Harrowing.

There was no other way to describe what she was seeing, what was happening. Her struggles with inadequacy and disgust at herself took a backseat to the sheer brutality of the scene playing out in front of her eyes.

After seeing that initial impact, Matilda had made the gut-wrenching decision to keep chasing instead of helping the victims. She didn’t know if it was the right one. She didn’t know what she could do, but she did know there were people she wanted to keep safe.

“Josiah. Tell me you’ve already left. Please,” she begged over her earpiece. She couldn’t lose him too. Pushy as he might have been sometimes, he’d still been there for her, helping her get settled in her new role as Damsel whenever Allen wasn’t around.

“I’m going to be okay, Damsel. Don’t worry about me,” he answered in that calm tone which seemed completely inappropriate for the current situation.

“You’ve evacuated?” she gasped out while jumping another ledge, fully aware of the distance between herself and the nearest hero other than herself.

“Yes, I have. But you need to stay safe as well. You should regroup with your team; let the captains handle this for now, okay?” came the reply in a tone that conveyed how he thought she’d seen more than enough action for the day.

“I promise to be careful,” she said.

“Be safe.”

She couldn’t swear she would stay out of the fight, but she knew when she was outclassed. Heavily so, even. She’d never managed to push Aiden in training, and now they were facing an opponent more destructive than him and Allen both. She wasn’t delusional about her odds in a head-to-head confrontation with an Unbound.

But she was a warrior-type. And her unique ability made it so a substantial portion of her practice was spent preparing for situations such as this, where an immensely durable opponent showed up and she was able to provide the requisite power to break through if she could get close enough.

Truthfully, she was terrified. The feeling surprised her; she’d thought she was over that nervousness that came with her first few outings. And she discovered she was, but this wasn’t mere stage fright. This was terror. It washed over her, goosebumps rising on her skin, tightening around her chest, nausea nearly making her hurl when the viper’s massive head turned her way. She could’ve sworn the monster was looking at her.

They had witnessed an unbinding in real-time. Nothing they could’ve planned would have prepared them against that, short of having an Unbound of their own at their backs. Suffice to say, this development was rare. Even though there were protocols in place for the current scenario, it seemed delusional to think they could control the situation. The board was scrambling, and everyone knew it.

Josiah wasn’t answering anymore, presumably because the command station had been shut down while the local DHD branch was being cleared. That meant she was free to switch over to her team comms, but there wasn’t much of a team right now. Scalestrike, Mountpin and Gossamer were way ahead, helping the civilians who were about to be in Viperia’s path get away so there wouldn’t be a repeat of what happened earlier. Warp and Aquiveil were doing the same, just all over the place, one boy being able to make portals and the other capable of teleporting by the use of controlled, symmetrical rain.

So Matilda jumped from rooftop to rooftop to the best of her ability to look for an opening in the main clash, or maybe do something that wasn’t standing around and praying for a miracle. People were dying, after all. And the only ones holding the line were their resident jester and storm caller. The rest had been pushed out of the fight, unable to keep up with the sheer intensity.

It was almost beautiful, from a distance. Definitely not as chaotic as it must have been up close, what with the two strongest heroes present wrestling down what might have qualified as a veritable basilisk. Or something in that vein. She wasn’t an expert on mythology.

Golden hues and blue flashes danced through the dust-filled air, lighting up the streets in bursts as Nar and Mistral fought to contain the creature. The scale of the fight was staggering; each blow from the Unbound rattled windows, shook buildings, and sent cracks snaking across the pavement. Despite her still being multiple blocks removed from them, Matilda could feel the impact of each clash reverberate through her, a constant reminder of the raw power she was up against.

Watching her step was important here. She wasn’t going to lose her balance and fall down and lose her balance before reaching the others. Except she might have to jump anyway, because the Venin leader opened her mouth wide again, primed to unleash her stream of poison. Mistral wrenched her head to the side a second too late.

Viperia used her venom breath again, the beam blasting across the cityscape, melting buildings and roads with vicious potency. Green smoke rose into the night sky. It filtered the illumination in the streets, casting the battlefield in ominous light, an eerie backdrop to this senseless massacre.

The quick dive Matilda performed in the nick of time was what saved her from being reduced to a puddle. Dark green cut the air above her, raining down drops that splattered in its wake. She landed on the ground from a height that would be lethal to an ordinary human with nothing but a shoulder roll, continuing her run to avoid splash damage. She was unscathed.

The people around her weren’t so lucky.

Next to her, a man got hit and was missing the front of his chest, face contorted as if to cry out, yet accomplishing nothing more than gurgling blood.

A group of people on the other side of the street were buried in rubble.

One woman’s face melted off, splatters of acid spraying across her head and neck, eating through her skin and muscle and bone. She screamed like a banshee, then went quiet as her brain ceased functioning and freed her from the maddening torture she’d been experiencing in her last seconds of life.

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Matilda’s pace slowed, coming to a halt in front of the innocent civilian’s remains. She fell to her knees as the body slumped to the ground with a wet thud.

“No, no, no…” she whispered. This wasn’t supposed to happen. People dying in front of her without being able to do anything. It was like being back in that alley, watching that boy slowly succumb to Viperia’s awful drug. Now the villain was actually here, ending lives in person.

Matilda braved another look at the latest victim. What lay in front of her was so gruesome, she would have absolutely vomited if her stomach hadn’t been empty before the mission. She dry-heaved and felt distantly thankful that her veil wasn’t ruined by puke. Small mercies.

Her hands trembled as she reached out, but she stopped herself. It was pointless, this one was already dead and carrying the body to Radi wouldn’t save her.

It was unfair. This wasn’t supposed to happen, these people hadn’t done anything wrong and they were being slaughtered because some overpowered criminal was throwing a tantrum. She pounded her fist into the pavement, spreading spiderweb cracks around the impact.

She gasped for air, her breaths shallow and ragged. Was this what it meant to be a hero? Watching people die, not being able to do anything about it, and then repeating the same thing over and over? The woman’s screams echoed in her mind, cruelly haunting, as though to reinforce her point. Despair threatened to overwhelm her, a bottomless pit forming in her stomach. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.

Rumbling caused the chips between her gauntleted fingers to shake, and she looked towards the source. Out of sight, beyond a collection of devastated homes, Viperia had begun moving once more. Of course. These people obviously meant nothing to her. Matilda was reaching the limit of her resolve. It was all just too much.

Damsel had to keep going. People needed her to fight, to stem the tide against calamities like the one heading for the center of the district. Forcing herself to stand, she put one greave ahead of the other, approaching the fallen concrete to see if the citizens underneath were alive. They weren’t.

Forcing her eyes shut, she gritted her teeth. But she didn’t collapse, or give up. She pressed on. Waving down a team of paramedics making their way through the chaos, she leaped off the sidewalk.

This time her run was a dead sprint. No gawking, no three-sixties to reorient herself and assess the situation, none of that. Only catching up to the serpent mattered.

She pumped her arms and legs as fast as she could, sometimes barely even needing to jump to skip between buildings. The battle raged on, and she decided to go around rather than get closer and be rebuffed. She knew where they were going after all.

Shockingly, she reached the DHD building sooner than her target. It seemed to be mostly empty, save for the entrance, which was barred by a contingent of heroes standing shoulder to shoulder. One she recognized: district A23H’s hero team, apparently the first of the backup to have arrived.

What few houses there were in the area had long since been vacated, so no new casualties mounted as a result of Viperia barreling over them, ahead of the two heroes she’d been fighting. Brick, wood, plaster and concrete exploded as she made her entrance, those black eyes zeroing in on the DHD headquarters.

The leader of the other hero team, Beefdom, was a muscular man in skintight red spandex wearing a helmet with a blue colored visor and metallic pauldrons on his shoulder. He raised his arms, his massive biceps flexing in his suit, and bellowed in a husky voice.

“Time to bring the pain, you overgrown lizard!” He cracked his neck dramatically, his visor glowing ominously. “Prepare to feel the full force of Beefdom!”

The other heroes standing with him visibly winced at his line, but Matilda barely had time to focus on their discomfort. Her eyes widened as Beefdom charged toward the monstrous Viperia, muscles rippling with raw power. With a roar, he tackled the venomous beast head-on, slamming his shoulder into the creature's side like a battering ram.

Viperia staggered for a split second before she whipped around to hose the hero in a torrent of poisonous venom.

Beefdom shot up like a cannonball, punching her jaw shut with an uppercut. Green ichor dribbled down the sides of the snake’s mouth as her head snapped back.

Her two main opponents of the night flew around the corner then, Nar rushing forward to protect Beefdom from the inevitable counter. Mistral, however, didn’t fly forward to help at all. Instead, he surged upwards. Looking up, Matilda saw the whole sky becoming more clouded.

No way, she thought. Allen was going to use that attack here? What about the collateral damage? There were no ordinary civilians around, but still.

Nar flew down to another member of Beefdom’s team, clearly touching them to get a copy of their power. That one had control over mud, if she recalled correctly. So they were going to stall?

And when the others jumped in, the fight grew more hectic, even if she had to admit this other district team was much more coordinated than she’d thought. More so than theirs. Then again, Allen’s team only had two fighters besides himself, so perhaps that comparison was unfair.

Viperia rushed for the building, burrowing into it and thrashing frantically inside. She let out a series of loud hisses, as if calling for someone. Searching.

But Beefdom dragged her back out by the tail. She rolled on the ground without having found whomever she was looking for. Shaking herself off, she rose back up, body coiling into a more dangerous position.

Then promptly got hit with potshots from somewhere Matilda couldn’t identify. The sharpshooters kept harrying the shifter every time the balance was about to tilt against them. Bolts and bullets and flashing lasers interspersed timed assaults from Beefdom as Nar worked on keeping the zone locked down. And she could see the other heroes crowding around the edges, but not approaching as boldly as before, no doubt having learned their mistake.

If they could keep this up, Allen might be able to finally end this. But the supervillain wasn’t going to make it that easy.

For the second time tonight, Viperia danced, and Matilda was not ready.

The effect hit like a freight train. Her legs felt like noodles, wobbling under her until she fell flat on her butt. It wasn’t fear this time, just this pervasive weakness throughout her body, leaving her unable to flex her enhanced strength or even stand straight.

Her eyes stayed on the fight, but she saw Nar was taking point now, directing golden barriers to fly this way and that. Either he learned to reverse the effect somehow or he was just enduring it better.

She tried to push herself to a standing position. Her arms weren’t cooperating, giving out when she tried to put her weight on them. No, she couldn’t let this happen.. She needed to get up.

“Looks like you could use some help,” she heard behind her.

Matilda turned to see who the speaker was, only to realize she was listening to a different kind of speaker: one attached to a flying drone.

It didn’t look like any of Zeta’s models, yet it was strangely advanced and compact. White, with a sleek finish and a camera pointed at her helmeted face.

Matilda eyed the lens speculatively. “Who are you?”

The voice on the other end paused for a moment, then responded.

“You can call me Gridlock.”