Amaranthine

Nick didn’t so much park Honey as much as he whipped her ass around to take a Bone Titan out at the legs. Bookkeeper and TuTulang hadn’t given ARMOR any grace period to set up much of a battle order, and Nick shot himself out of the window to help them keep the small beachhead they did have against the tide of bone.

A titanic hand with fingers made of spines clutched at him as he leapt, reminding him that taking a giant skeleton’s legs out was more inconvenience than KO. Dipping a tentacle into his bandolier, he walked a flash of plasma over the things torso and head, reducing it and the appendage to ash.

“Babe!” Gwyn scolded as she flew out of Honey’s back hatch on a cloud of ‘bots. “Slow your roll on the rings! This is gonna be more marathon than sprint.”

ALL DEPENDS ON CAIT AND KENNEDY RIGHT?

THEY COULD ALREADY BE FIGHTING BOOKKEEPER

A spinning glaive materialized out of Gwyn’s cloud, reaping an area clear around them.

“Love the optimism, but you know its misplaced. C’mon, lets fight over to the mechs. I’ll take the biggun’s, you go blender mode, turn these lil’ shits into bone meal.”

ROGER ROGER!

Gwyn’s mech suit formed around her, one arm immediately morphing into a cannon that started taking chunks out of Titans. For his part, Nick found that bone turned to dust pretty damn fast when you hit with the forces he could bring to bear, and they made good time towards the core of the ARMOR forces.

Nick cleared the ground as Gwyn entered melee with a particularly chonky Titan. It didn’t look like it would last much longer than any of the others until a thin, bright beam lanced through Gwyn’s suit, severing it at the waist. The legs dissolved back into ‘bots as they fell away and the torso began to lose integrity.

Whatever Nick had instead of blood ran cold before he realized the damage had taken place below where Gwyn took up residence inside the suit, but only just. His girlfriend was intact, but very upset.

“Goddammit!” she shrieked, directing a lance of bots up to block the grasping claw of the Titan she was now fighting on much less even footing. “That was Fingerguns wasn’t it? This fuckingbastard!”

The lance shattered, its constituent pieces forming a whirling storm to rush up the Titan’s arm, shredding it as it went. The monster burst under the force of a railgun shot before they could finish, D-VI-L visible right behind it.

“Leave the mech stuff to the professionals, yeah?” Captain Schwinn’s voice, mocking and cold, blasted from her suits PA. “That Character is doing a fucking number on us though. We need to sally out and eliminate them or our armored units are toast. Not everyone can dance like me.”

As if on cue, she dropped a shoulder plate to redirect a lancing beam off the reflective plating to spear through a Titan’s skull.

WHERE’S BULLRUSH?

“Just look for the skellies learning how to fly.”

It only took Nick a second to realize what she meant, as a batch of battered and broken skeletons tumbled into the air, light glinting off the tip of bronze-clad bull horns below them.

“I get what you’re thinking,” agreed Gwyn, “Lets go.”

Here at the real melee, there were Characters scattered in among the skeletal horde. They prioritized these as they went, especially those that looked tough. An assault rifle might not kill some of them, but a nano-lance or hardened tentacle tip were a lot harder to stop than a bullet, PlazLoaded or no.

HOW FAST DO YOU THINK HE CAN RESURRECT THESE?

“No idea, we haven’t had any reports of fighting the same guy twice in a single fight yet, so there’s gotta be some kinda cooldown. Let’s hope whatever it is, its longer than it takes Cait to get to him.”

The duo burst through a wall of crawling bone into the trail of destruction Bullrush had left in his wake. He performed his namesake essentially non-stop, the resistance of mundane bone doing nothing to impede his immense strength and momentum. His new arm gleamed black, and he maneuvered it surprisingly skillfully to intercept incoming projectiles, allowing him to continue taking his heavy toll on the rank-and-file of the enemy.

“Hey! Claudio!” Gwyn called, flying up behind him and hanging off his shoulder. “I’ll give you an upgrade in return for a ride.”

In answer, Bullrush just let out a bellow full of rage, and more sadness than Nick expected to hear. Sounded like he knew why they needed that OnyxIron arm. He turned towards the direction FingerGuns’ beams had been coming from, and charged.

As he ran, Gwyn’s cloud flowed over him, forming silver rivulets over his back that crawled down towards his arm. When they met the metal, they began to take on its characteristic color, then gathering over his forearm before swelling and expanding into a massive greatshield, complete with cowcatcher to assist in plowing through the chaff. Just as it solidified, a bright beam slammed into it, stopping cold.

“Sorry, old friend,” Nick heard Claudio mutter under his breath, voice carrying more sadness than rage. Nick swung up to affix himself behind the shield, whipping his tentacles out to form a whirling field of death around the advancing trio. Gwyn stayed covered behind Bullrush, playing rearguard, taking down any threats that thought they could get a better angle of attack from the back.

FEELS LIKE IF WE JUST KEPT THIS UP WE COULD WIN THIS FIGHT ON OUR OWN!

Bullrush brayed in agreement, but Nick could tell he was already starting to feel the thing that belied Nick’s optimism: exhaustion. The enemy was effectively endless, and none of them were Cait. Unless they could stop their production, a war of attrition would absolutely not fall their way. Best they could do was minimize casualties until the strike force succeeded.

Nick scanned forward with his Altered sense, looking for the characteristic aggressive red of Fingerguns’ powers, knowing it would be tainted with the parchment yellow of the Bookkeepers power. Finally, he found it. Hissing he directed Bullrush’s charge, and the Minotaur roared as he realigned himself.

Too late, Nick clocked an aura he didn’t recognize stepping in front of them. Dense, dark brown like packed earth, with that sickly yellow hue. Bullrush, as was his want, slammed right into the newcomer. Unlike every impact previous however, this one stopped him dead.

Well, actually, that would have been better. Something as heavy as Bullrush, moving as fast as Bullrush, doesn’t just stop. Instead, as they hit the figure, Nick was barely able to avoid being crushed between Bullrush and his shield as he crumpled against it. His momentum kept carrying him forward, flipping him up and over the immovable man, depositing the bull in a groaning heap on the other side.

Gwyn had detached as things got hairy, floating now above the crash.

“B-man! I’m gonna get Fingerguns or we are all the way fucked! Hold on!” she shot forward, directing clouds of nanobots to intercept beams as she flew, her swarm depleting dangerously quickly.

Nick got his bearings, examining the human roadblock that had caused the tentacle-taurus pileup. For a moment, his gut, or whatever passed for one, dropped as he thought the skeletons were getting superpowers of their own. Then he realized that, though skeletally thin, the man standing before him was fleshed, although so sparsely as to make him wonder how he'd ever been alive.

“It is so gratifying when someone useful dies,” the Bookkeeper said through the man’s mouth. As always, his tone was aggravatingly conversational. “He went by Masshole, by choice, if you can believe it. Beat your friend though! The one intent on defiling my Granddaughter, before dear Kennedy herself killed him. I daresay you won’t have the same luck.”

His tight smile actually looked apologetic, which caused enough cognitive disonnance in Nick it was like he’d thrown a stun grenade.

UHHH

FUCK YOU!

Nick let loose with a blastring, and a pillar of blue-white energy slammed directly into the Character’s chest. Instead of politely disintegrating, the man sighed, looking down at his naked body.

“Well, can’t fault you for trying, I suppose.”

The man burst into action, the ground cracking under his feet as he broke into a sprint. Nick had a good enough understanding of physics to know that the momentum he was carrying would do unfortunate things to his squishy body, and switched tactics. Shooting out a web of tentacles, he pulled himself in all directions through the horde of skeletal fighters, leading the man to do no damage to Nick, and plenty to his own army. Skeletons exploded into clouds of dust at the slightest brush from Masshole, his enormous kinetic energy far too much for dry bone.

That said, Nick was having zero luck actually taking the guy down. Or even hurting him. Even his nanotipped tentacles were unable to pierce his skin, and the repeated shock of hitting his enemy so hard with no effect was wearing on his body.

“Hey!” said a voice in his head. It took him a second to realize it was Lira over comms, and not the Reaper making an early entrance. “This asshole again huh—"

MASSHOLE

“Lol, right, this fucking guy. Compression is key! Keep hitting his head in the same place until he looks like he’s a bad children’s drawing and his brain comes out his eyes. Pinpoint accuracy mon frère!”

I CAN DO PINPOINT

“I know! Now toodles, got more asses to save using the sum of all human knowledge!”

Gotta talk to Gwyn about the surveillance state she’s got going on, IDK how the fuck else Lira knew I was in trouble.

Nick started whipping blows towards the mans temples, drawing a groan of frustration. Slowly, but surely, his head began to deform.

THIS GUY BEAT CAIT?

“Yes, well, I’m seeing now that it was a better matchup,” Bookkeeper admitted. His eves bulged out of his head, and had begun to seep blood as his head looked more and more like a peanut. Still, he gave a soft smile. “Can’t win every battle, can only win the war!”

Two tentacles met either side of his skull, and those eyes finally popped out, followed by a brain sludge that quickly turned to paper with the rest of him. Immediately, Nick began to scan for Gwyn and Fingerguns. He hadn’t liked the sound of that last statement.

They were out of his range, but continuous bright beams of lethal energy spearing through the sky were difficult to miss in his Altered sense. As he approached, swinging through the army, the scene began to form in his senses.

Mommy Long Legs darted about, her webs mucking up swaths of Gwyn’s bots. Attaché sucked sections of her swarm into his namesake case, storing them away wherever his weird Altered ability put them. Gwyn herself dueled with Nike, the woman’s bone spear pressing his girlfriend hard, even with all her tricks.

Fuck me, that’s half the Guardians we’ve lost since this shit started!

Nick hissed as a blazing beam pierced a clean hole through one of his tentacles, slicing it off when he tried to recoil.

“Knew Clyde here would pull some of you on a suicide run!” Fingergun’s voice carried over the fray, corrupted by the too-familiar intonation of The Bookkeeper. “Thought a few more of your old friends could help make sure the ‘suicide’ part really stick.”

This. Fucking. Bastard.

Nick had noticed that some emotions had dulled since his change. He’d never been a particularly wrathful person, but despite everything he’d been through these past months, he realized he couldn’t even remember ever getting angry. Blooddrunk, sure, but that was different, almost a kind of destructive high.

Now, whatever dam had been keeping that anger back burst, and it filled him to the brim and overflowed.

He hadn’t known this body could roar. Never had a reason to. So when the resonant blast of his fury made the very air itself vibrate, Nick was almlst as shocked as the rest of the combatants, Gwyn included, who all stopped to look his way, primal fear written on their faces.

Good.

He didn’t know where the air came from, to keep the howl going, but it was unending. And in an instant, The Bookkeeper learned that there was a difference between being a Guardian, and being BREAST MAN.

Slingshotting through a wandering Titan’s legs, Nike’s head was speared onto his tentacle before the fight even had a chance to restart. As it fluttered to paper, he rode the momentum towards Attaché. The man held up his case, opening it towards him like a priest would brandish a crucifix. Nick felt it sucking him in, but it only pulled the Character’s death towards him faster.

His tentacles caught the sides of the case, ripping it apart with inexorable strength. The fear in those eyes tasted much better than they did themselves, as they burst to paper when his maw closed around Attaché’s head.

Digging his tentacles in the ground to arrest his momentum, he performed a skidding turn midair, spiking more tentacles into the dirt to build his speed back up like a nightmare spider as he focused on Mommy Long Legs. He still hadn’t stopped howling.

The webs she shot at him were pointless. He had tentacles to spare, and they shredded the traps before they slowed him down for an instant. Reaching her, three tentacles grabbed a sharp leg each, liberating them from her torso. One, he flung, lodging it in Fingergun’s sternum. The other two found their way into Mommy’s eyes. Again, he drank the fear in her scream before she too fell into pages.

Finally letting his howl fade, he turned towards Gwyn.

And for the first time, in scent, in sight, in demeanor, he found fear.