A brick struck Chymera in the small of the back. The creature snarled and turned toward Jane where the teleporter stared at her from near the broken brick wall. Chymera breathed in, and her chest rattled. Jane scooped up another half brick and took a bite of the hotdog in her hand before teleporting out of the way of Chymera's toxic spittle. It didn't dissolve the concrete, but it glistened sickly in the sunlight. The creature flexed; the same substance began dripping from its shifting teeth and claws.
Chymera caught the next brick Jane threw; she tossed it back slathered in venom, but Jane was already gone. She reappeared behind Chymera.
"Hey!" she said. Chymera turned. "Ice cream?" She vanished before Chymera's claws scythed through the air where she'd been standing. Jane popped into being next to Sarah's still figure. She dumped the cup of ice water now in her hand on the hero. The Grasshopper sputtered. She lifted her head to stare at Chymera, Jane, and the discarded foods that marked Jane's erratic course.
"Are you--still eating?" she asked. Jane struggled to swallow her current mouthful of chicken.
"N-no," Jane said. She tossed the half-eaten drumstick behind her, but then grimaced and teleported to grab it before it landed. "Okay, yeah. But that reminds--"
Chymera tackled her. Both women yelped; Sarah leaped back into the fray, but she could find no purchase on Chymera's momentarily-furry scales. Chymera snapped at Jane's face with komodo teeth. Sarah's tazer buzzed; a swell of bone plates was Chymera's answer to the numbing electricity. Chymera threw Jane into Sarah and both women fell far back. Sarah pushed herself up on one arm.
"Why aren't you telep..." Sarah's eyes widened at the tooth marks on Jane's neck; the gashes reached up her chin and below her torn shirt. Her hands couldn't hide them.
"She changes so much," Jane said. She swallowed a whimper. "You think she's still poison?" Sarah's eyes hardened. She fixed her gaze on the coiled Chymera. "Wait," Jane said. Sarah tilted her head, but she kept her eyes on the creature across the street. "When I c-called in. Some lady. She said to remember. Chymera can't uh, throw up? I can't... remember the word. Maybe you feed her bricks, something h-heavy?" Jane laid back.
The Grasshopper began walking toward Chymera. She stooped to pick up a mangled tire without breaking stride. She threw it like a discus; Chymera leapt over it. Next she tossed the three-wheeled car, her arms bulging with effort, but Chymera hopped onto and over the wreck. The strength of her temporarily-digitigrade legs propelled it into a building behind her. Shards of wood and stone rained down on the fighters. Bricks and cinderblocks followed the wheel and the car; Chymera avoided these, or let them impact her armor plates without reaction. She caught one large brick in her teeth. She stared the approaching hero in the eye as her teeth cracked the stone. Its halves fell away to either side. Sarah stopped.
"I'm not some dumb bird," Chymera hissed through changing teeth. "Y'think I'm just going to eat whatever comes at me. Stone, rubber? You can fill me up and I'll fall over dead. Or you can stick one of those orange things on me. You ever been stuck with one of those? You know how much that hurts? Don't use powers then, they say." The fur and tendrils fell away again. Teeth receded, and Chymera stood upright. They both ignored the limbs that exploded from her sides and then withered, the wings that made her gasp with pain as they burst out and then became spines.
"All I want," she said, "Is to not use powers. They told me they could do it. Figured it out. They told me one job, and I could be normal. Proved it by making me a normal animal for, what, an hour?" Sarah nodded slowly.
"You've never told anyone who 'they,' are," the Grasshopper said. "If you can tell me--if you can tell me who killed Rhea Rose, I can get you clemency. Have you set up in a preserve in--I don't know, Montana. No neutralizer. Minimal monitoring." Chymera smiled again.
"You're real sweet. Sorry about your cousin. But it doesn't matter, does it? She didn't last. No matter what, I'll still be hungry. No matter what, I'll still need--"
"Buster!" They both twisted at Jane's shriek. Her concentration shattered, Chymera broke out into a hundred different animal pieces. She lunged for the boxer charging toward her from the café. Sarah cursed. She ran toward the dog with speed that tore up the pavement behind her. She leaped, shrinking as she went, to land on Buster. Her weight pushed him down, out of the grasping tendrils. Sarah stared up at Chymera's hungry maw.
"Ah, damn it," she sighed. The diminutive hero jumped from her dog; she made herself smaller--perhaps for easier swallowing.
She needn't have bothered. Chymera burst into strips of leathery skin. These pieces seized on the Grasshopper, pulling her into the creature's stomach cavity. Chymera's flesh reformed. She grimaced at the dog nipping at her heels. She gave chase and skittered down the asphalt with a varying number of limbs. She swiped; the dog yelped. She snarled--and then paused. Chymera stared down at the boxer. Her face twisted, eyes popping into being at random across her face just so they could screw up in discomfort. She took one step, and then another. Chymera clutched at her stomach; her serrated fingers cut her skin, but she didn't seem to notice. The creature retched, but she could not vomit.
Chymera managed another step, and then her leg sank up to the knee in the asphalt like tar. She put one arm down to catch herself, and it did likewise. She pulled, but the blacktop lay in frozen, immovable ripples. New limbs sprouted that were unable to free her. Metal glinted in the shadows underneath her; Chymera howled in pain as Sarah worked the knife through her shapeshifting flesh.
The gash healed almost as quickly as Sarah made it, but she slipped through the regrowing flesh to land wetly beneath the creature. She low-crawled her way out from under Chymera. I didn't move. I didn't need to move; I was already there. Haggard, stained red and surrounded by viscera, the Grasshopper looked up at me. She managed a glance back at the half-buried Chymera.
"Hey, 'Cadia," she mumbled. "Long time, no team-up." Sarah heaved herself to her feet. She swayed, and her power flicked off like a switch. She returned to her normal height. Jane to teleported in to support the Grasshopper as she passed out.
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