Chapter 139 Penetrator.

Chapter 139: 139 Penetrator.

Was I catching the stupidity of this world?

Probably.

Actually, scratch that. Definitely.

There were a thousand reasons not to take a fight with these would-be heroes. Not the least of which was the fact that I wasn’t getting paid for it.

Unless my life was in danger, I didn’t willingly fight capes for free. It cheapened the merchandise. Why buy the cow when the milk is giving away free beatdowns in the lobby?

Plus, I intensely disliked others getting a feel for how I really fought. Sure, they’d seen me battle heroes before. It was my whole job. But those were more or less scripted, choreographed dances that made people underestimate what I could really do. Which was a highly useful tactical advantage.

Yes, there were plenty of logical, business-minded reasons not to fight this kid. But there was one massive reason why I had to.

See, I didn’t care if people badmouthed me. Fuck it. Let them say what they wanted. It was my job to lose to heroes. I’d heard it all.

But insulting Glacia?

No way in hell was I going to let that slide. So yeah, maybe I was being stupid. But hell, sometimes, you had to be.

Not that I was particularly worried about my life here. Now that I was sure the Bureau wasn’t looking for my head, I wasn’t exactly threatened by a cocky sidekick. Still, underestimating your opponent was a quick way to the grave, so I’d take him down. Fine.

But I was about as enthusiastic about it as a cat staring at a bathtub.

To my surprise, we had drawn a massive audience by the time we reached the primary practice ring. Word traveled fast around the Hall of Heroes.

I looked up and realized this wasn’t just a crowd of trainees. The Five themselves had taken up positions on an elevated observation balcony.

Hell of a crowd, I mused, climbing up into the sand-filled arena. I took my position while the sidekick took his on the opposite side, pulling a tight cowl over his head.

With his open robe, the big ’P’ on his chest, and his bouncing boxer stance, he was clearly a close-combat fighter.

"Good crowd to witness your defeat!" my opponent declared, puffing out his chest as he looked up at the S-listers in the balcony.

"Whatever," I sighed, rolling my shoulders. "Can we get this over with? I missed lunch."

His sneer came back as he dropped into a deep fighting crouch, one arm forward, raising his fist. "Ha! You won’t talk like that for long, villain! Because you face... The Penetrator!"

...

I stared at him before turning to his classmates hoping someone—anyone—would even snicker at that.

"I’m sorry, what?" I said.

"The Penetrator!" he shouted proudly.

"Did you... did you actually say that out loud to another human being before deciding on it?" I asked, genuinely horrified. "Like, did you run that by a focus group? A PR team? Anyone over the age of twelve?"

"It perfectly describes my combat style!" he snapped, his face flushing red. "I penetrate enemy defenses! I slip through any barrier! I trained for years, honing my body into the ultimate weapon to breach the unbreachable! And now, with my master watching, I will penetrate you!"

Holy fuck. The internet was absolutely going to eat this kid alive. Just like they did with the Erector and his Mighty Spear.

The poor bastard hadn’t even lasted a week before he was forced into early retirement. There was no coming back from those headlines.

"Seriously? Which hero actually signed off on that?" I asked, rubbing my temples.

"I call Mister Invincible my master!"

Up on the balcony, Rick Steele threw a massive fist into the air. "THAT’S RIGHT! SHOW HIM, JIMMY! PENETRATE HIS DEFENSES! USE MAXIMUM PENETRATION!"

Cloudfire slowly lowered his face into his free hand.

Ah, okay. Now things were starting to make sense.

"Alright, buddy," I said, spreading my hands, letting my magnetic powers begin to resonate with the metal training equipment scattered around the edges of the ring. "Let’s get this over with."

"Fine with me! Taste my fists!" he shouted, rushing toward me.

Kid was fast, I’d give him that. He crossed the sand in barely three steps. I raised a hand, magnetically seizing a heavy steel dumbbell from the rack and whipping it right at his chest.

He didn’t even flinch. He just kept running.

The fifty-pound dumbbell hit him—and passed completely through his torso like he was made of air.

Intangibility.

I dropped low, sweeping his legs with a brutal kick. But my leg passed right through his shins.

He smirked, winding up a punch. I tried to grab the metal zipper on his shorts, but the moment I pulled, his clothes simply fell right through his phased body and dropped into the sand.

Well, his special hero suit stayed on. But his robe and anything else that wasn’t chemically bound to his DNA phased right off him.

Suddenly, he sank perfectly straight down into the solid concrete floor of the arena, disappearing from sight entirely.

Oh, that’s how it works.

I’d read about this kind of power. Permeation. It was incredibly rare and stupidly dangerous. When you phased, light passed through your eyes so you went blind. Air passed through your lungs so you couldn’t breathe.

And if you phased your feet, gravity pulled you straight down through the earth. The only way to move was to deactivate the power while inside a solid object, letting physics violently violently eject you to the surface.

Sure enough, a split second later, Jimmy popped out of the ground directly behind me like a torpedo, throwing a solid right hook at the back of my head.

I ducked, feeling the wind of his fist ruffle my hair, and slid backward.

"Ha! You can’t hit what you can’t touch!" The Penetrator boasted, sinking halfway into the floor again.

He was right. Mostly.

Permeation was a hell of a power. But it required immense, terrifying levels of concentration. You had to constantly shift which parts of your body were solid and which were phased. If you phased your whole head, you went deaf and blind. If you didn’t have a suit made of your own hair, your clothes fell off.

And if you were a sixteen-year-old kid whose parents had just paid five grand for orthodontics...

I focused my powers. There it was. The distinct, metallic hum of standard-issue, stainless steel dental braces sitting right inside his mouth.

Jimmy couldn’t phase them. If he turned his head completely intangible, the braces wouldn’t phase with his teeth. They would literally fall through his gums and into his throat, choking him to death. He was actively being forced to keep his jaw solid to keep them in place.

Which made him a glaringly obvious target for a master of magnetism.

Jimmy launched himself out of the floor again, rocketing toward my chest. I didn’t dodge. I just raised my hand and clenched my fist.

YANK.

Jimmy yelped—a highly undignified, wet sound—as his mouth was violently jerked forward. His entire body followed, yanked entirely off course by his teeth, and he face-planted spectacularly into the sand.

"What the—" he sputtered, spitting out grit as he pushed himself up.

I flicked my wrist sideways.

Jimmy was dragged violently to the left, his boots scrambling uselessly against the ground as the magnetic pull on his braces dragged him across the arena like a dog on a heavy leash.

"Alright, enough," I said, stopping him near the edge of the ring.

Jimmy shook his head, recovering from the initial shock. His eyes widened in horror as he realized exactly what I was grabbing onto. He couldn’t phase through it. His power was being hijacked by his own dental work.

"No! You dirty villain!" he cried.

And then, to my absolute horror, he reached both hands into his mouth.

He gripped the metal brackets on his teeth, fully intent on violently ripping the braces out of his own gums so he could phase his head.

Jesus Christ.

"Whoa, hey! Seriously man, just stop!" I shouted, genuinely repulsed. I was a villain, not a gore enthusiast. I didn’t want to watch a teenager rip his own teeth out.

"Never! I don’t even know the meaning of the word quit!" he gurgled around his fingers.

That I could believe. But this was getting way too PG-13 for a training match.

Time to end this.

I reached out with both hands, pushing my powers to the absolute limit. People in the stands shouted in surprise as three heavy punching bags, a steel bench press, and a rack of dumbbells lifted violently off the ground, soaring through the air straight toward The Penetrator.

He saw it coming. He let go of his teeth, opting to phase his entire body to let the equipment pass through him.

He sank into the ground to dodge.

Ah. I loved this part.

I waited exactly one second for him to rocket back up to the surface. The moment his chest materialized into solid mass above the sand to take a breath, I dropped the entire armory on him.

Crash.

A two-hundred-pound punching bag plowed directly into his stomach, driving all the air out of his lungs with a heavy oomph.

Before he could phase again, the steel bench press slammed down across his chest, pinning him flat against the sand, followed closely by a rain of dumbbells that trapped his limbs.

He gasped, struggling uselessly against the crushing weight of the solid steel. He couldn’t concentrate enough to phase, and he certainly couldn’t lift it.

There we go.

I lowered my hands, releasing the magnetic hold on the equipment, leaving him thoroughly and safely pinned to the dirt.

Turning my back on the groaning sidekick, I walked to the edge of the arena and hopped down to rejoin Glacia. She was absolutely beaming. I had to admit, my chest puffed up a little at the sight of her genuine, aristocratic delight.

Khonsu was standing near her, his starry eyes unreadable, along with a completely seething Divina.

Up on the balcony, Mister Invincible looked devastated, while Cloudfire was actually laughing into his drink. Cortex, miraculously, had still not blinked.

"Guess we’re done here," I said, dusting off my jacket.

"So it seems," Khonsu said coolly, his booming voice entirely absent. "Thank you for your time, Polaris."

"No problem. Glacia?" I said.

"Right behind you, sir," she said happily, falling perfectly into step beside me.

But as we walked away toward the transit seals, I could feel the heavy, assessing eyes of the most powerful heroes on the planet burning into my back. Almost at once, I felt my good mood fade into a deep, sinking knot of anxiety.

Haa.

I sure hoped this didn’t come back to bite me in the ass.