14 Creepy Six

"There are no KillCannons left," I quipped. "But there's a little bit of me, and that's much better."

"What?" Eve didn't get the point... and I tried so hard to connect my joke with her prayer, md.

"Forget it and better get down," she knew what I meant this time, and it's hard not to understand when you're being carried away with a fierce yell: "You can't hide!"

It was as if he were deliberately telling her not to get caught in the fatal blow...

Eve huddled against the floor, armed with an iron pipe that came to hand, and the wall above her head exploded in a heap of debris, under the impact of her brother's steel fist. And those weren't just words - the boy's arm was indeed a solid piece of steel, from elbow to toe.

Not very well calculated his strength, the guy fell forward after the blow, setting Eve's back, and she finally decided to fight back. With a piercing, truly girlish, battle cry, she struck her brother with the pipe. The metal went into her flesh like heated plasticine, the bat practically slicing off a piece of the boy's body, from shoulder to waist like a slice of bread.

It's a creepy sight. It's clear now that there's something specifically wrong with their bodies. It must be some side effect of their ability to rearrange the atoms of their own flesh, or a consequence of abusing it, or maybe just a birth defect that for some reason they can't fix with their powers.

"You're trying to kill me, and I don't even know your name, what the hell!" Eve shouted in annoyance at his back.

"My name?" The Two's head asked, turning to face Eve independently of her body. "My name: phase two, take two, retry, second child, second best."

As he spoke, his body was rearranging itself as he went: his spine dipped inward to swap places with his stomach, his pectoral muscles showed up where his shoulder blades had been, his right arm twisted to become his left arm, and he grasped the pipe that still divided his body into two; the result of this metamorphosis was that he was facing his sister again. Creepy, I could see why this had been the worst day of her life: I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.

"My name is," the boy shouted in Eve's face with a final fury. - "Get back in the tube, boy, you make me sick!"

In doing so, he got so hot - literally - that he practically vaporized the metal pipe with his body, finally restoring its integrity. Shocked by this outburst of both temperature and rage, Eve recoiled from her brother.

All right, that's enough bullying of the girl, it's time for me to step in.

"Shoes!" the littlest one suddenly shouted inappropriately, deciding to do his part in the conversation and... he did indeed throw a box of shoes in Eva's face.

"Cover your ears, girl," I appeared in front of Sam, knocking the harmless projectile aside, and then clapping my hands as hard as I could, sending a wave of air directly into the crowd of weird kids.

By the way, this is a great non-lethal way to neutralize weak opponents: with the proper level of skill, the shock-sound wave is very powerful, directed, and extremely unpleasant for the senses. My father could probably demolish a small building or kill a couple of hundred people.

I'm not him yet, but that was enough for the kids: they were thrown to the wall far away from us, and the two smallest ones were literally splattered with minced meat on it. There's obviously something wrong with their bodies; even an ordinary human shouldn't be seriously injured by something like that-they can turn their bodies into metal, but they're absurdly fragile the rest of the time.

But they are able to recover and, as I can see with my own eyes, even the destruction of their brains does not interfere with their ability to reconstruct their bodies.

Just as I thought, you can't kill them that easily... not even brain damage prevents them from using their power to regenerate themselves. That's pretty impressive, I'm even a little jealous - that power is practically godlike, especially if they can extend it to other living beings! If I feel that they are trying to change my own body somehow, I need to act quickly, since I have the overwhelming advantage of speed on my side. At the very least I will have to use space to finally calm them down, I would not want it to come to that, of course, in the past Eve somehow managed to cope with them herself...

Yes, there must be a weakness, it's not for nothing that they were kept in flasks and called defective in comparison to Samantha. And by the way, why can't Eve manipulate her own body as freely as they do?

"Oh-oh, my ears!" There was a pitying moan behind me.

Eve had put on pink headphones to protect her from the sound, but she hadn't taken care of the old man, and he had to do with his own hands, which, obviously, was not enough. What can I say - collateral damage - and it shouldn't have seriously injured him... I guess.

"Shoes?" The smallest one woke up the quickest and looked at his empty hands, but there was nothing there.

Oh, so recovery is automatic, and until they have a whole brain, they're not aware of themselves. There's something already.

"This way, quick!" Sam was all worked up, suggesting that the doctor and I retreat after her into the new pink tunnel.

And though I could keep them in a state of mincemeat for as long as I wanted, it was her superhero origins, not mine, so I wouldn't have to pull the blanket over myself, let the girl take the helm.

So I left the superchildren to come to their senses, too, and followed the doctor into Eve's pink hole... and found myself in an all-pink cave dug in the foundation of the building. The hole behind me was immediately covered with pink stone, just like everything else around me. Okay, another protective dome would buy us some time, but it wouldn't solve the problem.

"Okay, Doc," Eve turned to the old man with her pink headphones, "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 atoms of air inside them, yes - but not themselves, why is that?"

"That's the right question," I agree mentally, having asked it myself a second ago.

"I had to do it, Eve," oh, so his ears are fine. "Otherwise, you'd be all-powerful. We had to give you limits."

How'd you say it, huh? Not to put restrictions on you, not to reduce your power, no: to give you limits, as if you were doing her a favor. He's got a good mouth, I'll give him that.

"You could turn blood into chocolate, heart into rabbit, or even influence the mind through neurochemical reactions in the brain, we couldn't allow that, nothing should be that powerful!"

A classic story of a creator afraid of his own creation...

"And the only way to prevent this was to implant you with a mental block - to give you a preconscious setting to refuse to change living biomass."

Now that's interesting. If this block was put on her artificially - though she was created this way in principle - means it can be removed or at least weakened. Hell, if it works, Eve is potentially the most powerful of us all! Yes, I remember that she's very exhausted from using her powers and can't, for example, transform several tons of material at once - not Dr. Manhattan in a skirt in general - but if you affect the substance inside the enemy or even his mind directly, the stamina drain isn't too great, is it?

What was that feeling? It gave me goosebumps! So much for hidden potential! Who the hell is the main character here, me or her? With the right approach, for example, if this power had gone to me - I would certainly 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 blew it all off and just kept messing around with her condensed air.

"Yes, but..." Eve started sluggishly (I think I accidentally sped up my perception while I was thinking, so impressed by the doctor's revelation), but was interrupted by outside interference.

The pinkish stone cracked and exploded with shards, one of which struck the doctor right above his eyebrow, causing a deep cut.

"Leave us alone!" Eve screamed, getting to the boiling point, and turned into a ridiculous pink juggernaut and attacked herself.

It could have been that way from the beginning... not to mention the fact that I could have... but okay, let him have all the fun he wants. I leaned toward the doc.

"Hold still," I ordered him, pulling a medical needle and thread from his own robe-how thoughtful of him.

"What?" the man didn't understand. "Ow... what are you..."

He pressed his hand to his forehead, where a second earlier there had been a huge incision, and now a neat but still bleeding stitch. Superfast medicine.

"Why are you doing this?!" Eve, meanwhile, shouted, attacking the Two. "Why are you doing this to me?!"

And she's really got a taste for it, and now it's like a one-sided beating - the little ones can't break through Eve's armor, but she's scattering them herself, like live pins in a murderous bowling alley. And where did all that strength in those thin arms come from? I don't see any outward manifestation of her pink armor's extra strength - like jet jets from her elbows or something - so she's created some sort of artificial cascade of muscles underneath the armor out of the thickened air. Very ingenious, but also very clumsy at that.

"Why?" - Yelled back Two, finding an opportunity to strike back at Eve's armor, useless though it was. "You, sister, are the only reason why we exist! The only purpose of our creation, our destiny, is to make it!"

He struck Eve again with his stone fists, this time he even managed to break off a small piece of her armor.

He's really giving up... wait, that's... he's... his skin is peeling off! If this keeps up, she's going to kill them for good! I managed to intercept Eve's hand just as she was about to press her huge pink fist into her brother's face.

"Wait, he's had enough," I told her, but all I got in return was a blank - Are you still here? - stare. "Look."

I nodded at the guy, and everyone, including him, followed my gaze to his hands. Which were starting to decompose right in front of my eyes.

"Oh, sure," he said, and then he calmed down. - Too long out of the tube, but it doesn't matter-we can't go back. They don't care about us anymore. After all, they have you now."

As he spoke, his skin began to blister, oozing pus, and as if on cue, the rest of the children began to do the same. So that's how it ended that time, that's why I never heard about the brothers and sisters of Atom Eve, they all just died that day, never having learned life properly.

"What?" A shocked Eve dispelled her armor and stepped toward her brother for the first time, not with the intention of hitting him.

I hate to interfere with a touching goodbye, but this is their only chance of survival:

"It's about time the restrictions were lifted, Doc." I turned to the old man who was silently watching the tragedy. "If everything you said is true, Eve can save them. Fix the defectiveness of their bodies. How do you remove a mental block?"

"I... no," he recoiled. "It's... impossible. It is impossible to remove the block."

Is he lying? Is he so terrified of giving it his full power that he would deny these innocent children? I cannot understand.

"Goodbye, sister," the Two stretched out, his body already beginning to smoke, he was literally vaporizing with acrid and extremely stinky toxic smoke. "It was a pleasure to meet you."

"No! No! No!" Eve wailed with tears in her eyes.

"Do it, Eve," then I tried to put pressure on her directly, maybe if she was properly pumped emotionally, she would break the block herself, there must be a way. "It's your family and your power - you're the only one who can save them. Just do it, break the damn block!"

"I..." she clenched her fists desperately, straining her all-powerful strength in helplessness. "I can't! I can't! I can't!"

By the end, she was already sobbing profusely, not taking her eyes off the stinking, acrid puddles that her newfound family was turning into.