Our momentary four way standoff – no, five way. The second valkyrie twin was back on her feet – was broken by Lung charging one of the twins. Kaiser must have anticipated that because a series of spears shot out of the floor that Lung had to change direction just to avoid impaling himself on.

  The Nazi twins quickly moved to counter him and I…

  …left them to it and focused on Crashman.

  If the chief nazi wanted me to stay out of his fight with the same gang leader he failed to take down for years, I’d stay out of it. The truce was to cooperate, not sacrifice myself protecting the idiot. He could focus on that while I focused on the Robot Master insistent on blowing all of us to hell.

  Crashman wasn’t going down without a fight though.

  He saw me coming for him and used his still functional arm to shoot a bomb at his feet and then surprised me by jumping straight up almost to the ruined roof of the warehouse almost twenty five feet in the air.

  I threw my hands up in front of my face and powered through the explosion. Then I looked up at the now falling Robot Master and grinned.

  “Mistake~!” I practically sang, and jumped after him. With no leverage or ways to maneuver mid-air, I was confident I could disable him and focus on ending the other fight.

  Crashman had other ideas.

  He didn’t try to dodge or counterattack with the little mobility he had. Hell, he barely tried to block – crossing his arm in front of his chest. In fact he almost seemed to lean into my attack just to position himself better for a full body hug even as my first attack nearly tore his right arm off at the elbow.

  “No mistake, just the best way to get you close!” He shouted back, an unhinged glee in his eyes. “You won’t be able to get away this time!”

  I was suddenly very aware of the three Crashbombs practically touching me since he still had the one I’d used to disable his left arm rammed halfway through his forearm. But while three of those would hurt, I was confident I’d survive.

  “You’ll only destroy yourself.” I tried to reason with the crazy robot.

  “Temporarily,” he agreed, “but if stopping you here serves Dr Wily’s ambition–!

  He never finished that sentence as all three bombs beeped once behind me. I had a split second to brace before the combined explosion sent me flying uncontrolled through one of the warehouse’s walls and skidding down the street.

  Fucking…ow.

  For a moment I was tempted to just lay there and wait for the world to stop spinning. I had definitely taken Crashman out of the fight by forcing himself to self-destruct, so I deserved at least a little break to recover from getting launched like a bottle rocket, right?

  Unfortunately I could still hear the others fighting which meant we weren’t done yet.

  As I pushed myself out of the divot I had carved into the pavement I did a quick pat-down damage check.

  I was covered in a good amount of scrapes and bruises that didn’t seem too serious and my back felt pretty burned from taking a triple explosion point blank, but nothing that was going to hinder my ability to fight for now. My bodysuit was naturally mostly trashed and was almost completely blown off my back area but it still covered the important bits…kinda.

  I was about one good hit to the single scrap of fabric on my left shoulder from giving everyone a show. Something I’d like to avoid if possible.

  My self inspection ended when night turned to day as a star suddenly appeared in the remains of the ABB warehouse around the same time a somewhat battered Skitter ran up to me.

  “Lucifer, are you okay?” The younger teenaged villain half-demanded, half-asked. It was such a departure from the timid person I had met at the mall that I nearly did a double take. Instead I focused on the warehouse.

  “A little battered and I’m going to need a very long hot bath after tonight, but I’m fine. What’s going on over there?”

  “We managed to drive off Oni Lee, but both of Coil’s mercenaries were hurt in the fight and Newter got stabbed. He’s staying behind with Labyrinth for now while Bitch helps them move somewhere safer. I had Sundancer go try to help with Lung while I came to check on you.” Skitter gave me an update. “Finally convinced Sundancer to use her power too.” She sounded frustrated about that last part.

  I nodded at that, not exactly surprised Newter got hurt. Outside of very specific situations no one won in a knife fight.

  “Good to know. I’d better get back in the fight, you should try to find a place out of the way so you don’t get caught in the crossfire.” I said, already starting to move.

  Skitter stopped me though. “Wait, Lucifer, your mask!”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  I paused and raised a hand to my face. Sure enough my domino mask had vanished some point between the explosion and crash. And honestly? It wasn’t much of a concern at the moment.

  “No helping it. We’ve got bigger problems than my nonexistent secret identity. Let’s go.”

  Halfway back to the warehouse the artificial light pouring out of the building cut off suddenly and all sounds of fighting stopped. I quickly ducked back into the warehouse through a ruined wall and immediately saw why. It was, after all, a little hard to miss the giant silver scaled monster Lung had turned into standing in the middle of the room with a lance of metal impaling him through the chest.

  The other people in the room didn’t seem happy about that fact though. Sundancer was visibly upset while the Nazi trio was standing on the other side of the floor, weapons out and looking like they were ready to keep fighting.

  Feeling the tension still in the air I decided to get some answers. “What’s going on?”

  “I ended it.” Kaiser said confidently.

  “It was already over!” Sundancer snapped back.

  Confusion followed by a sense of grim clarity flowed through me. They thought they won, that the regenerator was somehow killed by something as simple as a tiny hole through his heart.

  I opened my mouth to say…something, but I was too late.

  Lung proved he was still alive when a pair of blood red wings unfurled from his back and he ripped the metal out of his chest while simultaneously growing another two feet in an instant. My aborted warning turned into a curse as the scaled monster rushed Kaiser and put him through a wall. In the same heartbeat Lung turned to bat aside the spear one of the valkyrie twins thrust at him, grabbing her by the wrist and stabbing into her stomach with a clawed hand.

  The other twin cried out at the sight of her sister getting impaled and was distracted when Lung simply threw his victim at her. The sword wielding giant dropped her weapon to catch her twin while Lung ignored her and turned towards the rest of us.

  “Sundancer! Run!” Skitter shouted from behind me.

  The Traveller either ignored her or panicked because instead of moving, she brought her hands together and I could see the beginnings of a sun flickering between them.

  Obviously, Lung also saw that and growled a denial while pointing a claw at her and making a crushing motion. Sundancer’s power cut out like a snuffed candle. She tried again, but Lung shut her down just as easily the second time.

  I was already moving towards the idiot too dumb to run when her power was obviously getting trumped and pushed her behind me, a spell circle blooming under my feet.

  My shield spell snapped into place just in time for Lung to hose the both of us in waves of fire that splashed harmlessly over my defenses. At the end of the day Lung’s fire was just that. Mundane if incredibly hot fire.

  That didn’t mean I wanted to stand around all day hoping Lung wouldn’t think of a way through it.

  I jabbed the stunned looking Sundancer who had been staring at the flames. “Either help or get out of the way!” I yelled as I focused on creating several more spell circles around me. All that practice in the mountains had

  Predictably – if somewhat disappointedly – Sundancer scurried away instead of preparing to fight. I couldn’t even say anything to her about it either because Lung chose that moment to realise his flames weren’t doing anything and stopped the torrent of fire. He looked at my shield and cocked his head in a disturbingly catlike manner before slamming a clawed fist into the magical barrier.

  It held, but only just.

  Massive cracks spread from the point of impact and I could feel the spell fighting to destabilize. The only reason it hadn’t shattered at this point was because I was still directly feeding the spell energy. Something I stopped because it wasn’t going to stop a second hit anyway.

  As the barrier dissolved into specks of light, I flexed my gauntleted hand and shot Lung a smirk.

  Finally I was facing off one on one against the idiot that thought he could get away with threatening my Peerage. I was looking forward to showing him exactly how wrong he was about that.

  At some unseen signal, the both of us roared and launched ourselves at each other.

  -o-

  Skitter did her best to shove down her terror at seeing the two gang leaders slam into each other just a few hundred feet away.

  Not for the first time tonight was she feeling very outclassed with her powers and simple knife while Lucifer and Lung were throwing enough power and fire around that Skitter could see the air shimmering from all the way out here, feel the impacts resonate in her chest as their limbs crashed against each other.

  She had already pulled what remained of her swarm out of the area because the air around them was actually getting hot enough that some of the less resilient bugs had started dying from the ambient heat alone. And even if they hadn’t, Skitter didn’t want to mess up and somehow distract Lucifer at a crucial moment.

  Feeling familiarly useless, she looked around for any way to turn the tables but nothing was jumping out to her.

  She did notice Sundancer struggling to limp away from the warehouse though and decided if she couldn’t help out in the fight directly, at least she could help the other cape get out of the way.

  “What happened?” She asked Sundancer as she pulled the older girl’s arm over her shoulder to help her stagger away.

  “Fell over when those two started going at it,” Sundancer grimaced. “Ended up twisting my ankle.”

  Skitter looked back over her shoulder where she could barely make out a flash of silver getting thrown through a wall and a blur of red following close after.

  Yeah, she could understand not wanting to be in the middle of that.

  “Can you still help? You managed to stop Lung long enough that Kaiser was almost able to beat him.” She carefully avoided the word ‘kill’. While Kaiser obviously paid less attention to the Unwritten Rules with his mocking of Lucifer for trying to uphold them, Skitter wasn’t prepared to see the ‘no killing’ rule brushed aside so easily.

  At least Sundancer seemed just as upset about the Nazis ignoring the rules as she was.

  The other cape shook her head though. “I can’t, Lung’s strong enough now to strip my control with the wave of a hand. The only thing we can do now is run and hope he doesn’t come after us.”

  Nothing they could do? The thought burned in Skitter’s mind. There had to be something.

  There was another crash behind them that rumbled the ground and caused Sundancer to nearly trip and bring them both down. Skitter did her best to catch the both of them before they face-planted on the pavement but the sudden surge of heat and light consuming the bugs she had placed behind them caused her to focus on the fight.

  Lung must have seen them running away and sent a wall of fire after them. Sundancer might survive because of her powers but Skitter was certain she was about to die…

  Until Lucifer suddenly appeared in front of them with another of her glowing circles flashing in her hands and a wall of ice erupting from the ground.

  She could do ice now too?

  “You might want to get moving!” Lucifer yelled, snapping Skitter out of her thoughts. “I can keep Lung in one place for a little bit, but he obviously doesn’t like you!” And then she was gone again.

  The insect controller looked past the already crumbling wall of ice and saw what the redhead was talking about. Beyond the flashes of fire and lightning, Skitter could see three more of Lucifer’s circles shackling Lung’s legs and tail that apparently prevented the ABB leader from moving from his current position.

  As much as it burned, Skitter knew they’d only get in the way and her only idea how to help was useless if her bugs couldn’t even get close without being incinerated.

  “C’mon, we need to move.” Sundancer urged. “Once we’re safe you can try calling for help from one of the other groups.”

  Skitter nodded, but was reminded by something from her words.

  She brought a hand up to her ear and pretended like she was waiting for a phone to connect. Part of her felt stupid for expecting something like a magic cellphone to work but the small glow next to her head was proof something was going on. “This is Skitter from the Undersiders, I’ve got Sundancer but Lucifer is stuck fighting Lung by herself. We need to help her or at least call the other groups for backup.”

  “We’ll pass it along to the boss, but tackling something like Lung is outside of our scope of operations.” One of Coil’s mercenaries spoke in her ear.

  “I’ll do the same but don’t expect much.” Newter said a moment later with a pained hiss. “Can’t leave L hanging and I don’t think the rest of the crew can get here in time to make a difference.”

  Skitter seethed at the familiar sounding responses. ‘We’ll talk to somebody about it. There’s nothing we can do. It's not my responsibility.’ It looked like Tattletale was right, only Lucifer was trying to actually work together and end the threat to the city instead of using the Truce to gain some kind of advantage over everyone else.

  She was about to try calling Bitch directly to see if she could call Grue or Tattletale so they could pass a message to the rest of the Peerage when a white figure suddenly landed in front of her and Sundancer.

  “Do not worry, Villain! I heard your plea for aid for my glorious rival! While normally our crossing paths would demand a battle of Good versus Evil, I will set aside our conflict in the face of a more sinister foe! I, Paladin, am here to save the day!”

  Oh, the Protectorate was here…somehow Skitter wasn’t sure that was actually a good thing.