Fog billowed through the space below them, snaking through vents and sliding across every solid surface in the building. Ceaselessly, it expanded, until the whole floor below was covered in the unnatural vapor.

To Finn’s surprise, it retracted the following moment, converging back on Niebla’s skin briefly, then bursting onto the second floor. So she could sense through her mist, he concluded. Similar to his own power in that regard.

When he had realized what was going on, he had started sprinting for that strange, rectangular crystal on the floor above him to make sure he secured it before anything could happen to it. But alas, he didn’t make it. A cloud of dark mist cut through the wall next to him and formed a blade that went straight for his heart.

The attack was so sudden and so fast that he barely had time to pivot out of the way. How did she know? The mist hadn’t touched him. Did she have passive senses like him? No, she didn’t, he realized. A phone rested in the Venin enforcer’s pocket; she must have been told where they were by whoever sent out the distress signal.

That, and she was looking at him through the hole she’d made in the ground. He mentally kicked himself for being so focused on the possibility of someone else having a similar sensory ability to him that he’d forgotten something so simple as line of sight.

Scalestrike, having followed him from where he started dashing off out of nowhere, came to a stop a few paces behind. He used his power to communicate who they were facing, what he knew, and made an arrow indicating the villain’s position.

Simultaneously, he poured the information he was getting into a singular channel in his comms, not bothering Lyra with her own fight. His attention briefly flickered to her, and he saw her team engaging the other Venin superhuman already.

Movement in his peripheral vision brought his focus back. Niebla jumped up to meet them, and he half-expected her to launch into a monologue about how they would never foil Viperia’s plans. No such thing happened, of course, and the fight started in earnest.

Hand gripping his staff again, he gave the ground a few taps to build up its charge just as a ripple of miasma rose to engulf both him and the shifter behind him. He held his breath. While there was no way they were going to be able to circumvent inhaling the mist entirely, and he had a filter in his facemask, he would avoid risking it for as long as possible.

If only that helped with his movement. It wasn’t quite like moving underwater, but he was slowed enough to be noticeably hampered.

The almost inky wave blotted out the ceiling lights, patches of it being shaped into various constructs once more. Around him, he observed the vapor drawing in more of its surrounding gas and blackening into a solid box. Wasting no time, he smashed his staff into it with full force, activating the charge and dispersing the entrapment technique in one blow.

Breaking through, he fired his grappling hook behind him to get away from the woman and turned to Scalestrike, who was getting pummeled by a batch of swords and spikes. They failed to pierce through his scales, but the Junior Ace had no way of anticipating where the attacks would come from. Add to the fact that Niebla was keeping him off-balance by concentrating most attacks around his center of gravity and legs, he was practically helpless. Finn launched his hook at the larger hero and reeled him in, pulling the pangolin out of the smoky nightmare zone.

A real villain, sent here to get rid of them. Finn knew what it meant: life or death, as it had so many times in the past. The difference, unlike every other time, was that he wasn’t backing out. He wasn’t running away—he was going to win.

Their opponent repositioned herself to the side before attacking again, letting her power expand farther. Taking another deep breath, he used his electro modulator glove to send a shock through the weird substance Niebla produced when it came near, hoping to end the fight then and there. Whatever it was made of, it didn’t conduct electricity as the electricity did nothing. No surprise that something so common didn’t completely neutralize her. Rather obvious in retrospect.

Next, Finn channeled his color into her mist, intending to see if he could get a better handle on the properties of her power. And it worked. Upon trying to use his ability to obscure hers, the whole space in front of them went pitch black, as if they were looking at a two-dimensional cutout of a cloud rather than one with actual depth. The villain inside was abruptly caught off guard, crouching to make herself as small a target as possible and sending her newly darkened vapor to circle around and enclose them with more spikes.

Vantablack on such a large scale still stressed his power, causing that building pressure in his head which increased the longer he maintained it. Though he couldn’t deny this was much easier to handle than when he stopped that fire.

Plus, it might be worth maintaining since he had now confirmed something. Under normal circumstances, Niebla could see through her own smoke. Currently, however, the attacks lacked accuracy, relying more on volume than precision. His power was blocking her vision.

Leveling his wrist at her, he shot a dart at her neck with perfect accuracy, though as expected the projectile was slowed by the mist and pinged off a shield she formed with a wave of her hand.

Scalestrike took a ready stance when he made a green arrow on the floor pointing to where Niebla was. When they were about to be swallowed for the second time, Finn charged instead of waiting for the unnatural haze. Indicating for his ally to follow, he used his staff to clear a path.

The moment he passed the threshold, the attacks redoubled in their ferocity, and each and every single one of them was on target without fail. She would know where he was so long as her power was touching him, regardless of eyesight.

But it was working. He was advancing. Due to his senses, he could sense the formation of each solid creation and predict where they would hit. That allowed him to clear the way for Scalestrike to build up momentum and gear up for a rolling impact on the gang lieutenant.

By this point, Finn was familiar with her physiology inside and out. Which was sufficient to confirm she wasn’t a warrior type and didn't have enhanced toughness; one hit from the shifter, and she’d be done.

He maintained his run as best he could, dodging and ducking and jumping where necessary, then jumped to the side. His grappling hook adhered to the wall and pulled him toward his enemy in an attempt to trap her into being slammed into the wall by the other hero coming from the left.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Ducking under his staff, she dove forward between them. Landing in a handstand as the scaled hero crashed into where she had been a moment ago, she consolidated a sharp ring that extended around her in every direction, threatening to bisect Finn.

When he sensed what she was doing, he rolled under it to avoid it. The pangolin, unable to see, fell over in the process of uncurling himself, the solidified mist clashing against his hardened scales and pushing him back. Then the ring retracted again, forcing Finn to duck.

The mist weapons didn’t stop. Spikes, swords, axes, and jagged spears continuously formed and launched at him, as if Niebla’s focus sharpened each time they dodged or blocked. The density of the mist around them seemed to thicken with every missed attack, creating an oppressive atmosphere that didn’t let up even when Finn had to gasp for breath.

His thoughts didn’t so much race as they waded through quicksand, slow and heavy. She was herding him away from any escape routes. It was too easy for her to control the battlefield in such a confined space. The lack of air became more and more pressing too. They couldn’t go on like this.

Things were truly desperate when his equilibrium started to falter. One of his legs was positioned a centimeter too far, just a bit off, just a bit slower to correct. The next sword that flew his way almost lopped his arm off. He threw himself to the side, but it still nicked his shoulder, drawing a line of blood.

Beyond a slight grimace, Finn didn’t react. Reaching behind him, he fished around for a contraption he hadn’t used in the field for quite some time. The makeshift flashbang.

Niebla dodged the moment he threw it, not knowing what it was. When it didn’t do anything, she moved to destroy it. However, right at that moment, everything around her turned white. The only part Finn left black was where Scalestrike sat balled up to defend himself from the onslaught.

Suddenly having her retinas flooded with light, the villain stumbled back for a moment, but Finn didn’t attack because he knew she could still sense him. He just shot his grappling hook at the nearest window and smashed through it, getting the junior hero out along the way.

Both boys fell a single story and landed in a roll, one protected by shock absorptive padding in his bodysuit and the other having the natural defenses to weather far worse. Finn assessed his condition after exiting the cloud, which was manageable. Glancing to the side, Scalestrike himself didn’t seem damaged, but based on the panting breaths from his squad member, the shifter form still needed air just like him.

Their opponent caught onto what he was doing and surged forth with her smoke to follow them as they filled their lungs with blissful oxygen. He built up the charge in his staff again, ready to go on the offensive, only to be forced to spend it blocking the absolutely gargantuan club rushing down at them.

His staff bent from the impact, and his feet were off the ground before he knew it. Sent flying, Finn did his best not to skip across the pavement like a pebble and got his bearings with his hook, but by then the navy smog was free to swamp them.

What was that attack? Why hadn’t she used it earlier? Because it used most of her smoke, probably. Her total amount was finite. She couldn’t do that and have her cloud up at the same time, meaning she couldn’t use it while whittling them down with disorientation tactics and faster sneak attacks. Never mind that it would take longer to prepare than a smaller weapon.

Scalestrike was caught inside again, as he expected, yet he didn’t leave the guy in the dark this time, instead using the full range of his power on the mist to redirect the light coming from the building and light fixtures around them in order to send signals with his colors, telling the pangolin where the attacks were going to come from and where their target was.

Having those indicators supporting him, the other boy moved far more confidently, avoiding the most critical attacks and dealing with the ones that wouldn’t topple him over or stab him in the eye.

Seeing this, he closed in as well, diving into the multichromatic mayhem with the intent to press his advantage. But his advantage began to fade with every step he took. Niebla destroyed the surrounding light forces and began to solidify the mist around each of them, wanting to tie them down and keep them here long enough for them to choke or finally get hit.

No longer were the signals reaching Scalestrike with but the natural light from the night sky to work with. Finn saw the momentum shift back into their enemy’s favor, resetting battle conditions to what they had been earlier. Them slowly suffocating while fighting for their lives.

It didn’t matter that he smashed through the first barrier, because she already had a second and third salvo of sharp edges and blunt force waiting for him. And then he was back to dodging, no closer to her than he had been before. What other confirmation did they need? The two of them couldn’t beat Niebla by themselves.

So it was a good thing there was someone else, then.

Gridlock.

Finn had never stopped using his power to communicate information to his teammate, collecting the required data to understand the best strategy, which they were going to apply now.

Simple in application. Little more than a color signal, something he’d been able to do for ages. That was all it took to set up this final strategy.

Niebla’s senses were tactile, limited. Finn’s senses, meanwhile, told him all about a large drone getting into position for him to aim at. His grappling hook tore out of the mist and connected to it, then pulled it in with them, right past the Venin member. She realized what he was doing and tried to cut the chord of his hook, but he retracted it.

The drone was also under fire from her weaponry, and she successfully destroyed it, skewering it on a dark spike.

But that was alright. It just needed to get close enough.

Gel exploded out of the ruined chunks of metal and wiring—something Gridlock had prepared with the new resources at his disposal. It wasn’t lethal, simply pushing away the mist and covering the woman from head to toe, leaving her connected to the whole cloud around them by a small tether. And that was her limitation. She had to be connected to her power to control it.

The surrounding fog wavered, clearing up enough for them to see normally again. The mist, once thick and oppressive, began to recede, revealing the chaos of their surroundings. Debris lay scattered across the ground, and the aftermath of their battle echoed in the air, sparking remnants of light sources in the area dimly illuminating them.

To her credit, Niebla was quick to reassert control, cutting through the gel and flexing her mist again. The darkness thickened, tendrils of it curling around her, eager to reclaim their domain.

Too late.

Scalestrike hadn’t needed any more prompting the instant he could see. He charged forward, his powerful form a blur of motion, doing his signature move and crashing right into her. The force of his attack hit with the weight of a mountain, and Niebla staggered as he barreled through her hastily erected shield, the wind knocked from her lungs.

Like he thought, she went down in that single hit, apparently not able to withstand an angry pangolin shifter to the face.

This time, the air cleared up for real. And Finn let his staff fall to his side, exhausted by the whole affair.

They had done it.

They’d won.