Metanoia sprinted toward the PRT building on foot, her muscles coiling and expanding with each step. Layer after layer of dense musculature and connective tissue rippled and built upon one another, her bones lengthening and thickening as she took larger and larger strides. Her armor, too, grew larger and all-encompassing, forcing her to put effort into preventing herself from shattering the asphalt.
Did her friends make to it the shelters? Did they manage to get out of the city? She desperately wanted to check up on them, call them to see if they were okay, but she knew that the cell service had to be clogged up at this point and that there was no point in distracting them from their evacuation. She had her own task, and that was making it to the PRT headquarters before the Endbringer arrived.
By the time she arrived at the staging grounds, she’d gained hundreds of pounds of mass, her frame nearly three meters tall and her body completely covered in thick, intricate layers of ivory armor. She looked toward Abaddon, wondering if the other cape would have questions about her powers, but she was immediately distracted by the whispers around her.
Behemoth. Possibly the worst matchup for her, she realized, as she had no real protection against his kill aura and his plethora of other powers. It might be a bit harder for the Endbringer to kill her, but her bone armor would provide little durability in this fight. A clean hit from one of his lightning bolts would obliterate her mass, and nothing she could do would be able to injure the Endbringer.
Metanoia ran through her prepared list of options, recalling all the fun little experiments she’d performed with her power that would now be tested in the field.
Her emergency stash of flesh at the bottom of the lake she called home—no, that would be useless in this fight, and would only truly be useful after her regeneration rate stopped increasing.
Double check her offensive options? Goliath-Naga, acids, bombardier, projectiles, sonic, booby traps, Plague, Sins—all her little plans with their fun little names, all useless, useless, useless.
Defensive options? The only one she could think of that might be relevant was the one she’d named “Arcology”, meant to be a last-ditch fortress impenetrable by mundane means. It was a crude idea, an enormous pyramid constructed of bone extruded from her body. Estimations based on prior attempts and some basic math told her she could construct a bone pyramid a few meters tall and wide with a pitiful density in a few minutes, but how would that even help against the Behemoth? She doubted the beast would attack an immobile structure that posed no threat toward it.
No, in the end she’d best serve as a durable, somewhat fast cape that could help rescue other capes. Falling debris would pose little risk to her, and she’d be able to brave fires and other dangerous conditions better as a regeneration brute.
It looked like the capes were still gathering, so Metanoia had a little time to get started on her plan.
“Abaddon, please excuse me for a moment,” Metanoia murmured to the cape beside her. “I need to prepare for the fight.”
Metanoia was a bit unsure of how her power would be understood, considering the potential self-replicating nature of her power, so she wanted to avoid undue attention for the initial steps of her idea. Double-checking to make sure she still had time, she jogged a ways down the street, into an alley, and crouched out of sight behind a dumpster.
A blob of amorphous flesh bubbled out of her bone gauntlet, dropping the ground, and swiftly began to expand in size. Metanoia focused on it intently, molding it into one of her most well-practiced shapes. Her increased mass at this point bestowed massively increased mass generation, and in a few seconds she had a small wolf standing by her feet. It’s fur was a shade of ivory, its eyes a pale blue, and it was completely controlled as an extension of Metanoia. Most importantly, it was soft and fluffy to the touch and had a long floofy tail, something that Metanoia had hoped would give her an edge in public relations.
Not that it mattered now, of course. The wolf rapidly grew in size to the point where Metanoia could seat herself on its back. When she walked out of the alleyway less than a minute later, the wolf was as large as a horse and still growing, incorporating various adaptations underneath its skin as Metanoia directed it to bound toward the staging grounds.
Electrical insulation—might help a bit with the lightning strikes, though Metanoia didn’t hold out much hope for that. Burn resistance—heat-redistributing and heat-absorbing chemicals that circulated underneath the skin of the wolf, along with material that acted as heat sinks that could quickly be ejected. Armor—simply layered bone plates underneath the skin of the wolf, all to prevent damage to critical joints and muscles that would hinder its movement. The wolf didn’t have internal organs, of course, being a slab of muscle controlled by Metanoia, but extra protection would allow her to shunt crucial mass to other areas if needed.
The wolf was approximately the size of an elephant by the time it reached the staging grounds, eleven feet tall at the shoulder and nearly twenty feet long. Though Metanoia had read about elephants being able to grow even larger than this, she found that this size was a good balance between mobility and durability. After all, the square-cube law still applied to her, and having to repair bones and tissue after every sprint wouldn’t be conducive to search and rescue efforts.
She regrouped with Abaddon silently, dismounting briefly to take a communication device and thank the small brown-haired girl that handed it to her. She couldn’t help but gawk at the crowd of capes as she got back onto her wolf, having never seen such a large gathering of parahumans before, and when the Triumvirate appeared she stared at them as well.
For all these capes to have assembled here to fight the Endbringer, to protect her city… A shiver ran down Metanoia’s spine. Whether or not the each cape had come for altruistic reasons, she was still incredibly grateful that they had even shown up at all.
That feeling was further amplified as Legend began speaking.
One in three of us will die. It was an incredibly unlikely hope, but perhaps her efforts would help keep the number of deaths below that fraction today. These capes didn’t
deserve to die here, these people who willingly threw their lives into a hopeless fight against one of the world’s greatest catastrophes.
She listened carefully as Legend spoke, learning where she would go and the general approach to the fight. At the same time though, she observed the three incredibly powerful members of the Triumvirate, an idea itching at her mind that she frantically tried to puzzle out. She barely felt the tremors, so engrossed in her own—
Flight! That was it, they were all flying, and she was an idiot for nearly forgetting about it. As the tremors rocked the ground again and she directed her wolf to bound over to Inkscape, she began shedding her bone armor, letting the heavier portions scatter to the ground in a trail behind her as she began streamlining her body. Hollowing out her bones, shedding excess musculature…
Behemoth
roared and Metanoia flinched, but that didn’t stop her from finishing her changes. A set of ivory wings sprouted from her back, growing to the enormous size required to provide someone of her weight some semblance of flight. They would hopefully allow her to be more effective in search and rescue efforts, as she would be able to provide rapid assistance through flight while allowing for multiple people to be loaded onto her wolf.
As the battle raged on, she followed directions from Inkscape, surveying the rubble from the air as her wolf followed her from below. It pained her to see the horrific injuries that people suffered, and the first scattered remnants of an unfortunate cape who had been skimmed by a lightning bolt made her stomach churn. The nausea was easily resolved with a slight adjustment to her digestive system, but the cape was too far gone to be saved.
And then she saw it from her aerial vantage point—a silver blur that suddenly appeared near Behemoth, leaving a deep scar on the Endbringer. The two entities collided again a moment later, the mass of silver threads somehow fighting the Endbringer on seemingly even grounds. Metanoia forced herself to tear her eyes away, immediately rushing toward the location of the newest injured combatants, but she couldn’t help but feel a tiny spark of hope blossom in her chest.
