CHAPTER 40

  “What the fuck do you mean, she made her choice?” Kennedy screamed at Samsara. The teleporter had quickly medevac’d the wounded, and was now staunchly refusing to bring Kennedy to Cait.

  -SHE WASN’T THINKING STRAIGHT-

  Breastman’s comedically accented voice took away some of his gravity, but it didn't change the truth in his words.

  “Breastman is right, Samsara," Dawn pleaded. “Cait is new to this. I had a similar reaction when New Davenport fell. I only survived with Chance’s intervention. The opprotunity for the same intervention now falls to you.”

  Samsara ignored the doe and Breastman, focusing on Kennedy.

  “I’m under strict orders from your mother to not port you into unreasonable danger,” Samsara stated. “We have no clue how many of these things there are, or what would be waiting for you if I take you. No.”

  “Fuck you then, I’ll do it myself,” Kennedy snarled, and Samsara’s newly yellow eyes went wide as Kennedy snatched her power. A portal appeared behind Samsara as she tried to flee, far enough away to break the link, but Kennedy grabbed one of Dawn’s hands and one of Breastman’s tentacles, before focusing on Cait and falling backwards through her own.

  Kennedy hadn’t trained with Samsara’s powers. She wasn’t in the habit of forcibly linking with people, or really linking with people at all if she could help it, and the teleporter was almost pathologically private. That meant the weird golden line she felt herself following to Cait was new to her, although it also felt strangely familiar. It also meant she didn’t know how to aim, or what would happen when she reached its end.

  The trio fell out of a hole in the sky 50 feet up, and Kennedy cursed that she hadn’t touched Rose before portaling out. Fortunately, in the interim, Breastman had time to regenerate, and the swiss-army monster whipped out tentacles to his friends and a tree, slowing their fall like a bungee.

  He set Kennedy’s feet gently on the ground, and she linked her mind to his, sending thanks, and probably more of the jittery aftershocks of near-death adrenalin than she intended. Her link with Samsara had cut off as soon as they’d exited the portal, and she immediately filled that slot with Dawn. The doe's emotions were a maelstrom of rage and loss, and Kennedy's head shot towards her.

  Dawn looked at the ruins with such a sad kind of fury Kennedy might have taken the time to weep, if she wasn't trying to avert her own tragedy. Looking around to get her own bearings, a chill ran down her spine.

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  What she’d taken for a dark cloud in the chaos of the fall was actually an undulating pillar of water, rising up from the rubble of one of the many destroyed buildings that surrounded it. That same rubble swirled up within it, moving unnaturally to continuously batter a beautiful blonde form it held inside.

  “Cait!” Kennedy cried involuntarily, then cursed when two silver figures at the bottom of the pillar turned to face her. She met a pair of beady silver eyes and smirked, cold and cruel. Extending her staff, she summoned corrosion along its length, then whipped it around to a fighting stance. “Aim for the mouths.”

  The Ironhides were on them in a flash, but found them prepared. Kennedy stepped aside as one barreled into her staff, then howled as she redirected it past her, the corrosion along its length already eating away at a patch of fur.

  The second had made for Dawn, but the deer had played prey, freezing with eyes wide, them extending just a single root to trip it at the last second. Immediately, Breastman began to pummel it with the plentiful rubble in the area, crushing concrete to powder against its body.

  Kennedy squared off with hers, the leftover corrosion on its arm hissing angrily. She smirked, locked her staff under her arm, and beckoned with two fingers. This motherfucker wasn’t going to be compared to sparring with the Black Swan. It approached cautiously this time, wary of another redirect. Kennedy repeatedly slapped away its probing attacks, leaving it with nothing but acidic pain for its trouble.

  The continued crashing from behind her gave her comfort that, at the very least, Breastman and Dawn weren’t dead. She really didn’t have the bandwidth to focus on their fight any deeper than that. This fucker was learning.

  It would strike out, drawing a parry it would dodge, before diving in from a new angle to strike in the worst possible place to move her staff. Her confidence began to fade when the first brush against her thigh began to seep blood, even from the most glancing of blows. That confidence was buoyed again somewhat as the flesh knit together over the myriad small wounds, Breastman’s gifted regeneration making itself known.

  Sandra was right. Gotta practice with everyone more. But fuck me, how was I supposed to know Ironhides could learn to fight while I'm fucking fighting them.

  Kennedy forced herself to become more aggressive, capitalizing on opportunities she wouldn’t have if she didn’t know she could shrug off minor wounds. Her rage wanted this anyway, she just had to convince her instincts that there would be no death of a thousand cuts for her.

  That lasted until the monster lashed out with a kick that severed her ankle. She had enough time to wonder what the fuck it had been waiting for before her back hit the ground. The Ironhide stood over her, leering in a way she’d only ever seen from very bad men. It raised its face to the sky, releasing a long howl of victory.

  Idiot.

  Sweating from the pain of her severed foot, Kennedy’s arm extended up and over the beast, jamming her corrosion coated staff through the monster’s conveniently aligned throat.

  It shook and gurgled as it tried to look down at her, but she jammed it deeper, feeling the resistance within it melt away along with its insides. It clawed weakly at the shaft of the staff, trying to pull it back out.

  “Only way this is coming out of you is through your asshole, mother,” she growled. An instant later, she made good on the threat, and the end of her staff slammed into the ground as the monster slumped.

  Then she passed right the fuck out.