There is no hero here to save you
"Unfortunately, there are no Killcannons left," I quipped. "But there is a little bit of me—and that's much better."
"What?" Eve didn't catch the essence... and I tried so hard: I connected my joke with her prayer, yeah right.
"Just forget it a-a-nd you better duck," this time she immediately understood what I meant, and it's hard not to understand when someone is rushing at you with a furious yell: "You can't hide!"
It's as if he's deliberately prompting her so she doesn't accidentally get caught under a deadly blow...
Eve pressed herself to the floor, arming herself with an iron pipe that came to hand, and the wall above her head exploded into a pile of debris under the blow of her brother's steel fist. And these are not just words—the guy's arm really did turn into a solid piece of steel from the elbow to the fingers.
Having miscalculated his strength somewhat, the guy stumbled forward after the blow, exposing his back to Eve, and she finally decided to fight back against the offender. With a piercing, truly girly, battle cry, she hit her brother with the pipe. The metal entered the flesh as if into heated plasticine; the bat practically cut off a whole piece from the guy's body—from shoulder to waist—like a slice from a loaf of bread.
A creepy sight. Now it's clear that something is definitely wrong with their bodies. Apparently some side effect of the ability to rearrange the atoms of their own flesh, or a consequence of abusing it, or maybe just a congenital defect that for some reason they cannot correct with their power.
"You're trying to kill me, and I don't even know your name, what the hell?!" Eve shouted at his back in annoyance.
"My name?" asked Number Two's head, turning to Eve independently of his body. "My name is: phase two, take two, second attempt, second child, second best."
While he spoke, his body rearranged itself on the fly: his spine sank somewhere inside to change places with his stomach, chest muscles appeared where the shoulder blades had been, his right arm twisted to become the left, grabbing the pipe that still divided the body into two parts; the result of this metamorphosis was that he was again facing his sister. Creepy, now I understand why this day was the worst in her life: you wouldn't wish such a meeting with relatives even on your enemy.
"My name is this," the guy yelled in Eve's face, completely enraged. "'Get back in the tube, boy, you make me sick!'"
At the same time, he got so heated—literally—that he practically evaporated the metal of the pipe with his body, finally restoring its integrity. Shocked by this outburst, both of temperature and fury, Eve recoiled from her brother again.
Well, that's enough mocking the girl, it's about time I intervened.
"Shoes!" the smallest one suddenly shouted out of place, deciding to make his contribution to the conversation and... he actually threw a shoebox in Eve's face.
"Cover your ears, girl," I appeared in front of Sam, knocking aside the harmless projectile, and then clapped my hands with all my might, directing the air wave right into the crowd of strange kids.
An excellent non-lethal way to neutralize weak opponents, by the way: with the proper level of skill, the shock-sound wave turns out to be very powerful, directed, and extremely unpleasant for the sensory organs. My father, perhaps, could blow away a small building or kill a couple of hundred people with such a move.
I am not him yet, but it was enough for the kids: they were thrown back to the wall farthest from us, and the two smallest ones were literally splattered against it like minced meat. There is clearly something wrong with their bodies; even an ordinary person shouldn't have received serious mechanical injuries from such a thing—these kids can turn their bodies into metal, but at the same time are absurdly fragile the rest of the time.
But they know how to regenerate, and, as I can see with my own eyes, even the destruction of the brain does not hinder their ability to reconstruct their bodies.
As I thought, they are not so easy to kill... even brain damage does not stop them from using their power for self-healing. This is highly impressive, I'm even a little jealous—this power is practically godlike, especially if they can extend it to other living beings! If I feel that they are trying to somehow alter my own body, I will need to act quickly, fortunately the overwhelming advantage in speed is on my side. In the worst case, I'll have to use space to finally calm them down; I wouldn't want to bring it to that, of course; after all, Eve somehow handled them herself in the past...
Yes, there must be a weakness; they weren't kept in flasks and called defective compared to Samantha for nothing. And by the way, why can't Eve manipulate her own body as freely as they do?
"O-o-oh, my ears!" a pitiful groan rang out behind me.
Eve had conjured pink headphones for herself, which reliably protected her from the sound, but she hadn't taken care of the old man, and he had to make do with his hands, which obviously turned out to be insufficient. Well, what can I say—collateral damage—and it shouldn't have caused him serious injuries... probably.
"Shoes?" the smallest one came to his senses faster than anyone and looked at his empty hands, but there was nothing there.
Oh, so the restoration is an automatic process, and while there is no intact brain, they are not self-aware. That's something.
"This way, hurry!" Sam suddenly remembered, suggesting that the doctor and I retreat after her into a new pink tunnel.
And although I could have kept them in a state of mincemeat for however long I wanted, this is her superhero origin, not mine—so I won't hog the blanket; let the girl be at the helm.
So I also left the superkids to come to their senses and followed the doctor into Eve's pink rabbit hole... and found myself in a completely pink cave dug into the foundation of the building. The hole behind my back immediately sealed up with pink stone, the same as everything around. Okay, another protective dome—it will buy us a little time, but it won't solve the problem.
"Okay, Doc," dispelling her pink headphones, Eve turned to the old man, "why didn't you tell me that my powers have limits? These kids turn themselves into things, and I can't change them back. The atoms around them, the air atoms inside them—yes—but not them themselves, why is that?"
"Good question," I mentally agree, having asked myself the same thing a second ago.
"I had to do it, Eve," oh, so his ears are fine. "Otherwise you would be omnipotent. We had to give you limits."
How about that phrasing, eh? Not put restrictions on you, not cut down your power, no: give you limits, as if they did her a favor. He's got a slick tongue, you have to give him that.
"You could have turned blood into chocolate, a heart into a rabbit, or even influenced consciousness through neurochemical reactions in the brain; we couldn't allow that, nothing should be that powerful!"
The classic story of a creator terrified of his own creation...
"And the only way to prevent this was to implant a mental block in you—to give you a preconscious conditioning to refuse the alteration of living biomass."
Now this is already interesting. If this block was implanted in her artificially—although she was basically created this way—then it can be removed or at least weakened. Damn it, if this works, then Eve is potentially the most powerful of us all! Yes, I remember that she gets very exhausted from using her powers and cannot, for example, transform several tons of material at once—not exactly Doctor Manhattan in a skirt—but if you affect directly the matter inside the enemy or even their mind, the stamina consumption won't be too high, right?
What is this feeling? I even got goosebumps! Talk about hidden potential! Who the hell is the main character here, me or her? With a competent approach, for example, if this power had fallen to me—I would definitely have found a way to get rid of the mental block, or at least bypass it—or to some other creature of outstanding intelligence like Robot... I can't even believe that Eve just gave up on everything and kept playing around with her dense air.
"Yes, but..." Eve began sluggishly (it seems I accidentally accelerated my perception while thinking, the doctor's revelation impressed me so much), but was interrupted by outside interference.
The pinkish stone cracked and exploded into shards, one of which hit the doc right above the eyebrow, causing a deep gash.
"Leave us alone!" Eve yelled, having reached the boiling point, and, turning into a ridiculous pink juggernaut, rushed to the attack herself.
Well, she could have done that from the very beginning... not to mention that I could have... oh well, let her have fun however she wants. I leaned down to the doc.
"Freeze," I ordered him, taking a medical needle and thread out of his own coat—how far-sighted of him.
"What?" the man didn't understand. "Ouch... what are you..."
He pressed his hand to his forehead, where a second earlier there was a huge gash, and now a neat but still bleeding seam. Super-fast medicine.
"Why are you doing this?!" Eve was screaming meanwhile, attacking Number Two. "Why are you doing this to me?!"
And she really got a taste for it, and now it already looks like a one-sided beating—the little ones can't break through Eve's armor, but she herself scatters them like living pins in a deadly bowling game. And where does so much strength in those thin little arms come from? I don't see any external manifestations of additional reinforcement of her pink armor—like jet streams from elbows or anything like that—it turns out she created something like an artificial cascade of muscles under this armor from dense air. Very inventive, but also quite clumsy at the same time.
"Why?" Number Two yelled back, finding an opportunity for a retaliatory, though useless, strike on Eve's armor. "You, sister, are the only reason we exist! The sole purpose of our creation, our destiny—is to do this!"
He struck Eve again with his stone fists; this time he even managed to chip off a small piece of her armor.
He's really going downhill... wait, is that... he... his skin is peeling off! If it goes on like this, she will finally finish them off now! I managed to intercept Eve's hand at the moment when she almost planted her huge pink fist into her brother's face.
"Wait, he's had enough," I tell her, but in response, I only received an uncomprehending look: "Are you still here?" "Look."
I nodded at the guy, and everyone, including him, followed my gaze to his hands. Which were beginning to decompose right before our eyes.
"Of course," he suddenly became completely calm. "Too long outside the tube, but it doesn't matter anymore... we can't go back anyway. They don't care about us anymore. Because now they have you."
While he spoke, his skin began to be covered with pus-oozing blisters and the same thing, as if on command, began to happen to the rest of the children. So that's how it all ended that time, that's why I never heard about Atom Eve's brothers and sisters; they all just died that day, never having properly known life.
"What?" shocked Eve dispelled her armor and for the first time took a step towards her brother not to strike him.
I don't want to interfere in the touching farewell, but this is their only chance for survival:
"It's high time to remove the restrictions, Doc." I turned to the old man, who silently watched the tragedy. "If everything you said is true, Eve can save them. Fix the defectiveness of their bodies. How to remove the mental block?"
"I... no," he recoiled. "It's... impossible. The block cannot be removed."
Is he lying? Is he really so afraid to give her full power that he is ready to renounce these, generally innocent, children? I can't understand.
"Goodbye, sister," Number Two drawled; his body had already begun to smoke, he was literally evaporating with acrid and extremely foul-smelling toxic smoke. "It was nice to meet you."
"No! No! No!" Eve wailed with tears in her eyes.
"Do it, Eve," then I tried to put pressure on Eve directly; maybe, if she is emotionally pumped up properly, she will break the block herself, there must be a way. "This is your family and your power—only you can save them. Just do it, break the fucking block!"
"I..." she desperately clenched her fists, powerlessly straining her omnipotent power. "I can't! I can't! I ca-a-an't..."
At the end she was already sobbing uncontrollably, not taking her eyes off the foul-smelling acrid puddles into which her newly found family was turning.