Disabling mad science wasn't a particularly novel or difficult trick. Controlling technology was the easiest thing to do with the principles of control. However, I had forgotten more about this technique than this Johnny-Come-Lately had been dripfed by the world's worst mentor, and I knew the weaknesses and had my own counters.

Said counters mostly served to keep me from dying when a ray gun slid out of Gideon's sleeve and into his hand, and he launched me across the warehouse floor.

"Cute," I said, very loudly. I really hoped everyone up on the roof could hear me, and that they were coming in to help sooner rather than later. "It's a decent plan; it'd almost work."

I dropped and fell sideways into another shoulder roll, dodging Gideon's next shot, and drew my own gun. Two of the important weaknesses of this technique- often called the Stopwatch in demiurge parlance- were: 1) the Stopwatch can only turn off things that can be turned off; things like passive armor were immune to it, and 2) the Stopwatch is frequently tuned specifically towards disabling mad science, to eke out that extra bit of performance.

My Colt Python, however, was perfectly mundane, and Gideon couldn't stop me from shooting him in the wrist.

He yelled in pain, dropping the gun, and I grinned. Then I threw myself backwards as Bouley landed where I'd just been, in the intersection of a long aisle and a cross-aisle. I hate these stupid villains.

Bouley's name was a pun on Bully and Boule, and their power was to turn their flesh into monocrystalline silicon, giving them enhanced durability and density. There was no way in hell I could kick this guy's ass on my own. That's why I usually used mind control, which wasn't an option with Gideon's Stopwatch field.

Arms wrapped around Bouley's waist, picking him up and then suplexing him into the concrete between a row of steel shelves, empty of everything but cobwebs and rust.

"Fuck, am I glad to see you," I said as Lady Venus watched Bouley turn back into a fleshy human, groaning and curling up.

"There really is a first time for everything," she said dryly, provoking a snort and a grin.

I grit my teeth as Billy the Squid tried and failed to perforate me from behind, standing near the back of the warehouse. You care about human life, Roxy. This dickhead is beneath you, a flailing child who needs correction more than punishment. Don't kill him.

I shot him in the stomach, and he crumpled like tissue paper. That probably wouldn't kill him anytime soon.

"Get that dickhead in the labcoat," I said, turning back around and watching Gideon make a tactical retreat, stage right.

"Got it," Venus said, flying down the cross-aisle after him, and getting interrupted by a spear tackle from Voltaire, who'd been managing to hide behind, or possibly on top of, a shelf. Voltaire was a villain with the power of flight and a weird mishmash of bullshit with lightning; getting shocked filled up an internal pool that could be discharged as super-strength or just directed lightning.

"Or distract all the others, so I can get him," I said, watching the two duke it out, their fight moving away from Gideon and towards the mass of controlled villains. "That works too."

I dashed down an aisle of empty shelves, parallel to Gideon's path, not wanting to run into another ambush that Venus simply hadn't triggered yet. While the shelves being empty deprived me of cover from ranged attacks, the emptiness did improve sight-lines. Gideon could hide from my scanners, but he couldn't hide from my eyes.

What could hide from my eyes, however, was a vampire, dropping out of invisibility to leap at me with bared fangs and foot-long razors for fingernails.

"Fucking shit up my nose I hate vampires I hate vampires I hate vampires," I said, ducking under Wannabe Dracula's claws and ending up behind him. The rusty stench of blood hung from him, a telltale sign of vampiric magic that wasn't being hidden.

I reached into a pocket, withdrawing a silver Star of David on a chain, and, clenching the chain in my fist and the Star on my knuckles, I rose up in a vicious uppercut, supremely confident that God would back me up here. And back me up he did- the silver seared the vampire's jaw and physically repelled them, lifting them off the ground and throwing them back a good distance.

The vampire scrambled to their feet, fear warring with rage.

"May your memory be a blessing," I prayed, brandishing my faith as a weapon. For reasons that occult and religious scholars loved to debate over but which were not fully known, strong religious faith was harmful to vampires, reacting poorly with their inherent blood magic.

And as a demiurge, whose soul bent the world to her will, faith was something I could have whenever I needed it.

"You- fuck!"

The vampire was set upon by the pouncing werefox, cunning and sharp and ravening, and I pocketed my faith, turning to pursue my foe once more, faithful in Lisa's blooming skill and ferocity.

I came out into another cross-aisle, and immediately got blindsided by Rattlesnake Dick. He could store his movement, holding still, and then moving at blinding speed. There were limits to how much movement he could store, but it was definitely enough to knock me off my feet and give me several bruises.

"I hate my job," I muttered, as he charged up for the next strike. He surged forward... at a normal human speed, which shocked him, and gave me the opportunity to throw him over my hip and into the concrete.

"It worked!" Akane crowed, flying overhead, a blaster with a radio dish on the business end in her hand. "I was right!"

"Don't get cocky," I warned her, as she turned Rattlesnake Dick into aluminum before he could get back up. I wasn't that worried about it, honestly; transforming people into stone was a fairly common trick among Demiurges, and on the rare occasion it did inflict any sort of actual damage, it was because the device was faulty in a specific way that Akane would've noticed with the mice. "Stick with me. And get down; you're a bigger target up there if you don't know what you're doing."

We ran down the cross-aisle, after where Gideon had been going- I'd lost sight of him, because the sightlines weren't all that clear, admittedly- and skidded to a stop as we found him at the next intersection...

...surrounded by Bouley, who'd gotten back up and snuck through the warehouse towards him, two more villains I recognized, and a vampire I didn't.

Akane lifted her blaster, and pulled the trigger. Gideon's Stopwatch in action, no doubt.

"Bouley, kick his ass for me," I commanded, my eyes glowing green, and two patches of Bouley's face- it was hard to make out details when he looked like he was made of silicon boules- matched. The thing about the Stopwatch is that it isn't absolute. You absolutely can shield tech from the Stopwatch. Everything inside my body was so shielded; that my tentacles weren't was news to me, but I could cope.

"He won't," Gideon said, while I jumped backwards, dodging a vicious strike from Doc Bell that splintered the concrete. "They've all been brought to heel, with Dr. Skinner's techniques. Your control couldn't make a murderer of a mouse, and it couldn't make Bouley turn against his lord and savior."

"You know he's an impostor, right?" I told Bouley, before breaking Doc Bell's nose and wrapping his stomach around a follow-up punch.

Gideon let loose a strangled noise of panic as Bouley turned on him, and his two remaining minions had to turn to face Bouley as I folded Doc Bell like laundry and shoved him under one of the shelves.

"Stand down, lest I strike you down," I commanded the vampire and the other villain- Wattson, Voltaire's usual partner in crime, who simply shot lightning. Supremely useless in a warehouse full of conductive obstructions.

Before I could see whether it worked, Gideon fired his ray gun again- having apparently picked it back up- and launched Bouley into me like a bowling ball, striking me in the chest and not sparing my ribs.

"Roxy!" Akane screamed.

"Get off of me," I wheezed, before groaning. Of course Bouley was unconscious, having been concussed by Venus not five fucking minutes ago.

I tried extending my tentacles, and found, to my delight, that it worked; Gideon's Stopwatch was otherwise occupied now, and I could lift Bouley back up off of myself, up over my head, and stagger to my feet, my healing implant forcing my ribs back into place and fixing the cracks.

"Oh shit," Gideon whispered, before I shot his gun out of his hands again and threw Bouley back at him. Bouley hit his legs with a sickening crunch, and Gideon screamed. Aw, poor baby can't handle having some bones broken? Don't worry, Gideon. You'll get used to it.

I'll help you.

"L-listen, it's just a job for me," Gideon pleaded, scrabbling back on his hands, dragging limp, useless legs along with him. "Doctor Skinner is- well, you know what she's like. I'm willing to switch sides, with the right incentives! What should I call you?"

"I'm the three you forgot to carry," I said, stomping on his foot and provoking another scream. "The form you didn't fill out."

I kicked him in the stomach.

"The variable you failed to account for."

I bent over and grabbed him by the jaw, hauling him up.

"I am your failure, the Grim Reaper of failed hopes and broken dreams. And tonight, I've come for yours."

I reached for the implants in his brain with my own technopathy, examining them quickly and comparing them to my own mental library of common implants. A second later, they began to break, one-by-one. His screaming continued, and his nose bled. One implant remained that I did not break, put there by Doctor Skinner. A reified idea, like all the others, something Skinner had learned from me.

I drew the idea out of his brain, and into my own. Skinner had gifted him the fruits of her mastery, which was in turn the fruit of my experience. This solidified idea, this purest expression of control, was mine.

"Petrify him," I said, letting him drop. "Then go collect the others."

Akane zapped Gideon, turning him into aluminum, and I rose up on my tentacles, taking in the sight of my roommates, my friends, my team, finishing off their fights. Red Fox had finally knocked the fight out of her vampire- damn thing looked like a corpse, but I knew for a fact that it was just unconscious; vampires turned to ash when they died for real. Lady Venus, meanwhile, looked decidedly un-ladylike, surrounded by the beaten and the broken. She had, apparently, only had to kick a few of the stronger villains in the teeth to make the others stand down.

I nodded. After having blitzed through all of these dipshits piecemeal in the past two weeks, I didn't have much respect for the strength of superpowers. But... Well, my sample size wasn't big enough to draw any useful conclusions, and my metrics were flawed too, having mostly been "can I beat them in a fight?" after having spent five years in a far more mature and diverse supernatural ecosystem where my ability to take people in a fight was what determined whether I'd eat.

I called Liquid Courage.

"Villains are captured and contained," I said. "We're at the old warehouse with Welcome to Denver painted on the roof. Got two vampires and possibly a mad scientist, too."

"Oh christ. I'll send a few paddy wagons, but you're on the hook for helping us store those fucking vampires," Liquid Courage said. "I'm also gonna want to debrief you and Vega both."

I sighed. "This is gonna take a while, isn't it?"

"I'll have a pot of coffee ready."