Chapter 39: Gatekeepers
The subway station was damp, smelled like a wet basement, and featured the kind of flickering lighting that gives people migraines. Batman was doing the Batman thing—standing over a holographic map of Metropolis like he was trying to intimidate the pixels into surrendering.
He’d been explaining “thermal masking” for fifteen minutes. I think. I don’t know, I was pretty out of it. I’m pretty sure even Harley was starting to glaze over. Although, to be fair, her attention span is usually measured in nanoseconds.
I reached into my belt pouch and pulled out a bag of pretzels. The crunch was loud. Obnoxiously loud.
“The infiltration requires four synchronized entries,” Bruce rasped, his voice sounding like he’d spent the morning eating sandpaper. “If the atmospheric sensors pick up a thermal spike from a cape, the orbital lasers trigger. We move through the maintenance tunnels.”
“Counter-point,” I said, mid-crunch. I didn’t wait for him to stop talking. “We just walk in.”
Bruce didn’t turn around immediately. He just went still. It was that ’I’m-a-scary-shadow’ stillness that probably works wonders on muggers in an alley, but against a guy who can bench-press a continent, it just looked like he’d forgotten how to move his neck.
“We are not walking into the Hall of Justice,” he said, finally turning to face me. The white lenses of his cowl were supposed to be menacing, but they just looked tired. “That’s a suicide mission.”
“For you, maybe. No offense, Bruce, but you’re a guy in a high-tech onesie. You’re squishy. If a ceiling falls on you, that’s a bad Saturday.” I tossed another pretzel into my mouth and looked over at Kara. She was leaning against a support beam, her arms crossed, looking bored with the concept of stealth. “Kara and I? We aren’t squishy. I’ve watched her tank a blast that would’ve vaporized a skyscraper because she forgot to move. I’m pretty sure a front door isn’t going to be the thing that ends us.”
“It’s not just the door,” Batman said, stepping toward me. “It’s the optics. If you’re seen—”
“That’s exactly the point.” I cut him off. I wasn’t being a jerk, I was just being realistic. “Clark is a control freak. He’s spent five years building a world where he’s the only one allowed to be ’big.’ The moment I show up on his porch and start knocking, he can’t ignore it. He can’t send a drone, and he can’t send a middle-manager. He has to come down himself to show everyone he’s still the Alpha. It forces him to play our game.”
“And if he decides to just vaporize the street from orbit?”
“Then I catch the beam.” I shrugged. It wasn’t a boast; it was just a fact of my biology. “Look, your way takes six months of hiding in sewers and stealing batteries. My way takes ten minutes and ends with a face-to-face. I’ve got a life to get back to, Bruce. I’m not spending my summer in a subway station.”
Kara stepped forward, her white cape snapping slightly as she moved. “He is right, Bruce. My cousin... the one here... he rules through the illusion of absolute safety. If we walk through the front door, we prove the safety is a lie. We prove that he cannot even protect his own house from two people who aren’t afraid of him.”
Harley, who had been trying to see how many pretzels she could balance on her chin, gave up and hopped off a crate. “Plus, the front door has way better lighting for my outfit! Tunnels are so... 2012. Very ’emo-rebellion.’ We need a ’pop-star’ rebellion!”
“See?” I pointed at Harley. “The clown gets it.”
I looked at Batman. He looked like he wanted to punch me, then realized he’d probably just break his hand on my armor, and settled for a very heavy sigh.
“You’re going to get yourselves killed,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” I said, checking my HUD to see if I had any salt stuck in my visor. “But at least I won’t be bored. You coming, or are you going to stay here and update your spreadsheets?”
Bruce didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at the holographic map. I didn’t wait for him to give a speech. I just turned and started walking toward the stairs, Kara falling in beside me. She didn’t need a tactical briefing. She just needed to know who to hit.
“Luke,” she said softly as we hit the first flight of stairs. “The ’Absolute Power’... you really think he will come down?”
“Oh, he’ll come,” I said, the dry Gotham air hitting my face. “Dictators can’t stand being ignored. It’s their one weakness. Well, that and a right hook from a Viltrumite, but we’ll get to that.”
…
The air in the Hall of Justice atrium was thick with the tang of high-end air filtration and the sweat of men who knew they were about to have a very bad day. Corporal Miller adjusted the grip on his pulse rifle, the polymer stock slick against his palms. The internal comms were a mess of panicked chatter and frantic status reports.
Command was screaming about a high-velocity contact closing in from Gotham—something moving too fast for a drone and lacking the authorized IFF signature of the High Councilor or the inner circle. It was a rogue cape, and it was coming straight for the front door.
“Ten credits says Miller goes down in the first thirty seconds,” Jax whispered, his voice cracking over the squad’s private channel. “He’s got that look on his face. Like he’s already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Fuck you, Jax,” Miller spat, not taking his eyes off the massive, gilded reinforced doors. “I’m not dying today. I’ve got plans. Plural. Unlike your sister, who’s only planning on when she can get me back in her bedroom.”
The rest of the squad let out a series of low, nervous chuckles, the kind of gallows humor that kept them from sprinting for the emergency exits. They were the “Peacekeepers,” the elite wall of meat standing between the world and the Regime’s seat of power. It was a good paycheck right up until the moment it wasn’t.
The warning sirens shifted from a low wail to a continuous, piercing shriek. The contact was on the plaza.
Most people expected an explosion. They expected the doors to be vaporized by heat vision or shattered by a sonic boom. Instead, there was a sound like a giant groaning in pain—the screech of structural steel being tortured. The two-story-tall doors didn’t blow inward; they buckled.
Two gloved hands visible in the gap between the valves pried the reinforced plates apart with the casual ease of a man opening a bag of chips. The hinges didn’t just break; they were sheared off, the heavy metal slabs tossed aside like discarded cardboard.
A man in shimmering platinum armor stepped through the dust. He didn’t look like a martyr. He didn’t look like he was carrying the weight of a dying rebellion. He looked like he was looking for a parking spot.
“Hey, quick question,” the armored man said, his voice amplified by a dry, deadpan filter through his visor. “Do any of you guys know a good ice cream place around here? Gelato, specifically. I’ve been eating stale pretzels in a basement for an hour and I’m pretty sure my soul is starting to dehydrate.”
Miller’s brain stalled. This was the prisoner—the “unidentified variable” the High Councilor had personally locked in the Spire. He was standing there with a silver cape draped over his shoulders, looking completely unimpressed by the thirty pulse rifles leveled at his chest.
“Open fire!” the Sergeant screamed, his voice reaching a pitch that was pure terror.
The atrium erupted. Automated ceiling turrets swiveled with mechanical precision, raining down a curtain of red plasma. Miller and his squad held their triggers, the blue streaks of pulse fire turning the lobby into a strobe light of violence. It was enough firepower to level a city block.
The man in the platinum suit didn’t flinch. He didn’t dive for cover. He just started walking.
He moved through the storm of fire as if it were a light summer drizzle, the silver cape snapping behind him in the localized heat. A plasma bolt hit his shoulder and splashed harmlessly away; a turret-mounted missile streaked toward his head, and he simply swatted it out of the air with his bare hand.
The projectile spiraled into a decorative marble pillar, detonating in a shower of stone and dust, but the man didn’t even break his stride.
“Seriously, no one?” he asked, casually knocking a Peacekeeper aside with a flick of his wrist that sent the man spinning twenty feet across the polished floor. “I heard Metropolis had a decent food scene, but the customer service in this building is remarkably hostile.”
Miller felt his stomach drop into his boots. He fired until his rifle hissed with an overheat warning, watching his shots disappear against that platinum plating like rain against a windshield. What the hell did that make them?
The armored figure—this “King”—reached the first line of defense. He didn’t use a weapon. He just grabbed the barrel of the Sergeant’s rifle, twisted it into a pretzel, and patted the man on the shoulder.
“You’re shaking, Sarge,” King noted, his reflective visor staring Miller right in the face. “Probably low blood sugar. You should really look into that gelato thing.”
Miller realized then that they weren’t soldiers in this scenario. They were obstacles. They were the minor inconveniences a man handles on his way to a more important meeting. King walked past him, swatting another pair of soldiers out of his path with the same bored efficiency one might use to clear cobwebs.
Behind him, a second figure landed in the wreckage of the doorway. A girl in white and gold, her eyes glowing with a faint, residual heat that made the air around her shimmer. She didn’t look bored; she looked focused.
“Luke, the guards are still attempting to impede our progress,” she said, her voice blunt and earnest. “Should I disable their mobility?”
“Just don’t kill them, Kara,” King replied, not even turning around as he punched a hole through a secondary blast door that was trying to slide shut. “They’re just doing their jobs. Poorly, but still. It’s not their fault their boss is a prick.”
Miller dropped his useless rifle. He watched as the two of them walked deeper into the heart of the Hall of Justice, leaving a trail of bent metal and unconscious Peacekeepers in their wake. He looked at Jax, who was currently pinned under a piece of the front door, groaning.
“I think,” Miller whispered, his voice trembling, “I owe you ten credits.”
…
I walked through the secondary security checkpoint like I was looking for the bathroom in a particularly pretentious hotel. The hallway was a corridor of white marble and aggressive architecture that practically screamed “I have an ego problem.” I was just starting to wonder if the High Councilor had a department dedicated entirely to selecting the most intimidating shades of grey when the air suddenly ionized.
A bolt of magical lightning tore through the ceiling, slamming into the floor ten feet in front of me with a theatrical boom that was honestly a bit much. Standing there in the smoke was the Regime’s resident magical heavy hitter. Red suit, gold trim, and a white cape that looked like it cost more than the average Gotham apartment.
“Stop right there, prisoner!” the guy bellowed. His voice had that layered, divine reverb that usually made people want to kneel. It just made my head ache. “By the authority of the High Councilor, you are under arrest!”
I came to a stop, tilting my head. “Seriously? A red suit with a giant lightning bolt? Are you just blatantly copying the Flash’s look at this point, or is there a copyright loophole I’m not aware of? It’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think, Captain Marvel?”
He bristled, his fists crackling with yellow electricity. “You are in no position to critique my appearance. You are an enemy of the peace!”
“Right, the peace. The one where everyone is terrified and you dress like a circus performer. Got it,” I said. I didn’t wait for him to finish his heroic stance. I moved.
To everyone watching the security feeds, I probably just blurred out of existence. To me, the world slowed down into a dull, syrupy crawl. I watched a bead of sweat roll down the Captain’s temple. I saw the individual sparks of magic jumping between his knuckles. He was slow. Not just ’human’ slow, but ’god-who-thinks-he’s-invincible’ slow.
I stepped into his guard before he could even blink. I grabbed the edge of his pristine white cape and yanked, hard. The fabric tore with a satisfying screech. While he was still processing the sudden loss of his fashion accessory, I delivered a palm strike to his chest. It wasn’t my full strength—I didn’t want to turn the hallway into a red smear—but it was enough to send him hurtling backward.
He smashed through a mahogany briefing table, skipped across the floor, and buried himself into a reinforced wall. The “god” of the Regime looked more like a discarded ragdoll.
“You’re getting slow, Captain,” I said, walking toward the crater he’d made. I checked my gauntlet for dust. “Maybe all that divine wisdom is weighing you down. Or maybe it’s just the ego.”
He roared, dragging himself out of the debris. His eyes were glowing white now, and he lunged at me with a speed that might have actually worked on someone who wasn’t me. He swung a haymaker that could have leveled a mountain. I caught it.
The shockwave blew out the rest of the windows in the hallway, but I didn’t budge. I squeezed his fist just enough to let the metal of my gauntlet creak against his knuckles.
“Is this the part where you tell me how much you love order?” I asked, leaning in. “Because from where I’m standing, you just look like a kid playing dress-up in a world that’s tired of your games. You’re not a god, Marvel. You’re a bully with a sparkler.”
I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I spun him around, grabbed him by the belt, and slammed him face-first into a heavy oak cabinet. Before he could recover, I grabbed the back of his head and introduced it to the marble floor.
Over and over. It wasn’t a fight; it was a demolition. I wanted the cameras to see it. I wanted every Peacekeeper in the building to watch their champion get treated like a dusty rug.
He managed to scramble away, his face bruised and his breathing ragged. He looked desperate. “My name... is not... Captain Marvel!” he screamed, his voice cracking with a very un-godlike fury. “My name is SHAZAM!”
The word triggered the lightning. It was a massive, vertical pillar of white-hot energy that should have fried me where I stood. I just leaned back, watching the bolt hit him instead.
The smoke cleared, and the mountain of a man was gone. In his place stood a scrawny kid in a t-shirt and jeans, looking terrified and clutching a fraying backpack. Billy Batson. The “god” was just a middle-schooler with a magic word and a lot of bad influences.
“Well, that’s a twist,” I muttered, though I’d already known.
The kid opened his mouth to say the word again, but I was faster. I blurred forward, grabbing the piece of the white cape I’d ripped off earlier. I balled it up and shoved it into his mouth like a makeshift gag before he could get the first syllable out.
I reached into a utility pouch on the back of my belt—Batman wasn’t the only one who liked being prepared—and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty duct tape. I’d grabbed it from a MetaWorks maintenance kit before we left, mostly because duct tape solves everything.
“Sorry, kid. No more magic words for you today,” I said, working with the kind of efficient speed that came from years of dealing with unruly actors on set.
I whipped his arms behind his back, securing his wrists with multiple layers of the silver adhesive. Then I wrapped the tape around his head, securing the gag and making sure he couldn’t even hum. I stepped back, looking at my handiwork. He was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, wide-eyed and muffled.
“Luke, what are you doing?” Kara asked, landing softly behind me. She looked at the bundle on the floor, then back at me, her expression a mix of confusion and mild disapproval. “He is a child.”
“He was a child-shaped cruise missile ten seconds ago,” I pointed out, leaning down to scoop the kid up. I tucked him under my arm like a very grumpy surfboard. “Now he’s a hostage. Or a bargaining chip. Whatever the word is for ’leverage that Batman is going to give me a lecture about later.’ It’s cool, Kara. We’re just making sure he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else while the adults finish the conversation.”
I looked up at the nearest security camera and gave it a small, mocking wave with my free hand.
“Alright,” I said, turning back toward the elevator bank. “Let’s go. We’ve got superhero shit to do. And then we’ll all go out for milkshakes.”
“Yum!”
…
Before the elevator doors could even finish cycling open, a squad of Regime Peacekeepers rounded the corner, their pulse rifles whining as they surged toward the debris-strewn hallway. They saw the cratered walls, the shattered marble, and their champion tied up like a parcel on the floor.
“Drop the kid!” the lead soldier screamed, his finger whitening on the trigger.
“Actually, I think I’ll keep him. He’s surprisingly portable,” Luke said, shifting Billy’s weight under his arm as if he were carrying a rolled-up rug. He looked over at Kara, his visor gleaming. “Kara, go. Secure the terminal and find the prisoners. I’ve got these guys. It’s going to take at least three more squads before I even have to start trying.”
Kara didn’t argue. She didn’t have time. She pivoted on her heel and took flight, a sonic boom trailing behind her as she tore through the ceiling and into the upper ventilation shafts.
The upper levels of the Hall of Justice felt cold, sterile, and wrong. This was supposed to be a place of heroes, yet it felt like the tomb-worlds Brainiac had made her conquer. She smashed through a reinforced floor, landing in a high-security holding block.
The Mother Box terminal hummed in the center of the room, surrounded by energy cells holding people who looked like they hadn’t seen the sun in years. One of them, a man with a scarred face and a defiant glint in his eyes, looked up in shock as she landed.
“The terminal is secure,” Kara whispered, more to reassure herself than him. She reached for the console, her fingers hovering over the glowing glyphs, but a sudden weight hit her from behind.
The impact was like a falling moon. Kara was driven through three walls, the structural steel shrieking as it bent around her body. She skidded across the floor of a wide observation deck, the glass of the high windows rattling in their frames. She stood up, shaking the dust from her hair, and saw her.
Wonder Woman stood in the center of the hall, her golden lasso glowing with an ethereal, sickening light. She didn’t look like a protector. She looked like a conqueror who had grown bored with her subjects.
“You should have stayed in your cell, Kryptonian,” Diana said, her voice dripping with a condescending pity. “Kal-El gave you a chance to be part of something greater. To bring the Order that your people were too weak to maintain on their own.”
“Order is not a cage,” Kara said, her voice low and dangerous. Her chest felt tight, the protective fire she had felt for Luke and her family now focusing into a sharp, white-hot point. “You call him your friend, yet you have allowed him to become a monster. You have ruined him.”
“I have saved him,” Diana countered, lunging forward with a speed that rivaled Kara’s own. “I have given him the strength to do what must be done! Without us, this world would burn in its own chaos!”
Her shield slammed into Kara’s jaw, the vibration rattling her skull. Kara didn’t fly back. She grabbed the edge of the shield, digging her fingers into the Amazonian metal, and swung. She wasn’t fighting like the warrior Brainiac had trained; she was fighting like someone who had finally found something worth protecting.
They became a blur of gold and white, a localized hurricane of violence that tore the observation deck to pieces. Every time Diana spoke of “The Necessity of Order,” Kara hit her harder. She didn’t care about the Amazon’s centuries of combat experience or her divine lineage. Diana was the one who had whispered in Kal-El’s ear while he grieved. She was the architect of his madness.
“You speak of peace,” Kara snarled, catching the sword between her palms. The blade hissed against her skin. “But all I see is a coward who is afraid of a world she cannot control!”
Kara drove her knee into Diana’s stomach, following it with a headbutt that cracked the Amazon’s tiara. Diana stumbled, her eyes widening in genuine shock. She tried to raise her shield, but Kara was already there. She grabbed both sides of the bronze disk and ripped it out of the warrior’s hands, tossing it through the window and into the Metropolis skyline.
Kara didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. The image of Kal-El sitting alone in that cold throne room flashed through her mind, and her eyes burned.
“He was my family!” Kara screamed.
The heat vision erupted from her eyes, not as a surgical strike, but as a continuous, overwhelming torrent of solar fury. Diana roared, crossing her bracers to deflect the beams, the golden metal glowing white-hot under the pressure. The floor beneath her began to slag, turning to molten glass as she was driven back, inch by inch, by the sheer, unyielding force of Kara’s will.
Diana was an Amazon. She was a goddess of war. But Kara was a daughter of Krypton, and she had a boyfriend waiting for her downstairs with the promise of ice cream.
With a final, guttural shout, Kara increased the output. The blast shattered the bracers’ guard, sending Diana flying through the exterior wall. She tumbled into the open air, a falling star of red and blue, before crashing into the plaza below.
Kara stood at the edge of the jagged hole in the building, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The red glow in her eyes faded, leaving only the cold, grey light of the city. She looked back at the prisoners, who were staring at her in stunned silence.
“The cells are open,” she said, her voice shaking only slightly as she turned toward the Mother Box terminal. “Get to the lower levels. My Luke is there. He will keep you safe.”
Kara didn’t wait to see them move. She turned to the console, her hands steadying as she began the override. She had won the fight, but the war was still waiting for them at the front door.
…
The lobby of the Hall of Justice looked like a giant had tried to use it as a blender. I was currently perched on a makeshift throne consisting of three unconscious Peacekeepers and a very dented Black Adam, who was snoring with a rhythmic, wet wheeze that suggested his god-given durability didn’t extend to his sinuses.
Billy—or Captain Marvel, or whatever—was still tucked under my arm, muffled and taped, looking up at me with eyes that were about fifty percent terror and fifty percent “I’m telling on you.”
I idly picked at a piece of scorched masonry that had wedged itself into my gauntlet. The silence in the atrium was heavy, broken only by the occasional pop of a short-circuiting terminal. It was that specific kind of quiet that precedes a natural disaster—the kind where the birds stop singing because they know the world is about to get very loud.
Then, the air pressure dropped. It felt like the entire building had suddenly been vacuum-sealed. The temperature in the room spiked, the ambient heat rising until the sweat under my armor started to itch. High above, through the jagged hole where the ceiling used to be, a streak of red and blue appeared, cutting through the smog of Metropolis like a scalpel.
There was no sonic boom. He didn’t need one. He just descended, landing in the exact center of the lobby with a silent, terrifying grace. Superman—or the High Councilor, if you’re into the whole “Dictator-Chic” branding—stood there, his red cape settling around his boots like a pool of blood.
He didn’t look angry. Rage is hot; it’s sloppy. This was something else. This was the kind of absolute, frigid stillness that you only find in deep space.
I didn’t move. I just watched him through my visor, calculating the distance and wondering if the floor would hold up once we actually started throwing hands.
“You’ve caused a lot of property damage, Clark,” I said, my voice dry and amplified through the suit’s external speakers. “I hope the Regime has a good insurance policy. Or do you just tax people more every time someone scuffs the marble?”
The High Councilor didn’t answer. His gaze swept over the wreckage of his lobby, lingering on the unconscious gods and the tied-up kid under my arm. When his eyes finally met my reflective visor, the air around him began to shimmer with the sheer intensity of the heat building behind his retinas.
“You were a guest in my world,” he said, his voice low and vibrating with a power that made the dust on the floor dance. “A variable I chose to tolerate because you were a curiosity. But curiosities that break their toys are simply... garbage.”
I stood up slowly, letting Black Adam’s shoulder serve as a footstool. I dusted off a smudge of soot from my platinum chest plate and adjusted my grip on Billy. “Took you long enough to get here. You know, for a guy who can fly around the world in seconds, your punctuality is shit. I was starting to think you were hiding in the bathroom, psyching yourself out in the mirror.”
“Where is Diana?” he asked, ignoring the bait. The temperature rose another five degrees.
“Last I saw, she was taking a very sudden, very high-velocity tour of the city skyline,” I replied, tilting my head toward the gaping hole in the observation deck above. “Kara’s up there. She’s currently doing your job—you know, the part where you help people instead of putting them in glow-in-the-dark cages. She’s a bit miffed, Clark. Something about you being a disappointment to the family crest? I wasn’t really listening to the specifics; I was busy trying to find a gelato place.”
He took a step forward. The marble beneath his boot shattered into powder. “You think this is a joke. You think because you possess strength, you are somehow exempt from the order I have built.”
“I think your ’order’ is just a mid-life crisis with a global budget,” I said, shifting my weight. My internal sensors were screaming at me—threat levels pegged at the maximum. I ignored them. I’d dealt with Nolan Grayson on a bad day; this was just a different flavor of overbearing father figure. “And yeah, I do think it’s a joke. You’re a guy who can hear every heartbeat on the planet, yet you’re so deaf you didn’t hear your own people screaming for you to stop five years ago. That’s comedy gold, man.”
Superman’s eyes flared, two twin suns of crimson light that illuminated the entire wreckage of the hall. He didn’t launch a speech. He didn’t give me a warning. He just moved.
He was fast. Faster than Shazam, faster than Black Adam. But I’ve spent my life around Viltrumites. I’ve spent my life learning how to track things that move faster than light. I dropped Billy—softly, because I’m not a monster—and brought my forearms up just as the High Councilor’s fist connected with my guard.
The impact didn’t just make a sound; it felt like a tectonic plate had snapped. The shockwave blew out the remaining glass in the entire wing of the building and sent a cloud of pulverized marble into the air. I slid back ten feet, my boots carving deep furrows into the floor, but I stayed upright.
I shook out my arms, the platinum alloy of my gauntlets glowing dull red from the friction of the hit. “Not bad. A bit heavy on the follow-through, but the intent was there. Six out of ten.”
He was in front of me again before I finished the sentence. He wasn’t holding back anymore. This wasn’t the measured, ’saving the day’ Superman. This was the man who had put a fist through the Joker’s chest and never looked back. He was a blur of primary colors and lethal intent, raining down blows that felt like small nuclear detonations.
I blocked, parried, and dodged. I wasn’t winning, but I wasn’t losing, either. I guess this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Infinite stalemate.
“Is this it?” I asked, ducking under a swing that whistled past my helmet and took the head off a nearby statue. “The big finale? I’ve seen better choreography in a low-budget indie flick.”
He grabbed me by the throat, his fingers digging into the platinum plating of my neck guard. He lifted me off the ground, his face inches from mine. Up close, I could see the cracks in the mask—the exhaustion, the grief, and the bottomless, terrifying vacuum of his ego.
“You are nothing,” he hissed, the red glow of his eyes reflected in my visor. “You are a nobody from a world that doesn’t matter. I am the peace of this world.”
“You’re a tyrant with a cape, Clark,” I wheezed, my voice still dripping with that dry, effortless sarcasm even as the armor began to buckle under his grip. “And the thing about nobodies? They got a nasty habit of blinding you.”
I wonder if the journalist in him gets that reference?
I drove my knee into his diaphragm, the impact sounding like a sledgehammer hitting a lead pipe. He didn’t let go, but the surprise in his eyes was worth the price of admission.
We stayed there for a second, locked in a stalemate of raw, planetary-scale power. Outside, the sirens were wailing, and I could hear the distant sounds of the resistance starting to move in the streets. The ’Front Door’ was wide open, and the world was watching.
“You know,” I muttered, my reflective visor staring back at his burning eyes. “I really, really wanted that ice cream. And you’re kind of ruining the vibe.”
The High Councilor didn’t blink. He just tightened his grip, his eyes flaring brighter. The air began to hum with the sound of a god losing his patience.
I just smiled under the helmet. It was going to be a long afternoon.