Her head was still in the nod position. “Just because I failed doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability, Creature. Maybe all I need is some extra go-go juice.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “So you think I should shoot my rays inside of you in the odd chance that I’ll push your energy levels over the threshold and not fry you like an onion ring in doing so?”
She cringed. “You do have a way with words, Creature.”
“It’s a gift,” I replied, with a self-satisfied smile.
“Is it returnable?”
My smile vanished. “Sorry.” I closed the gap between us. “You sure you want me to try it out, though? Because I really could do some major harm. Remember how a certain steel cable snapped and dropped a disco ball on a certain nasty someone.”
She looked around, at the guarded door holding us, at the walls on all sides of us, at the floor and ceiling, and then said, “What choice do we have? Plus, if I do have powers, then it’ll be more ammunition for us when we need it. Two against one.”
“But that’s one hell of a big if.”
She reached her hand out and placed it over mine, her smile fairly lighting the dim room up. “We’ve come this far, Creature, back from the dead even, so why not go just a little bit further?”
I paused. “Well, if you’re sure . . .”
She gave my hand a squeeze. “Just do it, Creature. Now. Before I change my mind.”
I backed a few inches away and once again set my atoms on a collision course with one another. In no time flat, I was bubbling over, except, this time, rather than slicing through her, I lowered the intensity just a bit and simply bombarded her with a healthy(?) dose of radiation.
“Well?” I asked, unsure if she was standing there like that, stone-faced, unmoving, because she was in pain (doubtful) or dying (even more doubtful) or not feeling anything at all (possible).
“Wait,” she replied. “Keep going. Just a little bit more.”
And so I beamed away, theoretically filling her reserves. That is, until the theory was now fact.
“Well?” I asked again.
She grinned. “You have a Tasmanian devil tattoo on your upper thigh.”
I covered my crotch, little good it did me. “Hey!”
She chuckled. “See, not so nice when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?”
“Turn it off,” I told her, my beam now shut down.
“Off,” she said. “And nice tat. Pretty big, too.”
“Yeah, I’m not all bitch; there’s a little butch thrown in for good measure.”
She shrugged, clearly not believing me. “In any case, when you’re helping me, I have the same powers that you have.” She gazed at the wall. Nothing happened. I gave her another boost, and, lo and behold, a tiny hole began to sizzle its way through. “See!”
“Neat!” Truth be told, neat it was, yet another Superqueen power we had, adding to our growing roster. Plus, we really were two against one now.
“It is neat, isn’t it?!”
“Why are we shouting?!”
She stopped drilling, as it were, into the wall. “Sorry. It’s just, I’ve never had super powers before, apart from learning an entire script, then delivering it . . . with a British accent.”
“Show off.”
She grinned and laughed. “Plus, I was playing it blind and in a wheelchair.”
“Electric?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Call me when you had to use your hands then.” I snorted. “Electric. Please, Mary.”
“So now what?” she asked, wisely changing the subject. Because I could go on like that forever. Seriously. Forever.
“Now we sit tight,” I replied. I didn’t enjoy saying it any more than she enjoyed hearing it, but we had no choice.
That is to say, until we did.
***
The war didn’t start with a bang. Mainly because it began, it seemed to us, with an earth-shaking BOOM! The house, our prison, shook a moment later.
“What happened?” Lola asked.
I released my X-ray beam, sending it toward the pontoons. “Huh.”
“Huh what?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “No fires, no smoke.” And so my beams went in the other direction. “Huh,” I repeated.
“Again with the huh?”
I nodded. “Lots of fire, lots of smoke,” I replied. “Coming from where her boat must be. Maybe some of her explosives went off unplanned?” And then another BOOM! boomed, a second one barely a split-second behind that one.
I waved my hands in front of my face as the smoke quickly filled the room. “Hurry,” I then heard, the speaker still unseen. “This way.”
I grabbed Lola’s hand, hard as it was to find it as the room turned smoky black. We followed the voice as it led us through the freshly made hole in the wall. In seconds, we were standing behind the house, the black turning to gray as we realized what had happened.
“You used that second blast to mask the third one, the one that freed us?” I asked, staring up at VaVa, a face to the voice. She was covering her mouth as she nodded my way.
She coughed and replied, “Somehow another boat slammed into the one down by the dock.”
“Somehow?”
She shrugged. “It happens. There were lots of boats set adrift when the solar flare occurred. Some still come sailing by every now and then, freed by a storm or simply time.” Though, of course, that’s not what happened, just meant to look like it had.