Episode: 6.5

--- Tempest ---

She paused in talking with her fans when she noticed a number of negative emotions coming off of Amethyst, as she turned and started walking away from the crowd, leading Tempest to make a number of apologies as she moved to follow the officer.

“What’s wrong?” She asked once she caught up to her friend.

“There’s an incident over by Central Square.” Amethyst explained, still listening to something coming out of radio as she frowned. “It’s looking like a Rift opened and let a bunch of Creeps through.”

“Creeps?” She repeated as her face scrunched up in confusion. (But there aren’t any Malcontent left in Baskerville…)

“There’s only four of them so far but after everything the Corruptor did with them,” Amethyst shook her head, completely unaware of the real connection between those things, “everyone is in a state of panic over this.”

“Y-yeah. I’ll um, I’ll get over there before it can get too out of hand.” She nodded a little shakily, as she started ahead of her friend. “Y-you said, ‘Central Square’, right?”

“Yeah and be careful in case something else slips through the Rift!”

She threw Amethyst a thumbs up as she pulled up her hood, before pushing her dreams into reality and kicking off the ground with enough force to crack reality and send her sailing onto the roof of a nearby building, all the while wondering why Malice Creeps were attacking such a public place.

---

“Hey, just out of curiosity, how does that trick with your blood work?” she asked as Ariel did… something to the dissolving remains of the last Creep from a swarm of the things that had been unleashed on the city nearly an hour ago.

“Huh?” Ariel asked looking up from his work with a confused expression.

She rolled her eyes before elaborating. “The thing you used to lure the Creeps around, the one where you cut yourself?”

Ariel blinked before tilting his head. “Oh, that…”

The young Deviant ran a hand through his hair for a moment before nodding as he thought of an explanation. “You know what Malice is?”

She thought about it, remembering some vague lesson she’d had a few years prior during a Deviant safety class at school. “That’s the… stuff Malcontent use to do your thing, right?”

“Yeah.” Ariel nodded. “Creeps are attracted to it, and if they sense the stuff anywhere near a weak point between our dimension and theirs, they’ll tear open a Rift to get at the stuff.”

“So then, that means Creeps are attacking because you’re…” She trailed off not wanting to finish that thought.

“In part because I’m here.” Ariel finished so she wouldn’t have to. “But they’d only show up in places where I bled a lot or unleashed uncontrolled Malice for a few hours.”

She frowned. “Then why are there so many attacks lately? I mean, Malcontent are supposed to be fairly rare, right?”

Ariel gained a dark look that didn’t quite fit his face. “How do you think Geneticist is corrupting people?”

---

(If there’s Creeps then there has to be a Malcontent nearby…)

Malcontent were always a gamble as rare as they were. Most were content to let bygones be bygones outside of their dietary habits, which they instinctively limited to murders and rapists. On the other hand, if someone pushed a Malcontent to their snapping point, they could become right monsters to put down, due to both their downright obscene healing factors and their extremely varied Malice abilities.

Part of her was tempted to call for back-up from one of her friends, but (if there is a Malcontent victim causing this, then coming out in force will only make things worse…)

She shook her head, deciding that if it was a Malcontent, she’d take a chance on the misunderstood race as she landed on a rooftop overlooking Central Square.

With that thought in mind she looked over the square, taking note of the four Creeps destroying thing and leaving some dark liquid everywhere, either pouring from their mouths or vomiting the substance at people.

(Dark water, pale skin, dark hair, no jaws… Jawless! That’s what these are.)

It’d been a while since she’d fought any Creeps, but she still remembered a few details about the more common ones, even if these ones were more a pain for her to deal with than anything else.

(Weak to light and electricity.)

She started weaving together an appropriate dream, before flinching as she watched a civilian get doused in the fluid the creatures were vomiting everywhere.

(He’ll be fine. Their Dark water is physically harmless on its own, though it’s also powerful hallucinogenic whether ingested or through skin contact, so I’ll want to avoid that.)

She tossed her hands into the air unleashing a couple dozen butterflies, some a glowing white, others a crackling blue, and a few a vicious violet. With a quick mental request, she sent her butterfly swarm down towards the street and the Jawless sliding about on the ground.

(If I’m remembering right, they’re also supposed to be… slower on dry land than places with water, though given how long they’ve been here, they’ve managed to completely soak this place.)

As her butterflies made their way down below, she began weaving together another surprisingly more complex dream, before throwing her arm out to the side and bringing a silver sword, thrice as wide and thrice as long as her forearm, into reality.

She held off for a second as the violet butterflies landed on the Jawless before subtly bleeding into their skin, marking each one on her mental map.

With a flick of her wrist she spun the blade, so that she held it by its dark blue hilt in a makeshift javelin throw, before throwing it with a level of force her powers exaggerated with a small jet stream as the blade impaled itself on one of the Jawless, thus pinning it to the pavement.

It took a few bits of will, but she managed to switch her position to where she was holding her sword by its hilt with her boot on the Jawless’s chest, having effectively teleported to her blade, a trick she’d just managed to work out a few months prior.

She moved to twist her sword and finish off the still struggling Creep, only for the creature to sink into the water.

(Right, that’s why you’re supposed to get them on dry land…)

(Forgot that bit, since Ariel always just dragged them out of the water with his shadow gauntlets, rather than giving them an advantage with the water…)

Idly, she pulled her sword out of the ground before waiting as a short distance away a Jawless rose out of the water with a black scar on its pale chest, and a dark glare on its face.

(Well, this is going to be fun…)

With that thought, she ducked as another Jawless decided to take advantage of her momentary distraction to launch itself at her with a small explosion of water, lunging at her in the hopes to drag her to the ground, only to dive into the watery depths as it missed.

Behind her one of her flash-dreams detonated, and the violet butterfly bound to it let her know both where the creature was and that it was stunned for the moment.

Taking advantage of the opening she spun and once more threw her sword at the Creep, this time making sure to impale it to the wall rather than the pavement.

With another dream-step she had her hand on the blade and her boots sticking to the wall as she cleaved the Jawless in two before kicking off the wall and into the air as the Creep exploded into a mass of dark water, a nasty habit of the creatures that she hadn’t forgotten about.

As she flipped through the air, she pushed with her power to buy herself a little more airtime to survey her battlefield.

Below her she could only see two of the Jawless both with their eyes on her, just waiting for the idle opportunity to strike, and due to her connection with her violet tracker butterflies she had a rough idea of where the third was hiding, even if their water threw off her trackers by a fair margin.

Nodding to herself, she had her spark butterflies drift closer to the Jawless while she twisted herself in the air to land on a nearby streetlamp.

With a quick glance to make sure there were no civilians nearby, she pointed her free hand at one of the Jawless that her spark-butterflies had begun to swarm before twisting their localized reality, causing the butterflies to detonate and lock the Creep in a small cage of lightning, that branched out into the nearby water.

The Jawless still above water leaped away from the electrified water before the electricity could touch it.

Deciding to take advantage of the Jawless’s momentary defenselessness, she quickly threw her sword hoping to disorient the Jawless as it landed even if she didn’t have the time to put enough power to impale the Creep into a wall.

As she did this, she felt the haziness between her and her other tracker snap into focus, before kicking off the streetlamp and flying back just as mass of black water impacted her previous location.

A quick glance towards her attacker showed the previously hiding Jawless had risen front the depths to try and shoot her while she dealt with its accomplices.

Without checking to see whether her blade had hit or missed its previous target she summoned it back into her hand with a flash of butterflies and light, before throwing it at the more wily of Jawless, hoping to catch it before it could dive back into the water.

She flipped once to bleed off the momentum of her throw, her feet hitting the ground in a slide as she just barely managed to keep her balance despite the seemingly ankle-deep water’s attempt to trip her.

Her eyes darted between the three Jawless. The Jawless she’d locked in a cage was free, burned, twitching, and despite looking one clean from dissipating, looked ready for another round. The one she’d first tried to impale was picking itself off the floor with a nasty gash on its arm already healing in a flow of black mist to match the scar on its chest. The third Jawless, the one that had been spitting at her before she threw her sword at it, was still moving even with her sword sticking out of its stomach.

(Almost forgot how durable these guys are without a clean killing blow…)

She gave the Creeps another once over as they eyed her, just waiting for the idle moment to strike, all while taking a mental tally of the dream butterflies she still had floating around.

(A few flashers, and a few sparkers left…)

She nodded to herself, as she sent her requests out to the little dreams made reality.

(Alright, hit ‘em hard, hit ‘em fast.)

With a roll of her shoulders, and a twist of reality she shifted, suddenly gripping her blade, while it still impaled the Jawless.

With a twist and a turn, she ripped the blade free from the Creep before spinning and slashing the creature across its chest, giving her the opportunity to kick it back and once more throw her sword at it, this time being close enough to make sure it finished the Jawless off.

Turning around she detonated the various flash-dreams that were fluttering about, stunning the two Creeps mid-attack and leaving them vulnerable enough to warp her blade back into her hand and throw it at the scarred Jawless, making sure to give the blade enough force to impale the Creep and send it flying.

Spinning on her heels as she kicked up the ankle-deep water, she turned to the burned Jawless, and with a few gestures of her hands, unleashed a steady swarm of simple dreams to stun the Creep.

As the swarm flew at the Creep the remaining spark dreams slipped their way into the swarm, giving them the opportunity to finish their brethren’s work by detonating into a number of small spark filled explosions as they collided with the Creep, the accumulative damage eventually building enough to force the Jawless to explode into a shower of dark water that her butterflies kept from reaching her.

Down to the last Jawless, impaled to a wall on the other side of the square, she once more twisted reality around her blade, only instead of warping to the blade or teleporting it to her hand, she had it fly to her hand while dragging its captive.

As the Jawless flew towards her she weaved a number of dreams around her hand, bracing it in the same way she did while dream-running, before delivering a fist that could shatter concrete to the Creep’s face and leaving her sword to drag it away.

Rolling her neck, she couldn’t help but smile as the last Creep exploded halfway across the square.

(Still got it.)