[h2]Alessa Heather and Raymond Haywood: Trainyard[/h2]
There wasn’t much Alessa could do to help Lillian until she got out of Epsilon’s nullification field. By the time she had, the dinosaur-girl was already being… thrown? Nay, hurled bodily a fairly large distance, somehow!

‘Tiger Lily!’ Messiah called, eyes wide with shock beneath her mask of light. Whoever was doing that, whoever had hurled the crate earlier and Tiger Lily now, was clearly extremely strong in some way - which rather implied something of an Alexandria package, did it not? And if that was the case… hell. She was going to need a bit more firepower than she’d normally be comfortable using.

Or she would, if Lieutenant Reynolds hadn’t made it clear that the other villains here were starting to make an escape. ‘Thanks for the heads-up, Lieutenant!’ she called, starting to make a dash for the other side of the warehouse. She should have more faith in her allies, shouldn’t she? Reynolds and Johnson were both well-armed, and Lillian was- well, incredible! They’d handle this guy, no problem!

Or they would, if Troll hadn’t made herself known to the people in the station. The parahuman’s mocking voice had Alessa’s eyes widening all over again, and she came to a halt not halfway across the warehouse’s width. Shit… shit shit shit, they’d been set up the whole time. Of course they’d have a backup plan…

But of all people, why did that back-up plan have to be [i]Dean?[/i] No, no, no, when did they get to him? This wasn’t right, this wasn’t fair, he couldn’t have just... fuuuuuck! Damn it, damn it, if she’d seen the signs of his departure a couple of weeks back, she could have stopped this, she could have...

God damn it. Who said she couldn’t still fix this? Chatterbox was right, they’d been had good and proper, but there was still hope! Surely there was somebody, somewhere, who could cure Dean’s apparent madness? No way such a person didn’t exist! They HAD to! Which meant she had to get to Dean and… and snap him out of it? No, that wouldn’t work, not looking at how he was acting right now. She’d have to knock him out, then.

Orders first, though. She was a leader, damn it. ‘Lieutenant, Corporal, Private! OPEN FIRE!’ she yelled, followed by ‘Wards, regroup, we’re safer together than apart!’ They couldn’t hope to defeat so many versions of Dean, not the way things were going. Not unless her plan worked...

It was difficult to keep track of him through the swarms of clones he began producing, but not impossible. She knew roughly where he was; she just had to reach him… muttering a mild apology to the empty bodies coming for them, she activated her power for only the second time since she’d gotten here. Not now was she restricting herself to just the one beam; her fingers fired off rays of light that cut through flesh like butter, slicing one clone apart here, decapitating another there, piercing two over here…

Urgh. Oh God, this was awful. No worse than… than her Trigger event… she was barely keeping her guts inside her. But no, she had to keep going. They were fake, they didn’t really exist, regardless of blood spilled, what mattered was Dean - and not being killed herself. Tulpa’s projection was doing a lot of work, apparently absorbing both the Dean clones and the various materials within the warehouse; from his yell and the subsequent death of many clones, it sounded like Margrave had just thrown a car at them.

He was promptly one-upped by who else but the thrower from earlier: an entire train engine was tossed into the crowd, splattering gore and blood everywhere, blocking the original Dean from view as it skidded through the crowd. She… she wasn’t used to this much… Christ, why did nobody ever tell her how horrifically [i]visceral[/i] death by crushing was? They just turned into [i]goop[/i] and [b]bits[/b]… but it was okay. It was fine. She just had to try and stop breathing so quickly and heavily. The smell was what was getting to her, not the sight of so many dead people. Besides, the mass of already-unliving bodies being killed meant the original Dean, or likely the original Dean, was now in view again!

And then, with the sound of an impossibly loud gun being fired, he died.

[hr]
From the way she phrased her message, Raymond gathered that the person speaking to the two groups was the self-proclaimed Master Baiter. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t heard about her… only, he’d hoped he’d have been able to kill the bitch personally, on the grounds that her ability was a tad ridiculous. He was pretty sure the Protectorate wouldn’t have faulted him for that. Besides, she was already getting on his nerves.

Of course, that would have to wait another time. Right now, he had to get pulled back into the warehouse instead of cutting open one of the wire gates with a knife. Bollocks. But, at least that put everybody in roughly the same spot… now, what was most important? Ensuring he wasn’t swarmed with the clones of this “Overrun”, or ensuring Troll didn’t somehow talk them all into committing suicide?

According to the small mass of bodies running at him, he figured the former. At their current distance, he could spray them with rounds, and be certain that they’d go down so long as he roughly aimed at them; sure enough, by the time he’d emptied the FN P90’s clip and reloaded, he was, at least momentarily, safe. Which gave him a moment to think… there’d been an original, had there not? Perhaps if he slew the original, the rest… yes, yes, that ought to work nicely. And if it didn’t, perhaps he’d still succeed to preventing any more from being produced.

A number of loud crashes, indicating large objects slaughtering masses of Overrun’s clones, gave him time to set up. The gun switched forms, becoming the oversized anti-materiel rifle he used for a lot of his targets before joining the Jacks; he pointed the weapon in the approximate direction he believed this Overrun to be in, based on where he’d dropped down before, then laid it on the ground with its tripod up, laying down behind it and taking up the appropriate sniping position. And finally, he scoped in.

[i]Target: Overrun, the version who started this battle alone. Aim for upper thorax, obliterate heart and lungs. Kill any other clones in path, avoid harm to other Jacks if possible. Shoot.[/i]

There. Perfect. And as for the rest… well, they were not vanishing. Of course the asshole managed to ensure the rest lived on. Maybe it had something to do with other, similar clones? Or maybe the whole idea was based on flawed logic to begin with. Either way, there were still clones to take out, and a fight to win. Switching to the morphgun’s M16A4 form, he brought the gun up to a firing position and scoped in again.

[i]Targets: Clones, one at a time. Headshot, kill as quickly as possible, then move to the next clone nearest to former clone’s position. Shoot. Aim. Shoot. Aim. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.[/i]

[hr]
It took Alessa a few seconds to recover from the tinnitus of what sounded like a cannon being fired. It took her a while longer to process... human bodies did not explode like that. They did not suddenly turn into limbs and a head without a torso. They didn’t turn to cinders either. That wasn’t how they worked. They were. They. The.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Jesus fuck Dean was [i]DEAD.[/i] She’d failed to save him. She’d failed him. She.. he...

‘Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.’

For a moment, she just sort of stood there, engulfed in a ball of heat hot enough to boil the flesh of any clones that dared to approach. Dean was dead. Dean was dead. Fucking fuck fuck fuck fuck.

And the clones were still coming. Lead your people, Messiah. You can mourn later.

I said lead you self-pitying bitch. Use the. The communicator. Do it.

‘Wards, soldiers, find anyone who’s missing and form up! We’re getting out of here as soon as possible!’

Okay, good start. She almost didn’t sound like she was distraught, too. If she looked through the clones as she cut them down, she could see… who was there, she could see Epsilon, Margrave, Tulpa was probably at the van still. Lieutenant Reynolds and Corporal Johnson were with their respective Wards. Where was Private Skeetz? She couldn’t see him, where was he?

...

Where is the dinosaur. There was a giant dinosaur, and now there is no such dinosaur.

Oh, fuck.

‘Lily! TIGER LILY! Where are you?’

Now she was angry. Their Dean, her Dean, was dead. The rest of them didn’t matter. If they’d hurt one of her charges, then so help her, she’d vaporise them all. As it was, she was merely cutting a swath through them. She couldn’t see Lillian, where was she… shit, what if she accidentally hurt her with her beams? Crap, she- okay, she wasn’t tall. Just… cut off the heads of the clones. That’d leave Lillian alive even if she was on her tiptoes.

Yes, just. Cut through them. Cut through the mass of human but not human bodies. You’ll find her eventually.