Super: Underground - Book 2 in the Super: Series

Chapter 21: Darkness

After the light disappeared, it took a long time for anything to resolve. The darkness seemed complete; Lex couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face, or any of the rest of her body. After what felt like an age, she realized she stood on something and looked down to see her own bare feet on a wooden floor like the one in the martial arts studio. Nothing could be seen in the near or far distance, which vanished away into the dark, but she could see her own limbs again and she had a floor to stand on.

Lex smiled to herself, feeling good about that last part at least. She tried to figure out her location and what she was supposed to be doing, but as she did, her head felt as if she’d been pierced through with a spike under her chin that came out through the top of her brain, and she fell to her knees, clutching her hair until the pain subsided again. Deciding to abandon that line of thought as she began to feel normal once more, Lex instead planned to continue to work on the form that Mr. Chen had challenged her to create, rather than stand around with nothing to do.

She felt it had been coming along well, but she hadn’t completed it yet. Lex knew she would probably have been further along or have completed it by then if she hadn’t been trying to engineer an escape at the same time, but maybe now she would have time to finish. She began by running through what had been completed, and Lex felt her body relax as she slid into the now-familiar movements. As she raised her right arm in a block, however, Lex felt her shoulder stiffen, throwing off the normal arc, as an all-too-familiar voice broke into her workout.

“What the hell is that weak form that you’re doing? It looks like some ballet shit.”

As usual, her father’s voice seemed to ruin everything it touched, but for some reason, Lex didn’t panic like she used to. In this place, somehow nothing seemed strange or odd. She felt as if anything might happen as she turned her face up to look her father in the eye.

“Actually,” she said calmly, “this is a form I created.”

“You created,” he said mockingly, while standing up straight and broadening his shoulders, a familiar move meant to intimidate, she knew. “What the hell for?”

“To defeat you,” Lex replied, launching into the first move of her form.

He was caught off-guard by her swift attack and by the fact that one of her fists thrown at his chest turned into a pointed striking attack on the right shoulder at the last moment, hitting a pressure point and numbing the muscles of that arm. Her father roared then and came at her just as Lex had suspected, and she used her sticking hands and feet technique to control and redirect a number of quick blows, redirecting the hard punches and kicks he tried to hit her with.

“You’re going to lose, Alex, you piece of shit,” he yelled, continuing to come at her with a series of strikes meant to be withering. “You’re weak. God knows I tried to train it out of you, but you’re weak! You always have been.”

Lex ignored his words, continuing to work her form, and to her dismay found that most of the hard blows she directed against her father didn’t have much effect. The sticking hands and feet seemed to work best, and most pressure-point hits and joint locks also seemed effective. Remember this, Lex told herself as she pressed her attack.

She held her own, taking a few blows but giving more, until she ran up against the end of her form. As Lex hesitated for a split second, her father turned and jammed a large fist into her left kidney. Doubling over from the pain, he knocked her legs out from under her. Lex struggled to get back to her feet from under a hail of blows, finally falling back to her knees as the pain in her head started to return.

“That was almost too easy,” she heard her father saying then, through his laughter.

After that, Lex couldn’t be too sure of what happened for a while, but eventually found herself staring down at her bare feet on the wooden floor again. She checked herself for the expected bruises and found none. Upon stretching and trying her muscles, Lex found everything in good working order, but she felt more tired than she had been before her fight with her father. Shaking off her thoughts, Lex began to stretch out in preparation for more practice when she heard a voice.

“Hey, Lex,” Casey’s said.

Looking everywhere, Lex only saw darkness. “Casey?” she asked the nothingness. “Where are you?”

“I’m right here,” a voice returned faintly, and then Lex saw her friend. Casey seemed mostly an outline, ghostly at first, but in a moment she solidified. Hugging her friend, Lex noticed Casey was smiling but still looking worried as their eyes met. Lex sighed as she stepped back.

“My idiotic father was here. I did fine at first, with the new form you helped me put together, but he beat me at the end.”

Casey nodded. “You know, I should have said this before, but I figured it wasn’t any of my business. I think you may have put too many power moves into that form. The things that Mr. Chen taught you will probably be way more effective against your dad. He sounds like he’s the same sort of bully as George. Use the same tactics against him—go for his weak spots. Don’t attack him where he’s strong.”

Lex thought for a moment, then nodded in reply. “Can you help me rework what I have so far?”

“Yeah. I’ll try to come at you like George, so maybe it’ll help you think like it’s your dad.”

The two of them started running through the form and Casey tried to fill in for Lex’s dad as best she could, alternately charging at Lex and offering suggestions for areas where she thought the form should be changed.

“Remember,” Casey said as she moved into Lex’s mock throat blow, “he’ll be even easier to beat than George. Your dad is just an ordinary guy, so he’ll have any sensitive area that most people have: eyes, ears, throat, joints, and so on. It’ll be a piece of cake for you.”

“Yeah,” said Lex, unconvinced, sighing and smiling, but not feeling it.

Casey stopped then and looked directly into Lex’s eyes. “Don’t try to downplay what you did. That guy nearly beat me to death and you defeated him. And because you won, it gave me courage to do what I did. Your dad is just another bully. I bet there’s about as much behind him as there was behind George.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Lex replied, straightening up and looking at Casey with a new confidence. “Let’s keep going.”

They continued to work on the form and had reworked everything Lex had completed when Lex felt her strength start to seep away. She stopped and sat down for a moment but couldn’t keep sitting upright.

“I’m sorry, Casey,” she murmured as the darkness closed in again.

“Just get some more rest, Lex. You’ll feel better later.”

After that it seemed to be dark for a long time again, and Lex didn’t know whether she slept or floated in it. Eventually enough light gathered so that Lex could look down and see her own feet standing on the wooden floor again, however. She yawned and stretched, then went through her new form once quickly to make sure she remembered all of the changes she and Casey had worked on. Smiling when she reached the end of the sequence, Lex jolted forwards a moment later from a blow to the back of her head.

Lex spun quickly to find her father behind her, smiling at her evilly. “Ready to get your ass handed to you again?”

“Are you?” asked Lex, her eyes narrowing.

The very air seemed to vibrate with the stillness for a moment, and then the two of them came together in a blur of movement and the sound of Lex’s father shouting obscenities and insults. Casey had been right; the form she and Lex had developed together worked like a charm against the big man. Lex felt her heart sing with pride as she continually directed the bulk of her father’s blows away from her and then delivered stinging jabs to his pressure points, locked up his joints, blurred his eyes by hitting near them, and a number of other nasty techniques. However, as they fought, Lex felt her energy being sapped away. It didn’t seem to be so much from the few blows her father landed on her, but from his constant, screaming insults.

“You piece of shit, Alex! Did you really think you could get me with such weak shit? Come on now, little pussy girl, just give up and cry already! You’ll never beat me, Alex!”

Lex found herself drawing back as the form abruptly ended, unsure what to do next. She and her father eyed each other from a few feet away warily, Lex panting and her father standing awkwardly due to some of the pressure-point strikes Lex had managed to land on him. When he suddenly faded away into nothing, Lex almost sobbed with relief, but instead just collapsed to the floor as the darkness rushed in everywhere around her.

Although she had no way to tell for sure, Lex started to get worried as time seemed to drag on. The darkness seemed...