StarFall Comics
Presents:
Trespass
#2: The Broken Truce
It was dawn when Trespass knew something was terribly wrong. She stopped in mid stride and looked around. The alley was empty, but it didn't feel that way.
She reached out with telepathy. No one was near by.
Her battle instincts screamed ambush and they were as reliable as ever. The attackers closed in on her from both ends of the alley.
Trespass saw identical faces charge at her and knew she was in for a hard time. They were energy based duplicates of a person who had a grudge against Trespass.
Swarm was her name and she called herself that with good reason. She could mentally project images, then give those images substance and a certain degree of intelligence. She would order her duplicates to "swarm" over her opponents, pounding them into submission. It wasn't a pretty sight.
Trespass tried a telepathic assault to trim down their numbers. She knew that it wouldn't work, but she had to exhaust the option, just in case. She killed the first dozen with her claws and telekinesis.
The duplicates could be injured and even killed. Once their "skin" was torn, they'd "leak" until their energy was dissipated. How fast they leaked was determined by how much damage to took.
Trespass broke their skin with her claws, then she'd use her TK to accelerate the energy dissipation process. Once they reached a certain energy level, they faded because the couldn't keep the projection together.
The remaining attackers weren't deterred by the gruesome death of their comrades.
The minutes ticked by and Trespass saw no end. The duplicates just kept coming and coming.
With numbers on their side, they would eventually wear her down. She'd take a lot of them with her, but, in the end, they'd win out. She'd seen it before and if things didn't change real soon, it would happen to her.
She was bleeding or bruised in so many places that her healing factor had trouble keeping up: one hand was broken and slowly on the mend, her jaw felt like silly-putty, her ribs ached beyond description, one shoulder kept dislocating, then popping back into place.
All in all, Trespass was hurting, but she wasn't dead, not by a long shot and as long as she drew a breath, she would continue to fight.
She jumped with a telekinetic boost and just barely made it to a fire escape. She looked back and saw the duplicates look up at her.
There were a lot left, many twenty, maybe more.
Trespass knew Swarm's powers better than most and she never realized Swarm could create so many duplicates at one time, much less sustain them. Swarm had been powered up sometime after they last worked together.
Now that Trespass had a chance to breath, she had time to think. Swarm always counted on wearing down her opponents and it almost worked in the alley.
Trespass needed a weapon, besides her claws and TK. Something that woul cause a lot of damage. Something heavy and blunt. She looked up and down the ally and saw only a few things that met her demands.
When Trespass used her telekinesis to lift objects, there was no difference between lifting a fire truck and a pebble. The trouble was that she could only lift so many things at once. Her TK was strong, but limited in most respects.
The alley was lined with dumpsters. Trespass grabbed the heaviest looking one with her TK and started using it to hammer the attackers into the pavement like they were nails.
The alley boomed with the hammering dumpster. Each time it fell, it killed one or two of them and they still didn't hesitated in coming after her. Some tried jumping, but they had normal human strength and didn't even come close to reaching her. Others started making a human pyramid.
Trespass frowned as she picked up another dumpster and started hammering on them.
The sounds in the alley was deafening, but Trespass kept it up. There would be no use in running, the duplicates would eventually find her and the battle would start again. Swarm was a strong telepath. It would end in the alley, one way or another. Either Trespass would be killed or the duplicates would lose their "charge" and fade away.
She used a dumpster to topple the human pyramid, killing all ten of them instantly.
Trespass never regretted killing the duplicates. They were, after all, just duplicates of Swarm and not Swarm herself.
Then as quick as it begun, it stopped. The duplicates halted where they were and a hazed look clouded their faces. Trespass sighed with relief. She knew that look.
The duplicates were losing their charge. Swarm may be able to create them, but she couldn't maintain them for extended periods of time.
Ten minutes after the duplicates started their attack, they dissolved. As the last duplicate faded away, Trespass wondered what possessed Swarm to come after her after all these years.