She began spinning webs as fast as possible with all of her new limbs and spreading them out across the nearby buildings. .

  Even with her new size and advantages, their extent was completely unknown. Her chitin had stopped the sword of that baron. She didn’t know if it would stop a bunch from the likes of The Submission Regeant and she didn’t really want to find out. While she was spinning webs she began going over her offensive tools. Ideally the non-lethal varieties but they were probably tough enough to handle everything she threw at them so she considered everything.

  Wings were out until the civilians left. The tails though could be useful, they were mostly made of muscle and would probably pack a punch if she smacked someone with them. She’d knocked over a building earlier by accident. She thought it had left a bruise, not that she saw it now. Focus!

  Uh, main methods of attack would be the needle, fangs, legs and bulk. Her fangs used to have venom, she didn’t know how much that had improved. It couldn’t hurt someone before but did she want to risk it? Given she towered over buildings now, it had to be a bit more potent.

  Webbing though was a great non-lethal option. She didn’t know if it would stop the king ranked heroes as easily as it did the baron but what other choice did she have?

  Taking a deep breath, Aria readied herself just as the council that governed London came into view. Or rather came into view for those with average senses. She’d seen them approaching long before others might have. Judging by the look on the Submission King’s face, he had better than average senses too.

  Closer up Aria started to notice details about him. Like the fact that he had the two top buttons of his suit undone or the surprisingly large amount of makeup he was wearing. Not caked over his face but clearly enough to make him look good for the press. Then there was the ring on his finger, one depicting a rose gold crown.

  “A calamity shows up right in the ‘eart o’ London, ain’t that summin’?” Spoke the Submission King. He had a heavy accent but it wasn’t from London. Aria herself had adopted a London accent thanks to her time spent here but this man hadn’t despite being the ruler who presided over the city and most of the surrounding areas in England.

  The baron kneeled or tried to while still webbed up, so he ended up just shifting around uncomfortably. Aria realised she may have done him a disservice. Though when she thought about the fact that he had killed one of her drones, she wasn’t too remorseful. He could stay like that.

  He wasn’t the only one to react though. Camera flashes came from the nearby rooftops and even from some of the civilians still being dragged away by the drones. Humanity’s stupidity never ceases to amaze. At least the few who had managed to escape the drones for now weren’t obviously cheering for his arrival or making any obvious noise. Though now that she noticed them, so had her drones.

  As the dukes surrounded her, they noticed the drones. Meanwhile Aria heard the sound of a news helicopter above her. “This thing can create little versions of itself?” Asked Living poison, the vice Duke. Aria was a little pre-occupied.

  She could feel the electricity being used to power the news cameras and she was pretty sure there was also some sort of wave(radiowaves maybe?) in the air. They felt to her like a vague sensation all over her body. It was weird, like being bathed in really light slime or the feeling of water clinging to your skin after you’ve been dunked in a pool.

  “Great, more critters for Eggcentric to smash!” Spoke the obnoxiously loud Eggcentric, duke of arrogance or something similar. Honestly he didn’t have very many nice titles. He began spinning around and while Aria expected a bit more banter he just charged straight at her. No strategy, just a spinning charge straight to her face.

  Distracted and caught off guard, she tried to move her head in the way she might have while she was human. Unfortunately she forgot she was a much larger target now. Though her head managed to move out of the way he slammed into the chitin right beside her head. Aria winced and expected to hear a crack… It didn’t even pierce her chitin. Not even hitting a building afterwards by accident put a dent in it.

  “Tough bugger.” Eggcentric cursed when he returned to his place in the sky. Realising his slip, he returned to his boisterous tone. “No matter! I Eggcentric, will crack you open like… well, like my namesake.” He shouted before charging at her again.

  Booing came from the crowd who gathered on a nearby roof. Aria took note of which one and made sure to avoid hitting it.

  This time though, she wasn’t distracted. With the lack of other stimuli, she found focussing even one of her points of view on him was enough to make him look like he was moving in slow motion. With surprising ease she flung a web over him. He struggled but he wasn’t going to free himself from that. Or so Aria thought for a moment. Then she noticed the red barrier that had formed over Eggcentric’s skin. The Crimson Fortress had a gentle smile, saving him just in time. While she could spare some, she shoved a few shields onto the evacuating civilians as well. That made it almost impossible for her drones to evacuate them.

  This time there were cheers and a lot more camera flashes. The Duchess smiled and posed regally. Aria had to wonder if she thought this was a fashion shoot, was this really how heroes behaved in a crisis?

  “Let’s not get careless Eggy.” Spoke the Submission King. “This thing is a calamity, I gots no doubt about it. That means it has the power to fight several duke ranks at once. You’re not gonna beat it to death with force.”

  He hefted the cudgel he carried over the same shoulder as his cape. “It requires a little finesse.”

  Then he turned to Aria. “We’re the heroes here.” He kept his words vague so anyone listening would still think it was heroic. What he said though struck Aria as cold. “Whoever or whatever you were, dun’ matter to me. We gotta protect the people, yeah? Creatures like you ‘re our bread ‘n butter.” He said. Then he moved.

  He was fast. Or at least he should’ve been. To Aria, it was still slow. He didn’t get caught in the webbing though. With the Duchess around, it seemed kinda pointless.

  Changing tack, she let him get close. A few cursory jabs, just enough to put up resistance. He weaved through them with ease. She waited, his smirk coming ever closer.

  Then she struck.

  Fangs met cudgel and a drop of venom gently caressed the weapon. Before it sizzled and melted like it had just been dumped in lava. There was a gasp from the crowd and the news copter was getting uncomfortably close.

  With her enhanced senses Aria could even hear how the public saw the fight.

  “-King ranked hero Marcus The Submission King has engaged the monster in noble battle. Will he save London once more, as he has countless times before! He’s fought two calamities before this one, I am sure our safety is in good hands. Yet despite that, we see now that his treasured instrument of justice has been melted by the calamity. What horror! How will our hero make a dashing return after this awful setback!”

  Aria didn’t want to listen any more. When she was watching it on TV, it seemed so exciting. As part of the action though, all of those words seemed hollow. Almost rehearsed.

  At least melting his weapon wiped the smirk off his face.

  He had carried through plenty of battles and it took quite a lot to even damage it. This new calamity had melted it with seemingly casual ease. Aria herself was shocked for similar reasons, she didn’t know her venom would be potent enough to melt their weapons even in such small doses. If a couple drops could melt through the weapon of a king-ranked hero, what would happen if a she injected someone with a proper dosage? Or worse, just sprayed it everywhere. She would test it later. Somewhere far away from anyone who could possibly be hurt by it.

  Seeing their king charge into the fray, the duke ranked heroes began to follow suit. The first to do so was Enforcement. Chains unwrapped from his torso like snakes as he was flung forward by Procession.

  More cheers and Aria stopped listening. She had to focus.

  The gravity manipulator then began creating pockets of hardened air around Aria that she thought nothing of at first, all while staying with the Duchess and Living poison. Far away from her.

  While she was distracted by Eggcentric, who had finally stopped aiming directly into her face at the chastisement of his boss, Enforcement began to wrap his chains around those pockets of hardened air. It stopped Aria from feeling them tightening. They worked in perfect sync: eggcentric’s charge drew attention, The Submission King was constantly harassing her, one brutal swing to her leg joint followed by a kick to that same piece of carapace he’d been working on for a while. That whole time, Enforcement was preparing the trap and Procession was constantly providing them footholds. Even worse, she was starting to feel a little heavier.

  She had honestly expected them to go help the civilians first or at least the Baron. It would have given her some more time to prepare. Yet they were immediately hounding her, all their focus concentrated on killing her as soon as possible.

  It wasn’t the heroic vision she had heard from all the stories on the news. She’d be more shocked but her dad said something similar all the time. She hadn’t believed him when he said there were corrupt heroes out there or those who wouldn’t care for civilian lives. Even if she did believe that, thinking that the king was one of them… Was London actually as safe as the news made it out to be? Should people like this really be in charge?

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  It was only her 48 different points of view and the fact that she could process all of them at once that let her notice the trap before it sprung. Eggcentric bowled towards the side of her head and she swatted him away with a leg. He controlled his momentum, not taking too much damage. Aria though was focussed on the chains. Eggcentric would be fine thanks to the Duchess’ shields.

  When the pockets of air finally disappeared, Aria acted quick. She curled up, legs folding into her body and becoming smaller than she thought possible. The chains snapped by where she was in a flash, wind whipped up in their wake.

  She quickly uncurled and met the cudgel aiming for that same square of carapace with two of her tails. It surprised her that the Submission King had to retreat at the force. He swung that cudgel around with no abandon or remorse, doing more damage to the nearby buildings than she was.. Despite her size and situation, Aria felt like a victim at his hands. It didn’t feel like the first time for him either.

  She was quickly realising she wasn’t to incapacitate them this way. If she could harm them at all. On one hand that was a good thing. While their attacks were well-coordinated and a little less heroic than she was expecting, she could handle them fairly well regardless. Oddly well actually. Her new points of view meant she saw all their attacks coming and for some reason she seemed to be incredibly good at processing the battlefield. The webbing she had placed before was done so perfectly as well, as if she instinctually knew where best to place them for maximum effect? She’d have to think about it later.

  They were each strong fighters and the Submission King was a crafty old man, constantly hitting that same square. Every single time. She was starting to feel the impact more and more each time he did so, she’d have to be careful of that. Still she could handle it.

  The support heroes meanwhile were sitting in the back. She didn’t actually notice when Living poison was buffing someone until it was too late. She’d think it was odd that Eggcentric became a different colour for a moment. Then suddenly he’d hit just that little bit harder, dodge that little bit faster and every time she was unprepared.

  The footholds were important to her new sense for battle but she didn’t know why. What she did know was that feeling like you were carrying a bag of rocks on your back, an unbalanced bag of rocks as well, was incredibly annoying.

  Then there were those annoying shields.

  No matter what she hit them with there always seemed to be a barrier in the way. Admittedly she didn’t know much about her powerset. Not to mention she was trying to keep things non-lethal just in case this could all be cleared up later, though she seriously doubted that by this point. Still, it was doing absolutely nothing.

  Every time Eggcentric would vary the part of he was targetting. They were all obvious: leg joints, head, wing joints, back carapace but that didn’t matter. Not when every time she smacked him down he just got back up with a shield glowing around him.

  On the other hand though, she didn’t want to actually hurt them. They were needed to defend the people. She didn’t want to be the reason a Duke was out of commission and couldn’t fight an actual calamity that showed up in London. Let alone the bolster in morale this would give the local villains.

  All she needed to do was stall. So, all things considered, this was going fairly well.

  Of course, things changed that very moment. “Now.” Muttered the Submission king and Eggcentric barreled straight towards the same spot the king had been hammering for the past few minutes. He lit up in a green, smoke-like glow. The vice duke was doing something in the background to power him up and she noticed Procession do something moments before her right side sunk into the concrete. The duchess meanwhile frowned. She looked a little pained but reluctantly, the shields disappeared from the civilians and Eggcentric’s shield was suddenly a lot thicker. The civilians were suddenly exposed and livid about it but Aria had a feeling this wasn’t just going to bounce off her chitin.

  They’d done all the things she’d been taught not to in class. They doped up, ignored the civilians in danger and became obsessed with killing the target.

  She threw webs in an effort to slow him down but with the speed he was going at he just dragged the webs along with him. They didn’t snap, to her surprise. They did however stretch more than enough that he was still going to hit her at almost full momentum.

  It was just a stall tactic anyway, she knew she couldn’t stop him in his tracks.

  Instead wings unfurled from underneath her fan. 16 pairs of insectoid wings buzzed as they lifted her considerable bulk off the ground. Wind slapped into the surrounding buildings with a roar. Debris, shards of glass and pieces of someone’s kitchen began flying through the streets with the force of a hurricane. A few buildings crumbled around her and she silently apologised.

  The kind of force it took for her to take off so fast, it caused more than a little property damage. An unfortunate neccessity, at least her drones had done their job without those pesky shields. It let her move fast enough to dodge Eggcentric. That living projectile heading straight for her head again.

  The man was too predictable, constantly going for the- Suddenly his trajectory shifted. He was like a living arrow. Green fog and all he completely changed directions on a dime.

  He’d been such a bull headed idiot the entire time that she had completely forgotten the guy’s power was to literally control force. Of course he didn’t need to obey the laws of physics when he was covered in superpowered steroids.

  With Aria now flying above him, Eggcentric had a straight shot into the middle of her stomach, right into the egg sac

  In a panic Aria tried to adjust her own trajectory but suddenly she was not so mobile. The weight on her right side suddenly switched to her left. She tried to re-adjust and her several pairs of wings helped but it wasn’t enough. He slammed into the fringes of her egg sac.

  This time she felt more than the impact. There was a sharp, stinging pain like a bee had stung her in the stomach. Instead of a scream a violent hiss left her mouth and instinctively she crushed the thing that had caused the damge with her entire weight.

  She came down so fast that the ground shook and the few buildings that survived her takeoff now collapsed. It would have been fine, except the chopper had gotten a little too cocky. The winds had blown it off course and it was now crashing towards the ground. Worse, Aria didn’t really have attention to spare. That hurt, it didn’t look all that bad when she saw the wound when looking under her with those many eyes of hers. Yet it hurt. A lot.

  There was now a small crack leaking blue fluid in her carapace that was slowly coagulating around the wound. In fact as she watched it became a gel-like substance. The moment it coated the wound, she felt like the wound had been doused in refreshing cold water. She felt the tension leave her. Then rush back just as quickly, adrenaline and confusion fueling further stress and causing even more work for this mysterious substance. It began to harden before her eyes. Aria watched it turn form gel to solid, forming new carapace and soon the only sign she’d been hurt at all was the slightly lighter shade of carapace.

  Even that faded in moments as Aria truly took in what just happened. A small wound yes, but gone in seconds. How many Noblesse did she know with that kind of healing factor? Or actually, how many creatures in this world had that kind of healing at their disposal? Was she really a monster now?

  How would she be a hero if everyone was scared of her? If she was scared of herself?

  Watching the process in real time really let that sink in. Unfortunately the same was true for the heroes she was fighting, including Eggcentric who grimaced openly at the speed of that regeneration.

  “Oh that’s bullshit.” Eggcentric groused. Then he blinked and continued “I mean, come on. It was no mean feat for the great Eggcentric to crack that shell. Yet it recovers in seconds. Ludicrous I say!”

  She ignored their reactions and turned her attention to the chopper. It was about to crash. Cursing herself for her inattention, she threw a web at it’s landing point and hoped that would be enough. With the civilians evacuated and knowing they had a way to hurt her she wanted out. No matter how fast her regeneration, she didn’t know if she could do that twice. Immediately her wings buzzed and she began to take to the skies as far up as she could possibly get. She was still weighed down by that gravity from Procession. Thankfully though, he apparently couldn’t keep that uneven pressure up for long because it was much easier to move now.

  “Oh, it’s running away. I guess the great Eggcentric scares even calamities.” Eggcentric proclaimed smugly. “Take that you spider… rat… thing!” He finished, a little lamely.

  The others were less willing to simply allow their prey to escape so easily and weren’t so happy to just let her fly away. Procession clearly strained, trying to increase gravity again but Aria just beat her wings harder. The duchess tried to make a barrier to stop Aria from flying away but at the speed she was going and the size she currently was she managed to shatter the barrier with little effort. She was rising into the sky now and could see all of London. Her many eyes however had to focus on a single spot when the Submission King figured out a way to stop her flight.

  He took his cudgel and found the nearest hive drone, one who hadn’t been required to help the civilians evacuate. This one was crippled from the start. It had chosen insectoid legs but a rat’s body which meant the two legs it had given itself weren’t enough to support it’s weight.

  It had largely been dragging itself across the floor smelling the area with it’s rat’s nose. That stopped when the Submission King casually brought his cudgel down upon it’s head. Aria too stopped at the sight. She felt the cudgel come down, she felt what it was like to be ripped from it’s body and returned to a floating consciousness in the hivemind. A lonely, confused drone sat in her mindspace. Before she could think about anything else the Submission King had found another target.

  There were several clustered groups of crippled drones that had formed their bodies incorrectly or were attacked by the civilians they were trying to save. He began to slaughter them. Slowly, almost carelessly as though he were playing whack-a-mole. All with a smirk. “Now what kind of queen would leave ‘er subjects behind? Tha’s some royal negligence if I ever saw it. Let’s start the cleanup early eh boys? Don’tcha worry fair citizens!” Aria heard with her enhanced senses.

  The ‘fair citizens’ had mixed reactions to this. Some still cheered but most of them noticed that the heroes had removed the shields from the civilians. Some looked at Aria with pity. Weren’t the Noblese supposed to protect everyone? Why had this calamity saved more lives than them?

  It was unfortunate Aria was not in the correct mindspace to care about their opinions right now.

  One by one she felt the drones’ minds return to the hivemind. Each one bringing a vision of pain, of it’s own demise. It didn’t matter if some of them rejoiced the new sensation, it didn’t matter if they were happy to die for the hive.

  Aria screeched.

  It was high pitched and loud, enough so that the windows of the nearby buildings shattered into tiny shards and rained down on the empty streets. How dare he! Her fangs began dripping with venom, saliva and unbridled fury as her flight halted before turning on a dime straight back towards him. She would not allow him to slaughter her children in front of her. She knew it was bait. She knew he wanted her to stay behind, to get angry, to become out of control but in that moment she didn’t care. What hero slaughtered children?

  The drones themselves rallyed against the decision. “Mother must leave!” They shouted. “Protect the Matriarch!” They frantically screamed. Aria didn’t listen. It might have been the natural order for her drones to protect her, there might have even been a part of her that agreed with that sentiment.

  She shoved that part into the dark recesses of her mind. She was not that kind of queen.

  Realising her resolve, the drones took matters into their own hands. They began returning to the hivemind. Their bodies flopped uselessly to the floor without the drones to pilot them and The Submission King noticed as well. He frowned.

  Aria thought she’d feel that same ‘death’ she experienced when they abandoned their bodies. Instead of pain however, she felt their pride.

  They had protected their Matriarch, given up their lives in the ultimate sacrifice. There was no pain. Only the sensation of returning home after a job well done and hanging up their metaphorical boots. They even began lounging about and chatting in her mental space. The drones who had given up their lives for her were being praised, even envied by those around them.

  She shook off the strange scene and regained her wits. She wouldn’t let that sacrifice be in vain. The same aerial maneuvreability that allowed her to rush back into the fight now let her escape on a dime.

  The civilians didn’t say anything. They didn’t know what to say. London was silent as a tomb which was why he missed it.

  Before The Submission King knew what happened she was gone. He clicked his tongue. “Tha’s a right pain that is.” He muttered before gesturing for Procession to follow the creature. He knew the Duke couldn’t kill it on his own. Still knowing where a threat like that was at all times was paramount. Not only for his own safety but also for the information itself. He wasn’t the only major power in England and plenty of other countries would also like to know anything they could about the newly born calamity. He’d be able to sell that info for a mint.

  Still having a calamity on his doorstep was going to be annoying.