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The whole bird theme had been a joke, really. Cardinal’s
joke, specifically. None of us found it funny, but it’s not like the rest of us
had any better ideas. He’d said if we were going to be superheroes, we should
stick to a theme, some sort of iconography people could instantly recognize. He
settled on the bird idea when he was trying to think of how to fit us into
primary colors.
I thought that was really weird, honestly. I vaguely
remember from my old comics that hero teams tended to consist of more specialized
characters; you’d have your strong guy, your energy guy, your space alien tech
guy, your one animal themed character, a wizard, and a mad scientist. Or
something like that. And their colors were usually not coordinated, since most
teams consisted of people who already had their own solo comics, and thus had
their own style independent of the others.
I later found out Cardinal was a huge fan of those goofy Japanese
hero-team shows. Still was, even though he was in his mid-thirties. The kind of
show where a handful of teenagers all got their powers from sci-fi wristwatches
or magic amulets or something. Say a phrase, hit a button, and poof, they’re
covered in fabulous spandex and bike helmets, each one a specific color. They’d
all have the identical powers of knowing martial artists and shooting laser
guns. Also, they had giant robots.
I admit, having giant robots would be kind of cool. Not that we needed them, given our powers,
but such things would be a boon for mass transport and possibly help with
farming and construction. And yeah, they would even have been a help fighting
off some of the larger creatures we’d battled in the early days.
Anyway. There were times when the bird theme really seemed
fitting, and not in the best way. Aside from being among the few superhumans
who could actually fly, there were times I felt like a small creature in a
cage, able to look out upon a world beyond the Mist Wall, but never able to
reach it.
It means I can be anywhere in the state I’m needed, at any
time, and the rest of the Aevir can be right behind me. We’ve probably each
scoured every inch of the state by now. We’re all feeling cabin fever, even
under the seemingly open sky. I’ve found myself wondering if, with powers like
these, if we were still on Earth, would the whole planet seem too small after a
few years? Right now, I’d settle for just the Mid-West by itself.
No point in thinking like that. We have what we have, and we
just have to deal with it.
This morning, I left the former prison that serves as our
base by going to the roof and lifting into the sky. There’s no need to flap my
arms or get a running start or fan out my cape, I just think “fly” and I do. At
most, I feel a sort of vague envelope of force push me from behind whatever
direction I want to go.
Once I’d raised a hundred feet, I shot out towards the city,
staying at about half the speed of sound to spare the people below any sonic
booms and not give away my presence too obviously. It’s only a couple minutes
before I crossed the deep trench that separates the still mostly intact Kansas
City suburbs from the city proper. The intact and fairly well-kept
neighborhoods of the suburbs contrasted sharply with the mangled wreckage of
apartments and sky scrapers between the trench and the Mist Wall.
I did a lazy circuit around the city, scanning for mutant
activity. I saw only the occasional lone creature scuttling or flopping about,
in search of food or just something to kill. One or two notice me and raised
their fists or claws or tentacles, shaking them at me and howling. Nothing
answered their rallying call, and they couldn’t reach me themselves.
The other mutants were either staying inside or underground,
or our efforts have trimmed their numbers back enough that the gangs are just
paltry shadows of their former selves. This time, I didn’t even take my usual
pot shots at some of the uglier specimens. Easier to let them finish each other
off.
I almost went the morning without incident. As I turned back
towards the suburbs to check in with the base, an enormous shadow fell over me.
I look up in time to see something resembling a ragged pterodactyl diving
towards me. It’s easily the size of a bus. I dodged to the side, and the thing
rushed past, large, greasy feathers dropping off its mottled leathery wings.
Some kind of mutant vulture, perhaps?
The thing clumsily pulled out of its dive, swooping low over
the remains of a toppled parking garage, and barely managing to avoid clipping
the busted out office building the garage used to be attached to. It banked
hard, flapped once, and this was sufficient, somehow, to launch its bulk higher
into the sky, zooming up towards me with its toothy beak open wide, its wings
spread behind it like those of a jet. I didn’t think a creature that big could
actually fly that way; maybe, like myself, it possessed some kind of mystical
flying power, and the wings just helped stabilize it.
I dodged to the side once more, ducking under the left wing.
As it passed, I held out my hand and unleashed a burst of brilliant white
energy, edged with a blue aura. A single burst of plasma or laser light or whatever
the hell the stuff was, blasted the thing’s chest apart like a rotten pumpkin.
The creature fell into quarters, the wings, the head and shoulders, and the
rest of the body falling away, and crashing down to the ground, smoking from
the edges that had once been attached to a torso. I hovered in the air and
watched it fall, listened to the satisfying meaty crunches of its corpse
impacting on the ground.
Only a few seconds passed before the body was suddenly
swarmed, mutants jumping out from hiding spots to snatch up the fresh meat.
Lanky, clawed ones sliced up chunks of the body and ran off with them, thick
burly ones just ripped off parts and lumbered away. I saw one with a massive
set of jaws just start chomping away at one meaty thigh, ignoring or even biting
the other mutants near by as they went for their pieces.
I set my jaw and watched the carnage, reminded of sharks in
a feeding frenzy. It was revolting, how low these people had been reduced. I’ve
only met a few mutants who were not completely feral or irrevocably insane. To
this day, seeing their twisted forms and their warped minds almost made me
throw up.
I held up my hands and charged a burst of energy. This
wasn’t their fault. They weren’t evil. They were just people suffering a
horrid, incurable disease. This is what I told myself on these patrols. They
were insane, they were animals, even those smart enough to form into gangs were
savages. Cardinal was a fool to spare their lives. I was a fool. All of us Aevir, we should have cratered these cities
into smoldering glass in the first month, not just cut the trenches. Who cares
if the mutants also helped suppress the monsters form the Mist Wall? Surely,
the mutants were worse to keep around. If nothing else, we'd be putting them out of their misery.
I grit my teeth as I let the energy flare up, bright enough
to be blinding to the poor creatures below. They howl and start to scatter. Too
late. I unleashed a punishing salvo of energy bursts, using well-practiced
reflexes to pick them off in what looks like a random peppering of the
landscape, but is actually a series precision shots to the creatures’ torsos or
heads. I found this technique much more effective than just using a less
powerful, less controlled wide-angle blast. Depending on if they were near some
kind of cover and how durable they were, some mutants could survive such a diluted
shot, especially from this distance. Plus, a wide-angle blast would kick up too
much dust and debris, letting the survivors escape under cover.
As it was, I counted thirty-seven bodies when I was done.
Two had managed to escape through pure luck of being right next to cover and
ducking into the shadows when I got started. One I had blown a leg off of, just
barely missing its head, but it had twelve other limbs to run away on.
I glanced around a bit to make sure there weren’t any
stragglers in sight, and that the ones I’d successfully hit weren’t still
moving. I let out a breath and closed my eyes, dropping my arms down, and
letting my cape drape over them. I tried not to feel good about what I’d done.
I tried to just think about it from a sort of pest control stand point. I had
to. These people—no, these things
were dangerous. You couldn’t let pity make you soft. Like any vermin, they had
to be eliminated in order protect the citizens.
The problem was, if I completely accepted them as inhuman, I
felt myself almost relishing squashing them, the way I used to when I killed a
bug. Between my great powers and their inhuman forms, that’s what they seemed
like to me, especially looking down at them from this height. And when someone
was as powerful as I was, living in as delicate a land as this one, the idea
that I might actually like killing things that were people, even twisted ones, was a little
frightening. In my position, it was hard to stay grounded.
I spun in the air to continue my trip back to base, only to
jump back and get into a defensive posture when I almost ran into a figure that
had been hovering right behind me. Ghost was there, staring at me with her
creepy, silent, impossible to read face. I scowled. Somehow, without her saying
anything, I felt like I was getting an earful of a judgmental lecture. She
still didn’t like me, despite agreeing to work for me.
I can’t say I blamed her, not when the carnage below was a
casual morning exercise for me. I composed myself, “standing” tall, lifting in
the air a couple inches and crossing my arms. I set my voice to that
well-practiced firmness. “Well?” I said. “What’s up?”
“Kestrel contacted the base,” she said. “She wants you to
call her back.”
I nodded and floated past her to resume my trip home. She
held out a hand and touched my shoulder as I passed. “I think you’re right to
do it,” she said.
I glanced back at her. Her gaze was on the still smoldering
bodies of my victims. “That’s very reassuring,” I muttered. I was only being
half-sarcastic.
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