With a laborious sigh, Charlie Gardner slips back into her seat among the other performing heroes. Her job is done, and so now she rests, with tired eyes and limp posture. The heroes around her are not so relaxed. Many of them watch her with either wide eyes or narrow ones, some amazed, others suspicious, all impressed.

  If they didn’t know her before, they do now.

  “C, what was that?” Darya walks over and asks, “You…you weren’t half that strong before.”

  “I’m tired, Darya,” Charlie replies, “Can we not do this now?”

  “Oh…okay,” she deflates, but still watches the ambitious runner with wide eyes as she takes her own seat, a little further away this time.

  “Well, folks, I think we can all agree that was very exciting, but our show isn’t done yet!” The announcer declares through the screen, “Let’s hear it for our next hero—and a city champion no less! We’ve all seen his work, and we all love it! Let’s give it up for New World!”

  A man in a wildly multicolored shawl steps out onto the stadium, gesturing erratically as a multitude of 3D scenes come to life: everything from trees to a ship sailing over water to a flock of colorful birds which begin flying over the stands. The audience cheers and laughs and seemingly forgets what just happened moments ago, almost as though it hadn’t at all.

  “Ah well, there goes our chances of being seen,” one hero in the tunnels complains, “Not only do we have that flamboyant fuck to compete with, but Jonathan too? This year’s a bust.”

  “Don’t forget the newbie,” the hero next to him whispers, “There’s always got to be a dark horse, doesn’t there.”

  “Dude, shut up, she can hear you,” his companion hisses.

  Charlie stands. One or two of the heroes closest to her flinch. With a deep breath, she walks down the tunnels for a little while before coming upon a restroom, where she quietly shuts the door and walks over to the sink. She turns on the faucet and splashes water on her face a few times, then sighs and stares at herself in the mirror.

  After a few moments, she shakes herself, and steps back out into the tunnel.

  “I thought you’d be happy,” a harsh voice says to her, “Most in your place would be celebrating.”

  With a start, Charlie turns to face the voice, fists raised. She hesitates a moment when she sees who it is, then drops her arms and stares daggers down the tunnel as a man steps out of the shadows.

  His glittering wings are just a little too wide for the tunnel walls.

  “What do you want?” She growls at him. Jonathan looks unimpressed.

  “I ought to congratulate you,” he replies mildly, “You’ve improved remarkably since I last saw you. You’d even give most of the reapers some difficulty now.”

  “What. Do. You. Want?” Charlie punctuates her words with an even deeper glare.

  The angel hesitates for a moment. His expression shifts uncertainly. He considers lying, more than once. Then he steels his gaze, and looks her in the eyes.

  “If I must be entirely honest, I want to kill you.”

  —

  “Well?” Drake prompts, “Speak your terms, king of the void.”

  “What else but the very same thing I asked of the last person to request such a favor?” Mijkal replies, “After all, an equal exchange must demand an equal price.”

  Drake clutches the armrest of his chair until the wood breaks, “Spit it out already,” he hisses.

  Mijkal continues to smile as his attendant, having finished cleaning up the mess of the table, now brings him a new cup of tea. Calmly and deliberately, he takes a slow sip, then sighs with pleasure as he swallows.

  “I’m sure you’re aware of the trends regarding who is gifted with an ability,” Mijkal begins.

  “There are none,” Drake says harshly, “It’s random.”

  “Not quite,” the king of Iceland replies, “Rather notably, the children of superhumans are highly likely to be superhuman as well—a rate of almost one in ten as opposed to nearly one in a hundred thousand. What’s more, one can inherit certain traits of their progenitor’s ability. As you suggested earlier, I control the vast majority of space-related abilities, but that is not merely the result of a recruitment strategy.”

  “You call them your family,” Drake interjects, “Not by coincidence.”

  The mad king smiles, “This is not the first time my humble home has dabbled in…selectively controlling genetic traits.”

  “You mean eugenics,” Drake counters.

  “Don’t tell me the monster of the East is too good for such things,” Mijkal replies, “It’s not as though your hands are cleaner.”

  “Then it’s obvious what you want,” Drake says, ignoring him, “You’re interested in cultivating my bloodline. You want to breed an army of powerful superhumans.”

  Mijkal laughs at that, a pure clean sound that is almost too perfect to be natural, “No, no, you misunderstand. I already tried that strategy, and it didn’t work. Something as complex as combat viability is simply too separate from the truth behind abilities to be passed down so easily. No, more often the trend leans towards concepts. My monopoly over space is a good example—my wife’s ability to Isolate space and my ability to break it lead to a host of abilities centered around space and its manipulation. Your ability, on the other hand, while near godlike for you, leans on rather boring concepts. Energy? Power? Might? Such things are a dime a dozen in our world.”

  “Then what?” Drake growls, “I only have the one ability to offer you.”

  “Your companion,” Mijkal answers, “I wish to have her ability.”

  Drake turns to the final occupant of the room. Xia Ling glances wildly between the two men, only growing more pale with fear by the second.

  Drake turns back to Mijkal, “Why?”

  “I have been observing you,” the king replies, “There is little doubt in my mind that her ability is wonderfully esoteric. It gets stronger the more it is used, does it not? And I believe it may even be tied to some activation condition—that implies its usage of something even more unique. I must admit, I find myself near salivating at the endless possibilities.”

  Xia Ling sputters, “Darling, you can’t possibly be thinking-”

  “She is mine,” Drake interrupts, “That is out of the question.” Xia Ling visibly relaxes.

  “Why, to hear you say that one almost might think you were imagining something crude,” Mijkal says, still smiling, “but I assure you, I am nothing if not an efficient man. All I ask is the chance to preserve her genetic material—I happened to possess the most effective IVF technology of the old world, and more than enough willing surrogates. A few hours in the lab would be all I need of your wonderful companion’s presence.”

  Drake frowns, and begins absentmindedly tapping a finger against the armrest of his chair.

  “Darling, please,” Xia Ling pleads, “no…” she trails off.

  “I assume you had this planned out from the start, didn’t you?” Drake scoffs, “Fine.”

  Xia Ling whimpers impotently. Mijkal only smiles.

  —

  “You don’t seem surprised,” the angel says calmly.

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve considered killing me,” Charlie replies, “Though I’ll admit, after everything that’s happened, I was nearly sure you’d given up on the idea. I’ve definitely done more than enough to provoke you to that point.”

  “He told me this would happen,” the angel says, “‘One day,’ he said, ‘she will be your downfall.’ I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Who did?” Charlie asks, cautiously taking a step back.

  “It would be easy, you know?” he continues, ignoring her, “They would be mad at me, but they’ve been mad at me before. All I’d have to do is tell them the truth, and then they’d let me be; they wouldn’t have any other options.”

  Charlie takes another step back, but with a flash she finds her way suddenly blocked by a wall of golden blades. Another one is pointed at her head, guided by the angel’s hand. It quivers there, shaking slightly, seemingly black in the darkness. She looks at it with wide eyes.

  “And, even as strong as you’ve gotten, you still couldn’t stop me,” Jonathan whispers in the dark, “Nobody could.”

  Then all of a sudden, the feathers return to his wings, and he straightens his spine, suddenly looking at the walls of the tunnel as though he cannot meet her gaze anymore.

  He takes in a deep breath, “…but that is a mistake. Killing you, here and now, would only tell the world that I am afraid of you.” He raises his gaze to meet her eyes. “I am not afraid.”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  He pivots away from her, facing down the tunnel he came from.

  “Don’t think I missed your message,” he says coolly, “You replicated my former feat intentionally, correct?”

  “…of course,” Charlie whispers.

  “Not bad for your first time,” Jonathan continues, “but I’m no amateur at this. I’d recommend you find a seat in the stands if you can. Wouldn’t want to miss seeing my response in person. It promises to be…awe-inspiring.”

  Without another word, the country’s defender strides away.

  And the runner, far out of her depth, slumps against the tunnel walls.

  —

  “Darling…” Xia Ling pleads one last time. Drake stands at turns to face her.

  “Do as I say,” he says with barely disguised rage, “You are mine to give, and I will not lose this chance.”

  “Worry not, dear,” Mijkal says without looking her way, “You’ll be well taken care of here. I have a reputation to uphold, after all.”

  As if on cue, a pair of tall men in lab coats enter the room. They deftly step over to Xia Ling and lightly grab her arms, guiding her out of the room. She gives one last pleading look to Drake. He turns to Mijkal.

  “Well?” He prompts, “You have what you asked for. Give me my passage.”

  “Not going to wait for her?” Mijkal asks with a smirk.

  Drake scoffs, “I can’t be rid of this place soon enough. Just send her after me when you’re done with her. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so,” Mijkal replies slyly, “Well then, no reason to delay, I suppose. Brace yourself.”

  “For wha-”

  With a sound like breaking glass, the world’s strongest man finds himself suddenly falling from the sky.

  He flails for only a second, before skillfully righting himself. Then after a second more, he begins infusing Power into his feet. Roiling waves of force blast out from him, tearing off his shoes as if they’d been filled with dynamite and pulsing a massive sustained blastwave downwards that pushes back on gravity.

  Within a few heartbeats, Drake does with practiced ease what many can only dream of, and flies. Hovering there surrounded by the roar of a jet engine, he looks down to find only water. A quick turn reveals that just behind him is a solid mass of fog, stretching all the way from the floor of the sea to high enough in the sky that it seems to go on forever.

  “Fucking bastard,” Drake curses, “Just had to prove a point.”

  He turns away from the wall and faces the endless horizon in the distance. Nothing but water all around—at worst, he could have been placed hundreds of miles from land. Drake growls impotently.

  “Someday, I’m going to kill that eugenicist bastard.”

  With reluctance and frustration, he angles himself away from the cloudwall and blasts off towards the USC.

  —

  Finally, he takes the stage.

  It’s been a long day, and over its course only more people have begun to flood in. The stadium is rated for nearly eighty thousand viewers, but with how many stand by the side of the seats, clamouring for any view they can manage, the place easily breaks a hundred.

  All of them are here for him. Perhaps not he alone, but nobody would miss this. He is their hero, their symbol, their golden boy. The showstopper is not to be taken so lightly, not ever. He is everything to them. They will not, cannot, ignore his presence.

  From the tunnel, he emerges, and the stadium shakes with the thunder of applause.

  It is a wild thing, their voracious hunger in this moment. It could not be anything but hunger, almost gluttonous, for his presence, his showing. The wildness of it roars with the sound of their hands clapping furiously, their shouts cacophonying until it all becomes the delirious roar of a beast in challenge. It is almost that—a challenge. Each one competes over the others, for dominance, for presence among the noise. They want so badly to be seen by him.

  He does not so much as glance at the stands.

  Wings spread wide, flashing in the sun, catching golden rays and making them more golden still. It is pure arrogance, to try and improve upon such a thing, but he manages anyway. His whole figure speaks of otherworldly beauty. He’s dressed not in his standard suit, but a mimicry of it dyed the purest white, with a black undershirt to contrast, and gold cufflinks to remind those that can see of the angel’s wings. The sharpness of his features somehow manage to make themselves clear to even those in the stands to whom he is as small as an ant, and his posture is as perfect as could be, almost to proclaim his superiority to all.

  Every feature is measured, intended. He has rehearsed this for months. It is all a show, and at that he is the master. The world sees what it has always seen: their perfect guardian angel. To an observer, that belief may almost seem to elevate him further, but others see it differently. In the stands, faces in the vast majority betray their dislike of this man. The titaness scowls, despising his mastery of the masses; the crone in the glass box scoffs, knowing of his folly; the ambitious runner, still in shock, watches silently, dreading what is coming.

  Then all at once, the crowd goes silent.

  Four feathers. A watchful eye would know that before he had a total of one hundred and eight, all shining as if polished. Now there are four, just enough to keep him aloft as he hovers ever so slightly above the stadium floor, never allowing his perfect white shoes to so much as be scuffed. The remainder move, and the fury of the winds comes with them.

  Would the crowd still cheer, it would have been drowned out, by the roar of the shockwave that tears apart the air. All across the crowd, hats go flying, hair is buffeted, children seated on their parents’ laps duck away and hide. The roar fades slowly, the winds stopping first, then the sound in the manner of a plane flying past.

  And then the world goes dark.

  In one smooth motion, the entire stadium—nay, the entire city—looks up.

  And they see a sky of gold.

  A hundred and four interlocking blades blanket the sky, though to call them blades is to call redwoods toothpicks. There are but a hundred and four, and yet every inch of the sky that can be seen in the stadium, and even beyond to most of the great Angel’s City, is entirely covered. High above, even the occasional small raincloud lazily drifts beneath the feather’s girth, as though they are defying the superiority of the heavens, for not even that is, quite literally, above them.

  The more worldly members of the audience, who have traveled far and wide and seen the monstrous mass of the cloudwall, recall it in this moment. The dividing line between the continent of North America and the rest of the world, majestic and proud, is the most reality-defying usage of an ability any of them had seen before. It simply represented more power than anyone could expect a human to hold.

  Watching the display, those that had seen it could not help but compare the two.

  One only had to look once more at the audience to see the impact, to few if any bothered with the sight still there to behold. Among those that were struck silent were not just the common people who had come to see heights they could not fathom. Even among the greatest heroes of the generation, who had spent the day displaying their own incredible might, could only stare slack-jawed and silent at the power before them.

  To them, he was not just an angel anymore. He has proven, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to all who watched that there was something greater here. To call him an angel seems to them insufficient. It would be almost more accurate to describe him as-

  “God,” the ambitious runner breathes, pale as a sheet and voice like a ghost.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it ends.

  —

  “Well, would you look at that?” The world’s strongest man says joyfully as he looks to the horizon. Near its edge, the faintest beginnings of a city skyline can be seen. It would be unrecognizable at this distance even to locals, but few would miss what’s above it.

  A ceiling of golden blades higher than the clouds is difficult to ignore.

  Drake finds himself laughing, a deep, mirthful belly laugh, “I’d heard he was tough, but this is…wow. I didn’t think he’d be any stronger than the Russians, or at least that swordsman from Japan, but I guess two decades of unimpeded training does a lot for a man.”

  He smiles with teeth, “I doubt I’ll find Luo Wen so quickly…which means I might as well have fun while I’m here.”

  Suddenly, the roar of his jet-like flight cuts out, and he begins to fall into the sea below, still wearing a smile. He folds himself into an expert dive as he plummets toward the water, picking up speed. He impacts the surface with a splash that would be massive up close, but is easily ignorable all the way at shore, and despite having hit at terminal velocity, he quickly surfaces.

  In fact, he surfaces just in time to watch the golden dome disappear entirely from the sky.

  “He works quickly,” Drake quips, treading water with enough alacrity to keep his head above the water even as choppy as it is, “Glad I decided to go in quietly—giving this man time to prepare could actually be a problem.” He laughs, “Look at me! Worried about a fight! Fuck, I missed this feeling!”

  Without even bothering to take a breath of air, he dips his head beneath the waves and begins swimming to shore. He moves with such power that his strokes begin to churn the waves into a silty foam, and pushes ahead with enough speed to rival most boats. Pure might is on display as he stretches his legs for the first time in a while, and begins to feel the miles fade away into his wake.

  And all the while, under the waves, he never stops grinning from ear to ear.

  —

  Slowly, like waking from sleep on a cold morning, the world starts to move again. It doesn’t happen all at once, or start anywhere in particular. It just happens, as people one by one remember they can move.

  The announcers wrap up the show with not half their previous energy, starting and stopping as they get going like an old engine. The scattered edges of the crowd already are leaving by the time they do so, more from habit than anything else. Many remain behind, discussing what they saw in hush whispers, or just looking up at the sky, as though they can still see it. Still, first slow, then progressively faster, the stadium empties, for no matter how miraculous, the day's events were little more than spectacle to most.

  In the tunnels, the lady of ice and snow does one last check for her past companion before ultimately being pulled away by staff urging her to leave so they can begin putting everything away. In the glass box, many leave immediately, or sit around passively as tired bones keep them seated. Not one of them is half as shocked as the crowd, but they too leave in time.

  Charlie is among the last to leave, still staring up at the sky. Pale, with wide eyes, the once ambitious runner sinks into a now empty seat. Her hands shake slightly as they lie in her lap, and she does not draw her gaze from the sky for even a moment.

  “Char!” a familiar voice stirs her from her stupor, “You got out here quickly. Did you come up to watch the end?”

  She turns, and finds her friends, Allacia and Elias, walking over to her. Both of them look a little worse for wear, but were among the first to recover. They come over and embrace the runner joyfully.

  “Are you okay?” Allacia pulls back, studying Charlie’s face worriedly, “I know that was a little shocking, but you still did well!”

  “He said he’d kill me…” she whispers under her breath, “He told me to watch. He wanted me to know he could.”

  Allacia glances at Elias with a worried look, then back to her friend, “What?”

  Finally, she looks down from the sky, “Jonathan. In the tunnels, after my performance. He was ranting, and…he tried to…he told me to go up. To see his ‘response’ to what I did. It was a message, not just to the USC, but to me. I think it’s obvious what he said.”

  Allacia throws another worried glance at Elias, who sighs and steps forward, sitting down on the empty bench next to Charlie. They turn to look at each other, one broken, the other with a steely gaze.

  “So what?” Elias says harshly.

  Allacia gasps, “El-”

  He holds up a hand to silence her.

  “So what?” He repeats, “It isn’t the first time he’s thought about killing you, and if you weren’t afraid before, then you’re an idiot. What does this change? The goal’s still the same. Or are you really telling me that you of all people are fine with someone like him running around free?”

  “I can’t stop him,” Charlie says softly, “You saw that. I can’t stop him. How am I…how am I supposed to beat something like that? Four months and I can barely replicate a feat he did nearly two decades ago. How am I supposed to keep up?”

  “I don’t know,” Elias admits, “I really don’t. But I’ve spent enough time piecing together truth from rumored actions and snippets of behavior to know that confident men don’t threaten young girls deep underground. Especially not a famously cool and calculating man like him. He’s afraid of you, Charlie. If nothing else, that tells us that he believes it’s possible. He believes you might just surpass him one day.”

  “We, uh…” Allacia interjects, “We don’t have to deal with this today. I mean, there’s still a party to go to! Let’s relax a little, okay?”

  “…yeah,” Charlie agrees after some hesitation, “Yeah, we can do that. Just…give me a minute to myself? I need to find Rowan anyway, to let her know where we’re going.

  “We can do that,” Elias agrees, standing, “Right, babe?”

  Allacia hesitates, then nods, “Yeah. Just…don’t do anything rash? Please?”

  Charlie looks up at her, “I won’t. Not like there’s anything I can do to him anyways.”

  “Okay, good,” Allacia sighs, “It’s just that I remember a certain incident involving an embezzling vice principal and several broken bones, so, you know…”

  Charlie chuckles, though it’s humourless, “I promise: nothing rash. I just need to think.”

  “Good,” Allacia replies, as Elias grabs her by the arm and starts slowly pulling her away. She gives one last worried look to Charlie before the two turn away to leave. Now alone, Charlie lets out a breath, and hangs her head, staring at the floor.

  All around her, the last few people depart, leaving her the sole occupant of the empty stadium, echoing in its silence.

  So ends the Twenty-First Annual Hero Exhibition.

  —from here until roughly the end of the second arc, in a few more chapters—was the first major event I had planned. The meat of the story, so to speak. I didn't even plan the beginning until way after, and you have no idea how long I've been waiting to get to what is, in my mind, the good part. Not to say that everything up until now hasn't—hopefully, at least—been good, but this is the part that kept me writing solely on the hope of reaching it. Strap in folks, and enjoy.