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A handful of the bad guy troops opened fire on the spot where I was, or rather, where I had been. I was already flinging myself into a backwards leap, assisted by my blue paint to get the hell out of that spot. An instant later, a lightning blast went flying through the air, as Juice very clearly targeted the spot he thought I was going to be in. But I had thrown myself backwards rather than straight up, anticipating something like that.
Thankfully, he didn’t have time to follow up with that, because Caishen had recovered from her own surprise, and lashed out with a punch at his back. She must have used her power to magnify the ‘value’ of that blow, because even with his incredible strength, it still knocked him down. The man caught himself on his hands and knees before his leg snapped out into a kick. Caishen managed to pivot out of the way just as Ephemera produced a shotgun and unloaded both barrels into the man’s face. I had no idea what the thing was loaded with, but it was enough to make his head snap back with a bellow of pain.
Leaving them to that, I activated a series of green interlocked circles on myself and Alloy, as both of us went sprinting toward Janus together. On the way, I saw Devil’s Due trying to pick himself up, so I activated the black-painted band-aid on his neck just to make sure he couldn’t fuck us over any time soon. Then I took a quick glance over my shoulder at an area behind us to judge my aim before sending a shot of red that way. That done, I gave a sharp whistle toward Janus themselves ahead of me. “Hey I’m pretty sure if you wanted a job here, you could’ve just dropped off an application! Or two? Whatever, the enthusiasm is good but coming in with all your friends for moral support is just gonna make you look immature and needy. It does not look good to a hiring manager.”
They took the bait. An instant later, there was a fist the size of my entire bed flying at both of us. Alloy went high, having her marble suit lift her into the air, while I dove into a low slide as though I was heading for homebase. On the way, I hit the massive fist with two shots of paint. One was green and the other red, with the former fed into the latter for speed. I activated all of them, including the red paint I had sent over my shoulder a few seconds earlier. Janus was taken by surprise as their fist flew much faster than they expected, stopping them from adjusting their aim as I went sliding under the extended limb. “Hey, hey,” I shouted, “I know you need support, but no hugs!”
Meanwhile, their fist was pulled by the red paint, extending outward faster than they could recover and stop themselves until it slammed into the backs of Two-Step and Last Word. Both men were knocked to the floor. Not down and out, unfortunately, since the former had managed to notice the incoming fist soon enough to throw up one of his ghost-like copies to absorb some of the impact, and the latter was using some sort of power that enhanced his strength. Still, they were down for the moment. More importantly, Alloy and I weren’t. That was always a positive thing.
Of course, Janus still had an arm that wasn’t being extended out clear across the room. Which they unfortunately realized in that moment and lashed out with it at Alloy and me. At the last second, I managed to activate the orange shield pictures I’d painted across both of our backs. But we still took that suddenly-massive arm head-on, knocking the other girl out of the air before we both went tumbling across the floor together.
Grabbing my partner, I rolled myself on top of her before slumping down with a pained, incredibly dazed and barely coherent, “Don’t… can’t…”
I could almost see the smirk on Mister Harmful’s face as he brought his sedan-sized fist down toward us, attempting to squash Alloy and me like a couple bugs. His fist hit us… and then bounced off as Janus recoiled from the force of the blow that had just hit them. Or rather, that they had just hit themselves with. When I rolled on top of Alloy, I had activated a second set of orange paint, this one mixed with blue. Not only was I protected from the worst of the damage (though it still felt like getting slugged in the back so definitely not fun), but a portion of that damage was reflected back onto its source. Janus, in this case. They staggered with a surprised and clearly confused yelp, before abruptly cursing several more times in quick succession as a series of zapping sounds filled the air, like insects repeatedly hitting one of those bug killing electrical light things.
Yeah, that definitely wasn’t me, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t Alloy either. Both of us rolled away from each other, looking up in time to see Skip holding some sort of fancy-looking baton. She kept appearing all around Janus, taking advantage of the opening we’d given her to repeatedly hit them with that weapon. With each blow, a jolt of electricity was sent into the men, apparently strong enough to hurt even them. They kept trying to grab her, but she was constantly disappearing and reappearing in a different spot. It looked like she had run in a circle around the joined men and was now simply ‘skipping’ back and forth through that circle, wherever their hands weren’t. Every time their limbs started to grow, she smacked them with that baton and interrupted their focus. And yeah, they were clearly getting pretty pissed off about that.
Finally, the men both let out a pair of enraged screams, and suddenly grew much fatter. That was the only way I could describe it. Their torso became three or four times as wide as it had been. I’d had no idea they could even do that. I thought they were limited to increasing the size of their limbs. But either way, it was enough to catch Skip and knock her to the floor. While she was briefly dazed, they stomped down toward her. But Alloy was faster, having already sent one of her marbles that way, transforming it into a stretcher-shape just in time to scoop the other girl up and pull her aside before the foot slammed down into that spot.
Alloy and I managed to jump to our feet, even as the marble stretcher dropped Skip off right beside us. By that point, the massive form of Janus had turned to face our direction, bringing both hands up. But even as we started to brace ourselves, another voice filled the air. “It’s scrubbed, go!” The voice came from that second vault, where the mostly-naked red metallic skinned T-1000 woman was. But it wasn’t coming from her. Or rather, it was, but not from her mouth and not in her voice. A new face, one that looked an awful lot like Theory if he was made of red metal, had appeared on her stomach. Which absolutely was weird as fuck. As was the fact that he was speaking through that face. It was his voice and his orders, somehow projected onto a re-creation of his face on her own metal skin? Yeah, I was both horrified and confused.
But whatever that whole thing was, it made all the bad guys in the room immediately stop fighting. Instead, they abandoned their opponents, including Janus, both of whom took turns giving Skip, Alloy, and me one last glare before they took off at a quick run. Before the rest of us could react, another surprising thing happened. Namely, that metal chick jumped up, bounced off Two-Step’s raised and cupped hands, then off the hands of his ghostly duplicate who appeared in the air slightly above him, before flipping over in the air to dive right toward the floor, like she was going into a pool of water. But instead, she became the pool. As her body impacted, it spread out into a fifteen-foot-wide liquid metal thing.
Then it got even weirder, as all the bad guys proceeded to jump into her. They jumped into that metal… puddle, vanishing from sight. I was honestly so surprised by what we were seeing that it took me a moment to even realize that we should probably be trying to stop them. And I was pretty sure the others were in the same boat. By the time we all started moving, there was no one left aside from Juice. And he proceeded to unleash a massive blast of lightning throughout the room. It wasn’t targeting anybody, it was just meant to slow us down, essentially a dome of electricity that made most of us hit the dirt. Then he jumped into the metal puddle, leaving the transformed woman alone. Except not, because the second he was through, the puddle seeped into the floor and vanished. They were… gone?
“Holy shit, did we win?” Alloy, standing beside me, managed.
“Not completely.” That was Linesight, shaking his head as he emerged from the vault where they had been fighting. “Several of their people managed to grab a few of our secure cases from a couple of our vaults. That’s why they brought the big guns in here, to force us to focus our response on their Touched while the Prev troops grabbed whatever they could.”
Ephemera, currently in the form of a male who appeared to be in his early twenties, insisted, “Dude, it would’ve been a hell of a lot worse without these guys.” They gestured toward Alloy and me. “Getting rid of Praxis before she could do much damage with those laser-hands? That was pretty dope.”
“Indeed,” Caishen agreed. “Forcing those two to waste their time with that power. Even if they had come up with a way to return, it would require abandoning the power they had just created, finding a new one that would work, and then arriving back here while only having a short time left with the transportation gift before they would be forced to switch back into Theory so he could craft a new power for his partner.”
“And while they did that, they’d be vulnerable in here again,” I confirmed. “Yeah, that’s basically what we were thinking. Or rather…” Wincing just a little, I amended, “what your daughter thought?”
“Hi, Mama!” Sure enough, that was Lightning Bug herself. She and Trevithick emerged together from the elevator shaft and waved while everyone looked that way. Caishen gave a startled gasp, staring at her daughter in surprise for a moment before quickly moving that way. She scooped the girl off the ground, blurting, “That was your escape teleport badge! Why are you still here? I told you to get out of the building, Bug.”
Clinging to her mother, the little girl shook her head. “I couldna just leave you! They were bad guys. What if you needed help?”
For a moment, it looked like Caishen was going to say something about that. But in the end, she just exhaled. “We’ll talk about this later, and I promise it’s going to be a long one.” Holding her daughter close, she turned to the rest of her people. “Do an assessment, find out what they got away with. And get our internal communications back up so we can call security to do a full sweep of the building to make sure they’re all either gone or secure. Bring medical down for whoever needs it.” Her gaze turned to us then before she nodded to the elevator. “Let’s go talk while I check in with my people.”
Skip accompanied us as well, as we all went that way. The elevator arrived a moment later, clearly summoned by Caishen somehow. A control on her costume maybe? Whatever it was, Alloy, Trevithick, Caishen with Lightning Bug in her arms, Skip, and I filed onto the thing.
As the doors shut behind us, Caishen turned our way. “First things first. You’re the Tech-Touched who’s been helping Paintball here. I saw you in the footage from that zombie fight. Trevithick, right? After the inventor of the steam locomotive.”
Clearly surprised that the woman recognized the reference, Wren gaped at her for a second before giving a hurried nod. “Uh huh, uh huh! Practically nobody ever knows who that is!”
“I get paid to know things,” Caishen informed her, sounding more than a little tired. Which was fair, considering everything that had just been going on. Then she turned her attention to me. “Second of all, thank you–all of you–for your help back there.”
“We didn’t stop them completely,” Alloy muttered darkly, folding her arms over her chest while giving a heavy sigh. “They still got away with important stuff from your vaults.”
“Far less than they would have,” Skip, her even tone betraying no more emotion (good or bad) than ever, noted. “And with less damage being done to our people.”
Caishen nodded. “My sister is absolutely correct. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, and managed to remove one of their biggest threats from the fight, I’m afraid they would have been able to escape with far more than they actually managed. This might not have been a complete failure for them, but nor was it the level of success they were looking for, especially considering how much effort they put into it. Besides, something tells me that your group is the reason we were given any warning about the invasion at all. So we owe you a debt of gratitude for that as well. Which, I suppose, helps make up for the fact that you did not insist that my daughter use her escape badge while she had the chance.”
Wincing a little, I offered a weak, “I mean, if it helps, they were supposed to fly up the elevator shaft and hide as high as they could. It umm, it wasn’t as good as teleporting out of the building, but when she said it could work to get Praxis out of there…” I sighed. “I’m really sorry that we didn’t just make her teleport out of here. It was–it was the heat of the moment, I saw an opportunity to get one of the biggest threats out of there, and I thought she’d be safe in the elevator shaft since we were gonna be dealing with the bad guys anyway. But something still could’ve happened. She still could’ve been hurt, and if she was, that… that would’ve been on me.”
“On us,” Alloy put in quickly. “We both made the call. We–we’re sorry.”
“Hey.” Caishen shook her head, considering her next words briefly while the elevator doors opened to reveal a bunch of Ten Towers people running around. One approached, but she held her hand up to stop him, addressing us a bit more. “I understand why you made the decision you did. I just needed to be certain that you understood the possible ramifications and that you didn’t make it lightly. Whether it was my daughter, or any other vulnerable person, what matters in that sort of situation is making certain they’re all as safe as possible. You did what you could and you made what you believed to be the best decision in the moment. Thank you again for everything you did. I know it’s not always easy to make perfect decisions every time, believe me. You’re still learning, and you’re doing the best you can. In my book, for the record, you’re doing pretty well.”
Having said all that, she paused briefly before adding, “But if anything had happened to my daughter, we would be having a very different conversation right now. Just keep that in mind.”
We promised we would, and then she checked in with her people. While the woman was doing that, I grabbed my phone to do the same with ours. Paige picked up on the first ring. “The courthouse is all good,” she immediately announced. “The Stars and cops managed to breach the place and deal with everyone we didn’t. What’s going on with you?”
“They all retreated,” I explained. “We can get into the details later. What about Fogwalker?”
“He bounced,” the other girl informed me. “But we caught a few of their people. Maybe the Stars will be able to get some answers out of them. Like the location of their base.” Even as she said that, the girl’s tone made it clear she didn’t believe it. Of course not, the Ministry wouldn’t let something like that happen to a group they had only just allowed to come into their city. How would they ever make all the money they needed in that case?
“Here’s hoping,” I agreed. “Can you guys get up to the judge’s office so Trevithick can let you through to join us over here? I mean, I don’t know how hard it’s going to be to slip past the–”
The other girl interrupted me with a chuckle. “Look up.”
Blinking in confusion, I tilted my head that way, only to see Poise, Style, Calvin, and Hobbes leaning over the railing of one of the open balcony areas that overlooked this lobby area from several floors above us, waving down. Paige spoke into the phone she was holding. “Once we knew there was a door there, it wasn’t hard to get it open. We were going to help, but it sounds like you’ve got everything under control here.”
“Oh you know, we’re doing our best,” I replied with a vague gesture. “Come on down, join the party.”
By that point, Caishen had come back. She looked up to see where the rest of us were staring, before shaking her head. “Clearly, we need to do something about Switchshift’s door. And several other things. But yes, do please bring your full team together. We owe all of you a great deal of gratitude for your help. And yet, I’m very sorry to say, the form that gratitude is going to take at the moment is a series of meetings for you to explain everything you know. Very long, excruciatingly boring meetings.”
“I knew it,” I managed to get out while Alloy groaned beside me. “You really are pissed about Bug’s teleportation badge.
“We should’ve let Mister Harmful smash us.”
Heretical Edge and Summus Proelium 