Snippet #1566713

"Okay!" said Briar to Jimmy, before he jumped out the window. "You can depend on me!"

Briar could barely contain himself. He had an assignment. Everyone was depending on him. He knew that it wasn't right to feel a little bit happy in a desperate situation like this, but still, he felt a little bit happy. The Spiders were scary - there was no question about that. But Briar had never been in a situation where his powers had been beneficial rather than harmful. When he was younger, Briar hadn't been very good at controlling his powers, and he tended to start fires by accident whenever he became emotional. He had hurt a lot of people that way. He was lucky that no one had been killed. But Cyrus still had those scars...

Why am I thinking about that now? Briar slapped his face with both hands. Time to kick some ugly Spider butt!

Briar began to rain fire down on the Spiders. He tried to take out the Spiders that neared Jimmy, but for the most part, Jimmy was faster at taking them out himself. Also, Briar felt nervous about accidentally hitting a human with the blast. So after a while he began to focus on Spiders that were away from psychics. It was much more difficult than he had thought, because they moved so fast. Briar needed at least a second or two to concentrate and 'aim', and usually the Spiders wouldn't even give him that. He ended up missing a lot, charring the ground around the Spiders rather than hitting the Spiders themselves.

Damn it damn it damn it damn it! I'm not being useful at all! I'm just making it more dangerous for everyone else!

Briar became so angry for a moment that he actually almost lost control of his powers. He forced himself to breathe more slowly. In. Out. Then he began to try again, more methodically this time. Since it was difficult for him to hit a single Spider dead-on, he instead aimed for groups of Spiders clumped close together. He wasn't able to kill the Spiders like he might with a single dead-on hit, but he was able to injure them. Briar also practiced predicting the movements, and aiming for that instead - and more than a few times, it worked.

"Hell yeah!" yelled Briar, after successfully blowing a Spider's head into a crater of smoke. "Take that, asshole!"

Suddenly a kid around his age appeared next to him, blowing up Spiders with some kind of weird gravity attack. "Hey! Get your own window!" growled Briar. And why did the kid get to name his attack? Briar could name his attack too! "Fireball, fireball!" chanted Briar, successfully missing quite a few Spiders in a row.

But Briar soon became distracted from his competitiveness. Down in the fray, Jimmy wasn't doing so well. He had taken a bunch of injuries. "Ninja kid!" yelled Briar, ready to propel himself out the window. He stopped as someone grabbed him from behind. Briar assumed at first that it was that his brother, but instead he heard the patronizing voice of that Wednesday jerk.




"What the hell are you doing, kid? There's nothing about your abilities that saves you from a fall to the death. I don't really want to have to look at your smashed corpse. Let me handle this."

Wednesday gave the brat her most winning smile. The sort of smile that deserved an accompanying thumb's up, but Wednesday did not do that because she was a classy broad.

Damn the Peace and damn their grades. If not for the grading system, Wednesday would have done the only sensible thing: run, hide, and set up a force field around her. She would have emerged later from the fray, claiming to have killed a few spiders. The field was so large, and the players so many, that who would say different? Wednesday didn't know how the Peace worked, but she assumed that they were watching somehow, and that her absence would be noted. So she took the next route and opted to wait for everyone else to deplete themselves, and for the Spiders to thin, so that she could jump in like some kind of savior and get a whole heap of glory. Well, the Spiders hadn't thinned as much as she had hoped, but people were definitely depleted, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could stay on the fringes before the Peace docked her grade.

Wednesday looked at both Briar and Seph with an intense glare. "If either of you diapered brats accidentally hits me with one of your ranged attacks, I will murder you in your beds."

With that, Wednesday jumped out the window. She jumped down a flight of her forcefields to the ground, just in time for a Spider to lurch at her.

And Wednesday cut the Spider in half with a force field.




"Whoah, cool!" said Briar with a fist pump. Then he realized he'd just complimented a mortal enemy, so he scowled instead. "I mean, show off."

To Briar's immense relief, Jimmy had headed back inside. He looked hurt, but at least he was retreating, and maybe someone would be able to treat his wounds. At this point, the best Briar could do was to try and keep as many Spiders out as possible.

But he hadn't even crafted another explosion before suddenly some kid came in, yelling about a Spider in the bathroom.

"What, really?!" Briar immediately stepped away from the window. That Wednesday chick seemed to have it under control, and that Metsu guy wasn't doing bad, either. "Okay, I'll defeat it!"

Briar left his post, ran into the bathroom, and exploded the Spider in such a way that he completely destroyed the bathroom and sent himself flying back across the hall.

Oh yeah, thought Briar as he rolled on the ground, putting himself out. That's why Cyrus is always telling me not to use my powers in cramped spaces...

Well, the Spider was dead anyway.




Wednesday used her abilities in a myriad of ways: she created force fields in Spiders, protected people who were able to hit, protected herself. As far as she was concerned, she was doing pretty good. While other kids were getting torn the hell up, Wednesday barely had a scratch. She felt even more elated when the numbers began to thin and thin until there were barely any new Spiders coming in at all.

Yes, thought Wednesday to herself with a gleeful grin, When they wonder who turned the tide, I'm sure all fingers will point to me!

It was then that the shadow fell over Wednesday.

Wednesday looked up to see a gigantic Spider about five stories tall.




Cyrus was a lover, not a fighter. Currently, his objective was to stay alive in case anyone needed to use the mindlink. So he stayed in the auditorium, which turned out to be a bad idea when some guy came running in with a Spider at his back. At that moment, Cyrus thought only one thing, and that thing was Holy fucking shit on a stick.

He followed the guy out into a hallway, gasping for breath. "Do something!" screeched Cyrus, grabbing the guy. Cyrus was not much good under pressure, so the thought that the guy was more defensive rather than offensive did not occur to him. When the guy did nothing, Cyrus began to run along the hall, his hand still attached to the guy's arm, so most likely he was dragging him along as well. The Spider followed, tearing up the floor as it approached.

It was just about then that Wednesday opened a mindlink and communicated a message. That message was:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Cyrus nearly tripped.

Are you trying to kill me?! Cyrus roared back, returning to his previous activity of running like hell.

But Wednesday didn't come back with some snide comment. Cyrus thought for a minute that she might be dead, and that he had just heard her death thrall. It occurred to him, as much as anything could occur to him at a moment in which he was actively running away from impending doom, that he might hear a lot of death thralls in the coming days. But Wednesday wasn't dead yet, and she came back a few seconds later with a more coherent thought: There's a huge Spider out here, I need help - it's several stories tall -

I'm going to broadcast you to everyone returned Cyrus. His head was pounding, but he opened all the mindlinks (although he did not open Briar's, because the last thing he needed was Briar running out to try and tackle a gigantic Spider) and sent out the rest of her message:

A huge spider - several stories tall - they're retreating, but - I've created a force field around it, so it's frozen, but I can't make another force field, I'm too tired, I can't kill it - someone needs to come and help me, I can open up a tiny hole in the force field and they can go inside and kill it - please hurry, I can't keep up a force field this large for much longer, I'm coughing up blood already, I'll die -