NOVEL WEB 09: Hollerith Trio
In the comics, fights between superpowered beings are often evenly split between banter and action. They're clashes of ideology and goals as much as they are physical contests, with the victor just as frequently being decided through the moral high ground and persuasion as anything else. The closest real fights come to that is the posturing between gang members or personal rivals, between people that have many more commitments than just the fight, that lack training, that may in the end shy away from lasting conditions on themselves or others.
The way the trio stalked up to me, with the presumably physically powerful guy taking center stage while the two girls with less direct powers hanging back to support him at a distance while they said nothing, it was already clear this was not going to be one of those fights... if the destruction and loss of life they'd caused hadn't already clued everyone in of the fact, that was. Their stance and coordination spoke of practice or at least familiarity with fighting as a group, if not necessarily extensive experience. But their tactics also made clear who their heavy hitter was and that whichever of the two girls was responsible for the slowing field, they either were overly cautious or weren't as confident in their defenses vs a single opponent.
I was content to let them get close instead of moving out to meet them. In the meantime I used Force Awareness to get as much information as possible to adjust my tactics accordingly. The problem with all serious fights was twofold; first, the sheer variety of abilities that existed meant that one couldn't rely on a single plan because you couldn't know what enemies could or would bring to bear. Secondly, unless killing was on the table from the get go, one shouldn't hit enemies fast and hard because one couldn't tell whether they could survive any given attack or power. Being able to perceive physical forces gave me a great advantage in such situations because many powers relied on physical components and because durability was a result of such forces.
Specific powers aside, superhumans had almost universally better bodies than humans. The two girls in the back were tough enough to be largely bulletproof and had the kind of false density that let them take a hit from a truck and not be sent flying but not much more than that. They also moved in a choppy, fast-forward-video kind of way that spoke of boosted speed without the agility to match. The huge guy taking point was another matter. His frame appeared to be denser and tougher than a wrecking ball, with inertia to match; a tank could hurt him but not lethally and if he got his hands on it the tank would be shredded in little time. There was also an odd echo around him, his image flickering in my perception. Far more dangerous than the idiot I'd fought in the Mall, but not as much as the invisible monster... which made no sense with the amount of destruction around the base.
It was that last bit that made me decide to dodge his first exploratory blows, while settling on which powers to use. Proximakinesis, Force Adjustment and Force Awareness were a no-brainer, easily slotted into the first triad of available power "slots". Forced Acceleration was mostly useless with the slowing field in effect so it was set aside in favor of a more conservative approach. Immutable Force formed an invisible bulwark around me, fighting against any power that tried to directly alter my body or mind. I felt it seeking out to the slowing field but if it made any difference I could not tell; the hard way it was, then. Keeping it, I filled the remaining slots with Empowering Regeneration and Chronal Leap.
"Tag! You're it!" the bad guy shouted when I dodged a telegraphed uppercut of his, only for a far more sneaky right cross to come under my blocking arms. I tried to dodge again, but the slowing field limited my speed in a way that messed with my every move, something the attacker was both used to and getting advantage of. His fist slammed into my ribs with the force of a tank's main gun... which shouldn't have hurt nearly as much after being diminished by Force Adjustment. I reeled, feeling as if I'd tanked the blow without using my active defense at all.
Glowering at the shit-eating grin I saw through his mask, I returned the favor with a bit more force than initially planned. A tank would have been beercanned by that blow, even the largest wrecking ball ever seriously dented and hurled over the horizon. That did not happen with my opponent. Instead, my fist came to a dead stop, its kinetic energy vanishing. No, not vanishing; it was split to two dozen smaller packets which were subsequently converted to some other form of energy instead of pulverizing superhuman flesh and bone. If I hadn't been watching closely I'd have said the effect was identical to my Force Adjustment, but no.
The bad guy capitalized on my brief surprise to shock me in the jaw. Even as his blow's force was reduced by my Force Adjustment, the blow itself seemed to overlap two dozen times. The net result was an actual increase on the force he delivered so while he was still physically weaker than me it did manage to hurt... for all the good it would do to him.
Before I could retaliate, the black cloud the girl with the arrogant expression under her face concealing mask had conjured finally reached and engulfed us. It, too, was being impeded by the speed limiting effect, but its other abilities did not seem to be. First, while it appeared to be entirely intangible it could exert physical force about on par with a several-hundred-horsepower engine. This might not seem like much where superhumans are concerned... until it is focused down on strangling a target or drilling through their eyes. Against me it tried to do both... to no effect since Force Adjustment and my normal resilience were enough to handle it. Then, it tried to freeze me solid by draining away my body heat... but Immutable Force blocked it entirely. Even with its direct offense failing it would have been crippling against most opponents due to how it absorbed light, heat and sound, leaving them blind and deaf... but Force Awareness was already better than my other senses in a fight and all it did was make the battlefield less distracting.
The big guy I creatively dubbed Big Guy for his raw melee power did not stop attacking when his partner's black cloud engulfed us both, his balance and accuracy undiminished. The other girl, however, did not. Either the cloud blocked her senses... or she was the source of the slowing field and it was her only power. Considering the field could affect me with no apparent strain, it being a solo ability of very great potency made sense. And with that bit of critical information, a plan was already forming.
Big Guy went through well-practiced martial arts forms I couldn't even recognize, let alone match. On the other hand, my Proximakinesis allowed me leverage and attack angles impossible for a human body that still had to play ball with the laws of physics in everything else except scale. Skill fought against impossible leverage and skill won, with a two to one ratio of solid blows to his advantage. Every time I hit him the kinetic energy was split then absorbed, every time he struck his blows were both divided then multiplied by our respective powers with a little bit going through... exactly as intended.
In the meantime Shadow-Girl had settled into another tactic. Instead of trying to freeze or strangle me, her cloud was now trying to cut through the back of my neck, first with what felt like an industrial saw, then with a force akin to a giant drill, then with a laser. Most of my regeneration was focused on stopping her from succeeding, because her output seemed to be growing. No, she didn't have a dozen different powers like me. It took me a minute to realize, but like the other girl she had a single, very strong power; within a given volume she could redirect and transform energy. It looked like a black cloud because she absorbed sunlight, it could freeze and deafen by absorbing heat and sounds, and it could mimic various attacks by delivering the absorbed energy in various forms.
The problem? The longer the fight lasted the more the cloud spread and the more energy she had to redirect. She was already tapping into the raging fires in the surrounding forest and the air currents around us, enough energy to rival a medium-sized power station. Thus, the next time Big Guy tried to punch me, I let him... and when his fist drove into my ribs, I caught it with Proximakinesis. His own powers reacted, Proximakinesis splitting as if trying to hold two dozen guys, while any kinetic energy it applied was absorbed.
"Ah, I see. There's two dozen of you overlapping in the same space," I exclaimed because yeah, it was a rather cool power. "When I hit you you split the force across them so each of you takes less than a twentieth the blow, when you hit me you combine your blows to one two dozen times stronger. Neat!" He tried to pull back, grunting, huffing and puffing and... accomplishing nothing in the end. "Your second power though? Kinetic absorption is not nearly that good. Even against direct force it has things it won't work against." It was my time to smirk as he stood there, motionless. "Like, say, someone trying to hold you rather than punching you," I informed him before holding his chest immobile as well.
His previously disciplined attack devolved to a frantic struggle. With our multiplicative powers working in opposition the net result was his base strength contesting with my Proximakinesis, which scaled beyond my own body's base strength. Not only was I stronger than him to begin with, but the more and longer Escalating Regeneration worked to heal me, the more powerful I became. Our little duel was a foregone conclusion; all I needed was to wait out a body that might be superhuman but was also heavily exerting its every muscle to break my grip.
Shadow Girl tried to help by shifting her cloud's energy output to moving him. Her every attempt to break my grip however was either diminished into uselessness by Force Adjustment when applied to me directly, or was split and absorbed by her comrade's own powers. So she tried to get clever. First my head got hit by impressively powerful Radio waves; apparently she was trying to kill me the way Radar stations would kill birds and small animals.
It was less painful than her attempts at a laser, though the result was closer to a serious migraine than a burn. The nausea it came with was the worst bit and it even gave me a nosebleed. Against someone as tough as I was that could not regenerate it would even have worked if they didn't prioritize attacks on her but here, no dice. Scowling, she shifted to radiation and a good, relaxing, full-body warm-up.
"Bitch, please," I mocked her with a laugh. "I've stood in the heart of nuclear explosions. Your little tantrum will, at best, give me a nice tan."
She did not give up. As the extent of her cloud slowly ramped up, tapping into the heat and light of more burning trees, reaching to higher and faster air currents, so did her output become more lethal. But the more injuries she piled up, the faster my Escalating Regeneration healed them and the more powerful I became. Two minutes later, Big Guy stopped struggling against my grip. Shadow Girl made a last-ditch attack of light and sound that was brighter and louder than all flash-bangs in the world combined. It deafened, blinded and hurt me but it was only temporary and I did not need to see or hear to finish this. Fifteen seconds after that the fuzziness around Big Guy's body winked out, his neat overlapping power turning off as he fell well and truly unconscious.
I let him flop bonelessly to the ground, scanning his body with Force Awareness. Like every physical powerhouse I'd fought before, he seemed to have a good measure of enhanced recovery, though not to the level of in-combat regeneration. Safe in the knowledge that any wound he could crawl away from wouldn't kill him and no longer having his stronger power interfere, I broke both his legs at both ankles and knees. Recovering from that would take days and by then he'd be in custody and not my problem.
"You are done," I told the two female supervillains, then used Chronal Leap to effectively teleport closer, slowing field or no slowing field...