Chapter 194: Everyone’s a Critic

Chapter 194: Everyone’s a Critic

“What do you think this power would qualify as:” Perry asked, backhanding aside a skittering horror made entirely of paint, that had gotten inside the reach of his sword, staining him up to the elbow in thick, squirming oil paints.

“Minder with a gimmick, extradimensional space with godlike powers inside it, or Wildcard?”

He glanced up at the painted sky, which trembled slightly as new brushstrokes overwrote old ones at a speed nearly fast enough to trick the human eye into believing it was seamless. Maybe twenty-four times per second. The same applied to the ground, the nearby forest, and the sky beyond, it flickered at low frames per second, not quite fast enough to lend a sense of reality, but a jerky sense of motion that was slightly disconcerting.

Even if it was faster, the differences between individual brush strokes would create a strange sense of non-reality as everything wobbled and shifted like it was passing under the bottom of a coke bottle.

“We’d be separated into our own personal paint nightmare if it were option number one, and the second would be hitting us harder, and we might be turned into paint too. The fact it’s limited to paint screams Wildcard to me.” Natalie said from within Boomer’s confines.

“Maybe that’s what you want me to think, Minder.” Perry said before Heather gave him ‘the look’. “Sorry. Mind-control humor.”

“Putting Boomer on auto.” Nat said, climbing out as turrets popped out of Boomer’s sides and began pasting the paint-creatures that literally rose out of the walnut #43207F colored mud.

This gave them time to plan.

“If it’s a Wildcard, it’s got rules. We just need to figure out what they are,” Perry mused. “Anybody bring any turpentine with them?” he asked.

Their heads shook.

Perry crossed his arms, thinking for a moment. “I admit, my knowledge on painting is limited. I know the chemical composition of turpentine, and how it interacts with oil paints, but...”

Oh, right.

Aerosolize.

Perry summoned a can of solvent and tossed it out into the writhing mass of paint like a grenade before Boomer shot it.

The paint monsters screeched and flinched away, revealing canvas writhing under their forms for a moment before their skin drew back up onto their bodies, nudged by the gentle brush of an invisible painter working at stop-motion speeds.

Perry repeated this process on the floor, inspecting the canvas underneath them.

He cut it a bit, revealing...nothing beyond the painting.

“I don’t think cutting the canvas is the way out of here,” Perry said with a shrug. “But we can save it for an emergency.

“Hey guys, I don’t mean to freak you out or anything, but I shouldn’t be away from my body for too long,” Heather said, her cheeks looking just a bit sunken in as she stooped over, hands on her knees, catching her ethereal breath.

“This probably won’t take too long,” Perry said.

***20 minutes later***

“I know, I know, I should’ve knocked on wood.” Perry muttered, holding up his hands. Boomer was still pounding away at the encroaching paint monsters, but they were getting tougher as the paint dried, and The Painter was getting more creative with his creations as time went by.

“I’m getting kinda woozy guys.” Heather said. “If I pass out, I’m dead, because you guys can’t carry me back to my body.”L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

“Can’t we?” Nat asked.

“Eh?” Heather grunted, glancing up at Nat.

“Can’t you like...possess one of us until you’re back to your own body?” Nat asked.

“Huh. I didn’t think of that.” Heather said, straightening. She floated over to Nat and put a hand on her shoulder.

“You have to welcome me in.” Heather said. “I dunno. It’s a spirit thing. I didn’t even know about it until I tried.”

“You’re always welcome.” Nat said with a smile.

Heather gave a mischievous smirk and funneled into Nat’s body.

“Wow.” Nat said, staggering. “That’s really weird. It’s like dual controls,” She began tapping herself on the nose and pinching her own cheeks while Perry turned back toward the problem at hand.

Turpentine weakens them, but it doesn’t kill them, and they reform just fine after some time. The border of the world, as defined by the canvas under the paint, doesn’t seem to lead back to the ‘real’ world.

We could try cutting it open and jumping through, but there’s not confirmation whether we’d land in the real world or just be stuck in an extradimensional void for the rest of eternity.

Most likely these supers were trying to arrest Perry instead of flat-out kill him, which implied they would let them out of the painting eventually even if they didn’t get out on their own.

Only problem with that was, the enemy wouldn’t let them out until they were in a position of absolute control, like an army of supers or several exceptionally powerful Minders, an area that rendered superpowers inert, or something of that sort.

It would be better to break out sooner, rather than later.

***Sarah Mayer (Flag)***

Acolyte Karen was off to the side, haggling with the pregnant Blessed, trying to convince her to at least follow along with them to the Mission without a fight, when things got...weird.

“Luke, what’s wrong?” Sarah asked the painter, who’d suddenly turned pale.

“Ow,” The painter whispered, clutching his chest and sinking to his knees.

“Luke!” Sarah said, kneeling down beside him, almost dropping her flag in her haste.

“I think...they’re getting out. And it hurts,” Luke whispered. “On multiple levels.”

Their leader’s eyes widened.

“Combat positions!” Acolyte Karen said lunging over and yanking Sarah back by the collar of her armor. “Back away from Lu-”

WHOMP! A blast of displaced air pushed both of them back, and an instant later, a massive robot appeared near Luke, its leg nearly crushing Sarah.

The green-eyed monster named Paradox with the power of a full-rank Acolyte appeared near Luke and gently pushed the painter to the side, causing Luke to topple to the ground, unable to move as he was seemingly suffering from debilitating pain that reached his very soul.

“Artists,” he scoffed, shaking his head ruefully before glancing back up at them, pinning Sarah in place with that predatory stare.

“Alright, you got some pretty good teamwork. You guys obviously have a decade of training together and we don’t. Mad respect. Now that we’ve all gotten warmed up, we can get to the real fight.”

Paradox held out his arms and a suit of armor that devoured the very light around it flew out of the massive robot, clasping down around him to create a walking void of pure black.

Sarah had seen nothing more evil in her entire life.

***Paradox***

“Detaching!” Natalie shouted an instant before Heather’s Wraith form shot out of her chest like a cannon.

“Roger!” Perry said, dropping the life-energy infusion, letting go of Nat’s wrist with the spell and whipping the deadly black gunk towards their Karen.

The armored zealot put up a wall of magic that stopped Perry’s spell dead and began eating away at his control over it.

Give her something to chew on, Perry thought as he turned on the thrusters of his suit to twenty percent, shoving him straight forward without changing his stance an inch.

The bruiser’s eyes widened, and he reflexively brough the demonic buster-sword up between the two of them.

With the suit’s added strength, Perry drove his obsidian blade halfway through the buster sword before it gave up and folded over.

Guess I reached the flexible core, Perry thought as his prized $50 sword snapped at the sudden change in torque.

Perry tossed aside the handle and grabbed the bruiser’s hair before he lashed out with his foot, folding the rest of the demonic sword around the chunk of volcanic glass and driving it up into the man’s stomach.

Perry reached behind him with his off hand.

Melt.EXE

Monkey screamed in alarm as his heavier arm began to stretch violently away from his body.

Perry waded through a sudden bloom of steel-like vines, ignoring the plant-user entirely as he found a new target for his spell.

Melt.EXE

Flag’s raised flag snapped in half before she began to sing as a small portion of her flagpole turned to soup.

She attempted to sing anyway, so Perry targeted her vocal chords with a light-duty Melt in order to interfere with her power.

Karen hauled her out of the way, shielding subordinate with her own armor, which melted instantly.

BOOM!

HP:12

A concussive blast rocked Perry’s head to the side as a grenade teleported partway through his armor. It was only a tiny fraction of an inch, as the weave of his armor stabilized the dimensional weave enough to prevent Baldy’s grenade from detonating inside his helmet.

Still, it triggered his HP, since the concussive force that made it through his padding was about the same as a boxer’s punch.

Perry paused, then turned toward Baldy, who took a step back, his legs shaking.

“Hold on!” The leader said, holding up her hands. “We surrender!”