Luke ducked and weaved out of the hands of a mangled undead, nose cringing at the stench of rot emanating off the thing like a plague. He tried to raise his gun to clear the smell with the beautiful scent of gunpowder but the creature was faster than the cashier guessed. Its skeletal maw lunged at his arm, forcing Luke to divert his aim so the thing didn’t chow down on his hand.
He’d practised shooting a small amount in the warehouse Bloom had given him the keys to, but Luke wouldn’t say he was used to it. That was why, with an undead trying to eat him and his mind racing for an answer, the numb recoil almost made the gun slip out of his hands as he pulled the trigger.
The bullet nicked the side of the undead jaw, taking a couple of teeth with it but failing to do much more than piss it off.
I missed the window. Luke cursed inwardly as he backstepped away, desperately needing distance from the creature. Punchline, which was his only real ability for the time being, worked with bullets from his limited testing, but the window to activate the ability was much narrower. Also considering its chaotic nature, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to rely on it too heavily.
He made a passing glance at his two teammates as the undead closed in on him. They weren’t in much better positions. Shrapnel had the worst of it, seemingly deciding to take the brunt of the undead heading their way and getting surrounded in the process. He was handling it, but in a war of attrition, the endless armada of undead were bound to win. Snapper wasn’t much better off, snapping as he called it between undead and stabbing them when he could.
The old man was mostly running and dodging, using his weird ability to distort time for himself to snap into different places at will.
It’s not just that I’m not getting help. I need to help them before things escalate too far.
As he was thinking that Luke felt his back bump into the inky wall that separated each team. There was one glaring obvious negative to the cashier’s idea to stick so far away. He couldn’t retreat, because there was a wall.
“Not good!” Luke yelped, leaning under the undead attempting to grab him again and pointing his gun directly at its chin.
The thing twisted its momentum towards him without a care in the world for the bottom half of its face being blown to smithereens. Again Luke missed his opportunity to activate Punchline and this time, he was punished for it. The skelly’s hands racked across his arm, tearing through his jack with what remained of its nails and finding flesh.
Annoyance and anger at the idea of being caught so easily surged through Luke, causing his body to react almost on its own. His feet pivoted in quick motion and his hips twisted as he delivered the back of his pistol to the back of the undead’s skull with swift motion. The skeleton fell backwards as its caved-in skull shattered on the tile, leaving Luke a little stunned.
How the hell did I do that? He did not remember being nearly that coordinated. Stranger than that, when he took a quick look at his wound, Luke found that it barely even stung. The skeleton had definitely drawn a little blood and there were red marks on his forearm but considering how easily it had torn through his padded jacket arm, he expected something a little more gruesome.
“Right…” Luke mumbled, shaking off the shock. “...stats. Like a video game.”
Unconsciously he summoned his Status, for a little visual reminder.
[Mastermind: 1]
[Brute: 3]
[Rogue: 1]
[Swindler: 1]
[I.T Factor: 0]
[Free points: 4]
Was that Brute? Luke wondered, thinking of his grazed arm. When he’d gotten to VL 3 after completing his third DDE, Luke had invested one point into all of his stats bar I.T Factor, keen to squeeze any advantage he could while not potentially wasting stats. The thought process was, that putting one point in each stat might be enough to get a taste of what without committing too much potential power towards a build he didn’t want.
He had done far to much research to just mindlessly throw away stats and had been partially regretting putting two additional ones into Brute just to see how much of a difference it made. But Luke hadn’t clocked that Brute might not just make him stronger. It made him tougher too. Tough enough that it was definitely worth the points invested.
As for that sudden spin power by coordination and athleticism he didn’t know he possessed, Luke felt like he could attribute that to Rogue. Maybe Swindler too because he wasn’t quite sure if it was a charisma type of swindler or a pirate kind of swindler. The best bet was Rogue.
Mastermind could also be why I was so sure staying away from the gates was the right call. Mastermind was more vague than Brute, Rogue or Swindler but it had to have something to do with intelligence. Luke was sure of it.
As for I.T Factor and leaving it at zero…
I can’t even imagine what it does. He was unsure about it and unsure whether putting points into it was even a good idea.
“A little help from one of you lads would be great!” Snapper yelped, slipping through two undead and leading them straight to Luke.
“I got it,” Luke replied, gunning down the first undead as swarmed towards him.
Bullets crashed into its skull and made short work of it but the next managed to close the distance before Luke could adjust his aim, blitzing him with a flurry of swipes. His survival instincts naturally told him to retreat but his brain had other ideas. Using that newfound coordination the cashier walked into the blows, weaving the few he could and using his arms to guard the ones he couldn’t.
He delivered a vicious elbow to the skelly before it could do any meaningful damage, using the much wider window to pull off a Punchline. The teeth that he’d sent knocked back exploded into flaming rainbow sprinkles, burning through the back of the undead’s skull and extinguishing its blueish-black orbits.
That worked… a lot better than I thought it would. Flaming rainbow sprinkles were one of the only things he could consistently get Punchline to react well too. A good go-to if he couldn’t think of anything funnier.
“Thanks for that,” Snapper said, huffing. “I can’t snap as many times as I used to. Must be old bones or something.”
“Try to keep at least some uses in reserve,” Luke advised. His mind wandered for a moment, connecting how own Status with his teammate and chewing on an idea.
Would Snapper be pure Rogue? Assuming he was right about what Rogue did, his teammate's own power made his build so to speak, a speed dump. He was capable of far faster bursts of speed than either Luke or Shrapnel, but traded that for almost no impact. No Brute, if Luke was equating it to his own stats.
But there are means to make up for a lack of power that still takes advantage of speed.
One was comfortably resting in his hand.
“Your power slows down time for you, doesn’t it?” Luke asked.
“In a sense, yes,” Snapper confirmed.
“Then why don’t you use guns, Snapper?” Luke pressed.
The old men shrugged. “I’ve always just had knives. They’re much easier to get.”
And don’t make up for the downsides. Luke thought, unholstering his second pistol and chucking to Snapper with an extra magazine. With his ability, hitting targets should be child’s play. The cashier turned to check on Shrap-
Oh shit.
Bedsheet had been surrounded on all sides by undead and he was very quickly being pushed back towards them. Whether it was pride or a sense of duty the kid hadn’t said anything, which was definitely a communication issue. But Luke needed to deal with the undead issue first.
He sprinted towards Shrapnel firing a barrage of shots to his left and right to free him up a bit. The pistol clinked as the last bullet left its magazine, far too many projectiles for Luke to use Punchline on.
I can’t believe he was taking on six at once. The cashier thought as he blindsided the nearest one, delivering an uppercut and sending molten sprinkles flying into its face. They melted away the bone and blew out the orbits of undeath, causing the skelly’s body to crash into the one next to it, trying desperately to bite through one of Shrapnel’s metal arms. Luke took advantage of that, kicking the bony mass square in the chest sending the second undead crashing to the ground.
If Bedsheet had a build, it would be nothing but Brute. Seeing him take the opportunity Luke had given him to fling the four undead away, cleaving them in half with his metal arms only solidified that in Luke’s mind. Maybe a little bit of I.T Factor mixed in as well, considering the whole turning into a metal thing, but definitely a ridiculous amount of strength.
“Thanks for the assist.” Shrapnel said between huffs as the metallic parts of him faded away.
“You can’t keep more than one part of your body transformed for long without tiring out, can you?” Luke guessed, reloading his pistol.
“Kind of. I’ve only had powers for a month so I guess you could say I’m getting used to it.” Shrapnel admitted. He stretched his arms a little before his face went blank and a lofty finger slowly pointed to the middle of the ring. “Hey, what are we doing about that, V?”
Luke followed the teen's direction, laying his eyes upon a storm of gold that flashed over and over as the congregation of the two biggest groups was slowly being torn apart from the inside. Granted, there were a few that “died” to the straggler undead not unlike the ones that had set upon Luke’s group, but most of them had died to the Swarm hunter.
Which was still actively dissecting the group.
“I can think of few things,” Luke said, pulling out his shotgun.
He meant to save its limited shells for the next round; however, the undead Hunter tore through Team Basilisk's ranks like butter. The fact that neither the werewolf demon nor the giant robot had engaged with it told Luke everything he needed to know.
Speaking of those two.
Maybe he could use them some way. They were closer to where it was than his group, so there was a good chance that it would attack them first. That would be as good an opportunity as any to spring on the thing. Both the heavy hitters were overrun with the undead, but the second the Swarm Hunter finished with its current prey, it was going for either Luke’s group or one of them.
The plan had some glaring holes, but overall, Luke evaluated it as their best chance of success. But a good leader always consults his henchmen, so the cashier pulled them into a huddle.
“Listen, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think the three of us combined stand a chance against the walking nightmare,” Luke spoke plainly, gesturing to the Swarm. “With that in mind, I have two plans. Both dangerous and unlikely to work.”
“That doesn’t inspire much confidence.” Shrapnel said with a nervous laugh. “But then again, we’d probably be out already if you hadn’t held us back.”
“Exactly what the youngin said. You got us this far, so I’m all ears.” Snapper added, giving him a stiff pat on the back.
For a brief second, Snapper started to sound like his dad. Luke quickly shoved down all of that for later. He didn’t need unresolved trauma coming up when he had shit to do.
“Right, so plan A.” Luke started, pointing towards the two heavy hitters dealing with swathes of the undead. “We stay here, bide our time and hope that the Hunter targets one of them, and they either fight until the clock is done or do enough damage that we can swoop in and finish it off. Downsides are that it could kill them both, which would mean we’re screwed and…”
“...that it could target us first.” Shrapnel finished.
“Yep,” Luke replied.
“What’s plan B?” Snapper asked, not even trying to hide the fact he didn’t like plan A.
“We help one of those two out with their undead, then they work with us to take down the Hunter.”
There was a pause as Snapper and Shrapnel looked at each other, sharing some telepathic understanding between their masked faces.
“Plan B.” They agreed in unison.
With the plan in place, the trio started running through the arena, dodging the larger clumps of undead and dealing with the strays. Luke tried to focus on using his pistols for the lone undead but gave up a few shotgun shells dealing with the packs that set upon them. It was an arduous process to cross through the veritable wave of the undead and get to the robot/android/cyborg.
But between the steel titan and a demon werewolf, they all agreed that Metal Man was the more inviting alley of the two.
Snapper didn’t take long to adapt to his new, much more effective style of combat, dealing with most of the undead trying to flank them while Shrapnel held the vanguard down. Luke found their trio weirdly… effective, considering how they were all relatively unskilled, inexperienced and underpowered in comparison.
Maybe this whole henchmen thing could be a bit more permanent. Luke pondered as they worked their way through the horde. A good supervillain did need henchmen after all and he could definitely scam these two into working for cheap-
Luke slapped himself.
Bad villain, have some integrity in your evil. But… scamming them might auto-complete Daily Dose of Evil every day for him-
Luke slapped himself again.
“V, don’t get psyched out now!” Snapper encouraged him from behind.
“No, it’s not that,” Luke said amidst delivering a swift uppercut to an unlucky skelly’s jaw. It exploded into flaming sprinkles. “Just trying to curb bad habits.”
Eventually, they got within earshot of the robot. Or rather, close enough for it to turn its mechanical head when Luke flagged it down after shooting one of the undead scratching at its plating. The way the head snapped towards him was a bit spooky, but the cashier took it in stride, trying to strike up something friendly.
“Yo, robot man!” Luke shouted, waving. He wasn’t sure if the thing had a name and he hoped ‘robot man’ was inoffensive. “How would you feel about teaming up to deal with Swarm Hunter-
“COMPLIANCE WITH FLESH SCUMB IS BENEATH THOSE WHO HAVE UNITED WITH THE GREAT MACHINE. CEASE YOUR COMMUNICATION INFEIROR CREATURE.” Boomed out of the robot’s speaker mouth in a tone of brimstone.
“Okie dokie,” Luke mumbled, putting his hand down, very afraid and shrinking back from the steel giant. He had not been ready for that intensity nor the seemingly irrefutable sense of superiority. His teammates heard the robot's reply, and he directed them in a far softer voice than before. “So… who’s up for asking the demon werewolf?”
They both nodded.
“To the demon werewolf!” Luke commanded them, pushing Shrapnel ahead and running away from the scary robot.
Again, they started plowing their way through the horde of the undead, this time heading for their last potential alley. Unlike the robot who seemed to ignore or shrug off most of the undead, the demon werewolf was actively massacring anything that go near it. Luke hoped that didn’t include them.
When they got close enough, he waved at it, getting its attention.
“We come in peace!” Luke shouted. “We were wondering if you’d be interested in teaming up.”
It growled at them, tearing a skelly in half.
“Does that mean yes?” Luke asked.
“Why should I?” The werewolf said, in a deep grunt.
Luke pointed to the Swarm Hunter, who was actively finishing off the remnants of everyone else. Soon, it was going to be just them, the robot and a few stragglers.
“Good point.” The demon werewolf admitted in a deep, almost sulfuric voice. The way puffs of smoke out its snout when it talked made Luke’s hair stand on end. “Just don’t get in my way.”
“Gotcha.”
Luke and his team took the werewolf’s warning clearly, helping deal with the overabundance of undead to make sure they weren’t bothering it. A couple of times, Luke had to adjust his aim just to avoid hitting the ones right next to it. Snapper and Shrapnel were even more hesitant than himself, standing clear of the demon werewolf.
“Do you think it eats people?” Snapper whispered to him. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
“No. E.R.A.O would expel it if it did-”
The golden flashes stopped. They’d been so constant and so bright that Luke had almost gotten used to the sight of someone’s Guardian Bracelet being activated. But all of sudden, that bright warning had ceased. He peeked over and saw the spine-chilling sight of the Swarm Hunter, rattling its tail in an empty oval of tile where the majority of Team Basilisk had once been.
There was no screech of victory.
No roar of dominance.
Just the bloodcurdling click of its mandible grinding against each other as it turned to look for its next target. Its head snapped to the robot, then to a few stragglers. Luke had seen things move at inhuman speeds before, but never had he felt so disturbed by the way the Hunter smacked its tail into the ground and jumped towards the nearest poor soul. A single cleave of the bone blade on its arm did that guy in.
Then it jumped to another.
And another.
And it kept “killing” the stragglers until there were none left.
Then it turned to them. Because, of course, it picked them over the robot.
“Hey Mr V, that’s not good, is it?” Shrapnel asked.
No Bedsheet. No it is not.
The undead had thinned out enough to give them all a little breath of fresh air but that was immediately taken from them as the giant alien bug corpse murder machine jumped into the fray, keen to kill the biggest thing it could see.
The demon werewolf. Luke knew he’d made the right call “teaming up” with the werewolf when it batted away the Hunter’s attempt to pierce its chest with its bladed arm. The fact that the attack that almost immediately felled everyone else failed to harm it brought a little confidence that they might survive the…
…Holy shit we got to fight this thing for three minutes. Luke realised, looking up at the giant timer and the sky.
“A little help!” The demon werewolf growled as it tried to headbutt the Hunter off it. Its mandibles were getting a little bit close to the werewolf’s snout.
Luke didn’t need to be told twice, unloading two shells into the Swarm Hunter and trying his best to turn all the pellets into explosions of flaming sprinkles. While the shells themselves shook the horror from beyond off their ally Punchline struggled to take hold on the sheer number of projectiles. Tiny little sparks of rainbow sprinkles sputtered out before they could even do any real damage to the Hunter.
They just got its attention. It twisted its head towards Luke in an instant and raised its skeletal tail, whipping it down on him with enough force to crush stone. The cashier realised he was far too slow to dodge the sudden attack even with Shrapnel sprinting to cover him. He tried to step back, but his feet wouldn’t move faster than the tail sped towards him.
And I really wanted those quests' rewards too. Luke thought as he watched his impending doom speeding towards him-
The world snapped.
One second he was about to die, the next he was standing a couple of metres away from where he was about to die. There was a sizable crevice where he had once been and a very tired-looking Snapper holding onto him. Shrapnel had caught onto its flailing tail, trying to wrestle the thing down while the demon werewolf attempted to pry its mandibles apart.
“Thanks for the save,” Luke said, breathing a sigh of relief. He barely noticed his heart beating out his chest.
“I did always think I’d make a good rescue Supe.” The older man said, clearly happy to be helpful.
“You’d really thrive in heists.” Luke mused to himself, loading more shells into his shotgun and praying his team had done some sort of permanent damage to the Swarm Hunter.
They had not. Shrapnel did a good job using his super strength and durability to keep the bladed extremities of the creature from turning their werewolf into a pin cushion, but in a test of brute strength, their combined effort somehow failed to really dent the creature. Luke didn't know how bones were so durable.
But it gave him a newfound appreciation for the Globe and all the evil shit it kept out. He took to shooting clear, open shots at the creature when he could, trying to give one of them an opening. The problem was he wasn’t accurate enough to shoot while Shrapnel was close to the creature because he didn’t want to accidentally off his own henchmen.
That was bad villain etiquette.
There has to be some way to get an advantage here. Luke thought, trying to puzzle something together. Demon werewolf seemed pretty content just slowly losing a war of attrition, trying to claw and bite the Hunter to death in vein while Shrapnel was very clearly scared shitless and fighting for his life.
One benefit Luke found in the chaos was the way the Hunter acted. It was… robotic. Like a dead creature with preprogrammed instincts being controlled by someone who was also controlling a couple hundred more undead. That was another problem. So far, he and Snapper were doing okay dealing with the few undead that wandered into their fight.
But more were coming, and they wouldn’t stop coming, so the longer this went on, the worse it got.
Something had to change.
“Demon werewolf!” Luke shouted towards the seventies horror monster on their side, blowing the skull of a vagrant undead. “We need to coordinate some kind of plan.”
“My name is Jessica asshole!” She growled back, taking a sizable cut to the face in exchange for cracking on of the Hunter’s mandibles. “And I’m not a demon!”
“Point taken, Jessica. But are you a werewolf? Or do you just like shapeshift?” Luke asked, a certain idea rolling in his head.
“I like to think I’m a werewolf,” Jessica said with a very creepy toothy grin that Luke tried to ignore as he was busting undead jaws.
“How do you feel about the moon?” Luke questioned.
“I LOVE THE MOON!” Jessica roared as she pushed the Swarm Hunter over. Shrapnel was busy being swung around by its tail, trying desperately to get his feet back on the ground.
“Again, point taken,” Luke replied, ducking under one of the Hunter’s spikey limbs. He quickly ran to the nearest undead body he could find, whispering a message to Snapper as he passed. “Pull Shrapnel out if things get dicey.”
The plan slowly started to come into formation in Luke’s head as he grabbed the more dead undead, brushing away the remains of its shattered jaw. One key fact he knew for sure about Punchline was that the target didn’t need to be alive for the effect to work, which made the idea a hell of a lot easier. Luke made sure to wave Snapper into position as he dragged the body over to where it’d be the most visible to Jessica, the demon werewolf.
There were many things Luke had planned to use super strength for, but curling an undead skeleton into a ball was not one of them. It wasn’t a fast process, but to be fair, Luke had never actually seen the moon. The conventional one had been blown up a long time ago by the Echoes, damn near flooding the last remanants of humanity had it not been for Finite.
The world's greatest superhero could stop tsunamis. Who would’ve guessed?
His reference points were history books from the ninth grade, and it didn’t help that his teacher had adamantly believed the moon was just one big conspiracy theory.
He managed to finish just as Shrapnel was thrown off the Hunter, whipping its tail down on him to send him flying into the ground. With a free tail, Jessica started falling on the back foot, trading scapes and cuts just to not get “killed” all while Snapper struggled to deal with the undead piling up behind her.
Now’s as good a time as any.
Luke grabbed his ball of bones and raised it above his head, standing in plain view of Jessica and squeezing the bones as hard as he could, trying desperately to activate Punchline. It didn’t work. He could feel Punchline sneaking out from his heart, investing the ball of bones with power and failing to conjure any actual effect.
Is it too broad of an effect? He was trying to make the ball beam moonlight or do something similar enough to the moon that it empowered Jessica. At least he hoped it would empower Jessica like a regular werewolf. Powersets tended to follow the logic of the idea more than the logic of the world, so there was a fairly good chance that if Jessica believed she was a werewolf, then she was a werewolf.
Still, it didn’t matter if he couldn’t make it work. Luke squeezed harder and tried to think more clearly, but Punchline still didn’t budge. Meanwhile, their best chance against the Hunter was in a dirty brawl she was bound to lose, and then they were all “dead”. All his plans and ideas had panned out even despite his relative weakness, but now it was backfiring because of that weakness.
“But it should work.” Luke cursed to himself, squeezing harder. He could feel Punchline latch on, but it wouldn’t hold on the effect he was trying to produce. “I’m trying to turn a ball of bones into a moon. How is that not even a little comedic?!”
His power required him to think outside the box, and he was being punished for doing so. Out of desperation, Luke summoned the System Seven interface to read over the skill description again.
That’s when he saw it.
 
The reason it wouldn’t work was right at the bottom of the stupid description.
 
[The effect also scales with I.T Factor/Brute/Rogue]
 
What if not only the effect scaled… but the type of effect as well?
“Only one way to find out.” Luke cringed, a bit wary to waste the point just to see what would happen. But he had to see.
 
[Free points: 3]
 
[I.T Factor: 1]
 
The world immediately turned to static.
 
“Huh,” Luke mumbled, lowering his fake moon.
There was just black and white static all around him. For as far as the eye could see. He was in a world of nothingness. No sound, no space and no presence. Luke turned around to try and get a grasp on himself, almost certain he was hallucinating when he found his first sign of something in the static.
 
A person, maybe twenty metres away, looked just as confused as Luke. He seemed familiar. Gaunt with dark features, raven black and sharp white eyes that gazed at him curiously. He seemed lost, like he’d somehow stumbled into this static world as well.
 
He was also naked.
 
He also looked really familiar.
 
“Hey, dude!” Luke shouted, waving at him. “Put some pants on!”
 
The strange man tilted his head, confused.
 
“Are you an Echo?” The strange man said, slowly raising one of his hands very ominously.
 
“Nah, man I’m…” Luke paused, about to say his full legal name out loud. Probably best not to do that to the possibly violent, strange static man. “...V. V the supervillain.”
 
The strange man seemed to chew on his answer for a second before finding it satisfactory enough to lower his hand. Hopefully, that meant he wasn’t getting laser-beamed.
 
“I’m Finn.” The stranger said simply. “Do you know how I got here, V?”
 
“I don’t know how I got here,” Luke replied, partially lying. It was I.T. factor that got him there. “I was just trying to turn this ball of bones into a fake moon and boom, static land.”
 
“So that’s what that is,” Finn murmured, eyeing his bone ball. “I can’t say I was trying to make a fake moon, but I was knee deep in an Echo Quant. Probably should’ve listened to Reggie and just waited…”
 
Luke perked up. “Do you know someone named Reggie?”
 
“Yeah, why?” Finn replied.
 
“Is he tall?”
 
“I mean kind of-”
 
“A Prodigy.”
 
“How did you know that-”
 
“And does he have a habit of messing with people's memories?”
 
Finn scratched the back of his head, looking a bit embarrassed. “Not for any nefarious reasons. Do you know Reggie?”
 
Luke started marching towards this familiar person, keen to deck him. “You tell Reggie he’s a deadman!”
 
Finn held his hands up. “Woah, woah, just calm down. What’ve you got against-”
 
“A DEAD MAN, I TELL YOU!” Luke shouted, ready to bash this stranger's head in with his bone ball.
 
He made it about five steps before he was just suddenly back in the world again. No sudden pop. No weird sound or ominous premonition. Finn just disappeared, looking very concerned, along with the rest of the static world, leaving behind nothing.
 
Luke was back in the Pit, holding the fake moon like he was before. Jessica was still fighting for her life while Snapper and Shrapnel were trying their best to help. It didn’t appear as if anyone had heard or seen anything strange at all.
 
For a brief moment, Luke was left questioning.
 
Where the hell did I just go? The static place, wherever that was. It felt distinctly similar to the place he went when he’d talked to the masked man who gave him his Supervillain class. But also different.
 
And he’d seen that man with the white eyes before. He was sure of it. After a couple of seconds of thinking, he remembered seeing someone that looked exactly the same but older, chained to a tablet when he was tripping balls after getting his powers.
 
They felt related.
 
But his whole strategy was about to come undone, so the thinking could wait. He finally did what he was supposed to do and squeeze on the bone ball real hard, envisioning it becoming the moon. He felt it click with Punchline and even more than that, he felt a… increase in the amount of super resting in his heart.
 
Guess that’s what I.T Factor does… neat. Luke thought as his bone ball started to vibrate with a dim glow as Punchline came into effect. Nothing else happen.
 
He was clearly in Jessica’s line of sight but his creation didn’t seem to do shit for her.
 
“Jessica, look over here,” Luke said, waving his bone ball around. “The moon!”
 
Her terrifying yellow eyes looked at him and his bone ball like he was crazy, along with Shrapnel and Snapper as they continued trying to pin down the Hunter.
 
Why isn’t it working? He felt like it should work, not in his normal train of thought but in that weird fog that glued all his ideas together in ways that had all worked out so far. The effect was in play it just didn’t have enough juice.
 
The scaling effect has to be in segments. If he had to take a broad guess, more I.T Factor would probably help. But was it worth it spending more free points on I.T Factor?
Time will tell.
 
He was far too deep in this plan now to turn back.
 
[Free points: 0]
 
[I.T Factor: 4]
 
Luke felt his heart surge. So far, the effect of adding free points had been a little hard to notice, but not anymore. He felt his heart, the place where his super was, explode with energy that spread out through his whole body. He also felt it funnel through Punchline through his arms and up into his fake moon.
 
The skull bundled up in the middle turned to face outwards as it’s orbits came back into existence, now glowing with a silver moonlight that shined towards Jessica. Even more strange was the moisture that started to build up around his hands.
 
Or at least it was strange before Luke looked up and realised tiny little clouds were forming around his fake moon.
 
“Huh, that’s kind of cool,” Luke murmured before hailing Jessica’s attention again. “How about now? The moon big enough-”
 
“MOON!” Jessica shrieked from under the Swarm Hunter. Her eyes turned misty white like they were possessed as she stared at the thing for a moment.
 
Luke wasn’t prepared for what happened next. He doubted anyone in the audience or anyone in the Pit was, including Jessica. For starters, the moonlight seemed to double as both a hallucinogen and a steroid because she started roaring like a real werewolf, scraping and biting at the Hunter as she grew in size.
 
Her body kept ballooning with muscle mass until she was twice her original size, sporting dramatically darker fur and a drooling maw that was glued to the moon in Luke’s hands. The Hunter didn’t care for the change, trying to plunge its many bladed limbs into her regardless. Only this time, Jessica didn’t bat them away and caught them instead, hoisting up the Hunter and slamming it onto the tile.
 
It didn’t sit into the crater for long and tried to stab into her leg as Jessica moved towards the moon. She didn’t like that. She didn’t like that one bit. So the supersized werewolf hoisted the Swarm Hunter by the face and repeatable slammed it’s skeleton into the ground until it stopped moving entirely.
 
We won! And Luke would’ve celebrated with his excited teammates if a colossal werewolf wasn’t closing in on him with booming footsteps. Quickly he let the effect die in his hands and the soft moonlight evaporated right in front of Jessica. She stopped on the spot… then slowly started shrinking back to her normal size. Her fur brighted as she got smaller and her eyes slowly lost the misty sheen till she was back to the regular demon werewolf.
 
She rubbed her eyes, looking around herself. “What just happened.”
 
Probably shouldn’t mention the moon.
 
“You kicked the Swarm Hunter’s ass!” Luke encouraged, pointing to the corpse like a good leader.
 
“Huh… I guess I did.” Jessica mumbled clearly still a little in shock. “What happened to your fake moon plan?”
 
“Not important,” Luke said, tactfully dodging the question.
 
The sounds of the audience screaming and cheering began to leak into his ears again as Luke looked around for any other threats. Besides the robot standing off to the side disinterested, there were none. All the undead had collapsed on their own after the Swarm Hunter had died. So they were just left there, standing in the Pit as victors while the clock slowly ticked down.
 
Actually, now I think about it, I couldn’t hear the crowd at all once the walls went up. Some type of sound barrier had been dropped once they’d won, letting all them hear all the excitement they’d built up. There was a lot of it. People standing on edge all over the amphitheater absolutely losing their shit.
 
It was kind of cool.
 
Lying son of a bitch.
 
He could literally feel himself smiling unconsciously just hearing all those people. It was a little more than just cool. It was fucking awesome. Luke just wish he had on something better then his crappy masquerade mask. He was trying to sell an image, if anyone even knew who he was.
 
“And Team Basilisk, take down the Hunter, making them the second team to slay the beast and make it to the next round. Let’s do a quick look back on how it happened and the double team play by Fangtooth and V!” The announcer called above, now he could hear them.
 
He’s talking about me. That was surreal. A little more surreal than Jessica’s Supe name being Fangtooth. He soaked in that for a few moments before he was assailed by his two group members, both
giddy to have won.
 
“We did it, lads!” Snapper shouted to the sky, pulling them both into a hug.
 
“I’m not going to lie, I didn’t think we were gonna live past the Hunter.” Shrapnel admitted.
 
“Who cares? We did it!” Snapper emphasised, slapping him on the back. “My wife was right, this is exhilarating!”
 
“Agreed,” Luke said, congratulating his two henchmen.
 
They still had a second round to get through before they got prize money, but Luke was pretty confident he put on a good show. Surely his name had gotten into some people's mouths, especially with
his fake moon fiasco.
 
The cashier just hoped it was enough that Bloom would be satisfied. He didn’t want to get eaten by one of her plants.