Chapter 51: Emergence

-Lu Bu POV-

Patrolling was a pain in the ass even on a decent day, but doing so while it was raining was the fucking worst. Lu Bu grumbled to himself, idly twirling his bow across his shoulder as he marched on through the wet streets.

The sun’s reflection from a nearby puddle caught his eye, the glare mercifully reduced by his bodies automatic filtering system.

No, he hadn’t misspoke. Yes, it was raining and sunny at the same time and he didn’t just mean rainy with slight breaks in the clouds either. The sky was fully blue, clear as could be.

Something about the barrier’s defences making things slow down, or some shit, meant that rain took hours to reach the ground here in Jinzhou. More than enough time for the weather to clear overhead.

The effect was fucking bizarre, though not quite as bizarre as those fucking preachers who thought it was some ‘divine blessing’.

Fucking monks were the same in every era.

Although, he smirked as he casually flexed at his reflection in a nearby puddle, the weather did have some perks. Running into less dipshits was one of them, those who viewed him as a revered figure from history were just pathetic but those who viewed him as sacred because of the one who crafted his body?

Well those people deserved a blade in the back.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind a familiar stabbing pain flashed through him, causing him to groan slightly. It wasn’t the worst he had experienced, this was little more than a warning.

The words branded into him by his creator echoed through his head, like an endless repeating whisper.

“Lu Bu. You may leave, if you wish, but do not knowingly bring harm to the people of this city.”

It was an order imposed directly upon his conscious mind, a brand seared against his naked mind that he could not disobey. It was the order of someone who knew him, knew his history, and was determined to protect the people of this city.

Because all throughout his life Lu Bu had gone from warlord to warlord, offered oaths of allegiance and eventually stabbed them in the back when it best suited him.

Despite this, it was a pathetically soft order. The rest of the world wasn’t protected by such an order, just the people of this city. He could leave at any time, see where the wind takes him.

Yet, he didn’t.

Because Lu Bu was not a stupid man. Impulsive, brutish and stubborn, yes, but not stupid.

This was a far different world than the one in his memories. Instead of feudal nobles, merchant houses and committees dominated the lands - all while strange magics were woven throughout every aspect of the world.

Lu Bu was strong and had been made even stronger with this new body. In life he had never been as strong, as swift or as adroit as he was now. Even his looks had been idealised! From the few muttering of that blue bitch he had deigned to listen to he knew it was the influence of his ‘legend.’ The legacy he had left upon the world.

Yet strength, charisma and the power of a legacy would not be enough in this strange new world.

He needed time. Time to adjust, time to plan and scheme.

Which was why he was going through with this wearisome role of a ‘protector’, by the divine the word made him want to vomit! What did these people need protecting from?! The lowliest peasant here was treated to luxuries even the greatest from his time could not afford!

He nodded, absent mindedly, to a man that crossed his path -paying no attention to the man’s reaction.

The city was gorgeous, he acknowledged begrudgingly. He was loath to respect that soft hearted whore in any capacity, but in her capacity to build she clearly had no rival.

Which only made it an even bigger shame that he could not simply take it.

These musing were cut off as an enormous crack rang across the street. Lu Bu stopped in place, his head snapping towards the source of the noise.

It was not one of the few buildings that pre dated his creator, as he initially thought. The cracked building was stout, with steel grey concrete encompassing the entire structure. Unlike the rest of this forsaken city the design was austere, even humble.

The crack running across it, not so much.

The building shuddered, muffled noises of rocks falling echoing from inside. The crack continued to expand, the widening fissure spewing dust and debris.

His bow was in his hands in an instant. The blue whore, as previously mentioned, built well. Something had caused this, something that was still present.

The building finally gave up the ghost, splitting apart like some profane flower -fragments flaying in every direction- as a massive figure began slowly rising from the now destroyed building.

Lu Bu could hear panicked cries from several places nearby, the local neighbourhood still full of people -in spite of the still pouring rain. Lu Bu didn’t tear his eyes away from the figure.

It was indistinct, still covered by the smoke and dust caused by the death of the structure it had risen from. Yet, moment by moment, the rain stripped away the veil that had the figure.

Eventually, the dust dispersed and the smoke was smothered.

Lu Bu looked up.

And up.

And up.

For a moment Lu Bu felt a pit grow in his stomach, the feeling of smallness gnawing at his mind and soul as he beheld the beast before him.

It was large, terribly so - at least thirty feet tall. The beings figure was skeletal, yet radiated an inhuman grace as its pale white body glided across the ruins it had caused.

It’s fingers were knives and it’s face was little more than a bleached skull. If given a large enough black cloak it would have pulled off a very convincing impersonation of death itself.

But perhaps the most concerning part was the distortions floating around the creature. Invisible to the naked eye, save for the distortions in light that they left in their wake.

The thing stopped in place. Then the figured turned…and glanced down at him.

His bow’s string was pulled taut in the blink of an eye, arrows of light loosed with the force that would make a missile blush with envy. The projectiles split the air, the roar causing even more screams to fill the air - the stampede of feet sounding faint in his ears.

The arrows neared, reached the monster before him and… disappeared?

Lu Bu tutted in disappointment. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

The pale skeletal thing before him hadn’t moved an inch, still looking directly at him with the air of a scientist meticulously picking him apart with their eyes. Then the fingers twitched, the movement sending warming alarms throughout his mind as he dived to the side.

The ground cracked and the air split where he had previously been standing. Even light itself had been sundered, leaving nothing but a pure black line of nothing that split the street.

Nature abhors a vacuum, the data in his head claimed, yet here nature was found wanting. Air did not flow back into the void, and the earth remained stubbornly apart. He gulped, understanding that this was no mere chaff to be blown away or bullied into submission.

He kicked a stone towards the inky black slash in the world, and watched as it partially sank into the void - only to freeze in place once it was several inches in. He nodded, thankful that he wasn’t dealing with an annihilator.

He looked back, took a deep breath and took off like a bullet - racing towards the monster before him.

-Chubster POV-

“What the hell is going on?”

The scream was muffled next to the grinding crash of stone upon stone, the building coming down around them as they huddled around Atlas’ forcefield as the man lived up to his namesake and bore the immense burden upon himself.

The first signs of the disaster had been subtle, a tremor that had been mistaken for an earthquake. Then it got worse and the building began to rumble and shake. If it wasn’t for Remote discovering their powers were working again, if it wasn’t for Atlas’ quick reaction times, they would be dead.

Which led them to the present, trapped under a buildings worth of rubble, their surroundings only lit by the pale blue light emitted by the force fields.

The sound eventually settled down to a shifting hiss of displaced rubble and sand making its way down the wreck, only occasionally interrupted by the sound of something larger shifting in the mass.

They were alive for now, but Ben knew how precarious their situation was. Atlas was clearly struggling, and Ben had no idea if their access to air had been cut off or not.

Orwell shivered as he looked around, the man’s local omniscience clearly giving him a clearer picture on how fucked they were.

“We’re the only ones alive in the prison. The ten guards that were present are… no longer with us,” Orwell said - clearly trying to find a polite way of saying ‘crushed like raspberries’.

“So Shuffle is gone then,” he said sombrely. Fuck, Mary had been so young, too young to die so horribly. The guilt that had been gnawing at him since they were captured threatened to overwhelm him. Why had he accepted this mission and dragged his team into it?!

Orwell opened his mouth to say something, only to close it with a grimace - clearly thinking better of what he was about to say. Why? Was her fate truly that terrible that it would affect morale?

A plethora of horrible deaths swam through his mind, with each Mary staring at him in condemnation.

The urge to vomit rose up, but he forced it down through years of practice.

‘Don’t think about that right now, think of Charlie - you need to think of how to get back home.’The thought centred him, the knowledge that his daughter was waiting for him allowed him to push on.

“Orwell, remote, I’m going to need your eyes for this. Are there any volatile objects around us we’ll need to avoid while getting out of here,” he asked - speaking quickly as he felt the seconds tick by.

“There’s a few pockets of gas. Electrical wires in certain places,” Remote said, with Orwell confirming his findings a second later.

“Any above us?” The question received two shakes of their heads, causing him to grin in relief before he turned to the man holding Tom’s of metal and rock above their heads.

“Atlas, are you with us?”

The man slowly inched his head towards him, his face beaded with sweat and furrowed into an expression of intense concentration. The man grunted, clearly too focused keeping them alive to speak.

“We’re going to try going up, think you can make your shield drilled shaped?”

The man’s incredibly stressed expression screamed something along the lines of: ‘what the actual fuck.’ Still, he complied and slowly the shield that had protected them gained a point and began to elongate. The strain of it drawing loaned grunts from Atlas, they clearly wouldn’t have long to do this.

“Pyroclast, think you can start lifting us?”

Pyroclast idly rolled a piece of his namesake between his fingers, looking the most put together out of all of them. “Aye captain,” he said, both hands extending as his will seeped into the very stone beneath them.

The rock bubbled as it rose yet, despite this, their footing remained firm. Atlas’ shield remained firm even as they began to pierce their way back to the surface and away from this horrible hell.

The journey was long, and Ben honestly couldn’t tell whether it had taken ten minutes or ten seconds by the time they finally breached the last wall of rubble that encompassed them.

They squinted as the sun hit their eyes, long weeks -it had been weeks, hadn’t it?- of captivity had left them starved of the sun’s presence.

Ben would have loved to celebrate, would have loved to whoop and cheer, but unfortunately it appeared as if they had simply stepped from one hell into another. Ben’s eyes widened as he spotted a titanic figure glitch out of reality, only to reappear elsewhere as it sent black streaks flying at a distant figure.

Their target, an extremely muscled man wearing fine silks and wielding a bow, moved like a snake as he cut a jagged line through the air - effortlessly dodging the strikes and sending his own in return.

He couldn’t tell which was more breathtaking, which was more horrifying.

It appeared even, as if neither of these living calamities could fall to the other. But Ben had lived too long as a cape, seen too much, so he could read the flow of the battle to know well enough that the man with the bow was outmatched.

The pale titan moved lazily, many of the man’s arrows even striking the giant true. Yet, of those countless arrows, not a single one could penetrate more than a couple inches, mosquito bites against a titan.

Meanwhile the man was laser focused, taking the fight with all the seriousness it deserved and -most tellingly- he avoided every single black slash that sought him.

One of them could take as many hits as they needed, the other could not.

Another arrow pierced the monster’s hide, the arrow breaking upon contact, even if the head bit deep into the being’s belly. It set him on edge, yet he couldn’t tell why. Sure the thing, whatever it was, was powerful - but that alone shouldn’t have-

His eyes widened.

Oh god, they couldn’t be that unlucky could they?

“Do you think that thing is here for us, that would be one hell of a way to extract U.S assets,” Pyroclast whistled.

For a moment Ben felt confused, unable to understand what the man was getting at. Then it hit him. Did Pyroclast think that thing was a hidden U.S cape? The insane theory should have made him laugh, but all it did was make him feel cold.

“No. No, I highly doubt that’s the case. If they had something like that they wouldn’t reveal it just to rescue us.”

Atlas snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.”

The battle raged on, but Ben could see the man’s dodges growing more desperate by the second - the persistent black line removing avenues of escape from his arsenal, slowly boxing him in.

The archer continued regardless, firing arrows directly into the creatures eye sockets, but if that did anything to impair it the monster certainly didn’t show it. A flicker and it was gone, reappearing behind the man.

The robed man, still in the middle of drawing his bow, seemed to sense this and began to duck. He would be too late, Ben could already tell, the man had overcommitted by a hair’s breadth.

The spectre of death raised a clawed hand, intent on ending this, only to flicker away again as scorching light passed through where it was.

Ben turned, expecting to find a Blaster, only to feel his mouth turn dry at the sight before him. In gleaming rows stood an entire battalion of gleaming bronze androids, their forms immaculate and all carrying a sparking firearm in both hands.

They turned as one, setting their scopes of the white giant with eerie synchronicity.

“We need to go, while they’re still distracted,” Ben whispered urgently.

“Go where?” The question made the group jump, as their resident stranger made their presence known. “There’s still the barrier, and shuffle was our way out.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but anywhere is better than here. An attack like this will only draw out more of the city’s parahumans and I don’t want to be here when they get here! So let’s move!” At this historic team hurried to comply, moving with as much stealth as their situation afforded.

Ben looked back for a moment, hoping beyond all hope that the giant creature the city was facing wasn’t what he thought it was.

An Endbringer attack was not something he was prepared to handle at all right now.

AN: Travelling sucks! Been to Newcastle, was very boring. Said hi to my grandma, the one good note about that entire trip. The hotel changed the burger recipe, I’m sad now.

So, yeah, Shuffle’s Titan shows its chops for the first time. Gets into a fight with one of the twelve paragons, who is Lu Bu, and isn’t having much trouble at all. The city has its own defences though, and those are slowly coming online.

What do you think of Mary’s new form and powers? What do you guys think of Lu Bu, frankly I was surprised by how much of an asshole he was while researching him.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment!