When the storm of chitins and wings finally abates, Tammi very cautiously lifts her head from the crook of her arm while doing her best to ignore how badly said head is swimming after kissing the building's rooftop a little too hard.
With how rattled she feels, she's barely able to make out masculine screams and swears at the edge of her hearing. She blearily blinks, and finally manages to get a good look at what has the others so angry.
Her mind comes to a screeching halt and her breath hitches as she finds herself only a few meters away from a bare-chested decapitated corpse, arterial blood sprays still spurting out of the severed neck and dying the rooftop crimson.
Next to the corpse, Brad is frozen stiff, his mask angled in a way that suggests he can't believe what he is seeing. On either side of him, both Krieg and Alabaster are cursing and yelling death threats at the last person present.
Tammi's eyes slowly glide upward and finally land on the insane girl who had her gun kissing her temple only a scant moments ago.
She locks eyes with Nightflyer's deep red lenses, her figure still shrouded in the same blackish-red mist that sent the Striker ass over teakettle earlier and her mask tilted in a bird-like manner as she loosely hold a dagger shimmering with whitish-blue lightning in her right hand–
–while her left hand is negligently fisting through Stromtiger's messy black locks, what Tammi can make of his face through his mask seemingly forever frozen in horror, blood drip-drip-dripping out of his sawed off throat.
Her stomach rebels and she almost throws up inside her mask right this moment. The horror and disgust overpowering her is such that she tries to back away from the monster in the shape of a girl younger than her, but a painful jolt lancing through her right shoulder – right, she did land on it earlier – stops her attempt.
The pain seems to be just what her dazed brain needed as her hearing clears up all of a sudden.
"–for this, you bitch!" Alabaster seethes, one of his bigger guns angled the girl's way.
"Of course a coward would go for a cheap shot," Tammi can almost taste the sneer in Krieg's voice as he takes a step forward, "I should've known."
"Apologies," the voice is just as neutral as before, but Tammi now finds it utterly terrifying, "But this little Nightflyer has her orders, so–"
"You're dead," Hookwolf's delivery is oh-so-very flat and full of dark promises as his voice cuts the girl-shaped monster off, his head snapping in her direction, "You're… SO FUCKING DEAD!"
In the blink of an eye and with a wordless scream, the Changer sheds his humanity as metal sprouts out of his body and he charges straight at the girl–
–who takes a step backward and lets herself fall off the building, her left arm blurring as she throws the severed head at Alabaster right as he is taking his shot.
An extremely angry Hookwolf quickly jumps off the building hot on her heels, even as both Krieg and Alabaster run toward the building's edge to better look down.
"Take the staircase and join us in the street," the Shaker addresses the Brute, who quickly nods in assent as a thunderous crashing sound gets heard, "This subhuman dies tonight. Then we'll find her patron and make him pay."
Despite how her heart beats like a drum in her ribcage, Tammi slowly stands up as Krieg jumps off the roof, confident that his power will let him stick the landing, while Alabaster about faces and runs toward the nearest staircase.
The two lock eyes as they cross paths and the Brute sneers at her in barely hidden contempt.
"Make yourself useful, try harrying the cunt!" he barks.
And despite how afraid she is and how dizzy she still feels, Tammi figures this is as good a plan as any.
By the time she makes her way toward the rooftop's edge to look down at the situation, the facade of the building right in front of her has gotten introduced multiple times with the raging Changer, whose wolfish bladed body sends a shower of sparks and shredded asphalt with every step he takes.
Hot on his trail, Krieg is harrying the girl-shaped terror with the occasional potshots while moving in a way that suggests that he is trying, and failing for the moment, to pincer her.
As for Nightflyer herself?
The killer masquerading as a thief dances through Hookwolf's onslaught of blows, her dagger slashing and boring through his metallic body each time he overextends, shaving dozens of pounds worth of metal with each swipe. And all the while, the gun Tammi's temple knows the shape of very well remains on Krieg, the girl never stopping her deadly ballet as she too takes occasional potshots at the Shaker to slow his approach down to a grind.
As Tammi crouches next to the rooftop's edge, her hand already tracing one of her runes on the short brick railing to give herself some ammunition, she has a front row seat to watch Hookwolf jumps closer to the girl-shaped terror, whose back finds itself against the wall of the already damaged building.
A tortured scream of shredded metal, concrete and brickwork reaps through the night, and for a moment, Tammi is certain that the girl is done for–
–only for her to reappear atop her assailant's wolfish visage in a blur of blackish-red motion, before jumping away.
A half-jumbled memory comes back to her mind, Tammi only very loosely recalling the creepazoid Tinker saying something about some limiters, and she thickly swallows as she realizes that this is probably what he meant.
Pulling on her rune, she rips the railing apart and starts to take aim, right in time for Alabaster to enter the battle with a spray of automatic fire and a salvo of swears that would make the roughest of sailors pause.
Again, for the span of a moment, Tammi thinks this is it.
Yet again, the girl-shaped monster makes a mockery of the Empire's effort as bullets seems to only glance off the odd-looking armor she wears on the top of her uncomfortably skintight suit, all the while Hookwolf is still bearing down on her and Krieg keeps trying to close the distance.
Tammi can't help but find the ease the killer masquerading as a thief casually displays as she keeps dodging over and over again both off-putting and intimidating.
Yet, despite her apprehension, she sent a chunk of the railing the girl-shaped monster's way, then another, then another after that.
Tammi would like to pretend to be surprised when all her bombardment does is a fat load of nothing, but that would be a lie.
The deadly dance carries on for a while, less than a minute probably, but it feels like hours in Tammi's mind, until, out of nowhere, Nightflyer, for a lack of a better term, dashes backward three times in a row.
For an instant that stretches for way longer than it probably should be, she gets this very startling impression of witnessing an honest to god far west showdown, with her three teammates arrayed on one side and the creepy girl on the other.
"Finally done running?" Krieg calls aloud while stepping next to the Changer, the latter letting a growl a screeching metal as he pads forward, "It is pointless anyway, you'll only die tired."
"Not as much, no," the creepy cape answers in her off-putting voice, her head snapping to the side as she holsters her gun along her left tight, before reaching toward the low of her back with her now free hand, "This little Nightflyer is merely done gauging her opposition."
The gun she pulls off her back, because it can only be one, although of a make that screams tinkertech to Tammy's instincts, ominously gleams under what's left of the streetlamps. The girl-shaped monster angles the engraved and oddly tubular barrel straight at the changer, her head snapping to the opposite side.
"This little Nightflyer asks if you're really committed to this course of action," her head snaps back straight, "Because you are going to die."
Her only answer is a growl of tortured metal as the Changer charges back into the fray.
Which is approximately when things go from 'fucked up' to 'completely hopeless' in the span of a few short seconds.
Tammi's eyebrows shoot skyward as the girl-shaped monster does something with the hand holding the gun, and, out of absolutely nowhere, a bright bonfire appears in the middle of the trio fighting down the street.
Then the bonfire wails in anguish and pain, unleashing a wave of heat so hot it feels almost physical and sending Tammi on her ass.
Yet, with the hole she made into the rooftop's low railing, nothing stops her eyes from landing on the 'bonfire'.
Only, it isn't a bonfire at all!
Sheer, unadulterated dread washes over her as she watches a wailing corpse doing its hardest to wiggle free of the stake it is tied to.
"Cheap tricks!" Alabaster yells, prompting Tammi to look at him, and immediately understand that if the heat is barely bearable where she is, it is in fact scorching near it if the way the man's cloth flakes off his sizzling skin is anything to go by.
Once again, Hookwolf bears down on Stormtiger's killer–
–who blurs atop of his lupine form, before vaulting off with a somersault, her gun hand extended toward Krieg and Alabaster's both–
–again, her hand seemingly twists around the gun's handle, unleashing an orb of actinic lightning, which instantly starts grounding itself through the Changer's metallic body even as it zips toward the two other capes.
For the first time since she unholstered it, the girl's tinkertech barks, its barrel angled at the Changer for some baffling reason, right as the lightning's orb double its width, electric tendrils coming to kiss at the Shaker and Brute duo despite their best attempt at taking cover from it.
And the corpse tied to the burning stake wails, wails and wails, a haunting, skin crawling song amid the unceasing staccato of the girl-shaped monster's machine pistol as it vomits a torrent of bullets into Hookwolf's Changer form.
And with each wail wrenching itself out of the corpse's mouth, another wave of heat strikes, forcing Tammi to huddle for cover with her hands pressed against her ears and a shrill cry of fright on her lips.
When the silence comes back maybe ten or so seconds later, she timidly looks over the railing–
–and she freezes in horror.
Nothing remains of Krieg bars a person-shaped scorch mark against a nearby wall. Alabaster's face is forever frozen in a rictus of disbelief as the girl-shaped horror stands next to him, her dagger jammed through his chin and half of his body flaking off in ashes. And as for Hookwolf…
The molten, half-rusted mass of the Changer gurgles something as it tries to amble toward his friends' killer. Yet for all his effort, his glowing red-hot body keeps sloughing off him in a haze of heat, and every blade he conjures as a replacement looks brittle and dull.
That doesn't stop him from trying to reach Nightflyer, even as the girl's dagger vertically slices through Alabaster's head, what's left of the Brute's body falling limply to the ground.
Four and some change seconds later, Alabaster doesn't stand up.
And Tammi can only watch numbly as Hookwolf's harrowing journey ends with him standing at not even the fourth of its usual size, his blades and hooks rusted and rotten, his usually so proud stature now so feeble.
Still surrounded by her blackish-red mist, Nightflyer doesn't comment as she carefully put the tinkertech gun away before unholstering her silenced pistol once more.
Hookwolf comes to a halt a few feet away from the girl-shaped monster.
The two lock eyes.
A faint 'pfew' echoes in the empty street.
The Changer's rusted body collapses on itself, never to stand up again.
Slowly, the monster looks up and away from Hookwolf's corpse, her deep red lenses locking with Tammi's eyes–
–before about-facing and walking away to disappear in a nearby alleyway, the blackish-red mist trailing at her back.
Tammi herself remains there, eyes lost in the wrecked street as she tries and fails to process the night's events.
She doesn't react when the first siren starts to wail in the distance, nor does she when someone finally cuffs her and forces her to look away from the scene.
[AN: 𝅘𝅥𝅮All the other kids, with the pumped up kicks,
You better run, better run, outrun my gun,
All the other kids, with the pumped up kicks,
You better run, better run, faster than my bullet𝅘𝅥𝅮
For the record, the Heavy Spell/Light Spell shown during this scene – Burning Stake and Stormball – is about just as broken in game. The way it works is that the Burning Stake releases a fiery nova centered around itself once loaded, and every damage ticks charges it. So, Stormball + Machine pistol = a shitload of novas.