But Coalbelcher’s power produced a spray, and that spray included flecks that had scattered to the floor, ceiling and walls just in front of him. He hadn’t detonated that. I saw it at the last second, threw hands and arms around my head, and felt the explosion throw me off course. A ring of fire, that left me spinning in the air for a second.

A meaty hand grabbed me, as he leaped up to me and seized hold, and as he came down, he threw me hard into the concrete floor. I put out my hands to stop myself from crashing down face first, and I felt staples in my hand pull free, tearing at skin.

He exhaled, and it wasn’t a liquid geyser this time, but a cloud, aimed over and past me.

Swansong, following up.

Vista’s power altered the cloud, shrinking it. But with the close confines being what they were, and the particles being just as effective if they were on a wall or on the ceiling, she was left to keep them suspended indefinitely in air.

Ashley threw a hand to one side, threw herself the opposite way. Without taking the time to get up, I came at him from another angle, staying low and sliding along the ground with my flight.

Vista moved the blob of gas. It detonated to Swansong’s right, and the detonation was localized, kept to one side of the hall while Swansong slipped past.

Chris, partially mutated, his head encased in what looked like a rat skull, his body and limbs long, reached out to grab her out of the air. He got his grip on her and then biological mechanisms in his limb turned his already long, red-furred arm into a piston, punching her through a door.

I still managed to hit Coalbelcher. A strike dead center to the stomach, hard enough it might have caused internal damage.

Guards yelled noise in a foreign language. I looked, and I didn’t see them.

I looked at Cryptid, and saw him smiling, his face barely visible as it dissolved into connective tissue that cobwebbed out to the interior of the skull that was his new head. No skin grew over that skull.

The lights went out.

-That was us- the message on my display read. -cuz guards-

I saw the silhouettes of Cryptid and Coalbelcher, and hit the latter, three times, with two of the hits in the same spot and the third hit aimed at his leg with Wretch strength added in, because a power with that much output had recoil and he couldn’t handle recoil without legs.

“Crypt,” Coalbelcher gurgled, around an audible outpouring of more combustible gunk.

“Go!”

I put myself between Coalbelcher and Ashley just in time for another explosion.