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Toxic is someone that rolls with the punches. Literally. Figuratively. Whatever way he needs to be. It’s why he’s Shroud’s righthand man.
“I got ‘im Robert, you focus on Shroud!” The short hero called over his shoulder.
“What, you think you can take me on, Lucky Charms?” Toxic scoffed, as if Robert would pass up the chance at a rematch and—
“I’ll leave you two to it.”
No wait, yeah, he just fucked right off. Huh. Robert was confident in the guy at least. That was— fine. Probably fine. Just a little misplaced confidence, like how he believed in the rest of the Loser-Team.
Lucky Charms, Punch Up, according to the employee files Shroud had passed him during the debrief about SDN’s manpower, (which had only really focused on the Z-Team and hey, wouldn’t you know it?! They were the only “heroes” left who had bothered to try and protect Robert and SDN!) had some type of near-invulnerability power, with some possible regeneration. Which would make him difficult to melt but not impossible. Just had to take a bit of extra time with him.
Punch Up cracked his oversized knuckles and rolled back his shoulders.
What else had the file mentioned? Some kind of special move?
Toxic braced himself and summoned some extra acid to the surface. He’d let him get one punch in, just to see how much acid it would take to burn through him.
Two things happened in quick succession. One. Punch Up did not react to the acid in the slightest, nor did his hands seem injured. Two. Toxic gravely miscalculated what he assumed would be a hit to the gut.
Instead, Punch Up decided to uppercut him directly in the fucking dick. It would have been square on his pussy but Toxic was not looking to get his pelvis shattered in such a boring way (not the way he was trying to get fisted thank you very much—) and managed to move back just enough that the majority of the punch was taken by his packer. Toxic let out a hiss of pain at the part of the hit that did just barely land.
The packer however—
Was promptly torn off him. And then went airborne. And finally hit the wall and exploded into a smattering of extremely specialty-grade plastic fusion bullshit or whatever it was that kept his acid from melting it but did not make it immune to kinetic force, apparently.
A beat. And then another.
Toxic opened his mouth.
“JEHSUS I’M SO FUCKING SORRY!”
Toxic closed his mouth.
“That’s never happened to me before! I swear I usually just put enough force for it to stun I’ve never had one explode– well not in that sense, there was this one guy Larry but he was fucking weird— that’s besides the point, are you alright?! I can’t tell if you’re bleedin’!”
Toxic blinked. Did he seriously not— whatever he could work with this.
He dropped to his knees, cupped what would be the stump of his torn-off dick and wailed, “Oh fuck it hurts so bad! My dick! My perfect fucking dick!”
“No no no, you’re fine! You’ll be fine! Robert said you can reattach those! Fingers and dicks!”
“That’s oddly specific— anyway, it exploded!”
“It’s fine you just gotta— pick up the bits…Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that really went everywhere didn’t it— I’ll help!”
As soon as Punch Up’s back was turned as he began to shift through the rubble for bits of exploded dick, Toxic shot off in the direction the mech had flown.
A sudden weight slammed into the back of the mech, knocking him off kilter and into one of the arms of the spidermech that sent him skidding across the concrete.
“Your friend owes me a new dick!”
Behind him Robert could vaguely hear Punch Up shouting, “You shouldn’t be fighting in that condition, lad! The blood loss is gonna getcha!”
Somehow, despite everything, the turn of events reassured him. Really, what were the odds that Shroud would be able to predict anything his incredible mess of a team would do?