Chapter Six

I entered the nearest subway station. As it was still the middle of the night, it was pretty empty. I passed a homeless beggar on my way to the platform and dropped money in his broken cup. He thanked me, but I ignored him at the time. I was too focused on recovering and getting to the compound. 

As I stood close to the edge of the platform and the train made its way into the station, I felt a shoe print kick me in the back with enough force to send me onto the tracks. I did a half spin and grabbed the shirt of my assailant, pulling them onto the track with me. When I did this and as we both fell, my view of the tracks coming closer warped into the view of the platform ground. 

I hit the platform ground with my assailant and quickly stood, realizing that I had just teleported with them. I wasn’t aware of any teleporter in any rank of the Nobles. I took in the site of the attacker, a young man in his early 20s, brown hair, tan skin, t-shirt, sweatpants, wristband. Nothing about him said “superhero”. 

However, I knew of a group of Nobles that dressed like civilians as they weren’t fond of spandex like the rest. Technically the only group: The Archs. A group of Nobles that didn’t receive their abilities from the serum. The info on where they received their abilities wasn’t outed to the public. Perhaps I could ask Erza. 

“And you are?” I asked. The kid stood and flashed a toothy smile, glaring at me.

“Apexcel,” he said. “And you are the one that the Corps is looking for. Amaia Luther. Wanted for the murder of Metaman. And others. But I’m mainly focused on the fact that you killed Metaman.”

“I’m guessing you’re here for revenge?” I questioned. He raised an eyebrow. “You just tried to kill me.”

“Oh, that. Nah. Didn’t know the guy. But, I figured it would just be easier to kill you rather than bring you in. Anyone capable of killing a Noble and acting on it isn’t fit to live in my book,” he said. I furrowed my brow. He wasn’t speaking like the typical hero.

“I thought heroes didn’t kill,” I speculated.

“Only when we deem it necessary. Well, that’s the Archs’ code. That’s why I fuck with them,” he said. 

“Weren’t they formed with only seven members? You speak as if you chose to join them,” I said.

“They’ve expanded. I’m their newest and by far strongest member,” he bragged. I seriously doubted him, but I wasn’t about to take him lightly. Teleportation was not an easy power to deal with.

“And with talk like that, I’m guessing none of them even know you’re here,” I said, beginning to form an icicle. 

“You bet your ass they don’t,” he said, half-chuckling. “Imagine the looks on their faces when they find out I took out the hero-killing villain all on my own.”

“Or,” I said, flash freezing his feet, holding him in place. My eyes began to glow with the sheer cold escaping from them. “Imagine the look on their faces when you don’t return.”

I dashed at him, attempting to slice a gash into him, but he leapt into the air and flipped upside down. The force from the jump caused my black ice to break off his feet on the ceiling. From the ceiling he teleported and I immediately spun around. Whenever someone has teleportation powers, they always start off by teleporting behind. But, I got kicked in the back of the head. I stumbled forward, then spun back around to face him. This dumbass actually would have teleported directly in front of me. Either he was overestimating or underestimating me. My guess was the latter. 

I heard the hissing of the train doors and they began to close. I shot ice out at my feet and skated on it over to the train and I slid through the doors. They closed and the train took off. I saw him glare at me, then smirk as he shrunk in my field of view, then disappeared behind the walls of the station. 

I was expecting him to have teleported on the train with me, but even though I didn’t see him board with me, I wouldn’t let my guard down. The only thing I did was sit on one of the seats. There were two other passengers in the car with me: an old Asian woman who was reading a book and a middle-aged Hispanic man. He looked like a father that worked an impossible amount of jobs to provide for whoever he had to take care of. He was struggling not to doze off as the rumble of the train must’ve acted like a lullaby. 

He was standing, holding a support pole even though the car was pretty much empty. Maybe it was to help him stay awake. 

My super-hearing kicked in when I heard a hissing sound that was different from the squeak of the wheels on the rails or the rocking of the metal cars. I smelled burning and I soon as I realized what it was, I was too late to save the father as the back door between this car and the next flew off the hinges and slammed against the man, pinning him between the door and the other door of the car. I saw blood leak out from behind it then faced the open door as the hero stepped into my car.

“Ah. There you are,” he said. His eyes were glowing red, sizzling from the heat they just released. 

“You just killed an innocent civilian!” I shouted.

“Doesn’t matter. S’long as I kill you, the collateral damage doesn’t matter,” the Noble told me. “Besides, if you’d stop running and submit, no more people would be hurt.”

“If you kill people in the process, what makes you different from the so-called villains?” I questioned. He shrugged.

“I don’t intentionally kill civilians.”

I was ready to respond to that. Ready to say “neither do I”, but I was sure Daichi’s and Watts’s guards counted. Instead of saying anything, I stood and crafted a circular ice shield. He cocked his head to the side.

“You know I’ll be able to melt through that, right?” he asked. I said nothing as I raised the shield to protect my body. He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He shot a beam, aiming directly for the shield. He was correct in saying that the shield would melt from the heat, but it didn’t matter. I pushed against the force of the beam and stepped closer. I was finally forced to move out of the way when my shield completely melted, but not before I threw an icicle at his leg. When I did this though, he teleported in front of me--again, and kicked me in the face, sending me into the other side of the car. 

As I tried to stand, he appeared in front of me again, punched me across the face twice, then grabbed the back of my head, slammed it into the car floor, then picked me up by my hair and dragged me over to one of the windows. I attempted to grab at his arm to try and freeze it, but when I did, I grabbed at air and instead of using his hand to slam me against the window, he used the bottom of his shoe. My face cracked the glass, and as he continued to apply more pressure, the glass continued to crack and creak and the wall of the tunnel looked ever closer. 

I pointed a palm at the floor behind me and crafted a wall between me and his foot. It worked as the pressure on the back of my head disappeared. I assumed he was still on the other side of the wall because he was nowhere to be seen anywhere else in the car, so I placed my hand on the back of the ice wall and forced spikes to shoot out on the other side. They shot through the windows and once they made contact with the tunnel walls, shattered. The ice flew towards the back door of the car, but none hit the old Asian lady, who was still invested in reading her book. 

There was no blood nor scream on the other side of the wall, so I knew he wasn’t dead. It was probable he wasn’t even injured. This was the case as I turned to see him sitting in a seat in the car behind us. He had a smile on his face and waved to me before teleporting in front of me and letting off a beam of heat vision into my stomach. The blast was so strong, it sent me to the front car, which luckily happened to be the back one, meaning the head car with the conductor was on the other end. The train was moving backwards. 

As he entered the car, I crafted another ice wall between us. I could hear the anger in his voice.

“Urgh! Stop fucking doing that!”

I heard his beams sizzling and melting away at the wall. And while he focused on the wall. I slipped through a small gap in the side of it I left. I then placed my hand on the wall and shot an ice spike out directly for his face, but he saw me in time and reacted in time to the spike, teleporting in front of me and kicking me into the train car wall before grabbing my throat with both of his hands. He charged up his heat vision, and as he was so focused on killing me this time, I managed to touch both of his wrists, leaving black ice on them.

As soon as I did this, he let go and stumbled towards the final back door of the train, trying to melt the ice with heat vision as it quickly crept up his arms. Instead of attacking me or trying to dodge my attacks, the dumbass was focused on removing the ice first. So, I stepped in front of him and straight kicked him through the door sending him through it to be run over by the train. 

But he wasn’t done. Even if it killed him, he was determined to bring me down too, and he spun around while falling and let his heat vision fly at the wheels of the train. I heard an abrupt and loud squeak, that almost made my ears bleed and then everything flashed white. 

I woke up barely able to move my head. The first thing I felt was multiple parts of my body and clothes wet from blood. Everything was spinning. My ears were ringing. The only light shining was the light coming from small fires all over the tracks. I got to my knees, then once the spinning died down a little, I managed to get to my feet. I stumbled over to something that looked familiar near the derailed train. 

The book. The same book the old Asian lady was reading. I didn’t know how to feel. All this to get rid of me. I couldn’t help thinking all the heroes thought like this. As long as it was for the greater good, it didn’t matter how many people died in the process, right? It was strange in a way because I believed in the same sort of philosophy. As long as I rid the world, or at least Haven City of the Nobles, everything would turn out okay. I didn’t expect to be whole or satisfied once I was done, but I knew what I was working towards would help humanity, even if humans died in the process.

I heard a grunt and moan come from the other end of the tunnel. I stumbled over to it, thinking it was a civilian that somehow survived. But, to my disappointment, Apexcel had survived the crash. Just barely though. The black ice I began to encase him in shattered, along with his arms. 

“Heh…heh…And after all that…you’re still…alive, huh?” he sputtered. I didn’t want to say anything to him. I had nothing to say. I crafted an icicle and he began to utter his last words. I would have let him bleed out, but I couldn’t take the chance of him surviving. “My friends will avenge me. Once they hear about what happened here, they’ll come for you. Do what you can before they find you, because you’re f--”

I stabbed the icicle through his temple. Then I faced the dark depths of the tunnel and walked towards the next nearest station. Next stop, downtown Haven City, where I would face the bulletproof hero, Fiberglass.