Enjoy!
Nightmare 4.2
Boogeyman let out a taunting laugh as Phobia carried her down the empty streets. No fool in their right minds would travel so deep into ABB territory at night. Spray painted dragons covered the walls, warning everyone who ruled this part of the city with impunity, and the dangers of traversing it. They were all locked away in their cozy little houses and tucked into their beds and their dreams and nightmares danced in their subconscious minds.
Of course, none of that was Boogeyman's concern at the moment. Right now, her focus was strictly on the very angry Lung rampaging behind her. His howls of rage echoed through the street as he tried to keep up with her steed. She could have left him in the dust from the get go, Phobia could fly and Lung couldn't – at least not yet. She could have left him to stew in his somewhat justifiable anger given that she had quite literally shoved his Trigger event into his face with all the care of a bull in a china shop. A small, small part of her felt some pangs of sympathy towards the man for having to go through something like that, a feeling of helplessness that she understood all too well. But it was mostly washed away by the overriding contempt that she felt for how he had wasted his life with petty crime.
"I'll ki'll y'u!" he roared, his mouth starting to twist into an inhuman shape. His bare feet pounded against the asphalt as he tried to keep up, silver scales starting to emerge from his skin. Human dentures started to shift into a more fang-like state as he snarled like the mad dog that he was.
"How can you kill what you cannot catch?" she asked, turning her head around to give the man a mocking laugh. She was only a few yards away from him, so close and yet so far. The man howled again, his size increasing inch by inch as more and more scales burst forth from his flesh. The silvery keratin structures were almost beautiful in their own deadly way. She had watched a video clip of those very same scales taking fire from an AK-47 without so much as a dent.
For all her taunting though, she knew that she was playing with fire, quite literally so, as small flames started to waft off the man's form. If Lung so desired he could burn down most of the docks if he wanted to. The Protectorate and even the other gangs would likely come to try and stop him if he ever went that far, but given his powers that just screamed like a recipe for disaster.
Boogeyman allowed herself to pull further ahead of the gang leader as she made a sharp right into what was a dead-end street. Officially the buildings that surrounded the road were all abandoned and hadn't been used in years. But the largest of them was actually a drug lab for the ABB. It was a relatively minor operation compared to the total money that the ABB made, but it was a start.
Boogeyman pulled Phobia to a stop right in front of the building, ignoring the panicked cries from the lookout on the second story window. She didn't have time to deal with grunts, even if his fear was quite tasty. She frowned a bit as Lung started to slow down, a more calculating look entering his eye as he slowed his approach to her. Apparently, the man wasn't entirely a beast, he had some modicum of intelligence to recognize that something was up.
Well, that wouldn't do.
"What's the matter Kenta? Afraid to get close to a few drugs?" she asked with a wicked smile. She didn't even need to see the man's emotions to know that that had stuck a rather sensitive spot for the man. His slowly transforming face twisted in rage as his lips started to shrink back to make more room for his sharpening teeth. No words came from this throat, only a scream of pure rage as he cast aside his caution and barreled straight towards her. Talons erupted from his fingers as he prepared to impale her, only to find empty air once more as she urged Phobia to slam straight into the door, knocking if from its frame like tinfoil. She had her steed duck through one of the hallways, tramping one of the unfortunate men to get in their way. She could hear Lung's footsteps behind her as his large form tore through the shattered doorway.
She had Phobia dive through the meth lab and tear out the plastic draped window into the alley behind the building. She pulled the Nightmare to a stop as she felt the panic spike in the house as the occupants realized what was about to happen as Lung's flaming form followed her trail.
The lab went up in a flash of heat and light, as windows and doors were blown apart as the force looked for every crack it could to escape the confines of the room. She could hear the shortly lived panicked screams of the men as their clothing caught fire and they were thrown across the rooms like ragdolls. There was a sharp crack as something apparently important snapped. Boogeyman watched with detached interest as part of the building collapsed in on itself, burying Lung and his men in wood and plaster.
That was unexpected, she thought as she watched the pile of rubble stir. She had expected the explosion, but having the building collapse was an unforeseen development.
She had known that the men had knocked down one of the walls to make room for the lab, but that wall must have had one of the more important support beams in the building, and the explosion was the straw that broke the camel's back. She could only imagine how angry Lung had to be now.
The flaming wreckage burst apart like an erupting volcano as Lung's form pulled itself from the ruins. A smile stretched across the young woman's pale lips.
Oh, that's right. I don't have to imagine.
If the man was furious before, he was downright apoplectic now. His body had increased in size, adding another foot to his height, and his scales had already covered most of his flesh. There were a few spots that looked scuffed and dented from the collapse, and some of his scales were covered in soot and grime, but otherwise, he was unharmed.
"Y'll p'y f' t'th," he growled out through his fangs. Boogeyman let out an amused laugh at the man's words as if he had just told some hilarious joke.
"What did I ever do? I wasn't the one to bring the building down, that was all on you. You killed your own men because you were too stupid to realize what you were doing," Boogeyman said, clicking her tongue in disappointment towards the man's actions. She knew that Lung didn't give one iota of concern towards his men. The man only cared about himself, and everyone and everything else were just tools that he could use to further his own greed. What the man did care about was his ego. Insulting him in such a manner wouldn't surely stoke the flames of anger and hate.
The roar she received in return only proved her point. The man snarled as he knocked the wreckage aside with his scaled hands, claws tearing wood to shreds with errant flicks of his wrist. He would have been quite the intimidating sight if she couldn't read his every feeling. All of this was in response to her little scare, his way of trying to save face. The fact that they were the only two who knew about it was irrelevant. All that mattered was that he needed to reassert his authority over himself, he needed to prove that he wouldn't be cowed but such memories.
It was pathetic how far he was willing to go to do that.
She gave the man a bored look as she urged Phobia to move, keeping them out of the man's range. That boredom quickly turned to shock as Lung leaped for them as if he was jumping into a pool, arms stretched out as far as they could go. The parahuman came on them like a silver sun, eyes blazing in heat and fury.
"Move!" Boogeyman barked, digging her heels into her steed's side even as she pushed the order into its mind with such force that it physically recoiled. The personification of Emma's nightmares moved with a burst of speed, tearing apart the ground as if rushed forward to escape Lung. The would-be dragon roared as its prey escaped his grasp once more. Dust and dirt were flung into the air as he fell onto the earth like an anvil.
Boogeyman took a deep breath as she watched the man pull himself back up. Her yellow eyes trailed his form with renewed wariness and suspicion. In the depths of her mind, she berated herself for allowing herself to fall complacent and letting Lung get the drop on her like that. She couldn't let that happen again. Despite the man's reputation, he was no dumb brute, and if she gave him an ounce of weakness he would rip her apart.
"You must truly be powerful Lung if you can afford to wallow in the dirt while your enemy stands by," Boogeyman taunted in an attempt to hide how off-putting that attack had been. She hadn't expected the man to put that much of himself into one attack and leave himself open, but she supposed that he was getting some tunnel vision. Anger tended to do that to a person. The man let out a low growl as he retook his footing, the plants crumbling to ash beneath his feet as his flames flared in anger.
Surprisingly none of them seemed to extend towards the buildings and instead clung to him like a second skin. She supposed that made a sort of sense, Lung was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. The Protectorate might tolerate him burning down an abandoned building or two, but if he crossed the line they would drop the hammer on him. In a neighborhood like this, the flames would spread from building to building like a wildfire. It would be at least ten minutes before firefighters could arrive, and by that time the fire would be well out of control. Even in his haze of rage Lung could apparently realize that was a very bad idea.
A pity that the Protectorate was willing to wait for such destruction before they got serious, but if they had actually bothered to do their jobs she wouldn't have to be here right now. As Lung's ear shattering roar shook her bones, she had to wonder how Victoria, or Deimos as she was known now, was doing with her little search.
Victoria double checked the next address she had been given as she mentally crossed the previous name off the list.
The last house had been a bust, the individual in question had already been taken into PRT custody and his house searched. There had been nothing there for her to find. The teenage parahuman felt a brief glimmer of frustration as she ordered the Nightmare forward. It felt strange and alien flying without her own power, and even now she longed to be one with the sky. Aside from her invincibility, her flight was one of her favorite powers, and not being able to use it irked her.
She understood Taylor's reasoning as to why she needed to hide her powers, but it still didn't make it any less frustrating. Add to the fact that this sort of heroing was out of her comfort zone and she was nowhere near the best of her moods. She was used to beating criminals with her fists and asking questions later, this whole "interrogation" thing was a bit outside of her specialty. She could ask questions, but trying to keep the people from responding with insults and fists wasn't exactly her strong suit.
"That's the next house," Victoria said, pointing towards the innocent looking house on the edge of the street. The Nightmare beneath her snorted as it trotted across the open air towards their destination. Her voice sounded strange to her ears, muffled and distorted by the contours of the mask. The skull visage glared out into the world, the blonde hair flowing from the back of her head, an odd contrast to the intimidating mask. The dark colors of her outfit covered her entire body, unlike her Glory Girl costume, masking her identity from the world. Victoria and her entourage of Nightmares came to a stop above the house, their hooves standing on the air as if it were solid ground.
"Is he there?" she asked, directing the question towards her steed. She didn't want to rip through the building to find that he wasn't even home. The Nightmare's nostrils flared as if it was taking in the scent of the air, before giving her a snort and a nod. Victoria gave the Nightmare an idle stroke of the mane, earning a pleased ear twitch. As she considered how she was going to do this her gaze zeroed in on a van on the other side of the street. It was an unmarked and featureless van, but she had seen enough of them to recognize a PRT van.
Great, she grumbled in the back of her head. Fighting the PRT was not something that she had planned for, or wanted to do at all. Still, it was heartening to see that the organization was actually doing something proactive regarding the spies and moles. A complication for her, but not one that she couldn't overcome. She would just have to be a bit more discreet… which didn't bode well for her actually. She wasn't so nonself-aware that she didn't realize the word subtle didn't exactly apply to her. She was loud and boisterous and her aura naturally drew attention to herself more often than not. It made trying to remain unnoticed by teachers when she didn't have the answer to the questions extremely difficult.
"Whatever," the parahuman muttered as she tugged on her steed's reins. Trying to sneak in without being detected would be an exercise in futility since her only options were to smash down whatever obstacles were in her path. She would just have to make sure she was in and out before the PRT agents could intervene. Thinking about it, it wasn't likely that they would try to stop her without parahuman backup anyway. Embolden by her logic, the teen pushed her Nightmare down towards the second story of the building. The creature snorted as they came to stop just outside the man's bedroom. Victoria watched the inert form of the man as he laid on the bed for a moment as she steeled herself. This was it, the point of no return. After this, her new identity would be revealed to the world and there would be no turning back.
This is for Amy, the blonde parahuman assured herself as she urged her steed forwards towards their target. The Nightmare let out something that was between a snort and a roar as it bellowed forward in a surprising display of speed. Victoria was only just able to hold on as they smashed through the glass and part of the framework. There was a startled screech as the man was flung back off the bed in surprise. A concealed gun clattered to the ground uselessly as he struggled to untangle himself from his mess of bed sheets. Victoria said nothing as her steed's hooves clicked against the floor like a bad omen. As the man finally tore himself free from the blankets and made a dive for the downed gun, her Nightmare's hoof slammed into the metal construct, crushing it under its weight. The man's skin became a shade paler as he craned his neck from the ground to get a good look at her.
She could only imagine how she appeared to the man. Sitting on a nightmarish steed with razors for teeth and baleful yellow eyes that glowed as if they were an inferno. A cold mask glaring down at him, the mouth shaped into a slight smile to mock the man's quivering. Victoria let her aura loose, and the feeling of terror and awe washed over the man like a tsunami as his mouth dropped open in stupefaction. She could see the slight tremors that wracked his frankly unfit body. She supposed that she should be grateful that he was wearing a pair of pajamas. She didn't think she would make a good impression if she kept on ducking her head to the side every time she tried to talk to him.
"Gregory Carter," she said, her voice unrecognizable through the mask. She eyes were the only part of her face that was visible through the mask, and right now they were glaring down at the quivering man. The man nodded hesitantly, too nervous to form any words.
"I heard that you like to gossip," she said as she slipped off her steed. She cheated a bit by using the tiniest portion of her flight to raise herself from the Nightmare's backside. Nothing noticeable, but enough to guarantee that she wouldn't slip up and fall over as she dismounted.
"W-what?" the man stuttered, her aura putting quite the whammy on him. A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead, his eyes bulging in fear as he stammered a response out. "Wh-what are you talking about?"
"Yeah, I hear that you like to spread gossip a lot, especially with snakes," Victoria said, her voice becoming sharper. She watched as the man flinched a bit at the steel in her voice, but there was a light of recognition in his eyes. He knew what she was talking about, and judging by the way he was swallowing in fear, he understood that this wasn't going to be a pleasant visit.
"Who told you?" Carter asked, his face ashen and utterly devastated as a pair of Nightmares slipped through the broken wreck of a window and started to circle him. Victoria had watched a documentary about sharks and found the behavior to be quite similar. Though she doubted that the man would be too pleased by that little tidbit of information.
Victoria old shrugged at the man's question. "My…partner, Boogeyman," she said. She might as well have told him that she was working with the Grim Reaper the way that his skin paled. Quite frankly she didn't even know that people could even turn that shade of white without a Changer rating. Clearly, the man had heard of her.
"W-what does she want w-with me?" the man asked through his shivering, only made even more prominent by her aura. She supposed that she was lucky that he seemed to be a coward at heart, people always reacted to her aura differently. Some would end up showering her with praise while others would get angry and close off. Carter though, he seemed to be weaker than a wet noodle in term of willpower.
"Well, she's not too pleased that you've been working for Coil, and I can't say that I'm very happy with it either," Victoria said, a growl entering her tone. Quite frankly, people like Carter pissed her off. If anything, she preferred it when criminals were overt in their actions instead of trying to play the part of the angel. Though she wasn't a Ward, she did place a certain degree of trust in the PRT and Protectorate when she was heroing. She had to know that she could call for help when she needed it and that it would be given the consideration that it deserved. To know that there were people like Carter weeding their way through the organization, not to better the world, but to make a quick buck boiled her blood.
"P-please," the man whimpered as he tried to crawl back. But the man found himself stopped short as he brushed up against a Nightmare, earning a spine-shaking shiver as the soulless eyes of the creature glared down at him.
"This is what's going to happen," Victoria said as she marched up towards the man's cowering form. She loomed over the man, her skull mask glaring down at him as if she was death itself. "You're going to tell me everything you know about Coil and his men, or…"
"Or what?" the man asked, eyes flickering all around the room, looking for some form of escape.
"Or my friends here start breaking bones," she said, low and ominous. Part of her felt sick doing this. It was one thing to hurt and threaten someone that was actively committing a crime before her very eyes, but she had broken into this man's house to threaten him. But that didn't absolve him of his crimes, did it? He had still betrayed the PRT and Protectorate through his actions and actively assisted the criminal element in furthering their own agendas. That was enough to brush aside whatever uncertainty she had over doing this.
The man whimpered again, curling in on himself in an effort to shield himself from the glares of the invaders. His mouth opened and closed multiple times before he found his voice. It was less than a squeak, and Victoria didn't need a Thinker rating to know that he was downright terrified. She couldn't help but feel a thrill of pleasure run down her spine at the man's fear of retribution, of his villainous acts finally catching up to him.
"Coil, he'll kill me," Carter protested. Victoria shrugged her shoulders in an uncaring manner, though her opinion of Coil did drop a few rungs. Not that she had that high of an opinion of him in the first place, he was a supervillain after all.
"He'll probably kill you anyway," Victoria said, bluffing a bit. She had no idea what Coil would actually do, but if the man wanted to let his imagination run wild she'd let him hang himself.
"What?" Carter asked with a bewildered and slightly fearful expression. Victoria smirked a little under her mask, even though the man couldn't see it.
"Well," she said, drawing the word out with an irritating inflection. "I wasn't too subtle coming in here, and I'm willing to bet that PRT truck outside is going to realize that something is wrong."
"P-PRT truck?" there was no mistaking the sheer dread that coated his every word as if he realized where she was going with this but didn't want to put the pieces together himself.
Victoria only nodded at the man's stunned state. "Yep. Looks like they've realized you're not the paragon of justice you claim to be. Now, with all the spies that Coil has, how long do you think it will be before he realizes that they've found you out? A few days at best, a week if you're lucky."
Victoria wasn't quite as confident with her words as she would have liked to be. Threatening a criminal in this fashion was fairly unusual to her. Oh, she had made plenty of threats during her career as a hero, but those were always pretty straightforward physical ones. Threatening to break someone's arm or legs was a pretty standard practice as far as things went. Nothing like this psychological stuff that she was using now. Her own aura was probably making this far easier than it should have been, but she wasn't complaining.
Ironically, it did bear a remarkable resemblance to the tactics that she had witnessed and used herself in high school with all the other cliques. Trying to stay on top of the school was a grueling business, even if you had superpowers to cheat with.
Real life is like a group of girls arguing over the best cafeteria table, go figure, she thought with a roll of her eyes.
"Now," Victoria said, cutting off the coward's babbling. "If you tell me what I want to know, I'll drop you off at the PRT building. You'll confess to being a spy and will be placed in custody. Not a guarantee of safety, but it's unlikely that Coil will be able to get to you once even more scrutiny is placed on you."
It wasn't a promise of safety, that wasn't something that she could ensure and even if she could she wouldn't be inclined to provide it to a criminal like him. She wasn't going to kill him, but that didn't mean that she had to save him either.
"Okay," the man whimpered pathetically. "I'll tell you what you want to know."
The man yelped as she wrapped her fists around his clothing, pulling him up from the ground. Not enough to suggest that she had a Brute rating, but enough to make sure that his focus was solely on her.
"Start talking."
It was somewhat horrifying how much one man could influence a city. When Victoria had first heard of Coil she had been assured that he was a small-time crook who could barely command a few city blocks. He was a non-entity in terms of power. A tenacious cockroach that managed to survive a city full of Neo-Nazis and the Dragon of Kyushu, but that was the only notable thing about the villain. She had never even gotten a whiff of the man's powers. He was a nonfactor in her life and the lives of the heroes.
To find out that he had as much pull as he did was disconcerting. Case in point, Gregory Carter, the man that she had just spend a considerable amount of time threatening maintained a rather critical position at the PRT. He worked as a member of the department responsible for coordinating with other organization, specifically the prison transport conveys. He wasn't at the head, though that was a terrifying thought, however, he was well placed enough to leak critical information on transports to the gangs. She knew that Hookwolf had escaped his Birdcage convey before, but she had never really considered how the Empire prepared for such an endeavor.
Birdcage transports were designed to be as secure as they possibly could. They were far from perfect, but escaping one took an inordinate amount of time, planning, and resources. The majority of Birdcage transport escapes were facilitated by those who made it their living and specialty, like the old villain Madcap. And that was in the old days when the Birdcage was still very much a fledgling institution and hadn't reached the reputation and funding that it had today.
For the Empire to ensure Hookwolf's escape would have required a lot of planning and preparation. Such things could only be accomplished with detailed information as to how the transfer would work. She had just never considered how the Empire had acquired that information.
She couldn't really see what benefit Coil got out of it other than the continued conflict that followed each escape, but she wasn't interested in the why only the how. Coil was conspiring to aid the criminal element of the city and it was her job as a hero to deal with it. Victoria gave her costume a glance.
Well, her duty as a heroic vigilante in any case.
Late night drivers filled the streets below her as her steed passed into the safer downtown districts. Here it was less likely that a nighttime traveler would encounter a gang member, but Brocktonites knew better than to stay in one place for long. None of them would want to risk getting caught unaware, even if it was the "safest" place in the city. Somewhat ironically this was actually the area where most of the city's petty crime unaffiliated with the gangs took place.
The PRT had no interest in dealing with petty crooks when they had the likes of Kaiser and Lung to deal with, and the gangs had no desire to engage the local Protectorate in a full-blown turf war for the place. No matter how much good PR the PRT and Protectorate had, there was no way that they could allow a section of the city with so many affluent individuals to come under threat. That left this section of town a safe haven for all the little criminals who wanted to make a quick buck or two.
The fortress-like PRT building loomed in the distance, like a castle of old. Victoria twisted her head around to double check on her prisoner. Carter was no worse for wear, but he certainly looked like he had been put through the ringer. He clutched his steed/warden with an iron grip, eyes twisted shut in an effort to avoid looking down on the street far below. Satisfied that her prisoner wasn't going anywhere, she pulled on her own steed's reins, urging him to start descending.
Her hand shot up to shield her eyes as a spotlight atop the PRT wall swung towards her, nearly blinding her. Dark spots crossed along her vision as the sharp contrast with the night sky irritated her eyes. Her Nightmare snorted, clearly just as irritated about this development as she was. Their landing wasn't very smooth as the Nightmare was half blinded by the glare of the light, but they came to a stop a few feet in front of the building's outer walls as she had originally planned. As her eyes finally adjusted to the harsh glow of the light she could see that PRT troopers were taking up positions around her, containment foam sprayers in hand. She frowned a bit at the seemingly hostile treatment, then nearly smacked her head in realization that to them, she was a brand new and unknown parahuman.
"Parahuman, release your hostage and stand down!" Victoria winced a bit at the slight squeal of the megaphone that echoed across the asphalt. Victoria turned towards the Nightmare holding Carter and gave it a nod. The beast snorted and stalked up towards the assembled troopers. As is marched past her the troopers opened fire, coating the two of them in a thick layer of containment foam.
Victoria had possessed the misfortune of covered in the stuff a few years ago in a misfire on the part of a PRT agent. Even though she was one of the stronger Brutes in the city, her strength had been utterly useless in escaping the stuff. How Dragon had managed to make something so malleable yet so strong was beyond her, but that was Tinkers for you.
But as tough as it was, it utterly failed to contain the Nightmare as black sand slipped through the smallest of openings before retaking its form beside her. It snorted in irritation at its temporary imprisonment before falling back to join the other members of the herd.
"Parahuman! Stand down and prepare to be restrained, this is your last warning," the man on the other end of the megaphone ordered. Victoria rolled her shoulders, trying to appear as unconcerned as she possibly could. It was at that point that a stream of containment foam shot out towards her. She didn't know if the shooter had an itchy trigger finger or whether she had just used up her time, but she didn't have time to consider such things. She could feel herself preparing to fly away as a knee-jerk reaction, but her steed moved faster. Before she could realize what was going on, her Nightmare had already moved them out of the sprayer's effective range.
"Such a warm welcome," Victoria said sarcastically as the pile of containment foam began to harden into the inescapable prison that it was meant to be.
"Well, when an unknown parahuman is holding a PRT agent hostage, we typically don't roll out the welcome mat," another voice aside from megaphone man said. Victoria locked eyes with Triumph as he strolled through the gates without a car in the world. He looked ever the unflappable hero that he was meant to be. His lion-like helm gleamed even in the darkness of night, a sharp contrast to her own darker colors.
Victoria could say that while she knew Rory, she didn't know him that well. They were friendly acquaintances at best. She knew that he always tried to live up to the expectations of a hero the best he could, which had landed him in hot water more than once. He had always been kind to her, both in and out of costume, but they had never interacted that much beyond a professional capacity. He had been just a little too old to hang out with when he had been a Ward when she had first started dating Dean.
"And how are people that deliver traitorous spies treated?" Victoria asked as she tried to deepen her voice a little. She didn't think that he would be able to connect her civilian identity, but it was better to be safe than sorry. She could see that Triumph was visible startled by that claim, and looked to the mound of containment foam with a somewhat bewildered expression under his mask.
"I'm sorry?" he asked, confusion evident in his tone as he waved the PRT troopers to stand down. None of them looked too happy, but they all lower their containment foam sprayers so they aren't directly facing her. They could easily snap them back up and spray her within seconds though, so it would probably be best for her to finish this sooner rather than later.
"Gregory Carter was a spy for Coil. The PRT already knew that's why they were watching him," Victoria said simply. A couple of the troopers reacted a little bit, but the grey-haired man with the megaphone might as well have been a statue for all she could see. She wondered how much he had known about the whole situation.
"I see," Triumph said slowly, giving her an appraising eye. "You understand that we'll have to confirm that…"
"Deimos," Victoria said, trying her new cape name out loud for the first time. It was so different than what she was used to that she almost blurted out Glory Girl for a brief moment. And while she did love her name, she did have to admit that it sounded a bit childish now that she had aged a little bit. The stuff that sounded cool when you were younger didn't tend to age very well over time. "And don't worry about it, Boogeyman wanted me to drop him off here when I was done with him, so here you go," she said with a wave of her hand.
"You're working with Boogeyman?" Triumph asked, a hard edge entering his tone as he took a slightly more aggressive stance. She could see in the corner of her eyes that the PRT troopers were following the hero's lead, raising their foam sprayers.
"Yes, yes, I am," Victoria said. "Is that a problem?"
"Boogeyman is a dangerous villain, and any and all associates of hers should be considered the same," Triumph said, sounding as if he were quoting something. "Even if what you said regarding him is true, I can't allow you to go free. If you come with me now we can still work something out. Whatever Boogeyman is promising you isn't worth becoming a villain."
Yes, it is, Victoria thought, tightening her grip on her steed's reins. Whatever she did now would be worth the safety that it gave her sister. Nothing was more important to her than that. Part of her wanted to argue that Boogeyman wasn't a villain like Kaiser of Coil, jut a very violent vigilante. But somehow she doubted that Triumph would care about that distinction. I'm afraid that I can't do that."
"Is that your final answer?" Triumph asked with a somewhat regretful tone.
"Yes," Victoria said simply. It was at that point that a wave of solid sound blasted into her like a speeding train, knocking her off her steed and sending her flying back. She grunted more out of surprise than anything else as she pushed herself off the ground to face the hero.
"What was that for?" she asked, shouting her question as her face turned red in anger underneath her mask. Her aura, which she had previously been keeping in check let loose, washing over the assembly before her. A few men visibly wilted under the pressure of her aura, but Triumph only flinched a little bit as he quite visibly steeled himself. "I give you a spy and you blast me in the face!?"
"As I said, all associates of Boogeyman are to be considered villains," the sound manipulating hero said. For a moment Victoria was tempted to ream him out but realized that she didn't have the same connections that she did as Glory Girl. She was an entirely new parahuman and one that was associated with someone that had killed before. "Now, I'm going to ask you and your minions to stand down before this gets too rough."
I hope Taylor is having a better night than I am, Victoria thought as she prepared to fight her way out of his situation.
I may have miscalculated a bit, Boogeyman thought as she dodged another chunk of concrete. The piece of rock whooshed past her face at breakneck speed before crashing into a thankfully abandoned building. Just a little bit.
Boogeyman glanced behind her to catch a glance of the still beyond furious Lung. After her little trick with the meth lab, she had led the gang leader through several more of his establishments, burning them all to ash and rubble. She could tell that he knew what he was doing, or at the very least recognized that destroying his own business was a bad idea, but his only other option was to lose track of her and let her escape, something he couldn't allow. So instead he allowed himself to be used to destroy his own gang while he tried to kill her. It was almost awe inspiring the level of rage that she had awoken in Lung.
The man's growth had stalled out at about ten feet for the time being, but it was still more than enough to remind her that this was the man who had fought the entire local Protectorate at once and won. Silver scales covered the entirety of his body, providing him with comprehensive protection from attacks. His feet and hands had extended into clawed appendages that were as long as her head and could slice apart steel with ease. All in all, he was a terrifying enemy that would make most people quake in their boots.
She was not most people.
"All this rage, and still you have accomplished nothing but your own destruction," Boogeyman taunted, earning another bellow of rage. The street bubbled underneath the false dragon's feet like wet tar with each step he took. The air around him twisted as the heat of his flames warped the very atmosphere. The man was literally spitting mad, belching out torrents of fire to incinerate her form. Fortunately for her he didn't seem to have very good control after it left a certain radius around his form. It made dodging streams of fire much easier. A few of her Nightmares were on fire patrol behind Lung's rampage, trying to keep the misfires from spreading out of control.
But for all her preparation, she had to admit that she had slightly miscalculated on how fast the man's transformation would take over. It certainly wasn't instant, but it was much faster than she had been anticipating, even with limited combat on her part. She knew that Lung's power responded to threats to his being, or at the very least that's what all the speculation on PHO suggested. She had avoided engaging in direct conflict in order to limit his growth to something more manageable, but it appeared her little trick with the mannequin shot her up on his list of threats to his wellbeing.
It wasn't an ideal situation with his regeneration, but it was far from unsalvageable. She only needed to get him to a few more places before she could drive him towards and isolated area and leave him behind. Without a threat to focus on, the man's powers would eventually burn out until nothing was left, leaving behind a broken man.
"K' y!" he roared, his speech even less recognizable now that his maw was big enough to swallow her head whole. It was almost comical how large his mouth was compared to the rest of her head. A stream of fire bellowed from his mouth, shooting as straight as an arrow towards her form.
"Down," Boogeyman shouted, urging her steed into a shadow cast by a dilapidated bus stop. The duo fell in just as the flame struck, engulfing the station in an inferno. Boogeyman and Phobia emerged on top of a building further down the street.
"Do you want to know why you'll never kill me, nor the woman in the hat?" Boogeyman asked, drawing Lung's attention away from the bus stop as he dug through the wreckage for her broken body. His eyes blazed like twin stars of hate, a bubbling anger that no man could control. He let out a roar that shook her very bones as he rushed over to the building with all the haste he could muster. Boogeyman could feel the building shake as he used his impressive talons to climb up the building to kill her.
"It's because you're weak Lung. You might bully those beneath you all you like, but you have never once beaten someone more powerful than you. You know the woman could kill you without pause, to her you were even less than a tool. You know that Leviathan left because he chose to, not because of any action of yours. And you won't kill me because you can't kill the truth Kenta. This is who you are. A bully with a bit more power than others, terrorizing the weaker becuase deep down you know you aren't strong," she said with a wicked grin as Lung's eyes blazed in unquenched anger. She could tell that he was absolutely dying to kill her, but she was still out of reach despite his huge size.
Lung was about halfway up the building when something struck his right shoulder with a sharp crack. Lung roared in pain as the blood splashed out from the point of impact while armored scales were shredded and flesh was torn. Shards of bone clattered to the street below as Lung lost his grip on the building, falling to the ground with an earthshaking thud.
Boogeyman's gaze twisted over towards the source of the blast. Miss Militia's cold expression had no trace of emotion as she reloaded a rather large gun. Boogeyman bit back a curse at the woman's interference. Of all the times for the heroes to start doing their jobs, it had to be now of all times! The angry parahuman turned her attention back towards Lung and felt her heart plummet in her chest.
The wound was already starting to heal over, much faster that he had been healing previously. Lung rolled his shoulder as if test its effectiveness before turning her gaze back towards her. Despite the inhuman shape of his mouth, he still managed to turn his expression into a smirk as his size started to grow for the first time in the last five minutes. Even as Lung pulled himself from the ground another bullet struck him, this time in his much more heavily armored back. His scales charred and bent, but nothing that he couldn't heal. A noise filled the air, like two boulders being ground together, and it was at that moment that Boogeyman realized that Lung was laughing.
As his blazing gaze caught hers, Boogeyman realized that she may have miscalculated.
A lot.
So is it Taylor or Lung that's bitten off more than they can chew?
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