One hundred and ten percept Wretch

Wretch, I thought. Forcefield up, I reached for the beam. My hands fell short, but the Wretch didn't.

Glory Girl can't win this.

So what does a one-hundred and ten percent Wretch look like, then?

I lifted up the steel beam, The Wretch dug fingers in with enough force to leave indents in the warm metal's surface.

I took off. Lung was preoccupied, sending flame in the opposite direction from me. I had a moment, so I looked up, flying higher to where the air was cooler. A twenty-foot steel beam dangled from the Wretch's hands, one end held firm enough that metal distorted in multiple places, the other end swinging below us.

***

I dove for Lung, the Wretch gripping the beam in a way that was not at all drawing it back for a big swing. I'd deal.

Twenty feet long, give or take, a foot and a half tall. I'd picked up cars before, always an awkward affair, and even this impressive chunk of metal was only a third or quarter the weight of those vehicles.

"Hit him," I whispered the words. "Swing this at him. Come on!"

***

The gate crumbled. Free energy lashed out, and two people died. the forcefield went out, and people were forced into a retreat.

I reached past the Wretch's hands to touch the metal, gripping the lip of the beam in my burned hand. I pulled, straining to draw it back. The Wretch didn't obey.

A moment later, I was flying into flames, so bright and chaotic after the darkness above that I couldn't breathe or tell purple from orange. It was almost like slow motion, seeing Lung start to turn his snake-like neck around to look at me with one eye that glowed like a drop of molten metal. A distended face broken up into five sub-sections contracted together in an alien grimace.

The beam wouldn't hit. I canceled the Wretch, and let it hit the ground a few feet from Lung.

***

I hit the beam, rather than Lung. One end remained mostly in place, the other coming around to strike Lung. The effect was nowhere nearwhat I would have achieved had I been able to swing the beam like a bat. As it was, it knocked him back toward the area that burned. Purple flames were extinguished in the moment before Lung could roll through them, and he sprung to his feet. Before I'd recovered from the act of striking out, he was on his feet, hands moving, and the flames around me swelled.

Rain was still throwing out his crescents. Many were being intercepted by swells of purple fire. It likely didn't help that I was close.

I flew to the beam, grabbing it and trusting the Wretch to grab it on pure reflex. It was a narrow shield and a deflection that kept the worst of the flames from knocking the Wretch back out of existence. It was my weapon, to keep Lung at bay, to try and knock him down. This time we swung.

He caught the beam with both arms, feet skidding in dirt.

Then it was only one foot in dirt. The other came up, forward, and stomped down on the length of metal. The Wretch broke, and the end of the metal beam struck the earth with enough force to send dirt pluming over my head, above me and behind me.

- Gleaming 9.11