Current Energy: 5
Current Training: Lesser Magic Useage (9/10)
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Stansfield Mansion, Brockton Bay
You rush through the Gap after your Master, quickly followed by Trainwreck, who barrels past you as you exit, slamming one foot down to stop his forward momentum and, consequently, splintering the hardwood flooring beneath him as he comes to a full stop, arms raised in a defensive position as he scans your surroundings.
"Fuck's going on?" He asks, just as another of the Butcher's trademark metal skewers slams into his should, denting the metal there and bouncing off of him with a flicker of burnt orange energy as Trainwrecks Aura protects him from the brunt of the blow.
"Butcher attack. I need to get the people here out of the house." Taylor says verbally while simultaneously sending you a request with your mental link.
'I need a visual. Can you two distract her?' she says.
'Maybe for a little bit.' You determine, knowing that with both you and Trainwreck, as well as Ozma to fall back on, you aren't likely to be easily overpowered by a single cape. Quickly putting thought to action you become intangible and leap upward bouncing up through a few floors until you reach the roof of the building. Then you quickly pan your vision across the surrounding area until you spot the Butcher, in her almost samurai like garb atop another residential building in the distance. It's another mansion you think. Most of the homes in this neighbourhood would easily qualify for that label. As you watch, the woman quickly leans to one side, dragging a gauntleted hand across the roof she is standing on, and somehow coming away holding another of her ridiculous 'arrows', having seemingly pulled the material to make it from the roof beneath her.
"Ready?" Your Master asks both you and Trainwreck as you drop back down through the roof to land next to her. Trainwreck snorts, lifting both his hands to pull his dirty goggles over his face, then rolls his shoulders. Taylor seems to take that as a yes, because she quickly swipes at the space in front of her with her sword, creating a new gap that you and your teammate immediately dive through.
Well. You dive through it. Trainwreck jumps. As in, goes from a standing stop to a seventy mile per hour leap as if it's nothing. Which you suppose makes sense given how Aura is likely enhancing the already ridiculous strength of his suit. Regardless, you step through the gap with your weapon drawn, and immediately duck down to allow Trainwreck to pass by overhead, like a two-ton steel ball of death.
"Butcher Three! Danger sense!" Trainwreck roars at you as he plows into the spot the Butcher was standing in, facing away from you but suddenly leaping to the left and out of the way just in time for Trainwreck to go skidding across the rooftop terrace, only to twist in the air and slam his metal arms into the rooftop hard enough to cause some drag and prevent him from flying over the edge.
You capitalize on the moment, jumping forward to thrust outward at the woman before she can rise from her evasive maneuver. Recalling the scorching blast of fire the expands outwards from her teleportation ability, you make sure to make it a probing strike, leaning forward in a fencers stance and immediately pushing back off the foot you moved forward. It works - to a degree. While your strike doesn't land, the Butcher does, as you predicted, disappear. However, the resulting blast of flame doesn't emanate from her starting position, but her endpoint, which turns out to be directly behind you.
To that end, you find your sprawling forward, your Aura flaring as the heat of the blast scorches you. The very mild awareness of your surroundings that your Aura provides you warns you that something is descending on your head from above and behind you, but you are too off-balance to adequately respond to the attack. Thankfully, Trainwreck jumps forward to stand over you, one of his arms reaching outward, swinging past overhead in an arc and causing a sharp metal on metal ringing sound as he deflects whatever the Butcher was about to do to you.
"Butcher Six. Explosive teleportation. And Super Strength but the bitch has like six of those so meh." Trainwreck mumbles to you as you get to your feet and turn back towards your enemy.
'Taylor? How much longer?' You ask quietly.
'Halfway done. There are employees all over this stupid place and some of them don't want to leave.' She answers you in frustration, even as the Butcher quickly bends down to pull another arrow from the ground, the motion quick and practiced. You can't see anything even vaguely resembling human emotion in the woman's eyes as she moves about.
Seconds tick by, and as Trainwreck stands up and adjusts his armor, you begin trying to slowly circle around behind the enemy Cape. As you do so, you begin to become angrier and angrier. This waste of resources has shown up in your home, and by her mere presence is forcing your Master to back down. The circle you've been trying to walk around the woman begins to tighten as you seethe, until you find yourself leaping bodily at her, with a snarl on your lips and your weapon forgotten.
[Emmy.] A dim voice in the back of your head warns you, as you reach forward with your fingers outstretched to gouge her eyes out. You fail of course, because of that damned danger sense, but you don't care. You know you can win. You have Aura. You can shrug any hits off. She can't.
[Emmy, you need to calm down. Something isn't right.]
You just have to persist. To hunt her until she grows tired. You know that any Parahuman that kills her becomes the Butcher, but you aren't a Parahuman. You barely even register all the yelling going on around you as you roll across the spot the Butcher was in. You completely ignore the flash of pain as she draws the metal skewer in her hands across your front, causing your aura to flare.
[I detest it, but if you persist I will be forced to take over. Please.]
It wasn't perfect. you have a thin cut across your chest and a gash in your clothes, but that's trivial. You just have to-
Suddenly you find yourself face to fist with Trainwreck, who's barreling charge manages to hit the Butcher hard enough that she goes flying away from you, vanishing at the half way point of her fall. You snarl and turn to find her, to give chase - but are held in place by a metal hand pressing your futilely struggling form against the rooftop.
"Butcher Nine. Causes mindless rage." He explains as he swivels his head around watchfully, remaining in position even as a hail of rebar spikes begin to pepper him, most of them bouncing off of his aura and armor, but some of them managing to find softer gaps in his form that cause him to wince when they deflect off of him.
Like a bucket of cold water being poured over your head, your mind snaps back to normality, and you purse your lips in distress.
"You good?" Trainwreck grumbles at you, poorly hiding his concern even has he raises his free hand to deflect a shot from his head and releases his grip on you.
"Yeah. Sorry. I'll switch out if it happens again." You say resolutely.
[Are you sure?] Ozma asks. The old man is many things, but respectful of the fact that he is dead, and you are not, is chief among them. Despite his willingness to help you, he patently detests forcefully taking control of your body - despite the fact that such a switch would be temporary at best if you really didn't want him to do so.
"Has to be done." You mumble, standing as Trainwreck looks you over.
"We don't gotta beat the bitch right? Just distract her for a bit." Trainwreck asks to which you nod.
"Grab on and go invisible. When she shows up behind me smack her, then go invisible again." Trainwreck orders, and - in lieu of an actual plan - you comply, climbing onto his car size power armor and finding to your surprise that there are a pair of handles near where his shoulder blades would be. Similarly, two small pieces of his armor jut outward hissing with steam to create footholds for you that make the position oddly comfortable for what it is. You wish you had a Butcher ward on hand. Taylor gave most of the ones she made to the PRT earlier, so she never had the chance to make more.
"Let's rock!" Trainwreck screams as you settle, pounding his hands together and turning to sprint at the Butcher some three buildings away at this point. Steam begins to pour from vents on his shoulders, angle to pass you by without burning your skin off in the scalding heat and having the interesting effect of creating a trail behind you not unlike the contrails of a passing jetliner.
You wonder for a second how he plans on getting to the Butcher fast enough to catch her before she teleports away, only to be jerked forward suddenly when he leaps the entire distance - something you are positive his armor wasn't strong enough to accomplish on its own before he got Aura.
On the one hand, the feat is very impressive. Against most sane individuals, Trainwreck is basically a human artillery shell like this. Anything he hits that doesn't innately have a Brute rating is more or less guaranteed to die instantly.
If he hits.
Which he doesn't.
With a look that seems to be a cross between rage and annoyance, the woman known as the Butcher vanishes once more from sight, causing Trainwreck to slam through into the rooftop and somehow not straight down into the basement. Which, again, should be impossible. Trainwreck weighs literal tons. He shouldn't even be able to stand on the roof without falling through it let alone impact it with that much force. You assume theres some kind of tinker bullshit going on but you can't for the life of you figure out what.
You decide to ask him later, however, because just as Trainwreck expected the Butcher explodes into existence directly above you, a skewer pointed downward, directly at the top of Trainwreck's exposed skull.
Quick as can be you appear, lashing upward at her with your own weapon. Now loudly snarling in frustration, the Butcher vanishes again, which you match just in time for Trainwreck to spin unerringly towards her position before she even reappears and leaps again.
"Get fucked bitch!" He yells as he clotheslines her sending her bouncing into the street.
"How the hell are you doing that?!" You ask, appearing still attached to his back and being forced to yell over the sound of his armor has he immediately pivots towards her and begins to give chase.
"I dunno. Fucking Aura bullshit. Tagged her when she was making you all pissy. Now I just kinda know how to get to her all the time." He says with a shrug as his arms and legs pump.
Now staring balefully at you, the armor on one of her arms have fallen off during her fall, the Butcher readies herself - and then Trainwreck stops, stumbling a few feet from reaching her and sprawling forward, his aura shining brightly against the black tarmac of the road as though trying - and failing - to protect him from something. You handily evade landing under him as he rolls by leaping off him, and manage to deflect another attack from the Butcher in the process, who instead of teleporting away, begins to dart around you, stay as close to Trainwreck as possible and quickly pushing back until it's all you can do to hold her back from landing a lethal attack on your teammate.
"Bu-Butcher- One. Causes. Pain." Trainwreck hiss out between his teeth as he writhes on the ground.
"Sho-short range." He continues, as tears begin to gather in his eyes and stream down his face. Panicking, you do the only thing you can think of.
You flick Long Memory to the side, and a whirling barrier of swirling green energy appears around you and Trainwreck. You do your best to keep it tight - enough so that there isn't any space to teleport underneath it - and then you step past it with determination.
Energy: -1
"Oz. Push her back." You say with some finality, switching places with the ancient warrior.
"I now see why comparing me to this woman makes your Taylor uncomfortable." He notes as he lunges forward, deftly weaving past the Butcher's attempted counter attack with a minimum of movement and nearly landing a blow to her skull before she vanishes.
"If you were one of my students, I would chide you for being so predictable." He continues, as a small shield of green energy appears at his back to deflect a blow that would have caved in his head, and absorbs most of the blast from the Butchers explosive teleportation.
Energy: -1
Then he steps deftly past it and slams Long Memory point first into the still airborne woman's knee so hard that it visibly bends backward, clearly broken. There is no shriek of pain or any other obvious sign that the damage is affecting the woman, but she does disappear again, reappearing some distance away standing on the broken appendage without obvious discomfort.
"[Most of my students would also recall that there is more than one of us.]" He notes idly as Trainwreck slams into her from the side, bouncing her off his shoulder and into a nearby wall.
"Get... wrecked..." Trainwreck chatters through visibly grit teeth, obviously still in significant pain. You get the impression that the woman is going to teleport away at that point, cutting her losses and possibly coming back with her gang at a later date - but a voice behind you and your unerring sense of where your Master is, quickly nix that thought. If you had control of your face currently, you'd be smiling smugly.
"Oppose, Nemesis." rings out in the street, and you are treated to the split-second image of a spidery limb touching to Butcher, like the afterimage left behind by lightning when you are too close to it.
You don't feel anything, and presumably neither does Trainwreck, but the Butcher immediately goes still, whisps of smoke building around her as though her teleportation power were working in slow motion.
"You guys know I'm going to have to pay for all of this right?" Taylor asks as she steps past you to approach the madwoman. Ozma quirks an eyebrow at her, but does take a second to note that damage to several buildings and the road that Trainwrecks passing has caused.
"Also - Get Wrecked? Is that on a T-Shirt? I feel like that should be on a T-Shirt. Do we have T-shirts?" She continues idly, one hand glowing golden as it's light washes over the man, who slumps into his armor in appreciation.
"Your dad told me that saying I'd fuck someone to death with a chain saw attachment for my junk wasn't appropriate." He answers jokingly, though he's clearly tired and still slightly hurting.
"Are you sure you're not a secret Merchant? Sometimes you almost sound like Skidmark used to." Taylor answers, stepping up to the Butcher with a frown on her face.
"Eh. 'Nother life maybe. What's the plan? You can't do that weird spidery shit for very long right?" He asks with a shrug.
"A few minutes yeah. I wanna try something." She answers lifting her sword and pointing it at the Butcher. You and Trainwreck both get alarmed looks on your faces, at the same time as the captured villain gets a maniacal gleam in her own, but all of you are confused when she jabs outward a half dozen times, swiping at the air to either side of the woman and the pausing to examine... something.
"Hey, you still crazy?" She asks, waving her khopesh lightly in the air and allowing the Butcher to move her head. A privilege she quickly abuses by screaming incoherently at Taylor.
"Gonna take that as a yes." She sighs, then reaches out with a hand to poke her in the forehead, pinky upraised.
"Skadoosh," She says absently, but with some enthusiasm, dropping her pinky finger like a guillotine and causing the Butcher to vanish from sight in a puff of golden smoke.
It is at about this point in time, that Armsmaster arrives, his usually quite loud motorcycle sparking with electricity and running almost completely silently. Without preamble, he leaps off it, just in time for Dauntless to snap into view next to him, and the pair turn to you with disapproving looks on their faces.
'On a scale from one to ten how grounded do you think I'm going to be?' Taylor asks you rhetorically.
'Forever.' You answer with a sigh.
'That answer doesn't match the criteria of the question.' She needles you in amusement.
'And yet, still the correct answer.' You note with some dark amusement.
A/N: Let it be known that this fight really didn't go the way on paper that it did in my head. Also, Trainwrecks aura is a darker orange, close to rust coloured, and his semblance is a manifestation of how simple he is. He picks something he wants and he goes for it. He doesn't think about consequences or intervening bullshit. So when he tags someone, he gets a shitty lesser path to victory that serves no other purpose but to tell him how to get from where he is, to where they are within in his limited range. It's like a Thinker version of the Juggernauts unstoppable power. If that makes sense. He also scored a solid 88 out of 100 for aura capacity, so theres that too.
Also, you're in a lot of trouble and are probably going to be grounded until the sun goes nova, so if you get fewer actions, that's on you
Full disclosure, my current work schedule has shifted because of some things, so I've suddenly been shifted around to work during the exact period of time I typically sleep. This makes staying up after work to write this, really god damn hard, so if I don't post as frequently for the next week or two, that's why. Once my circadian rhythm or whatever the hell it's called adjusts, I'll be back to my normal post rate.
Anyway, here you go, enjoy.