Chapter 18: Acid Rain (1/2)
Ryan dived towards the servers, dodging flailing wires while the glass windows shattered around him. Outside, someone had opened fire on the garage, bullets piercing through the walls and damaging the computers inside.
“If it’s the paparazzi,” the courier complained, raising his coil gun at the ceiling, “here’s my autograph!”
He opened fire, projectiles going through the roof while glass shards formed flying walls to cover the holes in the ceiling. However, the acid rain quickly corroded them, the liquid falling on a server and starting an electrical fire.
A monstrous mass of wires stood on the roof, its malevolent eyes glaring at the courier through one of the remaining openings.
Ryan blinked. “Aren’t you braindead, Psypsy?”
“I told you,” Psyshock replied, an undercurrent of anger in his robotic voice as he raised his wire tentacles. From above, he looked like an alien metal squid. “I heal.”
“Oh good, that means I get to kill you twice.”
Ryan always saw the bright side of everything.
The courier wondered who helped the Psycho with his plastic surgery though. The skull’s shape had changed slightly, turning slimmer. Either the telepath had improper regeneration, or he had a different powerset than the courier thought.
Also, his body had been recovered by Dynamis for study. How did he escape quickly enough to launch this ambush? Something didn’t add up at all.
Psyshock moved his head out of sight before Ryan froze time, making it difficult for the courier to aim at the mutant’s only vital area. It didn’t help that the Psycho’s backup kept firing bullets from outside, providing suppressing fire. The invisible jackass created glass walls the best he could to keep the rain and the Psycho out, but the silica didn’t last long.
Deciding he would rather risk the acid rain than Psyshock brain-jacking him, the courier shot a few projectiles at the ceiling, dodged the frozen bullets, then rushed outside.
Toxic clouds had overtaken the skies as far as he could see, unleashing an acid downpour on the ship graveyard and corroding the metal husks. A large part of the area had gone up in smoke, probably Atom Cat’s doing; Ryan hoped that the kitty could hold his own against whatever allies Psyshock had brought with him.
Two mechanical hounds were the source of the gunfire, one standing atop an airbus husk, the other on the ground. They had the shape of dogs, except with a glass visor for eyes, a machine gun mounted on their back, and ammo compartments on the belly. Dynamis probably used these drones to support the Private Security, and Ryan wondered if the Meta had somehow hacked into them.
When time resumed, the courier sensed the acid rain drip on his clothes, eating at his hat and mask. Ryan’s clothes provided him little protection from the acid and had already started to dissolve; since he didn't know of any natural acid with these properties, the courier guessed it was a unique chemical composition, probably from an Orange Genome. A few minutes without cover, and he would look like a hunk of cheese.
Psyshock, standing atop the garage, attempted to pursue him, only to be forced back to dodge a glass spear aimed at his brain. A flying figure emerged from the workshop, attacking the Psycho with floating shards.
The Shroud occupied Psyshock, although the acid rain prevented him from using his invisibility. The poison corroded the vigilante’s glass armor, making him visible to everyone. Yet, he could still control the glass and silica from his machines, summoning an entire storm of sharp projectiles to keep the Psycho busy. Psyshock seemed immune to the acid rain, and moved at high speeds to dodge glass spears and blades.
Meanwhile, the drones’ machine guns opened fire on Ryan, who retaliated by targeting the one on the ship’s husk and pressing his coil gun’s trigger. The projectile, faster and more powerful than normal bullets, went through the robo-hound’s face and came out of its ass, blowing a hole in its circuitry.
The other leaped around, firing at will. Ryan whistled, his car rushing out of the smoke, and towards his location; the acid rain had consumed its windows and damaged the paint, much to the courier’s horror.
Still, the machine hound couldn’t dodge both Ryan’s shots and the vehicle. The Plymouth hit it like a deer on the road, smashing the drone into pieces.
“Cat!” Ryan shouted, rushing towards his car to take cover from the rain. “Cat!”
A chill went down his spine, as one of the raindrops suddenly transformed into a grenade right above his car.
Ryan barely had the time to backtrack before his wonderful Plymouth exploded in a burst of flames and iron parts. “My car!” the courier shouted in horror. “Not again!”
“Caught you, thief!”
A woman appeared in front of the courier, unaffected by the toxic rain. Her skin was bleached white, her golden hair cut short, and her eyes a bloodshot shade of crimson. She wore a sleeveless white shirt and tight shorts; Ryan might have called her attractive, if not for the crazy violent glint in her eyes.
Oh, and she also carried a bloody butcher knife in her right hand. Let’s not forget that part.
“Acid Rain, I suppose?” Ryan asked before activating his time stop. As he did so, the same feeling of tension ran through his spine.
When he entered the frozen time, everything was tainted by a Violet hue, but the woman had vanished. Did she manage to teleport away?
Pain raced through his body, as the acid waters managed to eat away his clothes and reach the skin beneath. While furious about his car’s destruction, the courier decided to retreat into the shadow of a ship husk, to get protection from the downpour.
The second time resumed, once again, a wave of tension went down his spine as—
Ryan let out a cough of pain, as a butcher’s knife found its way to his hand, cutting his fingers and causing him to drop his coil gun on the ground. Blood flowing through his right hand, although having experienced worse, he could still focus.
“You can see it, too…” Acid Rain chuckled, blocking his path towards the husk. “The purple world.”
…
Uh oh.
“That place between two moments and two angles, paradise!” she cackled, holding her head with both hands as if overtaken by rapturous desire. “It’s so wonderful! My brain shines with its beauty!”
“Okay lady, I’m done here,” Ryan said, looking inside his trench coat for the atom bomb. He barely had the time to bring it out of storage when the nimble killer teleported right in front of the courier, kicking the bomb away with a swift attack. She immediately vanished before the courier could return the favor.
Before she reappeared and fled, Ryan sensed… he could not quite describe it, a gut feeling. The same feeling as when his own power activated.
Not only could she summon acid rains, that Psycho could also switch places with raindrops, giving her an impressive teleportation range. A Violet Genome coupled with an Orange. One who drew her power from the same source as Ryan’s.
Their powers interfered with one another, enough that each could sense the other’s activation.
The problem was, while the courier only needed a thought to activate his time-stop, it took a fraction of a second to take effect. If she could sense its activation, Acid Rain had a very short window to react before the temporal anomaly manifested.
And not only were her reflexes superhuman, but her power also took action faster than his own. Ryan guessed it made sense. His time-stop affected the entire observable universe, while her teleportation only switched two objects in a short radius.
Ryan had found a counter.
“Geez, this city has a huge balance problem!” he complained, before taking cover under a husk’s shadow. He should have expected the Meta to send a heavy hitter after him considering all the headaches he gave them in this restart, but damn, that girl hit hard! “Cat! Cat, where are you?!”
He couldn’t hear anything with the downpour, nor see much. Even the battle between Shroud and Psyshock had turned into a distant background echo.
“I got him first,” Acid Rain laughed, reappearing atop an airbus’ remains with a machine gun. She had a clear line of sight towards Ryan. “Gutted him like a fish, chin to ass!”
She opened fire at Ryan, forcing the courier to duck. He attempted to target her with a well-placed thrown knife to the face, but she teleported away before the weapon could connect.
“Send me there!” the madwoman snarled upon reappearing on the ground near Ryan’s own location, daggers in both hands, his eyes lost in feverish madness, “Send me there, you thief! You think you can keep it all for yourself, you miserable little punk? You think you can take this beautiful world from me?! You selfish brat, you’re violating my rights!”