Urban Renewal - 27 -   by Erin Halfelven Art by Heather Rose Brown

 
"Ignition!" shouted Billy. Blue flames, the visible side-effect of his time-bending forcefield, burst out from his shoulder armor where Tess had concentrated her friction power and Penny had provided a laser spark. Tess switched her waning powers to simply thickening the air around them.

Their fall slowed. Billy had practiced falling from heights many times and with turbulent rapid scissor kicks managed to guide them toward the now-only-toasty warm outstretched palms of the giant robot.

"Got you," said Penny in the bass growl of the Nuclear Knight.

Tess's eight-year-old body, reserves all used-up, collapsed into unconsciousness at the announcement of their safety.

The hulk of the cyborg jetcopter crashed into the vineyard below them, wings tearing off, boom-like tail section breaking in half. The armor glass of the unused cockpit shattered and the heavy plastic fuel bladders in the tanks burst flooding the crash site with jet fuel that quickly caught fire from hot pieces of engine debris.

A column of greasy black smoke rose and was quickly blown into a ring by the first of several vapor explosions. For a moment it looked as if a nuclear explosion had occurred after all.

Penny opened the passenger shelf on the front of the Knight's body, letting Billy slip inside the narrow compartment, still holding Tess, who in turn still clasped her ever-more-raggedy dolly. The big robot then bent its path toward the airport where Lady Karma and other first aid could surely be found.

Smoke and flames rose behind them: Spartako's funeral pyre.

* * *

Seeing that the kids would be safe, Lady Karma reached out for the spirit of death and dying she sensed, a hungry spirit of longing and weariness. "You may go home," she told it. "Ride the wheel again or find your own peace. Goodbye, goodbye, I tell you three times, goodbye to this entangling life, you wounded souls."

Her eyes popped open. Souls?

"Man," said Leo beside her watching the burning wreckage, "What a candle!"

* * *

At the far edge of the airport, past some warehouses and untidy commercial buildings, near an empty SUV with both doors open, Candace Munson knelt on the ground holding her husband's head in her lap. "She's safe, Todd, she's safe! Wake up, honey!" She'd pulled off both their masks when she'd seen him collapse after watching Tess's rescue.

Todd's eyes fluttered, half-open. "They're gone," he whispered.

"No, no," said Candace. "The big mecha saved them! They're okay, Tess and the boy, they're okay."

He tried to sit up and she helped him. "I saw that," he said. "Then I reached for the mind still in the wreckage and something sucked all the others out of me." He looked at her, a small if worried smile playing with his expression. "They're gone, all the ghosts that haunted me are gone."