I had to admit, I was spooked.  That girl’s power was intimidating when she wasn’t on my side.

Yeah, as I was just saying, she’s incredibly powerful.

She wasn’t all there, mentally, so the only thing holding her back was the person telling her what to do.

Oh yeah, I guess she would need that for some of the more advanced plans.

If she could make those giant torches, she could set the floor on fire.

It’s real even for such purposes.

Or she could have created spikes instead of walls, without leaving the rest of us any place to run.  That nobody had been hurt was purely by her choice.

Or she could’ve had the entire building’s contents get squeezed together by thickening walls, if not for Newter being in there.

Stone poles speared down from the roof.  Looking up, I saw that the edges of the crack in the roof had fanged teeth, and that figures were sliding down the metal poles.

Ooh, coming in, are you?

Two female, one obese male.  Spitfire, Faultline and Gregor the Snail?

Sounds about right. It’s probably a good call leaving Labyrinth on the outside, too.

I wonder if Faultline has made any more progress on overcoming the Manton effect since last we saw her.

I will admit Hive left me kind of confused as to how real the results of Labyrinths power are, even after attempted clarifications via asks, but I think I get it. They’re semi-illusory in nature, but solid and opaque – practically real for most intents and purposes – to you unless she decides to exempt you from them.

It’s powerful as hell.

A maze.  She was living up to her name.

Yep.

And here we thought it was difficult enough to get out to begin with…

The walls at the outside edges of the mall were altering, now, more faces and body parts making themselves apparent.  Like statuary or reliefs.

But… why? Are you actually going to grab people with those hands, or is it just aesthetic?

Limbs intertwined and nude figures decorated the interior walls of the mall, each tall enough to extend from floor to ceiling, animated so that they moved with a glacial slowness.

Whatever it is, though, it’s awesome.

With a surprising speed, the interior of the mall was coming to resemble some kind of temple.

Certainly an interesting-looking one.

Skidmark used his power to saturate Newter and the ground around him.  As his power took hold, Newter was launched through the rungs of the metal railing and down into the midst of the crowd at the base of the stage.

Boing!

Skidmark shouted something, but I couldn’t make it out over the noise of the other Merchants.

Maybe something like “And stay down there, knobgrongler!”

I tore my eyes from the scene and we hurried toward the heaps of unconscious, bloodied and wounded that lay where the arena had been.  We were halfway there when the entire mall began to brighten.

Hm, what now? Labyrinth doing something, or Spitfire setting fire to the place?

The barred windows were expanding, and massive torches were lighting on the far sides.  Shafts of orange light extended into the mall’s interior, patterned into diamonds by the meshes of bars Labyrinth had erected.

Awesome.

“I’m going after the kid,” I said.

“Minor, Brooks, escort her,” Lisa ordered.

Sounds like a decent party.

Maybe we’ll get some snark from Brooks at the corpses. I don’t know if even he’s that irreverent, though.

Speaking of which, I’d better brace for some gruesome descriptions.

On the other side of the mall, Newter had reached Skidmark and pounced for him.  In reaction, Skidmark used his power to coat his cape in a layer of his power.

Ooh, that’s a very interesting use of the power. It essentially turns his cape into a weapon by virtue of it launching anyone who touches the coated side, which he can then swing at people. I like it.

Kinda risky, maybe, if it’s windy where he’s fighting (the wrong side of the cape might end up touching his own body), but he’s probably done this enough to have practiced control of the cape under windless circumstances like these current ones.

He raised it between himself and Newter.  Newter was already airborne, unable to change course, but he had the presence of mind to hock a loogie into Squealer’s face.

Huh, nice!

He bounced off of the cape, knocking Skidmark back, and fell to the ground.

I appreciate that the boost from the cape doesn’t completely erase the momentum he already had.

Newter’s tail encircled the vial before she could drop it, and he flicked it into his left hand.

One out of five, nice work.

An instant later, he was racing for the stage, almost casually finding stepping stones as he made a beeline for Skidmark and the rest of the group.  He was going for the case and the vials.

Woo, go Newter!

Though of course it’s not going to be that easy. And to as if to ensure that narrative near-certainty, there are still eight parahumans on the stage, though one of them can’t control his power yet.

But hey, we’ve still got a couple more Faultliners who haven’t shown their stuff yet in this chapter.

Much of the crowd was running after Newter, rushing for the base of the stage and climbing the heaps of rubble to follow.

Ah, right, looks like the mundanes in the crowd aren’t afraid of trying to stop Newter too.

In doing so, they were vacating the center of the mall where the casualties lay.  I hated to get closer to the chaos, but I suspected it would be a long time before I had a better chance to find and retrieve Bryce.

…good point, that is still the main objective of this outing.

Newter dropped from the ceiling.  The main part of the mall had only the one level to it, but the roof was arched slightly, and he was dropping from one of the higher points.  I was bad at estimating distances, but what was that?  Fifty feet? Sixty?

He’ll be alright. I bet resistance to fall damage comes with his power.

Also, same when it comes to estimating distances.

He landed in a crouch, a hair behind the girl who was carrying the vial down the pile of rubble to the base of the platform.

Cape landing! Only thing missing is a shockwave.

As she turned, dust, papers, cigarette butts and fragments of rock stirred around her.

Hm. Windy power? I forget if this girl was stated to be one of the Merchant capes.

They moved in a counterclockwise orbit, rising, increasing in intensity over a span of one and a half seconds.

Okay, yeah, this is definitely a power at work. Maybe her power has to do with whirlwinds?

Whatever her power did, Newter stopped it, smacking her in the forehead with his palm, almost gently.  She stepped back, as if she’d lost her balance.  The building whirlwind around her dissipated into a billowing cloud of dust and her legs turned to rubber beneath her as she tried to step back once more. She fell.

Nice work! I guess that’s the element of surprise for you – if she’d had time to build up the whirlwind, it might end up being a lot harder to tag her out of the battle.

Spit might work, though, if Newter got lucky with where it landed. At least the whirlwind could help take out a bunch of other Merchants.