Chapter 9

Saturday 22nd August 1998

Considering how the lightning yeti fight in the middle of town had gone last week, you have no idea how fortunate I was that our day-trip to London had been incident-free.

Well. Monster-free. Bao wandered off at some point and we spent two hours looking for him (he’d left his mobile phone at Dakota’s). We eventually found him on a bench in a park, reading comics and eating a huge bag of Woolworths pick-n-mix. After all that, we had to scrap our plans of eating at this little Italian restaurant we’d found and instead bought some McDonalds, which we wolfed down in about ten minutes.

Appetites satisfied, we hurried off to the train station to make the journey home.

“None of these guys know!” Kendal enthused in hushed tones, probably but not certainly below the hearing of the other passengers on our train carriage.

“Kendal,” Zahid began sternly, “absolutely no one we’ve passed the entire day knows. We get it.”

“I’m just saying…”

She slouched back in her seat, pouting a little.

Kendal had spent the past week ridiculously excited by the prospect of us being public heroes. Fuelled by Bao’s regaling of numerous superhero stories, she had begun conjuring up ideas on how we should present and conduct ourselves in the public eye. “It’s gonna be so exciting!” she’d declared. “All the cool things we’ll get to do!” And in the meantime, she was relishing in our anonymity in light of our impending reveal to the world.

“If anything, you’re going to wind up drawing more attention to us,” Dakota pointed out, spinning the London-themed keychain she’d purchased in her fingers.

“They’ll just think we’re a bunch of hip teens,” Kendal reasoned; I snorted in amusement.

“They will!”

“If we’re hip, they must be playing fast and loose with the meaning.”

“They?” Bao asked.

“Yeah, whoever’s in charge of… hipness.”

“Further demonstrating how not-hip we are,” Zahid grunted.

“You guys just need to be more self-confident!”

Kendal melted her slouch into a chilled-out sprawl, putting her hands behind her head and stretching her legs out as much as she could in the cramped space, crossing her ankles.

“Like this, dawg.”

Bao followed her lead, copying her pose and forcing me to move my legs to grant space to his as they stretched out.

“Yo yo, cat!”

“What’s hangin’?”

“The tree-swing in my back garden.”

“Dayum!” Kendal grinned, dropping the act and sitting upright eagerly. “How high can you swing on it?”

“Hold on, guys, save this for when I’ve got my camcorder. This is the definition of hip,” Zahid said with a shake of his head.

Dakota was staring out of the window all the while, watching the countryside and towns go by as she’d done on our earlier journey. Of course, she had journeyed from London once before, as her flight from Ireland had landed there; it seemed that her fascination came as much from an appreciation of the view as it did from seeing another country whiz past.

“Enjoying the view?” I asked her; she continued staring out as she nodded.

“It’s really cool getting to see England. I really can’t remember it that well,” she explained with fondness in her voice.

“Wait… what d’you mean?”

“Didn’t I say before?” she asked, turning to me now. “The weapons were recovered ten years ago. Mam took the spear with her to Ireland then. I lived over here until I was six.”

… was I stupid for having missed that?

“Ooooh… no, that makes sense…” I mused.

“You can’t even remember that much about me? And I thought we were friends…”

That teasing smirk spread across her face once again. My heart would’ve fluttered if I wasn’t busy squirming where I sat.

“No! I just think of you as Irish and all the talk about your childhood has been in Ireland s-so-!”

“Get a room, you two…” Bao sighed heavily.

I turned to him, staring wide-eyed. You can’t just say something like that! Not that he knew how I felt about her, but still!

Nobody else said anything. I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head and see what expression was on Dakota’s face.

“What?” my friend asked obliviously. Do you have no sense of tact, Bao?

The silence continued. I had to do something. I had to divert the conversation away from the suggestion of Dakota and me together. Anything. The first thing to come to mind.

“Y-Yo, dawg!” I blurted, throwing up the best hip hand gestures I could muster.

Well. Still silent, but at least now it was everyone else (bar an exhausted Zahid) trying to hold back laughter.

…

It wasn’t too much longer before we reached our station, and disembarked from the train slightly dishevelled.

“My uncle is a huge train spotter,” Bao informed us as we began our slog down the platform, weaving through the crowds. “He’s seen loads of famous old trains. I can’t remember any of the names though.”

“That’s where you draw the line, huh?” Zahid smirked at him.

“I was busy memorising pi when I last saw him so I didn’t really absorb what he was telling me.”

“Ooh! I tried that once, got to about fifteen decimal places,” Dakota noted excitedly. “What about you?”

“It was…”

Bao stopped in his tracks, and began counting on his fingers. The rest of us ground to a halt in turn, waiting as seconds followed seconds and he made multiple laps of his digits.

Zahid closed his eyes, almost wincing.

“Anyone wanna go see a movie while we wait…?”

“For what it’s worth…” Kendal began, before lowering her voice to a whisper. “Nobody here knows, either…”

“Yeah…” I agreed softly, perhaps almost a little despondently. Even I was getting a little wound up by the reminders at this point.

“All I mean is a monster could turn up right now and they’d see us suit up and everything!”

A blood-curdling screech erupted from nearby, and screaming and panic coursed through the platform – possibly the whole station – instantly.

Prowling next to one of the trains was a large, four-legged, predatory-looking creature, like some kind of oversized tiger. Furless, its red skin emphasised its musculature. Silvery blades of all lengths jutted out from its flesh, from nail-like studs down its sides to six-foot spines along its back. Its tail forked in two, each tip ending in a blade. A long snout lined with fearsome teeth was moving to-and-fro as the beast scoured the area.

“Am… am I okay to be excited…?” Kendal asked us, a sparky puppy in sheepish clothing.

“I guess it can’t be helped,” Dakota assured her; the shorter girl immediately began bouncing on the spot.

“And I’ve lost count, so I guess we’ll just start now.”

“Thanks for the all-clear, Bao,” I addressed him with tongue in cheek. He raised his eyebrows in what I assume was realisation.

“Oh, right, yeah, sorry. I was just… yeah.”

You don’t have to browbeat yourself over it, Bao…

“It’s okay man!”

I gave him a thumbs-up to cement my sentiment, before picturing the Lokon sword in my hand. The past several days had involved a lot of practice to make sure that I could do this and to guide the others into accomplishing it – with a blue flash, the weapon manifested in my grasp as I’d now seen it do numerous times. The others followed suit, four colourful bursts preceding the appearance of their weapons.

It would’ve been nice to take stock, to take a moment and prepare as I threw away my privacy, my anonymity. But a monster was here and it needed defeating. Sure, this wasn’t what I expected a handful of weeks ago when this all began… I didn’t sign up to be a superhero, but here I was.

All at once, with a few less-panicked people watching on, we turned our weapons and blasted our costumes onto ourselves. Our target turned its attention to us, its pupils super-dilated and its teeth on-show like a horror movie’s Cheshire Cat.

“They’re usually noisier than this,” I pointed out needlessly. As I took a glance back, I saw Kendal waving cheerily at the onlookers… they seemed confused.

“Okay, anyone got any thoughts on how to tackle this thing?” Dakota asked the rest of us, keeping her eyes fixed on the… if I call it a razorbeast, I’ll just be thinking of the Beast Wars figure…

Catana? No…

Wait, sorry, the fight…

“Get a really big catnip toy?” Bao suggested earnestly.

At once, the predator began stalking towards us.

“Forget I said that, forget I said that!” my yellow-sporting teammate cried out as if it made a lick of difference.

We all scattered at once – I headed off towards the now-abandoned train, as did Kendal and Zahid. For whatever reason, the creature went after us rather than Dakota and Bao. Probably a good thing, as it was moving away from the fleeing citizens.

As we reached the train, Kendal was the first to halt, turning on her heel and aiming at the pursuing beast. One, two, three arrows fired; they struck the elephant-sized monster, to no effect.

“Craaaap!” she yelled rightfully, and the three of us opted to retreat into the train carriage through the open door.

“Head through, we’ll exit out of the next carriage!” Zahid ordered us. We barely got to move before the entire vehicle rocked wildly. Visible beyond the windows, the sabre-beast (good enough) was up on its hind legs, its paws up on the carriage roof. With our footing unstable, we wound up stumbling about until finally, the creature forced the whole thing onto its side.

The three of us naturally tumbled and rolled onto what was previously the other side of the carriage – now littered with shattered glass and abandoned food and drink waste. I was pretty certain I’d cut myself in about seven different places. I didn’t get the chance to check.

The sabre-beast’s snout burrowed in through the open door which, of course, was now in the ceiling. Dozens of literally-razor-sharp teeth glistened in the light. Growling, Zahid got to his feet and swiped forcefully at the creature’s maw, a red blur following the movement of his axe as it cut deep. To no surprise, the monster withdrew its head while gurgling in pain.

“That means ‘keep out’,” Zahid remarked… before his eyes widened and he dived out of the way. A split-second later, the sabre-beast’s paw struck down where he’d been standing. Dagger-like metal claws raked around; the three of us fanned out to avoid them.

“It didn’t listen, Zahid,” I joked despite myself. A quick glance at my stinging palm – no deep red blood, but neon blue liquid instead. Weird…

Unable to reach any of us, our would-be assailant pulled its limb back, yet kept its claws at the doorway. Its other forepaw joined the first, and it began trying to tear the carriage open.

“I can try to fire at it!” Kendal proposed, grappling with her bow. She too had pink oozes where you might expect blood.

“You’ll just piss it off more,” Zahid claimed. “We need to get out of here.”

And… he looked to be bleeding, but maybe that was actually his Lokon shade of red…

“How? The doors are too high up for us to reach.”

I tried to leap up for it, to emphasise my point… and purposefully stunted my leap just in case those claws struck out at me.

Suddenly, the sabre-beast cried out in pain; it moved its paws out of the now-dented doorway, and its swift thudding footsteps assured us that it had run off elsewhere.

Zahid looked at the two of us, trying to mask his relief.

“£10 says it was Bao.”

A thud lighter than anything the monster had yet caused sounded out from above us, and Dakota peered over the edge of the doorway.

“Any of you injured?” she asked immediately.

“Bumps and scrapes, we’ll survive,” Kendal responded with a nod.

“Good. Bao’s distracting the monster so I can help you out.”

With that, she laid her spear across the doorway, leaving a wide-enough space to one side – she then leant in through the space, holding onto the spear with one hand and reaching her other hand out.

“Alex, you’re first,” she instructed. “Longer weapon.”

Y’know, I really would’ve loved to have made an innuendo there, but unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in the frame of mind to think of it right then. Instead, after switching my sword to my left hand, I focused on leaping up, just about managing to grab hold of Dakota’s hand. She began to hoist me up, straining and using the spear for leverage.

“Help push him up!” she commanded Kendal and Zahid – they each took one of my feet and propelled me upwards. It was quite a weird feeling, being hoisted like that… with reasonable effort from my friends, I managed to escape the carriage, quickly breaking off from Dakota and clambering onto the train’s side.

Gaining my bearings, I saw Bao being chased up and down the platform by the sabre-beast. The giant predator was attempting to pounce on him.

“Bao’s suggested aiming for its belly,” Dakota recounted to me. “No blades.”

“Got it,” I smiled to her, before vaulting off of the upturned train and landing down on the platform, a little more uneasily than I would’ve liked.

“Hey Alex nice to see you help me please!” Bao wailed while darting away from another thunderous pounce. Well, we had its modus operandi figured out, so…

I took one of my arcing swipes in the direction of the bladed beast, sending out a blue crescent which struck it without much effect. Still, it turned its head to look at me, eyes focusing right onto me. Regret pulsed through me like a static shock. This was the same damn thing as with the lightning yeti on the roof… what was it with me and goading monsters to lunge for me?!

As expected, the huge predator began charging my way. The moment it pounced, I ran forward, sword raised, and sliced through its gut while avoiding its claws, noticing a few yellow-stained cuts already there as I did. My sprint continued until I was well clear of the monster, turning only when I was confident I had passed its dual-bladed tail. The sabre-beast was reeling from the attack, howling in pain and breathing heavily. It wasn’t fading away, though. Perhaps it was simply too big for that attack to be enough? After all, the Krakenessie took a whole flurry of attacks and that was gigantic.

“Stand clear!”

Kendal’s voice. I assumed I was already clear, but…

I looked back towards the train, and saw Kendal standing atop it with a comically-oversized arrow glowing in her bow.

I took a few (dozen) steps back to be extra safe.

With a look of relish in her face, Kendal shot the huge arrow at the injured predator, knocking it onto its side (though, somehow, the arrow was blunted by its contact with the creature’s serrated flank).

Dakota gracefully leapt from the train, and strolled determinedly towards the now-dazed sabre-beast. As she did, she span her spear around, building up an intense green glow around the weapon’s head. Upon reaching the monster, she swiftly drove her weapon deep into its open wound: it snarled loudly, before smudging into the air.

Bao and I began walking over to our de-facto leader, while Kendal and Zahid made their way down from the train.

“You know what these things need?” Bao began. “An alarm system. ‘Heads up, we’re coming, so brace yourselves.’”

“Yeah… or, like, a schedule,” I countered. “‘Book when you want to turn up. Not on weekends, please.’”

“And then we could just pretend we’re booked out already!”

“Great thinking!”

“As soon as you’re both done,” Dakota addressed us with a half-smile, “any ideas on how we can at least get the train upright?”

“… we could always try a team blast from the other side?” Kendal proposed.

With no other ideas, we crossed over to the opposing platform (cautious of standing on the tracks in case our powers couldn’t protect us from a lethal electric shock). It seemed that the station was temporarily closed now, as no other trains had arrived and we had a clear aim at the tipped-up train. Then it was a simple matter of crossing our weapons and firing upon it.

The rainbow-coloured torrent that ensued didn’t simply flip the train up. It completely enveloped the vehicle, masking it until we finally gave up all hope of making out what was happening beyond the colourful haze.

We stopped the blast and were greeted with an upright, pristine train.

“… damn, I’ve got some old toys to fix when I get home…” Bao exclaimed after several seconds of silence.

“Excuse me…” a shaky voice spoke from behind us. A man with a moustache, maybe in his 30s and dressed in station attire, was looking at us all with confusion on his face.

“Who are you…? I mean, I know you’re the Painters… and thank you, for stopping that thing and for…”

He nodded towards the train.

“You’re welcome!” Kendal grinned at him.

“But… what kind of power is that? And how are you doing the…?”

Trailing off again, he waved his hand in front of his face.

“… doing what, sorry?” I asked for clarification.

“The… blurry colour thing…”

Not clarified enough…

“Your faces…”

Kendal took him by the shoulders, standing on tip-toes to account for the height difference and be as close to his face as possible.

“What do you mean…?” she asked with almost threatening undertones.

“You each… have… I can’t see your faces. Well, no one can…”

Lokonessence, now with auto-anonymity.

Needless to say… Kendal sulked all the way back to Dakota’s. The rest of us were relieved, at least.

And when I wiped away the blue “blood” on my body in Dakota’s bathroom, there was no sign of any cuts. Was Lokonessence healing us, too? Just… how powerful was this thing?