Chapter Text
She switched to the Rune of Resolve, picking Aftershock as her keystone, before her rise had fully stopped.
As beams of light, rockets, spheres and shifting ovals raced towards her, she pulled on the magic of Jarvan's armour, gathering it in her chest, and pushed it out, forming a golden-yellow aegis around her, half the power coming from her, the other half from the people around her, blocking the barrage.
The shield held, barely, leaving her free to focus on her lance as she descended, the earth magic of her weapon amplifying her weight a hundred times.
The shield gathered close like a cobra about to strike, a glittering coil, then burst outwards in a wide shockwave of golden ribbons that punched through the faint formation around her, tossing half the first line of heroes on their backs, the Brutes merely missing their stride.
Earth magic sang in her lance.
She didn't fall to the earth, she was pulled into it with the force of a titan's fist.
Her lance slammed into the earth, down to her gauntlet, and cracks snapped the soil around them like dry bone, travelling, ancient magic whispering- rise.
The soil buckled under her weight, the impact unnatural and spread outwards like a fan, and from the edge of her helm, she watched hundreds of feet of jagged stone pierce towards the sky like a line of spears a thousand strong, a volcanic shape, bowed inwards, leaving no escape, thirty feet tall.
The Aftershock keystone absorbed the impact, drinking in the force, greedily, green cracking lines splitting her form, shielding her, filling her with force.
She had to be efficient about this. Jarvan was one of the few Legends whose power to energy expenditure ratio was overwhelmingly conservative, but even still, her head was already incessantly pounding like a drum.
Her eyes moved to Vista, who had conveniently chosen to come right up to the front of the action, scrambling upright just twenty feet away, stretching space to further the distance.
Her left fist wound around her back, grasping a familiar, ridged pole banner, and she swung her arm wide, using the lance as a bracing point to pour as much power into the motion as she could.
It punched through Weld's stomach as he attempted to scramble upright to lunge at her and skewered him into the ground, Demacia's banner pointed high as he grasped it, trying to pull it out.
She twisted, digging the lance out and commanding it to extend, segmented, hooked portions lengthening, and swung it towards the banner, a wave of broken rocks following her motion, peeling off the lance.
She knew the length of her weapon, better than she knew the reach of her own arm.
By mere millimetres, one of the hooked segments at the very tip grabbed onto the ridges of the pole, and she forced the lance to shorten, throwing her forward as she used her legs to lunge simultaneously, to the left, swinging herself in an unpredictable, rapidly shortening arc.
The green lines cracked further, turning her to golden-green kintsugi, building up.
She threw her legs up and in front of her midair, working with sheer core strength, and let her armoured heels skid over the concrete for only half a foot, crouching, moving her center of gravity forwards to lunge forward again, eyes unfocused, seeing everything they could, instead of the focus point of her iris alone.
A whistle of a blade, a bright orange colour in the edge of her vision. A strike.
She didn't have time to waste dodging. Aftershock was about to release.
She Flashed past Challenger's axe, the full range of ten feet, and flickered to herself then back to Jarvan in what might as well be a nanosecond, banner once again settled on her back, completing the lunge, reaching towards Vista.
Space distorted, but her movements had been too fast and unpredictable for the girl to keep up. It was too late.
Her hand snapped shut around Vista's stick-like wrist, essentially making it impossible to gain distance from her.
Aftershock cracked with a sound like jade and glass shattering.
"Sorry kid." She managed to rush out, and let go, jerking back with a kick of her leg to the ground, cracking it, open back aimed towards a rushing Armsmaster, to bait him in.
Vista stretched space, as expected.
Armsmaster took the bait, as expected, charging into her space.
Aftershock exploded with the stored force of her first impact with the earth, redoubling.
The edge caught Vista and launched her away like a ping-pong ball, bones snapping like dry twigs, rolling to stop against a pile of cushioning bricks, knocked out instantly despite the helmet, it would seem.
Part of her hated doing that to a child, but it was buried under a mountain of rage and a monolith of cold pragmatism.
With Vista up, her little arena would be completely meaningless, after all.
She pivoted on her foot, swinging her head around to catch Armsmaster's armour flying back, broken into a million pieces behind her, a scattering mess of electronics and ceramic plates and hissing gasses and fluids, with a tumbling human body in the middle of it, charred and keeping most of the remnants together.
The fact he had enough in him to charge her after being Ignited forced a small, grudging sense of respect from her.
It only lasted long enough for her to duck under a blast of rainbow light from Lazerdream, and switch to the Rune of Precision in the interim, Fleet Footwork's keystone shining bright in her mind.
Weld was rushing her from the left, Tank from ahead, Challenger aiming between them with her musket-like rifle in the back, glowing axe hanging off her hip.
To her right, Manpower, faster than he ever should be when so large.
Above, Dauntless, a metal piece of rebar in his arms in place of a spear, looking for an opportunity.
She grasped her lance, and dove for Manpower, tip pointed forwards.
A barrier of pale purple-blue rushed for her feet, seeking to trip her up, Shielder's work.
Reaching into her core's spells, she tugged 'Ghost' forwards, and switched her grip, flipping the lance around, left hand darting to her waist again, for the ridged banner.
The barrier slammed through her feet, passing through them without so much as shifting her.
Manpower punched forward with a cry.
His fist went through her head, pale blue afterimages and echoes shifting in her aftermath as she dove through him, unharmed.
A bullet passed through her, two, six, and she shifted, tilting her helmet leftwards, up, just enough to catch her real target's outline.
Her right foot stomped the ground ahead of her, her hips locked, shifting with momentum, and she spun on her left foot, grazing the ground, throwing the banner in an under-waist javelin throw, with the wrong grip, in the complete opposite direction of where she was rushing.
It did not matter, not with the Rune of Precision making it so easy to aim.
The banner practically teleported through Shielder's shoulder, passing through with a splatter of blood and a surprised scream from the boy, leaving vitals and joints untouched, a flesh wound that had to force him to withdraw as he dropped from the sky, flight stuttering.
He would live. Recover, even without Panacea.
A rush of golden energy filled her from her keystone, attempting to heal her wounds and speed her up. Unable to heal her, it shifted its power to Overheal, providing her with another thin shield, flooding her limbs with the lightness of a feather and the whistle of an arrow, its speed boost mingling with Ghost's.
A bola of sparkling cylinders blurred towards her from one of Dragon's mechs, struggling to catch up to her without trampling anyone.
She didn't bother dodging it, allowing it to pass through her, instead digging her gauntlet's claws into the earth and tossing herself back and away from Tank's torso-sized fist that cratered the concrete, her right arm wound tight for a strike with her lance as she tried to position herself properly within this shifting tide of panicked capes.
She spun in place to place herself stomach-down again, and zipped forward in a straight line, lance gripped in one hand, hanging over her shoulder, moving on two legs and her left hand, ignoring Velocity's attempts to punch and stop her, Ghost simply making him fly through her with each frustrated pass.
Within the unfocused gaze that she maintained, she watched Triumph rush towards Miss Militia's side to defend her, up ahead, likely correctly assessing her next target, shoulders and chest swelling with a breath as Miss Militia's anti-material rifle switched for a four-tubed rocket launcher, aimed straight at her from behind cold brown eyes.
She'd made her target very obvious, but that was fine. It was a misdirection, again, regardless.
She gave up on that objective, head jerking around to see where Triumph could lead her.
One of the Blasters was on the opposite end, the one throwing odd ovals with seemingly detrimental physical effects.
If he could exhaust Jarvan like he did with Bakuda, she'd be forced to swap Legends and dampen the strength of her message.
That no matter how many heroes you brought, no matter how good and powerful they were, even a single one of Nexus' own could destroy them by himself. That it was pointless to even try.
So she couldn't have that, if possible.
Triumph's head jerked forward, abdomen curling.
She threw her left foot forward to stop herself cold, sharp-edged greaves punching through stone and halting her rush instantly.
Triumph's eyes lit with, well, triumph, as he roared, unaware he was doing exactly as she wished, and that she could pass by his strike too if she wished.
She did not.
It blasted her backwards with an ear-drum snapping intensity , wind trying to claw her very armour off of her, her grip on her lance nearly slipping, Overheal's flimsy barrier being washed away in an instant as she was thrown back in a straight line, straight towards Dragon's suit.
She had too much aerial awareness to flail through the air.
Instead, she focused her gaze on her target, and whipped her head according to her motions to keep it steady, like a hawk through a dive, and threw her lance forward and to the earth, extending it through two solid feet of stone, barely grasping it by the end of the shaft, one handed.
Her momentum allowed her to swing off of it like a jump pole, to the right of Dragon's awaiting suit, feet forward, right towards the Blaster, an acrobatic move that no doubt looked ridiculous when in such thick armour.
Dauntless crashed down like a meteor, passing through her harmlessly, making a crater under her.
The Blaster finally registered the danger she was in, and turned to run, throwing a pale blue sphere at her, which also passed through her.
Another mini-rocket, a bullet, a laser-
Kid Win had arrived with some laser pistols.
She hadn't seen most of the Wards, but they had participated. A milder punishment was necessary, to be fair.
She had time.
Dragon's tail covered by vibrating blades swept through her, uselessly, and she crashed into the earth, shifting her momentum forward to lunge like an arrow.
The Blaster's eye-sore of a bodysuit was clutched by the scruff within her gauntlet, and she gave her no time to adjust before she swung to the right with her whole body and force, throwing her to the floor.
The woman's right shoulder crunched against the floor, her suit ripping, and a hand moved towards her face, glowing red, by reflex, mixing with the woman's cry.
The sphere passed through her as well.
She swung her lance shaft-first, the sharp point braced against her shoulderguard, and it slammed into the woman's hip bowl, Taylor's left hand darting forward to grab her opponent's single free wrist before it could fire again or retreat.
The hero's hipbone broke.
Taylor's hand tightened, breaking bone, ignoring the scream of agony from below as bullets and lazers and Velocity's fists all uselessly passed through her.
She pulled, twisted just so, and jerked her arm away using all of her back, yanking the woman's arm out of its socket entirely, before jerking her kneepad into the Blaster's elbow to snap it backwards with a branch-like snapping sound.
Ignoring the flash of sympathy she felt when the woman shrieked like a banshee, kicking and wriggling back and away to the back of her ability, spheres shooting out of her hands in random directions as her limp wrist rolled within her grasp, she tore her eyes off of her.
Velocity lost his cool at the brutal beatdown it seemed, because he went for his most obvious strike yet, crying out in anger.
She tossed aside the woman's wrist, and caught his fist, sliding back two feet from the impact, and swung down with her lance, hand low on the handle, using her shoulder as leverage.
He didn't have time to scream about his severed arm before she wound her leg up close to her chest, and kicked him away, snapping half his ribcage with a worryingly satisfying crunch, rolling off on the jagged, broken asphalt.
Another surge of golden energy from Fleet Footwork, doubling her speed, and she didn't waste a moment of it, ducking down to lower her center of gravity and wind resistance, and lunging for the nearest weak link, once more, the second blaster just forty feet away, some kind of thermokinetic, she could guess from the blast of crackling, sub-zero air that swept through her.
The fliers and the kids would be the most annoying to deal with. She couldn't be that brutal with them, they'd barely done anything to deserve getting crippled.
But the thermokinetic was likely here to keep Lung fightable in melee without Dragon's suits melting. He knew what he was here for. He agreed to it.
Ghost would run out soon, so she wasted no time in diving through Dragon's suit as it tried to block her, and grabbing him by the hair, tossing her lance aside.
Just a little, she told herself.
Just let a little bit of it out, just a spark.
The furnace in her gut opened, fury filling her veins with hissing, shrieking acid, and she shoved her fingers in his mouth as he screamed.
She pulled, feeling teeth peel and break, flesh tear, hair and skin tear, her muscles shaking with the effort as the man wailed, clawing at her fingers as she slowly ripped his jaw off.
How many will die because of you? How many will be trampled because you betrayed us? How many times should you die to pay for it, had I not been here?! Would Lisa ever hear anything? Would Rune ever see? She snarled in her head, awaiting no reply.
"STOP! STOP, STOP PLEASE!" Dragon's suit yelled, trying to grab her, then giving up and grabbing the Blaster by the jaw, her metal mitt shoving it closed, pushing her fist up easily.
Jarvan was a man with magic in his veins and a bloodline of giants, but he was nothing against a Dragon mech.
"I can't. You did this to yourselves. I need to break you, because you left us no other choice ." She hissed, a sound of grinding boulders and venom, and pushed with Dragon instead, suddenly, slamming his jaws together, breaking the bone and ripping his gums apart, a tide of chipped, cracked teeth clattering around his mangled mouth as he struggled.
Dragon's gigantic, clawed gauntlet tried to grab her hand by the wrist, passing through, the second swiping through her head, in vain.
Dragon's mechs present were too large and combat-oriented to grab and handle the small amount of her actual body she was letting exert force into another. Dragon couldn't do anything, even if she could find out that only her fingers and palm technically existed at the present moment.
Deciding at least this was enough, as the man choked on his own teeth and blood, she grabbed his wrist, then the other, and planted her foot on his back, pulling until she heard his shoulders dislocate with a spasming cry.
Twisting her hips, she slammed her right heel into his right elbow, then his left, snapping both.
She let go, and flicked her right gauntlet, broken teeth and bits of flesh peppering the dusty ground.
Dragon's suit was covering most of her sight, but she could see how the heroes were well and truly panicking now.
They couldn't hurt her, or so they believed.
She could light them on fire with a glance, or so they believed.
She had seemingly arbitrary and undefined powers, so they believed, and were right about, to an extent.
What could they do in their minds but flee?
"CLEAR THE WALL! CLEAR THE WALL!" Miss Militia called, as another one of Dragon's suits moved next to the first, thrust wings spread to cover as much of her sight as possible.
They dwarfed her in size.
An explosion and a cloud of dust let her realize what was going on, and she flickered to herself and back to Jarvan, her lance and banner back in hand.
Another explosion, another, rapid fire, like a machine gun being fed grenades, and she watched the tip of her erected barrier tumble down over the tops of Dragon's suits.
Dragon's suits were so large that Ghost would likely not let her through them.
And they would be a massive annoyance once Ghost ran out.
She had less than ten seconds of it left. Maybe less than five, even.
She switched to the Rune of Domination, power and speed entering her veins, and tugged at the Electrocute keystone, something in her chest shifting in a familiar way.
A quick throw, which made her flag pole snap against Dragon's armour and immediately break into pieces like a flimsy piece of wire, and then she rushed forward, two-handing her lance for the first time.
A tide of missiles, lasers from above. Tank and Weld on the side, trying to surround her.
New Wave were retreating, Manpower rushing away while his family took their wounded and flew off, which was good.
She didn't want to harm people that had barely participated out of grief and manipulations, desperate for their missing family to return to them, despite the Truce suffering because of it.
The responsibility lay with the Protectorate.
Dragon's flight suit sent rockets to her feet, not pushing her away due to Ghost, but certainly making it harder to rush forward when the ground she was using to run forward was being turned into a stretch of craters.
Unfortunately for the woman, it wasn't enough.
She'd lived lifetimes on ships, and spent even more of it on dingy barges barely being kept above the cold black waves. Months of moving onto shifting tectonic plates, melting apart under her burning feet as the Void pursued endlessly.
A shaky, shifting ground was nothing new to her.
It just gave her good cover of dirt and dust to shift her target from the melee craft to the flighted one, flickering back and forth, another flag pole on her back.
She took it out, launched it forward into the ground at an angle, and in a familiar maneuver, used the hooks of the lance and its extending function to swing herself straight at the suit.
The helm opened, a monstrously gigantic blowtorch going through her head, blinding her, but not hurting her yet.
She swung, allowed her lance to become corporeal, and felt metal bite into metal, jerking her torso and head to the side to clear her view.
Sparks flew, hooks caught, but not much damage was done.
She shifted, allowed the lance to pull her downwards, and rolled under the suit, which immediately boosted away, the melee one leaping for her right over its shoulder with uncanny precision on both their ends.
Another series of shots from Kid Win, above.
She phased through vibrating claws, ducked under the melee Dragonsuit, ignored a blast of liquid nitrogen, and swung up, at the smaller one's flight wing as it tried to take off, barely scratching it, before shifting her grip, lunging to the left to obscure the sightlines of whatever capes were left, and wrenching her right arm forward in a perfect javelin toss with a guttural cry of triumph.
Her lance only stuck into one of the suit's joints for about ten inches before it stopped, but it didn't matter.
The third strike against the suit was enough to activate Electrocute, and with a thunderous, deafening boom, red lightning burst out of the impact point, punching through the mech, scattering mechanisms and a complex cloud of broken bits, parts and pieces.
It spun midair, once, thrusters going haywire, burning fuel splattering everywhere as it jerked and tried to correct itself, then crashed into the ground, a third of its body missing.
Not enough to kill the suit entirely, but more than enough to make it useless.
She flickered, calling her weapons back to her, twisted her waist in a rather painful, sudden way, neck creaking as she turned as far as she could mid-leap, trying to see what Miss Militia had done.
A solid thirty foot section of her wall of earth had crumpled inwards, and the majority of the heroes, the non-brutes, were busy trying to grab the wounded and extract.
She'd let them, in any other circumstance.
This time, she switched to the Rune of Inspiration, to get another charge of her summoner's spells, and cast Ghost, right as it faded, ramping up again.
Her gaze jerked to Weld, and she cast 'Ignite', unsure of how else she could hurt him without losing her lance or banner repeatedly, and very annoyingly.
Then she let herself mindlessly dead sprint towards the heroes, rushing through each and every attack, zig-zagging where necessary to dodge bad footing that would mess with her rhythm.
Weld was pretty much out.
Tank was behind her, with the other Dragon suit, too far to catch up.
And pretty much nothing could touch her unless she wanted it to, for maybe twenty seconds.
Plenty of time.
Shouting, everywhere, all around her.
An unfamiliar figure was standing on the hill made out of her broken wall, a slight, green thing, a gigantic crossbow pointed at her.
Flechette, she believed.
Cosmic Insight gave a tide of information so confused and hard to believe that she had a mental stutter for a second, unable to understand what ' god slayer' written in one's past destiny could even mean.
The bow fired.
She didn't dodge, confident that most power-to-magic interactions would always favour her.
The bolt, predictably, phased through her chest.
Except she choked, stumbling in surprise, in agony, throwing a hand out to not slam into the ground, instead rolling once, and scrambling upright, choking on crimson.
What.
What?
She didn't let surprise slow her, or stop her, immediately carrying her motion forward into a side-lunge, casting 'Heal' to get rid of the thin but gaping wound in her chest.
The Tinker that had been fighting Victor perched next to the girl, and a few feet away, Miss Militia, a firing line.
Adamant rushed down the hill to put himself between the backline and her, Challenger nimbly abandoning her attempt to go grab the Blaster capes she'd just mauled to pivot towards her, axe glowing, musket on her hip, aimed right at her with newfound confidence.
Taylor snarled, and her greaves slammed through the bottom rubble on the hill of stone leading out of this arena, on the lowground against almost a dozen capes, Wards and not, lunging forward.
She phased through Adamant, ignoring him.
The Blasters backpedalled, Flechette running up the hill and reloading, the Tinker throwing shockwaves at the hill in her direction, successfully slowing her by making the entire thing spread out and break further, like roiling sand.
She cast Exhaust on Flechette, brown-yellowish ropes of energy winding around her and working against her every move, sapping her energy, every step feeling like twenty.
She wound up her left arm for another throw, pole in hand, and used 'Flash' upwards , ten feet in the air, momentum carrying.
Her arm jerked forward, right between the tiny delay in the Tinker's blasts.
The pole punched through the Tinker's right buttock and out of their hip as they retreated, jutting out five entire feet, and with a shriek, they slammed into the ground, tube-weapon clattering down the hill of rocks.
"PROTECT FLECHETTE! STALL FOR TIME, RETREAT!" Miss Militia screamed.
Falling to the hill below, unable to resist gravity, she utterly ignored Aegis's flying tackle, Adamant's hammer throw, and every single thing except Flechette, simply phasing through them all.
They got to the crest of the small hill, barely twenty feet ahead of her, a group of retreating capes, Brutes left behind, and fliers useless, Flechette wheezing like an asthmatic as Exhaust finally let go of her.
They tumbled over the edge, and she lost sight of them.
She cleared the hilltop a moment later, and saw herself staring down the length of a flying arrow, right between her eyes, a mere foot away.
Something in her neck pulled and cracked as she jerked her head to the side, and she felt a thin line of flesh along her temple vanish with a good part of her helmet.
Her neck hurt almost as much as her head did.
Lunging down like a rabid panther, she saw Miss Militia look back at her with determined eyes.
They weren't going to escape, and they knew it.
Miss Militia threw herself in front of her, hands clenched around machetes, and swung at her.
She phased through the strikes, and her, and pivoted on her foot, lance whistling through the air.
Miss Militia jumped back, to the best of her ability, machetes low to defend.
The lance extended with a metallic scraping sound.
Defending one's feet while on high ground was very difficult.
The blade went through her shins with little resistance, and Miss Militia cried out, machetes leaving her hands as she fell, clutching her stumps.
She… might not survive that. Blood loss.
Then her eyes flicked to the tourniquet set hanging on her hip, and her worries faded.
It might be close, but Miss Militia would live. So would Velocity, assuming any of them had containment foam grenades left, or tourniquets.
She turned around for her main target, settling her left foot down, right one up near Militia's groan-sobbing, hurriedly reaching form and saw Aegis grab Flechette, flying up and away.
Her feet slid down the hill another few feet as she stared, trying to find a way to get to them without switching Legends.
Switching to the rune of Precision, no keystone picked, she flickered, and threw her banner again.
By comparison, a soft throw.
It punched through Aegis's calf, and through Flechette's outer thigh, only just barely missing the major arteries.
She did not recall the banner, mostly to give them some time to touch down and get something to stop the bleeding before leaving the gaping wound behind.
She turned, watching Miss Militia struggle to unlatch the tourniquets from her thigh with hands slick with blood for a moment, shaking, eyes flickering with shock.
The top of the hill practically exploded, sending rocks to tumble down over them, and she moved her eyes up to a frozen Dragon mech.
She could guess the kind of sight she was. Covered in blood and bits of gore, the cold frigid eyes of a murderer staring emotionlessly down at her recent prey.
Tank scrambled over the hill, and froze too, followed by Weld.
They knew they could not reach her in time before she decided to finish off Miss Militia.
Thankfully for them, she didn't care to do that. The woman was a good… soldier.
Not a good hero, but a good soldier.
She reached down.
"WAIT-" Dragon started.
The air whistled from above, Dauntless having finished doing whatever he had been doing with the wounded, and choosing to try and fight her one on one, apparently.
Ignoring that for a moment, she unlatched the tourniquet off Miss Militia's belt clip, half-buried under her, and tossed it onto her chest as she panted.
Stepping over the woman as she hurriedly tried to staunch the bleeding of her legs, she pretended not to see the quick glances above her, nor hear the light rattle of metal, the light buzz of electricity, the slight whistle of a sharp, moving object.
Ghost faded, petering out, the blue afterimages and shifting suggestions of movement sinking back into her skin.
She tilted her helmet down to hide her eyes, staring at the hazy shadow from the dim sun behind her and above her. Getting closer, and closer.
"How about a fistfight?" She asked in Jarvan's deep, arrogant voice, and threw her lance aside, helmet tilted towards Tank.
Something fhthrwoom' ed right above her, a bizarre sound, and she lowered herself as if to charge-
Then dove to the left, catching a glimpse of some Tinker-tech looking sword sparking with electricity, looking suspiciously similar to Kid Win's floating skateboard thing, plunging into the rocks where she had just been, held by a hand she recognized.
A hand that had reminded her of countless memories of death, and brought it on again, to the one least deserving of it.
Ryze would come back, in due time, but that could be months.
And it was his fucking fault.
She switched to the Rune of Domination, locking in Predator, red ribbons of aura bursting out of her armour and extremities, following her movements, leaving a trail behind. She marked him as her prey immediately, almost doubling her speed as she lunged at him.
He swung the sword towards her, and her left hand caught it by the wrist, stopping it. Her right formed a line of gauntleted claws, fingers straight, and forward, between two specific ribs, at a specific angle, Predator's energy moving into the strike and empowering it.
Her fingers parted the armour, and stabbed between his fourth and fifth rib, knuckle deep.
He jerked, trying to pull away.
A kick snapped for her stomach, which she blocked with a cast of 'Barrier', dragging him closer with her left hand, her right pushing in, shredding past his lung, cold leather deftly dodging massive arteries to grasp his still beating heart, wrist guard scraping against broken rib bones.
He froze, his fighting glare turning into a wide eyed look of mortal horror, choking on his blood, letting the sword fall to clumsily grab her wrist, falling to the ground.
She stared down, a sneer on her lip, a bottomless abyss of ice within her eyes.
She squeezed, gently, feeling his heart race inside her palm, pulse, convulse.
He couldn't pull away, he didn't even dare struggle.
One yank, one squeeze.
He had no chance of doing anything to her, nevermind simple resistance.
And in that moment, she believed, he realized just how weak and fragile a human was, how easily one could die, out of nowhere, regardless of their powers. It was reflected in his eyes, wide and almost unseeing in sheer terror.
"LET GO OF HIM-" Weld barked, rushing forward, and Tank seemed to join him.
She ignored them.
"DON'T! DO NOT MOVE! IF GOLD MOVES, DAUNT'S DEAD!" Dragon interjected, movement at the edge of her sight.
She ignored her.
She leaned close as his knees trembled, folded, staring deep into his eyes, holding him up by the arm.
"Remember this, Dauntless." She whispered, as bloody froth crawled up his throat. "Know that a so-called villain held your heart in his hand, and did not squeeze. Know that I did not do so, simply because Nexus hopes that one day, you'll think before you act, before you try to murder one of us. You'll think beyond your orders, or what you're told. Think beyond the law, and think about what's right. That you'll save more lives than this stunt could have killed when the next Endbringer attack comes. And that you'll respect the one rule that really matters. Summoner's given you all a chance. None of you would be alive otherwise. Nexus does not give second chances. Next time you betray the Truce, you'll all be beneath headstones. Do you understand me?" She slowly said, voice even, cold, quiet.
She had to scare the PRT shitless, or else they'd never respect her enough to uphold any kind of agreement.
But she could not help but admit, that this brought on a primal satisfaction in her.
Ryze was gone, for- probably months, because of this-
This person she couldn't truly hate, but she could certainly be angry at.
He stared, teeth clattering.
A slow, slow nod, jerky and terrified, another, frantic.
"Good." She grunted, and looked down to the sword.
She stomped on it, ignoring the electric shocks moving up her leg to the best of her ability.
"You're going to remember my words. You're going to relay them to your next regional director, word for word. Understand?"
Another choked, jerky nod, blood trailing down from his lips as he convulsed.
"Wonderful. You're going to fly away now. And if I so much as see you glance back, you will burn until you're charcoal. You will die screaming for the world to hear. Go, hero. We'll meet soon, hopefully under Truce again." She coldly stated, fully aware that the time for an Endbringer attack was fairly nearby, and carefully unwound her fist, wiggling the sharp bits to carefully move out of his vitals without further damage, and quickly pulled her wrist out of his chest cavity, lifting him by the arm and tossing him aside, switching to the Rune of Inspiration for another cast of Heal to use on him.
He never hit the ground, rushing away, faster than she'd ever seen him go, and three times as uneven in his flight. She wasn't sure he even noticed her neat tunnel through his insides had mostly closed.
He didn't look back.
She turned to the remaining heroes, above.
Weld, who seemed scared out of his mind and barely staying on his feet, despite his body physically seeming completely fine, Adamant, who seemed a bit shaken, Tank, who was the same as he had been since the start, Dragon's remaining suit, Challenger, vibrating with rage, a shaking Kid Win, wide-eyed and without his main form of mobility, Triumph… scared and hiding it well… and that was it. Hardly a force to be reckoned with, but her head was killing her, and she was almost completely out of Summoner Spells.
She turned her eyes to the side, at rows of PRT agents closing in on the scene. And a couple Wards. Browbeat, Clockblocker, probably Gallant, she couldn't quite see him.
Command had likely gotten quite desperate.
They hadn't even done anything yet, so she could hardly bother with them.
She glanced back to Miss Militia, who had a single shaking glock trained on her, her other hand helping her shuffle back and away.
She dismissed her, and focused ahead.
Dragon's dented, charred visor focused on her, her serpentine neck swerving.
"Everyone. Rush back to get the wounded, take them and run. I'll stall him." Dragon ordered, voice thick with command and anger.
She tilted her head as the heroes hesitated for a moment, then turned around, and all ran.
This… was annoying.
She couldn't run up a hill of rocks and push through Dragon, it would take too long. Then she'd have to catch the individually fleeing capes and deal out punishment.
A chore.
She flickered to Evelynn, already invisible, and burst into gas, flying up, watching the heroes split up.
She dove for Kid Win, and switched to Jarvan in the last moment, punching him in the thigh with a crisp crack, bowling him over with a cry, leg broken.
Good enough consequences, for a child that had barely participated and was no real danger. She couldn't stomach more.
She flickered back to Evelynn, soaring above.
"ABORT, JUST RETREAT! RETREAT!" Dragon's suit broadcast, speakers straining with volume as her suit burst through the hill, apparently finally getting it into her skull that she could abandon the fallen without Taylor executing them.
Everyone obeyed without question.
Too late, really.
She wound around Tank's shoulders, each bigger than her entire torso, and glanced for weak spots on the literal ball of grotesque muscle.
The eyes.
She materialized, back to Jarvan, legs wrapped around his neck, hooked fingers pulling back into soft, squishy tissue.
He roared, the first genuine exclamation of pain she'd heard from him aside from choked grunts, grasping her hands.
She felt her bones snap like twigs, her armour fold like tinfoil, before she flickered to Evelynn, and flew off, switching to the Rune of Precision again, picking Fleet Footwork.
Tank was damn strong. That hurt.
Weld was stumbling and struggling, but he was running away.
She felt like he'd suffered enough.
Besides, she wasn't sure how to cripple him, or if she even could.
So she turned to Challenger, who was jerking her head around to glare in every direction, paranoid and furious as she sprinted back out of the caldera Taylor had created, passing Dragon's shifting mech.
She circled around the woman, waiting for her to gain some distance from the others, then moved ahead and charged her from the opposite direction, head-on, gathering momentum.
A flicker, back to Jarvan, flying like a bullet, and Challenger's axe rushed for her face in a reflexive strike.
Her mangled left hand moved to redirect it, but she underestimated Challenger's strength, too powerful to just be nudged aside no matter how masterful her movement was.
She instead had to block it with her gauntlet, the axe blade splitting her knuckles, metal peeling, and she grit her teeth, unable to stop a cry of exertion and pain leave her as she slammed her pauldron into Challenger's chest, completely removing the woman's momentum and making her fly back into the ground, a clumsy tackle that had them rolling.
It ended with her on top.
Golden energy flooded into her hands from Fleet Footwork, a few rib bones snapping back into place, body lighter, flesh trying to mend shut around the axehead splitting it.
She reached for her summoner spells.
None were up yet. Ignite had another minute, and that was the closest.
Damn it.
Challenger tried to swing the musket-like gun at her face.
She grabbed her wrist, and slammed her hand into the ground with a satisfying crack of bone.
A knee dug between them, scrambling for a foothold to kick her off with as Challenger screamed in rage and pain, and she let go of Challenger's hand to grab her knee, immediately shifting her own legs to kick off the ground, and swing, dragging Challenger in a half-arc across the ground by her right hand grip on the woman's knee, her left jerking back and out of Challenger's axe, flesh tearing anew.
She spun once more, backing up at the same time, to deny Challenger leverage or balance, her head scraping the rough concrete as she tried to kick her off or reach her to strike.
With a shift of her hips, Taylor let her right knee bend, her left doing the same, and lifting, stopping the circular drag to reach easier.
Stomping on Challenger's mouth from above, she grit her teeth to ignore the pain of her axe biting halfway through her calf in retaliation during the strike.
She felt the hero's jaw fold inwards beneath her heel, crack like a dry beach bone, and reached around her back for her banner, kicking her left leg to the side to shove Challenger's axe and hand off, then stabbing the pole down through the shaft of Challenger's axe, her palm, and the asphalt below, pinning her.
The woman let out a dazed groan, jerked, and went limp, the mixture of pain and likely head injury too much for her.
She heard the sound of something loud, approaching, and moved to dodge-
Only for a dozen mini-missiles to flash before her eyes, guided, following her.
Too sudden to react in a better way, she instead activated her armour's magic, a weak golden shield surrounding her, her left arm curling around her head to shield it.
The shield shattered, and her world shifted into one of pain and spinning colours, head swimming as she rolled to a stop, agony pounding across every inch of her.
For a moment, she had a hard time focusing on who she was and where, panting on the ground, staring up at a murky morning sky.
It came back to her, fast.
She grit her teeth, rolled over, ground her fists into the ground, only one of them obeying her commands for some reason, and forced a knee under herself, before gathering her strength and pushing, throwing herself upright, stumbling in place.
Choking on blood for a moment, she coughed, gathered it, and spat it out to her right, exhausted eyes scanning her surroundings, trying to reorientate.
She wasn't far.
Thirty feet away from Challenger, without the landscape even being damaged. Shaped charges, directional explosions, most likely. Of course, with a Tinker.
She tried to wipe her mouth, only for a burning spike of pain to remind her of what she had diligently been pushing away. Her injuries.
She glanced down.
Her left arm was gone, broken off at the bicep with a mangled strip of flesh hanging down limply, leaking blood.
The acknowledgement of the injury forced her brain to realize it, and she grit her teeth with a shaking groan.
It only made things hurt worse. She had trouble breathing, stabbing agony going through the left side of her ribcage with every inhale and exhale, like someone twisting jagged spikes of glass inside her.
A few torn pectoral muscles. Broken and fractured bones, likely.
Had she not gone through all that training with Lung and Grasp of The Undying, that salvo of shaped rockets would have likely killed Jarvan too.
She spat out a long, long breath, and watched the next salvo scream through the air, different missiles this time, smaller.
She switched to Evelynn, and flew up, eyes swerving.
Tank hadn't recovered his eyes, blindly covering his neck with one arm while following Miss Militia's fading, exhausted voice, lumbering over to her, obviously lost and blind.
Weld was dragging the PRT agents and the other Wards away, yelling at them to back up and hold, obviously scared for their well-being.
Kid Win was limping, very slowly, towards a couple brave PRT agents that were rushing for him.
Aegis had dropped off Flechette to a medic van and was going back for the others.
She'd let him, just to be sure no accidents took heroes before their time.
Triumph was next, and he knew it, whipping around in every which direction, chest tight with a held breath.
She simply waited until he was red in the face, and was forced to gasp out a breath.
She materialized in front of him, flickered to Jarvan, and swung her lance at his leg, the flat side impacting his armour and caving his knee sideways with a horrid crunch.
As he screamed, she panted, and tossed her lance aside, taking a step forward, awkwardly unlatching her pole from her back with her right arm, and swinging it down with a cry of exertion, forcing it through the joint of his right shoulder, digging, twisting.
He yowled, no breath left to shout her off of him, spasming and grasping her pole with his left arm.
She flickered once more, lance in hand and banner on her back.
He sobbed, and she lightly kicked his foot.
"Till next time, Triumph. Well fought. Play nice, and we'll even heal your cripples, for a price." She grunted, and he just gasped air, in and out, staring at her wide-eyed. "How about this? When you all get together for another briefing, tell everyone hurt today, that Nexus will fix them, if they fight in the next Endbringer fight. That seems a good enough price to pay to not be cripples for life, right?" She asked.
He looked away, trying to keep his composure, teeth grinding as he choked on his breaths from pain.
She turned with a sigh.
Another smattering of tiny tracer missiles.
She switched to Evelynn, and resumed her flight around Dragon, waiting for at least two summoner spells to return to her, switching to the Rune of Inspiration in the meantime, to read Dragon.
What it gave her had her stopping her flight cold to simply stare, with incredulity, feeling her worldview shift a little by the sheer magnitude of what she just learned.
One, Dragon was… some kind of algorithm that had evolved into a human being at some point.
Two, she had triggered.
Three, she had a fucking soul despite her artificial existence.
She could feel it, just below, connected to something further away like a twin would be to its sibling in the womb, but not quite the same.
This was a Dragon suit, like many others. The woman herself wasn't here.
But apparently her mind was, and that was enough.
Fourthly she learned that she was a woman that was good, down to the marrow of her nonexistent bones. Which she suspected, but it was nice to have confirmation. It only made her future actions sting more.
Worldview-shattering revelations of AI, and her own very, very faint, anemic guilt aside, this also meant that she could Ignite her suit.
In the tense silence of Dragon's suit taking off and flying in a tight circle in the air, watching for her, she watched the people move below, trying to make sense of the devastation and the broken figures littering the field, all mangled but alive.
Then enough things came off cooldown for her to spring to action, firstly casting Ignite on the mech, which, despite how odd it seemed, did indeed burst into flames.
The voice box of the mech did a strangled noise like a dying dog and an alarm clock had a baby before cutting off, and she dove for it from above as its flight went haywire, spraying itself with some kind of… grease fluid as it spun out.
It didn't matter.
She switched to the Rune of Sorcery, picking the Arcane Comet keystone, the little indigo stone orbiting her as an unseen shadow while she dove.
She switched to Jarvan, and with one arm available, did what little damage she could, slamming into the suit's back from above, blade-first, barely puncturing deep enough for the Rune to count it as a strike.
Immediately, the rock orbiting her chest blurred upwards, as Dragon's suit buckled and thrusters flared, throwing her off cleanly, body spinning in the air.
It was a calming fall, after everything that had happened.
And it gave her a great view of when the comet crashed back down on Dragon, with the force its name implied, punching clean through the suit and almost tearing it in half.
She let herself fall for another moment, hurt in almost every way, sore and broken and exhausted, wondering if it was worth pursuing anything more.
Adamant hadn't gotten punished. He was still up and kicking.
But she was just so dead tired she couldn't muster the will to jump up and hunt him down too. He was probably with the Wards already, Dragon had stalled her enough.
No, this was enough. She'd sent her message to the capes.
All that was left, was a message for the world.
A few feet before Jarvan joined Ryze in temporary death, she switched to Evelynn, and gunned it for a rooftop, hiding in a small nook and activating Teleport.
Four seconds later, she materialized and waved her hand, light sensors lighting up Bakuda's workshop.
She didn't waste time, heading for the only grenade type she knew how to actually arm and throw, by dint of Bakuda ranting about how she'd made these simple ones for the mooks to use just in case, lamenting how boring they were.
Boring was fine. She just needed to do damage.
She pushed Evelynn away, Arclance in hand, covered in pale blue blood, and she felt her lip twitch as she reversed her grip, using her right arm to shove grenades into her hip pouch and clipping as many of them as she could onto her harness.
Just five. The grenades were huge.
She grabbed her phone, and ignoring protocol, called her info team directly, using her shoulder to hold it as she carefully used the analog clock on the grenades to set timers.
One ring.
"Boss?"
"Do we know where Director Tagg is in the Protectorate Headquarters right now?" She snapped out.
"One moment." They replied curtly, and she waited, five, ten, fifteen seconds.
"He's not in the Director's office. He's on floor two of three, Console room four. He's angry and yelling about something. Do you know where that room is, ma'am, or do you need-?"
"I do." She said, and closed the call.
She switched back to Evelynn, switched Runes to the Rune of Inspiration, and Teleported again to a familiar empty floor of an abandoned building, Lung's club barely visible in the distance.
Then she zipped to the Rig.
The barrier did not stop her, simply casting Ghost again to ignore it completely and fly through the walls of the outer rooms, a picture of a half-remembered floor plan that Imp had snagged, in the back of her mind.
She almost froze when she realized she just remembered Imp, and it took her a second to remember what she'd told her to do.
Deciding that was irrelevant, she flew onwards, barreling through walls, counting rooms and eyes flicking through signs, familiar and not.
She flickered, dropping the grenades inside pots, under radiators, in the vents, peppering them at random.
Then she dove up, to the side, and a room full of furiously typing desk jockeys filled her gaze, chaotic as could be.
No Director.
She flew through the wall, and the next, and the next, and there she found him, red-faced, hands clenched into a pile of papers he was swinging around as he ranted about shit she could care less about.
She didn't waste time, nor words. She simply gave him more than he deserved, materialising in the room, shapeshifted into Jarvan, covered in fake injuries and matted dust and dried blood.
One invisible, diamond-tipped feeler lashed out before anyone could even jump at her sudden presence, cleanly punching through his gut.
He screamed, and the woman he'd been screaming at shrieked in terror.
The room exploded into chaos as she stepped forward, ignoring all of it while Tagg grabbed at the invisible tree trunk punching through his stomach, his other hand fumbling behind him for a gun as he stared at her, wide-eyed, choking, breathless.
She twisted the tentacle, and jerked him closer, extending her right hand.
Her thumb and middle finger punched through his eyes, and he finally found it in him to make a noise like a dying pig.
She calmly dug around in his sockets as he took a breath and screamed, joining the cacophony of screaming as people rushed out of the door behind her, alarms blaring.
"Mindless fool." She simply breathed out, and her other feeler whistled through the air, her first feeler jerking out of his abdomen.
His body fell to the floor as he went silent.
His head stayed in her grasp.
She turned her feelers to mist and back again to be rid of the blood, and used one of them to carve a message into his flesh, meticulously, holding it by the sockets.
Her other feeler tore at his suit, and carved at his chest, sharp straight lines through fat and muscle.
It only took a few seconds.
Her first feeler lashed out at the wall, cutting the metal once, twice, thrice, a jagged triangle hole which left a thousand pound piece of steel to tumble off below.
Then, uncaringly, she threw Tagg's body out of it with her feeler, just the right way to make sure he would splat on the barrier road that led to The Rig.
She flickered, to store his head with her base form, and stepped forward in the now relatively silent room, grabbing a microphone, glancing down at a bunch of buttons she couldn't recognize.
She turned, to where the faint whimper of a coward could be heard, and met eyes with a desk employee, shoved into a corner, damn-near hyperventilating.
"Tell me how to broadcast a message to the entire base, or you'll die with far less grace than him." She dryly rumbled, and he choked, a deer in headlights.
"O-Override b-bub-button. Three six twenty seven ligma sigma delta charlie xavier five six three." He whimpered, tears pooling in his eyes. "P-P-please." He whimpered, closing his eyes, turning away, gasping for air.
She turned to the console.
The massive, red 'emergency override' button covered by a plastic cap was likely what she was looking for.
She flicked the cap, and pressed it.
The monitor popped up a prompt.
She typed the password given, and the complicated window in front of her resized, highlighting a section that flashed ALL CHANNELS incessantly at her.
She leaned close.
"Hello. This is not merely a threat, but a promise. The Rig, or some parts of it, will explode in exactly ten minutes and about thirty seconds, courtesy of Nexus as reprisal for daring to break the Endbringer slash A to S-class threat Truce. Get out as fast as you can. If you die, it's on you. Let's hope your new director will give you bonus hazard pay. Apologies for the inconvenience. " She snarked with a low rumble, and tore the mic out of the console.
She burst into invisible smoke, and dashed out of the gap in the wall, right as the shouts of base Security neared, heading for where the barrier bridge met simple, standard concrete across the Bay on the Boardwalk, where all could see and hear, and where all would gather.
People took the threat seriously, thankfully.
The first trucks to burn rubber as they rushed out ran into Director Tagg's body, and only stopped long enough to grab his body, to her great pleasure, instead of kicking it off the bridge, followed by a deluge of civilian vehicles and not, a constant stream of them that set up a broken, barely legible cordon around the barrier bridge to stop the curious passersby with no self-preservation from straying any closer.
A suitable audience for the final message.
Five, eight minutes passed as she watched, habitually casting Heal on herself to get rid of the pounding, but barely tolerable headache, when the last moped passed the barrier bridge.
She flew up high, and picked Jarvan, the real him, flickering once to put Tagg's head in her hand, fingers still wedged into his vacant eye sockets.
She crashed down before the bridge in a deafening impact, a small crater forming.
She tossed the head forward, carefully and precisely, so that it would roll to a stop on its chin, wide, terror-filled, vacant eyesockets facing the scrambling PRT agents and shocked civilians.
Flickering once more to put Dauntless's Arclance into her hand, she stabbed down through Tagg's head, pinning it to the ground with a short grunt of exhausted exertion, and switched back to Evelynn, effectively vanishing before anyone could so much as react.
As the Rig began to explode beyond the bridge, Tagg's head faced the crowd, skewered to the salted concrete with Dauntless's spear, the words 'TRUCE BREAKER' carved into his forehead in deep, spidery lines.
And she rushed off to regroup with her people and collapse into a chair, as fast as she could, wondering how to get to Heartbreaker before he could take advantage of the chaos.
Notes:
Hope you enjoyed. This chapter KICKED MY FUCKING ASS it was so hard to write but im really happy with the result. :) Let me know your thoughts, I got so happy seeing all the positive feedback to the last chapter as well as just the general excitement. Hope I delivered.
And tysm for all the love and comments, holy shit. I can't even reply to all the comments because there are so many of them now, but I read and love em all. :)