Amaranthine

They did ‘follow the bloodhound’. Kind of. Instead of Breastman leading the way, they adopted a strategy similar to the one they’d used in the tunnels. He extended a tentacle just in front of Cait, and one on either shoulder, directing her jog towards where he sensed bad guys.

It was kind of nice, actually, since Cait could let herself go ‘on-rails’ a bit, and get a feel for what they were walking in to. And her friends got the benefit of not taking any more 2 ton boulders to the face that got tossed their way.

Goliath might not have had quite the same flair for supervillain lairs that The Bookkeeper had, but his foreboding factory certainly ranked above Powershell’s disused sewage cistern. She felt like she was in a 2010’s shooter, everything rusted out, in shades of brown and grey.

Part of her wondered what the three goons that ambushed them had done to get that duty. There weren’t any more visible exterior guards, and while those guys would have been a nightmare for a beat cop, for the Dawn Posse? They barely budged the danger needle.

“You think those guys were maybe just actually perimeter guards?” she asked absently, following the tentacle under a corroded wrought iron banner that read S--TH -ORKS.

-COULD BE-

-THE DUDES INSIDE ARE STARTING TO MOVE THOUGH-

That snapped Cait back into a little more focus.

“Towards us?” Kennedy asked, and Cait heard the sharp bzzz-SNAP of her staff materializing in her hand.

-SOME-

-OKAY, A LOT-

-15 MAYBE?-

Kennedy cursed, a sharp contrast to Qi’s chuckle.

“Not too often they come to me,” Qi rumbled, and looking back at her, Cait could understand why. Whatever Cait had in her that made her make bad decisions, made her love the fight, Qi had it a hundred-fold this far into dragon form. The scaled god she became lost its femininity, keeping only the raw sexuality of power, the only sexuality a divinity needed. She caught Cait staring and smirked, once more, making her hate that it felt a little good to be small.

-OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR, INCOMING- Breastman warned, and the group had just enough time to duck behind Cait before the massive steel entrance to the main building flew off it’s hinges, hitting Cait hard enough to curl around her.

She’d leaned into it, setting her legs, which were now buried knee deep in the dusty dirt of the foundry grounds. Cait was relatively certain that the other side of the door would have a passable imprint of her face on it. She’d never get to find out though, as a titanic roar sounded behind her, and an impact like an extinction event hit her in the ass. Both her and the door went flying back the way it had come under the force of Qi’s kick, and if the ‘clang!’ meant what Cait thought it did, what remained of the door wasn’t only going to have her face imprinted on it.

The door screeched against on the concrete floor inside the foundry building, grinding to a halt against a smelting furnace. Thankfully, Cait was on the side opposite the ground, and was able to extract herself with a modicum of twisting.

She found she was correct; there was a new imprint on the door. An ugly mug roughly the size and shape of a cinder block glared stupidly up at her in steel relief, and the scuttling Cait heard under the door informed her the owner of that face was at the very least not dead.

Well, gonna have to fix that, she thought, and slammed a fist down into the scowling visage. It deformed, but not as much as it should have, a dull thud that was not the sound of steel on concrete letting her know the mystery opponent hadn’t moved that far. She grinned, and began raining down blows with as much speed as she could muster into the door.

An unholy racket, like the choir of hell just going ham on some gongs, filled her ears, and before long, she’d flattened out enough of the door to see the shape of the man beneath bulging out, and got an idea. She kept flattening along the leg that had taken shape, working up and around the torso, until she’d effectively entombed the guy in steel. Cait pounded a little extra around the arms and legs, tightening things up until she was sure he wouldn’t be getting enough momentum to break out. Just when she was satisfied, she took the second hardest hit she’d experienced that day.

Cait rolled, trying to get her bearings under a rain of blows she didn’t understand, given that her assailant had her wrapped up in a bear hug tight enough even she couldn’t move. When their momentum finally arrested, and she got a foot down to kick away, it made a lot more sense.

Cait was best friends with a tentacle monster. One would think that an unexpected number of limbs on an individual wouldn’t phase her. However, when those limbs were attached to a swollen, overlong torso, at random intervals, and had a number of elbow joints no god would intend, one would be wrong.

“Jesus fuckin’ christ my guy,” she said, “supervillian really was pretty much the only career choice, huh?”

His face was ugly, but human, so Cait probably shouldn’t have been surprised when he talked back.

“It was between that or fuckin’ your girl,” he said with a grin that was definitely gonna be decorating some pavement soon, “but I ain’t into bestiality.”

Cait felt her heart flare, the way it only did when it was going to be fun to hurt something.

“You’re gonna have to be more specific as to which girl,” she shot back, nodding her head behind the abomination to where Qi was currently gnawing the entire torso off of a guy. “If you mean the one using your friend as a milkbone, then can’t blame you, we can’t all have adamantium dicks.”

His gaze flicked over for just a second, before his grin fell alongside all the color in his face. Cait staggered her feet, tensed, but took just one beat before releasing.

“You idiots had no fucking idea what was coming for you,” she said, and exploded forward.

Unfortunately, it seemed like some of those extra arms might have had minds of their own. One hand shot out to catch Cait’s throat. She felt its wrist snap under the unyielding impact, but it was enough to steal her momentum. Another shot up, replacing the limp grip of the other with what was probably supposed to be a stranglehold.

With a staccato crackle like machine gun fire, more knuckles than were appropriate cracked and popped as they tried to get even a millimeter of give out of Cait’s throat. She watched his face with a smirk as a mind used to being strong tried to wrap his head around her necks firm insistence upon its own shape. Cait even let him add an extra hand, then laughed, mostly just to prove she could.

The pause let her get a better look at him though. He didn’t have the same comically large muscles as his friend outside had, but his stretched, wiry limbs did have the same unhealthy definition, twitching fibers, bulging, pulsing veins. That said, his Alteration seemed to have began and ended with ‘fucked up anatomy’, so that might be normal for him. Still, he’d been holding her off the ground with one hand. He was anything but weak.

“Always this strong?” she asked conversationally. “Or is that the juice?”

He was clearly surprised she was able to speak with absolutely no difficulty, but that seemed to make him mad, rather than talkative. The mother fucker spat in her face, actually spat in her face, and threw her into one of the smelter chimneys.

She shot a hand out, catching the edge, and wiping her face with the back of her hand. Looking at the slimy spittle against her skin, she chuckled, shaking her head.

“My guy,” she said, looking up, grin quickly shifting to a snarl. “you are going to regret having that many joints to break.”

She shot forward again, but this time, had another punch loaded. Spinning, she juked herself to the side midair, then kicked off an old iron crucible, leaving a dent in its ancient metal. She was disappointed when those canny arms caught her again, but she’d planned for it regardless.

Reaching out, she locked her hands around two wrists, letting momentum carry her legs forward to the guy’s stomach. She tensed, and in the frozen moment before she kicked off, locked eyes with him. She smirked.

Blood flew like a Vegas fountain as she burst off of him, arms ripping away from whatever he counted as a shoulder. From there, it was easy. She attacked that side, easily breaking the two remaining arms it boasted, then worked on breaking the ribs they’d protected. By the time he was coughing up blood, he’d slowed enough that the punch that crushed his windpipe landed as perfectly as any Cait had ever thrown.

She had a bit before he died, and boy fucking howdy was she pissed about the spit, so she did consider going ahead and following through with the joints threat, but an empathic tug snapped her attention away. She followed its impulse, eyes passing Kennedy, engaged with two shockingly burly and acrobatic dwarves, Breastman, holding off a whole squad of nightmare body builders, and Qi locked in a clinch with a guy big and hairy enough he could save the next King Kong remake a lot of money on CGI. All of that was fine. It ruled, even.

But it wasn’t what Kennedy was pulling her towards. A vaguely feminine figure, 15 feet long if it was an inch, had wrapped itself around Willows legs. Originally, it may have been wrapped around the rest of her too, but Cait couldn’t tell, since its unhinged jaw had already slid far enough down Willow’s body that Cait could see the witch struggling in her throat.