When my eyes opened again I was somewhere else. I stumbled back a little from disorientation. I looked around and saw that I was in a stone room with a big opaque glass window. The metal door leading out of the room was wide open and there was a bed in the corner. I realized after a moment that this was a prison cell.
“You’re really light.” Amy Bates said dryly behind me. I turned around to face her. I don’t really know what I was expecting to see.
I wasn’t really expecting to see her at all, I guess. She was wearing the same light grey jumpsuit that Jones was wearing, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Dark circles crept around her eyes. Metal boots remained attached to her legs. I looked at her wrists and saw that her hands seemed to be replaced by two metal gauntlets of similar make to the boots. She held them limp against her sides. I let out a sigh.
“The suit makes me lighter than I really am.” I replied. She shrugged in response. I could hear Jones speaking outside the cell. They were looking for us. They were eager too. “Why’d you save me?” I asked. She looked at me with dark and empty eyes and for a moment I thought she’d snap my neck right there.
“She told me that if you died I’d never get out of this place.” She whispered in a sad sounding voice. I searched her face for a hint of an emotion and found a hollowness in her eyes. She was talking about Victoria.
“Alright. How do we deal with those two?” I asked her. She disappeared from where she stood in front of me. With a rush of wind, she was standing in the open doorway looking out at Cement Suit and Matter Chameleon. She looked visibly worried as she watched them. Her metal fingers gripped the door frame hard. I thought for a second that she might take chunks out of the concrete wall.
Without saying a word she became a blur once again. She appeared a few inches from my face and stared at me.
“We don’t. We’ll stay in here and wait it out.” She said in that same hollow voice. I tried to push past her.
“No way. I need to deal with them.” I said bluntly. She grabbed my wrist. The metal gauntlet was far stronger than a hand should be. She gripped hard. Had my wrist not been protected by the suit, I doubt it would’ve stayed in one piece. I stared deep into her hollow eyes.
She gripped my wrist harder as I stared. I wrapped my tail around her neck in a single motion. It jerked her backwards fast enough to force air from her throat. She pulled on my hand as she was jerked backwards.
I pulled away hard as my mind was forced back into the memory of her removing my hand in a similar way. My wrist pulled out of her grip without much problem. She looked at me with hate in her eyes as my tail coiled tighter around her throat.
“We fight them, we die. It’s stupid.” She said in a quiet voice. She sounded annoyed. I loosened my tail so she could talk properly. She let out a cough and started breathing heavily.
“We don’t fight them, and other people will die.” I retorted. She rolled her eyes as she breathed.
“When did that start mattering to you.” She replied rhetorically. I let out a sigh.
“You can help me or you can sit here. I don’t care. I’m going to go fight them.” I said in my normal voice.
I released her from my tail’s grip. She stumbled backwards but quickly caught her balance. I didn’t waste any more time trying to convince her further. I turned my back to her and started walking. I didn’t hear her move at all as I approached the open vault door of her room.
But I did hear something. I threw myself out the door as the glass window shattered so hard it shook the room and hallway. I did a roll into the wall outside the room and slammed against it. When I was done rolling I had a perfect view of the Matter Chameleon in an armor covering of glass, approaching Amy Bates. His silver skeleton was visible beneath the armor.
That was bulletproof glass.
I got goosebumps as Cement Suit appeared above me. His arm was still a jagged shapeless mass of sharp pointy ends. It was more spike than sword. He held it to my chest. The point pressed against where my heart was. He lifted my body up using the spear. I slid up the wall until I was standing eye level with him. The point of his blade was still pinning me to the wall. I stared into his ruined eyes. Around me the cement dust flowed at the ground like fog in a swamp.
“You took my life from me.” He said in a voice that was monstrous. “You turned my family against me.” He released the blade and let me fall back onto my feet. “You took everything from me.” He spit the words out with a snarl.
You did it all to yourself.
He slammed the jagged mass against my body and I slammed against the floor. I looked up to see him approaching me. The dust gathered around me, stiffening into concrete. I could feel the heaviness building on my body. His footsteps as he approached were slow. He was savoring this. The concrete was thick on my arms and legs. I clenched my fist and feet as I worked on breaking away at it.
I could barely think as I heard that sickening sound as his blade slid against the floor. I forced myself to my feet as he got within touching distance. I was almost thrown back to the ground when Chameleon was slammed against the wall, thrown back through the open window as fast as he had created it. He had changed his glass armor to concrete while he was in there. It was cracked and nearly destroyed as he lay limp against the wall. I could see parts of the metal skull beneath his domed head.
Cement Suit turned his head to see what had happened. When he did, I took the opportunity to punch him in the jaw. The dust tried to protect his face as my fist connected. It wasn’t fast enough. I could feel his jawbone popping out of place as the blow connected. Despite me dislocating his jaw, he didn’t fall. His body faltered for a second, and I used that to run past him and jump over the Matter Chameleon.
I was past the hallway and back in the open section of the cell block when I stopped being able to move. I was being pulled back by my tail. I looked back and saw the culprit. Matter Chameleon had grabbed the end of my tail as I had run past. I could see his metal claws vibrating. I flicked the end of my tail to try and get free of his grip. His armor was starting to change. The concrete was turning black again. But this wasn’t his normal armor. It was turning into a mass of black wire-like strands. He didn’t resemble his normal shape anymore.
He’s copying my fur.
I could now clearly see the metal skull beneath the strands of black polymer. He looked like a tall black sasquatch with a metal skull for a face. A metal skull with two glass windows for eyes with little dots of light within them. He let go of my tail as his transformation was complete. I moved my tail away from him. I ran as fast as I could to the center of the open area of the cellblock. I felt a rush of wind as Kathy appeared next to me. Cement Suit approached like a mad dog. His dust covered his face as it worked to fix his jaw.
He dissolved his spear arm and turned it into cement dust in seconds. For a moment his arm was bare and I could see the tattoos on it. They were mostly birthdays and names. One was an intricately done tattoo of a golden fish. Then in a second the tattoos and arm were gone as a layer of concrete covered them. I heard a popping noise as the dust relocated his jaw. Matter Chameleon appeared not far behind him. The polymer fibers moved in a weird way as he approached. He was using the fibers to slide across the ground without using his feet, I noticed. He was moving much quicker.
His porthole eyes were locked on Amy. She turned to me.
“You gave away my hiding spot.” She said, monotone. Not a complaint. Just an observation.
“Well you ripped the skin off my hand. So I’d say you still owe me a few.” I said back in a deep voice very much not my own.
Cement Suit’s got better control this time. No water to use against him, and I doubt that’d work twice.
I could fight him the same way Gar fought Matter Chameleon. Taking strips away from him using my claws.
“Fair enough.” Kathy replied. “Got a plan?” She asked. She stepped a little closer to me as our enemies approached cautiously.
Matter Chameleon’s a different beast entirely. He’s using my suit polymer at the moment. Unlikely to change unless desperate.
Right now he’s immune to most forms of blunt force, bulletproof, and incredibly strong.
“You take Cement Suit. I’ll take the other one.” I whispered. She gave me an uneasy look, then looked back at the criminals in front of us.
Cement Suit was eyeing me. He was approaching slowly. Chameleon didn’t look like he even knew where he was. I couldn’t read any sort of emotion out of strange eyes, and he was holding himself like he could fall down at any moment. The fibers that hugged his metal skeleton writhed constantly, some sliding up and down his skull face. He looked like a skeleton invaded by black worms. He stood in place, shaking. I almost jumped when the female voice came over the loudspeaker once again.
“You can end this anytime you like, Primate Boy. Just agree to the terms and we all walk out of here safe and sound.” Victoria mocked me from the speaker. I could practically hear the smirk on her face. I could hear other noises over the speaker. Sounds of keyboard strokes, fan blades, and a child snoring.
She’s in Polybius’s office.
“Like hell he can!” Cement Suit shouted as he charged me.
I jumped back as Amy Bates occupied the space I did a second ago. She caught Cement Suit’s concrete fists with her own metal gauntlets. I could see the concrete cracking underneath her clenched fists. Cement Suit let out a pained noise. He stumbled backwards and his dust started coalescing around Amy. She disrupted the solidification process by running faster than the dust could collect. With a flick of air she appeared behind Cement Suit and left behind an Amy shaped hole in the dust cloud.
Chameleon took the moment to jump through the air at me like a pouncing tiger. In a second he went from staring at me on all fours, to flying through the air in the direction of my face. I immediately panicked and rolled forward. I felt the rush of air, as I barely slid beneath his pouncing claws as he flew over me. I popped back up to my feet, and heard his claws skitter against the floor as he landed and attempted to spin around. He was back to facing me. Once again he began to charge forward at me. Running along the floor faster than I could dodge this time. He could move surprisingly fast for such a large creature.
I struggled to think of some way to counter him. As he charged me my mind went back to the night I fought Amy Bates, and how she had degloved my hand. I silently prepared myself as Matter Chameleon got closer and closer. As soon as he was almost within reach, I jumped straight up to shoulder height, and turned my body around as I landed on his shoulders. In a single motion, I gripped the edges of one of his porthole eyes and kicked off his back.
His forward momentum carried him on, and I managed to pry one of his eyes clean off. I looked at him, and he seemed to be completely panicking. He clawed at his face desperately while seizing on the floor. The fibers on his body spasmed violently, wrapping around everything. Sections of them were turning randomly into concrete, metal, and air. Some of his claws vibrated while others didn’t. He stopped spasming after a second and went completely still.
“Billy!” Cement Suit let out a painful sounding scream from where he was, fighting Amy.
I turned around just in time to see Cement Suit turning away from Amy to start to run towards Chameleon. As he turned, Amy punched him square in the jaw with her metal gauntlet. Cement Suit’s feet left the ground from the force of the punch.
His face exploded into a red mess of blood and bone. His armored body slid and he twitched painfully while he bled out. I got a good look of what was left of his face and there wasn’t anything there for me to hate.
His dust freaked out. Half of it swarmed around Cement Suit, desperately trying to heal as much of the hole that was his face as it could. The other half attacked Kathy. She evaded it by running faster than it could catch her. The speed of her movement left large holes in the dust cloud. I looked at Chameleon again.
He had gone limp but he was barely alive to begin with. I silently hoped that he had lived. I didn’t want to be a killer. I turned my eyes back to Cement Suit’s dust cloud covered corpse. I felt nothing. Then I felt bad for feeling nothing. The dust started moving away from the corpse, and towards me. It flowed all around and reached out at me. I ran up the wall to avoid its touch.
