Chapter 303 Idiots.

Chapter 303: 303 Idiots.

Oh, God dammit.

I looked up just as a violently swirling blast of wind howled down the narrow alleyway, gently depositing a hovering figure onto the cracked pavement.

It was a woman, clothed head-to-toe in a skintight, aerodynamic costume dyed the exact shade of bruising storm clouds.

The reinforced fabric generously showed off her petite frame, and her dark hair was whipped up into a severe, high-tension ponytail. Her gloved hands were clenched into tight, righteous fists.

"Don’t even think about starting anything, evildoer! Because Windlass is officially here to blow this villain away!" she cried out, striking a dramatic, wide-stanced pose.

I groaned out loud, letting my head fall back.

Wonderful.

"Back off, Windlass," Spirit Sword growled, aggressively pointing his buzzing katana at me. "This particular bounty is way too strong for a rookie like you."

"I should absolutely say the exact same thing to you, Spirit Sword! For I will personally take down this iron-clad villain, exactly as I swore to do on the tragic day that an unnatural F5 tornado brutally took my entire family of dedicated meteorologists away from me! But in that horrific tragedy, I finally found my true purpose, and—"

"Not so fast!"

I sighed a heavy, bone-deep sigh and looked down as the heavy cast-iron manhole cover between us was violently shoved aside.

A massive, horrifying cluster of jagged spikes pushed its way up out of the sewer.

It roughly resembled a human being, but his skin was dyed a toxic, bruised purple, and incredibly sharp, calcified spikes absolutely draped his hunched back and forearms like a biological turtle shell.

A black neoprene wet-suit covered the rest of him, and a pair of tinted swimming goggles were strapped tightly over his eyes.

"It’ll be the Street Urchin that formally takes down this villain tonight!" the spiky hero declared, crawling fully out of the sewer. "When I was but a lowly, misunderstood teenager, I accidentally stung myself on a genetically altered sea urchin my father—a brilliant, visionary marine biologist—was experimenting on!

"The accident granted me incredible, toxic powers! And just like the noble sea urchin, I will ruthlessly clean up the world and purge this sea of all the foul pollutants and evil that infect our fair city! Starting strictly with you, Iron Polaris!"

I aggressively rubbed my forehead with sheer, unadulterated exhaustion.

Fucking hell.

I so did not need this D-list circus right now.

"Look," I said, keeping my voice perfectly level.

Beneath my jacket, I subtly reached out with my powers, magnetically wrapping my invisible grip around the four shattered, heavy fragments of the steel emergency exit door I’d just blown off its hinges.

I began to circumspectly lift them off the asphalt. "How about you three highly motivated individuals just figure this turf war out between yourselves? I’ll gladly take a raincheck and physically fight all of you another time. Deal?"

"How about you eat this!" Urchin snapped.

His toxic purple cheeks violently ballooned outward as he sucked in a massive breath of air.

His entire spiky body suddenly squatted down low, his muscles clenching in a stance that looked exactly like someone dealing with a case of severe, agonizing constipation.

Every single spike on his back began to vibrate and quiver with deadly kinetic tension.

Oh, well. Here we go.

Several of the topmost, venom-tipped spikes shot directly from his hunched shoulders, whistling through the damp alley air straight at my face.

I didn’t even blink. With a sharp mental flex, I violently pulled the hovering steel door fragments directly in front of me, forming a makeshift, interlocking buckler.

The heavy, toxic barbs slammed deep into the reinforced metal with a deafening series of thuds, the force pushing me back half a step.

Before I could drop the shield, a sudden, concussive blast of localized hurricane wind slammed into my chest. Windlass was letting loose.

The gale-force impact nearly knocked me flat on my back. I instantly reacted, forcing my raw magnetic power straight down through the soles of my boots.

I found the massive, cast-iron water mains buried six feet under the city street and anchored myself to them, locking my boots to the pavement as if I weighed ten thousand pounds.

The immediate tactical bonus of securing my footing was that the second high-velocity barrage of toxic spikes shot by Urchin was caught squarely in Windlass’s crossfire.

The howling gale forcefully blew the deadly projectiles wildly off their trajectory, slamming them harmlessly into the side of a nearby metal dumpster one after the other with a heavy, metallic clatter.

"Stay completely out of my line of fire, Windlass!" Urchin violently snapped, squatting down to reload.

"Shut up, you freak! I’ve got this handled!" Windlass scoffed. The wind began howling like twin tornadoes funneling directly out of her open palms.

I aggressively squinted against the blinding dust and trash being kicked up by her storm.

I was entirely done playing games with these amateurs. With a single, sharp thought, I fully deployed my iron armor.

The heavy, overlapping plates slammed down over my arms and chest, and my iron visor violently snicked into place over my face, immediately feeding me a tactical view and giving my eyes some much-needed relief from the flying debris.

I flung out my right hand, sending a massive, concussive pulse of magnetic power straight into the heavy manhole cover Urchin had carelessly tossed aside.

I yanked my arm back hard, violently ripping the heavy iron disk off the ground and sending it flying through the air like a deadly, hundred-pound discus.

Windlass absolutely never saw it coming. She was entirely too focused on blasting me with her wind tunnel, right up until the massive chunk of municipal iron brutally smashed square into her spine.

She let out a breathless, agonizing shriek as the impact threw her ragdolling across the alleyway.

She slammed hard into a brick wall, and her twin tornadoes instantly collapsed into a chaotic, dying breeze as she slumped to the asphalt.

One down.

Instantly leaping into the breach sprang Spirit Sword, his white-hot katana humming with raw plasma as he slashed aggressively at my neck.

"Spirit Slash!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.

I quickly severed the magnetic anchor locking my boots to the water main and smoothly sidestepped the glowing blade.

He missed me completely, his plasma sword merely cutting a deep, molten furrow into the asphalt exactly where I had been standing a fraction of a second before.

"How dare you strike a noble woman!" Spirit Sword barked, wildly recovering his stance. "You will pay in blood for harming her, monster!"

"Oh, so this is exactly what we’re doing tonight?" I said dryly. Out of the corner of my visor, I watched Urchin deeply inhale again, his purple back-spikes quivering as he prepared for a third volley. "You’re actively going to white-knight for the unconscious heroine while I beat you to death?"