I drove the stingers in as deep as they would go, aiming for the spot where the chewed-gum mass of his upper body met the lower body. Flesh seared visibly around the penetration points. Flying up, I dragged hands and fingernails through the skin. Flesh peeled back, pulling away from surface tension alone, but only revealed more layers of the chewing gum, tumor-like mass.

It was a question of small improvements in efficiency. Before, ungainly, arms set further apart, it was better to deliver heavier hits, recover, deliver those hits again. Now I grabbed, instead.

Grab and tear. Slice with fingernails and separate what was sliced. Dig.

With only the wet sounds of flesh sliding against flesh filling my ears, I had no good cues to tell when he reacted. Only guesswork. Guesswork to dodge a cluster of his mutation-spikes, that were black against a backdrop of gray, dirtied snow and black, unlit landscape.

I flew away, and was in the midst of flying when a spike clipped me. Forcefield down, momentum broken.

I had a glimpse of spikes, where powers flashed on another battlefield. People fending off the Nemean Titan. I could imagine it was a dozen or two dozen new spikes a second, stabbing upward and inward, with himself as the spike’s fruitless, uncaring target.

I flew in a straight line, because the best impression Kenzie’s night vision tech was giving me suggested a morass of a dozen spikes all coming in different directions—criss crossing, straight up, from nearby buildings. Distance from any source of the bio-alteration spikes was more important than any evasive action—it barely felt like he was aiming. The outlining that her tech gave me was delayed by a second, and these things took about that long to get to me. Less like it helped, and more like it taunted me, notifying me of the near-misses.

My forcefield returned, and I was in the midst of breathing a sigh of relief when I felt the jarring crash of another spike striking home, a foot from me, pointed dead-on at my heart. I twisted in the air as the broken point continued to thrust forward, and it scraped the ornament at the top of my breastplate, damaging it.

All around me, I could hear the spikes sinking into him. Wet, sucking sounds, slapping sounds, fluids dribbling, audible where they splashed onto spikes below.

Forcefield still down. Spikes still coming. I saw flashes as heroes used powers. It wasn’t reassuring. It was another hazard to avoid, when I was trying to get clear. I tried to watch for incoming spikes, and nearly missed his hand moving. Reacting to something else, defending himself. Barring my path in the meantime.

I flew back, away from the ground and the nearby buildings that formed the foundations for the stabbing, pencil-thin spines. To buy myself a fraction of a second.