Chapter 5: Courtside

Laura woke up with a big, deep, inhale. All around her were pools of dried blood. She rose up in a stir, readying her gadgets as she took a look around: from left to right.

She saw piles of mutilated corpses, many missing their heads. The doors in particular had a pile up of gore which made her stumble.

Turning to her right, she saw the purple-haired woman she was looking for. The college student sat on a bench, sipping water from a bottle while idly swinging a towel with her other hand. Her body was clean of blood or gore, but still a bit sweaty from the volleyball match it seemed.

“What did you do?”, said Laura. “What happened to the game?”

It occurred to Laura she might’ve forgotten something. That seemed to be the power of the purple-haired gal, after all.

It didn’t take long for the mysterious woman to confirm it. Etsu took a loud gulp of her water bottle, then set it to the ground by her shoes.

“Ah, so you don’t remember after all. It’s not innate, then.”, said Etsu.

Etsu snapped her fingers, and the memories flooded back into Laura. The heroine remembered the volley ball massacre. Moreover, she remembered the events that happened to Kramston. She had gotten an idea of them from the logs she had read of course, and she knew she was there, in another timeline perhaps. But, now, she vividly remembered it all. It was no longer cut off from her.

Laura stared back, open mouthed at the brown-eyed face that had once loomed over her entire home city.

As back then, it was smiling.

“You should be grateful, I don’t usually do that for people. Much easier to leave them in the dark. Funner, too, to watch them squirm in confusion over something they can’t possibly recall on their own~”, said Etsu

“Grateful?!?”

Laura was incensed. She charged towards the college student, yet moments before reaching her, Laura was stuck. Her legs had sunken into the floor of the gym as though it was molasses. They swallowed the limbs up, then solidified.

“Relax.”, said Etsu. “I just want to chat. I mean, I’m sure you have questions. There can be time later for fighting each other, if you want to.”

“You’re a monster!”

“Eh.”

Etsu lifted her hand and the floor unswallowed Laura’s legs. The heroine immediately repaid the favor by fetching a mini-boomerang to throw. It hit Etsu’s face head on, and crumbled into dust so fine it blew away in the conditioned air of the gymnasium.

“Are you done yet?”, said Etsu.

Laura clenched her fists and grit her teeth.

“I suppose, but I want answers.”

“You’ll get them.”

“Why did you attack Kramston?”

“First I have my own questions.”

Laura grunted in indignation.

“You slaughtered a gym full of people-”, said Laura.

“I’ll bring them back.”, said Etsu.

“You killed millions in my home city.”

“I brought them back already, along with every atom in every building, street lamp, and more. Would you like a seat?”

Etsu patted the open spot on the bench next to her.

Laura didn’t even shake her head. Etsu didn’t need to read her mind for an answer. It was clear Laura wasn’t gonna seat next to someone she viewed as a mass murderer.

“Fine.”, said Etsu. “I guess your view standing is fine too.”

“View?”

Laura took a few steps closer to Etsu, which the purple-haired woman didn’t protest with another flex of her reality defying powers. Laura stood over the young woman, who didn’t seem phased at all. She figured it dangerous to be this close, but being far, well, that wasn’t any safer really. Besides, this close, she could reach out to try and subdue Etsu if she got the chance.

“How did you remember the Kramston events?”, asked Etsu.

“Because you made me remember.”

“No.”, said Etsu, not exactly amused. “Before that.”

Laura deemed it in her interests to answer.

“Tachyons. I assumed you were rewinding time, or otherwise messing with it. No one remembered things, but your meddling spread the particles everywhere in a radius of your actions. I detected this, and figured something was up. So, what you did to the city was recorded via tachyonic particle manipulation as I saw it happen, so I could leave a message to read later that escaped time, in a sense.”

Etsu’s eyes widened and she smiled.

“Kehehehe, that’s very smart of you. You’re a good hero aren’t you?”

“Why did you attack Kramston?”

“For fun.”

“For fun?!?”

“Yes.”

Etsu wiped her face off with the towel, then her upper arms. Laura was clenching her fist again.

The college student giggled. She brought the towel against the front of her jersey gently, and the white cloth soaked up the sweat there with ease.

“Same reason I’m going to do this.”, said Etsu.

Etsu stuck a finger in her mouth from her right, free hand. She dragged it against the open air in front of her. As she did so, space-time warbled and teared. A portal opened up. It was level with the stomach of the sitting Etsu, while being closer to the level of Laura’s knees.

The sight within the portal had Laura gasp.

It was a city. She recognized it. Sydney to be precise. Yet, no sooner did she notice some of its famous buildings did Etsu move her towel over the portal.

With her hands on either end, Etsu wrung the sweat-laden towel out over the portal.

--==--==--==--

The citizens of Sydney were going about their late afternoon. People were commuting along the busy streets.

Then, the sky opened up, and saw they saw a smiling, purple-haired woman looking down at them from the north while, looming higher, was the similarly unbelievably immense face of a certain famous CEO.

Then, a towel came into view. With a twist of the younger woman's hands, the sopping cloth gushed out a deluge of warm, salted liquid atop the city.

The roaring sound as it came down was unforgettable, though the citizens of city would be lucky to remember it for long at all. The fluid was quick to crush all in its direct path. People had their bodies crunched and crushed beneath the liquid’s sheer weight.

Salty sweat gushed through the buildings too, of course. Office workers heard the roar from above mere seconds before it burst through their ceilings, caved in their floors, and continued till the entire building just burst apart from the flood.

Tons upon tons of the sweat surged through the streets. The grates couldn’t handle it all. Nothing could. It was a city wide flood of college-girl sweat which caused untold damage to the infrastructure and lives of the metropolis. It defeated the city.

A few lucky survivors found themselves rafts or the like after avoiding the worse of it. They could see, through the portal in the sky, the white towel move away. Now, they could focus and really make out the distant roof of a gym and the two, miles-tall giants looking down. The standing one seemed horrified but the purple-haired one was smiling, watching all the chaos.

The standing one reached for the portal, but it quickly shut.

The city of Sydney was left to stew in Etsu’s sweat.

--==--==--==--

As Laura reached out to the portal, Etsu had shut it.

“A nice idea kehehe, but you’d just end up hurting them trying to help them. You’re just too big compared to them. But, wasn’t that fun, being so huge?”

Laura furrowed her brow.

“What? That wasn’t fun at all. Those people...”

“Are stewing in the hard earned sweat I cooked up during a nice game of volleyball. Isn’t that just delightful? You can’t tell me you don’t get a vicarious thrill out of that, don’t you? I mean, how humiliating for them, and the power trip...”

“It’s disgusting.”, said Laura.

Etsu brought her water bottle up to her mouth and took a big swig.

“I have more questions. You said you’d answer.”, said Laura.

“I have more of my own too.”

Laura grunted, curtly, in anger.

“Who exactly are you?”, said Etsu.

“I’m Laura Yeal.”

“No, the costume. That’s a bit newer to me. Lots of news articles out there: not many useful ones. I just checked. Besides, I want to hear it in your own words.”

“I’m the Leopard. I patrol the streets of Kramston, fighting crime and villains: villains like you.”

Etsu snorted out some water as she chortled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t think you’ve ever fought someone like me.”, she said.

“Not yet.”

“Maybe later.”, said Etsu putting down her water.

“So you knew it was me in the costume, how? Did you read my mind?”

“No I don't like to do that. Takes the fun out of things.”

“Then how’d you know?”

“I have keen senses. Very very keen. Down to the atomic level when I feel like it: which is quite often. I heard your voice while you were watching the game, and remembered it from the many other millions crying out and screaming as I flattened your city to rubble.”

Laura scowled.

Etsu continued.

“Though, I’m surprised you didn’t introduce yourself as the dust that briefly stained my big toe as I flattened your manor, and the surrounding district, to a smear.”

Etsu looked down at a bobbing sneakered foot as she said that, chortling to herself with her usual “keheheh.”

“Not funny.”, said Laura.

“I disagree.”

“Fine. Disagree, but I have more questions.”

“I’ll answer them. This game of ours is pretty fun.”

“Not a game.”, said Laura.

“I dis-a-gree”, said Etsu.

Laura couldn’t take it anymore, she cocked her fist back and moved to punch Etsu’s face.

Just like the boomerang, her fist turned to dust on contact.

Etsu laughed, then snapped her fingers. Laura was now in the woman’s palm the size of a small doll: the kind you’d put in a doll house. At the least, her fist had reformed.

Laura felt Etsu’s fingers clench around her. They wiggled to shift the grip upwards, about her chest.

Etsu’s stomach gurgled, and she giggled.

“Ah, she should talk over some food.”, said Etsu

“Food?!? What have you done to me.”, said Laura.

“Ah, but I should change first, of course. Can’t go to the dining hall all sweaty.”

“Change?!?”

“Yes.”, said Etsu. She moved her free left hand towards the free and kicking legs of Laura.

“And you’ll be coming with me.”

“What?”

“You still had questions right? Don’t see why you’d be upset.”

“You-”

Etsu gripped tightly and turned her hands in opposite directions. Just as she had wrung out the towel earlier, she applied torquing force to Laura’s shrunken body. Like a brittle cracker, Laura split open, gore dipping onto the floor.

Naturally, Laura’s vision went black, and she died, again.

Etsu looked down at her water bottle. The lid was off. She kicked it over and water spilled out of I and kept flowing far more than its capacity should have held. It quickly surged over the floor, walls, and crept up to the ceiling. The gym soon cleaned itself of blood.

The college student smirked as she quickly dried and cleaned up the rest of the mess.