I looked at her, confused, but I didn’t have time to figure it out.

“What do you mean, ‘Imp!’?”

A flare of orange light caught my attention.  Dragon’s mouth had opened wide, and she was spewing something like an ignited accelerant into the lobby.  With this fluid, she drew a three-foot wide line of flame onto the lobby floor, stretching from just below her to the stairwell door by the front desk.  She’d cut off our escape route.

Welp. Better hope some horned girl makes a new one for you.

Weld leaped into and through the flame, his hook hands swinging wildly.  Some of the accelerant had landed on him, making him burn, but he didn’t seem to mind.

I mean, burning isn’t gonna do a whole lot to a guy who’s non-flammable and can literally melt himself partially without suffering ill effects.

He turned ninety degrees and lunged forward in response to something I couldn’t see or hear, then swept his hooks out in a frenzied series of blind attacks.  On the third swing I saw Imp duck beneath the attack, then stumble back out of his reach, towards us.

Huh, it seems he detected her before she became visible to Taylor.

So did he detect her but not remember what he was detecting?

“The fucking fuck!?” she shouted.

Hm. Maybe Dragon can detect Imp and told Weld over their communications that Imp was next to him?

“Dragon can see you, you twit, and she’s relaying directions to Weld!” Tattletale shouted at our new member, “And what the hell were you hoping to accomplish over there!?”

Good question, but whatever it was, it’s probably better than nothing.

“So she’s piloting that thing, then?” Imp asked.  “My power works on her?”

It should, unless her seeing you through digital sensors makes a difference.

“We can’t be sure,” Tattletale spoke, “Don’t risk it.”

Huh. That’s not something you hear from Tattle every day.

Dragon advanced another step, circling our relative cover from the window to spray inches closer to us.  The way it was piling up, there would be no way to go over it, and the route we had available for going around the far end of it was rapidly closing.

Ah, right. Might be a good time to exit the gift shop, then, before you no longer can.

We were getting hemmed in, our backs to the wall by the window.

“Imp!” Tattletale shouted, “No!”

She’s risking it, isn’t she.

The gift shop jutted out from the wall of the lobby some, the glass panes arranged to showcase more of the pictures, action figures and memorabilia with three broad windows than they might with one.  This layout gave us some cover from Dragon’s attacks.

And hey, if she ends up breaking the windows with a burst of spray, maybe you can move some sticky shards. Although I guess they’d get stuck to the ground.

Even when the force of the spray served to break the windows, the expansion of the foam at the edges of the frame soon blocked the worst of it off.

Ah, yeah, or the frame.

If anything, it was closing the windows off.  Only the pane of glass facing us was left unbroken and largely free of foam.

Nice – cover that, when broken, only covers more. Not bad.

Sensing this, Dragon started to advance further into the lobby.  Her broad, mechanical feet began hissing with vapor, and the goo my ground-borne bugs were hauling towards her began to run, losing its consistency and stickiness.

Ahh, she considered the possibility of the mech having to go through the foam and installed the anti-foam substance in the mech’s feet… smart.

She set one foot down directly on a pile of foam, and lifted it up again with no difficulty.  It was clear: the foam wouldn’t hamper her.

Maybe you can somehow use this? Coat the bugs in the anti-foam and fly into some foam that’s in your way? But the solvent is probably used up too, so that wouldn’t do much and the bugs would probably get stuck.

Shadow Stalker was still fighting Weld.  As Dragon turned a stream toward them, Weld reacted fast enough that I suspected he had some line of communication to her.

I guess that would be through his earpiece. Did they ever turn Shadow Stalker’s earpiece back on?

He backed out of the way, and Shadow Stalker and the dog both moved in the other direction, with a stream splashing where they had been brawling a second before, blossoming into a pile of foam as tall as they were, separating the two groups of combatants.

Well, shit, that seems to mean Weld is now free to go after Taylor & co.

Most of my first wave of bugs had either been shot out of the sky by errant bits of spray or had placed their initial pieces of glass and were going back for more.  This wasn’t a K.O. hit, and Dragon was too good to let something this minor stop her, however it might delay or hamper her.

If there’s a way out of this situation that doesn’t involve K.O.ing Weld and Dragon, that would be worth pursuing, but even if you find one of those, you gotta wait for Grue to unfreeze.

The real issue was that this was too slow, and we were on a tight time limit.  Less than a minute, and the Protectorate would arrive.  Their team was smaller with recent deaths and Armsmaster’s ‘retirement’, and I hadn’t heard about any new recruits.

But they’re still a threat, and you’re having enough trouble with Dragon.

Then again, I hadn’t heard about the Ward’s new recruits, and here Weld was, being annoyingly persistent.

He really has been quite the formidable hero.

I was assuming he was the new leader, given his tone with Shadow Stalker.  I wondered if being ridiculously tenacious was a job requirement for being in charge of the Wards.

Heh. It certainly doesn’t hurt.

It made sense to have a commander who wouldn’t be removed from the field by an errant attack.  You wanted someone who would stay in the thick of it for the whole fight.

Yeah, and add Weld’s brains to that and you’ve got a fantastic leader.

“No way she got here this fast,” Tattletale spoke, “She’s based in British Columbia, on the other side of the continent.  This has to be remotely controlled, like the one she used to fight Leviathan, which means the only eyes on you are digital, and-”

Eyyy!

And… that means?

“She’s not,” Regent interrupted.

“What?” Tattletale asked him.

What? Are you sensing nerves in there?

“There’s someone in there, I tried using my power on her, experimenting, and I felt some kind of nervous system.  Too much material between me and it for me to do anything with it, and I wouldn’t really try it while I’m controlling Shadow Stalker anyways.  I’d probably backfire.”

Huh.

Well then.

Way to shoot me down just after my theory seemed to be confirmed, Regent. 😛

it could still be someone else, trapped inside the mech like the animals in Dr. Eggman’s robots…

I nodded acknowledgement, but my focus was elsewhere.  As I judged that enough bugs had caught the foam on one pane of their individual pieces of glass, I directed them to carry the glass down to Dragon.  As I positioned the bugs, the glass stuck to lenses, vents of hot air, vents where air was rushing in, and the smaller joints near segmented areas.

Oh yeah, vents! Of course, blocking those off could cause some major trouble for Dragon.

Dragon didn’t seem to notice or care.

So far. Maybe when things start overheating.

“Can she see me?” Imp asked.

Who are you?

Tattletale started to speak, but stopped when one of the streams changed direction to spray closer to us, forcing us to retreat in a hurry.

Whoop.

Also, whether Dragon can see Imp is a very good question, because we don’t know whether her power affects sensors and we don’t know whether it affects people who are far away.

I’m somewhat coming around to the idea that Dragon might actually be inside there, but there’s no way in hell I’m trusting that yet.

I glanced at the gift shop.  Would it be a good idea to retreat in there?  The walls were glass, which was both good and bad in that both Dragon and our group could break through it.  The problem was that we risked being trapped if we headed in there.

Screw the risk, go get some souvenirs.

“She’s got a disadvantage,” Tattletale spoke, her voice low, “This suit is meant to fly to serious crises at a moment’s notice, deal with dangerous foes.  She’s packing too many lethal weapons.”

And it’s still not that serious a combat “suit”? I mean, the focus is still clearly on speed, but she’s certainly equipped the thing for battle.

“That’s a disadvantage?” Regent asked.

When you’re trying not to kill the opponent, sure. Too many lethal weapons, not enough space for a lot of nonlethal ones.

Oh jeez, can you imagine Dragon and Armsmaster cooperating on a mech…

“She’s not about to kill us.  Bad PR, especially for a notable hero traveling into another country to fight virtual unknowns like us.

Right, yeah, Toronto, Newfoundlander accent. Not sure how it never really occurred to me that being a Newfoundlander meant she was Canadian, even though I’m well aware that it was in Canada.

So we only have to worry about her nonlethal weaponry, and she doesn’t have many.”

Nice.

I didn’t use this grip to stick to the surface, but instead employed it to collectively lift and pick up the glass.  Six or seven bugs could lift a decent-sized piece of glass if they were on the ground, while anywhere from twelve to thirty could fly with one if I managed it right.

Niice.

I had a few hundred to employ, with more still arriving.

With this glass, I did my best to catch and block the outlying flecks and drips of spray as it flew through the air, at the periphery of the streams.

Ohhh, I see. I was close, but I forgot to tie it back to blocking the foam. And if we’re lucky, the added weight of the glass will cause it to fall down on Dragon rather than get blasted away like the bugs!

The spray knocked some pieces of glass from the air, and struck some bugs, causing the group to lose their collective grip and drop the glass.  That was to be expected.  Others, though, caught the foam on one of the flat panes of the glass.

Or that. Nice, this gives them much more control over not only getting the foam on Dragon, but where on Dragon.

The sensors and weaponry would both be good places.

As more bugs rose with the glass between them, I organized them into loose walls and barriers, to maximize the area they were catching and to overlap so that less bugs were exposed to incoming spray.

Smart.

I’d been drawing my bugs closer to the building since we arrived, and I brought them into the fray as Dragon continued to lock down the lobby with the spray.

Taylor just keeps ending up in fights against people with metal protecting their bodies, sheesh.

And in Dragon’s case I’m not

even

entirely sure there is a human body to protect, let alone that it’s around here.

So… what can the bugs really do in this situation? I suppose they might be able to sabotage Dragon’s weaponry or senses, or if they can somehow get in there, circuitry.

The first tactic I tried was blocking the spray with the bugs.  I didn’t intend to stop the spray, exactly, but I hoped that I could cause the bugs to catch it & drop down atop Dragon, sticking to her.  It didn’t work – the spray was too strong, and the bugs were blasted much too far away.

Only one or two landed on her, and even then, I doubted the positions were that ideal.

Nice try, anyway.

Instead, I adjusted my tactics.  The idea was the same, but I didn’t want to sacrifice bugs for the purpose of clogging her systems or blocking her guns if it would be that ineffective.

Hm… so how do you do this without sacrificing too many bugs?

I gathered some bugs on anything that looked like a sensor – glass panes or openings in the armored vehicle, and I set the rest to gathering on the shattered glass that littered the floor of the lobby.

Ah, the sensor-blocking tactic 🙂

The feet of the insects and arachnids had setae, or small hairs, which branched further into setules.  These fibers, in turn, harnessed Van der Waals forces to cling even to surfaces as slick as glass.

Interesting! So are you going to have the bugs try to pick up the glass and drop it back down on Dragon, or something like that? Sounds ineffective, though… I’m guessing Taylor has a smarter plan.

I’d been reading up.

Nice. That explanation did sound a bit more academic than we’re used to.

The four engines mounted on the shoulders of Dragon’s armor shifted position, each aiming at a different point within the lobby.  Tattletale was the first of us to turn and run, the rest of us moving to follow as Dragon opened fire.

Hm. This sounds a bit familiar… I wonder if Kid Win took some inspiration from Dragon like he was suggesting that Chariot could.

All in all, Dragon unloaded four streams of containment foam into the lobby, each of the shoulder mounted turrets gushing like firehoses.  Only flecks of the spray struck us, but they expanded into blobs of foam the size of golf balls and softballs.

Sheesh, as if this room wasn’t already messy enough with that foam.

Each blob was tacky, sticky, and any attempt to wipe it away just smeared it and exposed more surface area to the air, making it expand more. 

If we’d started running a fraction of a second later, we might have been screwed.

Yeeah.

Weld moved to block our retreat, but Shadow Stalker stepped up to fight him with one of the dogs, Bentley, joining her.

Oh right, some of the dogs did get back up.

It made for a pretty effective combination, as Weld couldn’t swing hard enough to hurt the dog without risking hurting his teammate.

Sweet!

The way Regent was having Shadow Stalker fight, there was no self preservation or defense, which worked out to being a more effective combat style than anything else, in its own way.  I was pretty sure Weld had never fought someone who was actively trying to get hit.

It’s the kind of tactic that depends a lot on the opponent’s relation with the attacker, and in this situation, it’s pretty good.