Snip #27
I had a tree, I used it.
Grabbing hold of the trunk, I stepped to the side and let the wind push me back. The force of the gusts assisted my intended actions, turning me around the trunk and behind it.
The wooden pillar continued to groan as Tigerhead increased the intensity of his gales. Dirt, pebbles, grass and rocks swirled around me, a solid cloud moving almost horizontally as it shot past at high speeds. It was occasionally broken by a piece of litter, a shadow half buried in the low visibility. It felt as if I was trapped in a…
The raindrops of the heavy downpour fell, a liquid cloud moving almost horizontally as it shot past at high speeds. It was occasionally broken by a piece of litter, a shadow half buried in the low visibility.
I watched with rapt attention as the cracked window pane continued to rattle.
"<Son>" a voice interrupted my youthful fascination, "<Get your things. We have to…>"
I blinked. I found myself panting heavily.
What was that?
'This is no time to daydream,' I thought as I shook my head, clearing my mind. The flying dust continued to swirl around me, the cloud's coloration reddening as the continuous gusts of wind continued to strip away the earth, grass and topsoil giving way to the deeper clay layers. It felt as if I was trapped in a hurricane.
Something twigged in my thoughts. People get killed in hurricanes, don't they?
Dammit. The urgency to take out Tigerhead just went up. But first, I needed more information. Maintaining my concentration, I peered around the tree, using the same detective technique as before to keep myself mostly hidden.
I spotted him pretty much immediately; Tigerhead had not moved from his spot. He was still waving his arms around an orb of air, giving me an impression of a witch predicting a fortune from a crystal ball. Gusts of air blasted out of the orb; not a continuous flow of air, but instead a fake stream made up of many consecutive compressed blades of attacks shooting towards me.
He was probably straining to keep up his attack, evidenced by his silhouette's shoulders heaving with effort, but the flow of air did not lessen. The dirt between us had been stripped bare by now, while the bark of my shelter was giving way, splinters of wood breaking away to the sound of a staccato buzz.
But above all, I noticed his surroundings. His intact surroundings. The area around his feet was still littered with undergrowth, the men behind him were mostly unaffected as they ran away without much resistance, and while the trees and branches above him were swaying violently, they were not being stripped by enormous blasts of winds.
He was stronger than I thought. His blasts of air could somehow managing to cut into wood, dig up the very ground and throw people around. But apparently he had a blind spot that I could…
I paused. And I blinked. Then I went over what I just thought.
He was stronger than I thought.
By the sounds of the chipping wood behind me, his blades of air were comparable to heavy slashes with a knife, and their frequency was that of a machine gun.
Why was I still standing, unharmed?
I leaned back into my sparse cover. Tapping my body with both arms, I looked down and examined myself, and I blinked in surprise again. I found only unblemished skin on my arms, body, and legs. My torn clothes were undeniable evidence of where I had been hit, but there was not even a tan where the flame blade had pressed into my stomach, and even the stings of pain I had felt earlier were already memory.
The staccato buzz continued behind me, reminding me of the strength of the strikes I had endured.
Despite everything, I took a moment to smile. The smile evolved into a grin, and developed into chuckles. I laughed out loud, cackling as I examined my raised hands, reveling in the joy of it all. I had suspected this, but what just happened confirmed it: I was not only Strong, I was also Tough! All of me, so, very, Very, TOUGH! I was both strong AND--
An E88 goon tumbled past my shelter, shrieking all the way.
That's it. Laughter's gone.
Slapping my cheeks with both my palms, I focused on the problem at hand. How should I confront that windbag?
Go out, brace against his winds and simply walk up to him? That would work, given how tough-- I suppressed a giggle-- I was, but despite everything it would take time; I would still be delayed by his winds, and he would react long before then. The E88 was an old organization, and I did not trust their capes not to have hidden tricks up their sleeves.
Jump to the side, and close in as fast as I could? Doable, but risky; I was confident of my speed, but it was quite a distance. If he spotted me, he would redirect his winds. And being fast sacrificed stability; I would likely be blown away if I did not properly brace against the ground.
I would have to close in stealthily. But to do so, I would have to find a blind spot. But in this sparsely populated crop of trees, with no bushes, no walls, lacking cover of any kind, and with him knowing where I was? I doubt I could pull it off. I would have to fly at ludicrous speeds in order for him to…
Fly. Or rather, a controlled jump.
I looked up and smiled again, my sight of the sky partially blocked by the few leaves and branches that remained. My plan set, I peeked around the corner of the trunk again.
Good, Tigerhead was still where he was last, clearly panting with the effort of keeping his gale winds flowing. I bent my knees as I looked up at the canopy of--
--a movement, a flicker of silver in the corner of my eye provided barely any warning before I was slammed into the tree I was hiding behind. Rows of serrated teeth stabbed multiple points of pain into my chest and my upper thigh as he held me in his jaws, his head twisted to trap me between his upper jaw and the tree, his lower jaw no doubt crunching down on the opposite side of the tree trunk.
"Gotcha!" that odd, reverberating echo shouted from within the canine parahuman construct as I grunted in surprise. Cables of metal lashed out from the tip of his snout, disappearing behind me as they drew taut, and the pressure on my chest suddenly increased tenfold.
Dammit, I had been careless! He had caught me in a triangle of shrinking metal, with me in the middle. I was going to die, the serrated hacksaw that was his jaw was going to reduce me to gibs, and...
and...
'Huh,' I thought, looking down as the dog attempted to chew me up, but failed. He gnawed and gashed and nibbled, but the deadly triangular blades merely dented my skin, and nothing more.
'That is surprising. Fortunate, but surprising.' I would have thought, except, 'DAMMIT!! This is PAINFUL!!'
With clenched teeth I pushed back, ignoring the pain I felt as best I could as I strained with both my arms and legs. The upper jaw shuddered, and with a high pitched snap of failing metal some of the conjured metal of the snout snapped back. The pressure on my chest let up a bit. A little space formed in front of me, with just enough room to bend my elbows and rest my palms onto the smooth roof of its jaws.
I pushed again mostly with my right arm and leg, my left side too close to where the jaws joined to do much. I was rewarded with another 'twang' of breaking cables--
-- and that was when the giant mutt pushed back again, not with its mouth but with its body. It dug furrows of earth with its legs as it rammed me back onto the crumbling wood of the abused tree, using its bulk and weight against me. The pain and pressure doubled as the sharpened triangles of its metal teeth slid across me, and in that moment more cables formed from the tip of its nose as my strength slackened slightly.
No! Not happening! I was not going to give up without a fight!
I gritted my teeth as did my best to ignore the pain. With a heave and a shout I pushed again with both arms. My efforts were rewarded as the jaw widened again in the middle of the dying hurricane, rattling as fake tendons of metal broke apart against my strength.
He rammed me again, gaining a bit of lost ground as more inorganic muscles appeared. More of the silver metal flowed around me, reforming the bent and damaged sides of his mouth, and it trembled as he strained to keep me in place.
I pushed out once more and finally succeeded in straightening my right arm entirely. I tried to bring up my feet, to use them to kick my way out, but there was not enough space to get my feet in between the gap in front of me.
My feet hung off the ground as we continued to struggle, man and giant mutt. The winds around us had died down, but the wood of the tree behind my back continued to splinter as we twisted in our struggles.
We had reached an impasse; with my right arm fully stretched out I was unable to push him any further, but he was also unable to close his jaws around me.
No, wait. The reason why Fido's metal cousin was only biting down on me was because of the trunk behind me. It held us in place with its thick bulk, a pillar that was slowly giving way by the sounds of the cracking wood and splintering bark.
And when the tree finally snaps?
I remembered a scene I saw two days ago, of Clockblocker trapped between the jaws of Bitch's dogs, thrown about as if he was a chew toy.
I was out of options.
Except that.
No, anything but that! It was too early! I hadn't fully tested it out! I tried to think of something else, anything else…
Loud pops of the crunching wood reminded me of the time limit I had.
The irritating doggy construct raised its forepaw, its three serrated claws reflecting light at the tips with an imaginary, audible 'shhhing'. He tried to use it to claw at my body, but because of the awkward way his head was twisted, the limb only managed to create new slash marks in the tortured tree trunk as it began to tip backwards.
I was out of time. My mind was still blank of other solutions.
Dammit.
No time like the present to test things out.
I looked beyond the dogman's head, checking the area slightly to the left of me for anything important again. I revised my definition; only really important things, no, only 'critically' important items. Things that people would not miss too-- no, things that people would miss, but could do without, or stuff that would not cause anyone's death if it was totally wrecked.
It was surprising how many things I could dismiss with that criteria.
I shifted my weight in the confines between the jaws as I strained again, pulling back my right shoulder onto the fracturing trunk as I braced as well as I could with my left arm.
The raised paw returned to the ground in reaction, probably in anticipation to ram his bulky body against anything I was about to do.
Wrong choice, mister.
I raised my right arm up to my shoulder. I drew my fist back, looking at the roof of his mouth towards the back where the jaws met, having plotted out the punch's path all the way from my right to my left.
'Serious. Mode.'
Time slowed in my perception. I glanced to my side. I caught the right eye of the struggling hound, a tiny orb of black on the side oversized canine head.
'Serious…'
I saw his eyes widen. I gave myself a little smile just before I threw my right shoulder forward, leading the movement with my fist.
"PUNCH!!"
My fist hit the intended spot… and plowed through.
The top of the metal mutt's head… disappeared.
The tree behind my back… disintegrated.
The bulky quadruple body… sheared, dividing into half along its length.
The hound's snout… flew, its attached cables snapping like noodles as it was flung away with great force.
A ring of dirt rose up into the air beyond the punch. Another ring formed behind it as I watched. Large chunks of rocks and earth were thrown up into the air, intermingling with similarly lifted bits of root and grass.
The gap between the parting metals widened, revealing a reddish black orb right on top of the lower half of the divided construct. The obvious core of the parahuman cracked, cobwebs of fissures spider-webbing along the surface of the reflective orb.
I was flung through the cloud of splinters that used to be a tree, barely staying upright as I was flung by the force of my punch. My back crashed onto the other jaw of his mouth, beyond the shattered wood, but I slid off the sharply angled surface and continued to fly backwards, bending the bits of metal I had rubbed against as I went.
The top half of the dog-form disintegrated. Metal scales came apart in a cloud of deadly shrapnel, large pieces tearing themselves as they flew back and out of view, disappearing into the churned-up clouds of earth and dirt.
There were six rings of the park's earth in the air when it was suddenly clear once again from one moment to the next. A large crater appeared on the ground at the feet of the disintegrating dogman's body, a huge wave of pressure suddenly pushing everything away at high speed.
Dark red liquid started to spray out of the faults and cracks of dogman's core, as if it was highly pressurized. Bits and pieces of the orb flaked off, and I could see parts of the man I saw earlier within its confines.
As one, a row of trees fell, the collapse of the ten or so trees falling quickly even to my heightened perception. Another row followed soon after. And another. A fourth and final row collapsed, revealing the edge of Capitol Hill Park and exposing Capitol Hill itself.
The toes of my shoes touched the ground, and ripped right off. Exposed, the ball of my feet dragged lines on the earth as I adjusted my posture to slow down my backwards momentum.
The trees of Capitol Hill rippled in the wind as if I was watching a silent film as it… disappeared. Briefly, I saw the earth of the slope dent, a crater appearing along the entire side of the hill crushing the stairs there to dust. Mowed grass was stripped, canopies were denuded, thick tree trunks were thrown into the air, and finally the entire hill disappeared in a massive cloud of brown.
My feet hit concrete, throwing up equally wide furrows as my deceleration increased. I came to a stop shortly after, but I did not care.
I… well, I think… I thought of nothing in particular, my mind blank as I continued to look at the giganormous floating cloud of churned-up earth that used to be one entire face of Brockton Bay's third tallest hill.
…
Oh.
…
Erm.
...
Ahh.
…
Right.
Crap.
It's only Air!! Air's not supposed to do that?!
***
Special thanks to (SB) DawnGazer and (SV) readerboy7 for showing up to help with Beta support. And hidden betas Enohthree and TPK too.
They each get an 'Enterprise'.
* one of the cheaper models... of the sailing ship. Enohthree, TPK, you get the space version from the televised reboot 'Enterprise A'. You know, the one which didn't even have tractor beams at first.
