MGM - Chapter 74

Amy

Cawthorne’s engines rumbled beneath the spray of rainwater and wind like the mythical beast it was named after, its flight smooth and unbothered. The undercabin of the emergency response unit was small, cramped, barely large enough to carry both her and Cassie  - though that wasn’t the only reason why Trainwreck and Cerberus took the more dangerous route on foot.

Cold, righteous anger bubbled in her gut like a caustic acid.

Amy slid her hands along the smooth natural, dark wooden grains of her staff, eyes closed as she breathed in time with the hum of Green emanating from Mount Invictus down below. Not for the first time since this Leviathan touched down in their waters and the love of her life flew out to kill it, the self-designated witch wished she’d thought to bring one of her pre-rolls with her. She’d taken to cultivating her own strains, grounding the addictive properties to zero whilst bolstering the stress relief and dopamine boosters, but it hadn’t crossed her mind to bring any in the rush to establish order.

A shame, since it also boosted her connection to Ghyran. Benefits of growing the plants with magic.

Even without that boost, though, she felt herself slip closer and closer into the pulsating warmth of Life that encompassed their enchanted mountain. The grass and the trees and the soil and the flowers - they hesitantly reached back out as she caressed them with the Green Wind. Assuring their allegiance for the battle ahead. They seemed understanding of her anger, and accepted her touch eagerly. 

That was good.

The world whispered to her in ways it never had before she’d met him - Jason had changed her, drawn something out of her that she hadn’t even known was there. It was more than just the magic, the knowledge, the power. He’d given her purpose, something more than just the ceaseless demands of people who wanted her hands and her healing but not her heart or her mind. And today, she would use everything he’d given her and more.

In earnest.

Amy wasn’t a fighter. She didn’t enjoy violence for the sake of violence. She’d grown over the past few months, most notably in the realms of self-confidence and self-worth, but resorting to bloodshed would never be her first or second option if she could help it, for several reasons. However, when it came to the likes of the Slaughterhouse Nine… There was nothing you could do but fight. There was nothing she wanted to do but fight. Because sometimes, that was the only way you could protect the people and the things that you loved.

Especially when their suspected target was your hero boyfriend currently fighting for his fucking life in a pocket dimension against a goddamned Endbringer.

“Manton’s confirmed down,” Dragon’s quiet voice came through the speakers of their cramped cabin, as calm and authoritative as an airline pilot. “Imp is engaging Hatchet Face, but she assures me that she’ll be fine - I’ve a lock on her exact location just in case. Look alive, though; we’re approaching the peak of Mount Invictus now, and my sensors are picking up several signatures. Do you see them on the cameras, Iris? Did Siberian disappear?”

At her side, visor glinting pinkish-blue in the dim lighting of the cabin, Cassie gave a thumbs up without looking away from her digital screen. “Popped like a balloon. She was frolicking through the woods when it happened - they haven’t noticed yet. But Jack is starting to look around… If we want to surprise them, we’ll need to hit ‘em now.”

Wide, bright blue eyes flickered up to meet hers, loving and concerned. Cassie’s gloved hands softly gripped Amy’s forearm over her draping black sleeves, the smaller girl biting her lip nervously. “Hey, Ames… You ready? I know you don’t like fighting, but for this plan to work…-“

“It’s okay.” 

Her voice was quiet and distant, but it was also composed. Strong. Connecting so deeply with the Wind was always a heady feeling, especially since she was still fairly new to its magics. It often made her feel as if she wasn’t fully present. But now, with her mind split between her body and the Wind-saturated forest that was their home… Amy could feel the murderous invaders just as well as Cassie could see them through her cameras. Their feet crushed blades of grass, their fingers cutting bark from trees and grains of stone from the walls.

Lurking. Defiling. Trespassing. But they were still close enough to each other that she could get them all in one go. 

That was her job, after all. Restrain, bind, and wound. For that, she needed nature. And the Slaughterhouse Nine decided that the first place they would go in their goal for destroying her man was the one location in Brockton Bay - no, the one location in the world - that acted as a veritable leyline for the Green. She’d felt it in every breath she inhaled, whilst wandering through the forest. She’d felt it in every breath she exhaled, whilst nourishing the earth with both her Shard-given powers and her magic.

And she felt it now, when it was at its strongest. When she had something, someone, and somewhere that she wanted to protect. Perhaps that was what it meant to be a true Green Witch.

“They won’t leave this mountain alive.”

Cassie blinked, slowly, before an odd expression - one of confusion, and maybe a little bit of fear - crossed her cute little face. “Uhh, Ames? Your eyes…”

“What about them?”

“They’re glowing!”

Huh. Jason had warned her of the side-effects of channeling too much of the Green, but other than a bit of a twinkling, slightly itchy sensation, the ‘glow’ didn’t bother her. So she stood, using the gnarled base of her staff to steady herself as Dragon’s aircraft came to a slow stop. 

“Are they?” Her tone was colder, more dismissive than she’d meant for the rhetorical question to be, but if her girlfriend minded, she didn’t make it known.

If anything, she looked more… flustered and excited as she nodded her head with vigor. “Yeah. But they’re, like, super fucking sweet looking, so it’s fine.”

…

Why did she have to fall in love with the weird ones?

“Okay, Amy,” Dragon’s disembodied voice came through the speaker system once again, all terse, cool professionalism, “We are hovering directly over the backyard of Invictus Palace. I’m opening the cabin’s hatch now, giving you the line of sight you said you’d need for your ‘spell’. All hostiles save for Mannequin have boots on grass and soil, as described. Are you ready?”

The relayed information was accurate. Mannequin was still attempting to weasel himself into the Palace; she could feel him chiseling away at stone, folding his odd, segmented body into gnarled shapes as he searched for a giving crevice, but there were five lifeforms defiling the sanctity of her grov-... her backyard, and taking away Hatchet Face and Siberian, both of which were currently indisposed, that was everyone she needed to contain.

If she spread the feeling out further, she could just barely feel the large, oppressive forms of Cerberus and Trainwreck, waiting in the forest for her signal. For her spell. She would be the one to kick this bloodbath off.

And after that, they would all have their own targets.

Cassie wasn’t a bad strategist in her own right, but Cassie, Dragon, and Pod putting their heads together? Suffice to say, Amy knew exactly what she had to do. Instead of responding, she began chanting in a deep, ancient language that she was only just starting to understand herself, “Skaíl gythreva an’durhenn…”

The hand gripping her staff tightened as the words of power flowed from between her darkly painted lips, eyes turning lidded and dull as the tether between her, the Lore of Life, and the living, breathing spirit of nature roiling beneath the dirt and throughout the forest began solidifying into a physical connection. Amy could hear Dragon saying something quickly to Cassie, and Cassie scrambling forward to stand by her side, but it was hard to listen when her head was filled with so many voices already. Except, these voices did not speak any actual words. They spoke in feelings. In hums. In resonance.

Nature was answering her call, but she needed to truly see it before she could bring them to arms.

“Duthraén sylvas, rilenn corna thaëls…”

The metal hatch before her slid open, and both rain and wind attacked her from all sides, immediately soaking straight through her dress and smudging her makeup - but it, thank God, did not break her concentration. Amy raised her staff with her right hand, tilting her head ever so slightly to the side to get a better look at the battlefield. The words were uncontrollable now, spilling from between her lips at a volume that she hadn’t even realized was so fucking loud, but her voice echoed.

"Urvann thryssa, Ildru vaél korvenna…”

And down under, hundreds of feet below where she stood on the uncloaked mechanical dragon, the defilers looked up at her at once. She saw Jack Slash, ass wet against the moist grass, unclean feet dangling in a pool that did not belong to him as he craned his head up and locked eyes with her. She saw Crawler, the oversized, vaguely feline abomination covered all over in wet, beady eyes, drooling its corrosive acid mindlessly over a bed of lilies. Burnscar and Shatterbird sought shelter from the rain beneath Snowcone’s favorite oak tree, unaware of its sapience, or its anger.

And Bonesaw, the most complicated one on their team, froze where she’d been frolicking in the middle of the backyard, her white dress stained with blood and tattered at the edges. When she looked up, there was a genuine, childlike confusion on her young, cherubic face.

Amy stamped out the familiar sense of pity before it could rise in her gut.

Jack shouted something, rolling over on his side in order to stand. A knife was in his hand in one smooth, practiced motion, faster than most normal humans could ever hope to move, but-

“... TAAL GHYRAN - RESSUN DYR VAL’TAERH!”

He could not move faster than the earth beneath his very feet.

The moment the final syllable left her lips, the backyard erupted.

The very same blade grass that the Slaughterhouse Nine had just been standing on twisted up into barbed coils several feet in length, glowing an angry, emerald green as they lashed out like striking vipers and carved into defenseless flesh and muscle. Thorny vines the size of serpents burst from the flowerbeds, writhing and snapping through the air, entangling themselves around limbs and throats, dragging their unsuspecting victims down into the trembling earth. The trees groaned as their limbs stretched and bent unnaturally, roots lunging across the enchanted grass and seeking out ankles as tree branches did the same from on high.

In only a couple seconds, the entire battlefield was a din of absolute chaos as an angry and vengeful Mother Nature came to life to protect her sanctity, and not a single murderer - save for Mannequin, who she couldn’t see from her angle - went unmolested.

A soul-deep exhaustion weighed down on her spirit like an anvil, and Amy nearly fell out of the aircraft. It was so hard to focus now, but she dug her nails into her own palm, forcing herself to stay upright. 

She needed to stay awake.

She had to stay awake.

Screams of anger, pain, and confusion filled the air, seconds before an ear-shattering boom and the deep, guttural roars of unholy beasts drowned them out entirely. Trees that she’d just enchanted became nothing but kindling as a ten foot tall giant made of metal, fire, and spite ripped through the forest at a blurring speed Amy couldn’t even hope to follow, magical drugs or not. Trainwreck was like a supersonic missile - one second he was there, and the next, an even louder boom sent her staggering back into the compartment as he crashed bodily into the back entrance of the Palace, where Mannequin was last spotted.

Amy’s vision was too blurry to spot the arrival of Cerberus and her ‘three heads’. 

Everything was fuzzy. Her body felt faint.

But a familiar warmth and softness was at her side, and her head was pressing against two very soft, very squishy cushions. The comfort nearly robbed her of her consciousness.

“Gosh. You’re such a frickin’ badass, babe. It’s not frickin’ fair,” Cassie murmured, but there wasn’t even an ounce of jealousy or envy in her voice. Only soft, tender love. “Just rest here for now, okay? Dragon- well, one of the countless Dragons will take care of you. I’ve got an edgy Joker wannabe to troll the fuck out of, though, so I gotta-”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. Just… tried something I probably shouldn’t have yet,” Amy breathed, blinking away some of the dark spots in her vision. A small, half-delirious giggle escaped her lips, and she weakly brought up her hand to pinch Cassie on the side of her latex-clad butt. “As long as I’m conscious, I can maintain concentration on the spell. And I will. Just- hurry. And fuck him up, Cassie. For us.”

The spunky hacker grinned, leaned down, and placed a gentle kiss against her brow. When she spoke, it was in a dark, almost sadistic whisper - one that sent shivers up Amy’s spine. “That cringelord virgin won’t even know what hit him.”

Amy couldn’t stop herself from grinning. “That’s my girl.”

There was no time for anymore talking - not with the very loud, very active sound of combat happening outside. She pulled herself up with her staff as Cassie sprinted out of the cabin and leaped out into the sky with a high-pitched war-cry, and settled back down in her previous seat as a Dragonflight suit curved around the side of Cawthorne, servos whirring, and wrapped Cassie up in its mechanical arms.

There wasn’t much else Amy could do for this fight. Not right now, at least. Not while maintaining her grip on the Green, and especially not while concentrating specifically on holding one naughty little girl down. It was frustrating, but she’d done all she could at the moment.

Hopefully it would be enough until she could recover and head down to end things.

_____________________________________________

Rachel

There was something viscerally satisfying about bearing down on your prey with maw wide open, razor sharp teeth glinting wet with saliva, as your Pack runs alongside you. Malcolm and his engines were too fast for them to keep up with in a dead sprint, but that gap wasn’t as massive as you’d think. Rachel’s dogs had grown tremendously since Amy had used the ‘Alpha Serum’ on all of them, and according to her, she’d gone in and done some more complex changes to shift their DNA closer to that of wolves. Like she’d done with her. 

The specifics didn’t matter. Rachel didn’t know anything about that. All she knew now was that she was much stronger, her partners were much stronger, and they could defend their territory all the better because of it. They destroyed entire swathes of the forest when they barreled into the snarled, living hellscape that was their backyard.

Her hounds nearly stood taller than the bloodthirsty trees they effortlessly knocked down.

Brutus let loose a thunderous snarl that shook the branches and leaves as he vaulted over a twisted mass of thorny, writhing vines, landing with a quake that sent loose earth tumbling down the mountainside. Rachel crouched low against his back, muscular legs clamped tight around the bony protrusions jutting out from his flank, her clawed hands buried deep enough in exposed portions of his thick fur that it would take Avalon himself to rip her away. The scents of blood, burning bark and chemicals, and wet, fertile soil filled her nose - sharp, vibrant, impossible to ignore. But, above all else…

Prey.

Angelica and Judas flanked her, their paws thudding like war drums against the battered ground, eyes glowing in the misty dimness of the rain and overcast sky. All three of them towered over everything and everyone else in the clearing, rivaling even Snowcone in height, and they brought that size to bear as they dug claws the size of human beings into the ground, prowling low and menacing, uncaring of the lashings of Mother Nature. 

Rachel breathed it in, the primal part of her thrumming with satisfaction. This was the hunt. This was the kill. And tonight, her pack was going to feast on these foolish fuckers who dared to trespass on her new home. Her new territory.

The battlefield was a writhing nightmare of Amy’s making, and the land itself had turned against the Slaughterhouse Nine, twisting and constricting like a living beast seeking to devour them whole.

The ugly, goofy looking one - Jack Slash - was on the defensive near the pool, trying in vain to weave through Cassie’s relentless storm of frost magic - spells that the five-foot-nothing girl was cheerfully shouting out the names of from within the arms of a hovering, army-green suit of metal. Icicles the size of stalagmites shot through the air every other second, most of them slamming into the wiry man’s body and breaking apart against his flesh, bringing forth hideous yellow and purple bruises that matched the nasty lacerations the living grass and roots were carving into his body. He was talking, too - scowling, spitting, red-faced… but whatever he was trying to say, the self-proclaimed ‘cyber sorceress’ was hearing none of it.

Rachel would give him, at most, a minute before Cassie stopped fucking around and ended his disgusting life.

The Bonesaw girl with the traumatic backstory - tough shit, who cares - had been silenced completely, the earth having swallowed her up like it was fucking dragging her straight down to hell. Rachel couldn’t see due to half her body being submerged, but judging by the thorny roots flowing across the writhing ground and digging into the soil around her body, those same roots were probably curled around the girls’ arms, chest, and legs. 

Brutal. Even her little spider robot toy was crushed to pieces beside her.

It was only her sharp, preternatural eyesight that allowed her to actually spot the worst of it - the thick green vine forcing its way into her mouth and past her teeth, curling around her tongue, gagging her, choking her on her own saliva and screams. The girl gurgled, eyes wild and wide and tearful, but no one was coming to save her. Not now. Not ever.

Good riddance.

Burnscar kept trying to teleport out of the mess of old, gnarled branches and roots that were wrapped around her body, securing her firmly to the tree she’d only just been relaxing under, but Dragon’s containment foam smothered her flames before she could even finish a proper ignition. She was thrashing now, screaming and actually sobbing in frustration as the rain pelted down from between leaves, extinguishing every ember she managed to spark and mixing with the yellowish-white foam that slowly but surely began to cover every inch of her body.

The cold, imposing form of another one of Dragon’s suits floated overhead, silent and emotionless, both fists pointed out as they took on the role of Firefighter to Burnscar’s Arsonist.

Shatterbird had it worse than her friend. Amy’s magic had turned the very air against her, the trees and vines dampening the vibrations she relied on, muting the battlefield enough that her power wouldn’t save her. And worse - she was trapped just like Burnscar, except she’d actually managed to get away from the tree before Mother Nature dragged her back down into the mud and grass. Long, glowing spirals of brambles wrapped around her limbs, her torso, and even the slimness of neck. She was bleeding freely from dozens of wounds where the thorns and pressure had shattered her glass dress into pieces, and every twitch sent fresh trails of red running down her skin.

According to the Boss and Cassie, the bitch could control silicon but not plants. Made her fucking useless here. Truthfully, Rachel had no clue why she was up here instead of down in the city screaming her lungs out.

Probably because the whole fucking Triumvirate was in the city. No matter what, she would’ve lost.

Just another one to kill. 

But then… then there was Crawler.

The one she was supposed to ‘stall’ until everyone else was either dead or dying, so that Amy could come over and ‘shut him down’ with her scary ass bad touch power.

In reality, it hadn’t taken her much longer than a few seconds to scan the battlefield and gain her bearings.

But, in those brief heartbeats, the truck-sized monster had already done the exact same thing. Only, in his many, many eyes, Cerberus - that is, her and her three hounds - were the most tantalizing prospects to fight out of the entire lot. Crawler bellowed, a wordless scream like claws ripping across chalkboards, before charging. Acid poured freely from his maw, sliding off of his oil-slicked scales and melting the lashing roots and blades of grass where they slapped uselessly against his legs and chest.

In a blink, the rampaging monster had crossed half the yard to get to them.

CLICK!

And with one gnashing of her sharp canines, Rachel returned the favor. 

“Sic ‘em!”

This time, when Brutus blasted off, Rachel nearly lost her arm from the explosive burst of speed.

The collision was instant; one moment they were waiting, low to the ground and hungry, and the next, torn apart dirt and greenery spraying her skin like buckshot as her mount bulldozed Crawler into the mud. Both beasts were snarling, roaring into each other's face. 

Brutus was so much bigger, and heavier too - his paw stomped against Crawler’s chest like a meteor, crushing him into muck and shaking the earth on impact, but Crawler was deceptively fast. He slipped from beneath the paw, taking a shallow slash against his armored neck in order to spit a basketball sized prob of acid at her, but Brutus growled and threw his entire shoulder down into the fucker’s spine. Each hit rang out like a gunshots, the two titans roughly equal in power, until-

BOOM!

Like a nuclear warhead dropped from the clouds, Angelica slammed into Crawler’s back with enough strength, force, and weight to capsize the ground beneath their feet. The earth groaned, a crater several feet deep and much, much wider destroying a large portion of the backyard in that very instant. Crawler choked out a bubbling, acid-filled snarl as something inside of his body buckled and shattered beneath Angelica’s power. His head cracked against the beaten earth, dozens of crimson eyes blinking and dilating in tandem.

And then the second nuke dropped.

Judas.

This time, Rachel couldn’t keep herself steady.

She swore beneath her breath, muscular arms flailing for a balance that just wouldn’t come as the earth tilted on its side. Instead of fighting to stay upright, she pushed off on her boots, backflipping several feet back into the air and landing, in a crouch, knee deep in the muddied crater. Tripping backwards into the mess had her barely avoiding Brutus’ bony, telephone pole-sized tail from ripping her head off when he jumped in on the massive dogpile packing a snarling, struggling Crawler into the ground.

Pride and frustration filled her chest as she watched them overwhelm the much smaller monster with sheer, raw size and strength. Rachel wanted to help. Every instinct in her body called for it. But she’d only get in the way. They couldn’t cut into his armor enough to find that core, but they’d be able to keep him down until the fight was over. Which meant she was better off helping the others.

Rachel scrambled back up to her feet, yanked a decently long strip of thorny vine out of the wet dirt for a quick weapon, and hopped out of the hole in three strong, agile bounds. Determination and hot, heady bloodlust energized her movements. First she’d break Shatterbird’s neck, then she’d slice Burnscar’s throat, and if Cassie still needed help with the clown-

She froze.

Before her, casually wiping a long, gleaming blade clean of fresh, wine red blood, was a dark, shrouded girl in a white, horned demon mask. Beside her, bleeding from a clean, gaping stump where her head used to be was Shatterbird - or, at least, what remained of her body. Her glimmering dress was dirty and wet with rain, dirt, and blood, and a few feet away, her decapitated head was frozen stiff in an angry, horrified scream.

Where there used to be a struggling Burnscar failing to ignite was, instead, just a tree clumped into one huge, sagging pile of Containment foam that hardened quickly beneath the rain.

Prey. Both dead.

But who-

“Yo. Your dogs are gettin’ busy, eh?” the female figure slid her mask to the side, revealing inches of smooth, chocolate brown skin, and something behind Rachel’s eyes popped.

Memories wetted her brain like rainwater.

“You used your powers on me,” she stated gruffly, though there was no real heat behind her words. 

Imp grinned, a flash of gleaming white through full, plush lips. “Hard to control sometimes. You alright?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. I was gonna kill Shatterbird, but you handled it.”

“Yup. That’s number five down. Hopefully it stays that way for a while; I don’t wanna get all fucked up in the noggin.” 

… Five? But their enemies had eight members in total, and Imp had only killed two of them. What was she-

…

Right. Amy had told her not to question the likes of Imp, or Cassie. They said things that made your brain hurt.

So Rachel just shrugged again, and walked over to stand beside the shorter teenager. When Imp continued to look up at her with that proud smile on her lips, she paused awkwardly. Blinked. Angelica tended to look at her in the exact same way after killing a squirrel or a bunny, so maybe…

“... Good girl?” She patted her on the head with a large, calloused hand.

Pat. Pat. Pat.

“You’re literally just a female version of him.” Imp snorted, but she leaned into the headpat.

Rachel fought the urge to blush. She, of course, knew who him was.

And being compared to Malcolm, the man who defeated her and her dog with nothing but his bare hands, was a very big compliment in her mind. In the same way that Avalon was Imp’s ideal hero, the silent and grumpy Trainwreck had somehow become Rachel’s.

But she’d never say that out loud, to him or anyone. And they still had a job to do.

So she stayed silent, crossed her muscular arms over her chest, and watched her dogs bully Crawler into the mud.

… They really were getting busy.

_______________________________________

Cassie

On one hand, Cassie could count the amount of times she’d ever been in a life or death situation before.

The first time had been close to a year and a half ago, when she’d first made the harebrained decision to run away from home and make a living as a wandering vagrant and freelancer. She’d been more naive, then, and the woman who’d offered her a ride to Brockton Bay had seemed trustworthy. Kind. Motherly, in a way that Cassie had been coveting ever since she was old enough to realize that her own birth mom was more of a nanny than anything else.

It had also been her first experience with sexual assault, and the first time she stabbed someone. 

She hadn’t suffered anything more than rough fondling over her hoodie, but that evening had replayed over and over in her nightmares for weeks on end afterwards.

The second time was back when she’d acted as Lung’s personal hacker, for the very brief couple of weeks she’d actually been a part of the ABB. It’d been the first time she met Purity, actually - the nazi bitch had attacked the warehouse that Cassie had been working out of, and took the entire fucking building down in two shots of her laserbeam hand cannons. Cassie had survived, obviously, but she’d had friends there; other nerdy types that Lung had on payroll who didn’t have much choice other than working for him.

Most of them died. That was probably when she started fully closing herself off from becoming close to others on the street. 

The third and fourth time, funnily enough, was with Jason. Months ago, on the first day they met, when they’d been followed and cornered by nazi buttholes, and then, several weeks ago, when Lung decided to attack them inside of Fugly Bob’s. Fun times.

In each and every one of those situations, Cassie remembered being scared. Mortified. Maybe not so much with Lung, considering Jason was there to handle him and she trusted his power over anything else in the world, but for those other situations… It was rough. Damaging to her psyche and mental health. It sucked.

So what, exactly, did it mean for mister super scary Jack Slash and his band of infamous, mass-murdering psychopaths…-

“Fire Bolt-u! Fire Bolt-u! FIIIIIIIIIREEEEE BOOOOOOLT-UUUUU!”

“Why the FUCK are you screaming out your attacks, you stupid, insolent little- OWWW! DAMN IT!”

-... That she was, at the moment, not even frightened in the fucking slightest?

It only took a nudge of her fingers against the holographic control console floating in front of her body for her to direct Dragon’s mecha suit into a soaring, picture perfect pirouette. They danced smoothly over a trio of desperate slashes from the haggard and bleeding Joker-wannabe, each nigh-invisible attack highlighted clearly on Cassie’s HUD by big, bright red circles. Normally she wouldn’t be able to see them, and truthfully, she couldn’t with her naked eyes, but there were several VIs working in tandem inside of her MagiLink to assess the battle and come up with countermeasures to every dangerous occurrence they could find.

Like invisible slashes that still cut through rain and air, or the swinging of his physical knife that telegraphed exactly where the extended edge would go. Little things like that.

Funnily enough, it didn’t even matter if they hit, anyway. Not with Stoneflesh and Steadfast Ward on stand-by.

Jack Slash was simply out-fucking-matched in every category.

She landed a couple of feet over the writhing, angry roots and grass that Amy’s epic spell brought to life, reclining back in Mecha Dragon’s strong, cold arms. Her visor glowed a bright, burning blue as she lazily flicked her wrist, scrolling through the list of pre-programmed spells - and their icons - installed in her MagiLink. Jack Slash, looking more than a little worse for wear, clutched at his newest wound with a warped scowl. The tattered and bloodied sleeve of his grimy white dress shirt was burnt to a crisp, and the skin underneath was an angry, scabby red from where her last Fire Bolt had landed.

Cassie smirked.

“You know, Jacky-boy, I gotta admit - I expected more.” She flicked her fingers, shifting herself in the Mecha’s arms as another Steadfast Ward faded into place in front of her, a translucent, glimmering wall of protective magicka. “All that ‘grrrr, arf arf, I’m the scariest serial killer ever’ talk, and you can’t even touch me? What happened? You getting old? Losing your edge? Menopause finally hitting?”

Jack’s grip on his knife tightened, white-knuckled and tense, but he still managed to force a grin on his bloodied face. “Oh, you silly, overconfident little girl. You mistake a game for a war. You think you’re winning because you’ve drawn first blood? Because of those little parlor tricks Avalon donated to you?” His reedy, overtly smarmy voice dripped with a mocking amusement. “I’ve carved people apart who have had years more training than you, bitch. Decades. I make monsters from men, I steal dreams from legends, and I-”

Cassie cut him off with a loud, exaggerated yawn. “Blah, blah, blah. Jesus, you love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” She swiped her hand again, idly changing spells. “Lemme guess, this is the part where you try to monologue me into making some kind of big mistake? Maybe get too cocky and slip up just enough for you to flip the board on me? Or maybe you’ll attack when I least expect it, and-”

Jack’s grin twitched. He flicked his knife up and-

Shink!

Cassie’s Steadfast Ward flared just as his invisible blade connected, the force dispersing with a harmless ripple of magicka over the glowing blue shield. She grinned as she felt nothing. Not even a scratch.

Jack blinked.

“Oh my frickin’ god,” Cassie snorted. “You really thought that’d work? Again? Have you seen my drip? My magic? You think a glorified flick of the wrist is gonna get through this?” She gestured to her latex bodysuit, gleaming with a thin sheen from Stoneflesh. Her MagiLink’s ethereal pink glow sent shadows across her body, and with her lounged up in the arms of Dragon’s tall, intimidating Mecha Suit, Cassie almost looked like some sort of futuristic, neo-cyberpunk renaissance painting came to life. 

A genuine, amused giggle bubbled from her chest. “Dude, you’re literally getting bodied by a tiny Asian girl with a fancy VR headset. Lady Luck’s just not on your side today, huh? Cheat codes ain’t working on lil’ ole’ me.”

“Enough! Shut up! You are not in control here - I am!” Jack snarled and lunged forward through the living foliage, slashing wildly, cutting through tangles of bramble and roots in his desperation to finally score some type of hit. His movements were swift and lethal, refined by years of experience gutting people who’d never even seen him coming. People with alien parasites in their heads, telling them to stop and let him mutilate and destroy their bodies and minds. But Cassie?

Cassie was built different.

Her MagiLink beeped softly in her ear as her spell selection switched again. She threw out both hands.

“FUS RO - just kidding, Lightning Bolt!”

It wasn’t Cassie’s first time casting the powerful spell, but it was the first time she brought it out in this fight. 

Jack’s eyes widened the second the last of the syllables left her mouth. He tried to move, but his forward momentum was already too much, and he was hardly faster than a normal human - nevertheless motherfucking lightning. 

It took all of one microsecond for the staticy, arcing blue energy to coalesce into an orb of chaotic electricity between her palms before Cassie shoved her hands forward and allowed all of that gathered destruction to surge forward, burning and supercharging the rain and the wind and everything else in its flight path. 

It moved with a loud, overwhelming clap of thunder.

Raw, magical lightning.

CRACK!

Bright white light blinded her, but her contact lenses were quick to rectify that problem, just in time for Cassie to see the bolt of electrical destruction slam into the psychopath's chest, lock his lanky body into a seizing T-pose, and send him blasting back across the writhing hellscape that was their previously pretty backyard. When he came to a stop several dozen feet away, he was practically covered in mud, his entire body spasming and smoking as god knows how many volts of electricity surged through his nervous system.

Cassie tilted her head, her Mecha-Mount slowly drifting over to the sad pile of meat and bones. In the background, explosions and roars shook the mountain - probably Cerberus finishing up their tasks.

“Damn, you went down fast. You sure you’re the biggest, baddest villain of this world? I mean, really?” She poked him in the ribs with her boot, grinning as he groaned. “I’ve fought little kids in Overwatch that put up more of a fight than you, and they don’t even have depth perception. Or superpowers. Probably.”

Jack Slash was done, that much was obvious. 

He’d already been harmed by Frostbite and Fire Bolts before, slowly but surely whittling down what had to be a Brute body reinforced by Bonesaw’s freaky meat-tinker powers, but the Lightning Bolt was the straw that broke the murderer’s back. He couldn’t even respond to her taunts, now - his jaw was locked together, his lips in tatters and freely bleeding from where he’d bit through his lips and tongue. His shirt was completely gone now, his slim chest looking more like charred and blackened hamburger meat leaking plasma and pus than a healthy man’s body.

But somehow, some way, the bastard was still alive.

His fingers twitched towards where his knife had fallen beside him, but Cassie was already one step ahead. She plucked it from the mud, flipped it around with nimble fingers, and stabbed it back down into Jack’s palm.

He screamed, another deluge of blood exploding from his mouth as he forcibly retracted his teeth from flayed and tenderized flesh.

“Oops,” she shrugged, leaning back. “Guess you’re gonna have to use actual skill now. Maybe actual charisma to convince me not to just kill you. Oh, but wait-” She made a face. “You don’t have any. That was all your power, bringing these bad guys together. Keeping them with you. You’re nothing more than an edgy kid living out his grimdark fantasies in real life. You ever took a gun to school? You seem the type.”

Jack wheezed wetly, blood bubbling past his torn lips, his cloudy eyes unfocused but still managing to overflow with sheer, unadulterated hatred. He struggled to push himself up, but his limbs weren’t cooperating. It only served to push the knife deeper in his hand, but the pain didn’t even seem to register to him anymore.

Cassie squatted next to him, resting her chin in her palm.

“Lemme guess; in your cringy incel fantasies, you’d totally be saying something super edgy, right? Something like-” She lowered her voice into an exaggeratedly deep and slow timbre, “‘You don’t understand, little girl. I’ve already won. You just don’t know it yet!’ Or maybe something hella cryptic, like- ‘The seeds of chaos have already been sown! You can kill me, but the Slaughterhouse Nine lives on in the hearts of murderers everywhere,’” She snickered. “C’mon, man. That’s so fucking bad. You’re a cliché.”

Jack twitched, his mouth opening as if to respond-

Cassie flicked a finger and sent a burst of Sparks jolting through his body. His jaw promptly clanged shut, teeth chipping and breaking apart from the forced collision. 

“Yeah, nope, no one cares.” She stood up, dusting off her gloves. “Game over, loser. You lost. 9-0, get good, uninstall your life. Better yet, I’ll do it for you.”

The crystals on the back of her gloves were glowing dully, nearly depleted of all their magicka in the brief beatdown she’d subjected the infamous Leader of the S9 to. He was probably a Brute 1, if going purely off of the upgrades he’d been given by Bonesaw. Definitely nothing over a 2. But, in those upgrades, she’d given him some pretty heavy-duty survivability. Jack wasn’t a tank, but he was a weaker off-tank, and unless she wanted to burn out the rest of her mana crystals by pulling an Emperor Palpatine and frying his brain until it burst out of his nose and ears, Cassie had to get creative.

Fortunately, Dragon gave her just the toy to be super creative with.

Amy’s spell had waned enough, in light of the battlefield dying down, for her to properly move around on her own two feet without being tripped and sliced up by green, (t)horny tentacle monsters, so she stepped back and urged the empty Dragon Mecha Suit forward with her control console. It did so with a swiftness and ease that belied its powerful form, following her commands exactly.

Including raising its large, shiny green boots over Jack’s skull

His bloodshot eyes widened, but there was nothing left in the tank for him. As anticlimactic as it was, there was nothing he could do to stop the suit from curb-stomping his face into mincemeat. One stomp. Two stomps. Three. On the fourth one, something vital cracked and gray goo began spurting out every conceivable opening in his head, like sausage squeezed out of its casing.

Cassie never looked away. She’d have to get used to all of this gory crap if she planned on ascending to Goddesshood with her man, after all.

On the fifth stomp, there was nothing left to pulp. Where his head used to be was a mass of mushy gray shit, streaks of crimson blood, and fragments of artificial looking silver bone.

And Jack Slash, the infamous boogeyman, the man who thought he was a maestro of murder, lay sprawled in the mud, killed by a five foot nothing gremlin with a magical headset and heavy bottom energy. 

What a fucking joke.

“This Pod cannot help but experience bitter, overwhelming disappointment that he was forbade from interfering in Mistress’ fight,” 84’s bored, monotonous voice spoke up for the first time since she’d made the decision to take on Jack Slash alone. There was a buzzing, and then a glimmer of golden hardlight, before the hovering Pod materialized in the air over Cassie’s shoulder. His little mechanical hands clenched at his sides, as if he was imagining what it felt like to squeeze the life out of Jack Slash by himself.

Cassie rolled her eyes.

“I told you; it was a 1v1. Or, I guess, a 1.5v1 since I was using Dragon’s suit. But still! I had to prove to myself and to him that I could beat his stupid ass all on my lonesome. Ganking him wouldn’t have hit as hard.” She blinked as the aforementioned suit abruptly came to life, inclining its head once in her direction before taking off towards the sky.

Dragon swiftly answered her question before she could even ask it. “All enemies are dead... Except for Crawler and Bonesaw. Amy has sufficiently recovered; I’ll be bringing her down to handle Bonesaw’s deadman’s switch and Crawler’s… everything shortly. Standby.”

“Ahhh. Makes sense.” She side-eyed the Pod silently sulking beside her. Mechanical robot or not, she’d been around him long enough to know when his hovering was cheerful, angry, or depressed, and there was certainly a lot of depressed energy in the area right now. 

Cassie clicked her teeth pityingly. “Why don’t you go start repairing the crap Trainwreck and Mannequin most-likely destroyed in their fight, 84? I’m pretty sure I saw him shoulder-check that creepy bastard straight through the back door.”

The bulb on top of the Pod’s ‘head’ flashed a bright, alarming yellow. “... This Pod sees what Mistress is trying to do, and it appreciates her fleshy species’ tendency towards empathy. Affirmative.” 

Without warning, he zipped away, his servos humming with a renewed purpose - that is, to actually be useful. Which was bullshit, since they probably wouldn’t have gotten here in time if not for his warning, but Cassie knew abundantly well how it felt to feel useless. Hopefully staying busy would help him with whatever he was going through.

Though, honestly, she felt like he was just disappointed that he couldn’t kill something. The whole HK-47 roleplay shtick was getting kind of scary.

‘Anyways!’

It was time to focus.

Cassie straightened her shoulders, cracked her neck, and began making her way over to where Rachel and Imp were standing beside the decapitated body of who could only have been Shatterbird. 

They were talking in low tones, watching from a distance as the gigantic, bone-covered forms of Brutus, Judas, and Angelica loomed over a half-buried Crawler, the towering behemoth pinned beneath their immense, muscle-bound bulk in a massive crater that looked like the results of a C4 explosion. With just a glance, she could tell that, despite his infamous regeneration, he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The wet and muddy earth had swallowed most of his upper body, leaving only his lower end writhing and scrounging for purchase in the air. Every time he tried to yank his head and shoulders free of the ground, the pressure of the giant hounds pressing down on him kept him firmly in place. 

His gurgling growls were muffled, and they were quickly growing weaker. He was trapped. Helpless. Alive, yes, but that wouldn’t last for long.

And then there was Bonesaw. The damaged little girl who had orchestrated so many fucking horrors across the world was buried up to her neck in the mud, bound completely by thorny, twisting roots and vines. Her wide, desperate, doll-like eyes were flooded wth tears, snot running leaking from her nose like tap from a faucet, and when Cassie turned to see what they were looking at, she noticed that they were aimed straight at Jack’s dead and pulped body. The man who, according to Jason, had groomed her to be his perfect little monster. 

Her ‘daddy’.

So fucking disgusting. But now, she was just as helpless as Crawler, unable to trigger any of her failsafes with every possible movement of her body sans her eyes and uvula held in place by Amy’s magic. 

Everything had gone according to plan.

And yet…

Cassie came to a stop near her teammates, but her attention had shifted away - out towards the ocean. She couldn’t see the beach from where she was, nor the lines of heroes and villains and rogues holding down the fort, but she knew that the fight between Jason and Leviathan had to be finished by now. They’d have to finish up here before she could go and check on her boyfriend, but their victory against the S9 was an isolated battle. Something unrelated to the Endbringer attack. They couldn’t do anything to help him before, and they still couldn’t now. 

That was his fight, and this one was theirs.

So as Dragon disengaged Cawthorne’s camouflage once again, and landed it softly atop Invictus Palace, and Amy was lowered down to the backyard by one of the AI’s several suits…

Cassie hoped, beyond all hope inside of her heart-

That Jason won, and that they would all be reunited soon.

_____________________________________

A/N: Invictus did their fucking thing. Next chapter will be the aftermath of Avalon's fight, and then we switch to his POV.

I do want to get people's opinions on something important: Bonesaw, as of now, has a 'TBD' conclusion. Amy's going to kill Crawler, of course, but Bonesaw can go either way. She is 12, and has been through hell and hot water. Jack Slash effectively broke her mind when she was six, and groomed her into a monster.

That's facts.

So, I want to know: Does she live? Does she die? Let me know what you think. Maybe Amy will see your comments and it'll lean her in one direction over the other.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Trainwreck's fight wasn't shown because, to be honest with you guys, he literally almost one-shot Mannequin. He crushed him to a fucking pulp. After that initial supersonic tackle, it was over in a few hammer swings.