In which a nightmare is born.
Enjoy!
Nightmare 4.3
Boogeyman had learned quite a list of expletives from her father's men back when she had been Taylor Hebert. Despite knowing more than most, she had never been inclined to use them much before now. But even knowing all the ones that she did, none of them seemed to encompass her feelings on the matter below.
Lung's towering form was starting to grow even larger thanks to Miss Militia's interference. What had once been a stable ten feet was now starting to reach more towards twelvish. His neck was starting to stretch into a more serpentine form as a row of spikes started to emerge down his spine. The man let out another victorious bellow as he reached out to climb the building once more.
What am I going to do, Boogeyman asked herself as the flaming inferno that was Lung's body grew even larger. She could leave now and abandon the field of battle, but that didn't sit right with her. With the size he had now, Lung could go on for several minutes even without direct conflict. He could go after some of the more populated sections of the city if he chose to in an effort to smoke her out. She wasn't going to let that happen.
And if she left now, that would be a victory for Lung. An affirmation that his power was sufficient to cow her into compliance and fear. That was something else that she would not allow. Nor could she allow Miss Militia to die on her watch. Even if she didn't respect the Protectorate anymore, that didn't mean she should throw them to the dogs like they had her. After all, Miss Militia was actually trying to do her job now, and she couldn't blame the woman for that. Even if she had chosen the most frustrating time to do it.
She was going to have to fight the man. At his current size trying to lead him somewhere else would be beyond risky. He would demolish everything in his path to get to her. So now, instead of breaking him down block by block, she was going to have to enter his arena and challenge the man now that he had had some time to charge himself up.
This time Boogeyman could feel the building shake as Lung's claws plowed into the brick, using the holes as crude hand holds to pull himself up off the ground. She could hear the cracking of brick on brick and the faint groaning of wood as the building struggled to hold something that it had never been designed to.
The sound of gunshots rang out above the building's protests, and Boogeyman looked to see that Miss Militia had resumed her firing on Lung's form with a new gun. Each shot was a direct hit, which wasn't that surprising given Lung's size by now, but they did little to deter the man. They pierced his scales, but beyond that, the man didn't seem to care about them. They were little more than buzzing bees to him, irritating, but otherwise inconsequential. The ruined slugs popped out of his reforming flesh almost as quickly as they had entered, raining down on the ground and Lung continued his trek up the building without interruption.
Let's change that, Boogeyman thought as she slid off her steed's back. She gave the Nightmare a stroke before giving it an order to gather the others. Phobia snorted in compliance, moving off into the shadows to gather the other Nightmares. All the while Boogeyman gathered her black sand to form a spear that was as tall as she was. Barbed edges hooked out from the spear's insanely sharp tip. Try to tear this out and you would have to rip out your own flesh along with it.
"Going down," she muttered as she jumped off the rooftop. She could feel the wind against her skin as she plummeted towards Lung, spear in hand to skewer him. Her yellow eyes locked with Lung's blazing irises as she quickly closed the distance between the two of them. The flames that surrounded his form were intensely hot and would have given any normal human third-degree burns, but she was no ordinary human. That wasn't to say that they didn't hurt, but it was far less debilitating than it would be without powers. She let loose her spear once she was within arm's reach before cursing as her spear struck his neck, burying itself inside his jugular. She had been aiming for his face, but his now serpentine neck allowed him to twist out of her way.
But despite her miss, Lung howled as he moved to rip the spear out of his throat, falling to the ground once more as he lost his grip on the building. Boogeyman landed on her on her feet, cracking the ground beneath her. A sickening squelch filled her ears as Lung tore the spear, along with it a portion of his throat, free. Even as his own flesh dripped onto the ground the wound was already starting to close, a benefit of his regeneration.
"Fo'l," he growled out as crushed the spear into the tiny sand particulates that it was. Within moments there would be little evidence of her attack. Boogeyman formed a sand scythe in her hands even as Lung charged forward, claws outstretched. But for all of the man's size, his agility was far less impressive. Boogeyman jumped back out of his range, careful to avoid the inferno surrounding his body. She made a few passes at him with her scythe, drawing blood, but they might as well have been paper cuts for all the good it did her.
Suddenly, Lung twisted around, sweeping his huge tail around with the force of a wrecking ball. Though she didn't have time to get out of the way, Boogeyman managed to raise a quick wall of sand between her and the appendage. The wall didn't survive the hit, collapsing almost instantly. Boogeyman grunted as she was flung to the side like a ragdoll. She slammed into a building, cracking the bricks with the force of her impact.
Lung's laughter echoed down the street as he made for her stunned form, only to stop short as something explosive struck his back. The man howled in agony as chunks of flesh were seared from his form by the grenade. Blinking away her daze Boogeyman could see that Miss Militia had chosen an RPG as the form of her weapon.
Aim for the head, Boogeyman growled in the back of her mind towards the woman. Lung wasn't a villain that they could bring in by crippling him, his powers wouldn't allow it. Only by sheer overwhelming force would they be able to defeat him. And yet, Miss Militia seemed content to play by the "rules" for the murderer.
Though whatever she had to say about Miss Militia she wasn't one to flinch away from danger as Lung twisted around to bring the full weight of his power against her. He made it about two steps before a bolt of lightning struck him in the chest. Scales blackened as he was forced back by the bolt of an angry god. Boogeyman looked up to see Dauntless floating above the buildings, and what she had initially thought to be a lightning bolt was, in fact, his lance.
"Lung, stand down," he declared, earning a bellow of laughter from Lung as he spewed a thick stream of flame at the floating hero. The man dived out of the way with the speed of a falcon, moving in to pick Miss Militia up and carry her out of Lung's path. A red blur surrounded Lung's form, spinning in circles as if trying to create a tornado.
Velocity appeared to the side for a brief moment, drawing Lung's attention before increasing his speed to the point that nobody could hit him. Lung seemed to consider the red blur for a brief moment before turning his gaze back to her, dismissing the Breaker as a threat. Boogeyman called her black sand to her as Lung charged forward, fangs bared into an ugly sneer. With a wave of her hand, the summoned sand shot forward towards Lung's exposed face. The giant of a man raised his paw to block the attack, but the sand slipped through his hand as easily as air. Most of the sand vaporized once it came in contact with the fire, too small in amount to survive the heat, but that which did survive the inferno landed directly in Lung's eyes.
Boogeyman twisted the sand and felt a smile tug at her lips as Lung's pained howl filled the street again. Lung's hands reached to his now shredded, eyes, clawing to remove the invading substance from them. She could already feel what little sand was present starting to fade, so she pushed it even further, tearing all the way to the back of his eye socket. But even as she basked in her slight victory over the man, the sound of a canister hitting the ground caught her attention.
Boogeyman looked down to see a white and red can roll to her feet with the words PRT printed on the side. After making a sound that was most assuredly not a yelp of surprise, she kicked the can towards Lung. Half a second later the canister went off, releasing its containment foam package. She didn't know how Lung could tell that it was heading towards him without his eyes, perhaps he heard it coming? In any case, Lung managed to avoid most of the still hardening containment foam.
But not all of it.
Lung roared as his right foot got stuck in the stuff, sealing him to the concrete. She could see his muscles straining against the foam with all the force that he could muster, but he might as well have been trying to tickle Behemoth into submission for all the good it did for him. Satisfied that Lung was contained for the moment, Boogeyman turned her attention towards the three Protectorate heroes who were trying to regroup. Growling in irritation Boogeyman jumped into the nearest shadow and emerged behind the group.
"What was that for?" she asked with an angry growl. The shocked squeal from Dauntless and Velocity were amusing, but she wasn't in the mood to savor such fear. Miss Militia, on the other hand, appeared unconcerned with her appearance, her hands not even instinctively tightening around her weapon. But there was a brief flash of fear as her gaze fell on the woman's gun and she shifted a bit so that it wasn't directly in her reach. Boogeyman held back a smile at the woman's reaction.
Someone was still a little shaken up with their meeting.
"Boogeyman, I suggest you stand down," Dauntless said in what she supposed was supposed to be a "heroic" voice. To her, it just sounded grating. The man's lance crackled menacingly as arcs of electricity ran up and down the pole, but Boogeyman didn't pay it any mind. She had more important things to worry about than a little electricity. Like, say, the giant rage dragon still trying to escape from his confinement.
"Perhaps you should focus on the larger threat at hand?" Boogeyman asked, gesturing to the struggling parahuman.
"Don't act like we're on the same side Boogeyman. You're a dangerous murderer and you will be brought to justice," Dauntless said, his words dripping with unfounded certainty. Clearly, this was someone who had bought into the cool-aid that the Protectorate was selling.
"I prefer to think of myself as a problem solver," Boogeyman said with a shrug.
"By resorting to murder?" Dauntless asked, the sneer evident in his tone. His stance was tense, ready to move at a moment's notice, but there would be no way that he could get to her before she dropped into the shadow beneath her.
"If it solves the problem," Boogeyman said. She could practically hear the man's teeth grinding against each other as he prepared to strike her down.
"Before you do that, I'd consider that you'd have to fight me and Lung at the same time. And you don't have very good track records at either," she said. She could feel a small tremor of caution at the thought of facing both of them at once. There was little that Velocity could do to either of them other than being a distraction thanks to their Brute ratings, and Miss Militia had already demonstrated her lack of effectiveness against them both. Boogeyman supposed that if she used a really big gun she might be able to put her down, but that would still leave them with a very angry Lung. She had no idea how effective Dauntless would be against her, but she decided that voicing that opinion probably wouldn't be for the best.
For a moment, Dauntless hesitated, clearly conflicted on what he wanted to do.
"Dauntless, she's right, Lung's the bigger threat right now," Velocity said, drawing the man's attention to him.
"Lung is restrained," Dauntless said with certainty. As if the universe itself was listening in on them, a loud crack interrupted the conversation. All four of them looked over to Lung, who was busy hacking away at his own foot. His regeneration was working against him, but in a few seconds, he would be free, albeit missing a foot. His tail was now easily twice her length, and his neck half of that. His maw had enlarged to the point that it had more in common with a gaping pit than anything else. A pair of stubs were reaching out of his back, the first sign of his wings.
"Lung was restrained," Boogeyman said in a tone drier than the desert.
Dauntless cursed, "That was my only containment foam grenade." The glare that he gave her through his Greek-like helmet clearly showed that he blamed her for that. Boogeyman just shrugged.
"I'm not the one who decided to try and foam the person who was trying to keep the giant rage dragon from demolishing the city," Boogeyman said with a scowl. She understood that she wasn't on the best of terms with the Protectorate, but trying to foam her with Lung right there? Was he that petty that he would risk his life and his comrade's lives to try and catch her instead of the bigger threat?
Dauntless looked less than enthused by her answer before turning to Miss Militia. "Where's your grenade?"
"I was confronted by Oni-Lee on the way here and had to use it to restrain him," she said. She didn't even bother glancing towards her partner, keeping her dark eyes firmly locked on Boogeyman's form. Now that she was closer to the woman, Boogeyman could see a few tears on her costume. She supposed that explained why she hadn't seen the serial suicide bomber at all. She had hoped that catching Lung off guard would have given her enough time to deal with him, but it looked like the ABB was a bit more battle ready than she anticipated.
"So, unless you have backup that can get here in the next ten seconds, I'd strongly suggest that you put aside whatever issues you have with me," Boogeyman said with an expressionless look on her face.
Dauntless looked like he wanted to push the issue, but Lung's howling was enough to make him reconsider. With an angry growl, Dauntless charged forward towards the parahuman as his foot started to reform far quicker than any natural regeneration would allow. She watched as his lance extended out, striking Lung's form as quickly as he could manage it without getting too close to those flames. Scales blackened and broke under the force of the lightning charged rod, but they were all mere flesh wounds.
"I don't suppose you have anything bigger than that," Boogeyman said with a nod towards Miss Militia's summoned gun. She could see the Blaster's face contort into a scowl as she glared down at her as if her mere existence offended the woman. She could feel the woman's desire to bring her to justice fight against her fear of allowing Lung to rampage. After a moment, her fear won out and she gave Boogeyman a tired sigh.
"Nothing that could put him down at this size without risk killing him," the heroine said with a regretful sigh. Boogeyman couldn't help but snort dismissively.
"You're really trying to keep him alive?" she asked, her face twisting into a sneer. Lung was a monster of the highest order, a man who willingly allowed his men to kidnap girls and force them into sexual servitude for his own profit.
"Unlike you, the Protectorate doesn't demand the death of all villains," Miss Militia said as she started to shift her weapon through various forms, apparently trying to think about an appropriate one to use. Boogeyman was far from a gun expert but any stretch of the imagination, but some of those she wouldn't want to be pointed at her, Brute rating or not.
"Only those that affect you personally?" Boogeyman asked with a mocking grin. She knew that Miss Militia had killed all of the men responsible for her village's destruction.
"Enough," Miss Militia said, her voice stronger than steel. Boogeyman flinched at the sheer unshakable will that the heroine was demonstrating in the face of the memory of the most traumatic event in her life. She felt like someone was ramming a spear through her heart. It was in a word – uncomfortable.
"If all you're going to do is hurdle insults at us, I will detain you here and now. Either assist us or stand down," Miss Militia said, her resolve unbreakable. Boogeyman could tell that she had touched quite the never with the woman, but she was doing an admirable job at holding it back. And quite frankly she was right, insulting her gained her nothing. She was being petty while Lung's blazing form was howling behind them.
"Very well," Boogeyman said as she formed another scythe. She held back a wince as Velocity was nearly sent flying by one of Lung's massive claws, only missing him by mere millimeters. She was glad that Victoria wasn't here to join the battle because invincibility or not, an angry Lung was not someone you wanted to mess with. Hopefully, her mission was going a bit more according to plan.
Victoria grunted as she was flung back into a mailbox, denting the structure beyond repair. As Triumph charged her to close the distance she turned around and threw the metal container at him. She kept the throw weak so that it wouldn't actually hit him, but it was enough to make him end his charge. She felt a little bad about breaking public property like that, but he was the reason that it was broken in the first place.
She had tried to hide her super strength at first, but it was a little difficult to hide recovering from being blasted into a building. She had managed to keep her flight hidden, but only barely. It was incredibly hard to resist the urge to take to the skies to avoid attacks. She had a close call dodging one of his sonic blasts but managed to make it look like a result of her super strength rather than independent flight.
"You can't win," Triumph intoned as he marched forward without a trace of fear. His costume had a few scuff marks on it, but otherwise, he was unharmed.
"I'm not trying to win," Victoria said as she pulled herself up from the ground again. While her invulnerability gave her defense against the physical nature of Triumph's attack, her ears were still ringing from the sonic blast. Everything sounded so far away, like trying to listen to someone talking on the other end of a tunnel or having cotton candy stuck in her ears. "I'm trying to leave, you idiot."
Honestly, the only reason she hadn't been captured yet was because the Nightmares were running interference on the PRT troopers, keeping them from lining up a clear shot against her. None of them were hurt aside from a few bruises, but it was starting to become harder to resist injuring them. She needed a way to disengage from this fight otherwise the outcome wouldn't be in her favor.
"This would be far easier if you just surrendered," Triumph noted as he dodged a rather large chunk of concrete being hurdled his way. Victoria rolled out of the way as he let loose another sonic blast in retaliation, utterly wrecking some poor sod's car parked behind her. The car alarm sparked for a moment before puttering out with a whimper.
This isn't working, Victoria thought as she kept a close eye on Triumph. Every time she tried to disengage from combat the man would blast her and her steed with another sonic attack. She could tell that he was trying to force her closer to the PRT building where she could be taken out at their leisure, but he wasn't having so much luck on that front either. He certainly was limiting her ability to move by destroying everything around her, but he hadn't quite managed to pin her down yet. She could end the stalemate by flying away and leaving the Blaster in the dust, but then the game would be up. As good as her costume was, she didn't think it would fool many people from putting two and two together.
She watched at Triumph's chest puffed in in preparation for another attack. This time, instead of trying to dodge it, she held her ground. Asphalt cracked as she quite latterly dug her feet into the ground, using them as anchors. When the sonic waves struck her form, she flinched as the initial physical punch knocked her back a little, but she managed to hold her ground. Her ears were ringing, but that was a minor concern, she could always have Ames heal her up later. Instead of letting up, Triumph doubled down on his sonic attack. Victoria felt another wave of pressure strike her form, but instead of allowing herself to be pushed back, she pushed forward.
It was akin to trying to take a swim in molasses. Every step felt like an eternity as if their weight of the world was being pushed against her. But as she moved further and further down the tunnel of sound that Triumph was making, she could feel the difficulty of each step lessen. She couldn't see his face through his lion's helm, but she could see the way his arms were shaking as he struggled to keep up his attack. At the same time, Victoria knew that if managed to catch her with two quick waves of pressure then her shield wouldn't have time to recharge and she would have to be scraped off the ground.
They were both being pushed to their limits, and right now it was a race to see who would break first.
Victoria nearly fell flat on her face as the constant resistance she had been trying to fight through let out in a single instant. It was only her quick reflexes and a tiny use of her flight that prevented her from face planting onto the ground. Seeing that Triumph was trying to regain his breath Victoria charged forward and struck him in the chest before he could recover. The metal plate of his costume bent and warped with her punch, but not enough to hurt him. Besides, he had a healing factor, so it wasn't as if he would to too injured.
In any case, Triumph went flying with a grunt, face planting into the ground. Satisfied that he wasn't moving, for the time being, Victoria let out a piercing whistle to call her Nightmares back. Or at least she hoped it was a piercing whistle, her hearing was still muffled thanks to Triumph's sonic roars.
At her signal, the Nightmares pulled back from their harassment of the PRT troopers. One who was cowering on the ground in an attempt to shield himself from the beasts looked quite relieved. She could see that they were all preparing to aim their sprayers at her, but none of them looked too eager to push her without cape back up.
"Do what you want with the spy, he's all yours," Victoria said as she mounted her steed. At least she thought it was her steed, it was a little hard to tell them all apart. They all looked like the same nightmarish figure to her eyes. Satisfied that she had done her job she pulled on her steed's reins, indicating that she wanted to take to the sky. The Nightmare obeyed without question, its hooves soundlessly moving against the open air as they were pulled higher and higher above the streets until the PRT troopers were nothing more than tiny specks.
The blonde parahuman let out a sigh as her hair whipped out in the wind, a cold breeze brushing up against her cheeks as she slumped in her seat. The fight with Triumph had been unwanted, but at the very least she finished her mission, if albeit bumpily.
"Come on, let's head back," Victoria said with a small sigh. She had hoped that her first mission for Boogeyman would have gone more smoothly than it did, but she knew all too well that things didn't always end up the way you wanted them too. As they coasted through the air, something caught Victoria's attention in the corner of her eye. A faint glow, like the ember of a fire. She couldn't make anything else out from this far except for the thick plume of smoke coming from the area. Her eyes narrowed behind her mask as he urged her steed to change course, sending them both straight towards the light.
Lung.
If she was right then Boogeyman needed her help. If she was wrong, well, she had always found asking for forgiveness easier than permission.
It could be worse, Boogeyman thought as they began another round with the man. They had managed to keep him contained on the street for now, but that was becoming more and more difficult. Velocity's movement had become more and more impeded by melting asphalt to the point where all he could do was circle the battle. Miss Militia was still trying to cripple Lung, a futile action if Boogeyman had ever seen one.
Even when her weapons penetrated the man's hide the damage they caused healed up too quickly to make any lasting impact. She could feel the woman's hesitance to call up more powerful weaponry in fear of killing Lung or making him stronger. Dauntless' lance had become little more than an irritant to Lung, shrugging off all but the most debilitating blows. Boogeyman was certain even with her assistance they wouldn't have been able to keep up as long as they had if Assault and Battery hadn't joined the fray.
The two capes worked as a well-oiled machine, using each other to further their position. They were the only two aside from her that were still making headway against the man. Battery's power allowed her to withstand the flames and strike at Lung, but only for the split seconds that her power remained charged. Assault was arguably the more powerful of the two, but the inferno surrounding Lung limited his involvement until she stepped in.
Using her sand, she temporarily snuffed out some of the flames surrounding the transformed gang leader, giving Assault time to move in. Lung reeled as the red costumed parahuman blurred at him, striking him with a force that could rival a cannonball. Lung howled as he was forced back a few steps, with Miss Militia taking out one of his knees and Dauntless striking at his eyes, two of his only weak points left.
Boogeyman joined in the assault, splitting her focus on keeping the flames smothered and directing another stream straight into Lung's chest. Millions of grains of black sand struck the man's form, their rough edges acting like miniature buzz saws. Alone the damage they did was so small as to not even be worth mentioning, but together?
Lung howled.
Boogeyman felt a smile cross her lips as Lung's roars of pain filled her ears. Right up until everything went wrong. Lung's howls of pain turned into rage as he burst through the sand with a torrent of flame. Assault and Battery flinched back at the sudden charge even as Lung leaped for Dauntless. It looked like the man was too high for Lung to hit, but Taylor watched as Lung spread his still nascent wings. They were still too small for him to fly, but big enough to give him an extra boost. The draconian man's huge paw swept up and struck Dauntless from the sky. She could see the man's shield laden arm blur up as tendrils of energy swept out from the disk in an effort to shield himself from the blow. There was a bright flash as the shield took the brunt of the blow, but the force of the impact was so great that Dauntless was knocked straight from the sky. The spike of fear and concern from everyone was overshadowed by the overwhelming terror from Dauntless. The man's unprotected back struck the ground with a crack. His weapons laid at his side, but he looked far too stunned to make use of them.
She could still feel his emotions, which mean that he was alive, but she wasn't sure how long that would last with Lung's presence. Lung had nearly put her through the wall earlier and he was far stronger now than then, even with his shield protecting him. She couldn't make out what was being said by the red speedster as it was drowned out by Lung's triumphant roar. She could feel the man's concern and fear rolling off him in waves as he picked up his comrade and started to pull him out from the battlefield.
"It took you this long to take one of us down? No wonder you never come out to fight," Boogeyman taunted. Lung's eyes, which had now multiplied into six, narrowed with in anger. She could feel the rage rolling off the man as if he were a small star. Idly she wondered if his powers were increasing his capacity for rage.
"Y'r n'xt," he growled, the threat clear even with his mangled speech. Even with her taunt, she could see that his wings were still growing. In a few minutes, he would be able to fly, and any attempt to contain him would be utterly wasted. Time was on Lung's side. All he had to do was wait them out long enough for his power to grow even more and they would be dead.
Boogeyman grinned as she felt some familiar faces brushed up on the edge of her awareness. Lung wasn't the only one stalling for time. Even with Lung's flames lighting up the street like a demented bonfire the surroundings seemed to darken and chill. A cold breeze swept over the battlefield, a cold claw of dread squeezing the very hearts of the combatants. Even in his rage Lung seemed to realize that something was off, pausing his rampage to glare around for the source of the disturbance.
Boogeyman could feel the Protectorate parahuman's heart rates spike as a black shadow fell over them. Lung, realizing that everyone was looking at something behind him, turned around to face the disturbance. He too couldn't help but gape at the mass of shadows and sand. It stood as a towering monolith of darkness. Yellow eyes flickered in and out of the front of the collected mass as almost every Nightmare she had created fought over the best positions. Despite himself, Lung took a step back as his neck craned up to search for the top of the pillar of sand which stood over three times his own height.
But only for a moment.
Lung twisted around to face her, eyes blazing with an unquenchable anger as he charged forward, intending on ending this once and for all. Boogeyman only smiled as the draconian titan bore down on her like an avalanche, an unstoppable force of death. Even as Lung's clawed hands stretched out to rip her to pieces she only smiled.
"You're going to choke on your fears, Kenta."
The pillar of Nightmares had been held aloft because of her will, and in a single instant, it all came crashing down. The tide of darkness swept over the street, burying everything in its path. Telephone poles and scraped cars were helplessly caught in its wake as it smashed into the enraged gang leader. Lung's howls of rage became even more incensed as he was swallowed up by the mass of sand and darkness. Boogeyman dove in after the man, the forms of her Nightmares feeling more like a comforting blanket than anything. She took to the howling mass like a fish in water.
She could feel Lung's desperation hit a fever pitch as he tried to escape the mass, but his flames were being smothered out with ease and without a visual landmark, he was hopelessly lost. She could feel her Nightmares pounding against his armor, searching for a weak point. It was like trying to crack a lobster. Difficult, but not impossible. Boogeyman slammed her fingers into Lung's scaled back and pulled. She could feel her Nightmares joining her, trying to get past the thick outer layer and into the juicy center. With a final grunt, she managed to make a hole in the man's defenses, allowing her Nightmares to swarm the man. Scales were shredded and flesh torn asunder as her Nightmares savaged the man like a pack of piranhas. But despite all that, Lung continued to fight on, striking out wildly, destroying scores of Nightmares with mere swipes. For a brief moment, he actually managed to break free of the swarming mass.
Her herd had done a number on him, with the pale white of bone shining through on multiple points of his body. Half of his eyes were a mangled mess, and gut was almost pouring out of his insides. She could see that his healing factor was taking care of the damage, but with it being divided between so many injuries, it was slowing down. Still well beyond natural healing rates, but not as fast as it had been before.
Lung made it about a foot out of the swirling mass before an explosion rocked his torso. Lung howled as the RPcourtesyesy of Miss Militia, detonated against his mass, interrupting his tandem and giving her Nightmares time to swarm him again. With a wave of her hands, Boogeyman had some of her Nightmares travel down his gaping maw, smothering out any nascent flames and churning through his insides like a blender.
"This is how your story ends, Kenta," Boogeyman whispered into his still intact ear, only just barely audible above the endless gnashing of teeth and sand. She dodged a rather pathetic swipe from Lung before resuming her speech. "You die how you were born, alone and afraid. You have no friends coming to help you, no support to assist you. You're going to die here and now."
She could feel the man's lung pop like bubbles as she twisted her sand inside of him. His healing factor was desperately trying to heal him, but it appeared even it had its limits. Each second inside the cloud of Nightmares only added to what it needed to repair, and none of it was superficial. Stomach acid rained down on his insides as it was ripped apart by a set of jaws. Every part of his body was on fire and his healing had nearly slowed down to a crawl.
"And in the end, all your power is for naught. When faced with a challenger that can match you, you will always fail and fall. Take that to your grave," Boogeyman hissed as the man's throat was torn to shreds. The once proud gang leader fell to the ground, hands clutching his throat reflexively as he gasped for air.
She could tell that the man was near the end of this line. A minute more of this and he would be dead. She could hear the shouts of the Protectorate parahumans demanding that she cease her attack She snorted. If they thought she was going to let Lung walk away from this they were sorely mistaken. This wasn't quite the end she had intended for the man, but it would still serve its purpose.
"Goodbye, Ken-"
She felt, something, but she couldn't even begin to describe what it was. It was like an echo of a brain freeze at the edge of her awareness. It was a feeling that she quickly brushed aside. The other parahumans though? She felt them collapse to the ground like puppets who had their strings cut. Even Lung slumped down for a brief moment as if he were about to fall unconscious when his mind suddenly snapped back into awareness.
And then everything exploded in a sea of silver and scales.
Everyone assumed that Lung was a mad beast. An unthinking thug who had gotten lucky in the superpower lottery and had the cruelty and viciousness to back it up.
In a sense, they weren't wrong.
He was prone to rage when insulted, but when all that one had left was his own pride, did it not make sense to defend it with all you had? Who could fault him for wishing to defend his honor, with what little he had left?
He had once been a reckless youth, drunk on his own power. He had been that beast then, taking what he could and giving nothing in return. He had needed no one after the death of his friends and his subsequent Trigger, for he had power. There had been to subtly or thought in his actions, only a mindless rage that could only be quenched with the suffering of others.
It had not been until Leviathan rose from the waves to challenge him that he learned humility. For all that people praised him for driving off the beast he knew it was a farce. The wave-maker left because it had chosen to, not because of anything he had done. His power had driven him to heights he had never before reached, to the point where even the Triumvirate could not remain in his presence.
And still, it was all for nothing.
His homeland had been decimated and all that he had was taken from him once more. He had been lost in the wake of Leviathan, uncertain as to what to do with his life.
The Yàngbǎn had tried made that purpose clear. They had chased him all across Japan until they caught him off guard in his sleep. They caged him like an animal and treated him as one. They resorted to every trick in the book to break him.
He tried to escape at first, raging against the walls with all his might, but it had accomplished naught. For every trick that he had, they possessed a dozen more. They were Legion, and he was but one.
It was there in that hell that he learned patience.
He let his captors believe that they had broken him, hiding that spark of self from their gaze. It had taken all of his willpower not to crack, but after two years of being held captive, he managed to escape. They did not survive pursuing him after.
He had experienced three great losses. He would not experience another.
Brockton Bay had been the perfect place to set himself up. The swarms of displaced immigrants from the fall of Japan had all been too easy to gather together. Uniting the other Asian gangs had been difficult with how much they hated each other, but after killing off all their parahumans they bent to his will. Oni-Lee had been the only one to survive his wrath, the only one to realize that he could not be defeated.
While he could never replace what he had lost, Brockton Bay could fill the void. He cared little where his money and stuff came from in the end, so long as he could have it to himself. His peons could do what they want so long as they obeyed his will. Jennifer Lin had yet to learn that lesson. Her rebellion had been brief, though he did have to give her credit for how far she had been willing to go. He had been tempted to kill her right then and there, regardless of his respect for her willingness to fight, but he had not spent too much effort getting her to Brockton Bay just to kill her when she behaved like a spoiled child. It was not her fault, she had not experienced true loss yet, and the bombs that she made were well worth the time he had put into recruiting her.
Hopefully, the loss of her tongue would change her mind. It wouldn't do for him to have to damage his pet Tinker too much while he tried to train her. It had been amusing to watch her face collapse as she realized he knew about her conversation with Boogeyman.
Boogeyman.
Some of the fools believed her to be a Kami, come down to punish them for their transgressions. They were idiots, for if there were Kami, they had abandoned them long ago to Leviathan. No, Boogeyman was nothing more than a child with power, lashing out at everything around her. Not unlike he had been so long ago.
He had promised himself to repay her for her insults to him on the video, but her assault on the Empire had been amusing. He had laughed for ten minutes after Kaiser's death, cut down in front of his own army like the mongrel that he was. He had been content to let her exist for a time, at least until the Empire was dead and gone and this city was his. He held back his rage so that her assaults on the Empire would continue, giving Bakuda more time to create her little bombs. With over half of the Empire's roster dead, captured, or gone, it would have only been a matter of time before they fell to him and his superior firepower.
Then he would repay her back tenfold for all her grievances. And then she would learn what fear really was.
But her stunt had stoked his anger like nothing ever had before. He had long tried to shove the woman in the suit out of his mind, to bury her underneath the weight of his memories. The moment he realized what Boogeyman had done he knew that she wasn't going to walk away from this alive. He would skin her bones and put her corpse up on display after he was done with her, assuming that there was anything left to begin with. Nothing else had mattered, not his men, or his gang or anything else.
She would die for that transgression.
But now, here he was, choking to death once more because he had allowed his rage to control him. He could feel his insides bursting apart as the demons entered his maw. He tried to close it, but his mouth was far too large for that now. Her insidious voice whispered to him, the seeds of doubt that she had been sowing finally coming to fruition. For all his power and influence, he was going to die, choking to death as he had all those years ago.
"Goodbye, Ken-"
The world broke.
Error.
Conflict.
Intercession?
Agreement.
Activation.
Oops. Looks like Boogeyman pushed him a bit too far.
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