Page 87 of All Superheroes Need PR
“She can lift it,” the younger male says, shocked.
The older male roars, face pointed down. “How is that possible?”
“Because she’s ... the key,” Rollo’s low, gravelly voice says from somewhere behind the pile of wrecked planes. He must be lying at the white-haired male’s feet. “And if you touch her ... I will—augh!” He roars in pain.
“Leave my boyfriend alone!” I shout, storming forward, weapon raised. Only ... I’m slowed by the pile of airplane bits blocking me from Rollo and the one hurting him. I try to climb, but the metal pieces cut into my skin and crumple beneath the balls of my feet.
“Oh shoot! I’m sorry, airplanes,” I whisper to them.
The younger boy says loudly, “Is she serious?Sheis the key? She caused his reversion? How?”
“It doesn’t matter. The effect has been undesirable. We’ll need to get rid of him. Her, we’ll keep. Perhaps she can activate other weapons. We’ll have to try everything ...”
“No, you won’t!” I shout, and I topple over the other side of the pile, my weapon tumbling from my grip. I reach for it, and when I pick it up from the cold concrete ground this time, it turns toflame.
I scream, but the weapon doesn’t fall out of my hand even though I try to release it. Instead it gleams with a vibrant orange light that floods the darkness and scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I stumble forward, tripping over something massive and red. It can’t be an airplane part because it moves when my toes bump into it. I stumble forward, fiery helicopter piece leading the charge, though now that I think about it ... it looks suspiciously like a sword. Or maybe it only looks that way because, as I fall, I meet the eyes of the white-haired male, and we share the same look of utter shock as my flame-laced épée slides cleanly into his belly button ... and then out the other side.
Oops.
I open my mouth with every intent of apologizing, only to recognize that this dude was just talking about killing Roland and abducting me. So instead, as he and I fall together onto the floor, my sword impaling him straight through the stomach, I scream, “You are not a very nice alien, but I didn’t mean to do this!”
I scrabble up onto my knees and try to staunch the blood flow unsuccessfully with my hands. “I Will Fix It!” Maybe. There’s a lot of blood, and the alien looks like he’s in a lot of pain. I try to use his shirt to soak up the blood, but as I press around the blade, a sudden, horrible pressure slices sideways through my temples.
I scream, dropping over the older male’s crotch, which isn’t exactly where I want to die—though, make no mistake, I do feel like dying. I cry out and distantly hear a low rumble before the pain I’d been feeling comes to an abrupt end. I open my eyes and look over my rightshoulder. Spread over the floor is the body of the male I stabbed ... but the space where his head once was is now a puddle.
I gag in the back of my throat and hurl myself away from his body up into a seat. My back hits broken bits of the airplane junk pile, and I cry out, rubbing a painful spot on my side. I need to find Rollo and get the hell out of here. “Rol—” I go very, very still and completely and utterly quiet, forgetting instantly about the headless corpse when, lying there right beside it, a huge monster rises from the ground, hand dipped in blood that’s just as red as its flesh.
Crouched on one knee, the monster looks at me briefly before turning away and launching itself over the ground, over the barrier of broken airplanes. I move into a crouch, tracking it with my eyes, not wanting to let it out of my sight—a mistake. Because I see then in full clarity as the younger male turns, his hands raised. The wall of sand that had been keeping my not-so-official extraction team outside suddenly falls. Sand blasts into the space, and I duck, but not before I see the monster retaliate. The monster’s horns catch fire. It lunges. Lifting one enormous arm to block the sand, it arrives within arm’s distance of the smaller male, and then it removes the male’s head with one swipe of its massive claws.
Familiarclaws.
The sand falls, and in the quiet of its absence, my squeak isloud. I cover my mouth with both hands as the creature with red skin and massive horns who stands eight feet tall and has clawed feet and black ... talons and ... is wearing ... the sweatpants I gave him ... turns toward me. He moves so slowly that time bends away from me, and I have to use both hands to reel it back in. Because then he’s facing me, and I drop to my ass behind the wall of airplane bits because I can’t unsee what I just saw.
A whoosh sounds. The monster is in flight. I see it move over my head, landing on the finished concrete between me and the headless alien who’d been hurting me. My hands are clasped over my mouth, and I look up, admiring familiar inky-black hair feathering around freshhorns gracefully, a chunk falling across his forehead like a Highland cow. It’s cute, if anything so terrifying could be.
His mouth and nose and eyes are the same shape, just bigger to match his new proportions. His skin is covered in runes that glow very subtly when he first sees me and then die down to a shade just darker than the rest of his skin. And it isn’t red, by the way. It isn’t red. It only looks that way in the light of all the flames glowing around the building. Flames that are slowly dying away. The smoke too.
He’s pink.
Roland, the giant pink monster, takes a step toward me, his sweatpants tight around his massive thighs and slung low around his hips so that I can see all his fancy new muscles. I swallow hard.
He isn’t looking into my eyes but at my feet or possibly the ground between us as he says, “Are you all right?”
I shake my head and then, realizing what I’ve done, nod rapidly. “Actually.” My voice is trembling. I clear my throat. His head cocks to the side and flicks his light-pink gaze up to mine. “I’m having the time of my life.”
His whole face busts out into a smile, and it’s mesmerizing. Because it looks exactly the same as it did in his ... well ... before. His lips are full, a darker color than his skin, his tongue darker than both. He licks his lips and then bites the bottom one between teeth that are ... sharper than they were. Does he have ... fangs? “I ...”
“You’re really handsome,” I whisper.
He shakes his head quickly, his hair swishing around massive dark-gray horns. “What?”
“I came to rescue you,” I blurt out next. “With my brothers and Margerie and Dan and Jeremy. Vinny brought friends too.”
“They brought you out here?” He looks furious.
“It was my idea.”
“They’re supposed to protect you ...” He sounds furious too.
