I froze, completely, maybe for the first time in my life, definitely the first time since I took up the mantle of being a villain.
“Help me,” He muttered.
“I don’t know how,” I said sincerely.
The smoke seemed to ooze in and out his mouth, nose, and ears, and then suddenly it all disappeared inside of him. His body shook violently for a few seconds and then his face turned blank, all the pain that was there evaporated, and the normal human expressions were gone.
“Gambler are you ok?” I said, but no answer came.
Then I heard that noise again, it was inhuman, it scratched my ears from the inside and made my body ick. All of a sudden Gambler, or what he used to be, rose his hand, and the black smoke spread out of it in my direction.
I was still in shock, but luckily for me, almost two decades of training paid off and my instincts kicked in forcing me to dodge the smoke wave. The air around it warped and the noise became louder. I tried to reason with him one more before he launched another wave I dodged once again, but this one was too close to comfort. I had no choice but to attack him.
My powers were quite unique compared to other heroes and villains. I could enchant my body to way above human levels I could even match the strongest Heroes like The Sentinel or The Hit in raw strength, or The Quicker in inhumane levels of speed. I could also impact other people in negative or positive ways. At the beginning of my career, they thought I was doing magic so they fiddled with the name Mage, but it didn’t stick for long, and the name Enchanter stuck with me after that.
So I did it, I enchanted my strengths to 70% of power and gave the rest of it to speed so I could doge way easier and attack faster. I lounged myself forward and attacked him with full power. As I was about to hit him with my fist, he dodged to the side with ease and hit me just below my ribs. The pain shoot thru my body as I stopped several meters behind me.
So he could still use his powers. The Gambler had the powers of prediction. And you could guess it, he first used them to cheat people out of their money on poker tables and to rob casino blackjack tables, and before you know it his picture was in every casino in the country with the caption “Kick on sight!”
Him and I sparred all the time because he just made you be better, you could rarely hit him and you had to find a way to find smarter, more unique, and think way outside the box. But the one thing was weird, him hitting me this hard, was way out of the ordinary. When we sparred he always used 100% of his strength and it never fazed me even when I was just lightly infused and now I was almost at the full strength.
I attacked a few more times, and with the same result, he dodged and managed to either graze me or hit me with full force. One of the hits was direct to my nose and the blood went everywhere. I enchanted my healing for a brief moment in order to stop the bleeding and used that time to plan my next move. Attacking him like this just wore me out, he seemed to be completely fine.
So I switched my enchantment more in favor of speed and ran around the backyard collecting wooden pillars from his fence. They were I broke them off in half to make both sides shard. I had around 20 stakes around me now while he stood there just watching me.
I enchanted my concentration and left the speed running on high percentage and started throwing them at him. He dodged the first ten with ease, but then I completely changed my pattern throwing the next five off the side and before they even arrived at his location I enchanted my speed to full, took one more stake from the ground, and lounged myself forward, I crossed the ten-meter distance between us in less than 0.1 seconds and tried to jab the stake in his stomach. He managed to react but not in time and I stabbed him into the side, taking the huge chunk of meat with me.
Looking back at him I expected to find him down or bent over, but he was standing tall. There was no blood or anything, only the black smoke coming from his body, forming around the wound and closing it off. I repeated the process once again, stabbing him in the shoulder this time. He did lead off a loud screech and the wound was sealed off in a matter of seconds. I was about to continue with my attacks, but he, or it, cocked his head to the side, turned around, and went sprinting towards the house. Instead of going in, he took the giant leap, jumped on the roof, leaped again, and jumped to the front of the house.
I stood there dumbfounded by everything that had happened so far. I left the backyard and went straight to my car. I had to pay Dr. Anderson a visit and see what he knew about all of this. The Lab he worked at was near and arrived there shortly.
I went straight to his office with the determination to find some answers. Once there I noticed that the doors were slightly open and the light was on.
“Anderson we need to talk now!” I said barging in.
But same as in the Gambler’s house no answer came back, but this time I didn’t have to go looking around. The doctor was lying next to his desk with three bullet holes, one at his forehead, one at his hearth, and one on the right side of his chest. The Spectre was here…
Leave a Reply