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A Man Out of Time #7: The Rise of Rage #2
Location: Pacific Point, California
It had been half an hour since his first encounter with the new monsters, but The Wanderer could see no end in sight of the fight he had managed to get himself into. Much like the fire and sand-based monsters that came after his first fight, more of the monsters crawled out of the woodwork and went for him. Panting over his recent conquest, a plant-based monster, he looked around the wreck of the streets he had been fighting in. With the number of times he had been thrown through buildings, he had a gash on the top of his head, open through the left side of it. With the blood streaking down the left side of his face, his burn scars on his right and the building dust from being thrown, he looked an absolute mess. Despite it all, he was still holding strong. The anger was still evident in his fatigued face as well as the purple flames around his entire body. While he can still go on with the fight with these strong monsters, he still hasn’t recovered from his previous engagements with the Hounds.
As he was kneeling down beside the recent monster, he watched as another group of them appear. As he had now figured out that each monster had a theme based on their abilities, he could judge that the next group of monsters had the abilities of light, ice, speed (by judging by how much it twitches), wind and rust. While he was still panting, the mutant gritted his teeth as the group approached him, the twitching monster hanging back from the group. ”Just how many of these fuckers are there?” he moaned, reactivating his psionic blades on both his arms. With the inclusion of the metal monster he first faced, he had faced 7 in total, seemingly staggered in size. The group that was coming towards him was certainly the largest group he faced of them. ”At this rate, I’d rather face those Hound bastards than another large group of these things.” Getting back up to his feet, he stood his ground as the rust and ice beings charged towards him.
Suddenly, a swirling portal opened up nearby. From out of this portal, two heroes hopped out. The first was a mountain of a man. However, his height and muscle mass was not the man’s most unusual feature. That distinction belonged to his elephantine head. Behind this man, a woman exited next. She had nine fluffy fox tails, along with two ears from the same animal instead of regular human ears.
“Really? Ice? This couldn’t be any easier,” the Kitsune heroine said while her nine tails began to glow. She then held out her arm and blasted a burst of flames from her palm. With this torrent of flames, she created a fiery wall that at least caused the ice meta to think twice before charging forward. The rust meta, however, did not have the same fear of melting. Therefore, it was the elephant man’s turn to shine. He charged forward to face the charging metahuman monster. When the two collided, a contest of strength ensued as the two individual’s struggled against each other. The elephant man eventually overcame his foe, lifting him up over his head and tossed it at the ice monster, knocking both of their feet and onto the ground.
With both the ice and rust monsters taken down by the new arrivals, the wind and light monsters stood there, snarling at those that they were fighting. While both the downed monsters were still figuring out what had happened, it wouldn’t take them long before they got back to their senses. Throughout all of this, the speed monster still twitched in the back of the group. The Wanderer felt a bit uncomfortable with the monster remaining in the spot for as long as it did while its buddies were being taken down by the new arrivals. Though he had to admit, the assistance of the two people was a big help. Even if one looked like they were animal hybrids of one form or another. But for now, he had to focus on the fight at hand.
Suddenly, the twitching monster surged forth at incredulous speeds towards the kitsune woman. With the sheer strength of the monsters, the mutant had to think quickly before she got taken down by surprise. Deactivating both of his blades, he phased from his position to the ground between the charging monster and the woman. With psionic flames covering his entire body, he braced himself as he took the monster on. While they collided with brutal force, The Wanderer held on as his feet skidded across the asphalt as he slowed the monster down. He gritted his teeth once more as he struggled with the force, but somehow, he held firm as they moved to a stop a few meters from the kitsune woman.
”Thank you for the assistance,” he grunted, audible as he held onto the strength of the monster. ”If you guys are capable of using other abilities outside of heightened strength, I recommend you use them.” As his strength was about to fail him, he spun around the speed monster. During the spin, his left arm sparked to life as the deactivated psionic blade was summoned again. As the monster started to move away, The Wanderer took the opportunity and slashed at the monster’s legs. As the attack connected successfully, the monster tumbled to the ground in a heap. It was shortly rendered unconscious with a few fists to the back of the head, the sudden force bouncing the head on the road despite the resistance to the impact. Panting again, he spun his body back around and faced the monsters. His body was placed between them and the kitsune woman, the ice and rust monsters now back onto their feet. ”Not sure if you’ve already faced them, but they seem to have the ability to resist physical hits.” With the psionic blade still on his left arm, he prepared himself for the next wave.
The kitsune heroine, who was called Firefox, placed her index finger against a communicator device clipped onto her fox ears that crowned the top of her head, as if she were receiving some information from another teammate on the other side of the communicator. She then crouched down next to the speed metahuman that the Wanderer had just taken down and rolled him over so that the metahuman was laying on his back. Firefox focused her fire powers onto the tip of her finger and pressed it against the circular device that was attached to the meta’s stomach. After she scorched the device and pulled it off, the metahuman’s warped appearance returned back to normal.
“Looks like these little devices are the cause of these berserker metahumans,” Firefox stated to Gajana and the Wanderer. “If we can get those devices off them, we can neutralize them.”
The Wanderer remained poised as the kitsune woman announced a solution to stopping these monsters, who turned out to be a person with abilities under the control of a device. While his body hadn’t changed its position to face her, ready to take the others on, he thought back to the other 7 he had fought with earlier. While the first one had been defeated without the use of his blade, the other 6 had. There was a deadly weapon in his possession when fighting them. At any moment during those fights, he could have killed an innocent victim. And he hadn’t checked the bodies after each fight. The fights only bear a resemblance to his fights from his time, where each mutant he faced ended up dead.
Then, he smiled. ”It’s a good thing that I didn’t kill any of them earlier,” he answered. Luckily for him, his psionic eye saw the energies coming from each body and, in turn, saw the life force that came from them. While he was unsure of how closely linked they were, he deduced that psionic energy and life force were intertwined. That much he had observed from his 5 years in learning his trade.
His smile faded as he focused on the task at hand. ”The other seven beings I’ve fought before still have their devices,” he announced to her and her comrade. ”While I could have blasted them off with my psionics, my abilities seem to be unpredictable with me being in this time. The only thing I can do is help your friend take these 4 down while you take off the devices on the unconscious ones. Sound like a plan?”
The two Immortals agreed to the Wanderer’s plan, although they was not sure what he meant by not being in his own time. Firefox stood up and stepped away from the speed metahuman, whom she had just reverted back to normal. Gajana also took a defensive stance facing the remaining metahumans, who had been driven mad by the Hounds.
All the while, the standing monsters remained there, drawing close to the small group.