Sudden Superhero

21. Super By Chance, Hero By Choice

WE STARTED CIRCLING each other like sharks, never breaking eye contact. When he stood with the trucks behind him, I let my gaze shift a little to the three vehicles. I didn't doubt what he'd said; the weapons were definitely in there. He clearly expected to win, and judging by the small, taunting smile on his face, he wasn't expecting much of a fight, either.

I supposed that his confidence had skyrocketed when he had successfully thrown me off the Myer Building; and the public, like Ms. Henderson, must have lost some faith in me, too. That was okay. I didn't need them to support me, and I didn't need Remote Man to fear me, I just needed to beat him.

We stopped moving, and I watched as he pulled a glove out of his pocket and put it on. This glove was way more sleek than what I'd seen his henchmen wearing, and I knew it was probably more powerful, too.

"Bring out your worst," I said encouragingly. All or nothing. This was endgame.

"Oh, I will," he said, nodding. "Believe me, I will."

And then he ran at me. I noticed too late that the soles of his shoes were not normal soles, they were made of something else that allowed him to jump into the air and come crashing down toward me with his fist ready to smash into my face. Had I acted a second slower, he would have succeeded, but I jumped to the side and out of his way, and he landed in a crouch, denting the ground where I had just been standing.

"I've been thinking," he said, but before he could continue, I ran at him.

Punches were thrown and blocked, and because he was at least six-foot-four and I was five-foot-seven, I found it enjoyably easy to duck under his arm. The third time he tried to punch me, I ducked under, grabbed his glove with both hands, and tugged.

It didn't work.

He flung me away.

Ms. Henderson's words crossed my mind as I rolled to a stop on the ground. He had superpowers too, but because the syringe I had been injected with was the newer, improved formula, I should be stronger. I should have been able to tug off the glove before he flung me away, but because I hadn't, I knew that the glove was even more powerful than I thought.

I also realized that it wasn't a just glove. There were thin metal extensions that went up his arm, providing extra force and power. Stupid airpark lighting. I could barely see the slim details.

"I've been thinking," he said again. "Why don't you join me?"

Before responding, I shot out my little wrist string—the one I had used to attach myself to the side of the Myer Building—and the three metal prongs jabbed into his shoulder. The string pulled taut and then I was flying toward him, and we both crashed to the ground, and I held him down. "Because I care about people," I said, pulling the prongs out of his shoulder and letting the string retreat back into my costume. "Because, unlike you, I don't want to trade weapons of mass destruction."

He rolled his eyes. "Mass destruction," he repeated cynically. "As if humans aren't destroying each other already."

I was ready to punch the side of his head and knock him out, but then his hand formed a fist. He made it look like he was about to punch my face, so I leaned back, but instead he stuck his fist in the air.

And that was when I realized that the glove was the new remote.

I heard a hiss behind me and didn't even get to turn around before something slammed into my back, throwing me off of him and sending me flying forward. I felt pain shoot up my spine as I tumbled onto the concrete landing strip, and gravel scraped my face.

I was lying face-down on the strip, and I could hear him laughing. I raised my head to see him standing there smugly. The shapeless metal demon thing was no longer shapeless; he had finally turned it from Henderson's prototype into his own personal machine. Now it looked like a creature, a creature a little taller than him with glowing red camera-eyes and sharp edges. But as I stared at it, as I stood up slowly, I realized that it was flowing. It was a bunch of moving parts, commanded by Remote Man, somehow through his glove. Brain wave technology? Whatever it was, it was impressive, and it was dangerous.