Dashing devil 5 bold beg.., p.20
Dashing Devil 5: Bold Beginnings, page 20
Boyd wasn’t reliant on the mental comms Mind Witch had established to communicate with his Devoted. Each of them could sense him almost as well as he could sense them—especially when he was holding the Bonds they shared as wide open as he was currently doing. They could sense his desires just as he felt theirs.
And right now, he desired a wall to appear just in front of Atlas.
Hopewing summoned a golden barrier into existence precisely where he needed it as Boyd dropped into a crouch before springing into the air. Atlas crashed into the barrier with his knees first and brought his fists down onto it with a shout. He was no Last Dragon, though, so the golden barrier didn’t even quiver.
However, it did vanish from existence just as quickly as it appeared—a split-second before Boyd’s rising fist would have crashed into it. Instead, his big red fist slammed directly into Atlas’s nose. The barrier had robbed Atlas of all of his momentum, leaving him more or less stationary in the air. That is until Boyd, a large and heavy object in motion, imparted all sorts of force directly onto his face.
Newton’s third law did its thing and the big demon came to a stop in the air before dropping to the ground with a casual bounce of the knees. Atlas, meanwhile, went flying through the wall between two arching armored windows set over the stage. With a shout, he soared off into the forested valley beyond.
Pandemonium broke loose as all of the rich and powerful people present realized that their money wouldn’t buy them a Hero who could stop the big demon right in front of them. They started pushing and shoving for the nearest door, kicking and punching each other to try to be the one first out. Each shouted over the others, insisting that their importance was enough to make the rest of the group clear a path for them.
Crystallize lifted her hands over her head as dozens of shards of shimmering crystals with dangerous edges appeared in the air around her. Each was about as long as Boyd’s forearm and looked decidedly lethal. They made a tinkling sound that could barely be heard over the yammering crowd of panicked socialites as they came into existence.
“Atlas is an idiot, but he was right about one thing,” the enraged woman shouted over the fleeing mass of socialites. “The only possible way out of this we have is through you, so fuck off and—oof!”
Her less-than-polite request for Boyd’s death was cut off by a pissed-off six-tailed Kitsune’s flying dropkick delivered directly to Crystallize’s ribs under her raised left arm. Boyd would have smirked, but his heart stopped instead as the crystals that were still floating in the air dropped on his fox-featured love, tearing into her.
‘I hate that,’ Boyd groaned over their mental comms as Kitsune’s illusionary clone was torn into wisps of fiery red and crimson-green smoke.
‘Sorry Big Guy,’ Kitsune replied over their telepathic comms as he spotted two of her, one collecting the duck-billed woman from the cage while the other scooped up the dog-featured boy.
Another Kitsune appeared and charged behind the curtains where the one that had been destroyed had kicked Crystallize. Now that she had six tails and a matching number of illusions, it only took three of them merging to make a ‘real’ copy of her.
With potentially three of her, Kitsune could now officially pull off a one-woman orgy.
‘I felt your heart break a little just now, so I’ll try to give you a warning in the future. But honestly, I didn’t expect that me to go down so quickly. I had to get her away from the kids, though. This me will be more careful. She’s down but not… damn.’
Another Kitsune clone appeared and charged behind the curtain.
‘Never mind, not down.'
At that moment, Atlas came bursting back through the wall and landed about twenty yards away from Boyd before coming right at him in a sprint. Boyd stood perfectly still, wondering how many times he could get away with the same trick. Atlas wound his fist back as he closed, telegraphing a punch so loudly that the big demon almost decided to change how to counter it—almost.
He hadn’t been able to use the barrier-n-punt tactic in so long, though, that he decided to stick with the classic. Hopewing’s barrier appeared exactly where and when he wanted it through a combination of years of practice during childhood and adolescence, combined with a level of communication possible only through the Bond he shared with his angel.
The golden barrier disappeared just in time for his sweeping tail to pass unencumbered through that space to catch Atlas in the side. Boyd completed his quick spin, one practiced more in dance class than in combatives’ training, just in time to see Atlas crash through another wall. The big Powered skipped off the lawn that surrounded the mansion once before tumbling into and disappearing among the shadows of the forest beyond. Faintly, Boyd heard the echo as he crashed through several trees.
‘Well… shit,’ Kitsune complained as another clone appeared and raced off towards where Crystallize was still out of sight behind the curtains as the other two of her and Mind Witch hurried their charges off the stage.
‘She’s really lethal in close quarters,’ Kitsune reported. ‘I can keep stalling her, but I don’t think I’m taking her down any time soon.’
‘Hermm,’ Silver made a frustrated sound.
Boyd watched her blur around a very scared-looking man in the blue jacket over a black shirt. He looked like a typical high-level manager—slightly overweight from a lack of physical activity but not obese due to a healthy diet. Still, when Silver tried to donkey punch him, her fist just seemed to bounce off his skull as if it were steel. It was as if she wasn’t ridiculously strong.
‘What the heck?’ Silver asked over their mental comms.
She then darted up into the air, aimed her outstretched hands at the man, and unleashed a flurry of silver energy orbs that crashed into him. These… did nothing.
“Oh, come on!” The silver-haired bombshell complained out loud, before trying her eye beams to similar effect.
"No fair!" she huffed in exasperation.
Silver’s foot stomped the air while she anchored her hands on her hips in a clear display of annoyance. It was a mix of frustration and disbelief that this plain-looking man could withstand her formidable attacks without a scratch.
“He’s not on his knees so I get to beat him up… but he won’t get beat up!” she shouted before stamping her foot in mid-air again.
Just then, one of the large round tables that were scattered around the edge of the ornate ballroom the fight was in the process of demolishing arched through the air on a path for Silver’s back. She felt Boyd’s desire for her to dodge to the left and followed it, smoothly sliding out of the improvised projectile’s path and spinning to face her new attacker. Her hand flashed out and a silver ball of energy lanced out, catching the gangly middle-aged man in a beige suit over a blue shirt in the shin.
The silver orb took his leg out from under him while scorching the fabric of his pants and leaving an angry red welt on the skin beneath. He didn’t feel it burn for long, though. Untrained and unprepared, he didn’t get his arms up in time to protect his head after his leg was ripped out from under him. His head cracked against the marble floor of the ballroom, and he went limp.
‘Hopewing,’ Boyd rumbled over their mental comms as he glanced over his shoulder at his angel.
Her suit had gotten an update from Tinker. It was still primarily a white bodysuit, but instead of armored golden plates, it had metallic gold accents strategically placed along her sides, shoulders, arms, and on her thighs. The small change added a very different effect to the full body covering. The gold was meant to accentuate her fertility goddess figure, which she was very excited about.
Hope had not been pleased that her former suit was designed to match, but not outshine, the Blonde Buffoon’s. It hadn’t been long before she’d asked Tinker to make her a new one, weaving her own blonde hair into the gold accents.
A flap of the angel’s wings took her a bit closer before a golden pulse of energy radiated from her halo. It currently glowed gold, despite her proximity to Boyd. She’d said it was a simple act of will to cover the pink-in-his-presence halo with a barrier to hide the sinful effect he had on the symbol of purity. This pulse reached and washed over the downed man who had taken a swing at a Hero way out of his league.
In addition to the mental defense boost it granted, his angel’s halo gave her the ability to heal others at a distance—if only to a limited degree. They had yet to have many opportunities to test it, though, as intentionally inflicted injuries was taken right off the table by several very adamant parties before anyone had the chance to suggest it, not that Boyd intended to have anyone suffer such injuries other than himself.
He had been trained in how to read a room, so hadn’t bothered to press his case.
Hope had said she believed she now had two methods of ranged healing. She could concentrate on up to two people within about ten feet of her and apply her standard—that is, miraculous—level of healing. Then there was the pulse she had just used. It traveled about thirty feet out and offered a significantly reduced level of healing. It was enough to stabilize most injuries but not recover much beyond that.
Seeing as her standard level of healing regrew limbs in seconds, adding a little range to it and allowing her to apply it to two people at once was a game changer. But the pulse was almost as great a boon, as it meant she could stabilize several critically injured people at a distance before following up with the more intense healing as she got within range.
After the pulse washed over the now safely unconscious man, another flap of her glorious wings brought her back for a smooth landing in her original position just behind Boyd where they could cover one another.
Boyd looked through the recently added exit he had launched Atlas through in the ballroom wall and saw him charging back across the lawn. Just then, the newest Kitsune clone was cut to ribbons before it reached the center of the stage as Mind Witch and the two other Kitsunes started moving the Changed away from the fighting and toward the exits.
A very pissed-looked Crystallize stormed out from behind the curtain clutching her ribs on the side the first clone had kicked.
“Got something,” Mind Witch darted away from the group, leaving two Kitsunes to transport three drugged hostages.
Another Kitsune clone leaped up onto the stage and charged the slight woman who had razor-sharp shards of crystals swirling through the air around her. A few intercepted the heavy red velvet curtains that framed the stage, passing through them cleanly and rapidly shredding the cloth that was quite a bit sturdier than most people's skin. Then, she threw her arm out at the charging Kitsune, shredding it into smoke just as easily as before in a storm of glimmering shards.
Crystallize swept her arm and the glittering cloud of whirling death swerved toward the real Kitsune, her other clone, and the Changed they were jointly hustling away from the stage with.
Boyd didn’t even have time to picture their grizzly ends before a golden barrier appeared in the path of the deadly shards and they shattered harmlessly against it. This was almost immediately followed by twin beams of silver energy lancing towards the murderous Powered who was forced to drop the offensive shards as she summoned a thick defensive mass of glittering crystal between herself and the beams.
Boyd was mildly impressed at her reaction speed—not that it earned her any points. Silver’s beams caused shards to explode off the mass of summoned crystals as the woman behind it desperately added more with sweeping motions of her arms.
Just then, Atlas burst back into the room through the improvised exit he had previously made and charged Boyd, who let out a sigh and shifted his stance. Crystallize was the only real threat, but Atlas was always going to be a long slog. The manager in the blue jacket and black shirt, who was likely a nullifier, also complicated matters—even if he wasn’t much of a threat.
It simply made his capture more complicated. If his Power worked the way Boyd thought it did, it dissipated any and all incoming force. It was the only thing Boyd could think of that would allow someone he suspected of being only an A-Rank of taking the various types and intensities of Silver’s attacks.
The way he was struggling to drag the lanky telepath away, that was likely all his Power did though. Boyd’s Black Flame might pierce it, or the manager’s Power might simply stop his fist that carried Boyd’s dark energy. The easiest way to deal with a nullifier was quite literally to take them out of the picture.
The big demon took two quick steps back to get out of the way of the charging Atlas, leaning back a little further to avoid his sweeping arm. By the time his tail flashed out to loop around the passing idiot’s ankle, Boyd had decided on a course of action. First, he yanked the stone-booted foot out from under the opponent that wasn’t proving to be a good test of his new strength.
Unbreakable Atlas’s face slammed into the marble floor, cracking the large slab he impacted. Then Boyd arched his tail up and over himself, taking the big—well, big in any other circumstance—man with it. When Atlas bounced off the marble floor on his other side, Boyd turned and snapped out a kick into the man’s ribs that sent him flying through the wall once more. Atlas created another unauthorized exit on his way out of the ballroom and Boyd turned back to the stage.
Hopewing was still holding her shield in place, covering the retreat of the trio of Kitsunes—the second duplicate having been resummoned—who were now carrying one of the three Changed each and beating a hasty retreat with their vulnerable charges.
They passed and ignored a rather pretty brunette woman in a shimmering red cocktail dress coming the opposite direction. She leaped up onto the stage and Boyd was confused until he felt Mind Witch’s sense of worry. It was a very particular worry she only got when she used her Power to issue a command that might get the controlled party hurt. One he hadn’t sensed in her since back in the PAC during those few short months in shared with her.
The woman hustled around the continuously exploding crystalline barrier and screamed.
Boyd swore he could actually see the soundwaves coming out of her mouth. He just might not be hallucinating, as they generated enough force to send Crystallize skidding and bouncing across the floor to land in a heap against the back wall of the stage.
The woman Silver had designated ‘hottie in red’ turned and hustled back to Mind Witch, who let out a relieved sigh over their mental comms.
‘She was holding up the rear. Dreamed of being a Hero but didn’t make the cut. Thought this was her moment to shine by driving off the big bad Corruptor, but she got distracted breaking up a fight at the door. Now she’s mine,’ Mind Witch reported.
The woman in question made a beeline for Mind Witch, who still needed to establish physical contact to update her commands.
‘Take her and use her to cover the Changed,’ Boyd ordered over the comms. ‘Priority is on getting them to safety.’
‘Yes, Captain.’ She even avoided including any sarcasm in response to his ‘Captain voice’ as she called it.
‘Cloak remains on escort duty with Insight,’ Boyd continued, glancing through the newest exit in the ballroom wall to see Atlas once again charging back at him in a straight line.
While Boyd didn’t consider Atlas a threat, he was a problem. Silver might be able to do some damage to the rockhead, but even that would probably take a while. Standard practice was to slowly wear down anyone with composition-based S-Ranked durability like the idiot Powered. The only problem with letting Silver do that was that in the time this would take, any runners dumb enough to flee into the forest would find out why the valley being called ‘habitable’ for humans didn’t necessarily mean ‘safe’ for humans.
For one thing, very few of the socialites had ever seen a forest before—and they certainly didn’t understand even the basic danger of running through one in the dark. For another, it was nigh impossible to keep every form of Powered plant or animal out of a valley like this. There would be few to no aggressive or expansionist creatures, but the threat of a spider carried on the wind with venom that disintegrates bone was very real. That’s to say nothing of the moths that ignited into four-foot fireballs when startled.
Boyd needed their fastest member ready to grab anybody who lacked even the most rudimentary survival instinct and keep them out of the trees. At the same time, he didn’t want to spend the next few minutes until Silver returned punching Atlas into the distance and waiting for him to run back. There was a risk, a very low risk, that the blockhead might have an actual thought and try something that led to unexpected injuries.
Fortunately, a solution that would allow him to put Atlas down much more quickly presented itself as Crystallize began to stir where she had fallen.
‘Dagger,’ Boyd kept his Captain voice going, knowing that his order wouldn’t thrill his silver-haired love. ‘Blue-jacket, black-shirt is likely a nullifier. Gently pick him up and then move him to one of the holding cells on the Osprey. If you can’t get a grip on his skin, grab his clothes. From there sweep the perimeter for runners. Overwatch, coordinate Dagger’s efforts. Hammer will handle Atlas and Crystallize.’
‘Yes, Darling,’ Silver replied as she darted over to the manager.
After slowly reaching out she was able to get ahold of his lapels and easily lifted him into the air. ‘Freaking nullifier,’ she muttered, ‘I should have known.’ Then, she blurred away with her screaming passenger, his voice quickly fading.
Boyd glanced over to confirm that Mind Witch, Kitsune, and their charges had made it through one of the doors out of the ballroom. They had the available information on the layout memorized, with Mind Witch sharing details learned from the minds of the staff since the operation’s beginning. They would get the kids to safety.
He glanced back towards Crystallize, judging it would take at least two or three more volleys of Atlas-pong before she would be put together enough to be useful for his purposes.
