He heard some mechanical movement from behind him and then a solid clunk as something latched into place. He reached an arm back behind his head and took hold of the handle that was there. He felt the thing release from Panther’s back and brought it forward. The handle had telescoped out from a round central core, which also held two semicircular blades. “An axe. Nice,” he said. He could see how the blades slid together into the core for the axe to stow compacted on Panther’s back. In his hand the core looked about nine inches across, and the blades a diameter of twelve inches or so. That meant the real blades outside were roughly six feet tall.
“This might be big enough to block some incoming fire, too,” Matt mused. “Yeah? No kidding.” He checked the axe, and could see the two attachment clamp points on the back face of the core. Then he looked at Panther’s forearms and saw matching clamp points on both of them. He placed his left arm against the axe and the clamps engaged. The handle retracted and the axe was now a shield. Matt chuckled. “Awesome, man. You are one sweet-ass ride. Damn, I really need to stash you somewhere to finish your repairs and get home though. I’m probably going to sleep through all my classes tomorrow now. Yeah? Oh, that will definitely be useful. It must be in the impact crater still, let’s go pull it out.”
– – –
Matt rushed into the family room when he heard the channel 34 nightly news theme music on the television. He hadn’t previously been so dedicated to it like his parents were, but since Cheer Raider showed up he never missed it. “We start out with breaking news from Bensonville, where a third monster is on a rampage. Debbie Woods is on the scene. Debbie?”
“Richard, it is a scene of horror here as the new creature has set fire to a series of homes. The fire department is out in force but they are being overwhelmed. Wait, what’s that?” Debbie turned and the camera panned off her and zoomed in on a figure in the distance. “And here she is, the heroine Cheer Raider! This is a live exclusive on KHNT, Cheer Raider in Bensonville fighting the fire monster!”
“What?” Matt exclaimed. “Cheer Raider’s attacks are fire based, she’s going to have a lot of trouble against a fire adversary!”
“So that’s what all those sirens were,” said Matt’s mom. Matt moved to leave the room.
“Hey, aren’t you going to watch? I thought you were a big fanboy for her,” Matt’s younger brother Neil said.
“No! I’ve got to… go… to my room, because… I can’t stand here and watch her lose,” Matt stammered.
“Suit yourself. I’ll record it for you in case you change your mind,” Neil said.
Rather than heading upstairs, Matt quietly went outside. Sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to visit Panther was starting to become a habit. So was his mom scolding him for leaving his bike outside. As he pedaled off down the road, he said, “You know, this wasn’t such a big deal when it was just goofing off with weapons practice in the woods, but this is a real emergency. At this rate I’m not going to make it in time.” Then he came to a quick stop and dropped his feet to the ground. “No kidding? Well alright then, let’s give it a try. Emergency pilot retrieval, dimensional fold, activate!” Matt and his bike promptly vanished in a burst of light.
– – –
“Well, they do say to fight fire with fire,” Cheer Raider said.
“Wouldn’t that be just a metaphor?” asked the squeaky voice in her head.
“Not tonight it isn’t.” Then she switched to a shout, “Hey, ugly! Over here!” The creature was insectoid in form, same as the others, like a guy in a big ugly bug suit. Except this one was launching gobs of goo out of its arms, and where the goo from both arms mixed together, they instantly burst into flame. It ignored her. “Maybe this will get your attention. Pom-poms!” Her pom-poms appeared in her hands with short puffs of flame. They were a mix of red, orange, and yellow, matching her uniform. “Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst!” She put her hands together and thrust them forward, launching a fireball at the creature. Then several more. “Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst! Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst! Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst!”
It finally turned towards her, firing from both arms. She jumped aside, dodging the blasts, but she could tell she wouldn’t be able to keep that up. She tossed the pom-poms aside and they vanished back into puffs of flame. She brought her hands together and called out “Baton!” As she moved her arms apart, a twirling baton appeared in her hands, starting with the metallic red shaft and finishing at the white tips. Once it was fully formed, she transferred it to her right hand and started twirling it. “Baton Twirl Blazing Shield!” Hot embers shot out from the ends of the spinning baton like grinder sparks as the glowing shield formed in front of it.
Flames licked around the edge of the shield as a continuous barrage of the monster’s flammable goo impacted upon it. Cheer Raider started falling back as the monster approached her. Eventually it stopped shooting, growled and chittered at her, then turned away, back towards the houses. “Dammit, distance hits aren’t going to cut it. I need to take one of those arms out. Time to be aggressive. B, E, aggressive.” She tossed the spinning baton in the air. “Spinning…” When it came down again, now half again as long as it had been, she caught it and kept the spin going. “Ignition…” She tossed it up again. “Burning…” This time rather than waiting for it to come all the way back down, she thrust her hand up and caught it tightly, halting the spin. It was now double the original 28-inch length. “Pike!” One end of the baton burst into a blaze of sparks as a ten inch pointed spike appeared.
She lowered the weapon, took it in both hands, and ran at the creature. “Hey, fucker, I’m not done with you yet!” It turned back and resumed shooting at her. She managed to dodge most of the blasts, but one finally got through. It hit quite hard, somehow she managed to maintain her charge, knowing that another hit meant she would be cooked. She aimed for one of the arms. At the last moment, it thrust its arms upwards. She tried to adjust, but it threw her off balance. The pike glanced harmlessly off the creature’s armored carapace, and she lost her grip on it while she fell to the ground, her momentum causing her to roll for several feet. The pike hit the ground and vanished.
She looked up from the pavement, the creature had her dead to rights, aiming at her with both arms. She instinctively closed her eyes and put her own arms up to guard her face, not that it would protect her in the least. The creature fired. She heard two large impacts, one to her right and other directly in front of her. She also wasn’t consumed in flames. She lowered her arms and opened her eyes. Embedded in the ground in front of her, shielding her from the creature’s attack, was a huge axe with what looked like green fire around its blade edges. She looked up along the axe’s handle, past the large arm holding it, and saw the giant robot with a cat-like face and green glowing eyes. The pavement was cracked where it had landed on its knees.
The robot gave her a thumbs-up with its other four-fingered hand. Then ports on its shoulders opened up, and the guns concealed inside shot yellow energy bolts towards the back side of the axe. It pulled the axe free and stood up, revealing the creature in very sorry shape. Cheer Raider called out, “Megaphone!” At her command, an acoustic megaphone flamed into existence in her hand. It too matched her uniform, red with “Cheer” written on each side. She aimed it at the creature and shouted into it, “Roar of the Crowd Scorching Sonic Blast!” The resulting wave of condensed heat and sound slammed into the creature, destroying it utterly.
“Nice!” said Matt inside the cockpit. “Panther, can you detect life signs inside the burning houses? Give it to me. Oh shit, look at that. Let’s go. Activate the plasma claws.” He stowed the axe on his arm in shield mode, ran to one of the burning houses, slashed the wall open with bright green claws that appeared on each fingertip, and plunged first one arm, then the other inside. He stepped into the street and lowered his hands to the ground, depositing the child and the firefighter he had rescued. “What else needs doing, let’s see, what are the firemen focusing on? Over there!” Most of the affected houses had been abandoned to the fires as lost causes, the main effort now was to keep it from spreading to the other houses. Matt deployed Panther’s axe again and used it to smash down the ruined homes that were putting their neighbors at risk.
Cheer Raider watched the robot finish its assistance to the firefighters, then some kind of aircraft, really just a flying wing, descended from the air. The robot reached up and took hold of handles on the underside, and the wing lifted it off the ground. “And I thought all of this couldn’t get any weirder. Sugarshine, can you follow that thing? I want to know everything about it.” Suddenly, the robot and its wing vanished into thin air. “Holy shit!” she said.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” replied the voice in her head. “It may have turned invisible, but I’m pretty sure I can still follow it.”
– – –
“This is the house?” Cheer Raider asked.
“I followed him on his bicycle back to here and saw him through the window above the porch. The light went out a few minutes before you got here. He looks to be of high school age, like yourself.”
“Thanks, Sugarshine. Time to go say hello.” The porch roof was about has high as she could jump with her magically-enhanced body, but she made it up okay. She pushed the window up and climbed inside, noticing the screen had been removed and was leaning against the wall beneath it. The room’s occupant did not stir, apparently he had fallen asleep immediately. She turned on a lamp and sat down on his bed next to him, which was enough to wake him.
“Oh my God! Cheer Raider!” he said, sitting up. Seeing her up close for the first time, she was even more beautiful than Matt had expected.
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