Project ROWDY 2-27C (Patreon)

Rex was in the air, charged splinters sent flying into the fray as he kicked off a wall, and threw himself over a shoulder. Wood chips went off behind his back as the big one coming right at him took a bunch of blasts to the back of his neck.“Gotta be quicker than that, Minotaur!”“It’s Monitor!” The growl came out immediately, the big man forcing the words out through a jaw full of jagged chompers. “Monitor!”“I don’t care, man.” Monitor roared again and rushed him, moving fast enough to get a ticket in a school zone. Rex laughed back in his face and stepped into the charge, his own legs carrying him forward just as fast. 

His right swung out, a clean cross connecting with an over-scaled jawline. Gold light crackled out right before impact, a point-blank explosion rocking a solid four-hundred pounds of pale giant sideways and face-first into reinforced steel.

HuhOh, Rexy baby, nothing’s gonna stop us now.Kate was everywhere, alive and dead as the situation went from a fight to a pile-on — dozens of bodies on the floor with a dozen more calling positions in an overlapping mess of sound. "Left! Left—" Four Kates had Iguana pinned to one wall — “Got her, I've got—!". A couple more were throwing elbows as hard as they could, still bleeding hard from the woman’s claws. They weren’t the only ones, the very ‘rugged’ woman that went by Gila raking claws across one of the Kates with thick venom foaming a bright orange in the cuts. "She's got claws, do—!" The scream the Kate let out was loud, something spreading up the open cut on the clone’s arm. The sound died to gagging a few seconds later, thick dark blood bubbling from her mouth as she twitched in silence. Two more Kates didn’t even waste a minute, stepping over the dead one’s body to tackle the venom-throwing woman from both sides.

Rex caught it all in flashes of sound and his own light, Kate fighting to maintain clones as quick as they were killed and Rae bursting out of nowhere in between blinks. A full-size green fist burst out of nowhere — head height and already connecting — and gone again before the recoil, Salamander’s slimy red ass still hunting for her in wide circles.

The air kinked beside him again, Rex’s eye twitching as he jumped back. Oh, come on. Green scales flashed where there’d been nothing a split-second ago, the chameleon bastard from before back on his feet and already aiming for Rex’s blind side. Tough or healing?Maybe both, and those were fucking annoying.Rex ducked a swipe, and leaned out of the second, a laugh bursting free as a third blurred past his nose. “What’s your name, guy?”The guy vanished without an answer, Rex’s eyes wide a split-second later as he felt a pair of soles land clean on his chest.

“Fuck!” His own feet left the floor, emergency lights spinning around him. Rex tucked his legs in on instinct and forced himself into a flip, a hand to his belt before the first full twist. A washer sat in his hand — thumb underneath, pointer and middle pinching it as gold crawled across the metal. He couldn’t help the hand motion, especially after Brick had infected his brain when he made him and Mark watch that crazy good anime…Rex grinned as he spun rightside up — “This ain’t Purple, but you might end up Hollow.” — and with a flick, the washer burst out in a streak of yellow across the hall.

The chameleon disappeared under smoke and a flare of gold, scaled meat sent flying in chunks that slapped the wall by the time Rex landed in a crouch. “Ha, fuckin’ di-!”Rex’s grin didn’t stay as strong as he wanted, the smoke fading to show what was left of the guy’s shoulder halfway through pulling itself back together, gutted muscle slowly crawling over exposed bone. Dickhead.“...Regen, then.”

A scream caught his attention, forcing Rex to look away from the still-healing lizard. A quick look over his shoulder was enough for him to catch who it came from — the one with the chest almost too good to be real and too big to be fake. Her hands were over her face as something the size of a wasp shot away from her bleeding eyes. Rae?The question died before Rex could voice it, the woman’s mouth unhinging all of a sudden and napalm went flying free in a blind screaming arc that had nothing to do with aim.“Jesus Jumpin’ Christ!” Rex jumped back, common sense all he needed to keep him from getting hit. Some of the Kates weren’t so lucky, a couple dozen of them caught up as a whole chunk of the corridor took on the worst of ropes of liquid fire pouring out of wherever the scaled woman’s head was pointed.Regen guy staggered to his feet, picking the absolute wrong moment for it as napalm caught him right in the back. Not a second later, he went down screaming; suit melting into his skin as he rolled and twitched on the melting floor. 

Considering his whole thing was explosives, Rex had heard people burn before. It wasn’t really a thing of being cool with seeing it, but it was something that got more familiar the more you had to deal with.And this… it was feeling pretty familiar. The dragon-woman kept screaming, the edge of the spray catching another of the leaguers as they went down in another panic, all while King Lizard was off somewhere screaming something about “control it, CONTROL IT!” She didn’t control it fast enough, not as the fire spread across the floor and Salamander caught the edge of it, the slimy-skinned Leaguer making a sound that would have given little Rex nightmares nine years ago.

"Rae!” Big Rex didn’t have time for that, though, one arm over his mouth as he coughed past the thick dark smoke. “You good?"

"Yeah, yeah!" The voice came out from all the mess, somewhere under the black fog filling the room. "I'm, like, mostly good."

Well, he couldn’t ask for more than that. Another scream punctured that hope, Rex spinning around at the familiar sound to see Kate clashing with Komodo Dragon. “Kate!” The big guy was way out of her league and a sicko who’d been at this shit for as long as either of them had been alive. “Ka-!”

Rex didn’t get a chance to rush forward as something wrapped his ankle and forced all his attention straight down. A tail?It latched on tight. A tail!

A scrape of keratin on concrete was all the split-second warning he got before the tail yanked tight and Rex Splode was in the air again, floor swapping places with the ceiling in a spin he didn not choose. Before he could even recover, something latched on tight around him, a scaly face right up against his as he found himself rolling along the ground.Gator-style death roll; floor-ceiling-floor-ceiling over and over, everything a smear as those arms gripped tight to his midsection and making his ribs suffer for it. Goddamn it! Blasting her scaly shell was pointless, everything low-level doing as much as a firecracker on a truck bumper. He’d already tried a minute back and, judging from how pissed gator-girl was, she remembered each and every blast.

So he stopped fighting the roll.

He let it happen, let her keep spinning, and  let her keep spinning, got one bare palm flat against the ground and dumped a charge into it.

The deck exploded and sent both of them off the ground in a different kind of roll. The blast was bigger and closer than he’d usually risk, but it was worth it either way; a spray of yellow and keratin bursting off the heavy-tailed lizard woman with a scream.

Her arms went limp as she fell off him, Rex throwing out a burst from his bare palm to push himself clear. The whole section gave out from beneath the tail-woman, as she broke down into the level below with at least a ton of concrete and metal falling down with her. 

…Jesus. Rex landed with a grunt, still rolling by the time he pulled himself up. It was far from a clean win, gator strength and death roll a combo on top of the explosion that had his ribs absolutely screaming. 

But a win was a win.One more down, at least.He wasn’t sure how many more of them were left in the fight but with Iguana down, Salamander twitching on top of the green scrapper, and the chesty napalm lady collapsed and crying on the ground, well… We’ll be back at base in no t-

“Rex!”“Kate?!” His head snapped up to see Komodo — that big brick in mustard yellow tearing through the Kates as they piled on him — five, eight, more coming up and crashing down. Two of them got smashed beneath his feet, a third and fourth caught by the ankle and splattered against a wall like he was beating out a rung. Five more piled onto the dark-skinned lizard-man, one riding his back to choke him out and two others working the ribs. The fourth didn’t even get a chance to do a thing, a fist punching clean through the other side, the duplicate coming straight apart with nothing but a trail of blood connecting both halves. 

Then Komodo’s head came down, jaws closing on an arm as Kate #5 screamed.

A sixth hit him across the face for it.

He turned into her.

A fist closed over a wide-eyed face, a wet sound Rex felt in his own gut as that Kate’s head went like a raw egg. Rex was all the way across the hall by the time he finally forced himself back to his feet, an arm across his chest. Sh-shit… Pain or not, he was already running.Quicker than Rex could pick up speed, Komodo started charging — all his weight and strength as he shoulder-tackled every Kate on and near him into walls, server stacks and columns. A half-dozen still hung onto him, that number shrinking with every third footstep, the screams thinning by the second with fewer mouths to make them. 

The last one jumped and split off, two Kates desperate to go in two different directions.Komodo caught each one in both hands. 

“Kaaaate!”Before the girl could scream back, the monster of a man slammed both together, bone sent flying in a spray of red as the bodies were mashed together. A split-second later, Komodo’s jaws came down. 

Twin bodies dropped out of his hands, each one missing a head.

Rex stood there, ears ringing and eyes wide as he waited for the hall to fill up with more of the same bored face, the way it always did, the way it had every single time for four straight years of his life.

Instead, the space stayed mostly empty and full of smoke.

The dark-skinned lizard man dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, eyes down as he took in what came off it. Then he looked up, eyes on Rex. "I love Chinese food."

The teeth showed red all the way to the gum, hair and brain still stuck on the side of his mouth.

"Always hungry for more."