As I quickly put my costume on I pulled up my power. A Trump from Lizardtail and a Blaster from Cassiterite. I was going as Shard to intercept Lung while Cameron helped the Undersiders get away which meant I was logically going to be sticking with my Shard powers.
Except this was Lung, one of, if not the, strongest parahuman on the East Coast. If either of these rolls got me a silver bullet to stop him I was going to take it.
I bit the inside of my cheek and put in 4 Loose SP to bring my Trump roll to its maximum. Go big or go home.
1d94=40=Imbuement Plane
Trump/Shaker: Imbuement PlaneCost: 8 SPYou can create infinitely thin planes that can be imbued with your powers. These planes are both invisible and intangible, and when something passes through them they are affected by the imbued powers. It takes a second to manipulate a plane, but they last forever. Such manipulation includes the ability to move, reshape, create, destroy, and modify the imbuement. You may have an unlimited number of planes active at once, but each plane may only have an area of up to 10m^2. To imbue these planes with powers from other people, you must both be touching them and have willing consent. You are informed of whenever something passes through the plane, and what it was.
What could I do with that? I mentally ran through my powers to see what it could actually do. Connections building in my brain and reading between lines and generating power interactions. Most powers would fail when trying to imbue them, like all my Tinker powers or most of my Brute ones. However Striker powers would work for a set definition, Divergent Fist wouldn't but Finger Painting or Heat Exchange would if I set a desired effect. I then saw it. My silver bullet. It would be dangerous, and if I was wrong then I would be risking more than just myself. It could be worth it though.
7d132=68+30+129+69+72+74+96=What You Egg+Weakling+Radiation Eater+Flawless Ocular Donor+Problem Solver+Wasteless
Thinker/Master (What, You Egg?)Cost: 1 SPYou are a savant when it comes to insults. Whether it be based upon a person's appearance or character, your insults are astonishingly accurate, always hitting where it hurts—emotionally, that is. This power does not cause direct physical damage. Do note that you have no direct control over how a person will respond to your insult—where one person would collapse and sob with a potent insult, another would go into a blind rage. Not all insults are equal, though; you can't expect a weak or cut and paste insult to have much effect, but it would have a minuscule improvement.
Stranger: (Weakling)Cost: 1 SPPeople will initially come to the conclusion you're weak and that they could defeat you easily. You can turn this off so people can come to their own natural conclusions.
Brute/Breaker: (Radiation Eater)Cost: 1 SPYour body has mutated to metabolize ionizing radiation as a source of energy. While not perfectly efficient, this ability allows you to survive and even thrive near hazardous radiation levels. Your cells are far more resistant than a normal human's, enabling you to stand near something like the Elephant's Foot for a few hours with only some minor radiation sickness your body can quickly purge.
However, extreme rapid exposure—like to the Demon Core—can still overload your system, temporarily shutting down your ability and causing acute radiation poisoning, though you'd still survive where others wouldn't.
A steady, high radiation source puts your body into a temporary overdrive, pushing you to peak human physicality. But stay in that state too long, and you'll crash from the strain. Moderate levels, on the other hand, boost your stamina, reduce your need for food or sleep, and make you healthier overall.
Yet, this heightened metabolism will also make your body emit noticeable heat, enough that anyone touching you might be alarmed by how hot your skin feels.
Thinker/Brute: (Flawless Ocular Donor)Cost: 1 SPYou have 20/20 vision, your eyes can regenerate any damage done to them and they'll have graft tolerance as transplants. You can also painlessly detach your eyes, which will remain functional even without a body to sustain them, your eyes will regrow within a week.
Thinker: (Problem Solver)Cost: 1 SPYour ability to solve problems has been increased tenfold. You can process information, evaluate options, and come up with solutions way faster than normal. What would take others minutes or hours, you can do in a few seconds. You can analyze a problem and mentally run through dozens of possible solutions, narrowing it down almost immediately to what you think is most likely to work.
You'll be able to come up with solutions on the fly and adjust your approach as new information comes in.
Thinker: (Knowledge Condensation)Cost: 1 SPYour mind can condense crystals that contain your experiences, such as a single memory, knowledge, or skill. It may at most contain an hour of information, and it is wiped from your mind. This process will take a second for every minute of information stored.
Keep in mind that any knowledge or skills gained will be fairly weak, as anything decent would typically take longer than an hour to learn.
Breaker: (Wasteless)Cost: 1 SPYour body no longer needs to sweat or produce waste. As such, processes that would've needed either of those are handled by your power—for example, your temperature is constantly adjusted to what it would've been had your body still produced sweat.
This also extends to any organism in your body, which means no eye crust and your teeth won't decay.
Useful but irrelevant. I waited a beat for any synergies to show up.
SchematicsCost: Knowledge Condensation+HandymanYour ability to easily make mental blueprints allows you to insert a how-to guide to make a weak piece of tinkertech. This is extremely limited and cannot be used for more than one piece of tech. An engine part could be added but not the full engine. It is only as strong as 1 SP but complexity could be upgraded to 2 SP depending on other addons.
Crystal ClearCost: Knowledge Condensation+Clarity+CypherWith improved clarity of thought and a natural grasp of communication, you can greatly increase the quality of your knowledge. No matter a person's past experiences, they will perfectly understand your knowledge, and with greater quality. This also naturally allows for higher concentration of information at up to ten times the previous amount.
Improved CondensationCost:Knowledge Condensation+Power Nap+Bullet TimeWith the powers of mental hibernation and acceleration combined, you may now condense larger crystals while napping. There is no limit on storage size of such crystals, and they condense at a rate of one hour of information every second.
Animalistic Ocular VarianceCost:Flawless Ocular Donor+Colorful EyesYou can copy the eyes and ocular characteristics of animals you've encountered and studied the eyes of, be it to experience having compound eyes like those of insects. For night, heat or monocular vision, or to see more colors like tetrachromats do, as long as you manage to encounter animals who have these kinds of visions.
The Condensation upgrades would be more than useful but at this moment the only thing even close to relevant was Animalistic Ocular Variance. I pulled from a college level biology textbook I had skimmed one evening when I was bored and changed my eyes to become like those of a cat. It worked with my evolution based powers and my body instantly adapted to the night vision and made it my own. The tier 0 powers were a bust for the current situation so it was now time to roll my Blaster power.
1d55=44=Just Fireball
Blaster: Just FireballCost: 8 SPYou can create fireballs in a wide variety of types and sizes. You can generate them in sizes anywhere from a baseball to a meter in diameter, create them out of either burning gas, oil, or plant matter, and can control how they move, such as having them fly in a straight line, obey gravity, follow a set path, or even chase after specific targets. You can also set how they interact with others, such as having them disperse on impact, bounce off of people and/or the environment, explode and spread their contents over an area, or stick to whatever they contact.
There is no hard upper limit to the number of fireballs you can have generated at a time, but you can only generate about one maximum-sized fireball a second, or however many other, smaller fireballs that make up the total size.
Powerful. It was actually insanely powerful when combined with my multasking abilities. Unfortunately I was going up against Lung, who in addition to his ability to grow stronger the longer the fight went on was also a powerful pyrokinetic himself who was immune to flames. Maybe I could get some sort of miracle synergy with my tier 0 powers.
However instead of being greeted by the usual influx of blue screens I got something new.
Congratulations!You have acquired:
1 Power from each category
Half of the powers necessary to gain the tier 2 power questYou are officially over halfway through your journey to reach tier 2 power! As a result the tier 0 pity system will be removed. Excess Loose SP will now be converted into PSP at a rate of 10/1.
What? No more free tier 0 powers. What was PSP even? Was whatever it was worth losing out on free powers and synergies basically? Okay that wasn't the end of the world, between Golden Body, Comprehension, and Mental Computer I think I had some of the strongest synergies I could gain from them. I also didn't have time to worry about this. I shoved all my annoyance and frustration into a thought stream I shoved in the back of my mind to stew until I could get back to it.
I had fully gotten into my costume and quickly penned a note to my dad saying an emergency came up and I would be back later.
I hoped I wasn't lying.
I pushed my body to right below its limits to get to Lung's position in time. Based on the positions of him and Oni Lee I could intuit that Oni Lee was Driving the Undersiders to Lung's general area, where the leader of the ABB would be waiting. I had to get there fast, but I also needed my stamina to stay high. Best case scenario I take down Lung, nothing bad happens with Cameron, and we all live happily ever after. Realistic case scenario I get dragged into a marathon fight against a regenerator that gets stronger the more he fights. I needed to be fresh for the fight. Back at the Boat Graveyard I had been too impatient and used my trump card way too early. Consistency was the most important part of a fight. Making sure I could output a steady amount of power throughout the entire confrontation.
At the same time I was thinking that Cameron was being driven to the Undersiders last known location and getting a rundown on them. The information was good, details that the public, and even New Wave weren't aware of. She was also given a rundown on Oni Lee's powers.
"He's a teleporter, but line of sight only. He also leaves behind a temporary clone in his previous location. Uses it to be a suicide bomber or dog pile his enemies. They only last ten seconds or so, and if damaged enough they turn to dust." Cameron's driver gave her the rundown on everything she needed to know. She started formulating plans in her head. Teleportation was a bad matchup for her, but there were ways around it. She just had to focus.
That was true for both of us. As long as we focused and kept our wits about us we would be fine.
Cameron jerked her head. She thought she had heard…No it was nothing. She was just on edge.
I wondered if I had upped the tension levels on the Cameron thoughtform too high. Before I could think seriously about changing them I realized I had arrived. The building in front of me was where my Sympathetic Sight was telling me Lung was. I shoved all Cameron related thought processes to my subconscious. I couldn't risk anything getting in the way of my concentration. I called upon my Scrapyard dimension to pull out two potions and downed them. One to up my fire resistance and the other to boost my healing. My stomach churned once they were in it but settled after a moment. My extra Tinker powers let me boost the strength of my potions, but they were almost too strong now, with two being the limit of ones I could ingest and not feel any ill effects in the moment.
Now it was time.
Infiltrator kicked in and I instinctually found my way to an unlocked window and silently made my way through the building. I found Lung on the bottom floor, speaking to a group of armed men. His ABB flunkies. I observed from a crawlspace in the ceiling.
"Lee will be herding the children to the location soon. It is time to move out." My blood ran cold at those words. I knew the 'children' that he was speaking about were the Undersiders, superpowered crooks that could at least attempt to defend themselves, but the way he was speaking about them? He actually saw them as children, no different than one who spent their days just playing in the park, and he would kill them just as easily as he would kill actual children. This man was sick.
Without a word I dropped down silent as the night and dropped onto Lung with an elbow to the spine hard enough I heard his vertebrae snap. The next instant I ran up to one of the armed goons and grabbed the shotgun he was holding. I took aim and shot right at Lung's liver. I wasn't going to kill him, but anything that didn't kill him right away he could heal from, and in my limited experience growing back organs was a costly and lengthy process.
One shot.
The blast hit dead on and a spray of gore blinded me for a moment. I pumped the gun and another pellet loaded in the chamber. Another shot. At this point the ABB goons wisely decided to run away. Smart.
A third shot.
That was when I noticed something wrong. There wasn't enough blood. My empowered eyes focused on the wound. Metal. His metal scales were already there underneath his skin. Was that how his power always worked? He was supposed to be the type of Brute that built up steam so why was his body already covered in metal.
His body jerked, his spine realigning. Dammit. I continued to fire the shotgun into him, this time aiming for different parts of the body, trying to see if the scales were evenly distributed or not.
They were.
He lifted his head up, his eyes glowing orange like molten metal. He was already charged up. I shot him in the face, his metallic dragon mask cracking in half revealing an intimidating visage that had already half broken into knife-like scales. He was already charged up. My mind put the pieces together, he charged up yes, but not always in battle. He could anticipate conflict, start his transformation early. He was about to go fight four capes, so he was already charged up enough to fight. The ABB members didn't run because they were scared of me, they just wanted to be out of Lung's way, since they knew he wouldn't pay them any mind.
He roared and lunged at me, his hands already having turned into talons. I blocked with the now useless shotgun, it tearing in half like butter faced with a hot knife. His momentum continued, far too fast for a man his size, and I barely dodged out of the way with only a gouge on my upper arm to show for it.
I glanced at the wound. It was bad, but it didn't affect my combat abilities. It would heal soon enough. I glanced at Lung.
"So you're the little girl that defeated the trash up north?" His voice was warbly, broken, as if his vocal cords were shifting around with the rest of his body. It didn't make the sound any less commanding. "You thought to try your hand against the dragon?"
Surge!
I rushed forward in an instant and hit him with an uppercut that sent him into the air. My other hand came up and grabbed his face, pushing him back into the earth, forming a crater in the building's floor. I didn't let go, my left hand gripping his head as tightly as I could while I brought my right around to punch him in the temple repeatedly. I had to knock him out as fast as possible. Keep him from continuing to grow.
I pushed the corrosive blood in my veins to my left palm and had it escape out at high velocity. Lung screamed as his face was eaten by the acidic blood. Overwhelm him. Keep him from fighting back!
I felt a stinging sensation in my side. I glanced down and saw Lung had plunged his talons into my sides. They plunged right through my body's natural defenses and were deep enough that Lung could probably tickle my kidneys if he wanted to.
Instead he used his pyrokinesis to light me on fire. My body was fine, the potion doing its work. My suit on the other hand wasn't. It was well made enough that it didn't crumble to ash, instead it just melted and fused with my flesh.
"No!" I stopped my attack on Lung to grab his arms and tried to dislodge him, but his claws here too stuck in there. The burning continued, the heat only rising, slowly but surely approaching the tolerance my body would be able to handle even with my potion.
Lung started to stand up, holding me up with his knife-like fingers. "You aren't as strong as I thought!" He increased the pressure of his grip, small microfractures forming on my ribs.
Surge!
I kicked him away with my increased strength and thankfully it was enough to dislodge him from me. He took a decent chunk of me with him, but nothing I wouldn miss. I created a thought process to regulate my blood flow, ensuring that it wouldn't fall out of holes in my sides and keep going to my muscles. I was still on fire so I dropped my internal temperature as low as I could. It wouldn't put out the flames on its own but it would help prevent my body from joining my uniform and hopefully starve the flames.
Lung got up from the wall I had kicked him into, and stretched out into his full glory. He was maybe seven feet tall now, his body completely covered in scales. His neck had extended and become almost lizard-like. His face distorted. I had done damage to him though. One of his eyes was gone, melted by my blood. That meant it was effective.
I raised one hand up and shot my blood out with the force of a firehose. That alone would be enough to knock most people off their feet. It didn't even give Lung pause. What did though was the corrosiveness that caused his body to start to steam and him to cry out in pain. Despite how it looked I had him on the backfoot. My blows to the head had stunned him, my acid was damaging him. Maybe I wouldn't be able to beat him with brute force now, but what about with ranged attacks?
I poured on my blood, pushing it to become even more deadly, more focused. The area around Lung began to melt into a soup of concrete and metal made liquid by my powers, but he still stood strong. He stood stronger than he had when I started this assault. One foot in front of another he started making his way towards me. I was still burning off his metallic armor but it was beginning to heal faster than I could strip it away. How the hell was this in any way fair. Lung was like a living cheat code.
As he got closer I had to make a decision. I cut off my assault and in the second he was staggered from the force of my blood no longer acting on him I began to run away. Out of the building that our battle was taking place in. I reached my consciousness over to Cameron to see if she had managed to get the Undersiders to safety. Instead of connecting to my other self I instead hit a wall.
What?
My brain was preventing me from accessing that information. Instead I was just being told to not run away, in fact I was being told to keep fighting and make the fight as loud as I could. I didn't know why I would do this. I still had 'admin' permissions, I could remove the wall keeping me from knowing what was happening and see what I was hiding from myself but…I wouldn't do this without a reason. I most likely wasn't the main consciousness anymore, which meant that I had a plan that required my body to act with less knowledge than usual.
I caught my breath as I waited for Lung to exit the building as well. He was barely humanoid and growing more so by the second. "Why do you run? I am not finished with you yet!" He was pissed. Healing didn't mean immunity to pain in most cases, and I just washed him in concrete melting blood. The pain was probably unbearable.
"I'm not running Lung!" I shouted. And I called upon one of my newest powers. "And if I was I wouldn't have to run fast for a fat, old, weak lizard like you." What You Egg? Proved surprisingly effective as Lung roared and charged at me.
He was stronger than me, healed faster than me, and was more durable. However he wasn't faster yet. Especially not over a distance. I leapt up and started climbing my way up the side of the alley. I needed to get high. High and loud. "Plus your fire? Weak as hell. Might as well have touched the stove. While it was off!"
Lung responded by sending a searing blast of hellfire my way. I leapt over the building's edge and got to the roof in time to avoid it but it still seared me like a steak. Without that potion I would have been a goner a long time ago. Lung roared and he started climbing up the wall, his talons cutting through the bricks of the alleyway and giving him the means to get up to me with ease. I waited on the roof. One second. Two seconds. Three. There he was.
Surge!
The moment his head peered over the lip of the building I smashed my leg right into him. He roared in pain and the head shot back, now attached to a long sinewy neck, but no actual damage was done and it turned back to look at me. His eyes were so cold. Despite the fact that they were orange like burning flames, they were cold with hatred. His jaw unhinged grotesquely wide and a torrent of fire shot out so fast I couldn't dodge it all. I was still fine as long as the burst of fire wasn't too prolonged, but my already melted costume continued to merge with my burned outer skin. Unfortunately I ended up closing my eyes due to the intensity of the fire, and next thing I knew I was in the claws of the dragon once more.
"You would laugh at me!" His voice was so distorted I might not have even been able to understand what he was saying without Cypher. His mouth was now in four parts, like an X shape. He was rapidly approaching a state where most people wouldn't even believe he had ever been human. "Kill you! Then the kids!" I was calm, despite being caught again. I wasn't sure why, since I didn't know if even a Surge backed kick would be enough to get me free.
Then a giant dog-like creature slammed into Lung so hard that he let go of my and I dropped to the rooftop. That was why.
Let's Play
From the car window Cameron could see faint glimpses of action on the rooftops of the rundown part of town she had been taken to. The Undersiders and Oni Lee. "Cameron, I can't get you any closer. Time for you to take action." The driver said.
She nodded and exited the vehicle. She had to get up to the rooftops, and that was the perfect reason to try out her new trick. During her fight with Cassiterite she had used her limited shapeshifting to add claws and increase her grip strength on the ground. Now she restructured her entire body. Against a teleporter she needed to be fast. She lengthened her limbs and removed unnecessary drag from her main body. She also adjusted her proportions and her neck so she'd be able to comfortably act on all fours without straining it. She hadn't gone full cat, rather a hybrid between a cat and a human, something made for immense agility and dexterity. She then leapt onto the wall of a building and began to climb up with her claws.
The action had already moved further away by the time she got up there, but she could still get a good layout of the battlefield. There were only a handful of Oni Lee clones, a masked figure wearing black and outfitted with knives and explosives. Across the rooftops there were pockets of shadowy clouds, Grue's power, that created a trail ending where Cameron could see Oni Lee.
The Undersiders were hidden away in that last black cloud, or at least that was what Cameron was assuming. Especially since Oni Lee was occasionally creating a clone and lobbing a grenade into the cloud. It seemed to cause some of the cloud to dissipate. Instantly Cameron recognized what had been going on for the past however long. The Undersiders had been hiding in the clouds to prevent Oni Lee from getting at them directly, but that didn't stop the grenades. They would have to expand the clouds and run to a new area. Looking at how long the trail of clouds went back this had been going on for a while.
Cameron locked her eyes on Oni Lee and tensed her metallic muscles. Like spring coils she contracted them and then expanded to launch herself at the teleporting cape. She leapt onto the back of the Oni Lee that most recently appeared out of nowhere. Unfortunately he seemed to hear her coming up and began to turn, but not in time to prevent Cameron from jumping onto his back, pushing his head down to try and keep him from being able to see anywhere to teleport. Unfortunately in the corner of her eye she saw Oni Lee pop into existence. The one in Cameron's grip was a clone, which meant…
Cameron dug her claws into the clone's skull causing it to turn to dust before it could reach for its grenades. A grenade was lobbed the metal cape's way and she rolled out of the way as fast as she could. The explosion rocked the roof, breaking it to pieces but she was far enough away all the blast did was push Cameron backwards, the shrapnel failing to pierce her metallic skin. The metal girl looked up and saw three Oni Lee charging at her with knives out. She changed one arm into a blade and swung it through the three of them. Like she thought they all turned to dust. Where was the real one?
"Behind you!" She turned and saw Oni Lee there pulling the pins of the grenades on his chest. Cameron was too out of position from the swing of her sword arm, she couldn't react in time.
Thankfully she didn't have to as the clone was jumped on by a large dog-like monster. It turned to ash and Cameron turned and saw Bitch standing there holding three large metal leashes each connected to their own dog monster.
The dogs were all going wild, leaping at clones of Oni Lee that were popping up almost as fast as they could form. Grue, the darkness generator, also appeared and rolling clouds began to billow off of him, cutting off large swaths of the rooftop from Oni Lee's line of sight.
Cameron returned her blade arm into a claw and began to observe the teleporter. He had ridiculously good instincts, but he was slowing down. He couldn't do this forever. Plus there was a slight delay every time he teleported. She began to whisper the timing to herself then she saw him shutter for a second as he appeared and she leapt.
Not at Oni Lee, but at the most stable position that he could teleport to in the direction he was looking. He appeared right as Cameron shot by, her claws raking him across the chest. "Got you!" He teleported again, but she had gotten him!
I turned to where he had gone, and realized what the coward was doing. He had teleported to a neighboring rooftop and was looking away. In fact he probably already gone, a thought proven correct by the fact a few seconds later the clone crumbled to ash on its own.
"Freaking coward." Cameron spat out.
"And we're Lucky for that." Grue said, catching Cameron's attention. "Oni Lee never stays long for a fight unless Lung is here, and if he was we'd be dead already. I'm more concerned about you. Who are you? A good samaritan?"
Cameron opened her mouth but began to feel a little tonguetied. These were capes, real actual capes who did heists and stuff. They even all had cool outfits. "Uhhh…" Dammit! Cameron shouldn't be freezing up like this.
"She's back up." Tattletale, one of the members who was walking out of the quickly disappearing darkness clouds spoke up. "Boss sent her." How did she know? Did Coil contact her?
She just tapped her head and with an impish grin said "Mind reader."
"Holy shit that's so cool!"
"Yes yes she's very impressive," Regent, the last member of the team said. "But how about he be impressive elsewhere? Tattletale said Lung was coming before, and I don't want to be around for round two."
"I don't trust her." Suddenly Cameron was hyperaware of three giant dog monsters surrounding her. "You've been wrong before," Tattletale let out an offended 'when?' "She could be with the ABB, leading us into a trap."
"But you were already in a trap?" Cameron was confused. "If I was working for the ABB wouldn't I have just helped Oni Lee kill you?"
Bitch honest to god growled at Cameron who flinched away.
"Bitch!" Grue yelled. "Stand down." Reluctantly the girl did. "I want to say thank you, but I also want to know who you are. From your own mouth, not our resident Thinker."
The darkness generating cape's motorcycle helmet looked like it was staring right into Cameron's soul. "The boss, I've been working for him for a bit. Doing odd jobs here and there." Grue nodded. "Tonight he said you guys were in trouble and where the boss tells me to go I go. So…you're welcome." He spared a glance towards Tattletale who nodded and some of the tension on his shoulders bled off.
"Thank you. Now we should probably get out of here. I don't know why Lung didn't show up, but I'm not going to stick around and hope he keeps staying away."
"It's another cape." Tattletale said looking into the distance. "Only reason he wouldn't have shown up is if there was another cape attacking him. It's also why unpowered reinforcements didn't show up. They were probably also taken out by our mystery cape."
"Show off." Regent said. Cameron was just impressed.
"We can't just let Lung get away with dissing us." Bitch said with a sharp bite. "He's in the middle of a fight. We show up, beat his ass, and prove we can't be messed with."
"Beat Lung's ass?" Regent seemed honestly shocked at that. "That's literally the dumbest idea I've ever heard. You don't just beat Lung's ass, and wouldn't that just make him madder at us? You know, the people he tried to kill!"
"She actually has a point." Tattletale started and Grue groaned.
"Please tell me you don't agree with her. We wouldn't have gotten out alive if it wasn't for Tin Girl and the ABB are already on our tail."
"Yeah and that's the point. We go there, Let Lung beat us around a little, then let the hero that's there take the rest of the heat. Lung gets to say he scared us off, and he won't lose any face so we can just lay low for a few days and we'll be all good. Just need to appease his ego."
"If we're going after Lung I'm not letting him hurt my dogs!" Bitch said with a growl stepping up to Tattletale before having to be stopped by Grue.
"Back off! Tattletale, how confident are you that if we do this we can get away?"
"Not one hundred percent but if the hero is still alive at this point he'll be able to survive long enough for us to put on a show and then toss him back to the wolves. Only way we get this ABB heat off of us. Otherwise it's going to be the same thing any other night we try to pull a job near Lung's turf."
Grue seemed to hesitate. Weighing the pros and the cons.
"Hey." They Undersiders turned to the metallic girl that shared the roof with them. "So I know I'm not really a part of your team, but I kind of have an idea that might help get the ABB out of your way permanently."
Let's Play
I blinked as Bitch's dogs began to claw at the transformed Lung, doing more damage than I ever could. I truly underestimated their strength when I saw them last.
I followed the metal leashes and saw their owner standing there shouting commands.
"Holy shit, are you alive?" I turned and saw a teen in a loose white Renfaire type shirt and a jester mask. Regent was the name that came to mind. "You look like Freddy Cruger's uglier cousin."
I looked down and realized how disturbing I must have looked. Most of my outfit had fused into my skin, and I still had a small portion of my sides torn out from earlier. "I'll live."
"Good." A commanding voice said. My gaze switched to Grue, the group's assumed leader. Next to him was a girl in purple, Tattletale, and a metallic girl that I hadn't heard about running with the Undersiders before. The one from the boat graveyard. She had a look of concentration on her face.
"Good? Thanks for the concern." I snarked.
"Good because we have a plan to end this fight and we need some extra muscle. Can you fight?" Tattletale was telling the metal girl something, my mind filling in blanks of what I couldn't hear. She was directing her to place something at the mouth of the alleyway where Lung was fighting Bitch's dogs.
"Yeah. I can fight." Already any internal damage was being taken care of by my healing factor. Everything on the outside was just set dressing. "Why? And what does it have to do with the metal one?"
"Clever" He whispered under his breath. "All you need to know is that Tin Girl is essential to the plan. We need your help in pushing Lung through the mouth of the alley." My mind made some connections. Bitch's dogs had muscle, and plenty of it, but not enough finesse to push Lung where they wanted without going themselves. I on the other hand had plenty of finesse and presumably if whatever they were doing went wrong they wouldn't give a shit if I went down with Lung.
"Got it in one." The girl in purple said. What was she? A mind reader?
"Listen." Grue said, pulling my focus away. "Lung is ramping up, hard, and soon he might end up on a rampage not even the Protectorate can contain. Normally I would be fine with that and just be on the other side of the city when that happens but we're the target of that rampage and from the looks of it you're not much farther down the list than us." He had a really good point. "So trust me when I say that if you can help Bitch send him through the mouth of that alley."
I nodded. "You make a convincing argument." I then moved myself over to Bitch. "Bitch. Good to see you again."
"Shard. You look like shit." She responded bluntly.
"You take the good with the bad." I shot back. "You dogs, how much longer can they deal with him?" Lung was already taking back the advantage from the surprise attack and the monstrous transformation the dogs went through couldn't stand up to his assault forever.
"Not long. So hurry up and fucking help."
I nodded. "Listen, I need to set up there," I gestured towards a fire escape. "Once I'm there I need you to get your dogs to throw Lung in the air like a giant ball. Can you do that?"
The dog master nodded and I moved. I set up, and used Grounded to basically stick my feet to the edge of the fire escape, basically facing Lung head on. I looked to Bitch and nodded, my muscles coiling together like springs waiting to be let go. Potential energy that would explode if given half a chance.
Bitch shouted something and the three dogs worked in concert to launch Lung into the air. He reached the apex of his trajectory and then began to fall back down. That was when I launched myself. Like a human rocket I slammed into Lung, feeling my bones crunch at the impact, but the dragon was sent flying. Half a second. For a moment he reached to the side, to catch himself, but that movement was disrupted when Divergent Fist activated and pushed him through the air again.
Pushed him right through the mouth of the alleyway where he went through and then became completely still as he landed and rolled out onto the street. From my position in the alley I looked up and saw Tin Girl, the one that had frozen the vigilante Browbeat for several days. This was her doing, but how? With Browbeat it was an entire section of space that was frozen, here Lung was frozen but still moving through space.
"Well this was fun!" Tattletale yelled down at me, "But we really have to go. Don't worry about cleanup though, Armsmaster is on his way. Tata!" And with that the Undersiders and Tin Girl got onto the back of Bitch's dogs and began to ride away.
The moment they left my full memories were unlocked and the context of what happened returned to me. I remembered explaining my powers as Cameron to the Undersiders and saying I was also working on a trick to create a gate that when passed through would cause things to become frozen in time. Explaining away Imbuement Plane as a function of Frozen Space. Cameron, or Tin Girl as it seemed she was wanting to call herself, placed a plane at the mouth of the alleyway for Lung to be pushed through. The act did reveal a condition to Imbuement Plane that wasn't on the powers description though. Making the planes was easy, but once they were imbued with powers they took the same mental energy to keep up as those powers. A quick moment of creating a Just Fireball plane confirmed it took no actual mental concentration to keep up, but with a power like Frozen Space which took much of Tin Girl's concentration to use the moment she stopped concentrating the plane vanished.
I also remembered why I had sealed not only my ability to observe the Cameron thoughtform but also my memories of Cameron at all when the Undersiders showed up. When Tattletale said she was a mindreader she was half lying, which meant she was telling half of a truth. Without more information I couldn't risk any thoughts that could give Cameron away.
At this point I began to hear the telltale sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle approaching. I glanced down at my horrific appearance and sighed. Hopefully he wouldn't be too freaked out by what happened.
Name: Taylor Anne HebertDragon Slayer LVL 15SP Cap11Loose SP3Tier 1 Powers(24)Mover(1)Shaker(3)Brute(3)Breaker(2)Master(3)Tinker(2)Blaster(1)Thinker(1)Striker(1)Changer(3)Trump(3)Stranger(1)Tier 0 Powers(79)Synergy Powers(27)Power Upgrades(6)
April 11th
A.N.
I am so mixed about this chapter. I might do another rewrite of this one but also it's like 3:00 AM and I don't want to miss the deadline I created for myself.
Quick rundown on my thought processes. I wanted to do some fun mental trickery with Taylor messing with her own memories and ability to access them. It seemed fun and it set up some stuff. There's also a decent piece of foreshadowing here that I think might be too obvious but hey it might not be without my own hindsight.
Lung's scaling is pretty inconsistent but it seems at least it is partially based around how large the threat is so he grew quickly around Taylor.
I wanted to have a bigger interaction between Bitch and Shard but it is really late and I need to publish this. Once again I might do a rewrite of this, or at least post a 'missing scenes' type chapter.
No more tier 0 powers because they were driving me insane to constantly roll. Trust me you don't want to know how annoying that process is.
Cameron now goes by Tin Girl! And is at least in contact with the Undersiders. Things moved fast but she isn't on the team yet. Next chapter will deal with fallout and them interacting with her when they weren't just having been fighting a teleporting assassin trying to blow them up.