Penumbra dug away the roof of the old police station with their claws, jumping aside every time a jet of hot air blew into them. Max was worried, because Penny was bad with heat. No matter how much they hardened their exterior, extreme heat and light caused them harm. It was one of the reasons Penny lived inside of her most of the time, after all.
I’ll push through it, Penny said. You’ll just have to eat more protein bars for a while.
“Blegh,” Maxine joked. “Can I at least get the chocolate ones?” She pulled away a sheet of plating, and immediately a fireball exploded upwards, scorching Penumbra’s forearms and face. They hissed and scurried back.
We need a different approach, Penny said. Also, the chocolate ones you like are really bad for you, Max.
“We’ll work it off,” Max mumbled, “and you’re right. Maybe we can get in through one of the windows?” She looked over the edge of the building. In the distance, a man in a fireman’s outfit seemed to be sauntering away from the building almost casually. That was… strange. “Penny?”
I see it. Might be a perpetrator. I’ll do what I can to memorize his face. Not that it was going to help much. The fireman’s face was obscured by a hat and popped collar. For now, let’s— They were interrupted by the sound of glass breaking. A chair flew out of the second story window. People?
“Looks like it!” Max said, and she began to carefully crawl down the building. Now that she knew for sure there were still people inside, fighting for their life, she was torn between hurrying and trying to minimize structural damage. She was only halfway down to her destination when she began to slip. “Penny?!”
It’s the heat, Penny said. Making myself sticky is hard. I think my exterior is melting.
“Shit. Claws.” They’d come a long way since Penny had bound themself to Maxine’s nervous system. At first, Max had needed the symbiote to do anything remotely ‘super’. In time, instead of two bodies closely intertwined, they had started to merge. Sometimes, Max and Penny really were one. And their body was a shared vessel, with shared control. The greatly enhanced strength was something Max was just used to now, her muscles and bones denser than that of any normal person.
Shoving her fingers into solid brick barely hurt, even without Penny at full strength. They climbed down the building, slower now, shards of brick tumbling down. They were only half a dozen feet away from the window when a woman jumped out the window and landed on the hedges below.
“Wh—” Max said. “Okay, good call.” A second later, the boy they’d seen run inside stuck his head out the window. Okay, so he was the one that had gotten her out. So he would be jumping out next. His head retreated. Max assumed he was going to take a running start. Not the worst idea, but if he ran too far back he could clear the hedges entirely and make a pretty rough landing. Two stories up from an old pre-war era building onto sheer concrete would likely cause some broken bones.
Grab him when he jumps? Penny offered. Max nodded. He’d get the fright of his life, but if it kept him from shattering his shins it was probably a good trade-off. Making sure her fingers were dug into the stone, she got ready for the boy to jump out. A second later, a wall of fire exploded out from the window and hit them in the face. Penny hissed, Max hurt and Penumbra fell, their fingers dislodging from the wall.
At the last second, they managed to get their bearings enough to avoid crashing onto the woman who was still scrambling to get out of the hedges. The downside of their increased density was an appropriate increase in mass. They had to carefully read the signs when stepping into the elevator. Most of the time, they teetered on the edge of Max Capacity. The irony was not lost on them.
The woman tried to scream, started coughing, and rolled out of the bushes. She was scrambling to get away, but she was covered in cuts, bruises and burns and clearly had trouble standing. Max clawed her way out and pushed herself to her feet. Smoke was coming off of her. “Take five,” she mumbled to Penny.
The viscous, purple-ish goop that made up the symbiote — and Penumbra’s suit — retreated, into her pores, into her skin, and now she looked like Just Max. Her clothes were technically made of the same thing most of her body was made of these days, so she made sure she wore a hoodie and a face mask when Penny retreated. Other than that, it was just a leather jacket, hoodie and ripped jeans. She wouldn’t stick out in a crowd.
“Hey,” she said to the woman, sticking her hands up, “don’t panic.” The woman turned to her in a panic, and then relaxed when she didn’t see a six foot tall ichor-monster, but instead a small woman. “Listen, you’re hurt. The EMT’s are on their way.” She pointed to the other side of the parking lot. “Try to sit down over there, then don’t move too much. You probably have a concussion. Do you understand me?” The woman paused, then nodded. “Okay,” Max said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Yeah, you tell her, Penny said weakly, and Max couldn’t help but smile.
“Do as I say, not as I do,” she chuckled to herself. “Okay?” The woman nodded again. “Alright,” Maxine said. She was halfway to running back into the building when she remembered something. “Oh, other than that boy, is there anyone else inside the building?”
The woman thought for a second, then shook her head. “I don’t think so, no,” she said. “It was just me.” Max looked at her for a second. The woman looked like she was hiding something, but also like she was too much in shock to really lie. She was going to have to trust her.
Turning back to the inferno, Max considered her options. She could jump in through one of the other windows, but without Penny covering her, that was going to hurt like hell, and add more oxygen to the fire. The backdraft was likely to charbroil her to perfection. But what other options did she have? The boy was still in there, and she had to hope he was still alive. She saw what looked like a shadow next to a window on the other side of the building, and leapt without thinking.
In mid-air, an explosion rocked the building. Something must have caught fire, and a wall of hot air and pressure slammed into her. Thankfully, Max wasn’t nearly as petite as she looked, and her trajectory took her next to the window anyway. She slammed her hand into the wall as hard as she could, trying to gain purchase.
“Penny!” she shouted. “Need your help!” The symbiote covered her again. They’d have to recover later, there was no time for self-preservation right now. Inside the window, it was clear the boy had been slammed head-first into the glass. He was bleeding badly, and his eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. She got the feeling he couldn’t even see her. He turned around unsteadily to look at the fire, and then the floor seemed to give way and he fell down.
“Fuck!” Penumbra roared, and they tore the window out of its mount. Immediately, heat blasted them in the face again. There was no time. No time to think, no time for pain. They crawled inside. They could feel their skin sizzle. Down in the fire was the boy. He wasn’t going to last more than a few seconds at this rate.
Penumbra jumped down, the flames licking at them. It was hotter than anything they’d ever felt, like their entire body was being held to a cooking plate. Penny was screaming, doing what they could to hold on, and Max’s brain was starting to shut down its higher thinking functions to keep moving. They wouldn’t survive this for very long either.
Landing next to the boy, they pulled him out of the wreckage. He was a ragdoll, broken limbs hanging limply. His clothes were on fire and falling off of him. His hair had been burned off. The words for curses had all evaporated in the heat. Penumbra looked around. They couldn’t see an exit, couldn’t see much of anything, couldn’t think properly.
Up, Penny thought, and Max agreed. Brain was full of fog. Smoke. Penumbra jumped. Their back hit something solid. Roof? More heat. Fire. Falling again. Then, something solid wrapped around them. That was strange. There was a blue light. Cool, fresh air. Then water. Lots and lots and lots of water.
“I’m up!!” Penumbra shouted, then shook like a dog and looked around. Above them, floating comfortably, was Rue. Her translucent shell glowed softly, as did the claw that had plucked her and the boy out of the rubble. It looked like one of those that arcades usually had. Around her, several translucent tubes were hosing water onto the fire, connected to nearby fire hydrants. “Rue!”
“Keep your voice down,” Rue said grumpily. “I got here as fast as I could, but you almost got yourself killed anyway, didn’t you? What were you thinking? Victoria is going to—” She stopped when Penumbra opened their arms and showed the boy they were still holding on to. “Shit,” she said, then looked over at something Penumbra couldn’t see. “Hold on, I have to go talk to the fire brigade.” She pulled her collar up over her nose and flew over the building like it was nothing while the giant mechanical claw deposited Max, Penny and the boy on a nearby roof before it disappeared.
Rue was not a superhero. Explicitly so. She felt deeply and strongly that she had no responsibility to put herself in danger any more now than she did before she had gotten her powers. That said, she also couldn’t really help herself. Penumbra liked to imagine they were rubbing off on her. They sat down.
“How are you holding up?” Max asked as Penny retreated inside of her again.
Pain, Penny said. But I’ll be okay. I’ll take those chocolate protein bars now, thank you. That hurt like hell. Max nodded. Her face and arms stung. She looked like a lightly boiled lobster, and her skin was especially sensitive where it touched her clothes. When Max got hurt, Penny could put her back together. When Penny was hurt, they could retreat into Maxine, rest and heal. But fire hurt them both. They’d need a day or two of hard rest to be back at even half strength.
But that was secondary. They weren’t done yet. The boy was in bad shape. He was breathing, but it was labored, rasping. His lungs were probably burned from the heat, and he would probably never walk or see again. “He’s not going to make it,” Max said with sadness. She hated not being able to save someone.
A few minutes later, the translucent fire hoses were replaced with physical ones, and Rue landed next to them on the roof. She only needed a moment to read the situation. “Do you think there’s time to get him to a hospital?” Max shook her head and frowned. Rue paused for a second. “Someone else can wear Penny for a second, right?” she asked.
It was, of course, more complicated than that. I’m not a second-hand suit, Penny said quietly, but the humor was still there in their voice. Max stepped aside, letting Penny front for a moment while she collected her thoughts. “Ordinarily, yes,” Penny said, her voice coming out of Max’s mouth. Rue was used to it by now, but she clearly needed to make the mental switch as she realized she was talking to someone else all of a sudden. “I am too weak, right now. I can’t completely separate myself from Max right now. I’m afraid I wouldn’t survive it.”
“Then why not a little bit?” Rue said.
Max and Penny looked down at the boy. “If it helps save his life…” Max said, putting her hand on the boy’s chest. His breathing was getting more shallow by the second. “You think it’s worth a shot?”
“Everything’s worth a shot to save someone’s life,” Penny said as they detached a piece of themself. It traveled down Maxine’s arm, and they injected it into the boy’s chest. “Here goes nothing.”
Elamimax
Ayyyy we’re back and I actually have an upload schedule now :p sorry for the people who have been waiting. If it’s any consolation, the book itself is already 29 chapters long so you have something to look forward to! If you can’t wait (or you just want to support me doing this for ever and ever) you can, of course, always subscribe to the Patreon. There’s about 66 unpublished chapters of various novels on there, which means you get about 2 novels worth (and about 1 every two months) for the price of like, a cup of coffee. Plus, it helps me out, which also owns.
Anyway, that’s enough out of me. I’ll see y’all in a day or two ;3
Penumbra dug away the roof of the old police station with their claws, jumping aside every time a jet of hot air blew into them. Max was worried, because Penny was bad with heat. No matter how much they hardened their exterior, extreme heat and light caused them harm. It was one of the reasons Penny lived inside of her most of the time, after all.
I’ll push through it, Penny said. You’ll just have to eat more protein bars for a while.
“Blegh,” Maxine joked. “Can I at least get the chocolate ones?” She pulled away a sheet of plating, and immediately a fireball exploded upwards, scorching Penumbra’s forearms and face. They hissed and scurried back.
We need a different approach, Penny said. Also, the chocolate ones you like are really bad for you, Max.
“We’ll work it off,” Max mumbled, “and you’re right. Maybe we can get in through one of the windows?” She looked over the edge of the building. In the distance, a man in a fireman’s outfit seemed to be sauntering away from the building almost casually. That was… strange. “Penny?”
I see it. Might be a perpetrator. I’ll do what I can to memorize his face. Not that it was going to help much. The fireman’s face was obscured by a hat and popped collar. For now, let’s— They were interrupted by the sound of glass breaking. A chair flew out of the second story window. People?
“Looks like it!” Max said, and she began to carefully crawl down the building. Now that she knew for sure there were still people inside, fighting for their life, she was torn between hurrying and trying to minimize structural damage. She was only halfway down to her destination when she began to slip. “Penny?!”
It’s the heat, Penny said. Making myself sticky is hard. I think my exterior is melting.
“Shit. Claws.” They’d come a long way since Penny had bound themself to Maxine’s nervous system. At first, Max had needed the symbiote to do anything remotely ‘super’. In time, instead of two bodies closely intertwined, they had started to merge. Sometimes, Max and Penny really were one. And their body was a shared vessel, with shared control. The greatly enhanced strength was something Max was just used to now, her muscles and bones denser than that of any normal person.
Shoving her fingers into solid brick barely hurt, even without Penny at full strength. They climbed down the building, slower now, shards of brick tumbling down. They were only half a dozen feet away from the window when a woman jumped out the window and landed on the hedges below.
“Wh—” Max said. “Okay, good call.” A second later, the boy they’d seen run inside stuck his head out the window. Okay, so he was the one that had gotten her out. So he would be jumping out next. His head retreated. Max assumed he was going to take a running start. Not the worst idea, but if he ran too far back he could clear the hedges entirely and make a pretty rough landing. Two stories up from an old pre-war era building onto sheer concrete would likely cause some broken bones.
Grab him when he jumps? Penny offered. Max nodded. He’d get the fright of his life, but if it kept him from shattering his shins it was probably a good trade-off. Making sure her fingers were dug into the stone, she got ready for the boy to jump out. A second later, a wall of fire exploded out from the window and hit them in the face. Penny hissed, Max hurt and Penumbra fell, their fingers dislodging from the wall.
At the last second, they managed to get their bearings enough to avoid crashing onto the woman who was still scrambling to get out of the hedges. The downside of their increased density was an appropriate increase in mass. They had to carefully read the signs when stepping into the elevator. Most of the time, they teetered on the edge of Max Capacity. The irony was not lost on them.
The woman tried to scream, started coughing, and rolled out of the bushes. She was scrambling to get away, but she was covered in cuts, bruises and burns and clearly had trouble standing. Max clawed her way out and pushed herself to her feet. Smoke was coming off of her. “Take five,” she mumbled to Penny.
The viscous, purple-ish goop that made up the symbiote — and Penumbra’s suit — retreated, into her pores, into her skin, and now she looked like Just Max. Her clothes were technically made of the same thing most of her body was made of these days, so she made sure she wore a hoodie and a face mask when Penny retreated. Other than that, it was just a leather jacket, hoodie and ripped jeans. She wouldn’t stick out in a crowd.
“Hey,” she said to the woman, sticking her hands up, “don’t panic.” The woman turned to her in a panic, and then relaxed when she didn’t see a six foot tall ichor-monster, but instead a small woman. “Listen, you’re hurt. The EMT’s are on their way.” She pointed to the other side of the parking lot. “Try to sit down over there, then don’t move too much. You probably have a concussion. Do you understand me?” The woman paused, then nodded. “Okay,” Max said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Yeah, you tell her, Penny said weakly, and Max couldn’t help but smile.
“Do as I say, not as I do,” she chuckled to herself. “Okay?” The woman nodded again. “Alright,” Maxine said. She was halfway to running back into the building when she remembered something. “Oh, other than that boy, is there anyone else inside the building?”
The woman thought for a second, then shook her head. “I don’t think so, no,” she said. “It was just me.” Max looked at her for a second. The woman looked like she was hiding something, but also like she was too much in shock to really lie. She was going to have to trust her.
Turning back to the inferno, Max considered her options. She could jump in through one of the other windows, but without Penny covering her, that was going to hurt like hell, and add more oxygen to the fire. The backdraft was likely to charbroil her to perfection. But what other options did she have? The boy was still in there, and she had to hope he was still alive. She saw what looked like a shadow next to a window on the other side of the building, and leapt without thinking.
In mid-air, an explosion rocked the building. Something must have caught fire, and a wall of hot air and pressure slammed into her. Thankfully, Max wasn’t nearly as petite as she looked, and her trajectory took her next to the window anyway. She slammed her hand into the wall as hard as she could, trying to gain purchase.
“Penny!” she shouted. “Need your help!” The symbiote covered her again. They’d have to recover later, there was no time for self-preservation right now. Inside the window, it was clear the boy had been slammed head-first into the glass. He was bleeding badly, and his eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. She got the feeling he couldn’t even see her. He turned around unsteadily to look at the fire, and then the floor seemed to give way and he fell down.
“Fuck!” Penumbra roared, and they tore the window out of its mount. Immediately, heat blasted them in the face again. There was no time. No time to think, no time for pain. They crawled inside. They could feel their skin sizzle. Down in the fire was the boy. He wasn’t going to last more than a few seconds at this rate.
Penumbra jumped down, the flames licking at them. It was hotter than anything they’d ever felt, like their entire body was being held to a cooking plate. Penny was screaming, doing what they could to hold on, and Max’s brain was starting to shut down its higher thinking functions to keep moving. They wouldn’t survive this for very long either.
Landing next to the boy, they pulled him out of the wreckage. He was a ragdoll, broken limbs hanging limply. His clothes were on fire and falling off of him. His hair had been burned off. The words for curses had all evaporated in the heat. Penumbra looked around. They couldn’t see an exit, couldn’t see much of anything, couldn’t think properly.
Up, Penny thought, and Max agreed. Brain was full of fog. Smoke. Penumbra jumped. Their back hit something solid. Roof? More heat. Fire. Falling again. Then, something solid wrapped around them. That was strange. There was a blue light. Cool, fresh air. Then water. Lots and lots and lots of water.
“I’m up!!” Penumbra shouted, then shook like a dog and looked around. Above them, floating comfortably, was Rue. Her translucent shell glowed softly, as did the claw that had plucked her and the boy out of the rubble. It looked like one of those that arcades usually had. Around her, several translucent tubes were hosing water onto the fire, connected to nearby fire hydrants. “Rue!”
“Keep your voice down,” Rue said grumpily. “I got here as fast as I could, but you almost got yourself killed anyway, didn’t you? What were you thinking? Victoria is going to—” She stopped when Penumbra opened their arms and showed the boy they were still holding on to. “Shit,” she said, then looked over at something Penumbra couldn’t see. “Hold on, I have to go talk to the fire brigade.” She pulled her collar up over her nose and flew over the building like it was nothing while the giant mechanical claw deposited Max, Penny and the boy on a nearby roof before it disappeared.
Rue was not a superhero. Explicitly so. She felt deeply and strongly that she had no responsibility to put herself in danger any more now than she did before she had gotten her powers. That said, she also couldn’t really help herself. Penumbra liked to imagine they were rubbing off on her. They sat down.
“How are you holding up?” Max asked as Penny retreated inside of her again.
Pain, Penny said. But I’ll be okay. I’ll take those chocolate protein bars now, thank you. That hurt like hell. Max nodded. Her face and arms stung. She looked like a lightly boiled lobster, and her skin was especially sensitive where it touched her clothes. When Max got hurt, Penny could put her back together. When Penny was hurt, they could retreat into Maxine, rest and heal. But fire hurt them both. They’d need a day or two of hard rest to be back at even half strength.
But that was secondary. They weren’t done yet. The boy was in bad shape. He was breathing, but it was labored, rasping. His lungs were probably burned from the heat, and he would probably never walk or see again. “He’s not going to make it,” Max said with sadness. She hated not being able to save someone.
A few minutes later, the translucent fire hoses were replaced with physical ones, and Rue landed next to them on the roof. She only needed a moment to read the situation. “Do you think there’s time to get him to a hospital?” Max shook her head and frowned. Rue paused for a second. “Someone else can wear Penny for a second, right?” she asked.
It was, of course, more complicated than that. I’m not a second-hand suit, Penny said quietly, but the humor was still there in their voice. Max stepped aside, letting Penny front for a moment while she collected her thoughts. “Ordinarily, yes,” Penny said, her voice coming out of Max’s mouth. Rue was used to it by now, but she clearly needed to make the mental switch as she realized she was talking to someone else all of a sudden. “I am too weak, right now. I can’t completely separate myself from Max right now. I’m afraid I wouldn’t survive it.”
“Then why not a little bit?” Rue said.
Max and Penny looked down at the boy. “If it helps save his life…” Max said, putting her hand on the boy’s chest. His breathing was getting more shallow by the second. “You think it’s worth a shot?”
“Everything’s worth a shot to save someone’s life,” Penny said as they detached a piece of themself. It traveled down Maxine’s arm, and they injected it into the boy’s chest. “Here goes nothing.”
Elamimax
Ayyyy we’re back and I actually have an upload schedule now :p sorry for the people who have been waiting. If it’s any consolation, the book itself is already 29 chapters long so you have something to look forward to! If you can’t wait (or you just want to support me doing this for ever and ever) you can, of course, always subscribe to the Patreon. There’s about 66 unpublished chapters of various novels on there, which means you get about 2 novels worth (and about 1 every two months) for the price of like, a cup of coffee. Plus, it helps me out, which also owns.
Anyway, that’s enough out of me. I’ll see y’all in a day or two ;3
