Project ROWDY 27

December 2023 – Month 7

The televisions filled the glass window, all of them on sale but he doubted they’d ever get that far.

Each screen was filled with the panicked face of the same urgent anchor, her dyed blond hair glued to her face by sweat and sewage water, voice pitched just shy of screaming. He had to applaud the camera man for getting such a good view of her uvula, or the newslady for doing such a good job of yelling that it was even visible for so long.

Even from miles out, Brick watched her wide mouth shape words on screen he didn’t need sound to put together.

He wouldn’t ever get that sound either.

A literal fraction of a second later, a manhole cover punched through the glass keeping the TVs separate from the street. Over one hundred pounds of cast iron shot into the display center, shattering thousands of dollars worth of (probably overpriced) electronics as it bowled them over before the lid bounced back into the sunlit expanse of Third Street. 

Another lid followed, then a third. Sewer water geysered behind them, brown and shining almost like glitter until you remembered that was mostly runoff and shit.

No plan survives contact, Brick mused as he flew forward in a red streak, even if the contact is with plumbing.

Hydrants ruptured next, and with just as much force as the manhole covers, valves coughed chrome caps into windows like cannonfire as water blasted free. Pedestrians scattered like rats, hundreds of locals and tourists on the street screaming like seagulls as concrete flexed in slow waves, warning of mass moving where mass should not.

Brick noted the rhythm of the heave from fifteen miles out.

Seconds between pulses, each one heavy and deep. 

Each one headed north-east.

The marble lobby of Seaboard First cracked open like a cheap egg. Dust billowed. Glass doors bowed, then shattered inward with a sound that definitely left some more fragile eardrums hurting. A thing climbed through: arms the length of backhoes, shoulder girth past any doorway, skin blotched purple and spoiled gray, arms and head a knot of tentacles twitching for focus while its eyes burned a bright bloody red behind the writhing. Jesus Christ, that thing is ugly.

“Jesus Christ, that thing is uuuuuuugly!” Butch yelled, repeating Brick’s thoughts so accurately the redhead almost flinched.

“OCTOBOSS TAKE WHAT OCTOBOSS WANT.” The monster’s voice was like overstuffed drainage pipes, clogged and phlegmatic to the point that it actively hurt to listen to, loudness aside.

Bank patrons tried to shrink behind columns, the bank’s internal cameras visible on the HUD of the new glasses the GDA had given to them with the updated costumes of last week. Donald reported twenty-six civilians, five guards, zero routes clear in Brick’s ear, the man’s voice still as preoccupied and hectic as usual while remaining deceptively calm.

The red Rowdyruff’s eyes narrowed as he watched tentacles that could crush a car like a can of Pepsi coiled themselves around the vault door, hydraulics squealing inside flesh, and with only a second or two of strain, the entire thirty-five-inch-wide steel slab tore free and was quickly tossed aside.

Sirens yelped down the street and in second, squad cars skid-parked themselves across double yellow lines. A small army of boys in blue rushed out, powerless pistols poised and pointed. The lead officer’s radio crackled out, well aware how fucked they were: “Dispatch, we need help. Code Red.”

Brick arrived with the word still in the air.

Three color streaks, red first, then blue, then green, knifed from separate sky corners and slammed asphalt in a triangle thirty paces in front of the bank doors. Cracks fanned under their boots as Brick stood dead center, red lenses folding back into his earpiece.

He flexed his gloved fists as Boomer, to his left, stretched out his back, and Butch, on the right, pumped his arms like he was cocking dual shotguns.

They all stood there in updated uniforms, each one of them in brand-new black bodysuits intercut with colored V-stripes. Donald told them it was a material the GDA had designed especially for them, a functional flex-armor that would adjust to their bodies while “still maintaining invulnerability.”

Brick had raised his eyebrow at the Deputy Director until the cyborg in glasses chose his words better a few seconds later: “…n-nigh-invulnerability, that is.”

Much better.

Boomer tapped his own sleeve like a show-and-tell kid. “This piping, dude, look, it’s reflective. I can see my nose becoming, like, infinity.”

Butch grunted low with a click of his tongue. “Shut it.”

Brick inhaled low, letting numbers drive out noise, and speaking up before Boomer could snap back at Butch and start a bigger fight. He didn’t really need another repeat of last month considering Cecil was still irritated about Albuquerque, after all. “Metahuman, cephalopod traits. Nine-foot frame. Elastic reach. Unknown damage threshold.”

The vault door clanged onto marble as the thing burst through the front door, said cephalopod-beast stomping through and flinging the vault entrance aside and into the poor unprotected parking lot. The beast of the sea turned to face them, tentacles feeling air like angry cables. “SMALL BOYS THINK STOP OCTOBOSS? OCTOBOSS CRUSH.”

Butch rolled his shoulders. “Oooh, calamari?”

Boomer flutter-shook his hands, excitement written clear across his face. “Never tried octopus, kinda hyped.”

As usual, Brick kept his voice level, too focused to sound anything but tactical. “Surround and contain. Tentacles seem to reach four meters at full extension. Do not let them anchor.”

They moved. 

Butch punched forward in a green blur, Boomer zoomed in the opposite arc in blue, Brick rose vertical, a red trail behind him. Octoboss snapped two limbs at once. Butch caught one high, his boots dragging back across marble as he got slammed back into the ground, teeth set, but not straining as he held a chunk of the monster’s limb.

“CRUSH!” Octoboss flexed, tentacles bulging in size.

Not straining turned into not really straining and a second after that, turned out to be a lie.

“Stronger than it looks,” Butch hissed, teeth a little clenched as he forced it back slowly, only for a bunch of those suckers to wrap tight around him. Green eyes went wide. “…oh.” The limb fully wrapped around his bicep and then his entire upper body, yanking the green Rowdyruff off the ground.

Boomer reappeared behind the creature, palms already spitting sparks. “Let my stupid brother go, Octo-BUM!”

Wait. Brick’s eyes widened. “Blitzkrieg, no!”

Too late.

Bright blue bolts arced from his hands with enough voltage behind them to light up a skyscraper and into the monster, forcing a loud yell from the phlegmy sounding ocean creature.

Moving surprisingly quick for someone his size, the aptly-named Octoboss plunged his other remaining tentacles into abroken water main. The electric wash traveled the puddle and lit the entrance outside the bank neon white. Instantly, Butch’s lower body jerked, legs spasming as barely audible and highly angry curses sounded off from inside the bulging tentacled arm.

Boomer’s eyes went huge. “Oh no no no.”

Despite appearing like a brute, the creature was clearly smarter than it sounded, not like that was a high bar. Evem still, that was plenty smart enough.

“He’s exploiting the water,” he barked at Boomer, “I’ll make a dry zone, you keep the pressure on him.”

“Got it!”

Brick zipped down low towards the ground and made a quick tight turn, doing so over and over and over until he had a red cyclone trailing off his heels, vacuuming all the water on the stree upward into a swirling funnel. It looked showy.

More than that, it worked, water cyclone dumping contents a block away

Inside, Octoboss rotated, confusion cracking across muscle. “WHAT SMALL RED BOY D-AAAAGH!?” A hard punch to the face had the sea monster stumble, durability clearly not enough to take a supersonic blow from the supersonic Boomer.

With Octoboss distracted, Butch tore his way free of the villain’s slimy tentacles, green aura flaring as he floated in the air, face covered in pockmarks and slime.

“…I’m going to eat you.”

The green Rowdyruff grunted, then shot forward in a burst of jade light as he drove an unrelenting uppercut into the underside of the creature’s jaw. Cartilage blew like wet wood as Octoboss staggered back three steps, all nine feet of him clearly unstable.

Not enough. Brick realized that.

Octoboss’s eyes narrowed to furnace slits. “BOYS TRICKY. OCTOBOSS TRICKIER.” It hammered one leg down into the pavement in a powerful stomp that forced the asphalt to shudder then split, sending what few civilians and cops in the area screaming and running. At the same time, tentacles wrapped around the back of a firetruck and yanked it forward.

Brick’s eyes widened as Butch got hit by it like a baseball bat and lunged for it as it screamed by. A young woman’s shriek cut off as it shot right towards her, her eyes slamming shut as she prepared for death. A half-second later, she opened them slowly as she realized she was still alive only to stare in shock as Brick hovered above her, the truck as red as his eyes held above his head.

“Alright…” he muttered as he set the thing down on the un-cratered asphalt. “That’s enough. This guy can take a hit. Give him the business, triple B.” Cecil had asked them to avoid committing murder around anywhere public if they could help it, and as much as they could, the Boys stuck to that. 

Even if that meant pulling their punches and using more strategy.

In this case, the BBB. Bind, Break, Bellow.

Butch nodded once, jaw set, eyes hot. Boomer’s grin vanished, replaced by the jittery focus that meant he was listening. Good. They rarely all listened at once.

Boomer shot high, Butch barreled low and Octoboss’s arms windmilled, trying to cover both flanks. Unfortunately for him, he was big, not omnidirectional. Brick’s fist found the creature’s side just beneath ribline as he took his dead center spot.

Gross. The guy’s flesh felt like punching wet tires but Butch poured in force anyhow. Another hard punch in the same spot and was rewarded with an audible crack. Octoboss wheezed, tentacles drooping in micro-spasm.

Butch caught two limbs, locked them under armpits, feet sliding for purchase on broken pavement. His muscles tensed, but they held and so did Octoboss as he roared for freedom.

Boomer hovered above, lungs already full, waiting for his cue.

Brick called it. “Now.”

Upon hearing the command, Boomer released a sonic scream, pure harmonic spike tuned from last week’s practice and right down on Octoboss. The monster’s tentacles whipped wildly as if electrocuted, but he couldn’t escape, not with Butch holding him tight. Octoboss gurgled and choked loudly, tentacles still reeling and spasming, flinging disgusting-smelling slime everywhere around him. “OCTOBOSS… EARS… HURT.”

Brick wasn’t done, though, not as he drove both palms at the villain’s kidneys. While the impact landed, they weren’t really for pain. No, he was checking for something. And I was right.

Without wasting a moment, he hissed to Boomer, “Blitzkrieg! Nerve cluster, dorsal side, hold three seconds.”

Without even a word, thick blue electric arcs leapt from Boomer’s fingers, right to the spot Brick indicated. With even more pained gurgles, Octoboss convulsed, his whole body this time and not just the tentacles.

Three seconds later, Boomer cut the power and the sea villain collapsed, knees denting already-cracked pavement. The weight hit as the monster slammed down fully with his whole body, the street shuddering.

Silence arrived like someone cut volume even as Brick’s pulse still hammered. He knelt near the tentacled head, two fingers to what he assumed was the equivalent of the guy’s carotid. Alive.

Brick exhaled slowly. “Stable.”

Boomer tilted his head, one eye closed as he listened. “Two minutes, and we got a GDA transport VTOL inbound.”

Brick nodded. Made sense. They always had one following not too far behind them on a mission for exactly the fact that he and the Boys did quick work. Not like the other losers, with long-ass half-hour fights.

Butch rolled his shoulder with a look that was halfway between pissed-off and curious, pulling thick slime out of his hair at the same time. “Fun workout, I guess. Squid-face was tough, had moves too.”

Brick didn’t even look over as he corrected, “Octopi and squid diverged at order level. That was octopus morphology, not squid. Hence the name.”

“Hence, he says ” Butch mocked, faking a British accent that Brick didn’t have. “Thanks, professor.” His little brother rolled his eyes as he glanced toward the bank with a clear greedy gleam in his eyes. “Money still here. You want any?”

Brick’s eyes snapped over to him, red and piercing. “What are you do with money? Don’t you have like half-a-mil in your GDA account?”

Butch held hands up, unimpressed. “Kidding, tactical Barbie.”

Brick let out a low, slow breath, too done to deal with his impulsive brother. Kidding, sure. Butch would be exactly the type to steal something just to realize he already had money. “Help Boomer with evac, dummy.”

“Yeah yeah,” Butch muttered as he lumbered off.

Police edged back into the scene as his green and blue brothers cleared civilians. Brick stayed near Octoboss, counting pulses. He tracked officers’ holsters, finger tensions, radio calls, all background noise that might spike, even down to the way the lead officer’s hands and voice shook as he gave orders.

The VTOL landed in the center of the street and, without a moment to waste, the GDA containment unit thundered down on grav-ramps, suits all dark gray and tactical as they slammed stasis cuffs over each tentacle root, Brick watching carefully as the meters on the cuff rose into the green.

Boomer floated in, empty hands raised like he’d completed a magic trick. “Civvies out. There’s a lady with a broken ankle in the ambulance. She asked for our autographs and that she loves our merch. Her kid has a crush on me.” His voice kludged excitement with pride in equal parts that was classic Boomer.

Brick smiled at the words even as Butch returned, still silent and already bored as the three of them watched the GDA haul off Octoboss to whatever specific GDA facility was closest.

Around them, media drones already buzzed. Brick saw the reflections on Butch’s knuckles: red tally lights like hungry eyes. He rolled his shoulders, teeth clamping down on his tongue before he could let out a yawn in public.

“Mission complete,” he said, voice level.

Boomer tried a grin. “Lunch complete?”Butch grunted. “Burgers?”

Brick smirked. “Burgers.”