The swirl of emerald energy roared with the force of a hurricane, devouring Art without mercy.
The clown's body, trapped in the horizon of that vortex, lost all structural cohesion. His limbs elongated like rubber noodles in a process of "spaghettification". His face distorted into a spiral of loud colors that spun dizzily toward the center of the chaos.
Art could not fight.
In a matter of seconds, the stretched mass of what was once an immortal clown compressed until it became a thread of essence, which was absorbed suddenly and with violence by the tiny mouth of the glass bottle.
Fuuu-Plop
The sound was similar to that of a vacuum snapping shut.
In the instant the last trace of Art's shadow disappeared inside the container, the tornado of green energy collapsed and vanished as if it had never existed.
Silence returned to the warehouse and Lief did not waste time.
He crouched down, picked up the bottle cap that had remained on the floor and with a quick movement, placed it over the mouth of the container and screwed it on tightly, sealing the clown's fate.
But he knew that was not enough.
To ensure there was no margin for error, he extended his index finger. The tip of his finger began to shine intensely with that bluish-white light of purifying energy, acting like a welding torch.
Using the air as ink and the cap as a canvas, he swiftly traced a symbol on the metal.
It was not just any letter. It was a sealing rune, an archaic "A" that flashed with a blinding golden glow for a fraction of a second.
Tsssss
The sound of metal being branded was heard. The rune sank into the cap, fusing with the material, and then faded, becoming invisible, but leaving an impenetrable barrier on the astral plane.
Only then did Lief allow himself to exhale and picked up the bottle.
To the touch, the glass was freezing, emanating an unnatural cold that numbed his fingertips.
Not like holding a soda, but like grabbing a block of ice.
Lifting the bottle to eye level, he examined it against the light and shook it slightly.
Inside, there was a miniature Art.
He was exactly the same in every detail, but reduced to the size of a doll. However, the clown's face showed an empty look.
Suddenly, the little Art reacted.
Poof
His tiny body exploded into a cloud of black and white smoke that spun frantically inside the bottle, looking for a crack, any exit. The cloud launched itself with violence upward, crashing against the sealed cap.
And at the instant of impact, the invisible golden rune lit up.
The seal rejected the attack with a discharge of sacred energy. The cloud bounced violently, forced to condense again at the bottom of the jar.
Art recovered his humanoid form, falling on his butt. He rubbed his head, dazed, and looked up with deep disgust toward the barrier that contained him.
Then, he stood up and, through the curved and distorted glass wall, his black eyes met Lief's.
"..."
Lief held the little one's gaze and brought the bottle closer to his face, observing him like a child who has just caught a dangerous insect in a jar.
A mocking, cold, and satisfied smile formed on his lips.
"Reflect on your sins in there, little guy," he whispered, tapping the glass.
Clink
The vibration, amplified inside the enclosed space, caused mini Art to lose his balance and fall onto his back again. The clown got up furiously, banging on the glass with his tiny fists.
Lief laughed.
Confirmed: the seal was solid and with a simple thought, the bottle disappeared, being instantly absorbed into his system's storage space.
With the main problem sealed and filed away, he exhaled and turned toward the warehouse entrance.
Silence had returned, but it was a silence charged with nervous static.
Tara and Dawn were still there, clinging to the doorframe as if it were the only solid thing in a universe that had become liquid.
They didn't look at him as if he were a superhero… they looked at him with a primitive mix of terror and absolute adoration with which a castaway would look at the coast guard pulling him out of the water in the middle of a storm.
They saw him as a violent deity who had just erased a demon.
Their bodies trembled, being the side effect of burnt adrenaline and post-traumatic shock hitting their nervous systems at the same time.
Seeing Lief walking toward them, Tara's paralysis broke.
She tried to stand up, but her legs were jelly, so she opted to crawl, pulling Dawn with her, stumbling through the trash on the floor until closing the distance.
She needed to be close to the only safe thing in that room.
"My God... oh, my God…" Tara stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence at first, "Is-Is he...? Is he gone?"
Lief nodded.
That simple confirmation made Tara collapse. Tears of relief burst forth all at once.
"Thank you!" she sobbed, "Fuck, thank you! Thank you for saving us. I thought that... I thought he was going to kill us. I don't know who you are, but... thank you."
Dawn, for her part, did not speak. She was in a deeper state of shock, catatonic. She clung to Tara's arm with such force that her nails dug into her friend's skin, and she nodded frantically toward Lief with bulging eyes, while tears ran down her cheeks.
Less than five minutes ago, she had been hanging upside down, feeling the cold touch of a saw on her naked skin, waiting to be split in two.
That kind of horror doesn't disappear because the bad guy is gone, it stays etched inside.
"..."
Lief watched them and felt no need to console them, emotional heroism was not in his job description.
"You don't have to thank me," he said interrupting the flow of gratitude, "I didn't do it for charity. I was simply curious to see how that clown worked. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
While he spoke, his gaze inevitably settled on Dawn.
This girl had been stripped of her clothes for Art's "show", and now she was there, curled up in the dirt of a warehouse, trying uselessly to cover herself with her own arms and hiding behind Tara.
Under the light, she looked incredibly small, vulnerable and miserable.
There was nothing sexual in the image, it was simply… pathetic and sad.
Lief shifted his gaze to Tara, arching an eyebrow with pragmatism.
"And, by the way..." he said, signaling vaguely with his chin toward Dawn, "You should find something to cover her with. It's cold here and I don't think she wants to go out like that."
The phrase, said with a total lack of tact but with crushing logic, snapped Tara out of her loop of gratitude.
"What?" She blinked, dazed, and followed Lief's gaze.
!
Panic had prevented her from seeing the obvious. Upon looking at her best friend and seeing her naked and trembling, reality hit her.
"Oh, shit! Dawn!"
With clumsy hands, she took off her own jacket, ignoring the cold she would feel, and carefully wrapped Dawn's shoulders, helping her put her arms in and zipping it up to the top to cover as much as possible.
"I am sorry, I am sorry... I hadn't realized" she murmured hugging her friend, and then looked up at Lief, embarrassed by the indignity of the whole matter, "Thank you... for saying it."
Lief shrugged, "It doesn't matter."
He hadn't said it out of chivalry. He had said it because the situation was uncomfortable and impractical.
"The police will be here in five minutes. Probably someone heard the shots or the screams." Said Lief with indifference, his work there was done and his interest had evaporated the moment he stored the bottle in his inventory.
Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heels and began to walk toward the warehouse exit
"Wait!'
Tara's desperate scream. She separated a little from Dawn and took a few hesitant steps toward him.
"Wait, please!" she insisted with hysteria, "We don't even know who you are! We don't even know your name!"
Lief did not stop. He kept walking toward the darkness outside, a black silhouette outlined against the industrial moonlight.
He simply raised a hand in farewell, without turning his head.
"Batman."
The word sarcastic and charged with an irony that the girls were too stunned to fully process.
Lief left the warehouse and immediately the night air hit him, surprisingly fresh and clean compared to the stench that saturated the interior.
Stopping, he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
!
The air in front of him fluctuated and out of nowhere, pixels of black and silver light began to weave themselves in the void, materializing solid matter in a fraction of a second.
A motorcycle fell onto the asphalt.
It was Fenrir.
"..."
Tara and Dawn, who had limped out of the warehouse just in time to see it, stood petrified.
Tara opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Dawn blinked, her eyes wide open, unable to reconcile what her brain was seeing with reality.
What had just happened? Magic? Were they hallucinating from the stress?
Lief ignored their amazement swung his leg over Fenrir's seat. He put on the matte black helmet, hiding his face, and grabbed the handlebars with both hands.
He twisted his wrist.
Vrooooom
The engine came to life with a deep and wild roar.
It sounded like a beast waking from a slumber, a bass vibration that shook the girls' chests ten meters away.
Lief did not look back and shot off like a ground missile.
Before the astonished gaze of Tara and Dawn, that strange bike became a bolt of black lightning that cut through the darkness of the night.
The red taillight drew a long trail of light, persisting in their retinas like a scar, until the bike and its rider disappeared around the curve at the end of the street, swallowed by the night.
The roar of the engine faded slowly into the distance, leaving behind a silence even deeper than before.
A long minute passed.
Far away, in the distance, police sirens began to be heard approaching, just as he had predicted.
"Gulp"
Tara swallowed hard, feeling her throat dry.
She stared at the empty spot on the road where Lief had disappeared, trying to fit the pieces of the craziest night of her life together: an immortal clown, a magic bottle, a boy with infinite weapons and a bike that appears out of thin air.
"Dawn…" murmured Tara, "Did we just...? Did we just meet a fucking superhero?"
Dawn hugged herself tightly to stop trembling. She looked at the destroyed warehouse behind her, then the empty road, and finally at her friend.
In her eyes there was still terror, yes. But there was something else.
A fracture in her perception of the world.
________
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