204 200 The Last Laugh
A/N: final chap before epilogues of this vol, so it's a 9k word chap, that's over 4 in one :)
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The very instant she reappears in this dimension, notably lacking the corpses she went in with, Lusia is blasted away by Myrddin's sigil, while he himself takes to the skies away from her.
Blood pours out of her body like fountain, increasing her size by another foot as claws and spikes dig into the platform below her, dragging speed down.
However, the Heroes aren't going to give her any time to orient herself.
Narwhal moves first, flying closer to be within her range limit, and with a simple flex of thought, a crystalline barrier of violet-blue appears inside of Lusia, splitting her in half straight down the middle.
A pulse of gravity appears from the freshly made gap in her body, pushing the two halves away from each other, which is followed by Exalt bringing the air he has been gathering down against her as one enormous fist, crashing into one half and sending it flying to the edge of the forested battlefield.
At the same time, Rime flies over the other half, shooting down a fractal of ice that, upon contact, immediately flashes out into a structure of ice, flash-freezing the half in an instant.
However, almost as fast as it forms, the ice shatters into dust, just as the other half stops it's flight, nearly two miles away.
Like the world is trying to correct a mistake, threads of blood appear between the two halves, moving so fast that it seems as if they teleported, connecting her body back together and bringing to snap them back in place.
But before they can cross half the distance separating them Myrddin appears in-between them both and waves his hand. With another thunderclap and a spray of mist, Chevalier appears in the air in front of him, Raising his cannonblade high as he starts succumbing to gravity.
He barely falls an inch before he feels the feeling of gravity pulling on him intensify a hundred fold, and barely manages to react fast enough to change the properties of his blade to maximise density and sharpness, bringing it down on the connecting thread of blood and severing it with ease.
He disappears again as Myrddin touches him, flying away to make distance as Legend and Eidolon blast the two halves of Lusia at the same time.
Boooom! Boooooom!
Both halves explode into a cloud of blood mist, but before anyone can question if the assault worked, a pair of lasers fire from Dragon's suit, as her sensors show that Lusia still lives.
"HAHAHAHAHAA!!"
Hundreds. Thousands of spikes and crescent blades shoot out of the clouds, cutting through Dragon's laser and forcing the Heroes, minus Alexandria, to defend themselves. All the while, the two clouds start spinning, condensing in on themselves to reveal Lusia in perfect health, if not for the fact that she is still in two halves.
From where her bodies are cut open, gigantic wings appear, from her waists to the top of her heads, with monstrous, thick legs appearing from where her hips should be, stabilising her as deep purple energy starts glowing across her skin.
"LaUgH wItH mE!! HEHEUHAHA."
Lasers explode from Legend's body like water through a sieve, each laser striking against the constant stream of projectiles being launched form the Monster, opening up her allies to focus on offence, even as their target's two halves start blasting towards each other.
A rain of ice fractals leave Rime's body between the two halves, flash-freezing the world, forming a towering monolith of ice, so tall that it seems to reach the heavens themselves and reinforced by sparkling rainbow crystal barriers, just in time for more connecting threads of blood to crash helplessly against it.
On one half of the ice, the world turns on its axis, 'down' changing to mean 'behind Lusia' as gravity itself works to keep her two halves separated, while on the other half, it's the skies that work against her as a concentrated cyclone appears before her, crashing into her and forcing her back.
With Legend defending them, Poe and Exalt keeping her halves from reconnecting and Narwhal and Rime blocking the two off, the others are free to attack.
On one side of the wall, Eidolon discards his defensive power, keeping his flight but using his two other slots to combine powers. First, Fire Generation. Large output, weak control. Then Heat Enhancement.
He raises an arm towards one half of Lusia, struggling against the forces of gravity as she is, and between blinks, there is fire.
All he can see becomes a deep red as his fire burns up the sky, but that changes when his other power kicks in.
From red to orange. Orange to yellow. Yellow to white. The fire keeps burning. Hotter and hotter.
The titanic wall of ice starts melting form the heat, and Eidolon changes out his flight, swapping from telekinesis-based flight to Breaker-based flight to protect himself from the heat that is rapidly growing enough to overcome the resistance granted to him by the powers creating it.
As though experiencing a metamorphosis, the white changes to blue. A deep, oceanic blue that rapidly starts to brighten until it shines almost neon-bright, waves of heat rolling out with such intensity that the forest below them dries out and erupts into flames, the platform beneath him and the mountain beneath that start melting, but Eidolon does not let up.
After all...
He can still hear her laughing.
But while he is handling one half of the Monster well enough, the same can not be said of the other half.
Dragon and Chevalier both prepare their weapons, shooting at Lusia with attacks strong enough to stumble even an Endbringer, if only slightly, while Myrddin decides against attacking, choosing to continue charging up for one extra powerful shot instead.
But they were so focused on separating her halves, that they were left completely unprepared as she abruptly spins around, flapping her wings and pushing herself towards the Heroes, using Exalt's own power to boost her speed as she twists around Dragon's attack, and simply allows Chevalier's to crash into her, cutting through her arm fruitlessly as it reattaches itself the next moment.
"HAHA~ LaUgH!!!"
"Shit!" Chevalier exclaims as Lusia crashes into Dragon's suit, sending it flying if not for the hold she takes of it's arm.
The force from the impact almost causes the robot's arm to be ribbed off, but unfortunately it sticks, allowing Lusia to yank it closer, spartan kicking it dead centre with her fake leg, tearing a hole straight through it and reducing the marvel of technology to scrap metal.
Almost in the same movement, Her wings launch a concentrated blast of projectiles at Myrddin, even as she flashes around, spinning to face Chevalier.
Her eyes bore into his own even through his helmet, and the sight of her head, split in half and still smiling that same mad, insane smile, is enough to cause him pause, leaving him barely enough time to bring his sword before his body as a makeshift shield.
But thanks to his distraction, her blow is enough to knock him off balance, leaving Lusia free to lunge for his neck with her teeth, only for a blur to impact her at the last moment.
Holding the thrashing creature in a tackle, Alexandria dives down into the platform, crashing Lusia's body through the stone as if it is not there, digging a trench nearly two-hundred metres before Lusia manages to wriggle out of her grasp, spinning them both around to throw her forward, sliding to a stop herself.
Glancing briefly to the side, Alexandria sees the ice wall start melting as the fire on its other side shines a bright neon blue, but she quickly ignores that, focusing on the insane Monster in front of her as it starts to... sing?
"Hehehehe, TeN bOtTlEs Of BeEr On ThE wAlL~ tEn BoTtLeS oF bEeR~~ tAkE oNe DoWn, PaSs It ArOuNd, NiNe MoRe BoTtLeS oF bEeR oN tHe WaLl~."
Frowning, she does her best to ignore her madness, lest she be dragged down into it.
Noticing Narwhal and Rime flying over, Alexandria hardens herself and flies forward, trusting in her allies.
Half the distance is crossed and her fist is ready to snap out when Rime reaches out, throwing a fractal down at Lusia, encasing her entirely in a thick layer of ice, all the whole Narwhal creates a forcefield through her neck and launches it up, separating head from body.
Her fist ploughs forward, intending to shatter the Monster in ice, only for the ice to shatter by itself right before her fist can land.
Maybe if Narwhal hadn't removed her head, Alexandria would have seen the smirk plastered across her face. As it is, she decides to commit her attack.
Time slows to a crawl as Lusia's headless, half body, moves, twisting around the blow with a sudden grace Alexandria didn't expect, moving like a ballerina, leaving her blow to brush past her open half, all the while she raises her only arm, fingers primed like claws, and Alexandria's mind freezes.
Bloody claws and obsidian muscles change in her mind, overlapping with white and black stripes, and she cannot move fast enough to dodge as the Monster's claws dig into her face, carving through her invulnerable flesh for the second time ever.
Alexandria cries out in pain as her eye, the same eye, is torn from it's socket, the surrounding bone being ripped from her body in a spray of blood even as she reverts her flight, doing her best to get distance, bitterly thankful that the claws didn't seem to reach her brain.
But the Monster is faster.
A tendril lashes out at her, wrapping around her waist, but before they can pull her closer, Chevalier charges into the scene, returning her earlier favour by once more swinging his cannonblade through Lusia's tendrils of blood, only for Lusia to immediately disregard Alexandria and swing her larger wing horizontally at him, intending to cut through his body.
He has not time to defend himself from it, but he doesn't need to as a crystalline barrier crashes down in front of him, shattering under the blow but taking most of it's momentum away with it.
However, he was never Lusia's target in the first place, so she wastes no time launching a blast of bone-white blades from her other wing straight at Rime, who returns fire with a dusting of ice fractals, stopping most of the projectiles, with Narwhal moving even more forcefields to protect her from the rest.
But once again, she wasn't Lusia's target.
A small tendril of blood used their distraction to extend from Lusia's body, and the moment Narwhal adds her barriers to Rime's protection, it springs up, latching onto the rainbow-clad woman's ankle before any of them can react, and it pulls.
A startled scream leaves the Canadian woman's throat as she plummets to the ground, her lack of focus causing most of her barriers to disappear, allowing Lusia to reattach her head, and leaving her unable to properly slow her descent.
She hits the platform with a sickening crunch, and all to late, a barrage of multicoloured lasers crash into Lusia like a cluster bomb, hundreds of individual explosions going off as she is hit by every laser type Legend has, from simple explosions of extreme heat to lasers that simple erase matter, and all sorts of other esoteric effects.
At once, all of their armbands let out a chime, Dragon's voice coming through. "Her claws are All-or-Nothing. I repeat, her claws are All-or-Nothing."
Chevalier especially curses in his mind, knowing that with this revelation he cannot try to match her claws with his blade, lest he lose it.
"Myrddin!" Legend shouts out superfluously, as the wizard in question was already reaching Narwhal's distressingly still form, tapping her with one hand to store her away, his other hand still charging the same one attack.
"I'll get her somewhere safe!" He yells out, not waiting for confirmation as he flies away to the nearest Endbringer shelter, which Dragon quickly locates and directs him to, three miles away.
As he leaves, Lusia launches herself out of the dust cloud generated by Legend's attack, only to get hammered straight back down by Exalt bringing the sky crashing down on her, pushing her into the platform and cratering it.
But as she lies there, split in half and pressed against the floor with such strength that she can't seem to move, she only laughs, looking for all the world like she is on the ground only because she is rolling in laughter, rather than because of Exalt's power.
"Hahahaha, NiNe BoTtLeS oF bEeR oN tHe WaLl~ NiNe BoTtLeS oF bEeR~~ TaKe OnE dOwN, pAsS iT aRoUnD, eIgHt MoRe BoTtLeS oF bEeR oN tHe WaLl~."
With Poe and Eidolon on the other side of the melting ice wall, Legend is their main firepower here, so he doesn't hesitate to lay into her, firing laser after laser until all that can be seen of the Monster is a towering pillar of multi-coloured light, digging into the earth and dragging Lusia down with it, burying her under more firepower than Legend has ever thrown at anything that isn't an Endbringer.
Yet, Legend feels as if something is wrong.
The pillar of light starts changing, favouring one colour. Purple. A deep, deep purple. Growing until half the pillar is that same deep violet, and all of a sudden, Legend's eyes widen with panic as he notices Chevalier far too close.
"Chev get back!" He yells out too late.
Chevalier hears Legend's yell, and is raising his blade in front of himself as a shield before he even really registers the words, such is his unconditional trust in the man.
At the same time, Rime pushes her power to its limits, erecting an even larger wall of ice between the pillar of light and Chevalier, as well as herself.
This time, the pillar of ice is heavy enough that the platform it stands on cracks and crumbles, falling apart in what seems like slow motion just due to it's sheer size.
But nothing has any time to truly fall, as the pillar of light abruptly condenses down on itself, and almost in the same instant, it expands. Exploding out in a dome of violet energy that crushes everything it touches, reducing the platform and ice wall to nothing as it passes through them.
It hits Chevalier first, impacting against his blade but failing to destroy it, simply pushing around it to burn his body directly, the outer parts of his armour turning to slag as the power enhanced metal is heated up to incredible levels, making him roar out in anguish as his own armour turns against him, burning his skin and causing him a pain more intense than anything he's ever felt.
As the blast launches his pain wrecked body away, it reaches Exalt and Rime, the former of which throws everything he has at it, air gathered from the skies for tens of miles crash against the blast and keep it at bay, allowing him enough space to fly away as the rest of the blast moves around the spot he attacked.
With Rime, she lets out as many fractals as she can, not caring about what shape they take, just that they protect her. The fractals hit the growing blast, exploding into towering constructs that shatter almost as quickly as they form. Hundreds of them, for every construct that gets shattered, ten more take it's place, but the dome keeps gaining on her anyway.
As a last ditch effort, with the blast getting uncomfortably close, she creates ice for a specific purpose, and the next set of constructs that get destroyed launch shrapnel at her, and she simply braces as the giant ice cube crashes into her, breaking her shoulder immediately on impact and likely shattering half of her ribs and hip as well.
But the velocity is enough to push her away from the blast of violet, even as it knocks her unconscious, and being injured is better than being dead, no matter what anyone says.
Legend however, is simply fast enough to escape the blast with ease. He would have tried to bring the others with him, but he knows that he wouldn't be able to move them fast enough without also killing them, so he decided to simply have faith in them instead, while Alexandria simply crossed her arms over her face and tanked the blast, being launched away but not being harmed by it.
With worry in his heart, Legend glances around, taking in how his comrades took the blow, feeling relief when he sees Exalt, but panicking slightly as he sees Rime's limp body falling from the sky, as well as Chevalier's body falling off of the platform and into the burning forest below.
"EXALT!" He yells out, shooting out lasers to highlight Rime's falling body for him while also moving as fast as he can while keeping track of the world around him, flashing over to Chevalier's body and catching the man.
He almost drops him as a searing pain spreads up his arms, but he endures as he realises what it means for Chevalier.
Temporarily ignoring the fight, Legend flies down as fast as he can, shooting out negative temperature lasers to leave a circle of forest not on fire, and he gently lays Chevalier down, ignoring the way his own arms seize and fail to flex from the incredibly painful burns.
"Sorry Chev," he mutters as more lasers flow from his body, thin and surgical as he brings them down on Chevalier, the matter annihilating lasers cutting through the man's armour like a knife through cold cheese, not quite as easy as warm butter, but it's not struggle.
He has to fight down the urge to cover Chevalier in freezing lasers, knowing that doing so would only make the burns worse, instead he simply destroys all of his armour and lays his sword down by his side, having had to tear it out of his unyielding grip.
By the time the man is completely naked to the world, he seems to come to ever so slightly, letting out a cough and a pained grimace.
Legend is sure that the man would be crying out in pain and balling with tears if it was anyone else, but with him as naked as he is, Legend can see all of the scars he already had, and knows that he can bear it.
"D-don't worry 'bout me... Go get 'em." He struggles to say, making Legend shake his head with a slight, wry smile.
"Working on it." Legend reaches for his own armband and takes it off, Chevalier's having been destroyed, "Dragon, I'm leaving my band with Chevalier, see if anyone can come get him."
With that, Legend fires a sphere of freezing lasers around the clearing he's in, getting rid of the surrounding fire and hopefully stopping it from spreading to the now sleeping man.
All said, he wasn't even gone for a whole minute before he returns to the fight, seeing that the dome of energy has just finished expanding and is starting to disperse, leaving behind it a deep crater, one that burns through the platform and then the mountain beneath it, almost deep enough to reach surface level, leaving the mountain looking like a bowl.
But before he can even consider that, his enhanced eyes catch a blur of movement, and he turns just in time to see the titanic wall of half melted ice crack in half, folding over itself with the upper half falling down on him, and he catches Alexandria flying after the blur that he presumes to be Lusia.
Looking at the falling wall of ice, Legend can't help but let out a weary, bone-deep sigh as exhaustion starts to seep in to him, realising that Lusia is likely attempting to reconnect herself again.
He can't help but think back to Endbringer fights and compare them to this.
She's still not as powerful as an Endbringer, and clearly not as durable. But her regeneration makes up for that, as she seems to be unkillable, and she's faster than an Endbringer, all while being a much smaller target, even if she is about three times his own size already.
She doesn't cause the same feeling of inevitability the Endbringers bring when they show up, the same resignation that they cannot win. But at the same time, fighting her is just so much more tiring.
Letting out another tired sigh, Legend shakes himself lightly and cracks his neck, straightening his posture by bringing his shoulders back up from the slouch this fight has caused them to develop.
"Haaaah...." He drowns out the sounds of the world, focusing only on his breathing for just a moment, and when he opens his eyes, they are once more burning with the determination to win.
With a light smile now on his face, Legend looks back up at the enormous piece of falling ice casting a shadow over miles worth of land and whispers to himself a catchphrase he picked up from an old friend.
"Maximum effort."
The sky explodes, and the world knows light.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Eidolon fails to notice the rapidly approaching half of Lusia until the wall of ice starts to fall, his eyes barely catching a blur of movement fly into the sea of fire, shortly followed by Alexandria.
Cursing to himself, he accepts that fire alone is clearly not going to cut it, and swaps both powers out, briefly flashing one power that deletes all of the fire, both in the sky and the land around them. Just, one moment the sky is burning, the next it is clear.
With the newfound clarity, he can see as the two halves of Lusia rapidly approach each other, Alexandria chasing one half, abruptly gaining on it as Poe makes a miniature black hole between the two, slowing Lusia and boosting Alexandria.
Cycling through powers, he gets rid of his flight, replacing it with invulnerability, then adds a line-of-sight based teleportation power and a Trump power that, when used on someone else, enhances their physical blows.
Between one blink and the next, he is in front of Alexandria, tapping her on the shoulder as she passes, and then he is on the other side of the fight, by Lusia's other half.
He briefly notes how charred the half body is, some parts of her body seeming to have been melted down to the bone, but without the fire still burning, she is starting to heal. Slowly for now, but he knows that won't last and takes advantage of it now.
The Trump power is replaced by a power he's used before on her, and he teleports again, right by her side. She lashes out with a dozen whips of blood, but he ignores them with his invulnerability ant taps her on the skull, causing her head to 'pop', the body going limp as that power disappears, another one taking it's place.
Before she can regenerate her head like last time, he teleports again to the same spot, allowing him to reorient himself in an instant so that he can tap her open neck, causing a sickly green miasma to spread over the wound, festering it and hopefully inhibiting her regeneration.
At the same time, Alexandria reaches the other half, who spins around just as Alexandria is about to drive her fist through her chest, and simply kicks the woman away, almost dismissively despite the woman being the single most well known and respected female Hero on the planet.
The air explodes where her kick connects, and Alexandria is launched into the distance, not getting the chance to make use of her buff.
Either by design or chance, Alexandria's body flies straight at Poe, forcing him to spare extra attention to not get flattened by her, and when the sky over the wall lights up, Poe gets even more distracted.
Both distractions are only minor, but they add up, and before Eidolon can switch to a power that would stop her, blood once again appears between the two halves.
An uncomfortable feeling grows in Eidolon's gut as he helplessly watches her reconnect herself in the air, the temporary limbs flowing together seamlessly, and the damaged half that he was dealing with heals to full health almost immediately, the festering wound doing nothing to stop her from returning to peak condition.
"Hehehehe, OnE pLuS oNe Is tWo~! Hahahahaha~! EiGhT bOtTlEs Of BeEr On ThE wAlL~ eIgHt BoTtLeS oF bEeR~~ TaKe TwO dOwN, pAsS tHeM 'rOuNd, SiX mOrE bOtTlEs Of BeEr~. HaHaHa!"
As she finishes her 'song', Poe amplifies the gravity under her, pulling her down to the ground at incredible speeds, and Eidolon recalls someone's words about stacking effects, and picks out a similar power, enhancing the gravity over Lusia even more, making her speed down to the ground in a blur, impacting the side of the mountain hard enough to cause the new bowl-like structure to cave in on one side.
"Fucking. Hell," Exalt pants out as he comes to a stop beside Eidolon in the air, looking down on the latest crater, with Lusia right in the centre of it, slowly, ever so slowly, pushing herself back to her feet, "what the fuck is that thing made of? It feels like we're just throwing rocks into the ocean here."
As he complains, the other remaining Heroes gather together.
"Eidolon, do you not have any powers than can put her down, and keep her down?" Poe asks, warily watching the woman in question as she gets to her knees, knowing that this reprieve isn't going to last much longer.
Unfortunately, Eidolon shakes his head in the negative. "It's not that simple. I probably can get something that would do that, but I don't exactly have complete control of what powers I get. The fire hurt her, but if I try for anything stronger, then the cities around us will start experiencing some actual collateral. Doing so would cause more than just broken glass."
"What about a Striker power? Something that can end the fight in a touch? Even if you have to charge it up?" Legend asks, knowing how his power works better than most, and Eidolon considers it.
Eventually, he nods his head. "There's a power I've used on her twice now. If I can charge it up, it might kill her in one go."
He was initially reluctant to do so, not actually wanting to kill her despite everything. A Villain she may be, but she could be useful in the fight against greater foes, such as the Endbringers.
But that was before today. Now he has started to view her much the same as those Endbringers. Letting her live is no longer worth it.
"How much time do you need to be certain?" Alexandria asks with a sort of malicious glee that he rarely sees from the woman, proving just how little she cares for Lusia.
Tilting his head this way and that, Eidolon searches for the power, taking a few seconds to catch it, and he closes his eyes and holds it for a moment before coming to his conclusion. "Five minutes to be sure, give or take half a minute."
The Heroes around him cringe appropriately at the timeframe, five minutes being a long time to have their Strongest out of commission.
Which is when Myrddin arrives, carrying with him a chaotic black ball, about the size of a beach ball.
"What happened to Rime and Chevalier?" He asks as soon as he joins the group, glancing down at the woman nearly back on her feet.
"They're alive," Legend responds before giving the ball in his hand a pointed look, "how strong is that right now?"
Holding the black, miasmic ball out in front of himself, Myrddin shrugs. "I have no idea, I've never charged it this much before... I'm gonna drop it on her."
Gesturing with his arm, Poe floats to the side and invites Myrddin forward.
As he floats over the gravity well, he looks down and freezes as he locks eyes with Lusia. Even from this distance, with her in a position of weakness, her eyes still send a shiver through his spine, and her smile makes cold sweat form on his forehead.
Pushing forward, Myrddin flicks his hand sending the ball of darkness careening down upon the woman, who attempts to match the attack by launching a pillar of deep violet light up at the attack.
With the added speed from the enhanced gravity, it's almost impossible to actually see the ball as it falls, especially as it cuts through the pillar of light, only the result of the action.
The entire five mile by five mile circle of now dead greenery, as well as a small portion of the surrounding infrastructure, just flattens.
There is no explosion, no great flash of light.
Just, one moment, there is a dead forest covering a group of mountains, and the next, there is just a hole, devoid of anything.
Wait, of anything?
Frantic eyes search the centre of the crater, only to find no sight of Lusia, not even a splattering of blood.
"Huh, wish you'd have done that earlier," Exalt says with tired mirth, only to raise his brow in confusion as his fellows turn to him and gape in abject horror, "wha-"
None of them are fast enough to warn him, too stunned by the bloody sight of Lusia behind him, missing her lower half entirely but still bigger than Exalt, though it is bubbling and stitching itself back together, and absolutely caked in her own blood, her wings spread wide with an aura of blood surrounding her, making her seem as if she is an evil Deity come down to punish them.
None of them are fast enough to so much as call out a warning before her too large mouth opens, her jaw unhinging like a snake's and engulfing Exalt's head entirely, biting down in one smooth motion and ripping it off.
His body hangs in the air for one long moment before gravity remembers it's job and he starts plummeting down, snapping the Heroes out of their reverie.
Alexandria reacts first, barrelling towards Lusia only to be batted away by an oversized arm once more, and Poe is second to react, only to be stopped when Lusia flings Exalt's body at him with a tendril, swinging another arm forward at Myrddin even as Legend does his best to fillet her with lasers, only managing to punch deep enough to cause her to bleed, all the while Myrddin fails to dodge in time, leaving him to simply take the attack.
Not unlike Rime, half of his bodies bones break almost immediately, and he loses consciousness as his body is flung to the ground.
At the same time, a thick spike of blood rushes out from her chest at Eidolon, forcing him to defend by raising his hand in the way. The moment her blood meets his flesh, it disappears. Popping into nothing alongside the rest of her arm and a portion of her torso that immediately starts regenerating.
Down below, Alexandria catches Myrddin and looks up at the four capes in the sky, bitterly and reluctantly acknowledging that there's nothing she can really do there, and flying away, grabbing Exalt's corpse as she goes, leaving the three Heroes to face Lusia alone.
More tendrils of blood burst out of her body, but this time Poe isn't distracted and they fail to land as her body is dragged away by the invisible force of gravity.
Scowling at having lost the power again, Eidolon equips a power that lets him fire a concussive blast that he uses to help Poe get them some more distance, their ranged options being far better than hers, and equips a Thinker power in the hopes of coming up with some method of victory.
Almost immediately the answer comes to him, and he almost feels insulted for how unhelpful it is.
"She's smaller than when we started," Eidolon announces, neglecting to inform them that the difference is minimal. Not due to their own efforts being lacking or anything, it just means that she came into this holding back, "her regeneration isn't endless. If we just keep hitting her, she'll run out eventually."
Unsaid is exactly how much they will need to hit her before she runs out of juice. But having a plan, even one as simple as 'hit her 'till she stops', is better than having no plan.
At his words, Legend visibly sags for a moment, letting out a tired breath that Poe almost matches.
"Well alright then."
With a wave of his hands, light, every colour of the rainbow, shoots out from his body in a near constant beam.
Once the light crosses half the distance to Lusia's body, still being launched into the distance, it splits into hundreds of separate beams, spreading out into a wide circle, some of them moving past her, only to turn on their axis and spin around, until Lusia is completely surrounded by a sphere of lasers, each intending to do her grievous bodily harm.
As Legend transforms Lusia into a multicoloured sun, Poe helps the process along by wrapping his power around it all, and squeezing, compressing the ball of light smaller and smaller.
All the while, Eidolon is throwing away powers one after another, searching for the Striker power for the third time today. It's always harder to find a same power after discarding it, but he still thinks it's the best option right now anyway, especially with Legend and Poe keeping her at bay.
Of course, it's as he thinks that that it stops being the case, as the ball of light is abruptly cut into pieces, giving Lusia an opening to blast straight through it and at them, the purple energy surrounding her body now so deep to be approaching black, and Eidolon can't help but focus on the new appendages sprouting from her body.
Where once was six ribbons, there is now three double-sided scythes, made of the same obsidian material that makes up the faux-muscles covering her body. Each scythe is connected to her back by a really long tentacle, leaving them floating a small distance away from her body, spinning around and cutting Legend's lasers with ease.
Eidolon's keen instincts, honed after three decades of fighting the good fight, warn him that something is wrong about the scythes, and he decides to do his best to avoid them even more than he already would just from being attached to Lusia.
Quickly switching to another Shaker power, aerokinesis, he joins Poe in refocusing their efforts on keeping Lusia away from them, and Legend suddenly has to slow down his own assault as she starts launching out a slew of her own projectiles in all directions, letting them curve to attack from odd angles, forcing Legend to shoot them out of the sky and leaving them in something of a temporary stalemate.
"SiX bOtTlEs Of BeEr On ThE wAlL~ sIx BoTtLeS oF bEeR~~ tAkE tHrEe DoWn, PaSs ThEm 'RoUnD, tHrEe MoRe BoTtLeS oF BeEr~. Hehehehehe~!"
Before Eidolon can complain about her 'singing', a piercing, high pitched sound takes their attention, and though they don't stop their powers, they do all turn to the source of the noise, finding it to be in Oakland.
Eidolon has to equip a new power to enhance his sight, but Legend and Lusia can see just fine for miles, leaving only Poe unable to see what they are seeing.
A man, dressed in a simple, casual outfit, with the noticeable exception of a full face mask with no real defining features.
Holding a Tinker-tech megaphone up to his lips and standing at the top of a fancy manor, right in the heart of the city No Face interrupts the ongoing fight with great satisfaction. "Heeey! Lusi!! Bastard Son right below me! Alongside Lucky! The guy who killed Fool!!"
Lusia's attacks suddenly cease at his words, and she completely ignores the lasers poking small holes in her body as she gives No Face her full attention.
"I repeat! Bastard Son is right below me! Right here! So what are you waiting for, wasting time with those faggots!?! Clowns are supposed to get the last laugh, so gET THE FUCK OVER HERE AND FUCK 'EM UP!!!"
If possible, Lusia's feral grin only grows wider at his words, and before they can finish processing his words, the three Heroes see Lusia erupt with even more energy, shooting straight for the city with incredible speed, breaking through the sound barrier immediately.
It takes the Heroes only a second to react to the sudden change, but even that is enough time for her to reach the city limits.
But while his allies rush after her, Eidolon focuses on the inside instead. He closes his eyes and shuts out the world for just a moment, idly using a Thinker power to give him all the time in the world as he recalls the boot camp a certain man put him through, and with a smile, he thinks of his favourite catchphrase.
'Maximum effort.'
Opening his eyes, his flight is replaced by teleportation, coordinates based, and his aerokinesis is replaced by a barrier that reverts kinetic energy, and finally he swaps out his Thinker power for a different of the same class that gives him the exact coordinates he needs.
In the blink of an eye, Eidolon overtakes his allies and appears before Lusia, his barrier springing in place even as he swaps out teleportation for a barrier/flight combo, and his Thinker power for short term precognition.
His vision flashes with the future, and he sees Lusia's scythes cutting through the barrier in front of her before it can even make use of the kinetic energy reversion, and so he discards the barrier before she even reaches it, his precognition fading after it's first use.
Two new powers slot in almost immediately. Matter creation and matter transmutation.
A wall of earth appears between them both and immediately transforms into containment foam right as Lusia impacts it.
Her scythes cut through it, but they only cause gashes in the wall rather than an actual hole for her to fly through, so she crashes into it regardless.
It doesn't hold her, but it does delay her for a couple of seconds. Enough time for Legend to appear, blasting her full of light once more, only for her to ignore the damage in favour of pushing further forward.
Poe arrives before she makes it further into the city, attempting to drag her back with his power, only for her to pump out even more energy, resulting in Poe only managing to slow her down.
Eidolon swaps out both of the matter powers, taking a power that generates a vortex of impossibly potent acid, and another power that takes away the five senses of whoever it touches.
He fires the latter first, making Lusia flinch slightly but failing to stop her, and then he layers the former over the lasers already bombarding her.
The vortex remains static as she moves, so she soon exits it, but when she does, Eidolon can see her melted skin clear enough to know it worked well enough, so he keeps the vortex and swaps out the other power, replacing it with one that slows down time in a specific area.
He layers that one over the area covering and in front of Lusia, while also creating a new vortex for her to fly through, only for the time distorting field to pop immediately after appearing, her own All-or-Nothing cancelling it out.
Throwing away the useless power, Eidolon idly recognises that they are making steady progress towards her target of Bastard Son, not that he's particularly worried about saving scum like him.
Getting an interesting power, one that turns the blood of whoever he touches into an acid, he throws away the vortex, replacing it with a power that lets him move in a burst of null time, which he can effectively use as teleportation, getting close to Lusia and activating his other power before making some distance once again, right as time resumes.
Immediately, he hears her scream.
"AAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!! IT'S SO FUNNY! HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!"
Ignoring her insane laughter, Eidolon keeps the power up, figuring that it's working to whittle down her regeneration, and he swaps out the other power for one that turns a given area into a vacuum, working with a barrier of sorts to stop the surrounding atmosphere from filling in the gap, and he layers it over her.
If nothing else, removing all of the air available to her finally gets her to shut up, even if he can see her still silently laughing, her eyes curled up into maddened delight.
Worryingly, even with all three of them throwing everything they've got at her, they've only managed to slow her down, and Eidolon might be imagining it, but Legend's lasers that were cutting through her body at the start of the fight, now seem to be doing less and less actual damage against her.
Poe must have noticed the same thing, as he decides to allow some controlled collateral, as he stretches his power out further, keeping a well of gravity behind the woman to slow her down, even as he wraps his power around the tallest building in the city, pulling the skyscraper out of the ground entirely and bringing it to the sky.
It's only right as Lusia is one street away from her target building, with No Face still fearlessly standing on top, that Poe drops the building on her head.
Far more effective than his own power, two hundred thousand tonnes of concrete and steel slam her into the ground.
The building starts crumbling right away as it collapses on top of her, helped along by Poe pushing down on it all with everything he's got, while Eidolon changes out the vacuum power for one that doubles the effective weight of every material in range, a range that handily covers the mountain of debris burying Lusia.
At the same time, Legend doesn't want to ruin the chance of this keeping her down, and instead takes over from Eidolon by blasting the area with lasers that exclusively burn away oxygen, leaving her without air to breathe.
For one, sweet moment, they have the thought that this might be enough to hold her down, but then she shoots out of the rubble, wreathed in violet-black light as she leaves a melted hole of molten slag in her wake, bursting free and rising into the air slightly once she leaves the gravity zone, reaching the manor before they can defend it and banking down, melting a hole straight through the ground as she moves right for the bunker below, somehow knowing exactly where the Bastard is.
The Heroes move to follow him, only to be stopped by No Face, who seems to have gotten a lawn chair from somewhere and sat down, megaphone still in hand. "You might as well wait and set a trap y'know?"
The three of them exchange glances and prepare to ignore him, only for No Face to speak up again. "She's gonna be a minute, and she's just killing some Villains. Villains that were compared to the Nine in terms of assholishness. Letting them die horrible deaths has gotta be worth giving yourselves a breather, right?"
Acknowledging the point, and maybe feeling just the slightest bit of respect for the power she's displayed, Eidolon starts cycling through his powers, finding that Striker power once more, and adding another power that speeds up time in a given area and wrapping it around himself to charge faster, finishing up with a weak flight power that can be swapped out for teleportation when his Striker power is ready.
But while they wait peacefully, catching their breaths after such intense activities, the scene taking place below is far less peaceful.
Lusia lands in the centre of the bunker with a crash, melting a hole in the ground even as she comes to a stop, casting her gaze about the people in the room, most of whom are holding seemingly random objects, but the only ones that hold any interest to her are the five sitting down at a table on a slightly raised part of the room.
She immediately picks them out as the only capes present, and though she recognises Bastard Son on sight, she spends a moment trying to figure out which one was lucky.
Bastard Son, seeing the intrusion immediately jumps to his feet in a panic, joined by his compatriots as he yells out an order to his men. "Kill her!"
Unfortunately for him, his words seem to snap Lusia out of her thoughts, and his men barely get to make a single step before thirty-eight thin spikes of blood shoot out of her body, impaling each of them through the brain and holding the limp bodies in place.
"KiLl? So RuDe, YoU sHoUlD bE lAuGhInG iNsTeAd~."
She lets out a little mad giggle of her own with her words, and the Villains before her can only watch paralyzed as her blood spiker flow and spread over the fresh corpses, covering them entirely, like a second skin, and then squeezing.
Each body crunches as it contorts in ways it is not designed to, limbs bending in too many ways as everything gets crushed into a small, singular ball, the sound alone enough to give any man nightmares for the rest of their lives.
Luckily for them, they won't have to worry about nightmares.
Lusia laughs at the thought.
"WhO iS lUcKy?"
Evidently, there is no honour among thieves here as three of the capes don't hesitate to point at another.
That is the last thing they ever do. They don't even realise they've been killed, each of them just had a spike ran through their skulls the moment their fingers pointed at the same man.
"Hehehe, wHy ArEn'T yOu LaUgHiNg?"
Lusia starts walking closer to the two, and for all the bravado they normally enjoy, neither of them stand bravely. Instead, staring into the insane, burning crimson eyes of the Monster before them, they both can only freeze up, feeling a warmth spreading down their legs at the same time.
"It'S fUnNy, IsN't It~? Hehehehe, hE's DeAd Y'kNoW~? rEaLlY dEaD, Hahahaha, iSn'T tHaT fUnNy~?"
Reaching the two of them, Lusia towers over them both, looking down with an impossibly wide smile.
"It'S fUnNy~! He'S dEaD~ Hahahahaha IsN't ThAt JuSt HiLaRiOuS!?!? HahahahaHAHAHA FUCK YOU!!!" She abruptly screams at them, leaning so close to Lucky's face that he can feel her warm breath, stinking of iron, on his face. "FUCK YOU!! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?!?"
Hundreds of thin blood tendrils shoot out from her body, drilling into both of theirs, burrowing through their veins, through their marrow as she rages at them, ignoring their writhing screams of pain.
"IT'S SO. FUCKING. FUNNY!! LAUGH WITH ME!! LAUGH!!!"
And they do. They feel so much pain that they can only laugh. Mad, suffering laughs, but laughter all the same.
It pisses her off.
"AHAHAHAHA FUCK YOU! WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING! JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY!!"
Both of their bodies abruptly bloat, like they are being filled with water, before they simply explode into a shower of blood and gore painting Lusia and the room around her in blood, flesh and brain matter.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THAT'S WHAT YOU FUCKING GET!!!! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU ASSHOLES!"
With one final scream, Lusia is left alone, surrounded by the remains of corpses, simply panting to herself in silence.
With a smile still on her face, and a quiet, almost childish giggle intermittently leaving her throat, Lusia turns around and heads back to the hole she melted into the bunker, simply walking back up it, all while giggling lightly to herself, madness clear to anyone that would hear it.
Soon enough, the others outside can hear her approaching footsteps, and the Heroes prepare themselves to continue the fight, only for Lusia to ignore them completely.
They were about to attack anyway then they notice her size decreasing, blood turning to mist and flowing back into her body as she goes, walking up to the gigantic pile of rubble that used to be a skyscraper, until she is no longer a fifteen foot tall monster of blood and gore.
By the time she reaches the peak of the pile, she is just Lusia Abel, a twenty year old woman with psychological issues.
Once at the top of the rubble, she falls to her knees, sitting back on her ankles even as she brings a hand to her mouth, biting against her palm in an attempt to hold back her giggles.
Unsure of what exactly to do, the Heroes float down around her, surrounding the woman from a safe distance, Eidolon having informed them of his plan, and changed out the time manipulation power for instantaneous teleportation, his Striker power charged enough for him to be confident of success.
Getting her shaking shoulders under control, Lusia takes her hand out of her mouth and turns her head up to gaze at the night sky, billions of starts twinkling overhead.
"Y'know, one of the first friends I ever made, one of the only friends really, were a pair of dudes, right before I first started out as a cape. James and Theo."
Sharing glances, unsure of where she's going with this, the Heroes silently decide to let her talk, hoping they can use her emotions to get her to surrender to the Birdcage.
Besides, the longer she talks, the more Eidolon can charge his power to instantly kill her if it is still necessary.
"When I met them, James was wearing a shirt that mocked Hero's exclusion from the Triumvirate. It was funny."
Legend and Eidolon's fists clench at the reminder, and they wonder if she just wants to insult them, only to throw the thought away as she keeps rambling, talking more to herself than directly to them.
"I'm sorry for that. It's still funny, but it sucks. I don't like it. I don't get it... I don't really know what I'm feeling, probably grief or something. I don't like it. I don't like it at all."
A smile grows on her face, a happy, sunny smile that is completely out of place in the current situation, especially as a single tear rolls down her cheek.
"I don't like this feeling. I don't want to feel it anymore."
A silence envelops the area as she simply stares at the stars, while they stare at her.
Eventually, Legend, being the bleeding heart that he is, is the first to open his mouth, no doubt about to try and say something comforting, no matter who he is talking to, but as if she was waiting to interrupt someone, Lusia speaks up again the moment he opens his mouth.
"You ever wonder, 'why clowns?'" She asks, catching Legend left footed, even as she continues without a response, a cheshire grin growing on her face as she does so.
And it's only then that the Heroes finally notice the faint glowing in her stomach as a ball of condensed violet energy pushes it's way out of her belly, hovering lightly in front of her.
"It's because Clowns always get the last laugh~."
She gives them exactly no time at all to react to her words before setting off the ball of energy that expands so rapidly that by the time Eidolon teleports by her side, she is already completely covered in it and he has no choice but to teleport again, getting as much distance as his current power can give him.
With exclamations of their own, Poe and Legend both move as fast as they can to get distance from the rapidly expanding dome of violet light.
No Face simply sighs and accepts his fate as that body is atomised in an instant.
But unlike the one on the mountain, this sphere of light just keeps growing, and growing, and growing.
For Poe, it feels like his entire world is being pulled out from underneath him as he watches the ball of destruction continue to grow, enveloping more and more of the city by the moment and showing no signs of stopping.
While, in the centre of it all, as her body is melted down by the effect of her own power, Lusia hardly even notices the pain, only one thought in her mind.
'I need a vacation.'
=================
A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Boom, end of fic, story over, another protagonist killed.
I kid, I kid. I bet you believed it though Thotslayer >:)
Sooo, this is Not at all how I planned to end this, she was supposed to just murk Bastard Son and then it would end cinematically with.... I already explained this last chap's a/n didn't I?
Eh whatever. Also, it's a 9k chapter purely because I wanted it to end on chap 200
Now, if you're curious about how things will go from here, consider this, cuz it's actually pretty funny. When I started this fic, I had certain ideas in mind. Now I'm 500k word in(half a million!) and six straight months of daily uploads and I still haven't actually got to those ideas yet lmao.
See, I always like the side characters and antagonists with cool backstories or who are just op, so really, this entire fic has just been an incredibly elaborate backstory for the main OC of the actual fic that I want to write. Funny right?
So what's gonna happen now is that I'm gonna do a couple epilogue chaps, that will just be to cover what's going on between this volume and the next volume, then I'll start that story, which should be cool, but I am taking a short break once I'm done with the epilogues, cuz holy fuck consistency sucks ass
Also, I only realised when I wrote the last one that I wasn't gonna be able to finish the omake thing in time for the end of the fic cuz I forgot about it lmao, and I don't want the next chaps to be anything but epilogues, so one of y'all is gonna have to remind me about it when I start posting the sequel and I'll just finish them there, fuck it right?
Also, because I find shit like this cool (like ending a fic on chap 200) you won't actually have to read these prequel-sequel. I mean, obviously all of y'all rn are gonna be reading that way, since I haven't started posting it yet, but when I do, you should be able to read the next fic like a normal fic, just with a long ass backstory for one character in particular for no real reason lmao.
Also, what do you think of this long ass fight? I actually like how it came out for once. Honestly it's made me consider just doing like one 10k word chap a week or something instead of dailies, but that would mean less powerstones so eh.
I uh, don't really have anything else to say. Thanks for reading this far, it means the world :3
Peace out.
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pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)
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