“Retreat,” Tattletale spoke, “Just don’t turn your backs to them.”

Good call.

Fog moved forward, his limbs and legs dissolving into a cloud as he advanced on us.  His pace was slow, only a little faster than we moved walking backward.

Hm. Unfortunately “a little” faster is all he needs unless it allows you to get to somewhere you can speed up or get away in some other way.

Bitch had to whistle twice to get a growling Angelica to retreat.  The dog seemed set on protecting her master, attacking this threat, and was slow to obey. 

Pick your battles, Angelica. Be like Oni.

The fog reached her, and we heard a strangled yelp, an unnatural sound from the throat of an unnatural animal.  I saw Bitch start forward.

No no no no no no

“No!” I caught her shoulder.

I might have argued, told her why she couldn’t or shouldn’t attack, how useless it would be against a man that turned to a sentient gas.  I didn’t get a chance.

Not sure it would’ve helped anyway.

While our attention was on Angelica, Night took the opportunity to blindside Brutus.  He was thrown bodily into our group with enough force to to bowl us and even Judas over.

STRIKE!

Geez, if the dogs are as heavy as I’ve been imagining, that’s some incredible strength there.

Night just stood there, standing straight, heels together, one arm outstretched in front of her.

Did she throw Brutus like that with a simple push?

I hurried to my feet, my legs and knees aching, putting one hand on Brutus’ shoulder to steady myself.  It was then that I saw the damage she’d done to him.

Noo, don’t hurt the doggos 😦

We reached the alley, Angelica found footing on the wall, and then made her way safely to the ground.

As we landed heavily, I fell from Angelica’s back.  My hands were stiff from the deathgrip I’d just maintained, and my legs were a wreck.

Still, hard to complain.

Heh. Yeah, could’ve gone a lot worse.

“You okay?” Tattletale called out.

“Yeah.  You guys?”

“Not so hot,” Grue replied.

Well, at least he admits it now.

He was leaning against a wall, with Tattletale at his side.  Darkness radiated from every part of his body but his chest, and I could see how  he’d unzipped his jacket to investigate the damage.  He was bleeding from the cuts on his chest.

Ouch.

“Fuck, I knew you weren’t good to go!” I struggled to my feet and rushed to his side.  “You pull your stitches already?” 

“Other things to worry about!” Regent called out.  “Incoming.”

Rune again?

I looked, and sure enough, Night and Fog were striding into the alleyway.

Ahh. Shit.

Night sported high heeled boots that clicked as she walked, and there was the gender difference, but the two were otherwise very similar.

Fighting in high heels strikes me as impractical, but her choice.

Cloaks, cowls, no logos or other decoration.  Gray for him and black for her.

Hm. That’s what Rune was wearing, too. We haven’t heard anything about an E88 uniform. Is Rune their daughter?

But we had another option.  If I could only convince Angelica.

“Go!” I shouted at her, kicking my legs.

Running straight off, to maintain better control than if you were to fall?

She pushed forward, and the movement only accelerated the decay of the fractured rooftop beneath her paws, prompting it to slide and tilt.

Hm, that’s not good.

Angelica ran toward the building to our right.  To the right of the alley.  She clearly intended to leap to the building face, use her claws to dig into position there… and there would be nowhere to go from there.

Hrm.

Even if she could hang there indefinitely, or scale the wall back to the street, Rune would scrape us off the wall with a levitated piece of rubble.

And hanging there indefinitely is kind of useless to begin with.

I grabbed a horn at the side of her head and hauled on it, pulling her left.  She resisted, hauled right, but I tugged again.

“Go!” I shouted at her.

I’m sure having read that book on dog psychology could’ve come in handy here.

Maybe you have to whistle?

She lunged straight for the floating piece of debris.  Her claws latched on it, and for a moment, we hung there, Angelica in an undignified pose with her upper body hanging onto the thing, back legs dangling.

Hm. Not a bad move, but now Rune just needs a vertical surface to slam you against, and there’s certainly some of those here.

Wait. Can Rune even move this now? It seems like the Manton effect should at least limit it. Though I guess if Taylor and Angelica being there cut the power off entirely from this piece of debris, it should fall.

Also, Rune was moving herself with a piece of debris and she’s presumably alive. I suppose it’d just be that she can’t use the power directly on people.

It drifted downward, slow at first, then faster, as though Rune couldn’t support the weight of us and the chunk of building.

…Angelica weighs a ton or more all on her own, doesn’t she.

I generally visualize the hellhounds as roughly the size and mass of a big car.

Angelica scrabbled for a grip, pulled her body up and forward, and found the footing to leap.

Nice.

Brutus pulled clear easily enough, but the continued drifting of the piece of debris forced Bitch to direct him down toward the alley, off the rooftop.

Well, at least he shouldn’t have much trouble getting back up.

The rest of us had a harder call to make.  We were sliding off a precipice, and it was a good ten story drop to the street.

…I keep forgetting that buildings in this city are more than 2-3 stories tall, even in the Docks.

The nearest and only available rooftop to leap to was the one we’d just left, which was in ruins.

Well, that kinda puts some limits on the awesome rooftop chase, now doesn’t it. Hm.

Judas, I saw, managed to clutch the edge of the sliding raft of rooftop and get the leverage for a jump.

Ooh. But where to?

Brian, Tattletale and Judas reached the alley, where they could rebound off the walls until they reached relative safety.

Nice.

I was about to urge Angelica to do the same, when that drifting debris of Rune’s shifted position to block off the alleyway.

Dammit, Rune learns.

Another of Rune’s pieces of building approached from her direction, promising to smash us if through some miracle, the section of roof Angelica and I were standing on didn’t break free.

The roof breaking free is probably the better outcome here, especially if Angelica can manage to land on her feet. Maybe.

We were already kicking the dogs into motion, leaping to the neighboring rooftop, when the debris struck with a series of crashes that suggested the debris had punched through the roof and even the one or two floors below it.

Well, that’s another building to cross off the list.

Crusader was apparently too occupied covering for Rune’s sudden absence to come after us.  That meant that all we had to worry about was keeping from being crushed by Sabrina the teenage nazi.

Hah!

Note to self:  I apparently wasn’t one of those capes that was good at the repartee, banter or name calling.

Ahahaha

Fair enough, better leave that to Spiderman.

One piece of debris soared over our heads, then plunged to stab downward through the roof in front of us.  The dogs were agile enough to leap out of the way.

In the heat of the moment, we didn’t anticipate it rising again.

Whoops.

The debris thrust up through the edge of the building’s roof, and the dogs had to skid to a halt to avoid treading on crumbling rooftop.  With the damage the building had sustained, our footing grew unstable.

Aw, shit.

The ground sloped, Angelica scrabbled for a grip, and then the section of roof beneath us began to slide down toward the street.

Honestly, going back down there would be kinda inconvenient.

The pair of villains were running interference for Purity, distracting and trapping the heroes to set them up so Purity could blast them out of the sky.  Purity was too high up for us to interfere with, which meant we had to find another way to get her attention.

Hmm. I’m sure a message written in giant letters made of darkness in mid-air, saying “WE’RE HERE” ought to do the trick.

(Unlike Buglish, Darklish uses apostrophes.)

Regent handled that for us, sweeping his arm to one side.  Rune slipped from her position on her floating piece of balcony.  Another gesture from Regent, and the girl was left hanging from the side.

Nice work! 😀

“Don’t kill her,” I told him.

“Right,” he looked up at the girl.  Seeing her struggle, he shouted, “Better make sure you can land somewhere safe!  I’m dropping you in three seconds!”

…fair enough.

The rock drifted in our general direction, and we backed the dogs up.  When Rune was over the rooftop, Regent swept his hand to one side and brought her down to a painful landing.

Ow.

Hi.

“Fuckers!” the teenager in the cowl and robe screamed, “I’ll squash you!”

You don’t like the Undersiders very much, do you?

The big pieces of rubble in the sky above drifted our way.  One suddenly stopped levitating and dropped.

I wonder, can Regent’s power interfere with this kind of thing? Probably not.

Rune was the source of the debris that had struck us, which was rising back into the air as I watched.  A teenage girl in the service of Empire Eighty-Eight, Rune was a powerful telekinetic capable of lifting nearly a ton.

Had to be a girl, huh. I’ve been having a hard time not assuming male, due to Rune (ROO-neh) being a male name in Norway. If I slipped up and said “he” somewhere, that’s why.

Seems like I was off-base about her power involving symbols, too.

So did that debris miss someone else and just happen to almost crush the Undersiders, or has Rune spotted them?

Several things weighing up to a ton, judging by what I saw.  She hovered in the air, crouched atop a piece of building as big as a garbage truck, with more similarly sized pieces of rubble orbiting her.

Nice.

The drawback to her power was that she needed to touch things before she could move them with her mind, but that seemed fairly inconsequential right this moment.

It does seem helpful to some extent – it ought to slow down her reloading. Although there’s probably nothing stopping her from reusing the same debris she already threw at them.

Bitch whistled, and Brutus surged forward in our pack.  Brutus turned partway into an alley and leaped.  He latched his claws on one wall of the building, half turned, then leaped across to the neighboring building.  Zig-zagging upward, he ascended to the roof in a span of seconds.

Oh hell no.

Ahahaha seems like it took Taylor a moment to realize what Grue meant by “Up!”

Judas followed, and Angelica was only a heartbeat behind.  If I’d thought our travel over the rooftops on our last escapade had been rough, this was sadistic.  Or masochistic.  It depended on where I assigned the blame.

Hehe

We reached the rooftop just in time to nearly be squashed by a huge chunk of building that dropped from the sky like a meteor.  Angelica lurched under me as she leaped to one side.

At least no one’s wearing ruby slippers.

New Wave’s fliers and Purity weren’t the only ones in the air.  Aegis was also up there on the side of the good guys, but Purity had backup from Crusader and Rune.

Oh hey, more people. Looks like Rune is here after all, though not working directly with Othala at the moment, and… wait, Aegis can fly? Huh. If that was shown or mentioned back in Agitation, I forgot it.

“Around!” Tattletale pointed over Grue’s shoulder.

Wordlessly, Grue steered Judas into a turn.  Bitch, astride Brutus, a bit ahead of Judas, looked over her shoulder and turned to join them.  Angelica was happy to follow after.  Together, we detoured left to a side street running parallel to the ongoing battle.

Yeah, might not want to dive right into that. Sounds like Tattle has a specific destination in mind, though… Does she want to talk to someone at the other end of the battlefield, or something?

“Why?” I called out.

“Safer!” Tattletale replied, without turning to face me.

That’s fair too.

A crash behind me made me duck.  Manpower, a powerful seven foot tall athletic figure decked out in white and yellow, had been thrown through a brick wall.

Hi there! You look like a bruiser, like I theorized.

Maybe more than one.  He seemed unhurt, but he was a fairly durable guy.  Personal electromagnetic shielding, if I remembered right.  He was still struggling to his feet after we left him behind.

Hm. Sounds similar to Glory Girl’s forcefield.

“What’s our plan!?” I shouted, raising my voice to be heard as one of Purity’s blasts crashed down to the street to our right.

I thought Tattle was going to explain that between chapters! Maybe she just explained the thing the plan is based on, and not the plan itself?

“Get her attention!” Grue replied.  He pointed,  “Up!”

Oh boy, here we go.

I guess distracting Purity might help New Wave get some good hits in? The thing Tattle Knew could easily have been that there’d be heroes on the case. But that seems too simple.