The Daughters of Men

Chapter 13

Holly had very rarely encountered a moment when she was truly afraid for her life. Or, at least, in her own life, she considered it to be a very rare occurrence in comparison to the number of life-threatening situations she found herself in. However, as she stared at Homer Waterburg wearing a makeshift mechanical suit as he pointed a flamethrower less than fifteen feet from her, she came to be certain this would truly be the last thing she did. Everything seemed to slow down, as though some higher power was looking down at her in pity and giving her an extra moment to think of whatever she wanted before dying. Despite this generous gift, Holly felt as though all she could think about was how irritating it would be for her to be burnt to death. In all reality, she always thought she would die a fairly ordinary death, maybe a revenge scheme from a scorned enemy who found out her secret or in an actual motorcycle accident the way people thought her dad died. But being burned alive seemed especially brutal and silly, as she imagined her ending up looking like a pile of ash, like some wacky cartoon.

The reality of the situation, however, was very different. Just as the flames made their way towards Holly, she felt herself jerked out of the way. Hitting the ground heavily, Holly looked up to see Elizabeth wrapped around her center, clearly having just showed up to the scene.

"What is your problem, kid?" Elizabeth grunted. "You were just gonna take that? He was about to turn you into charcoal."

"Yeah, I don't know, I guess I just froze," Holly admitted, blinking a few times. "How'd you get here?"

"How'd you get here, is the better question," Elizabeth countered, looking back at Waterburg. "Actually, hold that. I'm going to fight this guy, I think."

Elizabeth turned around to face Waterburg, her cape billowing in the wind. "Good evening, Mister Waterburg. My name is Power Girl."

Instead of a reply, Waterburg swung his damaged arm at her in a poor attempt at a backhand; Elizabeth held her hand out and Waterburg's arm hit it with such force that it essentially shattered into pieces, the remainder of the arm flying to ground in chunks.

"I'm going to ask you to give up your silly crusade, Mister Waterburg," Elizabeth pleaded. "Or else this is going to get much worse."

"You seem pretty tough," Waterburg chuckled.

"I mean for you," Elizabeth elaborated.

Suddenly, Waterburg began to shake violently in his harness. A small silver ball began to circle him, sending out what looked like tiny balls of lightning at him. Eventually, Waterburg gained just enough of himself back to swat at the ball, which quickly evaded.

"Sorry about the theatrics," Tanya whispered to Holly, who jumped slightly.

"How did you sneak up on me?" Holly asked.

"I'm just lucky like that, I guess," Tanya muttered. Holly looked down at her and noticed that Tanya had what appeared to be a dozen silver balls circling around her as if in orbit. While Tanya was knelt down, she appeared to be typing on a keyboard installed on the sleeve of her jacket, quickly typing in a series of code.

"What are you doing?" Holly questioned, her mind racing to come up with answers that were not presenting themselves.

"It's a new thing I've been working on," Tanya explained. "It's my battle mode. These little balls all have a purpose. There's a fire ball, a electric ball, a hacking ball, all sorts of fun stuff. The sleeve has a command input interface I can use to tell them what to do."

"But how can you do that while you're blind?"

"I have a couple of mapping drones around, surveying the area and reporting things to me through wireless headphones. I have a pretty solid mental image of what the area looks like, enough for me to guide my little guys out there to do some damage. My dude's getting the big bad wolf, right?"