"Drop us off here, Dad, and we'll go in on foot." Taylor looked at her father, who looked back, then slowed. The DWU facility was around the next corner.
"Why?" he asked curiously as he pulled over.
"I'm going as Saurial and it would look odd if Taylor and Amy arrived with you, while Saurial and Amy were seen around the BBFO office, wouldn't it?" she asked, shrugging.
"True enough," he grinned. "I'll see you in a little while."
"OK." Both she and Amy got out of the car, closing the doors, then watching as he pulled away. Amy shivered a little, pulling her coat around herself.
"It's horrible at the moment," she complained. "I hate this cold damp, it's worse than proper winter." Looking up at the very close sky, she frowned. "I hope this is going to clear soon."
"The forecast is that it'll probably only last until tomorrow sometime," Taylor said as she headed towards a nearby alley between some of the old warehouses, checking carefully for witnesses. She could smell some homeless people somewhere fairly close but couldn't see any nearby heat sources. When she found a suitable spot she changed into her Saurial form without stopping, Amy walking next to her. They came out the other end of the alley and turned right towards the bay. "It's worse because we're so near the water," she carried on, waving towards the shore, which was invisible in the mist.
They could hear the sounds of construction machines working in the distance, rumbles and crashes echoing around the whole area.
"Well, I don't like it," Amy grumbled. "I'm cold."
"Here," Taylor smiled, handing her a thicker coat which came down to her knees. "Try this."
Her friend accepted the trenchcoat-like garment, holding it up and admiring it, then slipping it on over her other clothes. Zipping it up she smiled. "Good fit. Thanks. Where did you get the pattern?"
"I saw one like it in that shop half-way down the Boardwalk today," Taylor replied. "It looked pretty nice."
"I like it," Amy said, looking down at herself.
They were now close enough to make out vehicles moving around on the site of the former warehouses. The skeletal steel-work of the modern one was half-gone compared to the day before, a dozen cutting torches spraying sparks as workers sliced through the beams and girders, while the first stone one she'd brought down was almost entirely cleared away. An excavator was in the process of loading the remains of the thing into a couple of trucks, while further away, barely visible, another one was starting in on the next warehouse along.
"Wow, they're really going at it," Amy commented as they stopped to watch for a moment.
"Apparently they were working through the night," Taylor said. "I've never seen so many people working here." She looked around at the decaying buildings. "This place must have been pretty impressive twenty-five years ago when all these were full of shipping companies and the bay had ships coming and going."
"Hopefully it'll be back to that soon enough," her friend replied. They resumed walking, heading towards the main entrance. The guards smiled at them when they were close enough.
"Hello, Saurial, Panacea, nice to see you again. Danny got here a little while ago if you want to see him."
"We're going to the BBFO office right now, thanks," Taylor smiled back. "But we'll stop in and see him." She looked over to the work zone for a moment. "Looks like things are going really well."
"They've been at it since your sister and Glory Girl brought all the warehouses down," he said with a nod. "All night. Everyone is working their asses off to get ready for Tuesday."
"It should be fun," she laughed. Waving to the other guard, both of them ducked under the vehicle barrier and headed to her building.
Opening the door she went in and turned the alarm off, then the lights on. Amy closed the door behind her and went over to the workroom, pulling a key on a chain that Taylor had made from around her neck and unlocking the door to it, going inside the separate area and turning another set of lights on. Taylor joined her. Both of them studied the contents of the workbench under the fluorescent illumination.
"It looks good," Taylor said after a minute or so, running her hand along the largest thing there.
"Still needs some work but it's a good test of the process," Amy agreed. She moved over to another set of items, reaching into a small transparent tank of dull yellow goop, picking up one of the modified versions of her healing symbiote, one of half a dozen floating in the nutrient solution. "These are still active. So the support system works," she reported after a moment.
"Great. How long will it keep them alive for?"
"Probably… about six months, maybe?" The brunette looked slightly unsure. "I need to experiment some more but I think that's probably about right for this version. I can improve on that, I'd like to get a shelf life of at least two years. Some sort of stasis, or a spore maybe… Anthrax bacteria can survive for centuries in spore form. Hmm." She got a thoughtful look on her face and stared at the little semi-living thing in her hand for a while. Eventually she dropped it back into the tank.
"I'm going to have to think about it. But it should be possible."
"How many versions have you gone through so far?" Taylor asked.
"This is the fourteenth variant," Amy replied, tapping her right wrist. "The last few changes have mostly been functional tweaks, not major revisions. It's about as optimized as it's going to get without a complete redesign. The next generation is more complicated by a long way, because it adds all the other things we were talking about. I'm not quite ready for that yet. Maybe around the middle of the week."
She looked down on the floor at a half-empty twenty pound bag of onions. "But we're going to need more biomass."
"Potatoes?" Taylor suggested after a second or two. "The cafeteria buys them by the truckload."
"That's usable, I tried it at home, but onions are a little better for various reasons," her friend replied.
"I could go and pull up a load of seaweed, I need to do some work on the docks in a minute anyway."
"Too messy," Amy smiled. "I'm not in a hurry, I can wait. There's enough here to finish this off and do some more experiments. We can order a ton or so of onions tomorrow."
"OK." Taylor opened the door to the second room and turned the light on, looking at the contents. "I can hardly wait to see this working."
"You can hardly wait?" Amy snickered, coming over to stand next to her. The metallic structure glittered under the overhead lights. "Think how I feel."
"Scared?"
"Terrified. But so looking forward to it as well." She laughed, looking over her shoulder at the workbench. "If that works, this will, and it's going to be amazing fun."
Closing the door, Taylor grinned. "It'll work. You're very good at this sort of thing."
"Thanks. But it would be a lot more difficult without your help."
"We'll have to come up with a good name for you," Taylor smirked. "Panacea is too boring for this."
"What do you suggest?" Amy grinned.
"Something that puts the fear of you into people." Taylor tapped her muzzle with a claw. "Something dark and edgy. Memorable."
She thought some more. "We shall call you… 'The Amy!'"
Her friend burst into giggles. "That's not dark or edgy," she laughed.
"Of course it is. Once you've beaten up a lot of criminals, posed on the pile of bodies, and announced that they were taken out by The Amy, you'll have respect. You'll have to refer to yourself in the third person as well, that makes it more impressive. And a little creepy." Taylor grinned. "I'm telling you, after a month of that, criminals would run like hell if someone came in shouting that The Amy was coming. They'd shit themselves."
"You are an idiot, you know," Amy chuckled, shaking her head. "Try again."
"I'll have to think some more, if you're going to reject a perfectly good suggestion out of hand like that," Taylor huffed in mock annoyance.
Sharing a smile, they left the workshop and looked around the main building. "We need to get some proper toilets and that sort of thing in here, and maybe a kitchen as well," Amy pointed out.
"Easily done. I'll ask Dad about that later. Right now, I'm going swimming, while it's good and foggy." Taylor smiled, heading for the rear door, while flipping her friend the key ring with the high-security keys on. She'd tried duplicating them and found her copies didn't work, there was some subtlety to them she hadn't yet worked out. "If you need to lock up. You know the alarm code."
"Yep. How long will you be?"
"Couple of hours or so. If you need me, shout, I'll hear you."
"OK." Amy nodded to her friend. "I'll be working in here until you get back unless there's an emergency."
"See you later." Opening the rear door, Taylor looked out, checking carefully both ways. Pulling her head back in, she thoughtfully added, "Put making a tunnel from in here to underwater somewhere on the list, Amy," then as her friend smiled and nodded, ran out the door and dived into the bay, entering the water with barely a ripple. As soon as she was under the surface she changed, growing larger as she swam deeper, until she was at the appropriate size to begin work. Humming softly to herself she started digging, enjoying the work and talking to the Varga.
"Fuck!" Lisa ducked as another bullet spanged off the tunnel wall, spraying stone chips over her. The pursuing ABB were still firing wildly, enough rounds ricocheting down the tunnel to keep life exciting for them.
"This is ridiculous," she muttered, pressing herself as hard against the dog's back as she could manage, the spikes on it getting in the way. She shifted around, then looked down, before smacking herself in the forehead. "Grenades. Idiot." Pulling a gas grenade loose she held the spoon in place until they reached a slightly narrower part of the tunnel, then tossed it over her shoulder. The pop in the distance was faint, the hissing sound inaudible. After fifteen seconds she dropped her last one.
Seconds after that the shooting from behind started to drop off, then stopped. Presumably most if not all of the ABB gangers had run into the gas cloud and passed out. With nowhere to go it meant that the tunnel would be nearly impassible for some time.
A roar of rage made her twitch.
Unfortunately, it obviously didn't work on Lung.
She tossed a smoke grenade behind them as well to try and cover their escape, pairing it with a flashbang. The flashbang had a two second longer delay, going off inside the smoke cloud, but even so it was blindingly bright through her closed eyelids.
"Shit, Lisa, warn us before you do that, will you?" Brian called back with anger in his voice when the echoes died away.
Her ears ringing from the blast, she shouted, "If I warned you I'd warn Lung as well."
"Shit. OK. Good point." Their nominal leader sounded irritated and scared, neither of which she blamed him for at all. She was terrified, herself.
The sounds from behind faded slightly, Lung apparently having found the smoke and the flashbang not to his liking, but she knew it would only provide a short reprieve. Reaching a fork in the tunnel, Rachel who was still in front shouted, "Which way?"
"Right!"
The dogs poured into the right tunnel. She looked up at the walls, seeing it was older and in fairly poor condition compared to the one they'd just left. An idea striking her, she exerted her power for a moment, then signaled her dog to slow, which she reluctantly did. "I'm going to try blowing the tunnel," she said into her radio, suddenly remembering she still had it.
There was a pause, then Brian's incredulous voice came out of the device.
"You're going to do what?"
"Collapse the tunnel," she replied, looking around as the dog trotted along. Up ahead she spotted a good candidate spot for her idea. "It's in bad condition. I think a couple of concussion grenades will bring the roof down and at least slow the bastard down. But I have to do it now before he catches up or we're dead."
"Oh, fuck it. Be careful, Lisa," her friend replied, his voice resigned and worried.
"I'm always careful," she snarked, carefully removing two concussion grenades from her vest, and a roll of fishing line from her pocket.
"Yeah, sure you are," Alec said in a similar tone, making her smirk.
Carefully and quickly tying the pins on the grenades to the line, she tugged the knot tight, then indicated to the dog to stop as they reached the right point. Whining, she did so, looking over her shoulder in a way that clearly indicated she knew something horrible was following them.
"I know, Angelica," she said in a low voice, patting the huge animal on the head as she slid off, running over to the support column she'd picked out, then pushing the grenades into a hole where a couple of old bricks had dropped out of the rotten mortar near the bottom. Wedging the explosives in place with a chunk of brick she ran back and climbed on top of the dog, paying out the line as she moved, then urged her into a run. The animal was more than happy to comply.
Letting out a hundred or so feet of line, she grabbed the reel firmly and yanked when she felt they were far enough away. The line in her hand went slack.
Three seconds later there was an enormous boom from behind them, a concussive blast blowing shrapnel past her and spraying her with dust. It was immediately followed by a rumbling crash as the ceiling of the tunnel started to collapse.
She looked up to see that there were flakes of mortar falling from directly above then, paling a little when her power helpfully informed her that the blast had started a cave-in that was going to keep going for some distance. "Oh, shit," she yelped, urging the dog to top speed.
They barely made it as the roof came down behind them, a good hundred yards of storm drain falling in on itself. Billowing clouds of dust propelled by the collapse engulfed her and the dog, making both cough. "Are you still alive?" Alec asked over the radio.
"I think so," she replied, coughing again. "That was a little bigger than I expected."
"Don't stop, even if it landed on him it won't slow him for long," Brian put in.
"I'm not stopping, believe me," she radioed back. It was possible that Lung was under all the bricks and debris, and if he wasn't ramped up too far, it might even stop him. But they couldn't count on that and by the sound of things, he'd been more than a little miffed.
A miffed Lung was bad news.
At least down here Oni Lee wasn't a problem, without being able to see them he couldn't teleport to them. But when they got out, that could be an issue. Another idea struck her. "How many gas grenades are left?" she asked.
"I used all mine," Alec replied.
"I've got one left," Brian said.
Rachel put in, "Still got three."
"One each, good. We need to distribute them, if Oni Lee turns up they may be the only thing that works on him."
"Oh, right, I see where you're going with that. Good idea." Brian sounded impressed.
"It'll take good timing but it might work. Worth a try."
"How do we get out of here?"
Struggling to remember the map, Lisa replied to Rachel's question after a couple of seconds. "About a quarter of a mile more, there should be a tunnel to the left, going up. It goes into another warehouse near the water. It's blocked off, smash the wall down."
"OK."
They ran on for some time. Behind them, she could hear sounds that suggested Lung had made it past the cave-in somehow. When she looked back there was a faint light somewhere back there again. She tossed another smoke grenade behind her having warned the others with the radio, then tried to persuade her dog to go even faster.
The animal was panting hard, clearly getting close to exhaustion. Which wasn't good.
"Found the tunnel," Rachel said. A moment later she reported, "At the wall. I'm going to break it down." Lisa heard a crash a few seconds later from a couple of hundred yards ahead.
"I'm in the warehouse," her colleague radioed. "Hurry up, we need to…"
The radio signal abruptly cut out amid a crackle of static. Moments later Lisa heard gunfire.
"Oh, fuck, there are ABB here as well," Rachel shouted. She heard a concussion grenade detonate, then a flashbang. "About a dozen of the fuckers."
"Nearly there," she called back. "Brian?"
"I'm five seconds away," he responded. Another grenade detonated, close enough that the walls of the tunnel vibrated.
Reaching behind her, she pulled the .32 pistol she carried from the back of her belt and cocked it, slowing the dog as they reached the exit tunnel. Very much wishing there was another way, but knowing that the only choices were back towards Lung, who was rapidly approaching while shouting unintelligibly but furiously, forward which only led into the water of the bay in another few hundred yards, or left into the warehouse and a firefight between the ABB and her friends. She didn't really have a lot of options.
With a sigh of anger, she charged up the tunnel into the warehouse, bursting out into the badly lit area and waving her gun around seeking a target. Spotting someone in ABB colors she snapped off a shot, missing but making him shout and dive out of sight.
She frantically looked around for her friends, seeing Rachel in the distance at the other end of the hundred yard long warehouse, on foot, swinging a piece of pipe at another ganger, who dropped like a stone when her improvised club caught him across the chest. Her dog promptly pounced on him and jumped up and down a bit.
Lisa winced. That guy was out of the fight.
Hearing a sound to the right she whirled around on top of Angelica, aiming quickly, then pulled the trigger again. The ganger who had been in the process of pointing an AK-47 at her screamed as her bullet hit him in the knee. As he dropped to the ground clutching the wound, his rifle bouncing off into the distance, she frowned a little. She'd been aiming at his chest.
Probably a good thing all told that she'd missed, it was a disabling wound without being fatal.
"Lisa!" At the call, she looked around, to see Brian waving at her from behind a partially collapsed wall. Wheeling her mount around she headed for him, sniping at a couple of gangers on the way and missing both times. When she reached him she found him holding Alec onto the dog, the smaller man leaking blood from a grazing wound along his rib-cage, making the side of his overalls damp and sticky.
"Just a flesh wound," her colleague joked weakly. "Fucking hurts, though."
"It's not too serious but he's not going to be running anywhere," Brian told her, a serious look in his eyes through his gas-mask. "There are about eight of them I think. Now, anyway. Rachel took out three of them, she's not in a good mood. You got that guy."
"I've only got one more magazine left and this one is half empty," she replied, shooting at one of the gangers who was more persistent or less smart than his friends. He yelped in agony and dropped again, a lot of swearing in Korean coming to them. "Or even less full now."
"Seven, then. Plus Lung, sooner or later," Brian sighed, looking apprehensively over at the collapsed wall that lead down to the storm drains. They could hear something big approaching. "I suppose it's too much to hope for that he'll get so big he gets stuck?"
"If the cave in didn't stop him I doubt that will," she answered, shaking her head. "We need to get out of here."
"Brilliant idea, why didn't I think of that?" he grouched.
"That's why I'm here," she grinned. A bullet snapping past her head made her squeak and duck frantically. "But I don't want to be."
"None of us do," Alec complained. He pulled a flashbang free, cocking his arm back. "Close your eyes," he warned, then threw it with a hiss of pain. Seconds later the world went white and there was a huge bang. Opening her eyes and blinking furiously, Lisa spotted two gangers rolling around with their hands over their ears, having been almost under the device when it went off. Aiming carefully this time, she shot both of them in the lower legs, emptying the magazine. They screamed and writhed around, while she popped the empty magazine out and replaced it with the full one.
"Jesus, Lisa," Brian said, staring at her work.
"They're trying to kill us, you know," she snapped. "If it's me or them, I'm going to make it them. Anyway, they're alive, just not having much fun right now."
"OK, OK, calm down. You have a point." He sighed. "Probably five left now."
A scream from the other end of the warehouse made them all cautiously look over the wall, to see Rachel's dog shaking a limp body in his mouth while the girl herself pummeled another ganger with his own rifle. She seemed to be having a certain amount of fun.
"Three, I guess."
"We should be able to make a break for it," Lisa suggested. "Use another flashbang then run."
"Worth a try," Brian agreed. He raised his radio to his mouth. "Rachel! Can you hear me?"
There was a sufficiently long pause that they began to think she'd lost her radio, but eventually the girl responded, sounding a little breathless. "Yes. What is it?"
"We're going to try a breakout. Can you see if there are any of them outside?"
"Two more out there, I think. They keep shooting at the building." There was a pause, then she added, "Yes, definitely two. I can see one of them from here."
"Damn."
"Smoke grenades, then," Lisa suggested.
"I can just flood the place with my darkness," he told her.
"Sure you can. Which points right at us. At the moment they don't know who we are. If we can get away, I'd prefer to do it without leaving them clues that lead right to our front door," she remarked acidly. After a second or two he nodded.
"OK, you have a point. But if we get stuck, I'm doing it anyway."
"Fair enough. Just don't jump the gun."
Alec, who had been watching the surroundings while they talked, made a motion with his hand, the ganger he'd spotted tripping and going head-first into a wall with a solid thud. He didn't get up again. The boy raised an eyebrow, then grinned. "That worked better than I expected."
"If you get the chance do it again," Brian suggested with an impressed look.
With only two ABB in the building still in a state to fight the shooting had dropped off markedly. They were probably also running out of ammunition, Lisa suspected. She could hear something coming up the tunnel, which meant they only had fifteen to twenty seconds. "OK, we need to go right now," she instructed. Keying up her radio, she said, "Throw the smoke grenades you have outside, quick. Try to get them between the ABB and us."
"OK."
Moments later they heard three sharp pops then smoke billowed up outside the warehouse. "Go. We're behind you."
There was no response but they saw the third dog with Rachel on charge out into the smoke. "Come on, guys," Lisa said, pulling her last flashbang and tossing it down the tunnel with a hard throw, then wheeling Angelica around and urging her to run. A few shots passed, but the smoke grenade Brian threw towards the remaining gunmen quickly obscured them.
Seconds later they were racing away from the warehouse. A howl of rage came from inside it, along with a burst of flame that even three hundred yards away they could feel the heat from. 'Got out just in time,' she thought thankfully. 'Now we need to actually lose the fucker.'
A few minutes later she was becoming more and more certain that they might well have managed to do that. They'd spread the smoke grenades they had out among the various alleys, the still air and the fog aiding them nicely, until a large part of the abandoned dock area was almost completely obscured. She'd seen a fair number of apparent Merchants who had scattered when they heard Lung rampaging around, apparently unwilling to get involved. She certainly couldn't blame them. But at least they were unlikely to get any trouble from that direction.
The explosion that went off way too close took her completely by surprise.
"Oh, fuck," she screamed, recognizing the figure who appeared in front of them with horror. "Oni Lee!"
"Scatter," Brian ordered. "He can't teleport to us if he can't see us. Line of sight, remember. Use the last of the smoke grenades and the flashbangs."
Rachel went left, Brian and Alec went right, and she jinked around the form of Oni Lee, who pulled the pins on the grenades he had in his hands with his teeth. She was only thirty feet away when they went off behind her. The clone vanished in the blast, while shrapnel pelted them, the dog under her faltering then recovering, Lisa nearly falling off in the process. She felt something hit the backpack she still had on her back, the packed cash absorbing the shrapnel, and a sharp pain in her left arm, looking down to see her overalls and costume under them were torn with blood leaking out.
The wound wasn't bad, but it was much too close to home. She dropped her last smoke grenade, then grabbed a flashbang and waited.
More explosions went off in the smoke and fog, all around her, one after the other, mixed in with shots from a handgun. The teleporting cape was apparently jumping around all over the place more or less randomly taking potshots at them. She wondered why for a moment until she heard a roar, an unpleasantly familiar one, coming closer.
'Fuck, he's trying to delay us so Lung can catch up,' she realized in horror. Even if Oni Lee couldn't see them, he could cause enough havoc to make them have to avoid him, inevitably slowing them down.
The figure appeared again to the side. She threw the flashbang and turned the dog to run away from where it landed. A boom sounded and a brilliant flash lit the smoke for a fraction of a second.
Blinking, she kept going, heading towards the water. The warehouses were getting older and more decrepit as she and the dog moved through them, showing that they were entering the oldest part of the Docks area, which was largely wood and stone, dating back in some cases over a hundred and fifty years. No one lived here, not even the Merchants, it was so wrecked that even they had decided it was below their standards.
More explosions went off in the distance. She heard a burst of automatic fire, a couple of screams, and another boom, with a bright flash lighting up the fog to the side. Another flashbang.
Reaching for her radio she felt around, then looked down, before swearing viciously. It was gone. It must have detached itself from her vest when Angelica stumbled.
The dog was limping a little now, and looking back she could see a trail of blood behind them. 'That's not good,' she though with worry. It wouldn't take enhanced senses to simply follow the trail.
Two more flashbangs went off, which by her count was the last of them. After a short pregnant pause, there was a double blast of a pair of grenades, the signature sound of Oni Lee at work. Oddly enough, after that, there were no more. She could hear Lung raging and roaring not that far away, hopefully going in the wrong direction.
Wondering with worry what was going on with her friends, she pressed on, her gun in one hand and a concussion grenade in the other, looking around. Her dog was moving more slowly now, clearly at the end of her endurance.
The warehouse wall a few dozen feet away suddenly burst open to reveal the flaming form of a fairly heavily ramped up and extremely pissed off Lung, making both her and the dog stop dead in their tracks.
"Oh, god damn it," she whispered.
"Fo' 'u," he gargled triumphantly, rising to his full ten foot height and walking slowly toward her. Behind him the warehouse was now burning merrily.
She pulled the pin on the grenade, holding it tightly, while emptying her gun into him. He jerked a little, the wounds closing nearly instantly. Half the rounds bounced off his silver scales.
His distorted face moved in a horrible smile. He opened his mouth, only twenty feet away, to say something.
She threw the grenade, amazed at the way it actually hit the point she was aiming at, going straight into his mouth, even as she slid off the dog and put it between her and the horrific figure.
The ensuing blast was incredibly loud. Angelica screeched in agony and collapsed, nearly landing on Lisa, who dived out of the way. Rising to hands and knees she peered at Lung, who had collapsed to his own knees.
She nearly threw up when she saw that most of his lower jaw and throat were missing, blood running down his chest.
Moments later she nearly cried when she saw him slowly stand up, the wounds healing in under fifteen seconds.
He smiled, and reached for her.
'What the hell is all that noise?' Taylor wondered, looking up at the surface thirty feet over her head. She could hear faint explosions and gunfire, some distance off by the sound of it. Swimming up to the surface she cautiously raised her head above the water, just enough to look around. She was about a hundred feet from shore, hopefully invisible in the fog to the DWU workers, although she could see their thermal signatures moving around on land, along with brighter glows from engines and cutting equipment. By the looks of it the workers were pulling back from whatever was going on, congregating inside the DWU fence in small groups.
A whole series of explosions went off one after another somewhere about a mile away, although they were definitely getting closer. She sighed heavily. 'Damn it, I was nearly finished as well,' she thought irritably.
"I would presume that some of the noisier neighbors are having something of an argument," the Varga commented.
'Sounds like it,' she agreed.
The explosions and gunfire, accompanied by screams, roars that sounded like a huge animal having a fit, and less identifiable sounds, were heading their way and towards the water from somewhere between them and the Ship's Graveyard. 'I think that's Lung,' she added after a moment more of listening.
"Ah. This could be interesting. I would like to see this 'Dragon' from Japan," her demonic companion replied with a note of humor in his voice.
'Let's go and ask him to keep the noise down, then,' she laughed. Sinking under the water again she started swimming in the direction that the uproar seemed to be going. It sounded like a running gunfight of a fairly serious form.
Arriving at a point directly in front of the sounds, she peeked out of the water again. Flashes of brilliant white light, with loud bangs accompanying them, were going off behind the warehouses in her view. She was just off the end of one of the old wharves that the ships used to tie up at, which led to a narrow street between two rows of wood and brick warehouses, all of them rotting away and completely derelict. This area didn't even have the sparse number of streetlights that the rest of the docks had.
Sighing a little, she shrank from the form of Kaiju to that of Raptaur, climbing up the side of the dock and standing on the narrow access road that ran along the shoreline. As she did, a tall figure, glowing with heat, smashed through one of the old buildings a couple of hundred feet away in front of someone riding a familiar looking animal that had just come around the corner a little further than that back.
She recognized the figure despite the distance and the overalls with gas-mask. The slight breeze blowing towards her confirmed it by scent. 'Lisa,' she thought, worried. 'And that's definitely Lung. In a very bad mood.'
As she started to run, forming a hammer, she saw the blonde girl somehow manage to get a small spherical object neatly right into Lung's mouth. A moment later the front of his head and neck exploded with a bright flash and a very loud bang. The dog that Lisa had been riding screamed in pain as shrapnel hit it and collapsed, revealing Lisa kneeling behind it, looking stunned.
Lung stood up, regenerating as he did so, and in a lightning-fast move, grabbed her, then whirled and threw her through the rotten wall of the warehouse on the other side of the street.
Growling with anger, Taylor accelerated, bringing her hammer back with both hands.
'Let's see how much he can regenerate,' she snarled. The Varga urged her on.
Lisa froze, looking up in horror as Lung ripped the wooden planks to the side with one clawed hand, the wood bursting into flames in the process, then stared at her. "Oh, fuck," she whispered, before closing her eyes and waiting for death. She could feel heat from the Asian cape and didn't need her powers to tell her what he wanted or what was going to happen.
She had no idea where Brian or Alec were, the entire area was covered in smoke mixing with the fog rolling in off the bay to a level that reduced visibility to less than thirty feet, and she hadn't heard anything from Rachel since they'd split up.
A sudden loud thump accompanied by a burst of distorted obscenities made her twitch. The noises continued, getting fainter, and the heat from Lung faded. After a moment she opened her eyes a little, squinting at the hole in the wall where he'd been standing moments before. There was no sign of him. Coughing, the smoke getting to her and making her dizzy, after a few seconds she struggled to her feet, limping to the hold and cautiously looking out.
Barely visible in the mix of fog and smoke, back lit by the burning warehouse across the street, she could see Lung, ramped up to the point he was nearly ten feet tall, viciously fighting the heavily-armored six-limbed reptilian cape who was only a little smaller. She was wielding an eight foot long war hammer, which she swung so hard that the whistling sound was almost painful as the massive thing whipped through the air.
One blow struck Lung right in the middle of the chest, flinging him right past her and into the side of the other warehouse on her side of the street, crashing through the brickwork and vanishing into the building. There was a roar of rage and the silver-scaled part draconic form ripped its way out of the hole, screaming insults that were barely comprehensible through his changing face. His tail thrashed in fury as he charged back past the blonde, who winced and put up a hand at the sheer radiated heat which was enough to make her hair crisp.
The heat from the fires was starting to burn off the fog in the immediate area, making the scene more visible. She could see Lung's opponent turn on one leg with the hammer in her right hand held outstretched at arm's length, catching Lung in the side of the head and flipping him through two complete turns until he slammed down onto the cracked concrete with a crunch.
So angry he was almost literally glowing, he shook his head violently then staggered to his feet. Lisa could make out that his head was oddly distorted on one side from the horrific blow which had been so hard it had actually crushed his skull, but the even more horrific thing was that as she watched it popped back into shape, the bleeding flesh reknitting at an incredible speed.
The other reptilian cape waited for him, crouched on her hind legs with the front ones and her arms ready, the hammer vanishing and being replaced with a huge sword, one that looked impossible to wield. Yet she moved it in a way that made it blatantly obvious that she'd have no problem using it.
"I'm giving you one chance, Lung, before I really get annoyed." She sounded like she was in fact quite annoyed already, Lisa thought. "Leave this area alone and I'll let you go."
Lung stared, the threw his head back and roared with laughter, flames licking around him as he did so. "Little lizard, I am Lung! I go where I want and take what I want. I do not 'go'. Save your breath, it will be your last."
Lisa could barely make out the words, although the other cape seemed to have no problems, merely tilting her head curiously.
"You may be overestimating your chances," she replied.
Not bothering to speak, Lung let a huge burst of flames engulf her, making Lisa gasp in shock and swing back inside the building as the fire billowed past the hole she was watching from. When it cooled from impossible to merely very hot she peeked out to see the reptilian female still standing in the same place, apparently intact and unmoved.
"You'll have to do better than that," she smiled, exposing enough teeth to make a velociraptor jealous. Lung howled in anger and charged, as she set herself, then ducked and swung the sword as he reached her.
Both his legs and his growing tail separated without effort, the upper part of his body flying past her in an uncontrolled spin. Lisa stared in horror, then terror as she saw he was already regenerating, obviously deep into the level where he was basically unstoppable.
'He's not going to stop until she's dead,' she thought fearfully, 'by which time everyone else around here will be as well.'
Proving her right, even before he had fully regenerated Lung sprinted at the other cape, who ducked, but in turn managed to duck her return swing with a burst of sudden appalling speed. He managed to knock her weapon from her with a titanic blow of his tail, the huge sword crashing through the side of the nearby building with no effort at all.
'Christ, how heavy is that thing?' Lisa wondered in a sort of detached horror. She watched as Lung managed to lay hands on the female's tail, heaving and swinging her around his head twice then letting go. She flew out into the fog towards the nearby bay, and there was a splash after a second or two a good two hundred feet away. Staring after her he began moving in that direction, past Lisa, ignoring her completely for the moment since he was so focused on his opponent.
He peered around, looking for Raptaur. "Come out, little lizard. I've been wanting to try you for weeks."
There was no answer, but she could hear some splashing sounds in the water.
"Surely you can't have given up so quickly," he laughed, his words so distorted only her power let her make them out. "The great Raptaur, who took out Hookwolf like he was a small child. Come and fight a real opponent."
He walked out onto the wharf towards the sounds in the water, then held out his arms. "I'll let you take your best shot."
Under his feet the wharf was smoking. He glowed with heat, ripples in the air rising above him and carrying the smoke and mist up and away.
Both Lisa and Lung waited, for different reasons, to see what would happen next. The splashing sounds faded.
"I'm disappointed, little lizard. But I suppose you recognize greater power when you see it. I am Lung, I am a Dragon! None can stand against me."
There was a long pause after his roar of triumph.
It would be fair to say that neither Lung or Lisa expected the deep laugh that rumbled softly out of the fog.
"Dragon?"
The voice was incredibly deep, and full of humor.
"I see no Dragon," the voice continued after a moment, not carrying far but making everything in the area vibrate gently. From Lung's body language Lisa could see he was shocked and not sure what was happening.
Not something she was unfamiliar with, to be fair.
"All I see is a little Salamander who needs to be taught not to cause problems," the voice said. A shadow grew in the fog off the end of the wharf. Despite himself, Lung took a step back.
"Who are you?" he shouted. "Where is Raptaur?"
"My sister decided that she wanted you to meet me," the voice replied, a definite smile in it. "She thought it would be… interesting."
"I want Raptaur. I'm not interested in an impressive voice. Do not push my patience."
"Or what?"
"Or you will die!"
"Really?"
The voice laughed again. Lisa shivered. There was something absolutely terrifying about it, but she couldn't work out exactly what. But when she tried using her power on it, she got a very familiar effect.
Her eyes widened.
When the clawed, scaled hand big enough to pick up a school-bus on the end of arm fifty feet long shot out of the fog and grabbed Lung like a child picking up a toy soldier, she nearly screamed. The only reason she didn't was because she couldn't make her mouth work.
"I suspect you may be mistaken," the voice said, as the shadow grew closer.
"This isn't working, Brain," the Varga said as they watched Lung regenerate rapidly, growing larger in the process, and hotter. "His regeneration is too fast. We can kill him, but simply stopping him is very difficult using these methods. The larger he grows the stronger he gets. We are stronger and tougher, but if we let him continue in this vein, the collateral damage will inevitably destroy the entire area."
'So what do you suggest?' she asked, ducking Lung's return blow.
"He thrives on conflict. Remove the conflict and I think that his growth will stop."
'But how do we do that? If we pull back he'll just go after Lisa again.'
"Let him throw you into the bay, which I think he's going to try soon, then allow me control. I have an idea."
Taylor thought for a second, then agreed. 'OK.' The next exchange of blows resulted in him knocking her sword loose, the weapon smashing through a wall and vanishing, then he lunged for her. She ducked again, turning to make her tail a tempting target. Predictably, he grabbed it, swinging her around a couple of times before letting go. Resisting the urge to yell 'Wheee!' as she flew towards the bay, she instead decided to enjoy the flight, short as it was.
Splashing down in the water well past the wharf, she sank to the bottom. 'You have the con, Mr Varga,' she chuckled. He laughed, then they started to grow.
Reaching a size a little larger than the normal Kaiju form, the water up to their waist, he put one hand out and splashed the water with it. 'What are you doing?' she asked curiously.
"Baiting the trap," he said with amusement.
They listened to the threats, watching the heat source that was Lung walk down to stand half-way along the wharf, which began heating up and smoking.
The Varga splashed some more.
Lung roared out his challenge.
Giving off a sense of amused satisfaction, the Varga began slowly moving forward, then laughed...
Lisa watched in terrified awe as an absolutely vast version of Raptaur's head, glowing eyes several feet across fixed on Lung with a look of easily visible malicious amusement in them, slid smoothly out of the fog, hanging on the end of a muscular neck twenty feet in the air. Lung was totally still in the enormous hand that held him with no effort at all.
"Hello, little Salamander," the rumbling voice said in a silky tone. "You are very noisy. We would like you to stop and go away. This territory is under our protection, as are all its inhabitants. You are no longer welcome here."
Lung seemed to be shrinking very slowly, or at least no longer growing, Lisa noted with the corner of her mind that wasn't gaping in shock. Her power worked on the problem.
Ramps up when in conflict
Conflict when opponent trying to beat him
Current opponent has no interest in beating him
Could end him with no effort
Conflict trigger confused
Unable to ramp any further until confusion resolved
Lung neutralized for the moment
She shook her head a little, the conclusion odd but somewhat logical. Aiming her power at the insanely large reptilian creature, she winced at the same sensation she got with doing that to either Saurial or Raptaur. Before the pain got too much, forcing her to pull away and disengage it, she did get one, completely horrifying, final item of interest.
Not maximum size
Lisa simply gave up at that point, slumping to the ground and holding her right arm, which she thought was probably broken from where she'd gone through the wall.
"What are you?" Lung sounded confused, and if she hadn't known better, awe-struck.
"What am I, little creature?" It laughed again. "I am the third sister of the Family."
Lung stared. So did Lisa. She knew, logically, that this was Saurial, or Raptaur, obviously far more powerful a Changer than she had ever expected, even having seen the intercepted video from the PRT, but it didn't sound like her. It sounded older, more experienced, and vastly more dangerous.
"What have you done to me?" Lung shouted, noticing that he was no longer growing. He was still radiating heat, which the thing holding him was ignoring completely, but he definitely had stopped growing.
"I have done nothing, little Salamander. I am merely no longer in conflict with you. I will release you and you will leave permanently, or I will eat you. The choice is yours."
The head moved closer, the enormous mouth opening only feet from Lung. "I don't care which you pick. Only that you pick quickly."
"I am Lung, Monster! I cannot be intimidated." he roared, his awe apparently converting back into defiant anger.
Another hand came out of the fog, far faster than it should have been able to considering the sheer size, a claw nearly seven feet long suddenly resting on Lung's neck. The thing raised him to eye level.
"I am Kaiju, little Salamander. Your arguments are all invalid. Choose."
The claw began to apply pressure to his neck. Lisa saw him swallow. "You cannot win this encounter, Small One. Pick your fate and accept it."
"I… I will leave," Lung finally said with extreme reluctance.
The head of the great reptile nodded slowly. "A wise decision. Go in peace and do not return. All this area belongs to the Family. Remember that."
The hand holding him lowered him gently back to the wharf, then released him. Lung stared up at the head in the mist looking down at him with a small smile on its lips, then turned around and walked away. He stopped where Lisa was sitting on the ground. "What about them?" he asked without turning. "They stole from me."
"Spoils of war, Small One. They are mine now." The rumbling voice was amused.
Lung stared down at Lisa, then walked on without another word. She looked over her shoulder as he disappeared around the corner into the smoke from the still burning warehouses.
Looking back, she saw that the head had disappeared.
Shivering, she stood up with difficulty, limping back to check on Angelica. The dog's monstrous outer shell was disintegrating, the small animal in the middle of it struggling to escape.
"That's pretty revolting," a familiar voice said from behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see Saurial smiling at her. "Hello, Lisa."
"Hi," she said numbly, still holding her arm.
"Let's get your little friend out, then we can go back and get that arm fixed," the lizard-girl said, kneeling and quickly releasing Angelica from her trouble, the dog sniffing her outstretched hand, then allowing her to scratch behind her ears. Saurial stood up, inspecting Lisa for a moment, then shifted into Raptaur with a suddenness that made her twitch. The much larger reptile squatted down, indicating her back, which had a saddle formed into the armor. "Up you get. This will be quicker."
Pulling herself aboard with a wince, Lisa cradled her broken arm again, barely noticing that straps formed to hold her in place. Raptaur picked up the little dog, which had frozen when it saw her, but sniffed her tentatively then relaxed a little.
"You have a very large sister," Lisa announced in a dreamy voice.
"You have no idea," Raptaur snickered, smoothly rising to all fours then heading off at an easy pace, towards the DWU facility. "None at all." She looked over her shoulder, smiling a little. "What the hell did you steal from Lung?"
"An awful lot of money, and something that I suspect Coil planted on him as an excuse." Lisa sighed. "I got the scent sample."
"Good. When you're fixed up, we should talk about hunting. I hear it's an interesting past-time if you don't mind a little blood."
"After the last few hours?" Lisa snorted with amusement. "No. I want that fucker dead."
Raptaur chuckled and fell silent, trotting along with a gait that while odd was surprisingly comfortable.