Present
New Bug Cape takes down Lung in the docks
Hero Cryoblade chases off Vacuum
Well shit. I thought my fight would be on the front covers for days. Yet somehow I hadn't even been the top story. I merely had to settle with sharing the front page of the news.
I didn't even get the main picture. Shooting blades of ice out of an extended wing towards Vacuum was far more cinematic than the picture of an unconscious Lung laying on the pavement. And yet my picture was shuffled into the bottom corner while an unconscious Lung sat front and center.
Who the hell was this new bug cape?
They were apparently powerful enough to take down Lung. Which is really interesting. How would bugs have taken down the dragon? I heard of Lung brushing off tranquilizers strong enough to take down fully grown Rhinos before.
Lung had been one of the few players I was slightly worried about fighting. I don't think he would be able to burn through my ice, even at his most powerful state, but even being the scientist that I am, I'm wary about testing it. I guess I won't have to worry about it. That is, until he's broken out of his transport in a few weeks.
Maybe I should do something about that.
Whether that be actually protecting the caravan, or being the one to stop it, would be left to see.
I'd set my plans in motion taking into account every cape in the city.
I guess I'll have to remember to consider that other villains will be drawn to the city, and other capes will trigger while my plans are in motion.
I briefly considered how the gangs would react to the news.
Normally, the Empire would have jumped at the opportunity to gain new ground on the ABB in the dragon's absence. But they were licking their wounds.
So maybe the Merchants would gain some ground, but even Oni Lee on his own could reclaim lost ground if need be. No, the politics wouldn't change much for now.
Either way, this cape had taken the momentum out from under my feet. I had to fix that.
PRT transport driver Evan was having a stressful day. It was a lottery system for the drivers to decide who got to drive the transports for the villains.
At least they had good escorts for this one.
Velocity and Assault.
It almost made up for how loud the latter was. Evan swears he had never heard so many dumb comments come out of somebody's mouth in such a short period of time.
The ground shook a bit, startling Evan.
Were they getting attacked?
"Oh shit." The formerly wisecracking hero turned to the plume of smoke rising from Brockton Bay.
Even if he wanted to go help, he couldn't abandon the transport.
But the same couldn't be said for Velocity.
"Go. They might need help."
The transport teetered a bit as it shed some of the weight from its roof, and a small boost forward as something behind it rocketed the other direction.
Evan was glad it wasn't the transport. But he still had family in Brockton Bay. Hopefully that bomb hadn't been anywhere near Downtown.
Turning back towards the horizon, Evan settled his resolve on his mission.
But a shiver ran down his spine as a telltale whoomp came from above. Small sounds of fighting slipped through the armored walls before the escort shook from the impact of an explosion.
Oni Lee had arrived.
More explosions came from farther away, smoke rising from different areas of the city.
Evan tried to call for backup, but all the lines were busy.
If Evan made it out of this, he was quitting for good. Pizza delivery was probably a hell of a lot less stressful than this.
Tracking a teleporter was really weird.
I could keep track of people with their water signature. I could feel the water in their veins, their organs, the air, basically everywhere in that two block radius around me. And the orientation of the water in each person was different. So I could keep track of where and who people were in my radius.
Trying to stay out of sight while following someone who could duplicate with teleports was much harder tracking than usual, but by following his general direction I could always speed up to try and find his signature in my radius once again.
I'd followed him past the edge of the city.
I'd been checking up on the ABB the last two weeks. While I didn't have any sources in the Protectorate or PRT yet, they did. So they would know when the transport was happening. So I just had to watch for when they started to prepare for something, and follow them to it. I certainly hadn't expected another cape to show up, but I'll have to deal with her later.
Lung came first.
An ear splitting explosion made me turn my head. Looks like the ABB was making their move in more ways than one. If my house got damaged in any way I was going to be pissed.
I saw a blur race away from the escort.
Seems like Velocity thought she might be needed in the city. With her power, evacuation was probably one of her strong suits. Did she have to worry about giving the people she carried whiplash? I feel like there must be some weird power thing there. Because going from 0 to 200 mph tends to rend your organs, the same as going from 200 to 0 would if you fell from a building onto the pavement. Granted, then she might be called Mush. And probably not be a hero.
I'd have to research the specifics and events revolving Protectorate cape powers.
I'd mostly just been researching villain powers, as they were the ones I had to worry about fighting.
Speaking of, Oni Lee had begun his guerilla grenade drops on the figure on the roof, but the figure seemed to be doing fine, weathering the blasts.
My mind mentally checked through the capes before landing on Assault. He'd be able to weather the blasts. They'd even power him up. But they were still tearing through the armor of the escort.
Soon enough, Oni Lee had broken through. Each clone duplicate barely had time to drop a grenade before it was pulverized by the powered up Assault, but Assault was only able to kick some of the grenades off before they exploded. So little by little, the roof was torn apart.
Then Oni Lee could drop grenades into the transport, tearing through Lung's bindings.
Assault himself jumped off the escort as a torrent of fire and rage tore out. The van exploded
Oni Lee's grenades had not only destroyed the tranquilizers constantly being applied to the beast, but also kickstarted his growth by making him regenerate the damage from the explosions.
The escort was nothing but a smoking pile of melted steel and rubble now. And from the simmering wreckage, a 9 foot tall Lung walked out, fire shimmering underneath his skin, steam shooting out of his nose with every breath.
Oni Lee backed off as a torrent of flames swept over Assault.
Well, now or never I guess. Don't want Lung getting too powerful.
From the creek next to the road, a massive tendril of water slammed into the asphalt. More joined it, each tendril as thick as a tree trunk.
Both Lung and the now charred Assault turned to the new figure. Rising from the creek, the monster towered over even Lung, each thick tendril bigger than the dragon.
Assault was burned, but not out for the count yet. At least, he was, until one of the tendrils whipped out faster than he could react, sending him flying back into the countryside.
Another tendril lengthened far longer than anybody could expect and latched onto Oni Lee's head.
Others slammed into the dragon, some holding him down by the arms while others hammered relentlessly into his head and body. One held his head in a tight grip, refusing to let him breathe.
I expected Oni Lee to teleport out. This was only meant to stall him while I killed Lung. But for some reason, he wouldn't. I then saw him struggle against the tendrils to throw his mask to the side, then teleporting again.
Ah.
So his teleportation is limited by sight, and when I grabbed him his mask had lifted up and obscured his vision. That also explains why his teleports before had been small jumps. I'd assumed it was just a range limitation.
Interesting.
I could work with that.
Shooting out another tendril before he could make another duplicate, I tore the shirt from his body.
He then teleported far enough I couldn't reach him, but with his water signature I'd know the millisecond he teleported back, easily time enough to wrap his head before he could make a duplicate and teleport away again.
The tendril covering Lung's head was of highly condensed water. It had a high enough pressure that I could cut through steel. And yet it had all turned to steam as the dragon raged.
I had to back the monster off of Lung before it was all consumed.
This was a problem. It seemed he had already reached too far along in his transformation to deal with.
Grabbing stray Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules and combining them let me put on a show of the monster regrowing his limbs.
I reached out again with the tendrils, but they all evaporated when I got even a foot within his reach.
Shit.
Oni Lee wouldn't come back to help unless Lung was in lethal danger, and Lung was currently easily capable of taking down Kraken.
Well, plans never did work out as intended.
A breeze swept the field as a figure with armor made of hardened contorting wind and air entered the fray.
All of the fire surrounding Lung extinguished immediately as it found the oxygen it fed on being sucked away.
Lung began readying himself to leap at the new threat. The lack of air in his lungs was painful, but Lung knew pain. He could regenerate the damage caused by such trivial things anyway. He would push on through sheer force of will alone. But before he could leap towards the hovering form of Vacuum, watery tendrils grabbed onto his limbs and locked him to the ground.
I had to make a thin layer between the water and Lung to make sure he couldn't make fire through the oxygen in the water. The vacuum continued to sap the air from his lungs. The fight in his eyes was beginning to dim.
I noticed the water signature of Assault. He was crawling over the ridge, making sure he wasn't seen. He would not interfere.
Oni Lee seemed to notice that Lung was in trouble, and teleported right next to Kraken, dropping grenades to hopefully cut off the tendrils at the source.
But I reacted faster than he could ever try to match, wrapping his head in the cloth of his shirt before he even let go of the grenade, and swatted the grenade away into the creek as it fell from his fingertips.
Surrounding the demon with water, Oni Lee wrenched about. There would be no escape this time.
Lung kept trying to summon his fire, his rage. But the lack of oxygen made reaching his fire impossible. His regeneration tried to keep up with the damage the lack of oxygen was doing to his lungs and brain, but as he failed to fight something to physically fight, merely being locked in place rather than being beaten senseless, the light in the dragon's eyes dimmed even more.
His transformation began to revert. His regeneration would slow with it.
Soon enough, the Dragon of Kyushu and the Demon of the ABB lay together on the asphalt. Their eyes were devoid of life.
Assault could only stare in horror from the ridge above.
The Kraken slinked back into the creek, disappearing into the water.
Vacuum floated back into the air. His work was done. But before he blasted off into the sky, he turned to give Assault a look. A look to let him know he was there the whole time. The look of a Tiger stalking past, a powerful predator choosing in that moment that you weren't worth killing. Prey was prey, but the mere fact the cape's bloodlust had already been satiated meant Assault would get to live. It sent shivers down his spine.
The villain disappeared into the clouds.
And with that, my work was done.
Assault would be able to tell the story of how the ABB came to an end. How powerful the new cape was.
Shit.
I just realized, Vacuum and Kraken were seen working together. They had to, to kill Lung. That beast had been too powerful.
I just accidentally made a villain team.
Goddamnit.