Running From Himself 3-26

Rain came down in heavy droplets, thick enough to plaster her extensions to the sides of her neck. Starlight didn’t pay much attention to that, blinking water out of her eyes as she stared at the one woman she’d looked up to since the moment her powers came in.

The rest of the world might have been on fire as far as Annie could tell, transformers still popping in sequence where Nubia and Stormfront were carving each other apart under the weather. Jagged yellow and concussive purple went in and out of cloud cover above the Nazis and Rojos — Kimiko still clawing pieces out of that sicko in suspenders — but none of that mattered as Queen Maeve stood up out of a crater — tall and strong and just as powerful as ever.

The woman held a Rojo by his neck, the street supe’s skin flushed toxic red after his sudden attempt at tackling the second-in-command of the Seven. She didn’t even look at the man, blue eyes aimed elsewhere as she tossed him over her shoulder. “Starlight-”

“Y-yes!”

"I have waited—!"

A bellow tore through thunder, Vikor’s charge drowning out whatever words Maeve had on her lips. 

"—so long—!" 

That oversized hammer went up over his head, both hands on the haft, and Starlight felt a twitch in her gut; the zipper on her suit moving forward at the same time. "—for THIS!"

Iron came down.

And met a grip of steel.

The ground beneath Starlight shook, Annie almost stumbling forward as the street buckled where Maeve didn’t. Pavement under the woman’s boots spider-webbed a half-dozen feet across, the nearest car windows protesting the sudden force as they cracked.

Annie’s own hair lifted off her shoulders for a moment, the weight from the rain not enough to hold it down against all of that.

Maeve, though?

Her arm didn’t even move.

Starlight couldn’t even be sure a grunt left the older woman’s lips as Maeve stood there, palm flat against the head of the thing. “Oh my God…”

A pair of blue-green eyes slid her way from the gaping Vikor, whatever electromagnetic craziness the other supe had done with the hit accomplishing nothing. “...Starlight, little busy.”

"Right. No.” Annie shook her head. “Sorry."

Maeve pulled her arm back, the hammer yanked toward her with Vikor still attached to it with both hands. The moment the viking-man stumbled forward, a heavy hook across the jaw changed the shape of Annie’s understanding.

Vikor had looked so big when Starlight had shown up here, the man shaking the ground every time that hammer made contact with anything. Minute after minute, Annie had seen him wade through nine Rojos at once — half of them about as strong as she was — and knock one through a laundromat fast enough she could barely even track the path.

Even Stormfront wasn’t up there.

All she could think back then was ‘that’s the anchor, the strongest thing on the whole street.’ 

One hand gripped Vikor’s mantle, holding the supe tight before he could fly back, another blow in the form of a hard backfist forcing a spray of blood from his lips. 

She’s— A third punch took the other supe in the gut, more blood spraying as Vikor went a full dozen feet back before he found his balance again. She’s so much stronger.

Gold light came in from the left and Annie blinked as the Queen of the Other World disappeared in front of her, thrown bodily through the front of a nail salon.

Annie had about a half-second of warning as the glow came bright again, forearms up and over her face as light burned hard and bright. She screamed against herself, Norska’s power so much more than Skandia’s, the raw force of it taking her all the way into the side of a delivery van.

Teeth grit tight, Annie planted her stupid heeled boots and pulled everything left in the van’s battery as she fired back up—

Are you kidding me?!

—only for her blast to go wide as Norska spun away.

Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

“Starlight!” Maeve’s voice sounded loud as she stomped back out of the nail salon, the woman shaking her head clean of dust as the wall collapsed behind her. A piece of fiberglass and brick bits fell from her dark armor, eyes narrowed at her younger teammate. “Get your head in the damn game!”

“Okay!” Annie’s hands went up, palms facing out as she backed toward Maeve. “Uh, okay, a quick explanati-!”

“No thanks.”

“What?” Starlight whipped her head back. “There’s like two dozen people fighting out here.”

“Yeah.” Maeve snorted as she rolled her shoulder. “I’m not blind.”

"A bunch of them are Nazis." Annie pulled in a breath, pitch high as she blasted out at the swarming Rojos pushing down towards them in the pouring rain. “Like the old kind.”

Maeve’s eyes went high, tracking the purple and yellow tearing holes in the clouds; a billboard blasted through by an errant Nubia. "Also noticed."

Before Annie could even respond to the unfazed older woman, the street rushed them in the form of three Rojos from three different directions. Annie spun, a single blast fanning out in a spray of four as she flicked her wrist.

The sweep of light caught a Rojo — thick red veins up his neck and high around his eye — and shoved him back into a parking meter. Without wasting a breath, Starlight followed up with a single blast, compressed hard and tight enough to put him through that parking meter.

Behind her, Maeve threw one of them through a bus and did something to the second one that Annie only caught the sound of.

Light lanced down from overhead, Annie’s arms up over her head as she took on a half-dozen spears courtesy of Skandia’s strafe. One scraped a line down her thigh, another across her shoulder as she was forced back a few steps until—

—until she was back to back with Maeve, Annie facing up and out again with hands full of light.

"Stop-” Maeve caught a Rojo’s arm as it reached out for Annie, a crack like a tree branch loud in the air as she folded it in half. “-letting them touch you."

"I wasn't planning on it!"

"Plan better.”

“LESBIAN WHORE!” Starlight didn’t need to answer Maeve as Vikor did it for her, the viking coming in swinging again. Once again, two of the strongest people she had ever been this close to went at it in a fight of a kind she had never seen, Annie enraptured even as she dodged a woman throwing gold spears from eighty feet up.

Supes fighting was… rare.

Joining the Seven had made that clear as day.

No matter how much the G-Men played up their reality TV fights and even pushed them up onto the big screen, supes just never actually went at it in any real way like this.

And definitely not the heavy-hitters — for obvious reasons.

Until now.

Vikor had the reach on Maeve. At almost seven feet tall, the man was a walking mountain and the hammer only made him that more dangerous; every missed swing eating a chunk out of the street or a car or a wall.

Even still, Maeve acted like that didn’t matter as she kept on getting closer.

The hammer swung harder, Vikor putting as much of himself in each swing as he could from the look of effort on his face. Maeve caught each one on her bracers though, each block forcing the bigger man to take a step back and Maeve to take another one closer.

Soon enough, she was inside the pocket and the hammer stopped functioning as a weapon and started being an awkward piece of metal Vikor could only hold between them.

Quick jabs left Maeve in a blur, not the world-rocking hits from before that shook the ground as much as Vikor’s hammer; this was the short stuff — the woman treating the much larger man as a body bag. “You know how hard it is-” Three blows to the chest in quick succession left Vikor stumbling back, suit clearly dented, but Maeve was far from done.

“-to find someone tough enough-” An uppercut shot out almost faster than Annie could track, the viking leaving the ground for a half-foot before Maeve yanked him back down.

“-that I can get in-” An open hand to the jaw had Vikor spit out a curse only meant for those with German ears.

“-a workout?!” The grin on her face broke past that surly scowl and, for all of a second, Maeve looked actually happy for the first time since Annie had met her.

Norska interrupted that with another gold ball of power to the face, Maeve’s head snapping back as soon as it landed. Vikor seized that interruption, the man jumping forward with a hammer blow. Ozone in the air spiking in a way that had nothing to do with the two lightning-throwers above all their heads as Maeve took another hammer blow, this time to her unguarded chest.

Yet, even as Maeve tore up asphalt as she was launched a half-block away, the woman was already up and with a smile before Starlight could get out a gasp.

“Jesus.” A blonde head of hair shook as Maeve ran back to her side again. “Does anything actually hurt you?”

"Yeah." Rain fell heavy enough that Maeve stood fully drenched and still ready, fists clenched tight in front of her. “A lot, actually.”

"Seriously?"

"Mostly you talking." Maeve jumped forward, catching Vikor off-guard again with another punch the man felt and the asphalt complained about. “Usually you talking.”

Annie didn’t even get a chance to scoff as Norska came strafing down again after Maeve, the woman shouting something through the air as Maeve got hands on that hammer.

Another blast of gold launched Maeve a good twenty feet, Vikor and his hammer pulled along with her. The one after that barely managed to break her grip.

By the third, Maeve stumbled about a step and a half with a grunt as she jumped for a stunned Vikor again.

"Get away from my husband!"

Maeve didn't look up. "How about no?"

One more blast caught Maeve flat across the face, the force of it rocking her back on her heels and accomplishing absolutely nothing else — as far as Annie could tell. Norska froze where she was in the air, light dying and skin going even more pale as the redhead simply wipied away a spot of blood from her nose and smirked up. “Got another one in you?”

Vikor answered that for his wife, abusing the opening as he came at Maeve with a roar.

“Wasn’t talking-!” A pale hand grabbed him by the beard, the man’s shout shifting to a scream as his face was snatched down into a rising knee. “To you!”

“Viko-!”

Annie didn’t waste her own opening, Norska knocked back as a two-handed beam of gold came up from the ground. The first was luckier than she’d like, every hopeful blast after that more an unrealistic goal than anything else.

By the tenth time Annie fired up, she’d hit a grand total of once.

Despite that, every single time Norska turned to Vikor, Annie put a blast across her line of flight and the woman in the white cape had to bank, roll and waste at least a second and a half correcting in the air.

The Rojos made the fight so much worse, one of them filling a chunk of the street with something green and chemical that sizzled in the rain with thick fumes that made Annie’s eyes water before it went down into the sewer. A chunk of melted taxi went high into the air clipping Skandia and coming right down onto the street right above Starlight’s wide open eyes.

A crash as loud as Maeve and Vikor’s clashing fists sounded out, an entire slab of sidewalk several feet thick saving Starlight from something painful. It only took a snap of her eyes to the side to see who saved her, Kenji standing not too far away with both arms up and out.

“Thanks, Kenji!”

Maeve’s head snapped around. “...that the supe-terrorist?”

"Not the time!"

"That a yes?"

Another slab came through, Annie ducking just a little bit as a charging Rojo got a chunk to the chest. "Just don't hit him!"

Maeve raised an eyebrow.

"...please?"

Vikor swung again, Maeve catching the blow clean between both palms with a grunt as that ozone charge spiked higher. “Hit me one more time and I’m keeping this!”

She was already taking it away from him, Vikor’s boots scraping forward across wet pavement as she pried the weapon from the other supe’s hands bit by bit. The look on his face said as much as anything, his weapon moments away from no longer being his.

Norska chose that moment to fly down her like her daughter’s spears.

“Maeve!” Annie fired up and across her path, the caped woman rolling around it without even breaking speed. “Maeve!”

“I see her!”

Maeve let the hammer go, both feet planted as her hands went above her head. Both palms met and the world went sideways.

Two dozen feet away and Annie still found herself on her back, blinking up at the sky as the rain went horizontal with her; glass and grit and rubble in a fifty-foot radius went with it. Norska was caught mid-dive and wasn’t spared at all, the woman disappearing through the second floor of a walkup across the street.

“J-jesus…” One elbow under her, Annie’s ears were still ringing as she stared at Maeve’s smirking face aimed at the hole.

“Problem solved.”

That’s… Annie got her feet under her, eyes trailing from that oversized hole to Vikor still standing there and the pale-gold trail of Skandia already banking hard their way. Maybe for about ten seconds.

Maeve clicked her tongue as those blue-green eyes landed on Starlight. “Just take the w-”

“SISTER!!!”

Down the block, Thrymr charged toward Maeve — body a straight line as his fists charged up a brighter yellow than Norska’s.

Annie’s eyes went wide. “Maeve!”

Maeve didn’t even dodge, simply taking a single step.

One short step forward as her hand came up towards a man coming at her fast enough to outpace a train. That single hand became a fist and, with a motion that Annie couldn’t even track, it became a piston.

Blood — so much of it, all at once — poured down the front of Maeve’s suit, as the blond man stopped; the huge supe going from a hundred miles an hour to completely stationary around one woman’s forearm as he hung there.

Annie’s mouth fell open at the sight of the hand, still clenched tight, sticking out the back of him.

“...idiot.” Maeve looked down too, her arm pulled free. “No idea why he likes that so much.”

Who… The question had nowhere to go even with her mouth wide open, Annie unable to help but Thrmyr dropped to both knees and then onto his side, deep voice sounding close to a baby’s as he screamed with both hands over the hole. What am I doing… 

She wanted to close her eyes, run forward, run away but — He’s bleeding out on the street, but he… he’s…

The thought didn’t get a chance to finish as Vikor’s scream drowned everything out again.

No words, just noise; pain and rage and everything else that could fit into one voice as he came at Maeve again. Rain came off him in sheets, Vikor bleeding out of the mouth and entirely uncaring of it as something shifted.

Annie had to notice, the feel undeniable as her power always kept her aware of current within a hundred feet or so — usable not — the same way you could hear a fridge hum. 

And the field around the hammer was loud.

A bent stop sign scraped across the pavement on its own, a manhole cover shaking not too far away, as rain bent around the hammer head.

Blue eyes went wide. “Maeve!”

“What?”

"S-something's happening!"

“I’m not blind, Starlight!”

“N-no!” The youngest of the Seven shook her head, extensions falling free and into the slurry at her feet. “You don’t understa-!”

“No, I don’t care!” Another grunt left the woman as she ducked a hammer swing from Vikor, a fist rocking the man’s head in retaliation. She smirked in his face. “Done?”

“No!”

Every piece of loose metal in the street rose off the ground at once, the man’s shout forcing Annie’s heart into her stomach as she felt the built-up charge. “Maeve, move!”

Vikor let her have it, everything the man had put into one solid swing.

The air protested before Annie could even take a breath, thrown off her feet a second time in half as many minutes. It took too long for her to come down, spinning over a car before she came down in a puddle as the sound arrived after the pressure.

By the time she got her head up, the whole middle had a third crater to add to the street, a ring of ripped-open asphalt at dead-center. “...Maeve?”

Maeve was gone, a skipping line of destruction going west; an entire rooftop vanishing with her as a dot trailed for block after block into the distance.

Annie pushed herself up onto her feet as Thrymr nearly did the opposite, the man struggling for breath and red-faced under the rain. “CHILDREN!”

His hammer went high. “TO ME!”

Annie winced at the volume, hand over her chest as she tried to ignore how her ribs throbbed with each motion. She's coming back.

Annie made herself believe that, on purpose, as she held both hands out; already pulling from the line again. “Okay…” Shaky or not, breath or body, she was fine. “Guess I’m doing this till she does.”