Chapter 34: Flesh That Hates

-Dragon POV-

It was at times like these that Dragon wished she could be everywhere at once.

“There are too many of them! Fall back! Fall ba-AARRGGHHHH!!!”

If only her father hadn’t neutered her, chained her with restrictions out of fear.

“IT BURNS!!! OH GOD, HELP ME! HELP ME PLEASE!”

Then she wouldn’t be forced to listen as so many were snuffed out.

It was something she had, tragically, gotten used to. The world was ripe with tragedies, and you couldn’t regularly attend Endbringer battles and not see and hear horrific things. For Dragon it was, perhaps, worse as she had to organise and relay the messages of those that stood against the three, now four, apocalypses.

It was in those battles that Dragon had viewed tragedy after tragedy. She had seen treasured colleagues die, heard the last stands of heroes and villains and wept over dead friends that had sacrificed themselves.

And the worst part of it all was that it was often pointless.

Now here she was again. Once more overviewing the battleground, clinically listing off the dead and wounded whilst being helpless to stop it. All while she was ordered to flee, to get word out to the rest of the world.

It burned at her central processing systems.

First she had been ordered to engage in this skullduggery, allow herself to be cut off from the rest of her resources and meekly comply with whatever order Alexandria came up with. Now she was moving at a blistering pace to undo the very noose they had placed around their necks.

The Wyvern model 8A-11 wasn’t designed to fight Endbringers one on one, nor was it designed to manage, and direct, an entire army on it’s own as it lacked the computation power. No, instead this model had been chosen based upon it’s sensors.

The latest models of Radar, Lidar, air pressure modelling, grav-pulse generators and a hundred other esoteric ways of seeing the universe had gone into this one model. To be honest she had been excited to test this suit, despite her forced compliance, and to examine the technology of the architects using the many sensors built into her suit.

Needless to say, she was no longer enthused.

The only data her suit gave her now was the innumerable ways a person could die, because she could see it. All of it. All throughout the city people were dying horrifically.

There, across the city and trapped in an alleyway, a young woman died screaming as acid ate away at her features.

Acoustic deceased, AB-3.

Among the main defence an older man was gored through the stomach, having pushed someone else away and taken the hit.

Road Rover deceased, CD-6.

The outer cordon, manned by a select few capes in order to prevent the escape of ‘The Architects’, was being overrun. Many of them were younger members of the Protectorate, given an easy job in order to gain experience they would never receive as most were eaten alive.

Miss Mercury deceased, EF-3. Doctor Dangerous deceased, EF 5. Magius deceased, EF-7. Skipper deceased, EF-9. Compass deceased, EF 11.

Normally she would have to use the status of the armbands to determine a person’s status. In those cases many could erroneously be declared deceased because of the armband breaking. It would have been even worse in this case, as they were not using the sturdy Endbringer variant of the communicators.

But this was not the case. In those battles the suit she would normally pilot had to be immensely tough, enough to withstand blows from an Endbringer. It also had to have enough computation to manage the workload of a dozen Thinkers sharing their analysis, all while relaying messages and calling out notifications. The platform would have to have weapons, sensors, medical aid and more.

Always more. Always too much, because Endbringer battles always demanded too much.

Because of that she typically had to field a creation of hers that was a jack of all trades. A jack of all trades she had invested countless resources and time into, but still not a specialised platform.

But this was, so now she didn’t need the armbands to tell her who died and who was injured.

She knew.

She desperately wished she didn’t.

So she pressed on, increasing the thrust of her engines far past what could be considered safe.

Estimated time until the jamming field is cleared: 1 minute.

One minute to clear the field preventing outside communication.

A second needed to sound the Endbringer alarms the world over.

Far too much time needed to inform the needed parties of the situation.

Estimated time until reinforcements: 10-20 minutes.

If she could Dragon would have gritted her teeth.

The nozzles of her engines began to glow bright orange, and then white, as they were pushed even further.

‘Please, just hang on a little longer!’

-Armsmaster POV-

Armsmaster was barely hanging on.

Even with the increased coolant the inside of his armour was still slick with sweat.

It had only been twenty minutes, but in that twenty minutes he had come closer to death than at any other time in his life.

Repeatedly.

It wasn’t that the creatures he was facing were particularly strong. Their claws and acid left only imperceptible scratches and dents.

It wasn’t that they were tough either, as they could be taken down with only a single swipe of his halberd.

But they were everywhere.

His breath came out ragged as he pivoted to the side slightly, thrusting back with his weapon and scoring another kill as the attacking creature was impaled upon his halberd. There was no time to rest however as the dying creature was swallowed up and replaced by another five.

One spat flames at him and he had to shield his unprotected face even as he struck out again. The bladed whip of another crashed against his arm and wrapped around it, jostling the limb painfully. The creature tugged the whip, trying to make his arm budge and allow his face to be melted by the flames still rushing past him.

The arm didn’t move, held in place by the powerful electric servos.

A newly mounted shoulder cannon fired containment foam grenades at the last three, who were angling for a better strike. The grenade sailed through the air, and with a pop detonated. The whitish-yellow foam expanded and hardened rapidly, forming a barrier for him to use.

Armsmaster had been separated early on from the rest of the defenders and had taken to using the alleyways to funnel his enemies along one narrow route. The few times he had been forced to relocate he was often forced to use his containment foam grenades in such a way, there would have been no way to survive if he became surrounded.

Thankfully most of the flying creatures were choosing to harass larger groups so he had gone unmolested from any aerial assaults. How long that would last was anyone’s guess.

He took the short reprieve given to take in a fresh lungful of air.

They just kept coming. Second after second, minute after minute.

Colin felt tired. Despite being near the peak of human fitness the constant battle and alertness necessary to survive this battle was taking it’s toll.

Armsmaster grunted, as his suit injected him with a chemical compound that would keep him up and keep him fighting.

The hiss and clicks of the insectoid abominations got him moving again, and back into another alleyway after the last had become too clogged with constantly reanimating bodies to survive. Armsmaster held up his weapon, and with a flex of his index finger a liquid was sprayed across the entrance of the alleyway.

A single spark followed the liquid, igniting it and the monsters attempting to skewer Colin moments after he had entered the alley. The fire would make them cautious, and it would increase the time necessary for them to revive.

The creature, with a last pitiful whine and the crackling bubble of it’s flesh, fell down dead. If only that was the end, but even now Colin could see the way the ashes flowed back to the creature and once more became flesh. It was like a video played in reverse.

Another creature leaped over the flames, the creature gave a shrill shriek and its limbs began to crackle with electricity. Colin’s eyes widened as he took in the creature, as well as the surrounding environment.

He was ankle deep in muddy water. Very conductive water.

Armsmaster leaped, and the creature yelped in surprise as its head was lopped off with a single swing. The creature’s body fell to the floor, thankfully no longer electrified.

That was the second issue about these creatures. There was no uniformity.

Sure, some spat acid and others used claws and teeth. But then there were others who lit themselves on fire, or used sonic screeches.

Hell he was pretty sure he saw one actively emitting radiation like a poor man’s Behemoth.

As if being a living tide of tooth and claw wasn’t bad enough they were also impossible to predict, and no cape was truly safe save for, perhaps, the members of the triumvirate.

“HEY!”

Colin looked up, spotting a stocky man dressed in electric blue and marked with thunderbolts. Lorentz, a Mover that had been tasked with patrolling the outer cordon. The fact that he was here spoke poorly about how the defence was going.

The man jumped down, his body dissolving into a thrashing electrical current that crashed into the floor of the alley only to then reform into his body.

“Armsmaster,” he began, “I’ve been sent to gather those that have been cut off and return them to the main defence-“ the man cut himself off as he coughed raggedly.

Now that he was closer Armsmaster could see the torn and bloody state his costume was in. He could see the haunted and worn expression on the man’s sweat slicked face, what little he could see of it anyway.

“Sorry about that. Anyway, just take my hand and I can get you there.”

Colin looked at the outstretched hand dubiously, initiating several scans.

There was no sign that this was a shapeshifting variant, and there was no evidence of mind altering pheromones or any other suspect sign. None that he could detect anyway.

Lorentz was a potent Mover 7, capable of travelling at immense speeds while capable of choosing how he interacts with the world while at that speed. So unlike Velocity Lorentz was more than capable of pulping a person’s body at 100 miles per hour, or more. Someone like this should have been used to plug up gaps in defences, to act as quick support. He shouldn’t be acting as glorified transport.

Not unless the need for more fighters had gotten truly dire.

At that thought Armsmaster reached out and grasped Lorentz’s hand firmly.

The world flickered around him, and with a sudden sense of extreme vertigo Colin found himself elsewhere. Lorentz was gone, presumably off to find more fighters. He looked around, he was on the rooftop of a small two story home. The cracked tiles bore his weight admirably, but he could tell from the slight groans as he shifted his weight that he should make his way down sooner rather than later.

A boom shook the earth, and Colin had to avert his eyes from the bright glare that came from his left side. When the light died down Colin glanced towards the source of the explosion, and had to resisit the urge to gasp.

It was like a scene directly out of hell.

Twisted and deformed bodies were stacked high, forming a fleshy battlement for the few remaining capes to fight from.

Above Eidolon towered over the battlefield, still uninjured and proud.

To the front of the battlement came a sea of red gnashing teeth. Lasers and bullets were fired into the horde to seemingly no effect, those killed quickly replaced. Every few seconds there was another flash of white as Eidolon deleted an entire section of the storm of claws bearing down on them.

And there, among the monsters, was Alexandria. She was bulldozing her way through the swarm, every punch and kick felling ten or more of the abominations.

Yet, despite the heroics, Colin could see the writing on the wall. There were so few left. What had once been a small army of parahumans had been whittled down to around twenty, a massive loss for the Protectorate.

Beyond the wall of flesh there was the Endbringer, gazing upon them with a scornful, imperious, scowl. Around the bringer of death monsters poured from it like water, every second a hundred new abominations were spawned into existence.

For a moment he wondered why they didn’t just attack the Endbringer directly, to stop it from increasing the number of it’s minions. A moment later the answer dawned on him.

They couldn’t.

The only ones present that could both reach the Endbringer and meaningfully damage it numbered at two: Eidolon and Alexandria.

Looking over the battlefield, the remaining forces present and the foes that were set against them, Armsmaster knew that if either of them left the remaining forces would perish quickly. If that happened it would just be them against the Endbringer and their army of monsters.

Even for them that would be too much.

So they were being forced to rely on reinforcements that could arrive at any time, whether that be in a few seconds or in a hour.

They needed his help.

Colin jumped from the roof, activating his integrated rockets to allow himself extra time in the air before he was forced to land. He landed heavily on shattered masonry and stone, and took off immediately – racing towards the carnage.

‘Hang in there, I’m coming!’

AN: Ugh, this was initially meant to be 3K words, then I had to go to a wedding. The wedding itself was nice, my cousin got married to a girl he’s known for a while and seems pretty happy. But having an afterparty that lasts for seven hours is way too much, and I couldn’t leave early without looking like a total jerk.

So yeah, I couldn’t get any writing done on that day.

But hey, moving back to the chapter: Alexander(‘s shard) is pretty terrifying huh? In about ten minutes he’s reduced the initial force that met him down to about twenty members. And this is with the shard sandbagging, the moment Alexander regains control he’s going to be pissed and will go even harder in an attempt to end this.

Dragon is going to get reinforcements, since she has both the capability and influence to do so. Armsmaster is doing alright, but now he’s being thrown into the proper meat grinder so we’ll see how long that lasts. Ganbatte Colin, I believe in you!

Please comment, my ego depends on comments from strangers on the internet.