Doc Holliday immediately turned when he heard the loud taunt. Having been in the villainy business for a long time at this point (and having been a hero before that), Holliday was like teflon when it came to these types of callouts. The way he saw it, they could make fun of his demeanor and persona all they wanted, but he was still quite alive, and many of them were either spending the night in the hospital or the morgue. So instead of retorting, he offered a simple
"hmmph" and turned to face the threat, his revolver spinning like a disc in his right hand. He assumed that his shot had bought himself at least a moment of time to focus his attention on the flying threat. Even if he didn't, he trusted that his ally's drones would prove to be worth their sticker cost and provide some level of protection.
It was lucky he did that, because the flying man launched down directly at him in an attempt to dive-bomb him. It was almost cute to see him go for such a head-on attack, and in a vacuum, it made sense. Most people could not see a target moving down at them at ludicrously fast speeds. Ardent would turn 90% of the villains he faced into red pulp with the speed and strength of his attack.
But Doc Holliday was not most villains. He had some of the sharpest eyes in the world, and he had spent years honing his craft. He had spent a year in Africa shooting peregrine falcons out of the sky in the savannah, and he had fought more than his fair share of winged, flying, floating, and otherwise airborne combatants. This was, for the most part, par for the course for the man.
This guy was moving faster than your average superhero with big, useless swan wings, but Holliday also
saw a hell of a lot faster than your average supervillain with a gun, and so he simply aimed his already-cocked-and-lifted revolver and pulled down the trigger, firing a single bullet at the man. The bullet he had chambered was the same bullet that he had fired at Blast; it was filled with a special type of plasma that could cut cleanly through most metals. Holliday was hoping that this one would do enough damage to knock the annoying hero clean out of the sky, and let him re-focus his attention on the recovering, earthbound speedster behind the metal bench.
☆
Hurtling down towards his target, Ardent's eyes narrowed as he watched Holliday turn around and take aim. They had only just locked eyes, but this was already the moment of truth that would decide the direction of their fight. The enemy had taken his shot.
Ardent's entire body twisted, spiralling through the air as he psychokinetically pulled his head and torso out of the line of fire. A normal bullet would have been nothing, but if Holliday had ammunition that could melt through a mailbox, it was too risky to take a direct hit to the vitals.
The moment of impact brought white-hot pain as the bullet made impact. It hit Ardent's arm, just as he was preparing to throw his punch. Even from a mere grazing shot, the power and heat of the plasma was overwhelming, digging a groove nearly an inch deep into the meat of the arm as it scorched through reinforced flesh, only barely deflected into curving away and burying itself in the nearest wall.
Ardent clenched his teeth, hissing with pain.
...Doc Holiday can and surely will shoot Ardent out of the sky...
Up against a guy like this, getting shot was a given. It was really the
out of the sky part that David took issue with. With his power, he could prevent himself from flinching or doubling over in pain. He wasn't even going to slow down. If Holliday was used to chasing down injured deer, he wasn't ready for this.
For anyone watching, the exchange was instant. Simultaneous. A bullet, glowing with plasma, cut across Ardent's arm, letting loose a spray of blood. At the very same moment, Ardent's fist, unerring, met its mark, crushing bone into innumerable pieces. The villain's upper arm was destroyed, his shoulder rendered a broken wreck in the blink of an eye as he was hit with an attack that carried enough force to send him to the ground.
☆
Doc Holliday knew he would land his shot, but he had not anticipated the hero pushing
through the shot and landing a blow of his own, and the villain was certainly punished for his miscalculation. The bones in his arm loudly snapped as they were fractured in too many places to count, and his revolver was launched from his hand, landing a safe distance away on the asphalt of the road. The hit also sent the villain literally spiraling; he was thrown back across his own float, being launched through a couple of tumbleweeds and hitting his back against a (presumably fake) barrel of whiskey. His arm was mangled and, to those who had not been in their fair share of fights, very much offputting by the way it was bent the wrong way.
But Doc Holliday, though old, was also gruff, just like his idol; and though he had been in his fair share of fights, and had taken his fair share of hits, he was also extraordinary resilient for a guy who looked like he worked in Splash Mountain. And besides his toughness, which while not superhuman was certainly impressive, there was one other fact that the H.E.R.O. documenters had failed to mention in his villain profile.
He was ambidextrous.
No sooner had his back slammed against his fake booze than he had tugged his other revolver free with his left hand, and with masterful dextrosity he flicked back the hammer, aimed, and fired the weapon right at Ardent, releasing a special type of bullet from the barrel. This bullet not loaded with plasma, but rather, was laced with a heavy dose of sigillium that would, with luck, quickly spread and take quick effect. The bullet was very expensive, but Doc Holliday paid the big bucks in order to have these types of tools in these types of moments. Ardent may have gotten him here, but he would not get anybody again.
☆
"Fuck, that hurt!" Ardent winced as he remained in flight, not quite touching down on the platform after landing his hit.
Although the enemy appeared to be down, he wasted no time. The blood that had sprayed from his gunshot wound stopped in midair before hitting the ground, reversing direction to return inside his arm, following after him as he flew. Having landed a decisive hit, he needed to maintain the offensive and secure the takedown. However-
While Ardent had surprised the villain with his unexpected endurance and commitment to attacking, those roles were now reversed. He had considered the possibility that Holliday had backup weapons, but hadn't been expecting him to be prepared to draw one within hardly a second of having his arm broken. The hero's face tensed as indecision nearly took over. Why was Holliday so confident he could win after even his plasma bullets had failed? What sort of ammunition had he been keeping stored away in his emergency gun?
Ardent trusted his instincts. His power may have seemed simple on the surface, but it afforded him a few good tricks beyond flying and punching hard. All pieces of his body were under his control. With a wave of his arm, the blood that had been about to return into his wound flew forwards, ahead of his flightpath. Blast's use of the mailbox and bench for cover had proven that while Holliday's aim was impeccable, he still needed to see his target. And so the blood flew straight for the cowboy's eyes.
His movements masked by the splash of blood, Ardent evaded, snapping to the right as soon as the bullet left the chamber. Expensive as it was, it sailed harmlessly through the air and out of sight, its true threat left unknown. The hero circled around Holliday before turning towards him again, aiming to reengage before he had even wiped the blood from his eyes. He might have shouted something about how Castleburg wasn't big enough for the two of them, but Holliday didn't seem to be impressed by those sorts of lines. Ardent would have to settle for beating the hell out of him instead.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
It would be a great disservice to Lady Blade to say that she was not fast; she had incredibly quick reflexes and was an extremely talented assassin. But it would be fair to say that she might have bitten off more than she could chew in this particular situation, as unlike her Western-themed partner, she was not capable of dodging bullets. And though she had successfully avoided being sucked into the ground by Terraformer, she was not able to avoid the junior Professor Gadget's onslaught of plasma blasts. She did just barely weave out of the trajectory of the first two, but the third one caught her squarely.
Like some type of wicked ballerina, she spun and contorted from the hit as her body temperature plummeted. She knew she was about done for. But she could even the odds.
With her last vestige of strength, she drew a knife from her belt and chucked it at the assembled group of heroes. Due to a significant lack of strength, the knife didn't really soar, instead kind of awkwardly arcing into the floor like a very poorly thrown frisbee. It was what happened afterwards that was more alarming; several lights that were positioned on both the handle and the blade of the knife began to pulse red, and the knife began to emit a loud, periodic beeping noise. Almost like a bomb. Scratch that, exactly like a bomb.
"Goodnight..." Lady Blade whispered before collapsing onto the ground. She may have been defeated much more easily than her compatriots, but it seemed she was willing to go out with a
bang.
