Eric Stever - Non Metallic

“Mentissa,” he whispered to himself. Blinkity-blink.

She had told him about the bridges, had egged him on knowing he couldn’t resist a target like this, an easy chance at redemption. Bob-Ten had stopped Mentissa from doing exactly the same thing. Had she gotten to him, he wondered? Was this her revenge, to make him hallucinate and do her bidding out of spite? What would the Optonians—with thousands of flying ships—want with a land-bridge?

Blinkity-blink.

The Heroine-6 had amplified her powers, and maybe this was what her mind control was like. Maybe it made you think you wanted to do these things, you wanted to hijack the school bus or blow up the hospital or… destroy the bridge.

But there was another reason Bob-Ten hesitated. Why choose such a vulnerable position? Whatever the blinkity-blink machine did, humans would have a hard time getting to the bridge by traditional methods, as it was heavily guarded on both ends and from the air. They wouldn’t even attempt it. Mentissa said it had to do with the Khaganate’s species, with their religion or as a symbol of their control, and maybe she was right.

But Bob-Ten thought there was more to it. None of the weapons were pointed down at the water, the most probable line of attack for a superhero. Was it taboo? And the Waifs were more slave-masters than warriors. Mentissa had found that out early on in her mind-control infiltrations. Why would they be massed in tight formation under threat of aerial attack?

Somewhere deep inside of himself, Bob-Ten smiled. He sat up again, and looked at the banks of the canal, downstream from the bridge. Hidden in the underbrush was the real strike force, divided on both sides of the nets that would retrieve the bodies of whoever fell into the water.

This wasn’t an easy target at all. This was a trap set for superheroes. And Bob-Ten knew how to destroy it.

“A good rule of thumb is that if a weapon’s barrel is bigger than your head, you don’t charge at it,” Sertain said, peering around the corner of an old machine shop toward the bridge about 400 yards away. But despite his posturing, Bob-Ten could tell he was ready for the attack.

It hadn’t been hard to convince Sertain and his army of twenty men to come along. They’d been raided a few weeks ago, and the weapons Bob-Ten gave them had worked wonders on their self confidence.

“And why do we have to dress ourselves up?” Cushion asked. He had spray-painted his couch cushion silver for the occasion. The other men in the army were a mob of bright colors, mostly painted skintight outfits they had borrowed from their girlfriends.

“’Cause they need to think we’re superheroes,” Sertain said. He was wrapped head-to-foot in beads, which hung off of his body like dried moss. “And everybody knows superheroes dress funny. Otherwise you can’t tell them from regular folk.”

Bob-Ten interrupted the two arguing men. “But what’s important is that they see superheroes, not humans, attacking them. We’ll charge them, they’ll fall back so we can get close to the blinkity-blink in the middle of the bridge. Then they’ll activate their trap to try to disable us.”

“Except it won’t work because I’m just wearing a couch cushion,” Cushion said, proudly putting the pieces together.

“Now wait a minute,” Sertain said, dropping his weapon. “Superheroes fly, right? How you gonna paint us flying.”

Bob-Ten grimaced and then put down the bag he was carrying. He opened it, took out the spindly sticks tipped with rockets. Each was decorated with Chinese characters.

“Fireworks?” Cushion said. “Are you gonna smoke them out or some—”

“Shut up,” Sertain said. He looked from the fireworks to Bob-Ten and then back again, a smile growing on his face. “Fireworks flying through the sky. Like some crazy fast superhero attacking the blink-blink on the bridge.”

“Close enough to get us in anyway,” Bob-Ten said. Inside he was beaming.

Sertain clapped him on the back. “Stroke of genius, Bob and I know that’s the first time anybody has told you that.” He pointed at the smallest man in the group. “Julio you set them off, yeah. But wait ’til we get close.”

Bob-Ten took one last look at his spray-painted army and tried not to wince. “Let’s get ready for the attack,” he said, turning from them. “Now don’t forget; act like your invincible.”

With a war-cry that echoed off the abandoned buildings of Industrial Way, Bob-Ten charged the heavily fortified bridge. The Armored Wheelers were caught off guard, their weapons aimed at the sky as if expecting an aerial attack. He heard the whine as motors attempted to depress the angle of the guns. The Optonian troops, massed in the center of the bridge, were slowly moving toward the attackers, though their close quarters meant only the front seven could fire at the attackers. Bob-Ten knew he had the tactical advantage for the next minute, until they got into proper position. He knew they were, of course, faking it so as to draw him in, but that didn’t stop his new found sense of pride. He had planned something, and it appeared to be working.

Yelling wildly, some of Sertain’s army overran the forward Wheeler, attached the sticky bombs to one side of its undercarriage and watched it flip over in hail of fire and rock. Cushion strode out of the flame and smoke exactly as planned, appearing to have single handedly flipped the vehicle over.

Sertain’s army poured fire into the mass of Optonian troops, advancing and overtaking one Armored Wheeler after another. The hiss of rockets from behind him told Bob-Ten that his aerial support had arrived, and he watched with pleasure as some of the Optonians guards started firing into the air, trying to bring down the darting “heroes”.

Being in the lead, Bob-Ten had absorbed a few hits from the Optonian lasers, but he wanted to make his presence known. He ran at the nearest Optonian guard, a Waif by the looks of its dome shaped helmet. Bob-Ten smashed the side of its helmet with one fist, then lifted the guard high above his head and threw it into three other guards who were busy returning fire. All four toppled off the side of the bridge.

The illusion was complete. The enemy had seen not only Bob-Ten absorbing lasers and tossing around guards like hot-cakes, but other heroes flipping over vehicles with one hand, and soaring through the air. The enemy fell back.

Bob-Ten turned to look at his army as they worked through the wreckage, destroying anything that moved as he had told them to do. If things went wrong, they would need a clear path to fall back, and the Optonians, slaves themselves, weren’t above laying down until the odds were in their favor.

Bob-Ten looked ahead to the central point where the wires were massed. The Optonians fell back, appearing to be disorganized, but not so far that they abandoned the blinkity-blink to him. A few low obstacles, provided some firing cover to delay whatever superheroes would get this far. But there was something else that caught Bob-Ten’s attention. The Optonians would have a safety, of course. And here he was.

Bob-Ten’s brother was staring at him from across the bridge. His brother was alive.

“Persius,” Bob-Ten said, hopeful in spite of what he knew must have happened. Bob-Ten had seen Persius cut in two, had seen him fall to earth in First-Battle.

There was not outward sign of recognition from Persius, no sign that the Optonians knew they had been fooled either. But suddenly the Optonian soldiers became more accurate, and the drivers of the Armored Wheelers stopped fumbling with their controls. They knew. Persius had told them.

Persius rose up, and in one terrible instant Bob-Ten saw what had happened to him. The legs of Persius’s pants dragged across the bridge as he floated toward Bob-Ten, but Persius had lost more than his legs in that battle. They had taken his eyes as well. Black nodes swelled from the side of his head. A dark stain, the Khaganate’s personal mark, covered his face in a tattoo. Persius had been changed.