Suddenly, the torrent of flames drowning me were pulled off my head and my next gasp took in sweet, clean, breathable air. I greedily gulped it down and my head seemed to clear just a little; enough to realize that with the jet of foul green and black magic pushed back, I could see again. Unfortunately, what I could see was not good. The choking, draining, foul-smelling breath was still splashing over the rest of me and no matter how much clean air I took in my body was still cramped and drained like I was trying to run a marathon while holding my breath.
So stop whining and use your brain, a little voice in the back of my head demanded. It sounded like good advice, so I followed it. First, adjust forces so friction, weight and whatever else was holding me down was cut down by about an order of magnitude. Trying that earlier hadn't worked but now it did for some weird reason; no time to look a gift horse in the mouth, just use it and move along. Second, use Proximakinesis to reach behind my back for the one thing that might make a difference.
The overgrown imp was either too relatively slow to react to the changes yet, or was content to slowly drain and suffocate me into oblivion. Considering it had been winning until a few moments before, was still winning really, maybe not reacting was smart. Or so it thought until a short sword stabbed into its gut, swung around by Proximakinesis rather than my arms. It was less than half the strength I could have put into the blow at the start of the fight oh, about half a minute before. But it was also with a sword I'd enchanted to cut with its own Proximakinesis at the beginning of the fight, when I hadn't been worn down to near-uselessness so it vanished all the way to the hilt into my opponent's body.
The monster screamed and recoiled in the odd slow motion of those lacking true superspeed. The moment its grip weakened - even with a blade in its gut it didn't let me go - Proximakinesis pulled me sideways rather than trying to contest its strength. For a long, terrible moment nothing happened... then my wrists slipped from its grip aided by the greatly weakened friction. My body slid along the ground as if across snow-covered ice, then was pulled to the air against the protest of multiple cramped muscles in all my limbs.
This time, as I took a deep breath new vitality worked through my muscles, Regeneration kicking into gear now that it had more to work with. Unfortunately that did nothing for the exhaustion itself and we didn't have time for me to recover anyway. A single glance at the battlefield had me scrambling for every iota of speed my powers could provide.
The imps swarming over Mandy were scattered like a kicked pile of pebbles as I flew through them, but I couldn't slow down and see to my best friend no matter how much I wanted to. The demon standing over Jerry's prone and battered armored form had already produced a washing machine sized fireball and was about to throw it at him. There was nothing I could do to prevent the detonation and I didn't know if I was strong enough to carry Jerry in his armor or knock the demon back. So I flew in and hugged the fireball along with the demon's arm instead.
The explosion that followed felt like being hit all over my body with a baseball bat. Both my arms were dislocated by the blast, my face was a mass of bruises and blood, one of my legs was twisted in an unnatural angle and the entirety of my torso was both hurt and numb. I wanted to sit down on the ditch I'd carved through the park for just a little bit, wait for my regeneration to fix everything. Pass out so I wouldn't have to feel the pain while the wounds lasted. But those two monsters were still around and my friends wouldn't be able to win the fight on their own.
The moment Regeneration fixed my eyes enough to see, I was already flying. My body was... probably in a bad shape. Bad enough that it no longer felt how bad, muscles, bones, ligaments and organs settling into an exhausted, abused, numb lump on the verge of shutting down. But I had been to that point several times now, both before and after gaining powers, had finally learned to take it without passing out. My Old Man would say I was finally growing up, which was why I'd stopped listening to him years ago.
Jerry was already up, his armor magically fixing the damage so fast it put my regeneration to shame, so I flew towards Mandy. Punting the last few imps off the redhead let me see she was in a bad shape. Not even close to as bad as me, but still seriously beaten up and she lacked my regeneration or resilience. Fortunately, the two monsters were worse. The one I'd gutted looked halfway healed but the one caught in its own explosion was still two arms down. No, the grotesque baby arm it had already grown did not count.
"You need healing," I told Mandy as we regrouped, Jerry coming to stand over us like a bodyguard. My enhanced senses were still pretty jumbled but I was sure the redhead was bleeding internally in a couple of places. "We should fall back to base and-"
"Screw that, all I need is a fire," the redhead said through gritted teeth. "We can't let them recover and follow us back to base or-"
"Verity will crush them like bugs?" I suggested, swallowing my pride. "From what she's capable off I got the feeling she's playing in an entirely different level." If it had been just me maybe I'd be charging at the enemy already, but it wasn't... and looking closer, Jerry didn't look so hot under his armor either. Cutting out losses and retreating might be better than the alternative. I didn't want to lose my friends, not just to take out a bunch of overgrown imps.
"They'll grow stronger," Mandy insisted, despite being barely able to stand. "They are free to cause as much havoc as they need now, and there are survivors in the suburbs. If we don't end this now, people will die." The determination with which she spoke those words, the fury at our opponents, the refusal to change her mind despite the risks... Mandy wouldn't have done anything like this a week before. Then again, none of us had been left unchanged by the magical invasion.
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"Do you have a way to heal at least? You can barely stand!" The argument sounded weak, had even in my mind before I'd spoken up and we both knew it was only a token protest. On the other hand, that didn't make me wrong either.
"Just keep their attention long enough for me to drain a bit of fire and I'll more than bounce back," she said and I thought about it.
"Does it have to be fire?" Jerry asked, his mechanical voice trying to whisper and failing. Suddenly, I wasn't so sure we should be discussing our plans out loud at all, but what was the alternative. "Could it be something else, like a laser?"
"...maybe," Mandy said, sounding a bit uncertain. "Lasers don't last long enough to drain, not without setting up an enchantment in advance and we don't have the time for one. Why?"
"All the work to build a powerful weapons system and a fire immunity spell made it useless," Jerry said. Despite the mechanical tone, we could actually hear both his anger and dejection at the perceived uselessness. "Maybe like that I could contribute too."
"Don't be absurd. You managed to maim your monster just as much as I did," I shot back, angry on his behalf. "So you had to be saved, so what? Every one of us had; if we hadn't helped each other we'd have died. Don't do this because you feel useless, do it if it'll actually help." A glance at the demons showed they were recovering just as I was; waiting much longer would not to our advantage. "That said, wouldn't shooting at the ground heat it up?"
"Do it," Mandy demanded, her magic already gearing up, blossoming in a confusing tangle of forces I could not understand. "Give us... ten seconds."
"Ten seconds coming up," I agreed, then charged the demons before logic and common sense could catch up.
Instead of trying to punch the mountains of magical muscle up close, I poured in the acceleration while adjusting the forces of the imminent collision to my advantage. Rolling around at the last moment, I struck feet-first at the demon's bulk faster than it could react, faster than a speeding bullet. Typical bullets are under a dozen grams. Post-adjustment I was the equivalent of over a ton, an impact hundred thousand times stronger. Even with all my powers both my ankles broke, my target carried along until we both struck the invaders' iron wall with a deafening clang.
It didn't die. Given its already shown level of resilience I didn't think it would. But its chest was seriously dented, what passed for its rib cage broken in more than one place. It backhanded me for all the trouble and as I stumbled back tried to disembowel me with its other arm. Claws the size of daggers sliced through my costume and into my side but I rolled with the impact and instead of getting my guts spilling out I got a few slices on my right hip. They didn't hurt any less, the emerald fire igniting in the new wounds, using my blood as fuel, but it wasn't crippling.
I returned the favor, blasting the bastard with invisible beams of force as rapidly as I could. They did less damage than they'd done at the start of the battle, my powers somewhat scaling to my physical condition, but still drew blood and that was all that mattered. Keeping out of melee reach I maintained the barrage, little by little cutting the monster down. Until, that was, the second demon ambushed me from behind.
Claws dug painfully into my arms as it grabbed and drew me back then green-blood flame showered down my front. Immediately, strength started being drained from everything the fire reached, replaced by exhaustion and lethargy. No longer reeling, my first opponent jumped forth too, grabbing my legs and adding his own slowly killing breath. They stretched me out between them, holding me firmly enough I could not slip away and keeping me within their flames. I'd hurt them, nearly gutted one of them and blasted the other with his own magic, so I'd become their primary target. They wouldn't let up until I was too weak to do anything then kill all of us.
That plan went out the window when a world-shaking lightning bolt blasted the demon holding my arms away. Because with both enemies focused on me, they hadn't paid attention to what my two friends were doing. Another lightning bolt struck out and something inhuman screamed, proving that immunity to fire did not mean immunity to lightning. I hadn't remained idle either. Through several utterly exhausting seconds under both enemies magic I'd held on to a fraction of my senses, just enough to locate some particularly juicy targets. Under a single demon's flames I couldn't muster enough strength to more than bruise his skin, let alone cut through it. But the eyes? Those were much softer targets.
The monster howled in agony and dropped me. Its breath cut off just enough for me to fly away... to where my magic short sword had fallen. With my target blinded, near-crippling weakness didn't matter. I just flew back and away, slowly accelerated over the distance, then slammed sword-first into his head from behind. Two feet of magically enhanced speed pierced through skin, bone, what passed for a monster's brain, and out the other side.
In the meantime, Jerry and Mandy were making short work of the other demon. Jerry's many laser weapons had turned a patch of ground several feel across into magma and as he kept firing into the molten rock, Mandy absorbed the heat to empower her magic. That extra power she turned not to fire but repeated lightning bolts, sidestepping the enemy's immunity. The first blast had thrown the monster back. The second and third had reduced it to a twitching lump of flesh, because electricity messed with your nervous system way before it got strong enough to fry you. After that it was a matter of keeping up the lightning bolts until the helpless target died.
A massive amount of power, more than I'd ever felt before, flowed through me the moment the first demon died, washing away my exhaustion and clearing my head. It was by no means pleasant; the damage was still there and with neither fatigue nor numbness to keep it at bay the pain returned with vengeance. When the second, much smaller boost of power indicating the second enemy's death came, my every muscle relaxed as the need to keep fighting for survival went away. I collapsed on the ground in a boneless heap and let go.
In five minutes, or maybe fifteen, or even more, I'd get up, help the others back to base and get healing and a bath. Maybe we'd celebrate the first significant victory against more than just foot soldiers, maybe I'd search for a new power to deal with my newly discovered weaknesses or improve my old ones. But right then and there I could lay down and enjoy the simple privilege of breathing, of being alive.
Naturally, as soon as that thought had formed, the universe hurried to prove it wrong. A light drizzle fell, the first we've had for many days. Fat raindrops fell, bringing down the mist with them. Then in the distance, the explosions started...