Snarl 3.5
I preferred to be cautious, hiding the details and limits of my power so I'd have an advantage over anyone fighting my minions on incomplete information. Facing down one of the scariest capes in town with both the ability and inclination to kill me as soon as look at me, I didn't have that luxury.
In an instant I dropped my eye-spy, the beetleing in the breaker room, and the beetleing under the van. In the same heartbeat I created savages, as many as I could, and sent them at Oni Lee. Two appeared instantly, three following close after. They were distinctive, recognizable, and would surely be able to place me here as soon as the casino manager testified to the authorities. That didn't matter. I could worry about identities and covers later, right now I was more concerned about getting out alive.
Tattletale slammed the door shut behind the savages and turned to bolt down the hall, Regent and I hot on her heels. We weren't two steps from the door when I felt one of my connections shatter as a savage died.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" Tattletale was cursing between every step.
Another connection vanished, then another. After the third I heard gunfire start up in the office behind us and the other two quickly followed. I was of a similar mind to Tattletale. In seconds, my entire group of minions had been wiped out, leaving me down nearly a quarter of my stored energy. If they kept tearing through my minions like that, my power would be used up long before we got out of the building.
I heard the door to the conference room slam open behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see Oni Lee standing in the doorway and realized the futility of looking back at a teleporter a second too late.
A hand grabbed me by the shoulder. My head whipped around, and in an instant, I took in Oni Lee standing in front of me, knife in hand. Then he stepped forward and used my own momentum against me to drive the knife into my stomach.
My eyes widened and I gasped at the impact. I tried to backpedal, but he had a solid grip on my shoulder. He was already drawing the knife back for another stab. My power was activating before I'd even properly registered the danger, but he still got another three rapid-fire stabs in before a pair of savages bodily tackled him to the ground.
Oni Lee struggled against their grip, but there were two of them and one of him, and they were already pressing the advantage. They began to tear into him with tooth and claw and I took the opportunity to back away, already summoning three more savages. My hand went to my stomach and came away clean. No blood. I was hit with a wave of relief and silently took back every complaint I'd had about wearing my new costume under my old one.
The others weren't doing well. Regent was staggering away from another Oni Lee with several wide slashes across his vest. The Oni Lee was pushing himself back up from one knee, presumably recovering from whatever Regent had done to buy himself some space. Tattletale-
I flinched as a gunshot sounded and the Oni Lee in front of Tattletale fell back clutching his chest. She spun, gun raised, and I almost set my savages on her by reflex. Instead she turned towards the Oni Lee attacking Regent and fire twice, sending him staggering into the wall clutching his side.
I didn't see any more before the Oni Lee being mauled by my savages vanished into a cloud of gritty white ash that filled the hallway. I retreated farther down the corridor towards the elevator, grateful that my bandanna helped keep me from getting a lungful of ash. The other two fallen doubles dissipated into similar clouds, obscuring my view of the corridor as Regent and Tattletale retreated with me, both coughing and trying to cover their airways.
"Go, go!" Tattletale hacked. She held the gun in the hand she wasn't using to cover her mouth, ready to draw a bead on Oni Lee whenever he reappeared.
He appeared right in the middle of us, behind Tattletale. He wasn't even looking at us, instead staring off to the side as he grabbed a grenade from his bandolier and reached for the pin. Regent twisted his hand like he was turning a doorknob and Oni Lee's wrist twitched back, his fingers grabbing nothing but empty air.
I set my two of my savages on him before he could try again, each grabbing one of his arms and pulling them away from his chest. Tattletale shot him in the head before he could wriggle free. I was already moving the others in front of us to guard against his reappearance.
One died almost immediately as Oni Lee appeared directly behind it, reaching around its neck to drive a knife up under its chin. Another lunged for him, only for another Oni Lee to appear right to its side, slashing deep across its side just below its ribs. It didn't fall, but the way it staggered implied that Oni Lee had hit something crucial.
I was panicking more than a little. All my experience was with commanding and coordinating, letting my minions handle combat while I stayed far enough away that no one could find me, let alone target me. Getting trapped in the middle of combat was about the worst thing for me, and Oni Lee was one of the worst opponents I could face. He could teleport, which ruined any chance I had to evade and escape, and the short-lived doubles he left behind after teleporting negated my numbers advantage.
I set two more savages on the two Oni Lee doubles, keeping the last to watch my back. Tattletale shot one double before the savages could get to him, so I redirected one of them and the wounded one to attack the remaining double, sending the other further forward. As we were, it would be too easy for-
The fallen doubles exploded into clouds of ash. I moved forward to get out of the obscuring cloud, stepping around my two savages as they mauled the Oni Lee double. I could see clearly for only a fraction of a second before the double on the ground exploded into ash, but that was long enough to catch a glimpse of another Oni Lee appearing farther down the hall beside my savage, grenade in hand.
I didn't have to see him to send the command for my savage to tackle him and stop him from throwing the grenade. With only a brief hesitation, I also opened my connections to embrace my minion's sensory input. The discomfort hit me like a wave, the sense of three pairs of eyes coated in ash, three sets of lungs taking ragged breaths of the stuff, with the additional twinge of a ragged knife wound along one side.
I stumbled, but my focus was on the one input from outside the clouds. My savage had slammed Oni Lee up against the wall, but the grenade fell from his hand. It hit the floor with a thud, and through my savage's eyes I saw the spoon pop loose.
I was distantly aware that in situations like this, I should yell a warning so other people knew about the danger. But I was nowhere near calm enough to actually do that. Instead I hit the savage with a direct enough command that I practically hijacked its body, ordering it to release Oni Lee and throw itself on top of the grenade. At the same time I threw myself to the floor, hoping I'd survive this.
I heard a shout nearby that I recognized as Tattletale, followed by two nearby thuds. I flinched, reacting for one split-second like it was the grenade going off. I gave a wordless command to my other savages, sending them after the Oni Lee out of some indistinct sense of fear in the brief seconds of building tension. It couldn't have been more than five or ten seconds, but it felt like hours.
Then the grenade went off. In that instant I felt more pain than I'd ever felt before as I shared the savage's sensation of being torn apart by the blast. I went to scream, found my throat closed tight. Mercifully the sensation vanished a moment later as the savage died and ceased to exist, taking the pain with it to wherever my minions came from and went. The sudden clarity allowed me to focus on the input from my remaining three savages as they burst from the gradually settling cloud of ash towards the Oni Lee. He was still standing despite the bleeding claw marks on his neck and wrist, but a second Oni Lee was standing beside him, this one untouched.
I directed the savages towards the unharmed one and was proven right when the wounded double exploded into ash before they'd closed even half the distance. The ash blinded them, and thus blinded me, but I felt them tackle the double to the ground and began tearing into him before he could pull a grenade loose. Feeling their attack on him through three sensory inputs was disgusting enough to finish the job the pain from the grenade had started.
I barely pulled down my bandanna before I puked. I could have gone my entire life happily without knowing what it felt like to bite out a chunk of a man's bicep or claw through skin, but I was getting those sensations thrice over. Through the nausea I ordered two farther forward while I summoned a fourth to guard me. I left one on the double to keep him down and tried to tune out the input.
I pushed myself to my feet, dry heaving as I pulled my bandana back up. This was really going very poorly. I heard Regent say something as he stepped out of the cloud of ash and saw the double getting mauled. Whatever he said, it didn't register. The words just slid across my mind without registering a meaning.
Was I in shock? I might have been in shock. It could happen because of purely mental reasons, right? If feeling my body get torn apart by a grenade at point blank range wasn't enough to cause it, I doubted many things were.
Another Oni Lee appeared farther down the hallway. I set my savages on him almost without thinking. He was already pulling a grenade from his belt but his fingers spasmed and he dropped it. Regent's influence. It didn't help much, as another two doubles appeared in front of my savages, lashing out with knives instead of grenades. The double getting mauled exploded into ash and I sent that savage forward in a run.
I could see through the other two that it wouldn't be in time. Regent had been blinded by the cloud, giving Oni Lee enough time to grab a grenade and pull the pin. A second later Regent stepped out of the cloud and swept his hand to the side, sending the grenade falling to the floor behind Oni Lee as he drew his arm back to throw.
My savage rushed past the ongoing fight even as Regent stumbled back while yelling something that could only be curses. I tried to have it throw itself at the grenade again, but Oni Lee moved to intercept it. That was fine, I could adapt. I had the savage tackle the double onto the grenade, then throw itself on top of him.
I ducked low to the ground as the grenade went off. The pain was lessened this time as the double's body absorbed most of the shrapnel, but I still felt some shooting pains through the savage's chest and limbs, leaving me pitching to the side under the input. It didn't die immediately, so I dismissed it to reclaim its energy and create a new savage, aiming as much to alleviate the pain as to get a fresh minion. I dearly wanted to close down the connections again to avoid any further pain, but I couldn't afford to. The ash from Oni Lee's first doubles was only just settling, and I couldn't afford to give up the extra eyes to watch for his clones.
Speaking of which, a trio of his Oni Lees appeared in the hallway in quick succession. Unlike before, they appeared with weapons already in hand, blades gleaming as they threw themselves towards my savages. My view of them abruptly ended as the bodies of the mauled and mangled doubles exploded into ash, rendering my perception of them a chaotic whirl of sensory input as my savages attacked. I almost sent my newly summoned savage forward to reinforce them, hesitated, sent it backwards instead in case Oni Lee tried to pop in behind us.
When a hand clamped on my shoulder, I didn't flinch, though that was more from my focus on powering through the building pain as Oni Lee's doubles slashed into my savages. Instead, barely thinking about it, I sent a snap command and the savage I had watching my back tackled the owner of the offending limb into a wall. I almost had it attack, but the past several seconds had given me enough practice determining it felt like for a savage to tackle Oni Lee, at least enough to hesitate.
I stepped closer, trying to distinguish the figure in the settling cloud of ash. "Tattletale?"
I couldn't quite make out what she said in response, but I was pretty sure it was something along the lines of 'no shit.'
"Sorry." I had the savage release her and step back. The pain from the knife wounds peaked and then abruptly vanished as a savage died. I created another and sent it forward, barely having to think about it at this point.
Tattletale said something, and I had to focus to understand it. "We need to move. Get your monsters, we cluster up and rush for the elevator."
I shook my head to try and focus through the pain and the lingering confusion from what I was pretty sure wasn't shock now. "Not monsters. Minions." I wasn't quite sure why I focused on that, but I felt like the distinction was important. "And I can't. As soon as we group up, he'll just toss a grenade at us."
Tattletale shook her head. "He's done with that, sticking to knives now."
Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. This hallway was a deathtrap. No side niches or conveniently open doors to duck into, all it would take was one good throw of a grenade to maim or kill us all. So-
"Why?" I asked, not willing to spare more words to the question than I needed. Another savage died and I spent more energy to replace it, wincing a little as I did so. My reserves were significantly less than half of my maximum energy, and I'd already spent some dealing with the Merchants earlier in the night. If things continued like this, I'd be down to nothing before we even got out of this hallway.
I sent it forward with only loose commands to kill Oni Lee and protect us. Between the clones and Oni Lee's own disposition, I was more concerned about survival than any harm that might come from giving their unfocused mental programming too-vague instructions.
Not that it helped much. From what I could parse from my savages' input, Oni Lees were rushing forward with almost as much frequency as my minions, replaced as soon as they fell. My savage's ferocity, aided by a healthy amount of Regent's power to leave the doubles flubbing attacks and falling over their own feet, was holding them off for now, but I doubted that would be true for long. My new savage wasn't even in the middle of it before a throwing knife took it in one eye.
I flinched hard and Tattletale grabbed my elbow, helping to brace me. "He needs line of sight to teleport and he can't see through his own ash. Won't risk blowing himself up if the ash moves wrong and cuts off his getaway."
That caught my curiosity. I clenched my fist and forced myself to straighten from the pained half-hunch I'd been in. I was in the middle of things, but everything I'd done before now focused on reading the battlefield and making it work for me. I just needed to apply that here, and the thought gave me something to focus on besides the pain.
If Oni Lee couldn't see through his own ash, that was a weakness. It certainly explained why he was still appearing a distance away and running to close the distance instead of just appearing behind us. Staying inside the ash was a defense against his teleportation, but the ash would settle eventually, so we'd have to keep moving forward, towards where the doubles were to remain concealed.
Though that raised a new question: how was he teleporting at all? The ash filled the hallway, yet I was certain the real Oni Lee wasn't in here with us. Doubles would explode, but not all doubles saw the creation of another Oni Lee, which meant there was somewhere else he was teleporting to and from. But where?
The thought clicked and I turned towards the wall. Or rather, the window. A full hallway wall of glass to overlook the casino, one I'd idly taken note of on our way to the office but hadn't fully considered until now. He must have been teleporting out to some other balcony and then looking up through the window to appear in the hallway again.
With an understanding of his strategy, I could work against it. A savage died and I replaced it, reaching out to the others at the same time as I gave it orders. No more killing the doubles where they stood. Instead, I ordered my savages to grab and drag, to move the doubles to the length of hallway still unobscured by ash before tearing into them.
Fill the hall with ash, cut off his teleportation, let us move freely to escape. I had a plan, now I just needed to follow it. For now, at least, it seemed to be working. My three savages were able to shove his doubles back, though not without taking some injuries of their own. Once those doubles went, we could use that space to advance further. Though perhaps not much further, I could only make out two doubles through the ash, and that number quickly dropped as one exploded.
Three things happened in quick succession. I felt a twinge of suspicion towards Oni Lee, Tattletale spun around, and the savage I had in read guard vanished.
I turned with Tattletale to see a trio of Oni Lee doubles rushing towards us. And after I'd just considered the danger of the ash settling over time! I backpedaled, creating a new savage and sending it forward along with my bodyguard savage to try and hold them off.
The Oni Lee in the middle died as Tattletale shot him twice in the chest before shifting her sights to the one on the left. She didn't get to repeat the process before he whipped out an arm, sending a blur of steel towards her. Tattletale let out a cry of pain as she clutched at her arm, the gun dropping from her hand. I was already backpedaling, trying to put more distance between myself and Oni Lee, and hesitated, torn between my desire to get away myself and to pull Tattletale back with me.
A mistake, it seemed, as something collided with my head. I abruptly lost most of the vision from my right eye, though I didn't feel any pain. My instinct was to immediately grab at my head as I took as stumbled step backwards and my fingers struck something protruding from my face. A knife?
One of the savages died as the pair of Oni Lees stabbed it through the throat and chest. The remaining savage repaid them by tackling one to the ground. The other hesitated in his advance, buying me a fraction of a second to grab Tattletale by the elbow and pull her back with me as we retreated.
I'd been so distracted by the rear attack that my attention to my savages' senses had lapsed, causing me to miss when the last of the Oni Lees between us and the elevator vanished and leaving the savages I had on the attack milling about without a target for their orders. I reached out to them and pulled them back towards us.
They almost ran into Regent in the process. He staggered back into a wall to let them past, clutching his forearm in the process. Had one of the Oni Lees gotten to him? I was sure none of them had gotten close enough to hit him, and he'd seemed to prioritize sabotaging any knife throws aimed at him.
The Oni Lee staring us down winged another throwing knife at me. This time it struck me in the stomach, falling to the floor without cutting through to flesh. Another half dozen Oni Lees appeared behind him, most wielding knives. The last was the exception. It seemed the ash was thin enough for Oni Lee to feel bold, because he appeared after a brief delay, and unlike the others, he held a grenade already missing its pin.
My heart dropped as he threw it, the other doubles already charging. The savages behind me wouldn't be fast enough to intercept it, and the one in front of me was already vanishing as a bowie knife was driven between its forked jaws and up through the roof of its mouth. Time seemed to slow down as I pulled on my energy.
My attention as torn between the grenade and the crowd of assassins still charging forward. Cover the grenade? It was far closer than any before, but maybe. But then the other Oni Lees would just tear into us. Fight back the doubles? The grenade would just kill us. Throw it back? It might kill the doubles, but the shrapnel would probably still reach us. There were no good options, so I went for the safest one.
I pulled for a shifter. They were dense, hopefully enough to cover the blast at close range. But they were also slow, and that density wouldn't do much good if it wasn't fast enough to actually cover the grenade. A bit of a gamble, but the best one I could think of for something that could maybe absorb the blast well enough to protect me even this close, and maybe survive to hamper the assassins. All that went through my head in the time it took the grenade to arc through the air and land shortly in front of me.
The air had already started to crack before it was halfway there, and my minion manifested at almost the same time the grenade landed. It wasn't a shifter. I was immediately hit with a sense of disorientation as its senses joined those of my savages, some distinct difference to the input I was getting muddling it enough that I didn't clearly comprehend its movements as it threw itself forward and curled tightly around the grenade.
The grenade went off a second later and I was distracted by trying not to crumple under the sensation of taking a chest full of shrapnel. It was the inputs of my other minions that helped be focus as they finally rushed past me. It felt like ages ago when I'd called them, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. They collided with the Oni Lees in a frenzy of teeth and claws, stalling the assassins' advance as they moved past the still curled up form of my newest minion.
The sudden violence was enough to shock me into action and I pulled back my connection from my new minion. I caught a glimpse of it with my own eyes, something large and blue, before Tattletale grabbed my arm and hauled me towards the elevator. "Let's move!"
Right, right. I was too used to analyzing and countering, but that was a liability to me now that I was in the thick of things. I ran with Tattletale through the choking ash, barely registered Regent as he abruptly stopped his run in our direction to turn on his heel and run with us. What I did register was my dropping number of connections to my minions.
Two of my savages had already died to sheer numbers, and the third was well on its way. But my connection to the minion curled up on the ground remained strong. A grenade had shredded a savage like it was nothing, but whatever this was, it was made of hardier stuff. But it was still curled on the ground. A mistake on my part, I'd been too distracted to give it new orders as soon as the grenade was dealt with.
I sent it a command to attack Oni Lee. Whatever happened after that I was blind to as my last savage died. I summoned another pair of savages, acutely aware of how low my reserve of energy was dropping, and sent them towards the fight. I glanced over my shoulder, but the billowing ash from the oldest of the doubles obscured my view of the fight.
Looking back, I almost ran into the wall as Tattletale skidded to a halt next to me. I would have too if her outstretched arm hadn't caught me across the stomach, less to stop me and more to rapidly hammer the button for the elevator. It hadn't quite registered before that Tattletale had specific the elevator, but now it didn't seem like a good plan. I looked to the side, trying to figure out which door we'd have to knock through to find the stairwell.
"No stairs." Tattletale interrupted me. "This is better, trust me."
I wanted to argue, but as bad as the idea of the elevator seemed, the idea of arguing with her felt worse. I'd spent more than a little time worrying myself into a circle about how to deal with her power undoing my plans, I could trust it to be good enough on the matter of whether stairs or the elevator was the best choice. The urgency in her voice didn't hurt, either.
She turned around and planted her back to the elevator door, and Regent and I turned with her, watching the hall as we waited desperately to hear the doors open. We couldn't see much through the ash in the air, but the sounds carried clearly. I cast my senses out to my savages, and tentatively, to my new minion. There were still clones, enough that they had to have appeared relatively recently, but not enough to indicate they were being constantly reinforced.
One of the savages died and I pulled back quickly, the brief break I'd gotten from the input of their pain making it even worse to suddenly resume. I lingered on my new minion though. It still hurt, but not nearly as much as it had when the grenade went off. Healing, maybe? Or maybe it was powered on enough adrenaline to keep going even after suffering mortal wounds. Whatever the case, it was tough.
I amended that to add "and strong" when I felt it swing a clawed arm that caught an Oni Lee across the head, tearing off his mask as well as the face underneath it and a good chunk of skull before he collapsed and burst into ash. At least, I assumed he burst into ash. Whatever was going on with its sensory input, it didn't seem to notice the clouds of ash that filled the air. The only way I knew it hadn't just killed the real Oni Lee was that there was no body left behind. A shame.
The seconds ticked by as the sounds of violence petered off. From my one direct connection, it seemed Oni Lee wasn't making more clones even as the old ones were torn apart. What was left was still enough to kill the remaining savage, leaving my new minion alone. Not that it seemed too put out by this as it tore open the chest of a double with one swipe. The force of the swing carried it through enough to swat another Oni Lee into a wall. I wished I could take comfort in it, but the gradually encroaching silence just made me more anxious as Oni Lee failed to resume his attack.
"Great plan." Regent hissed. I noticed he was still clutching his arm.
"Shut up." Tattletale snapped back, eyes still fixed on the hallway.
"No, really." He continued, though he didn't look away from the hallway either. "The new vault, the ABB connections, I'm glad we had a grade-A Thinker so shit like that didn't come as a surprise!"
The elevator dinged and opened behind us before Tattletale could respond. Oni Lee appeared less than five feet in front of us in almost the same second, which likely did more to preempt her response. Habit took over and I summoned a savage. But before it could act, Regent grabbed his scepter from where it dangled on his belt and jabbed it into Oni Lee's side.
The assassin stiffened and shuddered, his hand clenching tight around the knife he'd been prepared to swing into Tattletale's stomach. It made him an easy target when my savage pounced on him. I summoned a shifter, properly this time, and left it in the hallway to seal over the elevator as soon as we were in it.
We were already stepping back into the elevator when another Oni Lee appeared behind the first. I'd already sent my shifter the order to block the elevator, and it rose between us before he got a good look into the elevator. For a moment, I felt the first real relief I'd had since I first saw Oni Lee. He was a murderer, but he wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to teleport into a sealed elevator with no way out.
It didn't occur to me that he had been teleporting out of the elevator until I heard Tattletale's cry of alarm an instant before I felt an arm wrap around my throat from behind. My own response, whatever it would have been, was cut off as the arm squeezed hard, cutting off my air. I caught a glimpse of metal as Oni Lee's other hand came around, then heard a very different yell from Regent as he threw his arm out to the side.
Oni Lee hit me ineffectively in the face as his arm spasmed, the knife he'd been aiming to drive up under my chin falling to the floor. Regent stumbled back against the wall of the elevator, clutching his arm again with a grimace of pain and sending his scepter falling to the floor. Behind me, I felt Oni Lee reach down to grab another knife from his belt. Tattletale snatched up Regent's scepter and lunged forward. I summoned a savage with some of my last remaining energy. In the middle of all this, the elevator dinged pleasantly as the doors slid shut.
I felt the tip of the knife impact my back, just below the bottom of my ribcage, accompanied by a burst of pain. Tattletale jabbed the tip of the scepter into the forearm wrapped around my throat. My savage reached for Oni Lee's neck in turn, aiming to sink in claws rather than simply to grab. I tumbled away from Oni Lee as by savage yanked him hard in the opposite direction, the assassin's grip on the neck coming loose as his body shook. Tattletale caught me and helped steady me as my savage pinned Oni Lee into a corner. It didn't get to attack him before Oni Lee exploded into ash, filling the whole elevator.
We all burst into coughing, with the exception of the savage, who's breathing simply became more ragged. "This fucking sucks!" Regent managed to hack out.
With the ash in the air, I couldn't see anything, but I felt Tattletale move past me towards the doors. A moment later the elevator started to descend. "This wasn't ideal, no." Tattletale replied, voice muffled by her attempts to keep the ash out of her mouth. "Just a sec, I've gotta call Grue. Also, Aberration, you're fine. Kidney shot, but it didn't break the mesh."
The bandana over my mouth helped with the ash beyond the initial burst, and I didn't want to jeopardize that by speaking. Instead I just made a tight-lipped noise of acknowledgement and turned towards the corner. By my count, the armored mesh in my new costume had saved my life three times tonight. I'd just been lucky none of Oni Lee's attacks had struck home on my head, the one place left uncovered by wearing my costume only partway like this.
Though with this ash cloud, he'd given me the perfect opportunity to change that. I grabbed my hood and bandanna, pulling them down in opposite directions to let them fall around my neck, then grabbed by goggles. Oh, yeah, that was a throwing knife embedded in one of the lenses. I'd barely realized I was missing half my field of vision in between the chaos of the fight and the overlapping inputs from my savages.
I tucked the goggles in my pocket and reached down through the neck hole of my hoodie to grab the costume I was wearing under it. It took me some adjusting to grab it properly enough to pull the hood out, but I managed it. I'd fastened it at the back so it lay more easily under my clothes, but that made it impossible to put on now. I managed to undo it with some fumbling, a little distracted by the background murmur of Tattletale talking into the phone and my own multitasking by tapping into my connections with my two active minions.
My shifter had fully sealed over the door of the elevator, and it seemed Oni Lee wasn't bothering it. Why that was, I couldn't say, but I wasn't going to complain. My other minion was the same, though as I watched, the door to the office cracked open and someone peeked out. They must not have liked what they saw, because they immediately closed the door again. Far from making me comfortable, it just put me more on edge. Oni Lee could be anywhere now.
Prompted by paranoia, I pulled the hood over my head a little more quickly. It was a more advanced version of my current costume, a full face mask integrated into a hood. Ideally, I would connect it to the body of my costume at the collarbone, but that wasn't really an option right now. I settled for shoving the edge of it into the neck hole of my hoodie.
The ash had only partially settled when the elevator stopped a second later, but it was enough to see Tattletale jab the emergency stop button before the doors could open. I realized as she turned towards us that she was still talking quickly on the phone. "Tell me when you think you're done," she said, "I don't want to walk out into a face-full of knives." She shifted her grip on the phone in a way that seemed like she was covering the speaker and looked at me. "Aberration, you up to prying these doors open?"
"Maybe." I said hesitantly. If I was being honest, the answer was no. I doubted my savage could, and I was all but tapped out for energy. I could summon a beetling, or two eye-spies, but that was it.
"I'm fine too, by the way." Regent commented. He'd retrieved his scepter at some point, though he'd put it back on his belt to keep clutching his arm. It was clear by now that there was no bloodstain on his sleeve, which I took to mean he'd broken something.
"I'm not falling for it." Tattletale said, turning towards the doors rather than look at him. "I comment about it and you crack a joke about how I really do care, I don't comment and you make one about how cruel I am."
Regent shrugged, unbothered, as Tattletale cocked her head, listening into the phone, before stepping away from the door. "Okay, Aberration. You're up."
I adjusted my hood-mask and directed the savage forward. An experimental command had it grab at the seam and try to wedge its claws into it. Apart from widening the gap a tiny bit, nothing. It wasn't enough of a grip to pry open the doors, or maybe the savage just wasn't strong enough, because when it pulled apart its claws just slid out of the gap and scraped across the door.
I ignored Regent's comment of "two out of ten" and had it try again. Same result. Reluctantly, I reached for my power. My newest minion had been strong enough to take Oni Lee literally to pieces, but I didn't have high hopes for being able to create another one. Sure enough, when I tried, nothing happened. The sensation was vaguely like when I'd tried to lift the bumper of Dad's car as a kid while pretending to be Alexandria, a strain against the impossible rather than the difficult.
Hopefully I had enough energy invested in my current minions to reclaim. I dismissed the savage and felt my pool of energy double, but got the same result. With rather more reluctance, I dismissed the new minion upstairs and felt my energy double again. This time when I pulled on my power, it responded.
My energy dropped to nothing as the air cracked and I had to hurriedly back away as the minion materialized directly in front of me. Much like my savages, it was humanoid only in shape, though it was as different from the savages as from humans. It stood head and shoulders taller than me, a mountain of muscle with clawed hands large enough to grab my head like I could grab a baseball. Its skin was thick and leathery, colored a blue so dark it appeared purple in places. The head was eyeless, shaped in a way that made clear it had always been eyeless, which accounted for the oddness of its sensory input. No visible nose of ears either, the only facial feature a wide lipless mouth full of blunt, peg-like teeth, far different from the fangs and mandibles of my other minions.
Regent let out a quiet whistle. "Why didn't you start with that thing before?"
I felt a flare of annoyance as I ordered the minion towards the door, directed at my power as much as Regent. I certainly would have liked to use this sooner. From the little I'd seen, it was significantly tougher than my savages, enough to walk off a grenade at point blank. Even if it had a heftier investment of energy, it was worth it for the fact that I probably wouldn't have to replace it every few seconds. But that would require my power to be proactive in its help instead of waiting for me to flounder.
I was prepared for Tattletale to pitch in about it, to give Regent some pointed insight about how it was new or how I didn't understand my own power. Instead, she stayed quiet. It lessened my annoyance, but not by much.
The minion stepped forward on my command, the elevator shuddering slightly under the weight of its steps, and jammed its claws into the gap between the doors. The doors groaned, but it was stronger than the savage and its claws were thicker, enough to form a proper wedge. The gap widened and it shifted its grip to seize the doors and pull them apart.
The gap wasn't more than an inch wide before smoke began to billow through the opening. I backed up into the elevator wall, trying to put distance between myself and the door. Fuck, I should have anticipated this! Of course a teleporter with grenades wouldn't stop just because he couldn't get into an elevator. One fire set at the bottom of the shaft would either smoke us out or cook us alive.
"It's alright!" Tattletale preempted my panic. "It's just Grue."
I looked closer at the 'smoke' and realized it was too dark to be the result of a fire. It didn't behave like smoke either, it just flared and roiled in a similar way, especially when it was only a thin trickle like this. I stepped forward again, glad my full face mask hid my embarrassed blush.
Regent snickered. "Skittish much?"
I ignored him and focused on having my minion prise the doors open farther. The darkness billowed in as gap widened, not dissipating but gradually filling the compartment. I almost took a wary step back, but neither Regent nor Tattletale seemed to be panicking. It washed over my legs without anything peculiar happening. As utterly dark as it appeared, for some reason I'd expected it to be cold. I couldn't even see my minion any more as the darkness washed over it.
Tattletale turned towards me with a grin as Regent was fully swallowed by the dark. "Don't worry, it's-"
Tattletale's voice abruptly cut off as the darkness washed over her and then me, filling the entirety of the elevator. I was blind, completely and utterly. I'd never experienced a dark this total. Even when I woke up late at night, there was some trickle of illumination from streetlamps outside, but here? Absolutely nothing. Not even the locker had been so dark.
I tried to force down the jolt of fear I felt at that memory, but something else wouldn't let it go. The way Tattletale had stopped talking… There wasn't any hesitation like I'd expect from stopping mid-sentence. It was like someone muted a video.
"Tattletale?" I asked warily.
There was no answer. I couldn't even be sure there had been a question. My voice echoed back at me, hollow, as if the words had come from the other end of a long hallway rather than my own mouth. I couldn't hear anything else either, not the groan of the elevator doors, not the movement of Tattletale and Regent. I was deaf as well as blind, and if not for the feeling of my feet on the ground, I might have thought myself unanchored from all my senses. It at least answered my earlier curiosity about Grue's ability to walk silently across a forest floor, but I was far from happy about the circumstances of the revelation.
Fear blossomed into panic. Was this their plan? To leave me blind and deaf and helpless to be found by the police, a scapegoat for the robbery while they made their getaway? Worse, to leave me as a sitting duck for Oni Lee?
I opened my connection to my minion, only to find whatever senses it used in place of sight were equally useless in this dark. But it still had its hands on the doors. Using that as a reference point I had it step forward and wedge itself into the gap, blocking the way out with its own body. At the same time I groped around blindly in the lightless elevator, trying to find Regent or Tattletale. I wasn't wholly certain of a plan besides 'grab one of hem and hold on,' but I figured it would be a start.
They found me first. A hand touched my reaching arm, then grabbed me by the wrist. I tensed up, but nothing followed. No judo flip or sucker punch now that they had a grip on me. They were just holding on. O she was. I assumed it was Tattletale, mostly because Regent didn't seem the type to bother holding on.
I reached out with my other hand and grabbed Tattletale by the forearm, squeezing perhaps a little too tightly. She didn't try to shake me off though. She stepped forward, towing me by our shared grip towards the door of the elevator. The doors currently blocked by my minion.
Which wasn't too much of a problem. I could still tell my orientation in relationship to it. I had it step forward and to the side, opening the path out. Tattletale led me through the gap without hesitation, presumably thanks to her Thinker power. I wasn't so graceful, colliding full-on with who I assumed to be Regent. He seemed to realize that I had more guidance than he did because he fumbled around to grab my other wrist, leaving the three of us a tangled knot of limbs in the dark.
I got back at him for the annoyance once we were out of the elevator. Knowledge of my own location and that of my minion made it relatively easy to guide it in putting a heavy hand on his shoulder. I felt Regent jump at the touch and took a small measure of satisfaction in his surprise. It gripped, though it didn't squeeze. I'd seen the effect of its strength on enough doubles to reign it in from anything more than the token amount of effort needed to hold onto him. My minion could hold him more reliably than I could hold Tattletale, so I released my grip on her and allowed our motley group to rearrange into an easier to manage chain.
We got about five steps before our efforts were wasted by the withdrawal of the darkness. Suddenly I could see the floor below me, given murky illumination by a partially covered light fixture. I could also see, past Tattletale in front of me, Grue and Bitch. The darkness had only pulled back a few feet, leaving the walls of the hallway still hidden from view, and the two villains stood just barely in the visible space, Bitch's dogs right behind them.
"What the hell happened?" Grue asked. In the echoing effect of his voice, his stern tone sounded downright demonic.
"Short version, ABB were looking to expand, and we had the dumb luck to blunder into their meeting." Tattletale said. "Long version can wait until we're not in the same building as Oni Lee."
Grue made a noise that could have been a grumble, a hum, or any other number of sounds that his echoey voice rendered unrecognizable, craning his head to regard the darkness around us. "And you're sure he's not going to pop out at us?"
"He won't risk teleporting anywhere he can't see, and if you did what I said to, that includes the entire first floor of this building plus extras."
"I made enough dark to fill a good chunk of a city block. Anywhere not sealed off is covered. I don't suppose you know how to salvage this?"
"Nope!" Tattletale said in a tone far too cheery for the circumstances. "Same as before, but now someone's probably called 911 on a cell phone. We're gonna have to take the loss on this one."
Regent groaned. "So we came all this way for nothing?" He'd let go of my arm as soon as he could see again and exercised the privilege of two free arms by throwing them up in the air in exasperation. Well, he did his best to. One shoulder was still trapped under my minion's grip, and the other arm only got up halfway before he cringed and let it fall back to his side.
"I don't like it either," Grue said, "It'll be a hit to our rep if we run off with our tail between our legs. But if that's all we can do, we have to." His head twitched towards me as he talked in a way that felt like he was consciously avoiding looking at me. Did he blame me for the heist not working? I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. On one hand, I was hardly unhappy that they'd been foiled, even if I wasn't the one to do it. On the other, it still rankled to be blamed for something I didn't do.
"It's because of her!" Bitch snapped, jabbing a finger in my direction. "I told you we shouldn't have brought her!"
"Bitch…" Grue said warningly.
She continued over him. "We should just leave her behind. She's dead weight."
Her dogs picked up on her aggression, spreading out from behind her to have a clear path to me. I almost stepped back, but memories of Trainwreck flashed through my head, the frustration I'd felt as soon as I'd allowed myself to be cowed. And that had been when I was a civilian. I was a cape now. I stood my ground and reached out to my minion. It tensed, preparing to throw itself between me and the dogs on a moment's notice.
Grue, I noticed, didn't step in between us, though he did cast a glance towards Tattletale.
"Bitch," Tattletale said, "She didn't do anything to screw with the job. It's just bad luck things are working out this way."
Now Grue stepped in front of Bitch. "Bitch. Back off." He commanded. "There'll be other jobs, but right now we need to go, and I'm not letting you fuck with that because you have a grudge."
For his part, Regent just watched the back and forth like he was watching a mildly interesting game of tennis.
Bitch matched Grue's attempt to stare her down for a few seconds before abruptly turning away. "Fine," she snarled, "Let's get out of here."
The darkness withdrew farther in the direction behind Grue and Bitch, revealing more of the hallway. "Let's go." Grue said, already moving in that direction.
"Excuse me, boss man," Regent piped up, "But would you mind asking tall buff and blue to let go of the goods? He's rumpling my good silk and it'll take forever to iron out."
"Like you've ever touched an iron in your life." Grue said it in a tone that made me certain he'd rolled his eyes under his helmet and the layer of darkness that obscured his body. But he did look back to take in the minion looming behind him. "Aberration?"
"A second ago, one of you was talking about leaving me behind for Oni Lee, and the rest of you weren't exactly eagerly to my defense." I said in my best confident tone. "I don't think its unfair for me to want some collateral."
Grue nodded. "That's fair."
"What?" Regent asked indignantly. "How is that fair? Why not hold onto Bitch instead?"
"Try it," Bitch said angrily, "And I will sic my dogs on you."
"Should have spoken up for her." Grue said. I noticed that though the words seemed joking, he didn't turn all the way back round, making sure to keep an eye on Regent and my minion.
The route back through the casino hallways was confusing to say the least. Grue led the group, pulling back the darkness only enough to see the immediate path ahead of us and replacing it behind us. I had no idea how many doorways or branching halls we passed, and I didn't see even a hint of the walls around us that could have helped me figure out where we were.
The only point of reference I had was my shifter upstairs. I briefly tapped into its senses to check on the people upstairs. From the looks of it, the ABB thugs had gathered in the hallway and were looking at the window wall, or at least the parts they'd wiped free of the white ash that now layered the whole hall. The shifter couldn't properly see out from its current angle, but I assumed they were looking at the darkness that engulfed the casino floor. Of Oni Lee, there was no sign.
I considered tapping into my newest minion's senses again but decided against it. I didn't want to be distracted figuring out its weird senses while fleeing both a remorseless killer and the surely incoming police. Not to mention that it hadn't been able to see through Grue's dark anyways.
And then there was something in our way, a barrier more substantial than retreating darkness. A door I recognized as the maintenance entrance we'd used to get in. Grue grabbed the handle in preparation to open it.
"I'm going to black us out for a second." He warned. "Be ready."
Then he was gone, everything was gone, and I was once more in the lightless, soundless void of his power. It was, I thought in an effort to distract myself from the wait, a good thing I hadn't planned to go for him first. It would have been hard enough to figure out how to take him down in just darkness, but without sound to track him, it would have been nearly impossible.
I frowned. Something about that train of thought rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't have a chance to figure out what it was before the darkness withdrew and suddenly I could see again. The door was open, though the meager light of the hallway barely reached a few feet out from it before the darkness resumed.
"To the vans." Grue ordered. "Once we're there, I'll clear the dark as we leave."
We nodded and followed him out of the casino. Tattletale pulled out a small flashlight and clicked it on, which proved to be the smart move. Even if Grue's darkness wasn't directly around us, it still cut off all light from outside, leaving Tattletale's flashlight our sole source of illumination. In the nearly all-encompassing darkness, it was even harder to tell where we were than in the casino. The brief stretch of concrete followed by tended grass was adequate at first, but as soon as we hit the edge of the woods, I had no hope of figuring out where we were going.
Unless… I tapped the shifter's senses again. Still no sign of Oni Lee, though it looked like the gang toughs and the casino guards were starting to argue, the latter pushing the former back to where the elevator would have been if not for my shifter blocking the doors. Its purpose was served by now and I had other uses for its energy, so I dismissed it.
Still following the group, I sidled closer to the boundary of the darkness around us and stuck my hand into it. Nothing seemed to change with my arm up to my elbow in the darkness, so I went out on a limb and summoned an eye-spy. Whether or not I could wasn't in question, they took the least energy of all my minions and even the half energy I'd regained from my shifter was enough to make half a dozen of them. But with my arm hidden in Grue's dark as it was, there was no burst of light or loud sound to signify its appearance.
Grue turned back towards me, no doubt looking for the source of the sound only he could hear, but I was already sending it blindly up, higher and higher, hoping it would reach the upper boundary of Grue's dark and help me orient myself. And then suddenly I could see through it.
I resisted the urge to express my victory and spun it around to check over the area. To my disappointment, I couldn't see much. Grue's darkness blanketed the area behind the casino, rising up nearly two stories. I could barely see the treetops, much less where the vans were. I double checked in the direction of the casino, but there was still no sign of Oni Lee.
It was a mercy when the vans finally came into sight, the darkness withdrawing enough that we could see them clearly. Grue and Bitch went to theirs, hurriedly removing the harnesses from the dogs and chucking them in the back as the animals themselves shrank back to normal. Regent, Tattletale, and I went to the other and climbed in. I called my eye-spy down to me and had it latch onto the van roof just like I had on the way here. My newest minion made me hesitate before I dismissed it to reclaim the energy. I had no idea if it had other abilities that might interfere with the van and I didn't want to risk it with the possibility of pursuit by assassin.
Once we were in Grue dismissed the darkness, sending it back towards the casino like a wave returning to the ocean, and Tattletale hit the gas as soon as the road was visible. I remained tense as we drove, looking between the windshield, the rearview mirrors, and the tinted windows in the van's back doors, as well as my eye-spy's sight, looking for any sign of pursuit. I wasn't the only one who was anxious, as Regent didn't pick his game back up, instead gripping his scepter as it lay in his lap.
At least until we'd merged back onto the main road and driven for a few more minutes. "Well that was a waste of time." Regent groaned, tossing his scepter onto the seat beside him and grabbing for his game.
"Maybe." Tattletale replied. She tossed something onto the passenger seat, and it took me a second to realize it was her mask, becoming Lisa again. "We're alive though, and I count that as a win."
"You know what I'd count as a win?" Regent asked as he booted up his game. "A big pile of money."
I looked between them as they bantered, though I didn't follow their lead and let my guard down until we were nearly halfway back to Brockton Bay. This had been a disaster. I'd nearly died four times by my count, I might have made myself an accomplice to the Undersiders' crime, and my plan had fallen utterly through.
That last thought caught my attention. That was what had rubbed me the wrong way thinking about Grue. At some point, I'd shifted from thinking about how I was planning to take down the Undersiders to how I'd planned to. The thought was uneasy. Sure, it made perfect sense in the casino. With Oni Lee in the picture, it would have been suicidal to fight anyone but him. Of course I'd dropped my plan and focused on getting out alive.
But now? Oni Lee was miles behind us. I was in the van with Lisa and Regent. My energy was far below what it had been at the beginning of the night, but I could still try something. I'd even planned for a situation like this before this had all begun. A consolation prize, I'd called it.
They didn't seem in top condition either. They way Regent had been holding his arm without being injured, I was sure it was feedback from his power. Lisa didn't display any outward weaknesses, but considering how she'd found it necessary to carry a gun and how quickly she'd retreated when she was disarmed, I no longer believed her power had any real potential in direct combat. If I tried, I could probably beat them. All I had to do was take that first step and summon a minion.
But I didn't. We drove in silence, save the quiet noises of Regent's game, back to Brockton Bay. I stewed the whole time, urging myself towards action. I could do it; it would just take one minion; it was the perfect time. Over and over, a constant refrain. But I didn't. Something held me back. Regrets or a conscience, whatever the term should be, I was reluctant to turn on them so soon after fighting for our lives together.
I hardly noticed when the van pulled to a stop.
"Well, here we are." Lisa said, turning around in the seat to look at me. "We're only a few blocks north of where we picked you up, so you shouldn't have an issue finding your way back to familiar stomping grounds."
I nodded, felt like I should say something. "Thanks."
"No problem!" Lisa said. "You might want to lay low for a bit, but whenever you're ready to go back to the vigilante work, I'll be ready to help."
I nodded again, got up from my seat and put my hand on the door handle. This was it, my last chance to turn on them. Regent likely couldn't use his power at all after how he'd reacted to overusing it. Lisa had lost her gun back in the casino and her power couldn't help her fight. Meanwhile, though I was running on dregs, I still had enough energy for a pair of savages, or maybe one of my newest minions. With Bitch and Grue somewhere else in the city, if I attacked now I was almost guaranteed to win.
But would I? The idea had been easier before tonight. When I could look at Lisa without remembering how she'd shot Oni Lee to protect me and helped me steady myself when the second-hand pain of my savages got to be too much. When I could look at Regent without remembering how he'd used his power to save me at a cost to himself.
I thought about it, but the decision was already made. I opened the door and stepped out. I turned back as Regent pulled it shut behind me, catching one last look at Lisa looking back over the seat, smiling at me. And then there was nothing to do but watch the van drive away.
New Summon: Paralith (N medium aberration, CR 4, Starfinder)