Perry flew over to Hardcase’s last known location and spotted nothing but the damage from Boomer’s crash, and a long gash in the asphalt leading away.

I guess they went that way.

Perry glanced in the direction they went, but they didn’t pop out at him.

It’s possible she didn’t retreat in a straight line, might be faster to fly up and get a better vantage point. Just following Nat in circles would be embarrassing.

Perry flew straight up, following the wake of Boomer’s passing with his gaze as he did. Once cars starting looking like ants, Perry spotted a fluff of ruddy gold bobbing along, hustling away from the encroaching frontline of trolls.

Heather? Perry thought, frowning.

He scanned her surroundings and came to the conclusion that she was in low danger, leaping from building to building. It didn’t even seem like the trolls at street level were aware of her presence.

She was…mostly safe as long as she didn’t linger.

But still. It only takes one outside the box thinker like Karth to endanger Natalie’s baby.

Perry scanned the city for a moment longer and noted Boomer boating down the street, sending up a spray of asphalt. On top he could make out Nat’s tiny form controlling a massive hunk of green metal, smashing trolls left right and center as they made their getaway.

Looks alright for now, Perry thought, refocusing on Heather.

I wonder if the baby is making it too difficult or too dangerous to fly?

He swooped down and landed in front of Heather, her elongated legs shrinking as she slid to a halt in front of him, a somewhat guilty expression on her face. She seemed perfectly aware that Perry was going to cuss her out later, and Nat was going to give her a devastating ‘disappointed’ look.

But for right now:

“Come on,” Perry said, stepping close to her and scooping her up in a princess carry. “Let’s get you somewhere safer.”

Strangely enough, Heather didn’t protest the princess carry. She did seem a little out of breath, so maybe she was just tired enough from leaping building-to-building to not give him shit about it. Unlikely, but possible.

He took it easy, accelerating and decelerating at a gentle pace, highly aware of the damage speedsters could do to pregnant women with careless handling. Less than a minute later, he arrived at the roof of City Hall.

Perry would be surprised if a bunch of tech-stealing giants could get inside. Even if they could, the automated defenses would turn them into fertilizer. Regeneration be damned.

He set Heather down, where she staggered a bit, her ruddy gold hair frizzed out and plastered all over her face from the wind, blocking her vision.

Perry caught her shoulder, stabilizing his friend.

She parted her hair like a curtain, gazing up at him with an unusual reserve in her eyes.

“Thanks.” She said, leaning slightly forward, her breath halting for a timeless moment, lips curving in a shy smile.

THUMP.

“O-okay, I’m gonna go help Nat not die, okay? Okay. Um…Bye.”

Heather waved as Perry flew away, trying not to overthink her body language.

Okay, refocus. Now we need to make sure Nat doesn’t die either…then we need to figure out how to blunt the impact of these trolls.

Perry’s troops were in a fighting retreat. Their powerful hunting rifles had run out of charge after fifty shots, and had long since been discarded.

Some unwise individuals had even discarded their rifles where the trolls could get at them and he saw more than one of the giants with a freaking railgun fused to their forearm.

Thankfully the charge was empty so the trolls could only fire once every half hour.

Still.

This is looking…not great, Perry thought, flying towards Nat.

He spotted her a half-mile further down the street, being chased by a ravenous horde of trolls. No less than fifty of them.

There would have been more, but they could barely fit three wide while racing down the narrow streets after her.

Tomward’s Floating Dazzler.EXE

“HEY LOOK! MEAT!” Perry shouted in Manitian, amping his volume as he arrived in front of the howling pack and detonated the crowd control spell.

Dozens of trolls lost contact with the ground as their specific gravity was suddenly cut off.

Perry did some calculation and then proceeded to toss the trolls up and away, aiming them at Lake Michigan, hurtling them through the air at the speed which would drop them in the middle of the lake.

Normally it would be a bad idea to put trolls on the east side of the city as well as the west, but Perry doubted the ravenous pike would pass up on the trolls trying to swim in their lake.

Once that was done, Perry swooped down and landed beside Hardcase, instructing his armor to kneecap approaching trolls with Static Shock.

A buzzing torrent of lightning flickered out, popping one giant kneecap after the other, toppling the chasing trolls like dominos.

“You okay!?” Perry asked, doing a double take as he noticed a large portion of her helmet had been cleaved away, revealing one brown eye and a bit of nose.

“’Bout time you joined the party!” Natalie shouted with feral enthusiasm. “Focus on holding them still for Wraith!”

Perry frowned.

“Wraith’s-“

“BOOYAH!” Wraith’s voice snapped Perry’s attention back forward as she dove out of the closest troll, dragging the monster’s nervous system along with her.

It collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Well, I’ll be,” Perry murmured as the troll failed to recover.

So it is actually possible to kill them with massive physical damage…by removing their entire nervous system…actually, that gives me an idea.

“What are you-“ Perry glanced Heather up and down and noticed two things:

She was ethereal, only partially visible to the naked eye, and slightly more perceivable to his dimensional senses She wasn’t pregnant.

“How?” Perry asked, motioning to her.

“Anya’s Body-sitting right now! I switched spots with her!” Heather shouted before diving into another troll, trailing ethereal energy.

Huh. So, umm…that’s interesting. Is she absolutely sure the ancient ghost she’s only known for a year won’t take the opportunity to be alive again?

Hardcase tapped Perry’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Two minutes!” she shouted, pointing at Boomer’s screen. “Then we go home and regroup!”

Perry glanced over and saw a loading screen on the mech’s display before nodding his head.

Perry let his auto-targeting system continue blasting kneecaps while he dialed up his captains.

“This is Paradox, do we still have any civilians in the southwest quadrant?”

“They’re either gone or eaten!” Blue lightning responded. “I haven’t seen a living soul in over an hour. Tell me we’ve got permission to drop the buildings! Some of them have already gone outside the box, and they’re kicking our asses!”

“Do it,” Perry said.

BOOOM!

A concussive wave travelled through the earth, causing Boomer to shake violently under their feet. Several skyscrapers in the distance began to ponderously tilt, their fall patterns overlapping with each other. The box was coming down.

Perry hadn’t wanted to destroy those buildings to protect the city, but once Boomer’s cannon had been removed from play their only choice was a battle of attrition against regenerators, or boxing them in long enough to come up with a different solution.

Perry knew his troops were doing good work slowing the trolls down and evacuating civilians, but he was kicking himself for making their suits and weapons ‘ just good enough’ out of fear that they’d be stolen or used against him somehow.

Now a bunch of his men had been killed because they were wearing sheet metal cosplay against trolls who were way more dangerous than he’d anticipated.

It wasn’t a good feeling.

Boomer continued rattling under them for the entire two minutes as skyscraper rubble formed a makeshift wall around the southwest quadrant.

Sure, the individual trolls could probably climb over or around the wall, but not in big, organized groups. The terrain was now far too difficult to muster anything like the wall of muscle they’d arrived with earlier.

So they could trickle in, or they could trickle out, but either way it would render the troll army into bite-sized pieces that Perry’s men could hopefully chew up.

Wraith paused between trolls and gawked up at the falling skyscrapers, which were still falling, even as Boomer’s reboot finished, and he lifted off the ground, leaving the trolls waving their weapons behind him as the mech headed towards city hall.

Wraith pointed an ethereal claw at the toppling skyscrapers and sent him a pained look.

“You rigged buildings to blow without me?” she pouted as the wind whipped her ethereal hair.

“Did you wanna push the button?” Perry asked with a shrug.

“You know I wanted to push the button!” Wraith said.

“Well, blue lightning would’ve given the opportunity if you’d met them at City Hall when you were supposed to.” Perry said with a shrug.

“That’s…you…” Wraith turned toward the epic destruction covering dozens of city blocks, heaving a heavy sigh. “Damnit.”

The view from the air was a sobering one.

The southwest quadrant of the city was practically ruined, every road was covered by the hulking mass of twisted steel of a fallen building, and the interior wasn’t much better, with a tremendous amount of infrastructure damage sustained in the battle between his troops and theirs.

All told, they had killed maybe a hundred trolls out of a group five thousand strong, and numbers were rolling in that indicated the damage to their side might be even worse.

But not as bad as it could’ve been.

Perry had to stop and remind himself that if he stripped away all the guilt and self-recriminations, the damage would’ve been in the tens of thousands of lives or more if they’d been caught completely flat-footed against the attack.

Once they were done glutting their appetites, they would’ve rounded up as many people in Chicago as they could track down, and herd them back to their home to serve as rations.

He’d saved thousands of civilians. Maybe millions.

Still got millions more to save.

He’d gotten several ideas for how to force them out of the city, and he needed every second he could buy from boxing in the southwest quadrant to do it.

They landed on the roof, where Heather’s body waited for them.

Heather…jumped into her own arms, and faded into her own body. Her physical body’s stance changed an instant later, the reserve replaced with the smug confidence that Heather wore like armor.

“Ah, that’s better.” Heather said, breathing a sigh and fanning herself off with her hand. “Being disembodied for that long feels a lot like holding your breath indefinitely.”

“Shop?” Perry asked, glancing over at Nat.

“Shop.” Nat said, removing her helmet, revealing the glowing symbol of Bargand painted on her forehead. “As much as I’d like to drag you two to bed, I gotta do something about that tech-fusing flesh they’ve got.”

She cast a curious glance at him.

“I don’t know much more than you do about it,” Perry said with a shrug. “They’ve got a deal with a demon named Gna’kis that allows them to interface with tech of any kind by fusing it to their skin.”

“So the hack is magical in nature?” Heather asked, frowning.

“Yep.” Perry said, nodding.

“I’ve got an idea,” She said, grabbing his hand and tugging him towards the elevator.

“I’ve got three,” Perry muttered, his mind racing.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Heather asked, following them.

“You’re a tasty side-dish,” Nat said, sticking out her tongue as the three of them boarded the elevator.

“Oh?” Heather said, standing behind Nat and tickling her as the tiny raven-haired girl shrieked and struggled to get away. “how ‘bout now?”

“Cut it out,” Perry said, halfheartedly. “You’re gonna tickle the idea out of her.”

“And maybe some pee,” Nat gasped.

“Say that Perry is the side dish, and I’ll stop.” Heather said, looming over Nat ominously.

“Perry, you’re a side dish,” Nat said, tears in her eyes.

“Not good enough,” Heather said, tickling her again. “You said ‘a’ side dish, not ‘the’ side dish, implying you’re playing both of us.”

Perry rolled his eyes as the elevator descended to the shop level. They only had a few hours until the trolls reorganized, and they needed a plan before then. They couldn’t afford to waste any of it…

Except the elevator ride.

Soon enough, the doors opened up again, and Heather released her prey, allowing Perry and Nat to practically slide into their chairs at their respective computers.

Perry opened up his CAD and the digitized contents of his spellbook.

Let’s see what we can make with Trolls.