Inhuman // Cyborg

Chapter Thirteen: Salem's Lot

"What...? Stone?!" Zirrozinski's voice snarled. It then became faint, indicating that he turned away to speak to someone else. "Where is this coming from?! Trace it, now!"

"Ten minutes. Get everyone out."

The agent roared back "You're a goddamn psychopath! You're going to kill these people!"

With an amused huff, Cyborg taunted "That's going to depend on you." He then ended the transmission and double-timed it to the next structural weak point. The message to Zirrozinski seemed to encourage any remaining A.R.G.U.S. personnel to clear out, thus making Victor's job easier. Without an army of government goons to work through, the second charge was affixed with no obstructions. Afterwards, however...

Victor's proximity alert warned him of a foreign entity in the room. Disregarding how impossible it would have been for his sensory systems to not detect an individual while he planted the explosive, Cyborg turned to face this stranger.

His eye could barely comprehend what it fell upon. The figure was human in shape but cloaked in shadow. Chanting rumbled through the room as the blackness drained away from the silhouette. Victor recognised it as Latin...and matched the phrases with a Demonic rite. The body of a woman, as pale as snow and draped in rags, floated like a ghost at the far side of the room. Her black hair was oily and matted. Wisps of green surrounded her like moths around a flame. This same verdant glow beamed from her lifeless eyes.

It was highly probable that at least someone from Task Force X would be sent to respond to this disturbance...and since The Enchantress wasn't bound by the laws of physics, she was the only one who could've made it to this facility in time before Victor's work was done. It was plainly obvious to anyone, especially Victor, that magic was not his field of expertise. More often than not, it proved to be a fatal weakness of his. All of his strengths were dependant on natural law; science. How molecules reacted to stimulus, how energy enabled or disabled certain elements...so if all of that was tossed out the window, where did it leave Victor?

He didn't have a really good feeling about this...so he resorted to plan B; stall long enough to concoct an effective counterplan. "All that power, and you're still playing lap dog for the government."

The Enchantress' head cocked slightly to the side. She replied "I go where I please, hideous contraption."

"Right. Your host...June Moon. She still has power over you." Cyborg said, regurgitating what Raven told him about his current adversary.

As she floated forward slightly, The Enchantress smirked. "You know so little of the arcane, young one. Like an insect cast into the mouth of a whale. June is but a vessel."

"Really? Then why do you lap up orders from Amanda Waller? She's nothing compared to you. My guess is that June is still in there somewhere...making you walk the line."

The witch snapped her fingers and balls of light winked into life around her. "I believe I have humoured you long enough. It is time for you to die."

"I've rigged this building to blow in five minutes. If you wanna stick around, you're going to die same as me."

"Wrong, once again. June will die. I will simply seek another mortal soul to leech off."

This was it. There was no more stalling this Satanic witch...so Victor morphed his right arm into a phased plasma cannon, aligned the weapon with his targeting suite, and opened fire. The super-heated gas blast throttled into the Enchantress' chest and pushed her backwards with a blinding explosion. However, she simultaneously released one of her black magic spells.

The orb of light zipped forward, and Victor found that he only had a millisecond to react. Before it directly impacted his chassis, Cyborg dove aside in an effort to minimise damage. As the spell slammed into the empty ground, it exploded outward with black fire that consumed Victor despite his evasive movement. Alarms sounded within his mind, alerting him to the fact that surface temperature had spiked intensely. Sweat and the feeling of the sheer heat on the human side of his face, Victor snarled as he pushed upward and fired once more. This time, he embedded some on-the-spot tweaks to the energy makeup using some sensory data gained from observing that magical attack. He did his best to match its atomic structure and spread...so theoretically, his future shots might have a better chance of bypassing whatever protection salves were increasing the Enchantress' durability.