Project ROWDY 2-10

A warzone spread across three levels.

It used to be a simple lobby; big, corporate and clean, but still just a lobby.

Now though, chaos bled across three levels — vertically, horizontally and diagonally — glass catwalks and chrome staircases as much a victim to violence as the rest of the structure and suffering for being too close.

“Give.” Laser fire cut the air in a blood-blazing streak.

“Up.” A fiery backhand painted a hallway orange-and-red.

“Now.” A scream went high and loud, one villain overestimating his durability like the last dozen that had bull rushed him.

One hand lashed out, a gloved palm catching the neck of a lanky idiot who thought getting the jump on him was something he was capable of. “Or just… don’t.” Said idiot didn’t have the time to choke before Brickford Mojo twisted his wrist, over-long neck giving up. “I get paid either way.”

Every villain present seemed ready to choose the second option, not that Brick was surprised either way. No, he had a job to do; and that job didn’t include holding back the smile on his face at the screams of the Vicious Circle's C and B-list trash trying their very very best.

Red eyes flashed bright again, Brick’s lasers boiling a dark-green slime thing that had the balls to try and choke him. 

Boomer was living lightning around him, never at a stand-still for longer than a heartbeat’s heartbeat, his blue-blur-body weaving through plasma bolts and energy beams with grace that looked a lot more random than it actually was. "Okay-okay-okaaay, I'm going left!" His baby brother’s voice pitched higher, shrieking almost as loud as the villains they were clearing out; each syllable echoing on repeat as he pinball-bounced off black shiny walls and glass ceilings, leaving short-circuited cyborgs and neurologically scrambled brutes twitching on marble that cost more than most people's houses.

Some thug with a Gatling gun grafted where his arm should be, Neutron Bob or Proton Steve or something so stupid it didn’t matter, watched his weapon overheat as Brick grabbed it with a single burning hand. Ammunition cooked off in violent screaming pops of metal before the power core inside it finally gave up, the guy dropping with an open mouth and blank eyes, slag melting from his shoulder.

A seven-foot slab of granite-textured meat named Grunt found his legs turning to jelly as Boomer's full-body tackle scrambled every nerve he didn’t know he still had.

Brick couldn’t help the grin. Get him.

Where he moved directly and economically, each strike solving a problem, Boomer was his own perfect distraction. Like an electrified cat-of-nine-tails; not the best weapon to use but a great one to make a point with. It gave him more time to think too; an extra few milliseconds as his brain ran the battlefield like a grid, each calculation ending in blood or unconsciousness depending on how much he bothered to hold back.

“YOU’RE GONNA DI~YIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”  Wrath II was some kind of alien mutant thing, and while he was stronger than most of his species, like the rest of them, he had four arms. 

Had. 

Four precise heat-vision blasts severed them at the shoulder joints, limbs hitting the floor a full second before the screaming started, stumps cauterized so he wouldn't bleed out because Cecil wanted prisoners when possible.

Domestic Violet tried the gas trick, her body dissipating into smoke an instant before Boomer cackled through her at super-sonic speeds. The shriek the poison woman let out was more frustration than pain, even as his little brother's electric aura brought her back down to normal before he could even make another ricochet.

"I love killing kids.”

Brick shifted his gaze up to stare back at a set of red, the eyes set in an ugly hairy caveman face with a thick black braid swinging around behind his mane. Baby Killer, what a fucking name.

The sicko made the mistake of grinning back at him as he drew one fist back.

Brick blinked a second time.

Blood painted the walls, thick red arterial spray going everywhere but his direction as Brick’s fist punched clean through the giant man’s chest. It was a hole the size of a grapefruit, but it definitely did the job the Rowdyruff needed it to as he stared at the man sucking air through one missing lung.

Brick clicked tongue against teeth. "Yeah, me too."

They didn’t stop there as he and Brick kept ascending up the giant oversized skyscraper, a two-boy wrecking crew tearing through floors. Behind them lay trails of unconscious, groaning and occasionally-dismembered villains who weren’t smart enough to run.

A storm of red and blue, fire and lightning, held very little back as the Vicious Circle broke apart against them with each floor going nearly as quick as the last.

"You think Butch's okay?"

Boomer's voice cut through the noise, making Brick look over from what he was currently busy with; reminding another four-armed guy that he clearly didn’t need both sets if he was too stupid to use them right.

Hmm… Brick’s jaw tightened, heat flaring in his palms before he suppressed it. "...yeah, probably."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“HOLD STILL!”

The streets of Chicago were made to handle a lot of things. Traffic, people, and parades, of course. What it wasn’t meant to handle at all were three living thermonuclear bombs with fists and feet.

“I SAID,” Joey Finkleberry had no technique, just raw instinctual power that the world parted for anyway. Where other people might have had something called skill, Joey used raw mass and pure velocity. “HOLD STILL!” 

A lamppost tore free from the concrete as he swung it like a baseball bat in the same breath, the metal shrieking as it cut through the air. 

Butch roared back at him, the green goblin of the team filled with enough fury that he was actually focused, for once. He met Joey’s brute force with his own, a punch shearing through the metal pole until his bleeding knuckles met Joey’s unharmed ones.

Two fists collided with a shockwave that cratered the ground, fire hydrants flying free and filling the freshly flooded street. 

A laugh spilled out of Butcher Mojo’s mouth, a wild unhinged sound that was more animal than human as it came out with a mouthful of blood. “THAT ALL YOU GOT, FINKLE-FUCK?!” 

Joey didn’t get the chance to answer as a hypersonic missile of green shoulder-checked him with a blow that made the air scream. 

Invincible, however,  was doing his best in a situation that he wasn’t built for. Physically, of course; this was exactly the sort of situation he’d been training for these last few months.

Mentally, though, he was — “I’M GONNA BITE YOUR FUCKIN’ NOSE OFF!” 

Mentally, he wasn’t very good at insanely unthrottled fights like this. He was more used to fights that made sense and n— “MY NUTS!” 

Not this kind of thing.

“Butch, on your l-left!” The Viltrumite barked over his shoulder, a grunt spilling out of his mouth as he caught a building on the edge of crashing over. “C’mon, c’mon!” Arms straining, he pushed upward, flight and force giving him all he needed to let it settle down safely. 

Despite the warning, Butch didn’t listen; the thirteen-year-old was lost in the green mist of combat, more a whirlwind of pure adrenalized violence than anything else. “NNNGHH!” A punch to the ribs sent him skidding through the front of a department store, the sound of collapsing mannequins and shattering glass lost in the roar of the fight.

“FUUUUUU-”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“-uck are you?”

Bursting through the doors at the very top of the skyscraper with a concussive blast that sent a shower of sparks and shrapnel flying, Brick had to stare for a minute as he took in the penthouse that was more a throne room than anything else.

And technology was king here.

It was all humming servers stacked high on almost every wall and a holographic display so oversized it was blocking out the massive floor-to-ceiling window. Just nothing but a monument to technological ego and hubris.

And in the center of it all, he stood.

A fusion of man and machine, CyberFace stared back with purple eyes, metal-molded bald head shining bright with all the steel parts jutting out from his dome and every other part of his body. Said steel almost completely covered his arms and hands, the green-skinned Savage Dragon and his blond wife, Smasher, held by their necks in both of his grips; their faces and bodies bruised and bloody, their struggles were getting weaker and weaker.

“Party’s over, Metal-Mouth!” Boomer took the chance to speak first, sparks still surging around his fists. 

“The city has fallen and the world will follow,” CyberFace’s voice was a synthetic boom, echoing from around the room and every single speaker. “And all of your powers and strengths will be fucking useless to stand up to my Circle.”

The giant metal-man tossed aside both Dragon and his wife, the two of them crumpling to the floor as CyberFace stepped over their barely-moving bodies. 

Brick’s red eyes narrowed at the villain. “...you really think you can do this?”

CyberFace tilted his head for a second, before throwing it back with a laugh that sounded more like he needed to update his audio drivers. “Do you think I haven’t prepared for it?”

The oversized cyborg moved fast, bulk not mattering as he dodged a blast of red Brick sent his way.

“Whoa!” Boomer’s hands went out, throwing a full charged blast with wide eyes.

“Do you think I haven’t prepared for this?” One hand went up, a single palm catching Boomer's lightning like he was swatting flies. Electricity arced harmlessly over metal skin, and then...

The flick.

Blue energy surged back; the stream bigger, thicker, wider, maybe five times the voltage slamming back into Boomer.

Brick’s eyes went wide, his brother flying back with a scream as he crashed into a server bank, the thing crumpling around him in sparks and shattered glass.

"BROOOO!" Boomer’s hair stood straight up as he snapped vertical, a hundred and more sparks jumping off him in every direction. "Cheater! You… you can't use my own moves against me!"

Can, apparently. Brick rolled his eyes and charged, fists wreathed in flame as he closed distance.

He barely got halfway as the room came alive.

Wires snaked from walls, black cables whipping through air to wrap around him as turrets dropped from ceiling panels and lasers painting red over his chest. Every piece of tech in the building, security systems and environmental controls and who-knew-what-else, turning itself into a weapon aimed at his head.

Brick’s eye twitched like Boomer had just shocked him. Of course he can control it all.

Heat vision flared, severing cables in clean cauterized cuts as he tore free with a growl, eyes landing on the two barely-conscious heroes who tried to take on CyberFace. Can’t fight and babysit. “Dragon!" He barked the name out louder than he meant to. "Get out! Now!"

Green skin shifted, eyes fluttering open as the big guy processed, brain coming to life through whatever damage CyberFace had done. Whether it was instinct or just experience, there was no hesitation in the finned hero’s movements as he scooped his wife up in both arms, and launched himself straight through the penthous window, glass exploding outward as the two of them dove into open air a hundred stories up.

Good. Brick's jaw tightened, heat still crackling across his knuckles as he turned back to face CyberFace. Two problems removed. Just him and Boomer now, no dead weight slowing them down or getting crushed because they couldn't take the hits.

He hissed air slow through his teeth as he looked over at Boomer, who was pushing himself up from the wreckage of the server bank. Yeah, I’m done with this.

“FireStorm?” 

Boomer’s face split open with something wide and eager, the youngest wearing a grin worthy of their greener brother. “FireStorm!”

Each raised a hand above their head, energy gathering before they had a chance to take another breath. Incandescent swirling and car-sized, Brick’s palm was engulfed in roiling flame, a miniature sun burning bright while Boomer held up a chaotic crackling sphere of raw blue and white, an entire thunderstorm in miniature. 

With a shout, they brought their hands together and the two spheres merged into something that was far more than the sum of its parts; the air in the room crackled, lights flickering and dying as the very foundations of the building began to groan, steel screaming under the strain.

CyberFace’s metallic eyes widened in what might have been fear, or maybe just surprise as the villain rushed their way, all his weapons going active at once. “Wait, no, DON—!”

They brought their hands down. 

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Ragged breaths forced their way out of his mouth as Butch pushed himself up on his knees, one fist deep in a crater and his body a canvas of bruises. Mark was barely standing a few feet away, one arm hanging limp and a thumb twisted backwards. 

And Joey… Joey was face-down in a crater, glasses shattered, his arm bent back at a new angle that Butch had really enjoyed making it fit into.

He spat a mouthful of blood onto the shattered pavement and grinned, red-stained teeth on proud display. “Never losing to a guy named fucking Finkleb-”

A sound like a hundred explosions at once had green eyes go sky-high as the world went red-orange and blue-white.

and the merged ball of energy didn’t just hit the floor. It went through it. And the next one. And the one after that.

The top of the skyscraper bloomed with fire and lightning both, the entire top floor consumed in an instant. 

Then it spread downwards, and downwards, and downwards again; a chain reaction of collapsing steel and pulverized concrete, floor by floor, until the first half-dozen floors of the tower crashed in on themselves.

“AW MAN, I MISSED THE FIRESTORM!”