I didn’t know what his reasons were, but Weld turned toward Mannequin in the same moment the grenade left my hand.

Ow.

It was disastrous on two levels.  Whatever surprise I’d hoped to retain was lost when I was forced to shout out, “Grenade!”

Did the shout help Weld stop?

Mannequin abandoned his hold on the car as he leaped to one side to get clear well before it exploded.  Weld, too, managed to stay out of the way, stopping in his tracks.

Good. So what’s the situation with Crawler?

Crawler came tearing through the blazing parking booth and blindsided Weld.  In terms of raw power, the junior hero might as well have been a powerless human for all the defense he could muster.

I’m unsure about Weld’s chances of surviving this chapter. Fuck.

Crawler’s claws tore into him, revealing bones in silver, organs in copper and gold.

Yeeeeah, that doesn’t sound alive to me.

You were a good lad, Weld.

I pulled the pin on another grenade and lobbed it in Mannequin’s direction.

Call it chemistry, rhythm, or just the nuances one picked up after fighting alongside someone else, there was a flow to working with a member of your team, a way I could trust others to have my back and vice versa.  Weld and I didn’t have that.  It was my understanding, my assumption, that the bruiser would take on the heaviest hitter on the opposing side, and the others in the team would focus their efforts on the secondary threats with using utility and technique.

Well. When you build it up like this, it seems Weld is going after Mannequin too, which means nobody’s dealing with Crawler. Damn.

It was how the Undersiders tended to handle matters.

Weld… I don’t know what his assumption was, but maybe he was used to having people like Clockblocker and Vista handle the most threatening and problematic enemies, while he threw himself at the enemy ranks and drew the secondary fire.

A damage sponge. Except very different from an actual sponge for once.

This makes a lot of sense. Clockblocker and Vista are good at temporarily disabling the big threats, but right now they’re not available to do that with Crawler, which Weld forgot to account for.

Maybe they were even tactics he’d been drilled on with his previous team.  Maybe he was too focused on protecting his teammates from Mannequin and didn’t trust me to handle it.

That also doesn’t help.

The counterpoint to that was that Crawler had heard the commotion and was approaching.

Well, fuck.

He shifted from a walk to a head-on charge as he got a block away.

*nervously retrieves a laser pointer from his pocket*

“Crawler!”  I shouted the words at full volume.  Weld snapped his head up to look at me, and I extended one arm out to inform him on the direction.

The problem was that Mannequin could hear too.  He shifted positions and prepared to heave another car at the heroes.

Honestly, Mannequin might as well ask Crawler to sit down on top of the heroes.

Though it might not work, because

fortunately, Crawler seems intent on tearing Skitter in particular to pieces before doing much else.

Fortunately…

Weld gave me a salute, using a knife-hand that was as long as he was tall.

😀

Let’s take a moment to appreciate this reminder of why I like Weld.

We went on the offense, going after Mannequin.  I used two more grenades to drive him out of cover and to stop him from flinging any more cars at the heroes, while Weld maintained the pressure by constantly closing in.

So, remember how there was a little period where I low-key shipped Weld and Taylor with little basis?

That’s faded by now, but there’s still a part of me that really likes seeing them fight together, and wordlessly falling into good teamwork like this.

Both Weld and Mannequin had seemingly unlimited physical reserves.  Both had equipment they could spring from nowhere – Mannequin had his concealed equipment and weapons, Weld had his crude shapeshifting abilities.

In other words, Mannequin has quality, Weld has versatility.

Not that Mannequin isn’t versatile, but he has to specifically install something ahead of time.

That wasn’t to say they were evenly matched.

Honestly? I’d be betting on Weld in a direct fight. He can take a lot of what Mannequin can dish out, and dish out a lot himself, possibly enough to crack Mannequin’s casing, which is more than I think most of Mannequin’s attacks can do to Weld’s metal body. It’s just a matter of actually hitting the target.

Mannequin is vastly superior in terms of mobility, but Weld is well equipped to restrain him compared to most melee fighters, because of Mannequin’s metallic limb… joints. If Weld grabbed one of those with his hand, Mannequin wouldn’t be able to get loose from his grip unless Weld allowed it or he ejected the chain. Granted, Mannequin can use this against Weld, too.

I pulled the pin free, then dropped it straight down. 

Easy as, uh, dropping a grenade!

Wind carried the grenade further than I expected.  It landed somewhere a few feet behind Cache, rolled, then detonated.  The car that had been propped up against Cache was thrown off, rolling onto its roof.

I think that’s a success!

How did Weld and Mannequin take that?

The other debris scattered.

I felt a wave of relief that I hadn’t managed to hit them with the grenade just as they came out of stasis.

That would be… less of a success.

Mannequin backed away from Weld to stare up at me.  Weld, for his part, had absorbed the metal of the chains and disconnected the excess from his body.

Oh, so he did get stuck to the chains. Fair enough, that settles my concerns on that front! That just leaves the question of why the cars don’t get stuck on his blades (or vice versa).

When he reshaped his hands into weapons, it was faster than I’d seen him do it during our attack on the PRT headquarters.

Hm. Practice? Holding back before? Or perhaps this situation has put him in a state of mind similar to his trigger event somehow and that made the shapeshifting more powerful and thus faster?

There were crunching sounds and the noise of metal striking metal.  I directed the beetle around one particularly thick cloud of black smoke and saw Weld hacking the cars to pieces, his arms a pair of oversized blades.

Nice. That does kinda give Mannequin a lot of ammo to work with, but it’s smaller ammo that’s slightly less dangerous for the time-frozen heroes, as it’s harder for Mannequin to stack the weight of it all on top of them.

Mannequin threw a car at him, and Weld lunged forward to slam it down into the ground with both hands.  Mannequin used the opening to leap forward, his feet momentarily resting on Weld’s shoulders, before he hopped down to the ground.

Weld is being pretty cool in this fight.

Meanwhile, Mannequin is… doing something.

Spools of chain unfolded in Mannequin’s wake, and he bound Weld, dragging him away from his allies.

Well, shit.

Okay, seriously, did I misinterpret the bit about Weld’s clothing? Is he not basically topless here, his metallic chest exposed?

Because it really seems like both the cars and the chain should be sticking to him. Especially the cars, which he’s definitely touching with exposed blade-shaped arms.

Hmm. Did they cover Weld in some sort of organic oil or something? (Zinc, while appropriate as a covering for him, wouldn’t work because it’s a metal.)