The boulder, or, well, it felt too big to call it just a boulder. The meteor stayed in the air where it appeared in a very cartoonish way for a half a second. And then it started falling. It was about, uhhh, I’m not very good at distance. If you took half the stories of Z towers and then put them on the roof, that’s about the distance the meteor appeared above the tower.

I guess that’s the one I saw on the news. The imperium that’s been dropping boulders on random building around different cities. Although now that I was seeing this, I guess maybe they were targeting important places, or even people.

I was pretty far from the towers. A little under 10 blocks maybe? There was absolutely nothing I could do about it. In fact, probably should’ve started running away as soon as I saw it. I have no idea how big the impact could be.

As I was about to turn and run, the meteor suddenly stopped midair, and started moving to the side. It then abruptly disappeared.

Ok. Weird.

I would have guessed Ingenium was the one who stopped it, but, I don’t know who the hell made it disappear.

I used replay and started flying towards the towers. There was maybe something I could do now that the meteor was gone. I slowed down. Can’t the meteor just appear again at any point? Ahh whatever, thinking like that is boring. I sped up.

I got to the towers and found Ingenium talking with The Director.

“… How the hell did you get up here?”, Ingenium asked me after staring at me blankly for a few seconds.

“Figured out how to fly! Anyway, where’s the dude making those meteors?”

“Meteors? That’s one way to put it I guess.”

The Director cut in and pointed off the building to the right, “Somewhere in that direction.”

“Thanks!”, I leaped off the building, just barely hearing Ingenium yelling at me to wait for him. Ahhhh, I don’t feel like it though, I wanna go fight this bad guy right now. Oh, but I’ll talk to them first of course.

As the ground got closer and closer, I started using replays to slow down.

Oh! There’s someone who looks like an Imperium! Although, it appears to be a woman instead of a guy like I assumed. Why did I assume that anyway? Eh, whatever.

She was wearing tall boots, the really tall ones that go up to the knee, a fairly short red skirt, a black shirt and a black leather jacket. She had shorter dark hair, around chin level, and a black face mask, like the ones that just cover the area around the eyes and some of the nose. From what I could tell, she was actually pretty attractive.

“Don’t come any closer.”, she said loudly and confidently. “Let’s talk.”

I’ll admit, this sounds interesting.

As I hovered in the air, she continued, “Are you already working with the Z towers group? If not, its not too late to join us.”

I knew it. I’m so smart. This is interesting.

I replied, “And who’s us, exactly?”

“We don’t really have a name for our group yet, but, we’re gathering up all the strongest Imperium in order to fight Z towers, and, as a matter of fact, we already have the strongest Imperium, even if he’s kind of a hassle to get along with.”

“Hmmm. Ok sounds like fun, I’m in.”

“Wait what’s up with that, that was way too quick of a decision. Actually, whatever, you know the best Imperium I was talking about, he’ll be able to tell if you actually want to side with us or not.”

I probably shouldn’t say that knowing when someone’s telling the truth isn’t exactly what I think of when someone says ‘strongest’ power, but, I guess I’ll just wait and see.

“You can fly right? Pick me up and I’ll lead us to where we’re going.”

“You really trust me that much already?”

“Not really, I just hate walking, plus I know Easy will torture you forever if you kill me.”

Reassuring.

As I fly over and pick her up from under the armpits, Ingenium flies down from the building a hundred feet or so behind me.

He called out, “What’s going on here?”

Nice, I can use something I’ve been practicing for a while. Not power related, but still interesting. Everybody knows the classic ‘look over there!’, but I’ve refined it to a point where it usually works on anybody older than eight years old.

I begin to say his name, “Ingen-”, and then I look above him, wide eyed, and yell, “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!”.

There’s nothing there of course, but by putting on a good enough show, Ingenium is deceived for a single instant, enough time for the girl I’m carrying to make a giant concrete boulder between us and Ingenium. And yes, it’s more a boulder this time. I was already using replays to fly us off the building, towards the street, and then through one alley after another in order to stay out of Ingenium’s line of sight.

You might think I don’t seem like the smartest dude, and while this is correct, I have my moments. When Ingenium trapped me with his Telekinesis or whatever the first time we saw each other, I noticed that I was always in his line of sight while it was active. He even put me in front of himself when we flew to Z towers.

My guess is that he can only effect things in his line of sight, which is why I wasn’t just flying through the night sky. I also assume there’s some kind of distance limit on his ability, kind of like mine, where I can only replay things that happen a few feet around me.

I wasn’t really panicking because if his top speed was the speed that he flew me to Z towers with, then I was already much faster than him, just with makeshift replay wings. Imagine when I get my hands on something even better. Ohhhh I bet I could fly the same way a helicopter does, too. I’m basically flying like a hummingbird now that I think about it. I should get back on track.

The boulder woman pointed me in the direction we needed to go. It was about ten minutes until we arrived at what seemed like a normal, three floor apartment complex.

She used a key to open the front door, and we stepped into one of those small rooms that are put in between the front door and the actual building or house, you know what I mean? Anyway, there were some coats and shoes around the room.

She led me into the main building.

“Holy shit. What?”

I had walked into what was definitely the most expensive place I had ever seen before, let alone been inside of.

Explaining interior design sounds boring, so just imagine whatever you were imagining before, when I said it was the most expensive place you’ve ever seen.

There were already a few other people here that were all looking at me.

Boulder woman looked over at me and said, “Welcome to the secret villain hideout. Our leader, and the strongest Imperium I was talking about, Easy Tough, is actually at Z-towers working as an inside man right now.