In a far off canopy, Holly stood crouched on an ideal bough, microwave pistol affixed with a miniature scope. She lowered her eye from the sights hesitantly. Was it already over?
She shivered then. The tiny aura of the telescope dragonfly swirling within Chikita's soul linked Holly to the cryomancer's heightened senses. Chikita felt an ominous chill in the air, the waves of danger rolling thickly off of the manticore not running dry, even with its face and head planted in the ground.
The two women jointly cringed under the same ominous stimuli.
Freyja's hackles raised, the ridge of her back and the width of her shoulders flaming, partially melding into wolf flesh bulging with muscle. Her face was set in a static growl bearing huge canine fangs to rival the manticore's own mouthful of razor sharp spikes. She too realized it was far from over.
The manticore leveraged its paws beneath it and yanked its head out of the crater of soil and upturned grass roots, exposing wriggling pink earthworms, and shook out its soiled mane. Wiping out its eyes with its free paw, an expression of glee came into its eyes. A wicked smile stretched across its face, its tongue flicking out between parted teeth to lap up its own blood.
HE'S STILL FUCKING ALIVE?!? Richie panicked within.
The man-faced lion shook out the dirt and stood, yanking its entwined paw free of Cuppy's wire trap, uprooting Yukihana from its tent post pose. Chikita slipped her katana free of the fishing line, tutting as the beast untangled the snare. Cuppet was allowed to reel the line back in without incident, the forest so deathly quiet that the wire could be heard parting the grass like a snake.
"It's been a long time since I've had this much pain inflicted on me." the manticore continued grinning. The tension was worse than when it had projected only cold disgust.
"What do you want?" Richie forced himself to ask, his voice barely restrained from wavering by a white-knuckle grip.
The manticore purred. "I want only to satisfy my base instincts. I want to devour every rival creature in my path to satisfy my hunger. Meat satisfies the belly, but my appetite for battle has been starving until now. Don't get cold feet on me now, nothing is a bigger thorn in my paw than getting worked up for a challenge that falls through. Put up the best fight you can and die a warrior's death. Disappoint me if you'd rather be eaten alive from the feet up."
He crouched.
"What if we pummel you silly?" Cuppy asked, raising his hand.
"That's not an option." the manticore chuckled. "But, please don't let that stop you from trying. Miracles happen from time to time, am I right?"
Richie balanced himself on his legs again, hissing between his teeth at the throbbing ache under his kneecap. He knocked on it a few times, then cracked out his knuckles as he stood and stretched out his back.
His dragons sniffed the air.
Perhaps we have a little motivation now. they grinned into Richie's mind.
"Psychopaths. Psychopaths, the lot of you." Richie rolled his eyes.
The manticore yanked its tail free of the string trap on the porch with such force that Cuppy was dragged along the grass by his face, inadvertently grazing again. Shreds of snapped string flew to the corners of the complex as the manticore trampled around volleys of attacks on all sides. Freyja, fully transformed into a sleek jet black hellhound, wove in between the tread of the beast's massive paws, snapping and clawing at ankles. Cuppet and Chikita crisscrossed the beast, meeting claws with swordplay, and Richie sprinted full tilt around the back of the beast, circling and looking for an opening to exploit. Off in the treetops, Holly resumed looking through her scope.
Guess negotiations are over. she thought.
Cuppy lashed his fishing line out like a whip, casting, withdrawing, and recasting his floatball rapidly for the beast's face, shoulders, and chest. Despite his great mass, the monster easily bobbed side to side or ducked under every swing, fur ruffled by the recurring whip cracks.
As Freyja clutched to the lion's underbelly, biting and clawing, a huge fold of feline flesh clamped in her red-hot jaws, Richie kicked in the side of a rear leg. He grunted and hopped up and down on one foot from the collision of leg bone against leg bone. A microwave shot whiffed just over the thing's shoulder, creating the reek of burning hair. The manticore dropped onto its belly and rolled, pressing Freyja into the ground and dislodging her, its tail splitting furrows of dirt that kicked up blinding clogs in the faces of anyone within the immediate radius. It caught Cuppet's blades in its jaws and thrashed, shaking and flinging the marionette aside. Cuppy sprinted to rejoin his bro, dashing along a taut wire hovering above the grass like a tightrope. He fired an explosive pellet that was knocked back at him by a flick of the scorpion tail, engulfing the fray in blinding white and momentary tinnitus. The manticore felt the vibration of the keen garrote wire underbelly, and stepped over the 'tightrope' before it pulled suddenly up, slashing empty air.
Chikita was unusually passive for how aggressively she had tried to pressure the manticore in their last encounter so shortly ago, and the beast felt satisfied mirth at the sweet tune of her ragged breathing. She was dripping sweat, legs shaky. It looked like merely standing up and holding her sword was painful for her.
You rookies run out of steam before you even get started. Me? I can hunt all day and night!
Chikita's head dipped, her eyes falling closed. Her guard position, Yukihana held up in front of her from waist-level, fell as she began to pass out on her feet.
Chikita! Yukihana warned.
The assassin popped her eyes open, waking back up from the brink, to see the stinger lunging for her. She gasped and moved to slash at the barb, meeting and clashing with it. Her blade's keen edge barely nicked the side of the stiff, uncompromising armored spike. Her hands hurt, felt like her palms were bruising. It was hard to breathe. Her stomach hurt. Everything hurt.
The manticore pushed her aside with its tail, reloading to strike again.
"Always take out the weakest links first." it said.
Then, its tail lunged - for the wampus cat, left exposed, crouched into the dirt with its head hiding in its paws.
Level 2! Richie flash-stepped in between the fatal sting and the manticore, then pressed his outer forearms together, coating them over with gleaming azure scales as an improvised shield. Level 3!
As with before when this attack had struck Freyja, the barb kept extending farther than expected, and recoil that felt like getting his arms blasted with a shotgun while wearing Kevlar sleeves threw him back, uncovering the prone wampus cat again.
The sting flew again at the wampus cat - no use! - and struck it through the eye.
Freyja and Richie gasped. But then, a connecting thread caught the light, and drew closed, swapping out the entangled lesser feline for a sock-puppet-looking voodoo doll in its likeness. The derpy little effigy's six legs flailed as it was blown apart by the spear thrust of the manticore's tail.
Thank fuck. Richie wiped the sweat from his brow.
Before he or anyone else could say "Nice save, Cup!", the wampus cat's protracted, yowling scream overhead drew their eyes skyward. The voodoo doll had been positioned by a trailing thread cast skyward, and was still rising when it was activated by its likeness taking a hit. As such, the wampus cat was teleported into a parabola going high over the apartment complex roof, into the sky and out of sight. Its yowl echoed away to silence as it was essentially slingshot out of the battlefield.
"YOU DUMBASS!!!" Richie and Freyja yelled simultaneously.
The manticore roared laughter.
"Well look at that, dinner and a show!" he planted his paws again, claws curling into the dirt. "So eager to protect that worthless mongrel. I'll bet you're similarly attached to this den. Excuse me, you hominids call it a 'house', don't you? I do hope you've been holding back on its account."
There’s an interesting thought. Fighting here is relatively more open than in the woods before us, but he’s right; I’m not sure the wards would hold out against a prolonged assault, and we’re playing with fire on account of Freyja. Fire in the vicinity of a wooden building. Then again, the woods are flammable too, and they’d provide cover for the manticore. Richie thought over.
That’s not necessarily accurate. his dragons chimed in. It’s true that a predator like this beast is better acclimatized to wilderness than to urban areas, but that doesn’t mean much. So his sniffer is better at discerning the smells of animal shit and leaves than it is smog trails and refuse. He cannot shake the natural laws of his own mass and size. No matter how swift he is, the manticore is still a lion the size of an elephant. The trees would provide more cover for you than for him, and more opportunities for team attacks and angles to attack from. You’re all athletic or tricky enough to maneuver easily enough through the trees. The threat of provoking a forest fire still stands, granted.
Either the manticore was taking its sweet time, or Richie was processing his dragons' thoughts quicker than before. The breadth of that strategic assessment filled out his synapses as though the paragraph he heard was just a retroactive translation of pure intent flowing through his mind, between him and his runes.
Either way, he came to already in his Level 2 speed stance, to dodge a projectile stinger fired at his feet. It sank into the ground like a torpedo, out of sight. A volley of other barbs landed near and around his allies, forcing the lot of them to spread out and back away from the widening circle of fire.
Freyja, however, rushed forward, diving under the stinger and emerging on the other side of the death radius in a hybrid hellhound form that gave her a werewolf like stance. She shifted upright, chest, stomach, and limbs rippling with layered human and wolf muscle, her clothing absorbed into the magic of her transformation as the yellow bands of her eyes glowed and tightened. Her body became jet black, her mouth full of fangs, and her hands and feet became paws armed with gleaming red hot claws. Tufts of thick black fur adorned her limbs, and her hair grew longer and wild, merging halfway down her waist into her back like a pelt. Her ears pointed, and her face became lined with the hints of a snout pressing against her skin from within. Her nose did not shift to a wet canine nose, however, retaining her blunter human sense of smell for fear of getting her senses thrown off by the nearby lake of black rain. As it stood, existing in an animalistic state before this juggernaut of a predator was already playing hell on her nerves.
As if accepting a formal challenge, the manticore shifted to a bipedal stance as well, to meet Freyja on her own terms. His shadow towered over them all, the beast easily twenty feet tall from head to toe. His chitinous, deadly tail swayed back and forth behind him, longer than he was, like a sidewinder. Paws met paws as the clash devolved into something like a boxing match between two wild grizzly bears. Though Freyja had better mobility, she couldn’t contend with the manticore’s overwhelming strength and mass. The beast’s paws sank deep into the ground, rooting him to the spot, an immovable wall of claws, teeth, muscle, and malice. Freyja’s burning claws left angry tract marks in the lion’s torso, but a single retaliatory swipe nearly gutted her, and threw her to the porch again.
This time, a microwave shot nailed the beast from behind, passing just under the shoulder blade and emerging from his peck. Cuppy smiled, seeing that the beast’s nipple melted. Standing made the beast a bigger target for Holly. The psychometric archaeologist turned double agent allowed herself a pat on the back, and began lining up the next shot. In the interim, she found a tickle in her throat, and began coughing. A delayed spasm, some final side effect of exposure to Chinokiri?
No.
Holly felt something scratchy, vibrating, work its way up and out of her throat. She spat out a small satellite that began hovering right in front of her.
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“What the - Bob?!” Holly proclaimed in sheer disbelief.
Her most personal telescope dragonfly, whom she had assumed was crushed and drowned when the Faceless Man threw her across the city and into the bay, had been hiding in her lung, of all places. Now wasn’t the time to figure out exactly how, but her best guess off the cuff was that he might have impotently tried to save her from drowning, only to get swallowed along with seawater.
“You’re alive!” she grabbed the cyborg bug in one hand and pet him on the head with the other, weeping tears of joy. She peppered the little surveillance device with loving kisses. “Perfect. Go to Cuppy, I’ll whisper in his ear through you. You’ve just made coordination much easier.”
She saluted the telescope dragonfly, which buzzed in turn, and flew off to carry out her instruction.
Bob had his work cut out for him. A chaotic crossfire of ballistic and cutting strings, explosive pellets, fireballs, and air shots were zigzagging the battlefield as Cuppy, Freyja, and Richie tried circling the beast. The insect dove, twisted, barrel rolled, climbed, and sailed past, around, under, and over the innumerable missiles blowing apart its airspace. The mechanical thing shouldn’t have possessed a personality, but whether for glitchy reference to popular culture, proximity to the otherworldly flow of the Backyards, a spiritual awakening, or some combination, Bob played Ride of the Valkyries in its tiny trinket brain. The sky was black with smoke, and it surfed the pulse of roaring explosions, always just out of range of a deadly hit. The epic tale of its heroic flight would be known only to it, however, as its presence was only made known when it perched on Cuppy’s shoulder and buzzed at him.
Cuppy, recognizing the scamp as the same model of device that pestered him a while ago, produced a can of bug spray from his satchel and misted the cyborg thoroughly. The bug was unaffected, but seemed to take on an offended, angry tone to its beeps and boops.
“Cup, it’s me.” Holly said through the unconventional cell phone.
“You turned into a bug?” Cuppy asked, perplexed.
Holly nearly fell out of the tree.
The manticore was forced back onto four legs to slink under Holly’s aim, and Richie picked up on this opportunity, dashing to its side and crushing the top of his leg into its underbelly, deliberately targeting the wounds it had already been dealt. It was a pleasant surprise to see that its belly was sewn up by what looked like its own barbs. That made this a whole lot easier. A pained grunt from the manticore confirmed that this was a glaring chink in its armor. Not wasting a moment, Richie slammed an uppercut into the center of the stitches, nearly splitting them. His hand practically vanished inside the lion’s belly. The lion immediately dropped to its belly to pin Richie, but the thief was already out from under him, resuming a kickboxing stance.
“I think you’re getting slower, chump!” Richie said, ducking under an awkward swipe and pivoting. He took a knife from his pocket - the one Leon had gifted him from forgotten Tide Town - and spun toward the manticore’s back quarter, stabbing the thing in the back thigh up to the hilt, burying the ornate rose-themed dagger as deep as it would go in a vicious ice pick grip. Freyja leaped onto the manticore’s back and began biting at the base of its skull, burning talons hooking into its rubbery hide, while Cuppet’s fishing rod cast bound and redirected the tail that would have struck her. Chikita slashed the back of its opposite ankle, and Cuppy fired a thin, nigh-invisible bristle into the monster’s sensitive nose, flooding its eyes with tears as its footing was stolen. Richie broke away and slammed an outer crescent kick into the hilt of the rose dagger, gushing blood from around the stab wound, and dashed back again, shifting his hands to Level 1 dragonheads, gathering wind on their crocodilian snouts.
Cuppy nodded at Bob. “Got it.”
He flung a string at the manticore, hidden behind a great, bright red ball of yarn he conjured leading the charge. As the manticore tilted its head away from the ominous yarn ball, the sphere burst apart into snaking threads that wrapped themselves around the thing’s forelimbs, chest, neck, and head, wrapping and blinding its eyes. Freyja took note of the yarn, correctly surmised it was flammable, and jumped from the manticore’s back, onto a tree limb in at the edge of the forest beyond the wrecked picket fence. She spat a screaming fireball at the mass of yarn, igniting it into a flashfire that burnt hair. A chain reaction also ignited the hairs within the manticore’s nose, dizzying it as its olfactory sensors were clogged with the awful smell.
More importantly, the yarn was a decoy attack that gave Cuppy cover to steer the transparent thread into the manticore’s eardrum. He channeled the power he had awakened from that mystical place through this thread, willing it to sew itself into the lion’s eardrum. The other end attached to Bob’s thorax. Cuppet left the fishing pole wrapped around the treetops, and jumped down, stabbing the manticore in the side with a scissor blade. Holly triggered a special frequency to broadcast from Bob, through the wire, and into the manticore’s ear - and, by extension, its brain. The tone was far too high-pitched to be heard by anyone else except perhaps Freyja, whose ears folded a little, but it reverberated through the monster’s ear drum, rattling and magnifying inside its skull. It became dizzy and nauseated, crumbling to the knees of its back legs. Another microwave shot severed the end of its tail again.
Richie withdrew his dagger, dashed to the front of the manticore, and slugged it in the jaw with an armored hook punch, targeting the same hinge Freyja bashed with a burning log. Saliva and blood flew from the manticore’s whiplashing face. Richie again dashed backward as the manticore impotently swatted at him, and charged an airball. Freyja dropped down to the other side of the manticore’s head, igniting her aura in a blaze of hellish flame, flexing a clawed hand ready to take out the manticore’s throat. She and Richie were facing each other, apart from the manticore’s massive head in between them.
Now to finish it off! Richie grinned.
He fired the air ball at the manticore. Freyja blanched. “Wait d-!”
The manticore lifted its head, purely by accident on account of being momentarily deaf, dumb, and blind, and the condensed ball of oxygen flew into Freyja. The moment it hit her fire, a bright red explosion blew a scorch mark in the soil, and threw Freyja into Cuppy. While Freyja was blown partially out of her fur, Cuppy was struck by his friend-turned-projectile and sandwiched against and through the fence. Incidentally, he had been aiming another explosive pellet, which in turn went wild and hit Chikita in the hip. “Wh-” the cryomancer had only time to utter before a crackling blue flash engulfed her and threw her twelve feet into the air.
A perfect friendly fire rotation occurred in about two seconds.
Richie blinked rapidly, nervous, and Cuppet face-palmed.
The manticore opened its eyes again and turned to Richie, looking directly at him.
“Oh… hi there…” Richie waved, a distinct Oh fuck expression painted obviously across his face.
"Hello." the manticore spread its jaws. They clamped down on Richie's bent arm at the elbow, clamping tight. The boy armored his limb in Level 3 scales moments before, but gasped under the incredible pressure deforming the second skin and bruising him beneath the scales. The monster lifted him off the ground, standing, and Richie held himself up in an extraordinarily painful pull-up. He dropped his opposite elbow onto the lion's nose, exploding blood and snot out of it like a slammed ketchup packet. The tail arched and took aim, then began to compress like a spring again.
Oh I don't like that. Richie gulped.
Incoming. his dragons warned.
The fuck's the point of telling me if I can't dodge it?!
The tail sprung. Richie focused all the willpower he could muster into giving his abdomen a rock solid coat of gleaming azure scales. The barb hit him dead center. This was what he imagined getting blasted by a shotgun while wearing a Kevlar toga would feel like. He was knocked absolutely breathless, gasping as his armored stomach sunk in, nearly pierced. His ribs cracked in tandem with the explosive crash of the tail, like a firework celebrating the symphony of pain. Richie's arm slipped free of the lion's mouth, and he flew up toward the duplex's second floor, where his back struck the balcony. Tumbling head under heels, Richie's body just kept going over the roof, and he landed in a lazy-looking slump, belly-first on the roof.
Freyja shook herself off, dragging Cuppy out of the splintered planks by his leg, and shook a flaming paw at Richie.
"LOOK BEFORE YOU SHOOT!" she growled at him.
As if spurred by the trigger word, a microwave shot buried itself in the manticore's right ass cheek. It roared, quite sick of Holly's shit. The tail, without aid from the manticore even looking back, twisted around and locked a counter-snipe on the support party member.
Holly, still looking through the reticle, saw a barb blur out of the tail hardly half a second before it struck her in the chest. She cried out as she was violently flung from the tree top, her suit sparking electricity like a tangle of live wires as the spear tip breached their defenses and nuzzled into her breastplate.
"No camping." the manticore growled, twisting around to chew on its ass.
He looked back at the rest - a tramp draped across the roof like a wet blanket, a gashed, bleeding wreck of a spicy mongrel, a stringy tot and his inedible toy sidekick, and the mouthy holdover from a dead era currently moaning in a pile of soot.
It was time to bring this to a close.
The manticore aimed its tail - puckering like a revolting Freudian pink throat embedded in an armored stalk - straight up at the sky. The muscles of the tail tensed and expanded, the tail swelling grotesquely, and then something - a dozen somethings - shot out of the end, whistling like more fireworks into the sky.
Everyone looked up.
Richie had the best view, flipping over onto his back to stare straight up.
Roughly ten seconds later, hundreds of circular shadows began staining the complex grounds and surrounding forest. The sky was filled with falling stings, like divebombing crows that blocked out the sun.
"This is gonna get heavy." Freyja gulped. She shifted into hellhound form, draping Chikita over her back and picking Cuppy up in her mouth by his hood. Cuppet flew beside her as they all ducked onto the porch, shielded beneath the second floor roof.
The manticore curled its tail around its paws and sat on its haunches, grinning ear to ear, sallow spike teeth on full display. It was safe within a circle of clear sky as the hell from above rained down all around it.
Richie clicked, jumping onto his feet again as the spines fell. He sprung into Level 2, and began twisting and dashing in place, desperately shifting his body out of the way. The spikes began pelting the roof like the ultimate hail, and he wanted to cover his ears from the scream of the wind as the stings parted it like scalpel through flesh. Even with bursts of incredible subsonic speed, Richie's preprogrammed reflexes weren't able to keep up forever. He may as well have tried to dodge rain.
Richie's foot slipped on a slope of the roof, and just like that his rhythm and focus were broken.
Shit!
He hunkered down, encasing himself in Level 3 scales and tucking his head to his chest, shifting gears to enduring the deadly shower instead.
This was what he imagined having spiked pistons jammed into his back while wearing a chainmail poncho felt like. Every impact felt like it was going to punch through his defense and skewer him. His spine, shoulder blades, and arms where he covered his head were all fair game. As he was pummeled by the sting shower, his knees groaned, waiting to buckle under the weight, and he half wondered if he wouldn't just be plowed through the roof. When the shower eventually ended, seven spikes had punched partially through his draconic scales, stabbing just to the side of the base of his neck, beneath both shoulder blades, and down his back. Blood welled up from the chinks in his armor, the barb tips buried in muscle. His consciousness began to give way, and he forced a foot under himself to keep from collapsing.
On the porch, Freyja threw the sliding glass door open and chucked the others inside. She heard a rush, and saw the tail lunging at her out of that springloaded position. She ducked inside and slammed the door - and the barb bent straight at a right angle on impact, the glass standing like a steel wall.
"Gagh!" the manticore grunted in obvious pain.
"I'll be damned, Cup's charms really do work." Freyja blinked.
After a few moments, she began chuckling.
"He ha! Can't get us in here, you big quivering pussy!" she bent over and smacked her ass at the manticore, then flipped him the double bird while sticking her tongue out at him.
"Your mother wears army boots." Cuppy joined in, pulling his lower eyelid down and sticking his tongue out at the beast.
It lunged into the porch, trying to break down the glass and failing utterly, body buckling against the impenetrable wall.
"Damned cowards, get back out here and finish our fight!" it roared, enraged. "What happened to your guts?! Weren't you landing blows? I haven't had to struggle like this in centuries, and you're just going to quit on me?! I can still hear your hearts beat, we aren't through here yet!"
Cuppy mooned the manticore, pressing his bare ass up against the door.
The manticore jut a new stinger into place, dislodging the previous bent one, and rapidly stabbed the glass to no avail.
On the roof, Richie yanked the last barb out of his body, the recurved hooks tearing his flesh open wider, and the anticoagulant venom causing him to gush blood.
Fuck, I feel faint. Losing too much blood. Gotta wrap this up quick.
His dragons coiled, looking up at him.
Now's your chance, there's a clear breakaway to the forest. It seems that the only thing that angers the rival more than a disappointing battle is one that exceeds its expectations only to be cut short. What do you call it? A 'table flip'?
Richie sighed.
Oh goody, so he'll be entirely focused on me AND pissed off. Wonderful.
He leaped down across the grass strip, landing precariously on a fence picket, pinwheeling his arms for balance.
The manticore didn't notice anything aside from a light tap! in his ears on account of his broken composure... until an air ball hit him directly in his dangly manticore bits.
From within the sanctified apartment, Cuppy and the others watched the lion's eyes go blank white, mouth falling open as if on a broken hinge, and heard a pathetic meow. The beast collapsed on the concrete, all four paws cradling its swelling balls as the tail dropped dead in a twitching pile.
"Don't turn your back on your opponent." Richie said, crossing his arms and doing his best to look impressive. "If you want to fight, then you fight me. I'll kick your ass up and down neverland."
The manticore turned to Richie, standing on quaking legs like a newborn fawn.
"Insolent... cheap... WORM!"
Richie grinned. "Survival of the fittest, remember? There's no such thing as playing dirty."
The manticore crouched.
"Anyway - later!" Richie saluted the beast, then dropped down onto the other side of the forest and sprinted deep within the trees.
"Wh- knave!" the manticore bashed through the planks and gave chase.