The whole gang's here. You know what that means? It means the risk/benefit assessment of trying to pull your weight here just changed drastically and you're more than happy to take the easy way out there, holding down the fort as long as you did is probably gonna haunt you for a week.
First step, slicing the cables away from the monster's other ear to cut off the flow of electricity. The other half of your impromptu fence fizzles out, the cables reeling back into your suit to shave precious seconds off the blade reconstruction timers. You make a break for it the moment you can, more than a little leery of touching the monster orb again after the shock it gave you. To your relief it gives a plaintive "mraa!" and begins rolling in hot pursuit, bouncing like a rubber ball wherever it must gain height over the broken ground.
You have to cross Jae-yoon's path to get to Florence. He's busy swinging a monster around in circles by the legs, picking up speed until when he finally lets go the snarling, flailing thing goes sailing through the air like he fired it from a cannon. It makes it all the way to the centre of the lot, where the swirling tear in reality that brought these creatures here in the first place still sits. It collides with the very edge of the tear, the lashing flame-like border of ethereal blue light, and it just sort of... parts. Sliced in two at the waist like a piece of wood passed through a laser cutter, no resistance in the flesh and bone and chitin to be found. It's enough to make your stride hitch, your stomach do a somersault. In that moment of hesitation Jae-yoon turns to look at you, no doubt to question the next step in your master plan, and that gives you the surge of energy you need to keep running. He probably sees you aiming for Florence, because no questions come hurled at your retreating back.
You find Florence sitting behind a couple overturned slabs of concrete, barely enough to conceal her shoulders and most of her head from the horde but the fig leaf is probably good enough for her. She's panting, sweat shining across her brow, dusty staff resting across her knees as she twists her head around to keep an eye on the fight. She does a double-take when she notices you approach.
"What happened to the fence?" she barks as you squat beside her.
"It was sort of working and then Katarina sort of- sort of crushed it," you reply awkardly.
"It would be her," Florence mutters. "Forget it, the others can clean up from here. We've had worse jobs. What about you, what're you doing?"
"W-well I saw you got hurt so I just wanted to come check if it was serious or-"
The rotund beast that has silently rolled up beside you gives another bounce, making a noise somewhere between the kissy noises of a mouse and the chirrup of a cat. Florence's gaze flicks between it and you repeatedly, probably about as lost for words as you are.
"-also to give your thing back," you add weakly. "Can I see your leg?"
She obligingly sticks out her leg, the better to avoid having to talk about the round furry elephant in the room. You hold your hand over the rip in her pants and your palm prickles as the nanomachines seethe and reconstruct. First there's extra weight, a little like the holoprojector MD uses to talk out loud, and the affected area is bathed in scrolling blue scanlines. You blink rapidly as the results appear on your visor in realtime like X-ray vision, breaking Florence's leg down into its component parts like running diagnostics on a computer. There's so much information you almost miss the glittering, silvery cloud of nanomachines that flows down from your palm and in through the rip to make direct contact with the wound. Florence winces, but she doesn't pull her leg away.
"Assessment: deep pre-tibial laceration." MD intones in your ear. It shows you the scan results too, like you're supposed to make any damn sense of them. "Patient has suggested accelerated healing and greater-than-baseline durability, veracity unconfirmed. Healing will be slow as blood supply to affected area is poor - recommend minimal walking and bedrest with injured leg elevated."
"(Some of those aren't really realistic right now!)" you hiss.
"What?" Florence asks. You whip your head around, eyes wide as dinnerplates behind the visor.
"U-uh just talking to MD sorry," you reply hurriedly. "It's just saying you should try not to move much because it'll be, uh, slow to heal, not that we know how fast you heal if you do heal fast, just saying-"
"It's fine, my pets can mop up for me," Florence mercifully cuts you off, her lips set in a grim slash. "Trust me, you do this long enough, you learn to feel out the flow of things." She tilts her head slightly. "You must've been paying pretty good attention to see me get this scratch. Figured you'd wait to play nurse after all this was done."
"Well... when my swords break they need a bit to reforge so I sort of had some free time," you say haltingly.
"Fair." She nods over your shoulder. "Your swords are done."
"What?" Your twist your head all the way around like a buffoon instead of checking your visor. Sure enough, three more golden arrowheads are floating behind your back. "Oh, thanks."
You thrust your hand over her head and those same arrowheads go flying through the air, razored edges keening like wet glass, and embed themselves in the hulking chimera currently bearing down on the two of you. It staggers back, letting out a piping mixed-up cry of agony as it paws at its chest, and finally topples over backwards with a resounding thud. Another gesture brings them up out of the corpse and sends two of them back to join the last line of defence behind Jae-yoon - you aren't fucking with whatever is going on down at Katarina's side of things.
"Aaaare- how are you feeling, does it- anywhere else hurting or...?" you say haltingly. Jesus Christ you'll kill more people than monsters with this bedside manner.
She lets out a dry chuckle. "I'm in pain but I'll live, leave it alone for now. Run a sweep, would you? See if there's anybody left who didn't get a chance to run."
"Okay, I'll- okay. You just- yeah." You snap upright and back away before you can embarrass yourself in front of her any further.
The horde doesn't seem quiet as infinite as it did a few moments ago. The arrival of the rest of the team has pretty definitively broken the back of the 'invasion force', the tear disgorging no fresh waves of slavering predators or pitiless killbots for one final push. The acrid, battery-acid-and-burnt-rubber stink of alien blood and gore hangs heavy in the air, no doubt enough to make you sick if your helmet wasn't doing such a good job filtering the worst of it. A thick layer of concrete dust clings to everything else like ashes, dyeing the world a lifeless grey where it doesn't mix with blood into a tacky green-black paste. As you watch you see Florence's killer bird coming in for a 'bombing run', carpeting the rubble with rippling 'slashes' of razor-sharp air that harry the monsters and drive them inward toward her tiger-wolf thing. The lightning orb, for its part, seems to be tuckered out and dozing beside her.
The others are no less impressive for how they're handling the no-longer-an-onslaught. Jae-yoon's fists and feet land with the kind of meaty, booming thwack sounds you'd think would require professional foley work to achieve, the ethereal blue flames wreathing his body lagging just far enough behind his lightning-quick movements you can almost spy afterimages in his wake, like the end of a hard shift when your vision starts ghosting. He's fighting a towering, monstrous fly-creature straight out of a Cronenberg nightmare, but he's got a plan. It involves the new piece of rebar he just picked up, this one with a nice big lump of concrete still stuck on the end like a macehead. Caio seems to have slowed down his killfest somewhat, picking and choosing his targets as he slowly spirals toward the tear like a shark trying to herd a school of fish somewhere more favourable. His talons and fangs are wet and dripping with alien blood, his own body marred by dozens of cuts and scrapes that are healing over like melting tar before your eyes, and it's hard to tell from this distance but you're pretty sure he's got more eyes than last time you saw him - and in different places too. And Katarina, of course, is still putting doing her best to literally curbstomp the mech despite the unending list of logistical problems its sheer size creates there. Her every failed attempt pulverises the street into something increasingly close to a fine powder, and the constant shockwaves of impact make trying to intervene as daunting a topic as trying to handle that thing yourself. You decide to ignore her and hope that all just sort of... resolves itself at some point.
As far as the ordinary people caught in the event, though, to your relief it looks like pretty much everyone managed to run away thanks to Florence's early arrival (and maybe you did a bit too). In fact, as you send your spare blades zipping across the rubble and bouncing MD's scanner signal off them like light on mirrors you don't find anybody left except-
Except one person, huddled just about where you woke up yesterday.
You look left and right, as if looking for a sign. All you get is Florence shooting you a pained, squinting look, probably beginning to wonder why you haven't moved. You fix your eyes forward again, staring at the pulsating blue silhouette highlighted on your HUD. Person. It's a person and being a superhero means saving people. It doesn't matter they're sitting on top of the one place you never want to go again, this is the job and you signed up for the job and now's the time to do it. Your legs twitch. You lean forward, all but swinging your arms to try and lurch yourself to life. You grimace, teeth gritted and bared beneath the helmet.
Precious seconds. Precious, maybe life-or-death seconds, lost for no reason. In the end it's more about riding the wave of apprehension and diving headlong into the trough between the peaks as one might steer the Argo through the Clashing Rocks. You set off at a stumbling, ungainly run, flailing and windmilling your arms for balance as you dart over the broken ground and slip between the ongoing battles. The closer you draw to the mystery survivor the louder the voice in your head gets; don't look at the blood don't look at the blood don't look at the blood-
You keep your eyes laser-focused on the silhouette for fear of catching the bloodstain in your peripheral vision. Maybe it's gone by now anyway? Blood oxidizes pretty fast after all but then again there'd still be a stain- nope not important keep your head in the game Alex. You crouch down beside whoever it is, ever wary of being blindsided by some new flavour of hellbeast, and give the authority of a superhero a shot.
"E-excuse me?" Swing and a miss. The helmet means nobody can see you wince. "It's still dangerous here, if you're not injured I should move you t-"
"It's you, isn't it!? Oh thank God!" The shape bolts upright and you lurch away unconsciously, throwing out a hand to steady yourself against a nearby pile of rubble. The person formerly huddled up behind what looks like it used to be an exercise bike and half an outdoor dining set has one of those faces that makes him look not so much like an adult as a tall child that looks terrible, his dusty clothes half clinging to his skinny frame by sweat and half hanging off like they're all a size too big. His dark, frizzy hair is caked in dust, sweat-slick tracks of olive skin visible beneath the pale concrete dust, and his brown eyes are bright with desperation
"Wh-what...?" you stammer, eyes darting every which way beneath your impassive helmet until your brains stop rattling long enough to focus on some real details. First of all the bandage on his forehead that was probably sparkling clean before a couple minutes ago. It confuses your stress-addled mind and makes your thoughts chase themselves in circles as you seriously wonder 'wait did i do that and forget about it already' before your gaze drops to his chest and things finally make sense. Because there's a press card hanging around his neck by a dirty blue lanyard, the plastic cover smudged but still legible. Jacob Ward, reporter. Channel 32.
It can't be. There's no way he's the same-
The man's eyes dart just a little to the side, his face growing paler at what he sees behind you. You whirl around, sidestepping to put yourself in front of him and throwing out your hand in the same motion. It's an artless, ungainly maneuver but it works, pretty dramatically. Your three spare blades spin like sawblades as you sweep them in an arc before you, decapitating the monstrous, three-headed, eel-like creature that was preparing to make a snack of the two of you. Bright alien blood sprays, mostly on you which is a comfort(?), and when you turn around again the reporter seems none the worse for wear.
In fact he has his phone out.
Oh god.
"H-hey I don't think you should-" you start weakly.
"I'm sorry I know it seems insensitive but I promise it's important I document everything that- nevermind that now!" The journalist lowers his phone to look you in the 'eye'. "I don't know what's going on here or why you're back but right now that's not important. I- I- I was there and I saw a body and now- now look at you!" He gestures at you in an all-encompassing fashion. "I don't know if Paragon gave you his power or gave you a super-suit, whatever he did we need it now, the window's closing fast."
"Saw- Paragon- what window!?" you exclaim, voice cracking as the pressure builds beneath your forehead like your brain's sprung a leak.
"I don't have time to explain everything right this second!" he replies, casting frantic looks at the tear after every other word. "I got here maybe forty-five minutes ago and I bumped into a woman on the way - not a construction worker, she said she was here to see the damage, didn't live far away. The team chased me off to work so I started interviewing her and- everything happened so fast but I'm telling you, I know what I saw. She was taken, not killed."
"Taken?" You whip your head around, doing one quick sweep of everything you can see as if half-expecting a woman's corpse to pop out at you and prove the man wrong on the spot. You mostly see Jae-yoon and Caio doing mop-up on the last few stragglers, Florence's tiger-wolf slipping beneath her to carry her, and a lot of inarticulate punching from Katarina as she demolishes the mech and most of the street in the process. The last of those you especially don't want to think about right now, so you bring your gaze back to the reporter quickly. "How can she have been 'taken', monsters don't just... 'take' people!"
"Look, I caught some of it while I was filming, here-"
It's not exactly watertight. There's all sorts of excuses you could make, peering into that scratched screen at the many-limbed, spindly, chitinous creature that goes scuttling away from Ward and back through the portal like it has someplace to be. But you see the woman under one of its arms; not all of her, a clean front-on view where you have to look in her eyes and see the face of the woman lost as far from home as anyone could possibly get, but enough. Enough that you swear you can see her legs still kicking, her small frame still squirming, as she and her captor vanish through the tear and out of sight.
"I promise you, sure as I'm seeing you standing in front of me right now, she was alive when that thing took her through the tear." Ward gestures toward the tear with his phone. "Maybe she still is now."
Your stomach twists into an icy knot. You feel cold beads of sweat rolling down your skin inside the helmet. The sounds of fighting seem so far away now as you stare at the tear, that swirling kaleidoscoping portal into God-knows-where that may just contain a person. A person that could still be alive, still breathing, but not for long. Not unless someone helps her.
"(MD, can- is it possible?)" You hiss as quietly as you can, head tilted away from the reporter.
"Unknown. There are any number of reasons why a predator from an adjacent sphere may wish to bring a meal back to its den for later consumption. However some incursion events, like this one, are known to exhibit a 'berserking' effect on the xenoforms that pass through. I would need more data to determine why only one was captured," MD replies. "If you are asking me if the environment beyond the tear would support human life; unknown. I lack the instruments to assess such things from this side of the tear."
It doesn't need to add the extra bit you know damn well was coming. The bottom of a lake and the surface of the sun both fail to 'support human life', but one of those kills you a hell of a lot faster than the other. If she's not dead already, every second wasted could be her last. You try to breathe deep, try to keep yourself centered even as whatever simulacrum of a heart MD stuck in your chest to tide you over keeps thump-thump-thumping away just as fast and hard as the real one should be. If someone asked you what was off about it, what was wrong about it, you'd never be able to pick it out. But you know it's wrong. This panic, this fear, only reminds you of what you've already lost. The unpayable debt you already owe. You feel a dull pressure over your left pectoral. It takes you a second to realise that you're squeezing, claws digging into the nanomaterial so deeply you can feel it on your bare skin, just a hair below the sharper sting of breaking skin.
"S-stay- get back, s-somewhere on the street maybe," you say haltingly, staggering over your words like your tongue is as weak and wobbly as your legs. Ward nods and finally scarpers, off to hide behind a car or something, probably keep filming too but you don't care about that right now. You just shuffle in a circle, gesturing to recall all your blades. The subtle extra weight as they slot into their grooves on your back is a little comforting.
The team come to you, thank god. Scattered to the four corners of the lot trying to fight the shitfight into something approaching manageable, now convening near the very tear that started it all. They regard it as one might a sinkhole - notable, but not their problem. Not any more. Caio, fully healed, is picking something from between his teeth with a shard of splintered alien bone the size of a dagger. Jae-yoon seems to be winding down after whatever it was he was doing, his knuckles so caked in layers of drying alien blood it's hard to tell if they took any actual damage from the myriad blows. Florence is riding sidesaddle on the back of her huge tigerwolf, staff collapsed and held in the crook of her elbow. Katarina is the last to join the huddle, throwing her jacket back on and stretching idly.
"Well that was annoying," she grumbles. "Asshole barely even put up a fight, just took forever to kill."
"Yeah, the crater where Jefferson used to be thanks you for your service," Florence says dryly.
"Bite me, princess."
"No, she's right and you know it," Jae-yoon cuts in sternly. "You were completely out of line, you should've asked for help before you went throwing that thing around the city-"
"Oh come on, this is a Shaw Industries joint, it's one of the few blocks in this shithole that'll actually get fixed after this all dies down-"
"We're not done!" you blurt out. It's all you could think of to get their attention quickly. Now all eyes are on you - more eyes than there should be courtesy of Caio - and if it weren't for your helmet you'd probably die on the spot. You swallow, hard, anxiety rising from your gut to your gullet like a rocket taking off but you lurch forward to head it off at your lips. "There was a- someone- I saw a video- one of them took someone through! A-a person! We have to get her!"
Everything's so very, very quiet. None of them say anything. Your eyes dart from person to person to person until, at last, it's Jae-yoon that speaks.
"Slow down. What do you mean 'get her'?"
"I- g-get her. Go through and get her. We can, right?" you turn to each of them, desperately scanning their stony faces for some sign of support. "Th-the tears go both ways, if we just go through we can still get her back!"
The silence redoubles its weight on your shoulders.
"... r-right?"
Caio sighs, scratching at his temple with a wicked talon and folding his other arm. "It's not that simple, man. Other spheres, it's... it can get fucky over there. Seriously fucky. Whether you can breathe or not is just the start of it."
"If she's already been taken through then most likely she's already dead," Florence says grimly. "I'm sorry."
"But..." your head twitches left and right, your neck so stiff you feel like an anatomy model held together by wire and glue, pinned in place with nowhere to hide from these sympathetic yet unyielding eyes. "I-I mean if we just- if I just checked-"
"A tear isn't a window you can just slip back and forth through without thinking," Jae-yoon interjects, his commanding voice cutting yours in two like a blade through frayed twine. Your lips jitter shut, your jaw all but locking in place. "Even if you were sure you wanted to go through, had to go through, we don't have the equipment to stabilise a tear. Any moment now it could just vanish-" he snaps his fingers "-quick as it came. And then that's two people lost instead of just one."
Your gaze slowly falls, your head sagging beneath the weight of it all.
"(I...)"
The world seems to narrow to the head of a pin. Constricting around you until you're trapped in a snowglobe, frozen in time, nothing to see no matter where you look except more of this moment, refracted and distorted and curving in around you and over your head like a tidal wave ready to fall and plunge you into choking blackness.
"You can't save everyone." Jae-yoon's hand falls on your shoulder. Feels like a shot of reality in the middle of a nightmare, almost enough to make you jump. "Rule one of this business. I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but that's just how it is."
That's just how it is.
That's just the way it is.
What the hell was Ward thinking, asking you for help? Didn't he know?
"Alex."
Shouldn't he know? Everyone else seems to know the way things really work except you, why did he get your hopes up like that?
"Alex, please respond. You are showing signs of severe distress. What are you feeling?"
[ ] Anger. Roiling, seething, frustrated rage. You want to let it out. You need to let it out. On anything. Anyone. Any way.
[ ] Despair. Rolling, crushing, suffocating, icy waves of it. Superpowers or no, you still can't do anything right, can you?
[ ] Hollow. An aching void of emotion and feeling, like the nanosuit is a thin veneer preserving the facade of humanity as you try to answer MD and find absolutely nothing.
[ ] Relief. It's sickening and shameful but... it's kinda human too, isn't it? Your new friends are telling you it's pointless. They're all telling you not to bother, not to try, that you'd just fail even if you did. Telling you they expect nothing from you. What you wouldn't give to have heard those words sooner, huh?
