Styx tried to cut down all of the ones rushing forward first, there wasn’t time to try anything fancier than his blades, trusting his mentor to help Obsidian Wraith with the two bigger threats. Mentally timing his attacks to strike in between their shots so that the flash wouldn’t disperse his shadows.
He got two of the gunmen with their own shadows, hamstringing them and cutting deep into their shoulders to make them drop the guns. Both of which he slashed and destroyed a second later. The other three had fired their blasts with more recklessness and had inadvertently dispersed the shadows before they could strike.
The three Supers weren’t so fortunate, however.
There was an audible crunching sound as a blade of shadow lashed out and slammed into the bug-man, nearly punting him a full three meters back. The tall figure covered in bandages nimbly dodged the first strike aimed at his shoulder but left itself open to the shadow that cut deep into where Styx thought a calf would be; the wound erupted in a fountain of black ichor as the thing screeched and leapt away. The ten-foot-tall brute with matted hair was the most concerning however as he simply shrugged off the blades that slice at his surprisingly durable form, his hair acting as a unnaturally good buffer.
Reinforcements are en route; Simikiel is flying and the rest of your team is arriving via teleportation.
Styx couldn’t pause to acknowledge Dispatch as he saw that the gun men had paused at seeing their Super muscle assaulted and capitalized on the opportunity, this time his shadows struck true and felled all of them, destroying their weapons in short order afterwards.
However, In the time it had taken him to attack, the three criminal Supers had looked between the fight over by docks and the much closer Hero clad in black armor and decided to take on what they thought was the greater threat. The bug-man, who now had a broken and cut leg, unfurled see-through wings from it’s back and took to the air toward Styx.
‘He must have had some training, that’s usually enough to ruin a Shifter’s concentration.’ Styx thought as the bug-humanoid spit some viscous glob of slime at him and easily dodged around the projectile while noting how the ground sizzle as it splattered. He refocused and prepared to unleash a torrent of shadows to meat his charging assailants and prepared to dodge incase some launched another ranged attack, until another familiar voice rang in his ear.
“Styx stay right there.” Simikiel instructed through his earpiece and Styx did so without hesitation.
So focused the three shifters were on Styx that they never saw Simikiel coming until it was too late. Suddenly there was a silver and red blur that seemed to barely scrape the bug-man but still sent him pinwheeling back down and into the furry shifter, sending them both to ground in a tangle. The figure in white barely had time to be surprised by the new attacker before three shadows rose up and stabbed at it’s arms and legs, cuts going deeper than the wound on it’s leg. With an even louder screech and further spurts of black liquid the from blurred and turned into a pale woman with long dark hair as she fell to the ground.
The shaggy shifter threw off the shirtless man on top of him, who had previously been the bug-humanoid shifter, and tried to charge Styx again after not finding the red and white blur anywhere. Only for a tendril shadow to wrap around his ankle and stop him short while another cut deep across his eyes and brows where the fur was significantly thinner. He grabbed at his face as blood flowed freely and quickly blinded him, stinging his eyes, before yelping as Simikiel rushed up from behind and slammed her batons ultra-dense blade into the small of the Super’s back at super human speeds and discharged electricity into his body.
Simikiel impassively watched the creature jerked and twitch until the creature began to blur and she quickly withdrew the blade as the now entirely human-looking hairy man fell over. It took precision to not accidentally kill a shifter when dealing damage to them like that.
“Is that all of them?” Simikiel asked even as she used her alternate vision to look around the battlefield.
“Yeah, I can’t feel anyone else’s shadow.” Styx affirmed before looking back at the fight their mentors were having.
Obsidian Wraith was still corralling the Super inside of the large marble orb while Spectrum kept the blaster busy, there shots rather explosively canceling each other out. Styx struck out with dozens of shadows, mentally commanding them to slice and stab at the sphere only to see them slide off harmlessly.
“Don’t bother.” Spectrum said through the comms as he dodged a blast and another one of Obsidian Wraith’s punches failed to even crack the material. “It’s got some kind of kinetic absorption. You two help me deal with the blaster.”
Simikiel swooped down and picked up Styx at that command, flying them towards the action while staying clear of any errant waves of energy.
Styx saw that the Super noticed them coming but it didn’t matter, he could barely keep up with Spectrum, he wouldn’t be able to stop all three of them. Instead, the man did something unexpected: He launched an unusually large wave of energy that interrupted Spectrum’s increasingly aggressive and powerful rhythm of attacks, if only for a moment. In that short window the man clenched both hands and energy began to emit from his entire body in every direction, carving a smoking crater into the ground while making him rise into the air.
Spectrum propelled himself back with two twin orange orbs of force to escape the increasing blast radius. This bastard had a lot raw power to throw around and he was stupid enough to use it as well. Just as he began charging up a red orb that would blow past that little technique, it’d probably slag a section of the shipyard but it was better than letting a Demolition Class escalate, the Super suddenly gasped and his power cut out. He fell to ground, wheezing and sweating profusely; not a second later two thin, almost needle like, handless swords soared through the air and impaled the man’s legs, nailing him to the ground.
Spectrum ignored the Super’s shriek of pain and saw his teammates Crusader and Terram rushing along the shipyard towards him. He couldn’t help but to feel a little pride in how they’d effortlessly defeated an opponent he would have had to use overwhelming force against, though he wondered where Samshiel was- His small moment of revelry was interrupted by a rumble as the Super in a globe managed to knock Obsidian Wraith away and was rolling quickly back into the city at full speed.
Before the globe could roll any further though, the blue and gold form of Gadreel soared through the night sky and stopped it dead. She was surprised as that she hadn’t even made the thing budge back inch with how hard she’d hit it but was glad that she had at least stopped it from moving forward. It’d been seconds away from ramming through a factory building.
Just as she felt the globe try to shift direction and move around her a series of bright balls of golden light, indistinguishable from a stream with how fast they traveled, burned through the grey material and hit the figure inside dead-on. The globe shattered an instant later and the figure inside fell limply through the air before Gadreel caught what she could now see was bald man that looked to be in his early twenties. She nearly dropped him when she saw the three cauterized holes inside of the passed-out man’s torso.
Thinking quickly, Gadreel flew toward Terram and landed as gently in front of the large grey shifter. “He needs healing.”
Without complaint Terram’s eyes turned a luminescent green and the mans condition began to rapidly stabilize. It was a luxury most criminal didn’t Supers get but Terram’s ability allowed them to partially heal the mortally wounded to stability while still keeping them out of the fight.
“Styx, Simikiel, and Crusader; check for anyone else nearby.” Spectrum said, grabbing everyone’s attention.
Styx reached out with his power and felt for any unusual movements of darkness around them. “Not feeling anything out of the ordinary.” He said after feeling nothing approaching them.
“Ditto.” Crusader concurred.
“Same here.” Simikiel said before holstering her baton.
Spectrum gave a nod of approval before putting a hand to his right ear. “Dispatch? The situations been contained. One aggressor fatality and some significant property damage but nothing else.”
<Acknowledged. DVA containment squads are en route.>
After looking around one last time, Styx saw his mentor visibly relax and start looking around at all of the downed criminals, probably to make a mental checklist of everyone of their abilities.
Styx and Spectrum. Pulp has asked for a team connection through the comms, do you accept? Dispatch said suddenly into both of their earpieces, startling them.
“Yes.” Styx replied simply.
“I accept.” Spectrum nearly sighed. “What have you got for me, Pulp? I’ve already got a big problem on my hands right now.” He said while glancing at Gadreel and her bloodied glove.
“Yeah, you bet we’ve got a pretty big fucking problem.” Pulp replied. “These idiots are trying to kill the leader of every Hero team in the city.”