The Primordial Weapon

[PepsiWhirda]

They were losing. For all the aid provided by their ragtag band of new allies, they had served only to fuel the tarrasque's ire. The primordial weapon waded its way through the abandoned village like knee-deep water, seeming to regard the powerful Primes as no more than so many pesky insects to be swatted. Unless they could find a way to deal more than superficial damage, sealing off the Verse would truly become their only option.

To that end, Whirda resolved herself to find the de facto leader of their new allies. Her distaste for the man had been immediate. Years of isolation after she learned the truth about her father had taught her to distrust men who oozed his brand of saccharine sweet charisma. It was simply not the stuff of virtuous men.

Even so, the situation forced her hand. For all his pomposity, he had been the only one to deal the beast a significant blow. And indeed, true to his word, those wounds on the tarrasque opened by his holy oil were the slowest to close, continuing to spill rivers of magma down its sides.

It was between two of those rivers that Whirda sprinted. She deftly navigated along the tarrasque's spine, avoiding the bubbling rock and errant blasts from Blues, and leapt out into open space, vanishing with a crack.

When she reappeared, she let her knees buckle. She landed hard in a slide on the tarrasque's arm, just above the elbow. Thirty feet below she could see the helmeted warrior wriggling in the beast's grasp, flames limning his body. Even from this far away, through the cacaphony of the tarrasque's preternatural howling, she could hear the warrior's screams as his bones started to crack beneath the pressure.

Still sliding, Whirda created a shadow clone perched just above the warrior, on top of the tarrasque's hand.

"Blues!" she screamed, waving her arms at the preteen machine. She could barely see his visor tilt toward her through the smoke. "Catch him!"

There was no time to see if he had understood. Her slide ended at the tarrasque's wrist, where she planted her feet and sprung straight up, twisting and tumbling until she could see that the warrior was watching her.

"This is going to hurt!" Whirda yelled. She vanished a split second after the warrior's resigned nod.

She reappeared atop the tarrasque's spined and armored head, bracing herself against one of its remaining horns. She watched as, far below, her shadow clone detonated, wisps of shadow flung in every direction by sheer concussive force.

Roaring, the tarrasque relinquished its grasp on the battered warrior. The crackling flames limning his body flickered and faded as he slipped into unconsciousness. He dropped toward the ground just as Blues skidded into place beneath him, catching the warrior and absolving the bone-shattering momentum of his fall.

Whirda's lips quirked in a wry grin. Hell if this isn't fun.

She turned in response to a flicker of movement along the ground at the tarrasque's flank. There! The de facto leader of the squad of new Primes darted between the tarrasque's legs and out of sight, moving toward what remained of the village.

A final shadow step brought her beside Blues, who knelt beside the unconscious warrior. He seemed to be recovering quickly, his wounds stitching and fading away before her very eyes.

"This approach is useless," Whirda said. "We have to retreat to those explosives and come up with a plan."

As if in response, Dio Brando trotted up to them, breathing hard but seemingly otherwise unaffected by the battle. "The aberration's strength exceeded even my estimations," he said, eyeing the tarrasque with new respect. "Now, what sort of a plan do you have in mind?"