The neXt Generation
an excerpt

Chapter 12

Scarlet Psychic concentrated on the building. She could sense no minds in there. Looking up at Pearl, she said, “There’s no one in there, go Pearl!”
Pearl drew power from the building. All the lights went out. She rose up into the sky and illuminated herself. She glowed like a tiny sun, throwing a brilliant white light over the entire seaport.

Lightning Rod looked up into the sky, Pearl was nearly blinding, “Ain’t that Pearl, sweet? She lit everything up so we could see how ugly these suckers are.” He unleashed a bolt of lightning at the nearest moreau, pitching the creature backwards. It crashed into a cargo carrier and lay twitching on the ground, a smoke rising from a blackened spot in the middle of its chest.
Grunting in reply, the Spartan dove to the ground to avoid the claws of a leaping moreau. He rolled and came back up, driving his shield into the stomach of another moreau. Looking around, he saw he was clear for a moment and leapt up to the top of a cargo carrier. A moreau followed him. The Spartan kicked the thing off the top of the carrier down into a crowd of moreaus below. He could see Captain Freedom holding off a large group of moreaus on the other side of the cargo carrier.
The smell of ozone from behind him and the crackle of electricity told him Lighting Rod was holding his own. The Spartan ran to the edge of the cargo carrier and jumped down to where Captain Freedom was fighting. He backhanded one of the moreaus, sending it sprawling, and then swung his shield at another’s neck. The shield decapitated the moreau, embedding itself into the side of the cargo carrier. The head sat on his shield, grimacing while the body slumped to the ground, spurting blood onto the dock.
The Spartan yanked his shield out of the cargo carrier, sending the head spinning off and kicked another moreau in the chest. He heard a sickening bone-crunching snap as its chest caved in and it flew backwards into another advancing moreau.
Captain Freedom shouted as he tossed a moreau into another, “Geez, were they planning an invasion of the city?” He delivered a spin kick into another one of the feathered beasts that twisted its neck with a stomach-turning crack.
“The invasion stops here!” cried the Spartan as he ducked the acid spittle of the moreau he was facing. Delivering a one-two punch to the thing’s face, he dropped it and leapt up to the top of the next cargo carrier. The moreau followed him and was rewarded with a well-placed kick to its face, caving in its skull.

Supersonic was having the time of his life harassing the moreaus with hit-and-run tactics. In order to keep their attention, he had to run pretty slow, but he was leading a group of them towards a large puddle of gasoline he created before the moreaus advanced as far as his position. It didn’t take long for him to find some gas cans sitting around for some of the older, smaller boats. He simply zipped over, appropriated them, and dumped them on the ground.
He called to Hellfire’s Daughter, she was blasting a moreau with her fire just a short distance away. She flew over to him.
“Having trouble?” she asked, noting the large crowd of moreaus that were advancing on him.
Shaking his head, “Nope, just need to you blast this area when they get here. Hang on!” He started running in circles around the edge of the puddle of gasoline, throwing plumes of it into the air, vaporizing it. The moreaus charged at what they only saw as a blur.
Hellfire’s Daughter heard Supersonic yell something that sounded like “Now!” She blasted the cloud of vapor with fire, causing a massive fireball to engulf the moreaus. They screeched in pain as their feathers alighted, dropped to the ground, writhing in anguish, rolling through what liquid gasoline was still on the ground. Soon, they were still, charred lumps of meat on the dock.
Receding whoops told Hellfire’s Daughter that Supersonic had run off in some other direction, intent on finding more moreaus to torment. She could see The Elemental near the end of one of the piers, torching a large group of moreaus he’d corralled there. She flew over to help him.

Scarlet Psychic held her hands out in front of her, trying to calm the moreau stalking her. Its brain was alien to her, an amalgamation of two life forms that were two different to have ever come together naturally. One was clearly human, a human in anguish, but the other was unlike any avian she’d ever heard it. It wanted only to tear, rend, and devour the human before it.
Focusing her thoughts, she unleashed a blast of psychic energy at the creature, but it had little affect other than causing it to pause slightly before redoubling its efforts to reach her. Scarlet Psychic kept back pedaling. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Pearl creep out of the shadows behind the moreau.
“Time to stop pussy-footing around,” Scarlet Psychic said. She drew herself up and ran towards the moreau. It paused at this sudden change in behavior. Pearl punched it in the small of the back as Scarlet Psychic high-kicked it in the chin. It backhanded Scarlet Psychic and spun on Pearl, leaping at her.
Pearl screamed as the moreau collided with her, knocking her to the ground. It clawed at her, drawing deep lines of blood. She barely had time to move her head out of the way as it spit where her face used to be. Using all her strength, she kept its snapping jaws away from her throat as she draw power from the overhead lights. The lights dimmed and went out.
Hang on Pearl, she heard in her mind. Scarlet Psychic was coming.
Close your eyes, honey Pearl thought, hoping Scarlet Psychic was still in her mind. She released all the energy she’d draw from the street light, bursting with the brightness of the noontime sun. The moreau screamed in pain and fell off of her, clawing at its now-useless eyes.
Pearl got up and walked over to Scarlet Psychic, “Can you still see?”
“Yes, I got your message,” Scarlet Psychic replied. The moreau thrashed one the ground, screeching, blood streaming from its eye sockets where it had clawed out its eyes. Hellfire’s Daughter landed in front of them.
“I saw the flashbulb go off, you girls need some help?”
Pointing towards the writhing, screaming moreau, Pearl said, “Can you shut it up?”
Hellfire’s Daughter directed a stream of fire at the wriggling creature until it was an unmoving, charred lump. She saluted the two non-distressed damsels and continued her flight towards The Elemental.

Geode held a cargo carrier above his head lengthwise, with the opening pointing straight up. He’d managed to round up a score of moreaus or so and “persuade” them to enter the cargo carrier. He walked towards the edge of the pier, ignoring the three moreaus clawing useless at his legs. Their claws could rend flesh and split bone, but were somewhat more useless against solid rock.
Hoping the harbor was fairly deep at this point, more than ten or twelve feet, at any rate he flipped the carrier up and drove the open end of it into the water. He leapt on the top, sending it sinking further, while poking a rock-hard finger into the closed end. Air whistled past him as it escaped the cargo carrier, being replaced by water. The open end of the carrier embedded itself into the soft ground at the bottom of the harbor, the water covering the entire carrier. Geode pulled himself back up onto the end of the pier. He crushed the skull of one moreau between his massive hands and kicked another one across the pier into a cargo carrier as though he were kicking a soda can.
The third moreau leapt at Geode’s face, hoping to claw his vulnerable eyes. He plucked it off of him as he would a bug and shook it until it stopped moving. He tossed it aside like a piece of trash. Hellfire’s Daughter waved at him as she flew past.

The Elemental was barely finished torching another group of moreaus when Hellfire’s Daughter flew up beside him.
“Looks like we’ve almost got all of them,” she said.
He nodded, “Any casualties? Was that Pearl flashing?”
“A moreau tore into her a little bit, but nothing the doctor can’t patch up.”
“Good. When all the moreaus in their area are neutralized, have Scarlet Psychic start searching for human life. The seaport is never normally deserted; those people have to be somewhere,” he flying off. Hellfire’s Daughter grabbed his arm, ignoring the flames.
“What if these moreaus are those people?”
“Let’s hope that’s not the case, Hellfire’s Daughter.”
She let him go and flew back towards Pearl and Scarlet Psychic. She found them just where she left them; Scarlet Psychic was looking at Pearl’s wounds.
“How bad is it?”
Pearl waved her off, “I’ll heal. If I see the doc, I probably won’t have scars.”
How are things looking,” Scarlet Psychic said, “I don’t sense a lot of chaos anymore.”
“Almost all the moreaus have been dealt with. There were well over a hundred; it was like Dr. Venom was planning an invasion or something. The Elemental wants you to start searching for the people who worked here; they can’t all have just taken the night off.”
“Right,” Scarlet Psychic said. She directed her mental energies to searching for fear, anxiety, anything that would lead to a group of people being held someone against their will. Her concentration was broken by a transmission from Chloe over the comm system.
“I hate to interrupt you heroes, but we have a serious situation in Norfolk!”

The Elemental dove towards a cargo carrier and extinguished his flame as he landed. He put his hand up to his earpiece, “Say again, Chloe?”
“We have a situation in Norfolk, Chief,” Chloe said, her voice crackling with over the comm.
“Explain,” The Elemental said. The Spartan and Captain Freedom leapt up onto the cargo carrier where he was standing. He held up his hand for them to be quiet.
“While you were all keeping the city safe from a were-akeet invasion, a security guard logged a disruptive woman trying to gain access to the docks where the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford and the Dwight D. Eisenhower are undergoing refits. The woman vanished from their sight and immediately alarms went off on the ships indicating massive power loss; all the nuclear fuel for their new reactors went missing in the blink of an eye.”
“Stigma,” Captain Freedom said. The blood drained from The Elemental’s face. They’d been duped.