Power (4)
Sitting at the centre of an utterly demolished building was a large blue box only slightly smaller than a saloon car. The box had broken open from the impact of the fall, and there were blue splatters everywhere giving off a metallic, coppery scent.
It was blood, and it indicated that something had been inside.
It was the only way to tell anyway, since there was no corpse.
Only a faint blue trail gave any indication of the direction whatever had crawled out of the box had gone, and even that ended abruptly.
Jet stared at the box, his eyes narrowed behind the engine-themed mask. With a quiet sigh, he turned away from the wreckage to look at the mutilated body of a man underneath some bricks.
"Dammit," he whispered.
This is why everyone has to go to the CEZs the moment the alarms go off, Jet thought with tightly clenched fists.
But... I don't know his reasons.
Jet was acutely aware of the danger a new species of Mo presented. Unknown abilities, weaknesses, and habits. Too many variables to let the thing go around as it pleased.
He took a knee beside the corpse and closed its eyes.
You can rest in peace, sir. He lowered his head.
I'll avenge you.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small circular device. He stuck it onto the body's skin, then got to his feet.
'Code. Do you have a visual?'
Silence. Then—
'Hold on for a sec. Rapido and co are already fighting, and they should be done soon. Let me check the drones I sent out... got it.'
'Build and location?' Jet asked as he got to his feet.
'Defensive predator. Take a look: scales, large spines on its back, long tail with a wrecking ball—'
'Not funny, Code.'
'...Sorry. Anyway, it's half a kilo to the east. Good hunting.'
Jet shook his head. 'Good hunting? No one says that anymore.'
'I thought it would be a nice throwback for a geezer like you.'
Jet sighed as his chest glowed a dark orange.
'I'm twenty-nine. I barely qualify to be middle-aged.'
With that, he slid a foot back, lowered his body, and vanished.
****
"JUST DIE, YOU DAMN WORM!"
Diamond widened his stance and yelled as a tail twice his size slammed into him. Gritting his teeth, the Hunter sank his fingers into the brick-thick scales as he was dragged across the road. He grunted as his feet created deep grooves in the road, and with a single flick, the tail sent him straight into the air.
'Diamond, status report!'
The Hunter groaned internally as he was shaken back and forth in the air.
'I'm fine, Rapido! Just hurry up and kill it!'
Diamond grunted and strengthened his grip, right before he got slammed back-first through a wall.
"Ugh..." he groaned as the pale, sharp-edged half-mask on his face rippled and crawled up to cover his face.
"Fuck you," he growled as he got yanked out of the building and down to the ground.
His skin paled to an ashen grey, and cracks formed all over it. He slammed into the ground hard enough to leave a crater, and he let go of the beast's scales.
"Hurry up, you two." Diamond gritted his teeth together as the giant snake coiled itself up to look down at him.
His red hair froze into spikes, and his nails and fingertips hardened into claw-like appendages.
The green-and-black snake gave a chilling hiss, and its pupils constricted sharply into slits. It shook its head, and an enormous hood stretched out of its neck.
Diamond gulped. What even is this thing?
Without wasting another second, the snake burst forward, its enormous maw stretching open to reveal the harrowing depths of its throat. Diamond nearly froze up in shock at how fast the thing was, and he barely caught the monster's giant fangs with his hands.
UGH!
He slammed one foot down on the lid of the lower jaw and shifted his hands to the lid of the upper one. The very next instant, the snake immediately started to clench its jaw shut, intending to devour him.
With one foot gouging a canal into the road, Diamond gritted his teeth together and held the jaws apart. The snake didn't stop though, and it tore across the ground, quickly smashing Diamond through one side of a building and out the other.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Diamond gritted his teeth and continued to focus on holding the snake's jaws apart, ignoring the pressure on his back.
I'm a defensive Vanguard for a reason, you ugly son of a bitch! Diamond seethed. You'll never get to eat me, you piece of calamari!
Diamond's Venma, Harden, allowed him to transform almost every part of his body into a piece of armour strong enough to allow him to shrug off an explosion.
They broke into an open road, and Diamond lifted his other foot off the ground and kicked off the snake's lower jaw. The monstrous reptile's maw slammed shut with a sound similar to thunder, and as Diamond fell back, a black blur slammed into the snake's side.
The snake gave an ear-piercing shriek as its body slid away from the strike. It coughed and hacked before raising its head and—
Stiletto Code Two: Meteor.
Something slammed into its skull so hard the asphalt beneath its head cratered.
'That's taken care of.'
Rapido jumped off the snake's flattened head, leaving behind his weapon, and landed beside Diamond.
"Let's go," the Hunter said as his mask crawled down from his face to his neck. "Snakes thrash around when they die."
Diamond clicked his tongue, but before turning away from the snake, he noted the giant web of cracks in its side.
"Dammit, Sixteen. Why didn't you come sooner?"
The younger Hunter shrugged as they jumped up to a building's roof.
"Took a while to get here."
Diamond sighed, and his skin slowly began to revert to the way it was before. He turned to Rapido with a dubious expression.
"So you're telling me that you couldn't have gotten to me faster?"
Rapido turned to meet his eyes. "You were constantly moving, and even though Code was relaying your constantly changing location to us, it took a while to get into the optimal position to take it out quickly."
Their attention turned to the large snake that was coiling and twisting from side to side, smashing several more buildings and destroying the road.
Sixteen put a hand to his forehead. "This amount of property damage is insane. I don't even want to think about how much it would cost."
Rapido nodded. "Diamond, where and how did it appear?"
The redhead put a hand to his chin. "Not sure, to be honest. I was going to get a burger when the ground started shaking, and the next thing I knew, that monstrosity burst out of the ground."
"Hmm..." Rapido narrowed his eyes. "If that's true... then it's likely that this was planned in advance. A snake this large would have found it impossible to move underground without prior assistance. That is, if we assume that it doesn't have any parts that could help it burrow underground."
"Ugh." Sixteen made a disgusted expression. "It would literally be shitting bricks if it burrowed like an earthworm."
Diamond laughed, and Rapido chuckled.
"Fair point." Diamond nodded. "What do we call it though?"
Rapido looked at its black-and-green body thoughtfully.
This can't be a coincidence. Mo attacking at the same time Villains do?
Rapido shook his head and sighed. Turning to Diamond, he gave a quiet smile.
"Why don't we call it the 'Titanoboa'?"
****
"What kind of matchup is this?" Anansi muttered in frustration as he darted from side to side to avoid getting slashed by the scythe-like arms that were aiming for him.
One of his arms shot a web out of his fingertips and hit the side of a faraway building. The moment it connected, Anansi pulled himself away.
The Mo attacking him leaned forward to follow, but then suddenly snapped its head back. The wall further to its left cratered from a mysterious impact, and Anansi swore.
'What kind of Mo can dodge bullets?!'
'How am I supposed to know?' Anansi clicked his tongue as he crouched low on the wall. 'You're the one with Aimbot.'
'My Venma can help me aim, not hit unconditionally! I can't help it if the target's got super-fast reflexes!'
Anansi grunted as he flipped back to avoid the Mo's speedy charge. A pair of hands stuck to the wall, and another pair shot webs into the Mo's body. He tucked his legs in—
"SKREEEEEAAAAHHH!"
"Shut it, ugly."
He pushed off the wall at the same time he pulled on his webs, and he exploded forwards in a devastating drop kick to the Mo's abdomen.
He was left midair for a brief moment before he stuck his bare feet to the wall and yanked on the webs.
The Mo's arms snapped back as it shot back up, and Anansi cocked back his two front arms as the back ones pulled the rope.
'BULLSEYE!'
'On it!'
Anansi's fists slammed into the Mo's body, and he grimaced as he got a glimpse of the ugly monster's face.
It rocketed towards the ground, but before it actually hit the earth, it got blown to the side.
'Bullseye,' the Huntress chuckled.
Anansi rolled his eyes and jumped off the wall.
He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a finger and flicked it away before looking up at a drone in the sky.
'Code, is it dead?'
There was a brief silence before the Operator spoke:
'No. Its vitals are still going strong, but there's some significant damage to its left arm. As expected of my senior: she's the best Support Hunter around!'
Anansi held himself back from facepalming and stretched all four of his arms before staring at the rising monster.
'Code, what exactly is that?'
'It's very likely a new species of insectoid. I don't know what kind though, so be careful.'
"An insectoid, huh?" Anansi narrowed his eyes.
The Mo was a light brown colour with a few darker shades here and there. Its head was triangular, and its eyes were large and beady. Its mouth was made up of two separate mandibles that met at the upper "lip", and it had two short and thick antennae growing out of its head.
"Definitely an insect," Anansi muttered.
"SKREEEEEEAAHHHH!"
Anansi winced from the screech, and he covered his ears with one pair of hands. The Mo ducked into a crouch, dodging another powerful bullet, then immediately burst into the air.
Anansi clicked his tongue and dropped his hands to his sides. All around him, the insectoid jumped from building to street to vehicles and more, leaving the sounds of shattering glass and crumbling concrete behind.
Anansi stood in silence, waiting.
Suddenly, the insectoid hit the asphalt behind him, dug in its toe-claws, and burst forward hard enough to blow the ground apart.
Anansi remained still for a single second, then he burst into action.
He jumped up, webbing the ground with one pair of hands. He leaned into a backflip, webbed the monster's back with another pair of hands, then his hands snapped upwards in an instant, rocketing him feet first into the insectoid's back.
Right before colliding with the ground, the insectoid's head exploded, spraying vaporised lymph in all directions—
BOOM!
The monster was immediately eviscerated from the impact with the road.
"Tch."
Anansi clicked his tongue as he hopped off the creature's body.
'Bullseye, you didn't need to shoot it. Now I've got blood on my trousers.'
'Says the guy who's got even more blood on his boots for, oh, I don't know, stomping the Mo to death?'
Anansi clicked his tongue again, but Code interrupted before he could say anything.
'What's done is done, people. I've already contacted the Sweepers.'
Anansi nodded, then flinched as the sound of a large explosion shook the air.
"The hell was that?" he muttered, turning towards it.
'That would be both Jet and the lunatics who decided to attack the city.'
Anansi frowned for a moment, then shook his head with a sigh.
"We obviously can't step in when Jet's throwing blasts around. He only does that when it's necessary. What should we do, Code?"
'...Are you seriously asking her that?'
'Shut up, Bullseye. She's the Operator; it's her job to guide us to the places where we're needed.'
Anansi's words were met with begrudging silence. He shook his head, then looked down at the dead monster beside him.
"...And she claims she can't hit fast-moving objects. She hit the damn thing straight in the dome."
Anansi paused, then frowned deeply.
"She better not have done that on purpose. That kind of stupidity has led to a lot of Hunter deaths."
With that, his dark, tree-bark-style Akana crawled off his face, and he took in a deep breath...
Right before gagging in disgust from the scent of dead Mo.
As he swore, Code's voice crackled to life in his head.
'Anansi, I've got orders from Jet.'
The Hunter paused, his Akana flowing back up his face.
'We are to assist the Heroes in getting rid of the terrorists, jurisdiction be damned.'
Anansi remained silent for a few moments, then he chuckled.
"Understood," he said as he turned in the direction Code sent him.
'Moving out,' Bullseye whispered.