***Baroke***

“Ugh, son of a bitch,” Baroke groaned, pushing himself to a sitting position, spitting out dirt that had gotten in his paralyzed mouth.

I get my hands on that bastard, he’s gonna wish he’d never been born, Baroke thought, climbing to his feet.

The building above him exploded outward, revealing Calvin skating backward on some kind of tentacles, holding an orb of blood, his expression fixed with manic glee.

Immediately afterward, a gigantic Genosian man barreled through, trying to nail Baroke’s friend with a giant axe-hammer…thing. After that was a lithe woman with short-cropped blonde hair, and pair of floating sorcerers, one light, one dark.

What the f-

“Baroke,” Kala said, sliding to a halt in front of him, Her palm flashing with a white light that seemed to clear his head and make his muscles not so limp.

“Sorry about the subterfuge, but Elliot couldn’t know about the backup. Calvin’s body was killed by an immortal representative of a kingdom that spans the stars with beef against Calvin for crimes committed by a previous life, and in the middle of turning into an undead, the ancient spirit dwelling inside him used the opportunity to take control of his body, so we’ve gotta put him down again so his soul has a chance at retaking control! Can I count on you!?”

Baroke blinked, trying to process all that.

“What?”

Kala sighed and rolled her eyes. “Calvin’s turned evil!”

Finally, Baroke thought, eyes narrowing.

“I knew this day would come!” Baroke roared, leaping to his feet. “Come on, let’s put an end to him before he inflicts further damage!”

Baroke grabbed his bow in his left hand and wrapped his arm around Kala’s waist with his other.

The princess squeaked a bit of forced air as Baroke jumped, the compact dirt street cratering under his feet.

He dropped Kala off on the nearest rooftop and jumped dozens of feet into the air, scanning the skyline for Calvin. He wasn’t afraid of heights if he jumped up, oddly enough.

There he is, Baroke thought, spotting Calvin fending off multiple Legends simultaneously, his body gradually warping as black keratin armor grew up over his skin, reinforcing his limbs, while simultaneously drawing in Warp like a dry sponge.

“Hey CALVIN!” BAroke shouted, nocking an arrow. “This is for the leeches you put in my pants on my twelfth birthday! They had to burn them off my ass!”

Force Amplification.

Assassinate.

Called Shot.

Penetrating Shot.

Sirfen’s Prey

Pierce the Veil

Godslayer Arrow.

4 Bent reclaimed!

Betty has 18/22 Bent remaining.

***Calvin***

“Hahaha! I didn’t know Baroke was still sore about that!” Calvin cackled.

***Elliot***

These guys are good, but they’ve fallen into the same tired cliché’s. They can’t actually make anything new. Not like I can.

Elliot shrugged off the mind attacks and tore apart the illusions from the light-skinned sorcerer, bulled his way through the dark skinned one’s weaker counters, and used the organic material on the barbarian’s axe to pierce the oversized man’s hands with bone.

The slender one with the sword tried and failed to get past his armor, so he swatted her away.

God it feels good to have a body again! Maybe I’ll go swimming after this!

Elliot had been paying attention when Calvin did his experimentation with different warp mutations, and he was in an even better position to take advantage of them.

He reached into the Mage Armor pocket, took the bio material from Calvin’s little balls of Mage Armor and mixed it with Pasha’s blood and made Harbinger keratin reinforced with the warped toughness upgrade, creating a shiny black keratin armor to protect his body from the physical.

The Mental attacks were fairly easy to deal with by creating a sub-brain inside the blood sphere that broke him out of Illusions in fractions of a second. it was a bit like bitcoin technology, with the other brains correcting his if they detected tampering.

They’d gotten the drop on him at first, but he was rapidly turning the tide. Silly Kala, tricks are for kids. He didn’t really have anything against her, though. If his boyfriend’s body had been taken over by someone else, he’d probably try and murder them. Not that Elliot wanted a boyfriend.

Of course, he wouldn’t Kill Kala, seeing as she was Calvin’s girlfriend, and he’d already promised to take it easy on anyone or anything Calvin had penetrated. Killing her after promising that would just be rude, but finding a way to deal with her that didn’t involve murder or permanent lockup was going to be tricky…

Ooh, I can eat real ice-cream now, and visit wrathful vengeance on those who oppose me! and itching! I can itch again! I wanna itch something right now! No wait, gotta fight first.

“Hey CALVIN!”

“Eh?” Elliot glanced to the side, spotting a musclebound idiot floating in the air a hundred yards distant.

“This is for the leeches you put in my pants on my twelfth birthday! They had to burn them off my ass!”

Heehee! Good one, oh shit what is THAT!?

The arrow surrounded by crackling green energy seemingly approached in slow motion as Elliot tried every trick in the book to slow the fucking thing down.

When he yanked himself to the side with Bent, the arrow curved to track him. When he created a wall of reforced keratin, It burned through it like a hot laser through soft butter.

Crap,crap,crap.

Elliot grabbed the dimensional blade off his waist, forcing it to grow a mutated Refraction Spinner in the blink of an eye, creating a pocket of warped space to deflect the burning projectile.

It tore through it like wet tissue paper.

The bolt of green caught Elliot in the chest, boring a grapefruit sized hole through Elliot’s liver, evaporating a bit of his right lung in the process.

****Baroke***

“Haha! Take that you fucker!” Baroke shouted, pumping a fist as he began falling back down. Actually, this is pretty scary! “Ack!” Baroke flailed, trying his best to achieve lift as he fell back down to the rooftop where Kala was waiting.

Baroke landed less than gracefully, his left arm and right hand puncturing through the wooden roof, left hand holding Betty above his head.

He yanked his limbs out of the building and stood. “That’ll take him out of commission,” he said, standing up and meeting Kala’s gaze with a nod. “I’m sorry you had to find out about Calvin’s true self like this, but hopefully now you can move on. Maybe you could date a nice regional warlord?”

Kala silently pointed up into the sky. Baroke followed her gaze.

“You shot me in the liver!” Calvin shouted, pointing at the huge hole in his chest. Baroke could see blue sky out the other side. There was only a little bit of blood oozing out the sides, far less than there should have been. “What kind of asshole shoots someone in the liver!?”

Calvin looked like he was about to do something about it, but he was forced to block another strike from the oversized axehammer.

“That’s…weird. He should be dead, right?” Baroke asked.

“Did you hear the part where I said he was undead?” Kala asked, her eyebrows knotted.

“I…I did not hear that part,” Baroke admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

***Calvin***

“Calvin, I hate to do this to you, buddy, but I’m gonna have to kill your archer friend. He might be able to kill us.” Calvin heard Elliot mutter to himself. He glanced up from the board full of letters and numbers to see what was going on.

Calvin’s view was of his own chest, a massive hole punched through it, His own fingers exploring the size of the wound. He snorted.

“Good luck with that. You haven’t even got to the hard part.”

He glanced back down

“How about ElliotRox69?” Nadia suggested over the ‘Intercom’ “He’s always saying something ‘rocks’ when he means it’s awesome or great. And the sixty-nine is obvious.”

“Yeah, I’ll give it a shot,” Calvin said, entering the password.

Incorrect Password.

Would you like a hint?

Y/N

Calvin sighed and tapped ‘N’, writing down the wrong password on his rapidly growing list of wrong answers. The hint was ‘No hint for you, foo’, which was exceptionally unhelpful and irritating. Still, didn’t matter how long it took.

It didn’t matter how many trillions of combinations there were.

Either he’d brute force the damn password, or Elliot would die first. One of those two things would happen.

***Elliot***

Alright, gotta prioritize the archer. He’s got that no-counter max DPS bullshit going on.

Elliot flung his attackers away from him and flew upward on jets of compressed air from his armor’s auto-magical flight. He raised the sphere of blood up and gave it a good spine, showering the earth below him with Harbinger blood seeded with Warp and Bent, programmed to find and destroy anyone over seven feet in height and smelly.

The droplets morphed into puffballs of corrupted flesh, sending ruddy, pulsing tendrils down into the earth and growing at a staggering rate until they exploded open, thousands of his happy little Harbinger killing machines bursting forth to slice up giant archers.

I really like the design on the Harbinger mutants. It’s the crest on top of the emaciated killing machine that really sells it. Like Bob Ross always says, No mistakes, just happy accidents. Well, maybe Giger would appreciate what I’m doing here more than Bob.

Kill him.

The dog-sized creatures sprung forward by the thousands. One of them didn’t have the power to take the giant down by themselves, but all of them? That kid was going down.

It was at that moment that Kala decided to get annoying, taking a deep draw on her blue glass pipe and exhaling a barricade of smoke, forming up around the rooftop.

What did that accomplish? They’re gonna tear right through it.

Kala reached into her shirt and pulled out an ampule.

The wedding present. Shit. I forgot she had that.

With a bit of pressure from her thumb, the princess snapped the cap off the tiny piece of glass, and turned it over, dropping the tablespoon of undifferentiated Matter onto the ground.

The house underneath her and Baroke was crushed as an enormous fortress made of perfectly smooth Abyssal Steel grew under their feet, overtaking the surrounding buildings, shoving them out of the way in a tidal wave of crushed wood.

A hundred terminal Veterans coalesced out of the ground, manning the walls of the fortress, every single one of them armed to the teeth. Every one of them had gone into the vial aiming for one last hurrah. A fine and noble goal, but…

Elliot hadn’t planned on it being against him.

“Protect him!” Kala shouted, pointing at Baroke. “Kill that!” She directed her aim at Elliot.

“Your girlfriend’s really straining my goodwill,” Elliot said with a growl as the veterans formed a disciplined wall around the only one capable of doing massive damage to him.

People opposing him were coming out of the goddamn woodwork.

A lance of white hot fire blew over his shoulder, intersecting his blood pool and turning it to ash, boiling the outer layer of his armor in the process.

Elliot glanced behind him, squinting against the afterimage.

The Harbinger was floating some fifty feet behind him, arm held out.

Damnit, not you, too.

Elliot raised both hands and aimed a fist-sized beam of Annihilation at the Harbinger and the archer, intending to simply erase their hearts from existence. It cost him a lot of Bent – exactly how much he couldn’t say without the System’s assistance – but it would be worth it to get rid of certain problems.

The dusky skinned sorceress seemingly appeared from behind the Harbinger and fired a counterspell that knocked his spell off target, deflecting the beam just over the Harbinger’s shoulder.

Kala achieved a similar feat with the archer, creating a hole in the floor between the musclebound idiot’s legs.

At the same time, the Harbinger unleashed another attack, composed of an orb of scintillating energy that seemed to defy identification.

The orb crashed into the right hand held defensively in front of him and winked out, disintegrating everything up to his ribcage.

Yep. Retreat sounds good. Retreat is always an option. Elliot thought, glancing at the white bones sticking out of his side. Probably should have run right off the bat. I blame overenthusiasm from having a body again. Well, no time like the present.

Elliot dipped his left hand in his chest and flung the thick dead blood in a hundred different directions, each droplet forming a sub-brain.