What was Kaiser thinking?
I got my answer when, halfway down the stairs, he raised his right hand. Krieg, still two steps behind him, barked into his walkie-talkie… and a new star rose in the north.
Purity.
In an eyeblink she was overhead, hovering a bare fifty feet up. A second later, a beam of light larger than she was lanced out… and Lung was thrown down into an uncontrolled tumble, a lash of fire reaching up wildly while the Empire capes in melee leapt clear.
She didn't even bother to dodge, and the beam lashed out again, pinning him to the ground facedown, and cutting off the flame. He struggled to rise, getting his hands in position, and even pushing himself up to his knees… until the beam widened as it split into a rotating double-helix, the intensity of the light bordering on blinding. Lung was once more slammed into the concrete beneath.
He was actually slowly grinding an outline of himself into it under the relentless hammer of Purity's power, and through the blinding glare I could see his scales crack and bleed, the blood itself flashing into steam as he sheathed himself in flame. Fenja raised her shield against the coruscating magnesium-white strands, and Menja and Hookwolf crouched at either shoulder. Another I-beam floated off to the side, and I could see it sharpening itself into a giant stake as Kaiser reached out to it with his power.
Kaiser clearly believed in keeping something big in reserve. I could learn from that. I'd need to, if I wanted to pull all this off.
Lung had already learned that lesson.
Purity's beam broke off, a man grappling with her from behind, a knife through her stomach. Another knifed Rune in the kidneys. A third attempted to slit Krieg's throat, only for his knife to turn on him, branching into a dozen seeking spikes that found his eyes and throat. None of the three had legs — well, they all had a left leg ending just above the knee, but that was it — and each was hanging off of their specific target. It was when this third one burst into a cloud of ash that I understood: Oni Lee.
I widened my attention, looked at all the things I could see through my bugs, but hadn't necessarily understood. The scarf-wrapped man in the electric wheelchair I'd seen earlier… he too exploded into ash. Lee's bandages were soaking red — this couldn't be safe. Perhaps he didn't care. He might simply prefer to die fighting than to die in bed… or prefer death to disobeying Lung.
In the second I took to grasp this, a fourth Lee appeared on Victor, who immediately leapt on Othala, covering her with his body. A blinding flare of light went up as Lee's incendiary grenade went off.
The execution of Lung was in shambles — Rune's I-beams had dropped to the ground when she had. Purity had detonated the clone on her with a quick pulse of power, but was trying to hold her stomach in as she evaded straight up, vanishing in the clouds. Kaiser and Krieg remained untouched, but their focus had been disrupted.
Krieg actually turned away from the fight, gesturing, and launched a fresh Lee to the west, toward the roof of the building I was behind. He puffed into ash on impact, and I resumed searching for the real one, scanning the rooftops.
Lung rolled over and began to sit up, fire leaking out through his feral grin, only to have Hookwolf land on his head. Not everyone had lost track of the fight. Hookwolf's immense steel carcass pinned him for but a moment, but in that moment the twins lunged forward. Fenja's sword and Menja's spear struck, piercing Lung through the meat of each thigh and pinning him to the concrete. With a convulsive heave, Lung threw Hookwolf off him once more, and then sat up and attempted to snap the spear.
He failed.
Burning it didn't work either.
Whatever power the giantesses had that let them shrug off Lung's blows so easily, they could apply it to their equipment as well.
If I was going to intervene against Kaiser, I'd have to do something soon. I looked throughout the scene — Hookwolf pacing in pouncing range, Kaiser reaching the bottom of the stairs, Krieg turning to follow Kaiser, the twins pinning Lung down beneath the crane.
Beneath the crane!
That had been Kaiser's plan all along, or at least his backup if Rune somehow failed: drop a stack of I-beams on Lung, and then use all that metal.
But how?
How would you beat a villain whom fighting only made stronger?
The Undersiders and I had put Lung down for a very brief span by hitting him before he got going; Armsmaster was the one who'd managed to keep him restrained. And the more of this fight I saw, the more unbelievable that seemed to me. How had Armsmaster managed to keep this force of nature from just walking away, through walls if necessary?
Right — heavy sedation. Get Lung unconscious or otherwise out of a fight, and he was tough… but not Endbringer tough.
Kaiser didn't seem to be trying for drugs — just metal, and more metal, enough I-beams to build a small building. Could Lung suffocate? Pinned beneath tons of metal, unable to melt his way out without consuming his remaining oxygen and collapsing, left alone without a fight to fuel him… it could work. And it would let E88 disengage and claim victory even if it failed.
And if that was Kaiser's plan, then the crane drop was the time to intervene.
I had some swarms in the crane for the panoramic view anyway, with hanks of silk thread — I set them to binding it together into a long rope, bugs guiding it down to attach to one of the beams, others guiding it through one of the pulleys and down.
I still needed to figure out where to attach the thread… but Kaiser's armor did have a few hooks in the ruff guarding his neck. Worth a shot. The line itself was nearly invisible, but steering it down there without being seen meant guiding a long strand of silk with relatively few bugs. There was a reason spiders used these things to go hang-gliding, and it made guiding the strand down fiendishly difficult.
Kaiser hadn't been idle, either — from the forest of beams that Rune had planted in her efforts to hit Lung sprang a web of steel encasing the increasingly draconic cape. Spikes emerged and pressed against his body, as he thrashed and vomited flame. The twin giantesses held him down, unflinching, though Fenja did cover her face with her shield, while Hookwolf paced at a watchful distance.
I was concentrating on guiding that stubborn strand of silk down, when I was abruptly interrupted by a punch to my kidney. There was an odd moment of double vision as I turned, hand trying to reach behind me into my pouch, bugs boiling forth, while still guiding that thread down.
The good news was that my costume was, as designed, knife-proof.
The bad news was that I had an Oni Lee on my back, trying to test that.
An odd blink, and another swarm of bugs appeared on the roof above me. With another Lee. Whom they kept biting and stinging. After several hard punches, the one on my back shifted to trying to cut my throat — that wouldn't work either, but the pressure left me unable to breathe. I could feel myself thrashing about, feel the panic in my body. I focused on the one on the roof.
The real one?
I couldn't tell.
Then there was another, more distant. The real one was taking my bugs with him when he teleported! And he was moving fast, very fast — he could get away, like this. I had my swarm go for the eyes. Could he teleport blind? I didn't know.
Still choking.
Still couldn't grab him, or budge him.
Even maimed, he was too much heavier than I was, and far stronger, and that knife kept sawing away at my throat. Couldn't cut the silk, but he was pushing hard enough I couldn't breathe either. It's funny what runs through your mind at times like that: I couldn't figure out if Lung telling Lee that I should be killed if seen was Lung's way of responding to the threat I'd made in finding his newest lair… or if Lung moving me off his personal kill list was just his way of saying 'thanks' for my setting up this meeting with Kaiser.
Either way, I could have done without it.
While I had been fighting for my life, Lung had been getting ever less human — his neck was serpentine, now, and his face… his mouth opened too many different ways.
Kaiser's metal prison held him, for now, but the metal thorns it had spawned were no longer boring deeper into Lung's flesh. He shifted to forming something close to a guillotine blade, trying for Lung's unnaturally long neck, only for Lung to twist his head about, snakelike, and bite it, keeping the razor metal from building up momentum and turning it into an outright contest of strength. The blade moved downward, slowly bending Lung's neck back, but not with the force it would need to sever.
Another stalemate — and everyone present knew which side those favored.
Lung's thrashing was giving him noticeably greater play in his steel restraints. His fire might not be hot enough to melt steel, but it was clearly hot enough to soften it. Worse, Fenja's sword hand was beginning to redden, as if from sunburn. If the giantesses could no longer pin him down, E88 was running out of time to defeat Lung.
Much of their force had already left the field: Purity. Cricket and Stormtiger. A badly burned Victor, wounds half-closed and still weeping, was even now staggering away alongside Alabaster, who carried Rune in his arms. Othala jogged alongside, periodically touching both Victor and Rune.
The guillotine shifted shape, forming a plug for Lung's mouth. He opened all four of his mouthparts wider, flame roaring up at the sky, thrashing hard enough that the giantesses had to reset their stances. Kaiser spread his arms, and more metal flowed in, spreading the plug to cover the yawning maw. Other metal moved to cover Lung's smoking nostrils, and while Lung's thrashing broke an arm free, he wasn't quite able to pull it out: the plug was still joined to the I-beam which had spawned it, and the connection thickened as Kaiser shifted his efforts to keeping it in place.
So Lung simply took a talon and gave himself a home tracheotomy, flames gushing from the new hole in his throat, blood spurting as he continued to rip his regenerating flesh apart to keep his airway clear.
Kaiser turned to Krieg, and I looped silk on one of the hooks on his ornamental armor. Krieg began raising and lowering his hands rhythmically, tipping the bundle of I-beams up and down like a teeter-totter.
A shouted command, and Fenja and Menja fell back, abandoning the weapons pinning Lung in place. He redoubled his efforts to squirm free, and Kaiser abandoned the guillotine, turning his full attention to containing Lung. Lung was beginning to move despite the metal web, wrenching it with him as he twisted — but Kaiser's constant efforts held him down, web twitching as if alive, squeezing him, and repairing itself more quickly than Lung could bend it.
Kaiser sought to match the dragon's raw strength with his mastery of metal alone and — for now — he was winning that fight.
An ash cloud erupted around me as I inhaled at last, and immediately began coughing.
The real Lee — or the one I thought was real — wasn't teleporting anymore: he was writhing about, trying to crush my insects. He pulled the pin on a grenade, and I felt for the new copy.
Nothing. The madman had set off an incendiary next to himself! I could feel the swarm around him crumble — insects were not made for temperature changes like that.
Though the insects on him were drastically reduced in number, I could still feel him push himself up with his hands. Did he not feel pain? I could see the blood-trails his stumps were leaving, and he hadn't escaped his own grenade unscathed. He was teleporting again, and in my direction now. And he had other grenades on his belt.
Lee was the only cape from the ABB who hadn't yet tried to set me on fire. Maybe I was due.
When the stack of beams rotated to near-vertical, they began slipping out of the cables holding them. One fell, Krieg moving it into position where the web had grown thinnest like a man playing three-dimensional Tetris. On impact, it immediately began to warp, twisting itself to reinforce Kaiser's web.
A second beam fell, Krieg aiming it at Lung's head with one hand while the other continued to amplify the rocking motion of the bundle. A desperate twist had Lung's neck looking like a question mark, wrapped around where the ton-plus of steel had hit the ground. Kaiser promptly began shaping it into what looked the framework for a coffin.
I frantically gathered swarms about me, vectored others in in an attempt to intercept Lee. I'd have to guess right about his jumps to catch him. I rolled into cover behind a dumpster, and set a clone where I'd been. Lee didn't have to come in close — he could just throw grenades from a rooftop and barbeque the whole alley. But I was betting he'd come in with his usual suicide clone strategy… and if he tried it, he'd take the decoy swarm with him when he left again.
Three more beams slid free, and the rest could not be far behind… but the fifth beam that fell had a string attached to it, and if that string snapped almost immediately, it lasted long enough. Kaiser was jolted upward and to the right almost twenty feet.
Krieg abandoned his other efforts to give his leader a safe landing, which he managed — it hardly took four seconds before Kaiser was on his feet again, a dozen feet closer to Lung from where he had stood.
But without Kaiser adjusting the metal binding him, Lung ripped free more quickly than that. The spear and sword still held him… right up to the point where he simply ripped his legs off them, leaving about a third of each thigh behind.
I guess when you can regenerate, there are different options available.
Lee teleported in on the clone, and left as quickly — I shivered as the wave of heat and noise from his grenade passed by, and directed the swarm he'd picked up to resume the attack. With more bugs on him, I again had a better picture: it looked like my earlier efforts had messed up his eyes, and he was in bad shape regardless, bleeding heavily from the remains of his legs. He collapsed on the rooftop to my left — I could feel him struggling to rise, and failing. Again, he set off an incendiary to clear the swarm.
This time, he didn't get up afterward, but simply burned where he lay.
The beams continued to fall, and both Kaiser and Krieg were clearly still trying to bury Lung. They succeeded, too.
But before the avalanche of metal caught him, Lung exhaled a line of fire, eye-searingly bright. Still not quite hot enough to melt steel, Kaiser's armor included.
More than hot enough to leave him crumpled on the ground. His armor wasn't airtight, not even close.
Menja snatched him up and turned to run while Fenja did the same with Krieg. Behind her, Lung crawled out of the pile of I-beams, hawking and spitting out a glob of steel. His legs still trailed behind him — while they were visibly healing, that wasn't the same thing as being able to support his weight.
Hookwolf launched a desperate attempt to cover their withdrawal, but Lung simply swatted him aside to focus on Menja, whose ten-foot strides were eating up the distance. She might even have gotten away if it hadn't been for the wings. Lung simply glided in onto her back, and once she stumbled it was all over — Lung ripped her to pieces with fang and talon over an unbearably slow minute.
Kaiser's death was swifter.
Looking at the devastation through my swarms, I changed out of my costume and left, bruised, sore, and more than a little shaken.
I'd achieved my goal: Kaiser had fallen.
I only hoped this wouldn't be the start of something worse.