Shatterbird looked down over the city far below. A cruel smile graced her lips. Even here she could see the glitter of thousands of windowpanes and street lights and headlights and windshields; she could feel the fragile flecks of glass and silicon in cellphone screens and computer monitors and eyeglasses and drinking glasses and the thousands of other places people foolishly used such brittle, dangerous material without thought. Sometimes she marveled that after all her time in the Slaughterhouse 9 wreaking carnage on city after city that people still used the stuff at all.
It just showed how feebleminded the wretched human race was, she thought. She flexed her power, and felt all the glass and silicon in the city below tremble in response. She hummed softly and the glass hummed along with her--- an opening aria, just to ripen the panic in the people below…
***
The Lost Workshop was in a panic. Flechette stood next to Tattletale, staring in horror at the big screen as Shatterbird rose into the sky. She clutched her new arbalest in her hands, her knuckles whitening. Brockton Bay was about to become a bloodbath--
"Shit!" Tattletale yelled, leaping from her seat. She pulled a nearby rope. Heavy canvas curtains dropped from the ceiling over the Comms station, burying the fragile glass screens in heavy layers of cloth. "Cover everything! Shatterbird alert! Cover everything glass now! Get away from anything with glass or crystal in it!" Tinkerbots were racing back and forth, pulling hatches down over the shelves of tools and equipment before shutting themselves down and stowing themselves under workbenches, metal arms locked over their fragile glass opticals. Shen and Lei Ling were throwing blankets over anything glass. She heard a chime; the Hearthstone room under the Workshop just had a couple of arrivals. Great. Probably emergency evacs, family or friends... They'd be safe down there for now; there was nothing but concrete and dirt and the big rune stones.
In the midst of this a portal opened in the main room and a screaming pair of people riding a ragged couch fell through. Tattletale didn't even bother asking who they were; she threw tarps over their shoulders and started heaving at the couch. "Flip the couch, get underneath!" she ordered. The terrified couple obeyed. Before joining them behind the overturned sofa Tattletale slapped a rune painted on the nearby wall; it and matching runes elsewhere began to glow. "Here's hoping Sparky's defenses work--"
Flechette was about to take cover herself when yet another portal ripped open and Shar'Din came zooming through on his flying carpet. He swerved to a hovering halt in the middle of the room and held out his hand to her. "Come on!" he yelled. "Bring your bow!"
"What--" Flechette decided this was no time for debate. She took his hand and leapt aboard the carpet. Shar'Din pulled an immelmann and they flew out the portal he came in.
***
All across the city, glass panes began to hum. Her face radiant with the euphoria of her power and the blood and anguish that was to come, Shatterbird opened her mouth to sing.
And the steel tip of a crossbow bolt sprouted from her open mouth like a second tongue. She hung there in space for the briefest moment, as if she hadn't yet realized she was dead. Then her costume-- the glittering bodysuit and shining wings of glass shards-- fell away. Her lifeless corpse tumbled from the sky in a rain of glittering shards.
In the sky, two figures crouched on a carpet nearly a mile away. Shar'Din patted Flechette on the back. "Nice shot," he said.
***
Back at the television studio, the smile was wiped off Jack Flash's face. He watched the monitor as Shatterbird's lifeless corpse plummeted to earth, the camera tracking it all the way to the ground. "That was… extremely unsatisfactory," he said.
The new Butcher, who was lounging in the late anchorman's chair, snorted. "Dunno why you're surprised," she said. "She was sniper-bait from day one. Hell, I wonder why someone didn't pick her off with a surface-to-air missile ages ago."
Jack Flash continued to stare at the monitor. This was ANNOYING. The camera had panned up from Shatterbird's impact point to the flying capes that had taken her out. Was that a… a flying carpet? "I want those two dealt with," he said.
"We don't have an-y fly-ing ca-apes," Bonesaw said, skipping past.
"Don't look at US," Butcher snorted. "We don't have any flying powers either. And neither do any of the Teeth."
Jack actually paused and counted on his fingers. "No we don't," he said after a moment, eyebrows raised. "Well, not now that Shatterbird is..." he waved at the monitor he'd been watching. "Bit of an oversight, that. Do you have anything, pet?" he asked idly.
"Nuh uh," Bonesaw said. She stopped skipping around and thought. "I've never made anything with wings, actually. Maybe if you gave me some big bat wings and a couple of Teeth to work with..." The main camera jiggered a bit and the Teeth gangmember handling it looked VERY nervous. "Naah. Silk purses and sow's ears, you know? Besides, it'd take forever." She thought again. "There are a few flying capes in Brockton Bay, I could probably make something half decent if we get one or two of them to 'speriment on..."
"Eh, stick a pin in it, pumpkin," Jack Slash said. "For now we have to deal with the setback caused by Shatterbird's failure. Without the widespread havoc her Song was supposed to cause, the opposition will rally much faster. If we had something else to throw the streets in chaos… a quick plague perhaps?"
Bonesaw shook her head till her ringlets bounced. "I haven't got anything. You said 'no diseases this time, they're too easy and boring.' It takes days to cultivate anything and I haven't had anything brewing all week." she said with a hint of pride.
Jack gave her a look. "That was a bit overzealous, pet. I hope you don't regret it."
"Don't worry, Uncle Jack," Bonesaw said cheerfully. "Those improvements I made in Spree should be kicking in real soon; that should help--"
***
Spree's power could best be described as "one man mob." He could generate a seemingly endless torrent of duplicates, up to fifteen of them every 3 seconds, each equipped like himself. The downside was that they were all raging, mindless berserkers who simply attacked anything in front of them. They also only lasted a mere fifteen minutes, maximum, before bursting and disintegrating into a bloody mush. Of course in a mere fifteen minutes of idiotic smashing and bashing they could do a tremendous amount of damage.
On the other hand, Vicky Dallon aka Glory Girl could do a pretty heinous amount of damage herself, and she didn't have a timer on it. The moment Spree's mob of maniacs swarmed over her, she had lashed out in every direction with her tiara-directed Aura and her fists alike. Her brief surge of horror when the first few clones had literally exploded under the impact of her fists had been replaced with slowly growing realization:
They weren't people. She could punch them as hard as she wanted.
With a shriek of atavistic rage, she began to cut loose on the clones. Bodies and limbs flew; chunks of reddish grue sprayed. She was like a lawnmower going through a watermelon patch. Spree saw what was happening and, eyes wide, began pouring out clones even faster. It did him no good.
The rest of New Wave had joined in, bombarding the clone-mob from the air or pummeling those that broke away from the herd with bare fists and lightblades. They were barely needed. Soon they found themselves having to step back to avoid the flying dismembered body parts their pretty prom-queen princess was hurtling in every direction, screaming all the while.
Brandish looked on in horror at the carnage. "Glory Girl! Vicky!!" she started to fly in, but Flashbang caught her by the arm.
"Let her be," he said soberly, not taking his eyes off his daughter. "I think she needed this..."
Soon the mob was done. Spree was knocked out by a stray lightbomb from Flashbang; the other Teeth had fled for their lives. The only clones left were lying groaning in the street. Manpower retrieved Bakuda and now had her tied hand and foot and thrown over one shoulder. Glory Girl was standing in the middle of a circle of clone bodies. Her multilayered force-field had thankfully kept most of the grue off, but her fists and boots were both spattered red. Her chest was heaving and eyes wild and fists still up and ready to fly.
Gallant approached her VERY carefully. "Vicky? ...Are you okay?"
Her head whipped around. She didn't seem to recognize him for a moment. "Eeeeh-- Haaaa-- Eeeeh—Haaaa…. oh. Hey…. Gallant. Yeah. Yeah. Doing fine." She brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face carefully with a red-drenched pinky. "Kind of feel good, actually, you know?" She looked at the carnage all around. "I think I had a lot of stuff built up..." she suddenly dropped her head onto Gallant's soldier and started moaning. Confused as always, Gallant settled for patting her consolingly on the back.
Lady Photon looked over at Brandish. "We are SO all going into counseling after this," she said.
Laserdream had landed and gone over to examine one of the unconscious clones. She suddenly hopped backward and jumped into the air. "Oohhh shitsnacks!" Everyone looked. The unconscious clone was swelling, growing rapidly into a fleshy pink lump twice its size.
"What--" Manpower started to say. The lump split in two, and stood up. There were now two clones of Spree standing there, snarling and grimacing… large, distorted clones, swollen huge with muscle. All around them the downed clones were getting to their feet and dividing-- forming two, three, five clones apiece, each uglier and more brutish than the last.
Hastily Flashbang sent lightbombs bouncing into a group of five. The bombs detonated and they went down. Four of them crumbled to mush. The fifth stood back up and divided into three, bigger and more misshapen than their 'parent' had been. "Crap!" he said. "What is this-- Amy what are you doing??"
Panacea had been keeping back, staying behind the team for safety's sake. Now she ran forward and placed her hand on one of the downed clones. "You had it right, Crystal," she said, backing up hastily as the clone began to deform. " Someone screwed around with Spree's powers. Some of his clones are self-replicating now. They're slower, and there's a lot of degradation-- You'll probably get five generations out of them before they're too messed up to do anything but decompose-- but they make up for that by getting bigger and more brutish with each generation." One of them demonstrated that by trying to swat at the healer with an enormous, distorted arm. Shielder blocked it at the last second.
"That means we've got a real big problem," Manpower said, bringing his doubled fists down on one clone's head in an overhead arc, smashing it into the pavement. "Because at least half the clones ran off in every direction when Vicky blasted them with her fear aura--"
"Oh no, it's going to be like that math problem with the rice grains and the chessboard!" Vicky babbled. "They'll flood the streets in no time flat!"
"I've alerted the Protectorate," Gallant said, tapping his helmet. "But there's no telling when they'll get here--"
"We've got to stop as many of them as we can!" Manpower said. Two screaming clones tackled him. "Don't hold back, anyone!"
"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" Vicky said, tears streaming down her face as she dove headlong into the growing crowd of monsters.
***
Hex, Hemmoragia and Hemlokk never realized the danger they were in as Shatterbird ascended into the sky. They were too involved at that moment with trying to kill each other.
Hemlokk was keeping barely a half-step ahead of them. Her teleportation, smoke bombs and bursts of invisibility had the murderous women cursing and spitting as they lashed out in every direction with their powers. She could have easily slipped away and fled, but that would have left the people in the Dockworker's building to the mercy of these two monsters.
She was running out of steam fast though. She'd gotten a couple of strikes in on them, leaving Hemmoragia with a numbed leg and Hex with a paralyzed arm, but they'd gotten a few in on her, leaving her with several shallow but heavily bleeding wounds, and the blood loss was starting to cost her. She barely dodged another blow that would have gutted her, barely leaped over another of Hex's deadly razor-clouds, disappeared and tried for another backstab, only to barely graze Hemmoragia's shoulder blade before having to dance out of reach again.
Hemmoragia outright laughed at her. "What was that? Some sort of Tinker taser? A blade with knockout juice on it? You want to run with the BIG DOGS, little bitch, you've gotta be ready to BLEED!"
She wasn't wrong, Taylor thought. She wasn't even seriously injuring them, while they were slowly bleeding her out. And if they killed her, they'd go after the people behind her just for shits and giggles…
Letting out a low snarl, she gripped her ghost blades and pumped her power into them. The moonlight glow, the tell-tale that they wouldn't harm living flesh, faded away and was replaced with dark, indigo aura. "You want to bleed?" She growled, her fangs gleaming under her cowl. "I can oblige!"
She couldn't tell who was more surprised, she or them, when the forklift plowed into them. It crashed into the two gang lieutenants, the tines snaring them and trapping them in front of it. It rolled over top of Hex, barely slowing, and smashed into a parked car, crushing Hemmoragia against the crumpled door. A moment later Hex's blade-clouds winked out of existence and Hemmoragia's blades dissolved into crimson liquid, splashing on the asphalt.
A familiar woman climbed down out of the driver's seat, limping and grimacing a bit. "Ehhh, shit," she griped. "There goes my safety review..."
Hemlokk's jaw hung open. "Lacey??"
"Hey Taylor," Lacey said, grinning. "How's tricks?"
"Wait, how did you--" Hemlokk started, then facepalmed. "Dad told you didn't he."
"Not too many secrets that man can keep, once you get a couple of beers in him," Lacey chuckled. "Especially about his pride and joy."
Hemlokk's ears flicked back, but before she could say anything a small crowd of dockworkers came running up, armed with wrenches, hammers, and whatever else had been ready at hand. In the lead was Kurt, a pump-action in his hands. "You crazy woman," he swore. "Why didn't you jump like you said you would?"
"Didn't want to miss," Lacey said. "Care to check on our guests?" Kurt nodded briefly and leveled his shotgun before sidling over to where the two Capes lay. To Taylor's shock there were two loud gunshots. Kurt came back with the barrel of his gun smoking. "They'll rest easy now, all right," he said.
Taylor shuddered at the ruthlessness of it, but suppressed it. Those two had long standing kill orders hanging over their heads. If they'd come to, the first any of them would have known it was when they jumped up and killed someone.
She looked over at the glassed circle in the parking lot. Someone else, she amended. "Come on, people, we got wounded here to tend to--" Kurt said to the crowd.
"I can help with that," Taylor said, pulling several vials out of her satchel, even as she headed for the injured people lying in the parking lot.
"We'll be glad of any help you can give," Kurt said. "Thank you, T-- uhh..."
"It's Hemlokk when I'm wearing my work duds," Taylor said, amused. She knelt down next to the man who'd lost his legs; they'd tied the stumps off with tourniquets above where the glass ended. She handed him a vial; he downed it in one go. The glass fell off the stumps with a clunk as the flesh healed over. Taylor untied the tourniquets. "I'm sorry," she said, "It won't regenerate your legs. But if you can see Panacea once this is all over--"
The man, a grizzled fellow, grinned at her, though his face was a little pale. "Hey, it's hella better'n what I had a minute ago," he said.
Taylor nodded and smiled and moved to the next one, a woman whose face had gotten peppered with glass shards. "Where is my-- where is Danny Hebert?" she asked. "I need to--"
Arms encircled her shoulders. "Right here little owl," her father said.
Taylor felt a swell of relief, even as she protested for the sake of her cape ID. "Dad--"
"Sorry, kiddo, I think the cat's out of the bag," he said. "At least around here." A couple of the workers chuckled.
Taylor grumbled something about proud daddy syndrome and friends who were too free with their beer. "Dad, it's time," she said. "We need to go Underground. Things are heating up. It looks like Cauldron's turning up the pressure--"
Danny looked at his daughter, torn. "Are you sure?"
There was a commotion from the road running past the compound. A half-dozen brutish, deformed men, festooned with bones and skulls and screaming like berserkers, were charging down the road, knocking trash cans aside, smashing car windows and trampling anything in their way. Hemlokk got to her feet, daggers slipping into her hands. "Looks like," she said curtly.
Suddenly the dockworkers-- those still on their feet-- were behind her. They crowded in close, wrenches and hammers still in hand. Her own father was standing next to her, a length of rebar in his hand. "Well, everyone," Danny said, raising his voice to be heard by the crowd. "Looks like we need to give someone a welcome to the Dockyards!"
A shout that was almost a feral growl went up from the gathered men and women. Taylor felt herself grinning in spite of herself, all fangs and teeth. There were times when she loved being part of this family.
As the growing crowd of berserkers reached the perimeter fence, they charged. She flashstepped forward, leapt up and drove her dagger up under the chin and into the skull of the first Brute.
***
Aisha came to. She immediately wished she hadn't. She could feel bruises all across her chest and stomach where the seatbelt had snagged her. Okay, one point for you, Big Brother Nanny Buckle-Up, she thought. The next thing she was aware of was that her lap was full of little gummy pieces of glass, the kind you got from a shattered windshield. What had they hit, a telephone pole?…
She shook her head and looked out through the windshield used to be, and found herself eye-to-eye with the Siberian.
The Siberian was possibly the most terrifying member of the Slaughterhouse Nine. She appeared as a feral, voiceless woman, with skin and hair striped black and white like a tiger. She was seemingly indestructible, and was impossibly strong. She had maimed Alexandria, the one Cape in the world everyone had thought was indestructible, ripping her eye out of her face before eating it. She was a cannibal, eating her victims… and she preferred to eat her victims alive.
She was here, she was naked, she was squatting on the hood of her brother's car looking right at them.
Aisha could see the Teeth, and their boss-- what was he called, Feral, the one who turned into a fourlegged monster-- all around, keeping their distance from the Siberian, but she couldn't have cared less about them. They were just an underline for one crystal clear fact screaming in her mind: she was going to die. She was going to die and it was going to be slow and filled with agony and terror.
Almost like a curious child, the Siberian stretched out a hand to her.
//CONTACT.//
//AGREEMENT?//
//ACCEPTANCE.//
Brian woke up to his sister's scream. He groaned in pain-- his right arm was broken, he could feel it; a couple of ribs too from where he'd bounced off the steering wheel. Idiot; shoulda had the seatbelt fixed. Lucky he didn't go out the windshield... One of his eyes was swollen shut, and he could feel a warm trickle of blood down his face. He opened his eyes and came within a hair of pissing himself when he saw the Siberian reaching through the windshield for his sister… On pure instinct and the sheer jolt of adrenaline, he filled the car and half the street with his darkness. He heard shouts of anger and confusion as liquid Night boiled out, blinding one and all alike.
It didn't help much. The Siberian merely began flailing about, waving her hands through the Darkness like someone searching for a lost cup in a sink of dirty dishwater. Her fingertip brushed past the very tip of his nose…
//AGREEMENT?//
///ACCEPTANCE//
two infinitely huge beings, fractals brought to life, intertwining...
Brian rattled his head, shaking off whatever the hell just happened. The Siberian was still stymied by the black cloud. She was reaching for Aisha again--
Aisha opened her mouth, made a retching noise, and vomited a flock of birds.
Not little birds either, but big huge honkin' ravens. A torrent of them poured out of her mouth and swarmed around the Siberian, startling her anew. They pecked and clawed at her, screeching and cawing. The Siberian snatched one out of the air and squeezed; it disappeared in a puff of black smoke and vanishing feathers. That's no good, Brian wanted to say. Bayleaf told us, she's a projection. We want to stop the Siberian, we need to kill--
Brian rolled his head around, looking up and down the street. Manton. There it was, the white van, parked not fifty feet away, some greasy looking old white dude sitting in the front seat… watching everything avidly as if it were a porno.
Slowly, painfully, Brian reached into his jacket and pulled out the revolver Bayleaf had given him. It was a funky looking thing that looked more like part of a locomotive engine than a gun, but Bayleaf made him swear to carry it 'just in case.' Well, welcome to just in case. Brian dispelled the Darkness between him and Manton--- he could see through it well enough, but he didn't want to take the chance its energy-dampening effect would throw off his aim-- lined up the sights on the old man, and fired.
The gun roared, spitting a foot-long dart of flame. The windshield of the white van shattered, and the old man flopped forward over the steering wheel, the front of his head blown out through the back. The instant the old man died, the Siberian vanished like a popped soap bubble.
The Teeth were in disarray, blundering about wildly in Brian's rapidly growing cloud of Darkness. One of them wasn't though. Animos (that was his name…) apparently figured out that those in the car had something to do with their new boss' disappearance. He leapt up onto the hood of the car, snarling.
Instantly Aisha's ravens swarmed him. They made a lot more headway with him than they had with the Siberian: his flesh tore under their beaks and claws. He slashed and flailed at the circling birds, snarling but failing to snare any of them.
Which means, Brian thought, any second he's going to--
Animos took a deep breath and Screamed right into the open car, hitting them both full blast. His power-nullifying scream was deafening. It washed over the car, dispelling Brian's Darkness, disintegrating Aisha's ravens.
The effect was just as disorienting as the last time. It knocked Aisha out cold. This time though, this time Brian held onto his consciousness. "You really are a dumb mother," Brian said to Animos. He put his gun into Animo's open screaming mouth and pulled the trigger.
***
Mr. Chuckles learned some sad, sad things today.
The first thing Mr. Chuckles learned was that his nifty new spiffy-keen power-nullifying aura didn't work on everyone. That was a sad, sad thing to find out.
The second thing Mr. Chuckles learned was that while he had Mr. Hatchet Face's spiffy keen power-nullifying aura, he DIDN'T have Mr. Hatchet Face's spiffy keen invulnerability. This was also a sad, sad thing to find out.
The third thing Mr. Chuckles learned was that while his legs were super-duper fast, and his arms were super-duper strong, they were no match for an Orc warrior woman with a giant spear, a giant dog, and the god-emperor of all mad-ons.
And, judging by the way she had systematically pulverized all the joints in his arms and legs with a sledgehammer, it was clear to Mr. Chuckles that killing all her puppy dogs had made the Orc lady very, very… VERY mad.
This was a very, VERY, sad sad thing to find out.
"AAAAAAAH!!!"
"Oh what's your problem?" Fennek yelled.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
"We're barely even going fifty, you big wuss!"
Mr. Chuckles had the time to reflect on these things because at the moment, he was going nowhere. He was currently chained spreadeagled across the grill of an ice cream truck as it hurtled down the back streets of Brockton Bay. Somehow the roads had become filled with scattered mobs of rampaging Brute capes, and the Orc and the Fox were using Mr. Chuckles as a battering ram to get through the streets. To their delight they had discovered that the monstrous capes clogging the roads were apparently projections of some sort and burst like bags full of wet hamburger when they met Mr. Chuckles' power-nullifying field at high speed.
This did not make things much nicer for Mr. Chuckles. The Fox had started assigning points to wandering Brutes, and the Orc was now veering to try and hit them.
"Where's the windshield wipers? I can't see with all this Brute goop," Lok'Tara complained. Fennek reached across the dashboard and flipped a switch; the wipers began going, wiping off some of the gunk but mostly just slapping Mr. Chuckles in the head. "Bettern' nuthin'."
Fennek climbed up the outside of the careening ice cream truck and perched on the roof next to Fidget and Gidget. He was darned glad he'd looked out the window before Lok'Tara had finished toying with Mr. Chuckles and seen that the streets were starting to fill up with these bizarre monster-cape clone things. Judging by the raggedy clothes and the skeletal ornaments, they were from the Teeth. Didn't they have one member who multiplied...?
He saw a store surrounded by the freaks; the owner had apparently barricaded himself inside along with his customers. Good on him. But the clones were making short work of the security gate he'd pulled down. Fennek pulled out his bow, nocked an arrow, and fired a volley shot into the mob. That got their attention; roaring and howling they began chasing after the ice cream truck. "Sorry, kids," Fennek shouted over the noise, plunking arrow after arrow into the pursuing horde. Twang, THWACK. "I told ya--" Twang, THWACK. "We're out of rocket pops!" Twang, THWACK. One of them stumbled, split in two, and now there were two larger, more misshapen cape-monsters chasing. Not good.
"Where to?" Lok'Tara shouted up to him.
"We probably better find Bayleaf," he shouted back. He fumbled in his satchel and pulled out his cell phone. It was one of Bayleaf's custom jobs, with all sorts of widgets the regular phone companies wouldn't even think of for twenty years and several more they'd sue over. One of those widgets was a tracking system that let him find the location of any of the other members of the Alliance… well, their cell phones anyway. A few seconds' tippity tapping with his thumbs and a map of Brockton bay popped up on his phone with a blinking red icon on it. "Okay, he's in the suburbs right now-- Keep going straight on this road, then take a left on Main--"
***
The PRT was an overturned anthill. PRT squads were suiting up, the armory was rapidly emptying out, containment foam was handed out like party favors, and every PRT riot vehicle was loading up and rolling out. Piggot's staff was scrambling to contact the Rig, the Protectorate and PRT offices in neighboring states, City Hall, the National Guard, and everyone else they could think of.
Piggot herself was busier than a centipede with poison ivy, juggling every line on her office phone and her cell phone as well. "Alert the Wards! Yes, mobilize them, give them clearance to use whatever force they deem necessary-- we'll deal with the screaming watchdog groups AFTER we deal with the Teeth and the Slaughterhouse Nine. Till then I'm not having the Wards playing sitting duck!" She mashed one button on the phone and then another. "Have we gotten contact with the Rig yet? We have? Where are-- The force bridge is down?" She swore. "How long till they get-- fifteen minutes, I'm HOLDING you to that--" Another pair of buttons mashed in quick sequence. "Patch me through to Armsmaster!"
"Armsmaster here," came back the reply.
Piggot slumped a little in relief. "Thank God. Can you confirm that Shatterbird is down?"
"Confirmed, Director," Armsmaster said with some satisfaction. "I'm looking at the body right now."
"Are you certain it's her?" she said.
"Woman of apparent Egyptian or Saudi Arabian descent, lying in a pile of broken glass, naked, suffering injuries consistent with a fall from a great height, a crossbow bolt through her head and very very dead," Armsmaster said.
"Good." She mashed the receiver. "Could've just said yes," she muttered. She hit the intercom. "Attention all personnel. It is confirmed, Shatterbird is down, repeat, Shatterbird is DEAD and DOWN." She could hear a cheer going up throughout the building. "And on a personal note, I'm going to find out who was supposed to requisition plexiglass for all our windows five months ago and personally plant my boot so far up their ass they'll fart shoelaces for a month!" She cut off the intercom and switched back to the previous line. "Armsmaster, you still there? Who do we have on the street beside yourself?"
"Most of the Protectorate other than Miss Militia and myself are still back on the Rig," he replied. "They'll make landfall in ten to fifteen minutes. We may get bogged down here soon-- these brute clones aren't very sturdy but they're multiplying like mad." She heard a grunt, followed by the zzzzzsish noise she associated with Armsmaster's energy blade halberd, followed by several feral screams. "The Wards are still at school--" there was something that sounded like an explosion-- "But I'm getting reports that a half-dozen Teeth, along with more of these multiplying Brute clones, have surrounded the school and it's in lockdown--"
"I've given them authorization to arm up and fight," Piggot interrupted him. "Relay that to them if they don't know it already. Tell them to focus on protecting the school."
"Understood," Armsmaster said. "I recommend sending PRT squads out to the other schools-- and arm them for bear. Making sport by siccing the Teeth on schoolchildren is just the sort of thing Jack Slash would do."
Piggot repressed a shudder. "There'll be an armored transport on the way," she said. "And pass the word on: it's no holds barred. I have the feeling it's going to get worse before it gets better." Another line lit up; she switched to it. "Director Piggot, PRT ENE, and this better be important."
"Hello to you too, Director," a deep, cultivated voice said. "And yes, I do believe it important."
An unpleasant suspicion popped into her mind. "And who is this?"
"This is Kaiser, of the Empire Eighty Eight," the mellifluous voice continued. "We wish to discuss the possibility of how we might assist the Protectorate and the PRT in their… hour of need."
Piggot resisted the urge to drop the receiver and reach for a handy-wipe to scrub her hand. "Why that's quite simple," she said mock-sweetly. "Just have your capes line up in the street and wait for one of my men to come along, cuff them, and load them in a paddywagon."
Kaiser tsked at her like she was an errant child. "Really, Director Piggot," he said. "You're hardly in a position to refuse an honest offer of help. The Teeth AND the Slaughterhouse Nine? You need all the help you can get." He paused to let her grind her teeth for a moment. "My capes simply want to help in protecting their home town from these savages. All they ask in return is a few considerations--"
In another time and place, Piggot might have considered it. She would have damned herself for it, but she would have considered it, arguing that it was for the good of the city every step of the way. But here and now she'd seen and learned too much. She'd learned how the world was slowly being flushed down to hell by those posturing and pretending to save it. She'd heard how the PRT, the Protectorate, and even the Triumvirate had all been monstrously compromised 'for the greater good.'
And maybe she'd seen a lone Rogue, with a ragged band of allies, actually start to turn her cesspit of a city around by the simple act of refusing to compromise… ever. Her? She was damned sick of selling her soul one thin slice at a time to the likes of THIS scumbag.
"Allow me to save you some time, you prancing, preening, posturing tinfoil-wrapped Fourth Reich wannabe," Piggot said curtly. "If you or your Swastika-licking capes or your goofy-tattooed trailer-trash goons stick your nose out of doors, my men have full authorization to shoot it right off your face. The only consideration you will receive is that if we see you out and about we will drop anything and everything to arrest what is LEFT of you and dump you in the deepest, darkest hole we have for interfering with a joint Protectorate-PRT operation. Take that and carve it on a stone tablet because it is the Gospel Truth!" She slammed the receiver down hard enough to crack the plastic.
Was that applause coming from outside her office?...Dammit, she'd left the intercom on again. "AND GET BACK TO WORK, PEOPLE!"
***
Parian climbed clumsily out of the mass of cloth she was snarled in. She looked around at the state of her shop and cursed out Shatterbird fluently in three languages. She'd been in the middle of changing out of her (admittedly rather cumbersome) 'Parian' costume, and considering remaking it with some of the Azeroth fabrics she had in stock, when she'd heard the panicked alert over the radio. For lack of anything else she could do, she'd used her power to send swatches of cloth to the front of the store to adhere to the store windows, then cocooned herself in every loose roll of cloth in the store, including the rolls of silks she'd been musing over the moment before.
And then… nothing had happened.
After what felt like hours, she finally dared to peek out. They were announcing over the radio that Shatterbird was dead--! Killed by a sniper of some sort… She'd almost sobbed with relief, but held it in check. Shatterbird meant the Slaughterhouse Nine. They weren't out of the woods yet.
She stepped free of the pile of cloth and looked down at herself. She still had who knew how many yards of blue, purple and indigo Azeroth silks wound around her. "I look like a cross between a mummy and a belly dancer," she muttered in amusement. Streamers of cloth hung off her, floating off in every direction.
She was about to unravel herself and set all the scattered cloth to rolling itself back up when she heard the motorcycles revving outside. Cautiously, she crept from the back rooms and peeked out into the storefront. Outside in the street were three or four bikers wearing leathers festooned with bones, teeth, and skulls. One seemingly in the lead was shouting. "… is TEETH territory now!"
"Along with the REST of Brockton Bay," another one jeered.
Standing across the way was a group of skinheads--- led by Hookwolf. The Neonazi cape was flexing his blades in and out of his skin. "The Boardwalk is Empire turf," he growled. "Get used to it, Loose Teeth."
They were squabbling over turf. The freaking Slaughterhouse Nine were in town, and the stinking gangs in this town were squabbling over turf.
And the turf was HER. She had spent so much blood, and sweat, and tears to position herself as neutral, to keep herself and her store out of the middle of the stupid Cape wars. She'd held out as a Rogue, no matter how much the E88 and the ABB and the government and the PRT had tried to pressure her. And now these thugs were just going to divide up her street-- her home-- her LIFE like it was nothing but a Christmas pie two children were squabbling over…
Something rushed through her she'd never felt before. Inutterable, blinding RAGE.
"This is OUR turf!" One skinhead yelled, brandishing a crowbar.
"Guess again, baldie," one of the Teeth sneered, cocking a shotgun. "This territory is OURS."
The doors on Parian's dress shop exploded outwards; shattered glass sprayed across the street. A tornado of cloth swirled out into the street.
"WRONG!" it shouted. A figure formed in the center of the vortex, slender and feminine and wrapped head to toe in dark silks. The only thing visible was her burning, rage filled eyes. She hovered over the street like a spectre of wrath.
"This is MY TURF!!"
Ropes of silk shot out in every direction, snagging Teeth and Skinheads alike and flinging them every which way, into walls, cars, telephone poles. Bones cracked. She didn't seem to care. Several of the gangbangers pulled guns and began shooting at her. One of her silken tendrils interposed itself, spreading out at one end to the size of a tablecloth. It stopped the bullets effortlessly. There was no doubt it would; it was Azeroth silk and it would take far more than a 9 millimeter or a round of buckshot to pierce it, even without Parian's power running through it. More streamers of silk shot out, seizing the weapons-- breaking more than a few fingers in the process-- and crushing them like tinfoil. She slapped the shooters aside, sending them tumbling to join their friends.
Hookwolf had been surprised by the explosion of violence from that quarter, but he adapted quickly. Sneering, he transformed into his namesake; a whirling, spinning mass of hooks and blades, loosely shaped like a giant wolf. "Nice to see you finally got some stones, little girl," he rasped out through his blade-lined muzzle. "But I'm no bottom-tier gangbanger."
A ball of thread the size of her own head formed, floating over her open hand. "No," she said. "You're just a joke." She shot the ball of thread-- the ball of high quality, Azeroth spider-silk thread-- down Hookwolf's throat. The ball unraveled and thousands of loops of nigh-unbreakable thread snarled through his whirling, gnashing blades in an instant. He thrashed and writhed when he realized what was happening, but that only sped the process up. In a matter of moments he was nothing but a tangled ball of blades and string, unable to even twitch.
Parian took a moment to tie the gangbangers up with their own clothing. She cringed inwardly at the cries of pain when broken arms or legs were jostled, but she stifled the reaction. She. Had had. ENOUGH. Once the goons were secured and she'd called the cops and the PRT, she walked over to Hookwolf. "Even as stupid as you are, I know that cousin-crossbreeding boss of yours is going to eventually break you out of jail," she said. "So pass this on. This is MY turf. Next time I won't hold back. You nazi capes think you're bad stuff but I was studying to be a surgeon once. You don't want to see what I can do with a thread and needle and human flesh."
"Holy shit," she heard one of the Teeth whisper fervently. She felt a moment of smugness. Actually she'd been in pre-med, leaning towards a general practitioner… but they didn't need to know that, did they.
There was as grunting howl. A lurching, rag-covered form with twisted, gorilla-like arms entered the cul de sac. As Parian watched it was joined by two more, then three others. One of them twisted, grimaced, split in half and formed two new, even more deformed monsters.
Parian felt her heart start to race. She tightened her makeshift costume around herself and lifted off the ground, swirling streamers at the ready. "If it's not one thing it's another," she gulped.
***
Stormtiger gawked, then laughed. "This?" he said. "This is all the almighty Protectorate can send out when the city is going mad?" He roared with laughter and nudged Cricket with his elbow. The silent nazi assassin just rolled her eyes. "Oh, what are you gonna do, little Vista-- stretch the sidewalk so you can run away faster--"
Smeeeerp. Smeeerp.
"What the @$#%??" he screamed in a suddenly very high-pitched voice. The green-clad Ward girl now towered over him like a colossus. She twirled her ray gun and holstered it.
"NOT SO BIG NOW, ARE WE," She said. "HO, HO, HO...." She reached down and went to grab the two shrunken villains. Morons; they'd been warned if they stuck their noses out--
Panicking, Cricket slashed at Vista's hand. "Owww!" Vista pulled off her glove and sucked her thumb. "Why you little--" She began stamping with vigor around her.
"Vista," a stern voice overhead said. "Stop trying to stomp on the Nazis this instant." She looked up; Armsmaster was dropping down from above, the jets from his rocket boots lowering him smoothly to the pavement beside her.
"But she tried to-- oh all right FINE," she said, feeling only a LITTLE guilty. "Quick, grab 'em they're getting away!"
Armsmaster complied. His metal gauntlets held up a bit better to Stormtiger and Cricket's angry slashing attacks than Vista's gloves had. "How long till they resize?" he asked. "They're going to be a handful very soon, if I recall correctly."
"Oh I read up on the settings on my ray gun," Vista said casually. "They'll stay shrinky-dinked for a half hour or so now. Here." She held up her empty lunchbox; a classic old steel one with solid metal hasps and an actual lock. (She'd gotten tired of Jamie Finster stealing her snack cakes between classes.) "This oughta hold them."
She could almost see Armsmaster's eyebrow arcing under his helmet, but he dropped them in and locked the hasps. "And what are you doing outside the school?" he said, looking over at the middle school she attended in her secret identity.
There was a demented scream, and a malformed brute with no face and a mouth in his chest came lurching out of a nearby alley. "Dealing with that!" Vista yelped. She quick-drew and fired. With a telltale Smeeerp, the monster clone shrank to the size of a doll. It ran straight at them and proceeded to do violent things to Armsmaster's boot. "They've been showing up in groups of three or four for the past half hour or so," Vista said casually. "I just suited up, came out here and zapped 'em. No biggie."
It was then that Armsmaster noticed the red splatters all over the street and sidewalk. "Vista," he said, horrified. "You haven't been-- shrinking and smashing these pitiful creatures--"
"Ew, no!" Vista said, visibly grossed out. "I wouldn't do that. What do you think of me??" She huffed. "I didn't need to do anything, anyway. After a few minutes, they just sorta--" the one mauling Armsmaster's shoe suddenly burst with a wet pop. "Yeah, that." She looked around. "Kinda glad I shrunk them all before they could do that. The school kids are freaked out enough as it is."
Armsmaster refrained from mentioning that the tiny wet spatters would eventually return to normal size, coating the street with gore. Someone in the PRT was going to be very busy with biohazard cleanup. "A PRT van will be arriving soon," he said. "Once we turn these two over for processing--" he hefted the lunchbox full of Nazi; high pitched swearing could be heard inside. "We'll be heading back to PRT headquarters to regroup." He paused. "Good work by the way."
Vista beamed. "Have you heard from the others?" she asked. "How are they doing?"
***
"You little schweinhund--"
Zorch. Krieg froze in mid-tirade, mouth wide open, eyes bulging, hands reaching out to throttle a neck that wasn't there. Clockblocker holstered his time-freeze gun and drew his sharpie marker. He pondered the time frozen Nazi in front of him. He'd already written "Putz" across his forehead and given him two broad-tip marker 'shiners' around his eyes… perhaps a nice curly mustache to finish out the look? He'd already decorated the similarly frozen Alabaster with dick pictures, profanities and vulgar limericks-- hey, the guy was a walking whiteboard!-- but that was getting boring…
All around Clockblocker was a strange tableau. Perhaps a hundred or so figures frozen in time-- skinheads, deformed brute clones, Teeth-- were standing all about, caught in the most bizarre poses. Browbeat was trotting back and forth through them, putting cuffs, zipties, brute restraints, and even a few primed containment foam grenades on all of the timelocked people, tying as many of them together as he could as well. When the time effect wore off, there was going to be an epic chain reaction of pratfalls...
Clockblocker was ostensibly covering him, standing watch for any of them starting to move so he could zap them for another fifteen minutes. However he was spending far more time messing with the two Nazis who had shown up "to protect der Kinders from der SlaughterTeeth menace."
Clockblocker snorted. Like Arcadia needed a bunch of goose-stepping assclowns to protect it. There were enough Cape students attending here in secret to flatten an army!
"Come on, man, quit goofing off," Browbeat whined. "I don't want any of these guys waking up and NOT being restrained!"
"Fine, fine." Clockblocker sighed. All good things must come to an end. He cuffed Krieg and Alabaster's hands together, then cuffed them to each other-- it had taken some maneuvering to get them that close together. Clockblocker shook his head; nobody appreciated his efforts. He clamped shock collars around both their necks. If they tried to get rambunctious or use their powers, they'd find themselves dancing the 220 volt Two-step. "Whoa, look out, that one's moving!" he said, pointing.
Browbeat jumped back. One of the trollish cape monsters, one with a stump thick neck, one doll-sized arm and one gigantic one, lurched forward, growling. Browbeat hauled back and punched the clone in the chest.
The brute staggered back several steps, staring stupidly. It reached up and scratched its chest where it had been punched, made a belching noise, and burst like a water balloon full of meat. Browbeat staggered back, gagging in disgust and shaking red muck off his arms.
"Wowch, punched that one a little hard..." Clockblocker said.
Browbeat curled his nose up. "Aw man, I hope this doesn't stain."
***
The Brockton Bay Dockworker's Union was giving one hell of a showing. The ever-growing mob of mutants was actually stuck in a stalemate at the fence line, brutish fists proving less than ideal against crowbars, tire irons, sledgehammers and muscles hewn out of iron from years of hard labor.
Hemlokk was a whirlwind of death amongst the monsters, stabbing, gashing, crippling. She flashed back and forth to wherever the workers were getting hard pressed, dropping several of the clones with lightning strikes before disappearing and reappearing elsewhere. But her strength was starting to flag. We could use some help here-- she thought desperately.
The moment she thought it, a crimson streak appeared, moving through the monstrous mob faster than the eye could follow. Clones began dropping by the score, dropping in the dirt or folding double like they'd been hit by a wrecking ball, all to a machine-gun whump whump whumpwhumpwhump as they were pummeled.
Moments later the last clone fell, bursting and beginning to deflate like roadkill on fast forward. The streak came to a halt, revealing Velocity in a three point pose, balanced on one heavy-gauntleted fist. He looked up and gave the crowd a toothy grin. "Sorry I'm late," he quipped. "Did I miss all the fun?"
The Dockworkers whooped and cheered their new favorite Protectorate hero.
***
Crawler was having a learning experience. His power was pretty uncomplicated, really; what did not kill him only made him stronger. If he was exposed to anything that could injure or damage him, it adapted his body till he was immune to it (and generally added a few brute-force options for retaliating, too.) Since his Trigger event, he had been exposed to blades, bludgeons, bullets, lasers, poisons, acids, radiation, near-absolute zero temperatures, hard vacuum, molten lava, and capes who punched really, REALLY hard. He'd consequently reached a point where he barely even felt such assaults, and laughingly brushed them off before retaliating with his own horrific strength, acidic venom, and worse.
Arcane energy, however, that was a new one. Bolts of moonfire, rains of burning stars, blasts of solar flame formed of nature's wrath pummeled his mutant form, blasting away enormous burning chunks of his armored flesh as if there were no resistance at all. He lunged back and forth after the elusive wolfman, pincers and talons lashing, only to find himself snarled in thorny vines and wrestling with animated trees.
Bayleaf was keeping his distance. He knew even his most powerful forms wouldn't last a second hand-to-hand against a monster like Crawler, so he kept back and rained down sun, moon, and starfire for all he was worth. Crawlers' indiscriminate lashing out with claw and talon and sprays of acid spit had forced the Teeth to fall back to save their own hides. Several had been pinned down by thorny vines and would wait out the outcome of the fight in place.
Bayleaf was growing desperate. It was slow, but Crawler was starting to adapt to the spellfire; each blast was doing less damage, each wound was healing faster. What was potentially more deadly was that he'd lost track of both Vindicator and Mannequin in the fracas…
He didn't have to worry about Mannequin at least. The psychopathic tinker was finding his prey to be as irritating as Crawler's. A two-bit brute wearing primitive medieval armor and waving a hammer and shield about should have been an easy kill, his retractable blades ripping through thin plate to the flesh below, or working their way between the plates-- but no. Sparks flew, but his near-molecular blades skittered off the crude metal like butter knives off battleship plate, barely even scoring the finish, and his taloned metal fingers somehow couldn't find any of the seams his optical sensors spotted.
The boy wasn't exactly pulling his punches either. They had flung each other back and forth, knocking each other down only to have their foe pop right back up, dragging their own little fight through the quaint little yards and fences till they were quite a ways away from the battle between Crawler and the werewolf.
The boy had more than a few tricks up his sleeves. Twice he'd ricocheted that shield off Mannequin's torso, despite his loose-jointed puppetlike body dodging about like a manic slinky toy. Whirling intangible hammers had caught him a few glancing blows as well. The blonde punk had landed a few blows with that hammer in his hand too; Mannequin had tried lashing out with his arm at the end of a spooling cable, only to have it smashed to the pavement with a brutal hammerblow. He'd barely retracted it in time to keep the casing from being ruptured with a second strike.
It was time to get more esoteric. Toxins weren't really his forte' but he had one of his own design in his modules. He'd been pleased with the results; it was nearly as fast-acting as some of Bonesaw's concoctions. He opened the 'mouth' on his modular head and sprayed a cloud of toxin that engulfed the armored figure.
For a moment it looked as if it was working; the boy staggered back, coughing and gagging, his skin blistering and blood trickling from his lips as his lungs began to corrode. Then golden light had engulfed him, seeping out of the cracks in his armor. When it dispersed the boy was whole and unmarked, and charged him with renewed vigor.
A healer too? A HEALER? This was unfair! Mannequin spat a cloud of razor blades at the knight from his arms, trying to keep him at bay, then snared him with a lariat of garrote wire, binding his arms and legs. The boy screamed in anger and flexed, snapping the wire binding his arms almost instantly. What did it take to kill this brat?
He wouldn't get an answer. Without warning inky blackness engulfed him. He experienced a moment of genuine panic; all his sensors were down-- video, infrared, ultraviolet, radar, sonar, everything. Even his compass and GPS. He whirled and raced off, trying to get out of the dark. The dark seemed to follow somehow, even after running what had to be a full block. He stopped and lashed around him with his arms at full extension, tasers blazing and buzzsaw blades whirring, seeking flesh-- and found nothing.
A ghostly, skull-like face formed in front of him, floating in the air. WHOOPS, said an echoing, sepulchral voice all around him. LOOKS LIKE YOU GOT EATEN BY A GRUE.
The darkness suddenly parted and there was the knight, right in Mannequin's face, blazing with golden light at every seam, hammer drawn back for a shattering blow. The hammer came down, smashing Mannequin into the ground. Then blows began raining down, one after the other, merciless and relentless as a pile driver. Warning sigils began lighting up like road flares in his monitors; his torso was cracked open, the seal violated; his brain case just went, his delicate organic tissues exposed to air---
The last thing he saw was Greg Veder's face, locked in a rictus of righteous fury. Then the hammer came down once more, and Mannequin's world went dark once and for all.
The cyborg's flailing limbs all went limp and dropped to the ground. Greg wiped the sweat and blood out of his eyes and looked around at the cloud of darkness swirling around him. "Grue?" he said.
The cloud congealed into a human form, then transformed into Brian Laborn. He had a makeshift costume of a leather jacket and a ski mask with a skull painted on it. "Yeah, it's me," he said.
"What the heck happened to you?" Greg said.
Brian shrugged. "Had a run-in with the Siberian. Got an upgrade. The Siberian lost." He hitched a thumb over his shoulder at a white van parked nearby. The shattered windshield and the blood spattered on the dashboard said volumes. "It was messy. Aisha… Aisha Triggered."
No further words needed said. Greg saw Aisha getting out of the van; he noticed the birds surrounding her. That was gonna be a hell of a story, he decided. He hefted his hammer and brought it down on Mannequin's head with a crack.
"What are you doing?"
"Making sure. He might have a spare brain or something." A second, more powerful blow split the cyborg's head asunder. He moved to one of the modular arms. "I'm not gonna be that guy who turns his back on the monster at the end of the horror movie just long enough for it to lunge up and get him." A quick rain of blows fell on Mannequin's corpse; in seconds there wasn't a single recognizable segment of him.
"Good thinking I guess," Grue said. "Where's Bayleaf?"
"Well call it a hunch Smart Guy," Aisha said, walking up beside them in a flurry of black wings, "But I'd say thataway." She pointed down to the street where smoke, fire, and lightning could be seen and the occasional bestial roar and THOOM of moonfire could be heard.
***
It was just then that Bayleaf misstepped. His foot came down in a puddle of Crawler's acid. He yowled in pain, leaping back and rolling on the ground, pulling up healing energies to pour into his sizzling paw.
He didn't leap back far enough. Crawler lunged forward, flinging his lumpish mass forward to seize and crush the druid wolf. Before Crawler could close the gap a flock of birds-- a curtain of claws and beaks and ink-black feathers-- swept down out of the sky and engulfed him.
Crawler's Trigger event had not been a gentle one. He had been fleeing his hometown in the dead of night when somewhere out in the back hills of West Virginia his tire had blown and his car had tumbled into a ravine. He had spent three days pinned upside down under the vehicle, unable to escape… and unable to escape the carrion crows that had attempted to peck out his eyes every time he started to lose consciousness.
He had come out of that crucible with an iron-forged will to survive… and a pathological fear and loathing of birds, especially crows. To suddenly be swarmed out of the clear blue sky by a flock of the things, cawing and scratching and pecking at his dozens of eyes, was almost enough to unhinge him. He fell back, bellowing and flailing.
Bayleaf watched the panicking monster in surprise. "What--" Before he could finish the question, a swirling ink black cloud engulfed Crawler, making the beast roar in frustration. The birds scattered, leaving Crawler alone in darkness. Part of the cloud pulled away and formed a humanoid figure with a white skull mask standing next to Bayleaf.
"You good?" Grue said.
"I think--" Bayleaf was interrupted again when a tentacle thick around as his thigh whipped out of the cloud and wrapped around his waist, yanking him off the ground and into the dark.
Grue's cloud parted, revealing a gloating Crawler clutching the Alliance leader over his head. "Your cute little Dark trick is great against sight and sound," Crawler jeered. "But it don't do a thing about scent." His many nostrils flared, as if in illustration. The tentacle squeezed, making Bayleaf groan in pain. "Tough luck, Skinwalker. Looks like you're nothing but a midday snack!" Crawler's mouth widened; his jaw unhinged and opened, revealing a tooth lined maw large enough to swallow a sedan whole--
Ding ding dingle ding
Ding ding ding ding,
Ding ding ding,
Ding ding ding,
Ding Ding dingle ding
ding ding ding ding--
Crawler paused and looked up the street in confusion. It was still littered with wisps and curtains of Grue's darkness, so he didn't see the ice cream truck until it was too late. With a final chorus of "The wheels on the bus" and a lingering scream of horror from Mr. Chuckles, the runaway vehicle rammed right down Crawler's wide-open throat.
"Abandon Ship!" Fennek yelped. Lok'tara, Fennek, Fidget, Gidget and Truck tumbled out the back door as Crawler began to gag.
Ever since joining the Slaughterhouse Nine, Crawler had been very careful to keep his distance from Hatchet Face. After suborning the Teeth, he'd done the same with Animos. He was VERY aware that his indestructible biology was due to his Power, and he wisely did not want to even know what having his power nullified would do. But all the precautions in the world couldn't help when he literally had a screaming power-nullifying cape shoved down his gullet. He could feel his power unraveling. He thrashed about, desperately trying to bite down and kill Mr. Chuckles before his power undid him completely.
It was too late however. Under the influence of his Shard, Crawler's impossible biology was a carefully constructed jenga tower of interlocking invulnerabilities. Without it to sustain the delicate balance, all those interacting metabolic forces began tearing each other apart. He could feel his own toxins poisoning him, his internal organs being digested by his own stomach acid, his immune system attacking his tissues and internal organs.
Then spells rained down on him. Moonfire, starfire, blazing beams of gold and silver light, a raining torrent of golden light… His flesh bubbled, his bones melted, and the cauldron of chemicals making up his body ignited. He burned.
The members of the Alliance stood and watched as Crawler burned away to ash. Bayleaf leaned on his staff. "Like the man said. 'It bleeds, we can kill it,'" he said.
A steady whump whump whump whump came from overhead. Everyone looked up; a twin-rotored Chinook sporting the PRT logo flew by overhead. "Looks like the PRT got out of their gridlock," Bayleaf said. They waved to it; the pilot flashed his landing lights in response. "They'll make quick work of the Teeth that are still left in the street."
"Does that mean this is over?" Aisha said.
"Not even close," Grue said grimly. "Jack Slash, Bonesaw, and Burnscar are still holed up in that TV station."
"Burnscar, a la Butcher Fifteen," Greg said, shuddering. "All this was just the opening. The big boss battle is still waiting."
The chopper swung around and slowly dropped down to land in the street, kicking up dust and grit and Crawler's ashen remains. Armored PRT troopers disembarked and began securing the surviving Teeth, still entangled in Bayleaf's briars. Their commander stood in the hatch and waved at the Alliance, making beckoning motions. "Looks like Piggot's gathering the forces in," Bayleaf observed. "Come on, guys. Let's go save the city."
Different things. And even that wouldn't cure the plagues since presumably she isn't actually infected, she's got like capsules or something inside her.
