Amelia, Ch 192- Victoria
Skitter turned and didn't speak another word as she walked into the holographic simulation of Baal's lair. It wasn't really a hologram so much as a ghost imprint involving something to do with allowing light to cross dimensions or something like that. Trevor and Emma tried to explain it to me a couple times, but despite who I apparently inherited my power from, I still had to sum up the whole conversation as 'tinker bullshit' and be done with it.
What I wouldn't give for them trying to explain it again, so I could ignore the news I just got. Amy was in love with me. My old power forced it to happen. I had no words for how fucked up that was. No wonder they didn't want to talk about it. Well, that made the next part simple: we wouldn't talk about it. Now I just needed a way to not have to think about it. Smashing the faces of a bunch of Endbringer worshiping psychopaths would be an excellent way to do that.
"Holy shit," Skitter growled as we passed through the wall and into the side of their compound. There were bones hanging from the walls, and it didn't take my powers to identify them as human. "Are those fake?" she asked, sounding unnerved for the first time since I met her.
"No," I replied. "Very real."
There were a number of people here, all armed to the teeth. "Where the hell did they get military guns?" I asked. I wasn't really a firearms expert, but living in Brockton Bay, you pick up at least a general idea of most weapons.
"There are ways," Skitter answered. "All it takes is money and knowing the right people. These fuckers have a lot of money."
We kept moving through the halls, sticking our heads through walls to find more information where we could, the Zerglings taking flanking positions around us for reasons I was fairly certain were subconscious on her part. They didn't have dimension jumping, after all. I found a large storehouse full of munitions. "They've got enough explosives in here to destroy the whole compound," I exclaimed.
"I could shunt over a Razorbat and set them off," Skitter suggested. Not to me, I realized. I could tell by her reaction that she didn't like the response she got from whomever was at mission control this time. Probably Tattletale. "Fuck, they have captives."
Of course they do, I sighed inwardly.
"It's just a scouting mission, anyway," she reminded me. "We're only here to gather info and see if your power knows a way to beat them. Dinah's power only tells us the odds, and Lisa's only comes up with ideas."
We worked our way through the ghostly imitation of the compound. It was fairly large, all considered, and built almost entirely out of concrete. A fortress capable of withstanding almost anything short of a military assault, or parahumans. "Can't you use your freaky bug powers to find who we're looking for?" I asked.
"Not without alerting them," she answered. "Minerva's tried that angle, and she's pretty sure Lilith's power would detect it if I tried. The other most likely possibility is that there's a third parahuman in the compound that would spot it. Same with using a mapping scanner. We're not certain why watching from here doesn't set them off. Probably because their thinker can't reach across dimensional layers or something. Dinah says we're safe, the rest is just guesswork."
"Split up?" I suggested. "Lots of space to cover, and I can go a lot faster if I don't have to stay near you."
"Fine, but I expect you to report back to me if you find anything," she insisted.
"Yeah, sure," I turned and bolted, trusting my boosted senses to keep me informed despite my moving at over sixty miles an hour. Most of the compound was boring. There was a good amount of farmland outside the first building we entered, surprisingly enough. I didn't recognize the crops in question, but I did recognize slave labor when I saw it. There wasn't any other reason to have men armed with assault rifles threatening the workers. Pity sound didn't carry over to the side we were viewing. There's an idea. I hit the com system. "Hey, Riley?" I started. "Could you get lip reading into those knowledge upgrades?"
"That's a really smart idea!" Riley exclaimed happily. "How's the mission going?"
I was already moving to what appeared to be the largest building in this fortress. "Nothing we didn't know already," I answered. "Still looking."
"Okay, should I tell the others to go ahead with their missions?" she asked.
"Probably better to wait," I replied. No sense in letting them know we were coming early. I entered the large building. It was a warehouse of some sort, containing large bags full of what I was pretty sure was drugs. I watched as people walked to and fro. A man dressed up in an outfit of solid black, with three long ropes coming off his shoulders stood there. They're already imitating Barghest? I thought. It's only been a week and a half.
"Unknown parahuman, male, late twenties to early thirties," I informed over the coms, adding Tattletale and Emma to the conversation. I let my power go. Offensive strategy: attack from behind, punch him in the back of the head, he dies. "No special defense against surprise attacks, not a high end regenerator." Defensive strategy: avoid ropes, stay out of range of ropes, stay out of line of sight. "Blaster or shaker of some kind. His costume is built to be a weapon or improve his power somehow, I think. He needs line of sight on his powers. Maybe mover, my power doesn't want me staying still for long near him."
"Never heard of him," Emma replied. "Too generic a power description, and the picture makes me believe he changed costumes."
"See if there's any Simurgh imitators that might fit," Tattletale suggested.
"Only a couple dozen," Emma retorted.
The man in black touched a crate and then vanished, taking the crate with him. "Fuck!" I exclaimed. "Teleporter. Powerful one."
"Seire," Emma replied almost immediately. "Touch range telekinetic, not too different than your old power. Teleportation of up to five hundred miles, confirmed. Likely more. Can use it rapidly enough to be effective in combat. Manton limited, but uses his power to strengthen his costume. Likes to mutilate his victims without killing them. Shouldn't be able to get through our battle armor, though."
"My power thinks he can get through mine," I informed.
"Sending Horus as backup. He should be a hard counter," Tattletale added.
I smiled. Yeah, that would work. My power's strategy for getting through Theo's armor was 'no'.
"Found them," Skitter said over the com. Her voice fluctuated in a way that let me know she was incredibly upset. I turned and bolted back that direction. Seire might come back, but I needed a look at the bosses.
I arrived at a tunnel in the Yggdrasil, and a swarm of insects pointing at the hole. I followed it down, and the scenery changed. In the dark, it was easier to see the other world. I arrived in what was, for all intents and purposes, a throne room out of a depiction of hell. Complete with bone furniture. That, at least, was fake. Although many decorations on the wall were not. I continued following the tunnel into a side area. A large bedroom. Baal and Lilith were there. She does not have the body to be wearing something like that, I decided immediately. A Simurgh-themed 'chainmail bikini' costume didn't belong on a 5'6, 250 pound, 40 year old woman.
Baal, on the other hand, looked like something out of a barbarian movie. Muscular to the point of near absurdity, and covered in a dark red armor with bits of brownish bone plating. His armor is the real thing. And, if my power was any indicator, it's still alive. Reading his physiology convinced me that guessing his age would be impossible.
There were two other men, guards, one leading a girl out of the room, and another bringing a new girl in. Lilith gazed at her. "This one in ready, m'lord," she said with an attempt at a sultry voice that she couldn't pull off well, either. My stomach dropped.
"Ready for what," I asked Skitter hesitantly. The hormone and physiology information already told me the answer.
"Breeding," she answered angrily. "It's a breeding program. Like Heartbreaker."
"She's barely fourteen years old!" I exclaimed.
"I know..."
"I'm going in," I said.
"Wait!" she shouted. "This is a scouting mission."
"I'm not going to watch a child get raped," I growled.
"Can you disable them?" she asked.
"Her? Yes," I answered. "Him, I'll have to kill."
Lilith's head turned toward us even as Skitter gave the command. "Do it."
I shunted before she had a chance to speak. She dodged a burst of laser light with a shocking swiftness considering her age and physique, but she wasn't the one I was concerned about. At the same moment, my leg came up as hard as my strength would allow, right between Baal's legs. There was a wet crunch, as my armored foot sank into his flesh. I almost laughed at him, after my power was kind enough to tell me that, while such an injury would be temporary for him, he still had the ability to feel pain.
I dropped to the ground and rolled backward as Lilith fired a shot from some kind of tinker weapon. I didn't know the details, but my power made it clear I didn't want to take a hit from it. A splash of gore dropped from the hole my foot had left in Baal.
Meanwhile, I was listening to shouting and assault rifle fire from across the compound. They had, if my guess was correct, about fifty guards. We had thirty zerglings and countless modified insects. I took a couple more pot shots at Lilith, who evaded them almost casually. She's a better precog than I am, I realized as I struggled to avoid a couple more shots from her gun. I was only doing this well because I had superhuman speed backing me up.
Baal, meanwhile, had regenerated. I swapped out to the ice lance, and shot him in the crotch again. Sadly, that attack didn't leave a lot of nerves behind. He screamed, however, as his power started to undo the tissue damage. My power kindly informed me that I still had almost six and a half tons worth of human biomass to destroy before I would actually be able to do lasting damage to him. More importantly, I had to keep him fighting that whole time. If he decided to retreat, he could escape me. Or my power believed he could.
I dodged a couple more of Lilith's shots, then swapped to sonic and fired a wide burst toward her. The guards had started firing on me as well, but my armor was entirely bulletproof. It was, however, a distraction and one of Lilith's shots caught me in the shoulder. Fuck, I didn't want to do this so soon. I activated my war form. The breaker state undid my injury and adjusted my physiology. It even infused into my armor, which the tinkers had somehow bullshitted my power into thinking was a part of me. I mended the damage, moved forward and punched Baal in the head, sending him flying back. I fired a laser shot into his genitals. They caught fire.
I might be having too much fun with that, I thought. Then I flipped back to avoid another stream of energy from Lilith's gun. I swapped to EMP setting and activated the burst. Lilith, the guards, and the poor girl that was still in the room all screamed in pain. Contrary to popular imagination, EMPs fucking hurt. Other people.
She gasped as I closed in for a hit, and then my power warned me, so I moved back. My power was afraid to touch her, even through the armor. I wasn't sure why, but I would rather not find out.
"Fuck," she spat as she struggled to her feet. "You're a precog, too?"
"Guilty as charged," I quipped, my eyes glancing over to Baal. I resisted the urge to smirk as he had put multiple extra layers of his bioarmor over his crotch. "Of course, you're better at it," I admitted. Hopefully you're stupid about it, too.
She pulled a sword out from her position behind the bed, then rushed me. She was unnervingly fast for her size, but I was fast for anyone. I avoided her easily, only to be forced to duck and roll when Baal nearly got me with a spined tendril made from his armor. Lilith followed up by swiping at my shoulder, the one she'd shot before. The blade got through the weakened armor and sank into my flesh. She let the weapon go. Fuck.
I gripped the blade and shunted it out. Then, ignoring the injury, I twisted sideways and kicked outward, breaking Baal's knee. Thanks to the additional armor he used to protect the family jewels, he was a lot slower than he should have been with his powers. Slow enough for me to keep up with, as was the plan all along. Lilith pulled another sword from another hiding place. How paranoid do you have to be to hide all these weapons in your bedroom? I wondered briefly. Then I swapped for my sonic blaster again.
Lilith stepped to the side and pointed the blade at the teenage girl's throat. "You know I can kill her before you can stop me," she warned. It was true, of course. I hesitated as Baal got to his feet. Fuck. The girl just sat there in wide eyed horror. And then Seire appeared in the bedroom. Well, fuck me then.
Missy shunted in, near the door. Along with Theo. Zach appeared right in front of Lilith, who slapped him. He disintegrated. From just a slap? She has to have a scary touch power. The child vanished into dust a half second later, as Theo bull-rushed Seire, using gravity manipulation to help. Baal's legs exploded from underneath him, and I took a couple more shots at Lilith.
She moved toward Missy, and space warped around. It wouldn't work. Lilith's power let her follow the warp perfectly, getting her in touch range, where she grabbed Missy's arm. Lilith's arm started sinking into Missy's costume. Not in the usual sense of it, but more like when Lily uses her power to phase an object through another. Then Lilith screamed and stumbled back. Her arm was missing up to the shoulder.
I shunted out, moved a few feet, and shunted back in behind Seire. Cost me both of my jumps, but that was fine. I brought my claws into the man's back, using the cryo effect to weaken his armor and let me cut through. He vanished. I turned and clotheslined him as he reappeared. I definitely preferred fighting non-precogs. I also liked knowing we had healers, because I was pretty sure I just put the asshole into a coma he wouldn't come out of without parahuman help.
I turned back toward Baal. "So, want to surrender?"
"Fck ff," he muttered from through his altered jaw.
"Oh, thank you so much for saying that," I smiled, and moved. I shunted Lilith's sword back into this reality, dipped low, and shoved the thing up into his crotch yet again. Although, with the angle I used, it really did more damage to the intestines than anywhere else. Then I hit the weapon with the full extent of my electrical generation. He screamed as best he could while the metal heated to the point where it melted inside of him. Not a very high quality blade, I decided.
But, he recovered quickly nonetheless, even as everyone else retreated from the room. Missy took the teenager, while Theo carried the badly bleeding Lilith and Zach dragged Seire. Wonder who gave that command? Oh well, I was fine here with Baal.
I stepped back and grabbed the other sword. Nope, these are all replicas, I realized. I fired another sonic blast, this time at full concentration. The back wall cracked as he slammed into it. I shunted out and returned standing on the ceiling above him. I jumped off of it and used all that force to send the second sword down his throat, followed by yet another electrical surge. He dropped. My power told me that he was almost out of power.
I swapped to the ice lance, and aimed right for his heart, waiting for him to recover just enough to be aware of what was coming. His insides were reduced to near absolute zero. His eyes just stared at me in shock, and I watched as his power used the remainder of the stolen biomass of other human beings to recover. He was beaten, completely. He could recover, but would take years for him to restore his strength enough to be much of a threat. I guess I can take him in alive, I realized.
Fuck that noise. I kicked him in the chest, and he shattered to pieces.
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A/N- I updated the timeline.
Also- this chapter is as big as two of my usual chapters, and I got other shit to do today, so there probably won't be a second today. Enjoy.
