I Hate Howard

I hate Howard. I hate his goofy glasses, I hate his raggedy dreadlocks, I hate his pinched up zombie-pale face, I hate his bony limbs, I hate his black clothes, I hate his stupid bright yellow boots, and I really hate his superpowers. Fuck Howard.

He’d probably say some bad things about me too. He probably thinks this whole thing was my fault. Well tough. You asked me. They say there’s three sides to every story. Well I don’t care about the other two. I choose to remember that I’m the wronged party here.

Anyway, you asked about that thing where half of downtown was destroyed and hundreds died the other night. Well that started out innocently enough. I went down to Ballard’s Books to get a mocha, the latest Landon Flanderson novel, and a good look at River. She’s that chick with the purple hair that works the info desk. I don’t know how she does that thing with her hips when she walks but I could follow her around all day. What? It’s less creepy than it sounds. Okay fine, it’s exactly as creepy as it sounds. It’s not a crime if she never sees me, right?

Turns out she wasn’t working that night, so what’s it matter? I spent something like ten minutes in the coffee shop trying to think of a non-creepy way to ask where she was, but I came up empty. So I paid for the mocha and stepped out into the inky dark of the night.

Seriously? You’re going to ask me to tell you what happened then complain when I use evocative language? What do I care if you’ve got other things to do? I clearly don’t. Fine. It was dark out. And raining. It was raining like, something that rains, a lot. Shut up. I’m not great with metaphors and it’s something I’m working on.

I’m trying to tell you what happened and you keep interrupting. So I’m stepping out into the inky black night shot through with sheets of driving rain falling like the tears of God. Oh, I like that. So I go out the door, take two steps, and bam! There’s Howard. No idea where he came from. He jumped out between two raindrops or something. He’s always been a sneaky little bastard. You remember Apollo? Well, of course you don’t remember him personally, but you’ve at least read a book on Greek myths. Or seen a movie? Well Apollo didn’t see Howard coming, and he was the god damn god of the sun. Pretty hard to sneak up, wouldn’t you think? Not a lot of shadowy corners at his place. Howard sucks, but he doesn’t suck at his job.

Anyway, Howard shouts, “Have at you, Daunte!” and unleashes the POWER OF THUNDER. That’s just one of the messed up things about Howard. He always opens with thunder, cape billowing out behind him dramatically. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. He seriously wears a cape. I hate Howard’s cape.

So the windows of the book shop shatter behind me in a spray of razor sharp shards, which I assume was a problem for the customers. Probably would have made a cool visual in a movie though. But thunder’s just noise, so I didn’t feel a thing. Sure it’s loud enough to shatter glass, as I already mentioned, but my ears were augmented along with the rest of me. About the best Howard could do with thunder is keep me up at night. He actually did that once. Stood outside my window for like four hours thundering away and demanded I step forth and face him. Who does that?

Oh and here’s the really messed up part, Howard has the POWER OF LIGHTNING too. You know, something that’s actually dangerous. He unleashed the lightning next, but I’m already out of the way. The crackling silver bolt was impressively big, but all it did was ruin the bookstore’s door pretty good. I tossed a bolt of my own at him, but Howard managed to get the POWER OF SHIELD up in time to block it.

“Knave!” he says. “You base treachery is repaid this night.” Yes, he really talks like that. I guess being infused with the seething chaotic energies that rip at the very fabric of the universe by ancient and godlike beings from outside any conception of time and space comprehensible to the human mind does funny things to a person’s head. I know I didn’t enjoy it. Totally worth it, though.

Anyway, I shouted, “Shut up, Howard!” and hit him again with the lightning. He blocked it, but it backed him up a step. I smashed my fist into the ground and trigger the POWER OF EARTHQUAKE. The sidewalk ripped apart like someone was pulling a giant zipper right at Howard. Since he was still staggered by the lightning, one of his feet slipped into the crack and he went down.

I raced in, hands blazing with the POWER OF FIRE. I could have sworn I had him, but besides all that bad stuff I said, Howard’s pretty clever in a fight. He slapped a hand to the wet ground and the surface froze solid, POWER OF ICE. Next thing I know. I do a full Charlie Brown and land on my kidneys, legs in the air like Paris Hilton. My first thought was that I was in perfect posture to execute a kip up. You know, that ninja springy uppy thing you see on TV? Well I go ahead and try that before I have my second thought, that the ground is still ice. I go down face first this time, definitely a disimprovement.

I looked up and saw Howard pull his foot out of the crack, leaving his stupid boot behind. He yelled something about Yvette and leapt at me. He really needs to get over that. It wasn’t my fault she got splashed with acid. I was aiming for Howard. He’s the one who ducked out of the way. I would have used the POWER OF HEALING on her, but he chased me away with a giant axe. He’s bitter about that too, bee tee dubs. I can heal, he can conjure an axe. Again, not my fault, but that’s Howard for you. He’s the one who kept me from healing his girlfriend’s horrific facial scars, so I wish he’d stop acting like I’m the asshole on that one.

Anyway, Howard does a flip while shooting a line of fire out of his foot. It comes down like a giant sword. It looked pretty cool, now that I think about it. At the time, I focused on rolling out of the way and the fire burned through the ground right where I’d faceplanted. I sprang to my feet and used the POWER OF SHIELD to block Howard’s next shot of fire. The shield split the coruscating flame, sending fiery bolts flashing to either side of me to blow up somebody’s Escalade and somebody’s Yugo. Weird parking lot.

Howard shouts “Your foul life ends this night, false friend,” and blasts away with more fire.

This time I just sidestepped. I think that’s when the supermarket across from Ballard’s went up. “We were never friends, Howard,” I say. I aimed a bolt of lightning at his feet to see if I could trip him up again.

Howard jumped over the lightning. He’s all, “Faithless wretch. For how many years did we fight as one? You were my trusted comrade.”

I say something along the lines of, “You annoyed the hell out of me, Howard. On your best days, I wanted to smash your head with a rock. I tolerated you because we had a job to do. Once Xanos was out of the picture, I was done with you too.”

Howard goes, “And whose hand felled Xanos? You repaid our patron’s benevolence with blood.”

“Our patron?” I say. “He was a near-omnipotent elder being whose inscrutable motives resembled the human concepts of evil and homicidal insanity. It’s good that he’s dead.”

Howard’s all, “You came to Xanos and begged to be gifted with his might.”

So I told him, “I didn’t beg. And he tricked me into the chains that came with his gifts.” I hate it when I start talking like Howard.

He says, “You thought to gain power without sacrifice, then you slew the one who made you great. Now I avenge Lord Xanos with all the others you’ve discarded!”

By the way, there was a pretty spectacular exchange of eldritch firepower during this little conversation. We’re both good multitaskers. Columns of fire, bolts of lightning, shards of ice, metal blades, chunks of rock, lions, we were throwing everything we had at each other. Thank the darkness that River wasn’t at work. Ballard’s got pretty much atomized. I feel kinda bad about all the devastation and whatnot, but remember that this was all Howard’s fault.

Also, I want to say for the record that you wouldn’t like Xanos and you should be glad he’s dead. If you’d ever met, he would have made you immortal then twisted your body into hideous shapes, forcing you to live through the gruesome pain. This is if he was having a good day. And if the sight of his true form didn’t cause your heart to explode from pure horror. It can do that, trust me.

I mean sure, Xanos was basically my god and I served as his loyal cabana boy for centuries, but he wasn’t a nice guy. And he made me work with Howard. I saw an opening one day and took him out. It’s his own fault for giving me the POWER OF DEICIDE so I could take out Thor back in the day. I am what he made me.

So there I was, standing in the smoldering ruin of a Prius with my body wreathed in unnatural black flame. Howard’s rushing right at me, swinging that giant axe like a refrigerator on the end of a flagpole, one of those little flagpoles people hang off their trees. Ugh. Shut up. The point is he has a giant axe that I don’t want in my head. So I shoot into the sky with the POWER OF FLIGHT.

Flying is less fun than you probably think, especially in the rain. The drops are all like little pebbles if you’re going fast enough, and I always forget to bring goggles. The fires below quickly became tiny points of light as I rocketed straight up. Then Howard came roaring out of the darkness, sans his giant axe, thankfully. He was also having a hard time dealing with the air currents in the storm, thanks to his stupid cape.

I tossed a few fireballs at him to make him work harder to keep up. Not that I was running away, of course. I just needed some space to come up with a clever plan. Strip malls and mcmansions sped by below as my hair whipped around my face. The wind and rain had basically turned my fine Italian suit into a bobsledder outfit. One more thing to hold against Howard. He swiped at me with a lightning whip, but I banked out of the way fairly easily.

I had a clever idea and kept shooting straight up. Howard naturally followed me. I slowed down as I climbed toward the moon. Or the clouds that hid the moon, rather. Whatever, the point is I was pretending that my energy was running out. That’s the thing with the fell powers of the void, they consume souls. Fortunately it doesn’t have to be my soul, and I have quite a reserve of loose souls stored up. You’re welcome for my solving your hobo problem on the east side, by the way.

So Howard’s catching up and thinking he’s got me weakening. He yells, “Your base treachery is repaid this night,” or something.

I released the POWER OF FLIGHT and drifted upward on momentum for a couple seconds before unleashing the POWER OF GRAVITY. I smashed into Hoard and grabbed on. That altered gravity stuck us together like two pieces of duct tape with the sticky sides stuck together and drove us toward the ground like an upside down rocket. (Damn, I thought one of those would work.) A sonic boom echoed in my ears as Howard scrambled to free himself. My plan was to disengage the gravity at the last moment and fly myself to safety, leaving Howard to go splat. I used something similar on Ghanesha and it worked like a charm. By the way, you’d never believe how strange a flying elephant dude looks. Made a huge crater too.

Unfortunately for my plan, Howard managed to throw up a shield between us. That seriously shouldn’t have worked. Everyone knows the POWER OF SHIELD needs empty space in which to manifest. Well everyone I know knows that, anyway. Howard apparently never heard that rule, and his shield snapped us apart and gave him time to slow his landing. We both crashed down in the middle of Main Street. Amazingly enough, missing all the cards.

Now the next part was unfortunate, but I really don’t think you can blame it all on me. That guy should not have been driving so fast in the rain. As I climbed out of the crated I’d just made, there’s a car heading right for me. I flicked it out of the way with the POWER OF TELEKINESIS and it kind of went spiraling into city hall.

Fine, I get that you’re upset about that, but I was trying not to get hit by a car and I didn’t have time to be careful. Well sure I could have let him run me over and been fine afterwards. But it still would have hurt. And Howard started this whole thing anyway. And he’s the one who threw the bus through the front of the department store. He didn’t even check to see if it was empty first. Just threw the bus and the orphan boy scouts on board right at me. Yes, maybe I could have caught it and set it down gently, but I didn’t have a lot of time to react. And yes, maybe a huge wave of white-hot flame wasn’t the best counter attack I could have used in the middle of town, but I was pretty pissed off at that point.

So there are a lot of people screaming and running away in panic at this point, and a lot of things on fire. Howard comes at me with that whirlwind lightning combo he used to finish off Horus. Have you ever seen a tornado made out of lightning? It’s pretty cool. Now since I’m a stand up guy, I’ll admit that it was wrong for me to pull the radio tower down on Howard with telekinesis without at least checking if part of it would fall on the animal shelter. But accidents happen, okay? Why did they even have a first-grade class volunteering at the shelter that late at night?

The tower shorted out Howard’s lightning and smacked him back to the ground with a satisfying thud. He must have used a shield or something to absorb the impact though, because the next thing I know various pieces of the tower are rocketing at my face. I barely managed to deflect most of them. No I wasn’t trying to send that one girder crashing through the church’s 300 year old stained glass window. It just happened, and Howard’s the one who threw it.

So my head’s still spinning from all the metal shrapnel I just dodged when I hear Howard shout, “Behold my rat!” Next thing I know, he’s unleashed some power I’ve never seen before. Instead of water, I’ve got razor sharp metal spikes raining down at me. POWER OF POINTY RAIN or something? Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with rats, which would have confused me if I wasn’t scrambling to dodge the death shower. Actually, now that I think about it, he probably shouted “Behold my wrath!” That would make more sense.

Anyway, the spikes were somewhat nerve wracking, so I went with a somewhat desperate ploy and raced right at Howard with the POWER OF SPEED. Just like I hoped, the spike rain followed me toward him, so Howard had to cut it off. Now this next part is pretty cool. Howard goes back to lightning, which I dive under. I use the POWER OF ICE to freeze the street so I can slide. Howard whips the axe out of nowhere and tries to brain me, but I use a burst of wind to push myself to the side and up to my feet right next to Howard.

He tried to put up a shield, no doubt expecting me to use lightning or fire or ice or plasma or whatever. I swerved him by going low tech with what I like to call the POWER OF FIST. It’s not really a power, it’s my fist. It works great though. My fist smashed into Howard’s jaw like . . . a fist . . . smashing into someone’s jaw. Dammit. It was way too fast for Howard and he went down in a heap.

I would have finished him off, but that’s when the cement truck hit us. I hope you have the driver for DUI, because that’s the only sort of person who would be driving a truck at full speed into a warzone. The impact stunned me pretty good, and when I came to, Howard had slinked off somewhere. Coward. That’s when your SWAT boys showed up, and I figured I’d be a good sport and surrender.

So that’s the story. I’ll be going now. You obviously can’t keep me here. It was nice chatting with you, though. Have a nice—shit. That thunder came from inside the police station, didn’t it? Dammit. Only one deranged superpowered assassin of gods would do that indoors. You should probably sneak out the back and run like hell before this thing gets started again.

I really hate Howard.