Brian stared open-mouthed at the sight of what was happening below them, then after a very long moment, turned to Lisa. She was looking at the scene with an expression that mixed amazement, horror, and a certain amount of pain. Behind her Rachel was watching with mute worry and Alec seemed frozen. "Tattletale?"
There was a pause of several seconds before she glanced at him, one eye twitching in a way he knew meant that her power was giving her a migraine.
He pointed.
"What. The Hell. Is that?"
They all kept watching as the huge reptilian creature wielding a sword nearly eight feet long took Hookwolf to pieces. Literally. It was moving so fast it was almost impossible to track or even get a good view of, but every now and then it paused long enough for him to see it properly. He estimated it would probably stand at least eight feet high if erect, with close to that much tail behind it. It looked, more than anything else, like some sort of mutant six-legged velociraptor right out of an Aleph movie, although he could see that the front-most legs were actually arms with hands that were amazingly human-like, albeit with several inches of obviously razor-sharp talons tipping each digit.
Those hands were wrapped around the hilt of the sword it was swinging fast enough to create a distinct whip-crack noise each time whether it hit anything or not. The blade was apparently incredibly sharp, not to mention tough, since anything it hit got cleanly separated into two pieces without obviously slowing it at all.
When it stopped moving for a moment he noticed that it was standing with the rear legs and tail holding it leaning forward, the middle ones which had less hand-like appendages poised ready to strike, and the fore-body above those limbs held upright, giving it a slightly centaur-like appearance. If one took the classical Greek concept of a centaur and replaced all the parts of it with some sort of alien killer lizard, at least.
The upper torso, in those terms, was less solidly built than the rest of it and if you looked at it right might almost be a scaly version of a human female, but the head was right back into dinosaur from hell territory. A reptilian muzzle with a lot of extremely sharp teeth could be seen, two glowing, literally glowing slit-pupilled yellow-orange eyes above it set widely enough that it probably had exceptionally good peripheral vision but still forward enough to allow for binocular vision as well.
While large it was slender and sinewy, giving the impression of something made for speed rather than pure strength. Even so, it didn't lack that either, the thing was definitely appallingly strong, high Brute level at least from what he could see. Its scales were a dark blue-black color, fading into the night and making it hard to see properly even leaving the sheer velocity of its movements out of it. The armor over the scales was almost exactly the same color and difficult to make out.
He watched in horror as it swung that huge blade again, heedless of the lamp-post that was between it and the target, the sword passing through the thick metal post as if it was made of cotton candy, aimed squarely at the metallic wolf-like form of Hookwolf, who only barely managed to move far enough out of range to avoid bisection. There were chunks of his own blades scattered all over the street as far as they could see, while the cape himself was visibly slowing down and looked very much the worse for wear. Even the normally extremely aggressive Nazi was giving off an air of becoming aware that he was in a losing battle. The top three quarters of the pole tipped over and landed with a clang on the ground.
"I have no idea," Lisa finally replied in a faint voice. The other three stared at her instead of the somewhat one-sided battle in the street below, surprised. She looked embarrassed under the pain.
"Really?" Alec turned to her. "The know it all doesn't know it all for once?"
Glaring at him she muttered something under her breath, before going back to watching the creature beat the shit out of one of the most dangerous capes in the city while giving off a distinct impression of enjoying itself. Which was, frankly, kind of worrying.
"No," she finally admitted more loudly. A particularly loud crash from below as Hookwolf got sideswiped by a heavy tail right through a rusty old abandoned truck made them all jump a little. "All I can tell you right now is that it's female, very smart, and incredibly quick. Not to mention dangerous. It's playing with him. It could kill him easily, but it's holding back for some reason."
"Is it a construct of some sort? Or a projection?" Grue asked curiously. She shook her head after staring at the thing some more when it briefly paused again.
"No..." She trailed off, then said more firmly, "No, I don't think so. I think it's a cape. And I think it's what left those footprints in the snow."
Raising an eyebrow under his helmet, Brian stared at her, then the creature, which was now slowly stalking Hookwolf who was backing away, using other old cars as cover. "A cape? You mean like Saurial?" He thought for a moment. "It's reptilian like her, true, and seems to be using similar weapons, but it's a hell of a lot bigger and looks completely different."
The thing suddenly moved like lightning, almost flowing over the obstacles in its way, darting at Hookwolf who screamed an obscenity and ran for his life, obviously having decided that he needed to urgently regroup somewhere a long way away. Brian watched with amazement as the sword that had been making such a mess of the other cape abruptly was a club instead, still wildly outsized. The lizard-thing hopped onto a car roof and swung like it was playing golf, with the result that the Nazi bounced down the street, ending up embedded into the wall of a warehouse a hundred feet away. His transformation ebbed away, leaving an unconscious man lying in an untidy heap.
The observers watched as the lizard-creature somehow made its sword turned club disappear, then sauntered over with no real urgency, lifting the Nazi by one ankle and holding him up for inspection, its head cocked curiously to one side. Apparently satisfied it put him down again surprisingly carefully then produced a set of heavy metal restraints with which it happily proceeded to hog-tie him. Grue was almost sorry for the other cape.
Almost.
When it was finished securing its captive, it producing a phone from somewhere, which looked absurdly small in its massive taloned hands, and carefully prodded the device for a few seconds, apparently sending a text. Putting it away again, it then slowly and deliberately turned its head on its long flexible neck to stare straight at them in a casual manner that made it pretty clear it had known they were watching from the beginning.
"Oh, shit..." Brian froze for a long couple of seconds.
The creature started walking in their direction.
"Um… I think we should go," Tattletale said in a small voice. The others didn't argue, all of them hastily climbing aboard two of Bitch's outsize mutant dogs, the woman herself whistling a quiet command that had all three of the creatures turning and leaving the area rapidly. Grue looked over his shoulder, his eyes widening when he spotted the reptilian cape now standing on the roof right where they'd been, watching them flee. It had made it six stories from the ground to the roof in seconds.
A moment passed then it started following them, leaping as easily over the rooftops as the dogs were, if not more so. "Oh, crap," he yelled. "It's chasing us!"
Regent and Tattletale quickly looked back, the blonde's face paling visibly. Bitch urged her dogs to a higher speed, which they seemed more than happy about, all three of them apparently well aware of what was following them and not liking it. The animals bounded over the roofs of the warehouses and tenement buildings, sending shingles and slates flying, while Brian kept looking back whenever they were in a position to allow it, frantically flooding their path with his darkness.
Half a mile further on, he turned around again, then sighed in relief. "I can't see it any more. I think we lost it."
Turning back to look forwards he was just in time to see the damn thing appear a hundred feet in front of them, popping up out of an alley having apparently scaled the wall of the building. "FUCK!" Bitch screamed in shocked anger, leaning over and prodding the dog she was riding at the head of the little pack to violently turn. Grue nearly lost his seat as the one he was on followed the lead instantly, grabbing for Lisa as she hung on frantically and helped him keep his place.
As they flashed past the thing he saw it was merely watching them, making no attempt to attack. Once they were clear he looked back to see it following again. A few seconds passed then it vanished, dropping into another alley. This time he didn't sigh in relief, having the distinct impression it was toying with them for some reason.
Sweating, he exchanged a look with Tattletale, then both of them went back to scanning the area. "Any idea where it is?" he asked her, leaning forward. She looked around, wincing in pain again.
"It's… somewhere over to the right. I think." Both of them looked in that direction but couldn't spot anything.
"Why the hell is it chasing us?" Regent called. She turned to stare at him.
Eventually she shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it doesn't want witnesses?"
"Oh, thank you very fucking much for that thought," the dark-haired young man snapped after a horrified second or two following her words. "I have no wish to get killed and eaten by a mutant dinosaur, thanks."
"I still can't see it," Grue stated, scanning around for any trace of the thing. Tattletale followed his gaze then shook her head.
"Neither can I."
"Maybe we really did lose it this time?"
"I… I think if anything it got bored," she finally replied after considering the question, rubbing her forehead with a shaking hand. He looked at her closely, concerned, seeing she was clearly about at the end of her endurance. Her power was obviously causing her more pain than usual. "From what I could make out it would easily be able to track us if it wanted to. I'm pretty sure its senses are wildly better than ours are. The damn thing can probably hear us half a mile away."
"Oh, great," he muttered.
"Do we go back to base, then?" Regent asked as they slowed down, the dogs also close to exhaustion. "Or run around for a while longer so we don't lead it there?"
It was a good point. Grue had no wish to allow whatever it was to work out where they lived. After a moment or two he signaled a stop. Bitch issued the command to the dogs, which slowed to a walk, then finally halted on a flat roof nearly three miles from where the lizard creature had so comprehensively stomped Hookwolf flat.
Relieved, as riding the dogs wasn't exactly the most comfortable thing in the world at the best of times, never mind when they were running for their lives, Brian slid off his mount, dropping to the roof and rubbing his ass. The others did pretty much the same thing.
Eventually they gathered in a group, the dogs to one side, in the shadow of the machine house on the top of the building they were on. Grue looked carefully around, both checking for the thing and trying to work out where they were. Spotting the lights of the Medhall building in the distance he realized they'd ended up half-way between the Docks and the Boardwalk, technically on the edge of Merchants territory but a safe distance from their main haunts.
"What the hell, Lisa?" he finally said, turning to the blonde, who was standing with her eyes shut and one hand pressed to her forehead. "What just happened? Who or what was that?"
"I told you, Brian, I don't know," she sighed, not opening her eyes. "When I looked directly at it, my power just… gave me static." She shrugged. "I could get bits and pieces but not much useful information. It's really strange. And hellishly painful."
Regent, looking even in his costume rather nervous, leaned against the side of the machine house and stared at her. Beside her, Bitch was checking one of her dogs, while Grue was thinking. "How often does that happen, Tats?" the smaller man asked, sounding worried.
She sighed, opening her eyes to look at him and wincing at the same time. Reluctantly, she admitted, "That's only the second time it's ever happened..." The blonde suddenly got a faraway look on her face, apparently realizing something.
"Oh, wonderful," he groaned. "Right at the point it would be really fucking useful to know what the hell was chasing us!"
"It's not like I'm doing it on purpose, you know," she snapped back in an aggrieved manner, coming back from wherever she'd been moments before.
"Did you see what it did to Hookwolf?" he asked, leaning forward and resting the end of his scepter on his shoulder. "It fucking destroyed him! And you think it was just playing with him? That's not someone I want to tangle with, or lead home. So pardon me if I'm a little annoyed that our all-knowing fountain of information picks that exact moment to run dry."
His voice was heavy with sarcasm, but Brian couldn't exactly fault his reasoning. Neither could Lisa, judging by her expression, although she wasn't happy about it even so.
"I mean, you were actually watching the same thing I was, right?" he went on. "It was nine or ten feet tall and swinging the biggest fucking sword I've ever seen around like it weighed nothing! It cut a car in half with one swing, one-handed. That's just bullshit. Never mind it was so fast I could barely follow it. I don't know what beef it had with Hookwolf but I do not want to meet anything that could do that to him. It was the most terrifying thing I've ever seen outside an Endbringer. Please tell me you know if it's going to follow us home? I don't want to wake up tomorrow to see a killer alien dinosaur grinning at me while holding the sword of plus ten destruction to my throat!"
Regent finished his rant, then stared at his three companions, who were all staring back from fifteen feet away, completely silent and not moving a muscle. The eyes of the two girls, the only ones visible, were so wide he could see the whites all around even in the dark.
He swallowed hard, closing his own eyes for a moment in terrified realization.
"It's behind me, isn't it?" he asked faintly.
All three of them nodded dumbly.
"Oh hell."
Very slowly, he lifted his head to look directly upwards.
A couple of feet above him, an unpleasantly familiar pair of glowing yellowish eyes set in a massive reptilian head were peering down at them all from the roof of the machine house. The rest of the creature was out of sight on the roof. It looked at them, totally motionless, while they all stared back, so frozen that no-one even considered using their powers to escape.
The tableau held for a few seconds, no one saying anything, then it slowly moved, the head staying almost still in a very disturbing manner while the rest of it eased over the roof and descended the side of the building, its claws easily holding it against the wall. Regent didn't move, worried that doing so would instantly precipitate an attack. Which, based on what he'd seen, would be something that none of them would survive. He was under no misconceptions about the mismatch in abilities present.
When it was standing on the roof, looking at them, it slowly turned its head to inspect each one of them in turn. It audibly sniffed, scenting them. A whine from one of the dogs, which were pressed against the roof in a submissive posture making it abundantly clear they knew damn well a much more dangerous predator was present caused it to snap its head around so fast it blurred to stare at the animal. Half a second later it looked back at them, equally quickly. The contrast between the horrifyingly slow and deliberate movements as it climbed down the wall and the practically instantaneous reflexes was deeply disturbing.
Grue watched as the creature studied them, glancing at Lisa without moving his head, seeing that she was looking terrified and at a complete loss. Briefly considering flooding the area with his darkness then trying to escape, he dismissed the plan when he realized that the thing could probably react much too fast to give that idea much hope of success.
Suddenly, the thing spoke, in a fairly deep female voice that sounded remarkably normal although with weird undertones, making them all twitch violently.
"You dropped this," it said, tossing Tattletale a phone. The device bounced off her chest as she entirely failed to even attempt to catch it. After a long incredulous moment, all of them looked down at the phone.
When they looked up, it was gone.
"What… the… absolute... fuck..."
Regent's disbelieving voice broke the silence nearly a minute later. Bending down very slowly, Tattletale picked up the phone and stared at it, before sagging a little and putting it back into the pouch in her utility belt it had apparently fallen out of at some point.
She turned to them, her mouth working silently. Eventually, she managed to speak.
"I..." Her voice was unnaturally high. She tried again after swallowing. "I have no idea what the hell just happened."
Shaking his head in defeated tiredness, Grue sighed. "Fuck it all, let's just go home."
It took Bitch nearly five minutes to get the dogs to stop shivering and let them get on. The ride home was slow, quiet, and thoughtful.
"We are being watched, Brain," the Varga said, as Taylor swung her sword with both hands, wincing a little internally as the lamp post that had jumped in front of her blade toppled over, but still concentrating on not actually dicing the idiot Nazi in front of her. She carefully missed hitting him square on, only removing yet another piece of his outer layers which clattered to the road and burst into fragments. The cape yelped in shock and dived out of the way, while she followed.
'I know, I heard them,' she replied absently. 'Tattletale? She's with the Undersiders, right?' She remembered what their research had shown up.
"Yes, with her teammates Grue, Regent, and Hellhound or Bitch. There wasn't much information available on them so far. Villainous alignment although they have been surprisingly inactive recently." The Varga sounded intrigued. "I believe that she is probably a Thinker of some sort."
'OK. Well, they're not a problem right now, so they can watch if they want.' She ducked a return strike by Hookwolf then pivoted on one foot, her tail smacking into him and flinging him into and through a rusty box truck at the side of the road. 'Oops. Dad is going to be very sarcastic about all the damage.' Taylor cast a quick glance back at the trail of destruction their running fight had left behind, embarrassed. While a good deal of it was due to her opponent a considerable amount was, if she was honest, her fault.
Shifting her grip on the sword, she swung it one-handed at the other cape, who let out an unmanly screech as it barely missed him, cutting an old junker of a car neatly into two halves with a crunch. She bared her teeth at him in a savage grin. 'This is fun, though. He's not as tough as he made himself out to be.'
"Please restrain yourself from killing him, although I agree that is what would be the rational approach. Your father was very clear that lethal force should be reserved for extreme situations, which this isn't." Her head partner sounded mildly annoyed about that little fact. He'd made it quite clear that leaving dangerous enemies alive was in the long term a bad idea. She had a sneaking suspicion he was right, but couldn't find it in herself to go against her father's wishes or her own ethical sense.
'Don't worry, I'll just wear him out and knock him around a little,' she assured the Varga. 'Teach him what it's like to be on the other end of a smackdown for once.'
Hookwolf feinted right, then dived left, apparently trying to get to cover behind some more cars, all of which looked like they should have been junked years ago. This area was very run down, not surprising in the current economic climate and considering that it was mainly Merchants who wandered around the place. Anyone with a brain had cleared out as soon as they heard the fight coming, though, meaning the area was almost empty. She could hear a few heartbeats, very rapid ones, in the surrounding buildings, so a few people had braved it out even so.
Quickly looking around Taylor could also see the heat signatures of half a dozen people, not including the four on the roof to one side, which also had three much larger blobs behind them. Idly wondering what they were she returned her attention to her opponent, who was watching her carefully in between glances about him for an escape route.
Smiling to herself, which in her current form probably looked a little worrying, she raised the sword again then dropped to all fours, skittering over the ground and the cars fast enough to make him yell out wildly, swear a lot, then make a break for it. Jumping ahead and to one side she swapped the sword for a club like a giant baseball bat with a quick mental flick, then aimed carefully and swung, pulling the blow enough at the last instant that Hookwolf only bounced, rather than splashed. Watching him hit the warehouse wall at the end of the street she grinned.
'Fore!'
"Ah. A golf metaphor," the Varga replied drily, making her giggle.
Wandering over having dismissed the bat she reached down and picked Hookwolf up now that he had reverted to human form, checking him for damage. He was out like a light but his heartbeat was strong and she couldn't see any real damage to him other than sheer exhaustion. Satisfied, she put him down again then applied the restraints her partner produced on request. 'Let's set them for a few days, just to make a point' she smirked. After another look at the unconscious cape, she had the Varga add a neck collar and attach the restraints to the back of it, ensuring that Hookwolf was going nowhere until the bonds evaporated.
Having finished, she plucked her phone from the belt around her waist above her forelegs, flipping it open with one talon. Quickly tapping out a message to her father, she put it away again.
'OK, that's that done,' she said with an internal smile. 'Hopefully it should stop those Nazi bastards from messing with us for a while.' Turning her head she looked up curiously to where the Undersiders were still watching. 'Think I should go and say Hi? I mean, I know they're villains, but they're still neighbors.'
"They don't present much threat as far as I can sense."
With a small shrug she headed towards the building she could see four faces peering over the edge of from the roof. These immediately vanished and she could hear a certain amount of worried whispering. 'Oops,' she muttered again. 'I think they might have the wrong idea.' Quickly climbing up the front of the building Taylor hopped lightly onto the roof, in time to see the three huge thermal sources, which turned out to be enormous lizard-dog creatures, bound away into the distance, two of them carrying a pair of people each on their backs.
'Wow. That looks… uncomfortable,' she commented. Glancing down she noticed that there was an expensive looking smart phone lying on the roof. Picking it up she sniffed it. The scent of a female and a distinctive perfume, which she could also smell in the air around her, led her to believe that it belonged to one of the Undersiders. After a brief internal debate she sighed softly, looking up at the disappearing quartet, before beginning to follow them. 'This looks expensive. She'll probably miss it, so I should give it back, I guess,' she remarked. There was no immediate reply.
Strangely enough, the Undersiders sped up when they noticed she was behind them. She heard one of them yell about being chased, briefly wondering if she should shout back, but decided just to follow. Eventually they'd stop and she could return the phone. A cloud of oddly opaque darkness billowed behind them, which blocked normal vision completely and even the thermal vision as well, not to mention muffling the sounds in a weird way. It had no effect on their scents, which was useful, so it barely slowed her.
It took some time for them to come to a halt, though. At one point she hopped down to the street and ran ahead of the direction she thought they were going in, to get in front of them, which actually worked. But as soon as she climbed up to the rooftops again the girl on the front dog-thing screamed in shock, then wheeled her mount around, almost dislodging the large young man on the second animal as it did the same thing, and pelted off in a different direction. Sighing, she watched them go once more, before muttering to herself and following, this time keeping out of sight off to one side. Perhaps if they didn't see her they'd stop?
A few more minutes passed while she tracked them by ear and scent. Eventually they halted, dismounting their animals and arguing with each other for a while. She gleaned quite a lot of information listening as she carefully approached, clambering up the side of the building away from them and lurking on the other side of the machine room on top of it. Tattletales real name appeared to be Lisa, and the larger of the two boys was Brian. Taylor thought he was probably the cape known as Grue. That made the dog handler Hellhound, which made sense, leaving Regent as the remaining boy. Wondering what their powers were she carefully and quietly slipped up to the top of the machine house, peeping over the edge to see what they looked like.
Tattletale was a blonde, very attractive, in a skin-tight body suit in black and purple. Grue was tall, well built, and wearing a modified motorcycle helmet and leathers. Bitch or Hellhound, whichever it was, looked pretty normal by comparison, just a solidly built young woman in normal clothes with a cheap dog mask sitting pretty much on top of her head. Wondering whether she should ask what name the girl wanted people to use, she pondered the matter for a second or two, before deciding it wasn't the time right at that moment.
Regent, the last of them, was directly below her, ranting wildly about something and seeming pretty wound up. His costume was interesting, looking like he was trying to pull off the effect of being a flamenco dancer but missed. She cocked her head, wondering what the idea behind it was.
When he stopped talking he stared at his companions, who were all oddly silent. She glanced at them and realized that they were all staring fixedly at her! It was embarrassing. She knew her current form was a bit unusual but the intensity of the stares was somewhat off-putting.
Not wanting to upset them any more she carefully and slowly descended their side of the machine house, trying not to make any sudden moves. Sniffing she cataloged the various scents, localizing the smell on the phone to Tattletale. It must be hers.
Staring at them and wondering why they all looked so scared, she snapped her head around at a sound from one of the huge dog-like things, almost jumping in shock, then looked back when it was obvious the animal was only tired. All three of them were lying on their sides panting. Briefly thinking that Bitch should take more care of her pets, she retrieved Tattletales phone from her belt pouch and gently tossed it to her, saying at the same time, "You dropped this."
The girl didn't move to catch it, not even when it bounced off her chest and clattered to the roof. Taylor managed to avoid sighing, even though she felt like it. Assuming they were a little embarrassed themselves about losing what was probably an expensive phone, although you wouldn't guess it from the way she'd dropped it again, she waved to them and jumped over the side of the building, grabbing the stonework on the way down then lowering herself to the ground to avoid her weight, which at this size was significant, damaging the street.
She wasn't even sure they'd noticed her wave, since by then they were all looking at the phone with peculiar expressions, at least in the case of the two girls. Speeding up she ran back towards the Docks and her captive, satisfied about her good deed. It had only taken an extra twenty minutes or so anyway.
'They seemed a bit confused,' she said to the Varga, which for some reason seemed to be sniggering to itself. 'I'm not sure they really know what they're doing.'
The great creature laughed inside her head and refused to explain why for quite a long time.
