Phoenix Prime, Chapter Three

Kumiko, apparently refusing to let a little thing like gravity keep her away from her target, all but skated on air as she closed the distance between herself and the flying form of Phoenix Prime. No other description could serve for the way Kumiko was scaling the heights, her ever-whirling wheels traversing rubble-mounds and diagonal roofs in a relentless ascent so fleet-footed it outstripped even Phoenix Prime’s nimble calculations. A final cannonball- launch from the ramplike edge of an awning rewrote everything the latter knew about trajectory, whereat Kumiko with her boots and knees drummed a rapid tattoo through Phoenix Prime’s defences before throwing her whole body into a vertical three-sixty reverse-spin. This circle-kick delivered a finishing blow under whose whiplash the winged one fell helpless from grace.

Phoenix, tearing after the combatants on her fluorescent feathers, watched from below and doubled her speed. Despite the outcome of this first sortie, it was Kumiko’s safety Phoenix was fearful for rather than that of her doppelganger. The former was about as dangerous as an ordinary human could be, but the latter was anti-matter mutated and that power-source had frequently proved equal to holding its own against The Four Heroes themselves. Moreover, Phoenix was only too aware of what D’Carthage had surmised earlier – that Kumiko was running on rage alone, which could not hope to prevail against the dispassionate and exacting battle-tactics of quintessential scientist Phoenix Prime.

However, before she could reach the pair and intervene Phoenix found she had other concerns to deal. A trio of Stealthonian dreadnoughts was making full steam in her direction, letting rip with every tiny rattling cannon. “Zut alors…!” our heroine cursed, ducking out of the line of fire and changing course to lead her diminutive pursuers away. As she turned she arched one arm and loosed a shot from her gauntlet-emitter, carving an expressway of sizzling photon through the doll-house command-centres and control-towers of the spearhead Stealthonian. It went down in flames with all seven hundred hands and was wrecked upon a kerbstone, while its two fellows continued the chase discharging all batteries upon the flitting Phoenix at once.

Phoenix Prime came to earth, crashing first through a sun-parasol and then the table beneath in the deserted forecourt of a street-café. Without any ado to speak of she rolled neatly from the heap of splinters and was back on her feet, her superhuman resilience sparing her the worst of the physical wounds, and her mode of thought sparing little consideration for questions of wounded pride. She did however mutter to herself: “If that’s the way it is,” whilst purposefully raising both hands above her head to aim them at the incoming shape of Kumiko.

Three fireballs shot skyward and Phoenix Prime was aloft again. Kumiko, to her credit, knew exactly how to twist and contort in a manner that kept everything important clear of the flames, but with only momentum to call her own she could not hope to pass through the interception with her extremities unscathed. She hit the pavement on palms and knees, breathing hard, her bare legs scorched and the singed edges of her hemline and ponytail still giving off smoke. The very next instant however Kumiko was flying back into action, somewhat short of her previous velocity but in drive and determination everything she had been before.

Leaping onto a picnic-table that remained intact Kumiko kept abreast of Phoenix Prime’s escalation through the vertical planes, skimming on her skates across the long level plateau at a lightning pace and on closing with her adversary inverting herself once more, the top of her head whipping by above the boards while her looping roller-boot chopped down onto Phoenix Prime from above. The duel went on unabated even as the table’s opposite edge fast dwindled into the distance behind Kumiko, who was pinpointing such stepping- stones as she needed to stay face-to-face with Phoenix Prime while forging on through open air. Some of Kumiko’s strikes made it through…but so too did some of her adversary’s, and as Phoenix Prime’s fists were ablaze, even her blocks punished Kumiko’s charbroiled skin. As Phoenix had seen from the start, stamina and wrath could not win out in an endurance-race such as this.

That one, having eluded the Stealthonians, swooped back into eyeshot of the battle and perceived at once Phoenix Prime’s intention. Defending all the while, she was leading Kumiko towards a tiny narrow alley which Phoenix knew let onto a shopping palisade that had been levelled in the Solidity attack. There the duellists might conceal themselves from enemy soldiers an indefinite time to resolve their differences without interference…if they could only enter the alleyway unnoticed. But they were altogether too close to the City Centre, where the redwood trunks of alien fungi towered hugely over the rooftops and stretched to the vast saucer above. The streets were teeming with Solidity troops, all of them mustering a rapid response to the sudden appearance of the combatants.

Phoenix made her decision in an instant. She aimed her gauntlet at the enormous vines, and fired at will.

Our heroine, like her creator James, had correctly surmised that those gargantuan things were somehow instrumental to the Solidity’s design. Her barrage caused only negligible damage, but it seized the attention of every foe at ground level in the split-second Phoenix Prime and Kumiko disappeared into the alley’s mouth. The next moment the horde of invaders was taking to its heels in vengeful pursuit of Phoenix, who tore off the way she had come.

Into the shadows of the ruinous war-zone Phoenix Prime and Kumiko plunged, playing out the last violent exchanges of their confrontation. What had been a churchyard was drawing close beneath their heels, and Phoenix Prime gripping Kumiko by the bodice made an end by bowling her once about at arm’s length then releasing her. The girl plummeted limply the last leg of her touchdown, cracking through a gravestone then scraping along the dusty grass to finally grind to rest at the foot of another.

Phoenix Prime landed and stood over her. The one source of light in the lonely gloom was the fire from her hands. Kumiko with slow painful movements was rising into a kneel.

“You’ve won,” she choked out. “I can’t fight anymore. Get on with it.”

In silence she held motionless. Phoenix Prime stared.

“Don’t you understand?” Kumiko flung hoarsely at her, tears spurting from her eyes. “I’ve failed! I wasn’t able to take revenge! My life is yours now!”

Boasting a near-superhuman prodigious intellect, Phoenix Prime had educated herself using for the most part scientific journals. This had produced in her a straightforward world-view. Harming the innocent out of cruelty or belligerence held no interest at all, while that which fell into the category of threats to her person or her place in the world – her clones, The Four Heroes, and murderous martial artists on roller-skates – were to be disposed of with clinical unfeeling efficiency. She lifted one burning hand.

Then Phoenix Prime paused. It was occurring to her that this might just be part of the different outlook on life she had apparently signed up to when she joined James and his crusaders. Certainly, she couldn’t shake the nagging doubt that Phoenix and her friends would handle this situation the same way.

“Who are you?” she asked Kumiko. “I don’t bear any ill will against you. You spoke of taking revenge. What have I done to earn that?”

Kumiko didn’t answer, though the tears continued to flow, and her head remained bent before Phoenix Prime’s fist. The quick and easy solution still presented itself. Phoenix Prime however forced herself to keep working this conundrum, even though it was one for which her extensive background in science had scarcely prepared her.

“You were at the railway station,” Phoenix Prime went on, remembering. “You said something strange…about Phoenix, and how she’d stolen your boyfriend…”

By now there was enough for her to go on.

“Dylan,” said Phoenix Prime, in what was for her a tiny voice. “You love him. This was about what I did to Dylan.”

So there were consequences. That was part of the new outlook too. Phoenix Prime’s Father had said as much, and here too was this girl, born into the world a living being just as she and Father had been, telling her through her deeds that it was indeed so. But what was humbling, crushing, to Phoenix Prime was that Phoenix and 4-H-N, the two clones, had told her the same. It kept happening, over and over again, that the clones proved they understood better than she what it was to be alive. There could be no more avoiding the conclusion she had been wrong about them. Neetra, their Father, and so many others had asserted that the clones’ wholesale slaughter was not the route to that which Phoenix Prime had longed for her entire life. And if that path wound instead through these mysteries, all the way to this unknown and daunting concept called the loving heart, then it was surely time she began doing as the clones of her acquaintance would do.

Phoenix Prime doused the flames from her hand, then grasped one of Kumiko’s and hauled the astonished girl onto her skates again.

“If you’ve given me your life,” said Phoenix Prime, “then I choose to spare it.”

She turned to glance back over her wing.

“Not least because Phoenix is going to need the pair of us to fend off the legions we ended up setting on her tail,” she went on briskly. “It’s never any problem for me to find my way to her. Let’s move.”

The telepathic homing-beacon in each of Phoenix Prime’s clones had led the latter and Kumiko back to Phoenix, and as a trio they swiftly routed the Solidity pursuers. Now they were resting in some out-of-the-way ruins, where streams from a broken pipe trickled down the rubble-mounds to collect in a pool at the foot of the overhang. Kumiko had slipped her bodice down to her waist and was quietly splashing her burns with the cooling water, in a manner that suggested she did not wish to be disturbed. Phoenix and Phoenix Prime were therefore holding off a little distance, to allow her some solitude as they took stock.

“Ze Drill-’ole is not far from ’ere,” Phoenix declared. “As soon as Miss Rintari is sufficiently recovaired, we should resume our journey if we can. I see few prospects of a rendezvous with Papa anywhere but our destination now, and time – or rathair, ze lack of it – remains our foremost concern.”

“Your friend clearly knows a thing or two about stealth and combat technique,” Phoenix Prime added. “Her falling in with us might work out to our advantage.”

This seemed to cover everything, so Phoenix was not expecting to hear more and had even begun to turn away when Phoenix Prime suddenly continued:

“It’s not easy.”

Phoenix looked back.

“This way you live,” her biological progenitor went on. “Following what The Four Heroes knew as their cause. It’s…”

Phoenix Prime was not accustomed to talking this way, but she persevered. “It carries so much responsibility. Always having to think of how your actions affect others. Putting the innocent above yourself in everything you do. Compared to the way I was leading my life before, it’s…”

“Not easy?” Phoenix repeated, finishing her sentence for her. “Not as easy as remorselessly killing all zose who do not ’appen to fit in with your plans? Agreed, Phoenix Prime. It is anything but easy. Ease ’as nothing to do with why we choose to obey ze Four ’Eroes’ cause.”

These words, however, were not spoken with the intention of punishing or shaming Phoenix Prime. Indeed, there was a light in Phoenix’s eyes, and the smile that was starting to touch her lips was that of one who has been given renewed reason to hope.

“You showed mercy,” Phoenix continued softly. “Ze Four ‘Eroes zemselves would ’ave called zat a promising beginning. I do not yet know if we can save ze world…but when our mission is over, you may find zat we ’ave saved something greater still.”

END OF CHAPTER THREE