While she's watching, a shade flits upward and gets absorbed by Legend's.

It's not immediate, but it doesn't take very long for someone to die of having a couple of presumably important organs smashed. And Legend couldn't miss any more than Butcher could dodge.

Butcher Fifteen teleports to the ground with an explosion and blasts at Burnscar. She disappears into flame and reappears somewhere with a better view.

"And... there it is. He's gone."

"Perfect. The old 'if you strike me down you shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine' victory by giving your opponents superpowers. Now, to see about getting him off our backs."

He starts waving to Legend. Keeping hold of the Siberian's hand was probably a good idea; a blindingly bright beam splashes harmlessly off him.

Point him at the remains of the Teeth? Two problems at once, if that works. He's got enough ranged power to take out Noelle without getting close. She'll have to follow to ensure she doesn't miss out on the harvest if that's the case.

Jack may have guessed what she's thinking. He whispers, "don't worry. They've got a Siberian and a top priority of protecting Noelle. The only side here who can touch her is us."

Then he starts shouting. "Hey you! You plural! Don't break the guy's mind like Three and Seven just yet! The clone army still has your Teeth prisoner, every Tooth they clone wants you dead as maybe the thing they want second-most in the world, and you can still save the originals! Plus this guy probably won't even resist; he wants that threat ended himself you know."

Well. She supposes that's true.

It'd be nice to pick up some of the variants, but that's not as high a priority.

Legend looks very internally conflicted. He probably is. But he eventually flies away toward the clones. The three make their way back to the rest.

"Well done Mannequin and Bonesaw, whatever happens next the heroes have already lost.

Now, we could interfere with that fight or we could attack the Protectorate reinforcements. But we might want someplace less pinned down first now that this base served its purpose."

Capes are more interesting than bases, but it is probably a good idea to have somewhere to fall back to if necessary.

Most of the group's longevity does come from being hard to locate rather than impossible to beat in a straight fight. Mannequin's a step ahead and already has a candidate site pre-trapped, but wants to make sure that there's an actual reason behind any danger they undertake.

Jack answers that the heroes might not know about Butcher XV, or might not have realized the implications. Got to let them know exactly how doomed they all are. "So we aren't mostly fighting to exterminate," he adds to Ellie, "or even to win the battle. Do make sure some get away."

She nods her acceptance. Most of the rest of the locals aren't terribly interesting, anyway.

It's not just the locals; there's backup from Legend's team. Ellie might be interested in Prism, a self-duplicator who can consolidate into any of her bodies in exchange for temporary brute powers, or Cache, who stores things in a pocket dimension and is presumably here because someone thinks he can affect the Siberian. Probably not Astrologer or Ursa Aurora; Ellie already has ranged attacks and slightly less bear-shaped force fields. Dovetail can fly; that's something. Clay is yet another force field cape, spraying them out in liquid form and probably here as a counter to Crawler.

When they arrive, Jack asks the blasters with the broadest attacks to announce their presence. Then he calls into the chaos "We're not mostly here to kill you! Got a message to deliver!"

Ellie can contribute to the announcement. As for the capes, well. As long as at least one survives, Jack will be satisfied, right?

He's not too worried there; killing every last cape would take effort.

When the dust clears there's one clearly least damaged part of the building. Must be where the capes are. And they start coming out of it, ready for a fight. Led by two Prisms and three bears, though one of the Prisms disappears before even being fired on.

Then she'll just have to put extra fire on the remaining Prism to make up for it. And some lightning, for good measure.

Prism is hard to hit immediately after consolidating. But not impossible. She goes down. Her shade doesn't do anything, though; it just goes back toward the building.

Jack slices upward, and Dovetail drops her passenger. She barely manages to fly down in time to break his fall. Other heroes spill out from nowhere when Cache hits the ground. Burnscar lights the area on fire, which Clay extinguishes. The side effect is that they're temporarily fairly trapped. Mannequin and the Siberian engage them.

They'll probably be able to handle it. Prism must have another body inside. Keeping a metaphorical eye out for any dying capes in the area, she blinks over to the building and shakes off a pair of drones from her arms to watch her back while she investigates.

One Prism inside. She's already spawning more and all three exiting. Seeing the Keres, she knows better than to get too close. She consolidates and breaks through what's left of a wall, then splits again. Two charge her.

Only normal strength when split. She blasts one and tries to grapple the other.

The blasted one goes down but doesn't completely stop moving. Prism isn't going to risk consolidating before physically attacking the Keres, but grappling suits her just fine. Until Ellie grabs her shade and pulls, and all three die. The one that grabbed her in a death grip, the one on the ground, and the one outside fleeing.

(The vision of the vast formless thing comes with a flash of sadness and loss this time. What for, who knows.)

There's more to this power than was obvious from the outside. A finite store that she draws upon whenever she splits, only partly restored when consolidating. She could leave behind particular objects, with concentration and at extra cost, but adding them is harder. An object of any real size would mean it costs more to stay split than usual.

Experimentally, she calls up the shade and splits. She regards her double for a moment, at the same time watching herself through its eyes. Or, well, her own eyes, there's not really a difference between the two. The second Ellie has shades flanking her as well, same as the original's. Any changes to the shades she makes is mirrored as well. Most useful. Prism will necessarily always be taking up a slot, but still.

She recalls the double, and rejoins the fight outside.

The heroes are mostly just trying to buy time for the civilians to escape. They're succeeding at that but not much else. Dovetail and Cache are dead—inconsiderate of her teammates, that—as are most of the formerly remaining local capes. The metal boy isn't dead, but Mannequin hits him with the nearest large metal object whenever he manages to get unstuck from the last one and then goes back to wasting as little attention as possible.

Pity about Dovetail. Perhaps she will ask Bonesaw to resurrect her briefly.

The metal one is the last remaining of significant interest. She splits into three bodies, with the teleporter and lightning, and has two distract him while the third sneaks up from behind.

It barely matters that he's distracted; he's a melee fighter and stuck.

(A glimpse of the two whatevers, one of them crashing to Earth—)

The other Nine are mostly toying with the survivors at this point. They managed to get to the cover of a less ruined building somehow but now that one's in the same state. There are injuries on the Nine's side but nothing that still counts as serious in light of the fact that they have Bonesaw.

Not much left for her to do then, as long as they're still leaving survivors. She collapses back to a single body, and offers fire support where relevant.

Eventually they're down to a single visible survivor. Clay continues spraying her weapon at anyone who gets too close and looks like they could suffocate, even after Jack tells his side to stop. It continues not helping.