Exsanguination 3
Manchester was not doing particularly well. Better than Brockton Bay, obviously, but not still not good. Shatterbird left an obvious mark on the city. Even though Jack Slash was scary for his macabre charisma, Bonesaw was feared for her horrific mutilations, Shatterbird was feared for her actual body count. Even if it was "only" the glass that had broken, half the population had received some kind of severe injury by my estimates. She could destroy at a range and scale that no other serial killer could.
We went towards the hospital as a group, even though Panacea had fixed everyone up by the time we got there. Physically, we were doing far better than the residents of Manchester. Psychologically, I think everyone was at rock bottom. After losing Velocity and Gallant, most of us had been hoping to be able to meet up with some reinforcements and get some relief, only to find more pain and suffering.
Maybe it was because Leviathan had spared Manchester. The city had collectively breathed a sigh of relief that they had survived, only for a different nightmare to follow. In a more practical sense, the fact that many of Brockton's patients had been sent here meant the hospital was already overcrowded. Then all the windows and lights had shattered. Computers and medical electronics fried themselves right when they were needed the most.
My bot coverage of this city wasn't nearly as extensive as in Brockton Bay, and especially not comparable to what I used to have in Brockton General Hospital. Although I tried to use what I could to shield people from the direct damage of flying glass shards, the absolute destruction of medical equipment meant that sensitive patients were dropping like flies.
Panacea and I got to work helping those we could, primarily the doctors and nurses, so they could get to work on the other patients. I had as many of my brains and bots surveying the other hospitals as I could, trying to figure out what was the most efficient way to help. If we only stayed at one hospital, that was a whole lot of people elsewhere that wouldn't be helped during this crisis. Maybe it would be best if we tried moving to each hospital, healing all of the actual medical personnel at each one, but then I had to factor in the travel time and the danger.
To say that the streets were chaotic was an understatement. It was still hard to tell where the other Slaughterhouse members were, as their roster kept changing and many of them looked "normal." I couldn't see where Shatterbird was, and she could quickly shed her costume if she needed to.
I needed to tell the others what I knew as I kept watch on the city, share the information, and evaluate the possible plans. While Panacea and I were trying to get everyone fixed up at this hospital, the rest of the team was working with the Protectorate members nearby. I guess the central hospital was kind of a natural meeting point in this kind of disaster. I guess I could keep them informed with Abyssal. But what could I tell them, and what was the most important? There was so much happening all at once.
Back in Brockton Bay, I wanted to stop Jack Slash before he did anything worse. But when I had tried last time, he had been invincible. Literally invincible, not just tough. Was I wasting my bots?
What the hell was I talking about? I had tons of bots. The city was completely forsaken. The bots I was using to hold the ground together to prevent the city from sliding into the sea were useless, only protecting broken and abandoned buildings. I could just let that part of town collapse and bring plenty of bots to spare.
He was already invincible last time we checked, it's futile.
I can't collapse that part of town, what if there was an innocent person trapped in the area?
Aren't there more victims I can treat better with those bots?
The Triumvirate never stopped him, what chance do I have?
Each one of my brains seemed to have a different reason for doubting any plans to take out Jack. There was just so much to do, in any case. Maybe I would have better trying to deal with that giant monster thing? Jack himself didn't actually kill many himself, compared to the rest of his gang. The monster girl, however, was the one literally eating whoever she could find, usually people that the Siberian caught and "shared."
"My my, you've been so hungry, haven't you?" Jack was saying to her.
"I have…"
"And all the while your so-called friends have been out and about, having whatever delicious food they want! And you still call them your friends?" Jack said.
Trickster was the first to protest, but he didn't even manage to get a single word out before the Siberian's hand closed around his throat. His teammates learned quickly from his example, and held their tongues even when their monster girl friend growled at them, and her lower mouths snapped at them.
"I know! We can play a game where they can prove to each of you who's really your friend! They can make it up to you!"
"How?"
"Well, since you've always been so hungry, we can see who can get you the most food! There's going to be prizes for the winner! And maybe the losers will get a special something, too!" Jack said excitedly. "Now, Noelle, what's your favourite food?"
"Uhmmmm… um…. I think… beef is good… Maybe some bacon too…" the girl on top said nervously, while the lower half of her body acted in the complete opposite way, completely ravenous.
"Now now, don't lie to me," Jack said to, wagging a finger at her like she was being naughty. "I saw how you ate the present I gave you."
"I like… people…" Noelle said, with her voice full of shame.
"Great! I think you'll be great friends with the Siberian, she likes people too!" Jack said. "So here's the game! Each of you can go out and bring back Noelle some of her favourite food! As much as you can get! It'll be an all-you-can-eat special for her!"
"But… But I don't want to kill anyone," the unmasked boy said.
Jack gave him a utterly disappointed look. "Well, you're useless," he said. He gave the boy a shove, right into the mouths of Noelle's lower body.
The multiple mouths and tentacles pulled him in further, each one fighting over him for a piece. "No! Oliver!" Noelle cried in horror. Despite her protests, the lower part of her body didn't seem to care, and within seconds had torn the boy in half and consumed him completely in two massive gulps.
"Well then. The rest of you had better get going then, should you?" Jack said to the rest of the Travelers.
Honestly I wasn't all that worried about the Travellers. I was already sneaking bots inside their bodies, so I would just knock them out before any of them attempted to kill anyone. I'd let them run around a little bit to waste their time.
With the hero meeting starting though, I didn't know what to tell them. There was the team from Brockton, most of New Wave, some police, and a few local capes that had gathered together. It was surprising enough to get this many people without any good communication, so we weren't expecting many more.
Miss Militia addressed everyone there. "Thank you for coming to this meeting. First things first – we can confirm that the Slaughterhouse Nine are here as well as Brockton Bay and Concord. The current disaster is the result of Shatterbird. We were ambushed by Mannequin and Hatchet Face on the way here. Hatchet Face is dead, but Mannequin remains at large. We've lost a few of our friends and heroes, but I think we need to stick together."
Ah, talk about good timing. My copy of Abyssal carrying Kid Win had just caught up to everyone. I guess it was a good enough entrance to the meeting.
"MANNEQUIN DEAD," Abyssal said upon making his entrance, and he laid Kid Win down among his fellow Ward members.
That managed to distract Miss Militia enough that she didn't continue speaking. Lady Photon decided to take over for her; they had discussed enough with each other on the trip over.
"As far as anyone's aware, the Slaughterhouse Nine are acting… differently from usual. Though they've been known to change strategies to keep themselves unpredictable. This is the first time we've seen them hit three different cities at the same time. We believe they've decided to be this bold to take advantage of Leviathan's attack."
"Where are the others?"
"We're not too sure. Communication has been down since Leviathan, unless anyone else has seen them…"
That was something I could give them more precise data on.
I made a quick check across the rest of the cities. The Travellers had begun their attempts to kidnap people to feed their "friend," so I knocked each one of them out. I didn't want to kill them; they were acting under duress after all. As for their cannibalistic friend, though, I didn't know how to deal with her. Several of my bots were working on entering her body, but it was extremely tough. Even the bots that got past the skin couldn't make any sense of the insides, it made no biological sense.
Meanwhile, Crawler finally made his entrance. He was hidden in a truck that had been left on the outskirts of the city, hidden among a line of several other similar trucks that were supplying the relief effort.
"I'M BOOOOORED! SOMEONE FIGHT ME!" Crawler ripped his way out of the truck. Thankfully, most of the city had already been evacuated. He was being loud enough that people could hear him coming from quite far away, and he didn't seem interested in ordinary people anyway. For now, he was running around crushing cars and smashing buildings, but with almost no victims.
So that made Jack Slash, the Siberian, and Crawler all around Brockton Bay, plus their new recruit. I couldn't find anyone else who looked like a serial killer, so I turned my attention towards Concord.
Bonesaw was the one limiting my survey of that city. I couldn't even guess what her plan was, because of how I was losing bots in the area. Although that was far away, there was no doubt the Slaughterhouse would regroup at some point, and she was bringing her bot-destroying methods towards Manchester. I confirmed now that it was caused by some kind of bioengineered bacteria, something that was made specifically to counter my bots. They excreted an enzyme that targeted a specific spot on my bots, cutting them in half and essentially breaking them. It was something I could design around and figure out how to counter within another day. But I didn't have another whole day.
For now they were fighting against the bacteria with sheer brute force and overwhelming numbers, without doing any kind of smart biochemistry tricks to counter it. I figured out a way to prevent the enzymes from destroying my bots, but that basically involved making my bots curl into a defensive formation, meaning they couldn't do anything useful. Then I would have my bots expend their energy heating up, cooking the enzymes. It was more heat-resistant than a normal protein, so it took a lot of time and energy, which rendered my bots useless an out of energy until they could recharge. But it was the only way for them to survive.
I didn't know how fast Bonesaw took to design her bacteria. Did she get samples of inactive bots to prepare specifically against me? Or did she literally concoct those things within minutes of encountering them? Depending on which it was, I might have to dedicate a lot of brainpower to out-adapt her.
Worse, she was definitely coming here, as I only knew by the spread of her bacteria. A blind spot in my vision that was moving from Concord to Manchester. Whatever plan the Slaughterhouse Nine had, it seemed to converge here. Cause chaos in multiple cities, then draw everything towards the middle. It was known that Bonesaw had a penchant for visiting hospitals. Of course, there were plenty of different hospitals between the two cities. On one hand, I hoped she didn't come to the one I was sitting in. On the other, I hoped she didn't pick any of the other ones that were undefended, either. I could only hope I could find a better solution before she actually arrived.
My bots were safest from Bonesaw's creations in the parts of town that were on fire. Ah yes. Concord was now partially on fire, with one pyromaniac cape lighting setting things ablaze. At least the fires didn't burn as hot as Lung's plasma-spewing extremes, so my bots survived that. I had trouble keeping up with her because she was capable of teleporting between flames as well. For the most part, it seemed like she was chasing after Faultline's mercenary crew for some reason. Maybe a personal grudge or something. The group of mercenaries were all taking on this one cape, and they were having a bit of trouble.
The main issue was that they didn't have many good Blasters; most of them were primarily Strikers. The one cape who could operate at range was also a fire-based cape, and her powers seemed to only help the pyromaniac.
Oddly enough, it didn't seem like the pyromaniac was actually trying to kill anyone. I was moving my bots around to try to quench the flames, and I knew there had been quite a few opportunities the cape had to kill or at least trap Faultline's crew.
"Come on Ellie! I just wanna talk!"
Whoever Ellie was from Faultline's crew, they weren't interested. They were retreating, even through some of the flames. "She doesn't want to talk!" I think it was Faultline herself who shouted that.
"But we're friends! Come on, it's just like the good old days?"
"We were never friends!" came the reply from one of the younger mercenaries.
God, these people were so disgusting. Barely human freaks… I could just kill 'em right now.
Wait, where did that utter loathing come from? I'd never had a problem with Case 53 capes, and I'd even treated one of them before! Newter had been pretty weird, but no more disgusting than any old human that I treated at the hospital. And I tried not to kill anyone I could. Even though the mercenaries were officially villains, they weren't Kill Order-level bad, not even close.
"Get out of here, you nasty bitch!"
"Fuck off!"
People were throwing rocks of all things. They weren't even capes, or armed with any real weapons, but they were as aggressive as gang members fighting for territory. But there weren't gang members, they were just ordinary people who had, just minutes ago, been trying to run for their lives.
"Shut up! Shut up! You're the kind of people who kept me locked up! I just want to live my life! Fuck all of you!"
She lit the people on fire, and it happened so quickly I didn't have a chance at saving them.
I could just kill her right now, what a disgusting excuse for a human being. There was that thought again. And it wasn't coming from me. At least, not the main me. Not even the majority of my brains. Each of the brains in my network thought slightly differently, sure, but I had never experienced such a huge disconnect between one small set of brains and the rest of them.
"You're a disgusting freak, Mimi! You deserved to be locked up!" the young mercenary shouted again. Reality started to warp around her, not the same way that Vista warped things, but it seemed to replace the space with something else entirely. But that wasn't what caught me off guard.
Disgust. Funny, when she used that word I almost felt like she was reading my mind. One of my minds, the one that was close by. It seemed a little too precise. It was like… the thought, or feeling, had been implanted.
Ah. It was a Master power. It all clicked together. It was a bit like Glory Girl's aura, but hers was sort of a vague positive or negative feeling. I had gotten used to tuning it out or having my other brains "correct" me when I was near her, I didn't give it much thought any more these days. But this particular feeling seemed both more powerful and precise. Honed in on a specific emotion and spiked it right into one of my cloned brains nearby.
Whoever the Master was, I think they were trying to force the two groups to fight. But who was the Master? Where were they hiding? And were they one of the Nine, or were they trying to help kill one of the Nine?
Back at the meeting, I had Abyssal give them the update. "SIBERIAN, JACK, CRAWLER: BROCKTON. BONESAW: CONCORD."
"How do you know that?" Funny enough, it was Brandish that asked that. Maybe I should have been more clear when I explained my powers to the team. I guess I could clarify later.
"POWERS."
"Aren't there supposed to be nine of them?" someone else asked.
"Their actual numbers have varied anywhere between six to eleven," Miss Militia said. "They have a tendency to try to corrupt heroes or recruit like-minded individuals. The latest confirmed recruit is Burnscar, a pyrokinetic."
"BURNSCAR: CONCORD. FIGHTING AGAINST MASTER," Abyssal added the update after confirming who the new member was. Though I wondered if that Master was a new trigger or some kind of villain, because she didn't seem to be particularly heroic.
"Master? We aren't aware of any Masters operating out of Concord, or recruited into the Nine," Miss Militia said. "Regent from Brockton Bay dropped off the radar a few months ago, he may have moved there. But I don't think he affected emotions."
"Hey, anyone fighting against the Slaughterhouse Nine are good in my book. What are we doing, though? We're sitting ducks if we just wait for Crawler or the fucking Siberian to come at us," one of Manchester's rogues said.
Personally, I was more worried about the Master, and I didn't consider them good. They weren't fighting Burnscar directly, or sending artificial minions to fight her. They were spurring innocent people to throw away their lives, so they were just as bad as any Slaughterhouse member. Even if they were fighting against them, they would probably just overstimulate our heroes' aggression centers and emotions to send them recklessly to their deaths.
I wondered if I could do anything about it. Maybe if I kept a closer eye on my friends' brains, I could detect, and possibly block the effects. Given the fact that their powers had worked on my artificial brains as well as normal ones, it wasn't strictly a biochemical control power. But even dampening its effects could be useful.
I spoke to Panacea first, just because she was closest. "Hey Panacea, I have an idea. There's a Master around and I think I might have a way to counter their effects. Or maybe other Masters, too."
"What are you going to do?"
"Basically, put my bots into your brain get a baseline reading, and if I sense something really weird is going on, I'll try to block it."
"What's the Master doing?" she asked.
"Making people get super-aggressive and attack someone who's way out of their league. But I think they can make them do other things… or at least, feel other emotions."
Panacea thought about it for less time than I expected she would. "I'd rather not. You can't, like, read my thoughts, can you?"
"What? No, nothing like that. More like what you'd see on an fMRI but more precise and personalized, I guess," I told her.
"I think I'll still pass on it for now," she said.
I didn't know why she was so hung up on that. Maybe she just felt icky about brains, maybe because her power's limits? Well, I could still offer it to everyone else on my team. It would take a lot of brainpower, which limited the number of people I could do it for, so I naturally would offer it to my team first. Once I had the chance to actually talk to them first, that is.
"If we're going to mount any kind of defense, we need to take out Shatterbird first," said another. "I can give you guys goggles to protect from the glass." He spawned some plastic safety goggles from his hands, and I wasn't sure if his power was some kind of pocket dimension or duplication skill, but it was useful.
I wanted to use my bots to find Shatterbird, but I couldn't see her. I didn't know what she looked like without her glass costume on. I was fairly certain she had landed on the ground after hitting Manchester, but all the flying glass had temporarily blocked my bots' ground vision, and now she was hiding amongst the people.
"Are we going to get any more backup from the PRT? Where's the rest of the Protectorate?" one of the police officers asked.
"Battery and Assault left for Concord earlier than we did, so they may be there already. The Director was still in Brockton Bay when we left. He's probably still there."
I didn't notice them the last time I checked, but maybe I would focus on them specifically.
Director Tagg was the easiest to find. It seemed that Crawler's loud shouting and smashing had attracted attention. Tagg was still operating on the streets, shouting orders directly as there still were no working radios or computers. He'd gathered together his reinforcement PRT troops as well as his semi-conscripted capes to try to enforce his idea of the law, but I wasn't sure if he even knew he was taking on the Slaughterhouse Nine.
Upon seeing Crawler, his eyes bugged out. "Foam him! Foam him and retreat!" his orders were quick.
The troops were on the same page. They all shot their foam dispensers at Crawler, but the monster just looked disappointed. Some acid started oozing out of his carapace which melted the foam off. A bit of extra liquid dripped down onto the road, where it caused even the asphalt to sizzle. "THAT DIDN'T EVEN TICKLE! YOU GUYS SUCK!"
"Miss Lindt! Enhance one of your dogs to cover our retreat!" Tagg ordered Bitch, who had been one of those he'd conscripted to come along, likely originally indended to fight Lung. Two separate PRT troops were there to handle the dogs.
"Fuck you," Bitch spat at him.
"Do it, or I'll kill one of your dogs myself," Tagg said, pulling out a handgun. "Which one do you like more, the pit bull? The shepherd?"
Bitch just growled at him, and her anger made the dogs rowdy as well.
"Kill all the dogs. They're useless," Tagg ordered his men. He shot the pit bull himself first. "Complete waste of good manpower."
Bitch screamed at him even as the troops hesitated slightly before drawing their guns. The dogs were going wild, making them difficult targets, and two of them got away from their handlers. They retreated to Bitch, who immediately began to enhance the two of them.
"Serratus, stop her," Tagg ordered another formerly-independent cape.
"Fuck that, Crawler's coming at us!" He turned tail and ran, but Tagg couldn't do anything to stop him, because his own troops all agreed to self-preservation.
Funny thing was that Bitch was a greater danger to them than Crawler was. The insectile monster didn't seem interested in "weaklings" as it were, but as Bitch's dogs grew, he was growing intrigued.
I was trying to do something, anything, to Crawler. But his skin was coated in acid, his skin was hard as tank armour, and his insides barely made sense. His blood was unlike anything I had ever seen with an immune system that could eat my bots as well, and I had no way of figuring out his nervous system. I wondered if Bonesaw had taken samples from his body to engineer, but even for the few bots that managed to burrow into his body, he was already adapting and closing off the points of entry, then eliminating my bots.
"TAGG ALIVE. FIGHTING CRAWLER."
Clockblocker was the first to respond to that. "There is no way I am going to go up against Crawler to save that asshole," he said.
"I wasn't going to suggest it," Miss Militia said. I think we should set up better defense here and fortify. If Abyssal is correct, the majority of the Nine aren't here. We're just looking at Shatterbird. This is an opportunity to get people together and fortify our position before the other members converge on this position."
"How much of the city can we search? We don't want to spread out and get ambushed," Lady Photon asked. "And the bigger the group, the more we need to help escort."
"We split into two groups. We can't save everyone, but one group will take a route to the other major hospitals, libraries, or other public gathering locations. We move who we can and escort them back here. The second group will remain here and primarily focus on securing this hospital. Shakers and Tinkers that have defensive applications can protect and reinforce this area."
People seemed to agree with that. I would keep Abyssal primarily with the defenders, though I was also gathering an extra copy to work with the search party. On the defensive team were all the underage capes. There was basically no arguing this time, as everyone, including local rogues and police and firefighters, all agreed that everyone under eighteen would remain here defending. Several police officers with rifles would take sniper positions on the upper floors of the hospital, though they didn't have scopes to aim down.
At least this time, Miss Militia wouldn't be alone either. Brandish, Manpower, Lady Photon, Laserdream, and several local capes as well as police officers would be joining her. They set off without fanfare, as everyone knew it would be a difficult slog ahead of them.
Glory Girl remained with us, and it was only with the encouragement of the Wards members that she patrolled the perimeter. I couldn't blame them, and though I didn't particularly like Gallant, he must have been a good friend to them, and a loss like that must have been about as bad as when I lost my mother. Maybe worse, because they watched it happen right in front of their eyes.
At least I got to talk to her face to face again first. "Hey, Vicky," I said to her. For once, she wasn't at the center of attention in the group. I think her aura was making others avoid her, but I was countering it with my other brains like I usually did.
"Huh? Oh, hey, Tay," she said, wiping her face. "Don't you have patients to look after?"
"My bots are taking care of things," I said. "And, I mean, you look like you could be one of my patients too. Can I help?"
"Unless you can make me stop feeling like this," she said. "I don't care."
"Uh… I mean, I technically could, but I don't think it would be healthy," I said. "You obviously cared about him, so I don't think you should just, uh, stop feeling sad about his death."
"Wait, you can?"
"I mean, I could dampen things a little bit," I said. "But not much. Feeling sad about losing people you love is a healthy thing. So I've heard. I think I cried for a week, maybe two, when my mom died."
"Yeah, but you were little. And I… I don't want to let everyone down when we're all still in danger, but I just can't stop thinking about him, and…" She stopped as her breath hitched and she had to wipe her eyes again. "Can you just do it for me? Just so… so I can focus on the fight right now instead of being distracted?"
"There's another reason I mentioned it," I told her. "There's a Master out there that can manipulate people's emotions. If they come here… I want to try to block their effects. So I might end up blocking some emotions anyway, but only if I have to. Right now I'm going to give you a bit of a focus boost, somewhere a bit between caffeine and Ritalin."
"Sure. Sure. Give it to me, Tay."
"Have you seen Shielder? I'm going to ask if he wants it, too..."
As it turned out, several other people, including the Wards, volunteered for my experimental anti-Master strategy. However, given how much brainpower and concentration I needed to dedicate to each person, I could only focus on those who would likely do the most harm if they were Mastered – in other words, the Capes.
As a group, we all mostly hung out with Kid Win, who was sitting in place fixing his blasters and board, while simultaneously trying to redesign them to eliminate all the silicon inside them. There was another Tinker, a local one, who had some kind of digging specialty. They were dismantling some cars to produce devices that could, supposedly, create a pit trap or something like that.
Although everyone was on edge, we couldn't just shoot at anything that moved. People from all over the city were still filtering through, making their way here by foot. I tried to screen each of them with my nanobots for injuries, and for anything "unusual."
About an hour after we split up, I came across one such unusual person. For one thing, she didn't have any external injuries, though she was limping along with another group of people. Second, my bots couldn't breach her skin. She looked pale from a distance, but at the microscopic level, my bots could tell it was a fine coating of powdered glass, held together with unnatural strength. And even when they tried to burrow through, the powder would simply fill in the gap, like trying to dig through sand.
Cape with glass control powers? Shatterbird was the obvious suspect. But at the same time, in a city devastated by glass, a new trigger who also had glass-related defensive powers was not unusual. Leviathan attacks often produced new hydrokinetic capes, and it was a well-known correlation. I didn't want to kill an innocent victim.
But I also couldn't let her get any closer in case she was Shatterbird. It would take me longer than usual to burrow my bots into her body to knock her out, so instead I formed Abyssal in front of her. That would also cause all the defenders at the hospital to be on alert.
"STOP."
Four out of five people stopped in shock. One out of five did stop, but with a snarl. No prizes for guessing who. She didn't say any words, but started a quiet hum from her throat, almost inaudible. One could mistake it easily for just a frustrated exhale. The rest of my bots in the surrounding area could feel glass start to move on its own, though.
"SHATTERBIRD!" Abyssal's voice thundered across the entire defensive line, instantly confirming everyone's fears.
The villain didn't waste time trying to play innocent. She instantly took to the air, screeching the entire way up. All the broken glass on the ground began to swirl up and around like a brutal sandstorm. I tried to lock down as much of it as I could with my bots, and protect everyone's bodies simultaneously, but that was straining my numbers.
As she got higher, some of the police snipers took shots at her in the air, but I was pretty sure they missed. Kid Win and the other Tinkers fared no better, they barely even had any silica-free tech yet and the one working blaster wasn't nearly accurate enough. I wasn't sure if it would have been effective anyway. She had increased the amount of glass on her body to form a thick armour that was likely bulletproof, on top of a storm of glass that spun around her as well.
"I'm taking this bitch down," Glory Girl said to nobody in particular. She flew away before anyone could stop her, but not directly at Shatterbird. She flew only a few feet off the ground with her an arm in front of her face to block all the flying glass. Some of that glass was hitting her hard enough to cause her invincibility shield to flicker, so I hardened the bots I had outside her skin to protect her further.
The bots inside her brain were reading a whole lot of anger, adrenaline flooding through her system. But probably not the result of a Master. She was rightfully angry, and I had been sensing a bit of anger behind her sadness ever since I started tracking her brain activity.
She wound through the alleys until she was behind Shatterbird. The serial killer was still focused on us, with most people trying to take shelter from the glass storm. My bots were helping the snipers last longer through it all, which helped draw her focus while Glory Girl sneak around. She shot upwards into the air, hundreds of feet above Shatterbird. Luckily for her, she was fast enough that her target didn't notice, and was still scanning the ground looking for her.
Shatterbird was the only flying cape with the Slaughterhouse Nine. She was used to being on top of the battlefield and looking down at both her teammates and her victims. She didn't see Glory Girl slam down on her at maximum speed from far above. The glass storm surrounding her did little to slow Glory Girl down; my bots and her invincibility shield managed to protect her from the flying glass and hardened glass armour.
In all likelihood, Shatterbird probably died before she even hit the ground. She technically didn't have a Brute rating as far as I was aware; it was only the glass armour surrounding her body that protected her. She mainly depended on massive offensive capabilities combined with her own flight to remain untouchable against harder-hitting opponents. Opponents like Glory Girl. Shatterbird likely didn't even have time to react before she was turned a splatter in the middle of a new crater in the parking lot, with Glory Girl at the centre of it in a typical three-point-pose.
All the glass falling to the ground after her just added to the effect.
"That was for Gallant," Glory Girl said, stomping on the corpse one more time. Everyone else was just staring at her in shock, all while trying to recover from the glass attack.
"GG, you're, uh, bleeding," Clockblocker said. "Maybe you should go inside and see your sister."
Glory Girl looked at her hand. It looked shredded, about as bad as any normal person would look if they had punched a pile of sharp glass as hard as they could. I guess the combination of my bots and her shield still weren't enough to completely get through the shield and armour. It looked like she wasn't even feeling the pain yet, though that was likely due to the huge adrenaline rush.
"Oh. Yeah. I guess I should do that."
I gave Panacea a heads-up. "Good news and bad news. Glory Girl took out Shatterbird. Bad news is she got a bit inj-" I didn't even get to finish before she was running outside.
Author's Notes:
- well there were some delays for this chapter, and... well, I wanted this chapter out before Cyberpunk 2077 came out.
- Sorry, but there will very likely be some further delays... because of Cyberpunk 2077