Buzzz. Buzzzz.

Darryl grunted and fished his cell phone out of his pants, glancing down at the message.

Paradox Team Vs Chemestro Team. Est. start in ~5 minutes. Bets?

Darryl opened the illegal app he’d buried in the Nexus mainframe and placed a healthy bet on Paradox, because what kind of father would he be if he didn’t?

Even though his track record against that Chemestro kid isn’t great.

Chemestro had been holding back in every interaction they’d ever had, else Perry’d just be a smear on the floor.

Sad but true.

Darryl broke into a grin when he spotted Neuron drop into the digital lobby.

BBE: I hope you’re ready to lose, Tin Can.

10 Million dollars added to the Chemestro team pot.

Tin Can: I’m always ready, which is why it never happens.

50 million dollars added to the Paradox team pot.

Anon5: What are the odds here?

Anon 1: Dunno, but I’m betting on C. Team to win.

2 Million dollars added to the Chemestro team pot.

Anon 3: But P. Team has more players.

Pushes-up-his-Glasses: P team is significantly underpowered in comparison to C team. Paradox and Hardcase are only as good as their suits, Plagius is too slow to catch anyone, and Wraith has limited range and power. Breaker is their only chance at taking C out of the fight, but they’ll still be working against a teleporter, Ranged Bruiser, and miniature Mass-Driver. Chemestro simply picked a stronger group of team-mates. I don’t see P Team winning easily, or at all. I’ll set the odds.

Admin has set odds at 3:1 favoring C team to win over P team.

Bets began to flow in, largely favoring Chemestro, while Darryl rode the elevator out of his lair, stepped into the kitchen and grabbed a popcorn bag, nuking it before sitting down on the couch in front of the living room T.V.

He tuned into Nexus security footage and was stuffing his face with buttery goodness when Claudette wandered into the living room in her underwear, yawning.

“What’s going on?” She asked, glancing over at the TV, where a super was chasing a young man around a suburban neighborhood.

“Movie?” Darryl said with a shrug. A moment later, Paradox and his team arrived, Hardcase’s distinctive mechsuit making it obvious who it was despite the distance from the camera.

Claudette glanced back from the TV and fixed him with an ominous stare.

BUZZ

Anon 12: @Admin Can you add odds for the Trigger High Super winning/escaping?

Pushes up his Glasses: On it.

Claudette glanced down at his phone and gave him a disapproving look. “I thought Nexus stripped that gambling app off their servers.”

I mean, they said they did, but the annual profit is in the hundreds of millions, and rich people really like their gambling, so…

“No comment,” Darryl said with a shrug. “Popcorn?” He offered his wife the bag.

“You’re incorrigible.” She huffed, taking the bag away from him and snuggling up beside him, crunching on his popcorn as Chemestro’s team landed on the other side of the street.

“You bet on our son, right?”

“Well…” Darryl said just to egg her on.

“You bet on our son, RIGHT?” she demanded.

“I did, I did,” Darryl said, chuckling as she ground her knuckles into his chassis.

“You know he’s probably going to lose, right?” Darryl asked.

“That’s not the point, is it?” Claudette said, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“How did your mother raise such an angel?” Darryl asked, stroking her hair.

“A maid named Jennifer raised me.” Claudette murmured.

“Ah.”

The two of them tensed up as Monolith threw the first blow, earning Anon 32 a modest payout: everyone knew Monolith was gonna throw the first punch.

***Paradox***

“I guess we’re doing this,” Perry muttered, peeling himself out of the van’s crumpled sheet metal.

Hardcase won’t be back from dropping off that jock for another thirty seconds or so, meaning I only have access to Breaker, Wraith, and Plagius.

Chemestro is suppressing Breaker pretty hard, we need to get his attention on something else, but there’s only me, Wraith, and Plagius to do that.

Monolith is going to keep me busy, but I think Heather can outmaneuvar Dazzle and Jetset. They don’t have that much power anyw-

Jetset gave an apologetic shrug and held up a palm. A blast of wind shoved Wraith away from him, and Plagius burst into confetti, reappearing a moment later high in the sky above them, removed from the fight entirely.

Crap. We’re gonna lose.

27 seconds until Plagius lands.

Perry’s mind was awhir with rapidly discarded plans as he watched Chemestro stalk towards the frightened goth girl, whose arms were twisted painfully around behind her back by artificial air pressure.

A moment later, Perry’s field of view was dominated by obsidian knuckles as Monolith took another swing at his face.

“So I guess you got downgraded to the minor leagues,” Perry said, ducking under the swing and leaning out of the way of the next strike.

“It’s your fault, you little shit!” Monolith shouted, punctuating a strike with a cleverly concealed energy blast that caught Perry in the chest and blasted him back through the wrecked van, tumbling to a halt in a delicately manicured lawn, putting a long streak through the grass.

Plagius ETA 20 seconds.

Wraith gained a long, snakelike form that allowed her to push through the overwhelming wind and tackle Jetset, winding around him for a stranglehold.

Jetset seemed entirely unaffected, standing still with an expression of concentration on his face before a blast of pressure flew out from him in every direction, dislodging Wraith and sending her noodle-like body flapping into the distance.

“You know, if a week-long absence is enough to take you out of the game, then I doubt you were actually that important in the first place,” Perry said, pointing Dregor’s Flacidity at Monolith.

“Gah!” Dazzle shouted as Perry fired the shot, and Monolith burst into confetti, appearing right beside Perry.

Perry tried to duck, but wasn’t fast enough to dodge the feral punch that sent him skidding along the concrete.

Plagius ETA 15 seconds.

“Why didn’t you just strip his armor!?” Monolith demanded recovering his balance after the teleport, while Perry climbed to his feet. “I coulda pasted him!”

“I tried,” Dazzle shouted. “it’s like moving an entire building!”

Nice to know the resistance to Chemestro’s abilities that I designed into the suit has fringe benefits.

“Yeah right, you’re just trying to make me look like a punk in need of rescue.” Monolith growled.

“Seriously?” Dazzle demanded.

“Just strip the armor, kid, I’ll do the rest.” Monolith rolled his shoulders.

“I told you, I CAN’T.”

“Don’t you fucking contradict me!” Monolith shouted.

“Monolith,” Chemestro said with an even tone as he turned toward them. The goth chick was over his shoulder, a rag made of her own leggings stuffed in her mouth. “You do not give orders. I give orders.”

Monolith winced. “Sure…sir.”

“Good. Dazzle. You need to think smaller. More precise. Teleport a small piece of Paradox’s weapon and it ceases to function and therefore ceases to be a threat.”

The exposed silver dish of Dregor’s Flacidity on his forearm puffed into a tiny bit of confetti, disarming the spell.

Damnit.

Plagius ETA 10 seconds.

“Plagius, I’m going to catch and throw you,” Perry said into his intercom. “keep yourself braced for it.”

“AAAIIII!” Plagius’s scream came back over the channel. Perry had to assume he was on board with the plan.

“Wraith, you still good?”

“Working my way back, five seconds!”

“Switch with me!” Perry said.

Wraith 5 seconds, Plagius 8 seconds.

It’s gonna be tight.

Perry lunged forward and caught Monolith off-guard with a furious assault, slipping through the obsidian man’s defenses and battering his stone face with power-armor enhanced punches.

Crunch.

“Ah, ya little brat-“ Monolith said as his nose was bloodied, snarling in pain as he waded through Perry’s punches as if they were a those of a toddler, reaching for him.

“Here!” Wraith shouted over the intercom. Perry ducked and lunged under Monolith’s arm and whipped out his left hand and triggered his newest spell before before Dazzle could see what was happening.

Jetset was frowning curiously as Wraith wrapped around the bruiser’s face, cutting off his breathing and vision, slipping out of his hands as Monolith tried to pull her away.

POW.

Wraith exploded into confetti as an arc of lightning caught Dazzle full in the chest.

Static shock (neophyte)

In one hand, hold the Zenith Amber and kint hide together, so that the kint fur glides across the surface of the amber. Hold the Maiard stinger between two fingers so that it remains in contact with the amber from the other side.

Rub the kint fur against the Zenith Amber and a Small bolt of electricity will leap out of the Maiard stinger, striking whatever the stinger is pointing at.

Proper hand position illustrated below.

The output is limited and nonlethal, producing a mild tingling contraction in the target’s muscles. Can be used as a self-defence measure for noncombatants to escape, as it is quick and easy to use, but ultimately, it is not suitable as an offensive spell.

Buried in his armor’s left forearm, a Spell-disc was controlling the three ingredients. What had been supposed to be a pencil thin arc of electricity had become a wrist thick bolt of lightning that slammed into Jetset’s torso and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

Perry winced. The hyperweave the teleporter was wearing had absorbed a massive amount of the shock, but Dazzle was definitely going to be feeling that.

I’m sure Chemestro can afford his hospital bills.

Wraith reappeared about five feet above Monolith, while Perry took three lunging steps forward, activating his jets to glide across the ground and cover the distance.

Plagius ETA 3 seconds.

“Wha-“ Jetset’s eyes widened as he stared at Dazzle writhing on the ground.

“AAAAAAAH!” Plagius landed in Perry’s arms, straining his back despite the power armor’s reinforcement. He blasted his jets to give them extra momentum, and flung Plagius toward Jetset, translating vertical momentum into horizontal momentum.

They’d forgotten Plagius over the last thirty seconds, and Perry was only gonna get this one chance to use him. Might as well go for the flier, like they’d planned.

Plagius had the presence of mind to trigger his power on contact with Jetset, and the flier’s muscles seized up, gasping in pain as Plagius rode him to the ground.

“Enough,” Chemestro said, and Plagius was flung away from Jetset, while Dazzle blinked, seemingly recovering from electrocution in an instant.

“What was tha-“ Dazzle’s voice was cut off by the crack of lightning as Perry charged Chemestro, targeting him with Static Shock.

He needed to move fast enough that Chemestro’s board reset didn’t take effect and put him back at a disadvantage.

The lightning curled around Chemestro rather than striking him as the Catalyst wove a faraday cage out of charged air, but the brightness of the lightning did obscure the super’s vision, preventing him from seeing Perry’s charge until it was too late.

Perry felt a brief moment of resistance as he slammed through Chemestro’s faux telekinesis and smashed into the super’s chest.

“Civvie?” Chemestro asked, glancing at the formerly rampaging girl slung over his shoulder, his right hand trembling as he held Perry’s armored fist away from his sternum.

Perry nodded, and paused for a breath as Chemestro set aside the trussed up girl, then re-engaged.

“You’ve made it a lot harder to dissolve your armor,” Chemestro said as he caught Perry’s attack. “But I can still brick it pretty easy.”

Perry’s HUD flickered and shut down as Chemestro focused his power on disrupting his armor rather than annihilating it.

Perry slammed the emergency release and tumbled out of his armor as the joints froze up on him.

Outside of his armor, Perry had little to no resistance to Chemestro’s control over air pressure, and he began to fly unwillingly through the air to meet Chemestro’s lazy punch.

Body 6 -> 10

Perry pumped his Body stat right before impact and leaned into it, focusing on Offensive HP use.

HP: 7 -> 0

POW!

A tiny stinging pain in Perry’s leg proceeded an explosion of stars in his vision.

“It’s fairly obvious you’ve got a handful of natural shields that recharge every day.” Chemestro said as Perry staggered backward. “If I know about them I can burn through them in a fraction of a second.”

“Fah, U,” Perry said, blinking the tears out of his eyes as he straightened his busted nose. There was a patch of lightly abraided skin on his leg where Chemestro had attempted to disintegrate him eight times in a fraction of a second, burning through his HP as a result.

The eighth time, Chemestro had simply stopped once his power took hold, rather than disintegrate Perry’s entire leg.

He’s still taking it easy on me, Perry thought with a scowl.

“I expected that to knock you out,” Chemestro said, frowning with a cocked head. “What did you do to your body?”

“Nun o your bidness,” Perry said through his blood-stuffed nose.

“Care to back off before things get worse for you?” Chemestro said, motioning to the street and raising a brow. “You’re past the point where you can win this. This capture is mine.”

“Hey asshole!” the goth girl said from the sidewalk, where she’d tugged the gag out of her mouth.

A huge wave of invisible energy wrenched itself out of Chemestro and disappeared down the girl’s throat, causing all of Perry’s hairs to stand on end.

The newly Triggered super doubled over and collapsed to her knees as a powerful black form climbed out of her mouth, extending her jaw wider than what should be humanly possible.

It was humanoid, with sharp edges and tightly controlled angles. And it radiated fury.

Crap.