Love Lost vs Needle Breaker

Syringes emerged from the floor like a cresting wave, growing larger and more numerous as they got further from the source.  I watched as Withdrawal tried to escape the tide, and an extension of the needles cut him off.  Tinker stilts and the repelling shield he’d stolen off of a guard caused the needles to break, spilling dirty yellow-black fluid onto the floor.

Pumps, thick pipes, and white tile defined this corner of the complex’s second floor.  We’d fanned out, our groups moving through the various rooms with the intent of clearing each room in turn and ensuring we wouldn’t be flanked, using powers to ensure we wouldn’t be followed.  Anything else ensured a constant fight from all corners.

Except we’d hit a snare.  The idea had been that if we had any fights, any victories would mean we could fold in on and flank the enemies to either side of us.  And as far as I could tell, none of our teams were winning their fights or moving on to the step two.

Needles grew out in clumps, clusters, and bouquets, and then more needles and clumps grew out of the clumps.

“Don’t get pricked!” some kid shouted.  One of our Mortari capes.  “My analysis says they’re drugged and diseased!”

Withdrawal yelped as he avoided a sudden emergence of syringes.  I crashed into the needles with the Wretch, shielding my face with my arms.  Withdrawal already had his mask, so he didn’t need to worry about the spray.

“Help,” Caryatid said, voice quiet.  The needles had cut her off while she wasn’t moving, and now grew in thicker, until they came at her from every direction, all stopping millimeters away from her face, neck, arms, chest, belly, and thighs.  She had gone human to talk, her back straight, arms at her sides, wearing the long, slim black dress with the yellow-orange poofs at the wrists and feet.  She resumed her breaker form, the poofs and her head becoming something more fractal.

For the time being, I couldn’t do a lot.  The broken glass and shattered plastic of syringes pressed in even though I’d broken them, edges reaching for me.  I backed off, hemmed in.

The geography of this particular stretch of hallways was a H turned ninety degrees, and I was in the lower intersection, Caryatid to my right.  Withdrawal was up ahead and around the corner to the left, periodically visible through the thicker pipes.

“Terminal, incurable, long term diseases,” our unhelpful helper volunteered.  “Addictive substances!”

*

Love Lost pounced, driving clawed fingertips and toe-tips into her chest, the breaker tried to retaliate by bringing syringe-fingers toward Love Lost’s middle.  Love Lost sprung back, landing on hands and feet.

*

Colt slashed through the thicket keeping the other group from accessing the breaker.  Love Lost jumped through the first gap that was visible, and tackled the breaker, who was only now getting shakily to her feet.

Claws impaled the woman by the shoulders.  Love Lost brought her masked face close, then swiped her arms out to the sides.  The claws didn’t break contact with the woman’s arms, as Love Lost raked her bone-deep from each shoulder to the respective hand.

A kick with clawed toes to the chest separated the two, knocking the breaker to the ground.

*

The woman who had been a breaker lay on the ground, arms at her side, bloody smears beside her like she’d been trying to make a snow angel, her back arching as she struggled to move in a way that didn’t elicit agony.

The strength went out of her pretty fast, all considered.  I looked away.