The Paragons

Chapter 34: A Light Extinguished

Coldsnap gripped her ice dragon's saddle tightly as it soared around the helipad at high speeds, bombarding the deck with icy blasts in order to both hinder her foes and make the ground more maneuverable for her allies.

The Crawler took a pair of rubber gloves out of his coat and threw them to Duncan. "Boss! Use these to free the Carlisle and the GDC troops!" he called. "They'll protect you from the electric tendrils!"

"Thanks, Crawler! You're always thinking!" the doctor replied as he strapped the gloves on and immediately set about freeing Carlisle and his men. Shocker, seeing that her brother was distracted, tried to ambush him with a hidden, out-of-view electrical current, but Malcorchus stopped her; their focus was on The Viper, and neither Duncan nor Carlisle nor his allies presented a significant threat at the moment. Shocker begrudgingly agreed and returned to the battle, transforming into a ball of lightning and erratically blasting back and forth between the girded towers on the edges of the deck, flooring most of the other heroes on pretty much every pass; however, they recovered relatively quickly.

Duncan tore apart the bonds keeping Carlisle restrained, then helped him up.

"Thank you, Duncan," he said.

"No problem. It's too dangerous for you and your men up here.....once I get them free, you've got to get them to safety. I'll direct them to the exit staircase as I untie them.....once they reach you, you get them back inside the building. The other five heroes and I will cover your escape," Duncan instructed.

Carlisle wasn't exactly in a position to refuse the doctor's orders; after all, they had more urgent matters at hand. He nodded understandably, then left the helipad as Duncan continued liberating the rest of the security team and sending them on their way.

As he did so, The Crawler stuck close to his employer and darted all around him, protecting himself and Duncan from any attacks that came their way. Mitchell soared over using his rocket boots and attempted to fire a plasma beam into Duncan's back, but The Crawler met it with his own laser from his cybernetic eye. After engaging in a brief beam war with him that lasted a few seconds, The Crawler's laser eventually overpowered Mitchell's, and he was successfully thrown back and winded, though his rocket boots were still functioning. Still, Mitchell came back to his senses and attacked the lizard yet again.

Meanwhile, The Viper, being the awe-striking superheroine she was, challenged every single Opulent member at once, actually managing to hold all of them off to an amazing extent. She ducked under one of Gor'bari's punches, then lifted herself back up and did a 360-degree spin, slashing both him and the now-heavily-mutated Sin'lazo---who tried to ambush her from the back---in the abdomen and inflicting them with deep, festering wounds in the process. Mal'tin attempted to fire three laser shots from his pulse rifle as The Viper dashed towards him, but she deflected all of them with her daggers before vaulting off of his back; while she was still in mid-air, she swiftly switched from the blades to her handguns and peppered him with bullets on her way down, causing him to keel forward in pain. Nic'qura dragged him to the backline to give him time to recover, before engaging the serpentine heroine herself alongside the mind-controlled Sal'terra.

Sal'terra's twin combat rings immediately went straight for The Viper's neck, bent on decapitating her in one fell swoop; thankfully, The Viper dodged below the blades and used her own to quickly disarm her, then kicked her in the gut and sent her flying backward. Nic'qura snuck up behind The Viper and used one arm to choke her while preparing to sell her a point-blank headshot with the laser blaster in her other hand.

However, a claw projectile screamed forward from her right and severely injured her hand upon impact, causing her to scream in pain and grab her palm, dropping her weapon in the process, right before she could deliver the killing blow. The Viper used this opportunity to elbow Nic'qura in the gut, then grabbed her shoulder and flipped her onto the ground.