Investments 14.14

Pressing forward, I found the first set of stairs, heading down them. Poking my head in the hallway of the next floor down, it was yet more spores, as was the third. The fourth set was different.

The stairways further down were blocked with all manner of debris, obviously trying to funnel me through the rest of the shelter, which was likely full of ambush points. This presented me with a difficult decision. With Shadowform, I could very easily sink down through this blockage as if it wasn't even there. On the other hand, it'd leave god knows how many monsters at my back, to either attack me from behind or to break through my barriers to the surface. As impressive as those walls I'd left behind were, they were only at their strongest if the monsters tried to break through them. It would be much easier to just go around, and dig through the bedrock around them, but I was hoping that wouldn't occur to them.

A few getting past me would probably be blocked, but an entire floor's worth? No, I'd need to take them down as well, but there was no reason to approach this like an anime, slowly bringing out powers one at a time, barely matching what came against me. I couldn't afford to run myself dry too soon, but holding back was not something I could afford to do either.

Pulling on Spatial Warping, dropping the last of it that'd been tied up in the water wall at the city's edge, I felt out the area around me. With the pseudo-sense it gave me, telling me how difficult it would be to use, I could tell that, unlike the floor above me, this one was populated with more than the dozen spore-extruders. The floor below that was worse, as was the one below that, three floors down, and further so densely packed there was no way that I would ever be able to use this power effectively past that point.

If that was true then even the Vector Shield likely wouldn't work, though even as I considered that I had the idea of working with it to create non-Euclidean melee shields, deflecting blows as they came, but that was a thought that came far, far too late. Maybe if I was desperate, but this was no time to test new ideas and skills.

Doing so in these kinds of situations could turn things around, but, unlike the story of this universe that I'd remembered reading, which seemed more distant every day, more often then not trying something new blew up in one's face instead of saving the day. You tried new things when you were desperate, when the alternative was certain death, not because it'd be cool. I'd been guilty of that very thing more than once, but with the stakes of 'do this or the not-zerg take over the world', I couldn't afford to fail.

From my back I extended projected metal tendrils, ready to strike if need be, and prepped Metal Creation as well to make spears. Too much weight and I might collapse the structure, but if, in my attacks, I added supports to the existing building, it would hopefully offset the added load. Creating an iron spike and dropping it into my palm, I prepped it with Momentum Infusion in my off hand, creating several more that weren't infused to grab quickly. I'd be doing enough things at once as is, the more I could streamline now, the easier everything would be in the coming fight.

Pulling out my sword with my other hand, I laid down Speed Zones down its length, so that anything the blade got stuck on would be shoved off. It meant I couldn't stab with the weapon, at least not more than a few inches, but, if I was fighting multiple foes, I couldn't afford the time it took to stab deeper than that.

I infused myself with Light, running down my limbs and the lengths of my tendrils, forming the same pseudo-wings I'd used during the Leviathan fight, if smaller. I kept my head free of the exotic matter, so as not to damage Quinn's device, and my Sword, as I wasn't sure how it'd interact with the Tinker-metal blade. The rest of me, however, was filled with energy, to the point that anything that touched me would have pieces gouged out of it.

I considered creating a Dryad body, but the numerical advantage wouldn't be worth the splitting of my already quickly dividing attention. I was going to be hard pressed enough manipulating two different projectile creation powers, the metallic tentacles coming from my back, and fight on my own, trying too much too fast was a recipe for disaster.

Tipping the edges of my glowing, metallic tendrils with Stellar Blades was just common sense, however, though I did tamp down the heat they created around me. I wanted to burn, but not to melt everything, including the walls. Lastly, I reconnected Projectile Projection to full strength, so the shields would automatically deploy once more.

Prepping myself, I realized I had two open Minor power slots, the Major having gotten closer to unlocking, but still feeling like it was only two-fifths of the way there, while the next Minor slot on its last ten percent, though I couldn't wait for it to open. I needed something I could use, quickly, without any issue. Something I'd already trained with, but something that would pay off for more than just this one scenario.

I didn't want to always be spending my resources to fight the current foe, but leaving myself without possible weapons was equally foolish. I wanted to leave one last slot open, just in case, but with the possibility of being disabled as I gained new, conflicting powers, like I had with Marked and Area Teleportation that didn't seem wise. Selecting the wrong power to gain in the middle of the fight might be signing my own death warrant, leaving myself defenseless by the gaining of conflicting powers, having to wait while they settled and easy prey for the monsters below.

With that in mind, I selected my first, Shadow Propagation, Grue's power. I was right about there being issues, as it did not like Shadowform, in a way that Lightform and Shadowform surprisingly didn't conflict. Bashing against each other in my mind, having my own body wreathed in Light let me ignore Shadowform as it tried to activate, only my face and sword turning to Shadows, which were then almost painfully forced back to reality as the air around me turned dark, the rest of the world shifting to Shadows as well, then back to the real world in fluctuating, swirling clouds of darkness.

They settled, after a long, uncomfortable moment, separating out, though there was something else there as well, but it was something that'd have to wait. With a thought, I darkened the area, pulling back and sculpting those dark clouds with a thought until they formed black, amorphously humanoid shapes. I could both see, and see through, them without issue. They'd serve as good distractions and, when battle was joined, I'd have them explode outwards to drop the entire area into blackness, blinding my foes.

The second power, Ice Projectile Projection, slotted itself in with barely an effort, nothing happening as it did so, nothing interfering, nothing interfacing. With a thought, several ice knives formed in front of me, hanging, ready to fire. They were identical, the inscribed frozen blades all carrying Arachne Assemblages logo, and floating, moving with me as I flew. I could maneuver them a little, and make them appear several feet away from me, but firing them off from that far created the same problem I ran into doing the same with Air Blades. To put it simply, my aim sucked. However, with enough projectiles, that became less of an issue.

Ready to go, I moved to the closed door, keeping myself absolutely silent with Acoustokinesis, invisible blades of air forming around me with Aerokinesis and joining the ice. As I opened the door, a Quillbeast was on the other side, launching it's payload directly at my face.

Shimmering hexagons sprung up in front of me, blocking the vibrating needles as the shields reddened under the force they stopped. I responded in kind, blades of ice and wind slamming into it and shoving it backwards, perforating it and tearing through its tough hide. The hallway was otherwise empty, suspiciously so, the doors that ran down the length closed. I could feel the presence of others behind those closed portals, disturbing the air with their breath, interfering with my Spatial Warping, but they were waiting. With a thought, I floated the three, humanoid black clouds down the length of the space. As they reached the far door, I opened it with air control, and everything went to hell.

Blue beams blasted through the shadow clones, leaving ice and frost wherever they hit. Monsters of all kinds pouring through the closed doors, moving for the dark shapes, only those closest turning and noticing me. Amping up the momentum in the spike in my left hand, I caused the dark facsimiles to explode outwards, smothering everything in darkness.

The monsters that moved to attack the distractions spun about trying to find their foes through the stifling darkness, all sounds removed through my Acoustokinesis. Those closest to me, that had spotted me before I'd blotted out everything, charged, though as I silently flew backwards none of them moved to follow, bouncing off each other and tearing into their friends, unable to tell it wasn't me. The foes further down, after a few moments of violence, stopped, looking and sniffing, trying and failing to find me.

With my targets so densely packed, I let the Momentum packed projectile go, ripping through dozens of monsters, ending mid-way through a Brute. It raised its head to call out, but I smothered the sound before it left its throat, the sound dampening properties of Shadow Propagation making it child's play.

I could move forward, taking my unaware foes head on. However, with the exit blocked I was in no hurry and prepared another metal spike filed with Momentum. A 'momentum spike', if you will. However, even though there was no sound, all the creatures in front of me stilled, turning as one to gaze in my general direction, just like they had against my first Lightning-Bug. Three Quill beasts climbed up the walls, above the others, and four of those humanoid metallic birds spread their wings and floated upwards as well without so much as flapping, the flight feathers along their wings lengthening.

So, definitely a controlling intelligence, I thought darkly. Because of course.

As one, and without a word, the hallway full of nightmares charged me, and I unleashed hell upon them. Cycling ice and compressed air blades, I started unloading on the teeming masses, filling and firing momentum spikes with one hand, while I held off those closest with glowing tendrils and golden sword. Long metallic feathers and vibrating quills were volleyed back at me, mostly over the heads of my attackers, though some did hit their allies. Any that reached me were blocked by glowing Hexagons, which spread out in front of me, screening me from their fire.

The area directly in front of me was quickly becoming a meat-grinder, the sheer mass of bodies pressing the attackers forward into my closer attacks. Brutes quickly moved forward and requiring me to fight directly as they shrugged off my flying blades, taking my fire for the others. Metal Spears punched up through the floor behind them, impaling creatures and creating blockages as those behind them blindly ran into the sudden floor to ceiling bars, showing that whatever was controlling them, it at least wasn't puppeting them directly.

More quills, metallic feathers, globs of acid, and other projectiles were sent my way, many times hitting their own side, those that did make it to me were still harmlessly blocked by glowing hexagons, my personal shields, or one the plates of my armor as I fell back slowly, sun-tipped tendrils slashing apart the rushing mass of monsters. The Brutes that pushed their way through met with my sword as I tried to strike them as hard as I could without spending a shield, trying to keep the two crystalline constructs for something really bad.

Something stabbed me from behind, not piercing my armor, and I spotted one of those indistinct, hazy shapes I'd seen through the Lightning-bug's eyes. It stabbed at me again, and I raised my sword to deflect the blow, only for my blade to pass through empty space, it's arm seeming to pull away even as talons raked along my arm where nothing should be. Not having time for this, or how it could see in what should be silent and absolute darkness, I created a dozen air blades and spun them like an open-air blender, which cut into the space it should've been in with no room to dodge. Some hit, but others missed, and one hit where nothing should've been at all.

Making the blades that bit into flesh detonate, like Stormtiger would, more gore than should be in the small space the creature seemed to occupy exploded outwards violently, some of it blocked by glowing hexagons. Pure black spikes, almost like caltrops, dropped from those shields and onto the ground.

Filling the area behind me with spinning blades of air, I was forced to face the horde in front of me, my powers still firing without my direct management, the tendrils automatically fighting off those that got to close, but the space between the masses and myself had shortened far too much, a Brute almost on me, glowing white tendrils of metal wrapped around it, crackling against bone armor and trying to hold it back.

With a blast of my limited Light, I set the exotic matter off like a bomb in front of me, blowing the Brute away and clearing the space in front of me while dispersing the darkness all around us. I heard a gasp through my comms, but I paid it no mind. Forming barricades of metal to fight from behind, I held fast, the air blades behind me ripping apart several creatures that tried to come at my back as I focused forwards, until it was over. Checking the display in the bottom of the eyepiece Quinn had given me, it'd only been a few minutes, though it felt much, much longer.

From Spatial Warping, I could tell I'd cleared out almost the entire level, a few more monsters lurking here or there, though I couldn't get more than that, and I gathered the shadows back into three humanoid forms. The previously wide and open hallway, meant for large amounts of people to rush through if need be, had been turned into a bloody mess. Remains of impaled monsters hung from vertical bars here and there, some of those bars broken, the palisades I'd hastily thrown up partially destroyed as well.

Patches of ice were splattered across the walls, burned and frozen flesh everywhere in equal amounts, spikes of ice sticking out of bodies everywhere. Several of my personal shields had dropped, from shots that hadn't been blocked in time, Projectile Shielding overwhelmed by the force of the shots, but my armor had taken the blows that'd gotten through without issue.

As the darkness dropped, a Yuki-Onna, in a room at the end of the hallway, the one whose opening door had set off all of this, stepped out and fired a blue-beam at me. I dodged it, easily, and returned fire with a momentum spike that blew her mouthless head apart with almost casual ease, air control letting me hit effortlessly, my original aim slightly off.

Dropping the silence effect, I sighed, "Okay, that's the first floor done."

"What?" someone cried through the comms, maybe Victoria. "The first floor?" Yeah, that was Vicky.

"From the feel of it," I said, floating over the destroyed piles of bodies, "There's at least eight more, though I could be off in either direction." Feeling something rapidly displacing air as it leapt towards me from behind, I turned and caught a Flesh-Scorpion with an ice-knife, driving it against a wall, grey exo-skeleton-less musculature twitching as it died.

Looking around, I was catching flickers of movement all around me, but I couldn't see anything moving, lacking any discernible powers and their presence not affecting my Space Warping at all. Priming my tendrils to move, I had the barest warning of something else coming for me before my pseudo-wings lashed out, catching another Flesh-Scorpion, then another, then another. They seemed to be coming up out of the piles of bodies themselves, a hundred parasites extracting themselves from dead hosts.

Sending air blades a-spinning again, I tried to catch the dozens that swarmed me from every direction, but they were small, practically invisible, and fast. Holding off monsters from one direction had been easy, but this was pressing me to my limit. One got through my tendrils, latching onto my leg even as it tried to stab its syringe-like tail stinger into my thigh, only to find no purchase. The grey gunk it's first stab had squirted on me sizzled as it tried again, even as my free hand came down and slapped it off, bits blown off by merely touching me to the point that, once it fell, it did not get up again.

With a moment of inspiration, pulling in my wings, I grabbed the area with Spatial Warping and twisted, like I'd felt from that one anomaly in the red zone. Another Flesh-Scorpion, looking like it'd been molded from old meat, leapt at me, only to come apart at the seams, disintegrating into ribbons of gore that twisted around me and splattered the walls.

A few more leapt, only to be similarly ripped to shreds. Focusing on another, the creature exploded as a flower of metal bloomed from inside it. The others that skittered around, trying to find a way to get to me, blending in with the gore and corpses that laid strewn across the corridor, were quickly dispatched, popping grotesquely as ferric flora grew from their insides.

"Jesus Christ Vejovis," Karen swore over the comms.

I took hold of the air in the room and pressed it outwards, compressing against the bodies. Four more wriggled out, trying not to be crushed, and I exploded them as well. "Flesh-Scorpions don't count as alive, for some reason. Makes them undetectable against powers that find living things, but makes them vulnerable against Manton-limited powers," I explained.

A flicker of something darted out the doors, invisible to my senses, and I tried the same trick, but my attention seemed to slide right off it as it ran down the hallway at me. A wall of air between us stopped it. As it bounced off the barrier, its arm flashed forward and tore at it in two separate locations, not just the one part it'd hit.

Impaling it from behind with a metal spear, pinning it against the wall of air, it thrashed, gouging out pieces well outside of its reach. It was humanoid, definitely, but my attention slid off of it, only the flicker of something indistinct gave it away as even being there at all. Immersing it in darkness, the shape solidified, the same flickering creature that'd stabbed me in the back before. Dropping Grue's power, my attention started to slide off it again, but know that I knew what to look for it was easier, even if I still couldn't quite see it, or See it for that matter.

Making holes in the air wall, I sent questing metallic tendrils, sans Light, to enwrap it, trying to hold it in place. There was the faintest sound from behind me, more felt with my powers than heard with my ears, and I whipped my head around to see another coming for me, seeming to run along the ceiling as if it were the floor, avoiding the squishy, slick walls and floor.

With one trapped already, I filled the air with rotating air blades, which it ran headfirst into, mulching even as something inside of it detonated, sending black fragments everywhere, blocked by my Projectile Shielding.

Turning my attention back to the metal tendrils, they'd finished wrapping around it, showing something quite odd. The creature was humanoid, but had two pairs of arms, one barely visible in that shifting, shadowy form of its, but the second were completely translucent, and, if the outline of my tendrils were correct, tipped with three long-fingered talons.

It was also taller than it appeared, actually eight feet from toes to the top of its head, but it tried to hunch in on itself, its long digitigrade legs similarly drawn up in on itself. Explains how it hit me, I mused. With as much as was going on, my sensory powers were of little use, so I was relying on sight, and thus had missed its secondary arms, in addition to underestimating its reach.

Staring at it, trying to See it fully, I caught hints of several powers, all twisted together but still separate, like a braided cord. The flickers of power abruptly cut off as the creature stilled, exploding, black shards embedding themselves into the metallic tendrils which cocooned it. Letting it go, it's grey body had been shredded from the inside, black blood soaking the body, and I dropped the remains into the gathered mess, along with the jagged black bits, what it obviously fired off when it became an ad-hoc fragmentation grenade.

Turning around, I found more flesh-scorpions starting to struggle out of the assembled gore. It was the work of moments to kill them, but their mere existence worried me. I was sure I'd taken care of all of them, but there were even more. As I reached the end of the hall, I felt something moving, barely, but just enough to disturb the air.

Spinning around, ready for another of those four-armed assassins, no easy name coming to mind for them, the hallway was empty. Mostly empty, as Flesh-Scorpions were emerging from the bodies where I'd dumped the black shards, small but quickly growing in size.

Growing a latticework of metal upwards, from and through them until I was sure they were all dead, I sighed. "Apparently the scorpions grow from those Flickerer's shrapnel. Fucking lovely."

Holding a hand in front of me, I tried to feel my surroundings with Spatial Warping, tracking down the survivors. There were three points of resistance around me, one more densely packed with living things. I couldn't track the Flickerers, but they didn't look like they'd be able to break down the walls I'd left at the entrance, so I could get to them later. Trying to coordinate my sensory powers, feeling out the air while tracking the places where my Spatial Warping blunted, I got a sense of the larger group, and tried to focus on where the air wasn't. From those points, I grew metal spikes, extending out and around the area where the living targets were.

Half the solid substances rejected my power, likely being the monsters themselves, but that let me target the others to pierce them, distant shrieks and howls of pain echoing down the halls. In moments, there was no more resistance to Spatial Warping from that direction.

Trying it with the second group, I hit some, lessening the resistance to Vista's power, but the others moved, making it hard to draw a bead on them exactly, though I could tell their general direction. The third group started moving before I could even start, dodging my attack completely.

With a thudding of feet, hoof, and claw the hidden monsters rounded the corner into a hail of ice daggers and air blades, darkness filling the air once more. At only over a dozen, they were easily dispatched, as were the handful of Flesh-Scorpions the dead Flickerer spawned from its compatriots corpse.

Happy that they hadn't even gotten closer, I moved past the others with a metaphorical spring in my flying step. Not paying attention to the new layer of gore that darkened the halls. I was starting to get the hang of this, not having had to use any of my limited resources.

"Okay, I can do this," I told myself, forgetting for a moment I had open comms. I heard more soft swears as I turned the corner, another dozen or so monsters filling the hallway, impaled on a thick forest of thin metal spikes. I'd grounded them in the ceiling, so hopefully they wouldn't matter that much for the structural stability of the bunker. That said, determining the number of foes left with Vista's power was a skill I sorely lacked, but I didn't need hard numbers, just locations.

Now aware of it, I felt the shifting of air as a Flickerer jumped me when I opened the door to the next set of stairs, the sign helpfully intact, and dispatched it easily. Interestingly, the black shards just sat there on the concrete, not doing anything, only the one that had buried itself in the remains of the Flickerer's flesh hatching, the grey skin smudged with black blood shrinking, then bulging as the creature pushed itself out, before I killed it with a metallic flower from within.

I could feel the other monsters below me, on the next floor, gathered and waiting as I silently descended, the black clouds of Shadow Propagation compressed to humanoids arrayed around me. I wasn't surprised that the way to the next floor down after this new one was blocked, making me run this gauntlet of running back and forth between the floors. I didn't mind, however, as my goal wasn't to get to the bottom as fast as possible, it was to make sure none escaped. I could feel them on the other side of the door, waiting, ready to strike, easily over a hundred, if I was interpreting Vista's power correctly. Even if I wasn't, there was a lot waiting, with no seeming divisions between them, like walls or corridors.

I built up a charge of Light, small, but deadly, and infused it into another Spike that I was filling with Momentum. They were meaning to jump me the moment I opened the door, but I could use that to my advantage. The floor rippled as I created defenses, palisades to hold back the monstrous masses. Taking a long moment to create as many projectiles I could, I copied my trick from the Leviathan fight of creating several more spikes, held to my free hand with tendrils, and infused them with a tiny amount of Light as well, as small as I could, each one barely registering against my reserves while I filled them with Momentum, which didn't seem to have any kind of internal reservoir.

Prepared, I forced silence to descend upon the area, blasting open the door with a hard shove of Aerokinesis, following it with a barrage of ice and air blades.

The others on the other side responded in kind, blasts of fire, cold, quills, metallic feathers, and more unleashed in a clashing barrage, our projectiles crashing into each other, but those that reached me were stopped against metallic spikes, or glowing hexagonal shields, while my own found purchase in the flesh of the masses in the wide open hall in front of me, the entire space on the other side of the door some kind of large gathering area.

A moment later I let go of the spikes, one after another, the main one detonating high, an airburst that blasted the shooters clinging to the ceiling and the force of which smashed down into the others standing below, but of the other six I let go, fanning them across the room, only the ones at the far left and right exploded, though they all ripped into their targets.

Brutes formed up, creating a wall to block my fire, but they didn't move forward, even as darkness billowed out from around my position in a dense cloud. I could wear them down, but the sudden use of tactics put me on my guard, and it was almost enough to avoid their next move.

The ground around me glowed a dull green, forming a five-foot circle, and I moved back to escape it only for it to go off in a flash, taking me to a room full of monsters. An Eye Tyrant, arms open, every red orb focused, stood before me. Whatever had moved me had even taken part of the palisades with it, and I slammed down Darkness in an instant to break the Master's line of sight, only for nothing to happen.

The eyes burned into me, the feelings from before a pale shadow of what I felt now. An overwhelming pressure on my mind, the Master power a sledgehammer to my psyche with a single, simple message.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

Submit. Unify. Join.

I felt myself drowning under it, the monsters all around waiting, and there was no need for them to worry, as we were all one. One collective. One Unity. My own powers, slipping out of my control, activated, stuttering as nothing happened. My costume felt tight against my skin, the fabric oddly rough, but I paid it no mind.

Acoustokinesis dropped, and I could hear someone's voice yell "Vejovis, what's going on! What's happening!" Right, there were others that were different, that hadn't known of the peace of Submission, of Unity, and they'd Join.

My Acoustokinesis continued to work, setting up something, but it didn't matter. I landed, not even having realized that the Light had faded from my form, noticed that I hadn't landed on a different floor, the door I'd broken on the far side of the room. Flesh-Scorpions skittered towards me, even as the others who hadn't yet Joined called to me, Karen yelling "I can't get him!"

Whatever my power was doing, it had finished, and the soft skittering of the Flesh-Scorpions was suddenly loud, before it went utterly silent, and the world came apart around me.

I was untouched, standing on a disc of concrete held aloft by a straining Mineral Manipulation, in a circle of peace as everything turned to dust and vapor, the collective around me coming apart like smoke under a strong breeze, taking the Unifier with it.

Staggering, I felt like my mind been thrown into boiling water, scoured clean but hurt, the shock hitting me harder than the pain itself. Above me, the ceiling dissolved into a shower of particles, and underneath me the bottom halves of monsters fell to the ground on the floor below me, others turning to look up at me as I floated.

"Lee!" I heard Taylor yell, and I focused on that, past what just happened, and saw the multitudes turning on me, placid expressions on inhuman faces turning to hate and rage once more. I pulled upon the Light, to blast them to pieces, but it would not come. I tried to turn to Shadow, to escape, but I remained solid. I called upon the air itself, and it complied.

The space around me became thick with blades as the monsters attacked, some charging blindly into the invisible woodchipper even as metallic spears started shooting up around me. However, it was not just those closest that attacked, as others shot at my floating form.

Ice and fire harmlessly splashed against me, and, while my shields started to appear, there were too many attacks from too many directions. I felt my personal shields spend themselves, but then I felt myself shoved full of white-hot knives as quills and metal feathers punched through my armor as if it wasn't even there, the impenetrable fabric pierced, the invincible plates cracking like porcelain.

My control over my air blades faltered, suddenly trying to divert the no longer harmless shots, as my wing-like tendrils pulled tight and thickened, forming a shield around my back as the horde around me got ever closer, the net of slashing tendrils and air blades no longer holding them off.

I wrapped myself in star-stuff , to give my shields a chance to recover, only to feel something fighting for control of the flames around me, pressing the solid bits of sun inwards to try to burn me alive, but I ignored the heat, taking a second to breathe. I could survive the heat, but a lime-green glowing blade punched through the stellar construct, bouncing off a metal tendril, the tail the blade was attached to burning as the biological metal heated.

Trying to push the star outwards, to burn everything, I found I couldn't, a dozen other powers locking it in place, meeting my own movements and barely able to match mine, but able to constrain my Stellar Creations.

Negating the shield, I warped space with Vista's power. With the crowds around me, I couldn't do much, but I could cause the distances to slip slightly, making the area around me non-Euclidean to any non-living thing.

That disrupted the torrent of attacks that started the second my sun shield dropped, though some still got through. I tried to move, but the blades and spikes piercing my chest, back, and arms, pulled against me, the pain a distant thing as I focused on the here and now.

The darkness I'd started to spread still hung at the entrance, unnoticed by all, and I exploded it outwards, calling it to me, even though I suddenly couldn't make it from nothing. Metal Creation filled the ground with razor-sharp blades, slicing upwards as my power strained to keep up the demand, killing and hampering those around me even as the edges of the floor around me gave way under the weight of the metal, crashing down on the monsters below me.

Trying to create darts of sun resulted in them being ripped from my control, fired back at me, but destroyed as soon as they entered the range of Stellar Negation. The Projectile Shields were spreading, many of them breaking when overloaded but I could keep up, barely, with my back still protected by shifting metal tendrils. The darkness, smothering part of the room, flattened out as it tried to reach me, seeming to arch across an invisible dome, high over the heads of the others. It at least blocked out the sight of those further away, but it left those closer unimpeded.

Brutes had moved forward, air and ice projectiles bouncing off their armored hides, large gorilla-like arms raised to protect their faces. Their bony almost-carapaces were strong, but momentum infused iron spikes, with far more in it than was likely safe, still tore them to pieces. It was a war of attrition, but, with my defenses in place, it was one I was starting to win.

Until the ground below me started to glow a dull dark green once more.

Ready for the shift, I burst into motion, injuries be damned, feeling the quills and metallic feathers shatter inside me as I launched myself backwards and swung my orichalcum blade. I narrowly dodged a Brute's fist and cut apart an odd-looking monster, a floating, almost ethereal thing with tattered flesh hanging off itself in glowing strips the same color as the effect that had moved me.

My blade met no resistance, blasting through the Displacer as if it weren't there, but the shower of gore told me it was no illusion. Moving through it, I lashed out with everything I had, flattened metallic wings thinning back out and slashing at everything in sight as fast as I could move them.

Standing and fighting didn't work, as any defenses I built I could be ripped away from, so I needed to keep moving. The darkness arched above me in an invisible cloud, at least to me, and I leapt up to it, moving to one side within it while I created projectiles from the other, raining them down on the gathering masses, not needing to aim to hit the horde of monsters below.

They took the bait, firing upwards at the point they were being fired upon as I moved further away. The center of the room held no darkness at all, but over half of it was at least partially obscured with enough for me to hide in. I moved from area to area, dropping down and slaughtering a dozen in an instant of blades, and Light infused, razor sharp tendrils. My abilities were all responding to my will once more, armor reforming on its own, though wherever the Darkness could not go, neither could the Light, fading away to nothingness if I entered an area that blocked out Grue's power, my armor suddenly paper-thin once more.

The monster themselves rallied, and started to fight defensively, but there was too much area to cover and I could move too fast. Using Aerokinesis to move myself even faster made patterns in the clouds of darkness, and I tried to use Shadowform to let the projectiles pass through me without issue, but I instead felt a wrenching feeling that cause me to double over in pain, personal shields dropping as I was peppered by projectiles, the glowing sword at the end of blade-cat's tail bouncing off my reformed armor, but thankfully I received no more injuries from that mistake.

As I darted from spot to spot, attacking from varying vectors, I settled into a pattern of controlling attacks from three separate locations: myself and two sources from which I fired ice and wind projectiles. I felt the metallic tendrils that ran through and reinforced my body wrap around the sharp pains of the shrapnel still in me and push them out, stitching my flesh together with metallic threads as I bled from dozens of wounds, though not as badly as I should've.

The monsters gathered near the center, my initial sphere of devastation actually to the side of the large chamber, and I killed the last Displacer, who switched out the area where I'd been firing from with the area in front of him, the Darkness in the space instantly vanishing as Grue's power worked to fill in the sudden gap in the clouds that ran across the ceiling.

He had started to fade back into the masses, but I'd seen it, and a momentum infused iron spike tore straight through the Brute covering the teleporter and killing them both. Of the Eye Tyrants, I saw no more, though I was ready to look away and set off a Hypersonic Disruptor, structural stability be damned, if I got near another one again. The hole I'd made had partially collapsed, but seemed to have settled, and while I didn't want to start taking pieces out of this structure, my power not strong enough to vaporize this entire place, I'd rather risk it then get caught again and lose everything.

Finally, after what felt like an age, the last were dead, or had fled, the room a mess of destruction and misshapen, rent corpses.

Then came the Scorpions.

Hundreds of them started crawling out of the bodies, from between, from underneath, burrowing through the flesh itself, and they came, a tide of grey infection and mutation. With my armor and my powers I should be immune to anything they could do, but that was a certainty which had been heavily shaken.

I tried to do what I had before, to rip apart the very space they ran through, all of them able to see me even in the black clouds of Shadow Propagation, but there were more monsters below me, two floors down, so many that Vista's power was blunted, and it only deflected them, moving them around me instead of shredding them completely.

That was okay, I had more powers.

With nothing left to interfere, whatever had been taking over my fiery creations, I could use my Stellar Creation power freely once again, and Metal Projection was functioning perfectly. Metal Creation, as much as I'd been using it, was drained once again, and I let it rest, not needing it.

Air and ice blades sliced the Flesh-Scorpions apart, miniature suns arrayed in a small constellation burned those that got closer. And those that made it through all of that? They spent themselves fruitlessly, their lunges and stabbing tails turned aside, and their bodies cut by dozens of metallic tendrils, moving with the barest of input from me, a grey tide breaking upon the bulwark of my power, more and more coming until the ground was a grey paste around me, the smell of burnt flesh stained my nostrils, and the floor was thick with steaming wet gore, the heat from my suns melting my frozen daggers.

In the end, there were no more, and I could finally relax. Feeling out with my powers, there were no hidden ambushes, nothing I could feel ready to jump me, only the dead, and easily ten times the number I'd just killed far below me.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't listening," I commented to the air jovially, though it felt more than a little forced as I talked to those back home, having shut out all distractions as I desperately fought to survive. "I was kind of focused, what's up?" Flying to the edge of the darkness, I made a chair of air, a full seat with backing to both protect me and to relax into instead of a bench, and slumped into it.

My injuries hurt, and my costume was comfortable once more, like a second skin, the damaged portions repaired.

"Are you okay?" Taylor demanded, her voice carrying over the sounds of others.

"Um, yeah? Been better," I shrugged, and it hurt. Pulling back the costume over my arm, the puncture wounds and cuts were still there, and I could both feel them, but on another level I didn't, my mind almost clinical as I watched them very slowly closing up before my eyes. Was I in shock? Could I be in shock? Either way, Logan, I wasn't, but with my wound tracts clean, and all my bits still there, my Peak Condition power seemed able to pull me back together fairly easily.

"We can't see anything," Quinn cut in. "But the diagnostics are coming back clean."

Right, I thought, dismissing the dark clouds, banishing it to the edges of the room, having kept myself to the darkness wherever I could, but I kept the hallways around me still choked in black vapor. "Better?"

"You're injured!" Amelia said, and I sighed.

"Yeah, found an odd Shaker/Trump effect. Watch." Grabbing a bit of Light, most of my reserve still intact, I shot it into the bubble my Darkness would not penetrate.

The packet of exotic matter destabilized as soon as it entered, not exploding but fizzling out into nothingness. I created a burst of swirling shadows, extending it from my hand and sending it out, only for it to flow into the null-space and disappear. It didn't even splash, like it was hitting a barrier, it only moved into the area and was instantly dispersed.

This time it was Karen who spoke, "When you were in front of the eye-guy, I tried to go and grab you, but it was like you weren't there anymore! I can grab you now. Maybe you should-"

"No," I interrupted, shaking my head. "No, if I can't handle this, no one can. There's hundreds down there. Waiting. It Mastered me, but I don't take being Mastered that well, and I'll kill any that try." A thought crossed my mind, and I quickly asked, "Did you get anything on your end?"

"No," Quinn informed me, understanding what I meant. "As far as we could tell you just stood there. If you don't mind me asking, what happened? The way everything came apart. . ."

"Anti-Endbringer level attack, requires a good bit of setup time. Not something I can do on a whim. Being Mastered gave me time to set it up," I stated, only figuring out the last part as I said it aloud, still not sure how I'd done so. My powers had been easier to use, after the reset I'd gotten from copying Eidolon's power, but there was easy, and there was setting up an advanced move while I'd been completely subsumed by a Master ability.

That wasn't important, what was important was what I was going to do next. Standing up, my boots squelching as I did so, I stretched, the stiffness in my limbs already fading as my injuries resealed. I wasn't fully healed, not anywhere close, but I could move, and I was on a time-limit. If these things could teleport, they could move around me, and escape even with my defenses at the door. That meant I needed to keep going.

"No, the real problem is this," I said, stepping into the null field. Once again my costume felt tight, straining as I tried to move. Holding my hand in front of the camera eyepiece, I clenched my fist tighter and tighter, the dimensional fabric pretending to be leather and metal splitting and cracking as if it were what it actually was what it was only supposed to be emulating.

Trying to fix it, I couldn't, nor could I mentally separate the gauntlet from the arm section, as they were currently one single piece of material. Creating an ice dagger, I grabbed it and careful sliced it off, to the gasps of those watching. "Yeah," I agreed, "That shouldn't be possible. Whatever's making the breaker effect is making my armor useless. Not the most fun way to find that out, let me tell you."

Thinking about what Mouse had said, I reached out to the Marks I'd left. I could tell they were still there, and where they were, but when I made a dagger and emblazoned it with my Mark, then tossed it into the air, trying to move to it. My power slid right off it as if it didn't exist. Grabbing and tossing it out of the Null-zone, I still couldn't move to it. Moving to the other side of the Null field, keeping it between me and the Mark, I was at the dagger in a flash.

Tossing the dagger inside the Null zone, it seemed to disappear from my senses completely, only re-entering the Null-zone showing me it was there at all, though I couldn't teleport to it. "Yeah, I see what you mean Mouse."

Running through my powers, I found that, of the twenty-one I possessed, four were locked away, but they were a very important four. Marked Teleportation, obviously, along with Shadow Stalker's Shadowform, Grue's Shadow Propagation, and Purity's Lightform. My ultimate defense, my ability to blind others, my strongest quick attack, and the battlefield movement ability I'd spent hours honing, all gone. Thinking about it, I reached for Area Teleportation, only to realize it was offline as well. Both of my abilities to quickly move, I mentally corrected, and my ability to run.

Of those that were left, Mineral Manipulation was practically useless, the composite materials of the Endbringer Shelter meaning that even holding up my own weight stressed it to its extremes. Spatial Warping was going to get increasingly less effective the more enemies I fought. Stellar Creation could be co-opted by something here, though I'd been too busy to see what had been doing it exactly. Arthropod Control was useless, but what use I'd gotten out, taking out an entire classification of opponent, had made it worth having.

Additionally, Tree Growth & Control even if it worked, wasn't something I'd practiced using in a form that wasn't Dryad. Actually. . . that wasn't entirely true. I hadn't used it, but I'd Seen it. The problem was I didn't have the materials needed. Stepping out of the Null-zone, I dismissed the glove I'd cut off, the leather and metal coming apart in prismatic threads that vanished into the air. "Mouse, I need you to go to my room, grab the Marked dagger with the black handle. The one with the badly made Arachne Assemblages symbol on it, where I embossed it instead of engraved it. Drop that in the quarantine room, and seal it, then tell me when you're done.

"Gotchya," she replied seriously, the sound of a pop coming over the comms.

"What are you planning?" Taylor asked. "If you don't have armor. . ."

I shook my head, knowing they'd see the motion. I'd been so busy setting up other things and managing what was going on, that I hadn't had time to work on my personal projects, so mentally exhausted at times that I'd forgotten I'd even had other projects at times, but necessity was the mother of invention, and under constraints was when creativity bloomed. "I don't have my normal armor," I said, ideas piling up on each other. I wouldn't have time to test them all, but here, away from prying eyes, I had a number of promising, blatantly stolen ideas I could try. "But that doesn't mean I'm without other defenses."