Summus Proelium

A uniformed cop was scrambling backwards on his hands and knees, fumbling to reload the pistol that had just clicked on empty. He was trying to get back under the cover of a parked car in the middle of the street, its doors left open after the people within abandoned it when the fight had broken out. Unfortunately, the two armed Oscuro Prevs were hot on his heels. The nearest, with a shotgun, howled in maniacal triumph while raising his weapon to take aim. He and his partner were savoring this victory.

They savored it for a bit too long. Just before he could pull the trigger, I went sailing just over both of their heads, using twin shots of red paint to yank the weapons out of their hands and off against a nearby wall, safely out of reach.

Just as they were reacting to that, I hit the ground in front of them. My right hand snapped up with a purple assisted punch to put the first man on the ground wheezing for breath. By the time his partner realized what was happening, I used a blue-green mix on my feet to propel myself into him. My hundred pound weight crashed into the guy at top speed, knocking him over onto the ground where he lay groaning. I might have been small, but so were cannon balls, and they could do a lot of damage at high speed. Especially when that cannonball followed up the initial impact by rearing back its fist to punch you in the face three times in quick succession. He was left dazed. As was his already-wheezing partner when my foot snapped out to kick that guy in the face before he could recover.

Two guys down for the moment. Five if we counted the really big guy that Poise and Style had crashed into, and the two that Alloy had caught with a giant fist made out of her marbles so she could throw them down the street and out of the way. Sure, all of them were Prevs rather than any of the Touched, but they still had guns. Dismissing them as a threat just because they didn’t have powers would’ve been pretty stupid.

And speaking of mistakes we could’ve made, it had been really tempting to split up and only send some of us to help fight Oscuro while the others got started searching Cup’s old labs. After all, the sooner we found independent proof of her involvement, the sooner we could convince the people in charge to force her to give them the cure. Unfortunately, that would've been a pretty bad move. Anxious as we were to get this done with, Cuélebre and his people were too dangerous to take that sort of risk. Hell, Cuélebre by himself was too much a threat, let alone when his army of goons were added into the mix. It wouldn't matter how much proof we managed to get about Cup being behind Sleeptalk if she died before she could be forced to fix it.

No, as desperate as I was to make sure my parents were cured as soon as possible, we had to take this one step at a time. And right now, the next step was making sure the only person who could make that cure didn't get herself killed by a giant pissed off demon man. And yes, I was fully aware of the irony that I had to save the person responsible for my parents’ condition in the first place so she could fix them. I was trying not to think about it.

We quickly got suited up and headed out. Well, most of us did. Fred, Qwerty, and Wren stayed behind to watch over Pittman. I didn't want to leave Fred all by himself against a guy like that, and Wren knew how to work all of the defenses in case anything happened. And Qwerty was a bit squishy to go up against Cuélebre, especially this early on. Besides, he could help Wren work up the best ways to get into and search Cup’s labs using the information we’d taken from Pittman. None of us expected him to have known every defense she had, but it was a place to start from.

So those three could watch over our prisoner and work on the plan to get into the labs. Meanwhile, the rest of us were going to help deal with this situation. And just hope that we could actually… uuuuggggghhh save Amanda Sanvers’ life. Because none of our lives had been weird enough as it was, apparently.

With these guys down, I took stock of the immediate situation. The three armored cars that had been escorting Amanda were on fire, broken down, just… done. They were scattered across the street in pieces. There were a handful of mixed cops and security personnel crouched behind a couple other cars on the left side of the street, exchanging shots with Oscuro Prevs on the right side, but mostly staying in cover. They were protecting the old shoe store right near the intersection, where those in charge of keeping Amanda contained had retreated into the manager’s office with their prisoner. From what we’d heard, they had been looking for the back exit, but Oscuro had the alley there blocked off. Apparently Yahui was back there, the Fell who could manifest various animal parts anywhere on her body. She was some sort of massive rhino-scorpion-bear thing right now. Between her and the heavily-armed Prevs with her, the Shields didn’t stand a chance of getting out that way. Cuélebre had planned this particular ambush well, clearly knowing where the escorts would flee. Only some very quick thinking and a couple lucky shots had stopped the cops and their prisoner from being snatched up immediately. But now they were pinned down in there.

Obviously, the threat wasn't limited to Prevs. Cuélebre and the rest of his Fells were here too. The big man himself was the most immediate and dangerous problem. Which was why Caishen, Stick, Linesight, and Rubi (or Flurry, which I really needed to think of her as) were all focused primarily on him. The fifteen-foot-tall blue-violet demon was right in the middle of the intersection, keeping as much focus on himself as possible. He knew they had to use every Touched they had just to stop him from walking right through the rest of their troops. Which was giving his people time to try to break through the line of cops and security people to get at Amanda. This was getting very ugly very quickly.

Of course, he and Yahui weren’t exactly the only Touched they had. The others probably would’ve already made it into the shop and finished this whole thing if it wasn’t for the Minority, who showed up shortly before we did.

Coverfire, the Oscuro guy in the red trench coat and welding mask with the skintight forcefield that could melt through anything, was stumbling dizzily as Wobble pummeled him with wave after wave of nausea-inducing vibrations. Unfortunately, his forcefield was preventing the worst of the damage, and he was very slowly yet steadily managing to push forward.

Meanwhile, there was Silbón, another of Cuélebre’s men. He was a guy wearing clothes that looked ragged and torn, with a dark gray mask that left his mouth uncovered, and wide-brimmed black hat. He was giving a low, eerie whistle as he walked right through a torrent of water and glass shards that Raindrop and Fragile were sending at him. The whistling made him immune to not only the impact, but even stopped Raindrop from using her gravity manipulation on his wet form. He was immune to everything they did as long as he was whistling.

Worse, a second later his whistle changed from an eerie tune to a sharp, violent one. Raindrop immediately jerked and fell, bleeding from the arm and shoulder as his whistle took on the sharp properties of Fragile’s glass. And Fragile herself was knocked down the street by the next whistle, which sent a firehose-like rush of water slamming into her. Silbón was immune to basically everything while whistling, and he could absorb and redirect the effects of those attacks within his whistle.

Those were the current Fell members of Oscuro we actually knew about, the established ones after Grandstand had left. But they weren’t alone. Even as I was reflexively launching myself over to check on Izzy, I saw the first of Cuélebre’s new recruits come running across the street toward the entrance of the shoe store. He was a big guy (not as big as Cuélebre himself, but a solid seven feet of muscle), wearing a cliche gangster outfit that looked like it came straight out of the nineteen twenties.

That was Thugdumb, there was no question. But if that was him, then those cops really shouldn’t--

Too late. Two guys by the doors had immediately opened fire on the incoming man. Neither of their bullets did any damage to the big guy. But that wasn't the worst part. Not only did they not manage to do any damage, the two men were immediately affected by Thugdumb’s actual power. The nearest one dropped his gun and blurted a quick, “I know how to scare him off!” He then proceeded to drop onto his hands and knees and start barking like a dog.

The other cop scoffed at that, insisting he had a better plan. Rather than trying to scare the man away by barking, he chose to wave his hands in the air and shout, “Hey, I’m the one you’re looking for, it’s me!” Then he turned and ran off down the street.

That was, as far as I understood it from looking online, the biggest part of Thugdumb’s power. Sure, he was practically invulnerable. But worse than that, anyone who tried to hit him would start coming up with the most ridiculous, absurd and useless ‘plans’ to deal with the situation they were in. Also there was something about people he hit being misunderstood so that anything they said would sound like nonsense to everyone else no matter how right they were. It was a recipe for a real mess, to say the least. He was supposed to be really hard to deal with, since you couldn't hurt him without completely losing your mind for a short, yet crucial few seconds. So no wonder Cuélebre had recruited the guy as part of the deal for sending Janus, Juice, and Devil’s Due over to the… ugh, Trendscendants.

Hoping against hope that this wouldn’t count as an attack that would leave me acting like a moron, I hit the ground in front of the running man with a spray of pink and activated it. His feet went right through the painted cement, making him sink up to his waist almost immediately. It wasn’t a direct attack, since I’d targeted the ground, not the man himself. If anything, his feet had attacked the ground. So, I managed to keep my head for the time being.

And speaking of keeping my head, Hobbes shouted a warning while pointing her Tech rifle at me. Before I knew what was happening, she caught me in the energy tendril from it and yanked me forward, toward her. In that same instant, a rock sailed through the air right where my head had been before exploding Into a burst of dark blue mist. That mist began to eat a hole through the brick wall nearby.

It was the second of the trio of new Oscuro Touched, Luz Mala. They looked like a glowing skeleton. More to the point, the body armor they wore looked that way. It was black, with what looked like heavily-reinforced glass over the arms, legs, chest, and back with brightly colored greenish liquid inside. Their face was covered by a skeleton mask, with a black hood. The eyes of the skull-mask were made of that same glowing green liquid.

Luz Mala’s powers allowed them to charge up any object they could hold, turning it into a bomb. But rather than a normal explosion, the charged objects would burst apart into various types of gas. Apparently they could even create gas that would heal people if they wanted to.

From what I’d heard, they rarely wanted to.

Skidding to a stop next to Hobbes, I muttered a quick thanks, before hitting two incoming charged bricks with a spray of yellow from one hand and green from the other. The combination made both bricks freeze in midair, just for a second before wearing off. That was long enough for the noxious smoke that burst out of them to stay over there instead of filling the air right where the two of us were standing. Sure, my helmet filtered out toxins, but I wasn’t absolutely sure of what that stuff could do. Besides, Murphy was beside me and I was pretty sure her ski mask and goggles didn’t include the gas shielding option just yet.

Either way, the bricks exploded over there, and I was about to follow up with a shot of red at the man himself. But before I could, something appeared on the ground right in front of us. It looked like a circular pool of tar, about three feet across with the edge bumping right up close to our toes. Even as my attention snapped down at that, a tendril of the tar stuff stretched up from the middle and started to reach for us. Instantly, my hand caught hold of Hobbes by the arm as I painted blue-green on my shoes for a quick getaway. We were both catapulted upward, barely evading the grasping tendril.

Before we’d even managed to land from that, I caught a glimpse of what would’ve happened to the two of us if I hadn’t gotten us out of there. Another of the tar puddles had appeared next to one of the cops who was taking aim at Luz Mala, and an identical tendril stretched its way up to grab onto him. As soon as it did, the guy was suddenly completely enveloped by the tar stuff. The sound of muffled screaming filled the air, as the figure was yanked uncontrollably backward, his pistol bouncing off the ground where he had dropped it.

Murphy and I landed a bit haphazardly then, distracted by that image. Before I could even try to think of a way to get the cop out of that situation, however, the goo stuff melted off of him. It just dissolved into nothingness. But he wasn’t exactly safe, because the tar had manhandled him close to another figure. At first I thought it was someone else who had been enveloped by the same stuff. Then I belatedly realized the truth, as the feminine figure lashed out, arm extending to about twice its normal length so her fist could collide with the cop’s head and knock him to the ground.

It was the third and final new member of Oscuro, Nasty. That was what she called herself. She was basically a walking humanoid figure made of tar or possibly thick oil, who could make those puddles with extendable tentacles in any spot she focused on.

Thugdumb, Luz Mala, and Nasty. Those three, combined with Coverfire and Silbón out here, and Yahui in the back alley, would’ve been bad enough. But there was also Cuélebre himself, and he was probably about as dangerous as the others all put together. If not even worse. It was taking Stick, Flurry, Linesight, and Caishen just to keep him from walking right into that shop to deal with Cup alone.

Oh yeah, that was another thing to keep in mind. We were doing all of this to protect Amanda Sanvers, who was actually responsible not only for killing God knew how many people, but also created the Sleeptalk shit in the first place! And we couldn’t even tell anyone about that until we managed to find a way to prove it without exposing the bad things we had done to get the information to begin with.

Yeah, this whole situation was supremely fucked up.

Before Nasty could follow up that first blow that had knocked the cop down, a geyser of water from a nearby fire hydrant erupted out of the ground and slammed into the woman. She was washed out of the way, sent careening down the street along with a couple of her puddles. Raindrop was there, hand extended that way. She was still bleeding from the arm, but seemed okay.

Silbón was still whistling as he reached the front doors, having added concussive force to it from being shot to knock two more security guys to the ground so he could stride right over them. On the way, he used another concussive whistle to break the cement that was holding Thugdumb in place, and yanked the other man up. Which was just great, since one of them was immune to any attack and could turn that attack back against people as long as he was whistling, and the other made people do dumb things if they hit him. Two guys, both basically immune to any attack, and we had to stop them from getting into that building.

Just before they could both go through those doors, three of Alloy’s marbles flew past them. They didn’t attack the men, but instead formed a new barricade in front of the doors to stop them from getting in. They could be invulnerable all they wanted, it wouldn’t get them through the marble wall.

Unfortunately, they both knew there was a way to get through the wall. And that was by attacking Alloy herself. The other girl had just landed right beside Hobbes and me, with Calvin quickly scrambling up on the other side. Poise and Style were right there too.

Coverfire had been making his way to the alley to help Yahui, with the Syndicates, That-A-Way, and Wobble trying to both slow him down and help the guys in the alley itself stop Yahui from breaking through those back doors. Raindrop and Fragile were busy with Nasty, who kept essentially teleporting around by creating more of her tar pits and transporting herself through them. Cuélebre was still keeping most of the adult Stars occupied.

Which meant our team had to keep Alloy safe by ourselves, and stop two guys we basically couldn’t hurt from getting to her. While she had to remain within general eyesight of the shop in order to keep the marble wall in their way. Oh, and to make matters worse, another vanload of Oscuro people came screeching up, allowing a bunch more Prev troops to pour out on the far side of us. We were caught with those guys coming up on the right, while Silbón and Thugdumb came up on the left.

Well, this was gonna be interesting.