Chương 88: The One In Which There Is A Giant Crab (Part 2)

Everything always seems to go wrong in all the ways that you simply cannot predict, but in such ways that you then will be able to criticize yourself for not seeing them coming. In this case, of course a building would be damaged by the gigantic crab. How much of a fool I was to not consider that. No time for tearing myself down like this. Needed some kind of assurance I wouldn't be stuck here forever. Had to reach out to Tancred, but… fucking hands are full.

My eyes flicked over to the deaf woman, and common sense came to me like a lightning bolt.

"Touch the right side of my head!" She looked at me like I grew a third arm right then and there.

"Please! Right behind my ear! Can't reach my earpiece!" I yowled out.

"It's not going down any time soon, I promise! Please!" My talking caused the mask to slip back down over my face. For the best, she didn't need to see the fear in my eyes. However, after what could have been seconds or minutes of deliberation, she nervously approached and pressed her hand on the back right side of my head. Beats trying to have to direct her on it.

"Tancred, I need an ETA!"

"On the Forces or Sentinels?"

"Fucking anyone! Crab hit a hotel and I'm holding I don't even know how many floors up! I can barely focus right now!"

"Relax, deep breaths and focus on the heavy load. How are you able to contact me?"

"Civilian in her hotel room's touching the earpiece! I don't know what's going to happen if I move my arms!"

"Okay, let me just yell at the guy getting me helicopter feed." He was too goddamn calm for me being in a worst-case scenario right now. I could only imagine the fit he'd pitch if it was him in my position.

"Fucking Hell, okay, I see the hole he slapped into it. You're holding up the Northeast corner of the hotel from what looks to be the third-from-the-top floor. Are you in pain?"

"Not yet!"

"That's a good start." Is it?

"Okay, I have your coordinates. Just had Sam relay them."

"To-" I could feel part of the roof cracking under the weight, right above my head. Had to tilt my head back just to add a third point of stability.

"Who!?"" YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-" came a voice I could hear with a great echo. As I tried my best to turn my head and see even a glimpse of the source, there was this sudden veil of black around me and the deaf woman. Like we were in a deep sea of darkness." HAW!" echoed out the voice at an even greater volume, before a gust of wind slammed into us. And yet, the breeze laid upon us no harsh impact, mostly just pushing the deaf woman's hair around.

The hotel roof, however, did not have that same luxury as the corner I was holding up was snapped up in the opposite direction by the gale.

"Them." Riding in on a comet black as night, coated in blue energy and gale winds stood them. The heroes of the South: The Forces of Nature. Their leader, Texas Tornado, had just lunged off of their traveling projectile as the winds died down around it. His leg was swung upwards. He was the one responsible for those winds. He kicked hard enough to produce a gust that could lift what I could even struggle to keep from falling. Didn't account for his terrible costume.

A cowboy hat, a domino mask, and a super suit covered by a pair of cargo pants and cowboy boots. As the portion of roof flapped up into the air, another thick ball of black energy encased them, leaving them stuck in place. The dark energy surrounding the deaf woman and I had dissipated at the same time. Texas Tornado landed on the exposed portion of hotel, sauntering over to us as he raised his hat.

"Well butter my butt n' call me a biscuit! Sorry for the wait, I've never thrown wind like that before! You two alright?" Soreness overtook my body as it was finally relieved of pressure, and I nodded.

"Yeah, no injuries."

"Splendid! I'm gonna go play distraction for Crabby over here! The others'll be with you in a second!" With that, the hat-wearing superhero leapt from the hotel room and down to the crab. Whirling in the air, he whipped the creature with an arc of wind that stopped it in its tracks for a moment. Maybe it wasn't so hopeless after all. As the deaf woman and I caught our breath, the black comet landed in the room, breaking apart and revealing four others. The remaining Forces of Nature.

Their second-in-command, La Cuerna, a massive woman in a wrestler's outfit and this tiger mask, spoke up.

"Have you seen anyone else in the hotel?"

"Just ended up on this floor, haven't had a chance to look elsewhere." She nodded.

"Alright. Miss, come with me, I'm going to get you to safety while I look for any other survivors." She then looked behind her to the other three. Another woman, with a red feature-less mask and draped in all sorts of black fabrics was addressed alongside a man in a fully orange and black costume with a face marked on it similar to a Halloween pumpkin." Midnight, Jack, you go help Tornado." So far, fifty-fifty on their costumes being more or less ridiculous than mine. The one in orange saluted.

"You got it!" As he saluted, I could see a bright red rod bearing flame in his other hand. He rather gracefully dived out of the opening left by all the mess, the flame from his rod growing to a massive, wall-like size that he slammed down in the middle of the road, blocking off the crab's path. The other one, floated out of the window as more dark spheres formed around the joints of the crab. She finally pointed at the remaining member.

A man, probably a few years older than me, in a blue and white uniform, a white bird emblazoned on the chest. He had a similar mask to mine, though fabric instead of the various rubber and metal materials on mine.

"Buzz, you coordinate with Hercules and deal with the debris." She pointed up at the portions of roof held up at the ceiling, before taking the deaf woman's hand and leading her out of the hotel. The one called "Buzz" reached a hand out to me, and one up to the debris.

"Pleased to meet you Hercules, I've heard a bit about you! You can call me Buzzbird!" His other hand produced a thick wave of blue-and-white energy that audibly whizzed and whirred toward the debris. The debris was enveloped before it slowly broke down into concrete and wood dust that was carried off by the winds Texas Tornado was swinging out. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I looked at his hand, but didn't shake it as I looked up at him.

"How are we supposed to coordinate?" Buzzbird seemed to react poorly to the rejected handshake, rubbing the back of his head with that hand.

"No solidarity between open-hair guys? I thought you were copying me?"

"I didn't come up with my costume."

"…Oh. Well…"

"This isn't the time for banter, how are we supposed to coordinate?" He threw his hands up defensively.

"Fine, fine. Can you give me a rundown on what exactly happened, if you know?"

"I'm kind of putting together a guess, but I can't promise anything. I was working undercover to try and catch a drug ring and some connections to an ecoterrorist group, the ADU. At a deal I was attending, someone was selling what he was calling 'Eggs.' These big, baseball-sized things that smelled like low-tide." Buzzbird nodded, crossing his arms.

"I get where you're going with this. You think they're this crab's eggs?"

"I can't say for sure, it's just kind of a guess because…" I trailed off, leaning over to observe the chaos. The crab was pushing against the flaming barrier that "Jack," probably Jack-O-Lantern now that I thought about it, had made. There were no signs of burning. Either the crab resisted heat, which the failed rockets would definitely vindicate, or his fire didn't burn. My guess was on the former for now. Texas Tornado was continuing to whip winds at it, forcing it to take steps back.

It would then try to trudge through as the spheres of darkness on its joints seemed to inhibit its movements in one way or another.

"…It wasn't attacking until I started getting close to it, and even then its first move was… a tidal wave. Like it was trying to sweep something up, maybe to try and dig through."

"Hm," Buzzbird hummed out with a nod.

"Anything else?"

"It didn't really try to hit me or the hotel until I threw Humvees at it."

"…You know, as a guy who pays taxes, that's kind of annoying to hear where the money's gone."

"Not the fucking time!"

"Right, sorry. Those definitely lead to signs of it being a more neutral kaiju, but then what's the solution? We're going to have to force it back into the water no matter what." My gaze was fixed on the crab as it seemed more and more desperate to swing through the barrier.

"It might not be a regular kaiju, though. This might just be a big animal."

"…Meaning it could get hurt by us."

"Yeah. The rockets didn't seem to cause it any harm, and I'm strong enough that it should've at least been scratched by the trucks I threw at it. But there's gotta be a clear line of its weaknesses."

"Hercules," Buzzbird started, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"I think it's fair that you understand even if this is an animal, maybe a mother, trying to find its young, it's making itself way too dangerous for society. I want to think there's a solution involving those eggs. But are you willing to understand that if we can't find those eggs, we might need to put it down?"

"Killing it?"

"Yeah."

"But we aren't supposed to be killing people. We're above that. Everyone says it. You guys even talked about it when I did kill someone," I admitted, suddenly feeling a lot smaller even though I had a good two to three inches on Buzzbird. He clicked his tongue.

"Don't treat that like some kind of law for superheroes. That happened because people don't like superheroes, Hercules."

"We're all people talk about. You guys have merchandise and comics, I have that even, though I've never seen it. They were mad at me because I wasn't being the superhero that people liked."

"No, I'm telling you, they don't like superheroes. They like marketing, soundbites, cool pictures. Do you think The Saint, who literally does not sleep and does not stop saving the world at any given moment, has anyone he can just sit and talk to? Discuss his feelings with? You think just because he doesn't sleep he doesn't get tired? Do you think there's anyone he talks to and tells them 'I'm just so damn tired, man?'" Made me think of Eliza. Tancred. Perry. Sam, even. Sam…

"There isn't. Me and the other Forces of Nature don't get any of that either. But we all get criticized when we mess up. We get just as much blame when Big Hippo throws a car into a building. Sometimes more. We're sports teams to them. It's the heroes' fault when things go wrong, but when there's any success they're the first to say 'We did it.'" I looked over at him, unable to read his face through his mask. Even his eyes seemed to have some white fabric over them to obscure even the finest details.

But I could tell he was staring through me.

"They hate superheroes so much that they voted for the people who put active legislation against them. You think The Firmament is for supervillains? It's to warn you or me about what happens when we cross the wrong line. Because we want to help people so much that sometimes it blinds us a little, and while none of us want to kill, because we all know it's wrong, we all know it can happen." It has happened. I've done it.

"We're the ones they keep trying to make register. We're the ones they're putting numbers on our names, while we wait and hope we won't end up on a train to Dachau. Even when we're put in a position where a life might have to be taken, as awful as it is, we're loading the gun pointed at our head, the one that teaches young kids who want to help the wrong lessons. And they'll use that against us." I could feel my tonsils in my ears. He pointed at me.

"Do you think a world that likes superheroes would really do that to them?" My gaze returned towards the crab as it desperately slammed itself against the flaming barrier.

"I keep getting told how we're not supposed to kill. I didn't try to. I know that sometimes things happen in the heat of the moment, I know it better than anyone else," I admit, looking back towards him.

"But I didn't even know if the person I killed really wanted to fight. And this…" I gestured towards the crab.

"I don't know if it wants to fight either. It might just want its babies back. I don't want to kill something that doesn't even want to be here, probably doesn't even want to fight. It didn't ask for its big body, or for its eggs to get stolen. When they don't even have the choice of the position they're in, they shouldn't be just killed for it. I don't care about the law. The law's never done me any good anyway. But I do care about saving who I can, where I can."

He gazed at me for a few more seconds, before nodding.

"Do you know where its eggs might be?"

"No. I know who collected them. But I don't know how to get that information out without it blowing my cover."

"Is your cover that important?"

"…I guess not, no." He pat my shoulder.

"Talk to your intel team about it. I'm going to go help with pushing it back. But just keep in mind if we can't find its babies, it's going to have to be put down. It sucks. I don't want to Old Yeller it either. But we have to do what we can. A lot of people are in danger. Even if they don't like us, they still deserve to live too. That's why we're heroes, Hercules. Because we're doing this job thanklessly." Letting go of me, he ran off of the ledge.

That energy he used on the debris formed out of his back as two thick, buzzing wings as he veered down towards the crab, leaving me by myself. I took a deep breath as I touched my earpiece.

"You can check my phone for the location of where the deal was, Tancred. A vampire named Hidalgo was selling what seemed to be huge eggs to some rich people. He has the location of them. Can you send someone to get the information out of him?"

"Your team's already en route via helicopter, I'll redirect them. They're not equipped for kaiju combat like you are, anyway. Why're you asking we do this?"

"I think they're the crab's eggs. I want to see if we can give them back to the crab. Maybe it'll calm down and go back on its own."

"You know if your idea fails, people could die, right?" I looked at the crab. I looked down at my hand again. The blood that stained my glove resurfaced.

"Hercules, you hear me?" I touched my earpiece.

"I'm not letting anything innocent die. I'm not you, Tancred." BWOOOOSH Awful timing. The crab had finally broke through the flaming barrier, claws flailing about as they tore through the sides of the buildings. Didn't even seem to be going for precise attacks like with me. Just desperate swings that didn't hit anything load-bearing, but debris was flying everywhere. The soldiers on the ground were in its path. No time to think.

I hurled myself at full force towards the ground, my feet slamming into the road before the largest piece of rubble had time to land. As I landed, I managed to catch the car-sized hunk of building and toss it aside, terrified soldier in my peripheral vision.

"Get out of here. I won't snitch on you for deserting," I assured him. He didn't wait to take the hint, sprinting off down the road alongside a few others. I turned towards the approaching crab, and my body relaxed. Just had to keep it busy until my teammates found the eggs.