Greg Vs Raid 9-39: Roaring Loud (Patreon)

“Do not allow him through.”Rory nodded, barely turning his head as he hoped Armsmaster was somehow talking to someone else, anyone else. But the plaza around them was mostly medics, medics and civs and troopers in need of an evac; one of the PRT field agents propped against a wall with his hand clamped tight on his thigh.Fingers already dark with red past the knuckle, the man’s groans went almost unheard as two more were dragged past him by their own vest straps; an independent in a flight suit scrambling over the concrete for safety.

Shattered glass glittered like deadly snow across the PRT plaza as people ran, every cape in range either already gone or doing the same as the one in the flight suit. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a situation like this and he understood Armsmaster’s order, honestly.Provide the suppressing fire while someone else actually handled the frontline fight; a solid playbook. The logic made sense, down to the tactics even and the math was simple.He just wished he didn’t have to be the one doing it.

But the roster was empty and Armsmaster’s second was already gone.Not gone-gone.

Miss Militia was still here, somewhere.

She was just nowhere to be seen, same with Dauntless and Lady Photon; the sound of heavy fire and lasers warring with Crawler’s own grinding laughter from the far side of the building. Rory could hear the sound of a weapon cycling, the ground thudding from six oversized feet as a van-sized monster pounded across asphalt in the distance.

Mannequin had vanished, just running from the fight like he wasn’t one of nine biggest threats walking the streets. That much didn’t make sense, but Rory couldn’t give much thought to the way the segmented psychopath had vanished between two buildings a half-minute back. That was a little worrying but Armsmaster hadn’t said anything and Rory wasn’t really sure he could afford an opinion when he didn’t even have a plan.

White Knight… Wherever that kid was, it definitely wasn’t here. The kid in knight armor had jumped out a window as soon as the screaming had paused the first time, and Triumph hadn’t seen him since. The rest of the Protectorate was scattered all around, running evac and rescue and just simply fighting where they could.

They were already down a member with Velocity gone, so that just left…Me.

The kid in the lion helmet at most two days cleared from medical iso and a body that felt like a rental car. A souped-up rental car but still a rental. Nobody else.

Just four months out of the Wards and his life had been almost one hell after another; four months of straight suffering that Rory didn’t feel he deserved. April had been paperwork and crowds and another training rotation request Piggot had denied him simply because. May brought Bakuda and the hospital bomb that left him waking up with Panacea’s hand on his chest days later.

And then Leviathan which…Leviathan came in June and was the closest he’d come to death, especially with no Panacea there to pull him back.Instead, it was White Knight.But he had come and gone and now this.

The Nine.He was starting to feel that somebody in the Protectorate office should really get onto updating the recruitment pamphlets with that bit of info. Be a hero. Get your ribcage rearranged twice a year, guaranteed.

Rory couldn’t even be mad about it, though. If things had gone differently, if the League hadn’t changed the rules last-minute, the eighteen-year-old would already have been ooking at a spot in the Majors this year with a contract from the Show that would have him set for life.

Maybe not from the Sox, but still somewhere.

Instead, he was two-near death experiences in and facing a near seven-foot tall bald Frankenstein walking across the plaza with a hatchet.For what? High-five figures and a little bump up to six a year from what little the PRT gave him for his merch sales. 

Being a hero… Rory Christner clenched his fists tight, the feel of something warm in his chest as he stared across the length of the plaza. It was at least big, as little as that counted; maybe a hundred feet of space between him and Hatchet Face, littered with chunks of Shatterbird’s little song. Even now, there were still aftereffects even with Shatterbird oddly silent; screaming voices loud enough to be heard streets away along with crashed and abandoned cars left behind in the street.

One still had its driver door open, dome light on and dinging away.

All other sights and sounds faded away, Triumph’s chest going tight as his vision tunneled forward — Hatchet Face’s bare feet touching curb enough to steal all his attention. Now, it was just a wide stretch of cracked pavement between him and possibly certain death. Range.That was his job.

All Armsmaster asked of him was to keep Hatchet Face occupied at range. 

Rory was sure he could easily do range.

…emphasis on the was.

Two days out of isolation hadn’t exactly given him much chance to test much at all of how his changed body worked; powers and strength both. Whatever White Knight had done to him to save his life, Aegis wasn’t even sure in his own report and Triumph hadn’t been conscious enough to even give consent. He didn’t know what was going on with him and even the PRT couldn’t pretend like they knew much either; all their requests — past more testing — about keeping this quiet.

All he knew was that his roars came out gold now.

A faint gold, in rings; the shape of the sound in the air the same color as his costume.

Everything else was just more.

More that he didn’t have a number on, so he was going in more dumb than blind and, changes or no changes, Hatchet Face could take every bit of it away.

Fine. It was fine. 

It was.

The gray-skinned villain crossed over a yard at once, a sudden burst of wrong-footed speed that had Triumph’s fists clench and come up higher. It was almost slow, upper body rocking like he was hauling something — only for the killer to suddenly lope forward.Five, ten, fifteen feet; each step hard on the pavement. Hard enough to break something beneath it with each throw of the weight as that axe hung off the right hand.Alright. Back foot dug, Rory loaded his weight; feet set the exact same way he’d set them a thousand times in a batter’s box. Mouth open, the young hero pulled in a breath that went deeper than his lungs could really hold — and Triumph let it out.

Faint rings rippled out across the plaza, a tight burst of sound catching Hatchet Face right in the middle of one of those lumbering long strides — impact striking that bare gray chest — and sending him sideways.The villain landed shoulder-first, a cracked concrete divider giving up completely and crumbling apart before he could get a foot down.“Got him—!”

The words were barely out of his mouth before a blur of blue steel crossed Triumph’s path, a jet burst cracking the pavement to the right and a halberd swung in low and angled. Hatchet Face turned, the axe coming around in a heavy arc — deceptively quick with all that strength behind it.

Weapon met weapon, blade against shaft, before Armsmaster simply twisted and the blade went past him and kept going — all momentum and superhuman strength behind it. Eight inches dug deep into the hood of a Corolla, Hatchet Face growling as he swung a fist back at Armsmaster that the Tinker simply darted back from.

"Hit him!" 

The order was barely needed, Rory already roaring while the brute was still wrenching the steel free. Gold traveled the plaza, shoving Hatchet Face deeper against the ruined car; sheet metal folding all around him. We got this.And they did, for a while.Armsmaster kept turning him — forcing the villain’s attention his way with strikes, blasts and everything else — over trying to hurt him, because Hatchet Face seemed just as tough as the files said. Rory did his own part, catching him with a short blast whenever both feet were planted, to give Armsmaster another angle of attack and a clear opening.Nothing kept him down, though.Ring after ring put Hatchet Face through a bench, a divider, and a hedge planter but every single time Triumph sent him flying, the villain found something else to push off. Hatchet Face would just land, plant, and lope back before Rory even found his breath again.

Each time, that breath took longer and longer; throat raw and tight and in desperate need of a glass of water. That was… new.

It wasn’t that his power hadn’t taken something out of him before when he pushed it before but it had never been so physical and it had never come so quick either. As far as he knew, it wasn’t like his body was actually making the roars so why…“Hold your line!” Armsmaster’s shout forced Rory’s focus forward. “You’re drifting!”“I’m n-” Triumph bit down the counter, because he was. “Yes, sir!”The fight kept sliding, though, even with Rory doing his best to keep pace. His own throat and chest were flagging and that was enough to mess up the timing. Even still, Armsmaster picked up his lack the way only Armsmaster could. 

A concrete planter was a sudden missile into the evacuation lane, Hatchet Face’s swing purposeful even as Armsmaster dodged. Not even wasting a second, the Protectorate leader twisted with a jet burst that scorched the ground black.A split second later, the concrete was split in half and Rory’s next roar put Hatchet Face into a truck before the psychopath could recover.Rory tasted iron in the back of his throat, a second of breath all he needed.

One. That’s all he was asking for, with that impact enough to buy time to keep the distance and reset the pattern.

He didn’t even get that much as the gray-skinned killer buckled the side of the truck and, without a grunt of pain or effort, Hatchet Face pushed.

Directly at Rory.

There was suddenly a lot less space — so much less plaza — than there had been a split-second ago. “Wai-!” Eyes wide, Rory fired out again, a desperate roar of gold barely doing a thing to all the ground-shattering momentum driving him forward.

Armsmaster charged back, halberd out, but Hatchet Face met that same charge with his own motion. Armsmaster’s new armor was strong but it only did so much in mid-air, especially without anything to push off of. Hundreds of pounds of powered armor dragged like a dog on a leash, Armsmaster’s new frame skidding through the ruins of a fountain.

Rory felt the field before the impact, somebody screaming. It took a split-second for him to realize the sound was his own voice, his mouth already open without a decision. 

A roar went off between them, several feet of air packed tight in solid gold as it slammed flush against Hatchet’s Face chest and sent him a good twenty feet across the pavement.Wha- Rory stood there, a white panel van at his back and confusion clear behind the gold visor of his lion helmet. How-

His throat still vibrated.It worked.Somehow.

Inside Hatchet Face’s null-field, it had work—

“Wha-” He didn’t have the time or luxury to be confused as to why basic parahuman physics had suddenly decided to look the other way. Hatchet Face was already back on his feet, jaw set and axe gripped tight as he loped forward.Rory got about a quarter of a second to breathe as a thick gray fist slammed him back, the van cratering behind him and a panel folding around his shoulders. More blood burst up, the red in his throat thick as something threatened to give in his chest.But he was still standing.And still ready with a fist he threw back.It was a good right, the exact same right he’d thrown into heavy bags since his first month in the Wards; one with enough power behind it to snap Hatchet Face’s head to the side.Okay, all of it, then. There wasn’t any time to question how he was still breathing, or how he still had his strength, as the fight got uglier immediately. Hatchet Face’s spread wide into a grin not far from Rory’s face, the axe almost ignored as the much-stronger villain swung him around with just one hand. Rory’s shoulder plate crumpled under Hatchet Face’s grip, fake gold giving way as a single hard throw sent Rory backward. 

The white panel van crumpled as Triumph caught himself against a ruined door, hand going straight through the metal as it buckled under his knuckles. 

A glint of metal caught his dazed attention, Hatchet Face stepping forward and the axe already coming down for a head-removing swing.A wide-eyed Rory yanked. 

The door came off with a squeal of metal, hinges and latch giving up immediately as Triumph swung up his new shield. The blade bit deep, inches from Rory’s fingers as the axehead almost completely tore through sheet metal as Hatchet Face’s momentum carried them all across the sideways; the door included.Scrambling back, Rory sucked in air and roared into the gray chest above him.

Hatchet Face flew back again and, with thruster-jet speed, Armsmaster rushed the villain from the blind side. Momentum worked against the Brute this time, Hatchet Face crashing to the ground from an elbow to the face launched at the speed of a highway crash.

Rory sucked in air, the sound whistling in his throat. That’s not… 

Whatever it was, it didn’t feel good.His ribs were doing something bad on the inhale, throat making noises that would sound more at home from Crawler. “Triumph!”Rory’s head snapped up, blood stil trailing past his lips as he caught Armsmaster fighting the too-fast, too-strong Frankenstein. “S-sir!”“Are you okay?”The question took a full moment to make its way through his dazed skull, but Triumph couldn’t even answer; his mind focused on something else as he watched Hatchet Face. The PRT had a few words with him about his powers, from his days in the Wards to his months in the Protectorate; words like ‘proportionality’ and ‘structural liability’. Back when his powers could tear through a car and powder a concrete barrier, back before White Knight. Since then, though, nobody actually bothered giving him a number at all.So, he didn’t know what this would do.But he knew he only had one more left in him.

“Sir!” Armsmaster didn’t turn back towards him, but he could tell the man had heard anyway. “Sir, get off— get out of the lane!”“...Repeat that, Triumph!”“Sir, move!”Armsmaster moved.

Hatchet Face dove forward, that loping charge carrying him up into the air and past Armsmaster without even wasting a moment. Rory planted his feet as the Brute bore down on him, concrete fracturing as he loaded his weight and pulled in the deepest breath his ribs would let him.Full force. Rory opened his mouth and the plaza suffered for it.

Gold rings, dozens packed so close the air between them smeared and bent. Pavement split and spiderwebbed under Triumph, glass and concrete all around picked up and dragged forward in the wake of the pressure wave.Hatchet Face took it all on the way down, nothing under him but empty concrete, momentum holding him in place for a bare second.

That second passed quickly, Triumph’s roar going on and on until there was nothing left in his lungs to give. By the time it stopped, Rory almost dropped to his knees as he stared out at the plaza and the trench in front of him — almost forty feet of gouged concrete torn open with blood and mess at the very center.

Nothing else. “Triumph…”Armsmaster’s visor stared back at him, his leader silent past his name.

“S-s…” Rory stood as straight as he could, even as his ribs said ‘absolutely not’. By the end of it, he settled for simply being bent over, jaw aching and blood filling the space behind his bottom te…

Teeth.

Rory stopped, tongue running over his teeth and came away with the feeling of something sharp. Four somethings; his canines coming to more of a point than they had any right to.

Huh. The hero blinked. Okay.

“Triumph.” Heavy boots thudded across the concrete. “Can you continue?”“I—” Triumph blinked up at him. “I…”He gave up and nodded, words fighting him too much to push any harder.“Your throat?”Triumph tried again, lips parted—

Only for the world to steal the words out of his mouth as a light went off on the far side of the PRT HQ, the world washed out in white as Rory’s shadow jumped across the trench. The sound came a split second after it, thunder stretched low and wide as something came up over the roofline with a pressure wave behind it.

Rory’s hands came up over his face as wind tore, mouth open as an entire slab of asphalt went cloud-high in seconds, crumpled metal peeling off it and dropping away as it kept climbing.

“Is…”Armsmaster’s visor tipped back too, the man silent as Triumph croaked.“...is that the parking lot?”