Alex had a little too much experience with being hit with electricity. That came with deciding to get into the cape lifestyle. Black or white cape – hell even if you just chucked on a mask before getting into the occasional bar fight – one day, you were gonna get your ass zapped.
And of all the ways to taste the tingle of a few amps, Riftmaker hated being on the bad end of tesla shots most of all. Being electrocuted was never fun, but from experience roughly half the time a lightning supe hit him with their powers, Riftmaker would be able to work through the spasms after a couple seconds and get back in the action no worse for wear than if he’d taken a particularly heavy punch. Laser Badger called him a freak for that, but Riftmaker chalked it up to an unfortunate familiarity with the sensation over the years. Tesla shots however always fell into other half his experience with lightning, where his muscles would take awhile to unlock themselves and almost always left burns.
Allegedly, almost all tesla shots on the market were fairly safe. Well, ignoring the immediate oxymoron, they were as safe as any non-lethal weapon could be. Obviously, despite the proliferation of regenerative tissue treatments in the past thirty years, there was still a massive risk using it on anyone who might have artificial implants or certain medical conditions. But outside of those concerns, with the way the ionized targeting system worked in conjunction with the current’s delivery method, the person getting zapped was probably gonna be alright after a single shock. Okay, actually there were a lot more reasons the damn devices could throw out “safe” lightning, but trying to understand regular electricity was already stretching the limits of Riftmaker’s engineering knowledge. He would stick with artificial gravity thank you very much and let the almost magic piece of tech’s inner workings be left to wizards and electricians who lied about not being wizards
Getting hit once was supposedly safer than working on your own home’s wiring according to Leckter (who liked to slur through explanations of these things after four drinks), as the weapon was somehow designed to prevent electricity from doing what it normally did when it hit your body (i.e., ravage your internal organs) by making it travel along your outer muscles. Something about the targeting system priming your outside more than your insides. And yes, regretfully, Alex could compare getting hit by these to other forms of lightning and knew the way it locked up your muscles felt different. The damage one shot left mostly just caused almost anyone to crumple to the floor with a light roasting on the very tippy-top of the skin. Couple of days later and you’d be better off than your typical sunburn. In terms of non-lethal options, it was up there with Retch Gas.
The thing was: the second shot was a lot riskier.
Again, something to do with the ionization beam and the properties of electricity in general, but importantly if you hammered someone twice in a row in a short amount of time, you absolutely could stop a heart. Maybe even outright pop one. The electricity started to not care about the shot’s “directions” and got a little more content to do its own thing. Give it time between shots and you were fine, but feather the trigger and people would die.
While Orbit had acted like he’d just skipped on down to Amberheart’s closet to pick out one, Riftmaker knew that the simple wrist mounted device probably had a full set of certifications the hero had needed to go through if he, an Amberheart bootlicker, got permission to strap it on.
Despite knowing how dangerous they could be, or rather because he knew that, Riftmaker wasn’t afraid of the telsa shot pointed directly at him. Orbit was definitely trying to intimidate him with the sparking barrel pointed down at his face, but Riftmaker had made sure to do his research on the Starlight Squad. Sure enough, their villain casualty count told him that they didn’t do executions. These guys were too powerful to not leave a higher body count if they actually were the type to throw caution to the wind when it came to getting bloody. This was pure posturing and Riftmaker knew it.
The issue was that if he called that bluff, Orbit would definitely use his gravity powers.
With no one else backing him up, even if Riftmaker risked overcharging the gauntlets to try to cancel out Orbit’s first attack wave, he’d quickly be overwhelmed when the hero just started spamming gravity wells at this distance. With his laser emitters retracted as well, he doubted that he’d be able to get a shot off from either those or aim his gauntlets before Orbit activated his powers. From this position, Riftmaker would still need to move half his barely responding body to get a good aim with his arm and the emitters would need to pop out and swivel around, while all Orbit needed to do was open his hand and let his power to do the rest. It was a matter of heartbeats and Riftmaker was too far behind to win that race. He bit his lip considering his options.
The grinding sound of the massive hanger doors trundling open snapped Orbit’s attention away from the prone villain. Riftmaker attempted to use the opportunity in order to stand up but his muscles were still too sluggish. For his troubles, he felt a strong weight pull him back down as Orbit growled, his fingers splayed apart as his power activated. Shit, he was right about how quickly the hero could activate those.
“Stay down or-”
The abnormal feeling of heaviness vanished as Orbit abruptly flew backwards with an undignified sound of alarm. Riftmaker spotted the white line of sticky webbing attached to his back right before Terror’s voice called into his ear, “Get up and keep him busy!”
He spotted the spider villainess leaping between strands above, dodging beams of light as Reflecta cradled her hands to force groups of her mirrors together into spheres, bouncing light between them for a few seconds only to reform the floating structures into concave shapes that erupted lances of white light. It was like watching seeds of crystal suddenly bloom into violent flowers, their beams slicing apart the lower hanging webbing woven between the shelves with every strike.
Riftmaker didn’t think that was how light worked and bet her superpowers were running behind the scenes. Cosmic power bullshit was basically just magic meeting midway between so called “mutation” or “genetic” based superpowers in order to throw up some middle fingers at the usual countermeasures for either of those. All superpowers were their own brand of bullshit but Riftmaker was convinced there was some shadowy cabal in charge of anti-power tech that was artificially drawing the line between magic and everything else to sell more tech.1
The aftershocks of Orbit’s attack finally worked their way through his body, allowing him the motor control to take to the air again. He raced after the gravity hero who had abandoned their duel to put a stop to whatever Val was up to, almost running head first into a fucking grenade the hero chucked behind him.
You have superpowers asshole! he screamed internally as he dodged the explosion. Stop copying my shit!
---------------------------------
Lyn cursed as Reflecta kept trying to box her in with various mirrors she’d summon out of midair. Shattering them seemed to slow the rate she could make more pop into existence but there didn’t seem to be an end to them.
Does she have some hidden replenishing stock of them? Lyn wondered.
Her powers allegedly came from space but Reflecta hadn’t been magnanimous enough to reveal all their secrets to the public. There was no way radiation did this shit though.
With Sand Devil being harried by Sun Light who apparently kept blasting apart the villain whenever she reformed, even with Turnaround trying to keep her busy, Reflecta’s mirrors were free to keep Lyn from breaking line of sight in the stacks. That killed any attempt at her skulking to the shadows to hit hard from a blindspot. If Lyn wanted to go on the offense, that meant doing it head on. However, Reflecta seemed to have enough mirrors on hand to keep intercepting her attempts at forward charges while also blocking any web shots she threw out.
Lyn had been attempting to move towards the mess of shipping containers to shake the reflective stalkers when she’d noticed Riftmaker’s prone form and had swiftly intervened there. They did not need to be down a villain this early in the fight.
Unfortunately, flinging away Orbit had let the gravity hero disengage and race towards the front of the warehouse where she’d been heading. It was already risking the plan to move herself and Reflecta over that direction, away from the two villains who were supposed to be fighting her. Now it meant Lyn would probably just be opening herself up to a cheapshot from Orbit in an already desperate attempt to shake this tail. Her best bet was still these cramped shelves where her spider legs were still working to her advantage.
As an alternative, she eyed the webs she’d previously strung up above. If she could get up there and retrieve a couple of her “welcome presents” or even just snip the lines and let them fall, she could give Reflecta something else to worry about for the few seconds Lyn would need to navigate through the rows of shelves and get the jump on Sun Light. With that, her teammates could do what they were supposed to be doing and this plan would get back on track.
She cursed as she dodged another beam.
“This not going your way?” Reflecta teased. “Arthur told us you were here, Terrorantula. Ned has mentioned how deceptively strong you are, not to mention that you tend to target the biggest threats first, so we figured you’d be gunning for Sun Light. The moment I saw Turnaround and Sand Devil, the rest of your plan was easy enough to figure out.”
Dammit Ned! I appreciate you hyping me up to your work friends but could you not share my strats? Lyn thought as she dodged three more blasts in quick succession.
“I know I’m not as-” Reflecta blocked another hastily fired blob of web with one of her floating mirrors before flinging it back to intercept Lyn. “-used to banter as Ned, but I was certain one of his villains would be a little more chatty than this.”
Lyn’s blood began to boil as she bounced away from the incoming projectile. Even here, even now, people wouldn’t stop treating her like an extension of Ned. People constantly assumed that her freak accident at the lab all those years ago had something to do with trying to recreate his powers or her looking up to him or some fucking thing or another. Ten years with a banter hero? Why aren’t you chatty?
Fine! You want to see me as an ArachNed villain? Let’s see if you’re as good as he is!
Lyn scuttled backwards, vertically ascending further and further like it was nothing. Reflecta gave chase, pushing her mirrors up towards her, clearly anticipating an easy shot as she stopped dodging back and forth. She got too greedy.
When one globe of mirrors mistakeningly came too close, Lyn lashed out with the back of her hand, causing the whole thing to explode into shards which rained down on the hero. She immediately backed off, now overly cautious about getting too close. That break in the pursuit, as small as it was, let Lyn squeeze through the shelves unimpeded, having cleared away the crates that had been here earlier for Val.
Lyn had spent a decade in this body and learned that she could flatten it more than most people expected. No one dared to think that her nine foot tall and almost that in width frame could suddenly slip through gaps that even normal people would need to carefully angle themselves through, but Lyn had spent years learning how to get through doors and dodge pesky heroes in warehouses like these ones with her giant body and knew the ins and outs of it.
Ned might’ve seen that coming, but this bitch wasn’t him. Likewise, she also wasn’t prepared for the double blasts of web Lyn spat through the gap, blocking a pair of mirrors that attempted to follow her. Lyn grinned smugly. If there was one good thing about having spent years fighting the same hero, it was that most of the rest couldn’t see you coming, especially heroes like Reflecta who always had teammates watching her back for her.
Speaking of teammates, as Lyn wove through the shelves, slipping between the other gaps she remembered making earlier, she tapped her earbud.
“Status!” she demanded.
“We’re alright,” Turnaround replied cheerfully. “Well, Devil is having trouble but I’m keeping Sun L- SHIT! Okay, yeah, wouldn’t mind trading anytime now!”
“Working on it…” she hissed, noticing the flashes of light that looked to be six rows down and catching fragmentary glimpses of a plume of black sand splatter down the aisle. She returned her gaze upwards and searched for the nearest cache in the rafters.
One dangled roughly two dozen feet above her, but reaching it would mean either jumping or scaling the nearby wall to get to it and leaving herself open.
“The hero Orbit has stopped the doors,” Val reported. “Riftmaker is harassing him, but-”
“HE HAS UPGRADES,” their male teammate cried over the line, an explosion punctuating his words.
Fuck! Heroes didn’t have to report kit changes, so it wasn’t like Vandal should’ve known about that, but it complicated things. Judging from what she’d heard, those explosions didn’t sound like the concussive rounds that Celeste had packed for her new employer. So Orbit was rocking his own bombs and anywhere that wasn’t covered in P.H.O.T.O.N.’s toys was free game for him to let loose.
“Rift, bait him over to those metal crates and use your own bombs,” Lyn ordered, figuring that the cover would work to his advantage. She quickly cut off the protest she knew was coming, “Yes I know the risks but he’s not going to crush you and you know it! Val, abandon the front doors and keep loading up through our way in. Turnaround, Devil, when you hear my signal, get ready to swap.”
She had to risk it. Turnaround and Devil could handle Reflecta way easier than she could. Right now, everyone was just spinning their wheels hoping not to tire out before the heroes did. They needed to get the momentum back. And that meant leaving her cover.
She checked around for any mirrors before dropping down a few levels to get a running start. As she bolted upwards, she bit her lip, drawing blood with her pointed teeth even through the chitinous skin of this form.
Her momentum allowed her bulky body to practically fly the moment it left the top shelf, her powerful legs bending the metal as she launched off of it. Her hand was outstretched, ready to grab the floating line of webbing that contained the knot a few feet down. She couldn’t directly grab the bundle itself, it was too dangerous.
She saw out of the corner of her eye a long mirror form itself out of thin air and watched with a mix of horror and rage as Reflecta flew out of it, her hands grasped around a polyhedron of crystals trapping a miniature sun. Lyn didn’t have the time to fire her web, either at the hero or as an escape line to pull herself out of the way.
Reflecta forced the angry ball of trapped light towards her, the petals of it unfolding. She closed her eyes.
“Mistress!”
Mistress?!
It suddenly hit her then: the full naked force of the presence she’d been feeling for weeks. No tingle of catching something out of the corner of your eye, no itch on the back of the neck from being watched. No, this was tidal wave of unnatural attention. The force of it caused her to initially believe that she’d been hit by Reflecta’s blast, only the lack of burning told her otherwise. She cracked open her eyes and saw the hero floating there, body slack with confusion as her concave arrangement of mirrors were dark. It wasn’t just that the light had faded, the mirrors were pure black.
No... there was a light there, just not the brilliance she’d been channeling. Instead, Lyn was peering at dozens of red pinpricks in the black. Then they began to move as a sea of darkness churned in what should’ve just been a reflection.
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Lyn was jolted from her stupor as her hand made contact with the webbing. Reflexively, she flipped her body around just in time, letting her legs intercept the rapidly approaching ceiling beyond the line of web she’d been aiming for. She’d meant to cut the line to turn it into something of a sling, but the still stupefied Reflecta presented a different strategy as her momentum carried her too close to the spider villain.
Releasing the web, Lyn ripped her hand forward and grabbed the other woman by her mask in the half seconds before she could regain her composure and back away. Using all her strength in her upper body, powerful muscles coming alive with her hatred and desperation, she flung the hero directly at the batch of primed explosives hidden in the webbing. At the same moment she felt the hero begin to go flying, she launched off the ceiling, aiming herself directly at the fighting below.
She glanced back to see the woman only barely manage to get a shield of mirrors between herself and the thick clump in the webbing before the whole thing went up, feeling the shockwave riding against her abdomen as she shot downwards like a missile.
---------------------------------
Sarah was getting annoyed.
When Arthur had told them who they’d be facing, she’d immediately demanded not to fight Terrorantula. Reflecta had shrewdly pointed out that the villainess was the obvious heavy hitter of the bunch who specialized in ambush strategy and that it was best to avoid playing into her hands by letting their own physical fighter get tied up in that. However, her tone of voice made it clear that she knew exactly why Sarah had made her objection.
Look, it wasn’t that Sarah was afraid of spiders. Just… the larger ones kind of… bweugh.
Aunt Flec had used the opportunity to bring up that she herself didn’t want to face off against Turnaround. Apparently the two had crossed paths during one of those larger fights recently (not the Maniacal one, like, maybe the one where ConTroller had used those mind control goblin robots to recruit a villain army?)2 and she’d realized the villain was an annoyingly perfect counter to her method of fighting.
Actually as it turned out, Turnaround was good at countering everyone’s method of fighting, assuming you weren’t the type to just explode everything around you. Sarah had tried punching, shooting, and even throwing things off the ground only to abruptly get spun around right before her attacks could go off, causing her to attack empty air if she didn’t hold her fire. She quickly learned to do just that, which at least let her attack Sand Devil before Turnaround could spin her again.
It was so frustrating! And it wasn’t like the villain’s powers could actually do anything more to her. If she did get off a light blast then the villain seemed helpless to stop it, though it turned out that flinging actual objects through the air was a little risky. She could only make Sarah’s attack miss if she flipped her around before they went off. Well, that or she was purposefully letting her teammate get hit, which from the accusations hurled by the sand lady could actually be true.
It wasn’t like Turnaround was letting Sarah just pelt the red skinned woman as she’d quickly flip the hero if she turned her attention towards the demoness. It was just that Sarah could easily adjust her aim after or even while she was being flipped around by the villain’s powers thanks to dad’s tornado training. Sadly, her quick fire strategy didn’t really work for trying to hit Turnaround herself, as the neon vomit colored villain would scamper away from any of her hasty shots the moment her hand drifted in her direction. Meanwhile Sand Devil, despite being annoyed by them, didn’t seem to be in any hurry to actually try to duck into cover whenever Sarah’s hands glowed regardless of whether she was aiming for her or her annoying friend. Despite that, judging from all the cursing, it didn’t sound as though the demoness was simply shrugging off her blasts so Sarah was getting the impression that she was doing some sort of damage.
Is this some weird honor thing? Sarah wondered as she was flipped around once again, quickly twisting her hand to her 5 o’ clock to nail Devil once more with the shot. She’d almost managed to line up an angle on Turnaround with that one before the villainess had zipped behind a crate and activated that annoying power again.
As she floated a few feet off the floor, light steaming from her cape, she glanced around to see if the other two villains which weren’t giant spider ladies were nearby. Maybe Uncle Bit had managed to corral them back here and she could let him take care of-
A loud explosion from above shook her out of her thoughts. Looking up to see the giant form of Terrorantula descending on her, she had less than a second to act. Her flight wouldn’t let her dodge to the side quick enough, so Sarah tried to raise her fists to fire off a blast and maybe-
She was facing the ground.
Her mind struggled to understand what it was looking at in the brief moment she had. She didn’t have time for the horror of the situation to hit her or for her to recognize what Turnaround had done in that instant because her face met the concrete before her heart finished beating.
The floor shattered with the force of the blow and she saw stars, but her enhanced durability won and she was still conscious if dazed. Instinctively trying to break away, Sarah put as much force as she could into twisting around, her body’s enhanced muscles turned to the sole effort of dislodging the weight pressing down on her back. Eight hands held her down, straining but not buckling against her efforts. No, not hands...
Don’t think about it! She lashed out with a backwards swing of her arm, trying to catch the creepy villainess with as much force of the blow as she could. An absurdly strong hand – this one actually a hand, albeit one with cruel taloned fingers – intercepted her strike. It wasn’t an effortless block, nor did it stop the blow instantly. Sarah heard the grunt that Terror made as she forced the incoming strike to a halt.
Unfortunately, the villainess still had another hand free. The fist it formed knocked into Sarah’s face, the chitinous skin dragging across her own reinforced flesh. The arm reared back for another blow but Sarah was able to use her free hand to grasp one of the gross legs holding her down and pull, hard. This destabilized the villain and it gave her just enough room to break the hold. Forcing her flight powers to shoot herself forward, she barely got free and airborne.
Sarah looked back and saw two pitch black eyes locked on her as the monster made to follow her back into the stacks, her clawed hands ripping forward like she was a beast bent over and hunting the hero by scent. That almost spooked her into fleeing, but then she noticed Aunt Flec’s gradually descending form being intercepted by both Sand Devil and Turnaround.
Her aunt’s costume was covered in jagged patterns of cracks as almost every reflective bit of armor had born the brunt of the explosion she’d been caught up in. It was clear from how sluggish her movements were that the heroine was still recovering, unprepared for the incoming villains.
Sarah turned around, justified rage igniting in her heart, and flew at the monster pursuing her. She knew she couldn’t turn her back now. If she tried to fly past her to help Reflecta, then Terror would no doubt attack her from behind. Sarah couldn’t fight all three of them at once if she did manage to jump into that melee. She had to trust that her aunt would be able to hold out on her own for a few more minutes.
She knew they needed help though. Immediate help. No time to radio backup even if she wanted to. The rest of the team wouldn’t be here in time. Thankfully, there was one more member of the team here, right now.
As her fist met Terrorantula’s and a shockwave burst between them, she called out.
“Orbit!”
---------------------------------
Riftmaker’s fight wasn’t going fantastically. Oh, sure he’d managed to avoid most of the tricks Orbit had thrown his way but he was pushing his jets to the absolute limits to dodge the explosives, gravity wells, and even a few objects that Orbit’s powers just grabbed and threw at him. Between his jets, the continuous use of his lasers, and the few times he’d needed to have the hard light shields pop up when Orbit got tricky, his energy bar was lower than he liked. Not past the halfway point but he’d definitely not expected to to dip it this far without leaving the shields up.
All the while, even as Riftmaker was nailing him with low yield lasers, mostly annoying him, Orbit was still managing to keep the front door shut and had taken a few harassing shots at Val as she zipped along trying to keep the heist going. He briefly considered upping the power on the lasers but knew that ended poorly.
I didn’t know I’d be fighting a bullet hell boss, Alex thought, remembering a game he’d been obsessed with between shifts working under Frost Fiend. Like the tiny ship in that game, he was weaving through what felt like a solid wall of danger that Orbit was throwing his way, even as he was disengaging to make his way to the maze of shipping containers off to the side like Terror had instructed him. Oh, he really didn’t like this part of the plan, his mind filling with images of a bored Orbit simply causing two massive steel boxes to slam together with him between them.
I know I trusted that this team had a “no kill” policy but this still feels like tempting fate. I really don’t want to end up jam for a steel sandwich.
While it had been his number one change to the new suit, he now regretted ditching the grenade launcher. He’d tried slinging a few smoke and concussive cans at Orbit over the course of this fight, but their travel time made it trivial for him to intercept them with a gravity well. Each landed a good distance away to explode harmlessly on the concrete floor. The one time he’d managed a solid hit with the smoke, having snuck the can’s toss outside of Orbit’s field of view, it hadn’t accomplished anything. In fact, he’d immediately been the target of multiple gravity wells like Orbit could still see him.
Of course bowl head here had thermal optics! He was sneaking in everything else in his stupid suit. Didn’t he know that you were supposed to leave all the gadgets to the tech heroes and villains?
That meant Riftmaker’s options were limited outside of his lasers and his gravitor gauntlets unless he could lure him into that enclosed space where he could lay some traps. He’d yet to spy an opportunity to actually make use of an overcharged blast that would meaningfully end this fight and he wasn’t sure he wanted Orbit to know that he had something up his sleeve that could shut down all those stupid wells lest the hero decide he needed to cut loose. So for now he kept using their regular mode to pepper the hero where he could, hoping the gravity hero wouldn’t notice what they truly were until it was too late. If he could maybe draw him in close in the maze, then he might get proper payoff of his limited uses of them if paired with the remaining explosives. A concussive grenade from the back with the full gravitic force of the surface of Junea from the front should crack that stupid bowl helm. Hammer that repeatedly and fight’s over.
With only a dozen or so feet left before he reached the safety of the “fort” of storage containers, Riftmaker suddenly felt what was “down” shift towards back of the warehouse and red-lined his jets to escape yet another gravity well and a flying traffic cone thrown at Mach Fuck his way. The moment he was clear of the affected area, he killed the boosters and tucked into a roll which carried him through the first gap in the big metal boxes. He unfolded himself into a sprint and raced between the messy stacks, hoping he had enough of Orbit’s attention for this plan to work while ignoring how those metal walls seemed to be closing in.
“Get back here!” Riftmaker heard the hero cry. He couldn’t tell if he was relieved or not that he’d managed to actually bait Orbit, but made absolutely sure to keep his speed up as he kept dashing around corners and weaving through whatever gaps in the huge crates in this hoarders’ labyrinth.
After a few moments had passed, he slowed down, letting his footfalls fade as he strained his ears. Orbit’s powers produced a dull hum that reverberated through the entire maze, echoing off the walls as the hero began to hover over the area. Riftmaker finally came to a complete stop to catch his breath and spooled up his lasers, once again instructing them to immediately target the hero the moment his sensors had a lock, ready to pull the trigger the moment the system lit up. He needed Orbit angry enough to come down here, but not angry enough that he started flipping P.H.O.T.O.N.’s merchandise to find him.
A distant explosion rattled the lights above as something happened further back in the warehouse. Riftmaker risked moving out of cover, hoping the hero would be distracted enough by whatever it was. His gamble paid off as he was greeted to Orbit’s back as the hero stared back towards shelves and his teammates, letting Riftmaker’s entire array of lasers get a bead on him. The tech villain fired immediately with every single one of them as well as both of his gloves for good measure, slamming dead center into the hero’s back and sending him spiraling for a moment before he regained control of his powers. The hero spun around and Riftmaker immediately took off to get lost once more among the steel walls.
It was impressive how even with his face fully covered by a stupid fishbowl, Riftmaker could read the unbridled rage.
He heard the hero say “Give me a moment” out loud and realized that something must’ve happened in the fight back there. Well, time to get ready for him to pull out the stops here. Perfect. If Riftmaker could tire him out, then maybe he might get him down to a point where those eight shots from his-
The container next to him lifted upwards. Then another. And another. And then Riftmaker realized he was beginning to float. He kicked on his jets and intended to fly away as fast as he could until he realized everything around him had drifted away from him, leaving him dead center in Orbit’s gaze. He turned to face the hero who had both arms held out at his side, hands clawed upwards, the classic pose of just about anyone using The Big Area of Effect Power, and he realized he was screwed.
“Never got your name,” Orbit remarked, his tone alarmingly casual.
Alex took a deep breath, “It’s Riftmaker.”
“Right, Riftmaker. I’m gonna ask you one question, and I really need you to be honest with me. I saw you use a hardlight shield earlier. Can you keep that up for a few seconds?”
Aw fuck…
“Yeah…” he sighed, his gaze going over to the manual controls for the shield.
“Good,” Orbit raised both arms and slammed his hands together.
Everything went flying.
---------------------------------
Val had finished another couple runs before realizing she should probably be assisting Riftmaker or Terrorantula. She had made good time clearing the shelves while everyone was busy.
She zoomed out past the shelves she’d mostly finished looting only to be greeted with the horrific vision of her teammate being battered around by dozens of truck sized steel boxes and all of the loading equipment which had been there, all puppeted by what looked to be hundreds of orbs of violet light. Riftmaker himself was surrounded by a globe of what looked like cloudy golden glass barely keeping him from being splattered by the barrage.
Orbit was floating too high off the ground for her to attempt anything more than perhaps a running leap at him, and even then she did not think she would be able to do much in midair other than maybe grab onto his legs. Not really enough to stage a rescue and no doubt would end with her tossed around like a doll in the hands of a child throwing a tantrum.
A clinical part of her, feeling detached from the scene she was witnessing, noted which containers were the ones they had been trying to rob. She had removed a few of their contents from those, but not all, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the contents were secure even as their outer storage was currently slamming into her conspirator.
After a few more bashes, the hovering arrangement of freight containers began to sag in the air and Orbit gently lowered them to the ground. It would appear he was beginning to tire from this grand display. Val readied herself to race forward, seeing the orb of golden light still there and wondering if she could rescue Riftmaker in time. Orbit didn’t give her the chance, throwing his arm forward and sending one last box at the villain with a horrible screech as it dragged along the floor. The open end greedily ate the shielded villain like a horrible wyrm devouring its prey in one bite.
With clear effort, Orbit punched his hand upwards and the shipping container leapt from the floor and spun in the air before crashing back to the ground. Val stood there stunned, unable to look away. She wondered if she’d just witnessed her teammate’s death.
Mercifully, she saw two beams of light pierce from the belly of the container and quickly carve a path out of it. Flickering golden light poured out of the new hole, and out stumbled Riftmaker, falling to his hands and knees.
“This time, stay down,” Orbit commanded as he began to float away, watching the villain for any sudden moves. When the dome of light around Riftmaker flickered and died, he seemed satisfied and flew towards the shelves, haggard but ready for another fight.
Val took this opportunity to race over towards her downed companion. The man was breathing heavily and covered in viscous blue goo which was splattered all over the interior of the hole he crawled from. She recognized the still intact barrels as one of their targets and winced. It looked as though there were still plenty left but more than a couple had ruptured when thrown against the walls and the villain’s shield. She shook her thoughts from calculating her expected payday to administer what aid she could.
“You appear injured,” she informed him. “I believe it would be best to use the ripcord.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just… the suit needs time to recharge.”
“We do not have it,” Val pointed out, looking as Orbit, even as tired as he’d seemed, was on track to upset the delicate balance of the fight in that direction. “We must take what we have gathered and leave.”
“No, I-” he made to stand only to slip on gel at his feet. “Godsdammit, what the fuck is this?!”
“Cryoterraga,” she noted. “It is one of our targets here. I believe it was to be used for your suit.”
“My suit?” he scooped a handful of it up and watched it drip through his fingers. Not a good reaction. He could be concussed. She should get his helmet off and check.
“Celestial,” she heard him ask over the radio. “You said you didn’t have ‘the good stuff’ for my gel layer, right? What’s the name of the stuff we wanted?”
“Are you seriously fucking asking that right now?” Val heard the scientist shout back on the channel. “I just saw what happened over the feed. You guys need to-”
“Answer me!” he growled, silencing her immediately.
“It’s cryoterraga… Look-”
Riftmaker stood and the scientist went quiet.
“Val, I need your help. Grab your cart,” he hissed as he rolled his shoulders. “I think I’ve got one last idea on how to salvage this shitshow.”
She looked at his expressionless mask as its gaze seemed fixed on the heroes in the distance who were currently seconds away from overwhelming their allies and a chill ran down her spine as she felt his malice.
1. This is false. There has been verified evidence of the difference between magic and other superpowers. Magic pulls from a separate force which only the resonant can tap into and store within their bodies. Arcane rituals can affect these energies allowing non-mages to practice some spells, often with magical catalysts, but true magic aptitude depends on interacting with this energy. Cosmic power is a grouping of effects which result from odd cosmic phenomena including but not limited to deepspace cosmic radiation. Based on contact with alien magic users, they utilize the same arcane energies as mortal mages of this planet, demonstrablely different from the energies and radiations which induce cosmic powers.
2. More likely it was during the attempted ploy by Garish Ghast when the specter used the entirety of his former family’s wealth to pay off villains around Victory while he attempted to bind himself to Amberheart Tower and spread his haunting curse to all of the heroes of the city. Both incidents saw the Starlight Squad separated from one another but records indicate that Turnaround was amongst the villains fought by the team Reflecta was part of at the time.
