206 - Ballroom Shootout [Cherno] (Patreon)

A dozen men aimed their guns and thaumaturgies at the black-armored banisher. At least three unique iterations of Mohawk’s “bladed chains” motif sprung up among them. Pandemonium unfolded — but the gulf between Silberblut and his foes was simply too great. None could strike him, let alone harm him.

“What are you waiting for?! Kill them!” Semzar barked as the women swarmed away from him and he raised his barrier. It formed instantly as a flat wall of purple force, letting off mist and electric sparks, before bending to wrap around Semzar’s personal space. The instinctive ease with which he wielded it betrayed that it was stolen from his current host, the body acting before the worm’s mind realized what he was doing. After realizing he had raised a defense, his head whipped to and fro as he called out: “Cabral? Cabral!”

Tsetse looked down at Semzar in silence. Almost resigned, he stepped forward to interpose himself between his employer and Casus. At this point, Casus felt the geyser of power swirling around Lady Blackhand intensify even further. Through the eye on his back, he could see her holding that voidkey above her head as she ran, power visibly bursting from her arm. Were it anyone else, Casus would have expected them to explode at any moment.

“Your name is Cabral?” Casus asked matter-of-factly, in his hand grasped a battered corpse. The mass of flesh shuddered as a bullet tore into it. A Red Reaper followed right after, shredding what was left of the dead man’s rapidly-dissipating wards and tearing off a third of his torso alongside his left leg. Casus dropped the body, but the shooter was already fleeing.

Tsetse answered in the same manner: “Cabral Khan. You will not find me in your church’s registry.”

The true battle started only then. Those with half a brain and a will to live had already cleared out from the middle of the room, and many had scurried away, with guards quietly opening other doors in an effort to facilitate evacuation.

The two warriors faced off - tremors carried through the floor and thunderous impacts rang in people's ears. The alien whirring and bassy thumping of Tsetse's sonic weapons played the percussion, whereas Silberblut seemed to fight in an almost restrained manner, avoiding coupler charges in favour of trying to feel out his opponent.

It seemed, at first, that Silberblut might even keep up - at first. Within two exchanges it became clear Tsetse still had the upper hand. Within three exchanges, Silberblut was obviously on the back foot and Blackhand was soaring overhead, riding on a scarlet pillar of high-energy thauma.

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As she felt the tides of chaos rising, Krahe raised her right arm, purposely stoking the flow of power between herself and the Atomica. Many pairs of eyes immediately turned her way. The Atomica responded instantaneously, and as the intensity of the current grew, so did the intensity of the Liminal Coil’s resonance, until the pain was nearly unbearable. In turn, the glow of her left arm also intensified, narrow geysers of crimson energy erupting from the cracks as a constant blowtorch-like flare vented from her palm. A second and third tendril inadvertently emerged from her back due to the sheer energy output, their nascent silhouettes writhing under her suit the same way her muscles twitched and seized.

Bullets and thaumaturgies were loosed her way, but the power writhing about her swept them aside — bolts of power went careening wildly in other directions, while bullets were simply obliterated. Nearly every stillborn in the ballroom immediately began doing everything in its power to reach her, some dragging their handlers along. Others responded to their handlers’ attempts at control by turning on them. Two packs slew their handlers, and in turn their heads exploded, adding further to the chaos. Only one handler managed to retain control of his beasts — another man with an implanted third eye. He did so by dragging them over to Tsetse, who exhaled a misting of what had to be pheromones onto the creatures.

Having achieved her goal and not wanting to risk it any longer, Krahe disposed of the excess energy as best she could — by expelling it directly. The only problem was that the mere thought of doing it was enough to set it off, well before she could properly align herself. She went flying through the ballroom, leaving a gaping, seething hole burned straight through the floor, rampant magic eating away at its edges even as she flew. On one hand, the pain abated right away. On the other, there was no way she would be able to reorient herself mid flight. Skimming was her only choice, and something told her the backlash would be an order of magnitude worse this time around.

In the span of moments, she did several things. First, she ripped a pen-type autoinjector kicking and screaming from her Kenoma Pocket, despite the item’s audible creaking and the scraping of otherworldly fangs against her skin. One out of many she had looted from dead bodies, it was loaded with Class 3 Pain Suppressant. Second, she willed her tendril to squeeze the Pattner's trigger just as the pistol happened to be pointing in the right direction. The bullet struck Semzar’s back. Not nearly enough to get through his wards, but he certainly felt it.

The landing was just as rough as she had feared. She skimmed at the last moment with the intention to shunt all her momentum, landed perfectly on the ground, and immediately doubled over in pain as the people around her stumbled back, visibly being pushed away as the carpet under her feet unraveled and burned. The painkiller, somehow, made it worse. As it spread through her blood, the secondary effects of pain fell away, and even the nature of her pain changed, but it remained, and alongside it, all other sensation was altered in turn. Her insides felt like a wriggling sack of serpents, her eyeballs throbbed in their sockets, and that was just the start of it.

Nonetheless, she could move again, and that she did. She wove through the mass of panicking bodies, and was provided ample cover by the half-stampeding crowd that had formed around the ballroom’s outer perimeter. Such was the threat of collateral damage that even numerous gangsters, despite being able to harm Silberblut and especially Krahe, had been cowed into inaction.