It had a tall and thin humanoid shape. Two legs and two arms with a deformed head. This one lacked eyes and a nose; it was just a snout similar to a shark with black, gooey spikes all over it. That strange substance covered each inch of the monster, extremely similar to petroleum. However, there was a small detail in that ocean of black oil. Small sparkles of bright, solid shards, like glass, swam across the mutant body. It had a strong, chemical-like smell, reminiscent of a gas station combined with a smoker's house.
"Don't let the tar hit you!" Olivia screamed before opening fire on the monster.
It was hard to when your main method to kill it was touching it. However, Max had his trusty steel bar to work as a conductor.
He crouched and rushed in, stabbing the abomination in the chest with the rod and unleashing a massive electric shot.
The monster let out a howl of pain as it vomited a huge ball of tar on the boy's face. Max could dodge it, but if he did, it would possibly hit Cat, who was behind him.
There was a second when the young man could only brace himself for what was coming.
A splash of oil covered Max's helmet. From the inside, the boy could see the shards of glass concentrating on a single point; this was going to hurt.
Max heard a high-pitched sound as the shards converged into a singularity and exploded. Then his power told him the damage as his eyes were blinded for a second.
Eyelids? Gone, like 89% of the skin on his face.
Massive external hemorrhage, probably just 1 or 2 minutes before he bled out.
He was going to need a new set of front teeth.
Before Max could react, he felt something stabbing him on his calf's back, one of the few places where he had no armor. It was Cat's spear. Flesh touched flesh, and so the woman could use her power on him.
The man immediately felt the healer fixing his body.
"Shock it again!" Cat screamed as the guns from both Olivia and Ange were leaving the monster like a strainer.
Using his newfound strength, the boy stabbed the monster again. A combination of his power and Cat's managed to partially heal the safety mesh that was burned during the first discharge.
Again and again. The boy became a battery that constantly discharged against that monster, giving the girls a fixed target to shoot.
At that moment, Max was no longer a person; he was a converter who turned the Cat and his Guideline power into sheer electricity. From the tip of his fingers to his burned hair, muscles tensed up, nerves flared up, and skin boiled, all in order to turn him into a superconductor.
"He is not completely liquid; keep shooting!" Olivia screamed, and a few seconds later, the creature finally collapsed on the floor.
Max could smell his skin cooking from the constant electric discharges. Even with his power, this would be a deadly wound. However, with Cat's help, he would be fine. Max hoped, at least.
"Hold on, I am here !" Cat screamed while healing his face.
Lucky for him, his brain was relatively fine. That was the only part needed for him to wield his power to start fixing his flesh. However, if oxygen ran out from the blood loss, it would be game over. However, Cat specialized in healing, and she had more than enough experience keeping a brain alive even with the minimum requirements.
"Oh! I like this face," Ange said with a smile as she saw the skin growing back over the charred muscles.
"Max, are you fine?!" Olivia asked him.
The most annoying thing was the smell. Charred meat, chemical stench, and gunpowder. The last one was more nostalgic than disgusting.
Max just nodded, as there was still some burned meat ruining his vocal cords.
He was out of danger, but the explosion almost killed him. If the young super wasn't wearing his helmet, the contusion would have knocked him out.
After this, a few minutes passed while Cat and Ange made sure that their meat shield could at least talk again.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I think . . . it is done . . . it always is like this?" Max mumbled as finally he had skin covering his face; the eyelids would take a few more seconds to regrow.
"Most of the time, just one small mistake and everything can change on a battlefield," Olivia added, still looking toward the entrance of the place with her pistol just in case.
"Don't worry! I will put a metallic mesh under your face so you are safe the next time you get it blown away," Ange said with a smile while patting his back.
After that, it was time to take a rest. Ange went to grab something from the pile of goo that used to be the zombie, and Olivia began to hack a control panel at the entrance of the monorail, trying to get access to the hydroponics cameras while the gas vented out.
Max decided to do something after cleaning the place up before investigating possible mutations. He went to speak to Cat.
"How are things going?" He asked the girl who was lying on one of the monorail seats.
"Like, shat . . . emotionally," she admitted tiredly, slowly sitting and looking into nothing.
"Do you need help with that?" Max knew that leaving this super alone for long periods of time was not the best idea. She already had enough time alone in jail.
"A professional," Cat mumbled and let out a small sigh. She knew that there was something wrong with her.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have that," the man said with a joking tone.
"It's alright. It's enough to have something around that I don't want to kill," the Scottish girl confessed and looked him right in the eyes. A small smile bloomed on her lips as she compared the half-dead state he was in 10 minutes ago with his current one.
"Would you like to discuss it?" the man said and sat beside her, leaving her enough space to move from the conversation.
"Well, I did something really bad to my dad and a whole city . . . and those two are partly to blame," she mumbled as this half-healed wound was still pestering her.
She took a brief pause before nodding.
"I am the other. I would like to return and correct my errors," Cat said, her tone sad and uncomfortable, but at the same time, after muttering those words, she didn't look that depressed anymore. It only lasted a second, and then she was back to normal.
"It's a little difficult to get back now that we're stuck in another dimension, but Ange will find a way," he added.
"Unfortunately, you're correct," she said and rolled her eyes.
"How about you, Max?" Cat asked, now being on the offensive, doing the prodding.
"This is going to sound sad or stupid, but . . ." He made a small pause, gathering the courage to reply.
"I miss my job; I loved working in a coffee shop." Max loved working with coffee and tea, even cooking pastries.
Cat let out a giggle.
"You know . . . you are like me; we see life as a machine made out of flesh and bones. . . I could rewrite your brain to be another person. You could do the same. . . ." Cat didn't sound angry or crazy; it was actually pure doubt, almost as if she were talking to herself.
"Why are you not rewriting that feeling away? I mean, it would be better for you," she added and made an uncomfortable long pause, trying to sound as polite as possible.
"You would be more focused on the mission. Max, you could even rewrite it back if you wanted or leave it as that if . . . you know . . ." The healer put a stack of words inside Max's head. Even if she actually was not talking to him, she was just using the man as an excuse to reflect on those ideas.
"So what you are asking is, why are we allowing any negative feelings?" Max asked just to clarify.
"Aye," Cat confirmed while letting her flesh wrapping unravel until her torso was exposed, helping her to take fresh air.
"Sometimes stuff goes wrong, and you need those to tell you that you fucked up. Also, without them, the good ones are not that valuable," the young man muttered, not looking at her but looking at the other side of the monorail car. He was actually infected with the same doubt that Cat had; now he was also trying to talk himself out of that idea.
Cat stayed silent for a second and blinked a few times.
"Yes, in the big scheme of things, those feelings work in our favor. Without them, I wouldn't want to go and fix my mistake."
"As you said, we are machines out of blood and flesh. However, that doesn't make us less complex," he said, and then tried to remember something personal to share that point of view.
"I had a coffee machine that for some reason had its own quirks; you needed to twist the filter juuuuuuuuust right to get it in. The owner and I were the only ones who knew how to put it in. It was just a piece of metal; now imagine something like a full human," Max muttered with a tiny and sour smile; after all, that shop no longer existed.
Cat took a deep breath and nodded. "You are right. . . you know. We should have these talks more often; it's kind of nice to have someone to talk about this stuff," she said, actually enjoying the company of someone normal.
"I would invite you for coffee, but . . . we ran out of it," he added with a joking tone as he pointed with his thumb toward the stuff they had stolen from the kitchen.
"And I would have tea," she answered with a fraction of a smile on her pale face, getting closer and becoming something similar to friends.