'Taylor, Taylor, Taylor. You're an idiot.'
"Shadow Stalker, you're on search and rescue with Vista and Kid Win. Do not to engage combatants and avoid the mess with Lung and Hunter's monster." Armsie's stiff voice cut through the staccato gunfire pouring down the street. Each punching shot marking an attempted murder of gangers. The ABB and Empire hurtled down streets in cars, boarded-up shops as pillboxes and religiously tried to slaughter one another. "Meet up with Dauntless at Brook and Main-street corner, he is in command of you three until I call again; stay safe out there." We stepped through one of Vista's spatial distortions, touching down on a roof a few streets shy of the inferno consuming lower Brockton.
"God…" Vista's uncharacteristic swearing aside, I had to agree with the midget, even from here the dry heat of the inferno reached us. Destructive roars eclipsed the closer gunfire.
"Kid! Get in the air, stick to cover and find some people to rescue. Vista, you move the rocks and I grab the people." Being the oldest of the three made me senior, and the two followed my orders without a complaint, child soldiers knew the importance of following commands. While we tried to rescue people we also had to meet up with Dauntless, the rising star of the eastern protectorate had loads of experience with near-apocalyptic situations and from what I overheard from several not-so-quiet conversations told me he was a veteran from one of America's last attempts to save several key ports in Africa.
"Vista!" Kid's shout over the comms broke the monotonous scanning of burning streets and mangled corpses, flinched us both as the internal dampener hastened to mute his voice. "Sorry."
"I can hear shouting coming from over here!" I yelled back, Kid stood in front of a burnt building. Rubble blocked the front where the balcony once stood above it, and as we came closer soft banging became audible as someone struggled to grab our attention.
"Stalker, I've got this." Vista in her green and purple uniform rose her hands and clenched her fingers, lightly distorted as she bent space, up deciding instead to be down and her corridor of space lifting the impeding construction onto the pavement. Job done Vista took a deep breath to recover while I tried to open the exposed door.
The solid chunk of wood refused to budge. "Hello! Whoever's in there, can you push while we pull?" with a team effort I felt the door slide forward an inch before jamming to a halt. Frustration almost set in but I decided to go check the other side and re-assure the trapped occupants.
"Stalker, I can bust it open!" "Wait!" Vista's had enough power in her tiny frame to bend space but even so, I needed to make sure the people trapped inside weren't in harms way. I phased through in my shadow state, scaring the two trapped behind the door half to death, the young man scrambling back to put himself between me and a girl. They were both Asian, but damn, they were banged up. Blood soaked the man's chest and the woman's pants. Blood soaked gauze wrapped around his midriff and the cloth bandage on the woman's wounds was in a worse state.
"Hey, hey. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm Shadow Stalker, I'm a Ward, Vista is going to bust open the door I just need to make sure you two aren't in the way. Just stay put." I phased back and gave the clear to the visored girl. Twisting the door to the side until it connected to the pavement didn't snap the hinges or crumple the door.
"Vista?" She frowned and lifted her hands again, concentrating on the door for a few seconds more.
"Gravity won't make it budge. Just give me a second." The blond pre-teen looked around and spotted a flat bar discarded next to a car wreck, hoisted it up in her far too small hands and jammed it between the frame and the door.
"Vista…" Whatever Kid was going to say froze in his mouth as she twisted space to elongate the crowbar to several yards and pulled, breaking nature so thoroughly that she didn't even need to pull to get the lever arm to work. The wood groaned as splinters blasted off. She repositioned the impromptu crowbar to get it inside the building and with more leverage and pulled again. Her space fuckery and diminutive strength ruptured the door open with relative ease. I was impressed, she had been experimenting with her powers for years but could never go out and use it to kick ass and take names.
"You can come out now, we'll get you medical treatment." It took a few seconds but the man came out, the woman carried on his back. Pain lined his face, sweat dripping as he took coarse breaths and shuddering steps, almost meeting face first as he put the girl down. Kid Win already on his phone calling paramedics over to see to the two.
"Hey, glad to see you guys are safe, but can I get some names?" The man spoke first.
"Shang-Huang, this is-"
"Samantha Blair." The woman cut in a split second after.
"Good to hear, stay safe you two. We've got to go." Kid Win floated in the skies looking for more people to save as Vista took a step up to a rooftop, the roof still sitting on the pavement as she held the twisted space for me to cross over after her.
"Hey! Wait!" Shang called and I turned to face him.
"Thanks again, but I need you to tell the Hunter something." I almost scoffed, "She saved us. Dauntless tried but he couldn't fight off StormTiger, so, if you see her… Can you say thank you, and sorry for everything?" Whatever... I doubted Vista could hear it as she shouted or me to walk over.
"Sure man, why don't you tell her yourself when you see her again…" I crossed over onto the building and space violently snapped back to reality. I looked over the rooftop and found four stories and a street separating me from the two below.
He seemed familiar, but I couldn't place him.
"Let's go!" We hurried through another distortion.
[/]
We were fortunate that the two monsters kept fighting further north into the dock area rather than south towards the central city, the fighting didn't abate in intensity and the volume of the screeching and roaring didn't dimmish as the fight went further afield. We met up with Dauntless running comms and instructing an entire temporary medical and police base.
"Dauntless!" I called out to the veteran, his shoulders relaxing as we got closer.
"Stalker, Kid Win, Vista. Good to see you, you're on search and rescue right?" It was more a confirmation than a question.
"Yes, Armsie's all in a twist. What do you need us to do?"
"I need you three to find any other paras willing to help, the mayor has declared a state of emergency and the truce is in effect. ABB and Empire capes are to be engaged if they are hostile, leave them be if they're helping. But don't get close to either." We trailed behind him as he led us to a tent where several haggard people shuffled around a table with a paper map of Brockton on it. Pointing at the northern section coloured with yellow highlighter.
"The fire's contained in that zone, we've got a lot of people coming in from around the area to keep it that way, but if Lung and the monster keep fighting and land in the northern woods we won't be able to contain it." A soot-covered fireman explained as Dauntless stood closer, the armoured cape turning back to us after acknowledging the man. "That is part two of your mission, find the capes running about, get them together and head off Lung. In thirty minutes we'll be having heavy hitters from across the eastern coast arriving, Legend's dealing with matters and will be here soon, Alexandria is organising the Protectorate and no we don't know where Eidolon is." Dauntless spoke with experience, giving us orders but also reassuring us with vital information.
"And the Hunter?" Vista asked before any of us could respond.
"We're leaving that to the big guys, help her if you can. Last know position was flying above conversing with Glory Girl before engaging Lung and the monster." I knew Taylor was responsible for the entire fiasco. We didn't know what was going to happen to her after this but we needed Taylor to fight the monster, kill it and then sort out Lung after.
"Alright, any idea where we can get some capes?" Vista took lead again, her eagerness getting the best of her, I didn't interject as the experience of the twelve-year-old outstripped mine by about two years.
"Follow Main road north, we've got reports of a rogue group fighting fires and rescuing people over there." Missy heel turned and strutted out of the tent, trudging to a clear spot and stepping onto a ledge with her powers.
"Stalker," Dauntless pulled me back. "Grue is part of the rogue group, don't do anything stupid. This is a make-or-break situation, if you do well here, we can maybe talk about your probation afterwards." Dauntless was not involved with my probation, but he was right. I had to act professionally even if my nemesis stood next to me.
I rushed to follow after the blond girl, she covered her mouth with her arm as an ash-laden wind blew over us. Smog coated the street as we made good progress further north, stopping every now and then when we found people trapped inside buildings. We came across the four rogues riding on two mutated monsters.
"Yo!" Kid win called from above, his placating hands not easing the four part-time, b-list villains. "Truce! Yea, truce! We need your help." Those words eased the reasonable of the three but the burly dog-masked girl still stood stiff. Grue, in his biker leathers and smoking skull-motif motorcycle helmet, approached his arms folded in front after dismounting the monster.
The blond girl with the purple skin-tight suit parked herself just behind him as the Victorian clown stood next to her. A stern look to Hellhound forced her to whistle and dismount her monster, the beasts sitting on their haunches and scratching the back of their head.
"Yeah truce, Mayor called it. We need some muscle to stop Lung after the hunter kills her monster." Vista took over,
"If, you guys don't think she can do it." The blond quipped, her voice entirely too smug.
"I don't care; if she dies, good, no more monster. She's got hell to pay anyway, but we need to concern ourselves with Lung. He hasn't been this big since Kyushu and I don't want a repeat of that shit show here in my home town." I shouted back.
"Lung wants her, you know. It's simple to figure out, she's the Dragon Hunter, he's the Dragon." Tattletale supplied. "He wants her, he's willing to sacrifice his entire gang just to recruit her. Poetry has a strong power in any language and he thinks it's destiny or something."
"Can you please stop talking already? I don't care about anything like that, we need to focus on saving lives and saving the city." I cried out, every talking second escalating the situation worse.
"Stalker, shut up." Taken aback by the pre-teen scolding me I took a second to find words, it didn't matter as the clown burst out into giggles and his reward was a swift kick in the shin from the blond.
"Tattletale…" Grue's smoky voice muted the conversation. "Vista, I hope you have a plan?"
"I've got an idea of a plan. Get on high and look for capes. Kid's fast on the board and can convince them to help quickly. Two, Delay action. We need more firepower to help Hunter kill the monster and de-escalate Lung." A twelve-year-old shouldn't be in charge of teenagers. It miffed me; I was in charge.
"Stalker, she's been a Ward for longer than you've had powers, just let her lead." Tattletale pre-empted the clown's giggle with another kick to the shin. I hated that I couldn't get a word in edgewise as a rooftop appeared next to Vista as the building leaned down to let her walk up to it. Kid Win followed first and the three rogues followed through, Hellhound instead climbing up the neck of the wolf-like monster.
"Never thought I'd be saving people." The dog masked woman mumbled as she rode a sprinting monster to where we had travelled up twenty stories and six blocks.
[/]
Taylor dived into this mess of her own volition, the absolute thrill of the fight overwriting any self-preservation or instinct clamouring for her to disengage and recover.
No, Lung's serpentine coil wrapped around Alatreon with accompanying unnerving crunches as he constricted, acting more a Boa than the silver dragon. Alatreon's sapphire blue scales scorched black underneath Lung's fiery halo. If the monster seemed fazed by the heat it didn't let it show, nor did my increasingly frantic hits against the body change the nature of the destruction brought.
Broken buildings trailed behind us as Alatreon zapped, froze and disintegrated every exposed surface. Tar clung to my red plates, sticky and heavy as a ball of oily snot barely missed me and ignited after landing next to a burning car, to say it burnt was equivalent to acknowledging that water felt wet. Even Lung's silver scales burnt black when ignited with the strain of nose boogers, the Asian immortal cared little for the added damage, instead of growing larger with every hit.
One of Alatreon's horns might have been fractured and his control over the elements lessened slightly, yet it didn't reduce the potency of the ice blast freezing trees and sidewalks alike sailing over my head by mere fractions. I responded by sending a bolt of dragon energy into its face. Alatreon ignored the sizzling of reverse aligned scales. Neither did the monster acknowledge my hammer connecting to the front arm and as the hammer's metal challenged blue scales, muscle and bone to a death match of resistance, it barely succeeded in retaining its shape.
The fight repeated in steps: Alatreon shifted its attacks between us, dislodging Lung with either sheer force, precise thunder or freezing him to the bone. I'd attack while it was distracted and he'd return to me and launch his assault after dislodging Lung. To survive until Lung re-engaged him I'd run in circles, fly or dodge a string of focused elemental nonsense and riposte at any opportunity.
While I remained the focus of Alatreon's ire, Lung regrew and added another few feet to his bulk, driving his multi-ton body into the black dragon and wrapping around him again. Lung's success depended on a hundred things and he'd just as often latch on as be thrown off of Alatreon.
And while we fought we spilt blood, dark red inky splots and streaks of vibrant crimson. Charring chunks of the eastern dragon littered the landscape, a very true reminder of my monster's power. Again showing a shocking display of power as he tore Lung into several pieces after a botched tackle, dousing the street in another layer of gore.
While most of the blood, destruction and fire were theirs, I wasn't a paragon by any measure. My vitae acted as the silver lining to their blue and silver animosity, and several buildings owed their destruction to my powers or even simply my body.
Each minute left a sinking feeling of a horrible stalemate between us, unable to kill one another while destroying whole blocks of the city.
I had never felt so alive.
[/]
"Look! They're getting closer." Tattlebitch pointed at the encroaching inferno. The Hunter, her monster and fucking Lung hurtled towards our quaint rooftop. None of the Wards had powers that could effectively fend off an Alexandria package like Hunter, and the Underdweebs didn't have a lick of crowd control beyond a little black cloud. Most importantly I wasn't forgetting the two dragons Hunter brought along. I turned about, looking for a rooftop close enough but not in the path of destruction that we could escape to.
"Vista, evac!" The pre-tween didn't clam up, a slow exhale and a thrust of her hand griped the invisible fabric of reality and bent it to her will, connecting one roof to another several streets over. The black dragon along with the silver serpent coiling along its body suddenly curved in their straight path into the ground. The Ward shaker pulled the ground up straight for them to collide with it with the other hand.
"Okay, time to go!" Her voice echoed out with a bit of shrill mania as she simply walked several hundred feet with a solitary one. We jumped ship so to say, winding up streets from the two dragons and the crazy bitch fighting them. Tattlecrazy muttering under her breath as she stared at vista and then back down to the inferno occupying the street.
"Maybe a bit too close for comfort there." Kid Win added, his voice cracking at the end from nerves. Our attention snapped to the whistle from Grue as he stood up next to Rattlebrains as she tried to hide her head behind the low brick wall surrounding the building.
"Tattletale told me Hunter's running on pure adrenaline and way way too many drugs, Lung is getting past the point of no return and after he kills the monster, he's going to use his momentum to wipe out anyone who's ever stood in his way. PRT, rogue groups, the Empire… he won't care." Grue's cool delivery backdropped against the city engulfing inferno, the ringing of fire engines and constant gunfire screamed end of the world action hero.
"Vista we need to help Hunter kill the monster, then we need to lead Lung away without getting killed…" His voice became stressed as he spoke, Vista silently agreeing to the crazy plan.
"And how the fuck are we going to do that?" I shouted back.
"Stalker!" I dismissed the tween, powers aside, Vista shouldn't be leading us to our deaths.
"We don't have the powers to kill a monster and we sure ain't fit to fight motherfucking Lung!" I strode over to captain darkness as I pointed out his stupid plan.
"Stalker, we're the only people -"
"Cut the crap. Our strongest cape is a twelve-year-old with a chip bigger than Texas on her shoulder and she can't even hurt the monster. Did you see them just shrug off tackling the floor, or are you looking at a fight that we can win that I don't know of?" I whirled on Vista stopping her words from escaping.
"We. Cant. Do. It. Grue's darkness can't cover a street. Tattlebrains can't blackmail a fucking dragon. Clown boy is a walking prop and the dogs will die in seconds. Kid's laser toys won't so much tickle them to death. We don't have the powers or the equipment." Thin lines sat on the faces of those with their mouths exposed as I listed our failings and lacklustre options.
"We. Fucking hell…" Blond hair scrunched in one hand and a look of pure pain across her face, Tattletale stood up to refute me. "We won't kill it. She'll kill it, we just need to give her one good shot." No way.
"No way in hell, that's a long shot and you know it." Vista brushed past me, the sixty -or so- pound barbie stepping closer to the Undersiders, Kid Win grabbing his hoverboard and following the tween.
"How?" she asked.
Resisting the urge to scream and rubbing my glove over my face mask I tried to calm down. There wasn't much that I could do at this point even if I was officially in charge, being the oldest of the three. It was still my responsibility to keep them safe. The problem with child soldiers being that they were children and wholly committed to their own suicides.
The five kids murmured in a circle as they shot ideas and tried to plan.
"A distraction? With what?" Kid questioned sounded out first as I pierced the circle with little fanfare. Vista's grin mimicked the cat that caught the canary and Tattlebitch equipped the biggest, most slappable, smirk I'd seed in the single day I'm about left to live.
The older blond began instructing us. "Grue covers us, Vista and I will take care of the distraction, Kid, eyes and ears, get up high and scout them out. Regent stay put, we'll see if you can fumble the monster. Stalker… I hate to say it but we need you to get to Hunter, get her here and then we'll try to kill the black dragon."
[/]
I thought it a trick of the light but a flash of recognition followed before her boot impacted Alatreon's horn. Victoria in her green and beige flashed a smile for a split second before disappearing. I turned back to the fight at hand and couldn't believe it. Alatreon laid flat on its side, a sneaker sized dent present in the remaining horn.
A capital opportunity as the monster struggled to put foot on the ground. The hammer slams aching my joints as brought blow after blow down on the monster's face. I had to shatter the horn, it remained my most obvious course of action, break the twisting purple glowing mass of steel-strength bone and maybe I could come out on top of this.
Lung didn't idly sit by as I struck the black dragon. He drew back fifty yards or so and reared up on semi-floating legs. His inhale of air whistled in my head and the distraction almost cost my arm as Alatreon buckled and tried to spear me with his now chipped horn. The red and green eyes focused on me as Alatreon quickly, much too quick for a monster of its size, placed its feet on the ground and reared up on its haunches to bring its bulk slamming onto the ground. Air grabbed me and pulled me away as I summoned the wind to pull me away and riposte his slam with a razorwind to the chin.
And still Lung drew breath, the whistle turning into a whine as the temperature reached a sweltering apex.
Alatreon turned to Lung, a cawing roar echoing its displeasure. Lung didn't care. All lung cared about was the torrent of flame that escaped his maw.
The four lanes of the street transformed into the sixth circle of hell as Alatreon drowned in a wall of fire.
I rocketed to the sky as the fires licked my feet. Ash dominated the once industrial street, the fire burning so hot that it melted steel and brick alike, a gale of air flowing in to fill the gaps of the city block-sized furnace.
Silence rang through the city. Every living creature holding its breath to scout out the damage. Everyone except for lung who, content in his destruction floated over towards me.
"I have slain your dragon. Do you submit to the Dragon?" being able to understand the hissing of his dragon speak still confused me and I turned slowly to face him.
"I've been under the heel of too many people in my life. I've escaped from them and I don't intend to subjugate myself to another." A hissing chuckle, if I ever needed to describe it came from Lung.
"You wouldn't be the Hunter if you gave in. Now Hunter face my wrath-" The screaming caw carved silence from the conversation.
A second cry transfixed our attention back to the ash-covered ground as Alatreon burst from his grave. Blue elemental glow sparked within the fringes of his snout and horn.
ZAP
Five bolts of thunder formed a prison cage around us.
ZAP
Five more, closer and at an angle. The original bolts only now starting to fade.
ZAP
Another set, close enough to have my hair stand on end. I let instinct guide me and growled out my own perverse power over nature.
ZAP.
Lung exploded. Two of the five bolts lanced through his body, spawning a fluorescent corona of blue, white and red between his floating coiling body. Each passing instance sent chunks across the streets below. I doubted that he was dead.
A lone bolt connected to me, and through some hateful miracle, I remained whole. Half a dozen monster powers separated me from the mundane world with cruel control over nature. All the power gained meant nothing as the next thing I knew was greeting the ground.
Alatreon collided with me in mid-air, the spikes of its chest crest punching the air out of my lungs. Darkness covered my vision for long stretches as I tumbled through brick and road alike.
I lifted myself up or tried to. My right shoulder ignored every command to move and my legs dragged in their response like a boat tumbling down a river sideways. I swore a potion could fix it but at the time my mind remained blank on any course of action as hurtful breaths wracked my chest with unusual coughs.
"Taylor!" I couldn't see, either from the faceplate being caked with mud or my eye soaked in blood.
"Taylor... Please!" My ear rung with rushing blood and a high pitched whine.
"Just hang on, I'll get sis to help you." Something pulled on my arm and the concrete bags replacing my legs tensed as they lost any foundation beneath them. I was too dazed to register anything past the delirium my mind swam through.
[/]
"She's down, Glory Girl is taking her away. Lung is also going to take a few minutes to patch himself back up from the few ounces left of his brain." Rattletale sounded off, her eyes zooming through a set of binoculars that had appeared when I wasn't looking.
"The monster is also looking around, assessing the situation. I can't be sure, but if we engage now it might decide that it doesn't like the city at all and just leave. Or it might just leave on its own after a few minutes." Grime and muck covered the cheeks of the blond, the white frills of the clown had taken an ashen tone and the green lustre of Vista's dress disappeared beneath a fine layer of ash.
"So, damned if we do, damned if we don't. We still have to keep the monster in the bay area, a roaming catastrophe like that won't sit idle. How's the plan coming along?" Grue asked. The Plan, or the mockery of one, kept trudging along as Vista piled a mountain of rubble together in her preparation. Kid Win struggled with his laser pistols and hoverboard, finagling them into a single gun with a bit more power while I stiffly sat on the bannister, waiting for the fated second to arrive.
"I'm ready." Vista said, sweat caking her brow and deep breaths dove into her lungs a bit too quickly for my liking.
"Just about done." Kid's gun blurted out a tone of discontent as his hands employed old fashioned percussive persuasion on it until the lights blinked green and the ding came back a bit more cheery.
"We need to get behind it and hope that we're not setting up a group suicide." Rattlebrain's 'plan' called for us to line up our few attempts in quick deadly precision and pray that we didn't die before our job was done.
"Just step across and we'll be behind it." The rooftop causeway connected our space with another a few streets away in a quarter circle around the black dragon, who, for some reason kept an alert vigil out for Lung and Taylor. We only had a few minutes opening to deal a significant enough blow to Taylor's monster to keep it interested in the here and now.
"Step one is a go!" Vista pulled space closer and closer, a two hundred yard gap shrinking to what felt like inches before me, the brickwork of a distant building rapidly encroaching. I shouldered the cumbersome contraption of Kid and took a deep breath, my hand squeezing the grip while my finger trembled on the trigger.
Brick – Brick – Eye!
I pushed down and braced for recoil, forgetting that lasers didn't have actual force behind them, a crimson lance speared from the muzzle and impacted right above the monster's eye.
"Break!" Warped space worked both ways and Vista collapsed her tunnel before fire could be returned to us, instantly starting her second phase.
"It might have killed if it hit the eye squarely, but it did do decent damage, it's partially blind on the right side now. Start the rocks." And the rocks did start, Vista picked up a boulder by turning the world upside down for it and stretched the space below it, the boulder floated next to us, suspended by Vista's warped space, the rock reached its terminal velocity in the mutated space-time after an agonizing few seconds. Seconds that Taylor's monster took to find us, roar and rush forward.
Vista's boulder rushed past at a hundred and fifty miles per hour, crossing the distance in two seconds. Two seconds that the monster needed to recognise the person-sized boulder and decide that it didn't want to get hit by it. It didn't have a choice.
The problem with rubble was that it was rubbish, a solid block of stone might have done more than just explode into bite-sized chunks as the black-blue scales resisted the impact. Fortunately, physics didn't care for unnatural resistance and the force impulsing on the monster sent it spinning into a building.
"Fuck yeah!" "Another!" Short-lived jubilation over, vista prepped another stone, the free-falling boulder floating in the air next to us as she waited for the monster to appear again, a fine sheen of sweat breaking out on her brow.
We didn't wait more than a breath as the building imploded with six lancing thunder strikes cleaved the building, the next set appearing halfway between us and it.
"Cover!" Our lack of protective powers reared its ugly face as thunder struck the building, some of the lances striking close enough that burnt hair wafted alongside the overpowering scent of ozone. Vista stood alone, the air above our heads twisting to reveal another roof sheltering us. The rock that previously floated in free fall, smashed into where the monster could have been.
"Gun!" Grue called as darkness began oozing around us, muting sound and sight until nothing but our own pulse thumped in our ears. I hefted the silent gun, knowing that Grue and Vista would open another corridor at the muzzle for me to shoot again, I just had to wait for the light.
I held and held. Heart pounding seconds passed in deathly silence. Where? Where! Hunting gangers didn't equate to holding onto a life or death trigger. What if the gun didn't shoot, Kid's weapons had the tendency to break just like most other tinker doodads, what if they were already de- Light. Squeeze! - No recoil, aim dead centre, trust that the squirt lined it up. The tunnel closed before I saw success or failure.
A hand on my shoulder pulled and I followed until I stood back in smog filtered sunlight.
"We missed but we did what we needed to do. Hunter's monster won't be leaving Brockton for about another hour." Tattletale reported, faint relief washing over me as we took another spacial corridor to an adjacent roof,
[/]
"Just do it Amy!" I didn't care about her stupid reasons, I didn't care that my sister didn't like Taylor. I needed her alive, Brockton needed her alive.
Amy huffed out her frustration but took the exposed bloodied hand of Taylor and silently flinched back, but kept her grip firmly on the tall girl's rough hand. Relief flooded through me as Amy worked her magic only to vanish as she stayed quiet.
"Amy?" she didn't hear me, I might have imagined myself speaking with how quiet I asked my sister's name.
"Amy." Her response was a raised finger, the universal sign for hold-on-please. I stayed quiet.
After about half a minute she turned back to me. "She's stable."
Relief, true relief. But stable wasn't going to kill a dragon. "Thank you, Amy. But I need Taylor to kill the monster." I dropped to my knees to look my sister in the eye, I knew it twisted something in her to see me so hung up on this random girl.
"Amy, please. Nobody can kill the thing, even Alexandria can't do it. Amy, it's her power, she has to do it." Pure bullshit, but nobody knew better. My boot print in the monster's horn contradicted my statement clearly enough. If Alexandria could take on Endbringers, then she could wipe the floor with a hundred-foot black dragon.
"Vicky, she's almost dead." Her delivery cut deep, even-toned and deadly serious.
"She's always made it through." I responded. Taylor always seemed ready to take on the world, even after fighting Neregigante, even after Velkhana. Her potions restoring her health to peak condition in seconds.
"Not on her own, the stimulants she magics up dampens pain, gives energy the same way cocaine does and accelerates the healing of the body a hundredfold. But it lasts for a few seconds at most and burns itself up to give the energy to repair the body. Most critical of all, she can't get the super drug without being conscious." Taylor's bullshit powers kept her alive, a form of breaker/tinker bullshit to the highest of degrees. She used the same bullshit to heal me from the spike that pierced my shoulder, she knew it and even gave me one of them to help with this fight…
The three phials clinked in my hands as I took them out of my pocket. Amy's eyes widened as she registered one as the red of Taylor's magical cure-all.
"Amy." "Vicky no, she'll kill herself if she keeps going at this pace." "Then it's my job to make sure she doesn't do it alone." I tipped the faceplate back and propped up her head, dumped the contents into her mouth gently and massaged her throat until she swallowed.
Nothing, nothing happened for a while as Amy silently watched Taylor's biology rewrite history and break the laws of nature and still nothing changed with Taylor. Maybe Amy was right, and Taylor was too out of it to continue fighting.
She coughed heavy wet coughs. I sat her upright and held her stable as she spat blood and phlegm.
"Ugh. Fuck." She slowly recovered. Not noticing us as she took a few seconds to boot up her brain from sleep mode.
"Taylor." I gently shook her.
"Whaa- Vicky. When, why, how? Alatreon!" She rocketed to her feet and stumbled as the blood rush caused her to wobble and fall on her armoured rump.
"Just wait Taylor, just breathe for a few seconds. You almost died." It took a few seconds to register but she sat down and began taking deep breaths, calming herself and letting oxygen return to her body.
"You're one crazy bitch you know that. Fighting Lung and a fucking dragon at the same time." Amy came swinging.
"Amy, not now. Taylor, you can't keep fighting your battles alone, you have friends that want to help you. I want to help you. You can't carry the weight of the world, you're just one girl. You can't save us all on your own." Blood matted her hair as she took off the helmet and with her bare hand wiped off the muck, dirt and caked blood on her forehead.
Silence stretched for several seconds as she took the time to regain her bearings. "Okay."
"Good, now the whole Protectorate is coming to the bay just for your circus. We'll get through this okay, you can't run from your problems. And you can't fight them alone."
A near-silent "Okay." voiced her agreement. I stood up and offered my hand, her armour suit made her heavier than I thought but my powers helped in lifting her up.
"Together." I kept a firm grasp on her hand. "Together."