Amaranthine

It was weird, how Breastman managed to look nervous, even without a hint of human facial features to express it. Cait thought it came from the movement of his tentacles. They were always moving a little, it seemed, but when he was anxious, the relaxed waves became a lot more twitchy. That, and his hat wiggled.

“You alright big dog?” she asked, nudging her elbow into the driver’s seat. She sat with her feet up on the dash passenger princess style, enjoying the turn her life had taken that meant she got driven most places she didn’t just run.

-ARE WE SURE WE’RE GOOD JUST LEAVING THE OTHERS ALONE?- His accented voice asked over comms. Despite not technically having to look at the road to drive, old habits died hard, and his hat would only have been legible in its reflection on the windshield. -I MEAN, YEAH, THEY’RE ALL SUPERHEROS, BUT KENNEDY IS ONLY AS STRONG AS THE PEOPLE AROUND HER AND GWYN DOESN’T HAVE THE PUNCH SHE USUALLY DOES-

Cait had already had the same thought, and felt the same twinge of uncertainty. But she didn’t let it show, instead dropping her hand to pat B-man on the hat and putting on a show of relaxed confidence.

“I get you, bud, but Kennedy’s still linked up to me solid, and that’s not nothing. Plus, if anyone throws an Altered at her, she’s getting a lot better about throwing that power right back, and the person she’s doing it to won’t have the benefit of an indestructible girlfriend sharing her goodies,” Cait explained, and felt B-man settle down a bit. She continued anyway. “Plus, weapons or no, remember, Gwyn could still take one of my power punches, even when she wasn’t expecting it. Adding on to that, I’d bet you money I don’t have that Willow can do some Dr. Strange-ass soul-punching thing we ain’t seen yet. They’ll be fine.”

“You do have money Cait,” Qi interjected, raising her head from where she lay across a bench seat. “I don’t know why you keep saying that. Also, Kennedy’s link to me hasn’t even dropped yet B-man, and you’ve seen what she can do with that.”

“Yeah, people tell me I have money,” Cait said, “but I ain’t seen it.”

“Have you, like, actually tried?” Qi retorted, hitting on a good point. Cait had not. “Or do you just do the thumbprint thing for food but enjoy telling people you’re broke?”

Cait scowled, and crossed her arms like an upset toddler. It was no fun when people called you out on your bullshit.

“Thought so,” Qi chuckled, laying her head back down. “Ya know, your dad was preeeettty set on that vintage Mustang last time you took us to trivia, might wanna talk to accounting. That’d be chump change for you.”

“Eh, I’ll let ‘em stew for awhile longer. They can stay salty I didn’t become a doctor,” Cait responded. B-man had calmed beside her, now casually following the nav-data Gwyn had sent to Honey through the city streets. When Cait had told her parents she was going to Technocago, they’d warned her to no end about Chicago traffic. That had really been a foreign concept to her, as especially post-wave, DSM had never been a particularly congested town. That was not the case with Technocago.

Vehicles had been bumper to bumper since they left the immediate vicinity of the Council Column, and Cait got the distinct impression they must have had some sort of dignitary route closed off for them on their approach last night. This city was fucking packed.

“Place would be a nightmare to patrol…” Cait observed, trying to wave at a passerby peering into the APC before remembering the windows were one-way.

“Right?” Qi agreed. “Imagine one kaiju coming out of that river. Collateral damage would be insane, just by virtue of there being a person anywhere it stepped.”

“Mmm,” Cait grunted in agreement, brow furrowing as she thought about the very reason they were in this traffic. There had been a massive attack not long ago at all, and there was next to zero sign of it in the city. As she looked along the building facades, the only real marks she could pick out were similar to the silver patterns Gwyn left when she’d helped them repair building’s after the Elevated Race attacks. One skyscraper was nearly covered in telltale silver kintsugi. “They must be about as adaptable as the folks back home. Although I’m getting the sense they’ve had a situation like Dawn’s Arbor here for awhile.”

“Yeah, I had no idea PlazLoad was, like, a dude,” Qi said, rising from her rest to sit in Cait’s lap and watch the world with her, size discrepancy be damned. Their eyes both traced the thrumming power of his omnipresent blue lines. “They do a whole lot of shit with those power lines huh?”

HOLY FUCK!!!! Breastman exclaimed, and both women braced, assuming an immienent fender bender. THE LINES! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT DIDN’T REGISTER!

“What?” Qi and Cait said as one, but Breastman didn’t have a chance to answer. The curious passerby Cait had been watching drew their fist back, and as she watched, it was coated a familiar silver before smashing through the window.

Qi reacted faster than the others, immediately grabbing the arm as it entered the APC and pulling the attacker into the vehicle. A screech of metal on metal as she dragged them through the too-small opening of the window revealed the coating was a lot more widespread than just its fist, and despite her using enough force to easily rip the arm off of a regular human, it entered whole, and entered swinging.

Cait caught its first blow in her hand, inches from Qi’s increasingly scaled face. She got her other arm around its neck and locked her joints, pinning it beneath her as Qi scrambled away and rolled off of the seat. Cait found herself face to face with a sort of horror-world silver surfer, features frozen in a mask of confusion and terror even as it thrashed under her.

“Hey!” she shouted, to null effect. “Hey! What the fuck gives? Who are you?”

She didn’t get a verbal answer, only the tortured shriek of tearing metal from beneath the vehicle as a familiar claw punched its way up and through the underside.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” she shouted, even as a girthy tentacle whack-a-mole’d the Ironhide back through the hole it had made. Concerningly, in the split second she’d seen it, she’d noticed it close its mouth as it saw the incoming tentacle.

“Get the girls on comms!” she shouted, ratcheting her limbs tight enough she felt the silver beneath her stop swelling with breath. Sorry, if you’re just, like, a guy, but saving you is way outside my area of expertise. “Let them know we’re getting hit by human Ironhides in addition to the usual!”

I AM! THEY SAY THEY’RE TRACKING THE SITUATION

Cait felt relief, but only for an instant. She checked in on her link with Kennedy, and found the girl curious about her, but calm. Not the emotions of a girl who knew her lover was fighting a new and dangerous foe. Cait sent purposeful bursts of panic and caution her way, the best she could do for warning.

“No, they aren’t,” she groaned, as the silver beneath her finally stopped struggling. She kept them held, to make sure they were down. “Whoever’s fucking with the comms got our asses, Kennedy definitely didn’t know this was happening!”

The hole in the ceiling looked like a silver chandelier as indestructible hands reached down through it to claw at Qi, who fended them off with talon and flame. Breastman kept up his game of whack a mole on the floor as more holes were punched, but soon enough there would be more hole than floor. Cait cursed.

“Fuck me! This is a losing fight, guys, we gotta move. B-man, can you take the nav data with you?” she asked.

A wrenching sound, sparks, and the scent of ozone were quickly followed by: UH, KIND OF?

Cait craned her neck over her shoulder to see B-man holding the nav display by its wires. It still showed their destination, but was glitching out pretty bad, and no longer showed their position.

“Gonna have to be good enough!” Cait said, rising and reaching under a bench seat to grab the only things she could think of. The mace she’d used against the Gigacarp hadn’t held up well, but Gwyn promised the Bunker Basement had upgraded their durability, and she needed a little more leverage than a regular human arm, no matter how hard, could muster to hit with. She spun the set in either palm and nodded to Qi. “Alright sexy Smaug, clear that hole. B-man, carry me like Gwyn’s been giving you bedroom eyes all day.”

A mushroom cloud of flame exploded through the top of the APC, throwing its unwelcome riders back before its inhabitants burst out in the flames wake. Breastman shot out his tentacles, pulling Cait along behind him like a particularly aggressive kite tail as Qi sprinted to keep up. The streets shook beneath her, not only because of her titanic stride, but also because the pavement roiled as silver claws tore through it from below.

Cait knew this assault must be multi-pronged, because the bursts of cool adrenaline she was getting from Kennedy were the ones that meant her girlfriend was in a fight herself, not worrying about Cait when she was in the thick of things. That wasn’t comforting, but Kennedy also wasn’t panicking, and if that morning in the Colosseum had reminded Cait of anything, it was that Kennedy could take care of her goddamn self.

As it was, Cait was reduced to taking opportunistic swings at any silvered appendages that presented themselves while she trailed behind Breastman. These were only marginally effective, typically stunning whatever she hit with her weapon, but without her tech she just wasn’t hitting hard enough to actually hurt these things.

That was not the case when B-Man used her as a makeshift mace, the way he had during one of their early skirmishes with the Ironhides. He’d hit hard enough to crack their skin then, but now…

Cait involuntarily headbutted a humanoid Ironhide, which she’d internally begun to call Silvers, and her head, as was inevitable, won. Its head burst like a frag grenade under the titanic strength BREAST MAN could now bring to bear, focused with one of the few things able to properly transmit it: Cait’s skull.

“WHOO!” She shouted, after sputtering a little to make sure her mouth was free of boy-bits. “Use me daddy!”

-FUCKIN’ WEIRD CAIT-

‘ALSO, DON’T BE SO JOYFUL-

-I THINK THESE ARE CIVILIANS, SOMEHOW-

Cait grimaced. She’d had the same thought, but she’d lived her life by the old-world American doctrine of Massive Retaliation. They came at her, she came back 10 times as hard. You couldn’t attack her and expect her to feel bad about defending herself, but yeah, maybe exploding the head of someone’s…. Mind controlled? Uncle shouldn’t be such a source of exhilaration.

“You guys see the similarities between the silver stuff and Gwyn’s tech, right?” she yelled, just hoping to be heard, and free to think as she was used as an immensely effective bludgeon.

-FUCK ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPLY-

“What? No, dude, I don’t think your girlfriend is doing this. I do think someone with some pretty similar tech is. How the fuck is this not considered hostile technology?” she asked, and BREAST MAN punctuated the point for her by using her to shatter an Ironhide that was leaping for Qi’s back midair.

For the dragon’s part, she unleashed a torrent of flame into the face of the Ironhide she held by the throat. They were getting smarter, and it kept its mouth closed…. for a bit. Heat like that stole the breath from its lungs, and when it was forced to open its mouth, its eyes flash fried from the inside before Qi threw its corpse at a Silver and strode to catch up with Breastman and his erstwhile sidearm.

“I think Cait’s right!” she said, releasing casual violence upon any of the sliver monsters that wanted to try and break her stride. “Its just too close to ignore! And when that first one broke through the window, the way it metaled up? Just like when Gwyn Han Solos bitches. Except, you know, these ones try to kill us instead of being statuary.”

-FUCK!-

-I KNOW. SHE’S GONNA HATE THAT.-

“Gotta have something to do with why they wanted her, specifically, here right?” Cait asked, having to pause the sentence in the middle lest her open mouth lessen her face’s excellent striking surface. “Whatcha think, Qi? Secret admirer?”

“Oooooohhhh, got some competition B-Money!” Qi cooed, playing along flawlessly.

-FUCK YOU GUYS-

HONESTLY THOUGH?

“….what, really?” Cait asked.

-KINDA-

- WHATEVER I FELT COMING INTO THE ROOM LAST NIGHT-

-THOSE LINES CARRY CAMERA FEEDS TOO RIGHT?-

-THROUGH ORWELL?-

“THAT’S why he’s called that?” Qi called, pausing momentarily in removing her gore-covered arm from the throat of an overeager Ironhide.

-I BET CAIT DIDN’T READ THE DOSSIER EITHER-, his foppy voiceover said, carrying all the requisite resignation.

“Of course I read the dossier,” Cait protested. “I was a huuuuge Guardian nerd before all this, my dude. Dossiers on powerful Altereds are like candy for me. Why else would I be dating Lira? She’s just that, but unlimited.”

“Oh fuck you,” laughed Qi, “I’m telling her you said that.”

“You better, it’s so much better when she’s pretending to be mad.”

Slowly, it became clear that the trio weren’t alone in their fight against the hordes of silver monsters emerging from the streets or the populace itself. The omnipresent glowing lines flared, blasting some, locking others in a kind of stasis, or likewise pulling non-slivered civilians out of harm’s way through no means Cait could identify. It was an effective defense, once it got going, but it was weird to see this many Altered abilities being thrown around without any caped, colorful Guardians around to go with them.

“Let’s pour on the speed,” Cait said, tapping her tentacle harness. “Looks like the city’s waking up enough to handle this disaster better than we can. We gotta hope Gwyn gave you that nav point for a reason, see if we can’t find whoever’s pulling the strings of these guys.”

BREAST MAN responded by wrapping Qi up too, and starting to slingshot them at incredible speeds through the city. He kept them high above the chaos below, and stone or steel, the buildings he used as anchors creaked and groaned under the immense force he was exerting. It was impressive that Qi’s own groans about dignity could be heard at all above them, to be honest.

In that way, they reached the marker Gwyn had given them, a shallow bank of the Chicago river right next to a massive, disused sewer outflow. A massive, disused sewer outflow teeming with angry, silvered shapes.

“Can’t ever be fuckin’ easy,” Cait sighed, cracking her neck and stiffening up straight as Breastman twirled her like a batter awaiting the next pitch. “Swing away, cuz.”