Brent Cosmos: A Hero's Quest

Chapter 12: Super Fighters Unite!

    The Mystic Brothers and I were flying through the skies of Fury as fast as we could. We couldn’t stop for anything. Well, we did stop at a burger stand…but we had to keep our strength up. As we continued to soar, we soon came to the Dark Lands, the territory of the Dark Legion. The Dark Lands are like a child’s nightmare come to life. The sky is red, the clouds are black, and it’s full to capacity with horrific monsters. You can just feel the evil around every corner, even if you’re not a Cosmos. Still, we didn’t falter. After all, we’ve been to the Dark Lands enough to not be scared of it…well, not to much at least.
    “Are we there yet!?” Diablo yelled annoyed.
    “Do you see the fortress?” Mighty asked.
    “No,” Diablo replied.
    “Well then we’re not there yet!” Mighty said annoyed. Diablo groaned.
    “Brent, why do we have to follow Mighty?”
    “Because he’s the only one who knows where we’re going,” I said.
    “Yeah well conehead’s likely to get us lost if we’re not careful.”
    “CONEHEAD!?” Mighty yelled. “Are you mocking my fashion sense!?”
    “Of course not,” Diablo replied. “How can I mock what you don’t even have?”
    “That’s it!” Mighty shouted. He then flew his black cloud right over to Diablo’s cloud and the next thing I knew, the two brothers started a slap fight, which turned into a fist fight, which turned into a wrestling match. At this rate, we’d never make it to the fortress.
    “Alright you two,” I said annoyed. “Break it u-,” I stopped. I sensed something. Something was coming, something big, and there were more than one! I looked out in front of us and saw it: a huge pack of giant stone gargoyles. They were headed right for us! “Guys look out!” I jumped in front of the Mystic Brothers right as one of the gargoyles was about to smash into them, taking the hit. It sent all three of us hurdling towards the ground.
    Thinking quickly, I turned us around so that I was the one closest to the ground. I then wrapped the Mystic Brothers in my arms, pulled them in close, and began to inhale. As I sucked in air, my body began to inflate like a balloon. As we hit the ground, I bounced along, taking no damage. Once I stopped bouncing, I let go of the twins and deflated.
    “Whoa, thanks B,” said Mighty, slightly dazed.
    “Yeah, we owe you one,” Diablo added.
    “No problem,” I said letting the last bit of air out of myself. “You can pay me back by helping me fend of those guys!” I pointed upwards towards the gargoyles that were still swarming around in the air around us.
    “Right,” Mighty said. “Let’s straighten these jerks out and get back to our mission.”
    “I’m with ya bro,” Diablo replied. The twins then bumped fists and flew back up to the gargoyles. Like I said, the Mystic Brothers may fight like any other siblings, but they always come together when it’s important. As they flew upwards, they caught the gargoyles’ attention. They began to charge at them.
    “Shadow Ball!” Mighty exclaimed. A purple orb of magic then emanated form his wizard staff. He then flung it at one of the gargoyles. It’s impact caused a small explosion, but the gargoyle was unharmed. Mighty tried hitting the gargoyles with more dark magic blasts, but still they had no effect. Suddenly, one of the gargoyles hit Mighty with its claw, sending him flying towards the ground. A baseball glove then appeared on my monster arm as I extended and grew it to a large size, catching Mighty in mid air.
    “Thanks again Brent,” Mighty said in a tired voice. I gave him a thumbs up.
    “Their stone bodies are too hard,” I said. “I don’t think your magic can help.”
    “Great,” Mighty said. “So we’re sunk?”
    “Not necessarily,” I replied. “You’re magic might not be able to help, but Diablo’s might.”
    “Diablo?” Mighty said as he looked up at his brother who was still dodging the gargoyles fearsome claw and wing attacks.
    “Yo, Diablo!” I yelled up to him. “Try using your water spells!”
    “Water spells?” Diablo said.
    “Yeah,” I replied. “Water should help wear down their stone bodies!”
    “Oh yeah!” Diablo said. He then flew over to gain some distance from the gargoyles. Once he was far enough, he held out his alchemy staff. “Tsunami Wave!” he exclaimed. Then he began to wave his staff from side to side and with every sway huge streams of water came out, hitting the gargoyles with great force and driving them back. “Bubble Barrage!” A huge and fast stream of bubble then came out of his staff and hit the gargoyles with the force of bullets. Diablo had them on the ropes.
    “He’s doing good but he can’t hold them off forever,” Mighty said. “We’ve gotta do something to help.” I then sensed some more danger coming our way.
    “Right now,” I said. “I think we should focus on helping ourselves.” Mighty gave me a confused look. I pointed in front of us. There was a whole gang of ferocious monsters charging right towards us. There were orcs, ogres, skeleton warriors, goblins, and horned wolves. And none of them looked happy to see us.
    “Aw crap,” Mighty said.
    “Crap indeed,” I replied.
    “Can we take all of these monsters on ourselves?” Mighty asked.
    “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “But either way, we’ve gotta try. That’s what superheroes do.”
    “Right,” Mighty said as he put a serious look on his face and held his staff up.
    “Let’s party!” I said. I transformed into a giant bull and with a huff a charged towards the pack of beasts. My whole body was engulfed by yellow energy that caused a huge blast as I made my impact. Once in the middle of the crowd, I grew my arms to engorged sizes and starting punching and slamming. Mighty flew up above me and stared blasting the monsters with his dark magic. Diablo was still high above, still fending off the gargoyles. We were holding our own pretty well, but the question remained, how long could we keep it up?
    Suddenly, a goblin jumped on my back and used it’s club to bonk me on the head repeatedly really hard. It made me fall over and monsters surrounded me.
    “Brent!” Mighty yelled. He then came down from the sky like a missile to my position. “Dark Pulse!” he exclaimed. Then a huge, explosive pulse of dark magic energy began to spread and knock back the monsters.
    “Thanks Mighty,” I said. I then reached into different pockets of my belt with both hands and pulled out a blaster pistol in one hand, and a ion piston in the other and began shooting.
    “No problem,” Mighty replied. He then started shooting magical missiles at the monsters. We couldn’t hold them off for much longer. There were just too many of them. Just as they were closing in on us, something strange happened. Mighty and I began to levitate. Neither of us was using our powers to fly, yet we were floating unwillingly. We were carried from the center of the monster hoard and over to a safer position (or as safe as one could be in the Dark Lands).  
    “What’s going on?” Mighty said.
    “I think I know,” I replied. I then pointed over to Diablo who was being floated down to us safely as well. The gargoyles weren’t even following him because they were completely paralyzed. I knew exactly what this was: psychic power. And there’s only one person I know on Fury who has psychic powers.
    “Take this!” I heard a girl’s voice say. The gargoyles then suddenly slammed to the ground, hitting a lot of the other monsters.
    “Nice job, Ruby!” I said as I looked behind me.
    “Ruby?!” said the Mystic Brothers in unison. There was a girlish giggle. They looked behind them to see a pretty girl with flowing red hair and a strange looking pink outfit. She had two antennae on the top of her head. One had a little blue ball on the tip, and the other had a little yellow ball on the tip. There was also a red dot on her forehead. Her pink outfit had a diamond jewel symbol on it. That was Ruby, another one of my friends and a member of my team.
    “Hello boys,” she said with a cute wave.
    “Looks like we got here just in time,” said another girl’s voice. Then three more figures walked up beside Ruby. One of them was a guy with brown hair and completely red forearms and hands. His legs from the knee down were red too along with his feet. He was wearing a white karate GI with a red belt and another red belt wrapped around his head. The chest of his GI had a red fist symbol on it.
    Another one of the figures had dark skin and sharp teeth. He was muscular and fit. He wore a brown fur vest with no shirt underneath and dark pants and boots. He also had a large purple tooth around his neck. There was a paw print symbol on his chest.
    The last figure was a girl with dark hair. She wore a red beret, a white shirt, and a rainbow skirt. She carried a giant paintbrush on her back. There was a colorful rainbow symbol on her shirt. These figures may seem weird to you, but they were my team, and my best friends.
    The girl with red hair and psychic powers is Ruby. Ruby is special because she’s not actually a Furyian. She’s from an extremely intelligent race of psychic aliens called Psychosians. When she was little, her planet tried to invade and conquer Fury. Even though she was only 11 at the time, she was meant to be part of the Psychosian army, but her own brother kicked her out for being “weak.” She thought she was worthless and had no place to go, but I showed her that she shouldn’t let others’ opinions get to her. I taught her that she could be as strong as she wants to be. My encouragement gave her new strength and she even helped me stop the Psychosian invasion. Ever since then, she’s made a new life for herself on Fury, using her psychic powers to help me fight evil. Ruby has many psychic abilities like levitation, mindreading, starting fires, freezing things, and brain blasts. She’s also a total scientific genius. She can be a little timid at times but she’s pretty tough when she needs to be.
    The guy with the red limbs and karate get up is actually a robot created by Primech. Primech designed this particular robot to be a master of all forms of combat. Karate, kung fu, wrestling, Ki, boxing, krav maga, pretty much any kind of fighting. Primech thought he could sell its designs and make millions and destroy those who defy him. But unfortunately, he made his robot a little too efficient. His combat android eventually became self-aware and, for whatever reason, it didn’t desire to be used for evil. It defied it’s creator and went on to live it’s own way. Luckily I found it. I saw something good in the android and anyone who goes against Primech is okay in my book. The android and I became friends and I gave it a very special gift: the Heart of Life.
    The Heart of Life is a special object I created with help from the Mystic Brothers. It gave the android true emotions and feelings, making him practically real. It even gives his robotic body the ability to grow as he ages. I’ve offered to just use my reality powers to make the android completely real, but he refused. I guess he likes being a robot. With the Heart of Life, the android was finally free to live his own life, and he decided to become a hero like me. That way he could still fight, but for the right reasons. The android’s name is Combat Droid 7736-F, but we just call him Fightbot.
    The wild looking guy with the fur vest’s name is Fang, and his story is a real doozy. You see, until he was 10 years old, Fang was raised in the wild…by werewolves! They took him in, taught him their ways, and trained him to be a ferocious beast. Sadly, he was kicked out of the pack for not having the ruthlessness to hunt. Guess he just didn’t have the stomach for it.
    Anyway, after being shunned by the only family he ever knew, Fang felt all alone in the world. Living in the wild also really took a toll on him. He didn’t want to be a beast, but he had to at least use his feral instincts to survive as best he could. Then one day a strange beast unlike anything he had ever seen before attacked him. It was more savage then any creature he had ever encountered. It almost killed him, but in the end he managed to get away alive. He also managed to get one of the monsters teeth. He wears it around his neck for good luck.
    He soon discovered that the tooth was magical and gave him amazing powers. It increases his strength and speed, gives him all kinds of savage animal powers, and even gives him the ability to control and communicate with animals. When I met Fang I knew he was something special, that’s why I made him part of my team. Despite how he looks, Fang’s actually a pretty nice guy. Living on Cosmos Island and being a superhero has taught him that being feral, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be bad. I can relate to that. Fang never saw the beast that attacked him again, but he swears he’ll never forget its scent.
    Lastly, the girl in the beret with the paintbrush is Adojo. All she wants is to become the world’s greatest artist. She grew up in and orphanage with nothing but a paintbrush to her name. The orphanage she grew up in tried to teach kids to be proper and neat. Or in Adojo’s words: boring and bland. She eventually ran away because she wanted to find a way to perfect her “creative style.” She traveled on her own, coming to appreciate the world’s form and uniqueness. She wanted to find a way to harness that uniqueness in her art. Then one day she finally got her big chance. A beautiful sorceress was looking for an artist to paint her portrait. Adojo was young an inexperienced, but she had to start somewhere so she took the job. She poured her heart and soul into the portrait of the sorceress and in the end it paid off. The sorceress was so grateful for her beautiful painting that she gave Adojo a very special gift. She turned Adojo’s regular paintbrush into a giant magical one with an unlimited supply of magic paint. It gives her the ability to make whatever she paints real. The magic paint can also be weaponized in many ways. She’s pretty creative like that.
    This experience gave Adojo the confidence that she could someday become the greatest artist Fury has ever known. Now, Adojo doesn’t really have any notable heroic traits. Adojo still wants to be a great artist. She really only does the superhero thing for kicks and giggles. She likes the adventure. To be honest, as long as she doesn’t use her powers for evil, I could really care less what she does with them. She lives in a penthouse with Fang on Cosmos Island. Adojo and I have a complicated relationship. We don’t always see eye to eye and she really gets on my nerves sometimes. Still, we always have each other’s backs when it really matters.
    Together along with Misty and the Mystic Brothers, the eight of us form Fury’s greatest superhero team, the Super Fighters! Yeah, I know the name’s not the greatest, but all the good ones were taken. Using our amazing powers, we fight evil on Fury, wherever we find it. We all have our dreams and goals and something to prove, to the world and ourselves. Sure we’re not perfect, but we do alright for a bunch of teenagers. We have our arguments, but we always stick together no matter what. We’re really more like a family than a team. I guess the reason we all fit in so well with each other, is because none of us fit in anywhere else. Even outcasts have a place where they belong.
    “Fang? Fightbot? Adojo?” I said. “What are you all-,” before I could finish, the monsters spotted us. The gargoyles began to float back up into the air and the rest of the monsters started gunning for us. “You know what? We’ll talk later. Ruby, Adojo, gargoyles! Fightbot, Fang, Twins, ground monsters! Super Fighters, GO!” With that, we all sprung into action. Ruby began to levitate and fly into the air. Adojo followed, riding her paintbrush like a witch’s broom, leaving behind a colorful rainbow trail. Meanwhile the boys and I charged towards the stampeding monsters on the ground.
    In the air, the gargoyles flew like fighter jets towards Ruby. She didn’t flinch. She just held out her hands. The orbs on her antennae began to glow and suddenly, the gargoyles stopped in mid air. Ruby then clapped her hands together and the gargoyles abruptly slammed together in a huge clump. None of them could move a muscle.
    “Little help?” Ruby said to Adojo.
    “No problem girlfriend,” Adojo said. She then flew her paintbrush over. Quickly, she grabbed her paint brush and started painting. She moved it back and forth, up and down, splattering paint on the very air. The paint then began to take form, the form of…a giant jackhammer. Adojo’s mighty masterpiece then floated over to Ruby’s gargoyle clump. It then began to hammer away all over it, wreaking havoc on the beasts’ stone bodies. Soon there was nothing left but rocks and pebbles. As the gargoyles crumbled away, the two heroines gave a victorious high five.
    Meanwhile, down below, the boys and I were going to town on the remaining monsters.
    “There’s like no end to these things!” Diablo exclaimed as he blasted some skeleton warriors with fire. “How’re we gonna beat them all?”
    “By fighting monster with monster!” Mighty replied. He then slammed the head of his staff on the ground. There was as huge flash. Suddenly, Mighty was on the back of a large purple, winged, dragon. It rose into the air and began to breathe purple fire on the monsters below.
    “Am I nuts,” said Fang as he lifted an orc over his head and threw it. “Or did Mighty just have a good idea?”
    “Well, logically speaking it was bound to happen at some point,” Fightbot replied as he punched an ogre in the face.
    “Yeah, way to go bro!” Diablo said. He then touched his alchemy staff to the ground. “Golems!” Three stone golems suddenly rose up from the ground and began to attack the monsters.
    “Nice work guys!” I said I fired twin machine guns at the crowd of monsters around me. “Keep it u-,” just then, a large group of monsters caught me off guard and tackled me like a team of football players. I was completely buried in a monster dog pile. For a moment, all was quiet.
    “Brent!” Fightbot shouted. A rumbling then came from under the pile. There was a loud roar. Suddenly, a huge, muscular purple monster with pointy ears, spiky black hair and ferocious teeth emerged from the pile, knocking away the monsters on top. With a roar it started to punch and smash and hit, sending the monsters flying in all directions. “Gotta love that shape shifting.” Fightbot said.
    “Word,” replied Diablo.
    “Time for some more reinforcements!” Fang said. “Call of the Wild!” Fang then let out a loud roar that echoed through the Dark Lands. Then, faint screeching was heard in the distance. Fang looked up and saw a giant swarm of bats flying down to him. “Bats? Are those seriously the only animals around here?”
    “Dark Lands Fang,” Fightbot said kicking a goblin. “Make it work.”
    “Fine,” Fang said annoyed. “Hey Brent, how bout an upgrade?” I looked over to him and nodded.
    “Monsterize!” I yelled in my monster voice. My purple monster hands began to emanate a dark red glow. The bats that fang had called then began to change. They got bigger, and more scary looking, their teeth even got sharper. I had transformed them into giant vampire bats! They descended down on the remaining monster and bit them. They then proceeded to drain not just their blood, but their very life forces, leaving nothing but dried out, withered husks. “Awesome!”
    With the monster hoard finally defeated, I transformed back to normal. Mighty and his dragon flew back down and with a flash his dragon vanished. Diablo’s golems went back down into the ground. We all ran back to each other and high fived.
    “Thanks you my ferocious friends,” Fang said to the bats. “Your help was greatly appreciated. Now go and be free.” The bats then flew off into the sky, screeching all the way into the distance.
    “Shouldn’t you change them back to normal first?” Fightbot asked.
    “Eh, I’m sure they’ll be fine.” I said.
    “Nice work boys,” Adojo said as she and Ruby came back down.
    “Naturally,” I said. The monsters were beaten. The Super Fighters reigned triumphant.