Heroes run toward chaos and screaming. Less expected was the screaming running toward us. Men and women stumbled up the street; buildings like cliffs to either side funneled these victims and their tormentor toward us. A tentacle whipped forward through the throng to grab one young woman. It hauled her backward, and we lost sight of her. Here at the café the road broadened to permit street parking. The crowd thinned, permitting us a view as Chymera fell upon her meal.
She was nominally human, but her ceaseless partial transformations overwhelmed her features: ram's horns sprouted and then fell away; tails grew, and then retracted; a wave of fur displaced a sheen of scales that grew hard like armor plates; claws swelled on hands that became paw-like too late to prevent her fingers from splitting open; fangs distorted her mouth as she ate. Her hyena teeth chewed through the woman's upper arm, tearing through the meat as Chymera shook her head like a dog worrying at a rat. Her jaw flexed. The humerus would break with another moment of pointed pressure.
The Grasshopper ploughed shoulder-first into Chymera. She knocked the woman free as the two empowered went tumbling; Chymera's snarling drowned out the civilian's screams. The creature twisted toward the Grasshopper. Sarah was on her back, and she drew up her legs and kicked Chymera in the fanged face and used the force to shove herself back. She made it within arm's reach of the woman. The Grasshopper got her hand on the woman's bare leg. The wound in her began to close as the missing muscle filled in. It was no more than a shallow gash before Chymera dragged Sarah away and threw the hero into a building with force enough to shatter the brick. Sarah--the Grasshopper--fell to the ground. She shoved herself up from the sidewalk as Chymera began to move back toward her prior victim.
"Hey!" Sarah shouted. Chymera's head swiveled away from the woman whose arm she'd nearly chewed off. Something in the creature's posture shifted; the rest of her changing body fell into place facing Sarah, and she let her sobbing victim continue to crawl away. The Grasshopper strode to meet Chymera's charge. Then something caught her ankle, and the hero flipped away as Chymera's tentacle snagged her from behind. She pulled; Sarah fell back, struck her head on the wall, lost her breath as she fell heavily onto the sidewalk, and then Chymera tossed her across the street into a parked car that struck the curb and tipped.
Metal and perhaps bone crunched; the car alarm sounded. Sarah popped free from the dented metal and Chymera's grasp as she shrank. Chymera snarled; another tendril joined the first, and both missed. Sarah charged in toward the creature as the first tentacle fell away. The second withered as Chymera's hands grew long, sharp claws. She opened her arms to welcome the tiny hero into her grasp; talons snagged on reinforced cloth and failed to puncture. They caught at Sarah's clothing, but Sarah was too small to grip.
And she was kicking Chymera in the chest. The kick sent Chymera hurtling back; when Sarah landed on the road she made a crater deeper than she was tall. She was out and speeding toward Chymera before the creature made it to her many feet. Sarah grew only a little as she leapt, but her weight still bore Chymera to the asphalt. She twisted to locked her arms around Chymera's throat. The creature gagged. Sarah tightened her arms, and Chymera's protean limbs began to fall out from underneath her as unconsciousness loomed. Then porcupine quills sprouted across Chymera's back in a wave. Sarah cried out; when the wave receded some of needles remained snagged in her flesh where her clothing rode up. And in her face.
Sarah let go and stumbled back. She had a quill through one of her eyes; a viscous substance oozed between her fingers. She crumpled as a spiked fist plowed into her gut. Sarah dropped onto the street, and Chymera loomed over her.
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; she kept Chymera's gaze, though both hero and creature trembled and staggered.
"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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