October 14th, 1988. Friday afternoon, 4:15 p.m.

Celestis had the hotels incident in the back of her mind as she’d gone with the rest of the Valkyries to confront the Dozen midway through their ‘remodeling’ session. She’d mentally blown off Joan’s warning about tangling with Khyber.

“Underestimate him and you’re going to regret it.” Joan had told her sternly. “You and Myst are the only ones who can keep him occupied, do not let him take either of you out of the fight. If he gets either of you one on one, things are going to go downhill very quickly.”

Celestis was still riding the high she’d gotten from holding a Contender at bay by herself for three minutes before any other front liners could be brought to bear. She was certain Joan was exaggerating to make sure Celestis kept herself safe. They’d surrounded the twelve story building, Whistler and Freya overhead to prevent any airborne evacuations, herself and Myst standing in the street out front. The rest of the Valkyries were waiting for the Dozen to make a play before revealing themselves.

She and Myst had both jumped when an unfamiliar voice came over their comms. “Now, all respect to Curie, but her technical expertise is in the field of chemistry and stuff. That’s awesome stuff, but it doesn’t really qualify her to keep me out of your comms. Sorry, this is going to be a bit loud.”

4:17 p.m.

Celestis doubled over and clapped her hands to her head as an ear-piercing shriek came over the comms. It warbled on indefinitely and Celestis had to shut her comms off to find any relief. Looking over, she saw Myst had done the same. As Celestis looked back up, she saw both Whistler and Freya trying to return to their original posts as they recovered from the shriek. She also saw something new, a storm cloud brewing over the building, where there was a perfect sky beforehand. She tried to call out a warning only to realize that her comms were still off. Celestis turned them back on for only a second before hastily silencing her link once more, the shriek hadn’t abated.

“Well, that’s going to be an issue.” Celestis turned to see what Myst was pointing at. In the sky was a ship, with multiple tendrils of sand drifting around it and the distinctive glimmer of a force field surrounding it. Whistler and Freya scattered as the ship let loose, a hail of bullets sweeping towards both flyers. Celestis had been assured they used rubber bullets against humans but it still made her nervous for her teammates.

Both women’s gazes were drawn back down to the street as something flashed and impacted the asphalt in front of them, leaving a deal of dust and debris floating in the air.

“Shit.” Celestis heard Myst mutter before a wave of green light came flying outwards. Celestis summoned and smashed six stars through the wall. She turned to see that Myst hadn’t been as lucky and was pinned to one of the buildings on the far side of the street.

“You the new kid?” The man emerging from the dust was maybe an inch taller than her five foot three inches and had on a grey bodysuit that glowed softly underneath. “Heard you’re pretty good, mind giving a demonstration?”

Celestis could hear the mocking grin behind the mask, people always had that expression on their face when they said demeaning things like that to her. She didn’t bother with words, snarling as she summoned fifteen stars each the size of a basketball and slammed them towards her opponent at full speed. They came together with a satisfying thud and Celestis smirked. She’d felt the contact, whoever the guy had been, he hadn’t been able to dodge her, same as anyone else.

“So much for the amazing Khyber.” She gloated. “Joan seriously over exaggerated how good you were.”

She dismissed her stars, expecting to see a body slump down on the ground. Instead, she saw a green, human-sized lump break into pieces. “Huh?”

4:18 p.m.

“You are good.” Celestis jumped at the sound of a voice behind her, bringing a wall of stars into existence directly behind her while she created more to home in on and destroy the source of that voice.

“Very good.” Celestis spun and went rigid as she felt several of her stars deflected off course. Neither Contender she’d faced had been fast enough to do that, yet this guy could?

“They said you were invulnerable.” Celestis sent waves of stars to converge on the new place she heard the voice, to her back and right. She’d yet to even catch a glimpse of him after that first moment. To hell with skill and finesse she thought.

Thousands of baseball sized stars appeared everywhere in her radius. Celestis smiled as she began swirling them around, creating a makeshift location detector. She wanted to see him dodge that. Frowning after nearly twenty seconds with no contact, she turned a full circle to try and spot where he’d exited her radius. She screamed when she made her full rotation and saw Khyber standing not two feet away from her, pleased judging by his posture.

“I’m glad you’re invulnerable.” He said and in her shock at his incredible approach, she completely forgot the idea of retaliation. “It means I can teach you some humility the same way I learned. By having it pounded into me.”

Celestis barely got an arm up to block his first punch, she ducked the second, only to take a knee to the face. Being invulnerable, she didn’t feel any pain but she was still subject to the effects of kinetic energy. Her face and body snapped upwards and as they did, she saw in her peripherals Khyber’s fist glowing with his green energy. Again, the punch didn’t hurt but Celestis had to dig herself out of the street nearly three blocks away when she landed. She flew back towards the front of the building only to be intercepted by a blast of green light about fifty feet out. Using her spheres as a shield, she barreled through, weaving random patterns with the thousands of spheres still under her control. She felt a good deal of those spheres being deflected and knocked out of existence when a hand came shooting through her sphere wall. It grabbed her leg before she’d registered it and she found herself slammed into the street, then a parked car, then a lamppost. Before she could reorient, she was once again dug partway into the street a few blocks away.

This guy is nuts! She thought to herself as she once again flew towards the office building. She saw Myst getting re-plastered with Khyber’s plasma, ensuring she stayed stuck. He makes those Contenders look slow!

4:18 p.m.

Khyber was standing in the middle of the street and held up a hand indicating she stop. Celestis halted about a hundred feet away from him, giving herself nearly twenty feet of clearance from his maximum range according to Joan.

“Your teammates are having some issues.” He shouted and pointed upwards and Celestis followed his finger. She saw Freya getting lit up by a hail of bullets, an explosion blowing her backwards as Celestis watched. Whistler was attempting to hit the ship with her blue darts, only to have them rebuffed by the spherical field surrounding the ship. The tendrils of sand were whipping around, deflecting arcs of fire that Joan was throwing from a nearby roof. Occasionally, a tendril would flick out in a seemingly random direction, only to stop a red streak that had suddenly appeared.

“Bubbles’ shield can only take so much energy at once.” Celestis jerked her gaze back down to Khyber, chastising herself for letting him distract her. She let out a small sigh of relief seeing that he hadn’t moved. “Petra’s making sure that Lyudmila and Joan can’t contribute to wearing her down. Sorry about the comms thing, Black Hat’s got a nasty sense of humor.”

“Uh…no problem?” Celestis called back. She was confused; none of the bad guys had ever stopped to engage her in idle chit chat before. And Contenders weren’t big on talking either.

“I have a proposition for you.” Khyber’s form flashed green and Celestis summoned a wall of two meter thick stars around herself for protection. “Not to attack you, not yet.”

Khyber sounded much closer now. “Hear out my proposition: we’re basically done inside and we’re clearing out shortly. But from what I’ve seen, you’re well…you’re obviously pretty new at this. How long ago did you get your powers?”

Celestis started. Was he insulting her? He didn’t seem to be, he seemed genuinely curious. “About ten months ago.”

“Hmm.” Khyber sounded thoughtful. “You can dismiss that wall of yours; it wouldn’t do you any good if I really wanted to get to you.”

Celestis couldn’t argue with that given what he’d done already. Still, she felt safer with some measure of protection, so she shrank the stars to a half meter in diameter each, giving her an easy view of Khyber. He was about ten feet from her, looking across the street. When Celestis glanced that way, she saw Myst still pinned to the wall, though her binding had cracks in it. Those cracks were re-sealing almost as fast as they appeared.

“That would mean you haven’t dealt with any real Contenders yet, just the lower strength stuff that's shown up recently in the area.” Khyber turned back to look at her. Celestis could feel the intensity of his gaze, even hidden behind his gray mask. “So you haven’t fought anyone as strong or stronger than you until now, right?”

Khyber stopped and Celestis thought he wanted a response of some kind. “Right.”

“You’re strong enough that eventually Ajax will come looking for you, see what you’re made of. He’d kill you in less than five minutes, once he got done toying with you. And if not him, if the Cast-outs or Rasputin’s crew or Et Timuerunt ever roll into town, their heavy hitters would do it even quicker since they usually don’t play with their kills beforehand." Khyber paused for a moment, shaking his head angrily.

"Invulnerable doesn’t make you impossible to kill, just difficult. A top tier Contender probably won’t kill you, but when you’re not able to hold your own against it, your teammates and civilians will pay in buckets of blood.” He delivered the speech in the tone of a counselor pointing out something their patient didn’t want to hear.

Celestis had no idea where he was going with this. “Okay…and you’re telling me this because…?”

“My proposition of course.” Khyber sounded almost offended that she didn’t understand that. “Meet me about thirty miles north of San Francisco, at a ranch called Huevos this Saturday morning. I’m going to spend the weekend giving you some actual experience fighting against someone stronger than you and advice on how to deal with it.”

“That smells like a trap to kill me.” Celestis pointed out.

“We don’t kill unless provoked.” Khyber said flatly. Celestis had never heard of the Dozen killing anybody, so she wondered why he’d added the proviso. Her response had been more of a gut reaction than anything concrete. “Just ask Myst about my offer; I gave her a similar offer a year or so ago.”

With that, he gave a wave and flashed green again. Celestis saw him sprint and jump off a nearby car, grabbing onto a line trailing from the Dozen’s ship as it screamed down the street with Whistler in hot pursuit. She broke off when Khyber sent several blasts of plasma her way.

4:26 p.m.

“Dammit, I hate it when he does that.” Celestis turned to find Myst brushing off some of Khyber’s plasma from her outfit.

“He’s done that before?” Celestis asked.

“Yeah, it’s a favorite tactic of his and it’s so damn fast I can almost never dodge it.” Myst grumped. “Looked like he talked to you more than he fought.”

“He said to ask you about an offer he made.” Celestis said hesitantly.

Myst nodded. “Going out to Huevos, right?” Celestis nodded and Myst continued. “It’s a serious offer. Khyber’s a bit weird; he loves having challenging opponents to fight, it chafes at him that the Dozen don’t get called to more rupture scenes or that Petra won’t let him go challenge Ajax. Now that would be something to watch.”

Myst shook her head. “Anyways, he hates seeing people with potential be destroyed before they get good. He seriously wants to show you how to get better so that you’ll survive and provide him with a challenge later. And hopefully rack up a few Contender kills.”

“So I should go?” Celestis couldn’t believe she was contemplating it.

“Yeah, but clear it with Joan first, that’s what I did.” Myst told her. “She’d be pissed if she didn’t know beforehand.”

“Okay, thanks Myst.” Celestis started walking back down the street to where the after action rendezvous had been set.

“Celestis, it’s a hell of a workout, in a good way. You’re going to learn a ton of things you didn’t even realize you were missing.” Myst said as she caught up with her a second later, with a grin on her face. “One piece of advice, though: he’s got a thing for redheads.”

Celestis stopped dead in her tracks as Myst casually flipped her bright red hair with one hand, sauntering away after a wink. Celestis tried to say something, ask a question, and only silence emerged. Celestis reached up and tugged on one of her own auburn locks, a nervous habit she thought she’d broken. Myst isn’t saying what I think she is, right…?