Shmd

Heya, a new chapter!

Where the serious business begin!

Happy reading,

With love, Sh'.

Chapter 82 : Dawn of a new era (The bigger they are)

Unmentioned street, East Bronx, Manhattan, New York, 16:12

We land, hard, on the crater's edge, the already battered asphalt and cement groaning under us.

A few shocked gasps are heard.

We look over our shoulder, our eyes landing on a startled middle-age woman of african descent, slightly disheveled and doing her best impression of a wide-eyed deer caught in headlight, her car keys still in her hand.

“You’d better run,” We calmly say, “We’re handling this.”

We are apparently successful at conveying the calm confidence we feel at this moment because she directs at us a shaky nod before starting to hightail in the opposite direction.

That, or we scared her shitless.

Our attention snaps back toward the crater, from which war cries kept rising.

Our eyes land on what we can only describe as a giant, hairy bare chested monkey, almost foaming at the mouth and eyes wild. We consider ourselves blessed since he has apparently kept some modicum of decency and a pair of pants.

Under him, we can see that he is only the prelude of what is to come, a mass of bodies writing and attempting to follow the king kong ersatz in his climb.

<“No fliers at first glance.”> We communicate on the mindspace, <“You can keep evacuating for now, we’ll keep them busy.”>

A chorus of assent and a groan answer us mentally.

We start to hover once more, both of our touch-TK mingling with each other in a white and purple aura, arbitrarily aiming for something close to a tenth of our collective potential for now.

Such a shame that we can’t just pummel back the monkeyman from where he came, that would solve a lot of problems in a record time.

The target of our ire heaves, curses and keeps pummeling the crater’s wall to create himself some grips as he keeps raising, shrugging off concrete bits and dust off his shoulder with savage grunts.

Those on his tails apparently aren’t fairing any better.

Our train of thought is interrupted by a jet of scaldingly hot flame coming from the crater that we dodge with a scowl.

Iris is, understandably, not amused and neither do I.

<“Long range and shooter confirmed.”> We say for the other’s benefits as we start to take evasive maneuvers to escape another gust of pseudo-napalm, a rafale of projectiles that strongly looks like quills, some seeds of all things and a slew of blue-light laser that should belong to the Sinister’s clone, <“How is it going?”>

<“Moved a few cars that impaired the traffic with Raptor, we’re on our way.”> Flash answer immediately.

<“I’m done and coming through!”> Cindy says in turn, both her relief and exitation palpable.

<“I’ll be good once I’ve finished with an old lady.”> Gwen answers more quietly.

<“You’ll cordon the street behind Tank once he’s here, Silk.”> We clip, still doing acrobatics above the hornet nest, <“Weaver, you’ll do the same for your side once you’re here.”>

We pay no heed to the affirmative answers, our eyes still locked on the hulking form of the bare chested monstrosity who’s only just reaching ground level while dodging the sustained firepower from down under.

Under us, the monkeyman rises on his knees and howls in victory, biting his chest with his two barrel sized hand.

That’s approximately all the success he has on this day since we barrel down on him the next second.

A good thirty running, or is it flying, yards of acceleration and our knees connect under his chin like a thunderclap.

The hulking form rises a good five feet in the air under the strength of the impact and starts to tumble back down the crater.

We cannot allow that.

In a flash, we are behind him, our two feets connecting in the middle of his back.

He is sent sprawling forward, tumbling for a few yards until he ends up face first in a car’s front.

The giant attempts to rise himself once more, metallic groan of the very defeated means of locomotion following his motion, until he flaps back down with a gargle, apparently down for the count.

We mentally reassess the touch-TK output at ten percent of our maximum.

The display, partially unseen by the other enraged, doesn’t seem to calm their telepathically induced madness.

Such a shame we cannot do anything about that without close contact, really.

The frantic climb of the other clones doesn’t relent and their forms start to become visible.

Uh.

I don’t seem to recognize any of those.

Our eyes are drawn in particular towards the pyrokinetic, a caucasian male whose skin is crisscrossed with red hot fiery veins, a woman with greenish skin and leaves in her hair and another man, from mexican descent at a first glance, whose back is riddled with foot long quills.

The three of them and all the other ‘patients’ under the tender care of Sinister wore loose hospital gowns. In the background, his clones, complete with white skin and all, are clad in black skin-tight pseudo-tac ware.

A loud ‘thud’ distracts us from our continuous evasive maneuvers, our eyes landing back on Flash armored form, having done a very good crouch landing on the crater’s edge and whose eyes are now locked onto today’s offenders.

Above him, Jessica rises once more, already taking aim with her slightly overpowered tranq-gun.

Of course, the addition of two new targets make it so we suddenly have way less shots to evade.

<“Lethal force authorized with Sinister’s clones.”> We modify our previous orders, <“They have no real value in the grand scheme of things and we rather not have cloning tech spread worldwide.”>

That’s approximately the moment Cindy choses to throw herself in the crater, whooping all along, in the middle of the aforementioned clones.

We groan aloud.

***

Decommissioned underground railroad, East Bronx, Manhattan, New York, 16:15, in Cindy Moon’s mind

<“Roger!”> Cindy mentally answered, barrelling down the newly created well.

Doing abstraction of all other potential counter-orders, the spider girl threw another line of silk on the wall, using it to start to spin on herself as she plunged head first.

This was her moment, finally, and she wouldn’t let anyone spoil it.

Best thing was that she didn’t even have to restrain herself!

In her world of slow motion she started taking count of the still ascending black clad clones.

It would be definitely less fun if they weren’t with her when she landed, though.

Cindy started to throw lines after lines after lines of silk, tying one with each of the clones her eyes landed on during her descent.

As she drew near the well’s end, she threw two more to slow down her descent.

A sudden feeling of alarm made her make a jerking motion to the right, a laser shot narrowly missing her.

The next thing she knew, she was in the underground tunnel, pulling on her last thrown silk lines while crossing her arms in front of her, brutally interrupting her fall at the same time as she pulled on the climbing clones.

Snapping her head up, she barely acknowledged the mad glint, pulsing veins and greeted teeth of the twenty or so pale white skinned mens in front of her before she was in their midst after a mighty leap.

Their long range advantage now properly negated, she started to weave all of her motions, dancing the lethal waltz she had so painstakingly learned under Aria’s mentorship.

Cindy’s knees were in the face of her first target with a sickening crunch before she knew it and she had to dodge a shot butt in the next motion.

The rest was a blur, only marginally interrupted by the sound of multiple bodies hitting the grounds under the well.

Cindy just moved.

She dodged punch, elbows, kicks and a few very perilous shot forewarned by her magic, weaving between bodies as they fell, her own hands and legs finding weak points on the surprisingly soft and weak bodies, her fingers flicking various silk lines and balls at the farthest targets to either pull them in or incapacitate them long range.

Cindy danced.

She danced a very lethal and exhilarating dance among her foes, zipping around, caterwauling and somersaulting, finally at ease in the rush of battle after months of playing nice.

When she finally took a hit, another butt shot ironically, to the back of her head because she was dealing with five mooks at the same time, she rolled with the motion, falling in a roll that ended with her punching the clone whose legs she went through in the balls.

He fell, emitting a gargling cry soon silenced by a lightning fast kick on the back of the head, and the dance resumed.

She danced, each punch a quaver, each evaded shot making the tempo, each quick landed a crescendo to the blood running in her veins as her heart thumped so very loudly in her torso.

Only now, now that she was in the thick of battle, Cindy felt truly alive.

And so, soon, too soon, she was the only thing left moving in the poorly lit tunnel, the sole light present the one from the well.

Cindy breathed loudly, heavily, her eyes roaming on her handywork and a manic grin etched on her face.

She took a second to center her thoughts, the part of her mind connected to the mindspace finally acknowledging it once more.

<“I’m good down there.”> She mentally communicated, <“Situation has been dealt with.”>

Barely an instant later, a large ‘boom’ resounded from up the well’s shaft.

<“Very well.”> Aria, no, Aria and Iris merged, answered, <“We'll clean the place once we’re done up here. Stay where you are just in case.”>

Cindy scowled.

<“I can still fight!”> She argued.

<“We need someone down there in case someone comes looking,”> The gelstat answered, her words clipped, <“This way, you’ll have time to reflect about the fact that you were so into it that you ceased to communicate.”>

Cindy swore under her breath and started to pace around, her ephemeral joy already forgotten.

It wasn’t really her fault, after all.

Right?

She, no, they are just motherhening.

There’s nothing wrong with me.

Shmd

Writing battle scenes against multiple enemies all sharing the same kit is freaking tedious, so there is a very big chance that the narration I used with Cindy's part against Sinister's clone will return in a similar form when the team is against an army or something like that.

Good news is that tomorrow scenes are a lot more invested and descriptive.