One moment, I'm hauling myself to the nearest cover, injuries screaming in protest. The next, I hear footsteps the size of an elephant somewhere between 1-3 feet behind me.

That's when the hand closes around the back of my neck in an unbreakable vise, and the world turns inside out. My body whipsaws through the air in a dizzying spiral. Every muscle goes rigid in a full-body spasm, tendons straining against the crushing force of that merciless grip as my vision swims in a kaleidoscope of sickening vertigo.

For a few disorienting moments, I'm simply along for the ride, a helpless passenger in my own personal cyclone of violence. Then, just as abruptly, the motion ceases and I'm hurtling in a flat arc directly towards the thrashing, contorting form of the man writhing at the heart of this maelstrom.

I have just enough time to register the glint of metal shards and rivets erupting from the thing's flesh in waves of agony, a razor forest of serrated edges and wicked points fanning outward in a deadly semicircle. Then, with absolutely zero time to spare, my world explodes into a blinding starburst of white-hot torment.

The impact is like being slammed into a brick wall at terminal velocity, every ounce of breath driven from my lungs in a choked rasp. I feel my ribs creak in protest as the unyielding mass of the creature's form collides with my body, steel fangs ripping into exposed flesh with savage, merciless abandon.

I'm only dimly aware of the creature's own hoarse shrieks of anguish mingling with my own, the two of us locked in a twisted, profane harmony of mutually inflicted torment. Its contorting mass seems to thrash against me, each convulsion driving those jagged shards of metal deeper into the very marrow of my bones as we grapple in a slaughterhouse tango of blood and viscera.

Distantly, over the thunderous roar of my own ragged gasps, I become aware of Rampart bellowing out a wordless battlecry. Then the creature's weight is wrenching away from me in a sickening crunch, and I'm tumbling bonelessly to the ground in a crumpled heap, every shallow inhalation sending fresh lances of agony stabbing through my ruined flank.

"...Bee? Bee! " Rampart's voice cuts through the crimson haze engulfing my senses, his words tinged with a rare undercurrent of naked fear. "Don't you dare check out on me now!"

I try to respond, to offer some sort of reassurance, but the only sound that emerges is a wet, gurgling moan of anguish. Panic claws at my throat, an icy knot of primal terror swallowing me whole as the realization sets in - I'm hurt, badly hurt, in a way that not even my accelerated healing can simply brush aside.

Rampart seems to sense my distress, his massive silhouette already looming over me with a look of grim determination etched across his battered features. "Easy there, slugger," he rumbles, features taut with concentration. "I gotcha, just try and stay still for me..."

I try to focus on Rampart's voice, on the steady cadence of his reassurances as he works with deft efficiency. But it's like swimming against a powerful undertow, the current of oblivion tugging at my consciousness with every agonizing heartbeat. He's saying words, but they don't resolve into anything important, only the feeling of my own gauze getting wrapped up around me and the blooming pins-and-needles sensation of my body struggling to knit itself back together.

His voice cuts off in a sharp grunt, body flinching ever so slightly as a fresh tremor ripples through the ground beneath us. I blink owlishly, struggling to make sense of the sudden shift until a looming silhouette resolves itself from the swirling shadows at the edge of my vision.

I try to call out a warning, to steel Rampart against this fresh onslaught of violence. But my lips merely work soundlessly, every shallow exhalation sending a fresh spasm of torment stabbing through me.

Rampart, to his credit, simply tenses and rises into a defensive crouch, clearly sensing the shift in the air despite his focus being divided. "You got some kinda problem, fella?" he growls, fists clenching at his sides. "Because if not, I'd suggest turning around real slow and walking your big dumb ass right back to whatever dank hole you crawled out of before I put you through the goddamn pavement."

The figure doesn't respond immediately, at least not with words. Instead, it simply continues its slow, inexorable advance, each ponderous footfall shaking the ground with the weight of a small moon's gravity. As it draws nearer, more details begin to resolve themselves from the inky shadows - the broad, sloping shoulders and thick neck, the vaguely anthropoid silhouette beneath that concealing shroud.

Projectiles whistle through the air, directionless, aimless. Rampart's eyes flick between me and the figure and them, flicking his hands out to deflect what pieces of metal come anywhere close to us.

When the figure finally does speak, the voice that emerges is a deep, rumbling baritone, rough and grating like subterranean tectonic plates grinding against one another.

"Well, well... if it ain't the big man himself, still playing errand boy for his government overlords," the figure - a name resolves in my head, somewhere between my ears, and then vanishes - intones, the words dripping with an undercurrent of mocking condescension. "Gotta say, I'm almost a little disappointed. Here I was, expecting the Defenders to send their big guns to this fresh hell, and here we have the junior varsity team, clinging to the edge of life. How upsetting."

Rampart tenses further at that, the cords of muscle in his neck standing out in harsh relief. When he responds, his tone is low and dangerous, a barely-leashed growl of unbridled menace.

"You got a hell of a lot of nerve running that oversized piehole of yours, dirtbag," he rumbles, already beginning to shift his stance into a combat-ready crouch. "Especially considering I don't even know who in the fuck you are, or why you've decided to make a bad night for these civvies even worse. You alright, Bee?"

"Peachy," I croak, throwing him a bloody thumbs up as my bones try their hardest to push themselves back into a fighting configuration.

The hooded figure lets out a low, rumbling chuckle at that, the sound somehow sounding a little upset. Like, genuinely. "Oh, I'm hurt, you guys - you mean to tell me you don't even recognize an old friend when he comes around for a friendly little reunion?" One massive hand whips up, fingers hooking into the concealing fabric as it tears the cowl away in a single, savage motion.

Pumice.

"Great, just what we needed. Rocky Horror Picture Show, four months early," Rampart tries to quip, wiping a spot of blood from his nose. I hear the whistling before he does, but hear it he does, and he whips his body around to grab a sailing sawblade, bouncing it off his palm.

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"Well now you're just being hurtful, big guy," Pumice rumbles, flexing one stony fist with an audible grind of tectonic plates. "After all the fun times we had back in the day, you'd think a little common courtesy would be in order..."

Rampart tenses further at the sight of the Phreak, shoulders squaring as he settles into a defensive crouch. "Pumice," he growls, the word little more than a guttural snarl of disgust. "Should've known the stench of filth and failure in the air meant you bottom-feeders were involved somehow."

Pumice's sneer widens at that, revealing a maw filled with perfectly white, cuboid teeth. "There's the rapier wit I've come to know and loathe," he intones, already beginning to advance with slow, purposeful strides. "But surely even a brain-addled meathead like yourself can put two and two together here, Rampy. And, hey, Smalls! How's your hand? Nails grow back yet?"

My breath catches in my throat at his words, a surge of cold dismay swirling through the crimson fog of agony still engulfing my senses. Rampart seems to share my sudden unease, his features hardening into a mask of grim resolution as he braces for the inevitable onslaught.

"So that's how it is, huh?" he growls, already beginning to circle away from my prone form, putting himself squarely between Pumice and I. "Figures a pack of two-bit bottom-feeders like you Phreaks would get a hard-on for wanton destruction the second you sniffed out a chance to punch above your weight class."

Pumice lets out another of those rumbling chuckles, shoulders rolling in an almost lazy shrug. "What can I say, big guy? We've got big plans. Deathgirl's got a great head on her shoulders, no thanks to you guys taking away the one person who had a leash on her." His gaze flicks momentarily towards me, lips peeling back in a savage leer. "Gotta give the little Megalodon some credit though - she's the only one who ever managed to put a real dent in yours truly before tonight..."

With that, he lunges forward in a sudden explosion of motion, one granite-hewn fist already hurtling towards Rampart's jaw in a blurring haymaker. But the big man is ready and waiting, forearms whipping up into a deft cross-guard to deflect the thunderous blow with a resounding crack of force meeting force.

And just like that, the fight is well and truly joined, the two titanic figures exchanging a barrage of crunching strikes and grappling locks in a whirlwind of savage intensity. I can only watch on in a daze, struggling just to remain conscious as the world seems to tilt and spin around me.

Rampart is giving as good as he gets, fighting with the same ruthless pragmatism and technical precision that makes him such a formidable sparring partner. But Pumice simply wades through the barrage with a contemptuous ease, not even seeming to register the impacts. Then, with a sudden shift of his shoulders, he's powering forward and seizing Rampart in a smothering bear hug, those granite-slabbed arms encircling the big man's torso in an unbreakable vise.

Rampart lets out a strangled wheeze as the air is driven from his lungs, body straining and thrashing against Pumice's implacable grip. For a few heartbeats they simply grapple in a grinding, sweaty deadlock. Can Pumice sweat? Questions for later.

Then Pumice rears back, hauling Rampart clean off his feet as he whips the big man up and over in a textbook suplex. I can only watch in stunned horror as Rampart's body cartwheels through the air, hurtling directly towards the still-thrashing, convulsing horror at the heart of this nightmare.

The impact is like a bomb going off, Rampart's sturdy frame slamming into the creature with a meaty crunch of shearing metal and pulverized flesh. A fresh hailstorm of shrapnel explodes outward in a deadly cone, each jagged shard and twisted rivet shearing through the air with the speed of a bullet.

Pumice doesn't even flinch, simply ducking his head to one side in a languid, almost casual motion as the storm of razors whickers past within a hair's breadth of shearing his stony skull open. A few errant fragments patter against his stony hide in a shower of sparks, but he doesn't even seem to notice. Rampart, on the other hand, has taken a knife blade to the gut, right past the body armor, even with all the other blades falling free from his costume, totally absorbed.

"Looks like your boy toy's gonna be down for the count for a while there, little fishy," he rumbles, already advancing with slow, purposeful strides. "Just you and me now, like old times..."

His voice seems to drift in and out of coherence, the words swallowed by a rising crescendo of white noise roaring in my ears. Dimly, I'm aware of my pulse thundering in my throat, every shallow inhalation sending fresh spasms of torment stabbing through my sides.

"Don't count me out just yet!"

Rampart's bellow tears through the fog of agony clouding my senses, jarring me back to some semblance of wakefulness just in time to witness him surge back to his feet. His body is a ruin of lacerations and embedded shrapnel, blood oozing from a dozen different wounds. But the big man's features are set in a rictus of grim determination, eyes blazing with the intensity of someone who simply refuses to be beaten.

With a savage roar, he throws himself forward in a flat charge directly towards Pumice's looming silhouette. The stony behemoth barely has time to react before Rampart is upon him, one massive fist whipping around in a blurring haymaker aimed squarely at his granite jaw. Rampart's knuckles meet that unyielding hide with a crack like thunder. For a fraction of a heartbeat, I almost think he's managed to stagger the living monolith, that he's found some chink in Pumice's armor that will allow us to turn the tide.

Then reality reasserts itself with a vengeance, and I watch in dismayed horror as Rampart's entire frame shudders from the shockwave of force rebounding back up his arm. Pumice, for his part, doesn't even flinch - he simply stands there, implacable and unmoving, taking the full brunt of Rampart's strike like it was little more than a gentle caress.

"Yeah, that's not gonna cut it, chief," he rumbles, not even bothering to move "Might wanna try something with a little more oomph next time if you wanna make an impression. Be more like Smalls."

"Rampart!" I rasp out, every shallow inhalation sending fresh spasms of torment stabbing through my ravaged flank. "Get... get the mutant into the fountain! We need to... to limit his firing arc!"

Rampart shakes out his knuckles, and glances between me and Pumice like he's deciding what to do. I grab the piece of metal that seems to have the shallowest penetration in my arms and rip it loose - it looks like a wine corkscrew. Crazy.

"What, you think I care? Go, let the five foot seven middle schooler fight the six six guy made of literal rock. Go! Pussy," Pumice taunts. I see Rampart's face twisting in that annoying little thing called 'thought'.

"Go!" I shout, and Rampart snaps onto one side like Schrodinger's cat. He hustles behind me, and I interdict, cracking my knuckles and rolling my neck and trying not to look feeble in front of Pumice.

The mutant offers no resistance, simply howling out its torment as Rampart quite literally drags its spasming bulk across the ruined killing ground towards the fountain. New metal erupts in its wake, each razor-edged fragment ricocheting off Rampart's battered frame in a hellish percussive frenzy. But he doesn't falter, doesn't slow - he simply grits his teeth and bears it, indomitable will fueling his march.

"Easy there, little fishy..."

I turn just in time to see Pumice advancing with slow, purposeful strides, each footfall shaking the ground with the weight of a small moon's gravity.

"Wouldn't want you going and doing something stupid now, would we?" he continues, lips peeling back in a savage leer as he draws up mere feet away. "Not when we've got so much catching up to do."

Anger flares in my chest at his words, an ember of pure, incandescent rage searing through the fog of pain and fatigue. I grit my teeth against a fresh spasm, forcing myself to meet that mocking stare head-on as I brace for the inevitable onslaught.

"Catching up?" I rasp, the words emerging as little more than a breathless hiss of contempt. "Sorry, but I'm not really in the mood for a heart-to-heart right now, Rocky Balboa." I spit a gobbet of blood at his feet, letting my features settle into a defiant sneer. "So why don't you just take your discount Quarry Creed looking ass and fuck right off back to whatever dank hole you crawled out of before I put you down again. Permanently, this time."

Pumice regards me for a moment, that same infuriating half-smirk playing across his craggy features. Then, without preamble, he lunges forward, one granite-hewn fist whipping around, aimed right at my skull.