A Normil Day

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Everything was very clear, and pure, and slow.

I had three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds, no more. I was keenly aware of that. But time never felt the same in this state. No more doubts, no more hesitations; the memory of the hideous things I'd done was still there, but for once, it rested lightly on me. The euphoria of having a body again—more than that, the euphoria of absolute power, knowing that everything I could perceive was mine to manipulate—

One second to change shape; it was important to do this right. A white man—interesting how very aware of race I was, now that I was Rick Normil. A distinctive face, narrow, made for ferocious, knife-like smiles. White hair, eyes like gas flame, featureless and glowing. Archaic formal clothes: a tailcoat, vaguely evocative of magicians. And, last but not least, the sigil on my forehead.

It meant nothing. I was astonished by that, and at the same time I'd always known it. It had nothing to do with the source of my powers; they were woven into the fabric of the rewritten world. The sigil, the hair, the glowing blue eyes, those were all to make it more difficult for the authorities to pick some poor innocent and claim he was me, temporarily unpowered. Or, conversely, to make it more difficult for a supervillain to pretend to be me and force kings and presidents to kneel.

I compressed the torch statue into a globe the size of a basketball and shot it at the false Guardian, hanging confused in the sky. It smashed into him, throwing him more than a hundred yards, as I ascended.

I caught the superdense globe easily, with my mind, and came parallel with the false Guardian as he recovered from his tumble. He stared at me, gasping for air, and I felt a jolt of pure satisfaction at the dread on his face. Fear. Such a potent weapon. Such a great number of lives you can save, by being the god of it.

"Sigil," the false Guardian choked.

I smiled. I made very, very sure it wasn't a nice smile. "That's right," I said, and smashed him with my cannonball.

A second, to allow him to right himself; not time wasted, time spent for effect. "The one being," I went on, "who can make Guardian—the real Guardian—look like a helpless child."

He bared his teeth. "I am the real Guardian!" He barreled at me, moving almost too fast to see.

Almost—but I was the fusion of two minds, one of them entirely immaterial and not limited by mundane considerations like synapse speed. I blinked behind him and smashed the cannonball into his shoulder. He howled in pain. "You're a villain," he gasped. "Everyone says so! You're not fit to shine my boots, you—"

"Is that really how you think it works? I'm not a villain because 'everyone says so.'" He came at me again. I stopped him, snapping my fingers theatrically, and then spread my hand as I stretched his limbs out as if he were on an invisible rack. Enough tension to give even Guardian a little pain—enough force to launch a battleship into lunar orbit. Not even brushing against the limits of my power, assuming I have any. "I'm a villain," I said, "because I turned eleven hundred human beings into dust."

True. Quite true. Also, at the moment, irrelevant.

The false Guardian moaned. "You can't," he protested. "I'm Guardian! I can't lose, I—"

Time to wrap this up. "You've lost. Here are the terms of your survival." He tried to shake his head, so I stopped him from moving and saw his eyes go rounder with horror. "You have twenty-four hours to recreate your device and return to your own body. You will make certain all displaced minds are back where they belong and surrender to the police." I could feel him struggling against me, but he might as well have been a kitten. "If you do not surrender, I will find you. If you leave any collateral damage, I will hurt you."

He made a sound like a wounded animal. I put on just a little more pressure, and gave him the smile. The Sigil smile.

"And if you're still in that body at this time tomorrow," I finished, in a murmur, "I won't kill you. Not for a very, very long time. Do we have a meeting of minds?"

He looked like a man in a nightmare. My seconds were almost up; I didn't have time to see if he'd surrender. I said, "Good," and made the compressed metal ball explode like a bomb, disintegrating into tiny metal flakes that wouldn't hurt anyone below.

I teleported to my apartment—to Rick Normil's apartment. My feet touched the ground just as Sigil ceased to exist.

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Author's Note: I think of this as roughly the midpoint of the story.  We know that Damon Robb was after Guardian's body—and succeeded in getting it.  We know about Sigil.  We also know that Sigil can't manifest without Armand, and Armand has stated that if he fuses, he won't be back until midnight.  So, it's all up to Rick . . .

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