To Lyger 0: It's actually been a full day since his encounter with the Hound.
Iron Maiden raised her arms, quickly scanning the scene around her and shifting her aim to point both energy cannons at the man in front of her with the energy weapons strapped to his wrists. The man flinched, his eyes widening in shock at her sudden arrival.
Beside Iron Maiden, Bandruí placed her sapling on the ground and dropped to one knee, pressing her palms to the exposed dirt closest to the barrier that had formed across the road, tensing her arm and pushing her fingers into the soil. Almost at once, the pavement next to her hand cracked apart as a teeming swarm of vines and tree roots pushed through it, the cracks spiderwebbing out from that point and spreading out across the street in all directions. A larger stone was pushed aside and rolled down the embankment as a tree sprouted from the top of the dirt-and-asphalt wall, swinging its branches the moment they emerged and sending a long, thick root out toward Electric-fist. Still staring at the Hound, Electric-fist let out a surprised yelp as the root wrapped around his chest, spinning around in its grasp and punching at the sapling. A spark of electricity jumped from his gauntlet to the tree and immediately grounded into the soil. Bandruí's sapling swung one branch at Electric-fist, knocking him face-first into the wall.
Around Iron Maiden, the fighting spread from one side of the street to the other. Oitokoisi snarled and charged at the armored knight, who swung his bow at Oitokoisi's face. Ducking below the bow, Oitokoisi smacked the knight under the chin with his snout. A few meters away from them, the Hound rolled on the road, wrestling with Gardur. Gardur pointed the nails on one hand into a set of claws and pressed forward to rake them across the Hound's face, only for the Hound to catch his hand and shift it enough to the side for Gardur to catch nothing but asphalt. Behind Iron Maiden, Mecha-Man blocked slash after slash from the Bearator's one hand-claw before reactivating his jetpack and rising into the air. Just as he ascended out of the Bearator's reach, the Bearator leapt, snagging one of Mecha-Man's legs and pulling him off-balance.
Castutrice was nowhere to be seen.
Energy-wrists sent two pulses of white plasma at Iron Maiden which struck her armor, superheating her shoulder and chest, barely missing her helmet. She winced at the heat and light, even as the suit compensated, its energy shielding absorbing the excess heat and wicking away what it could not convert into energy. Letting out a frustrated growl, she sent a pulse from one of her own energy cannons back at Energy-wrists, aiming to graze his shoulder and striking the building directly behind him, chipping off a piece of the brick façade. "You may pack a punch, but you really don't want to take one from me!" she shouted, shifting her aim to his head. "Now, either surrender, or you die!" Her jetpack activated, and she rose a meter into the air, still pointing her energy cannon down at him. "I won't give you a second chance."
"Like hell I will!" Energy-wrists retorted, ducking and sending two more plasma blasts at her. "The Lynchpin is paying a pretty good bounty for the girl."
At that same moment, an energy pulse struck Iron Maiden from behind, propelling her forward as she spun around to find the source of the energy blast. Quickly, her suit tracked the trajectory of the energy, tracing it back to the roof of an apartment building two blocks away. A second energy pulse fired to her side, striking the now-massive tree that Bandruí had grown on top of the wall. One of the branches fell off, leaving behind a charred stump. Her eyes narrowing beneath her helmet, Iron Maiden shot higher up into the air and sent an energy pulse straight back at the source of the sniper shots. A pair of energy blasts flew wide beneath her from Energy-wrists.
Spinning around and slamming back to the ground directly in front of Energy-wrists, Iron Maiden grabbed one of his arms just before he could fire again, sending the plasma pulse into the barricade behind her, flash-melting the topmost layer of dirt into glass. "You know, you're really trying my patience here," she growled, throwing him aside, into Bandruí's sapling. Energy-wrists collapsed to the ground, pointing one trembling arm at her. "You really think any amount of money is worth your life?" she demanded, whipping out one of her grappling hooks and wrapping it around one of his ankles, ducking to one side to avoid the next plasma blast. Energy-wrists' eyes went wide open in shock as she reeled him in and swung him up off the ground. He let out a surprised yelp, pinwheeling his arms wildly as he reached the apex of the cord and Iron Maiden reeled him the rest of the way down, grabbing his ankle as it reached her and slamming him to the ground, stomping her foot on both his wrists as she did so and shattering the energy cannons mounted there.
He howled in pain, writhing on the ground, cradling his broken wrists against his chest. "My wrists! My–my wrists!"
Quickly, Iron Maiden kicked Energy-wrists over onto his stomach, drawing his arms together and securing them tightly behind his back before straightening up and scanning the street around her.
The Hound had regained his feet, his leash wrapped tightly around Gardur's arm and pinning the two of them together. Gardur pulled away from him, trying to escape from the Hound, only for the Hound to yank him back toward him, punching Gardur in the face and knocking him back away. A tree root emerged from the ground just behind Gardur's foot, and the Hound kicked him backward over it. Gardur tripped and stumbled, nearly falling to the ground as the leash went taut. With a growl, the Hound swung him up, over his head, and into the ground. Gardur spun around to land on his hands and feet, stumbling the landing slightly but springing at the Hound in a snarling lunge.
Iron Maiden started in that direction, only to pause as Oitokoisi let out a low whimper. Turning in that direction, she watched as two red arrows struck Oitokoisi in the shoulder and faded away to nothing. The knight stood a bit to one side, between Oitokoisi and a group of terrified civilians pinned between the barrier and an apartment building. Shaking his head, blood dripping from a half-dozen wounds, Oitokoisi barreled at the knight, who jumped out of the way, drawing another arrow from the quiver at his hip. Oitokoisi swatted wildly at him with one paw, missing by centimeters. The knight sprang up onto a parked car and fired, moments before Oitokoisi crashed into the car, rocking it back and forth. Barely keeping his balance, the knight jumped down behind the car, drawing another arrow as he did so. With a frustrated growl, Iron Maiden rose into the air and drifted toward Oitokoisi and the knight. Landing between them, she aimed one energy cannon at the knight and unloaded with a blast that caught the knight in the chest and knocked him back a step. "Stop attacking my friend!"
As the energy pulse struck, the knight released his arrow in surprise, straight at Iron Maiden's chest. Catching himself with one hand against the wall of the building behind him, he shouted, "Fide!" Acting as if it had a mind of its own, the arrow in midair curved up away from her chest and slammed into her shoulder, biting deep into the metal before fading away.
"I don't want to hurt you, Iron Maiden!" shouted the knight, another arrow materializing in his quiver. "But I will stop this monster!"
Iron Maiden scoffed. "And what the hell makes you think my friend is a monster?" she shot back, stomping toward him.
"What else could he be?" demanded the knight, swinging at her with his bow and backing away from her. "I heard this beast babbling incomprehensibly. It transformed from a human into a monster – before my very eyes!"
"And I'm flying around in a mechanical suit, and you're walking around in a suit of armor that went out of fashion 600 years ago! What's your point?" Iron Maiden raised one arm to block his bow, driving her other hand into his chest with a clang that reverberated along the street. "He's my friend! He helped us fight against the Tarasque. He's a good guy!"
The knight cocked his head to one side, looking back and forth between Oitokoisi and Iron Maiden. "Many monsters can pretend to be good…"
"Says the guy who has attacked the Heroes of the UK two days in a row."
"How do I know that you are in your right mind, that this creature isn't influencing your actions?" The knight tensed. "Believe me: I have no desire to fight you – but I will, if I must."
"You're the one starting the fight," she told him curtly. "That's all on you."
An energy pulse reverberated above her from Mecha-Man as he pushed the Bearator away from him and flew up into the air, spinning around in a tight circle and narrowly avoiding a slash from the Bearator's hand-claws. Mecha-Man let out an enraged growl, and a dozen mini-rockets launched out of his shoulders, shooting toward the Bearator but spreading out around the battlefield. One nearly struck Bandruí only for a branch of her newly-planted tree to bat it out of the air. Another hit the wall close to Electric-fist, who pulled away from the roots binding him to the wall, stumbling out of their reach before they could recapture him. The Bearator held up his arms, shielding himself from the blast radius of four of the rockets, one of which whizzed away from him, over his shoulder, and struck the building at the end of the barrier.
At that same moment, on the opposite side of the street, the Hound let out a surprised shout. Iron Maiden turned her head, just as Gardur ducked a swipe form the Hound, planted his feet, and swung around, hurling the Hound across the street. Pinwheeling his arms, the Hound barely managed to twist himself around to point his feet and avoid crashing into the civilians huddled at the base of the building… only to slam feetfirst into that same building that had been weakened by one of Iron Maiden's energy shots and Mecha-Man's rocket. The brickwork creaked and groaned as it crumbled under his weight, a low rumble passing through the building. The front wall of the building cracked, a spiderweb of fissures that expanded outward as the first floor of the wall leaned forward, right onto the group of civilians who had been huddling in front of the building. Pulling himself groggily to his feet, the Hound's eyes shot wide open in shock, and he caught a child in his leash before diving with her out of the path of the falling debris. Iron Maiden shouted, aiming her grappling hook at the others, even as she recognized that it was too late. But before she could do anything, Oitokoisi growled and shifted form back to Dhuan, covered the distance between him and the civilians in a moment, and turned back to his bear form as he reached them. He lunged, throwing himself on top of the civilians as the brickwork collapsed on top of them. Shaking his head and groaning, the Hound lunged back toward the building, just as the bricks crumbled and Oitokoisi pushed the rubble off of his back and the civilians cautiously climbed out.
The knight started. "I–why–He saved them." He turned to Iron Maiden. "Huh. Maybe you were telling the truth."
"Obviously."
He coughed awkwardly. "Right… um… sorry…" Letting out a breath, he drew three arrows from his quiver and laid them across his bow. Turning toward the barrier and the Lynchpin-ions there, he called out, "Fide!" Releasing the arrows, two struck Gardur in the shoulders, knocking him backward in surprise and pinning him to the barrier. The third arrow whipped past Mecha-Man's head and hit the Bearator in the chest. The arrow vanished on impact, moments before another arrow followed it and was slashed out of the air. Growling in fury, the Bearator backed through the hole in the barricade and vanished, as Mecha-Man shot up into the air and fired an energy pulse at his receding form.
Finally, Iron Maiden let out a breath and looked up and down the suddenly-quiet street. Placing a hand on Bandruí's shoulder, she smiled ruefully. "It's over."