all very similar to this one—someone else did the work, and Everlux got the credit.
“Before we get to the mayor, we heard that there is evidence that Vent was actually a relative of the Ramos’—the owners of the apartment he attacked. Are there any plans from the authorities to unmask Vent?”
Members of the Paragon Guild—superheroes—were protected from official public unmaskings by law. Villains and rogues, on the other hand, could be exposed, if journalists had the proper permissions through the Paragon Guild.
Everlux shook his head. “There aren’t any plans to do so at this time.”
“So Breezy News will be the first to do it!” He grinned broadly, and Alex’s gut plummeted.
“No—wait—” Everlux held up his hands. “Wait! Stop!”
Images of Vincent Ramos and Vent, paired up beside each other, flew around the pair in the studio. It blew up across the holo screens, along with flashing, flying letters that settled into the name Vincent Ramos, Super Villain.
“Oh no.” He shook his head, icy cold flushing through him. “No, no, no.”
His mom came in, her eyes worried. “What is it?”
He gestured to the screen. “They unmasked Vent!”
Her expression dropped. Color drained from her face.
“The guild wouldn’t okay that, would they? There’s no way. It’s too soon. He hasn’t even gotten to trial.” She starting searching the room. “Where’s my phone? I need to call someone.”
“I was there,” Alex said. “Vent wasn’t himself. Something was wrong with him. Damn it.”
Everlux, on the screen, was sheet white, and then his face—what little Alex could see of it—went bright red, his teeth gritting.
“Cut the cameras,” He ordered, standing in his seat. “The interview is over.”
Rebecca grabbed her phone from the lamp table, shaking her head. “I’m going to go speak with the council. This is completely irresponsible. If they were going to release his identity, why didn’t Brimstone say something?”
Alex watched the outrage unfold as Everlux stood and began to leave the studio, the interviewer begging him to come back, looking around at his crew in distress. Mayor Burns stepped into the studio, glaring in Everlux’s general direction.
“Everlux, this is highly—” she started, but she didn’t finish.
That was when a palm tree grew through the studio’s floor, coiling around Diane’s body like a snake.
The cameras cut, the livestream replaced by an image of Gary smiling far too cheerfully, promising to be back soon with a dull, whining tone.
His mother stared, horrified, and then she steeled herself. “We have to go.”
TORY:
Tory was pretty sure the world was ending.
Vines sprouted from the hovering cameras, the studio lights, and the wood paneling in the floor, glass shattering and technology popping and smoking. The floor groaned, creaked, and then burst apart as long green tendrils curled toward the ceiling.
He glanced up at his mom, who struggled as the palm tree and vines around her body grew further away from the floor, her blue high heels dropping from her feet. She yelped and looked around desperately, her eyes landing on Tory.
“Everlux, help!” She screamed.
He sprang into action, realizing he’d waited far too long for an alleged hero in an emergency situation. He became a silver blur launching to his mom’s side.
He grabbed the vines around her body and tried to pry them away from her, but they were too strong and thick, tightening their coil around her as she struggled. He touched the green and tried to break it apart to its basic elements, but it didn’t respond to him.
The vines didn’t have basic elements to break down and control. They were made up of someone else’s neobond energy. He had no idea how to manipulate that, and living organisms were usually not in his wheelhouse regardless.
Shit.
He whirled around, looking for the source of the vines, and saw that the large metal doors to the studio had broken off their hinges, sprawled open with a torrent of vines pouring in. The crew and the host of the show screamed and scrambled to the backstage. Studio lights fell from the ceiling and crashed on the floor, glass spraying across the ground.
A woman stepped past the doors, a cold rage spilling from her being, her black super suit stark against the light with a pattern of pink wild flowers wrapping around her legs and arms, her long, black curls decorated with green and pink metallic petals. Her brown eyes were broken with a starburst of icy blue as her fierce gaze landed on Everlux.
“Wild Blossom?” He whispered, his throat squeezing. “What is she doing?”
She stretched out her hands, and vines shot toward Everlux. He dodged them and soared away from Diane.
He was going to have to defeat her first before he could save his mom.
He looked at her. “Hold on, okay?”
She nodded, terrified, and he shot towards Wild Blossom, a silver bullet in the dark studio of flickering, broken lights.
“Wild Blossom!” He landed in front of her. She raised her fists and grasses sprouted from the carpet, wrapping around his ankles. He yelped and flew back into the air, ripping away from the grass. They swirled towards him and he flew up to the ceiling, then stopped. The ceiling was swarming with black pipes, broken studio lights, and thick, flowering vines that were growing towards him.
A vine wrapped around his leg from below, then his arm from above. He gasped and tugged at them, and they tightened around his limbs, then wrapped around his torso, squeezing him slowly.
“Wild Blossom, wait! Stop!” He pleaded. “This isn’t you. We’ve worked together before—we defeated that shiftbeast! The one in front of the mall!”
He grimaced, remembering that experience. He’d stopped in the middle of the fight in order to sign a fan’s autograph, his mom barking orders in his ear. It was not his finest moment.
Wild Blossom did not seem to register his words, her expression unchanging as the green swirled around his body and blocked his vision. He was sinking into the suffocating vines, blue and pink flowers blooming around him, darkness flooding his green coffin.
He was trapped.
He was going to die.
And then he heard a bear roar.
Gale City was not known for its wildlife. Other than the shiftbeasts that occasionally broke in, scorpions, anthills, and the occasional lizard were the closest one would get to a naturally occurring animal menagerie, what with its protective dome surrounded by the large, incredibly hot Arizona desert. Tory’s reference to what a bear sounded like was framed in Grey American movies, which made him think that the grizzly growl must have been some sort of sound effect someone had played on their phone.
It was not a sound effect.
Claws ripped through the vines in front of his face. They fell away to reveal a giant, drooling, teeth-gnashing grizzly with black eyes. He yelped, then watched as the bear reached up and slid its claw down his arms and legs, carving through his bindings. He pulled himself free and stared at the bear in confusion, wondering how it was up this high, almost to the studio ceiling.
The bear was…hovering somehow?
And then he looked down, and realized a superhero was carrying the bear. Golden Blade, gritting his teeth and holding the giant eight hundred pound grizzly over his head as he flew, his white and gold supersuit brilliant in the half-broken lighting of the studio.
“Honey, you’re a bit heavy. I’m going to put you down now.”
The bear groaned, batting its paw in his general direction.
“Hey now! You’re a literal bear. You’re supposed to be heavy. Don’t be petty.” He looked up at Tory, his eyes narrowing. “You alright, Everlux?”
Tory wanted to say something clever. Sure! Just a bit allergic to pollen. Instead, he just nodded. He’d never been so scared in his life, between being suffocated by vines and then jump-scared by a grizzly.
If that was Golden Blade, then the bear must be his shapeshifting wife and hero partner, Revamp. Tory had been around them before in Paragon Guild events, but he’d never had the guts to talk to them. They were both stellar staples of the community—real heroes, as Alex would say. They’d saved countless lives and cleaned up the streets, while never selling out.
The bear transformed into a hawk in a flash of light, soaring towards Wild Blossom with a screech. Tory figured that, for now, the two of them would handle the villain while he saved his mom.
Tory panted, landing on the ground. He saw the shattered glass on the ground, warm and scattered, and he grabbed several large pieces off the floor. He felt the elements that made up each piece—the melted and contorted minerals, and he pressed them together, molding them into a long, sharp, knife made of a sturdy blade of glass.
He turned toward his mother and shot into the air.
“Not even a thank you?” Golden Blade yelled to him, and Tory’s face warmed under his mask. He was so bad at interacting with other heroes.
“Thanks!” He yelled back, then landed on the curling, swarming branch of vines. His mother’s body was almost completely covered in vines—he could only tell where she was because of her bare foot sticking out of the swollen lump of green. He commanded his knife to extend and expand and sharpen until it was three feet long and shaped more like a sword. He gripped the crossbar and swung it through the vines just below Diane’s foot.
The vines were instantly severed from the bottom, and the severed vines, no longer attached to their source of life, burst into green sparks. Diane was unveiled, and she began to freefall. Her eyes widened and she yelped and reached toward the ceiling. Everlux dropped his sword, swooped in underneath her and caught her, then brought her back down to the ground.
“Goodness gracious,” she whispered breathlessly, which was a Diane Burns way of saying, “Shit, that sucked.”
“Did it hurt you?” He asked, looking her over. Her white suit jacket was rumpled and her blond bun was falling out, the freed tendrils flattened against her forehead by a sheen of sweat. She looked like she had just run a business-professional marathon through a jungle, but otherwise, she was unharmed.
“I’m fine.” She shook her head, then glanced back at Wild Blossom, who raised her hand and summoned a large purple bloom from the ground beneath Golden Blade’s feet.
The flower expanded and wrapped its petals around Golden Blade’s arms and shoulders, trapping him in its tightening lilac grip. He struggled, looking almost panicked, but the hawk transformed into a huge, furry gorilla. It grabbed the thick purple petals and ripped them from the flower.
“Go and help them,” his mom said. “They need you.”
Tory stared at her. “Are you serious? I’m not a real hero! I barely know what I’m doing! Wild Blossom is one of the most powerful paragons in the city. I can barely handle collared shiftbeasts! They’re professionals! And literal adults.”
She shook her head. “You can do this. You have to step up. Now is the time to show them who you really are, Everlux.”
Her belief in him felt good. It felt incredible. But it also warred with his instincts—his mom never said things like this when he needed her to. She said things like this when she needed him to do something for her.
He glanced back at the pair fighting Wild Blossom. They seemed to have it handled, but barely. Their movements reminded him of a child speed-walking around a pool—dying to go faster, to do better, to fight harder, but afraid of slipping up.
They didn’t want to hurt her. She was their ally.
She, on the other hand, had no such inhibitions.
“Everlux,” Diane said. He looked back at her, taking in her grave expression.
“What?”
“Golden Blade and Revamp are Alex’s parents.”
He blinked. “What?”
He spun back around to stare at the duo, and he could see it. Golden Blade’s hair, his triumphant grin as Revamp transformed into a huge golden lioness and charged toward Wild Blossom.
“That’s my wife! Go, honey, go!” Golden Blade cheered.
Yep, that was definitely Eric and Rebecca Hale.
A torrent of blossoming vines pummeled into the lioness and threw her across the floor. She rolled across the ground and transformed back into her human form, grimacing and curling up in pain.
“Go,” his mom said.
Tory was on the move, launching towards Wild Blossom and flashing past Golden Blade. She was still watching the other two as he flew closer, her fractured eyes narrowing on them as she raised her fist to send another onslaught of green. Tory landed behind her and crouched to the ground. He poured his energy into the wood paneling and felt the old dead skeletons of trees shake and awaken, splitting apart from each other.
They revitalized and wrapped around her ankles, then her knees. Wild Blossom did not seem to notice the branches, stalling in place like an android trying to recalibrate. The branches reached her waist, then curled up her arms, solidifying around her body back into solid wooden planks. Tiny branches curled around her fingers individually—she couldn’t move an inch.
Wild Blossom was immobile in her cage, her hand outstretched to the black studio ceiling.
Her chest heaved with panic. Her eyelashes fluttered. The starburst of blue was gone from her irises.
“What—what happened?” She blinked. Tears slid down her cheeks. “Where am I?”
She looked at Everlux, and her expression shifted from confusion to panic. “What did you do to me?”
“I—You—” His heart was in his throat. “Listen, you’re going to be alright. We’re going to get you help. You attacked this place.”
She looked around, at the slowly disintegrating vines and flowers and grasses that flooded every inch of the place. It looked like a rainforest—there wasn’t a park in Gale City that could compete.
Her chin tilted up toward the ceiling and she let out a choked sob. The plants burst into electric green energy all at once, a thousand embers and fireflies bursting to life and then slowly fading into the air.
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