Capítulo 625: 64
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
With Dragon in the middle, telling them where to go, they immediately headed for the first spot. Taylor's clones were everywhere, dealing with the small fries and most of the big ones, while the main one was walking next to her friend, maintaining the barrier around them, and just in case she had to protect the explosives.
It wasn't like she was afraid that Tess would get hurt, because that was ridiculous. Instead, she was more worried about one stray shot igniting the stack of Tinker explosives. She had a feeling she would survive, but she wasn't sure.
Armsmaster was running them on their left side, cutting down abominations with frightening efficiency, while also maintaining steady communication with Dragon about the readings they got.
Taylor knew the man was competent, but this something else…
Cardea and Nero were next to them, protected by the barrier, and while Nero occasionally threw a few grenades at a big congregation of monsters (while laughing maniacally), Cardea looked like she wished she was far from the city.
Narwhal flew behind them, making sure nothing sneaked up on them, thankfully made easier by Dragon's scanners or her senses picking up the invisible murder cats. Otherwise, the purple giant looked like a blender with her force fields circling around her at increasing speeds while dicing any monster that stupid enough to get close to her. Which were most of them…
Alexandria was at the front, slamming into every monster horde that tried to stop their advance with reckless abandon, born from the knowledge that nothing could hurt her. And if Taylor saw it correctly, massively enjoying swinging her new sword around.
It took them a few minutes to reach the first spot, due to it being close to the portal they used as an entrance to this twisted wonderland.
"Okay, everybody!" said Dragon over their communication channel. They had to stop simply talking because the cacophony caused by the monsters suppressed everything. "We reached the Alpha point. Prepare for defending. Nero, Armsmaster come and help me set it up."
Taylor simply enlarged the lightning barrier covering them, while the three Tinker began removing something from the backpack Dragon was carrying. Alexandria also came back, and if the monsters hadn't flaked away, she expected blood and viscera would cover the older woman while she would also be sporting a bloodthirsty smile. So instead, she had to content herself with the view of her childhood hero sporting a bloodthirsty smile while swinging a giant sword around happily.
The Brute stopped just outside of the barrier, stabbing the sword into the ground.
"Need help, Dragon?"
Dragon looked up from a small box that they were fiddling with. "I would prefer if we could hide it underground. But I didn't bring…"
An enthusiastic Narwhal interrupted her. "Allow me, Dragon!" And Taylor watched with awe as several force fields fused in the air, creating a functioning drill. "Where?"
Dragon silently pointed at a spot, and the purple woman immediately began removing a copious amount of dirt.
Taylor was about to compliment the heroine when she sensed several incoming hordes. "Incoming!" she exclaimed, then turned towards Alexandria. "You take the left, I will go right."
Alexandria just nodded, wrenched the sword out of the ground, and headed for the left part of the incoming horde. It seemed Nilbog took the fact they stopped as an opportunity to amass more monsters. She could see the hulking monstrosities in the same number that she saw the small goblins outside.
Not that it mattered.
She created another batch of clones and sent them to exterminate the vermin, while several of them spread around the area, to make sure the late Goblin King didn't try something sneaky.
After a few minutes of pure carnage, Dragon exclaimed once again. "We are done. Let's head to Beta!"
And as Taylor looked at the scene, she saw perfectly undisturbed looking soil, with no evidence of anything buried there.
"How deep did you set it?" she asked.
"Around ten feet," answered the Tinker.
"Cool! I'm ready!" she said, while once again constricting the barrier down to travel size. Everybody nodded in agreement, while Alexandria simply took off in the desired direction.
"She is a little enthusiastic," said Dragon with a chuckle.
Alexandria was immensely enjoying herself. As Alexandria or even as Chief Director, she didn't get a lot of chances to express her true feelings or even to participate in some kind of worthwhile stress relief exercise due to her power. But here, in this cursed city, with literal armies of monsters trying to kill her and her teammates, she could do to them whatever she wanted.
So as they went through the first four checkpoints she happily spent her time annihilating one enemy after another, each of the swings of her new weapon (that she was totally going to keep) imbued with her feelings towards certain someone or something.
It was beyond cathartic…
They were at the fifth, Epsilon, point when Nilbog decided to switch up his modus operandi. Instead of hordes of monsters, they got nothing. Warily looking around, she called out to Lux, knowing that the girl had some kind of sensor power.
"Lux, any idea what's coming?"
The girl shook her head, but Alexandria could see she was concentrating on something.
"It seems… either a lot more monsters or something enormous. The life signs are all a jumbled mess," said Lux, and she could hear the frown in her voice. She shelved the fact that the young parahuman could sense life signs for later, though. Because if her suspicion was correct, and Lux and Serenity were the same people, that would be one more data point helping Contessa model her.
"From where?"
"From the center, I think."
She turned towards the biggest meat sack in the city, but before she could even start looking for the incoming enemy, a horrendous and insanely loud roar rent the air. And with it, the enemy they were looking for emerged from behind the pulsating meat sack that contained the body of the biotinker.
It was monstrous, easily twice the size of the Leviathan, and it looked like a giant green dragon, with shiny scales, pustules, cancerous growth all over its body. It flapped its wings a few times, hovering just under the top of the shield enveloping the city, then with surprising speed flew towards them.
"Holy hell!" exclaimed Nero in surprise.
The rest of them also expressed their surprise, but even so, they didn't stop what they were doing. Narwhal's drill even sped up, throwing dirt everywhere.
Alexandria glanced at the approaching beast, then at Lux Arcana. "You distract; I slay?"
The young woman nodded in agreement before answering with a small laugh in her voice. "If this doesn't flake away, I want a fang for a souvenir."
Alexandria couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Deal!" Then she turned towards the rest of the team. "Under the barrier, all of you, you don't have the same defenses as Lux or me. Narwhal reinforce the barrier; we don't know what it is capable of!"
They nodded, and as soon as the extra barrier went up, courtesy of Narwhal, the dragon announced its arrival by bathing the ground where they stood with pure green plasma. She hid her face behind the sword while the plasma washed over her and the barrier behind her.
"Everybody alright?"
"A little hot, but nobody is hurt," answered Dragon matter-of-factly. "Narwhal, Lux, please open a slot on the barriers. I want to see what my gun can do against something like that."
Alexandria snorted hearing that, then spun the sword in her hand before setting in the stance that she had learned long ago when she still believed there was at least one weapon that could take her strength.
"Ready, Lux?"
"On your mark, Alexandria," replied the lightning wielder, each of her clones clad in yellow lightning and wielding numerous weapons made of lightning.
The dragon touched down with a resounding thud and another roar. She could smell the rot blasting from its mouth.
"Go!"
As soon as the word left her mouth, Lux's clones blasted off, each of them heading towards the Dragon from a different direction. The clones in the air began blasting it with the now-familiar lightning spears, aiming for its eyes. She watched as the dragon began snapping its jaws at the clones flying around it, as if they were annoying insects, while once in a while it blasted them with its highly energetic plasma breath.
A few times, extremely precise shots of Dragon's hit the body at a supposedly weak spot, but the construct simply ignored the burning holes.
"I don't think it feels pain, Alexandria, so just go for the brain as always," stated the AI calmly.
She didn't answer, but she braced herself, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike while wondering what the people outside watching this were thinking. Probably freaking out about a new Endbringer…
Alexandria watched as ten clones grabbed the legs and tail of the beast, preventing it from moving, while several others were holding the wings taut, preventing it from simply flying away. The dragon roared, probably in frustration, and that's when she pounced.
She blasted off, throwing gravel and dust everywhere while swinging her new favorite weapon in an arc, planning on separating the dragon's head on its extended neck from the rest of the body.
In a blink of an eye, she was there swinging the sword, the scales on the dragon's body providing exactly zero resistance. The sword cut through the neck instantly, silencing the beast mid-roar. There was a tense moment, then the head separated from the neck and began falling to the ground. However, before it could reach it, it began flaking away, much faster than the other monsters.
She hovered there a little, basking in the fact that she was as of this moment a true Dragon killer, then flew back towards her teammates.
Armsmaster nodded towards her with respect, so did Narwhal and Lux, while Dragon and Nero spoke at the same time.
"Excellent timing, Alexandria."
"That was sooo epic!"
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
Cardea, or Jenny to her friends, wondered for the hundredth time today about what the fuck she was doing.
Watching the clearly insane Americans go annihilate monsters, wave after wave as if it was an everyday occurrence, was seriously disturbing.
She was seriously thankful for Lux creating the barrier, allowing her to not take part in the carnage.
She would leave that to them, and when they were finished, she would take the first teleporter home and drown herself in a metric ton of ice cream, to try to forget this ever happened.
When the gigantic beast of the dragon emerged, she was ready to cry. Why her? What did she do to deserve this? She was just a simple healer who could do shields…
Cardea didn't even have time to finish her lamentation before they were bathed in pure plasma (according to a surprisingly calm Dragon). The moment the deadly material cleared away, she could see Lux throwing her clones with reckless abandon at the monstrous beast, while the famous Alexandria stood there, waiting for something.
Turns out that something was beheading the giant monster with one swing of her enormous sword.
As she watched the heroes congratulate each other, and discuss the appearance of the dragon, she knew one thing.
She wanted to go home…
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
By the next spot, a new monster was waiting for them. This time it was a giant version of the hulkers. Taylor took care of this one, simply firing a super-fast lightning lance through the monster's brain. It simply fell over, then flaked away, while Nilbog swarmed them with the usual waves of enemies.
The Tinkers simply buried the explosive. Then they headed for the next spot while casually clearing out the monsters.
Where they were met with another gigantic monster, this time of the dog variety. This one was taken out by Nero, who threw something at it. None of them could tell what the probable explosive did, because what they saw hurt their head for a second, then the gigantic dog was gone.
The excited bomb Tinker simply nodded as if everything went as she expected, then began writing something in a pocketbook. Taylor decided her sanity was much safer if she didn't ask any questions. The others agreed with her, though she suspected Alexandria really wanted to know what it was.
The next few spots went the same way. They arrived; a gigantic beast showed up with or without an assortment of smaller ones; one of them took it out; then they proceeded to the next one.
And soon they reached Kappa point, the tenth area where they would bury a bomb…
Date
2011 February 23rd - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
Amy looked around the chaotic medical hall, and couldn't help but feel disappointed. She could be out there, fighting cool monsters. Instead, she had to be here dealing with arrogant parahumans, or clueless soldiers.
Dealing with the necrotic substance used by abominations was interesting at first, but by the fifth person contaminated by it, it became a chore, just like everything back in Brockton Bay. Sadly, the patients kept coming in great enough numbers that she had no time to rest. In the end, she had to imitate Lux and create her own clones, to deal with the influx of wounded.
Though she could proudly say that nobody died on her watch.
Most of the patients were from the army, which was understandable as they had the least amount of parahumans assigned to them. The next biggest group was the arrogant parahumans, who thought they were invincible. Though for some reason, as soon as she got to them, they quieted down even if they were in the middle of an argument with somebody.
She appreciated it because there was nothing fun in knocking them out…
The least amount of wounded, to nobody's surprise, came from Legend's group. Apparently, competence wasn't shared within the Triumvirate, because Eidolon's side suffered much more.
Vicky was once again either 'resting' on a crate or flirting with the handsome doctors, nurses, or parahumans, though at least she always did it near her…
Which was good because she was there if needed, and bad because Amy had to witness it…
She was broken out of her thoughts by a yell from one of the computer stations.
"Holy fuck! Nilbog created some kind of dragon Endbringer!"
There was a moment of silence, everybody processing the news, and Amy could see panic blossom behind several eyes, however, before chaos could take root, the person at the station yelled out again.
"Oh, never mind! It's dead…"
It was fascinating to watch an entire building sigh at the same time in relief…
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