Exposure 5
As Lisa's head jerked diagonally, it seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. Or more like I was suddenly paying attention very hard from fifty different perspectives. I watched her body fall and caught it gently with my bots. I could tell exactly where it had penetrated her skull. I knew its size and direction before it even stopped moving. I could catch the bone fragments before they could deal more damage. I was able to stop the bullet with the bots that were already in place in her cranium before it completely obliterated the most critical parts of her brain.
Not that I would ever call someone who got shot in the head lucky, but Lisa probably had a better chance of getting out of this alive than anyone else. It was like being shot, while wearing a helmet, in a neurosurgery suite with the surgeon already there and ready to go. Except better.
My bots were at work immediately, before Lisa had even stopped falling. The bots that I had been using to protect against the Stranger's knife attacks couldn't fully stop the bullet, but they did absorb a lot of energy. Moreover, as the bullet penetrated the skull, they were still strong enough to spread the force across more of the bone. That meant more of the skull got shattered actually, but the bullet slowed down and penetrated less. Bone could heal later. The bots, weaved together to form the armour, just happened to wrap around the bullet as well, preventing it from shattering into deadly fragments.
When the bullet stopped, I was able to extract it immediately without causing any more damage. Bots instantly got to cleaning the wound, stopping the bleeding, preventing infection, clearing out bone fragments. I'd worked on gunshot wound victims before, and even when they had been rushed to the hospital within minutes, those minutes were significant. The blood vessels were easy enough to fix up, but the section of neurons had been utterly obliterated.
What did that part of the brain control? I double checked with a spare brain of my own. It corresponded to part of the right sensorimotor cortex, so maybe Lisa would have difficulty controlling the left side of the body, or seeing things from the left side. It also damaged parts that were often associated with visualization. That is, if Lisa recovered. It was all on me to take care of her right now. I couldn't take her to the hospital.
After all, there was another fight breaking out as both Empire and ABB members were both starting to gather in the ER, along with victims of both. With the entire Empire wanting to kill Lisa, I couldn't take her anywhere public.
I contained the bullet in a clean capsule of bots for evidence later. The thing was clearly Tinkertech, not a typical bullet. Instead of just an aerodynamic chunk of lead and alloys, there were lots of miniature mechanisms in the tip and movable fins on the back. Where had the damn thing come from, anyway? My bots throughout the house told me. It had gone through the outside wall, an inner wall, the floor, and then into the basement before it struck Lisa. Tracing the holes through my home, the damn thing had curved and steered itself into Lisa's head. Thank goodness it had to penetrate so much more of the house; it must have lost enough energy before impact that I actually had a friend left to save.
It was hard to figure out where a curving, steerable bullet came from. It had to have come from the south side of the house, unless it was capable of completely reversing direction. But I hadn't even heard a gunshot with any of my bots in that direction – again, probably Tinkertech with a perfect silencer, or maybe it didn't even use gunpowder in the first place. Where could the gunman have been, though? I had a very wide area covered near my house in bots.
The first thought was that the sniper had been outside my range. A sniper bullet could easily outrange the area that I was watching in close detail. I only vaguely covered areas further out because none of them had a line-of-sight with my house. I hadn't accounted for target-seeking bullets.
The police helicopter, maybe? Coil had fake PRT vehicles, it wouldn't be unthinkable that he had a fake police chopper as well. Or maybe it was a real chopper piloted by his moles in the department. But who the hell could snipe someone from a helicopter? Well, potentially anyone could with the weird tinkertech bullet I found.
I'd take care of it later. I needed to make sure Lisa was safe.
Which, of course, left Grue and the Stranger. I'd given Grue enough chances. He may have saved my life before, but actually helping an assassination? He got no more free passes and no more chances to explain himself. They were already running, so I made spikes out of the ground to impale them. I made my entire house a deathtrap of moving spikes and razor blades of nanobots. No more mercy, no more joking around.
Grue spilled out his smoke, which further disrupted my control. The disruption was way more powerful than before – it used to just dull my precision against him and blur my senses, but now I almost completely lost control of the bots. Did his power get stronger somehow? Or had he figured out how to tune it against me specifically? The specifics didn't matter right now as long as he was getting the hell away from Lisa. I sent one last copy of Abyssal after Grue, and I just hoped that the Stranger was running with him. Abyssal chased him with wild, destructive swings of the swords so he wouldn't even think of a second try.
"Dragon. Lisa's been shot. Need safe place for her. Hospital is dangerous. Options?" I quickly relayed the situation to Dragon, who was still on video chat.
"My drones still don't have authorization for support, but the mobile workshop I had sent is sitting just outside the city. I was delaying its arrival due to the riots, but I can send it in immediately. If you need a safe place to keep her, the workshop is heavily armoured and has round-the-clock security systems, even if it is rather conspicuous," she told me.
Clearly people could find Lisa when she was trying to lay low, so there was no security in obscurity at the moment. Better security through thick armour plating and the threat of pissing off the world's greatest Tinker instead. Plus Abyssal standing guard.
"Thanks. I'll send her with Abyssal."
"It's extremely obvious to me now that the girl is being targeted. I'll keep her safe as best I can while I investigate," Dragon told me.
Could I actually fix Lisa's brain? I didn't want her to end up as a vegetable. My bots could emulate my own brain, sure, but that was because I just made an exact copy of myself. The good thing about the brain was that it was remarkably flexible, and sometimes restored itself to nearly full functionality. The problem was that the brain was remarkably flexible. While certain functions could be mapped to general regions of the brain, there was nothing set in stone about individual neurons. Heck, people who had suffered injuries or other issues could re-route pathways around large lesions.
I didn't know if I'd be connecting up Lisa's newly-severed neurons correctly. Actually, I had other problems to solve even before that. My bot-brains were entirely made of bots. I'd never tried to connect a biological brain to my robot brains. My bots got their power supply from each other, connected to the network of bots which was ultimately solar-powered. If I intended to have Lisa heal properly – including all the protective layers of the brain and the skull, I needed my bots to be functionally equivalent to an actual human neuron – including getting its fuel from glucose and oxygen, and keep working without my personal control. I didn't want to Master Lisa.
It was time for some rapid prototyping. I could partly test them in my own brain, but if it came down to it, I could ask Panacea to help before installing them in Lisa.
I dedicated a few hundred brains to the job, enough to leave most of my brains keeping watch on the streets and taking care of Lisa. It would take a few hours of work before I had a suitable candidate, and they would be very long hours indeed.
Outside my home, I noticed a flying cape up above. Dressed in dark colours, my first thought jumped to Alexandria, but there were too many splashes of red on the costume. Then, suddenly, there was an extremely bright, hot glow in the sky – as bright as a second sun.
It was obvious what was going to happen.
I completely encased Lisa's body in bots to protect her, then squeezed her out a tiny basement window. And not a moment too soon. The glowing orb dropped from the sky and through the roof of my house. I tried to use what bots I had in my home to remove the important things aside from Lisa, but there was no time. It happened too quickly, and I had moved too many of my bots into the basement for Lisa's defense. The fireball dropped on to my home and cut through it like butter.
It immediately seared through the roof. It burned through the wood like it was nothing. As it descended, the rapid heating caused the air to expand so rapidly it blew out the windows. Lisa was only a short distance from the house at the time, and even then I needed to sacrifice multiple layers of bots to shield her from the debris and heat.
Destroyed piping in the house spewed water which immediately turned to steam. Amazingly, that worked to my advantage, as it created a pseudo-fog for me to rush Lisa away. I could already sense Dragon's unusual truck enter the city, so I took Lisa in her direction for safety. I knew a person-sized cocoon scuttling through the streets was weird and conspicuous, but hopefully Abyssal would create enough of a disturbance to divert their attention.
I would probably end up sacrificing an entire copy of Abyssal for this – a thousand pounds worth of bots – but I could always rebuild. In the opposite direction I was taking Lisa, I sent an Abyssal. I had no good way to attack someone flying so high, so Abyssal just grabbed a random rock and threw it.
I missed by a wide margin, but at least I got the cape's attention.
Then the rock fell towards the ground and smashed through a car's windshield. Whoops. If I was just going to take pot shots at her, I needed a projectile that wouldn't annihilate whatever it landed on. The first thing I thought of were bots, of course. I could throw a bot-formed javelin at her, and let it disintegrate when I missed, hurting nothing at all.
And so, I started having Abyssal launch javelins over and over while trying to dodge ultra-hot fireballs. Abyssal's survival was not the issue, of course. It was protecting and hiding Lisa. Thus, I didn't mind putting him in sub-optimal positions or losing massive numbers of bots while the cape used the fireballs both offensively and defensively. I kept up the attack, even as my bot-javelins were being repeatedly incinerated, as long as I could keep her looking the other way.
Meanwhile, my house had burnt down to a crisp, along with my neighbours' homes. The fires were so powerful they incinerated the entire area. All our belongings, our clothes, our furniture, our home… gone. Along with a large reserve of bots, a significant stash of cash… and my mom's flute.
It was gone. All gone.
In a sense, it was a bit freeing. All the extra bots and brains I kept in the area, watching it constantly… now it didn't matter. I could spend more of my abilities to focus on what mattered. Dad. Lisa. Myself. My teammates. Clothes – not a problem for me. Homes – I was guessing either the Pelhams or Dallons could put us up for a few days, or we could just move into a motel or something. Money – I still had multiple smaller stashes elsewhere, and if all else failed, Abyssal could raid some gang stashes. It was okay. We were okay for now.
I focused myself. Dad was fine. He was still at work, away from most of the violence. New Wave was mostly fighting, all of them backed up with Protectorate support. Amy was near me, a little tired, but otherwise fine. I just had to take care of Lisa.
Dragon's arrival at our designated meeting place came quicker than I had expected. No others had tried to intercept or kill Lisa and Abyssal on the way. The cape fighting Abyssal had broken off after the fog cleared. It seemed like she was satisfied with her job of utterly annihilating my house, and didn't stay.
Dragon must have had cameras all around the vehicle. There was no driver – apparently she had a special license for remote driving, or auto-driving. Not surprising for anything made by her company Dracotek. The door opened up automatically – or maybe she had opened it remotely when she recognized us. Either way, I put Lisa inside, with a large helping of extra bots, and then had Abyssal stand guard outside.
"That was quick. I saved a copy of the video as evidence. I can make a basic life-support system here, but I'm afraid this workshop doesn't have advanced medical technology inside," Dragon said through the speakers. Multiple robotic arms inside unfolded and began to construct a simple ECG and other basic vital monitoring devices.
"I'll take care of it," I told her through my bots. I dropped the weird bullet on top of a table. "Bullet. Analysis?"
"Well, that's interesting. I'll let you know what I find out," Dragon said.
I wouldn't feel that she was safe until the fighting had died down, until Coil and the Empire were both downed for certain. As armored as Dragon's vehicle was, it had no obvious weapons and the Empire had a lot of firepower. I assumed the Empire 88 leak was a deliberate act by Coil to cause chaos so he could escape, but I had kept an eye on him. He had been brought into PRT custody, so if that had been his plan, it didn't work. I'd gone and dismantled all his other bases that I could find, so there was that.
There was probably no way to convince the entire gang that Tattletale hadn't been the one to leak the info, so really the only way to remove that threat to her was to help end the fighting a bit more quickly.
Everyone from New Wave was out tonight, except for me and Amy. We were both busy at the hospital. A few police officers had been posted here now, along with the ones that brought in detainees for medical treatment. The police presence helped reduce the fighting in the waiting area, which made everything else much more manageable. Still too dangerous to bring Lisa in, especially with the cash bounty against her that the Empire posted.
"Do you ever wish you could be out there, helping?" Amy asked me quietly, when we finally had room to breathe. I was caught off-guard, because Amy didn't usually stop for anything. I had taken care of more patients than she did for once. The nurses were okay with me treating dozens of people at once, as long as their injuries were minor.
"Sort of? You're already helping, Amy," I said. "I mean, the heroes wouldn't be able to do nearly as much without your help."
"I'm asking you," Amy said firmly. "I mean, medicine isn't even your power's specialty."
"Fine. Yeah, I get it. I don't want to be completely stuck here," I said while schooling my features as best I could. "I like the idea of stopping criminals in their tracks before they hurt anyone instead of just fixing up the damage they leave behind. Is that how you feel too?"
Amy walked to the next patient. I walked with her. "Yeah. I just wish I could be out there, at Vicky's side..." she said with a sigh. "Now I don't know what's happening to my family unless they get brought in here."
Speaking of Vicky, it looked like she was going for another rematch against Hookwolf. Except this time, Hookwolf saw her coming, was completely ready for a cape fight, and the ocean wasn't nearby to knock him into.
I made sure one of my Abyssals was ready to go to distract him. Cricket was in the area too, but she was easy to take care of. With the bots I had left inside her body, I just reactivated them, told them to migrate to the arteries in her neck again, and boom. Out like a light. Hookwolf, however, was an entirely different problem.
"Hey Hook, you still owe me a dress!"
As Glory Girl slammed into the prickly cape foot-first, Hookwolf braced himself and struck back at her. Although she had the definite strength advantage, Hookwolf used leverage and his massive weight to deflect her into a car even as he got knocked over. He shrugged off the damage as metal bits fell off his body, with more of them regrowing in their place.
"I don't owe you anything, you race-traitor," he snarled.
Glory Girl was pulling sheetmetal apart to get out of the car that had folded in half around her when Hookwolf charged. I made Abyssal intercept him, hopefully to either cause Hookwolf to stumble or stop him completely. With both blades extended, there was no way Hookwolf was going to be able to dodge to the side, so the villain jumped over Abyssal's low, sweeping swing.
Abyssal jumped as well, causing them to collide mid-air. Hookwolf grappled, but I didn't let him gain any grip. I dissolved Abyssal and had the bots flow over Hookwolf's body. He landed on the ground with Abyssal reforming above him, pinning him by the neck. My bots were desperately searching for a weak point on his skin. The steel of his hooks were far more than skin deep; as my bots attempted to dig into him, they kept finding more steel instead of blood vessels. It looked like his Changer ability completely converted his body.
No wonder he was so durable. And heavy. He probably weighed more than Abyssal at full size; he was already shrugging off my attempts to restrain him.
Glory Girl broke out of the car and gave Hookwolf a flying uppercut, sending more shards of metal flying. His neck twisted in a harsh whiplash, since Abyssal's bots were holding his body down while his chin snapped upwards from the blow.
"I hope Vicky doesn't get hurt," Amy said. "It really sucks, having to sit here and just wonder. She's not completely invincible, you know. She's pretty reckless. I've had to heal her, but she never learns her lesson."
I was tempted to actually let Amy in on my secret. Let her know I was watching over Vicky right now, helping her out. Give her a play-by-play of the action tonight. But it wasn't the time. Then again, I would need to reveal a whole lot to her once it came to healing Lisa. She was safe inside Dragon's mobile workshop at the moment – medically stable, but I needed things to calm down more before bringing her to the hospital.
The other option would be to bring Lisa to her. And I'd have to explain the situation to her, because it would be hard to lie to her while in Dragon's presence. Kind of make things awkward and probably send the wrong signals.
And I definitely needed to consult Amy with a few things later once my new prosthetic-neuron style bots were ready. I had about two hundred variations to test at the moment. It had to be sooner rather than later, before Lisa's condition got worse, but for now, I had to help calm the city down.
Well, it looked like reinforcements had arrived. Dauntless, the Dallons, a few PRT troops came onto the scene. Hookwolf and Cricket were restrained, foamed, and then the group received a call for more backup at the Medhall building. It looked like Kaiser and the twins were all ramping up against Lung. None of them were attempting to hide or deny their identities any more, and they were going all-out. Most of the other Empire members were rallying to that location, too.
As Vicky flew, I took out Stormtiger the same way I took out Cricket, helping out the heroes who were fighting at that location. Although that meant it was giving Oni Lee an advantage. I used one Abyssal to try to even things out and keep everyone else safe, but I had no way of dealing with an explosive, teleporting cape. Krieg and Alabaster were no slouches either; they could hold their own. Most of the Protectorate heroes had been backing off, waiting for backup.
I couldn't do anything in the primary fight involving Lung, either, but I was still using Abyssal to run interference against both sides. I could have taken Krieg out with my bots too, but unfortunately he was fighting Oni Lee. I wanted him to go to jail, not explode defenselessly against a serial killer.
My bots weren't getting near Lung. I learned that long ago, and even with further improvements. Maybe I could have taken him in the first two minutes or so, but he didn't just get bigger, he got hotter as he fought too. At his current ramping level, my bots were incinerated before I could touch his skin. One of the pitfalls of being made from carbon. Even diamond burned at high enough temperature. And yes, Lung could easily reach that temperature.
Fenja and Menja were using their massive size to pin down Lung and their toughness to resist his flames, but that would only last a short while longer as Lung continued to grow. I tried to get bots into their bodies as well, but at their massive size, their skin was proportionally tougher. Not that I wanted to take them out right away; they were doing a good job of keeping Lung from doing too much damage.
The Pelhams arrived together; they all immediately began to hammer down on Lung with practiced coordination. It looked like they had discussed their engagement strategy during the flight over. The men went to ground level, with Manpower helping the Empire twins to keep Lung under control and Shielder providing additional last-minute defense against Lung's random fireballs and explosions. The ladies stayed in the air and bombarded the dragon with concussive light blasts.
That meant Kaiser was being given free reign to attack the unpowered ABB members. Sure, he sent an occasional blade Lung's way to trip him up, but for the most part, he was the cause of the blood and screaming among the gangsters.
He had a fancy medieval-style armour, though made with high-quality modern materials. I could see that it was fully bulletproof. But it wasn't bot-proof. Time to end this fight. My bots slipped in between the cracks of his armour. Kaiser was too focused on all the big threats, like Lung, Oni Lee, and the ABB gang members with guns. With the constantly-shifting light from Laserdream and Lung, the shadows flickered constantly, making it impossible to notice my bots swarming towards him. I didn't even have to be subtle about it. Under the armour, he was as squishy as a normal human. My bots went into his bloodstream, and he went out like a light.
Naturally, just because he went down didn't mean his opponents stopped shooting. So in came Abyssal, giving each one of them a good whack and disabling their weapons, and injured the ones that were too unruly. Kaiser was already waking up when I was done with them; I had to use the bots in his blood to knock him out a second time. The PRT was too busy with Lung to get a foam dispenser on him. Abyssal grabbed the Empire leader and dragged him towards the nearest group of heroes I could see, which was back towards Lung.
The sound of metal scraping along asphalt wasn't loud, but it was distinctive. It caught a enough peoples' attention, including Fenja and Menja. Lung was sufficiently pinned down by all of New Wave and Fenja and Menja together, but their sudden distraction allowed him to break free. Instead of continuing the fight, he just gave a triumphant sneer at Kaiser, and retreated.
Did that asshole just take credit for my takedown?
I was hoping there wouldn't be another fight, but Fenja and Menja weren't going to let Kaiser be captured. And with Lung mostly out of the way, they were even more focused on their leader. Abyssal wasn't actually strong enough to stop them at their full size; they ploughed straight past all the heroes and grabbed their leader away from Abyssal. I let him shatter into his constituent bots. Although most of New Wave tried to stop them, they were in full retreat. They blocked most of the light blasts from Laserdream and Lady Photon with their shields. The speed at which they ran was difficult to keep up with, even for the fliers.
It wasn't worth the effort, not when there were still more battles raging elsewhere in the city. At least I had bots inside Kaiser; if he tried anything again, I'd be ready. I could take him down later when the PRT had more room in their jail cells.
The fight at Medhall had finally calmed down. Multiple Empire members lay on the ground, injured or foamed. Lung was gone – he'd done critical damage to the Medhall building, knocking out one of the primary support columns. The skyscraper was at risk of collapse, and the building was being evacuated. Once again, the police and PRT couldn't risk continuing the fight or the whole thing would have collapsed. They chose to allow him to leave and shrink back to a normal human while they aided in the evacuation, settling for arresting the Empire members at the scene. Same with Kaiser, Fenja, and Menja – they were allowed to leave in favour of rescuing civilians.
Dauntless was flying to the upper floors, focusing on rescuing people who were trapped and couldn't reach the fire escape. Aegis had volunteered to do the same.
However, almost all the high-ranking capes from the corporation were arrested. Krieg, Crusader, Stormtiger, Hookwolf, Cricket… it was a humongous victory for the PRT. Sure, the leaders of both gangs had gotten away, but you couldn't have it all.
Of course, the remaining Empire members were still on a rampage through town. They didn't receive a play-by-play of what was going on elsewhere. The PRT had been successful in a single concentrated fight, but now they had to spread their heroes out across dozens of separate pockets of violence. It was too much for the police to handle, and most of the Protectorate was focused on making sure their captures didn't escape.
Velocity had been sent out for scouting. Armsmaster had decided to patrol on his bike. Just about all the other Protectorate members had been assigned to escort the arrested villains. The Wards, on the other hand, had been scattered. A few were assisting the Protectorate, but some were fighting were on their own, which was unusual. They often worked in pairs, and rarely fought at all. I suspected the ones fighting weren't actually following orders.
Armsmaster was heading to back up Browbeat. He was physically the biggest Ward, and possibly even tougher than Aegis. To be honest, he was holding his own pretty well, and was practically alone in defending the biggest African-American neighbourhood of Brockton Bay. The Nazis had given up on attempting to fight the ABB, who were fully riled up and ready to fight back. The black community, on the other hand, was smaller and had fewer representatives.
To be fair, Browbeat had been doing surprisingly well on his own. His enormous physique had allowed him to carry a makeshift shield in the form of a steel-reinforced door, which protected him from small-arms gunfire and let him use it to non-lethally knock people down. However, he looked like he was getting tired. I didn't know how much of his body was natural and how much was a Changer power or whatever, but he seemed to be getting a bit smaller.
I decided to help him out as well, because I could see Victor, Othala, and Rune had joined. This group was probably the biggest single group of Empire members remaining, and those two were the last few Empire Capes that were running free. I supposed they were attempting to regroup or salvage what was left. Rune and Othala kept hovering above, safe and out of range. Victor jumped down into the fray with some fancy somersault-roll that maintained his momentum.
I didn't bother forming up Abyssal to help Browbeat; I just used the bots on the ground to trip up or knock out random Nazis. Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything against Victor, who had been rendered invincible. I couldn't even penetrate his skin. When the Nazi cape started to fight the beefy Ward, there was little I could do to help. I could slow him down slightly by trying to stick him to the ground, but that didn't help all that much. Browbeat had been fighting for the past hour on his own, Viktor was mostly fresh.
Meanwhile, I had to use Abyssal to protect innocent people from Rune's telekinetic rocks flying around, using him as a massive shield wherever she threw those things.
When Armsmaster arrived, he got off his bike and drew his halberd, but he kept it in ranged mode. He shot off a flash-flare at Rune and Othala, who were retreating, and then immediately loaded a tranquilizer and aimed it at Rune.
Although the flare seemed to blind Rune, she moved her platform erratically, causing his tranquilizer to miss. He didn't get a second chance to take out Rune as Viktor charged straight at him. Browbeat looked completely tired out, and was barely able to stay on his feet. His body was shrinking as well; he looked almost like a normal human now. That was fine, though, I was diverting bots to the area now that the big fight at Medhall was over.
Viktor fearlessly closed in for a series of punches and elbows. Armsmaster managed to get a hold of Viktor and use his suit's power to lift Viktor off the ground. Invincibility didn't mean super weight; with the loss in footing Viktor's elbow strike had much less force behind it. He followed up with a strike to the gut, but Viktor simply tanked the hit with his invincibility, blocking the blow with his arm while simultaneously delivering a roundhouse kick to Armsmaster's head.
Viktor raised his other arm, aiming his pistol at Armsmaster's face. At this range, Armsmaster knew he would be able to aim perfectly at the gap in his mouth. He stepped forward and grabbed Viktor's arm with his left hand; the shot glanced off the armour covering his cheek.
Before he could twist Viktor's wrist and force him to drop the gun, the Empire fighter had twisted his body and clamped down on his halberd with his armpit while following through with an elbow strike at Armsmaster's face.
He deliberately let go of his halberd to grab Viktor's leg and deliver a knee to the face; Viktor pushed away and took Armsmaster's halberd with him. He landed a few feet away on his feet, gun at the ready, again aiming his gun at the only gap in Armsmaster's armour. I had no doubt he had the skill to place the shot on target.
The halberd suddenly electrocuted Viktor. It didn't hurt him, but it was more the surprise that caused Viktor to miss and drop the halberd. It teleported back to Armsmaster's hands, and then the hero re-engaged.
Armsmaster went on the offensive, using his combat predictive software and his suit to the max while he advanced with a flurry of stabs, forcing Viktor to push his own power to the limit as he acrobatically backpedaled. He managed to find a split second to fire his weapon, forcing Armsmaster to shift his body slightly and delay a strike; it was enough for Viktor to begin the counterattack.
That fight went almost nowhere, especially since Armsmaster had to restrain instead of injure Victor. He fought with skill I could barely understand like some kind of kung-fu master in steel armour. But Victor had just as much skill, if not more. He deliberately used his invincibility to tank hits and force Armsmaster into sub-optimal positions. After all, most fighting techniques probably didn't account for someone who deliberately took a deathblow in order to keep going.
Moreover, as the fight went on, Armsmaster looked like he was flagging. His technique was getting sloppier, he was missing more often, leaving himself more open to Victor's counterattacks. I didn't know if he was getting tired, or angry. Maybe his suit was losing power. Maybe he was paranoid about Rune joining in, even though I was keeping her at bay the best I could. Wait, wasn't Victor's super-power to steal skills or something like that? Could he have been deliberately dragging the fight out to take away all of Armsmaster's combat skills?
Viktor didn't have super-strength to punch through Armsmaster's power armour, regardless of his technique. But his armour was the only thing saving Armsmaster at the moment, because he couldn't keep up with Viktor. Even so, the Nazi did some fancy backflips to regroup with Rune and Othala. The two capes dipped low to the ground. She touched him, and then he was immediately rushing Armsmaster again.
Fuck, I should have put more priority on Othala. I was focusing almost all my bots on protecting people from Rune's projectiles, while Othala was just cowering on the platform doing nothing. It was a bit too late to correct that mistake, but I immediately sent more bots into her bloodstream to knock her out now. At that height, I had to throw some more bot-javelins at them to shower them in a large number of bots. Rune dodged and blocked them often, and it took quite a few tries to actually get enough bots crawling on their bodies to enter their circulatory system.
Meanwhile, Armsmaster swung down at Viktor, who used a basic combat knife to block the blow. His attack wasn't just stopped dead, he was knocked slightly back. Including his power armour, he was over four hundred pounds. Viktor had switched out invincibility for super-strength. He must have been very confident in his ability to completely dodge Armsmaster's attacks, because as far as I knew that power didn't grant super-durability to match. Wait, that meant I could probably knock him out, too.
Viktor maximized the use of his gifted super-strength now, hammering away at Armsmaster's technological strength enhancement with his own. Every deflection and block he performed was backed with extra strength, forcing Armsmaster further and further off-balance. It was powerful enough that I was seeing dents in the iconic power armour.
Armsmaster was definitely about to lose if I didn't intervene fast enough, but I was almost done. Rune and Othala were knocked out already, and they fell to the ground. My bots had finally swarmed on to Viktor's skin, and it would only take another minute to get into place and knock him out.
Armsmaster went for a powerful swing down, but Viktor caught it. The two of them struggled hard against each other, but Viktor looked like he was about to win. Armsmaster didn't do anything fancy any more; he was just pushing down with all his strength.
Suddenly, Browbeat was standing in place of Viktor. He had shrunk down to a normal person – just a typical, if larger, teenager. Without any more resistance, Armsmaster's halberd swung down at full power.
It bisected the young man before anyone could react.
Author's Notes:
- I have since realized that Browbeat's power doesn't quite work like that, but, again, I mostly laid out this story based on fanon. And honestly... Browbeat barely gets mentioned. In fanon or canon. I can't even be sure what race he was. So I just chalked it up to "unimportant" and made it work this way for my story.
- Also, I have to wonder how a teenager with an inhumanly ultra-buff body could ever have a secret identity if they couldn't change back to "normal-sized" out of costume.