Chapter 11 – O' 88 Stars in Heaven, Shine!
The sound reverberated through the night sky, making the air tremble.
For half a second, nothing happened. Talia kept her eyes on the large zombie approaching her.
A blur of white and gold flashed across her vision, so fast that she could barely register it. Whatever it was, it whooshed past Talia, and in the next moment, the hulking brute of the zombie in front of her disappeared.
A violent impact suddenly thundered somewhere to the side.
Talia's head snapped towards the sound, only to spot the brute embedded in the side of a nearby building, its body buried several feet into the concrete walling as dust and fragments of masonry rained down around it.
Talia stared. What the hell...
Another zombie lunged from her left.
She turned instinctively, but knew before anything that she had been too slow. Just as it was about to clamp its jaws around her arm, the blur appeared again.
Another streak of white and gold tore across her vision, and this zombie disappeared as well. Talia managed to catch a bare glimpse of it tumbling through the air before it slammed into the pavement hard enough to crack the concrete.
Before anything else could happen, Talia felt a pair of arms wrap around her waist before her body was lifted off the ground.
"Wha-!"
They moved faster than she ever had under her own power, and before she knew it, she was being dropped on the roof of a nearby building. Talia stumbled as she was released, before grabbing a nearby cinderblock to stabilize herself.
Talia turned around, and her hazel green eyes met the brilliant blue eyes of the white-clad hero who had saved her life.
Glory Girl.
Victoria Dallon.
The name appeared in Talia's head, unbeckoned. She'd done her research on all the active capes in Brockton Bay, and Glory Girl had appeared on her radar much more frequently than any PRT or independent hero, save for her sister. Her powers were also widely known, considering Glory Girl was one of the most well-known Alexandria packages on the continent – and her limits of displayed strength, speed, and durability were also well recorded.
So all in all, she was a far inferior version of Supergirl. Albeit one without an obvious weakness such as Kryptonite or some other mineral.
Glory Girl was still scanning the street below even as she asked, looking at the monsters roaming on the roads. "Are there more of them? Anyone else out here I need to get to?"
"Not that I saw," Talia managed, "It was just me and them."
That seemed to be enough to let the heroine settle, as she visibly relaxed before turning towards Talia. "Okay. Good. Are you okay, though? You look like you've been through hell," she asked, giving the catsuit-clad woman a look over.
Talia said nothing, knowing how she looked. She had multiple slashes and claw marks on her body, going right through that skin-tight catsuit of hers, all of them bleeding badly. It also felt like she had dislocated a shoulder or broken a rib, but she wasn't sure about those.
"How the hell are you even standing right now?" Glory Girl muttered.
Talia straightened, forcing herself to ignore the ache running through her body. "I'll live," she said, sounding much more defensive than she intended. She realized it too, and her next words were tinted with a hint of apology, "But thank you."
Glory Girl cocked an eyebrow and smirked. "Not what I asked."
Talia looked down at herself, her eyes quickly darting from injury to injury as she noted them all. Her clothes were torn in several places, blood stained her side, and her arms were covered in scratches.
"I've been worse."
"Still not what I asked." Glory Girl crossed her arms over her chest. "But let's do it this way. Give it to me on a scale of one to ten. One's a sprain and ten's funeral."
"Around a five, probably," Talia said before pausing for a brief moment. "Actually, make it a five and a half."
What could she say? She'd been hardened against pain ever since she was young – well, not him her, Talia her.
Grr… she could feel herself losing the plot in her head as she even thought that sentence!
Glory Girl's gaze swept over Talia's injuries one more time with a skeptical look, her hand twitching toward her communicator belt. "That doesn't look like a five and a half."
"That's the number you're getting. Take it or leave it."
"Fine, fine. It's a six." She said, raising her hands in a placating gesture. Glory Girl tilted her head, studying Talia's face for a moment before saying, "So, who are you? I don't recognize you, and believe me, I know everyone who's a who in this city. Are you a hero or a villain?"
Talia winced. "That is an excellent question. It is also a very complicated one."
Glory Girl snorted. "Everyone and their mother has a complicated story these days, try me," she finished with a challenging grin.
I'm an abandoned prince from another world who was about to die when I joined a multi-dimensional chat room that also opens doors between worlds and gives random powers to every member.
Yeah right, like she could say that. Talia thought with a snort.
"Like I said, Glory Girl. It's complicated."
"It's always complicated." Her easy tone didn't quite survive the sentence. "That's usually the part where I find out I've been fighting next to somebody I should've been told about. So, you gonna make me work for the rest of it, or are we skipping straight to the part where I hear it from Armsmaster instead of you?"
Talia glanced down at herself again, at the blood and the torn fabric, and decided the deflection wasn't worth the fight it would cost her. "I just got here. Recently. That's all it means."
Glory Girl studied her a moment longer, her expression suggesting she was considering whether to push the issue. After a few seconds, she apparently decided against it, at least for now. "Fine. We'll come back to that." She nodded toward the street below. "Do you know what's going on down there?"
"Some of it," Talia admitted, concealing the rest of what she wanted to say. More than you, she thought, considering you're asking me.
She walked toward the edge of the roof and looked down the side of the railing. The horde of zombies was moving around, making all the grunting and groaning noises you'd expect from a zombie. As she turned her head to face the heroine, a cool gust of wind blew through the half-constructed rooftop, making her hair fly behind her.
"I was doing my own thing when the explosions started out of nowhere, and these things started crawling out of the woodwork," Talia began, Daemon's own style of speaking dominating her tongue as she spoke. "They're strong, and they're faster than they look, but each of them has different degrees of both. They also don't feel pain. I ripped out one of their jaws, and it still kept coming. They don't stop until you take the head or destroy their brain."
"So they're basically zombies?"
"Basically zombies," Talia agreed, the ghost of a smile appearing on her face. "They're also very coordinated."
Glory Girl's expression became more serious. "What do you mean? Coordinated how?"
"They weren't all mindlessly attacking me before; they used tactics," Talia elaborated. "The smaller ones kept me pinned while the larger one waited. They were deliberately creating an opening for it."
Glory Girl frowned. "So they're intelligent?"
"It's more of a -"
A sudden feeling, not too dissimilar to a click, resounded in the back of Talia's head, cutting her off. It wasn't an actual click sound, but more metaphorical, and a feeling she was intimately familiar with. It was the feeling of Metamorphosis's cooldown completing – the power was once more available for her to use.
Talia put the thought of that away and completed what she was saying, ignoring the confused expression on the blonde's face at her sudden pause. "It's more of an animal-like sapience, if I had to give a term for it. They're like wolves or hyenas, coordinated enough to hunt and somewhat of a pack mentality from what I've seen."
"Great," the sigh the heroine let out spoke untold volumes. "I was really hoping you'd tell me they were just some Master's minions."
"'fraid not."
Talia pressed her lips together into a thin smile.
"And what about your end? Do you know anything about these things? Where they came from, what's spawning them?"
All the while, in the back of her head, she was contemplating whether to activate Metamorphosis and transform into someone else, or maintain Talia.
There were pros and cons to both.
The two upsides she could see to doing so were the facts that she would no longer possess these injuries, as wounds did not transfer across forms (unless she was wounded in her base form, but that was a whole other calculation). She could also get someone much more powerful than Talia, someone with actual supernatural powers.
But on the flip side, she could also turn into someone much weaker than Talia. One of the forms she'd assumed before, Fujiwara Chika, came to mind. Transformations like the pink-haired girl would be absolutely useless here, even when fully healed. At least Talia had combat training and a frankly inhumane pain tolerance to rely on.
Hmm… decisions, decisions…
The glint in Glory Girl's eyes dimmed, the question visibly landing somewhere she didn't like. "No, this is new to me too. I've... the entire New Wave has been working with the PRT to get a handle on the bombings ever since it started. I was just flying over to the hospital to get Ames to the Rig when I spotted you and rushed over to save you."
She gestured out at the street below, at the smear of destruction Talia's fight had left behind. "This is the first I'm finding out anything about this. The PRT lines I'd been using broke down pretty quickly because of EMP or some shit, so I've just been flying blind, trying to help where I can."
Fuck it. Let's flip that coin!
Her next course of action decided, Talia reached deep within herself…
Glory Girl opened her mouth to keep speaking before she suddenly stopped, seeming to visibly reconsider something. "Okay, one major thing before we keep going: what do I even call you? Like, what's your cape name? Because I've been calling you Snow White in my head for the last five minutes and I'm starting to feel bad for it."
…And let go of her current transformation.
"That's… That's actually a good question," Talia managed to say as her power activated.
Glory Girl flinched as a blinding wave of silver light suddenly consumed Talia. It vanished just as instantly as it appeared, and when it did, the older woman in the leather catsuit was gone, replaced by a boy even younger than her with black hair and grey eyes.
"What the hell?!" Glory Girl yelped, jumping a few feet into the air and staying there.
Daemon blinked before grinning at the look of utter surprise on her face.
He continued a moment later. "Like I said, it's complicated. I haven't really thought of a cape name to go by, and the one PRT has given me is… well, it's kinda okay, just way too edgy for my liking." And this was coming from a guy who spent most of his younger years training with a sword.
Overkill was a name you could just feel the edge of.
He was sure that some chuuni idiot who dressed in all black and loved to cut himself would drool at the chance to have such a name – but it just wasn't to Daemon's taste.
"Yeah, they do that a lot," Glory Girl said with a snort. "That's why you gotta pick your own name before the PRT gets creative. Nobody wants to be the next Chubster, that's for damn sure."
Daemon didn't say anything, but by the look on his face, he clearly agreed. He'd looked into how PRT did things – a majority of which was finding things on PHO and then grilling Annette for more details – and he'd not liked the things he'd found.
"Yeah, well. I'm still thinking about it."
In truth, he had not planned on choosing one. Anonymity was his greatest strength against Coil, and more importantly, in protecting Dinah. But with the giant display of frosty destruction he had done as Grayfia Lucifuge and now the events of today, he was starting to feel like staying anonymous was nothing but a pipe dream.
Glory Girl gave him a long look. "You know, most capes have that figured out before they end up in a fight with zombies of all things."
Daemon let out an amused huff. "You sound like you've dealt with zombies before."
"Let's just say, this ain't my first rodeo."
Daemon raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
Glory Girl shook her head, apparently dismissing the subject. "Never mind."
A wet groan rose from the street below before a shrill scream suddenly cut through the night. Both of them turned in unison and realized that the sound came from beyond the intersection.
There was another scream before it fell silent.
Glory Girl was already moving before the last sound disappeared. "Stay here."
Daemon blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You're injured."
"I am not," Daemon said. "Talia was."
He told her, even though he knew that she wouldn't understand what he was talking about. And as if to prove his point, he activated his power.
Silver light filled the air again, and while she was still unprepared, Glory Girl did not flinch, though she did take a step back. The light faded away to once more reveal another person. The boy was gone, replaced with a girl with bright blonde hair and warm, brown eyes.
Lucy Heartfilia blinked, taking a brief moment to settle into this new form of hers.
She looked down to see what she was wearing. It felt both new and alien, and familiar and comforting at the same time. Like it was simultaneously the first time she'd worn such a thing, and had been wearing this set of clothes for a long time now.
It was confusing and jarring, and even after all these transformations, she had not gotten used to this feeling.
She saw herself wearing a turquoise-blue strapless crop top with a sweetheart neckline, accentuated with gold trim and a short blue jacket over it. Long blue sleeves covered her arms, ending in soft ruffled cuffs. She was wearing a glossy black mini-skirt, secured with a white belt and a golden buckle, and paired with black thigh-high stockings and slouchy brown leather ankle boots.
Glory Girl looked at Lucy for a moment, as if visibly suppressing questions, before she took a deep breath and nodded.
"Alright," she started, "Can you fight in this changer form?"
"I can." Lucy nodded.
What she didn't mention was that without her celestial spirit keys, almost all of her arsenal was unavailable to her. No keys meant no summons and no Star Dresses she could equip on herself to fight. She didn't even have her magical whip on her, and without her weapon and keys – she was starting to feel kinda naked.
And speaking of weapons…
Lucy looked around the roof for the first time since landing here. It was a cluttered space, with cinderblocks, bricks, and a wooden workstation haphazardly scattered across. She scanned her surroundings before her eyes landed on what she was looking for.
Taking a few steps, she reached down and grabbed one of the crowbars sitting in a withered old plastic bucket. She brought it close to inspect it for a moment before swinging it around to feel the weight of it.
It was no sword, but it'd do for now, she concluded.
Glory Girl followed her gaze to the crowbar, then back to Lucy. "Wait. You never actually told me your cape name."
Lucy tested the crowbar against her palm, giving it another experimental swing. Her eyes flicked towards the other blonde for a brief moment before returning to her weapon of the night. "Hm?"
"Your name. Your cape name."
"Oh right," Lucy muttered, "it's Overkill."
Lucy stilled, realizing what she had just blurted out.
Overkill was the name of a villain, one who was still wanted by the PRT for freezing several blocks and leading to multiple deaths and a lot of destruction.
A sharp swish cut through the night.
Lucy turned just in time to see a closed fist hurtling toward her face. She reacted on instinct, swinging the crowbar up to meet it.
CLANG!
The metal shrieked and shattered.
The punch tore straight through the ruined crowbar, but Lucy had managed to knock it just far enough off course. The fist missed her face by inches and slammed into the cinderblock behind her.
The block disintegrated on impact, sending a cloud of cement dust and smoke into the air.
"Hey!" Lucy yelped as she jumped to the side. "What was that for?!"
"You're Overkill?!" Glory Girl practically snarled, any trace of the previous geniality and friendliness on her face completely gone. Her fists clenched at her sides, as if she were resisting the urge to attack.
Lucy blinked.
Right.
Overkill was publicly classified as an A-class villain ever since her debut a few days ago. And right now she had just admitted to Glory Girl that she was Overkill. If Lucy were to look from the heroine's perspective, the mysterious cape whom she had just saved in the middle of a zombie outbreak had just casually admitted to being one of the most destructive villains currently wanted in Brockton Bay.
And judging by the look on Victoria's face, she was taking that admission very, very seriously.
Lucy shifted her grip on the broken remains of the crowbar, staring at the blonde hovering a few feet away.
Well, this is awkward.
It was a very Natsu action, she couldn't help but muse. The thought was so absurdly out of place that Lucy almost laughed.
Almost.
Because Glory Girl still looked ready to punch her through the roof.
"Look," Lucy said, raising her free hand defensively. "I can explain."
"Great," Glory Girl snapped. "Start explaining."
Lucy opened her mouth to start speaking, but stopped. She had no idea where to even start. She racked her brain for a few moments. "It's complicated," she finally said.
Glory Girl's eye twitched. "You've already used that one before."
"Oh, come on," Lucy groaned, "Do we really have to do this right now. There are zombies down there if you happen to have forgotten!" She waved towards the streets, where the zombies were roaming the roads, occasionally crashing into each other and letting out wet groans.
Glory Girl's blue eyes flicked between Lucy and the street below. Her expression tightened as she visibly weighed her options. Lucy could almost see the calculation happening behind those eyes. Fight the unknown cape who had just admitted to being Overkill, or deal with the steadily spreading zombie outbreak while there were still civilians who might be trapped in the area.
Eventually she came to a decision.
"This isn't over," she said, pointing a finger at Lucy before turning toward the edge of the roof. A moment later, she vaulted over the railing and dropped, only to catch herself in midair and shoot toward the street below, like a white and blonde shooting star.
Lucy watched the heroine hit the ground in a textbook superhero landing before turning away. She made her way back to the bucket, grabbed another crowbar, and returned to the edge of the roof.
She didn't hesitate and stepped over the railing and dropped down the side of the building, letting gravity carry her toward the street below.
OO OO OO
The comms-piece crackled in her ear, and Miss Militia spoke. "This is Miss Militia to all Units. I am authorizing lethal force for subduing the targets. I repeat, I am authorizing lethal force…"
Annette tuned the rest out as she ducked below a wild swing from one of the zombies before blasting it with pale icy-blue lightning from her palm. The lightning blasted it backwards before encasing the zombie in ice when it slammed against a wall.
No need to hold back anymore…
She took a step back, taking some cover behind a riot shield held by one of the PRT officers from the three squads that had come here with her.
Annette activated her power, and a holographic wheel appeared before her, glowing faintly in the air. It was divided into eight sections, each bearing a unique symbol. Beneath the eight-part ring was a smaller ring divided into sixteen sections. Unlike the upper ring, every section of the lower ring was completely blank, without even the slightest mark or design.
This was the core of her Power, each symbol represented a different ability. She could only use one at a time, but switching between them was quick enough that she rarely had to stay with one for long.
At least, that was what the PRT believed.
At a single thought, the wheel moved, and turned away from [Cryocharge] and passed two other powers before resting on [Substrate].
As she felt the power settle within her, Annette jumped out of cover and ran towards the Horde of Zombies. She activated the power halfway to them, and a cool tingle spread across her body as the flesh turned into a crystalline, almost diamond-like material with an accent of blue.
It almost looked like ice – but like ice in a Disney show, not how it actually was.
She reached the first ghoul and swung her hand at it, using a minor changer power inbuilt within [Substrate] to lengthen and sharpen her fingers into crude blades.
She swiped at the ghoul, and the claw tore through its chest.
Before it could recover, she reversed the motion and took its head clean off.
Another lunged at her from the side, and Annette raised an arm and let its teeth close around her forearm. And while it kept gnawing at her, its teeth uselessly scraping against her skin, Annette ripped her arm out, and several teeth came out with it, scattering across the pavement.
Her fist finished the job.
She searched around for another cluster of ghouls, only for several canisters to bounce across the pavement in front of them. The confoam grenades exploded, and white foam erupted across the zombies. The foam quickly hardened into a shell.
A rifle cracked from somewhere behind Annette.
One of the trapped ghouls jerked before its head slumped, and it was soon followed by the other trapped ones.
She looked at where it came from and met the eyes of Miss Militia. The two of them nodded at each other as the sniper rifle in the senior heroine's hands transformed into an AK47.
Then she turned around to face an even larger horde. Annette placed her hand on the roof of a nearby car and triggered her Breaker power once more. The crystalline structure that made up her body realigned and reassembled, and turned into the same metallic grey sheen as the car.
Rushing forward, she shoulder-checked one of the large ghouls about to slam into a riot-shield-holding officer, sending the creature staggering sideways from the impact.
Annette planted her foot into the ground before twisting and driving her metal elbow into the ghoul's jaw, slamming it with enough force to snap its head sideways.
It recovered faster than she expected, and let out a snarl before swinging at her.
Annette ducked beneath the blow and stepped inside its reach before driving both hands into its chest – the impact releasing a small shockwave as it sent the ghoul skidding backwards across the pavement. She charged at it, not giving it time to get back up.
She raised her claws up in the air and brought them down onto it.
Or at least, that had been the plan.
The ghoul suddenly turned to ash before her claws could even connect with it.
Annette got up, looking around in confusion as she saw all the ghouls turn to ash. "What is going on?" she couldn't help but mutter aloud.
"Ma'am, over there," The officer holding the riot shield pointed with a trembling finger.
Annette followed his arm and saw what she could only call a 'Shadow of a Brilliant Glow'. She had no idea what that meant, but those were the words that came to her mind.
And here I thought zombies were the strangest thing I would encounter tonight.
She didn't know how long she'd been staring, but the light had just started to fade away when she heard her name being called.
"Rimestar!"
Annette turned around to see Miss Militia sitting in the driver's seat of the Humvee.
"Get in," Miss Militia said, "We're heading towards the light."
Annette nodded and climbed into the Humvee. Miss Militia slammed her foot into the pedal, and they sped off, chasing the light.
OO OO OO
A bead of sweat slid down Lucy's cheek. She stepped forward and swung the crowbar in a perfect arc, exactly as Ser Arthur had taught her.
She didn't even get a chance to catch her breath before another zombie stepped directly onto the corpse's chest, its foot punching through the broken ribcage and into the organs beneath as it lumbered toward her.
Movement suddenly flickered at the edge of her vision. A third zombie was closing in from the side, still outside her guard.
Great.
Her brown eyes flicked between the two as she stepped back half a pace, pivoting until she could keep both of them in sight.
She caught sight of Glory Girl nearby, fighting off another group of zombies. The heroine slammed her fist into the stomach of a zombie, sending it flying backwards into a parked car. The metal door caved in around the zombie's body as the frame of the car crumpled inwards.
But Lucy didn't watch it land.
The zombie she was already facing swung at her. Lucy sidestepped the blow before bringing the crowbar onto its collarbone with all the force she could muster. A sickening crack echoed through the street as the bone practically disintegrated underneath her blow.
The zombie staggered for a moment, but it didn't stop.
That was the problem.
They just never stopped.
Not until you separated the head from the neck or destroyed the brain.
Lucy licked her lips, her throat suddenly feeling incredibly dry. Her grip on the crowbar tightened as she reset her stance before swinging the crowbar at the head of the zombie, shattering its skull in one swift blow. Its knees buckled first, then the rest of it followed, and it went down face-first onto the pavement.
The one on the side used the opening to close in. She turned to meet it, crowbar already rising. She was about to swing when she heard a low, rumbling groan nearby.
Her eyes found the source of the noise, and her stomach dropped. The zombie that had been punched into the car by Glory Girl was up. It was walking, slowly lumbering forward – heading straight towards Glory Girl like nothing had happened to it at all.
That one should not be standing.
She didn't know much about zombies, but she knew enough to know that they weren't durable enough to survive something like that. Not even the –
She didn't get the chance to finish her thoughts before the zombie she'd been fighting lunged at her. She managed to bring the crowbar up and steadied it with both hands as the zombie's jaw closed around the metal. Growls escaped its throat as it tried to bite through the metal to get to Lucy, but couldn't.
This stalemate lasted for a few seconds before Lucy let out a grunt of effort and pushed the zombie away.
It staggered off her and had just turned to look at her when the crowbar pierced through its eye and right into the skull.
Whatever monstrous life that animated the zombie faded away as it went limp.
Lucy ripped the crowbar out, freeing it from the skull, which exploded like a watermelon – sending rotten blood and chunks of bone and flesh flying everywhere.
"Oh, ew…"
She grimaced for a moment as one particularly nasty chunk of brain matter stuck to her exposed stomach. She used the ruffles on her sleeve to wipe it away.
She soon caught sight of two more zombies rushing towards her, their jaws open with blood and pus dripping out like drool, and a maddening gleam of hunger in their milky eyes. But they weren't charging straight at her. One curved left while the other curved right, trying to flank her.
She quickly realized what was going on. They were trying to pincer her.
Before the zombie on the right could reach her, another zombie – one wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, funnily enough – slammed into it with tremendous force, the two creatures shooting to the side and into a wall.
Lucy turned her gaze to the side to see Glory Girl with her fist outstretched, floating a few inches above the ground.
Glory Girl's eyes briefly met Lucy's, but neither had time to do anything more before Lucy dove in to fight the remaining zombie. She hooked the crowbar through the armpit of the zombie before twisting around – using the movement as leverage to practically rip the zombie in two.
The severed body of the creature toppled to the ground, and Lucy quickly shuffled backwards before the still animated top-half of the zombie could take a bite out of her. She didn't know how this… this zombification worked, but she'd seen way too many movies about zombie apocalypses to ever trust anything of hers near the mouth of one.
She raised the crowbar, ready to smash the zombie's head when –
PAIN!
A blinding wave of pain erupted on her side. A torturous gasp tore out of her throat as a hint of tears appeared in her warm brown eyes. While Lucy Heartfilia had been hurt and suffered much during her time as a mage of Fairy Tail, she was not as conditioned against pain as her previous form, Talia Al Ghul, was.
She instinctively recoiled away from the pain before she remembered what she was doing. Lucy whirled around and swung, slamming the curved end of the crowbar right into the head of the zombie that had its claw covered in Lucy's blood.
The head crumpled inwards under the force of the blow as the zombie dropped dead to the ground.
Lucy paused for a moment. Something about the angle it had come from nagged at her – she'd seen this one already, hadn't she?
Maybe it was that Hawaiian shirt it was wearing…
But she didn't get to think anymore as she was attacked by two more zombies. One of them lunged at her head-on, while the other was not that far away.
Lucy ducked under an arm swing from the first zombie before standing up behind it and hooking its arm with her crowbar. She then pulled hard, practically throwing the zombie at the other one that was still rushing at her.
The two zombies collided, and their heads smashed together. Blood dripped freely from the wounds on their heads.
Lucy switched her grip on the crowbar before thrusting the straight end of it like a spear, spearing through the heads of both the zombies. Like a circuit broken, they both stopped moving. She wrenched her crowbar back out, followed by a geyser of blood, bone and grey matter as the bodies fell onto the ground.
She looked around for more threats, but her gaze inexplicably went towards the fallen zombie that had caused the itching in her brain.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then her eyes widened in realization.
"Wait. Isn't this – ?!"
Her head snapped towards Glory Girl.
The blonde hero was weaving in and out of the street, her body a blur of white and gold as she took down one zombie after the other. But Lucy couldn't help but notice one thing: Glory Girl wasn't killing them. She wasn't smashing their heads or separating them from their necks. She was just pushing them around and breaking bones in the process. The hero was slamming them into the ground, punching them across the streets and, in some cases, even grabbing them and throwing them around like a ragdoll.
It would've been effective, if not for the fact that the zombies didn't feel pain and were not debilitated by any form of injury.
"Glory Girl!"
The hero paused high in the air where no zombie could reach her and turned to look at Lucy. Her gaze was a mix of curiosity and wariness.
"You need to destroy their brains to kill them!"
Glory Girl's blue eyes hardened into chips of ice, and she disappeared.
All Lucy saw was a blur of white and blonde before Glory Girl appeared in front of her face. "Say that again," she demanded, her voice full of righteous anger. "Tell me you didn't just say what I think you said."
"Destroy the brain. That's the only thing that puts them down." Lucy didn't back up, even with the hero leaning close enough that their faces almost touched. "That's the only thing that works against these zombies."
"Of course you'd say that." The laugh she let out had no humour in it at all. "Why am I even surprised? You're the one who froze half a dozen blocks solid a few days ago. Course killing's just Tuesday for you."
The sheer vitriol in her voice was almost enough to make Lucy flinch. But she didn't, and she carried on.
"This isn't about me," Lucy said, forcing a calm that she didn't feel.
"It's exactly about you!" Glory Girl jabbed a finger at her own chest. "I don't take advice on tactics from villains. I especially don't take kill-or-be-killed advice from the villain who's already got a body count."
Lucy stared back at Glory Girl with eyes just as hard as the hero's. "Fine. Don't trust me. Look at it yourself, then." She pointed at the nearest twitching corpse, jaw hanging by a thread of skin, still clawing forward. "Does that look like something that just needs a time-out? You don't need to trust me or even like me to see that."
"I am not going to start executing people because some cape with a fetish tells me it's convenient – "
"They're not people!"
The words tore out of her louder than she meant.
"Not anymore! I don't know what they are, but people don't get back up after their ribs cave in and just keep walking!"
Glory Girl's fists were shaking at her sides. "You don't know that. You don't know anything about them. You're not exactly someone I'd call a reliable expert on where the line is."
"I know how many times you've hit one and watched it stand back up." Lucy kept her voice level, refusing to match the heat. "You can hate me for what I did the other day. Fine. Hate me all you want. But that doesn't make me wrong about this."
"That's not how it works! I don't get to just believe the villain because the villain sounds sure of herself!"
"Then don't believe me. Believe your own hands." Lucy nodded at her. "How many have you actually put down for good tonight? Not knocked back. Not broken. Down."
Glory Girl didn't answer.
"So what, you want me to just – " Her hands came up, like she was trying to physically push the idea away from herself. "You want me to start caving their skulls in because a villain told me it's the smart move?"
"I want you to stop pretending there's a version of this where nobody has to. I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to look at what's in front of you."
"There's always a version where nobody has to!" she shouted. It came out too loud, too fast, and was noticed by both of them. "That's the whole point. That's the only reason any of this is worth doing. And it's not something I'm going to throw away because you told me to."
"I didn't ask you to throw anything away. I am asking you to survive the next hour."
Something in that landed differently than the rest had. Glory Girl's breathing was still ragged, but the anger underneath it had started to curdle into something else, something closer to fear of her own answer.
The fight seemed to go out of her all at once, the anger draining into something smaller and much harder to look at.
"I can't," she said, quieter now. "I can't be the person who does that. Even here. Even like this." Her hands had stopped shaking, gone still in a way that looked worse than the shaking ever had. "I don't know how to walk away from that and still be someone who flies down here every night thinking she's helping. So I can't. I just…" She shook her head, like she could shake the rest of the sentence loose. "I can't."
Lucy's eyes softened.
She didn't say anything at first. There wasn't really anything to say to that, not "it's okay," because it really wasn't, and not "you're right," because right now Lucy wasn't sure being right had much to do with any of this at all.
The groaning from down the street hadn't stopped. If anything, it had gotten closer, but neither of them moved yet.
"Hey." Lucy took a deep breath, drawing from this form's vast wealth of experiences. Her voice lay low as she spoke. "Look at me."
It took a second, but Glory Girl did.
"I'm not gonna sit here and tell you you're wrong for feeling that way." Lucy shifted her grip on the crowbar, not raising it or brandishing it like a weapon; she just needed something to hold onto while she said it. "You clearly already hate that you can't. Don't need me piling on."
Glory Girl let out something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Great. Thanks."
"I'm serious." Lucy's voice stayed even. "You're allowed to have a line. Doesn't make you useless."
"Feels pretty useless right now." Glory Girl glanced down the street, then back, jaw tight. "Standing here arguing with you while more of them show up."
"Yeah, well." Lucy let out a breath. "We don't have time to fix how you feel about it. So let's just work with it instead."
Neither of them said anything for a moment. The silence between them remained full, not uncomfortable, just full.
Then Lucy moved past it.
"You don't have to be the one who ends them." She turned her head toward the street, toward the shapes still dragging themselves closer, lumbering in a way that made her skin crawl even now, this many times over. The beginnings of a plan started forming in her mind as she spoke. "But I can't take them all alone fast enough. Not before somebody else gets hurt. So here's what I actually need from you instead, if you're willing."
Glory Girl straightened, and some of her old readiness returned to her shoulders.
"Draw them off me. All of them, if you can manage it. Doesn't matter how: fly circles around them, yell, throw something, whatever gets their attention. Just keep them moving, keep them chasing you, keep them off me for a minute. You don't have to touch a single one to do that much."
"And you'll – "
"I'll finish it. That part's mine, not yours." Lucy held her gaze steady. "You just buy me the time. That's all I'm asking."
For a second, Glory Girl just looked at her, searching her face for a long moment. Then she nodded.
"Yeah." Her voice came out rougher than usual, but certain. "Yeah, I can do that."
Lucy nodded. "Good, then let's start."
Glory Girl hesitated for a single moment before shooting upwards into the sky. She flew towards the opposite side of the street before coming to a stop at the far end. She floated in the air just outside the reach of the zombies. She ignored the swiping hands trying to get to her and closed her eyes for a moment.
When she opened her eyes, a wave of presence erupted out of her. It caused two entirely different effects in the zombies. Some were attracted towards her and tried to get to her even more ferociously, and the others started panicking and rampaging around with no control.
Lucy ignored the alien and unfamiliar sensation of a slight flutter in her lower abdomen she felt due to Glory Girl's Aura and closed her eyes.
For the first time tonight, she focused and channelled her magic.
Opening her mouth, she started to chant. "Survey the Heavens, Open the Heavens…"
OO OO OO
"Survey the Heavens, Open the Heavens…"
Overkill's melodious voice echoed in Vicky's ears as she got to work. Her Aura exploded out of her, washing over every zombie in the street. She couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness when they reacted to it – because it proved that they were once humans.
But they reacted strangely. Many milky eyes snapped directly at her as growls and groans filled the air. They all rushed towards her, a ferocious hunger filling them. The others just went mad. They rampaged around randomly, attacking everyone and everything around, even the other zombies.
"All the stars, far and wide..."
Suddenly, something grazed against her leg. Vicky's eyes widened, and she shot upwards into the air before peering down. "Fuck…" A soft curse escaped her lips as she saw the zombies piling over one another, trying to climb upwards on a mound of moving corpses.
She needed to do something.
Her eyes hardened, and she shot downwards like a meteor.
"Show me thy appearance..."
She slammed onto the ground right beside the zombie mound in a three-pointed superhero landing pose. She quickly got to work, her body becoming a blur as she kept throwing the zombies around.
She paid no attention to the illusory planets and stars forming around Overkill.
For the first time in her life, she placed her trust in a villain.
"With such shine. Oh Tetrabiblos..."
Vicky paused for a brief moment when she heard Overkill say a word that didn't matter. At this moment, she couldn't help but wonder what Overkill was doing, and why she was singing.
In the end, she just shrugged her shoulders and decided that it didn't matter.
She threw the zombie she'd held above her head to the side before rocketing forwards towards Overkill.
"I am the ruler of the stars..."
"What the fuck?"
She watched as the world around her dissolved into a kaleidoscope of colors.
The illusory planets became more and more real, like they were actually there. She ran a hand through one of the planets, and while her hand went through like it wasn't there, she could feel a tingling sensation on her fingers, that lingered even after she'd pulled her hand back.
"Aspect become complete..."
The colors swirled around like a furious cosmic storm as motes of golden light started floating off the planet and into the air,
Vicky took to the air as she watched with bated breath to see what was going on. She also noted that the zombies looked just as confused as she felt, roaming around aimlessly, like they couldn't see her or Overkill at all.
It was usually on sight with these things.
"Open thy malevolent gate."
Hundreds of thousands of points of golden light filled the air, swaying in some invisible wind only they could feel.
"Oh 88 Stars of the heaven..."
"Shine! Urano Metria!"
A burst of blinding light erupted, washing everything in Vicky's sight with a brilliant white. She panicked and shot upwards into the air, flying as fast as she could.
From hundreds of meters above, she looked down as a giant dome of brilliant golden light covered the entire street.
OO OO OO
The dome of light eventually faded away to reveal an exhausted and panting Lucy surrounded by a sea of ash. Even now, she could see more and more zombies turn to ash, even those outside the range of her spell.
She looked around, a smile of satisfaction appearing on her lips, even as the sheer exhaustion was starting to cause darkness to creep into her vision from the sides.
Still, she nodded with smug satisfaction, using Urano Metria had been the correct decision. This form only knew three spells that didn't need the Celestial Spirit Keys – something she definitely lacked – and were entirely caster-type. Other than Urano Metria, she knew the Fairy Sphere and the Gottfried.
She didn't have the sheer magical energy of Master Mavis, something which was an absolute necessity if she wanted to cast Fairy Sphere. And she didn't even consider using Gottfried, seeing as it needed three Celestial Spirit Wizards. And she was the only one in this entire world.
As she looked around, Lucy's eyes landed on a disintegrating zombie in front of her. She was about to ignore it when suddenly the faintest wisps of something extremely familiar crossed her senses.
Her head whipped around in shock.
Was that…magic?!
She kept her eyes trained on the zombie until it disintegrated, trying to see if she could feel it again. But there was nothing, just an empty void where life would usually rest.
She was almost starting to wonder if she was just too tired and had hallucinated the entire thing.
But she knew what she'd sensed. She just couldn't find it again, not even a trace of where it had appeared before.
Lucy bit her lip; maybe she was just tired.
I really need to go home and rest, she thought with a frown. She must be really exhausted if she felt magic in Earth Bet of all things. There was no such thing in this world. Amanises had told her that she'd checked when Lucy had been in a coma after being rescued from the wendigo.
In fact, this world was so dry and lacking in magic that it was practically a desert.
Still, she made another attempt to sense the magic she'd felt.
Nothing.
There was absolutely nothing.
"Guess it really was just exhaustion," Lucy murmured to herself.
Her introspection was cut short as Glory Girl landed in front of her.
"What the hell was that?" she demanded.
Lucy flashed her a tired grin before going to speak. "I —"
Lucy was suddenly cut off by the sound of rumbling that washed through the air. She and Glory Girl exchanged a confused look, before turning to see what was going on. Far down the street in the distance, she could see several vehicles making their way towards the two of them.
These weren't normal vehicles, but large armored jeeps that looked like something military would use.
"What now…" Lucy grumbled as she shifted lightly, preparing to fight if needed to.
Glory Girl saw this and quickly grabbed her fellow blonde's wrist. "Wait!" she whisper-yelled. "That's the PRT. They're heroes." She then realized just who she had said that to. "Yeah, I guess that wouldn't make a difference to you, would it?" she muttered as she released Lucy's wrist.
The Jeeps came to a stop, and several PRT operatives holding riot gear and weaponry exploded out of their doors as soon as they opened. They quickly came into a formation, locking their shields together to form a makeshift wall as they faced the two blondes.
Lucy smirked. "Well, this is something new. I don't think I've ever been treated like this before."
"Shut. Up," Glory Girl hissed as the doors of the lead Jeep opened.
Lucy immediately recognized the two PRT heroes who came out. Miss Militia and Annette. This was the first time she had seen Annette in her costume, and she had to admit, it was pretty cool. It was a white-and-blue one-piece made of some spandex-like material, and was obviously armored where she could see. She had an almost Power Rangers-type helmet on, just one that left her mouth exposed. It also had two large ear-like shapes on the side of the helmet. It also had fake blonde hair falling from inside the helmet – likely to confuse people about Annette's real hair color.
Miss Militia stepped out completely from behind the Jeep's open door. Her eyes swept through the street, taking in everything that was around – the devastation, the corpses, and the remaining ashes from when said corpses were turned to dust by celestial light.
Her eyes briefly ran over Glory Girl, likely checking for injuries.
Then her eyes met Lucy's.
"Are either of you hurt?" Miss Militia asked, her voice steady and calm, with a hint of warmth in it. "We saw the light from three blocks out. Wasn't sure what we were driving into."
Lucy blinked. This wasn't really how she had pictured her first conversation with a hero from the Protectorate – other than Annette – would go.
It had started on a much more positive note than she had expected. Fewer explosions and gunfire and all that jazz.
"We're fine," Lucy said, watching her carefully. "Better than fine, actually. The zombie problem's been handled here."
Miss Militia's eyebrows lifted, and even through the American flag scarf she had wrapped around her lower face, Lucy could imagine the confused expression on that face. "Handled, how exactly?"
"Would you believe me if I said 'thoroughly'?"
Miss Militia let out the barest huff of a laugh, something which Lucy decided to count as a victory.
"I might, given the state of the street." The Protectorate hero glanced past Lucy at the ash still drifting, then back. "I'll need a name, though. Whoever you are, you just did the PRT's job for us tonight. I'd like to know who to thank."
"That's Overkill."
Just when it seemed to go so well, Glory Girl had to open her mouth. Lucy glanced at her, and it took one look at her face to know that she had not wanted to say that and had accidentally blurted it out.
The PHO had nicknamed her well – Collateral Damage Barbie, breaking things without meaning to, now including conversations.
As Lucy mentally giggled at her own bad joke, it wasn't as cozy on the Hero side.
Any warmth Miss Militia had been showing faded away, leaving behind something much harder. In a blur of green and black energy, a submachine gun appeared in her hands, which was promptly pointed towards Lucy.
The PRT officer's reaction was somehow even more dramatic. A wave of panic and whispers spread before weapons started being pointed towards Lucy. She looked down at the several red laser dots on her chest and suppressed the urge to shudder, managing to project an aura of utter confidence she was not feeling a single bit.
But still, Lucy didn't step back. "Careful. Some of us had a long night."
"You're a wanted villain." Miss Militia's aim didn't waver. "I wish that changed what I just said. It doesn't."
"And you're pointing a lot of guns at the reason your headcount tonight isn't a whole lot higher." Lucy's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Go ahead. Pull the trigger. I'm curious what happens, too."
Her eyes flicked towards Glory Girl for the barest moment, half cautious of what she would do and half pleading not to reveal her secret – that this form was vulnerable to bullets. Lucy needed to maintain the illusion that she had the upper hand and that she was not afraid of a confrontation if she wanted to have any chance of getting out of here without being arrested.
She relaxed just a tad when Glory Girl didn't do anything for either side of this confrontation.
"That's not an answer to anything."
"I did that." Lucy jerked her chin at a nearby mound of ash without taking her eyes off Miss Militia. "All of it. In about a minute. So before your people decide tonight's the night, you might want to sit with whether you actually know what happens if I stop being cooperative."
Please believe it… Please believe it… Please believe it…
"You think helping tonight absolves you of what you did now?" Miss Militia's voice came out colder, much colder. "Several blocks frozen in ice. Multiple confirmed casualties, with more being discovered even today. Hundreds of injured people. Millions of dollars in structural damage. That's the act of villainy with your name on it, whatever you're calling yourself now." She finished, noting that this was a different form than the one that had created all that ice a few days ago.
"Oh, I wasn't threatening. Just doing the math out loud." Lucy shrugged, easy, like none of it cost her anything. Like she wasn't on the edge of exhaustion and wasn't about to black out any moment now. "Arrest me if you want to try. Won't change what's true right now, you need every gun you've got pointed at me somewhere else."
"Miss Militia," Glory Girl finally deigned to speak. "She's not lying about tonight. I watched the whole thing happen."
"That's not the deciding factor here, Miss Dallon."
"Then what is?" Lucy asked.
Miss Militia didn't answer right away. Her earpiece crackled, sounding low and urgent. She listened without lowering her aim, keeping her narrowed eyes trained on Lucy as she did so.
Then, she lowered her weapon, without showing even a hint of the hesitation she was clearly feeling
Her eyes flicked towards her own men, and she raised a hand. "Stand down," she ordered. Her men complied, and the red laser dots on Lucy's chest disappeared. Miss Militia turned to the blonde. "This isn't over. What you did tonight doesn't erase what you did before. You will answer for that in the future."
Lucy smirked. "Never said it did."
"Glory Girl, with me." She turned around, not waiting to see if the younger hero was following her. "I want a perimeter on this block, full sweep for stragglers, and somebody get comms back to the HQ..."
The operatives broke into motion around her, and for a moment nobody was looking at Lucy at all.
She used it.
As Miss Militia continued barking orders, Lucy met Annette's eyes through the visor – and the woman who had remained silent this whole time gave the barest nod to her. Lucy nodded back and slinked away into the shadows.
By the time Glory Girl turned around to look for Overkill, Lucy was long gone from the site.
OO OO OO
Lucy didn't know how she got back to her apartment, tired as she was. Her very bones ached, and her muscles screamed in protest with every step she had taken.
Urano Metria had clearly taken its toll on her body.
In the end, she just dropped onto the bed and fell asleep on the spot.