The entire operation of grabbing a monster, taking it high enough in orbit that there wouldn't be anything for the power to latch on, vaporizing its entire mass with a pseudonuclear blast of sufficient power, then returning to find another monster took a minute. There were thousands of large monsters now, all of them slowly growing more powerful as they absorbed more magic, all of them hungry for more. When they were done growing, they would be blindly lashing out, pushed by instincts born of Mavethan sorcery to cause more violence and generate more dark magic. The General's idea to use them to collect all the extra corrupt magic into relatively few vessels that we could launch into space and get rid of was ingenious, but it had the problem of a very sharp time limit. If they started killing each other, not only would much of the stored power return to the environment but their battles could also create kaiju-tier monsters that wouldn't be nearly as easy to get anywhere.
Thus the frantic pacing I had to keep up. Just killing enough of the wasteland population to force the energies into the hosts had already been the work of a whole day. Sending off enough of them would be just as enormous a hassle, probably taking the rest of the night. Creating forcefields to do the job was out of the question. At two force-fields per monster, made to last at least a minute and at maximum volume so as not to tear the monster apart in transit, the fields would be too costly. A hundred monsters would have been a cakewalk. Three hundred a chore. Half a thousand would be about my limit. There were at least twice as many waiting their turn, so I was forced to do this manually.
At first, most of them were corrosive brutes, easy to handle for me but deadly to anyone susceptible to their slime. Then came the armored brutes, tougher and heavier and a bit slower to lift so I had to push to make the plan work. After the first hour or so, the brutes started growing spikes all over their body in increasingly large numbers, progressively more jagged and sharpened, even with increasing length. They were also trying to impale me with them. Futile for monsters so relatively weak, but annoying.
That continued for another two hours with various brute designs, from fanged giants with biting maws all over their body, to fat giants that were too delicate to grab but whose fat was incredibly toxic and mildly hallucinogenic. That lost me nearly fifteen minutes when one of them burst on launch and had me seeing monsters that weren't there until my new regeneration handled it. From that point on I kept Focused Invulnerability on the monster's more dangerous gimmick, shifting to nuclear blasts only a split second before triggering each detonation.
The mutations weren't entirely random. There seemed to be an element built into the corruptive magic that sought to turn the mutated monster to the most horrible and threatening form it could to better overcome those the monster was meant to hunt. That was fairly odd and not something we had seen back in the Invasion. At least I think we hadn't. Mot had been the guiding intelligence behind the monster army, summoning or guiding the mutation of whatever monsters he best thought would deal with the opposition. He had even made weird customized soldiers to deal with me, Mandy, and a group of other powerful survivors that attacked his big, overcompensating tower. But there was nobody like that here.
Shrugging and continuing the slow slog through the enormous amount of monsters, I soon settled into a rhythm and went through their numbers more mechanically than anything else. First minutes, then quarter-hours, then hours passed by in a blur, the sheer repetitiveness of the task more exhausting than anything else. It was well past midnight that I had finished almost half of them and that was only notable because the monsters had returned to being random mutations. One had grown incredibly irritating feathers that caused a severe allergic reaction regardless of health or durability and had sent me choking for a few minutes even as it caused an incredibly strong itch. Others had grown eyestalks that shot low-end blasts of variable intensity and effect. About an hour past midnight one had been born without a head but with a dozen different arms, all ending in freakishly long scythes. Those had just shattered on impact but their fragments levitated along and kept trying to stab me all the way to orbit.
From then, more odd mutations had followed instead of dangerous ones, from a fat giant that grew a swarm of biting slugs from its skin, to an emaciated one that felt freezing cold to stand around, to a twisted, inhuman skeleton that had been perpetually on fire. Earlier mutations started reappearing, depending on which area of the blighted lands I flew in, often in random mixes, sometimes even in the same giant monster as they grew slowly larger and got more available space. Soon, I was fairly sure that the odd mutations were mostly near the place where Mot's huge-ass tower had been, from where Mot himself had grown into a towering demon two miles tall. The ruins of my hometown were there, or what remained of them. Of Mot's once titanic corpse there was nothing to be found, not even bones. He'd either been vaporized by the nukes and my magnifying their effect on his demonic ass, or rotten away in the months I'd been away on Mars. I looked into the crater for old time's sake but found nothing. Just more metal spikes and odd roots, like they had been spread all over the entire state.
It was nearing four in the morning and the giant monsters were beginning to thin. As if sensing the end coming, they all gravitated towards the same general area and started to fight each other. I had to intervene several times to break up fights, launch one or both of the mini-kaiju into space before they killed each other and spilled magical radiation all over the place. I was tired, I was cranky, and the last few days had not been very nice either. With an angry growl at nobody in particular I sat down and brought up the mental representation of my abilities through Liz's magic ring.
Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 18y0m13d Known skills:
Points: 4/245
Action and Reaction, Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Eyebeams, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forced Acceleration, Forced Intangibility, Forcefield Creation, Greater Proximakinesis, Holistic Regeneration, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap
Attributes: Might 58, Agility 30, Reason 6, Vigilance 28, Ego 30, Luck 7
Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope III
Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II
The massive number of deaths had given me another boost, it seemed. Not enough points to buy something impressive but I had a few points to improve how this whole crappy situation felt. Two points into Might boosted my strength, my durability and, most importantly, my stamina. Suddenly I was a bit less tired. Instead of being at the edge of exhaustion I felt I could keep going for another couple of hours. The passive benefits of Force Adjustment into my body got a few percentage points closer to completion. By the time I hit Might seventy in the future, they'd probably be done. My biology became denser still in a multi-dimensional sort of way and all the chemical changes that had started with the previous much bigger boost to Might meshed together in something that was bigger and better than the sum of its parts. In everything above the cellular level I'd still look human, but a proper look at the fine details would reveal I was a completely different being. Huh. Was that what being a perfectly humanoid alien looked like?
I was tempted to add more points into Might to see what new changes they'd bring but the main reason I'd brought up the character sheet now was because I felt shitty about this whole job and the past week. This should have been my vacation. It should have been seven days spent with friends and family, or with a good book, or watching funny cat videos. Instead villains and politics had intruded despite my attempts to keep my distance. I had spent a day with Anne and another with Mandy and Jerry, but the rest had been annoyance after chore after battle after debriefing. How had this happened? And why did it feel so shitty now when it had not before?
Screw it. I opened the sheet again and dropped the other two points into Ego. Immediately, my flagging will reasserted itself against what I recognized as both stress and lingering issues from non-physical attacks. Soon, I promised to myself. Soon I'd go spend a couple of days in a spa, with my new Holistic Regeneration fixing the unnatural issues and the harmful effects of the stress and I'd be fine. "No, I'd be better than fine. I'd have finished throwing the damn beasts into space thus considerably reducing the volatility of the wasteland. I'd have robbed a superpowered terrorist of his army and his go-to method to get even stronger. I'd have reconnected with my sister and friends. And above all else I'd have made a lasting difference despite everyone else's attempts to screw up the world beyond recovery for petty, asinine reasons!"
It was the closest mini-kaiju not just staring at me but coming closer to investigate that clued me in to the fact I'd been shouting there at the end. I punted the headless thing with the yellow grasping tentacles half a mile away. Instead of bursting as I half-expected it regenerated. Sure, that was definitely gonna help it escape or survive a nuclear blast. Tagging it, I flew it into space and blew it up, ignoring the tentacles that failed to rip me apart all the way there. It was... not easy but dull. Two points of Ego made me feel better, strengthened my will to handle the fights, even helped regain some confidence but the one thing they hadn't helped was with how repetitive it all was. All the other fights I'd been in had at least been exciting. They'd had real stakes. There wasn't anything like that here. So I opened my sheet again.
Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female humanoid, 18y0m13d Known skills:
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Points: 0/245
Action and Reaction, Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Eyebeams, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forced Acceleration, Forced Intangibility, Forcefield Creation, Greater Proximakinesis, Holistic Regeneration, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap
Attributes: Might 60, Agility 30, Reason 6, Vigilance 28, Ego 32, Luck 7
Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope III
Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II
Nope, no new points just yet. No easy way to feel better about all this. Sighing dejectedly, I turned the magical ring off and flew out, searching for the next giant monster to get rid of. It didn't take long to do just that. Then go and do it again and again until they were all gone. It was so, so-
WHAM!
xxxx
The ground had struck me with massive force, enough to leave me dizzy and making me lose a couple of seconds. Except I was pretty sure the ground was not supposed to be capable of moving or whacking supers out of the air - or drag them towards that tar pit. The realization woke me up from the stupor this attempt at cleaning up the wasteland had left me and I saw a thick, spiky band of red-black material wrapped around my legs.
Not the ground, the roots. The same roots that had grown out of Mot's tower as he returned from death and transformed, the same roots that had spread through most of the state of Florida during his rampage. Immobile, plant-like, mostly harmless - or so everyone had thought. Well there now was some pretty damn persuasive evidence that they were anything but harmless. I grabbed at the root wrapped around my legs and pulled. There was stiff resistance at first, but then it failed, the root tearing apart. Then out of the boiling tar came five more of the wrist-thick bands of Mavethan metal.
I went incorporeal as they struck out and immediately discovered what a mistake that was. The roots were there in the void, somehow thicker and even more solid than they were in reality. Merely touching them felt so cold it hurt even through the suit and I dropped back to the physical world to avoid freezing for the first time in... I did not quite remember.
I was thrown into the lake of boiling tar and every doubt, every discomfort, every fear, every ugly emotion I'd felt in recent memory burst out of it in an invisible wave and fell down my throat. This body was a lie. I was not the real Maya. I was just a violent thug, like my father. My sister would never accept me. My friends would vanish now that they had a life of their own. Humans were petty, cruel, and shortsighted and the world was not worth saving. There were enemies I could not fight, and this was one of them. I'd never be happy with my own choices.
No. Fuck you!
With a surge of strength I ripped all five roots apart, what had seemed so difficult before now happening with absurd ease. What? I flew out of the tar pit and a metal root as thick as a tree trunk struck me in the face like a meteor. I reeled from the force of the blow but tellingly, I had neither been stunned nor left dizzy despite this blow being stronger than the one that had knocked me out of the sky. The earth churned and collapsed, revealing a lake of not tar but liquid black magic that smelled like rot and blood and week-old corpses left under the sun. It was wider than a football stadium and full roots covered in swords, or perhaps masses of swords half-molten to be fused into a malleable whole with only the sharp points of their blades remaining.
I lashed out with eye-beams, slicing through dozens, but each one I killed the darker thoughts in the back of my mind renewed themselves. The air became oppressive, like a black hole hanging in an empty sky sucking in all light and warmth. I made to fly out but was hammered in from multiple angles, each blow only slightly weaker than my own and adding to the dark thoughts gnawing at the back of my mind. The worst about it was that those dark thoughts, the feelings of inadequacy, that I'd never be more than what my Old Man had tried to make me, that try as I might the Earth and humanity were already infected by something that had no cure, those were my own. Stupid, pointless, baseless worrying we all get in our worst moments.
These giant root things were not affecting my mind at all. They, and all the monsters I'd been killing over the last day, had been affecting my powers. Trying to twist them back to the more violent, less benevolent, callous woman I'd have probably become if I hadn't chosen to be a hero. All of us survivors started by killing monsters. All of us got most of our powers from monsters. And though we decided to use something other than violence as our core theme, it was clear that whatever this twisted plant was, it still had some claim on me at least. Was it because of all the monsters I had killed? Or was it simply trying so hard only now because we'd actually found a working plan to destroy this endless source of monsters?
I was betting the latter because if not, why was it revealing itself now of all times, the day the cursed magic on Florida had grown weaker for the first time ever? It was acting on both desperation and an opportunity because I was overstressed, because I was exhausted, and because this was the first time I'd come back to the ruins of my home town where it lay hidden. By trying... whatever the funky interference was I lost something I relied upon while at my lowest. But it had made a mistake. It had rushed, not waited another hour for me to get exhausted again.
I stepped outside of time and the power interference vanished. With my powers no longer out of whack, I was perfectly capable of handling the stress from all my issues just a little longer. And I was very, very, very angry at being messed with by a stupid alien plant that should have left well enough alone. I switched to eye-beams, switched my Focused Invulnerability against its stupid energy draining, and still under stopped time started burning all its exposed tendrils not just to the pool but to the bedrock and below.
One, five, a dozen, a score, a hundred, I sliced them all apart until most of this stupid plant was a burning ruin. By the time my stamina ran out completely and I was left gasping for breath, all of its thicker roots were gone, half its deeper connections to the rest of the state were severed and left to burn in pools of molten rock and everything that was left was twitching in agony.
The ground shook again, deeper cracks forming that went down for miles, and a larger mass the size of a city block rose from the depths. It was an orb of plant matter similar to another, vastly smaller plant that had once grown in my old school during the first days of the invasion. It had had tentacles too, and it could invade and take over corpses and even some monsters to do its bidding. It was one of my more disgusting memories of back then and seeing a similar plant of much greater power... only made me angrier. When the creature's surprisingly small maw shot out in a bus-sized tentacle I charged to meet it.
My fist slammed into its fibrous metal mass with enough force to beercan a battleship, shatter a hill, hard enough to make my own knuckles hurt. A crater three feet wide and half as deep formed on the monster's core, making it recoil and its sword-roots to writhe. I did not smile at this proof that its body was soft enough to hurt, that it could feel pain in the first place. I just punched it again and again.
The enormous pincers around its maw snapped shut around my torso and squeezed with enough power to make my ribs hurt, but I was no longer under its weakening influence. I grabbed both pincers and ripped them apart then started on its connections, its roots extending deep into Florida both to the North and South. I pulped one, then another, and a third and a fourth, ignoring its retaliatory blows in favor of destroying it root and stem. Did alien demon metal plants even had stems? Let's dissect the thing thoroughly and find out.
CRACKTHOOM!
The massive black lightning bolt struck me between the shoulder blades, extremely powerful magic frying all my nerve endings at once, sending liquid agony pumping through my veins, leaving my every muscle a burning, twitchy mess. Instead of finishing in a flash it kept going for one second then two, then three, then I was too out of it to keep count.
"Hello, there!" The disgustingly pleased voice was only audible through my Force Awareness, both my eardrums currently burst, bleeding wrecks. "I've been looking everywhere for one of you three little shits when, what surprise, what stroke of luck, my divinations showed you at a site of an enormous magical distortion." The voice sounded familiar, but it was the robes, the spindly limbs and dark, beady eyes that gave him away.
"You'se supposd't be ded," I tried to say through an unresponsive jaw, couldn't tell how much got out.
"That's funny, so are you!" the Wizard cackled with dark amusement. "I gave you my best shot in the back and everything." I tried to move, but too little time had passed for my regeneration to fix this and whatever the spell had been it was way more powerful than I'd expected from the second-best mage in the world. Not even Mandy could hit that hard and I'd seen videos of her rip kaiju apart. "But you're tougher and younger than poor old me and the spell didn't explode your heart from within. Should I have tried for the head?"
A greenish bolt struck me in the face, leaving a green, corrosive flame behind. It knocked me back and hurt my eyes but didn't do so hot. Nothing compared to the black lightning. At most it made my hair all frizzy. I tried to step outside of time again but the power simply failed. I was too exhausted, too banged up to use it.
"No, not even a scratch. Young people these days, so hard-headed." He shook his head though his eyes gleamed with malicious glee. "Let's try another angle, shall we?"
CRACKTHOOM!
This time the black lightning hit me in the chest while I lay in the crater the green blast had thrown me. It was, if anything, even worse than the first, locking down my every muscle as it seared my body from within, leaving me unable to even scream. It continued like that for even longer, long enough for me to black out once or twice. When I was next coherent, my body was still twitching uncontrollably, red raw Lichtenberg-Figur marks cut through my skin, a spot a bit smaller than my fist sizzling and blackened over my heart.
"It didn't dig deeply enough," the bastard said through gritted teeth. "And now I don't have any more prepared sacrifices to repeat it. How unfortunate... for you." And then the obviously unhinged mage cackled again. I tried to move, but if my body was not cooperating before, it now felt like a half-melted brick. Something did move me though, a grip around my waist.
"I don't know if you'd noticed, but this little eldritch baby here seemed quite desperate to get you." He laughed as we moved. I tried to burn him with Eyebeams but he wasn't in my field of view and my head lolled bonelessly as I hung in mid-air. "It wasn't strong enough, but its delicious corruptive aura seemed to leave you quite drained. So if it is so hungry... why not feed it?"
I tried to struggle but didn't manage more than a moan of protest. Even Force Adjustment didn't seem to work on the grip around my waist.
"Oh please! You think I'd use a physical grip against a kinetic manipulator? You filthy back-stabbing murderous whore!" he roared in fury. "The Red Bitch and her Tin Can were in plain sight, they couldn't have done it. It was you that killed me and this is your just deserts. That thing can have you while I stay out here to knock you back in if you somehow manage to escape." And then he threw me into the boiling tar where the enormous, state-spanning monster was still twitching.
A few seconds that felt like an eternity later, a blade-like protrusion poked me. When I failed to react, it poked me some more. The... whatever it was was barely clinging to life and it didn't feel like taking more risks. But as my inability or unwillingness to act continued, little pokes pushed me deeper and deeper into the opaque black liquid. Then a spiky root wrapped around my left arm. It wriggled and struggled, its spikes far smaller than the ones I'd previously destroyed and its strength lacking... until finally it pierced through my skin. More roots followed on arms, legs, chest, waist. Where my suit still covered they failed to penetrate but elsewhere they stung... then started leeching blood. Already struggling to heal me from the lingering cursed magic of Wizard's spells, even both my regeneration powers barely broke even against the continued damage...