A Beast with a Smile
Chapter 23 (Archy): The Fall from Grace

Scarlett had been acting weird ever since she figured out how to use the telecom. She would’ve been the first person to have severe mental damage from the thing if Clark hadn’t backed her up.

I thought for sure we were going to be making a pit stop at the closest nut house because we fried her brains.

That thought continued as I leaped out of the ship in pursuit.

Who just jumps out of a plane? I thought to myself as I dove for her free-falling body.

She had opened the ramp while we were all distracted with Clark. The emergency light and bell both immediately alerted us of her dangerous activities in the back of the room. The door let in freezing cold instant-frostbite kind of winds and I felt my body temperature drop.

My armor, which I built to adapt to extreme conditions, was struggling to supply me with sufficient warmth, and she stood in the center of it in pajamas as if it were nothing but a cool summer breeze.

“What are you doing?” Elly screamed effortlessly over the howling winds.

Scarlett couldn’t have heard even if she wasn’t trapped in her own thoughts. Velicity was the next to try and stop Scarlett, but when she zoomed in front of the dare devil Scarlett’s eyes were glowing white. She had no pupils, no color, and no sign of life. The sight shocked Velicity to her core. She froze in place and was taken by the wind, sending her barreling back at us.

Woodrow planted his feet and held out his arms, preparing to play catcher. Velicity’s small body had managed to create enough force to flip Woodrow head over heel and sent both of them at Elly and me. I managed to flip my helmet on in time to absorb most of the impact created by my two flying angels and the wall.

Elly was not so fortunate. She took that time to shield Clark from the onslaught of hurling bodies, which smashed her head into the wall, knocking her unconscious. All four of us were tangled up in the back of the room, two unconscious from the impact and the other two too frightened with fear to even speak. I was pinned under Woodrow and I couldn’t stand to get Scarlett before she nose-dived off of the ramp.

Clark let out a battle cry, sprinting towards the open ramp shield with his sword raised.

He just jumped after her, I thought in shock.

I tried to scream at him to stop, but he thought he was being a hero. My heart began to race. I could feel it stomping on my chest, trying to force its way out. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts, let alone make anything to fix two falling kids, both without armor or parachutes.

Nope they jumped out of a plan with PJ’s and paper mache.

I tried to focus on the beam above me, forcing it to bend at my will and bend to my position. It shook slowly at first not wanting to listen. I tried harder, letting myself think only about moving it. I didn’t think I’d ever loved this stupid ship as much as I did when the beam shifted to above my head.

Thank god I built this thing I thought.

It slithered down my side, wrapping around me boa style and constricted around my sides. It lifted me out of the pile and winded me up, preparing for the perfect pitch. The newly altered beam flung me out after them.

I couldn’t see them at first; the clouds were too thick and too dark for me to see through them. I dove headfirst, creating more heavy objects to try and speed up my decent. I broke through half a dozen storm clouds before I saw Clark sitting on Scarlett’s unconscious chest, shaking her to wake up. I couldn’t hear his voice, but I could see that he wasn’t afraid of the fall. He was calm and managed to move around on her body with ease due to his small nature. Another cloud was punctured by their bodies before I was able to latch on to Scarlett.

“Archy!” Clark shouted happily.

“Hey, little buddy.”

“I told you I would get here,” he said proudly, smiling with his front teeth missing.

“You sure did. Now let’s never do a jump like that again or at least never without a parachute,” I lectured.

He rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in disgust.

“A hero doesn’t need a parachute. He only needs his mind and his weapon,” he said, thrusting his wooden sword in the air.

I couldn’t help but smile. Even in impending death the kid still cherished a wooden sword more than his life. I slapped my hand on Scarlett’s back, forming a wing suit with an attached parachute. The force of the slap was intended to wake her up, but all it did was open her eyes.

They snapped open and peered into my soul. The light was so bright it turned my vision into a snow storm; every inch of my gaze was consumed by the blizzard.

Images of my past began to fly all around me. I was stuck in the eternal holy light. My mother’s face floated past me like a lost balloon, then the first day of commando training where I was first teamed up with Elly, the day I created the dragon egg, and finally the day we escaped from Atom’s facility. The past was surrounding me, never letting me forget my failures. I felt tears running down my cheeks: they steamed on my ice-cold cheeks.

Something hard and cold slashed me across my forehead, tearing me apart from Scarlett’s sight. The snow began to melt away and I was free to see again. Clark stood tall on Scarlett’s chest, sword held in the striking position ready for another strike.

“This is no time for a nap!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

My head stung and throbbed red where his tiny stick had impacted. My head felt like it was a hundred pounds and kept rolling from side to side without me being able to control the movements.

My helmet must have disengaged somehow, I thought to myself.

I pulled myself back towards Scarlett, being more cautious of her captivating leer. I pulled her arms out to let the flaps of the wing suit take a deep breath. The suit inhaled, expanding across the black sky, then suddenly our descent was halted to a snail speed.

Clark sat crisscross applesauce on Scarlett’s belly and pouted.

“What’s wrong little guy?” I asked wearily, barely able to keep my eyes open.

My head was pounding. It felt a thousand times heavier than the plane we were falling from and I couldn’t get my helmet to re-engage, freeing me to the butchering cold. The taste of blood overcame my taste buds and the tightness of my lips was the assumed source.

“You broke my sword,” he said, pulling his wolf helmet down over his face, trying to hide the tears.

He held up the hilt of his wooden sword. The blade had completely separated leaving only a splintered stump.

“Sorry. I’ve got a hard head,” I tried to laugh, but the words pierced me with pain, “The cold makes things break easily. I’ll fix it when we land.”

The ground was fast approaching, and it was time to pull Scarlett’s shoot and make one of my own. I pulled Clark off of her chest, then pulled her shoot. It sprung out, ripping Scarlett farther in the air. Her head bounced with lifeless jumps and her eyes lighted up the dark sky with a brown hue.

I spun a web of string and silk. They attached a mile away, connecting and intertwining as the threads formed what I commanded them to do. The web spawned into a massive parachute the size of a building, created to hold myself, my faulty armor, and the child warrior. I quickly attached Clark into the harness, tightening it to the back of my armor.

“Hey this is a baby carrier!” he complained, squirming to get free.

“Stop flailing around and calm down or we are going to get tangled and fall,” I exasperated.

I try to keep my temper in check around Clark. He has had a life more miserable and tragic than any child of Atom. He never got to meet the two premature deserters that gave him and his sister life. Atom saw to that, sending Scavenger to do the dirty work. When the mission was delivered personally by Atom himself, I knew it wasn’t going to be a honeymoon in Spain.

I didn’t know the full details of the mission; I wasn’t on Alpha team back then, I was just the tech guy. The first day I met the Shadow Wolf was when he challenged Tyler for wanting to kill Clark and his sister. He had been around for a few months and was the leader of Alpha team.

He challenged Tyler and Tyler tucked his tale and stormed off with a false sense of accomplishment and broken pride. Scavenger went on that mission alone, but he came back with two new residents for our little dysfunctional family. Tyler made sure everyone knew what kind of freaks Clark and Elizabeth were and everyone noted the monstrosities that grew up alongside them.

I never saw Clark talk to anyone besides his sister and when she was taken he had no one.

I think he’s been trying to be more like Scavenger, so the city will love him like they love our Shadow Wolf. If he ever knew that Scavenger was the one that murdered his parents, I think it would crush more than his spirit, it would crush his heart. He sees how much the city loves our sacred hero and he yearns for the same affection and honor.

We were a thousand feet in the air when the storm started. I didn’t appreciate the hard rain to add to my already freezing joy ride. Water slapped me in the face and dripped perfectly into my eye, momentarily blinding me. It didn’t make the ride any easier that Clark was getting soaked and freaking out about his paper mache helmet being ruined by the storm.

“It’s the only thing I love! Besides my sword…and my shield…” he screamed over the thunder of the storm, trying to hide the wolf head under his breastplate.

I used what was left of my light to make Clark a raincoat. He didn’t want to wear it at first. He huffed and puffed, pressing his arms tight around his chest. His hair was a damp shade of black and dripped into his eyes. He shook off like a wet dog, spraying me with a recycled shower. The rain began to pick up as we descended, and I could feel his tiny body shivering. I grabbed his hand and rebuilt the raincoat on him this time.

“You’re making me look dumb!” he pouted.

He began to sniffle and wipe tears out of his eyes, “You don’t understand what they will say if they see me in this. They’ll call me weak for being cold, for not being man enough.”

He began to rip at the ends of the yellow plastic of his rain coat, attempting to tear it off. I held out my hand and absorbed some falling rain drops; it wasn’t a lot of light, but it was enough to make a point. I formed a yellow raincoat around my armor, the exact same as his.

“Then they will have to call us both weak because it’s cold. Besides, I doubt anyone of them have courage like you, I don’t think any of them can say that they jumped out of a plane to save a life.”

“You saved the day,” he said, sniffling out the words in breaks between broken hiccup breaths.

“I may have made the parachutes, but you saved us all by knocking me out of Scarlett’s trance.”

“I guess I did, but I broke your helmet with my sword.”

His words hit me as hard as his swing earlier. I reached up and felt the cool bronze edges of my helmet still planted firmly atop my head. I felt the rim down to the shattered face mask which cut me on contact.

I felt my face where the pain was still throbbing. The blood still flowed from the wounds where glass shards and wooden splinters had broken the skin. He must have noticed my shock.

“How did you break the face mask?” I asked, astonished.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged with his shoulders, “I swung to wake you up from your nap on Scarlett’s face and it went through the white part of your helmet. You can have mine. I’m sorry.”

He began to cry harder now. I knew he was crying because he thought he upset me and that I was going to take his most prized possession away from him. I wasn’t angry at him, I was thankful he showed me a flaw in my designs.

“I’ve never been hit in the head before. Thank you for showing me my error.”

He was stunned by my response.

“So, you’re not going to take my helmet?” he asked nervously.

“Hm,” I laughed, “I won’t take it as long as you never mention the fact that you broke the most high-tech armor in the world with a wooden sword.”

“Deal!” he shouted.

“And Clark, don’t worry about what they think about you. It’s what you think that matters and being a man has nothing to do with strength. Just look at Elly. She’s a girl and she’s tougher than anyone I have ever met,” I said while reaching back ruffling up his hair.

His sniffing broke with a laugh and I swear I could hear the smile break the frown. Some sun light broke through the clouds and shined on him, his smile so bright and perfect that not even the sun wanted to miss it.

Scarlett hung limp from her shoot that flowed next to me. Her eyes had gone dark since the free fall, but she showed no signs of life. I grabbed her by one of her untied shoelaces and pulled her in close enough to where her shoot wouldn’t get tangled in mine. I absorbed her shoot slowly and attached it to mine with my free hand. The threads went in one sleeve and back out the other, extending my already massive shoot by another few hundred feet.

Her body bounced off of my side and Clark screamed, “Oh my god, she’s dead! Don’t take my helmet!” and smacked her chest with his feet, pushing her out.

She of course came flying right back at us with double the force.

“Run, Archy. She’s trying to take over our bodies!”

I flipped around so that my front would absorb all of the impact from her unintentional charge and Clark wouldn’t be hurt. She rammed my stomach with a hard clank and sent us flying in opposite directions. Clark screamed at the top of his lungs as we flailed around under the massive shoot.

“That was AWESOME! Can we do it again? I felt little tingles in my belly and in the back of my throat. I want to do it again,” he cheered.

“They are called butterflies in your stomach.”

Our dazed friend woke up from her nap and said, “I used to get them when I was on rides at the fair.”

She rubbed her head and rubbed away the crust around her eyes. Her bright red hair was darkened by the rain and looked like a bloody mop.

“Why are we not in the plane?”

“Uh, I was going to ask you why you jumped,” I asserted more aggressively than intended.

She explained her vision about Scavenger and the mysterious gray suited man.

“His name was Orvil. He was Tyler’s lap dog, Solace’s son. He did whatever the Atoms told him to do and if we are going where I think we are going, we are in serious trouble when we land.”

“What’s down there?” she asked.

I looked down and saw the black tared battle ground of a forgotten war glooming below us.

“The gates of hell.”