With Tapdance down, victory was inevitable. Most of the Vs we’d fought didn’t have the superhero damage to hang with us—especially not as we got stronger. All we had to do was mop up, and the first target was pretty clear. The First V’s skin was red-hot, and she had the potential to hurt us on the way out. By contrast, the Second V was little more than a BMX bandit—or an underpowered white van.
And as annoying as white vans were, the right play was simple. Take out Lava Girl, then the bike rider.
Fursona agreed with me. She stomped across the molten, tire-tracked street, roaring her own flames as she closed the gap with the First V. I was still Copy-Cat, and Tails’ reflexes worked perfectly as I dodged the Second V’s wheels and [Pouncing Panthers’d] off a wall and toward the lava-spewing villain.
[Badass Move! +1 Badass Point]
She looked like she was about to blow her top. Both her hands were glowing orange lava that slowly hardened into black stone, and she ran toward Fursona. The Kaiju vomited even more flames onto the already molten street, and I had to bounce off another building to avoid the inferno. I ricocheted off the street, claws outstretched, and slammed into the First V.
[Badass Damage! +1 Badass Point]
[Tough Kitty! +1 Grit Point]
It hurt. She had to be three or four hundred degrees, and her temperature was only rising—I was lucky [Fursonal Furcefield] had taken the flames instead of my superhero damage. I whirled, firing off a quick [Cat-Scratch Fever] and thanking Past Understudy that I’d gone combat cat instead of stealth cat.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
Then something massive hit us.
I stumbled across the street, falling off the First V as a roaring sound filled my ears. Was it Fursona or the Second V’s bike? I couldn’t tell, but right now, my main goal was to get away from the massive heat source in the middle of the street. It was already burning through my superhero damage, and I needed distance.
[HP 5/15]
Preferably before it blew up.
I looked over my shoulder; sure enough, Fursona had wrapped the First V in a massive embrace—but the temp villain wasn’t out of the fight yet. Her skin had cracked in a hundred places, and as I watched, her costume burst into flames. Her eyes were red, and she’d clenched her jaw like she was trying to hold something back.
Then, all of a sudden, she relaxed. So did I; Fursona had done enough damage to stop her.
The street exploded.
[HP 2/15]
[Tough Kitty! +1 Grit Point]
It felt like a bomb going off. Like the tanks exploding at the MoonTech chemical plant. A giant hand shoved me into an apartment—then through the apartment’s wall. The heat rippled out a moment later, bathing me in pure fire. And a moment after that, fragments of brick and gravel rained down like mortar shells, pepping the space the building had just been.
I picked myself up, glad no one lived around here anymore. Then I took stock of the battlefield.
The Second V was picking up her blackened bike, and Fursona stood at the blast’s epicenter, her suit burning in a half-dozen places as she held a thin woman in a dancer’s leotard. The poor girl was out, and for a second, I had a ton of sympathy for her. She’d used everything she had to try and turn the tables, and it showed.
The neighborhood was little more than a crater surrounded by a war zone.
Fursona shook her massive head, eye stalks waving back and forth. Then she dropped the woman to the still-steaming roadbase and roared at the top of her lungs. “Come on! Who else do you have!? I’ll fight them all!”
The dirt bike’s engine revved, and I whirled, dodging the outstretched Second V’s hand. She took a single swipe at Fursona, but the Kaiju suit tanked it. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve had enough.” Then she spun around in a donut, peppering my partner with gravel, and took off down the street for the water treatment plant.
I tried to keep up. [Pouncing Panthers] threw me from wall to fence as I burned powers trying to catch the V. But in the end, I couldn’t keep up with her machine. I had to give up the chase and wait for Fursona’s lumbering form to catch up.
[End of Act One: Act Two in Three Minutes]
Losing the Second V hurt, and not only because we hadn’t gotten the full mop-up we’d wanted. She’d tell the prison guards we were coming.
“Okay, stealth was never an option, right?” Fursona asked, shrugging her shoulders. Neither of us had planned on this being a stealth mission; the combat cat Costume had been a nod to that reality. Right now, what mattered most was the hope that Su-Bin had pinned down enough pro-Ilneat heroes with her protest, and that they’d take a few minutes to get here.
Which meant it was time to move fast and break things.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I shifted into Rainy Day, using a charge of [Virga] to top Fursona off—and to put out her flaming fursuit. Then I switched back to Understudy. “Right. Let’s do Hannibal.”
[Medic! +2 Cunning Points]
[Rejuvenation Activated: HP 9/15]
Fursona stared at me. “We’ve never done Hannibal. You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. It’ll be great, and it’s not like we can get help here.”
“I hate the idea of Hannibal.” She shook her head; the eye stalks bounced, and I laughed.
----------------------------------------
[Cell Theory: Act Two in Progress]
“RAWR!” Fursona yelled!
She might’ve hated the idea of the Hannibal plan, but by the time we crashed through the water treatment plant’s gates and stomped over the Second V’s bike like a war horse on an ancient battlefield, she was roaring and shouting just like me.
She wasn’t Full-Kaiju, but even her normal form was big enough to ride—I stood with my legs on her tail, waving my wand and firing [Starlances] like a mounted archer. Her fursuit gave me plenty of cover, and the silly-looking eye stalks acted like a set of reins—except I had no control over where Fursona went. She roared again and clomped her way between the three huge settling ponds.
The whole place was built around a pair of enormous water tanks, an enclosed building covered in rust and vents that shot foul-smelling air into the sky, and the settling ponds—a pretty typical treatment plant layout, if a little old. And when I say foul-smelling, I mean it; even though the treatment process was entirely enclosed, thousands of gallons of raw sewage ran through its pipes every day.
It reeked.
The first bullets started bouncing off Fursona’s suit, and I ducked reflexively behind her head before returning fire. At the same time, her flame breath shot out—mixed with the faint scent of freshly mixed Tang. But even though my [Starlances] aimed toward the muzzle flashes inside the plant, Fursona’s target was different.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point]
She breathed right on the water around us. The water turned to vapor that hung in the air around us like a smoke screen. When I couldn’t see the flashes in the distance, I thumped Fursona’s head and pulled on her eye stalk. “Okay, let’s get moving!”
“I’m your partner, not your noble steed,” she grumped, but she started moving forward and to the left. A few bullets hit her, but her [Fursonal Furcefield] was ridiculous, and most of them just bounced off, flattened.
The smoke screen was even blowing the right way; I couldn’t see the sheet metal walls until they loomed in front of us less than ten feet away. “Now!” I shouted.
“RAWR!” Fursona yelled, rushing forward as I grabbed both eye-stalks and swung down and to her left. She led with her right shoulder, slamming through the thin tin metal and into the maze of pipes and chemical containers inside.
But unlike my fight against Polar Vortex in the plant near Confluence Park, we didn’t care about the individual villains in the plant. For all we knew, there weren’t any yet; we’d only seen a few henches with guns. One turned and pulled the trigger, and I blasted him away with a [Starlance].
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
Then Fursona shook me off, and I rolled right, firing another two [Starlances] into the hall toward two henches—mostly to keep them behind cover, but also hoping for a hit. No such luck. “Fursona, try that way!”
“Got it!” She stomped toward the defenders, roaring and spewing spurts of flame at them as she closed the gap. I followed her like a soldier following a tank, watching her tear into the two henches until their hands went up and they started whining about being forced into the job.
I didn’t have time to give them orders. A door loomed up ahead, and I pointed; it was chrome, unlike the rest of the building around it. “That’s a trap!”
A second later, it opened, and a gun turret dropped from the ceiling behind it. Fursona dodged left, and I went right—a perfect Split Ends. The turret looked like a Tesla coil, and a second later, lightning filled the hall where we’d just been standing. “You deal with it!” Fursona shouted.
“On it!” I started volleying [Starlances] toward it, but it took four to break through its armor. When it finally exploded, sending a ripple of shrapnel across the room, Fursona lumbered toward the door.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
“Empty,” she said a moment later. “Just a trap. Keep your eyes open for more.”
A second later, the floor opened under her, and she fell through it, screaming, only to get cut off with a splash. As she resurfaced, she sputtered into the mic. “Annie, maneaters!”
I popped onto my sailboard and dove through the hole after her, then skimmed across the massive, foul-smelling lake until I found her. Sure enough, she and a Florida Maneater were death-rolling each other through the water, flames, and droplets of…stuff…filling the air. “Break off and get ready!” I yelled, “Pick-up’s coming in!”
I dipped below the water until it was rushing against my chest, struggling to keep flying forward. My speed dropped, and a maneater took a chomp at me. Its teeth didn’t get purchase, but they ripped my arm open in a cut that went from elbow to wrist, and I screamed.
[HP 6/15]
Then I screamed again as I hit something massive in front of me. It was Fursona, and she clambered on board as a half-dozen of the massive, overgrown reptiles closed in around us. I rocketed for the square of light overhead before she was really on the board.
We burst through it, dripping with disgusting, half-treated water. Neither of us could stop laughing as we lay on the tile next to the trapdoor. “You…you really stink,” I said after a second.
“You’re not exactly rosey either, you know?” she shot back. Then she stood up. “Okay. Traps everywhere. Got it. Let’s keep moving.”
Things happened fast after that. We worked our way through the maze-like treatment plant, being careful where we had to and moving fast when we could. A few henches took shots at us until we beat them up, but nothing felt like a threat. More dangerously, pit traps, acid-sprayers, and even a massive blade that fell from the ceiling greeted us around every turn—a sure sign that we were closing in on The Agent’s hiding place.
But eventually, we reached a simple, nondescript door. It had exactly the right amount of rust, and its keypad had clearly been pushed thousands of times—a four-digit code with four buttons worn down so far I couldn’t read the numbers anymore. I pushed the numbers in order—2, 5, 6, 7—and the door popped open to reveal an elevator.
The small space had no obvious traps, and after a moment, I switched to Lab Assistant Panic. A quick [Speed-Hack] didn’t show anything worth messing with, which was weird—an elevator was the perfect place for a lethal trap. Then again, every person coming in and out might use it. “I’m not seeing anything weird, just an ultra low-powered laser grid. It’s for decontamination. I think.”
“Well, I feel contaminated as hell right now,” Fursona complained. She stepped into the elevator, which creaked ominously. “You coming?”
I didn’t really want to; even though it wasn’t a trap, it was so obviously a trap I couldn’t shake the bad feeling. But I did stink, and it was the only way to wherever The Agent was keeping Dr. Jackson. So, after a second, I stepped inside and closed the door.
“Attention! Decontamination in Progress!”
The laser grid fired, and I flinched as the elevator descended.