Superheroine Battle Arena - The Phantom, part 14

sidekickmatt (66)in #superheroine • 5 years ago

METROCITY

Misfit Superheroine Underground

Invincible threw her last opponent from the ring and stood there breathing heavily staring them down. They were bruised, battered, defeated. Finally she caught her breath and yelled out, "I didn't come here looking for a fight! I came here to try to help!" The misfit superheroines were cowed by the beating they took, but still looking at her with sullen disdain to raw hatred. Fireplug tried to get to her feet in an apparent attempt to resume fighting, but got dizzy and fell on her backside.

"I'm searching for an alien parasite. It's totally undetectable and feeds on life energy. It landed not far from here about two weeks ago." Most of the women were ignoring her words but were too sore and humbled to mock her. "Have any of you been feeling weak or sick? Especially the strongest among you."

"All of us apparently..." muttered Rubber Rita as she stretched her back.

Invincibelle considered delivering another display of force to ensure some compliance, but one voice spoke up, "Wait..." Buffalo Rose got up to one knee. She hesitated for a moment, looked at her allies, then continued. "Hammertina. The champion of our ring. She lost her last three matches, and she should have won..."

"Hey!" yelled Dollface, who must have defeated Hammertina recently.

"Well it's true!" snapped Rose.

"All her Twitter feed was talking about was how she threw the fight."

"She was moving like she was... tired."

"Tired and old!"

For the first time since she started this mission Eva felt like she was close. "Where is she now?" she asked.

A strained, gravelly voice carried from outside the ring, "...buncha soft, Olive Oil, lazy dogs…” A large woman with a mohawk slowly stalked towards the ring. "...let a fancy, flower girl come into our house!" She tried to raise her voice but it was little more than a rasp. " ...you don't come to our house and start making demands..." her movements were slow and steady but her eyes showed that she was struggling with each step. She clambered up the ring steps, sounding like a mad woman on the verge of passing out. "...I'll teach you respect. I'll teach..."

WHAM!

Invincibelle didn't wait for her to finish, she dashed forward and landed a punch to the side of her head. Hammertina immediately collapsed and something shrieked with such ferocity that all the glass windows in the warehouse shattered and every heroine present recoiled in pain. Invincibelle saw through squinted eyes a distortion in the air like a heat mirage oozing out of Hammertina's body. The vibration faded away and Belle realized that whatever emerged from Hammertina was completely invisible.

Something slammed into Eva's cheek with enough force to knock her sideways and the inside of her mouth tasted like blood. "Holy crap, that hurt!" she thought. She suddenly had a terrifying thought. Whatever just hit her had hit her right through her force field. Ivankov had theorized that the leech would be vulnerable to the energy in her cells. No one had brought up the possibility that Eva might be vulnerable to the leech.

No time to be gentle, Invincibelle kicked Hammertina's unconscious body clear out of the ring and yelled at Rubber Rita, "Drop the cage!"

Rita's arm darted across the room towards a control panel and yanked back a lever. The inertium cage began to lower over the ring. Eva had no idea if that would contain the creature... All she knew was that it wasn’t going to get past her unless it killed her first.