Sidekick by Carl Stubblefield (10 best novels of all time .txt) 📗

pulse. Before Gus could realize what was happening, the sand below him stopped supporting him, and he sunk knee deep into it before the pulse ended. The sand stopped vibrating and locked his feet in after solidifying. Gus grabbed his thigh with both arms, trying to wrench his leg free. Another pulse sunk Gus to mid-chest in the sand and now his arms were trapped as well.

A smarmy look of satisfaction that seemed out of place settled on the super’s childish face. He was still struggling to create a respectable semblance of facial hair. Backing up, he ran towards Gus, who began to expect the worst. When his leg cocked back for a kick, Gus activated Xyzzy at the last moment and appeared fifteen feet above in the air.

The young super, meeting no resistance, kicked through empty air and fell on his butt from overextending himself. Only to become stuck butt-first in the hole left by Gus’ absence, awkwardly trapped and slapping the sand, trying to pull himself out.

Gravity reasserted itself and Gus fell on top of the boy, pushing him further into the hole, neatly folded in half. Gus slid a hand across his cheek and activated Leech and the boy stopped his struggling.

Behind him, Aurora screamed in frustration and Gus spun to see her trapped to her shins in the sand as well. Her opponent was focusing a large bright ball of energy in front of a tattoo on his chest that resembled an eye, but was hard to tell due to the brilliance of the energy ball. His arms were in front of him in hadouken style and it was obvious he was going to hit Aurora point blank.

Gus activated Dash and flung up a shield as he moved to intercept.

The impact shattered his shield and shot him backward into Aurora, the impact pulling her out of the sand. The rebound flung the other super into a rock wall and he crumpled. Gus continued to shoot backward until he collided with a large pitted and porous rock. His armor kept him from getting shredded on the rough rocks, but he hit with enough force to crush a human-shaped imprint in the rock.

Gus felt his vision shrink to a tiny space in front of him, almost passing out. That definitely caused some internal injuries, he thought through the agonizing pain. His right arm felt broken as he had taken the hit on his right side. Awkwardly with his left, he reached across to try to get a healing gel but his thigh was buried in the rock. Weakly, he rolled out of the indentation he had made and fell face-first into the sand. Coughing up some blood, he spit out sand that had pushed into his open mouth as he grimaced in pain.

He tried to push himself up but he felt weak all over. Aurora was screaming again, but Gus hurt so much he couldn’t help her even if he wanted to. He was disoriented and unable to coordinate his own movement effectively. Gus activated Energy Absorption or maybe Absorb, and tried to pull in some kind of energy from the sun on his back to see if he could get enough to move. His HP was at a meager 62/880, and his stamina bar was bottomed out, and did not want to refill. Aurora’s shouts stopped and Gus expected the worst when he was forcefully flipped over.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hell No

It was Aurora, and she looked mad as hell. She roughly brushed the sand off his face and cheek and jammed a red and pink gel in his mouth and forcefully closed his jaw.

“Gus, what the hell was that?”

Gus slowly bit the gels, sucking out the contents, then spitting out the casings. One side of his jaw was definitely broken. Aurora continued to berate him, even as she gave him more gels as he cleared the previous ones and his jaw became more responsive as the bone knit together and muscles were repaired.

“What was what?” he croaked when he finally got enough control over his mouth to talk.

“You swooping in trying to ‘save’ me. You almost got yourself killed! You have to think about the mission. I can take care of myself! I’m not some damsel in distress that you need to rescue. Same thing with the damn manor. It can be rebuilt, dummy. You rushed in and took a big risk trying to put yourself in its way.”

“Why are you so pissed? We won, right?” he asked, pushing himself up onto his knees and wiping the sand off of him.

“We won this time. And just barely. That type of sentimentality is ultimately bad.”

“What about no man left behind? Or woman, I guess.”

“That works for a large team, not when only you and I are the team! You had better promise me that you will never do that again or we are done!”

Gus had never seen her look so angry. And he really didn’t know what the big deal was. It was like he had inadvertently pushed a hot button.

“Say it!” she shouted at him.

Gus stopped trying to clean the sand off himself and looked up in surprise.

“Okay, okay, I won’t do it again,” he conceded, putting his hands up, even more confused. Don’t save you when you’re obviously in trouble. Seems legit.

“Gus, you’re a nice guy, and that’s going to be your downfall. You can’t get sentimental like that. About a teammate, hell, even about the manor. It makes you soft, and you’re too soft! Man up! As you are, you’re worthless to me!”

“Worthless? Really?” he snarled as his anger flared. He was getting tired of taking this abuse.

“Yes! I don’t need someone who can be manipulated by an enemy attacking a soft target, and they’ll drop all reason and compromise the core mission. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

Gus had never seen this side of Aurora and he definitely did not like it.

She continued her tirade of abuse. “Do you know how