Blood Obsidian

Issue 35

Whoso comes from the dark ... - Part 5

Caitlyn thought of all the times she had sucked at softball, and hoped that this wasn't going to add to those moments of embarrassment. The suit provided her with the baseball bat weapon and she swept it outward in an arc, cracking against the grenade. Sending it tumbling away just in time. The grenade exploded against the wall of the underground facility, the pressure wave knocking everybody away. Caitlyn. Kyle. Even Fiend.

The grenade had caused a crater to appear in the wall, cracks spidering outward from the blackened indentation, but Caitlyn didn't wait to see how bad that could get. Grabbing Kyle's hand, she yanked him upright, throwing him over her shoulder and tried to get her bearings. Desperate to find the elevator and the shaft to the surface.

Black smoke, an acrid stink from burning plastic, mixed with the grey smoke, swirling around her, thicker than any fog she had ever seen. Her suit filtered out the toxic fumes, but she couldn't say the same for Kyle. Barking coughs came from him, his chest heaving against her shoulder. They had to get out, but even her suit's infrared vision failed to point the way.

Through it all, she heard the incessant, high-pitched laugh of Fiend as they hid within the roiling mass of smoke. The villain was toying with them, planting seeds of doubt in their minds, inciting fear of the unknown, but Caitlyn had battled fear before. Or, rather, she had battled Fear and that terrifying superhero had made her far more afraid than this.

Fiend made a mistake. Barreling toward Caitlyn, appearing suddenly from the smoke, their platform sent the smoke into twisting whorls behind them and, for a fraction of a second, showed Caitlyn where they were within the underground lair. Ducking, folding her legs to a squat, she allowed Fiend to pass overhead and then launched herself toward where she knew the shaft to freedom lay.

"Oh, you are a jumpy jack rabbit!" Fiend laughed even harder, their voice carrying as though coming from every direction. "You can't save him, Caitlyn. Someone has to die today and the winner is ..."

"You!" Caitlyn gripped Kyle's legs, keeping him tight to her shoulder. "You dick!"

With her free hand, Caitlyn lashed out, anticipating the arrival of Fiend and catching them in the stomach, sending the villain tumbling from the stirrups of their platform, the machine itself continuing on through the smoke. Fiend disappeared from sight, but Caitlyn didn't wait to see whether she had injured the monster that plagued her.

The elevator shaft came into sight and Caitlyn wasted no time, crouching before launching her and Kyle up toward the surface. As her upward momentum waned, she fired out her suit's version of the grapple and, as soon as it latched on, she yanked it, hard, sending them both flying higher. The smoke filled the shaft, reaching to escape as much as they were and, after another grapple and yank, she and Kyle exploded from the shaft into the warehouse above.

Laying Kyle down, making a quick check to ensure he was okay, she spun on her heel, waiting for Fiend to emerge. What she hadn't expected was a salvo of rockets flying up, from the shaft, into the rafters of the warehouse, exploding far above their heads, causing old, rusted beams to groan and roar before Caitlyn heard metallic snapping and a large section of the roof began to fall.

Three grenades looped up from the mouth of the elevator shaft, bouncing on the floor and rolling, too far away for their explosions to damage Caitlyn or Kyle. The lights blinked, then steadied and Caitlyn turned her head. Instead of an explosion, however, she heard something more like three popping sounds. They weren't explosive grenades, but gas grenades, their contents billowing outward to bring visibility, even up here, out of the facility below, down to almost nothing.