Some might find Betty’s endless rage endearing, but Finn had enough of it.
Her thrust was easy to deflect. The bow glided over Finn’s blade and missed him completely. They both came up with their off hands to deliver a counter attack. Betty was swinging her violin while Finn’s hand cracked with magic. Tendrils of lightning wrapped around her torso and shoulders, restraining her arms in place.
”Hey! I’m not done yet!“But Finn had decided that they were. He lifted Betty over his shoulder and ran for shelter. The door to the precinct wasn’t far, and it had already been unlocked. Finn could already hear the people inside running for their lives. Still, it was safer than being out here.
Though Finn wasn’t going to get Betty past the threshold of the door. All because his ears were never blessed by the words of Quintus Ennius, father of Roman poetry.
“The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so.”Betty drove her knee into Finn’s chest, bursting his boils. Only Finn’s boils were patches of rust filled with water. Or at least they would have been if the Diver’s curse hadn’t turned the water to blood. The clockwork boy bled, and he could feel Betty slide off of his shoulder. She landed on her feet and ran into the apartment complex. Regardless if Finn wanted to pursue or not, there would not be a second chase. The falling hail cut the two off from each other. Betty disappeared under the veil of frozen blood. He could wait for it to pass, or return to the roof to help the others.
Marrie may have tracked down Betty, but she had her own target to worry about. Pac was already shielded by the mass of tendrils over her head, but Marrie decided to play it safe and gave her a shield anyway.
Her next move would be more time consuming however. She had spotted Ashley on her way down to the street, but she was no longer in sight. Ashley was about four to five stories up and no longer visible to Marrie. Climbing the rails wasn’t viable. They were a floor apart, and even a push melody would only get her up a story at a time. Hail and Pac’s incoming pacman projectile would have made a slow climb up the railings impossible to complete. Marrie ran inside so that she could ascend the stairs. If she was quick, she might save herself. She might save Ashley too.
But Ashley didn’t have much time.
Before her was Justin, a one man stampede accompanied by his mighty blood magics. She could see Jacqueline chasing the vampire, but she wasn’t able to catch him. Espers had the athletic ability of olympians, but a vampire veered into superhuman territory. He could jump across a city street without a running start. Staying ahead of Jacqueline was a simple matter.
Viridian energy gathered at the end of Ashley’s wand before flying towards Justin. But all it took was a simple twitch of his head to move the opening in his shield. Her projectile collided with his blood barrier and burned a large hole in it. Offense may have been the right move, but it was easy to telegraph when you could hardly move. That didn’t stop Ashley from preparing another shot from her wand.
If only she had more time.
The melody/wand one-two punch was a nice combo for minimizing the time between attacks. Melodies took time to cast though, and Ashley barely had enough time for that. Justin’s fly swatter-like arms were about to crush Ashley where she stood, and her wand wasn’t going to fire in time.
Then, an unlikely ally showed up.
In a battle of biblical proportions, it was a snake that came to Ashley’s aid. It sunk into Justin’s left arm, severing it and the flyswatter from Justin. The bloody net floated in the air, but it couldn’t move without Justin to swing it. Though he still had the right one. Blood ran down his legs and rooted him into the roof. The remaining net plowed into a car at Ashley’s left flank.
She couldn’t brace for it.
Something broke inside her arm, Her scapula sung with pain as she was flung to the ground. The remains of dead frogs and insects cushioned Ashley’s fall, but she might have preferred to land on the asphalt roof. Her head rested in some frog intestines, still warm and wet from detonating moments ago.
Ashley couldn’t see Justin bearing down on her. Just like she had predicted, stopping his first attack was not going to stop his assault. The bloody roots that held him to the roof released him. His new wound grew tendrils that latched onto his severed arm. He’d be back in full fighting strength shortly.
Had a war pick not shattered both of his legs.
Damage melodies were potent. They could be strong enough to sever limbs but they were limited in how long they took to cast. In the span of six, an esper could cast only a single melody, leaving them open to retaliation afterwards. Havoc, on the other hand, could do a
lot of damage in that time. With a hard enough swing, Havoc could punch through
multiple limbs. Justin’s brief stop meant Jacqueline could attack with impunity. His arteries and vessels cracked and shattered with every blow Havoc delivered.
He was about to roll himself over when Jacqueline shattered his remaining arm. The pick sunk into his torso and crushed his heart, but he still lived. Bloody tendrils started to wrap around her legs, even as Jacqueline drove her pick into his skull. His visage was split in two, and what remained was a cracked ruby large enough to be Justin’s brain. Ashley was able to stand back up without Justin’s gaze on her, and she fired her wand straight at the flawed gemstone, shattering it.
Had they killed Justin?
What remained of Justin’s body sunk to the ground. The ruptured blood vessels and remaining organs were now behaving like soft tissue instead of brittle gemstone. One by one, the organs melted into a pool of blood and sunk into the ground. But this did bring up another important question.
Where had all the hail gone?
Jacqueline and Ashley looked up. A spectral moose had appeared. It stood above both of them, horns crossing overhead like a giant net. The moose's antlers overflowed with frozen blood, but it kept those around it safe. Samuel had approached too, if not to seek refuge than to assist with Justin’s extermination. But things like this don’t come out of thin hair. And if that was what happened, someone needed to cast a melody or spell to make it happen.
All eyes turned towards the teal blur from earlier.
Nestled among the overturned cars was a
catwoman in a teal dancing dress. She hugged her knees against her chest and looked all around herself. She looked at the spectral moose the way a child may look at an aggressive dog. But that wasn’t how she looked at the Gemini espers. When she looked at them she straightened her posture. Her grip on her knees was a bit more loose. But no matter how many times she scanned them, she couldn’t find what she was looking for.
"Where’s mom?"No one would have a chance to answer.
Meanwhile, Marrie had emerged from the fifth floor of the apartment building. Pac was nowhere to be seen, which was probably a good thing. She had managed to survive the hail. Marrie herself managed to outrun the giant pac man, who took a few bites out of the hallway before expiring. She put the rest of her energy into scolding the Diver. It was hard to tell if they understood Marrie or even heard her. No behemoth thus far had demonstrated the ability to speak, Diver included. The only answer they gave was swinging their cross through the air. It kicked up some dust in the far corners of Pax Septimus, but as the dust particles came closer, it started to buzz.
This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.
— Exodus 10:3–6
The hail was gone, the bugs were only returning.
The streets, the rooftops, all overrun with giant locusts. The teal esper shrieked as one went to land on her, and she punched straight through its head. She ran across the rooftop yelling, but her words were lost in the buzzing. Though a giant spectral cat laid across the gap between the police building and the Diver’s hovering place. Just in time for the strange esper to cross.
If they wanted to put an end to this madness, they’d have to strike the Diver
now.
