Knowing he had to jump into the action immediately was a powerful-but-unnecessary motivator to get Finn moving. The fact that he was living on borrowed time served as a sort of pressure, a constant demand to make himself useful in the best way he could. He would have been fighting regardless, but this need to prove that it wasn’t all for nothing, that he wasn’t meaningless, gave the whole situation more weight than he thought possible. Frankly, the entire battle had taken so many turns and devolved so rapidly the only reason he still knew what to make of it was because he’d been able to follow almost every step through his senses.
The venom ravaged his body slowly, breaking down flesh and bone, making for a gradual, insidious death. He would have to take the second capsule soon, having already administered the first. Otherwise the damage would be too great to continue fighting. Yet if he took one too early, he’d cut his total remaining time short.
He had another temporary advantage to stave off the end, though: his enhanced power. His ability to anchor himself in reality beyond what should be possible allowed him to slow the progression of his condition. The same applied if he did the opposite; the poison wouldn’t be able to interact with his body properly and thus wasn’t able to damage him as much. If he hadn’t been doing that when he initially got hit, he would probably be nothing more than a corpse by this point since it would have latched on far better.
Furthermore, this boost to his abilities, which was rapidly becoming more familiar and comfortable, granted him a level of mobility that wouldn’t have been feasible even with the grappling hook. So now that he was able to combine the two, he could approach the battle in seconds. He could see that the other heroes needed it. Badly.
They rushed Viperia from every exposed angle, working to kill this monster to the best of their ability. That was something Finn realized that none of the people present held any delusions about, not anymore. Perhaps in the beginning some people had still been aiming to capture the Venin leader, but now it was just about putting her down for good. No matter what. He could see the increased brutality compared to the early stages of this conflict.
There was a lesson here somewhere. Something about mercy being a privilege, but he was too preoccupied re-entering the fight to really dwell on it. He reinforced a light fixture near Scalestrike to protect the Junior Ace from the incoming tail whip. He grit his teeth upon seeing that it wasn't enough. Viperia slammed it down on the young shifter hard enough to crater the road underneath. Then Finn’s eyes widened as his senses told him that the rolling ball of scales was trapped, but unharmed.
This guy was insanely durable. Finn had to give credit where it was due, fully aware that he himself had almost been turned into paste by a softer blow. He concentrated his power to indicate for one of the warrior types to go and free the trapped pangolin, then reinforced Nar’s barriers as the jester closed in on Viperia up above.
Finn didn’t spare Aiden any more thought than that because he also needed to provide backup for Bodkin’s assault. It left a bitter taste in his mouth to support a villain who’d stood in a room with Mom while a bunch of goons held her at gunpoint, but he couldn’t do more than briefly acknowledge the feeling and throw all his focus into ending the fight as soon as possible. Because they were reaching their limits.
During the time where Radi had been healing him, he’d kept observing the others while he could, and it had taught him a few things. The first was that Casey’s power could only affect one person at a time, rather obviously. The second was that when she applied it to her brother, it didn’t directly boost his copied abilities, instead removing the touch requirement on his copying and perhaps allowing him faster switching times. Not terribly useful here, given that Nar had settled on what he deemed the most effective power combination some time ago and therefore had no real need of active transitions to other powers for as long as he was forced to take Mistral’s place in the haphazard formation they’d started forming.
Narrowing his eyes, Finn grabbed one of Bodkin’s flying swords and stabbed it down into Viperia’s scales. He’d added his own bolstered power to it, so it managed to cut about a hand’s length deep when he pushed it into an existing wound, but no more than that. He wasn’t sure what the Homeland district leader’s power was beyond his ability to summon weapons. Jack had speculated it was something to do with being stronger when used as part of a crowd, and that was arguably true considering normal swords, axes and guns certainly wouldn’t be doing as much as they were even without Finn’s help. However, that wasn’t going to be of any use when Viperia regenerated most of the damage in the span of a few heartbeats.
What they needed here was another one of those rockets. The other Homeland members were staying back. Finn put them out of his mind for the moment. The only thing he needed to focus on was that car the weapon was mounted on. Create an opening, signal the operator to start firing. Simple.
He kept dashing in and out of the fight like an angry mosquito might do to an elephant, both to look for opportunities to do even a small amount of damage and to rescue whomever he could. They couldn’t lose more people here.
Tilting his head towards the sky, he locked gazes with Nar and the older boy went to work with his Shade-reinforced barriers to trap the serpent. It went more smoothly than any time previously. Aside from the new arrivals, most people were getting tired of the constant fighting, wishing for a clean ending but not having gotten it so far. And yet they were also growing wiser to Viperia’s tricks, most of which seemed to have been discovered at this juncture.
Beefdom bulldozed forward and wrapped his arms wound the gigantic snake body with both arms and suplexed her down onto the street, sending up a cloud of dust that didn’t hamper Finn’s ability to perceive them in the slightest. He made color signals to show Nar exactly where Nar needed to place his barriers when a few of the other heroes fired ranged attacks to keep the snake’s head pointed away from them, lest they get hit by her devastating breath attack again.
Golden shields sprang up around the Unbound shifter, trapping her completely as they pushed tightly against her body. One of the shields even went between her jaws in order to block the venom from spewing out. And so, the viper was pinned just in time for the next rocket to launch. Bodkin stretched his hand out to activate it and Finn reinforced it with his power, getting as close as was practical in order to get the maximum effect from his ability. He wouldn't hold back on this. They had to finish it here.
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A massive collection of bright white arrows pointed out Viperia’s exact location. The rocket launched. Nar wrenched her head up with his shields to put it in the direct path of the projectile. And it was on course to hit. The full force they’d been able to bring to bear in this short time. Was it enough?
They never found out.
At first, Finn thought Viperia had dodged. The explosion that would’ve followed never came and the rocket sailed past the displaced shields that had been holding her head in place, the sudden lack of resistance sending them careening off in different directions.
Then that initial assumption was proven wrong by the information his senses gave him. Her lower body was still partially contained. And wait, were those claws? But she’d lost them, hadn’t she? Why was there so much room left open for her? A split second realization later, he had all the answers he needed.
Viperia was shrinking.
But she wasn’t going back to the form she’d had before unbinding. No, he could feel in her existence that her presence wasn’t diminishing in the slightest. It was more like her power was being compressed into a smaller vessel, making her that much harder to hit while keeping all the devastating lethality from before.
The now-lizard scrambled forward with the extra space she had to move in the brief confusion left by the sudden miss. She pried open a gap between a cluster of shields to her right and broke through, running toward the nearest hero she could see. The nylon-clad man in ninja getup didn’t stand a chance. Honestly, it might even be a stretch to say Viperia actually finished him off, as she just sort of ran over and let her claws filet him, not giving any more regard than that.
It was at this moment that the other heroes were able to get their bearings and reengage in the fight. The spirals of light coursing toward her hit her exterior and slowed her down, the movements now going from those of a freight train with zero regard for inertia to a more manageable pace, though not slow by any means.
Additionally, a dozen more effects rained down to slow or otherwise debilitate her, but half of them missed, and the other half wasn’t able to make up for the sheer strength their opponent possessed anymore. Before, the bulk of the building-sized snake had more than enough surface area to get hit easily. Now, the increased agility from the slimmer, lighter form made her ridiculously difficult to hold still at all for more than an instant. She also had so much more leverage now that she had her claws back to grab onto things and change course without having to slither out of the way of incoming attacks.
Seven more heroes paid the price, gored by those gleaming black scythes of doom. Dead in less than a second from a maneuver so quick Finn nearly couldn’t see it. Blood splattered over the pavement and dripped off her claws in the evening light as Viperia loomed over the fresh corpses, tasting the air with her tongue for new prey.
Mountpin jumped in the way and tried to sink her needles into Viperia’s remaining eye but she was also shredded apart by the reptile’s natural weapons. Not that it killed her, of course. It merely scattered hay and thin pieces of metal everywhere as the woman got pushed away.
To Finn’s surprise, the next person to step up to the plate was Axon, the supposed data manipulator, or whatever her power was. She hadn’t been present for the battle prior to this, only now riding in. He’d forgotten about her after the debrief at the rallying point, honestly.
She drove the lead motorcycle in a set of high-tech looking vehicles lined with neon lighting of various shapes and sizes. Flooring the gas, she broke the speed limit thrice over, racing in with one commanding arm pointed forward. Three cars and two bikes overtook her, deftly riding around the ruined infrastructure and heroes without any passengers, as if driven by a ghost. Or, Finn supposed, as if directed by a tech manipulator.
Viperia shrank again, further compressing her form until she was only a little larger than the average house. She perhaps thought it a good idea to make herself more maneuverable in response to these new arrivals. She was wrong. Making herself a smaller target did not pay off in this case. She responded to the lead car swerving past a gap in the road and drifting up to her with a black stream of acidic venom. The car sprouted a glowing blue shield in front of it, deflecting the corrosive substance entirely.
It transformed in the middle of its last acceleration, avoiding a claw swipe and turning into a worm-like metal contraption that twisted itself around her, clutching with all its strength to hold her swill. Finn enhanced it. The other vehicles came in to do the same thing but this time they didn’t even have to activate their shield. Viperia was being harried by the other heroes again, who’d reformed and were shooting at her.
The absolute menace was completely trapped… and it wasn’t meant to last.
Predictably, she shrank again. The sudden gap required the machines to tighten their hold to compensate with the reduced volume of the target, except they were too late. It was ironic that Viperia managed to get free from capture with the same trick twice in a row. Granted, it wasn’t like Axon could’ve known unless she’d been observing the whole time. Which she might’ve.
Either way, it didn’t matter. That wasn’t the reason Viperia got free. What allowed her to get out was a combination of blackened venom, claws, and raw strength. Finn could feel the force shields straining under his enhancement effect and Axon’s control. Neither ended up being sufficient.
In a burst of sparks, shrapnel and acrid smoke, the supervillain emerged. She was much shorter than before, almost as small as she was before her power reached the next stage. Three meters, at most. Her scales were gleaming black with a sickly green luster, and she had the diagonal cut from Nar using Dad’s power, along with the missing chunks of flesh on her left side, crackling energy preventing regeneration there. Despite that, she stood tall. Bipedal, having regained some of the poise she had as the leader of a gang.
Excluding her scales and height, the sole difference between this Viperia and the original humanoid form was her hair color, a green so dark it bordered on black. Though none of that was going to fool Finn. He knew she was on a different level now. If the presumed increase in power didn’t make it so, then the calculating glint he saw in her expression did.
He wasn’t sure what caused it, but the evident transformation gave way to a pause where both parties sized each other up. The result being a wave of trepidation in the heroes. Finn even saw a few of them trembling in fear.
And then, at some unspoken signal, they charged.