In over his head

A.K.A Chapter 19

Quake tore through hordes misshapen creatures with gaping maws and sharp claws. His nine tails lanced through the alien swarm, piercing flesh with ease.

‘The enemy real enemy is hiding out on that observation deck. They’re trying to weed us out and wear us down with these weaklings. The logical option is to take the fight to them and end it quickly.’ Quake deduced as he stuck his hands into the abdomen of an alien and threw them wide like he was dramatically opening a set of heavy doors.

Intellectually, he knew the level of violence he was committing on these aliens was sort of cruel.

Morally, he knew the things he was doing was reprehensible to most people.

Personally? He didn’t really care.

It was just one of those things that surprised him every now and again. Information that he knew, but didn’t know exactly how he knew.

Jeck had theorized that it had something to do with him attaining sentience.

He had also hypothesized that sentience, in this case, was ‘bringing a non-sentient person up to speed in order to be able to function in the average society’

His Wraith had smarts like that.

‘Not that he always uses them.’ He snickered to himself, remembering the dawning comprehension of a man who knew he just did something stupid on Jeck’s face after he ate molten iron.

A bullet whizzed by his head as he tilted it out of the way. Tracking it with his sixth sense, he watched as it plowed through solid stone like it wasn’t even there. It raced towards one of the underground safe bunkers that littered the cities underground, where it ricocheted off some sort of shield and disappeared thousands of miles below them.

‘Man, Gillian has nothing on this guy!’

He needed to get closer. He had to fight this guy, fight all of them, and test himself.

He leapt ten stories off the ground and broke through paned window of an office building.

Up on the deck, Long-shot was very frustrated.

“Four goddamn people putting up a fight and every single one of them has a method to avoid me sniping their goddamn head off!” He ranted in frustration to no-one in particular.

“Maybe you just suck?” Screamer offered innocently. He’d quickly gotten over his disgust at Split-bodies decapitated head and was now doing keepie ups with it. He was surprisingly good at it too.

Long-shot growled under his breath but kept quiet. Kazzy was slowly getting tired of their back and forth, and he had no desire to be on the receiving end of his wrath.

‘That guy has no sense of humor, I swear.’

Deciding that taking more shots would be more productive than arguing with the moron, he gazed back out over the city.

His species had one very useful trait that was especially good for, among other things, sniping. Their eyesight was special. Three hundred and sixty degree vision as long as it was unimpeded by obstacles such as buildings and terrain. It also had the unique ability to ignore the curvature of the earth. That little tidbit pulled them out of trouble lots of times in the past. Like when he had to snipe through a planet during that princess heist.

From its moon.

Fun times.

He took aim at the one with the shaggy black hair, who had his back turned and was running away from the city like a coward.

By pure habit, he raised the scope to his eyes and watched as he disappeared. He blinked in confusion.

He raised the gun up and down, watching as Jeck disappeared when viewed through the lens, and reappeared whenever he focused around it.

Strange.

Leaving him to be run down by the rest of the crew, he switched his attention to the drill-rat. He caught sight of it running through an office hallway and quickly fired a shot. The damn thing whipped one of its tails around and blocked the shot, then continued running through the hallway, only briefly appearing in the door frame of the offices he passed.

Long-shot began pumping shot after shot into the glass frame of each window. Each bullet was either dodged or deflected. Blood pressure rising, he preemptively aimed two windows ahead and pulled the trigger.

The furry little bastard stopped just shy of the door frame, letting the projectile blaze past his face.

‘Son of a bitch!’ The sniper cursed angrily to himself.

Figuring that enough was enough, he started to actively use his powers.

His ‘dirty little secret’ so to speak.

It was considered a great shame among snipers to actively use their powers when attacking the target. A mark of defeat. If you couldn’t deal with your adversary with your wits and your skills, then you didn’t deserve to wield a sniper.

Long-shot didn’t care about that anymore.

‘Fucking stuck-up snobs with their pretentious bullshit. “Oh, but Long-shot, when you gaze into the scope, the scope also gazes into you.” As if any of that matters in the real world.’ He snarked to himself mentally.

Though he could not stop the slight hesitation as he took aim once again.

The cold metal stock against his shoulder, the feel of the grip in his hand, the slight jolt of recoil with each trigger-pull.

It called to him, somewhere deep down inside him.

But strange assassination-based ethics didn’t get results, which was what Kazzy wanted from him, so he sighed and widened his stance as he shifted his gun the Downwinder. A custom machine that he built himself from scratch, it was his prized possession.

It was also specially built to accommodate his power in situations that called for it.

The barrels method of propulsion was a sustained explosion that lasted as long as you held the trigger.

His power was bog-standard for gun wielders, the ability to spawn ammo from nowhere. Some manifested bullets of their environment or siphoned their own power for lasers.

Him? Call him old fashioned, but he preferred good-old fashioned metal.

High quality metal of course, he wasn’t that old fashioned. The process took him a while, learning the exact molecular composition of dozens of highly specialized metal took him months of studying. Honestly, he had no clue how some people did all that dimensional manipulation stuff down in a single lifetime.

But back to his gun.

The synergy between the two was simple, yet highly effective.

He’d essentially turned his sniper rifle into an ultra-precise minigun.

Which he was now hoping to use to great effect.

He took aim at the little drill thing, which had just crashed through the wall and landed in the middle of the street, and made a minute adjustment to his stance. His foot barely lifting off and onto the ground.

The rat’s head whipped up towards.

‘I see! Some sort of vibration-based sense.’

Not bothering with any sort of pre-shot ritual, he just squeezed the trigger tight and held it.

“A hail of bullets.” Didn’t do it justice.

What came out of the barrel was something only comparable to the relativistic kill weapons known colloquially as “Rods of God.” Metal rods accelerated to a significant portion of the speed of light towards a target, often annihilating whatever they hit down to the molecules.

This was more like a solid laser of metal with the occasional gap in between.

The bullets didn’t have nearly as much destructive capacity as the rods, but that was just fine. The mechanics of Layers didn’t allow for molecular destruction anyway. What these bullets were geared towards, and was easy to see from the hole-ridden drill-shield down below him, was piercing power.

Long-shot let out a cathartic sigh, and wiped the sweat off his brow, smiling beatifically. He tugged at the collar of his shirt. He hadn’t expected to break a sweat when he came to this third world part of the Plains, but it was worth it to see that animal’s corpse lying in a puddle of its own blood.

The giant drill that the creature had been using as a shield was slowly tipping over.

He froze.

Screamer, noticing his lack of movement, ambled over.

“What’s up with you? You look..” He trailed off as he hurriedly covered his face and bit his lip.

Long-shots smile faded from his face as he looked down…

“God.”

..into the dark, taunting lip..

“Fucking.”

“Pffftttt.”

…Of the hole Quake had dug to escape.

“DAMMIT!”

“Ahahaha!”

***

Quakes sensitive ears twitched as he heard incoherent yelling coming from the surface. He had a pretty good idea of who it was coming from too.

‘Good, bastard deserves it, especially after whatever that was.’

He winced slightly as dark crimson droplets followed his every step through the small tunnel. He silently thanked whatever God resided in that apartment building for his senses and instinct.

‘If I didn’t see that coming, I’d be filled with holes.’ He thought to himself.

‘Well, more holes.’ He amended after a jolt of pain struck him. A few of the death-pebbles had torn straight through him.

Nowhere fatal, or incapacitating, but it was still annoying.

He smiled widely even as he winced in pain.

‘I can’t wait to get to the top.’

Despite the ache from his wounds, he felt his own excitement grow at the prospect of fighting whoever was waiting for him. He quickly dug his way out, into a secluded street in the shadow of the observatory and began stuffing his mouth with any metal he could find.

With his cheeks puffed out like a hamster, he dug his claws into the Spel and scampered his way to the top.

Long-shot let out a yelp as he barely managed to bring the Downwinder up in time. Sparks blinded him from seeing Quake sling himself over the decks edge and dropkicking him in the face.

All three aliens stared at Quake, who stared right back, interested in seeing his opponents faces for the first time.

To his left stood a skinny green alien with a wide mouth, who had flaps of pale loose skin draping his stomach like loose fabric. He was shirtless too, because apparently that was trending right now or something.

Directly in front of him was the sniper. Tall, light blue with blonde hair and clutching a gun in one hand, and his broken nose in the other. He was wearing sort of military-casual, with a black turtle neck. Also cursing up a storm as he gingerly rubbed his nose.

The last alien was far off to his right, further behind the other two. Bright red skin with a texture like granite. His most defining features were the extra pair of arms coming out of his back. Despite his relatively short stature, Quake could tell that this guy wasn’t to be taken lightly.

All three of them looked surprised, though the red one quickly schooled his features into a more neutral position. That was strange, he’d thought they’d see him coming. Maybe Jeck’s stealth thingy was rubbing off on him?

The leader, because no one else in the city had his presence, crossed his arms.

Both pairs.

“Jeck, I presume?” He stated smoothly.

“No.” Was Quakes abrupt reply.

He quirked an eyebrow at that. “You aren’t? So, why are you here? Surely you must know we’re only here for him, right? You could have stayed out of it.”

Quake snorted humorlessly to himself.

‘Jeck is turning out to be surprisingly popular.’

“I know, but you guys came picking a fight with us, so I wanna know why before I take you down.”

“I can’t pretend to know all that much.” Kaz’bul admitted, “but some very powerful people want this Jeck guy, and if we nab him before they put a price on his head, then we can pick any reward we want.”

His gaze grew in intensity, and Quake instinctively growled under his breath. He sensed the other two slowly moving, positioning themselves, and it put him on edge.

“Earlier you said “us” right? You’re with Jeck. Someone important to him.”

It wasn’t a question.

“So, if I hurt you, then Jeck will be forced to reveal himself.” The rough-skinned man turned around fully and uncrossed one of his arms.

“If.” Quake snarked back with confident that was starting to wane.

Kaz’bul smirked. “Screamer, Long-shot.”

Quake vs Long-shot, Screamer & Kaz’bul

“Break him.”

BEGIN!

They jumped into action.

Screamer raced towards Quake, loose skin flapping in the wind as he threw a kick that the boy ducked under. Long-shot drew the scope up to his eye and let out a yell.

“Pull!”

Screamer ducked into a series of spinning kicks that ended up with him bent over backwards, directly in front of Quake.

Snarling furiously, he brought a clawed hand up and swung to pierce through the green, frog-mans torso. It puffed up as Screamer took a deep breath in, and his claw slammed into. Unable to hold his breath after the force of the blow, he deflated instantly. A tunnel of wind slammed into Quake and launched him into the air.

‘Shit!’ Quake cursed as he flew through the air. Without contact with the ground, he lost his sixth sense and battlefield awareness, something Long-shot took full advantage of as he released a widespread burst of metal. Contorting in the air as best he could, he managed to protect all his vitals.

The rest of his body was peppered with bullets.

He slammed into the white wall of the Spel with a crash, cracking the white material beneath his bulk and leaving a snow angel shaped bloodstain on its side.

He managed to land on his feet, shaking under the strain of standing when most of the muscles keeping him upright were missing pieces.

‘It hurts! I can’t win, what was I thinking?’ Doubt flooded his mind, washing away his previous eagerness. A cold sinking sensation began to settle in the pit of his stomach. He glanced from side to side rapidly, looking for an escape.

Screamer was on his left, glaring while rubbing his bleeding stomach.

Long-shot was on his right, loose, but ready to move.

‘I can’t get away either. Not like this. Think, Quake what would Jeck do in this situation.’

He recalled all the stories Jeck regaled him with, do-or-die stories with his life on the line. What did he do when there was nowhere left to run?

‘Fight to the bitter end!’ Quake roared mentally, letting out ear piercing shriek of scraping metal.

One of his drills transformed into a spring.

That was the unspoken signal for all three combatants to snap into action.

Quake launched himself at Long-shot, who brought the Downwinder up to retaliate. He quickly realized that wouldn’t work, as Quake brought all nine tails, one aiming directly into his line of sight, the others from every other angle.

In a surprisingly acrobatic move, he managed to smack away the leading tail and dodge the follow up lances, the rest sliced, cut and in the case of one, drilled itself halfway into his hipbone. He yelled in agony, which was thankfully cut short.

Quake sensed him move before he heard him, and ripped his drills out of him. Spinning on the spot, each drill melded into one another, creating a drill the size of himself with nine coiled wires attaching himself to it.

Screamer, who had launched himself forward with an air blast, seen the wind-up, and in an effort to delay him, opened his mouth and let out an ear-drum bursting scream, the same he used to destroy the city earlier, only this time with the frequency attuned to shatter metal.

He looked gobsmacked as nothing happened

The drill struck him with the force of a meteor, slamming him into the ground.

Kaz’bul snorted to himself. “Predictable.” He muttered derisively under his breath.

Quake winced as he felt his side rip open a little bit further, giving the two the time they needed to recover.

They rushed forward, attacking in unison. Quake met their charge with claws and teeth. They exchanged blows for a few seconds before the two of them, seemingly used to fighting with each other, pushed themselves back using his drills.

Both took aim.

Quake felt Kaz’bul start talking slow steps towards them.

He brought up his drill shield, wide and stubby and slightly curved. It covered a wider surface area than the other variations.

They fired, Long-shot’s bullet stream forcing him backwards, while Screamer’s air blast lifted him off his feet, into the air.

Thump-Thump-Thump!

He twisted his head.

His eyes widened in surprise and shock.

Kaz’bul grinned savagely mid-leap, twin fists reared back as far as he could pull them.

Time seemed to stand still as he made direct eye contact with the red titan. Black pupils, black iris and white sclera. He looked deep inside them and found them empty.

No greater desires.

No greater wants.

Nothing…more.

Just glee and joy at the destruction and pain he could cause, because he could cause it.

He’d seen eyes like that before, full of greed regardless of who he hurt.

Granite limbs swung forward and hit him like a double barrel shotgun blast. Air raced out of his lungs as they were crushed beneath his fists. It felt like someone took a hot poker and branded him right on the stomach.

He crashed into the Spel for the second time, just a few feet off the ground. He coughed and a mixture of blood and vomit clogged his throat.

“A cornered rat always fights back. I guess that old adage has some truth to it, huh?” Kaz’bul grinned smugly.

‘I am no rat!’ Quake tried to growl, instead a gross mixture of bodily fluids pushed itself past his lips.

“Nice one boss!” Screamer crowed, clapping his hands noisily.

“Thank you Screamer, please, calm yourself, it was nothing- “ He lapped up the attention before all three froze.

They didn’t move.

They couldn’t move.

The air around them quieted down and stilled, not something that would happen this high up. A shiver ran down their spine, Long-shot and Screamer began to sweat. A mysterious pressure began to weigh down on them.

Something old and terrible and many had just turned its gaze towards them.

And it was angry.

‘Uh-oh.’ Thought Kaz’bul to himself. ‘I’d better finish this quickly.’

He was not panicking.

Quake watched him leap forward in slow motion, or perhaps, his own perception sped up?

‘No, I can’t die here, not yet!’ He cried to himself. He felt scared, terrified that he might not get to see the wide world before him after he’d seen so little of it.

As the titan drew closer, the strangest thing seemed to happen, for a single, imperceptible second, Kaz’buls form wavered to that of skeleton, poised to strike with a scythe, wearing dark robes and…a pink apron?

Closer still, Quake didn’t close his eyes.

‘Please, save me Jeck.’ He begged internally, calling to the void.

Closer again.

‘I don’t want to die!’

His vision filled with white.

***

Foliage covered the street. Grass, flowers and trees of all shapes and sizes grew directly out of solid concrete and steel, linking skyscrapers, shops and every building in between with fairy bridges, bridges of living, growing wood.

All this was ignored by the mob of aliens Jeck was dismantling on his path out of the city in favor of running screaming, both at him and away from him.

Regardless, he continued sprinting, dodging enemies and shards of flying glass and other small objects, until he reached the city limits. He knew exactly where they were, because as soon as he crossed them, the time-distortion that affected him disappeared, and he was able to move at full speed again.

He also discovered something else.

‘These guys are slow as hell outside the city.’

Though they were leagues stronger than any civilian, the aliens giving chase weren’t quite as fast as they were strong. Once they all crossed the invisible boundary, they died without even realizing what happened.

He quickly mapped out a line in the dirt, where city and country met and started humming a song while experimenting with the boundary.

“Let’s get down to testing, to confirm, my hunch.” He hummed, though he reluctantly stopped when another lightning bolt struck a foot in front of his face.

He honed in on the three figures on the observatory deck. Opening his maw wide, he let loose a laser. It flew forward at just under the speed of light and slowed to a crawl once it crossed the line in the sand.

“Hmmm.”

He quickly ran through the list of hypotheses he had. This wasn’t something he could [Comprehend], though he wasn’t deterred. Not using that Aspect was one of his favorite things to do.

Lasers without the intent to fight or kill were slowed.

So were the trees he sent, both underground and above it.

Fire propagating quickly through the aforementioned trees practically ground to a halt

Sand he ground up from the dirt flowed in great waves before becoming little more than dirty clouds.

Any weapon he threw was reduced to the speed of a tennis ball.

Idly he noticed Quake and the others movements inside the city, but they were moving so slow compared to him that he almost forgot they were there.

Several more experiments later, a second to those inside the city, subjective years to Jeck, he noticed something.

Quake was at the Spel, battered and bruised.

Jecks eyes widened imperceptibly and his gaze grew deeper and deeper.

Purple eyes focused like laser, magnifying as the weight of a history quadrillions of years old, bore down on the city of Dello-Whorl.

Even Ghost stiffened at the sheer bloodlust radiating off of Jeck.

Though his expression was neutral, he’d never seen the Wraith so angry.

The enemy leapt towards him with outstretched fists.

‘Please, save me Jeck.’

Like it never happened, the pressure was gone. Jeck exploded into action. His brain racing, opening subroutines and taking full advantage of its bio-mechanical nature to have multiple trains of thought running at once.

All while two thoughts ran through his mind.

KILL.

PROTECT.

The two warred for dominance but only one was left remaining. His brain had also come to its conclusion.

‘Please let this work.’ He begged in his mind, dashing forward.

Three steps until he reached the barrier.

The first pushed him to the speed of light.

The second pushed him far beyond it.

The third, he jumped. Nanometers before coming into contact with the boundary, he hurled himself into the void.

He tumbled through non-existence, head over heels as he continued towards the Spel, retaining his prior momentum, but his joy was overshadowed by his need to act.

Flipping into position, he clipped through the floor phased through Kaz’buls back, turning solid the instant he left his body. He grabbed the titans red hands with his own, crossing them over his chest and braced himself.

His white cloak flared out behind him as he skidded to a stop, just in front of Quake.

Giving Kaz’bul a shove to make some distance, the black rod he showed before popped out of his palm. He swung it upwards, but the four-armed man retained enough of his wits to throw himself backwards into a series of handstands, only receiving a cut on the chin for his brief hesitancy.

The other two didn’t, and stared at the man who seemingly broke a rule they thought could never be broken.

Jeck turned to Quake and gave him a bright smile.

The boy’s voice was shaky.

“You came.”

The sheer relief on Quakes face was almost enough to make his upper lip start trembling too.

“Of course, I did, you’re my little buddy, right?” He said gently, gingerly lifting Quake out the crater he was stuck to and setting him on the ground.

Quake nodded as vigorously as his injuries would allow him.

Jeck looked at the bullet holes and blood that covered Quakes body and felt his temper flare up again though he reigned it in quickly. He pointed a finger at the boy and began healing his wounds.

Quake, almost anticipating his move, held up a hand to stop him before he could do anything more than stop the bleeding.

“You can fight like that?”

“Yes.” He glared determinedly around him at the other fighters, promising pain and vengeance for earlier.

“Good, now stiffen up that upper lip. You have those two?”

“I owe them a little pain, but that sniper is going to give me trouble, especially on this wide-open platform.”

The two jumped together back-to-back as the three enemies formed a triangle around them.

Jeck smirked. “Looks like I’ve been slacking as your teacher. Alright, Lesson two! If you can’t win the game you’re playing,” He slammed his palms together. Trees sprouted from every surface on the observatory deck, crisscrossing wildly, creating a dense maze of foliage and obscuring their vision.

Quake vs Long-shot & Screamer

Jeck vs Kaz’bul

“Flip the fucking table!”

Begin!