Even after all these years, it was hard to get used to the sheer magnitude of this technique. Part of that was due to how little Allen had used it, and part of it had to do with the near uncontrollable power he had to somehow keep in check until he delivered the condensed hyper-storm to its target. It was like trying to steer a raging elephant one-handed. Not to mention the blinding explosion that always followed.
Blue sparks and mist emanated from his arm, the limb still numb from the aftershock.
He was already beginning to regret using the attack before he could see the extent of the damage he had inflicted, sheer exhaustion catching up to him immediately upon steadying himself.
Granted, he hadn’t made this decision lightly. The ultimate application of his power had certainly found its mark, and for once, the serpent didn’t shrug it off.
The explosion had smashed her clean into the ground, forming a crater massive enough for the surrounding buildings to tip forward dangerously, making it look as though they were trying to see how hurt Viperia was as well.
Half her side was gone. Bare parts of a greenish skull, a missing eye, broken ribs sticking out. With a wheezing hiss, the snake tried and failed to get up, streams of black blood raining down as her hulking body rose off the ground, chunks of frozen, torn, and blackened flesh falling off. Her body fell with a crash, the surroundings shaking from the impact. On top of that, traces of glowing blue lingered on her exposed innards, inhibiting her regeneration.
But she wasn’t dead.
He knew he had to finish this. Other heroes were already responding, walking back toward where they’d cleared the area, but he’d pushed himself to the limit of his power for that singular attack. Which was one reason why he didn’t use it under normal circumstances. Another was the unreasonable amount of collateral damage it caused if he didn’t use it far up in the sky.
Allen dispersed his power. Gravity took hold and his stomach lurched from the freefall, but the sensation was familiar. Anything to conserve energy in those precious few seconds before he came down on the rampaging gang leader again.
Viperia was weathering a bombardment of suppressing fire from everyone present while she kept trying to stay upright. Lasers, fireballs, bullets, everyone who could throw something at her, did.
Nar swooped in from the side and sent battering rams of pure force into her side, aggravating her wounds and keeping her off balance. But Allen could see the writing on the wall. This wasn’t sustainable; Viperia was going to get her bearings in a few more breaths.
Inhaling deeply, he extended his arms in a diver’s position, speeding up his fall and calling on his power. Here and now, he needed everything. Rather than just floating on the new stormcloud, his entire body was covered in it. With the ease of long practice, he had donned his extra power-generated layer of armor. It roiled over his body with angry rumbles, but the vibrations were familiar to him. This application of his power required a lot of control, more than he could manage for extended periods of time without injuring himself. For this final sprint, he held nothing back. There was a window of opportunity in front of him, and he had no plans to waste it. The fight had gone on for far too long as it was.
Among the main advantages of this application of his ability, being clad in his own power, was the maneuverability it provided. Although he was adept at standing on clouds and getting around that way, this made micro adjustments in midair much easier. And he’d gotten to a point where it served its function as actual armor even better than his costume did, since it reacted to external contact by countering with lightning, rain, ice, or cloud cushioning, depending on what type of attack it was, in order to neutralize or redirect it.
Moveover, the residual energy of the attacks it received would be absorbed, extracted, and included by his storm in his own offense, not only fueling it but also strengthening it beyond what he would normally be able to manage. The problem, he always found, was the danger of spinning up such an intense power charge so close to his body. One wrong move, and he could suffer disastrous backlash.
Having his body covered in a raging storm also caused severe signal interference, to the point where his communicator wouldn’t work anymore. But that wasn’t an issue. The request for aid had been sent. More reinforcements would come, but he couldn’t rely on that. If he were the type of person that left the safety of his district up to a hope and prayer like that, he would’ve never been named captain.
No, this had to be quick.
Accelerating, he twisted and landed in a three-point stance on the ground, not slowing down in order to touch pavement with maximum impact. Cracks spread out beneath him as his armor rippled with sparks and he raised an arm to channel the surge into his next move: a whirling sphere of darkened vapor, pure pressure condensing it to the size of a golf ball.
He flicked his wrist, causing it to shoot off faster than a speeding car. When it reached Viperia, who was beginning to make her way out of the crater, it burst outwards in a dazzling spray of glittering drops reflecting the light of the surrounding projectiles, the beauty of it completely at odds with how viciously it knocked her away. She slammed into asphalt, carving a trench just by sliding there with her massive body.
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With a boosted jump, Allen closed the distance in a blink, through the haze of beams and rays and other power effects before anyone could pull back from committing friendly fire. From an outside perspective, his actions might’ve seemed reckless. And they were, to a degree, but he’d calculated what he could take on the specific path he was on and made a judgment call. The energy extracted from those and his next stopping point would be sufficient to feed into the next step of his assault.
Fizzing and crackling intensified on his storm gauntlets, lightning traveling into a spot between his hands until he’d formed a glowing white-hot plasma ball. The application of his felt somewhat unnatural, outside its usual purview. In contrast to using it in conjunction with something else, he didn’t do so well with pure heat, and it was all he could do to keep the spherical disaster stable. It snapped and popped, eager to be let loose. Allen obliged.
Viperia, prone on the ground, saw the blast coming and rolled out of the way. He created a gray cloud and had the heated ball of destruction bounce off it. When it hit, the burning wave seared her undefended side and made her cry out in that snakish way again.
Meanwhile, the other heroes worked to subdue the slithering menace with various capture methods, many of them familiar to him. He was here with many who had fought at his side over the years, not alone. Though he was prepared to finish this.
Allen didn’t let up. The moment the searing wave connected, he slammed his feet into the ground, sending a crackling ripple of electricity along the surface. With a snap of his fingers, the charge erupted into jagged bolts, tracing the fractured asphalt like branching rivulets of light and latching onto Viperia’s exposed wounds. Her pained hiss turned into a bellowing roar, shaking the air as she thrashed against the converging net of attacks.
Thrashing turned into writhing, the district leader increasing the power of his paralysis. The moment she was locked down, he leaped in her direction, swallowing the distance of an entire street in a second. He was in her blindspot under one of Nar’s barriers now, so she couldn’t see him, but she obviously knew where he was. The sound would’ve given it away.
Before she could turn to face him, however, he buried his arm in her gaping eye socket, freezing the inside at full blast. He grew crystalline spikes too, for good measure. She bucked against him with unbelievable strength, so great that he would’ve been bucked off if not for all the other heroes keeping her from moving more than a few centimeters. If he successfully froze her brain, this would be done. He flared his power as hard as he could, pushing past the limit until he could finally stop her.
It still wasn’t enough. Viperia broke out, shattering a dozen different restraints and hurling him away. The dark blood leaking out of her body suddenly traveled upstream, climbing up her body and towards her teeth. Then her teeth gained a jet black glint, just as she reinforced herself with more venom, coating every part of herself in the substance.
Flying over the DHD headquarters, Allen didn’t panic or hesitate to make use of his momentum. But the tenacity of this particular supervillain did make him utter a curse he wouldn’t have if he thought anyone could hear him.
The Unbound lunged. Her jaws closed on each other right where he’d been a second ago. The shockwave rippled through his armor and Allen absorbed it to shoot back a devastating sheet of rain that washed most of the poison off her body.
She twisted and slammed her tail into him before he could react. He barely registered the fall. He was in the air, followed by an instant where the world was a blur, and after that he was on the ground, in the middle of a plume of rising dust.
Around him, the world spun as he hopped up, his armor absorbing the brunt of the impact, but the force still leaving his senses reeling. He gave himself the tiniest jolt of electricity and shook himself, clearing his head.
There was no doubt about it. She was on the level of a colossal-class primebeast, and not a weak one. Whatever she had just discovered how to do, it put her on another level. She had been stronger than any single person present from the start, and the gap was growing wider the longer they let her acclimate.
And yet, he had a lot of energy from that one swipe. More than anything he’d taken before. That was why he couldn’t waste it, the only course of action he could take was to prepare a decisive strike that would end this quickly.
Previously, this would be where the other heroes picked up some slack, but Viperia had become too fast for the majority to keep up, let alone take any potshots. The snake blitzed toward him at a breakneck pace, staggering anyone who moved too close with merely the tremors of her movement.
She stopped just short of him and he backed away, leaving her crunching on the road. It blackened from her bite, flaking and rotting rapidly.
Her lone eye tracked him as he readied himself to put her to rest forever. He blasted her with wind to put the right amount of distance between—
She didn’t get blown away nearly as far as he thought she would. She arrested her flight just a few meters in, having dug in her tail beforehand.
That was all she needed to coil like a spring and push herself upward from her tail point. His eyes widened while he scrambled to dodge to the left.
It was a feint. She used her tail to slap into another building and sunk her fangs into his armor, straining it past the breaking point. He lost his mental grip on it, causing it to disperse in wisps. He managed to slip out by the skin of his teeth.
She opened her mouth, and his eyes widened in alarm because he knew what was coming, swerving out of the day with a fresh cloud and erecting barriers of frost in between. Then the final tail slap broke them as if they were made of eggshells.
Allen attempted to dodge, but the stream of venom spewing out of Viperia’s maw was inevitable.
It connected, melting through his arm and a chunk of his torso.
Mistral fell.