Amaranthine

She placed a foot on her opponents head, crushing it to gory splinters as she kicked off to go save her witchy hookup. The snake-woman’s eyes were wide, not with fear, but a kind of maniac rage and hunger that explained why she didn’t let go of Willow even as Cait thundered towards her.

Maybe she can’t, Cait smirked to herself, Willow is in there.

Her plan had immediately been a quick strike to whatever the snake analogue of a jejunum was, to get her to spit up Willow and let Cait fight her without worrying an errant strike would explode her new teammate. Unfortunately, that plan had issues.

First, Cait might have a biology degree, but she still had no clue what or where that analogue might be. Second, the snake woman pulsed with the same sick, unnatural signs of strength everyone in this gang had, and having Willow in her throat didn’t seem to slow her down at all.

Her opening punch whiffed, the slack portion of the snake-lady twisting sinuously out of the way, unbound from the normal axes of motion that defined human body-plans. Her tail whipped out as it uncoiled from around Willow’s legs, thickly muscled tip catching Cait in the abdomen and sending her flying into one of the massive support beams of the structure.

As Cait righted herself, the snake advanced on her, head tilted up as it seemed to work on actively gulping Willow down. Concerningly, the witchy woman’s squirming had diminished to feeble kicks of her feet, legs only still visible from the calves down. That presented a few problems. One, it seemed like Cait might be working against the clock. Two, the more of Willow that was inside the snake, the less of the snake Cait could safely punch

Fuck, it’s so much easier when I’m the one that gets eaten.

Her mind raced, trying to cook up environmental kills, weaponry, anything that would let her end this quickly and safely. Then, a buzzing shriek reminded her she wasn’t alone in this fight. She followed the noise to where Kennedy’s enhanced staff had just cleaved a piece off of an iron crucible.

Cait sent a burst of warning her way, following it up with herself.

“Kennedy, switch!” she called, and received an empathic confirmation before Kennedy even looked at her. She must have known where Cait was though, because while her next swing ‘missed’, it put one of the grotesquely muscled gymnast dwarves directly into Cait’s flight path. Midair, she blasted a knee forwards driving it right into the diminutive goliath’s spine, driving him into the floor.

She followed that up with a rain of explosive blows to the back of his head, quickly cratering the concrete floor with repeated force. Impressively, his actual head stayed intact, but he’d gone limp, so Cait counted him out for now.

Cait looked up, searching for rhe remaining acrobat, and saw him braced against a crucible, tensing to leap at Kennedy’s unguarded back as she moved to engage with the snake Cait had abandoned.

“Wrong target Dopey,” Cait growled, planting her feet, aiming, and blasting off to intercept his leap midair.

They hit the ground rolling, and with some impressive maneuvering, the dwarf ended up on top. He treated Cait much like she had his friend, pushing her head into the ground under a flurry of super-powered strikes. Unlike his friend though, that was barely even annoying for Cait.

As seemed to be typical for the super strong, the dwarf was heavier than he looked, so Cait couldn’t simply sit up. That didn’t mean she couldn’t move though. She adjusted her arms, got a good base on the floor, and activated her tech to push.

Both of them shot off the ground, propelled upwards a good 10 feet by the force. Credit to him, Dopey didn’t stop punching, but that turned out to be the wrong move. His blows sent them spinning, and since those punches didn’t hurt, Cait had the clarity of mind to grab hold of him. This time, the fall didn’t favor him, and Cait added momentum with a kick as she suplexed his head into the floor, planting him like a tree.

More like a bush, Cait thought, then noticed the guy’s hands were cracking the very concrete as he struggled to free himself. Nope, sorry Dopey.

She leaned back, and drove a powered kick into his hips, the force slamming his body to the ground at a right angle to his planted head, with the second soft snap Cait had heard that day.

Man, maybe I should talk to Director Swan when I get back, she thought, pondering the apathy she felt at her fourth, maybe fifth, extrajudicial killing of the day. Part of the job, not like we have super-prisons, but I’m supposed to feel a little bad when I do that, right?

That was what media and fiction had told her at least, but looking around, she wasn’t sure it was the lived experience of most Guardians.

Breastman was beating one of his assailants with the raw remains of what appeared to be one of his other assailant’s muscly arms. A one armed corpse impaled on a tentacle and being used as a shield confirmed this.

Qi’s King Kong doppelganger had an arm fall limp as the raging dragon bit off a chunk of his shoulder, then spit the bloody mess into his face. His gasp of surprise and pain proved fatal, as it opened his insides up to Qi’s preferred finishing move; a kiss. While Cait liked the way dragon fire felt inside of her, for most anyone else, it wasn’t good when your ‘inner fire’ became literal.

Kennedy had cornered the snake lady, Willow’s concerningly still toes all that were visible of the witch. All that was visible until her silver white hair spilled out of the new end to the snake woman’s torso, a few inches shorter since Kennedy had cut it preeeety close bisecting the woman. Kennedy yanked on those locks, revealing Willow’s still, pale face.

Well, she’s always pale.

Still, the spike of worry Cait felt from Kennedy was one she shared. She spared a glance towards the others, but with Qi freed up, she and BREAST MAN were making short work of the remaining gangsters. Cait ran over, sliding to her knees and helping Kennedy pull Willow out of the snake, who had finally stopped twitching.

“C’mon,” Kennedy muttered, patting at Willow’s cheeks, searching for a sign of life, “don’t be dead. Please, god, I don’t wanna have to do CPR while you’re covered in snake juices.”

Cait put her hand to the side of Willow’s neck, and relaxed as she found a faint pulse.

“We’re good,” she announced with a relieved sigh, “she’s alive.” Cair fixed Kennedy with a quizzical look. “I thought she could, like, fight?”

“Jury’s still out, honestly,” Kennedy chuckled as Willow’s eyes fluttered open in her lap, She gestured at the half of the snake lady that was more or less human. “Medusa here dropped onto her mouth-first from the ceiling, didn’t get much chance to react.”

“Chertova cyka,” Willow added, coughing up something unidentifiable and nasty. Her accent was thick for the first time since Cait had noticed it creep into her voice. “Where is bitch, I will raise soul just to kill—”

“Shhhhh,” Kennedy comforted, stroking Willow’s damp hair and sharing a smirk with Cait, “Bitch is in multiple pieces, no need to do a eschatological war crime.”

“Kurwa,” Willow muttered, brushing Kennedy’s hand away and sitting up. She looked around, eyes scanning the room and locking onto where B-man and Qi were finishing off their combatants. By Cait’s count there was one less than there had been, and Qi’s jaws looked a little more bloody.

“Has the dragon been eating people?” Willow asked, not necessarily judgementally, just really trying to see if she was reading the situation right. Cait laughed, slapping her on the back, then wishing she hadn’t as her hand came away wet and sticky.

“Turnabout’s fair play, right?” she asked with a grin. To be honest, it was something she kind of wanted to address too, but… well, in the legends, eating people was what dragons did. Perhaps they should just be happy theirs was eating people on the other side.

With steps that shook the ground, the dragon in question approached, purple ball of lovely horror riding on her shoulder.

“Finished with your vore play?” Qi asked into a scowl from Willow. Whatever magic she used to beautify herself, it took a little something away from expressions like that; without any real wrinkles, it pretty much just looked cute.

“Scale will not protect your soul,” Willow said, words carrying the intonation of a curse. She looked unsure for a moment after she said it though, and Cait had to wonder. There had to be a reason Qi’s power had been the easiest for Kennedy to share with Cait, and perhaps it lay in her draconic lineage. Who knew? The Bullshit Waves rarely failed to live up to their name.