Amaranthine

Minutes earlier

After Fingerguns fell, there hadn’t been much Bookkeeper’s army could throw at Nick that could phase him or Gwyn. Nick tried his damnedest to forget the expression Gwyn had worn after that fight, and the girl herself refused to acknowledge it. BREASTMAN and Nano-Smith cut through the marching skeletons and hapless Characters like a reaping scythe, and that was before the bone warriors all fell to the ground, lifeless once more.

“Looks like Cait and Kennedy are doing something,” Gwyn observed, sending out pinpoint lances of nanobots to spear a few, now completely exposed, Characters.

NEVER ANY DOUBT, Nick fopped over comms, realizing it was true. There were probably plenty of ARMOR soldiers wondering if this fight was futile, but Nick had never questioned for a second that his friends would kick ass exactly as planned.

DIDN’T GET THE BOOKFUCKER THOUGH, he observed, fencing with a familiar blade-bodied Altered before Gwyn’s nanobots could eat away at its metal.

“Still though, a kill on TuTulang? Noooot bad!” Gwyn noted, floating over to take a breather as their immediate area was cleared. “Whatcha think? Team effort on that one or an Amaranthine solo act?”

BIMBO BEATS BONE, Nick answered, extending a few tentacles out to wrap up Gwyn, who lifted up his core for a kiss.

“Mmmmm…” Gwyn purred into his tongue, pulling away. “Think you could fuck me while killing bitches? Be kinda—”

NO! YOU PSYCHOPATH!

“Alriiiiggghhhhht,” Gwyn groaned, slapping at him with a grin that did nothing to confirm she’d been joking, “God forbid a girl try to spice things up.”

AND IM THE ONE IN THERAPY

Gwyn giggled, gave him a smooch on the bill, and they were off continuing the cleanup.

Time blurred, until a Character burst into pages just before Nick could kill it himself. Taking stock, every enemy he could see had followed suit. The rush of victory rose within him, but close on its heels was something much, much darker. Hungrier.

The center of the city glowed golden, as spheres of light began to rise from the scattered pages and bone. It didn’t seem like anyone else could see them, which was good, because they were his.

Even as the spheres began to rush towards the center of the city, Nick’s maw gaped wide, wider than should be possible, as his body grotesquely stretched to accommodate it. Like a little pink ball from a fondly remembered game, galeforce suction began to pull against the spheres, gathering them to his cavernous throat.

With each that entered him, he grew. After 10 he’d doubled in size, and there were thousands. Tens of thousands. Inside him, a beast raged as many more spheres were pulled away towards the force at the center of the city, a rival at this feast. Now the size of building, it felt an insect buzzing and prickling at its side, and struck it away. It would not be distracted from the kind of lavish gorging that usually only came at the fall of a world.

Its senses locked on a glowing figure wreathed in ghostfire, rising out of the city center, and it felt its eyes lock onto it in turn. Their fury clashed, power and wills battling to take the larger piece of this banquet of souls. Closer, more buzzing, cutting impacts on its flesh. It swept them away, barely distractions, but more than it was willing to tolerate, as it consumed, as it grew.

Inside of it, it could feel the other fighting, but he was now one soul against the power of many. Uncommon will or not, the funny little man that had kept it locked away would no longer waste the potential this new reality represented.

Then the beast recoiled, as a new figure shot forth from the city. Far from the pale golden glow of this world’s souls, it bore the heated, blinding blaze of the sun up towards the beast's rival, before it hit the competitor comically hard, rocketing the thief of souls into the stratosphere. The beast had an instant to be satisfied, before it felt the prickle of an unfamiliar sensation as the new figure turned towards it. The beast knew fear, but never before had it felt it from something so small.

------

“Your family sucks, babe!” Cait said to Kennedy, who held onto her neck for dear life as they watched her Father rocket away from the force of Cait’s uppercut. The goth let out the barking laugh she’d inherited from the only mother she’d acknowldege.

“Oh honey, you don’t know the half of it,” she said, with a heavy sigh, “after this shit I’m not sure I do either. What the fuck is going on?”

“Don’t know,” Cait answered, “but for once I think we’ve got bigger problems.”

Their momentum had finally given out and they began to fall before Cait began to airsprint out of the city. She heard Kennedy gasp as the girl followed their trajectory, to a friend in need of some help.

BREAST MAN towered like a nightmare vision of the Vegas sphere, easily eclipsing any building in the city as the myriad golden lights of wayward souls floated towards its maw. His tentacles flailed like the limbs of a dying spider, shaking the earth as they fended off the feeble attacks of AEGIS and ARMOR.

Jesus Christ, I don’t think it’s gonna matter how hard I punch him, Cait thought, heart feeling like it was physically tearing as she imagined what must be going on inside that monstrous body. No fucking chance that’s still B-Man in control.

“All forces, this is Sonder,” Kennedy called over comms. “I’m riding Amaranthine in to assist. Does anyone have eyes on Thoughtless?”

“Sending up a flare!” came a response, and Cait changed her trajectory to slam into the ground next to its origin. The remnants of Rodeo Squad milled about, clearly wanting to help but relatively powerless in the face of this titanic threat.

Kennedy hopped down off Cait’s back as Bri ran up, abject terror written on her face.

“What the fuck did you guys do!?” she screamed, eyes wild, before Kennedy slapped her. She shreiked, holding a hand to her face, but her eyes were clear when she looked back to the girl. “Right. Sorry. Plan?”

“I’m going to link to you, and we’re going to use your powers to blank out that thing. The person inside Breastman can handle that monster, he just needs some help.”

“He’s fucking killing us!” Bri shreiked.

Cait cut in; “Let me handle that. Can’t kill me, right?”

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, but she left a crater in the ground as she shot off to do what little she could against the man that had quickly become her best friend.

The closer she got, the smaller she felt. Once again, she was left wondering whether punching really good was going to be enough to even make it notice her. Her momentum carried her in front of the monster’s gaping maw, and while she wasn’t moving, it felt like she was falling in.

Then the eye opened. A lid that wasn’t there opened to reveal a supernova pupil surrounded by a field of dying stars. Cait’s question as to whether she could get the thing’s attention was answered as that eye saw her, the gaze of something unfathomably cosmic falling like a crushing weight on her shoulders.

But Cait didn’t crush.

“I don’t know what the fuck you are, but get the fuck out of my friend!” she growled, pulling herself forward.

It was hard to know where to hit something that big even when it had a comprehensible body plan. On an eldritch horror like B-Man, with no recognizable weak points or really even any concrete body parts, it was basically impossible. To some extent that made things easier.

Her strike sent ripples through its incongruosuly solid gelatious body, and she learned where that unholy racket from earlier had come from as it roared. The force of air alone was enough to push her back, and it followed her with its enormous tentacles.

Frantically, Cait activated all of her tech, hoping she could reverse her momentum enough to beat physics when something that big slammed into her in midair. As it approached, she knew she hadn’t done enough.

A bright blue flash and the whine of a motor working overdrive led to a torrent of black blood drenching her. Cait wiped her eyes, refocusing on a familiar callsign she hadn’t yet been happy to see.

“If you can keep its attention, you’re worth keeping around,” the mech’s PA roared, and Cait could only barely make out the undercurrent of vitriol in Captain Schwinn’s voice. “I’ll keep the feelers off you, you keep pounding.”

“You’re the last person in the world I expected to be encouraging my pounding,” Cait shot back, regretting it, but unable to help it. It was weird to hear a mech mutter, but ‘Jesus fucking Christ, what did she ever see in you’ still floated over the PA.

Kennedy linked to Bri, forcefully battering down the woman’s panic. As her power filled her, like a cold, comfortable nothing, she reached out for Breastman. Just like when she'd tended to him, unconcious and broken after their fight with the Ironhides, she found herself pulled inside, more completely this time. She, or her mind at least, stood on a blank, black expanse, right in front of a staggeringly enormous mental wall.

There, she found two minds. Two souls, maybe. The dam the man inside Breastman had built around the Beast lay in ruins, and his concioussness, tiny but resolute, scrambled to rebuild it. The effort would have been inspiring even without the Beast itself, flowing endlessly into being like a living tide, fighting against the small man every step of the way.

By rights, the man, Kennedy realized she didn’t even know his actual name, should have been destroyed instantly. But it was like he was made from the same stuff as Cait, shrugging off titanic blows as he replaced brick after metaphysical brick. Kennedy reached out to help, trying to ‘lift’ one of the mental constructs into place, but finding it heavier than lead.

Just who the fuck was B-man? She wondered, feeling Bri’s mind join her in the battlefield of wills. On the weird, unreal landscape surrounding the breach in Breastman's wall, Bri, or a representation of her at least, swirled into being next to Kennedy.

‘Focus on the Beast,’ Kennedy ordered, and she felt Bri bring the mental bludgeon she was as Thoughtless to bear. A wall of mental static crashed against the waveform of the Beast, rearing it back towards the breach in the dam. ‘Hell yeah, keep that up!’

Waves of psionic force flowed from Bri’s thoughtform, each pushing against the Beast’s relentless encroachment. It was not, however, going to be put back in a box without a fight. Hundreds of animus tentacles surged from its surface, reaching to rip apart the mind of the one assaulting it.

Kennedy, as she so often cursed herself for recently, had never taken the time to practice with Thoughtless’ powers. Just like she hadn’t with basically anyone. But her mother had taught her improvisation and adaptibility, and that served her well.

With barely any bond, Kennedy’s mental power was a mere trickle of Bri’s immense, crushing force. In fact, what she could muster was reminiscent of the tentacles themselves. Which was fine by her.

After training with the Black Swan, her trump card had always been being more skilled than her opponents, even if she was weak with the powerset she was using. She weilded the thin, elastic strand of mental energy like a bladed whip, weaving an impenetrable web around Bri as she continued to pound the Beast. Its myriad tentacles dissipated as they met her defense, foiled in their attempt to stop the psionic fusillade.

With each blast, she watched the man, still tiny, still unwavering, put more bricks into place. His work seemed to be non-euclideanly effective, each piece taking up more space in the wall when he left than it had when he placed it.

Already, the vast ocean tide of the beast had waned to a roaring river, each of Bri’s blasts pushing it back ever further. In an instant, the flow was gone entirely, and that terrible eye filled the remaining hole in the wall. It locked onto Bri, and it saw her. Kennedy felt it, through Bri, as it saw her so entirely, knew her so deeply, that it consumed her. Her thoughtform swirled past the wall into its supernova iris even as the man placed the final brick, and the world went black for all of them.