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Chapter 31
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With a second wind, Swan Diva resumed fighting to help push back the mask bearers. Captain Patriot finally sat back at the end of his first. Near boundless energy, that one, just like his father said once or twice.

Pixeletta’s voice came over the earpiece, “Is anyone else near ‘The E?’ I spotted someone dressed suspiciously. Approaching now.”

Suspicious how? An uneasy feeling hit the pit of Swan Diva’s stomach.

“Excuse me, miss, are you lost?”

A second woman, her tone notably wicked, said, “Well, well, as long as I live a breathe. If you were a . . .” She cut out.

Swan Diva turned, fear and anger using her face as a battlefield that no one could see under her mask. Without warning given to anyone, she flew, and she flew hard.

“How 'bout that?” the woman asked. Vulture wings burst from her backside. She opened her mouth and leaned in slowly as though she were about to take a bite out of Pixeletta’s neck.

Pixeletta, however, shot out an electric wave of energy against the woman holding her. The woman let go and stumbled. Pixeletta dropped to the ground.

The woman laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that. Huh?” She looked toward the direction of a growing sound, and then someone rammed into her. Suddenly, it was Swan Diva floating where the winged woman was, and the presumed villainess slid through the air into the side of a building.

Her hat and sunglasses didn’t survive the flight.

Swan Diva said into her earpiece, “Which of the villains is known for her vulture wings?”

“That would be Carrion,” said a woman that Pixeletta didn’t recognize. “Why?”

“Because I’m about to fight her, it looks like.”

Carrion stood, holding back the better part of a laugh. “Good luck with that. Your luck ran out already when ya got the jump on me. Ya should have chased me down like a piece of dog meat, you bitch!” She flew toward Swan Diva, who braced for her attack. It wasn’t enough to be knocked back herself.

Her feet dug into the hard pavement for the short distance she was knocked back. Swan Diva caught Carrion’s arm amidst a follow-up attack, and she used the momentum to swing around a few times and throw the villainess into the air.

“Get to safety.” Swan Diva flew after Carrion.

Once her mom was too far too hear her without the earpiece, Pixeletta said, “Right, safety. I’m going to go help more people evacuate.”

“No, please,” cried the woman sticking to the wall above eye level.

Vidnyanta, however, shot more webbing, the same that held the woman, into her victim’s mouth and nose. Her screams and gags muffled, and the web kept forcing its way in until the woman lost consciousness. This left Vidnyanta feeling elated.

Her pleasure from this kill wasn’t enough. She couldn’t see those pillars of light around the city anymore, but she knew they were there. How could a mortal block her vision from such an area of land? How could he even have learned the spell on himself?

A better question she had was where that fool Cingeteyrn was. Before those runes had activated around the city, Vidnyanta had sent his copies out to the mortals wishing to ravage the land and its people, telling them what she knew regarding these so-called heroes. Now she was as good as blind, the threat of fate worse than death hanging over her head, and Cingeteyrn was nowhere in sight.

The last that fool said, he was opening the way for their escape at the bridge. Finding and undoing the runes would take too long, far longer than sabotaging the radio channel the heroic mortals had been using, and that had already proven to be difficult. If all of Cingeteyrn’s copies were at the bridge, then Vidnyanta had to trust that he was successful now. So why the silence? Why was he not coming back to her, leaving her in this despicable spot to be spotted by mere mortals with no power but plenty of fear.

She couldn’t wait any longer. It was time to move.

Swan Diva pulled her fist back for a single punch. It wasn’t going to be everything she had. Not yet. She flew at Carrion hoping she could get the one blow in before the other woman recovered enough to take any sort of action against it.

She was off by a fraction of a second. Carrion swung around in the air and kicked Swan Diva in the back. The attack sent her plummeting toward a major road that she could barely recognize in this speed. Swan Diva should have expected the counterattack. Being away from the hero gig for so long must have made her rusty.

As she drew ever closer to the major road, Swan Diva used her flight ability to pull up. She definitely remembered this feeling, half of her body lagging with the momentum for a split second. At least it got better with time as her body became attuned to both flight and super strength.

The villainess was a loud one as she flew after Swan Diva as fast as she could. It gave Swan Diva enough time to dodge to the side and watch as Carrion slammed into a building. The impact left a dent in the wall the size of an exercise ball. Both women flew at one another then with their fists clenched.

By all rights, their punches should have resulted in a broken nose for Carrion and a shattered collar bone for Swan Diva, but the heroine was made of sterner stuff. She suspected that of Carrion as well while the villainess’s body made the dent larger and added another hole behind it. Swan Diva, once she collided with the ground, created a furrow in the asphalt.

She fully expected Psi Wizard to appear out of nowhere and call it an “ass fault.”

Swan Diva pushed herself up, and she was once again off to follow Carrion through the air. Carrion stepped up to the hole her body made in the wall, and she crossed her wrists as if to block another punch from Swan Diva. The heroine, however, tackled her at the torso and flew the both of them through a series of thin, weak walls and one concrete wall at the end.

Once they were out on the other side, Swan Diva clasped her hands and swung them downward against Carrion’s back. Carrion fell through the ground below. She descended slowly while the dust was in the air.

Carrion grabbed her by the ankle the next second, and pulled her down with a screech.

There was a small family in and around a car that had a broken windshield and a flat tire. Pixeletta happened upon them while looking through the streets near the Escapist. The father of the family pounded on the trunk, and it opened to reveal some luggage.

“Come on,” the father said. “We’ll reach the bridge by foot if we have to.”

“Daddy, look out!” shouted one of the children.

Pixeletta saw it too. A pair of those horrors with the large tiki masks had shambled their way into the scene and now they were picking up the pace to attack the father.

She ran in and zapped each of the horrors with her electricity. Pixeletta got in close and tried some attacks with her fists against the masked things until they fell to the ground. It was safe to say her attempt worked, but now she needed to catch her breath.

Note to self, ask Tatiana and Ohmie for a few fighting lessons.

The father said, “Oh, thank you. Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” His eyes narrowed on Pixeletta for a moment. “It can't be? You look a lot like that one heroine who died five years ago. What was her name?”

“I, uhh . . .” said Pixeletta.

“Pixie-something or other?”

“Pixeletta. She did. It’s a long story, but . . .”

“Hey, kids, this is Pixeletta! She was one of the best heroes around five or six years ago?” His kids cheered for her. “I don’t know how you’re here, but we’re rooting for you. When our neighborhood turned its back on you heroes for so long, my wife and I cheered you and your friends on for always disrupting the way of things and bringing down the worst villains this city had to offer at the time. When Shiva Bay was destroyed, I blamed the fact that you weren’t here to prevent it. Now you are. I know you can save this city.”

His words sparked a tear that she held back. Pixeletta said, “Thank you. You said you were heading to Independence Bridge?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“The Escapist is closer. They are helping people get to safety with a portal.” She pointed in its direction.

“Oh, perfect. Come on, everyone, let’s head that way.” He started leading the family away.

Of course Pixeletta was happy to have saved a family, but she yearned to save more people. She yearned to fight alongside her greatest hero – her own mother. She’d need energy to do a thing like that, however. Then she considered the car.

She said, “Wait. I know this is an odd question, but is your car battery working, and is there a chance I can use it?”

After slamming face-first into the ground Swan Diva got up and immediately blocked another hit from Carrion. She punched back, and it was blocked as well. Swan Diva gabbed the other woman’s arms and threw her overhead.

Carrion managed to regain control of herself, and her vulture wings flapped rapidly before she made a dive for Swan Diva. First, Swan Diva afforded herself the luxury of remarking mentally that the other woman lacked grace while she also drew back her right fist. Then she waited until the last possible split second to move down and punch upward into her opponent’s stomach with her left hand.

Then she yanked the passing woman back and punched her with her right. The second hit sent Carrion through another set of walls. She chased after her on foot, paying little mind to the fact that they were now in Faultline.

She had to finish this soon, Swan Diva realized, because her second wind in a fight could only last so long. Swan Diva slowed down and took a deep breath while the villainess got up from the pile of rubble she made by the far wall.

“Damn,” Carrion said, “You are a strong one, aren’t ya? I’d say ‘Birds of a feather,’ but now I really am gonna have to kill ya.”

“Tough words,” Swan Diva said.

They collided again, only now Carrion fought with more fervor, and thus Swan Diva had to up her game as well. She wasn’t the best fighter, but then, Carrion showed no signs of being trained in hand-to-hand either. Neither was invulnerable, but their super strength made them crash through more and more walls throughout the Faultline district.

Their flight made the holes they punched vary in height.

For more than six years, Faultline had taken a beating from so many battles. This one was little different, aside from how far and how long they went at it. Swan Diva wondered how the district had any walls left before now.

If any walls remained when they were done fighting, she was going to call shenanigans.

At one point, a tenderized Swan Dive managed to grab one of Carrion’s wings by the end, and then thrust an elbow down against the bone sustaining the wing with as much force as she could muster. There was a crack. There was a blood curdling scream. And then there was a retaliatory swing and punch into Swan Diva’s chest.

Swan Diva flew backward again through another wall. Damn it, let it be the last wall. She forced herself up, her chest hurting like a bitch.

The villainess heaved in pain and rage, and stomped the ground toward Swan Diva. “I’ll make ya pay for that. I will break ya, unmask ya in front of everyone, and then kill everyone ya care about.”

Swan Diva, trying not to tremble or fall over, shook her head calmly the one time, and just stood there staring at the villainess. She needed to muster more strength. She needed to attack one more time somewhere that mattered.

“What?” asked Carrion. “No witty comebacks? No pleading? No saying ‘Over my dead body?’”

Someone else said, “No, mine.”

A ball of lightning struck Carrion as soon as she turned her head in the direction of the woman who said it. Swan Diva knew that voice. She also knew the smell of cooked bird and the sight of a person being knocked sideways by the force of a truck.

Out in the clearing stood Pixeletta, and she was toting something that looked like a smoldering battery.

It was impossible to be mad at Pixeletta under the circumstances. Carrion, on the other hand, had nothing but contempt coming to her. The villainess struggled to get up, fumes rising from her beaten and bruised form.

“. . . make . . . pay,” Carrion barely managed to say.

“Why do you suck so much?” Pixeletta asked.

Carrion huffed a laugh, and then fell to the ground. It took a moment for Swan Diva to see if the fallen villainess was breathing, but she ending up looking in the distance as the alien ship took a couple shots at the city.

“It’s times like this I wonder why I ever retired,” Swan Diva said, trying and possibly failing to make a joke. She examined the battery that her daughter was carrying. “That looks like it could be heavy.”

“Doesn’t it?” Pixeletta asked. “I half expected to drag it here from Kingston, but feels pretty damn light; almost as light as the amulet I’m still carrying.” She dropped it to the ground. “Too bad I used it all already. Are you alright?”

“Just give me a moment, baby girl, and I’ll be ready to take two of her.”

Pixeletta giggled at her.

Static interrupted them. Someone on the radio channel said, “There’s cobwebs all over the stadium in Galaxy Park. I’m trapped here with lots of people. I can’t break through.”

“It’s her,” Pixeletta said. “It has to be. Mom, could you give me a lift?”

“What’s going on?” asked Mayor Oldman after they stopped.

“I’m not too sure,” Walter said. He pulled up closer.

Further up ahead, there stood three men, or rather three of the same man. His hands were glowing a sickly shade of green, and it looked like he was levitating a car. The car went flying, and the nearby evacuees ducked.

The trio called out in unison, “No one leaves until we do. No one try if you value your life.”