"I have six spells right now. The usual four plus … umm, Vines and Potence. That's Mush and Trainwreck nearby." Dark Witch could feel the extra spells filling her up, taking their places besides the four that were already maxed.
Key piped up at that, "Wouldn't be a party if there was nothing to steal." Her Panopticomnicon was a huge mask extending out from her face with collection of lenses that looked like it could belong to an eye doctor instead of a cape. The over engineered contraption spun noisily before clicking into a new position. "Luckily, there it is." She pointed enthusiastically with her similarly oversized gauntlet. "It seems pretty big, though not for Squealer, I guess, and it's pretty much done. I think I should have it ready to go A-S-A-P, especially if the 'Master' over there is any help besides being April's cheerleader."
At that, April said cheerily "My Master is great at helping me out with all sorts of tasks!" For his own part, Overlord looked a little annoyed at the biting comment from a mere tween, but stayed quiet for a moment, seemingly checking on something under April's blonde hair. His regal purple-and-black theme was a decided contrast to April's street clothes and cheap domino mask; he still hadn't finished the costume for his otherwise impeccable gynoid robot.
Taking an annoyed tone, he finally replied, "Key, can't you remember we're dropping the nicknames tonight? Too much of that in costume and it'll compromise our identities, and besides you're confusing April."
Key pouted at being reprimanded, and Dark Witch hesitated for a second before getting back on topic, "So that's a go right? Low risk and high reward?"
"Five by Five, Dark Witch." Slayer, the leader of the Scooby Gang, sounded as confident as always. She supposed Slayer had reason to be confident, as impossible to kill as her Changer power made her. The sultry dark-skinned girl glanced over her newly expanded ranks and strode into the lead. Faux-tribal adornments accented her risque costume, and the bright white warpaint on the face she was wearing was even less real, merely a change in coloration done with her power.
Not for the first time, Willow worried her about her own costume in comparison. She felt a little slutty wearing the loose black silks, but was she even going to be able to get Xander's attention when compared against Faith?
Despite the goofy jester's getup he wore, Cretin was all business at the moment, and paying more attention to their surroundings than to either Slayer or Dark Witch. As they strode out of the alley, Dark Witch saw a distraction popping up along a more obvious sight line for the thugs guarding the outside of Squealer's garage. A swerving car raced drunkenly from the left side of the street with another two after it in close pursuit. Half of them dived for cover and most of the rest turned to watch the spectacle. Slayer leaped out of the shadows like a tiger, arms stretching out and bulking up as she grabbed two of the Merchants still standing and threw them wildly into the rest.
Not to be outdone, Overlord zapped a surprised Merchant with his taser and commanded "Blitz Three Delta!" April reoriented with an inhuman twitch and then cartwheeled her way into a jump kick, taking out another unwary thug. As she got up to repeat the maneuver, three duplicates of her appeared, all bouncing off in different directions. A couple popped into nothingness as they hit their targets, but the confusion they caused proved almost as dangerous as the real April as the Scoobies quickly decimated the opposition.
One of their luckier foes had managed to dive to cover well enough to avoid the initial barrage and pulled his gun as Dark Witch and Key exited the alley after the others. Dark Witch shook off the shock of her first real fight in time to shout at him "HEY! Look at me!" Her eyes filled up with black as his locked on them, and his movements slowed, stunned and stupid. Just as she was wondering how she could best knock him out without losing eye contact, Key ran up and nailed him in the side of the head with her giant (single) gauntlet, unceremoniously dropping him to the concrete.
"We're clear! Key, get the door! And Dark Witch, be ready with your mumbo-jumbo the second it's open!" Slayer had just finished the last man standing outside, and Key quickly ran up to make short work of Squealer's garage lock. Meanwhile, Dark Witch looked around to see if anyone on her team was hurt, but the whole of the group was unscathed, and thanks to Cretin, rapidly multiplying. Scant moments later, tools extended from Key's gauntlet and took the lock into its component pieces, and she rolled out of the way as Slayer threw the rolling door up and open, seemingly surrounded by six dozen of her teammates. The fight outside the garage hadn't lasted longer than ten of Dark Witch's hyperventilating breaths.
They were greeted by another dozen or so stoned losers in various states of unreadiness on the other side, reinforced by Trainwreck just finished getting into his mech and given cover by the massive form of Mush already covered in soggy garbage and three times the height of a man. Dark Witch was true to Slayer's orders, shocking Trainwreck's mech with an arc of black lightning and exploding shadowy vines to entangle several of the lesser thugs. Overlord lobbed a stun grenade to confuse another handful of Merchants, and Slayer and half of her illusory copies leapt straight for Mush, her hands exploding into foot long wicked shearing claws as she tore into his disgusting form. The Scoobies real and imagined swarmed through the door and the second battle was on.
Dark Witch entered and immediately noticed a giant mechanical spider splayed out on a very bizarre version of a garage lift. Its eyes lit up, and for a moment it looked like it might not just sit around to be stolen. She momentarily regretted using up her anti-Tinker spell, but Key, Overlord, and several of their own doubles ran over to the unconventional vehicle and started hacking at it themselves. Key's gauntlet exploded into metallic tentacles that networked themselves into Squealer's creation and shorted it back to a reboot sequence, and Overlord started lowering the lifts to get it ready to move on its own.
Dark Witch ran toward the paralyzed powersuit Tinker accompanied by eight of her doubles in close formation, but eight quickly turned to seven when one of them was winged with a gunshot and disappeared. She (and her seven remaining duplicates) eeked in panic, but in the second it took her to figure out who had shot at her, Cretin had already got to the barely entangled baddie and knocked him down for the count with his weighted scepter. He refreshed her eighth duplicate to boot, and added a ninth and a tenth for additional protection.
She got back on task, and just as Trainwreck's mech started stuttering back into motion, he looked her way. Dark Witch skidded to a stop and trapped his gaze inside her own black eyes, the enlarged irises of her mirror images rippling with her own in unison. This time, it would take more than a big gauntlet to do the job, but April was up to the task. She dove at his legs with a cry of "The bigger they are, the harder they fall," and Trainwreck toppled and landed badly, leaving his oversized form exposed to a serious beating from the almost comically smaller April.
Slayer was still wrestling with a rapidly shrinking Mush, but the rest of the fight was wrapping up and it would only be a matter of time before Key had cracked the lock on the spiderbot vehicle they were here to steal. Overlord was looting bags of cash and tossing them into the spider, and Cretin was calling her over to fix a nasty gash he'd gotten on his arm in the melee. "XA- umm, Cretin, you're hurt-"
Just as Dark Witch was about to move to help her oldest friend, she noticed two more of her spells start to fill up from nothing. Telekinesis and Shadow Blend, meaning Skidmark and Squealer were near. "Wait. Guys! We have a prob-" And then two more spells she didn't recognize started filling up after that. "We have an even bigger problem! Skidmark, Squealer, and two other unknown capes all just crossed into my range! The plan was only for two capes, what are we going to do?"
Slayer was still busy, but Cretin reacted quickly, running to Dark Witch and looking around the room. He instantiated a couple dozen new clones to replace ones that had been lost during the fight, and announced, "Looks like us ambushers are about to be us ambushees. Key, we need to blow this drugsicle stand nowish or things are going to get hairy fast!"
Dark Witch snapped out of her panic as he reached her and brushed her hand over the bloody tear in his costume, her spell pushing Slayer's borrowed power into his arm to heal it. Shadowy tissue formed from nothing and then burst into reality, leaving Cretin uninjured but his jester's outfit still torn. Fortunately, the injury had looked worse than it was, and her Cure Wounds pool was still more than half full.
Key was now in the driver's seat tucked into the head of the spider's minivan sized body, but her gauntlet was still whirring like crazy and tied into the guts of the machine. "I have simple control, but without the programming cracked this thing isn't going to move faster than a snail. Get loaded up, but it'll be another minute before we can move." The octopedal device was now standing on its own, and the retractable roof slid the rest of the way off the passenger compartment in the body exposing two rows of hefty bucket seats. The spider started taking hesitant steps to the exit but clearly Key didn't have her balance with it yet.
"April, Regroup Tactical Beta!", Overlord shouted as he was first into the passenger compartment. With an upbeat "Yes, Master," April upended a stack of crates on Trainwreck's still prone form and ran to join him in the passenger seats. She hadn't been able to deal much real damage to Trainwreck's durable mech, but between the lingering effects of her spell and his compromised position Dark Witch expected he would stay out of action long enough.
Slayer finally managed to disengage from Mush, tossing his now barely larger than human form into a corner of the garage. Lingering cuts and bruises from the battle faded to nothing even as she spoke "Good work everyone, let's bail!"
Suddenly, Squealer's earsplitting loudspeaker cut through the noises of the night, "Not so fast you little shits! Nobody steals my tech!" and her helicopter descended, filling up the entire garage door. Skidmark was riding in the backseat, and even as he layered stripe after stripe of his power on the helicopter's stabilizer wings, the railguns mounted on them opened up, destroying a handful of duplicates, causing massive damage to the garage's contents, and putting a foot long spike through Slayer's chest.
Things would've been even worse, but a panicked Dark Witch threw up a quick mirror shield to deflect the fire back at the chopper. With the rounds bouncing back against Skidmark's acceleration fields it wasn't very effective at doing damage, but it managed to at least block the tail end of the volley before winking out.
Despite the massive hole in her chest, Slayer burst into action, grabbing up Dark Witch in a bridal carry and jumping with her on stretching legs to the back of the spider. "April, the manhole, now!" At Slayer's order, April turned from her path back to Overlord and instead worked on pulling up the giant circular cover presumably leading to the overlarge city sewer system the spider was designed to fight in.
Meanwhile, her gruesome wound already healed, Slayer jumped back towards Squealer and Skidmark to cover the escape, flanked by twenty new doubles spilling out of the spider after her. Dark Witch wished she could do more to help, but her anti-tinker bolt and her shadow vines were both still refilling, and only one of the newer four spells seemed ready to go. She prodded it hesitantly, trusting her instincts to make sure she didn't screw up the first activation of an unknown spell that badly.
Immediately, a second visual sense overlaid her usual sight, painting streams of red around her in a complete 360 degree view. She saw the whole battle as a collection of bright red nets; her teammates in the car, Slayer fighting Squealer, and Skidmark now out of the helicopter and trying to get Trainwreck and Mush back into the fight. Was she seeing their blood? It was gross but cool, but just as the duration was about to run out, she noticed something terrifying, coming from below.
"April! Watch out!" Willow shrieked, prompting April to dive to the side just as a pair of bright red tentacles launched the large manhole into the air and then pulled up the body they were attached to. The peroxide blonde man was suspended in midair by three of his animated blood whips, and gracefully used the fourth to launch a pale goth girl out of the sewer and straight at the slowly activating spider. Desperately reacting, Willow activated the other unknown spell (just barely ready) and a high pressure torrent of blood blasted straight out of her hands at the airborne girl.
Things wouldn't be that easy however, as the newest Merchant on the scene easily aborted her flight by grabbing one of the spider's legs and swinging around it, letting the blood hose shoot by harmlessly. The goth's elaborate black tresses flowed through the air, even as April was leaping into action against the blood-controlling man in the black leather jacket. Dark Witch hoped April could lose gracefully for a while against such a terrifying opponent, while the three Scoobies in the passenger seats dealt with the goth girl's invasion.
"This is a rather dirty setting for a tea party, but needs must as demons drive. I'm Miss Edith, and I'll be your host for the evening." Even though Cretin had rattled off copies of himself, Dark Witch, and Overlord all over the spider's body, the mentally but not physically unbalanced Miss Edith stared straight at her.
Dark Witch responded by activating her freezing stare, but her gift horse was nowhere to be found as Miss Edith closed her eyes the instant the spell was cast. "Naughty, naughty. Don't make cross eyes at mother." Overlord tried to exploit her temporary blindness with his taser, but she was far too quick and dodged through several doubles and right into Dark Witch, burying a wicked knife directly through her silks and into her guts as she pushed her out of the spider.
The landing was rough, jarring her head as she bounced on the hard pavement, but somehow Dark Witch still maintained consciousness in spite of the impact and mortal injury. The room blurred, sounds muted, and Edith's face loomed above her. "The blood came out of you so merry and quick before, but now it's slow and tepid. You'll never have your own act at the fair if you keep on like this." Edith raised the knife to finish her off, but just as she was about to strike, April clumsily tackled her, pinning her in a heap.
"Remember, always apply proper first aid with pressure on a wound and a clean bandage." Willow could forgive the robot the less than cogent comment, but reflected that it was too bad that would be the last thing she ever heard. Woozily, she relaxed on the floor, and the room faded further away.
Then, as she lay dying, her Xander appeared to her, in all his wonderful regalia. He said something she couldn't quite make out. This would be a much more fitting ending. She might even get a kiss. Instead, he slapped her, ever so lightly, and disappeared. Then another Xander, more words, another light slap. On the third Xander, she made out "cure", and realized she could just heal herself.
Struggling, Dark Witch moved her hand to her bleeding gut, and dumped the whole of Cure Wounds' spell pool into her gashed intestines. Dark Witch immediately took a deep breath, smarted at the lesser pain still unhealed, and then got to her feet, completely embarrassed with herself.
The fight was chaos all around her, as Slayer was still dueling Squealer and her overengineered helicopter near the door, Key and Overlord frantically tried to get the spider into a state to do something useful, and Cretin's clones bounced across the landscape, dying in droves to Edith's infuriated friend with the blood whips. Just as she regained her bearings, a newly recovered Trainwreck charged her, prompting her to use his own spell to fight him off.
Dark Witch wound up her arm in an exaggerated motion and threw an uppercut right into his mech's stomach as he reached her, the Potence spell exploding dark firecrackers from the point of impact and brutally wrecking Trainwreck's suit. The sheer impulse of the blow blasted him straight across the room … and into the surprised form of Skidmark, screaming a last tortured "Goatfucker!" out to the world as he was nearly ripped in half by the high speed collision and dragged gorily across the floor.
She felt Skidmark leave her range, his spell's power slowly draining back down toward zero. Trainwreck groaned as he rolled to a stop, and Skidmark was clearly dead. Willow Rosenberg had almost died herself not twenty seconds ago, and now she'd gone and killed a man. She'd killed a gang leader. A drug dealer. Probably a rapist and a murderer too.
"I'll fucking rape your eyeballs out with my screwdriver for that, you dumbass goth pretender! Do you think your fakeass hocus pocus can protect you from this?" Squealer shouted over her loudspeaker. She didn't give Dark Witch anymore time to reflect, ignoring Slayer to let loose another railgun volley at her. Quick action with the Mirror Shield and numerous new duplicates saved Dark Witch from being ripped to shreds, but an errant spike grazed her leg and sent her tumbling to the ground again. As she dropped, another dozen clones of her popped into place, all apparently injured in the same way.
Even as Dark Witch was desperately putting pressure on the wound, Key shouted over Squealer's rant on the spiderbot's own speakers. "Annnd we're online! Round up little doggies, it's time to go home!" The larceny tinker whooped with victory as the spiderbot's movements changed from hesitant to fluid, and she moved it up into combat with leather jacket, supporting Cretin and April in their battle with the lightning quick Breaker.
Dark Witch noticed that he'd picked up the unconscious Miss Edith in his arms, and the added weight was slowing his reactions and hampering his defense. Cretin spammed copies of the long, piercing spiderlegs Key was using to fight, and Overlord's souped-up taser seemed to be disrupting the blood whips, ever so slightly. Against their combined assault, the peroxide blond was forced to give ground, backing up and exposing the open escape hatch to the sewers.
Fighting against the pain, Dark Witch used the last dregs of Skidmark's diminishing spellpower to wrap a couple of crates in black ribbons of TK. She hurled them at Squealer's still functional helicopter, knocking it off course, which let Slayer disengage from her holding action and join the Scoobies at the hatch. Key used attachments on two of the spider legs to carefully lift Dark Witch up into the passenger compartment, and as the spiderbot descended into the sewers Slayer and April exchanged a couple parting blows with the mystery cape's resilient blood whips.
Moments later, the spider was in the sewer and the last two Scoobies leapt down into the passenger compartment, crowded with Scoobies and doubles alike. Even as they were escaping, the blood cape had apparently left his sleeping ally upstairs and was trying to follow them down. He wasn't having an easy time of it though, even unburdened. Dark Witch let off another pressurized Blood Hose spell at him, Overlord kept it up with the now fading taser, and Key even managed to activate an acid weapon mounted in the spider's butt to join the ranged barrage. Lacking support from the other Merchants in the cramped quarters of the sewers, he retreated back up the hatch, and the Scoobies escaped.
After a few more seconds, April broke the tense silence of the pumped up group. "Remember kids, safety first! Make sure to buckle your seatbelts."