40 ABBe Gone!

April 22nd 10:30

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Oftentimes, when people think about parahumans, they possess the mistaken opinion that parahumans are just normal people plus a superpower.

Now, that may technically correct, but Mary's of the opinion that such an understanding vastly undermines the difference between a parahuman and a normal, baseline human.

A simple proof is that an activated corona pollentia has been proven to accelerate neuron activation throughout the body. Basically meaning that parahumans all have better reaction times than normal people. 

Granted, the difference isn't overtly large in most cases, only shaving off about fifty milliseconds, but people underestimate how much such a small change can mean.

The average human's reaction speed is around a quarter of a second, so having an average reaction time of a fifth of a second isn't exactly a massive difference, hence why hardly anyone even knows about it in the first place.

But still, the difference is there, and it makes all the difference.

Similarly, most powers have minor secondary effects. Masters for instance generally are better at multitasking to better control their minions, Shakers are generally more perceptive, Changers tend to be less confrontational and more adaptable and so on and so forth.

The point she's trying to make here, is that she doesn't feel that para-human is entirely accurate. After all, in it's original Latin, 'para' as a prefix means 'besides'. So 'parahuman' would basically mean 'human adjacent'.

Parahumans aren't just equal to humans, they are above them, so she thinks suprahuman would be more fitting. Because at the end of the day, a normal human simply can't compete with one of them.

Case in point she just watched Bitch beath the shit out of two grown men despite her power not having anything to do with enhancing herself.

Humans are just so.. fragile.

Glancing down, Mary shakes her gloved hands, flicking the coating of blood off in front of her.

Around her, half a dozen Asian men lay in varying states of health. Which is to say, some of them are still alive.

Shaking her head, she steps up to the man she impaled with her cane and uses one foot as leverage to yank the implement out of their chest, summarily ignoring the spray of blood.

She had to beat the rest of them with her bare hands because the handle of her cane got stuck behind one of his ribs. She blames Cavatica for her sloppy performance, because it's basically impossible to see or hear anything with all the bugs flying everywhere like a thick fog.

She's glad she doesn't have entomophobia, or this would really suck.

An explosion sounds off nearby, muffled by the ever buzzing swarm, but before she can even think about investigating, the swarm in front of her parts like the red sea.

As if it wasn't obvious enough that Cavatica wanted her to go that way, a few bugs form an arrow on the floor pointing down the newly made corridor.

Shrugging to herself and pretending she can't hear the screams, Mary jogs after the arrows, up a set of stairs and into the likely office room of the building that is thankfully mostly bereft of bugs.

Thanks to there no longer being a swarm of insects blocking her vision it doesn't take her long to find what Cavatica no doubt sent her to find, Newter lying in a pool of purple blood.

"Yo, you alive?" She asks to no answer.

Sighing, she steps closer, getting his blood all over her boots and crouches down to check his pulse.

Unfortunately, he's still alive, which means she now has to drag him out of here, which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that his entire biology is possibly the most potent hallucinogen on the planet and that simple skin contact will leave her too high to count her fingers.

It's a good thing she has gloves.

But before any of that, she needs to stabilise him or he'll just bleed to death and then what would be the point?

At least there is one upside there, in that she is a minor pyrokinetic, and she doesn't really give a shit how much cauterisation will hurt him.

That thought in mind, she moves her cane to her off-hand and ignites the other, bringing her burning fingertips to the wound-

Abruptly aborting the action Mary dives to the side as some vague instinct screams at her, and when she rolls to her feet and looks back she sees a red Oni mask glaring at her.

Well fuck.

Seeing Oni Lee standing where she just was at the end of a knife swing leaves little doubt of how close she came to following after Newter's example.

Another explosion sounds out in the distance and then Mary has no time to think as Oni Lee appears in front of her, his blade already swinging for her neck.

By only the faintest margin she leans back enough to avoid the slash, and then she has to spin her cane in a reverse grip to block that same knife as another Oni Lee appears behind her.

The Oni Lee in front of her moves to strike again but a sharp kick to the shin has him exploding into a cloud of ash that Mary doesn't hesitate to dive through, using the brief moment of movement to swap her weapon back to her dominant hand.

Rolling to her feet for the second time in a dozen seconds, Mary extends her cane into a whip and sweeps it through the entire room, dusting another three clones as she does so, leaving her and Newter alone in the room, at least for a few seconds anyway.

Without wasting any time, Mary's mind works as fast as she is able to remind herself of Oni Lee's powers and how she can beat him.

It's certainly not easy, because his power is incredibly annoying. Line of sight based teleportation that leaves a clone behind on every teleport that lasts for up to five seconds and explodes into ash when it expires.

Frankly, the only way he can really be beaten is to predict where he will teleport. Typically, teleporters aren't actually too difficult to beat in a fight, unless you count actually catching them as a victory then it's obviously way harder, But thanks to the nature of Lee's power, that is no longer the case.

See, even with the power of teleportation, they will still have reaction times and likely limited physical specs. With that in mind, if you are fast enough, and she is, then a teleporter can't really do much to you, because you can react, and maybe even counter attack, in the time between their appearance and attack.

Think about it like this, once the teleporter arrives in a location, they need to process their new surroundings, decide on a course of action or movement, and then act it out. The whole process only really takes about half a second to a second, but that is enough time for someone like her to punch a hole through your chest.

Lee on the other hand, is different. Because once Lee teleports, he can just immediately teleport again to safety while leaving his clone to go through the whole half second process of attacking.

That means to actually hit him on reaction, her brain would need to process his appearance, then send the signals for what her body should do, and then her body would need to act on it, all in about one tenth of a second.

All said, she can probably go from surprised to impact in about three tenths of a second, less if she's as keyed up as she is now.

Which is to say, she needs to cut down her reaction time to a third if she wants to actually hit him, which means she can't be reacting at all, which means she needs to predict.

Which is not as easy as it sounds.

As if to emphasise the difficulty, her brief respite comes to an end when Oni Lee reappears on the opposite side of the room from her, and then in half a second there are five more of him surrounding her, each lunging with their blades poised.

It's only when she tries to swing her whip that she realises how useless it is against an opponent who can close the distance in literally an instant when it tugs against one of their boots.

Not having the time for anything else, Mary drops into a split and leans back, yanking at her whip hard enough to destabilise the clone standing on it and using the same momentum to spin her legs into a wide kick, trading all her senses for a boost to her body for just a brief moment.

When she can see again she is already halfway to her feet and covered in a dissipating cloud of ash.

Her whip retracts back into a cane right when another trio of Lee's appear, only these ones don't charge her with knives.

Instead, they each pull the pin on one of the grenades attached to their bandoliers and then proceed to dogpile her.

Well fuck.

Fun fact about grenades. When one arms one, they have about three to five seconds before it goes boom. This is a safety measure to ensure you don't blow your arm off immediately.

Fun fact about disposable clones. Due to their nature as of being disposable, it doesn't really matter if they were to die or have their arm blown off from, say, a specially made grenade without a fuse.

All this is to say that she very much did not have enough time to dust the clones and thus their grenades before they went off. The only thing she really had time to do was jump into the air, curl into a ball, and hope that pushing out her fire will do something to cushion the impact.

The explosion is loud, and the impact is swift and leaves her gasping for air even before her back cracks one of the office walls.

One thing the grenade isn't however, is bright. Even with her head swimming and her hearing nothing, Mary doesn't let herself lose her guard.

The force she was thrown with eventually wanes enough that she falls to the ground from where she hit the wall, and though he lands on her feet, she almost immediately falls forward as her sense of balance fails her.

Right. Think. That grenade was probably sonic-based. It would explain why she can feel blood pouring out her ears and why she can't hear anything, even her shitty balance.

Shaking her head in an effort to focus, Mary uses her own power and gives up her sense of hearing, finding her sense of balance immediately restore to normal levels.

Useful.

Surveying the room, pretty much everything is trashed, and Newter must have been closer to the epicentre of the blast because his body looks more like a mushy pile of meat than a human being.

He's still recognisably human shaped, but his face has caved in with bits of bone and blood sticking out, and the rest of his body looks an orange would if you squeezed it between your hands, with the sides of his torso torn open and his organs half falling out while a prey of blood covers the floor from his position all the way to the walls.

On the bright side, she doesn't have to worry about bringing him out anymore.

A knife embedding itself where her head was a moment ago reminds her of the not so bright side, even as a rising knee turns that clone into dust.

Of course, once the dust blows away, she is greeted by the sight of seven Oni Lee's, each with a hand on their bandolier of grenades. How fun.

Y'know, as much as she complained before, she would be pretty happy to be surrounded by a swarm of bugs right now, because the Manton Limit would probably prohibit Lee's power from letting him teleport inside of anything organic, like a swarm of bugs.

Alas, her hope for convenient timing isn't answered.

"I don't suppose you would be willing to surrender yourself peacefully?" She asks.

He doesn't answer.

It was worth a try.

However, right as the Lees are about to pull their pins, a deep, resounding crash echoes beneath them and shakes the entire building, causing them all to stumble.

It wasn't what she wanted, but she'll take what she can get, is what Mary thinks before a few dozen metal spikes spear their way through the ground and fill the room, one of them very nearly cutting off her left foot.

A responding roar tells her that Kaiser is likely fighting lung right beneath them, which makes her not want to be here anymore.

Unfortunately, she's not given a choice in the matter, as the two clones that didn't get accidentally impaled by Kaiser both pull their pins and immediately everything around them starts turning to sand in a rapid pulse.

Thinking quickly, Mary hooks some debris with her cane and throws it into the area of effect, watching it immediately turn to sand mid-air, taking away the option of jumping over the effect if it needed contact to spread.

With little options left, she dashes to her right and trades all her senses away for all the strength she can get as she rams herself into a wall.

She obviously doesn't know what happens exactly, but she can infer when her senses come back to her as she is already halfway through falling into the building's main floor.

She only has a second to take in the scene. Bitches dogs are trying and failing to maul a twelve foot tall Lung who almost casually grabs one of the van sized monstrosities by the back of it's neck and throws it at another, sending them both tumbling away.

By the time she's touching the ground, rolling to bleed momentum, Lung is getting bisected at the hip by a truly massive spear of metal erupting from the ground at an angle right in front of him.

Ignoring Lung's roar, Mary turns back to the upper office to see it completely reduced to falling sand, and she takes the sight in just in time for one of the giant twins to collapse forward.

She must have been standing right under the area of effect, because her head and one shoulder is completely missing, replaced by a stream of sand.

The giant woman hits the ground and the sand coating her neck finally falls enough for a truly copious amount of blood to spurt out.

The remaining twin lets out a scream of anguish that Mary can't find herself to feel sympathetic about, and starts growing even bigger as she runs up to Lung.

She grows so much in two steps that her head pushes through the roof of the warehouse, and she uses all the momentum of her run to kick Lung like he's an only slightly oversized to her new frame football.

The displaced air that follows her kick almost drags Mary to the ground, but she doesn't mind since she gets the wonderful pleasure of watching Lung get launched out through a wall, through a building across the street and into the next.

Then a Lee appears in front of her and she barely manages to dust him after he pulls a pin but before the grenade explodes.

The remaining twin isn't so lucky as another Lee appears by her left foot and almost immediately everything around him turns to glass, including the giant woman's left leg all the way up to her upper thigh.

Before Lee can do anymore damage, the swarm returns, noticeably diminished. This time, she can see through he swarm pretty easily, but she can understand Cavatica is just doing exactly what she thought about and spreading her swarm out to inhibit Lee rather than attack anything.

Relaxing slightly, Mary turns to find Bitch and quickly jogs over.

"You good?" Mary asks, looking at Bitch surrounded by her dogs, two of which seem only minimally injured, while the other looks to be in bad shape.

Bitch grunts and continues checking out her dogs.

"Lung is too big for your dogs to safely engage him anymore and they'll be useless against Lee. Newter's dead, the twins are down or dead and we don't care about Kaiser. Go join the reserves and get them on your dogs in case we need to leave, Labyrinth and Cavatica don't have Brute or Mover ratings."

Bitch glares at her for a long moment before nodding and swinging herself onto one of her dogs, but before she rides away she turns back to Mary.

"What 'bout you?"

"I'm going to see about dealing with Lee." As soon as Mary says that, disparate pieces of information click together in her mind and a plan comes together. "Which reminds me, when you get there, tell Cavatica to gather all the fliers she can and have them hover above me. Tell her there needs to be more bugs on the edges over the street. Tell her she needs to drop them all once the cage forms."

Bitch nods once, says "Good luck," and then she's off.

Sighing to herself, Mary takes a second to stretch, feeling an ache all the way to her bones. One part of her wants to say that this all sucks, but she can be honest enough with herself to admit that she's having fun.

Once she finally recognises the thought, a grin splits her face as a sense of euphoria fills her.

She's been acting so tense and worried because her plans are at a very important tipping point right now and she doesn't want to screw it up that she seems to have forgotten the most important part of her plan.

To enjoy herself.

Chuckling slightly, Mary shakes her head and slaps her cheeks before panicking slightly and rapidly bringing her hands up in front of her face, sighing with relief when she doesn't find any of Newter's purple blood.

That would have been really embarrassing if she accidentally drugged herself into immobility after all of that.

Giving herself a brief once over, she finds that she only has Newter's blood on her boots.

chuckling again, Mary adjusts her grip on her cane and starts jogging over to Kaiser and the shrinking twin. Though, she's not really a twin anymore. Yay for exclusivity!

Hiding her mirth once she reaches the pair, she's quick to hold her arms up in surrender at the hostile glares she's greeted with.

Someone's in a bad mood~.

"Newter's dead, I have a plan to teal with Lee," there isn't really time for conversation so it's important to get the details out fast, so she doesn't wait for a response, confident that Kaiser won't be in the mood to worry about petty power plays regarding who orders who right now. 

Hell, she doubts even her skin colour would stop him from listening to her right now. "I'll grab her and drop her off a couple buildings the opposite way of Lung. I need you to go over there," Mary points to a part of the street visible through the missing wall that's in the same area as the reserves but not too close, "And be ready to block off the street. There won't be enough time for your power to make a whole box, but you can start forming metal inside the buildings to cover all the windows, when you see Lee appear, cover the alleys and and the street, ceiling last."

She doesn't wait for him to respond before moving to the no longer a twin and unceremoniously lighting her hand on fire and pressing it against her wound.

Kaiser doesn't stop her in the face of 'Enja's scream, so she assumes he's being reasonable, which is nice.

'Enja ends up passing out from the pain, which is kind of pathetic for a so called Übermensch. 

The sounds of roaring battle wane slightly as she carries 'Enja the minimal safe distance as fast as she can before simply dropping the woman in an alley and running back.

To take the expedient path, Mary leaps to the rooftops in one bound and swiftly makes her way back just in time for the sound of Lung's roaring to return in full force.

Looking down on the street, she watches a swarm of bugs get incinerated to reveal a fifteen foot tall Lung. That's bigger than he got when she beat him, and she needed Challenger and Miss Militia to do that then.

Glancing down the street, she sees Ten finally moving, heading towards Lung and looking like he really doesn't want to. Behind him the street has been replaced by some kind of marble, Greek temple-like structure, no doubt the result of Labyrinth's power.

Cavatica and Labyrinth are sitting on Bitches dogs with her and Kaiser is further down the street. Glancing up, she sees another swarm growing by the second above her.

Okay then. She jumps down to the street, attracting the attention of everyone but Ten and Lung. Ten can probably stall Lung if not defeat him, and the rest of them have a pretty solid chance of beating Lee if her plan works out.

Really, there's only one downside to her plan, and that's that it kind of hinges entirely on a single hunch.

Because if Lee probes her with a single teleport before immediately departing after only leaving one clone, then he'll notices Kaiser springing her trap and won't fall for it a second time.

The whole thing hinges on the fact that he already understands that against her, a single clone will be destroyed before it can do anything. Which means he will teleport in front of her and then a few time around her before departing.

If she's going with the assumption that Lee can push out ten teleports a second, then ideally he will make at least seven clones to deal with her. That should be enough time for Cavatica's swarm to drop low enough that Lee can't see the rooftops clearly, then hopefully the time it will take him to pick another avenue of exit will be enough for Kaiser's walls of steel to meet Cavatica's walls of bugs.

If all goes well, she'll be trapped in a box with Lee, which would be more dangerous if not for the fact that Cavatica's swarm would then drop on them and basically nullify Lee's power entirely. That just leaves the bombs, but even Lee isn't suicidal enough to kill himself so long as he doesn't think she's going to kill him anyway, and she's supposedly a Hero, so he likely doubts she would go that far.

It's a pretty sketchy plan, but hey, it's better than nothing. And who knows? It might even work. Stranger things have happened.

///

Meanwhile, with another team

L33T

///

Wearing his Noble Three armour from their Halo themed mission, L33T dives back behind cover and activates his Armour Lock again as another explosion barely misses him.

When he agreed to come here, it was with the understanding that all the other capes would be facing the danger and he'd just be sniper support. That's why he wore the fucking Noble Three armour! So why the fuck is this insane bitch shooting at him!?

"WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU SECOND RATE SHITTY TINKER RETARD!!! YOU THINK YOU CAN TRICK ME!?" Bakuda's voice breaks almost into a squeal at the end there, but L33T struggles to find the amusement he would usually get about mocking squeakers. "YOU THINK YOU'RE SMART FAGGOT? YOU'RE NOT! I'M A FUCKING GENIUS CUNT! YOU REALLY THOUGHT I WOULDN'T SEE YOU DUMBASSES COMING!!? HUH?!?"

L33T, being a born and bread Brocktonite thought he knew crazy, but this bitch takes it to a whole other level. Which is why he is mostly tuning her out in favour of punching texts into his phone as fast as he can begging for Über to fucking notice!

Did his shitty tech fucking break again!? Is that why Über isn't responding to the fucking emergency line!? Because now is not the fucking time for his tech to fail! He doesn't want to fucking die to this crazy bomber bitch!

"YOU GOT NOTHING TO SAY FAGGOT!?!" Bakuda scrams once more, followed by a thoom of another grenade being launched that has him scrambling to reactivate the Armour Lock.

Another explosion, closer this time, and L33T feels like he's at the edge of his rope.

"LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE YOU CRAZY BITCH! WHY ARE YOU EVEN ATTACKING ME WHEN YOU COULD BE ESCAPING FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO!?"

"DON'T FUCKING TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOU SHIT BRAINED PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A TINKER! I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE AN INSULT! PEOPLE HERE THINK ABOUT TINKERS AND THEY THINK ABOUT YOU! THEY COMPARE ME TO YOU! SO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DIE ALREADY YOU USELESS BRAINLESS SHITSTAIN! TEMĒ NO ATAMA WA HAPPĪSETTO KA YO? ANATA NINGEN'NOKUZU!!"

What the fuck is she even saying! L33T whimpers in his mind as a rain of foreign insults wash over him. Somehow, not knowing what she's saying makes it even scarier.

Eventually, his fear reaches a tipping point where he just can't take it anymore and with wide eyes he grabs his plasma pistol, too keyed up to feel the usual annoyance that comes with using a covenant weapon in UNSC armour, but it's the only one left that works. Über had to make do with the DL-44 from their Star Wars outfits.

But the specifics of the weapon isn't what's on L33T's mind as he charges up the plasma pistol. In fact, there's very little on his mind at all except for a long unused fight or flight instinct telling him he has no choice but to fight.

He practically leaps to his feet and barely spends two seconds lining up his shot, his armour doing most of the heavy lifting. His helmet locks onto his target, the grenade launcher wielding woman in a modified gas mask standing atop the back of a truck. His armour makes minute corrections to his posture.

Then, before he can think any further, the trigger is pulled, and no one is more surprised than L33T when his shot actually lands. He doesn't know what he was expecting. It's probably weird to be surprised, because what would be the point in shooting in the first place if he didn't even think he had a chance to land it, but again, he wasn't really thinking.

Which is perhaps where everything went wrong.

Because one thing that had been made very, very clear during their debriefings was that Bakuda has a dead man's switch on her heart and that they shouldn't, under any circumstance kill her, or every single bomb she's made will go off, and nobody wants that.

Now, that shouldn't really be a problem, because for all that he is a Villain, L33T isn't a murderer. His plasma pistol doesn't even have a lethal option, so it should have been fine.

However, with his mind in such disarray from having so many bombs launched at him, L33T forgot one critical detail.

When a person is hit by a large influx of electricity, even if it is not lethal, it's not unheard of for their heart to, say, skip a beat.

///

Maryam

///

Watching Ten walk up to Lung, who now has a fully grown tail and large but still growing wings all covered in silver scales, as if he's just a tired and disgruntled employee off to tell the intern off for setting things on fire again is incredibly amusing.

Lung apparently doesn't feel the same, as evidenced by how his tail slams into Ten's side hard enough to audibly shatter all of his ribs and send him crashing into the wall next to them, where even more bones shatter.

That was.. underwhelming.

Even Lung in all his rage pauses for a moment at how easily Ten went down, but he quickly shakes it off and starts stalking his way towards the rest of them, shaking the street with every step.

But once he passes Ten, Lung, more dragon than man, jerks to a stop.

Following Lung's gaze, they all see Ten's hand gripping the end of Lung's tail and watch as rubble shifts and Ten slowly climbs back to his feet, his skin radiating a faint toxic green mist.

Then they see his eyes. They both glow like shining emeralds in the dark, and then, he heaves. 

A deafening screech fills the street as Lung's claws dig furrows into the street before he is lifted entirely off of the ground and swung bodily over Ten's head and back into the ground on the other side with such force that the street shakes and cracks underneath the dragon.

Looks like he's got that handled then.

As if her attention was a summon, Lee appears in front of her the next moment, likely wanting to make sure they can't gang up on his boss, and trusting that Lung will come out on top eventually.

The only sense Mary hasn't sacrificed to her power by now is her sight, and she uses the boost to her strength to dust the first two clones almost immediately, btu Lee keeps making more.

Then, after his eighth teleport, for the first time so far, Lee hesitates.

She smirks to herself as she flings herself at the clones, dusting them as fast as she can without taking the real Lee out of her sight.

By the time she's killed the third clone his mask turned to the side of the street where there should be an alley, but Kaiser pushed his metal out from the sides of the alley instead of bottom up so it's already covered.

The fifth clone is reduced to dust when another Lee appears twenty feet away, right in front of a wall of steel down the street.

The rest of the clones go down by the time Lee has turned around, and she can practically see him processing the situation. 

Mary in front of her, steel surrounding them and bugs above them. He has nowhere to go, and once the swarm finishes dropping-

The world explodes.

There's a ringing. A ringing.. in her head? 

It's not... it's- it's not sound? It's...

What was..?

Something... is hot? What is hot? She is?

No. Not hot? Burning. 

She's burning she's burning SHE'S ON FIRE!!

Pain drowns any thought so she takes away her ability to feel it. Her mouth tastes like blood and ash and fire, so she takes away her ability to taste. Her ears ring like nails on a chalkboard, so she takes away her ability to hear. Her eyes only see a painfully blinding white that causes her brain to throb, so she takes away her ability to hear.

But it doesn't work.

She still sees, still hears, still tastes, still feels.

And it hurts.

What.. what happened?

The light starts to fade, the throbbing starts to lessen.

She tries to move, but she can't.

She knows she will heal, so she focuses on her eyes.

She needs to see, to know.. to know what? 

What happened. She needs to know what happened.

The light fades, slowly at first bur more rapidly.

the first thing she notices is the smoke, it's everywhere. Surrounding her, brushing against her skin and filling the sky beyond.

She can see the sky, but it's covered in smoke. A dozen, more, clouds of smoke rising in the sky. Some close by, some far away.

She looks down.

The street is gone. It's all ash and dust and sand and fire.

She feels her consciousness starting to slip when a big red 'X' appears in her vision.

Ten.

He says something. She doesn't hear him.

She just..

She just wants to take a nap.

Just.. five... more... minutes....

///

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

the time is 23:59 right now as I am writing this, I am not late! But there's no time for an a/n