Noelle clutched at her abdomen and doubled over.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Noelle, please. Talk me through it,” Amy urged.

  “B-b-burns, oh, it burns!” she wheezed out.

  A flash of light struck Amy, and suddenly she wasn’t Amy in a bunker anymore.

  A glittering sea of stars, a vast, endless canvas of lights of different colors, stellar nurseries like massive glowing nebulae, lit from within and with varying hues. A vibration, a message, but a message so dense and so powerful that she could feel the fabric of space surrounding her rippling like waves. Sound that wasn’t sound, carrying a wealth of information, but barely a conversational hello for her kind.

  Another flash and a jolt, and Amy was staring at the floor of the concrete bunker, sprawled out in a heap. Her remote flicked out and looked around, finding the rest of their group in a similar state, and then another flash took her.

  Two enormous crystalline masses shaped like icebergs slipping through space, both pulling and pushing themselves along, warping the canvas of existence so they fell forwards, rolling downhill, without rolling or any hills. A method of movement that was as beautiful in its simplicity as it was terrifying to consider.

  A flash of light, and Amy rolled onto her side, seeing Noelle on top of the mutated beast, her, and the entire thing she was attached to convulsing in a seizure.

  More light crashed into Amy, and she was gone again. The icebergs hummed to one another, singing, and then it looked like a beehive that had been roused as thousands of tiny pieces started to fall away from the two large objects, following the same trajectory, but separating and spacing out from the main mass.

  She was back yet again, rolling onto her belly and pushing off the floor. She heard groaning from half a dozen voices.

  There was a long, loud, wet, and juicy slurping sound. Amy stood up and looked over. Noelle was collapsed on top of her lower body, slowly sliding down the side as blood and mucous poured out of the point where the two joined. A pale, bare ass was visible, then thighs, and calves.

  Weld rushed forward and caught her before she fell headfirst onto the bare concrete. She appeared to be intact, not quite healthy, but intact and whole, from what Amy could tell.

  “Weld,” Tattletale was holding the side of her head, which was bleeding. “Get her out of here, and get everyone else in here. Tell Grue to have Imp man the door controls.”

  “Did it work?” Trickster asked, putting his tophat back on his head.

  “Quiet,” Tattletale hissed. “Yes, Trickster, go get Sundancer, and get her in here immediately. Go, now.”

  He cocked his head to the side. Tattletale pointed. Amy followed the finger. Noelle’s mutated lower body was twitching. The eyes were rolling. Mouths opening and closing, like it was waking up from a nap and wasn’t quite out of the twilight phase yet.

  “Oh, shit, going!” Trickster darted out and through the door.

  “You too, Oliver, go, quickly, we can’t have people coming in while we’re still letting people out,” Tattletale said, wincing as she pulled her hand away from her head and looked at it.

  Amy side-shuffled her way over to Tattletale and placed a gloved hand on her cheek, fixing up a minor concussion and the scrape she had on her head.

  A steady stream of heroes was coming in now, coughing, waving their hands in front of their faces, some gagging and retching. Tattletale and Miss Miltia started forming ranks, splitting people up into smaller groups.

  “We wait for Sundancer to get here, or for it to attack, or if it tries to escape. When we attack, go all in, maximum destruction. It’s got major regeneration, probably has a core in there somewhere that we have to destroy. Until it’s ash or that core is in pieces, don’t consider it dead. Do not let it escape and do not touch it, we don’t know if it can clone or not.” Tattletale’s voice was clear and sharp.

  The group looked focused, alert.

  Grumbling, creaking, cracking, snapping, and popping were emanating from the beast. Amy saw that the hole that Noelle had left in it, which had been deep, was now gone entirely; the only indication it had been there was the trail of blood and pus left behind. The thing was flexing, stirring, and moving like it was slowly getting up.

  No, wait. It’s not getting up. It’s… Growing!

  Amy turned to Tattletale. “I know,” she said. “We need Sundancer, I don’t think we have enough firepower with just us here, and it’s getting bigger and stronger the longer we wait.”

  “Shouldn’t we attack it now, then, try and keep it from getting too large, and out of control?” Miss Miltia asked.

  “All we have is you, Kid Win, Flashbang, Photon Mom, and Laserdream for ranged attackers. We’re in an enclosed space, so we can’t use real big explosives that you and Flashbang might be able to make.” Lisa said.

  Miss Militia rested her hand on the grip of her pistol as she eyed the fleshy blob. “What if we took it up to the surface? We could go more aggressive, call in Dragon for air support?”

  Tattletale shook her head. “No, that’s an absolute last resort; that thing gets loose in the city, there’s no telling how bad the damage could get. Look–” She pointed at where flesh oozed out of a split in its side, flowing like liquid, before firming up and forming what looked like a shaggy bear’s leg. “Its body is flexible. It’s a Changer. It could get into the sewers or into buildings where we can’t all engage. We’re better here.”

  “Fuck.” Miss Mitlia swore.

  “Idea! Idea! Manpower, Assault, Battery, come with me!” Glory Girl called out. Miss Militia gestured at them with a shooing motion.

  The beast got up on its many limbs, using tentacles and side-facing limbs to assist it in standing. An ear-piercing howl tore out of the enormous wolf’s head, and its bloodshot yellow eyes looked over the group of heroes, wads of thick drool dripping from its mouth.

  “Seems like we’ve run out of time! Everyone, get ready!” Tattletale shouted. “Imp! Bring the lights all the way up! We don’t care if it’s pissed off anymore!”

  A moment later, the remaining lights inside the vault turned on with a clack, and the entire place was bathed in bright light. The creature squinted and roared out of several mouths. Amy activated her power within her suit, converting her quills into extremely potent neurotoxins. She wasn’t sure what else she could really do in this fight; this thing could crush her just by sitting on her, and it had nearly doubled in size from what it initially was in only the past few minutes.

  Poisons and toxins, I can do. Flamethrower, too, but with the amount of fuel I can make, it won’t do much against this thing. Shit!

  Kid Win deployed half a dozen drones from the back of his exo suit, which floated over his head. Miss Militia’s pistol, now in her hand, morphed into a weird, boxy, bulky-looking gun with a big, round magazine in the middle of it. Weld had converted his right arm from the elbow down into a what Amy thought was a billhook, and his left arm from the wrist down was an axe with a big, razor-sharp crescent head. Lady Photon and Laserdream were both floating ten feet off the floor, and their hands glowed with the energy of their laser beams.

  Without making any other sounds or posturing, the monster lurched forward, directly at their group. It was fast, incredibly fast, like a speeding car. The group dashed to the sides, and the beast head-butted the wall of the vault so hard that the floor shook and concrete dust rained down from the ceiling.

  Amy had dashed and dove, rolling and springing back up on her feet. She spun around, checking her line of fire, and fired all of her darts in a wavy stream running down the length of the bizarre creature. It was hard to tell what way it was facing because it had various heads and limbs facing in every direction around it, and tail-like tentacles whipped around in a similar arrangement.

  Grue was sticking back and controlling his smoke to cover the monster’s eyes and numerous heads, keeping it tight to its form as it thrashed around. Amy saw Clockblocker running all over, pulling out long strips of paper, jumping up into the air, and freezing them in time.

  They’re like landmines, but they don’t explode. That’s wicked smart, good job, Dennis!

  Sarah and Crystal were full-on blasting with their lasers at maximum output, carving big hunks off the monster, severing legs, limbs, and heads as the opportunity presented themselves. Amy’s Mom had a very long-handled spear with a sword on the end made out of her contained lighting, and was doing absolutely horrific levels of damage to the creature with every swing. She didn’t need to carve with the blade; the energy of her melee weapons at their full output would vaporize straight through living tissue like it was smoke. She rarely ever used her weapons full-tilt like this.

  The creature didn’t sit still and take it; it went after the slowest and weakest-looking of their group viciously, chasing them down and lashing out at them with hoof, claw, and tooth alike. It was fast, frighteningly so, and despite being massive and horribly mutated and disjointed-looking, it was nimble, too. It bounced around, leaped off the walls, grabbed onto pillars to quickly turn and change direction, and it never let up its attacks.

  Lady Photon and Laserdream shifted their tactics, along with Brandish, who were using their attacks to dismember limbs when they lashed out, sever heads when they gnashed at someone, and tried their best to keep up with the tide of limbs and tentacles.

  Despite the fact that they were doing an insane amount of damage to the creature, they were barely having any lasting effect. They’d cut a tentacle the size of a telephone post off, and then it would sprout a new one on the other side of its body, and attack someone who was trying to get behind it. Two legs would fall, two or more would burst out. Blood and gore were spraying out onto the floor, making it slippery and slick, dangerous to navigate with a monster so large rampaging around.

  It reminded Amy of the tales of the Hydra. It didn’t have weak spots, and the more you attacked it, the more frenzied and dangerous it became. It seemed to be slowly gaining in overall mass, too, but Amy wasn’t certain of it.

  Miss Miltia had started off shooting some kind of automatic shotgun, which was blowing limbs off and carving wads of flesh out of the body, but she quickly swapped out of it, her gun blurring in her hand into a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Dropping down on one knee, she took aim and fired while Amy watched. The rocket streaked between Brandish and Weld, and it didn’t blow up on contact with the monster; rather, it punched a hole in the side that sprayed blood and smoke. A muffled whump, Amy could feel inside her suit, sounded, and a volcano of meat and blood sprayed out of the monster’s back and splattered against the ceiling.

  Blood, skin, fur, meat, and bone all showered down on everyone present. It was dripping and peeling off the ceiling. Half a head with a bulging eye splatted into blood on the floor, splashing up Tattletale's front.

  I'm so happy I'm in an exo right now.

  Tattletale doubled over and hurled on the floor, adding vomit to the utterly foul mix. Miss Militia’s weapon flickered out and then back in on her shoulder, instantly reloading. She fired again, with similar results. The creature spun in place like a top, flipping one-eighty in fractions of a second.

  It’s going to go for Miss Miltia!

  “Clockblocker, on me!” Amy screamed. He was only a few feet away and turned, booking it over to Amy, who was standing next to one of the pillars. “It’s going for Miss Mitlita, I’m going to shoot a web, freeze it as soon as I detach it!

  “Got it! Go!” He shouted over the din.

  Amy fired at the wall, where it would intercept the path of the creature. She angled it upwards, so it was at a shallow angle. The webbing stuck, and she brought her arm over, firing again at the pillar next to her. Dennis hopped forward as the beast charged straight for Miss Militia. Amy saw her eyes widen, and she scrambled, dashing away at an angle, trying to put pillars between her and the monster. Barrelling forward, it got to the web, and it sliced through the mutated creature like it was a cheese cutter, taking nearly a quarter of the entire thing off the top. It peeled off like a flap of meat and bone, the entire thing wriggling and flailing around, as if it didn’t realize it was dead.

  The thing roared and squealed from half a dozen mouths and heads, skidding to a stop. It trembled and shook in place as more mutated random animal flesh ballooned out from the wound.

  “Keep–Don’t stop attacking it!” Tattletale screamed. “Amy, Clock, more of those, scatter them all over, make it pay a price for charging around!”

  Amy sprinted off with Clockblocker, and the two started rapid-fire shooting and freezing lines in place in random vectors. While Amy was blasting through her biomass stores, Clockblocker was slapping up more sheets of paper, mostly above head level, presumably so people didn’t run into them by accident. He seemed to be trying to orient them so the edges were vertical.

  Maybe so people see them? It’s not like the monster can really do much about them.

  While they worked, Amy kept her remote pointed at the action, so they didn’t get caught off-guard, and she could watch what was going on. The monster spun around like it was going to attack Laserdream, who popped a shield up in front of her and darted away. But it was a feint, and instead, it lashed out with a tentacle and slapped Grue square in the chest, sending him flying backward like a ragdoll. He crashed into a wall more than a dozen feet away and fell into a slumped position.

  Fuck, it’s smart!

  Kid Win was firing a barrage of lasers, between his energy pistol, which seemed to be disintegrating person-sized chunks out of the monster, and his drones, which were lancing with different color laser beams. They weren’t nearly as powerful as Lady Photon's or Laserdream’s lasers; they couldn’t carve through thick flesh, so he used them to attack sensory organs, boiling and bursting eyeballs, and drilling holes into the thing when he didn’t have other options.

  Amy’s Dad was flinging glowing balls up on top of the monster at a blistering pace, and they exploded with a crack and a shower of meat chunks and blood. He was also pitching them and bouncing them off the floor like tennis balls, so they hit deep underneath it, hitting both sides. When a head would be in his line of sight, he threw short-fused, stunning balls, which flashed with blinding light and a thunderclap.

  Between the gunfire, lasers, explosions, and the constant bellowing of the monster, Amy was sure that everyone here without any ear protection was quite well deafened at this point. Nobody's eardrums were making it out of here intact tonight. Good thing she was on this team.

  The creature was making to attack Kid Win, who was taking cover behind some of Amy and Clockblocker’s boobytraps. It was willing to carve itself to pieces to get at him, and, in a sneak attack, it burst what looked like a gorilla’s arm covered in antlers out of its chest area, punching Kid Win, smashing several of his drones, and sending him flying. His exo screeched across the concrete, throwing a roostertail of sparks, and he didn’t get up when he came to a stop.

  Amy eyed the raygun-looking blaster pistol he’d been using, where it was abandoned on the floor.

  Does he have a safety system built into it? Would I be able to use it?

  She shot a web at it and yanked back, sending it sailing towards her. She caught it with her other hand and detached the web, slurping it back up with her power, retracting it and salvaging the biomatter. She aimed the blaster and fired it. A red light on the back flashed, and it buzzed.

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  Shit!

  “Give it here!” Dennis called over to her. She tossed it to him underhand, he caught it, and started blasting away with it, grinning at Amy. “I got Kid to give me an ID chip for this exact reason!”

  “Smart!” She called out, setting up the next trap.

  Lady Photon was the next to fall; she got slapped out of the air by another freshly sprouted limb. Carol screamed, and Crystal snapped up a shield curved like a ramp before she hit the floor just in the nick of time. Rather than hitting and bouncing, she dropped into the shield like it was a half-pipe, and went sliding across the floor on her cape. Brandish split off and grabbed her sister, dragging her up against a pillar and checking her briefly.

  We’re losing. Fuck! It’s back to gaining mass, and we’re getting our asses handed to us! I could try and see if I could get a few of them up, but then we can’t keep boobytrapping the vault, which is the only thing that’s keeping it from just splattering us at this point!

  “Hey, motherfucker! You don’t get to hurt my aunt!” Amy’s heart swelled as she heard Glory Girl bellowing over the racket. She was hit with her aura a moment later, strength and confidence filling her body from top to bottom. Amy got the next trap frozen in place, then looked around the corner of the pillar she and Dennis were taking cover behind.

  “Say hello to my big friend!” Manpower laughed, his voice deep and resonant.

  Amy saw her sister and uncle both carrying enormous guns, side-slung by their waist, just because of how huge they were. Each had equally gigantic boxes attached to it, with belts of ammo slapping around as they moved. Assault and Battery had normal-sized rifles with long, boxy attachments under the barrels, and each was strapped with a bandolier of black bricks across their torsos.

  Tattletale’s voice cracked as she screamed over the noise: “Everyone, clear the monster, it hasn’t cloned anyone, keep clear of blasts! AND WHERE IS SUNDANCER!?”

  “Don’t worry about hitting me, I’ll try and keep it occupied!” Weld shouted. The metal man was covered from head to toe in meat chunks, entrails, and gore. He’d been staying glued to the side of the creature throughout the fight, and was a human lawnmower for chopping monster pieces off. Amy had seen horror film villains and monsters that looked less horrific than Weld did right now. In fact, that would be most of them.

  He’s honestly terrifying. Does he even get tired or wounded? He’s like… Oh my god, that Aleph movie! "He absolutely will not stop… ever, until you are dead!"

  Amy was literally blasted out of her brief lapse in focus. Uncle Neil started shooting his machine gun, and Amy could feel each muzzle blast in her chest. He walked it toward the monster as he fired, meter-long jets of fire belching out the barrel as it slowly chugged along like a locomotive. The beast hadn’t given much of a shit about gunfire so far, except for Miss Militia’s rocket launcher thing, but it didn’t like whatever Manpower was firing. And Amy could see why; it was blasting fist-sized holes deep into the monster.

  Battery glowed, hit Assault, who blurred, and then she recharged and blurred herself, each of them setting up at a forty-five-degree angle from Manpower. They shouldered their rifles and shot. Rather than the gun barking, finger-thick purple beams glittered in the dusty air, shearing clear through the beast as long as they didn’t try to shoot through more than a third of the thing in a single go. Where the beams pierced through the other side, they left glowing, pockmarked trails all over the concrete ceiling and walls in their wake.

  Glory Girl flew over Amy’s head with her own monster-slayer-sized gun, sticking near the ceiling and to the side, shooting over and down at the mutant. Her gun fired slowly, like Uncle Neils, but rather than boring holes into the thing, the bullets Vicky shot penetrated and exploded inside, like Miss Militia’s rockets did. It immediately reacted to Vicky, chasing her around with a single-minded focus, even horribly maiming itself on boobytraps if needed to try and stop her. But Vicky was fast, and her power’s flight didn’t care too much about inertia, so she zipped around while raining down explosions on and inside the thing.

  Weld got hit by the blast of one of Vicky’s shots and got knocked over, but he sprang right back up and waded right back into the carnage, swinging, chopping, and stabbing like he didn’t have a care in the world. Amy thought for a moment that he looked like he was having fun amidst the chaos.

  Their renewed efforts were yielding results; the mutant was slowly getting whittled away, but their battlefield was becoming harder to fight in by the minute. There were piles of discarded and destroyed monster everywhere, posing tripping hazards, and the blood and guts on the floor were a couple of inches deep in places. Amy was setting up more web traps when Tattletale made her way over to her and slapped her on the arm.

  “Huh? What is it, Tattle?” Amy yelled.

  Lisa pointed at her ears and shook her head. Dabbing a finger in the blood rolling across the floor, she scribbled on a pillar. “GO FIND SUN-D, BRING HER IF U HAVE TO DRAG!”

  Amy gave Lisa a thumbs-up, tapped Dennis on the shoulder, pointed at the message, then her chest. He nodded and turned back to blasting with Chris’s gun.

  Amy took off running. With the enhancements to the suit’s nervous system and her link, she didn’t feel the suit at all; she was the suit, and the suit was her. And she was fast and limber and agile now, thanks to her makeover. She made it to the door, slipped and skidded, catching the door with one hand and dashing through the gap. Imp was outside, watching the fight on the camera system.

  “Where are the Travellers!?” Amy shouted.

  “They went down the hall, up the stairs, and then left across that catwalk. No idea past that!” Imp yelled. It was only marginally quieter out here. “Why? You guys are kicking that thing’s ass in there!”

  The answer to the question popped into Amy’s head, like a light flicking on. “Ammo! They’re going to run out of ammo! We need Sundancer to actually kill it!”

  Imp also had an ‘Ah hah!’ moment. “Let me go with you, we can spread out! You don’t need anyone to watch the damn door, it can’t fit through anyway!”

  “Yes, it can! It’s like putty when it wants to be, or a blob, or something!” Amy yelled.

  Imp recoiled, then glanced at the door.

  “If it tries to get out, smash it with the doors, but don’t let it escape! You can open them back up after it fucks off! Lisa said she doesn’t think they can stop it if it gets out into the city! And it’s growing fast as fuck!”

  Imp slammed a fist into the wall. “Fuck! Fine, go! Hurry! My bro is in there!”

  Amy didn’t have to be told twice. She took off at a sprint, tail swaying and flapping behind her. She bent the steel railing of the staircase when she grabbed onto it and whipped herself around, jumping up the staircase and across the catwalk. Door after door she passed, all were empty rooms. Offices, barracks, supply rooms, kitchen, gym. She found some kind of office, and she heard voices arguing over the ringing in her ears.

  “I don’t want to stick around here when that thing kills half of them and they decide to go back on our deal,” Trickster said.

  “But they saved me!” Noelle, this time. “They want Mars, anyway, not us!”

  “Are you kidding me? I saw what that thing is doing. I’m not going in there! I’ll–I’ll die! We’ll all die! Krouse is right, let’s just run away!"

  Amy shoulder-checked an interior door, fancy wood with brass fittings. It toppled over and crashed on the floor on the other side. Trickster was poking at a very large armored safe built into the structure, Noelle, and another girl in a red-and-black costume with a radiant, art deco-style sun on the chest in gold. A big guy was leaning against one wall.

  She panted and pointed at who she was sure was Sundancer. “You! Listen to your god damn friend, the one that isn’t being a little bitch!” She pointed at Noelle.

  Noelle’s eyes widened, and she pointed back at Amy. “That’s her, the girl who saved my life! Marissa, you have to go! They need you!”

  Marissa’s, Sundancer’s eyes were wide and panicked-looking. “I don’t do this shit! I don’t fight giant fucking monsters! I don’t want to die!” She screamed, flailing her hands.

  Amy didn’t want to just grab her and haul her panicking, screaming ass all the way down there, but she knew time was an exceedingly precious resource right now.

  “Listen. Marissa, right?” Amy asked, softening her voice some, even though the adrenaline was still causing her hearts to pound.

  Sundancer nodded quickly.

  “I saved Noelle’s life, we had a deal, but I don’t care about that. Here’s what I care about. Literally, my entire family is down there right now, fighting for not just their lives, but the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people in the city above us, because if this thing survives and gets out, there is no second line of defenders. We’re it.”

  Marissa gulped.

  “I don’t want my Mom, Dad, sister, uncle, aunt, and cousin all to die. I don’t want my city destroyed. Can you be brave and please help us destroy this thing with your power? We’ve already lost a few people; we don’t have time to think too long about it.”

  “Mars, please. I’m going to go with you,” Noelle said. She stood up on shaky legs from the stuffed chair she was in.

  “The fuck you are! You can barely stand!” Trickster practically shouted.

  “I’ll carry her. I’ll protect her, and you, Marissa. But we have to go. Now,” Amy urged and motioned with her hands.

  Sundancer wrung her hands, then nodded. “Fuck, fuck! Okay! I hate this world!”

  Amy scooped up Noelle into a princess carry. She looked over at Trickster. “It'd be nice if you joined the fight too, you know. We don’t have to acknowledge that any of this happened; stick to the original plan. Noelle just needed help, right? That’s why you were delayed. Look at her, she’s weak.”

  Trickster stood up, took his tophat off the desk and rapped it with one hand, flipping it and planting it on his head in one motion, then he bowed with a flourish. “Of course, precisely right, let’s hurry along!” The other guy, the one in the football-like armor, shoved off the wall.

  “Krouse is a fucking prick like that. Let’s go, I want to kick that fucking thing’s ass,” the other guy rumbled.

  They took off at a dead run, footsteps and boots clanking on the catwalk, down the staircase, and back down the tunnel.

  Imp was shouting at them as they approached. “Thank fuck! They’re almost out of ammo! Metal Man is stuck on something, TimeDouche got knocked out, and Miss Miltia’s losing blood. Get in there!”

  The big guy side-hopped through the door gap, Trickster went next, then Sundancer, and Amy took up the rear with Noelle, who had tears running down her face. Amy had to shift her to hold her under her arms and walk through the doorway, and then she put her back in a princess carry on the other side.

  Inside was utter chaos. Lights were flickering, and the air was thick with smoke and dust. Deafening gunfire and blasts, snapping and hissing lasers, explosions from Mark’s bombs. Brandish was back on the battlefield, her energy-sword-spear cracking and humming loudly as she spun it and herself around her like a whirling dervish. The linebacker guy was pulling what looked like metal rods out of his multitudinous pockets and pouches, and they’d blink out of his hands with a crack, piercing straight through the entire monster and causing puffs of concrete to appear on the far wall.

  Holy smokes, that’s a nasty ability!

  Trickster started finding chunks of concrete near the entrance and swapping them out with wounded and unconscious people. Miss Miltia staggered over, pale and sweaty. She’d tied a tourniquet around her leg, just above the knee. Her pant leg was soaked in blood, and she was leaving bloody footprints. Amy darted forward, sliding a hand out from under Noelle to grab onto Miss Militia’s bare forearm.

  The popliteal artery was sliced open, and she’s lost a good amount of blood, too. Blood volume is low enough that–

  A roar sounded, echoing off the walls, and she saw Victoria spin and hurl her spent gun at the creature, and the impact cratered the thing's flesh and caused another explosion of blood and guts. Assault was already fighting the thing in close quarters. Battery fired off more of her purple laser, hacking off chunks for several long seconds, then she too dropped her rifle and started charging her power, the circuit patterns on her bodysuit glowing brighter and brighter. Assault hopped back, made eye contact with Battery, and nodded. She streaked into him with a blur of neon-blue light left in her wake and slammed him with everything she had. Assault took the devastating blow, jumping forward and punching the beast so hard that it lifted the front half of it off the ground and slammed it against the ceiling.

  Amy quickly converted some of the fuel and the remaining dregs of her biomass reserves into Miss Militia’s blood and pumped it into her body. She’d already healed the gash in her leg. She also converted some of Miss Militia’s mass into a drug cocktail, forming it directly in her veins. A pretty solid dose of amphetamine and epinephrine. She’d feel wired for an hour or two, and then crash, hard. She saw Miss Militia’s eyes dilate, and she cracked her knuckles. Amy released her, and she darted right off, straight into the battle.

  Sundancer brought her face in close to Noelle’s and Amy’s faceplate. “What do I do?!” She shouted.

  “Don’t you burn things? Just burn it!” Amy shouted back.

  “I’ll burn the heroes too! They’ll die!” Sundancer shouted back.

  “They’re not idiots, they’ll get out of the way if you just give them enough time to move, now go, incinerate it until there’s nothing left!”

  “Wait,” Noelle coughed and held an arm out to Sundancer. Sundancer went to take it, but Noelle flapped her hand at Marissa and beckoned her closer.

  Marissa stepped closer, and Noelle fussed with Marissa’s glove, finally pulling it off. She took Marissa’s hand and closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing, WhAAAAA!” Marissa shouted, which turned into a scream.

  Right before Amy’s eyes, Sundancer, costume and all, underwent mitosis. She literally stretched wider, then snapped into two Sundancers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Then she did it again, and again. Noelle let go of Marissa One’s hand and tucked in against Amy, panting and shivering.

  “Go,” Noelle said loudly, “Protect the people, and burn the monster until nothing’s left. Don’t let it escape.”

  Sundancer Two through Four leapt into action, dashing forward without a hint of the fear that Sundancer One had. Marissa One stood there, shivering in place. Noelle cracked one eye, turned, and made a shooing motion with her hand at Marissa One. “You too, you’ll be fine, Mars. You always get nerves before a match, then do great when you’re in the arena. Just go force yourself into the arena, you’ll be fine.”

  Whatever Noelle was talking about resonated with Sundancer, who nodded rapidly, turned, and sprinted off as well.

  Amy used her power on Noelle and dove into her system. She was malnourished, fairly extensively, with numerous vitamin and mineral deficiencies. She had a lot of scarring in her esophagus, and the esophageal tissue had converted to stomach tissue in places. This wasn’t unheard of; it was fairly typical for people with a history of acid reflux. But Noell didn’t have the associated damage to her stomach lining or ulceration. She did have an unusual amount of wear and tear on her teeth, though.

  Oh. This poor girl. I know what this is.

  Amy made modifications to her suit on the fly, grafting parts of her DNA into the feeding tube, and she linked it with one of the gel pads at the base of her spine. There, she had another remote to use her power with. It wasn’t often she got to use it on multiple people at once, so this was stretching her horizons into new territory. The thought sent an electric thrill up her spine.

  Right now, Amy was happy to play backline support. Because she chose to do it, and wasn’t forced to do it. She was going to heal people. She was going to heal the shit out of these people. Noelle first, since she had to support her if she didn’t heal her first, and that would free up her hands to work with more people.

  Her suit’s tail dropped limp, the tip splatting into the blood that was flowing past them like a thick river, out and past the blast doors. She started to suck it up into the suit, converting it into its component parts as she did. She had to pull a large amount in, the ‘waste’ materials she used to refill her suit reserves, and she transferred the parts she was looking for into Noelle. She was moving a lot of mass, relative to how much she normally did for most medical operations.

  While the battle raged in the background, Amy paid close attention to nursing Noelle back to health. Deficiencies were addressed, tissues damaged by Noelle’s own body self-cannibalizing to keep her alive were repaired. Many of her organs were in rough shape. As Amy worked, the girl in her arms looked like she was literally blooming before her eyes. Bruises faded, scars healed, the sunken eyes, cheeks, and too-prominent cheekbones receded. She wasn’t merely repairing the damage to Noelle’s body; she was also shunting raw mass back into her. She gained weight, and Amy was careful to keep her relative body fat lower, but still at a healthy level. Much of the weight she’d lost had been from her body scrapping her muscular and skeletal systems for spare parts. She’d been on the path to having brittle bones by the time she was in her mid to late forties. Not anymore.

  Noelle’s eyes shot open, and her nostrils flared. She coughed several times and asked, “What are you doing!?”

  “I’m healing you, not just saving your life. How do you feel?” Amy asked.

  “I feel…” Noelle blinked slowly and shifted around in Amy’s arms. “Good? Really good. Better than I have in years.”

  “Okay, great. You feel like you have some of your strength back?”

  Noelle nodded, then winced as screeching roars and a terrific crash sounded elsewhere in the vault.

  “I’m going to set you down, so I can get the others up. Please don’t go anywhere.”

  “Um… why not, if I can ask?”

  I’m so bad at this part.

  “You will have to come back to the fire station with me; your friends can come along too, if they behave. You’re going to need further treatments to stabilize you over the next few days.”

  “But I feel fine now?” Noelle protested, but it was a pathetic attempt.

  “It’s like a high, you’re going to crash in a few hours. Listen, I’m the best healer in the world, okay, so just… trust me? I’m better than any damn doctor you could possibly find.”

  Noelle nibbled her lower lip, then nodded slowly. “Okay. The others might not like it, but I will. You’ve… only really helped us, and you haven’t really even asked for anything in return.”

  Amy set her down, and she stood solidly on both feet, although the blood probably felt weird on her bare feet. They’d found her some ill-fitting sweatpants at one point, so at least the poor girl’s ass wasn’t hanging out anymore.

  Amy looked up briefly at the battle. It was in the back part of the vault now. The Sundancer army had pushed the monster against the combined forces of the rest of the heroes, and it was getting battered hard by a freed Weld, Manpower, Assault, and Glory Girl. Each time they rocked it with a major blow, it slid or was pushed back towards the three suns behind it, and another sun above it. The thing getting even within a few feet of the suns made the flesh evaporate off the creature, and it was ablaze, surrounding the parts that had vaporized off.

  Trickster seemed to be helping the footballer recycle his rods, making them appear in his hands with flourishes and handing them over, while rocks and bits of debris clattered from the ceiling or down the walls where the rods had been. At some point, a giant blue gorilla-thing had appeared and was with the other front-line fighters, smashing into and against the mutant.

  Amy turned her attention back to the wounded people arranged before her in a sloppy line. She reached out and touched Lady Photon, Kid Win, and Grue simultaneously. Kid Win had a mild concussion and some torn muscles in his neck. Less important. She took her hand off Kid Win and placed it on Clockblocker.

  Oh hell.

  Clockblocker had a brain bleed. Parts of Grue’s ribcage were shattered, and his spine was broken near his navel. Lady Photon had a serious concussion and a few fine fractures in her skull. Amy took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves.

  I can do this.

  The bleed was easy to fix, as was removing the fluids pressing on Clockblocker’s brain. She simply reabsorbed them and patched up the blood vessels. She treated the handful of other moderate injuries and told Dennis’ body to give him a spurt of adrenaline. He awoke, gasping and clutching at his chest. She took her tail off him and dropped it back into the blood, sucking it up and processing it into more biomass.

  Lady Photon was next. A few twitches of her eyebrows, and a puff of air to blow some sweat off her nose later, and Aunt Sarah was up and moving with a groan.

  Amy moved on to Grue. Fixing broken bones was sort of a pain in the ass. You had to get the alignment right, which involved manipulating the break and causing more damage in the process. No, no. It would be much faster and more efficient to simply dissolve those broken ribs one or two at a time and grow out new ones at super fast-forward speed. Uncomfortable as hell? Yeah, but he was unconscious. Big whoop. Ribs fixed, she moved on to repairing the spinal cord and then the spine. When she was done, she gave him a shot of adrenaline, too.

  Grue popped up with a jolt and a yell. “Who! What!?" He looked around frantically. "Oh shit! We’re still here!? I’m up! Going!”

  Apparently, his conscience is a strong enough motivator for him.

  Grue climbed to his feet, twisted at the waist, and jogged back into the fray, hanging back and utilizing his smoke to blind and deafen the monster, who was now looking much worse for the beating it was taking. The simple fact that it was even alive was amazing. Amy refocused her attention on Chris. He came around quickly, sitting up and patting himself down.

  “Aw, hell, Piggy is going to murder me if I lose my disintegrator pistol!”

  He tapped a series of buttons on a recessed panel of his suit over his forearm, then he held his hand out. “Come on, damn it, I know it’s in range!” Chris yelled. A ripple in the blood slid around a pillar and shot toward Chris, splashing and spraying blood into the air as it went. When it got closer, his pistol flew up and out of the muck and snapped into a rigid position over his bracer. Chris grinned and pulled it from where it was held in the air as if he was drawing from a holster.

  “Wow… That’s really cool!” Noelle said, pointing at his arm, and giving him a thumbs up. She was smiling.

  Chris blinked, then gave an awkward thumbs-up to Noelle before getting himself fully upright. He tapped, then slapped the gun a few times until a chamber popped out from the side, and a small object fell out and splashed into the blood. He pulled a new one from under his chestplate, plugged it in, locked the chamber closed again, and gave his gun a twirl before setting off to the other side of the vault.

  Work done, Amy started using her suit’s biomass reserves to reload her quills and the protein reservoir for her web launcher.

  Noelle slid over closer to Amy and asked her, “Who was that, in the red and gold armor?”

  “That’s Kid Win, he’s one of the Wards here in the city. A Tinker, pretty good one, from what I have heard.”

  I wonder how long it’s going to take him to realize that I tidied up the wiring in his noggin while I was putting a new lightbulb in?

  She chuckled.

  It appeared like the battle was winding down, and they’d won. The creature was reduced to pony size at this point and was totally boxed in by the Sundancers’ orbs, which were steadily incinerating it. As the orbs came into close proximity with one another, Amy could see the intense heat distorting the air, and smoke was practically jetting up and against the ceiling. Whatever ventilation system this thing had, it was struggling to keep the air from filling with soot.

  “And you’re Panacea?” Noelle asked.

  “Oh, yeah. You can just call me Amy, though. My team doesn’t do the hidden identity thing, and it’s public knowledge. Plus, I’m rebranding.”

  “Well, thank you, Amy. For saving my life, and for making me feel better, too. And for not letting my team run away and break their promise. Now that I’m feeling better, I think it’s high time I took the reins back from Trickster.”

  “Hey, Noelle?” Amy turned to look at the shorter, filthy girl.

  “Yeah?” She asked.

  “Your boyfriend seems like a gigantic asshole. I know he cares for you; he was instrumental in the action tonight,” Amy said.

  Noelle nodded along, peering up at Amy’s faceplate.

  It’s probably menacing looking, but I still want to get my point across.

  Amy held out her hands to Noelle, who took them. “We just met, and I haven’t gotten to know you very well yet, but I’d like to. And if I’m going to be brutally honest with you, like my friend Morgan would be, I’d tell you that you can do better for yourself.”

  Noelle dropped her eyes and rubbed some filth off her cheek with one hand. She muttered something, but Amy couldn’t make it out.

  “What?”

  Noelle cleared her throat. “I know. I… I’ve been meaning to break up with him for a while now, it’s just, I haven’t been able to, between moving around all the time, being sick all the time, and everything else. Nobody else on the team likes him, and he does it on purpose; he thinks it makes the team stronger if they’re united in hating him, but he’s wrong, and that’s… really stupid.”

  The last of the creature burned off in the distance, and Miss Miltia pulled out a big, menacing-looking pistol and shot at the ground. There was a crack of the gunshot, and then what sounded like glass shattering. She held her hand up, giving a thumbs-up to Amy. Amy returned it.

  It was finally over, the nightmare dead and gone.

  “I want you and your friends to come back with us. You can stay at the station, so you don’t have to be in this horrible place. We have power and water, too. I think some of you might get along pretty well with some of us,” Amy said.

  Noelle looked off towards the approaching crowd of heroes. Three of the Sundancers stopped in place, then crumbled into dust and ash. Noelle turned and looked up at the head of Amy’s suit again. “I’d like that. But what makes you say that?”

  “Your friend, Sundancer? Marissa? And how scared she was earlier?”

  “Mhm?”

  “That was me. I was exactly the same way until recently, when someone really helped me out. Maybe I can pay it forward, you know? Help her find her feet with this superhero business?”

  Noelle smiled, the gleam of her teeth and warmth of her grin a sharp contrast to the hellscape they found themselves in, wading in blood and gore inside a stiflingly hot, reeking vault-turned-furnace.

  Yeah. I think that could work out well if we can get them to engage.

  Noelle held her hand out, Amy took it, and they shook. “Consider it a deal, Amy,” Noelle said before turning back towards the rest.