Daisy landed another punch on Furball. She could have used her powers on him, since her opponent didn't have any annoying Darkforce messing with her aim, but there was a problem with that.

Her vibration punches, where she used her powers on the area she punched, wasn't as effective as it should be but she wasn't sure if that was because he was a hulk-type opponent or if it was all of his fur acting as a dampener.

If the problem was his toughness then she'd just use her power in him, shaking his internal organs around which would incapacitate him immediately, but if the problem was his fur then that could be more than a little deadly.

The ground shook but it wasn't her powers, that would have made it shake consistently instead of rhythmically and it wouldn't have risked making her trip. No, the ground shook because of the giant gorilla walking towards them.

Jack dropped from a roof, narrowly missing Iron Heart with his chains, forcing her to abandon her pursuit of Hollow.

Squirrel Girl and Patriot stopped fighting Exile to deal with the gorilla while Ms. Marvel, having just then noticed Jack, went to tie him up.

Daisy landed another few punches, still doing less damage than she'd have liked but since he had yet to land a hit she still considered the fight in her favor. All in all, the whole confrontation was going fairly well, other than the unexpected arrival of the gorilla. And a horde of smaller, insectile creatures.

Daisy made lifted the ground around them, from the inside out it started with an upward slope to a sheer drop, forming a wall to keep them at bay for what she hoped was long enough for her team to do something about them. "Iron Heart, find out what we're dealing with, Inferno help keep the horde in check."

"You can't keep those things 'in check', nothing can." Furball gloated.

She had hoped that maybe it was unrelated, that Exile would help fight them off or at least not get in the way, but considering Furball's smile that wasn't likely.

She cursed internally. If the swarm made it over her wall they'd be in trouble since there was no way her mostly inexperienced team could fight super villains while having to watch their backs for bug monsters, especially since capturing Exile when just half her team was busy dealing with his team was hard enough.

Gwen hated fighting the Jackal, not because it was particularly hard or dangerous, but because he was a pervert, a sex offence waiting to happen. The only reason she could imagine why rape wasn't on the list of crimes he'd perpetrated was because he was obsessed with her , or rather Gwendolyn, so he wasn't strong enough to actually do it.

She punched him hard enough to send him flying into the brick wall.

"Now, now, my dear, I know I missed our anniversary but given the circumstances you have to understand why ," He said getting up again. "I'll make it up to you soon, promise."

A shiver ran down her back. Her one saving grace was that he wasn't a masochist on top of being a deluded stalker, but it didn't make being near him any more tolerable.

He launched into a flurry of swipes at her, aimed mostly at her face, pushing her back.

"You know, Jackal," she dodged back further, "if I could choose just one person, in the whole world, to get out of my life forever, you'd be one of only two people I'd consider for it."

Gwen punched him in the face, and he stumbled back, but only a step or two.

"Well you know what they say, my love, love and hate are two sides of the same coin; so why don't you calm yourself down so we can have a nice dinner today." His half-canine face contorted in a vulpine smile as he added: "My place."

Castration, she calmly decided, was the only way to deal with horny child-predators, or any sex offenders for that matter seeing as she wasn't a minor anymore, and she'd start with the one in front of her.

"So the two of you are a thing then." She turned around, slamming her fist into nothing as it passed through Hollow's head. She felt like gagging, but held it in.

The ever present danger that surrounded Hollow the last time she'd met him wasn't as strong as it used to be, in fact it didn't seem ever present anymore, but he did set of her Spider-Sense.

She jumped over a leg swipe before turning back to her enemy, stomping down at him as she did so.

Hollow ran through her to avoid Iron Heart, putting some distance between the two as Gwen's teammate had to navigate around her.

Not long after that the ground shook and Jack showed up, getting Iron Heart off of his trail.

"Iron Heart, find out what we're dealing with, Inferno help keep the horde in check," Daisy ordered as she raised the ground around them.

Gwen vaguely noticed Ms. Marvel getting the drop on, and capturing, Jack for a second before Hollow freed him by doing to him what he'd done to her the first time they met, and fazing them both out from where Ms. Marvel was wrapped around Jack.

"What's wrong, honey-" Gwen aimed a high-kicked at his head, but he dodged to the side. "You're usually more talkative than this." He grabbed her foot, with a vice-like grip, then began gently stroking it with his other hand.

Sticking her hands to the concrete, Gwen spun around and kicked his chin with her other foot, forcing him to back off.

"Are you giving me the silent treatment? Isn't that a bit immature?"

"You didn't have a problem with me being immature then you decided to sexually harass a minor," she shot back, injecting as much venom in the words as she could.

"Come now, we both know this has nothing to do with our age difference."

"Get over the wall," Hollow told Jackal, as he punched at Gwen from behind, barely a thought needed to dodge it.

"Shut your mouth imbecile we're in the middle of something."

Despite what he said Jackal maneuvered them closer and closer to one of the walls, the one that had been further from them, as they kept fighting.

"Didn't take you for someone who'd get ordered around like this," Gwen said, disgusted by the small-talk-esque nature of her prodding into their internal power structure.

"The Jackal takes orders from no-one," he answered, turning around to fight her on the slope.

"Yet you still follow Exile around like his loyal lapdog." Gwen jumped up to Jackals side, taking away his high-ground. "And you're even taking orders from Hollow." The swarming masses of the horde still had a bit to go before they reached the wall, so she didn't need to worry about them.

" Exile is an incompetent follower pretending to be a leader. He could never be in charge of anything."

"Then who is?"

"A man in a red suit," Jackal volunteered.

Only her experience and Spider-Sense kept her from getting stabbed as her mind reeled from that revelation, but when fire blasted down from above, not five seconds later, she wasn't fast enough.

It didn't hit her, but the heat was enough for her to recoil in pain, enough to open her up for a slash of Jackal's claws.

Riri was hovering in the air, blasting her repulsor-rays at any of the insect-like creatures that came close to her, keeping them at bay. From just a visual analysis A.M.I. noted their resemblance to the Zerg in the videogame series 'Star Craft', and they even behaved similarly, acting without any hint of self preservation in service to the whole. Non-lethal methods didn't seem effective at all which she only realized after gradually increasing the output of her repulsor-rays until one of them popped out of existence.

"No sign of life detected. No pain registered. It's safe to destroy them," A.M.I. announced, after going over all data available to her.

"Hey, the insects, and most likely the gorilla as well, seem to be some form of solid-light projection," SLP for short, "not living beings. If you hit them hard enough they should just disappear."

"Got it," Rayshaun answered.

"All right," Dante said.

"That's," Doreen punched a Zerg Roach out of existence, "good, 'cause if we had to capture King Kong over there alive we might have a problem."

From her vantage point it seemed like they had a problem regardless. More and more Zerg filled the streets and they showed no sign of stopping.

According to A.M.I. the Zerg were coming from the west, and using the few cameras she could legally access in the area she narrowed it down further, but there wasn't any guarantee that dealing with the source would hurt the SLPs.

Roughly 10% of all SLPs were actually made using a projector, and only those could be easily shut down. Super-power-based SLPs (roughly 50% of them) could often be shut down by knocking their creator unconscious but there was also a risk that they'd go out of control if you did that. Magic based ones (the remaining 40%) were guaranteed to stick around if you just knocked their creator unconscious, so unless you knew how to undo their spell you'd need to tire them out or deal with the SLPs directly.

So far the only thing she knew for sure, beyond that they were SLP's was that they seemed to be made to look like Zerg and a huge Gorilla, which really meant she knew nothing since an SLP didn't have to act like the things they looked like.

Below her Hollow was messing up her teammates' rhythm, tripping some of them up, freeing Jack whenever Kamala, after much effort, managed to captured him, and talking strategy with his teammates.

Exile had grown to his Darkforce form. America and Kamala were keeping him busy but that also meant that they couldn't come to help with the Zerg horde, and Kamala was s till dealing with Jack on the side! Inferno was on the other side of the battlefield, dealing with the Zerg that approached from the west. He was burning a lot of them but most of them were shrugging it off.
Furball and the Jackal weren't about to beat their opponents, but the reverse also seemed true, another two of her teammates who wouldn't be able to help fight the Zerg.

"Patriot, take over for me," Daisy says over the comms.

"Kind of busy at the moment..." Rayshaun fired a concussion missile from his shield, hitting the gorilla in the jaw.

"I'm not sure I can take Furball down without killing him but I might be able to do something about the bugs."

Just as he's about to get on his shield, Hollow appeared from the wall and punched Rayshaun, kicking away said shield. Riri dived down and punched Hollow, hard enough that he flew into a wall. Not through it, mind you, it seemed like he couldn't use his intangibility shortly after getting hit.

She kept chasing him, leaving not just the Zerg but also the gorilla to just Inferno and Squirrel girl which risked them getting over Daisy's wall but allowed Rayshaun to get his shield and fly over to where Daisy was fighting Furball.

Rayshaun paused at his shield for a moment, pushing the battle up the wall by a meter or two more than necessary before getting on it. "Fume's fumes are hiding under the horde to the east," he said. "I don't think they're near the wall though."

As soon as he was over it Riri turned from Hollow to shoot down the Zerg that were climbing the wall, aiming for the ones at the top first, but valuing quantity over quality. A lot of them were breaching already but she somehow managed to keep them at bay, aided by Inferno as he left the west open for a moment.

Daisy, once she was at the top of the slope, used her powers on the whole wall, shaking off most of the ones climbing, and directly hurting (though not destroying) the SLPs.

As soon as it looked like they'd gotten the immediate threat under control Dante flew further to the east of the eastern wall while Daisy went to where the gorilla was fighting Doreen, leaving Riri to defend the western wall alone. It was tough, and she was losing ground but according to A.M.I. both the fight against Furball and the one against the gorilla had gotten better.

"I need help over here! We're getting over-run!"

Gwen threw the Jackal to a wall and webbed him in place, her timing seemingly more than coincidental. Riri dismissed the thought as Gwen backed her up, guarding the wall on the busiest street and letting her take a higher position to pick off fewer but more specific threats.

Daisy dodged as the gorilla lunged for her. When she tried to vibrate his internal organs she didn't seem to be doing much damage, but then: Iron-Heart had said that they weren't really alive so she didn't know what she'd expected. It did freeze though, and that would have to be enough.

Considering she was only trying to delay it, it probably would.

Gwen's side stung, and her head felt woozy, but she had managed to recover the initiative against Jackal. He dodged a kick at his knees and said something, but because her head wasn't clear she didn't really hear it.

He clawed at her chest but Gwen grabbed his hand and threw him over her shoulder, slamming him to the ground. He recovered fast enough, managed to jump to his feet and avoid Gwen's foot as it came down where he had been just a short while ago.

Gwen went on the offensive, and this time Jackal struggled to dodge.

With every swing of her fist she fealt her mind clearing a bit. Her healing factor taking care of whatever was messing with her head was one thing, but it also helped clear her head in a less litteral way.

For a moment she thought that it was fun, beating up Jackal without hearing his disgusting remarks... Then she heard Iron-Heart call for help.

She threw Jackal to a wall and webbed him in place before helping Iron-Heart with the bugs.

Soon after that Inferno blew up the fumes on the eastern road probably destroying most of the bug-monsters on that side in the process, which would be great if it weren't for the several thousand still charging at Gwen. Not to mention the property damage and city repair bill.

Luckily whatever had messed with her head when she fought Jackal had cleared up so she was actually able to focus on the army of bug-monsters coming her way.

Iron-Heart flew more to the center of the battle, still shooting down most fliers so that Gwen didn't have to bother with them but was otherwise dealing with the eastern side of the swarming mass.

"Hey, Quake?" Iron-Heart said over their comms.

"Yeah?"

"At this rate we're going to get overrun soon." Gwen wasn't sure how it was going on the eastern side, but if it was anything like the west then she'd have to agree: they wouldn't last long. "We could hold them off for 5 more minutes but after that our only hope would be that whatever's making them runs out of energy."

"Do you think we can shut it down before then?" Daisy asked.

Gwen didn't know what Daisy was doing but whatever it was it made the gorilla freeze like a buffering video on shitty Wi-Fi.

"Unlikely. If we could spare somebody they could try tracking down the source but if we're unlucky and it's magic we won't know how to shut it down."

"And if we're lucky?" Doreen asked.

"Tech. All we'd need to do is smash it and they'll all disappear, but the odds of that are low, 10%

"But if it isn't tech they'll probably all disappear once we're gone since whoever's making them would run out of stamina, if they keep them around for too long."

"Then falling back's the safest option. Everybody regroup," Daisy ordered. "We'll have Lockjaw take us away."

Gwen swung over to where she had stuck the Jackal to a wall, trying to pull him off but the flying insects Iron-Heart had been keeping away were still there and if she didn't leave quickly they'd be right on top of her so she jumped off leaving her captive behind.