'What the eff?' Weavemaster mumbled in his head as he watched the girl, Lilibeth, slice everything in half just by running through them. 'Is that her real power?'
Weavemaster, Lance Hiller, had spent the entire afternoon observing the girl who he had seen by chance a week or so ago when he'd been out patrolling. That Lilibeth had been recommended by his friend, and erstwhile lover, Madeline to his place of work, had been a coincidence, and one he had taken advantage of to get the new Altered's mettle. He didn't expect to waltz into a warzone, however, or an occult disaster.
As a formerly devout Orthodox, he'd read about such things in the Records. Of invaders from the nether realm, of how daemons sought to infiltrate and overcome humanity and claim Astoria for their own. He, like every other person in the world, thought that they had been fanciful tales concocted by ignorance. He never expected them to be true.
He had not been able to see the rift that Lilibeth claimed was there, not until the daemon octopi emerged from it. Now, he could see it as though a veil had been removed from his eyes.
'No, no, there's something more frightening than the hole in space,' he thought furiously even as his mind reviewed what happened over and over.
Lilibeth's extended fingers could cut like a blade, that much he figured out just from observing her fight. His microthreads extended several paces around him and detected motion from interpreting the movement of the air, sort of like the fine hairs on one's skin. And what he felt was the air, the winds, following her movements until they turned into vicious blades that carved up the monsters.
He could still feel the tentacles worming their way into his skin. He could feel the tiny holes in his chest where they tried to force their way inside, and he could feel the echo of the mental assault as they tried to break into his head. He gasped painfully and staggered back towards the street. This wasn't what he expected and definitely not what he had been paid for.
Well, he wasn't actually getting paid in the sense of this being a job…well, the deal was he'd get tax breaks which was as good as getting paid, really—though not quite as good, come to think of it, since the Torries never touched his hand.
Wait.
His micro-threads extended towards the street and he feared that the disarmed daemons would also have the octopi—wait, they only have seven tentacles, so heptapi? The daemon heptapi might also be within the bodies, right? A single look showed he was right, but also wrong in the assumption that they would attack, not when all the heptapi had been squished flat.
How?
More to the point, the rift wasn't done spitting out heptapi. Even after Lilibeth killed most of them, that didn't make the others run. Instead, some of the horde that had avoided death gathered together on the opposite side of the rift, while the aspiring model simply stood when she landed with a distant expression on what he could see of her face. The hoodie shaded her eyes but kept most of her face exposed when under certain lighting. All in all, an unsatisfactory way to keep identity hidden.
Then again, if he didn't recognise her from the first day, and if he didn't know about the Protectorate's request to find and bring her in for…questioning, he might not have found her at all. The hoodie and the way she used her power meant that there was little need for equipment.
Hmm, did his eyes deceive him or was he seeing a glimmer of something around her hands? Those and her lower face were the only exposed skin of her outfit, so maybe it was effective enough. For some reason, even with her vigorous movement, the hood was never displaced.
More of the heptapi emerged from the rift. Half of their number joined the gang at the back while the rest attacked. Weavemaster's unravelled threads whipped around with such force that any daemon heptapi were swatted away. But common thread wasn't enough. His hand reached towards his belt, where he kept a roll of steel wire. He fished it out of its compartment and held the end. He had affixed a plastic handle of sorts so he wouldn't cut his arm then he took control of it with his thoughts. It was a bit of a struggle since wire wasn't an ingredient of traditional clothing, and if not for his years of practice, he wouldn't have been able to do it. But wire was woven from threads of fine metal and that connecting concept allowed his power to finally grasp hold over it.
He whipped the steel wire across the air and sliced a couple of heptapi in twain. Then he wiggled it all around to catch the rest of the darting creatures. Some of them came close through his blind spots, main the area close to the ground, but he directed a few of his hemp threads to sweep the floor around him. No way was he letting the things close enough to latch on to him again.
With a flex of his power, he re-wove the fabric of his costume so that his torso wasn't exposed. Then he continued flailing about, killing many and keeping the rest away. With what he could spare of his attention, he looked at Lilibeth, expecting the girl to have finished off the invaders by now, only to be unpleasantly surprised to find her simply standing there.
She wasn't completely doing nothing, thankfully. Any heptapi that came within a couple of paces of her were sliced in half. But the scary thing was that this time, she wasn't moving her hands or feet, and there were no visible phenomena to accompany the attacks. He shivered at the thought of his skin sliced apart simply from coming too close. As attracted as he was to her, that might be too much.
Oh, well no, actually. The longer he stared the greater the desire. He shook his head, wondering if she also had a mind power. He hadn't felt anything other than the heptapi push into his mind, and if not for his power, which involved a lot of focus, mental gymnastics, and discipline, he might have succumbed to them. Then again, considering how Lilibeth looked, and how he was decidedly straight, it wasn't all that unusual to be infatuated, especially considering how competent she turned out to be, both as a model and as a fighter.
Ah, he should probably reveal his identity since he knew hers even before she debuted as an Altered Human superhero.
"Eff!" he yelled as one of the heptapi slipped through his defences and managed to latch onto his arm. He reached with his left and tried to tear it off his limb, but the tentacles tightened around the limp and he felt the pinpricks of its hooks caught on to the fabric. Worse, his inattentiveness invited more of the heptapi to attack. Another latched onto his calf, while a third grabbed his knee. He staggered back and nearly fell. His scream of terror, definitely not a girlish squeal, attracted more attention, though thankfully, it was from allies.
"I've got you!" Soundwave's deep, masculine voice reverberated. A sharp whistle struck the heptapi on his arm and knocked it silly. The tentacles didn't loosen, but the sharp pinpricks paused.
"What the eff are these things?" Lightfoot exclaimed though she didn't freeze at the sight. Instead, she leapt towards Weavemaster, which turned her into a blur, and she slammed into a bunch of heptapi, throwing them into the air. That didn't kill them so much as disorient them, however, but it gave her the opening to help dislodge the things clinging to his body.
"Mind control!" he gasped.
"Her, too?" Lightfoot asked, looking towards Lilibeth even as she tugged at the heptapi on Weavemaster's arm.
"Hah!" Soundwave yelled his sonic blast, the soft sound Weavemaster heard was only the spillover out of the taller man's control. The blast struck a wave of incoming heptapi and scattered them. A couple were struck directly and their bodies bulged as the shockwave pummeled their insides, then…
Pop! Pop!
They exploded.
A minute of struggling finally killed the heptapi clinging to Weavemaster, but in the meantime, Lightfoot ran circles around the area. Dozens of heptapi flooded out of the hole in the air with about half killed when they ventured close to Lilibeth. The girl stood still, but he could see her fingers twitching. Every twitch coincided with heptapi cleft in twain and it wasn't hard to imagine invisible blades cutting the air. Razor-sharp blades at that considering how clean the cross-section looked.
Perhaps the one saving grace that eased Weavemaster's mind was that the invisible blades only killed everything within a couple of paces around Lilibeth.
"That's…what's she doing? That's her, right? Yuriko?" Lightfoot asked when she retreated towards Soundwave and Weavemaster. The two men had settled into a defensive formation, with the taller man blasting at the heptapi groups while Weavemaster cut down or entangled those that got too close. Lightfoot acted like a skirmisher as she darted around and prevented the things from escaping.
The rift continued disgorging heptapi, and the volume was increasing. The rift was slowly growing bigger and the daemons' size grew to match.
Then, the mental screaming slammed into Weavemaster's mind even without the critters touching him.
"Ugh," he groaned as he and Soundwave staggered from the assault. The heptapi clumped together, tentacles entangled into an occult weave that magnified their power.
"Graaah!" Soundwave's blast bounced off the heptapi's barrier, but the man twisted the spent blast around and hit them from behind. Another barrier absorbed the blow and grounded it, causing a small puff of concrete dust to burst.
"How do we close it?" Lightfoot asked through gritted teeth.
"Divines if I know," Soundwave snarked back, but he grimaced a moment later when they were all hit with an agonising mental wave.
"What about Yuriko?" Lightfoot yelled, more than a touch of concern in her voice.
The girl was still standing a few paces from the rift, just outside the ritual circle. The flayed bodies were hidden from sight via a pile of heptapi. Her fingers were still twitching, and with every movement, the heptapi were slain. But the number of daemons rushing at them exceeded the amount she killed with her invisible blades, and they came closer and closer to grappling her.
"Her mind is under attack…" Weavemaster gasped in realisation. He should have seen it. She came too close to the rift! Of course her mental defenses would be tested. Why else would she stand around like a little fool?
"Go get her!" Soundwave yelled.
"Wait! Don't, it's dangerous!" Weavemaster shouted back.
"What? Why?" Lightfoot, bless her heart, didn't just run off as she was wont to do.
"Look at the edges of the floor around her." There were deep cuts on the ground, but most of them were covered up by daemon corpses. "You get close and you'll be cut up by her power! We—Soundwave, you should try to shake her out of the daemon-induced trance."
"I'm on it!" Soundwave said, "Wake up!"
But nothing happened. Well, something seemed to ripple around the girl, but that was it.
"Eff, try again!"
"Wake up!" Same thing.
With more than a bit of panic and despair, the three of them could only look as the daemons came closer and closer. Finally, one of them managed to latch onto her calf and dig through her jeans.
That, more than anything, must have woken her up because she jerked and stepped back. The daemon that caught her was sliced in half.
"You broke my enlightenment," they heard her growl. Then, she slashed furiously with her arm. The daemon's around her weren't sliced in half.
No, they were minced to ground meat.