To say it was unbelievable would be an understatement. Finn couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that a villain organization had decided to help out in such a crisis. For a moment he thought they were perhaps here to start some sort of free-for-all fight, but he dismissed that notion when they drove into view and glanced at them without making any hostile movements. They simply got out of their vehicles and into position to launch that massive rocket-dispensing monstrosity again.
Trooper, meanwhile, hopped out of his car and sprinted straight towards Viperia, who was now shaking herself off as she rose from the cracked ground.
The man who had not that long ago been set on executing Finn fired off his thicker grappling hook and pulled off the same trick he used during their fight with one of the abandoned civilian cars parked off to the side, spearing the metal hull and latching onto it, flexing his arm and tossing it full force at the Unbound.
It had little effect beyond rocking the giant snake’s head slightly. Finn had briefly considered enhancing it with his power, but the thought of outright helping a supervillain, much less one that had almost put an end to his life not that long ago, gave him pause. It wasn’t just the thought of putting himself in danger like that by aiding a villain with unknown motives. He couldn’t sense Mr. Co—Trooper’s—emotional aura or anything, but he felt he had a fairly good read on his intent just based on body language alone.
Briefly, the villain locked gazes with Finn, and under that mask he could see an indecipherable expression cross that face before it shifted back to impassive. Trooper refocused on Viperia and readied another gadget as she got her bearings and assessed her new set of opponents.
Lyra asked the obvious question while Finn set her down. “Why is Homeland here?”
“Oh shit,” Jack said, sounding alarmed. “I… I was so focused on the fight that I didn’t even have any drones up to scout for any third parties that could arrive. Fuck, I’m sorry. I should’ve been more on the ball.” The frustration was evident in his voice.
“They’re not here to cause trouble for you though, I’m pretty sure,” their friend continued, regaining his composure quickly. “It’s probably more that they have a vested interest in keeping the district up and running, or they got orders from the main branch to show up in force. Oh, wait, I’m already seeing them negotiate with some of the heroes back here.”
Indeed he could. They were plainly visible in Finn’s senses; it seemed they had surrounded the perimeter and came from all angles. Though he could tell there were a few more Homeland executives present besides the local leader and his right hand.
Truce was a strange thing in Apexia. It certainly wasn’t common, as there wasn’t demand for it considering the government at least wanted to look like things were well in hand. And truthfully, they mostly did. Villain attacks rarely escalated to the level they were seeing now. It was just that right now they were in the presence of a rampaging tyrant who would not stop at anything to get what she was looking for.
More often it was at the borders with the military that villains sometimes acted, but generally only in a subordinate capacity; sometimes, arrested villains got offered forced military service against primebeasts as an alternative to prison, depending on their crimes.
But Finn wasn’t worried about that at the moment. Really, Homeland’s presence wasn’t as urgent in his mind as he would have thought. More to the point, he was prioritizing Viperia. She was the real threat. Finn needed to deal with her, and he could sense Casey waving her arms to get him to start moving again.
Right, she likely couldn’t tell what had just happened and what seemed to be causing the momentary delay.
She was right, however. He couldn’t just stop. He pushed away stray thoughts of how he was compromising himself by working with villains and the question of what he was willing to turn a blind eye to in order to achieve his goal, instead zeroing in on Viperia again. He signaled the person who had his back the most to start moving as well.
To her credit, Lyra didn’t miss a beat. She got into action and attempted to stagger Viperia once more with a shockwave channeled through the ground so someone else could use that as an opening. They weren’t having much luck on that front, especially when the viper jumped again, having dismissed Trooper with a tail thrust and decided to keep on chasing Finn.
Yet, Trooper was showing why he’d earned his name. His broken body was already reforming itself and he shot his laser gun into the air with solid aim in spite of the ruined arm he was using to hold it steady.
The small quake ended up doing nothing, same with the laser, and yet it was harder for the serpent to dodge when Bodkin directed one of the people in the front car to shoot another one of those rockets. In the meantime the Homeland branch leader himself saw fit to use his ability.
One hand outstretched, the rocket was coated in some sort of enhancing layer, bearing a lustrous blue color that looked quite intriguing to Finn’s senses. He didn’t stare for long, only paying attention to the attack long enough to know how it affected Viperia. She countered with one of her poison breaths, but he weakened it while enhancing the projectile.
The black venom was far more difficult to weaken than the green one she’d used most of the fight. He frowned, watching the empowered projectile grow most resilient with his influence. He’d decided to add his own power to it at the last second, odd as it was to work together with a villain. The thing surged forward, partially melted by the acidic substance and then collided with Viperia’s head.
Another blow, another knock-back, another fall. She was grievously injured, Finn saw, but he knew better than to get his hopes up. Despite the flesh of her frontside being mostly gone, there weren’t many injuries hampering her insane musculature.
Never mind that this was only temporary damage. Her left side was missing even now because of the lingering energy from Mistral’s ultimate technique and nothing else. If not for that, the snake would’ve been fully healed.
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So it wasn’t a surprise when her flesh started to regenerate at speed after her second fall. Bodkin glanced at Finn for a moment but Finn didn’t acknowledge him, too honed in on his next target. Namely that building up there calling for him to climb it for a better position. He still wasn’t planning to do anything up clo—
His body faded for a dash to the side and a giant mouth that almost swallowed him whole.
Those blackened teeth gleamed in the light coming from below, and Finn smelled the scent of death wafting from Viperia’s mouth. It didn’t stink per se. Rather it was simply so strong that he didn’t think he was ever going to forget it no matter how hard he tried. He was familiar with the smell of blood, this was just ten times more overwhelming.
The behemoth of a gang leader had blitzed upwards so fast he hadn’t been able to do more than frantically dive out of the way and scan his surroundings for anything that could save him from the follow-up move he knew was coming in the half-second he had to process everything.
He had a second opportunity to dash away with a lightened body, but he stumbled, his muscles not quite responding as they should.
His eyes widened. What was that? Why were his legs not working? He scanned his body and found the answer immediately. The poison. He’d run through Viperia’s smoke earlier when he was dodging her thinking it was the same as the green smoke, not a major threat. But the black smoke was different, and it had entered his body through the open wound he’d stubbornly refused to treat after his fight with Niebla.
Viperia demanded his attention in the present. He quickly thought of something and hooked a piece of debris then reeled it in and used it as an impromptu shield reinforced by his power. To block the hit he knew he wasn’t fast enough to dodge anymore.
He still tried of course. He didn’t want to risk it, but his instincts were right and Viperia proved capable of massively outranging him with that gargantuan tail which could end his life in a single strike if he took it unguarded. Even if he had, it might’ve ended him, he suspected.
A glowing golden barrier ended up being his saving grace, killing some of the force of the swipe even if it did break after offering some resistance. Finn was trying to brace himself for the incoming pain as he attempted to swerve out of the way with another grappling hook shot. It didn’t help. She still managed to hit him.
The pain was excruciating.
He’d never felt anything close to it in his life. His training sessions at Cyrus’ facility had been protected by a high-tech field that prevented him from taking actual damage. His previous fights had not seen him get injured often, and when he did it wasn’t to a degree that he could honestly describe as unbearable. Even after his run-in with Trooper back then it had not been this bad.
Not to say he wasn’t aware of how lucky he was to even be alive. He was cognizant of how many factors were necessary to give him a shadow of a chance at not being instantly turned into pulp by a hit like that. His reinforcement, the shield, pulling his body away from the momentum of the blow, the barrier assist, all of that helped him not die. But as he crashed through a window, visually perceiving the world as a rapidly spinning blur around him, he could do nothing except choke on his own blood and let his power feed him information about his surroundings with perfect clarity. It dutifully let him know how helpless he was.
What made it worse, he dazedly noted, was the psychological awareness that this was the level of pain he was feeling through the haze of adrenaline that had spiked in his system. That, if he were at baseline hormonal levels, he would be unable to even think. Thinking was hard as it was, honestly. His thoughts were moving through molasses, it felt like. And the brain fog. Buzzing in his ear, almost like a voice. Every moment, the spots of black encroached on his vision, and he started to feel really tired.
He could sense the state of his body. He would die in a few minutes, at most, stuck here in the wall of this office building. Best case scenario, someone would… no, gravity asserted its grip on him and his entire nervous system screamed in agony as he fell face-first on the floor, blood leaking out of his suit and pooling underneath him.
“...inn! Please…” someone called out. Someone? No, not just anyone. Lyra. His friend… girlfriend… He observed her running up to him with her aura flaring out of control and couldn’t do a thing to reply besides gurgle pathetically.
From that point onwards, he couldn’t even properly concentrate on his surroundings anymore. He was about to fall asleep. He would never admit this out loud, but he suspected he already would have let himself lose consciousness if not for his senses telling him precisely how bad his situation was. He knew that if he closed his eyes now, he would never wake up again.
An interminable amount of time passed in a blur of semi-wakefulness while he was dragged somewhere. At some point, the glow faded from him and lit up some other place. He was too tired to pinpoint the exact location. It was moving, anyway, and they weren’t. They’d stopped a second ago.
“Radi… you… him!” Lyra was saying, but he couldn’t make out every word of the conversation with the other person standing next to them.
“…close… limit…”
“Please… beg… anything.”
“After… nothing…”
In a heartbeat, he was lighting up for the second time today. This time not an outline, but internal. He felt Lyra pry open part of his costume to expose skin, then the other person injected him with a syringe. He… started to feel better.
His broken bones, ruptured organs, cracked spine, torn muscles, and split skin were resetting themselves into their proper place. Making him whole. At which point he felt a violent urge to cough.
Finn had enough strength to roll over onto his elbow and push himself up a bit. Then he pulled up the lower part of his mask and began expelling the crimson liquid from his airways, tasting sweet lungfuls of air again. The others were talking, but this time he could hear them clearly even if he was taking a moment to himself so he could recover. He realized who the other person was, at least, standing on a sidewalk some distance removed from the main battle.
And her next words shook him to the core.
“You will not survive this,” Radi stated, panted and slouching as if she were barely capable of standing straight. “There is no cure for what you have in your bloodstream. But I gave you the fastest, most potent treatment I could. You… can fight.”
Upon catching her breath a bit, her heartbroken tone became clearer. Finn didn’t know how to process what he’d just heard. And apparently neither did the people around them, the scant few heroes nearby staying silent while Lyra muttered a series of increasingly insistent no’s.
Finn felt the weight of her words settle over him, heavy and unrelenting, like a boulder crushing his chest, leaving him breathless and immobile. No cure. The phrase repeated itself in his mind, twisting and gnawing at his resolve. He wanted to scream, to deny it, but all he could manage was silence, his thoughts ricocheting wildly between despair and defiance.
He was… dead?