Echidna leaped to the side as the cannonball ripped out of the weapon. Not quite fast enough, she wasn’t able to avoid the worst of it. Three of her eight legs, all on one side of her body, were turned into flecks of gore. She hit the ground and her momentum carried her forward, skidding.
Chevalier didn’t flinch as she hurtled towards him. Instead, he waited until her trajectory brought the right part of her into harm’s way, then shot out more of her limbs. The impact of the hit brought her to a halt, spinning until her back was to him, only two of her monstrous claws intact.
A female hero threw out small ice crystals in Echidna’s direction, and they expanded explosively into virtual glaciers on impact. Maybe the intent was to give Echidna less room to regenerate.
Chevalier withdrew the twenty-five foot long blade from the ground and chopped at Noelle – the upper body that jutted out of Echidna’s back. He severed her from the monster at the stomach, turning the blade mid-swing to catch the body on the flat of the weapon. He swatted her away, separating the girl from the monster.
The impact of Noelle’s landing was enough to kill, but she didn’t die. She flailed weakly for long seconds before she started falling apart.
Echidna caught Chevalier with a tongue. He cut the tongue with his blade, and walked around her, blade poised, as if he were trying to find a place to strike.
I realized he was trying to find a way to rescue the people inside. Alexandria, Eidolon, and seventeen of the capes who’d volunteered to fight this thing. Had he directed the cannon blast with the same intent? To avoid harming the people within?
Chevalier was struck. He turned, and was hit again. He was under siege from one of the nigh-invincible clones, with the burning hands. The guy was digging his hands into a car at one side of the street, coming up with hunks of white-hot metal and flinging them.
He scraped them off, but more attacks were incoming. One cape threw a stone, and though the speed and arc of the thrown rock didn’t seem to amount to much, it shattered one of the glaciers the ice-cape had erected.
Chevalier used his cannonblade to block another rock and a lump of molten metal from striking home. From above and behind him, the woman with the ice shards began raining her attacks down on the clones, encasing them in ice.
I joined in, sending my swarm forth into the fray. They flowed from the battlefield around me, finding paths to travel between the crags of ice and the capes. Cockroaches tore into the membranes of eyes. Hornets found flesh to bite that was close to arteries and veins, stings dug into the most sensitive flesh, and ants worked together to scissor and tear flesh more efficiently.
More bugs moved in the Eidolon-clone’s direction. The flying insects faltered, their usual mechanisms for movement failing them. Then they started falling out of the air.
They were suffocating; it was a vacuum.
He’d chosen his powers, and by the looks of it, he’d dressed himself in a mirror of his other self’s costume. A costume with a black hood, loose black sleeves and a pale red-orange glow emanating from each opening.
The flickering. Was that some variant on Scapegoat’s power? More broad? Paging through realities to find the state he wanted to be in? Uninjured, dressed?
There were a lot of ugly possibilities with that one. Could he affect how he was accessing powers?
He took one step, and was carried off the ground. It wasn’t flight so much as floating. Combine that with the vacuum around him… It had to be aerokinesis. Manipulation of air.
Miss Militia took a shot at him, and he reeled. There was a flickering, and he was back in the position he’d been in a moment before, uninjured.
She changed guns, and unloaded two assault rifles in his direction.
Her hits were on target- at first. His armor absorbed the worst of it, and he undid the damage he’d taken with more flickering. The bullets gradually moved off target, grazing him instead of striking vital areas. A moment later, they stopped hitting entirely.
The effect he was using to alter their trajectories hit the rest of us a moment later. I felt Atlas’s wings beat against nothing for just a moment before we caught air again, steered him through a sudden, unexpected headwind that dissipated as fast as it had started, and then found a spare moment to pull up, putting distance between myself and the Eidolon clone.
My bugs gave me a sense of his effect’s perimeter. The storm effect had a diameter of roughly three-quarters my own range, no doubt allowing him to sense where people were by the movements of the air.
The vacuum extended roughly a hundred feet around him, the air condensing into threads that found him and flowed into his mask to sustain him. Even the clones on his side were suffering, falling to their hands and knees or running to get away. He was indiscriminate, and far more dangerous because of it.
He was approaching the battlefield where we’d engaged the clones, where many of our heroes had fallen. If the vacuum extended over them, they wouldn’t last long. I wasn’t sure what kind of effect it would have, but even the smallest push could mean the difference between life and death, and this wasn’t necessarily small.
“Rachel!” I shouted, but the wind kept my voice from reaching anyone. It didn’t matter. I could use my bugs, too, not as a collective effort, but with ten thousand voices in a hundred ears. “Rachel! Get over here and fetch the wounded! Everyone else! Get your teammates back! He’s surrounded by a vacuum!“
Heroes kicked into action, hurrying to collect the injured. Rachel was occupied trying to herd the clones at the far edges of the battlefield, but she heard my order and broke away from the skirmish.
We still had to manage those clones, though. A few Kudzu, and none of the forge-guys. If they got away-
I contacted the ice dispenser. She was trying to cover Echidna in more ice, but the wind was blowing the shards away. “Need your help to contain clones. This way.”
My bugs pointed the way. She hesitated, tried to shout something to Chevalier, but went unheard. She decided to follow my instruction, flying in the direction I’d indicated with the bugs.
Okay, so she was one of Chevalier’s people. I told Chevalier, “Your ice cape is dealing with clones.“
He only nodded. He at least knew she didn’t have his back, now.
People were moving too slowly as they dragged and carried teammates away. Worse, there were only so many able bodies. Only three or four out of every ten heroes were down, all in all, but some required two people to move, and there were those like Tecton that required enhanced strength to budge. Eidolon was getting dangerously close, now.
People screamed and shouted in alarm as Rachel reached the fallen. She barely paused as she stopped momentarily by each body, pointed, and screamed the name of one of her dogs.
“It’s okay,” I communicated, though it was getting harder with what Eidolon was doing with the air. “Rescue operation only.“
The dogs followed her instructions as much by mimicking Bentley as by anything else, it seemed. I knew they weren’t well trained, and there was a reason she didn’t bring these dogs on every excursion. It would look bad if we killed a hero in the process of rescuing them, but we were risking that simply by moving the wounded. It had been reinforced over and over in the first aid class I’d taken, never to risk moving anyone who was injured.
Then again, this wasn’t exactly a typical situation. Better to remove them from near-certain death.
With Rachel rescuing the wounded, the Eidolon-clone didn’t have any easy targets in reach. Instead, he turned and floated toward Echidna. Ice was chipped and whittled away by what must have been sharp blasts and currents of condensed wind, with fragments flying toward him, twisting in mid air and whipping back at the chunks of ice they’d come from, helping to chip away. Enough cracks formed that Echidna could use her two remaining limbs to leverage herself to her feet.
The meaty, frost-crusted ruins where her legs had been blown away by Chevalier were healing over, bulging where muscle and bone were growing wi
thin the stump. Bone penetrated the flesh where her claws and armor were.
And on top, Noelle was already more or less regrown, her arms wrapped around her upper body in a straightjacket of flesh, her eyes closed and face turned toward the sky.
Chevalier took aim and shot, and the cannonball veered in midair, slamming into Echidna instead of Eidolon’s clone. One of Echidna’s growing limbs was destroyed, but so was the glacier that had encased it.
The Eidolon hit Chevalier with a focused blast of wind, and the hero went flying, the air in the Eidolon’s range shifting to reduce resistance and carry him further.
Chevalier was out of my range before he hit ground.
Legend and Alexandria still fought above us. I could, when he passed into my range, note how he got faster the longer he flew, giving him the ability to put distance between himself and Alexandria, but he couldn’t stop to take aim and shoot without losing that acceleration and giving her a chance to close the gap.
The result was that he was flying in loops and circles, using the turns to find opportunities to take aim and fire on her. She dodged most, but the hits that did land bought him distance and time to stop and laser down clones who were attempting to escape.
If any of them slipped away, it could be disastrous. One clone could track down their original self’s family and murder them, or even go after innocent civilians. My bugs were blinding them, finding weak points, but there were some that my bugs couldn’t touch that Legend was succeeding in taking out, like the forge-man.
Myrddin was below Legend and Alexandria, recuperating from holding Echidna at bay. He took to the air, flying up to Echidna and the Eidolon-clone from behind.
He pointed his staff at the Eidolon, and his target disappeared.
The air the Psycho-Eidolon had compressed expanded all at once, sending Myrddin flying off course and Echidna rolling sideways, over a line of parked cars. For the moment, the vacuum was gone.
Myrddin set himself down on the ground. He wasn’t using his power against Echidna or the clones, which suggested that his reserves were low.
The Eidolon-clone reappeared. He turned and spotted Myrddin. The two started fighting, the Eidolon trying to close the gap and trap Myrddin in his vacuum, which was considerably smaller in area than before, but growing every second. He hampered the self-professed wizard’s flying with headwinds and gusts, and sharp blasts of wind that Myrddin deflected or dodged. Myrddin, for his part, attacked relentlessly, pummeling the Eidolon with explosions of energy alternating with scattered releases of whatever he managed to suck in while close to the ground.
Echidna was mending, and with Chevalier down and our heavy hitters more or less out of the running, I wasn’t sure we could stop her.
We needed to stall.
One tinker had machines rigged on the ground, with forcefields erected in layers, one behind the other, five between himself and Echidna. I’d glimpsed him at work before, knew it wouldn’t hold if she really hit the things. They were dangerous or lethal to the touch, if the experiences of my swarm was any indication, but little more than an annoyance for Echidna.
The ice cape was back, having dealt with the clones. She began laying down more glaciers around Echidna, but with the monster being more able-bodied than before, it was only a temporary barrier.
We needed something more effective.
My eyes roved over the fallen, both those that had been rescued and the ones that still lay on the ground, injured or dead. Weld had Kid Win and Scapegoat, and I recognized Browbeat dragging Tecton behind him. He must have joined another team in another city, only to find himself accompanying them in a return trip to Brockton Bay.
No. This wasn’t a case where we needed brute force. Echidna was liable to win any case of hand-to-hand combat that wasn’t against a full-on Endbringer.
Maybe she could even come out ahead in a close-quarters fight against the likes of Leviathan or the Simurgh, if she was capable of absorbing them.
Scary thought.
I recognized so few of the capes around me. There was a girl who was emanating red lightning that wasn’t harming the allies she struck, apparently accelerating them to a faster speed instead. I had seen her somewhere, but had no idea who she was. A boy was fading in and out of reality, grabbing capes and then disappearing with his rescuee in tow. He’d reappear a moment later, a few paces away, before fading out of existence. He wasn’t teleporting, he merely wasn’t here when he was walking, some of the time.
Rachel arrived with a number of fallen capes in tow. I flew low to the ground and helped lower them to the nearest solid surface. One dog had bitten too firmly, not knowing its own strength, cracking body armor and maybe a rib. I didn’t mention it – it was obvious enough that people would catch on before he was in terminal danger, but we didn’t need people turning on Rachel or getting distracted from the matter at hand. The man was alive, and that was better than if he’d been caught in the vacuum.
Psycho-Eidolon went on the offensive against Myrddin, shoving the hero against a wall and then holding him there by pummeling him with repeated blasts of wind. The Eidolon got close enough to catch Myrddin in the vacuum, and the bugs I had on Myrddin started to perish with surprising speed.
Myrddin, for his part, stopped fighting entirely, trying only to escape. The Eidolon caught him and knocked the staff from his hand, then pinned him against the wall, choking him with the vacuum. I knew it was supposed to take around two minutes to suffocate, but that presumed one was able to hold some air in their lungs.
Myrddin’s struggles were getting weaker by the second, almost from the instant he was in the Eidolon’s range.
The Eidolon’s grip slipped from Myrddin’s neck and he careened into the ground, hard. Again, air billowed out around him, thrusting Myrddin into the wall once more, but supplying him with much needed air.
I could see Regent, turned towards that particular bout of fighting. Had he been responsible?
It wasn’t enough to revive Myrddin. He fell to the ground, only a short distance from the Eidolon, and slumped down into a prone position. One hand pressed against his chest, and he went limp.
The Psycho-Eidolon stood, and Miss Militia opened fire, joined by several other capes. The Eidolon was driven back, forced to flicker to recover from the blasts. Again, his armor was absorbing the impacts. It would be the best stuff money could buy, if it was a functional copy of what his other self wore, and it was healing every time he did.
Then, as before, he found a way to divert the incoming fire away from himself. The bullets and laser blasts stopped, no doubt because the heroes didn’t want the Eidolon redirecting any of their fire towards Myrddin.
My bugs flowed in, carrying a length of cord. I bound the Eidolon’s neck as he walked up to Myrddin’s unconscious form, but there wasn’t anything significant to tie the cord to. I chose a car’s side-mirror.
He stopped short, a pace away from the fallen hero, then flickered. The cord came free of his neck as though he weren’t even there, and he bent down over Myrddin. I swore under my breath and tried to bind him again, knowing how ineffectual it would be at this point.
It was Wanton who moved to stop the Eidolon, turning into a virtual poltergeist, with debris and dust flying around him. He barely slowed as Eidolon directed a blast of wind his way.
The Eidolon flickered, and a knife with a wavy blade appeared in his hand. Before Wanton could reach him, he gripped Myrddin’s mask, raised the hero’s chin towards the sky, knife held ready.
His hand convulsed, and he dropped the knife. Regent.
An instant later, he flickered, rendering his hand untouched, the knife back in position. He thrust it into the soft underside of Myrddin’s chin.
Wanton hit him a moment later, tearing the dagger from the Eidolon’s hand and using it to cut and bludgeon the clone.
Myrddin was dead or dying, I couldn’t even guess if Chevalier was okay or not, and two of the three members of the Triumvirate had been turned against
us. We were swiftly running out of big guns.
The red lightning girl hurried past me, helping mobilize a group of heroes with more wounded. We had maybe forty to fifty capes on our side, with twenty that were no longer in any shape to fight.
I saw Gully with two heroes cradled against her body with one arm, the other arm holding her shovel, planting it in the pavement like it was a walking stick.
One of the heroes was Clockblocker. The face of his mask had been shattered, revealing the softer padding beneath. I didn’t recognize the other cape, a guy with green dyed hair and a domino mask.
“Stop,” I told her. “Is he okay?”
“Ramus is, but I think the clock boy is going to die,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at the Psycho-Eidolon. He’d broken away from Wanton, and was working on mending the damage, one part of his body at a time.
If there was a limitation to his self-heailng, it was that. It was healing by degrees, weaker against all-around damage. If my bugs could have gotten to him, that might have done some damage, but they’d have to get past his armor, which looked like the all-concealing sort, and there was the not-insignificant matter of the vacuum.
“Clockblocker,” I said. “You there?”
He turned his head toward me. I could barely make him out over the wind. “You’re still here.”
What did he mean by that? Was he surprised that I was still alive? That I hadn’t run? I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Craved a fight,” the words reached me despite the winds that were tearing across the battlefield. It wasn’t my bugs speaking, either. “I hoped you’d challenge me.“
Eidolon. He was echoing his sentiment from earlier, that had driven him to fight Echidna alone, except it was twisted, warped, the original reasoning forgotten.
“Do I need to get you angrier? Do I need to push you harder? I could torment you, inflict pain on your teammates until you’re forced to throw all caution to the wind and come at me with everything you’ve got. Or I could attack you on another level. Would you like me to tell you a story?“
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