Another series of leaps. Shorter distances, with no big drops. Any pain she felt was from the first big jump.
She could see the capes fighting, down below. A man was at the center of it. He’d swelled in size until he was twice the height he should be, almost breaking apart, like a statue that had been dropped, only the biggest chunks preserved, hanging in mid-air in a vague human shape, high above the street. Black ooze gushed from foot-wide cracks and divides in his body. His flesh was dark brown, the edges of the cracks raw and bloody.
Even from her vantage point on the rooftop, she could hear his screams. It was muffled, despite the volume, as though he were screaming while underwater, the effect amplified.
The capes were occupied – a very small few seemed to be trying to attack him. The rest were working to keep the black ooze from spreading.
Rachel paused, watching.
Miss Militia was down there. She had a containment foam gun, and was forming a short wall.
The screaming got worse, and the man in the center broke in half, a crack widening in his torso until it separated completely. More ooze, faster. His lower body was almost impossible to see.
His hands went to his head-
Faces. Mockeries. Variations on a theme. Reaching hands, supplicating.
-The image was brief, but acutely familiar. Rachel felt mentally disoriented in the same way she might be physically disoriented if she stepped forward and found the ground wasn’t there. Others in the area had staggered. Miss Militia had dropped the hose for the foam gun.
Rachel gripped the chain that looped Bastard’s neck. When he was small, the same chain doubled as a leash.
Familiar, comfortable. Reassuring, in the midst of this situation.
She’d had visions before, she’d even remembered one, after the fight on the beach. They hadn’t been like that. It had been brief, and somehow broken up.
Something was wrong.
Someone shot the black ooze man, and his collarbone splintered, cracks spiderwebbing up to an oozing fissure in his neck and the stump of one shoulder. Rachel could see how more ooze was starting to bleed out from the site of the injury.
He reacted, looking down at the injury, then looking up.
He reached out, and the ooze below him shifted, moving in a singular direction as if it were flowing downhill.
The cape who’d shot him hurried to run-
A moment of uncertainty. The population of this world wasn’t reacting any further. He attacked, they moved. Again and again, they created the images. They weren’t afraid, and he was.
-but stumbled as the mental image shook him. He managed to get his footing, but the ooze moved faster with each passing second, and the delay had cost him. It slopped around his ankles on its way past him.
The black ooze man moved his hand, and the ooze that was pouring from him became black fire, spreading to alter all of the ooze it touched with a sound like the gas lanterns made, but a thousand times louder. Things touching the fire burned, and the dark sea was briefly highlighted in oranges, yellows and reds.
The gunman who had attacked the ooze man dropped before he could react, his feet and lower legs burned away. When he touched the black fire, there was a brief flare of orange flame before he was obliterated.
She had a sense of what she was up against, now. She surveyed the battlefield. The ground was rising into a crude bowl, containing the ooze, but a veritable waterfall flowed from the man’s ruined midsection, and the rate at which the bowl filled was outpacing the rate at which the bowl grew.
There was a crash. Sunny and Cassie had arrived.
“Biter?”
“Not coming.”
Rachel scowled, but left it at that.
“What’s going on?”
“Trigger. Something’s wrong.”
“Trigger events can be plenty bad on their own.”
“Mm,” Rachel grunted.
“Oh. Yeah. You know.”
“Mm. You stay out of the way. Black stuff is bad.”
She didn’t wait for a response, ordering Bastard to head down towards the ground. Why? Hard to say, just like it was hard to explain the solidarity, or why she’d come in the first place. There were people out there who functioned best with their brains. Putting ideas together, analyzing the situation, rationalizing. She wasn’t one of them. She functioned best on instinct.
Gut feeling? If this fight continued like this, it would turn out ugly.
Miss Militia had shucked off the foam dispenser, and was backing up, shouting orders. She pulled the trigger on a small gun, sending a flare skyward.
Rallying the troops. Made sense.
The ooze man rose higher into the air, as she made her way down. There were people on the fringes, cornered or caught where they couldn’t freely maneuver.
Bastard’s claws scraped against the side of the building on the way down, his front claws getting more traction than the rear ones. He wound up swinging, his hind end descending while his front end maintained a grip. Rachel was nearly flung off, but her hold on the chain kept her in place. Bastard elected to drop the remainder of the way to the ground.
Another heavy impact. The imminent bruising went from ‘I’ll feel it in the morning’ to ‘I’ll be feeling this all next week’.
He was out of practice. Chasing buffalo and bringing them down was different from leaping around a city.
But she was on the ground, free to run.
“Kip up!” she called.
Bastard leaped, touching the side of the building, tensing and leaping from that point before landing on solid ground. In the process, they’d circumvented a large pool of the black stuff.
They landed near one of the capes on the fringes, a man standing in a construction site, with enough stuff around him that he couldn’t maneuver freely. He was using his power to push at the ooze, a kind of telekinetic wind. Her arrival had distracted him, and the wind had faltered. The ooze encroached.
She extended a hand.
He glanced at the ooze, then at Bastard, and sided with her. He took her hand, and used his power to help himself up, landing behind her.
She could see movement out of the corner of her eye. Tentacles, pitch black, reaching out of the ooze that poured from the man’s body. Like the fire, it spread, altering all of the ooze it touched to make it the same.
“Up! Rooftop!” she called out.
Bastard leaped, ascending by leaping from one wall to the next. By the time they were halfway up, the tendrils were almost touching them.
They reached the last jump, leaping to the lower of the two rooftops, and stopped. They’d been snared, suspended over the street, the rooftop ten feet in front of Bastard’s front claws.
Cassie was approaching, moving along rooftops to try and get to them. Below the rooftops, the entire neighborhood was a shifting morass of black fronds,grasping, seizing what they could, crushing. Fire and the lights of other powers were visible on the opposite side of the battlefield. Miss Militia’s group. A flamethrower-
He tried to push the feelings away, but they were seductive. A spiral, where the feelings were both the torment and the balm that soothed the torment. Stopping was daunting. He had been wrapped up in them, and now it was something else. He’d never dealt with something like this. For hours, days, he’d been reveling in emotion, and now he couldn’t stow it away, even as he experienced trauma for the first time.
-torched the worst of the tendrils, keeping them at bay. The fire stopped as other capes stepped in.
Rachel felt a frond seize her wrist. She pulled, and it didn’t give. Cassie wouldn’t make it in time.
The telekinetic wind shifted from focusing on the fronds to focusing on Bastard. Pushing him in one direction, getting his claws closer to the rooftop. One and a half feet closer, two feet…
At the same time, the rooftop changed. It twisted, inching closer to them.
Rachel gave her companion a bit more power. Size at the expense of flexibility.
Other tendrils encroached. There was no ooze on the ground, now. All of it was alive, a singular writhing mass that extended from the man above them.
Distant gunshots sounded. They jerked forward, and Bastard got one claw on the edge of the roof. More traction.
Two more gunshots. They were free. Bastard made it three steps before the black tentacle around Rachel’s wrist pulled tight. He took her sudden movement as a command and stopped, turning, his head moving so he could see any gestures or instructions.
A red dot appeared on the tendril that gripped her. Another distant gunshot, and it was severed. Ooze splashed onto the rooftop.
“Go!”
Bastard moved.
Tendrils became fire in that same flowing transition, and the flaming liquid descended, covering the streets and buildings below them. There were flammable materials on some of the rooftops, where tall buildings were being extended to be higher, and black flames rose.
High above them, the man continued to fall apart. Barely any fragments were larger than a fist, now. There was only the upper half of his head, a chunk in his chest. His legs were a pillar, framing the flow of the ooze that continued to spread beneath him.
Capes had retreated to higher ground, but it wasn’t a refuge. The ooze would change again.
Common sense told her she shouldn’t get any closer. Instinct told her otherwise.
She directed Bastard to a lower rooftop, then one that was lower still. A pair of kid capes, fending off the spreading black flames with a combination of powers.
There wasn’t time to be nice about it. She grabbed one, had Bastard grab the other. They ran for higher ground as the liquid fire became mist.
It reminded her of Grue’s smoke. It spread to fill the air, and it moved too fast to avoid. Consuming everything, covering everything. The fires seemed to have gone out, or the black fire had overtaken any normal fire, but the damage was there. There were places where Bastard would fall through if he landed, balconies and rooftops. hazards. They were harder to see now, too, behind the mist.
If he turned it into fire or tendrils now…
“Up!”
The heroes were hesitating to attack any more. Easy to see why. Every bit of damage seemed to increase the amount of ooze by a hell of a lot.
He wasn’t dying, he wasn’t stopping.
She ordered Bastard to higher ground, and the telekinetic wind helped them rise, where the added weight of the two kids slowed them down. The tallest building was near Miss Militia, so she circled around the area where the fight was taking place, constantly moving higher. A balcony nearly collapsed beneath Bastard’s weight. She misjudged a jump, urging Bastard on, while forgetting that she’d made him stronger and less agile.
Down there, somewhere on the ground, Miss Militia was in the midst of the smoke, her team holding it at bay. She seemed to come to a decision. Her rifle became something else. A cannon, fixed to the ground.
She shot into the black mist with a rocket. The rocket seemed to grow to twice the size as it flew. The explosion was dramatic, noisy, and distracted Bastard mid-landing, making him stumble. The explosion consumed the ooze man entirely.
The amount of smoke flowing out around the man doubled.
Two more rockets hit the same point, each one growing as it moved.
The smoke cleared. The dust and smoke from the explosions slowly cleared. By the time the area was visible enough to check on their enemy, the black mist was starting to clear as well.
He’d been stopped.
The visions, they’d been broken up, too recent. She wasn’t forgetting them. The power, too… he’d been strong.
He’d been-
A man in a white hood and cape stood there, the tension in his body swiftly stopping. He had no expression, only a green and blue glow beneath his hood, but his body language was clear. Shock, defeat.
A flash of golden light wiped him out of existence.
-too strong.
She started to turn her head, looking for the source of the voice, and felt the disorientation that had accompanied the visions. Her ride-alongs weren’t in better shape.
It wasn’t over?
Bastard’s head turned. His ears perked up.
Instinct. She urged him towards whatever had gotten his attention.
She could hear it, now.
“Hey,” the wind-maker said. “What-”
He stopped when he heard the same sound.
Screaming. As if from underwater, getting louder with each moment.
There was somebody on a rooftop, in the midst of a garden, screaming.
Her arm broke in half, and ooze began dripping from the injury.
Bastard collided with her, and she broke apart, ooze flowing like a wave, tossing them aside. It was defensive as much as offensive.
Except it seemed to be hurting its host more than anything. The force of the flowing ooze was damaging her body, tearing her apart. Her eyes were gone, with only dark sockets streaming more fluid. When she opened her mouth, more erupted forth, flowing.
“Again,” Rachel whispered.
Bastard found his feet, readying for another attack. She could feel the tension as he prepared to leap.
Just have to break her enough.
The ooze froze into jagged crystal. Bastard’s leap failed, and he nearly bucked his riders free.
The freezing had spread through the ooze that covered the woman, and the jagged spikes of black ice tore through her upper body and head.
For long seconds, things were still.
And then the woman came to pieces. The ice broke, and Bastard pulled himself free.
“Jesus,” the wind-man said.
Rachel was silent, watching the back of Bastard’s head. He hadn’t reacted like he’d heard more screaming. Was it over?
“Hey kids, are you-” the man started. He was silenced as Bastard leaped, retracing his route to the ground.
More hard landings, but she was already resigned to the aches and pains that would follow a fight.
When they touched solid ground, Miss Militia’s entire group was waiting. Vista was there, along with one of Taylor’s teammates from Chicago.
Bastard landed, and Rachel was careful to keep a distance. Miss Militia stepped forward, and Rachel directed Bastard to back up a little.
“We going to have a problem?” Rachel called out.
“No. No problem,” Miss Militia said. “I’m coming closer, okay? We’re good. There’s an amnesty.”
“Don’t know what that means.”
“There’s a deal. Everyone gets a second chance. We don’t have a problem with anyone, until they do something wrong.”
“I’m not a villain anymore?”
“Not unless you want to do something villainous.”
Rachel nodded.
Miss Militia approached.
“It shifted to a new host,” the wind-man said. “That was definitely another one.”
Rachel gave a push to the kid she’d slung over Bastard’s shoulders.
“Get down,” Rachel said. “Bastard, drop it.”
Bastard let the boy he was holding drop, along with a fair amount of slobber. The boy hurried back. The girl was taking more time to find her way to the ground. Rachel grabbed at her arm, and the girl flinched.
“You dealt with it?” Miss Militia asked, stepping closer to give the girl a hand.
The wind-man wasn’t moving. “It dealt with itself. The power destroyed the host. That’s number two on the list of things that aren’t supposed to happen.”
“Shit happens,” Rachel said. “World makes a lot more sense when you accept that.”
“This is a little different from the everyday sh-tuff,” the man said.
Miss Militia no
dded, her eyebrows knit together in concern. “This makes four. Almost a fifth of the regular triggers we’ve heard of. Two in three days. One’s still loose, the others died or destroyed themselves.”
“Hey, wind-man,” Rachel said. “Off.”
“I’m just waiting for Gloss to get down.”
“Off.“
He heard something in her tone and moved, using his power to hop down.
“Hellhound-” Miss Militia said. Rachel gave her a hard look. “Um. Bitch.”
“If you’re going to fucking give me trouble after what you said before, then-”
“No.“ Miss Militia said. She raised her hands, showing she was unarmed. The mortar was a distance away. “Thank you. That’s what I wanted to say.”
Rachel shrugged, averting her eyes. She couldn’t help but feel surrounded, here. “I was looking for you anyways. This is your territory?”
“That’s a little complicated. The-”
“You work here? Do the superhero thing?”
“Yes, but-”
“Then it’s yours,” Rachel said. Others had told her she could sound hostile in situations like this, so she tried to speak like she would to a dog that hadn’t been exposed to humans. Gentle, acknowledging the fact that it couldn’t understand. The sound was more important than anything.
“Um, I suppose,” Miss Militia said.
“It is,” Rachel said, trying to measure her tone, suppressing her irritation. “If someone else is in charge, you tell them this instead. Some fuckstick came into my fucking neighborhood, cozied up to his old girlfriend, then waltzed with their kid. Came here. I was looking for the asshole, and I wanted to let you know before I went to collect them.”
“Okay,” Miss Militia said, sounding a little more authoritarian. She glanced at the wind-man, who had his hands clamped to the boy’s ears. “That’s-”
“Okay?” Rachel gave Bastard a light kick, indicating he should go.
“-Problematic!” Miss Militia raised her voice.
But Rachel was already leaving. She heard Miss Militia’s voice, swearing, running footsteps.
Didn’t matter. A glance to the rooftops indicated that Biter had arrived. He had a man and a little boy with him.
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