All right, screw it. Round two, shithead, let’s go.
Round two? Bitch, we're barely into round one!
You can have your kung fu and your Krav Maga or whatever else you got, I don’t care. Utopia had an antireality cannon and look what happened to her.
Yes, I remember you closing the gaping hole in your chest by wanting to hard enough, because you happened to be the first Dreadnought to actually realise you could do that. Daniels, please don't use your shit storytelling as the basis of a brag.
The slap of fists to meat that comes off like gunshots.
And hey, did I mention he’s got lightning powers? Because he’s got freaking lightning powers, and it’s really pissing me off. My suit is a powerful insulator, which is the only reason I’m not dead yet, but even so, his lightning burns and stings and makes every punch land harder.
Here's a thought, why aren't all of Garrison's troops armed with electric weapons?
And they fight and they fight and they fight...
—tumbling through a wall together, jewels of shattered glass spinning from our bodies, and for a still moment noticing that beneath us Calamity is taking apart a tactical team with her bare hands.
You know, when Batman does shit like that, at least when he's being written with some connection to reality, he does it by using stealth or disorientating his enemies. Think the predator mode stuff from the
Arkham games. He doesn't usually just... run at a bunch of armed, armoured dudes with just the power of gymkata. If Daniels is going to write Calamity like a full-fledged superhuman, why not just... make her one?
Doc has dropped her guns, is firing energy blasts from her palms—
Wait, so Doc had inbuilt energy-weapons, and she was relying on regular guns? Why does "not pretending to be human anymore" only appear to amount to "now I'm a much more expensive Jamie Maddox"?
—and then through the mansion and tumbling across the sod, great ribbons of grassy turf thrown into the sky as Sovereign and I savage each other again and again.
Kinetiq and Panzer streak past us, a flying lightshow of lasers and muzzle flash. Kinetiq gives Sovereign a burst of crimson energy right to his face as they pass, but Panzer’s got the same idea, and I catch a rocket with my gut.
“Kinetiq, that psych-out would come in handy any time,” I call over the radio.
“Working on it!” they reply, voice labored, breathing heavy. “The brat got a second wind!”
Great strategy, Danny. Really, you should go pro.
A reminder that the strategy they're talking about is beating the shit out of a child in order to shake her father.
“If one of you’d finish your side of the dance and come give us some air support, I wouldn’t tell you not to,” says Calamity. The sound of gunfire is evermore hectic over her comms. “Codex, how we doin’, partner?”
Gunfire is a bit muffled, but still an obvious baseline under his reply. “It’s one of those good news, bad news things.”
“Bad news,” says Calamity.
“Graywytch set up some more magical booby traps. I need to untangle them.”
“And the good news?”
“They’re not very good booby traps. I think I can do this without getting my head blown off.”
Didn't some Italian guy have something to say about people whose enemies were simultaneously incredibly dangerous and laughably impotent?
“Wait, that doesn’t make sense,” says Doc. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” says Codex.
“Gift horses, Doctor,” grumbles Calamity. “Keep going, Codex. Tell us when—SHIT! DOC, THE LEFT! WATCH THE LEFT!”
In a smart book, it would turn out Charlie--a teenage hobbyist--was unable to recognize the subtleties of Graywytch's spellwork, and he would then be painfully transformed into a literal bag of dicks.
What the hell are you—oh shit. There he is again, with two men who look like they were cooks hiding in a walk-in cooler. Holding them by the back of their jackets, Sovereign floats out over the promenade and beckons me to the fight with his head.
It’s too risky to throw more bricks at him; I’ve got to close and engage. But when I drive a hard punch at his face, suddenly an innocent cook is in the way to block me. I manage to pull the attack just in time to catch the back of Sovereign’s boot with the side of my head. The cooks are screaming, pleading, and he doesn’t care. Another kick erupts from between the two of them, and I barely turn the blow with my shoulder—the wounded one where Panzer shot me. Crimson spikes of agony stab up and down my arm and I cry out.
I'm almost shocked Danny doesn't just write the cooks off like tankies do the Romanov servants. Also, is it me, or do civilians feel really absent from these books? I think that's another reason Danny feels less like a battle-loving superhero and more like a blood psychopath. Almost all his interactions with non-supers--remember, Cecilia has super-stamina or something--are either indifferent, or downright hateful, like with his parents or David. This is actually a wider problem in a lot of modern cape-comics: the heroes only really interact with other superheroes.
Back up, back up fast to get distance and reconsider.
“So that’s it? Stalemate?” I call to him across the chasm between the towers. “That’s your big play?”
Princess Panzer tears between us on jets of pink flame, Kinetiq right behind her, cobalt beams lashing from their eyes.
“I don’t see a stalemate, little girl,” Sovereign says, an instant before he charges. My heart clenches—baseline humans can’t take acceleration like that!
Okay, embarrassing failure of reading comprehension on my part, first time I read this passage, I thought Danny was horrified that
Garrison could handle such acceleration, completely forgetting the cooks he was holding hostage. But yeah, Danny has to save both of them by sapping their momentum with the lattice, yadayada, which Sovereign uses as an opening to fuck him up. Danny spends a few paragraphs getting the shit kicked out of him, which might've been satisfying if it wasn't so dull, but then he remembers something:
There was a group photo taken after the Northern Union superteam stopped that asteroid from hitting us three years ago. I remember I bought a glossy copy because I was hoping to get it signed someday. In that photo, Thunderbolt was wearing a pressure suit, unlike the old Dreadnought. That’s because Dreadnought could hold his breath for hours on end. So can I. Thunderbolt couldn’t. And Sovereign is using Thunderbolt’s powers.
Worth a try, though, admittedly, for all Danny knows, Sovereign stole a bunch of powers. Hell, who says he hasn't drained Red Steel?
We hit the water at nearly the speed of sound. Half-delirious with pain, struggling to keep my hold on the lattice, I didn’t fly well. It feels like I hit every wall and piece of furniture I could on the way off the island. But it doesn’t matter, because my legs are still locked around his waist, and my hand is still locked into his head, and we are headed as far down as I can drag us.
The water is cold. It’s heavy. The salt stings my wounds. In a matter of moments we’re in darkness, and the pressure is a vice grip. The water slows his punches—they hurt, but not so much. My thumb comes out of his eye with a blooming black cloud, and I make a steel band of my arm around the back of his head, lock him in tight to my chest and throat.
Down, down, deeper we go. The anchor cables for Cynosure slide past, a dark bamboo forest reaching down to infinity. High above us, daylight winks dimly through the rippling scales of the surface.
I can tell the moment he figures out what’s going to happen. There is a horrified stillness, and then he begins to thrash. Electricity floods out from him, as much as he can make, but in his panic he can’t focus it to make it behave unnaturally like he normally can. It flows over my suit’s insulation and heads to the sea floor, harmlessly. My broken arm is as far out of the way as I can get it, and I clench tight to him with every other muscle I have. You’re down here with me, Sovereign. You’re down here until I decide to let you go. You don’t get to hurt anybody else.
"That's
my job!"
I watch his heart slam in his chest. I watch his legs thrash and twist. Not much longer now. He’s still hurting me. His attacks still land. But I’m tougher than he imagined I was, and more deliberately cruel. They never see it coming. They never expect that someone who looks like me could have so much calm, considered malice at her disposal. By the time they figure it out, it tends to be too late.
The last handfuls of breath escape his chest. He spasms, seawater rushing into his lungs, plumping them out tight. He thrashes again, harder than ever, and then goes still. Cautiously, I loosen my legs. He stays limp in the water and begins to sink.
I am not undefeated.
I am undefeatable.
I know those two quotes were very long, but, man, you needed to see it
all.
Up, up into the air, water streaming off my shoulders, pouring off my cape, Sovereign’s ankle clenched in my good hand. His face is pale, his eyes half-lidded. It takes some effort to shake the water out of his lungs, and when I drop him onto the promenade he lands with a wet smack. First things first, I pull one of Codex’s trinkets out of the low-profile cargo blister on my thigh and use it to tie his wrists. It’s tricky with only one hand, but I’ve still got most of my teeth, and I manage. The magic makes the necklace chain as strong as titanium wire, and it should dampen all his powers—including his power-dampening field. Magic is weird. When I roll him onto his back he’s still not breathing. A roll of nausea twists up my throat, and I move straight into CPR.
The chorus of “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees happens to be the perfect rhythm for the chest-pumping part of CPR.
Threat Level Midnight was a better book than this, and that was a film!
With a cold, urgent fear driving me, I push his ribs in to the beat of the song I’m whispering under my breath. (I’ve heard that paramedics hate this song. Now I know why.) Please. Wake up. Doc was right. Please, wake up. I blow into his mouth. With my ear down at his lips to listen for breath and watch his chest, a little voice in my head screams, the lattice, you idiot!
The Plot-Inciting Orb may have solved all of Danny's problems, but it's caused all of ours.
Princess Panzer comes screaming out of the sky. She lands in a flurry of vernier thrusters and unfolding weapons platforms that gleam in the sun. In a half-second I’m staring down a tank platoon’s worth of firepower.
“GET AWAY FROM MY DADDY!” she shouts, rigid with terror. At least three railguns are pointed at my head, their capacitors crackling with stored charge.
“He’s inhaled a lot of water. I’m trying to save him—”
“MURDERER!” Two of the laser pods floating behind her paint me with targeting beams.
Technically inaccurate, but not for lack of trying.
As calmly as I can, I raise a placating hand. “The CPR isn’t working. He needs a defibrillator. Is there one of those on the island? Do you know where to find it?”
Tears are rolling down her cheeks. Panzer looks from me to her father and begins to shake. “I don’t—I don’t know,” her voice is tiny. “Please, Dreadnought, you can’t let him die.”
“Can you make one?” I ask.
She nods, more a spasmodic jerk than anything else. The railguns fold up and disappear into the nowhere they came out of.
“You need to have the right amps and volts or else—”
“The magic does all that,” she says distractedly. Panzer’s eyes are unfocused as a pair of silver paddles edged in gold appear from folds of light.
Okay, is Panzer saying magic literally or figuratively? Well, I suppose
all magic is figurative here, now. The defibulator works.
Panzer takes a step forward, murder on her face.
“Princess,” rasps Garrison. She stops dead, and looks down at him, her face stricken. “No. I can’t lose you. Not after everything else.”
Surely he'd use her real name here?
Panzer collapses into sobbing. Garrison sits up as best he can, leans against the lip of a long, low planter box. She crawls to her father and curls up in his lap. Garrison whispers to her, says that it’s going to be okay.
For a moment, I don’t understand why I am stabbed with envy.
Yeah, yeah, your dad yelled at you entirely off page, we get it.
