Amaranthine

“-CK!?” Cait’s body finished the sentence her soul had started to, apparently, Kennedy’s endless amusement. The goth cackled next to her on the bed, arms wrapped tight around herself lest she shake herself apart with glee. Cait glared at Willow where she sat on the foot of the bed. “Seriously! What the fuck is she laughing about? Her mom just held my balls like that fuckin’ teacup you had, rightin front of her!”

That only made Kennedy laugh harder, and, predictably, did nothing to alter Willow’s amused smile. Cait scoffed, hopping out of bed and leaving the room.

“Turn down a girl’s mom because, god forbid, you care for once, and this is what happens…” she muttered to herself. Breastman turned from the game system he’d been occupying himself with at the table, facing her. She shook her head forlornly at him. “Why do I even try, buddy?”

BEATS ME

I CAN BARELY KEEP UP WITH ONE

AND MY PURPLE ASS IS A SOLO GANGBANG

Cait dejectedly held up a hand for a high five, which was promptly slapped, before Willow and Kennedy joined them a second later. Qi walked out of the bathroom, saw a performatively depressed Cait, Kennedy wiping mascara tears of mirth off her face, and a pleased looking Breastman. She added confusion to the mix of expressions.

“Weird vibes out here,” she observed, but seemed to take it in stride. “We’ve got our marching orders right? Ready to make like the Autobots and roll out?”

Like any respectable nerd, especially one that was only pretending to be sad, and was actually psyched that she might finally have the go ahead to get dirty with her girlfriend’s smokeshow mom, the mention of Transformers perked Cait right up.

“Hell yeah!” she agreed, grabbing Qi’s tail and starting to drag her towards the suite door, “Lets fuck up some actual, real life, supervillians.”

They spiced the ride up with a little further testing of Qi-as-Gun, taking potshots at whatever monsters had the misfortune of emerging from the sewers within eyesight of Honey. There weren’t that many, honestly, but until ‘not that many’ were ‘none’ that was still too many Altered Beasts for civilians to freely roam the streets. Maybe Qi didn’t put much of a dent in the actual tally on the way, but hey, those monsters had to go sometime, and it made for a hell of a show.

A fringe benefit to the lack of civilian traffic meant that Breastman didn’t have to obey the rules of the road, so when he screeched Honey on two wheels around the final turn before the factory, they were moving at speed. That was good, because if he’d been driving like a sane person, the chunk of masonry roughly the same size as the APC that flew just behind them would have hit head on.

The air exploded into noise as Qi cursed, and returned fire. Cait fought a hail of spent shell casings to climb her, get her footing on the roof, then kick off, smashing through the next massive stone missile. She landed in a rain of rubble, then rolled on pure reflex to avoid a foot the size of a car battery hurtling towards her face.

She sprang up, getting a good look at the opponent wearing those size 21 Jordans.

Cait had spent time in a lot of gyms, around a lot of bodybuilders. Shit, she’d tried Gear herself in her early 20s, before she realized she just didn’t need it with her genetics. She knew what healthy muscle looked like. This was not it. Every striation, every bump, every vein, and honestly some Cait was pretty sure weren’t part of normal anatomy, were visible on this dude’s body, pulsing and throbbing darkly. The straps of what should be a loose bro tank strained under a pair of tits that would have looked ridiculous on a pornstar, even if they weren’t made of pure muscle.

“Jesus buddy, that can’t be what you wanted to see in the mirror,” she murmured, answered only by a spittle flecked roar, and a thunderous charge. “Right, well, I ain’t your life coach.”

Cait cocked back, and threw a supersonic straight right between the guy’s eyes, his momentum only adding to the impact. The world felt like it froze as the blow landed, stopping him in his tracks, but not turning his skull into the crunchy bone smoothie Cait had hoped.

Welp, can’t always be easy.

While he shook off her first strike, Cait had the benefit of being immune to her own recoil. She crouched, bunching her thighs, before driving an uppercut with two sets of tech behind it into the hollow of his chin. The guy was tough, Cait had to give him that, but the subtle snap she heard as his neck stretched up like a rubberband told her his nervous system had failed him. He fell to the street, twitching in the aftershocks of paralysis, while she scanned for the next threat.

A pair of two more equally massive figures stood next to a pile of rubble, yeeting stones bigger than they were towards Honey, which now lay on its side. The massive dent in its armored flank gave her a clue as to what was to blame, but really, the vehicle was convenience, not necessity.

Qi charged towards the duo, shoulder-mounted cannons blazing until her growing mass finally snapped the harness at her shoulders. That might have been for the best, those bullets hadn’t been doing much to faze the pair anyway. They each dove to either side, and Qi pivoted, catching one around the waist and driving him to the ground.

That made Cait’s choice of target easy. She kicked off, cratering the road to slam a superman punch into the unattended opponent’s chest as he rose out of his dodge roll. He crashed back into the pile of rubble he’d been using as ammunition, and Cait had to stop, coughing out the lungful of… concrete dust? he’d left in his wake.

Stone ground against stone as the rubble shifted, and the man emerged unscathed. Getting a better look, Cait realized that what she had discounted as pale gray flesh was actually living concrete, constantly cracking, throwing out little clouds of dust with each movement. The guy didn’t even have a mouth, just tiny, beady eyes glaring out through deep, dark sockets of stone.

“If you don’t want to get turned into gravel, say literally anything,” Cait demanded, grin already splitting her face, “No? Then lets get this started you walking OSHA incident.”

Just because he didn’t roar as he charged, didn’t mean it was silent. His skin cracked sharply, joints grinding against each other as a huge mass of stone built momentum towards Cait. She watched this cooly. That punch she’d thrown into his chest had landed perfectly, to basically zero effect. She needed to get a better read on him to actually take him down, and watching how he moved as he—

As he hit her square in the face, sheer force sending her flying across the road. She slammed into a light pole, body leaving a Cait shaped indent straight out of a cartoon. When her feet touched the ground though, her grin had morphed into a victorious sneer.

“Sorry buddy,” she said, squaring up as the rock guy charged once more, “this is probably gonna hurt worse than if I just killed you.”

On the first run up, the grinding of the man’s joints had drawn her notice. She’d taken those extra few moments before the hit to examine his shoulders and elbows, which cracked like dry, shattered earth as they moved. The guy was wearing pants, thank god, but Cait was more or less certain the joints of his lower body would look the same.

As he approached, she dropped one leg back, using her front to pivot just to the right of his wild grab. At that same moment, her loaded back leg flashed forward into the side of his crotch, and his left leg tore off at the hip in a cloud of concrete dust and gore.

A muffled howl of misery confused her for a moment, before Cait realized maybe there was a mouth under that concrete after all.

Fuck, well, not gonna leave him like that.

She followed the man, insensate with pain, down to the ground, grabbing his chin in her hand and locking her wrist. Cait purposely avoided his eyes as she lined her finger up with one, activated her tech, and with a sharp crack and upsetting squelch, her opponent fell still.

Her hackles raised at the crunch of footsteps next to her, but her gaze traced a line of scales all the way up to Qi’s toothy grin. The dragon reached down a hand to help Cait up.

“Slow,” she teased, and Cait countered by extending her own hand, currently covered in eye goop and brains, to accept Qi’s. Fair play, it didn’t seem to faze the dragon at all, but perhaps that was because a little extra gore wasn’t going to be that noticeable compared to the dusty spatters of blood that covered her scaly armor.

BREAST MAN swung over, Kennedy and Willow in tow, and taking cover behind the tougher party members. Kennedy was fine after the crash, but Willow was definitely the worse for wear. She was about as messed up as Cait had left her last night, but looked like she’d had a hell of a lot less fun getting there. That said, she was conscious and none of her joints hung at odd angles, so really, messy hair and that gash above her eye might have been the best she could hope for.

-SORRY-

-DIDN’T EXPECT THEM TO BE QUITE THAT READY-

Willow glared at him for a moment as he set her down, but, with a deep breath, seemed to move past it. Kennedy poked a claw at the tentacle holding her until she was let down as well, and quickly took stock.

“Okay,” she began, words trying to catch up to her thoughts, “Okay. I don’t see any more outside, but that complex is huge, and there’s what, 47 left?”

“That’s my count,” Cait agreed, “Provided they’re all home.”

Kennedy nodded, turning towards Breastman.

“Altered Sense? Can you confirm?” she asked, and the bill of his hat scrunched up in a passable imitation of a concentrated frown.

-THAT’S ABOUT RIGHT-

-A LOT OF THEM ARE BUNCHED UP, TOUGH TO GET A REAL COUNT ON THOSE-

-SIDE NOTE, THEY FUCKING REEK-

“Like, actually reek?” Cait asked, a little surprised. She hadn’t noticed anything, even after she and Qi popped two open, and that was usually when people smelled their worst.

-NO….-

-LIKE, WRONG-

-THEY… FUCK, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE THIS IN HUMAN TERMS-

-THEY’RE WRONG-

The entire group exchanged uneasy glances at that. It wasn’t exactly surprising, the number of human foes they’d gone up against that didn’t explode when Cait or Qi punched them was low, and they’d just fought 3. Still, it was new, and an unknown factor that didn’t bode well.

“Right, well,” Kennedy said, shaking off the uneasiness for all of them, “cryptic and concerning statements aside, can you locate them for us?”

-OH YEAH TOTALLY-

“Then that’s all we need,” Kennedy said with an infectious, vicious grin, quickly mirrored by her friends. “Dawn Posse, lets go hunting. Follow the bloodhound.”