3.23

“Showtime.”

— Vincent Hall

The impact slamming into my upper torso would have immediately pulped my internal organs if it weren’t for the significant amount of work that’s gone into reinforcing my bone structure and muscle fibers. Instead, I’m only flung back, cratering the brick wall of a nearby building as I feel a number of ribs snap inside me. I activate my power and begin stitching together strips of bone, but a grotesque fist of inhuman proportions strikes out through the still-settling dust, shattering the remaining brick wall and driving me further into the building.

I tumble against the hard concrete floor, fighting past the pain to land at least somewhat upright and halting my momentum in an effort to continue re-attaching my ribs correctly.

Cook stomps through the doorway, muscles bulging against his patchwork outfit and veins pulsing with a sickly purple color. His left arm drags behind him, flesh ballooning outwards in a strangely-shaped limb the size of his torso.

He lunges, and as much as I’m technically capable of moving while using my ability, the sudden attack breaks my concentration, leaving my ribs unrepaired. Cook’s boot knocks a leg out from under me, forcing me to take a knee, and I abandon the idea of healing myself for the moment.

My right arm splits, a jagged bone knife erupting from the center wrapped in sturdy, glistening tendons. Steam hisses, spurting in a geyser of mist from my shoulder as I activate a pressure booster, propelling the blade arm in a vicious swipe at Cook’s torso.

The man doesn’t dodge, I’m not even entirely convinced he really processes what’s happening, but he does flinch back slightly. The blade impacts his mutated shoulder, shearing off a chunk of flesh and a patch of his coat.

Blood sprays, and Cook ignores the relatively minor wound. He crouches, swinging that enormous arm around for a tackle.

I react, burning another pressure booster even as I set the spent one to expanding, stealing air from the surrounding area and compressing it into the tiny sacs set behind my shoulder blades.

The spent booster sends me sailing through the air in a leap over Cook’s head, and I take the chance to spend a pressure booster in my abdomen, where the two extra insectile blade-arms rest against my torso. The right one extends, carving a deeper gash along Cook’s shoulder, extending the prior wound I’d given him.

Three boosters now, refilling. They should be ready in about a minute. I don’t think I need them to finish the fight, but Cook’s liable to bleed out even if I don’t continue.

Actually, maybe I can get him to bleed out faster.

I smirk as he turns around. “Can’t say I expected a science guy like you to go all monster mode, but maybe throwing a tantrum is just part of your modus operandi.”

Cook snarls. “Insolent!” He tears a small metallic rod from his coat using his normal arm, and jams it into his neck. The wounds on his shoulder don’t heal, exactly, but an almost crystalline shell hardens over them, and his pupils shrink to pinpricks.

Ah. And my ribs are still broken. This has backfired spectacularly.

He swings his mutated limb around, forcing me into a long backstep as I release the blade hidden in my other arm preemptively, darting to the side as he carries the momentum upward, transitioning into a heavy slam that shatters concrete where I was just standing.

I step in, striking out with an unpowered swipe, my modified muscular structure still doing wonders even without the booster as the bone blade cleaves through mutated flesh, tracing a line up the malformed arm.

Cook grunts, bending the arm to lunge forward in a hasty shoulder tackle. I brace myself, taking the blow without too much damage and skidding across the ground.

He’s quick, I note. Not physically, but he has a good sense of weight and momentum, and more battle sense than I would expect, looking at that monstrous limb. I can’t help but wonder if he’s actually practiced with it before, or if he’s picking all this up on the fly…

Then, Cook takes a step back, drawing what looks like a small spray gun from his coat. He quickly latches it against a canister strapped to his belt, depresses the trigger, and sweeps the device in a wide arc.

I’m not close enough to stop him, but when he stashes the spray gun and reaches for a smaller canister — an antidote, maybe? — I decide that whatever poison he’s made can be easily dealt with later. I break into a run, dashing through the steadily-thickening cloud of smog.

I take a breath —

—

I used to think deer were stupid. I still think that, but it’s not as if they really had a choice in the matter — they’re deer. They run around, eat all your plants and freeze in the face of oncoming traffic.

Stupid.

Even darting across the room in a body large enough to make grown men cower, muscles creaking, fluids compressing, pressure boosters hissing, and blades of flesh singing through the air, I can’t help but freeze at the sound of a blaring horn and burning yellow lights.

—

The impact bowls over me, shattering my panic, and even through the half-haze of tires on pavement and blurry vision I can tell my senses are being distorted. There is no truck, there are no tires, and the attack sending me flying across the room was not thrown by any kind of vehicle — but the adrenaline coursing through my veins has yet to get the memo, I guess.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Scared, roach? Scuttling away already? A minor setback, and you’re crawling back under the floorboards? Miserable wretch. Perhaps being pulverized is too good for you,” the man howls, and his voice blends with the heavy crunch of bone and the sickening thump of rubber over flesh.

I grit my teeth against the panic, dipping into my power. It’s not exactly a simple compound, but my power is easily able to highlight which areas of my brain are being affected, and from there it’s only a matter of normalization. The rate my power heals the damage outstrips Cook’s toxin by a surprising amount.

The real issue is, I don’t know how to dodge attacks while having my power up at the same time. Trial and error proves the modifications I made allow some range of movement, but I have no idea if it’s going to be enough.

Another truck breaks the fog, blackened shadows tearing at its sides as my power works to destroy the hallucination and reveal the man behind it, and my decision is made for me.

At first, hauling my muscles in the correct direction feels like swimming through honey — they buck and strain against me, and it’s all I can do to concentrate on the movements as well as keeping my power active. Every time I think I have it down, my power slips or vice versa, and as Cook’s enormous mutated limb barrels down at me, I find my focus slipping further.

My adrenaline spikes, and —

—

Twisting, twisting spire of flesh and gristle and bone, stretching across torn rock and sundered land. Turning, turning, sweeping man and beast into cauldron tall and great.

Tall enough to reach past the clouds. Great enough to brush the edge of —

The thing reaches, crawling ever skyward, desperate to touch, desperate to feel, desperate to know. It gathers its followers of tooth and claw and fang and it —

—

— feels like trying to drive two cars at once, on two separate roads, but as Cook’s fist descends, I manage to push back the hallucinogenic haze and neatly step to the side.

His arm sails past, and I lash out with both my main arm and my smaller one, carving two new wounds along his flank. At the same time, I set to work reorganizing my brain structure and sealing the internal bleeding in my torso. Ribs crack and organs squelch as they realign, and I don’t miss a beat as I turn on my heel and dash towards Cook.

As much as it pains me to admit it, Cook might have an advantage in the endurance department, here. Any emergency repairs I perform need to be carefully rationed, what with the hallucinogenic burning up my calorie stores. I’d prefer to end this quickly.

I’d also prefer to end it out in the open. No point in a beatdown if no one sees it.

I plaster on a grin, pulling back all four limbs and driving them into Cook’s writhing torso before he can rebalance. He responds by screaming, eyes wild and limbs twitching, before he scrabbles against his coat and desperately flings something in my face.

From what I can tell, in the split-second before they detonate, they seem to be a collection of small, spherical capsules.

They burst, flooding the space between us in a sheet of thick white foam, immediately coating my torso and most of my face. The substance burns my skin and eats through my coat, and I have to kick my ability into a higher gear just to keep up with the damage.

I’d stored a good amount of extra material before this fight, but I’ve already burned through almost half of it — and then, Cook pulls out the fire.

He pulls out another device, flicks it, and a spark leaps from the end and catches against the foam. It ignites into a full blaze of heat before I can register the fact that this guy apparently carries around portable napalm in his pockets.

Once I do register it, though, a number of escape methods flit through my mind before I settle on something. The foam itself is sticky, and the heat it generates is intense enough to melt skin. It’s possible the foam will burn itself out before long, but since Cook’s ability is involved, it seems unwise to assume the substance will behave according to traditional laws of physics.

I can’t just stop drop and roll, not with the way the foam clings, but I need to remove it somehow.

I skip to my last resort almost immediately. Temporarily dropping my control on my body, I focus my power, preparing a wave of changes to take place as fast as I can manage without using too much of my stores. Just as the heat starts to break my skin, I trace an outline where the stuff meets my flesh, and detach the upper layer of epidermis.

I leap to the side, partially blinded as blood streams from exposed muscle on my face, using the pile of flaming pseudo-napalm as cover to stomp forward and plant my boot in the middle of Cook’s chest.

I grin as his head snaps up. He doesn’t pale, exactly, but he looks vaguely disgusted.

The expression doesn’t last after I activate the pressure booster set into my leg.

The wind whips past my face as the force of the impact propels Cook through the open hole in the wall and tumbling out onto the street.

A spotlight sweeps across the road, coming to a rest over the man as he surges to his feet, muscles rippling and fists clenched. From my vantage point halfway in the building, I can see the beginnings of a USMC quarantine line setting up about a block away.

My grin widens, and I soften my gait as I walk out of the building. A wheezing laugh forces its way out of my chest, and Cook’s eyes narrow dangerously.

Another spotlight swings around to pin me to the tarmac, and I have to resist a flinch.

“Ready to fall, kingpin?!” I shout over the dull roar of helicopter blades and distant sirens.

Cook is silent, for a moment. “What is this, some kind of display? A public lashing?” He smiles crookedly. “It’s not as if the street trash follows me for my image.”

I shrug. “Guess you’re lucky I’ve got the other end of your employment deal covered, too, then.” I splay my blades, letting my coat billow behind me.

Cook’s bulk shifts, considering. Then, he tenses.

“Hah… I know what you are, child.” His mutated arm lifts into the air, pauses, and then hammers into the earth, cratering the tarmac and letting out a crack sharp enough to split the air around us.

“You’re me!” He screams, expression manic. I resist the urge to twitch. “These underhanded tactics, this strategic dismantling — you’re not like those other barbarians, those thugs! You think before you act! You utilize your god-given intellect!”

“I can tell — don’t think I can’t — you think you’re doing this for the greater good, but I know! I can tell the real reason you pick apart my assets, twisting them to your will — you’re doing the same thing I did, all those years ago!” As he rants, Cook’s enormous hand tightens around the displaced chunk of pavement, cracks forming in the earth as it begins to separate.

He twists his body sharply, and pulls — the earth cracks, shards of stone tearing up as Cook wrenches a chunk of rock from the ground and hefts it above him, bits of broken stone raining down his palm.

Cook pulls his arm back, winding up. “Well, compatriot?! You’re so sure you can do it better than I can?!” The arm halts, and Cook’s pupils shrink to pinpricks.

“Show me!”