This time, at least, Weld took on the heavy hitter.  He leaped at Crawler from the side, his hand becoming needle-fine as he plunged it into one of Crawler’s largest eye sockets.

WOO!

I knew that Crawler could dodge Ballistic’s hits.  He must have seen Weld coming and simply not cared.  The needle barely penetrated Crawler’s eye, but Weld used the leverage to wrap himself around Crawler’s face.

…still cool.

So what’s he doing now, just trying to be the giant bug on Crawler’s windshield, blinding him that way?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but bugs are Taylor’s specialty.

I drew the gun and leveled it at Mannequin’s back.  He was running in a straight line, I remembered to click the thumb safety, squeezing the handle with both hands to get the grip safety on the back of the gun, and put him in the crosshairs, leading just a bit.  I could remember the tip you always heard in the movies.  Squeeze, don’t pull.

I’ve never heard that in the movies, that I can remember.

Maybe that just means I have a different taste in movies than Taylor. Very likely, that.

Exhale as you squeeze…

Visions of the dead Mannequin had left in my district flashed through my mind’s eye.  The paramedics, the bitchy old doctor, the people he’d gassed.  My people.

Time for vengeance, huh?

I could feel the recoil jolt its way through my arms to rattle my body at its core.

I feel like this scene would be a lot more tense if I was under the impression that shooting Mannequin would actually kill him.

I wonder if Crawler is more vulnerable from the inside. Maybe throwing the grenade into his mouth could work.

Or it could give him a fancy new kind of breath/spit weapon.

I didn’t get a chance to see.  Cache came to life.

Ah, fuck.

Quick, get everyone out of your pocket, Cache! Even if you don’t make it because of the caustic spray, we need the rest of the team!

I couldn’t even imagine what went through his mind.  He went from disengaging from a fight with Jack and Bonesaw in a flooded parking lot to facing down Crawler and Mannequin in the middle of a sea of fire.

While covered in boiling corrosive mucus.

Maybe he’d anticipated that, but he couldn’t have anticipated the acid spittle.  Holes began to appear in the fabric of his fireproof costume.

Unfortunately not acidproof, clearly.

He managed to maintain his composure- I had no idea how.  I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt to be down there, feeling the heat and smoke coming in through the widening holes in the fabric.

And the acid, I’d imagine?

He began using his power, calling up the shadowy geometry that would deposit the heroes onto the battlefield.

Let’s call in the reinforcements!

The two members of the Nine, it seemed, didn’t intend to give him the chance.  Both charged for the hero.

Of course. If they can stop this, that’s fantastic news for them. They’d be rid of a whole bunch of local heroes, as well as Legend.

And all this so they could avoid some incendiary bombs Piggot insisted on dropping.

Mannequin made a gesture at Crawler, fingertips of two hands all touching, pressed to his ‘mouth’, then he pulled his hands away, splaying his fingers.

Air kiss? Roar? Tear him to pieces with teeth and claws?

Crawler cocked his head and Mannequin pointed at the frozen heroes.  I heard Crawler rumble with guttural laughter.

…bite over the heroes and wait for the unfreezing?

Sounds like a good way to give half the local heroes access to your guts.

No.

What could I do?  I was a bystander here, effectively powerless, but for my beetle.  I had the gun, but it wouldn’t do anything to Crawler and I didn’t trust myself to hit Mannequin at this range.

Would it do much more to Mannequin, for that matter?

I had a single grenade, and I knew that wouldn’t even make Crawler flinch.

Crawler spat a caustic spray onto Cache and Clockblocker.

Oh. Oh jeez.

That’s a problem.

I could see the mucus fizz and pop from my vantage point high above.

If I used a grenade, could I clear it away?  Or was it too viscous?  Would I be losing something I couldn’t afford to throw away?

I doubt it’d get it all away. Also, try not to take too many risks re: grenades right when they unfreeze.

Two grenades left.  I threw one down at them.  Mannequin backed away, and Crawler, though his head was directed at Weld, rose up onto his two hind legs and batted at the grenade with Weld’s body.

Oh jeez, we’re playing baseball now.

With a metal bat and everything.

The explosive went off a second after the impact, and Weld was thrown free of Crawler’s grip.  I saw him stagger to his feet, his wounds closing as he shapeshifted them.

Oh hey, he’s still alive! And the shapeshifting lets him take care of the healing himself. Nice.

Now can he manage to stay that way?

He couldn’t do much about the material that had been raked off of him.

Absorb some cars when this is over?

This wasn’t going well.

Wait, really? 😮

If he is still alive, he’s gonna be badly hurt, and I don’t think Amy can help him. He’s immune to her power, counting as inorganic for its purposes.

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.