Supernatural Taxes

47) Catch and release is essential for sustainable villain thwarting

The murky atmosphere that Phantasmore brought was gone, Atla thanked Nora for her sacrifice then inspected the treasure chest, it was completely empty, "Come on, Lod, you could have put some special item or even a gift card in here for Nora's troubles."

No one heard her, Thanos was squealing about how cool he was and Lod was stuck muttering, "What... what the..."

Lod jumped to his feet in outrage, "What the hell that skill's broken AF —Ouch!" He'd hit his head on the camouflaged trap door to his panic room, which lifted up.

He tried to slowly sit down again but froze under Atla's predatory gaze.

"Ahhhhhh" The trap door fell shut and Lod screamed as he ran along his escape route. Atla grabbed the still boasting Thanos and used pull to lift the seamless 'tile' up. "Stop him." Her army poured through the trap door. Atla and Thanos followed at a leisurely pace, directly under the trap door was a control room of sorts that included a black leather chair an array of monitors a microphone and a few dozen buttons. Behind that was a hallway leading to a flight of stairs that followed the circumference of the building.

While he ran Lod desperately summoned creatures, chimeras, hellhounds, pterodactyls and football sized murlocs emerged, formed by condensing the dark aura shrouding him. His creatures gradually got smaller and smaller, Atla's army of ash was unrelenting, killing overwhelming anything summoned in seconds.

"It looks like he's running out of juice," commented Atla, Lod's dark aura was thinning out and the little bit left clung to his shoulders like a torn cape. He wasn't a writer after all, unless the writer specifically wished for his power to be limitless he likely had a limit auto created.

Lod was pinned to the floor face down and surrounded by Atla's remaining hundred ash creatures. Lod was nearly invisible what with the dim lighting and pile of black and grey ash creatures on him so Atla activated the flashlight on her phone.

In the end he was was just a normal, albeit edgy, kid. He had long messy black with red highlights and a pale complexion. He wore an unwieldy number of skull rings and a bikers leather jacket but there was also steel tipped wooden cane were at his hip, experimenting with different villainous looks perhaps. The dark particles around his shoulders fuzzed like tv static.

Lod bit his lip in frustration, "It seems you have caught me hero."

Atla nodded and got some huge novelty shoelaces out of her inventory, they looked more like the kind of rope that one would tie ships up with, except there were aglets on both ends. Lod closed his eyes and started trembling. She sat Lod up, tossed the bundle over him and used Knots a couple of times to thoroughly bind him. Because Knots only only tied a bow knot he looked like he was gift wrapped.

"What are you doing?"

"I should ask you that, I'm capturing you." Atla looked at him weirdly.

"You aren't going to slay me?" Lod was confused.

"Hell no kiddo, I'm not about to murder you."

"But you had no trouble killing my razor pom poms."

"Because those are some of the vilest creatures ever conceived by a sentient being, they had it coming."

Most of the mobs seemed pretty mindless and they either respawned or were remade by Lod between challengers. As for Kango... she felt bad for beating him up further but could go all out because worst case he would have respawned fully healed –physically- at least.

"I don't know that you'll respawn if I kill you, do you?" He shook his head. "And what about Nora, is she going to be stuck in limbo if I defeat you here because you forgot this part of your respawn mechanic?"