Ascent 2.9
As I stabbed the kukri into the sole of the assassin's shoe, something stabbed up through the floor nearby. A hand, gauntleted, the size of a dog and gripping on a support beam. A beam that went right under us, one that was buckling as one of the Twins used it as leverage to do something downstairs.
"Newter, you're up. Skitter, window, I'll get you outside." I had maybe a minute left on Press and then I was essentially out, unless I wanted to Torch. I would if I had to.
The floor creaked as we ran to the broken window. Outside, a mess awaited. Bitch was on the sidelines, but the lot outside the warehouse was a burning, tangled mess of twisted blades and torn, melted asphalt. The dogs were prowling the periphery of the big warehouse next door, and Lung was starting to get big, from what glimpses I got through the burning structure.
"Don't fight or I'll lose grip, " I warned Skitter quickly, then hoisted her through the frame. I set her down near Bitch, and turned to Newter.
"He down?"
"Hard to tell," he admitted. "I think I got skin through the cut, but…"
"Be ready, then. He shouldn't have a knife anymore, but he might have some other tricks."
He nodded, rubbing the bloody area where his wound had been. I raised my Stun-Gun, tightening my finger to the trigger.
"Orb Pondered Successfully," I shouted, feeling incredibly stupid at the deactivation phrase I'd chosen.
Rolled 18-2+8=24/20. Hit.
The hardlight field flickered and disappeared, the projector clanging to the floor. A bolt of Stun-gun lit up the figure who stumbled out of it, and the moment after that, a bloody hand slammed the spasming cape into the warped flooring hard enough to snap a tooth off the oni mask.
Newter backflipped over him, landing opposite me. We waited with bated breath for an explosion of ash. Then a few more seconds to be sure.
"Grab him and let's go," I said as the building rocked from another clash.
"We're taking him?" Newter asked incredulously.
"Which would you rather, we turn him over to the PRT and deny the fuckers an assassin, or we leave him here to either get back up with a grudge or die an ignoble death by Kaiser saying 'Whoops, I thought he was a clone'?"
The corner of the room sagged, smoke pouring through the cracks.
"Fine," he grumbled, tossing the cape over his shoulder and bounding out the window. Gathering the projector unit in a football carry, I glanced at the stairs, dangerously close to the sagging, burning corner, then at the window. Not worth a teleport, if I even had one in the tank.
Fuck, this might hurt a bit.
Fell 4.5m, rolled 4 for fall damage.
Luck Save: Rolled 20 vs. 14. Pass. Damage halved to -2 HP, 10/12 remaining.
I landed in a roll I never would have pulled off in my previous life, though not so perfect that I didn't feel some potential bruising on my back. Back on my feet from the maneuver, I started sprinting away from the battle like my life depended on it, following Newter back to Labyrinth.
A crash of metal behind me made me look. Kaiser stood before a massive glowing cage of steel, molten droplets scattering across the pavement, two valkyries towering even above that. Skitter stood nearby with Bitch, her dogs standing vigil. Lung tore free of the cage a moment later, a line of ragged flesh already sealing from hip to shoulder, his neck long and sinuous, wings on his back.
"You're an animal, Lung," Kaiser said in an announcer's voice, raising more blades even as Lung shattered them with casual swipes. "Even without your powers making you into… this. Your people, animals. Your cause, inhuman."
I heard screams, and let myself come to a stop.
"Kaiser, no!" Skitter shouted.
He turned and said something I couldn't make out, even as a shaft of sharpened metal shot across from one wall to the other, impaling lung and throwing him to the side as the twins moved in to stab and slash at him.
I knew how this had gone down in the book. Sundancer's solar orb thing could overpower Lung long enough for Kaiser to think he had a killing blow, then things would go south. Sundancer wasn't here, though, and Lung was already too powerful to simply put a blade in his heart and run. In less than a minute, he'd be capable of flight, and already he was capable of melting steel in seconds with a blast of flame.
Goddamn my bleeding heart, but I couldn't force myself to walk away yet. I had some ordnance left, and this war needed to end.
I checked the holoprojector. It was low on charge, but it had a minute or two left in it. I selected an option and slipped it back into my pack.
"Let's Do Launch," I commanded, reaching over my shoulder to grab the fake gun. Not a traditional grenade launcher, either; this was an homage to the more zany side of Saint's Row, a cartoonishly wide flared barrel with completely pointless doohickeys, pipes and attachments. Leet made the model custom, and it could theoretically fire anything you could put down the barrel, albeit not very far.
I grabbed one of the three beer bottles on my belt, not much caring which one it was, and ran over, yelling, "Fenja, Menja, get clear!"
That turned out to be a bad decision, as Lung took the moment of distraction to break loose of the new cage. They backed off quicker when they saw the glowing gun in my hands, though.
"Kaiser, hold him!"
"Gladly," he said, as a wave of serrated steel rose from every surface around Lung. I waited just a beat, hoping I'd gotten everyone else out of the blast radius, and fired.
Rolled 15-2+10=23/20. Hit.
The fake molotov soundlessly left the barrel in an arc, sailing towards Lung. He scoffed, I think, and backhanded it to the side, his hands coated in white-hot flame as he melted his way through the steel as fast as it came.
There was a sound like a zipper unraveling, and Lung's arm disintegrated. The flash-frozen chunks clattered and hissed in the heat as they bounced off the brittle quenched steel.
Lung's face was anything but easy to read, but I got the sense he was almost confused. "'akuha?" he grumbled, twisting his neck to face me, even as Kaiser renewed his attempts to give Lung a tracheotomy. "'ill ooo," he said as things clicked into place, and I hurried to grab another bomb.
He moved, like the barriers of steel were made of tissue paper, not fast but simply unstoppable. Bitch whistled, her dogs getting even bigger and charging in, and I grit my teeth. That wasn't going to hold Lung, and only one of my two remaining reclaimed bombs was nonlethal enough to use near them. It cost me precious moments to see which one I'd grabbed, teleport-cantrip it back into its spot, and grab the other, backpedaling as I did, while Lung threw aside Angelica like a judo master and batted Kaiser aside with a swipe of his tail.
Rolled 20-2+10=28/20. Critical Hit!
The second bomb left the barrel moments after he knocked Brutus aside, and by some twisted miracle, struck the rampaging monster right in his stupid mouth as he started to roar out some pithy line to murderize me by. Instead, he choked, stumbling in his charge as his remaining arm grabbed at his throat, claws digging into the bulge. I realized he was going to try to tear his own throat out to be rid of the bomb-
Then a claw slipped or something, breaking the bottle, and Lung vomited blood and rapidly blooming petals of pink crystal. In a second, the shards were engulfing his head from within, bulging out his throat in uneven clumps, feeding off heat to grow and leaving just enough gaps that if it wasn't inside you, you'd still have air. Even when Bakuda did nonlethal, it was all about location.
"We need to knock him out!" I yelled, hoping Skitter might think of something, or that Newter would come rushing in. I loaded the last bottle as Lung vomited up more blood and crystal, his arm already grown back to the elbow and his beady eyes full of hate.
"Don't make me use this one, Lung," I warned. "You'll wish it could've killed you, I swear."
Persuade Check(Wis): rolled 8+1 vs. difficulty 12. Fail.
Morale Check: Lung rolls 9 vs. Threshold 12. Pass.
Lung snorted and shook, shattering the crystal again and forcing his body off the ground. Another wave of shards and blood came up, more blood than shards by the end. His wings flared, and I raised the launcher.
He snorted again, blinking. Stumbled. "Ut oo do?" he asked, trying to take a step and unbalancing.
I grinned under my balaclava, realizing what happened. "I bet on the girl who beat you last time," I told him as he collapsed.
He groaned, struggled, and began to shrink as consciousness left him.
"Skitter! I yelled, glancing around but keeping the launcher leveled at Lung. "Go get Newter, have him bring Lee and tell him we need his knockout mojo. Is Kaiser still with us?"
As Skitter ran by, one of the twins came up, carrying the limp form of their leader over her shoulder. Her sister, whose arm had shattered at some point by the looks of things, was sitting on the other. "He's still breathing," she confirmed.
I reached into my pack with my left hand, floating the Lazarus Patch into my grip with a little tactile TK, and tossed it to her. "Take this, use it if his heart stops before Othala can get to him. My team owe the Undersiders for the shit with Bakuda. Hook wants to start shit with them, consider this their payment, got it?"
Persuade Check(Cha): Rolled 9+0 vs. difficulty 8. Pass.
She passed the comically small packet up to her sister. "What does it do?"
"It stabilizes dying people, instructions on the label. Now get going before you have to use it, because if he dies before you get him back, I have footage that I did my part to stop it!" Wasted on the piece of shit, but maybe it'd buy me something in the way of goodwill.
The giantess nodded, turning away, loading her passengers into one hand as she grew and broke into a jog.
"Bitch, are your dogs okay?" I called over, finding her near the fallen Angelica.
She didn't answer, but she didn't seem very hurried. She was cutting at it, I realized. I vaguely recalled that at some point in the transformation, the actual dog was contained in a sac of some kind. I considered offering her my kukri, but Skitter returned with Newter before I could. Labyrinth wandered behind the two, eyes distant through the mask.
"Holy shit," he swore, taking in the still-receding form of Lung. "I can't believe you got him."
"Thanks to you," Skitter said. "I mashed some dead caterpillar in the blood you left upstairs, jammed it in his throat while he was throwing up. Can you dose him harder, keep him out long enough for the PRT?"
Newter dumped Oni Lee down next to his boss, and spat into a hand before rubbing it on Lung. "Probably, yeah. Somebody call them yet?"
I cracked open the breech of the holographic launcher, carefully unloading the bottle as they hashed that out.
ABB Asset Destruction Complete(5/7, 6/7, 7/7). 1,500 xp.
Cape Combat Cleared. 1,200 xp.
Level Up!
Fire lanced through my skull as new pathways forked off old ones, giving me an instant migraine as metadimensional power swelled its boundaries within the fragile meat computer I kept in there.
Fuuuuuuuuuuck you, other me. Nearly made me drop the bomb.
Processing Quest Rewards...
On the upside of everything, I walked away from the most stressful night of my life with a literal bag of money, which I bet would look good on the edit. I couldn't bring myself to be happy with the results, even though I knew, objectively, I had every right to. I'd made a difference somehow, despite everything that should have said I was dead meat. It had taken most of the tricks and contingencies I had prepped, cost me some tinkertech grenades I hadn't been able to replicate yet, but that was chump change by comparison to the opposition.
It was still eating at me. This night, these events? They should've happened two days ago, on the first night of the alliance. It getting butterflied away entirely was one thing, but delayed two days? That was two days where the ABB had no cape presence in the field, two days where Lung could've found a good fight and healed up. Something was wrong, very wrong, and I couldn't tell if it was Real Me being a dick, or things beyond my control moving in ways I couldn't predict, well before I expected.
I had one suspicion, though. When I'd fired the first grenade, Lung hadn't reacted how I expected. He hadn't immediately raged, or looked all that angry, when he thought it was betrayal by his pet tinker. He'd seemed almost… confused.
Lee, I could understand his absence. He was loyal to Lung, and Lung hadn't gone on the attack from day one for some reason. In the book, Bakuda hadn't gone out because she was making the EMP to end all EMPs, so her absence could be that… but part of me wondered, and worried, all the way back to the workshop and well into my sleep.