Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 111: Totally Worth It

Crap, Crap, Crap!

Perry scrambled away.

Zero HP and no armor made for a rather risk-averse Perry.

Perry glanced over his shoulder as he sought shelter, keeping a close eye out for Monolith. Getting blindsided by monolith of all people, and dying of blunt force trauma would be embarrassing.

Speaking of my armor…

Perry’s armor was toppled face-down on the ground, where Chemestro had used his power to disrupt the inner workings enough to cause a system shut-down.

It’s made of self-healing materials. I wonder if it’s managed to fix the fudged-up wiring.

“What are you waiting for!?” The goth girl demanded, throwing away the last of the gag around her neck.

The angular personification of fury was just…sitting there.

Perry’s sprint slowed to a halt as he gawked.

The shiny ebony creation of the newly triggered super just stood there, breathing heavily and being mad at everything. Not doing what it was created to do.

That’s odd.

“Miss, I am in control of my anger.” Chemestro said, his jaw clenched, obviously resisting the creation’s aura influencing his thoughts. If Perry’s guess was right, the donor of the emotions was the most powerfully affected by the aura.

“Oh, OH! Thanks!” the raven-haired beauty smacked her forehead before she pointed at Chemestro. “Kick his ass!”

Like a switch had been flipped, the monster leapt forward, the surge of rage that radiated out of it was ecstatic, and it felt like it was filling Perry up to the eyeballs with joyous rage as it charged Chemestro.

She’s learning to control her powers, Perry thought, resuming his sprint towards his armor. Obviously you didn’t trigger with full knowledge of how to use your powers to greatest effect, but since it was second nature, it could be reasonably expected that a super would experience rapid growth over the first few hours/days of their career, until they hit a plateau, at which they would have to put actual effort into improving.

Perry glanced up at Chemestro, who was bobbing and weaving, using his ability to slip through nearby lamp poles and cars to slow down the hulking abomination.

Can he not just disintegrate it? Is it immune to its donor’s powers, or is he just too angry to think straight? Nah, if he were too angry, he wouldn’t be playing rope-a-dope with it right now.

Perry grunted as he hauled his armor back up to standing and tried to turn it on.

Nope still fried. DAMN

Multi-Tool.

Perry hissed and reached into the armor, summoning a specialized impact driver and using it to pop the hatch on the back of the armor. Normally to mess with his suit, Perry would have to be in the comfort of his own lab with a bunch of specialized drillbits, but he could summon them on a case-by-case basis for modding on the fly.

Superpowers, yay!

The back of the armor popped open, exposing Perry’s spell-discs. The wiring around them was ruined, partially slagged from where Chemestro had been messing with them. Obviously copper didn’t have the same resistance to Chemestro’s power as his specially created laminate, a fact the Catalyst had taken advantage of.

Perry yanked out the Static shock spell disc and rapidly unlatched the suit’s left arm, glancing up to watch the mayhem as he did.

Chemestro flung Wraith off of Monolith, sending the redheaded super sailing into the air, where she turned into a manta-ray shape and flew in a circle above them, assessing the situation.

“Hold on a moment,” Perry said into the earpiece as he reconnected the spell disc directly to the spell-frame, smoothing out the wiring with a specialized tool before housing both of them in his suit’s hollowed out arm. “I’m going to try to reset the board.”

“Wait until she roughs ‘em up a bit,” Wraith said, flying above them like a vulture.

Perry glanced over at Breaker clearing the last of the gunk out of his throat, and Plagius climbing to his feet, brushing himself off.

In the distance, he spotted Hardcase’s jets approaching them, soon to provide some much-needed support.

Perry glanced over at Dazzle and Jetset. The two looked a bit under the weather, knees trembling as they watched their boss struggle with the manifestation of his rage.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Perry muttered as he worked. “Of course I’m gonna let her rough ‘em up.”

Perry used a summoned cutter to create a notch for the spell-disc to rest, applied some spray-on adhesive, and secured the spell disk extending out the bottom of the arm like a handle.

Perry let go of the cutter and summoned a battery backup, causing the cutter to disappear before it hit the ground, sticking it to the lingering spray-on adhesive.

Perry connected the new power supply and hefted his new creation:

A Tinker lightning gun that looked like an arm.

“Groovy.”

Now to see if it works.

Perry hefted the makeshift gun and leveled it at the monster chasing Chemestro.

“I said not yet.” Heather said.

“Chill,” Perry said, tracking their progress as Chemestro led the creature towards Monolith.

Monolith at the very least had the most basic sense of tactics, and rather than pursuing Perry, wound up a massive punch and waited for Chemestro’s move.

Chemestro slipped through a car, gliding over the asphalt as the raging monster grew bigger and spikier, lashing out with swordlike appendages that turned full-sized SUV’s into neatly diced piles of scrap. He ducked to the left and slipped through Monolith.

The giant obsidian cowl gave a heavy grunt and punched forward, his shiny black fist impacting the shiny black rage-monster.

The impact travelled visibly through the creature’s body in a wave of energy that seemed to travel outward into its blades. It brought them down on Monolith, looking something like a sea creature wrapping around its prey.

“Ow, ow, OW OW! It’s HURTING ME!” Monolith said, his voice shocked and incredulous. The hulking mass didn’t seem to have a high tolerance for pain despite his career as a professional kneecapper.

So much for waiting, Perry thought, shouldering the makeshift gun. There was certain level of super etiquette that required him to prioritize saving Monolith, as repugnant as that option was.

Perry pressed the manual activate button on the Static Shock spell-disc, and a blast of lightning leapt out of the arm and slammed into the two combatants. Maybe it was the magical nature of the lightning, but it hit the two of them with physical force, ripping the rage-monster off of Monolith and flinging it into a street lamp.

The creature ricocheted off the toppling metal lamp and dug a trough through some poor civvie’s lawn.

Perry felt everyone’s gaze land on him and the disembodied metal arm in his hands.

“It works.” Perry said with a shrug.

The rage monster leapt up and oriented on Perry.

Crap.

Perry started backpedaling immediately as the shiny black monster began rushing him, gradually losing its sharp, angular features and devolving into a rolling ball of thrashing blades that flickered like fire.

I think I made the anger creature angry.

“No, him, attack him!” the goth girl shouted, pointing at Chemestro.

The creature was approaching faster than Perry could hope to run, so he leveled the gun on it again and grit his teeth, waiting for the right angle.

Don’t wanna send it into someone’s house. Perry thought, squeezing the button.

ZAP!

Another bolt of lightning slammed into the creature but it seemed to sense the attack coming and slammed its forelimbs down into the asphalt, weathering the assault of electricity none the worse for wear, and most importantly:

Still directly in front of him.

“Shi-“ Perry’s words were cut off when the entire world shoved him backwards, causing the creature’s bladed tentacles to whiff, audibly cutting the air inches away from Perry’s face.

Aw man, he saved my life? Perry thought, glancing at Chemestro, who was smacking his forehead. This day couldn’t get any worse.

“Him,” the goth girl said, approaching the monster, pointing at Chemestro. “Listen to me, already!”

The creature whipped out a blade that would’ve cut her in half, save for Chemestro tackling her to the ground.

“I don’t think it’s going to listen to you!” Chemestro shouted over the monster’s roars. “Also, you’re under arrest for assault and property damage!”

“Fuck Yo-“ the girl’s eyes rolled back in her head as she passed out. With a dismissive gesture, she was flung away to land gently on a carefully manicured lawn while Chemestro led the creature further away.

“You guys clear of the thing?” Hardcase’s voice came in over Perry’s earpiece.

“Chemestro is in front of it,” Perry said.

“Do we care?” Heather asked.

“Eh…he should be fine. let it rip.” Perry said.

“Hey Chemestro!” Perry shouted at the top of his lungs.

The overpowered Catalyst glanced toward Perry with a scowl.

Perry pointed at Hardcase, floating in the sky above the scene. Both of the mech-suit’s arms and both of its legs were moving in front of her, combining seamlessly to form a single, massive gun hovering in front of the egg-shaped cockpit. The gun was about ten feet long and a single person would have trouble wrapping their arms around it.

It was big.

Chemestro’s eyes widened, and he surprised Perry by darting forward, hiding his body behind the rage-monster’s bulk, holding it in place for the space of a breath, long enough for Hardcase to get a good bead on it.

Thrum, thrum, thrum…

BOOOM!

A wave of invisible force flattened the creature directly onto Chemestro, sending a wave of dust outward that caused the nearby parked cars to slide backwards. The high pressure wave of air would’ve flung Perry backwards if it hadn’t been for the shiny obsidian grip on his shoulder holding him in place.

A surge of near-death adrenaline allowed Perry to drop his gun, raise his arms and slip out of his shirt as a massive obsidian fist swooshed past where his head had been.

“Dick move!” Perry shouted, scrambling forward and snatching up his gun as Monolith’s energy blast nearly put an end to his super career.

Perry rolled forward while turning and leveled the lightning gun on Monolith and pressed the button. The giant was winding up another energy blast when he got struck full-on with Static Shock.

Perry witnessed the lightning invade the bleeding cuts in the bruiser’s skin like a living thing, causing the massive super’s eyes to widen as he began convulsing violently.

Perry shouldered his makeshift lightning gun and surveyed the destruction, panting with exertion and delicious adrenaline.

There was a flat black smudge where the rage monster had been. It was slowly dissolving into black smoke, and it wasn’t moving. The girl was subdued, Chemestro was dead (hopefully) and Perry’s team was reassembled.

Perry glanced over at Dazzle and Jetset as Hardcase, Plagius and Wraith landed beside him. The two opposing supers were shaking the last of the effects of Perry’s lightning and Plagius’s drain.

“You guys wanna keep going?” Perry said, nodding toward Monolith, who was staring at the sky, struggling to breathe, and then to the smudge in the ground where their boss had been alive a moment earlier.

“I see no reason not to.” Chemestro’s voice cut through the silence as he emerged from the solid ground beside his teammates.

I knew it was too good to be true.

“Oh, come ON!” Perry shouted as Chemestro fixed Monolith, and the bruiser climbed back to his feet, wiping blood away from his lips.

“That’s a wonderful piece of tinker-tech,” Chemestro said, glancing at Hardcase. “But I can destroy it faster than you can blink. Save your team the money and humiliation and leave now.”

“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE!?” A voice shouted, drawing their attention toward an old man shuffling towards them on a walker.

“You kids with your newfangled Super-Powers think it’s OKAY to throw monsters through a hardworking veteran’s hydrangeas!? I was there, back in Nam, when the real monsters showed their faces. All you kids playing at heroes are just play-fighting when the REAL heroes are dying up there on the wall? And what’s with those girls wearing spandex that looks like it’s painted on? It’s downright reprehensible, is what it is. In my day, folk’d never do anything so appalling.”

Chemestro’s eyes narrowed as he took in the geriatric shuffling towards him on his walker. “Sir, this is a high danger area, and I advise you maintain a safe distance until it’s over. Nexus will be here to listen to your complaints once the situation has been handled.”

“Oh, the situation will be handled alright,” the old man growled, toddling forward. “It’ll be handled when I CHALLENGE YOU AND YOUR TEAM TO A DANCE BATTLE!”

The old man threw his walker aside and began flossing, a dozen more identical old men appearing behind him, copying his movements.

***Five minutes later***

“Who knew Chemestro was that good at dancing?” Perry said, patting Breaker’s shoulder as the dancer wiped a thick sheen of sweat off his brow.

“You say that like I lost,” Breaker said, glancing over at the Chemestro’s unconscious team, splayed out on the lawn. Chemestro had been the last to go down and he’d used some sort of light refraction to split himself into three copies, giving Breaker a run for his money. In the end, Breaker was the more talented dancer, better optimized to win a dance battle, and had managed to put Chemestro down.

“Without that belt, you would’ve,” Perry murmured to himself.

“Totally worth it,” Breaker said, nodding.

Belt that enhances Breaker’s natural abilities: $60 million in leveraged assets.

Seeing Chemestro finally lose a fight and passed out on the lawn: Priceless.

“Totally worth it.” Perry echoed.

Officially it was the trigger-rampaging newbie super who’d knocked out Chemestro’s team, but everybody knew who’d won.

Perry shrugged and went over to where the Nexus personnel were loading the goth girl into the back of their transports.

“Hey kid,” she said as Perry approached.

“What?” Perry asked, expecting a question about processing, or how long she might be arrested for, or maybe to plead her case about how none of this was her fault.

Something like that.

What came out of her mouth instead gave Perry chills.

“So that Chemestro guy, is he single?” She asked, leaning forward on the truck’s bench, glancing past Perry to where the muscle-bound super lay.

“Oh my god, I don’t care.” Perry said, slamming the door shut.