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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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RandomOTP said:
An idea for an Omake: Joe meets Truth. How do you think it would go?
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Poorly. There's only one way to get there and there's exactly zero ways to get back out without a sacrifice. If you show up there, under your own power, then you are not walking away with everything you walked in with.

You can predetermine the cost of Human Transmutation, but if you don't it's up to Truth just how large your toll will be. And if you haven't noticed, he is not a forgiving entity.
 
198 Cultists are watching this thread right now, 1 and a half hours before the chapter is due to drop. Man, we have it bad don't we...
 
Yeah just to let new people know Lord has dropped an update an hour or so before (relatively recently even) saying he isn't able to do it that day.

He's working a lot and has other obligations so if a chapter does not come don't freak out.
 
My fellow cultists. I have failed you. The call of sleep and work is to strong. My brothers and sister I hope you enjoy this gift our lord is about to give us, and remember those who will not be here when it arrives.
 
Callidus said:
Please read again. Sorry if I was unclear :/.

I was just saying that an update has been postponed close to the post time before, not that this one would be.
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Eh, we've got people who've asked him on discord. He says he's been doing good and has made no indication of the chapter being delayed.
 
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41.3 Interlude Glory Girl
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    • 41.3 Glory Girl

    Glory Girl stood on the roof of the ruined shopping center with half of the Brockton Bay Wards and watched the video screen. It was still floating above Kid Win's wrist device thanks to some technical holographic wizardry the young tinker had cooked up, complete with an impressive sound system. Impressive enough to give them the full depth and texture of the word the man on the screen was bellowing.

    Apeiron's cry continued to echo over them as the man clawed at the air with a hand that was rapidly being consumed by burning energy of every imaginable color. Whatever the effect that caused the burning scars was, it was compounding with the mess of the red fibers stitching the tinker's broken body together in a manner disturbingly similar to a rag doll.

    The word he had screamed had broken more than just Vicky out of her immersion in the scene. The sheer power of it, the raw emotion behind the cry, implied some kind of significant meaning, something incredibly important, but not anything that was obvious to her.

    "What…?" Vista muttered as the last of the cry was dying off. Vicky tried to puzzle it out herself. Calling for a trauma team seemed the most sensible explanation, but that didn't make sense in this situation. It might be accurate as a description of his current state, or possibly a reference to the burning energy snaking across his body in a manner that was clearly painful on a level outweighing even the significant injuries he had already received.

    That alone was enough to cry 'Trauma'. Apeiron wasn't in any better a condition than when he had been blown out of the sky. Possibly even worse, given what had happened to his face, the actions the threads seemed to be taking, and whatever that new effect was. It was a miracle that he was functional, but that was the only miracle being displayed at the moment.

    His magical healing technology hadn't activated, meaning it was either destroyed by Oni Lee's attack or he was too injured to use it. While he still managed to look good, Vicky was beginning to think the man couldn't not look good, he had a zombie-like stiffness to his actions. Well, if zombies could move faster than sound in short bursts. That had seemed to be due to the burning fibers, and she still wasn't sure if they were a good or bad thing. Brief contact with the strands had sent March screaming in a fit of pure agony, and Apeiron had them inside his body.

    And now the man's body was being consumed by every kind of energy she could imagine. Thanks to her time as a cape, that covered a lot of ground. Heat, ice, electricity, wind, smoke, steam, flame, stone, strange purple and black auras, even molten rock, they all bubbled off him from the ever-expanding trails. The luminous scars snaked over any flesh that wasn't already torn or sundered. The man who had been able to endure March's attack and a mysterious string-like material pulling shattered limbs into combat service had reached his limit under the weight of what looked to be every kind of blaster power bubbling to the surface of his body.

    Her mind jumped back to Kid Win's theory, the idea that Apeiron was a power tinker, that he was messing with parahuman abilities. Was that what this was? Some combination of a dozen cape powers going out of control and consuming him? The man who had managed so much, come so far, was he actually going to die to a failure of his own technology?

    Before she could muse any further she saw it. She wasn't sure what it was, some kind of glowing gray mass flowing out of his body, not from any specific point, but like an aura had sprung up around him that was feeding the amorphous thing as it pulsed through that air towards the upraised hand with fingers clawing at the sky.

    Then it settled around the hand and changed, shifting to black metal with gray highlights. There was no transitionary period, no gradual alteration or rollout of pieces, it just took shape and altered itself into a new form. One instant his raised hand was covered in a cloud of gray light, the next it was solid metal. Of everything she had imagined, every theory that had flitted through her head, she never saw this coming.

    Didn't she just commit to not being surprised anymore? That had lasted what, about four seconds?

    This particular surprise was potentially the most evil looking device she had seen in her life. From elbow to fingertips, Apeiron's left arm was covered in glossy black metal plates. A gauntlet of the most masterful and horrifying design she could imagine. The fingers were clawed, the knuckles were spiked, the edges of the plates were sharpened, and often serrated. It looked like there was no way to even touch the thing without losing at least two layers of skin, and maybe an entire finger.

    And it was the least threatening part of the device.

    Mounted on the back of the gauntlet was a shield. She assumed it was a shield because it was vaguely roundish in shape and held where a shield would normally be worn. And because she couldn't really bring herself to describe what other purpose that device could have. The entire circumference was ringed by layers of spikes, barbs, serrations, and saw teeth in such a dense cluster that they should have come across as a jumbled mess. Instead, the design drew the eye through multiple rows of horrific hazards, making sure no part of the nest of death lost focus.

    She pulled back her hands instinctively just from looking at the thing, and realized that the layering effect of the barbs and spikes made it impossible to accurately judge where the threat ended. They just got finer and sharper, seeming to vanish rather than definitely stop. It was the kind of device that you wouldn't feel safe sharing the same room with, even if that room was the size of a basketball court. The glowing orange crystal built into a lantern-like enclosure on the surface really didn't help with that impression.

    Apeiron slowly clenched the black metal fingers of the gauntlet closed and rotated it, allowing Vicky to see the final feature of the nightmare weapon. Some kind of small harpoon launcher was mounted under the shield, complete with a reel of cable that looked about as friendly as the rest of the device.

    As if that wasn't bad enough, they watched transfixed as the red fibers, the ones still embedded inside his body, began working themselves into the gauntlet, shield, and cable. With a final clench of his fist the fibers glowed briefly, highlighting the details of the horrible thing in a pattern of red and black, with every edge outlined clearly.

    And there was a lot of edge to outline.

    Before anyone could voice a question on that detail Apeiron's body surged with the gray aura again. The lines of color tracing themselves across his body stopped advancing and the energy bleeding from them paused. They still glowed faintly, but they weren't smoking or discharging lightning, flame, ice, or stone anymore. They could see the look of agony leave his… well, his face was still a split and shattered mess, but what they could see of it looked to be in less pain, as much as a face missing an eye and partially covered in a shredded mask could convey any indication of a person's wellbeing.

    There was a vacant silence as Apeiron slowly climbed to his feet. The Wards' gazes drifted across to Dennis, who seemed at a loss for what to do, even with his new commitment to leadership.

    "Uh, right. Well, that was clearly, a, um, you can…." He trailed off, then shifted his gaze. "Kid? Your assessment?"

    The tinker shifted awkwardly for a moment before responding. "Right, um, well…" There was a flicker on his visor and he seemed to be checking something. "That's a lantern shield. It's a Renaissance dueling weapon that was used mostly in Italy." He glanced back down at the confusion of the group. "Live commentaries on the broadcast. Most of it's useless, but some stuff has a bit of insight."

    "So, was that like a voice command? Some kind of teleport effect?" Browbeat asked. Kid Win just sighed.

    "I'll level with you right now, I have no idea what kind of technology is in that thing, how it works, what it did, or what it just stopped from happening." He shook his head. "Tinkering is complicated. You can't just see something in a video and figure out how it works. Like, people have been trying to figure out what his glowing healing lines are, how they work, how he activates them, and what their limits are. Nobody has any ideas because that kind of effect can mean a hundred things, or nothing at all. In fact, the only real hint we have to their limits is the fact that he can't use them now."

    "Um…" Browbeat muttered.

    Kid Win saw the expressions moving across the group. "What?" He asked.

    The big cape made a slight gesture and the tinker turned back to his floating screen just in time to see the glowing blue lines finish spreading across Apeiron's body. Like magic, open wounds began to close, bones took their proper shape, and the fissure in the man's face merged shut, reforming the destroyed eye in the process.

    "Well, that's just…" He gestured nebulously, then dropped the arm that wasn't supporting the screen. "So much for that."

    Looking more closely, Vicky could see that the restoration wasn't perfect. Wounds had closed, but his costume was still in shreds and the red threads continued to extrude from his flesh. Seemingly without anything to grab ahold of they begin to twist together, hug close to the skin, or work their way into the remains of the man's clothing. Even when the last of the visible injuries vanished the tinker maintained the blue glowing effect that had healed him, just as he had when fighting Uber and Leet. She didn't know if it was a preventative measure, or if he was actually hurt worse than he looked.

    Actually, he still looked pretty hurt. Setting aside the glowing red fibers snaking across his body, he still had dozens of lines of glowing color tracing across his flesh. They weren't burning or advancing, but were still prominent, and seemed to be bubbling up from inside the man, trying to split the flesh. The collection combined with the crimson threads and blue circuitry to make a technicolor mess.

    Actually, no. No it didn't. Technicolor, yes, but it was anything but a mess. 'Mess' had been how she pictured them inside her mind, the pile of colors clashing and crossing over each other at random, creating a blobby mixture that was impossible to distinguish. That wasn't what was happening with Apeiron. Somehow the thin red glowing threads, still moving in most cases, the angular blue lines of his healing, and the seemingly erratic scars of energy that had been just barely contained, all combined to create one of the most beautiful patterns she had ever seen. Even the nightmare shield complimented it, the harshness of the weapon contrasting with the energetic blend of colors that used the man's body as a canvas.

    It probably helped that there was a lot of canvas to use. Normally that was the start of a fat joke, but she didn't think the man actually had an ounce of fat on him. She had to wonder when looking at him, was Apeiron always that ripped? As someone who had grown up in the cape community where heroic builds were expected it took a lot to impress her, and this managed it. It was difficult to pin down what it was, particularly with capes like Browbeat, capes that could bulk up beyond the level of professional bodybuilders.

    That was probably it. Somehow, this didn't come across as deliberately sculpted. It was like there was a purpose behind the muscles. She couldn't exactly say what was different about them, but they gave the sense that they were for something other than just show, that it was the build of someone who made things.

    The glowing colors of the tinker's various mystery technologies spread across his muscular flesh like intricate warpaint. The destroyed costume only highlighted the effect, creating areas that hid or framed the glowing pattern, circuitry spreading on top of the cloth while energy effects sat below it, and red fibers darted between.

    A wrenching and burning sound pulled attention away from the technological miracle and the video cut to the pile of collapsed containers. Lung was clawing his way out, assisted by gouts of flame hot enough to soften the metal of the shipping containers. The steel peeled back like foil and the gang leader emerged, at least twelve feet tall, with a snake-like neck and legs shifted to that backwards-knee thing.

    Twelve feet was a serious threshold when it came to Lung. Well, serious for most people. It would be a tipping point for most teams' ability to handle the gang leader. One last push before he became too much to handle. Past that and he would heal faster than most groups could damage him, and the longer the fight the worse things would get.

    The dragon man stalked forward, the video cutting between him and the stoic Apeiron. At first it was a sharp contrast of expressions, Lung's fury stared down by Apeiron's steely gaze. Then something happened. The tinker dropped his eyes. She struggled to tell what he was looking at, then she saw the movement. At first it looked like a wind was stirring up around him, but then the motion became more directed. The tattered remains of his clothes were moving.

    They weren't repairing themselves, or deploying any kind of technology, at least as far as Vicky could tell. Instead, the destroyed costume was rearranging itself, unwinding and assembling on the fly to create a new outfit. Some kind of technology built into the clothes? A fashion system? Or was it some effect tied to whatever undefinable shaker power seemed to guide subtle details around him?

    Whether it had any tactical benefit she couldn't say, but it certainly made an impact. Apeiron wasn't in tattered rags anymore. He wasn't in his crisp military costume with his dramatic cape. He wasn't in the sleek cut of his earlier outfits, the ones that had faced down Uber and Leet. What he was wearing was unquestionably salvaged, improvised, and primitive.

    That was it. It was a savage outfit. Bare chested, with bulging muscles and one hand encased in a deadly shield. He stood against Lung, an expression of fury on his face. The man looked like a barbarian hero at the climax of some Hollywood movie. Complete with a fight against a dragon.

    One of the people manning the cameras managed to get a close up on the tinker's face and suddenly she realized she had been underselling things. You never saw Apeiron's expression, he conveyed meaning through body language and tone of voice. But you could see some of his face now. You could see the anger in his eye. You could see it build past the point of containment, to the level where Vicky caught herself looking towards the area north of the Boardwalk in concern.

    Lung dropped his body and looked to be about to charge. The tinker hit him before he had the chance. This wasn't the clean, flowing combat Apeiron had displayed in the fight with Uber's robot. It wasn't the military professionalism he had shown at the storage yard. This was a frantic, rage filled assault that threatened to overwhelm the larger cape.

    The people recording the fight were having a hard time keeping up. They switched to a wider shot, showing Apeiron clawing at the face and neck of Lung as the gang leader skidded along the ground from the force of the tinker's opening tackle. Vicky's stomach lurched as Apeiron raised the horrible shield and brought the edge, well, the collection of pain that composed its edge, down towards Lung's neck.

    Lung managed to tilt to the side somehow, and the nightmare weapon bit into his upper arm instead. That happened just as a camera managed to get a closer shot of the action, giving everyone a clear picture of exactly what the weapon did when it encountered flesh.

    Vicky decided she was off ground beef for the foreseeable future.

    With one arm dangling from bloody strands connected to a ragged stump Lung spit a gout of flame at the tinker. The man ignored it, shifted to grab the damaged arm, and with one sharp jerk, pulled the appendage free.

    "No fucking way." Vista muttered. Vicky was right there with her, and most of the Wards were watching open mouthed as Apeiron manhandled a limb nearly the same size as his own body. With a strength that seemed to ignore things like balance and leverage, he brought it down on Lung's head with the force of a meteor strike.

    Lung's neck snapped back, causing his head to get caught on the ground. His residual momentum worked against him and the big cape's body flipped over, throwing Apeiron off. But the tinker was back up in a flash, closing on the stunned gang leader. Suddenly, he veered to the side, out of frame. When the camera caught up with him he was standing in a cloud of all too familiar dust. Oni Lee. The man was wheeling on two more copies as the assassin cape brought his tinker tech missile launcher to bear.

    The copies, or presumed copies since Oni Lee seemed to be doing nothing but teleporting and leaving the work to his clones, opened fire, sending a wave of tinker wrought death flying out.

    Apeiron didn't have the support of his robots and drones to save him from the rockets. Nothing was picking them out of the sky with the efficiency and precision she had seen earlier in the day. Instead, he raised the horrible shield and launched the grapnel, keeping his free hand on the speeding wire as it sparked past.

    With that he was able to turn the direct shot into a brutal whip, cutting through the missiles. That wouldn't have seemed like enough, but, as if the weapon wasn't excessive enough, the cable actually seemed to be barbed like some kind of razor wire. It cut through rockets like butter, and surges of energy, like a multicolored burning lightning, arced off the cable to fry any rockets not directly struck.

    This wasn't the clean, total destruction of the missiles that had been managed by the robot's lasers. This was a messy affair, and half of the shots detonated when struck. Vicky got to see the array of effects that Bakuda had obviously prepared to be effective against Apeiron, and therefore devastating to every cape in the city.

    Time stopped inside one blast while another formed a small black hole. One simply caused a sphere of space to vanish like it had been removed by an ice cream scoop. Another just turned everything close to it into pale green goo. A type of space bomb twisted the nearby containers like taffy, something that Vista reacted to strongly, and a final one created an ominous white sphere around it, totally featureless and hanging in space with no clear indication of what danger it presented.

    The fight had turned into a frantic running battle between Apeiron and Oni Lee. The pace hadn't slowed down in any respect, but the difficulty in capturing the action was creating a disconnect that at least let the group catch their breath.

    "Okay." Clockblocker began, but seemed unsure where to go from there. "Right, Apeiron is fighting the ABB." He looked north. "We're probably the closest team in the field…"

    He turned to Kid Win for confirmation. "Uh, this Guard unit is the most forward relief force, but I'm not sure they'll want to put them into that." As if to drive home his point, a series of missed shots from Oni Lee impacted a wall of shipping containers, turning them into a mosaic of nightmare effects.

    "Does anyone even know what 'that' is?" Missy asked, as Apeiron leapt into frame lashing out not just with the energized barbed cord from his shield, but massive lengths of burning fibers from the rest of his body.

    Vicky cringed. It was one thing to see that stuff stitching through the tinker's wounds, or poking out from sealed injuries, but he was using them like a weapon. She remembered what it had done to March's wrist as she watched the crimson fibers reduce clones to dust with a touch.

    The worst part was the reach of the stuff. She had the impression they were tiny lengths of… something, maybe a few inches at most. Watching them spiral around him like living bullwhips she realized how wrong that assumption had been. It wasn't a few discrete pieces spread through his body; it was massive, continuous lengths of threads that probably snaked through his entire system.

    It was Browbeat who stepped forward. "I mean, no, we don't, but did we ever?" They turned to look at him. "Hey, everyone knew he was holding back, right? New stuff all the time, mystery powers and technology. So, even if we knew what that was, would we be any better off? It's not like there's any guarantee that's the end of it, that he won't pull out something else that makes no sense that nobody expected."

    It wasn't exactly a comforting thought, and Clockblocker clarified her feelings on it. "The PRT can't deploy based on that kind of assumption." His voice turned seriously dour. "As long as there's unknown factors at play they'll want to hold back, which means…"

    "Rory." Vista answered. "As long as Apeiron is there they won't send anyone to help Rory."

    That brought the mood of the group down even more than Browbeat's suggestion. Kid Win did something with his controls and a smaller screen appeared in the corner of the broadcast. "Um, I think Rory's okay, at least for the moment." He advanced the image on the smaller screen, showing various low-resolution angles of a red-stained gold and white form slumped on the ground. "There's a tinker in Texas running image recognition and partitioning programs on the live broadcast. She's uploading the data to the Protectorate tinker boards and a shared server. These are the individual shots of Triumph, split out from wider frames." He advanced through them. "He's moving, might be conscious. I think he'll be alright" He said hopefully.

    Vicky nodded as another volley of missiles sailed past the tinker. They could actually hear the impacts from their location on the roof of the shopping center, echoing through the city from the none too distant container yard. Sure, it was a perfectly safe place for Rory to be, with all that death flying around. One camera managed to catch a perfect shot of Apeiron launching into the air, then using his grapnel to shoot down into a crowd of clones, spinning in a blender of destruction as he dove towards them.

    The crowd exploded into a wave of ash, and it seemed like the encounter would just be another of dozens of dramatic exchanges in the running battle that was nearly impossible to follow. But it hadn't just been the sound of clones dusting. There had been a wet, splatting sound. As the ash cleared the camera showed Apeiron standing over a prominent blood splatter spread across a nearby wall of containers.

    "He got him." Vicky whispered, then looked at the Wards. "He tagged the original. Maybe… possibly not enough to kill him, but he's out of the fight."

    Vista nodded slowly. "I've seen it. If he takes a hit like that he'll slink off. Teleport back somewhere for medical treatment. Don't know where, but he's recovered from some bad injuries that way."

    "But not quickly. Usually, he falls back from hits a lot less severe than that one." Dennis clarified. "At best that's going to be weeks before he's in the field, maybe months before he's at full strength." He looked at the screen.

    "So, March is down and Oni Lee's fallen back, but there's still Lung." Browbeat said nervously. "Can… Is that something we can handle? Can we actually do anything here?"

    Vicky remembered that Browbeat was pretty much a novice cape. She'd heard he had some vigilante work beforehand, minor clashes. Everyone else in the group had faced Lung on more than one occasion, and driven him off at least once. She wasn't surprised when Dennis let Missy field the question.

    "You can handle Lung, as long as you hit him fast. It's kind of a threshold point, but if the Protectorate can get enough forces in there we can bring him down." The girl looked at the screen where Apeiron was posing atop a stack of containers in the aftermath of his attack. "Maybe Apeiron as well." She added hopefully.

    Nobody else in the group looked particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Kid Win cleared his throat and checked something on his visor. "I'm not sure they can manage that. We've still got Bakuda's attack teams out there, plus the gangs are going full tilt, and the Protectorate is stretched thin."

    "We still have time." Missy argued. "As long as they can get there before Lung grows wings we'll stand a chance."

    "Lung can grow wings?" Browbeat asked. There was a roar from the screen and the big cape froze. "Oh, I see."

    Vicky whipped her head around in time to see Lung rising above the container yard. He had to be close to twenty feet tall with more than twice that in wingspan. She couldn't suppress a gulp at the sight. This was bad. This was the 'fall back and let him burn himself out' level. There were only two times in her career as a cape she had seen him this powerful, and one of them had been during this nightmarish week.

    "It's too fast." Clockblocker spoke in a hollow voice. "Lung doesn't grow this fast. Not even when he's fighting the entire Protectorate. He shouldn't…"

    Dennis stopped speaking, apparently remembering that he was in command. She could practically see the effort it was taking to pull himself together and put up a strong front. It left her both impressed and seriously concerned.

    "How… how do we deal with something like that?" Browbeat stammered. Lung was hanging in the air on slow beats of his wings. His body was wreathed in shimmering heat and cast into stark contrast by the harsh light of the setting sun.

    "Disengage." Vista spoke robotically. "Fall back, set up defensive measures, deal with collateral damage, and avoid provoking him."

    "Do you think Apeiron's going to do that?" Browbeat asked.

    Vicky didn't know, and her uncertainty was mirrored on the other veteran Wards. Dragging out this fight would be a nightmare, and that was assuming Lung's normal growth rates. He was advancing faster than she had ever seen him. She didn't like what it implied when an injured tinker provoked more of a response from Lung's power than all the heroes in the city combined.

    Looking at Apeiron on the screen he didn't look like he was falling back. The shot was zoomed in from ground level, making it a little shaky, but you could still see the rage on the man's face. And something else.

    Every person in the group immediately tensed. They knew that look, that posture. The feeling that the tinker was suddenly somewhere else, dealing with something they couldn't see. Theories about what he was actually doing were all over the place. Power switching was a popular idea, as was the fabled 'strategy trance'. But those were just theories. Nobody had any actual insight to the situation.

    Everyone agreed it was something serious. The fact that the man had unleashed a nuclear-level sword attack after one of those trances was proof enough. If there was ever a time where something like that would be helpful, it would be now.

    But something was off. Usually there was this sense of contemplation, like the tinker was considering something. This time he was clearly annoyed by it, like some unwelcome intrusion had occurred. Then his expression changed, and it was clear he was well past the point of being annoyed. She couldn't call an expression like that anything short of murderous.

    The tinker leaned back and let out a roar. Not like the scream of pain that had echoed through the city. This was concentrated fury and a deep-seated rage, the likes of which she had never heard from a human being.

    Then the roar shifted. It dropped in pitch, becoming more like a tremor in the earth itself that the voice of any one person. She could see the containers on the screen shake and rumble, a few falling off stacks as the motion became too much for them.

    "What the…" Someone exclaimed, and it took Vicky a moment to realize she was the one who spoke. Apeiron was changing. Not like before, when he had slowly pulled himself together from the attack. This was a shift in a very different direction, one that, even with everything she had seen from the man, still left her shocked.

    Brown hair was spreading across Apeiron's exposed skin. Short and coarse, it was more like a mat of bristles than any kind of fur. The hair moved over the pattern of energy covering his body. The elemental scars sat beneath it, shining up through the hair, while the blue circuits sat atop it as easily as they did on the man's remaining clothes. The red fibers interwove with the new hair, creating burning crimson highlights across his body.

    Those highlights made the rest of the changes particularly clear. His already impressive musculature swelled even further, taking him past even Browbeat's bulkiest form. At the same time the tinker's bones started to shift, moving into a distinctly inhuman configuration. You only needed to look at the man's face to confirm exactly how inhuman.

    Apeiron's mask was falling away with the change. Actually, all of his clothing was shifting with him. Even in its jury-rigged state it was holding its new form, growing with the man or slightly altering itself to account for his new shape. It created the impression that this was something that he was prepared for, something he expected to have to deal with. Everyone else might have been blindsided by this, but Apeiron, despite not seeming at all pleased about the situation, had contingencies in place.

    And that 'what' was revealed through the remains of his mask. She watched, stunned as his face extended into a primitive muzzle, like something caught between a reptile and a wolf. His mouth filled with fangs, including a pair of absolutely vicious saber teeth that extended from his upper jaw like daggers.

    They watched as the transformation completed and the thing that used to be Apeiron finished his roar and dug his clawed feet into the edge of the container. The video cut between him and Lung, two inhuman capes staring each other down.

    And then Apeiron moved.

    The monstrous tinker launched himself forward like a missile. The container he had been perched on went flying backward, slamming into another stack behind it and causing an out-of-control collapse that sent the camera operator scrambling for his life. The broadcast cut to Lung just in time to see him struck by Apeiron, a collision that sent both capes flying out over the bay.

    The shock of the incident caused the people filming the conflict to pause briefly before they started running to find a way of getting the capes back in frame. The Wards and Vicky pulled back from the broadcast as well, though for a very different reason.

    "Uh," Browbeat asked nervously, "Everybody saw THAT, right? It wasn't just me?"

    "Um, yeah, I mean, I think…" Clockblocker stammered before looking at Kid Win, who was frantically doing something with his wrist device and visor.

    "Okay, um, it's not on the recording. I mean, there's a frame-by-frame analysis being done of this stream, and it's not there. So maybe it was…"

    He played the footage of the strike again, and Vicky saw it. From the look of the Wards everyone saw it. It was just hard to believe.

    Hard to believe. The absurdity of it burned in her mind as Chris replayed the strike again with everyone watching in disbelief. Out of everything they had witnessed, this was apparently the breaking point. This was a step too far, even for veterans of Brockton Bay.

    They could deal with city wide coordination of tinker tech assaults being countered by robot strike forces. They could deal with teleporting super attacks. They could deal with perhaps the most disturbing emergency medical response imaginable, which also seemed to be both deadly and grant super strength. They could deal with mysterious expanding energy scars that apparently needed an evil shield thing to control.

    They could even… Well, no. They hadn't had time to start dealing with the final insanity of that monster transformation. There were too many questions and concerns about it. The point was that eventually they would be able to deal with it. Some smart people would look at the recording and say some smart things about bio tinkering of copied changer powers, or side effects of medical technology, and they would be able to deal with it.

    This? They couldn't deal with this. Even with all of Apeiron's supposed powers, this was too much. Chris replayed the scene a third time, and there it was. A wide shot of… whatever Apeiron had changed into shooting through the air at Lung's hovering form. There was a token attempt to dodge, but Lung was too big and Apeiron was too fast. Then the impact. An impact that should have been maybe one frame long and taken both of the capes out to sea.

    Not an impact that somehow caused the video to zoom in, change angles to highlight the perfect framing as Apeiron drove his knee into Lung's chest. There also shouldn't have been a shift in color saturation to highlight the scene. And it definitely shouldn't have had a border and caption drawn in a savagely beautiful script, like someone captured the essence of a cave painting, the purest form of ages past, lost eons of history, and put them on the screen with decorative flourish.

    'LOPINGIAN VENGEANCE'

    The words played across the scene like they were being carved in by a master, all accompanied by a peel of electric guitar music. The entire display lasted maybe a second, and then it was gone. The video continued, showing Lung and Apeiron shooting out towards the bay.

    "You're sure that's not actually on the video?" Browbeat asked.

    "Certain." Kid Win replied in a worried voice. "Frames go from before the hit to after it. It's not on the timestamp, and the audio isn't there either. From what the forums are saying you only see it if you actually play the video." He checked something on his visor. "Uh, it still works if you mess with the play speed, at least to a certain point, but…"

    "Thanks Kid." Dennis cut him off. "So, aside for the weird and concerning display power, that apparently works through video… And we can worry about that later," He quickly added, seeing Vista's expression, "Where do things currently stand?"

    Chris looked like he wanted to add more, but steeled himself and shifted his focus. "Um, broadcast is back. They're showing the fight over the bay."

    "You can see it from here, kind of." Vicky offered, glancing between the screen and the flares of light just visible in the distance. The fading twilight made them stand out quite prominently.

    There was a better view from the broadcast, where one of the camera operators had apparently propped himself on top of a container and zoomed into the aerial battle. Vicky was almost impressed by their dedication when she remembered that they all had bombs in their heads, and were probably under orders to keep recording on threat of death. Whether Bakuda would or could pull the trigger in the current situation was another matter, but not something they were likely to test.

    Apeiron, and it felt strange referring to the monstrous thing like that, had latched his jaw around Lung's snake-like neck, sinking saber teeth through armored scales as easily as butter. The… man hung by his teeth while raining blows onto the gang leader. Punches, kicks, elbow strikes and knee strikes shattered scales while the horrible shield carved canyons of flesh out of Lung's body.

    Eventually Lung had enough. He grabbed the other cape and tore him off of his neck, taking a large portion of that neck off as he did. Then he reared and violently hurled Apeiron towards the water.

    The camera caught the scene as Apeiron recovered from his tumbling trajectory with an agility that could only be described as animalistic. The man had his feet under him as he shot towards the water. Then, just as it looked like he was headed under the surface, he kicked.

    They could see the water spout from their location, but the camera caught the shape of Apeiron shooting back into the sky, directly at Lung. This time the bigger cape managed to roll out of the way, and launched himself upward, getting a vantage point on Apeiron's arc.

    The tinker might have launched himself with terrific force, but he was uncontrolled in the air. Lung waited until the man was at the peak of his arc before bringing up a hand and shooting a blast of fire.

    This wasn't one of Lung's typical fireballs. For one, it was a continuous stream, shot out with a range Victoria had never seen him use before. It was also bright. Dangerously bright. She didn't know how hot that stream of fire was, but the camera was having a hard time adjusting to it, basically reducing Apeiron to a silhouette as he swung his body out of the stream of fire.

    And then reached down and grabbed it.

    The tinker held onto a searing line of plasma like it was a solid beam. The stream was still moving, that was obvious as it reached the ocean and sent up a plume of steam. They watched, open-mouthed, as Apeiron shifted his grip on the thing that nobody should be able to physically interact with, and started to haul himself towards Lung.

    He bounded up the line of fire faster than seemed possible. When he reached the top, he surged forward and landed a pulverizing kick that reduced Lung's jaw to powder. The camera was too far back to make that out, but they didn't have any trouble seeing the details. Not with the artistic closeup and accompanying guitar music.

    'LOPINGIAN VENGEANCE'

    Browbeat quickly glanced around to confirm that yes, everybody had seen that as well.

    "That won't be enough." Vicky whispered, and Missy nodded in return. As devastating as the hit was, Lung was past the point where most teams could have a chance against him. She knew he would be healing quickly, and Apeiron was under equipped and fighting in an environment where Lung had the advantage, particularly since he only needed to stall for time. Apeiron was already headed towards the peak of another arc, hanging near motionless in the air.

    At least until he turned and launched the barbed line for his shield-harpoon into Lung's back. The wire went taught, and Apeiron launched towards the dragon man. Somehow he managed to put himself into a spin with his shield extended, raking down past the ABB leader like a human, or humanoid, buzzsaw. The sheer speed should have made the attack a blur. Should have.

    'TRAUMA KYKLOS'

    Once again, the video zoomed in with perfect framing, border art, intricate script, and musical accompaniment. Once again there was the sense that no time had passed, and Kid quickly confirmed that was the case. But other than the broad similarities in mechanics it was a totally different experience.

    The previous closeups had carried a primal theme, a feeling of ancient power from before the dawn of man, and expressed that through the coloring, lettering, and design. This time was completely different. Maybe it was because that horrible shield was being used instead of an unarmed strike, but the tone had completely changed.

    The writing, style, and themes were sharp, brutal, and gothic. Edge. That was the word that stuck in her mind. For some reason she was thinking of Hot Topic, but not in the normal dismissive way. What she had just witnessed was like seeing what Hot Topic was trying to emulate, what they served as a pale reflection of. Like comparing the grandeur of a royal court to a Disneyland imitation. She'd only seen it for a second, but the impression of it was sticking in her mind.

    The fight was moving too quickly for her to waste time on such things. She spared a glance towards the container yard, then at the figure of Lung hanging over the bay, considering what their next move should be. For the immediate moment it seemed to be sitting and watching.

    Apeiron had landed on an ice shelf that extended out into the bay, one of dozens of trails of elemental effects that had spread from the point where he was ambushed. In the air, despite almost being split in half by Apeiron's attack, Lung's body was reforming, and he was wheeling towards the tinker. They could see Apeiron tense, then were immediately enlightened to the reason for his reaction.

    The sky turned red, the air screamed, and the camera caught the effect of Apeiron's laser weapon striking Lung in a direct hit.

    The attack continued, probably just for a few seconds, but with the energy being discharged it felt like hours. They didn't even need the broadcast. Everyone in the city could see the attack. It beat down on them like a physical presence. Vicky could feel the heat through her forcefield, like standing under an oven, and could see discomfort from the rest of the group, save Browbeat.

    Finally, the beam died off. Vicky dared to hope, but the camera focused on a charred skeletal form hanging in the air, kept aloft by jets of flame. It hadn't been enough. Lung was healing, the effect was already visible, and he would come back stronger.

    She wondered what else Apeiron could do when Lung's charred form suddenly reversed the direction of the jets keeping him aloft and dove into the ocean. The reason was suddenly evident as the trails of hundreds of missiles filled the screen, each unerringly tracking the path of the gang leader as he dove underwater.

    The camera operators seemed at a loss for what to focus on. They cut to Apeiron, claws dug into the side of a wall of ice, then back to the open ocean. There was a flash of light from beneath the waves, then another. Then the water ripples and a large bubble breached the surface. Then another. More lights, more shockwaves, more effects churning the surface of the water until it looked like someone had thrown a pile of firecrackers into a pot of boiling soup.

    Vicky looked at the Wards and let out a breath. "Okay, I'm just going to say it. What the fuck?"

    Vista snorted. "Where are we supposed to start?" She stared at the screen, currently cutting between the boiling bay and a zoomed in shot of Apeiron clinging to the side of the ice wall as one of his robots flew towards him. "I'd say the monster transformation, but we're not exactly short on 'what the fucks' here."

    "The red fibers, that shield, whatever the glowing stuff on his skin is…" Dennis started listing.

    "The elemental stuff that was released when he was caught by March and Oni Lee, probably. Same type of energy." Chris broke in. "I mean, you also have whatever March was talking about, his technology affecting capes…"

    "But not him." Vicky added.

    "Right. Um…" He checked something on his visor. "The way he's fighting, his movements, they don't make sense for normal physics. There's some kind of breaker or shaker thing happening."

    "Uh…" Browbeat stammered. "Am I the only one concerned about the fact that he apparently can mess with people's senses, he's using that power to show off, and it works through video streams?"

    "You're not the only one." Vicky assured him. She had experience with master and stranger capes, and knew how nasty a power like that could be. It seemed harmless, but nobody was going to be comfortable taking that chance. Those closeups had a way of sticking in the mind, and she really hoped that was just the impact of their astonishing design and not any sinister mental effect. "There's just a lot on the pile now."

    "That transformation?" Dennis added. "It didn't look like he meant to do it. I mean, that was definitely a surprise before it happened, and he didn't look like he was all there afterwards."

    Vicky swallowed and nodded. The man had been absolutely savage in every element of his behavior. From the way he stared down Lung to his first pounce, to the way he fought, completely different from everything he had done before. All of his motions when fighting Lung were just…

    Vicky suppressed a laugh and the Wards looked at her questioningly. "Apeiron can apparently physically grab a fire blast, treat it like a solid object, run on it, and use it to attack Lung. It's insane, but it's not even worth discussing at this point."

    Some tired smiles spread through the Wards as the ocean water on the screen continued to churn and bubble.

    "I'm pretty sure this is above our paygrade." Browbeat offered. "Or at least my paygrade. Does anyone know what we're supposed to do here? Do we have any orders?"

    Dennis shook his head. "Still on escort for the Guard." He looked towards the container yard. Towards Rory. She could see the weight of it on him. Would the old Clockblocker have ditched his assignment to rescue his friend? She knew how hard the situation must have been for him. The Ward slumped and turned towards Chris. "Kid, anything on your end?"

    The boy checked his visor before replying. "Command wants more data on what's going on in the bay. No deployment orders yet, but they'll probably have me as far forward as they can."

    "You got that sensor system working?" Dennis asked.

    Chris nodded. And the screen shifted to a complicated picture composed of different color gradients that sort of looked like a street map of the area. He lifted his right arm, indicating a bulky section of the bracer. "It's really just a bunch of targeting systems cobbled together, but it was good enough they wanted me in the field." He paused and swore. "Fuck."

    The screen shifted back to the broadcast, showing the still bubbling water of the bay, parting in a massive waterspout. A ravaged skeletal figure blasted through the surface, propelled by jets of flames from each of its tattered limbs.

    Lung looked horrible. He was still larger than she'd ever seen him, and burning with that incredibly intense fire, but if he was any other cape she would put him seconds from death. Apeiron's laser had left him a charred wreck, and his missile barrage had almost finished the job. Almost, but not quite, and that was all that mattered.

    She could see the terrible impact of Apeiron's weapons on the man, from the shattered limbs, to the sections that were frozen, warped, crackling with electricity, or coated in strange chemicals. Any visible flesh was pulped in a way that suggested a significant amount of conventional explosives were used alongside the more exotic offerings. It looked like victory was only a hair away, but that wasn't the case. She could already see the damage reversing under the weight of Lung's regeneration, rolling back the impact caused by the deployment of an amount of firepower that no one in the city could match.

    As Lung's body filled in she realized just how bad the situation actually was. Any sense of mirth in the group died as the Wards put things together. Lung was towering over the bay. Thirty feet tall, at least. The size of Leviathan. The size he had been when he fought Leviathan. To a draw. An Endbringer hadn't been able to stop Lung at this point.

    She felt the weight of hopelessness press down on her. Apeiron had been so distracting that she had missed the growing threat. Everyone had missed it. Assumed they had more time, that Apeiron would deal with it, or that things would just work out. Really, as soon as Lung hit twenty feet without any sign of stopping they should have sounded the sirens. Gotten people to safety, declared a truce with the gangs, and then thrown everything they could at him while they still had a chance.

    Too fast. Everything was happening too fast. It hadn't even been an hour since the attacks began. It had barely been forty minutes. Everyone was still trying to figure out what was happening, what they should do, all while March and Apeiron approached the situation with mechanical precision. It made her feel helpless, useless.

    On the screen Apeiron's robot began dispensing some small objects to the tinker, which the man just threw into his bestial mouth and started chewing. It was hard to tell what it was, given the limits of the camera's zoom and the dying light. Only Lung was impossible to miss, his burning form restoring itself as he hovered over the bay on heavy flaps of four healed wings.

    "That's really bad, right?" Browbeat asked. "I mean, I've never fought Lung, but that's big even for him. What happens now? What do we do?"

    She could see Clockblocker tense. His voice was barely above a whisper. "Whatever we can."

    "Clock?" Vista asked. The older cape just shook his head.

    "Nobody can fight that." He started pointing at the screen, then turned and pointed to Lung's glowing form, clearly visible over the bay. "He took the best Apeiron had and came back stronger. Nobody in the city is going to be able to do better." Missy looked to be about to object, but Dennis just shook his head. "Nobody. I… I don't know what will happen, if Lung can even hurt Apeiron, but as soon as he's done out there, he'll come back to the city." He looked over the group. "You know what that means?"

    Chris was the one to respond. "A-class scenario, minimum." She could see the worry on his face. "We can run token defenses, manage damage, mitigate casualties, maybe help evacuate, but whatever Lung wants gone, it's gone. He could clear out an entire gang, level part of the city, wipe out anyone he wanted."

    "There's nothing we can do?" Browbeat asked. It was shocking seeing a person his size act so shaken. "Nothing anyone can do?"

    Vista took a long look across the bay. Vicky could practically see the light go out of the girl's eyes. "No. Nothing. Apeiron, he's dragged it out too long, let Lung get too powerful, more than he can handle." Her voice was bitter. "Unless he has some miracle in his back pocket, something to fix his mess, then it's all over."

    Vista trailed off into silence, her voice dropping to barely a whisper at the end. The five of them sat in that silence, watching Lung heal off the last of the damage from Apeiron's attacks.

    Then the silence was broken. No, that was too mild a way of putting it. The silence was shattered, demolished, utterly destroyed by the roar of rocket engines on a scale Victoria had never seen before.

    The towering shape soared over the bay like a comet. One of the cameras managed to zoom in on Lung just in time to catch his reptilian eyes widen in shock as the Endbringer-sized cape was tackled out of the air by a giant robot nearly twice his size.

    They watched, first on the broadcast and then from their own vantage point as Lung was carried out towards the ocean by the force of the tackle. The, and she couldn't believe she was describing him like this, SMALLER combatant was struggling against the grip of the robot, trying to wriggle free as he was carried away from the city.

    In the stunned aftermath the group tried to figure out what to do next. Vista looked particularly put out, but wasn't voicing her frustration. Finally, Clockblocker, apparently still in 'leader' mode, stepped forward.

    "Um, okay. Apparently Apeiron has a giant robot. Uh, I think, for the time being, we can put aside the obvious concerns about where he was keeping it, how he deployed it, and how he managed to build it…"

    "He didn't build that." Kid Win cut in. His voice was sharper and surprisingly frustrated.

    "What?" Dennis asked.

    The display shifted to a rapidly scrolling set of technical diagrams and analysis documents. "I've been looking at everything Apeiron's displayed since Saturday night. Everyone in the Protectorate has. There's a huge amount of analysis that went into this."

    "I thought you said nobody knew what his specialization was or how his technology worked?" Vista asked.

    "They don't, but there are similarities, principles that are seen in most of his works. Not all of them, but some are repeated, refined. They don't always make sense, but they're there. They're part of his work. All of his work. It's like a fingerprint. You can tell when he made something." He pulled up a still of the giant robot flying through the sky. "And he didn't make that."

    Clockblocker leaned in. "Are you sure? I mean…"

    "Look, I could get into a systems analysis discussion, or a breakdown of profiles, or key design principles that are absent, but seriously, just look at it." He pointed at the picture. The picture of an impressively sized and moderately sleek giant robot. But that was all it was. Vicky could see it. There was no style, no artistry to it. Apeiron had more design sense the first time she had seen him, and it had only gotten more prominent from there.

    She had to admit it. If she was shown that robot she would have been impressed. It would have come across as a major project by a powerful tinker. Looking at how it functioned, its mobility, flight, dexterity, durability, and strength, then it would have been doubly impressive. Something that would be kept in reserve for major opponents or even deployed against Endbringers.

    What she wouldn't have done was associate it with Apeiron. If it hadn't flown to his rescue she would never have made that connection. It was too plain, too… industrial. It was like something that had been designed for combat use first and aesthetics second. The only distant possibility she could entertain was the idea that Apeiron had built it ages ago, before he achieved his current power progression.

    But that didn't make sense either. Apeiron claimed, with all sincerity, that he sold weapons to the Undersiders for startup money. That robot would have to be built before then. No way someone with the resources to make a machine on that scale would be scrounging for what the Undersiders could pay.

    "You're telling me we have a second, unknown, tinker out there?" Missy asked. "One with the space and resources to build something like that?"

    "I don't know about that," Kid Win stated, "but I know he didn't make it." He switched the screen back to the stream, showing Apeiron on the ice shelf.

    "That's… that's insane." Vista stammered.

    "No." Clockblocker interrupted. "No, it makes sense." Everyone turned to look at him. "One of the theories being thrown around was that Apeiron wasn't working alone. Too many resources, building too quickly. There was the idea that he was just the public face for a group of capes. If you had two or three tinkers working together, or even more, then the stuff he's done makes a lot more sense."

    "So, you're saying there's some secret gang behind Apeiron? And what, everyone missed it? Nobody saw a tinker cabal setting up in our city?" Vista chided.

    "We have been a little preoccupied." Vicky offered. "Both before and after the attacks."

    "Because of Apeiron." Missy muttered.

    "Because of a lot of reasons." Dennis countered.

    Vicky glanced from Dennis to the broadcast. The camera operators were still at it, but the giant robot had dragged Lung all the way to the mouth of the bay, meaning the fight was nearly impossible to make out. Two tiny figures wrestling with each other in the air. Well, tiny from distance, massively imposing close up. The stream cut over to Apeiron, still clinging to the ice.

    "And yeah, Apeiron being Apeiron hasn't made things easy. Nobody knows what he's about or what he's going to do next." Dennis added.

    The bestial cape seemed almost contemplative in his posture, a big change from the primal fury he had displayed earlier. They watched as the hulking form took in a deep breath, and shifted back to human form. Fur receded, teeth disappeared, bones shifted, and his body shrunk back to a reasonable height and build.

    There was a sense of purpose behind the change, like the man had taken a moment to put aside the bubbling rage that defined him, focused himself, and suddenly he was human again. It reminded Vicky of her earlier commitment. That was probably good advice. Don't try to understand what Apeiron is doing. It's not going to make sense. Leave that to other people, and focus on what you can do.

    As if to reinforce the wisdom of her decision, the video cut to show the giant robot pull out a pair of lightsabers, one pink and one green, shift the pink one into some kind of shield, and engage in a midair duel with Lung. Despite how small they looked in the broadcast she knew each of those blades was probably three stories tall and likely incredibly dangerous.

    Lung took a harsh lesson of that fact as he pulled back from his first exchange with one arm and wing sheared off and plummeting to the bay. That shifted the exchange from the earlier slugfest to something more akin to an airborne duel.

    Nobody elected to comment on the giant robot's decision to play Jedi. She didn't know if the rest of the group was sharing her conviction, but everyone seemed to realize pointing out the insanity of the situation wouldn't really accomplish anything.

    Well, everyone other than Browbeat. The big cape was leaning forward, watching the flashing blades intently.

    "That robot? I think it's a…" He faltered as everyone rounded on him. "Um, never mind."

    "What?" Dennis asked.

    "Nothing, just reminded me of something I saw before." He replied quickly, brushing off the team leader.

    "Dragon's incoming." Chris announced, checking something on his visor, then pointing out a contrail in the darkening sky. The trail slowly wheeled down towards the bay, on a line straight for Lung and the robot.

    "Deployment orders." Dennis announced, raising a hand to the side of his helmet. "Guard will be advancing towards the docks. We're… we're setting a perimeter. Holding position outside the container yard until they confirm it's safe to enter."

    A grimace went through the group. "What about Rory?" Missy asked.

    Clockblocker shook his head. "Specific orders. We're not to enter the engagement zone, even if someone's in distress." He spat the words, frustration clear in his voice, then collected himself. "Can't leave the guardsmen." He added in a more collected voice. "Can't abandon the situation. They could need us specifically for containment, relief, or evacuation."

    "Rory needs us for evacuation." Missy countered.

    "I know." Dennis added grimly. "But we have specific orders, in a state of emergency." He looked down. "This situation is bad enough, hard enough for the people trying to sort things out without us running off against orders."

    Vista looked at him with an expression that seemed to be wavering between impressed and betrayed. She turned to Kid Win. "Chris, can you…"

    He shook his head. "Just got deployments. They want me on the Rig. Forward position with networked sensors, plus whatever is still operable after the attack." Something pinged on his visor. "Now." He glanced nervously between the other Wards, his display screen, and the ruined headquarters floating in the bay.

    Vicky stepped forward and spoke in the most confident voice she could manage. "I'll go."

    Dennis spun to her and managed to look conflicted even with a full-face mask. "I can't ask you to do that. Like legally can't, for a lot of reasons."

    She smiled. "You're not going to get in trouble over this?"

    He shook his head. "Officially, breaking the coordination. You're no longer accountable to me in any way." There was a hopeful edge to his voice. "And thank you."

    "We should be nearby." Browbeat offered. "You should get him to a hospital, but if it's really serious I can probably help, at least enough to get him stable." He didn't sound like he was totally confident in that, but was putting up a good front.

    "Take a straight flight. I'll do what I can to help you get there." Missy added.

    "Guard is moving." Clockblocker declared, looking over the edge of the roof. "We need to go. Good luck."

    "Thanks." Vicky assured him.

    Vista started warping the space around them. The distance between the roof and the ground was reduced to a single step, causing the roof to drop away as Glory Girl launched herself into the sky. She took as direct a path as she could and felt her stomach lurch as the world around her distorted. Vista's power helping her along. The girl hadn't been able to send her the entire way, but she had managed to allow Vicky's initial launch cover about half the distance to the container yard.

    She maintained the arc of her flight and marveled at the state of the city. The sun had set, casting the world into twilight, but that just highlighted the extent of the damage. Not just from the areas of darkness signaling blown powerlines or EMP bombs, but from still active fires and occasional discharges of one Bakuda's bombs.

    As devastating as that was, it paled in comparison to the aftermath of the attack that took down Apeiron. It looked like a technicolor starburst had spread across the city and part of the bay. Corridors of elemental energy extended like spokes of a wheel from the point where Apeiron was attacked, stretching for blocks across the city or deep into the bay. It was even more noticeable in the dying light, given that each trail was softly glowing a different color.

    That is, the trails that weren't actively burning or sparking. There was a sense that the energy had been thrown off at random, and in a small mercy that most of the truly dangerous effects had been directed towards the bay or boat graveyard. Actually, was that random? It was almost like there had been a deployment of certain effects in certain directions. Some kind of arrangement, intentional or just lucky?

    She couldn't say. And even if the trails of energy weren't likely to set the city on fire they still had a devastating effect on the areas they passed through. There was a solid rock wall that cut through roads and buildings alike, slowly tapering and losing height as it stretched towards the south docks. Similar effects were mirrored with ice, crystal, or in one case, the upraised ground of the city itself.

    The other effects were more varied. A bank of persistent mist, at least fifteen feet wide and four times as tall stretched through the city. Another area glowed red with a heat shimmer over it, not enough to set anything alight, but clearly blisteringly hot. The opposite effect could be seen with a corridor that was causing windows to frost over and patches of ice to form on the ground. A chasm had opened along the path of one trail, creating a deep fissure in the earth stretching through the city. Another effect seemed to have created a river through the urban landscape, with a faint blue glow as water with no apparent source made its way to the bay. There was even a long stretch, glowing faintly purple, that seemed to have turned off gravity. Inside it refuse, random objects, and even some cars floated hopelessly in the air.

    Even with everything she had seen, both in Bakuda's attack and Apeiron's battle, this was a staggering display of power. Probably because it was, by all appearances, completely unintentional. This was a fault of some system or equipment that Apeiron was carrying when he was attacked. The impact it had on the city showed that his technology was so potent that just the effects of it being damaged dwarfed the best efforts of any non-Triumvirate cape.

    One advantage of the display, at least for the current situation, was the effective bullseye it drew on her destination. She merely needed to follow the trails to their center, the point where all the effects had originated. It probably wouldn't have been that hard to find otherwise, but the container yard covered a significant area and had been turned upside down, from the combat both before Apeiron was attacked, and in the devastating aftermath. People underestimated how hard it could be to navigate from the sky, and knowing exactly where to drop down was an advantage she welcomed.

    The actual 'ground zero' of the attack wasn't the clustered maelstrom of elemental energy you would expect after seeing the impact on the rest of the city. The combination of Apeiron being attacked in the air and some kind of buildup to the discharged effects created a kind of an eye of the elemental storm.

    The effects started maybe thirty feet out, starting small and building fast. It looked like someone had sprayed them down from the air, which was probably sort of what happened. Possibly a clue to the mysterious mechanism that caused the mess.

    She flew down towards the clear patch. Well, relatively clear. It was still littered with debris from the fight, and a disturbing number of residual effects from Oni Lee's tinker tech rockets. As she dropped she glanced up, her eyes drawn by the flash for some kind of energy weapon. Dragon had joined the fight, blasting Lung back with her opening move.

    She wanted to help. Specifically, she wanted to help with that, the titanic battle taking place over the bay. But she couldn't. Everyone thought she was invincible, and she desperately wished it was true. Since she triggered, actually since before she triggered, she had this sense that she was living up to… something. Yeah, she was an Alexandria package, but she was the Alexandria package that people called Alexandria junior. Jokingly, of course, but they still said it. She always felt that if she just did enough, pushed enough, tried enough, she could cross that threshold. Be the kind of cape who could make a difference in situations like this.

    No, that wasn't fair. She was making a difference. This was Rory. Leader of the Wards for the longest term in the team's history. She went to school with him, from before she triggered. Just because she wasn't fighting in the skies for the fate of the city didn't mean she couldn't make a difference, couldn't help. Missy, Dennis, and Chris, they were all counting on her. Rory was counting on her.

    It was an eerie feeling, landing in the middle of the container yard. Like visiting the set of a movie after filming had wrapped. There had been a sense of disconnection from watching the events play out on Kid Win's display screen. Seeing it in person brought the impact of what had happened crashing down.

    She was standing where Apeiron had fallen. She knew that because the cement under her feet was shredded, cast backward by the force of Apeiron's charge. Maybe twenty feet away was the point where he had caught the rabbit cape before swatting her across the container yard. Past that was the place where Apeiron had punched Lung, sending him flying into a stack of containers. The ground was still stained with glowing residue in a dozen colors, the result of whatever had happened to cause the energetic scars to spread across the man's body. Some of the patches of color were still smoking and throwing off elemental energy.

    She hunted past that point, straining her eyes in the early evening light, seeing mostly by the glow from various residual effects hanging in the area. The storage year was eerily quiet for the site of such a vicious battle. She had spotted shadows darting away on her approach, likely the remains of the ABB. Thankfully, whatever orders they had didn't involve trying to attack her.

    She had a flash of terror when she considered what those orders could have been. Would they have left Rory here? He hadn't been moved during the first part of the fight, but they could have stolen him away as soon as the battle moved over the bay. She had a horrible image of her old friend being dragged off to Bakuda's lab where the mad bomber would be waiting with one of those nightmare implants.

    It was the kind of thought that made her curse herself for not leaving earlier. There were so many points where she could have moved out, tried to interfere, to make a difference. Intercepting March, stepping in against Oni Lee, or even just getting Lung out of there. If she had simply dragged the gang leader into the bay he would have petered out with nobody to fight, instead of casting flares of plasma across the sky in his aerial duel with the two best tinkers on the planet.

    That was actually what made the difference in her search. A particularly bright flash from the sky was enough to partially illuminate the yard. She saw a glint against a wall of shipping containers. The gold highlights of Rory's costume. He had been thrown into the shadow of a stack of containers and buried in shadow by the setting sun.

    "Triumph!" She called, soaring towards him.

    She arrested her momentum carefully, half hovering over the broken former-Ward. Relief filled her as she saw him move, breath, and even try to speak, even if it came out as something like "Hurree uhhhn neecky."

    She strained to remember her New Wave training on how to handle serious injuries. It was something she hadn't kept on top of, understandable when 'Get Amy' was a better strategy than any possible form of first aid, and when the older members of New Wave were always there to step in. She had rushed a few people to the hospital in her time, but the evaluation had always been done by someone else.

    She did the best she could, trying to ensure she wasn't aggravating anything. Rory wasn't bleeding, his healing power had at least taken care of that, but there was a lot of blood on his costume, and she wasn't sure if he could properly handle internal injuries. For the thousandth time that week, she wished her sister was there.

    In addition to the now closed wounds Rory had been beaten to hell. There were fewer burns than she expected, but still some singing around his costume. That was the real obstacle in treatment. Cape costumes generally weren't designed to allow easy access or convey a clear state of the person underneath. There was only so much she could do to assess his condition when she couldn't even see his eyes.

    He seemed to recognize her, at least enough to not flail or panic in response to her checking on him. He calmed down, lying back against the ground. The area around him was covered by smears of blood and other less pleasant things, the product of his bad reaction to Apeiron's technology.

    Glory Girl was considering how she was supposed to move him, whether she should trust her forcefield to keep him steady or find some way to brace him for the trip, when he suddenly tensed. A shaking hand was raised, pointing behind her. Before she had a chance to turn there was a popping sound and a flash of sickly green light.

    Something burned behind her eyes, blocking out everything else. Not just sight, but sound, smell, even touch. She was somewhere else, somewhere black and red and of a scale that was harrowingly massive.

    And then she was back, returned before she could make out any details of the experience. She had fallen backward from the shock and disorientation of the experience, but Rory had flailed like a man possessed, twisting himself into knots and making a mockery of Vicky's earlier attempts to keep him from aggravating any injuries.

    She twisted towards the source of the light, and froze. She had been looking for Apeiron's crashed robot, something she should have been on the lookout for earlier. She spotted it, but that wasn't what shocked her. It was the blood trail stretching about a dozen feet across the ground, extending from the side of a container to the crash site of the wrecked robot. And at the end of the trail was March.

    Or what was left of her. The ABB thinker was in a state so bad that it made Rory look like the picture of health. One leg was clearly broken in more than one place, and the other was bleeding from a mess of scrapes and abrasions, reducing the fabric of the costume to shreds. She was propping herself up on a hand that was barely there, the one that had been held by Apeiron before he smacked her out of it. The novelty executioner hood was in tatters, revealing a broken rabbit mask beneath with blood dripping from underneath it. One of the ears was broken and the other was sticking out an angle.

    None of that had stopped the cape from crawling the distance to the crashed robot. She was amazed the girl was still conscious, but she knew how insane adrenaline could be. That March would use her last strength, drag a broken body for what must have seemed like an eternity, and propped herself on a shattered hand to reach into the guts of a broken, sparking robot…

    The girl had been digging inside the machine with her undamaged hand. Well, probably her less damaged hand. There were scorch marks on her sleeves and a section of her coat was smoking, but the cape totally ignored it in her task. Suddenly, she lurched back, and with a wrenching motion tore something from the heart of the machine.

    Vicky was afraid.

    The instant the object left the wreckage the entire assembly went dead. No sparks, no twitching motions, it was like someone pulled the plug. Because that was exactly what happened. Vicky didn't need any supporting evidence to know that March had found the device's power source. She could tell just by looking at it.

    It was a ball of blue crystal, two or three inches across. And it glowed. Using a word as simple as that didn't do it justice. It wasn't the light you get from lightbulbs or tinker tech or even the energy powers her family specialized in. This wasn't an earthly glow. It had a depth, a distance to it. Just looking at the object was mesmerizing, like it somehow had a three-dimensional form while also being a tunnel of unaccountable distance.

    March cradled the crystal intimately, fawning over it, and Vicky's fear spiked to a new level. She scrambled up, drawing the thinker's gaze. One bloody eye looked at her from a torn hole in the rabbit mask. There was no fear, concern or apprehension there. It was a gaze of triumph, of victory.

    Glory Girl knew, absolutely knew, that she had to stop the thinker. To get that… thing away from her. But before she could move, could take flight, could do anything, the crystal began to spark. Tiny trails, invisible in the gloom and against the dark blue sheen of the crystal, lit up and darted across the tiny sphere. The moment seemed to take longer than Vicky could imagine, but less time than it took her to move. Before she was in the air the sparks had circumnavigated the orb, and popped.

    The earth moved, split, and shattered. The air turned inside out. Holes opened digging upward from the ground and crystal spread like fire across her vision. With one eye she watched the container yard tear itself apart, and with the other she gazed up at mountains the likes of which there were no words to describe, stretching from the inky depths of an impossible abyss to the towering heights of an electric red sky.

    Her vision was backwards, split between two shades of insanity. Somewhere behind her she half heard Rory flail worse than ever before, the sound of shredding metal and shattering concrete echoing forth as his super strength bled over into his spasms. Any concern for his injuries was lost under the weight of her own struggles.

    She couldn't turn her head. She couldn't figure out which head she was supposed to turn. Why did she have more than one? The world, what might have been the real world if the real world burned with red crystals and belched forth material that could be flesh or stone or both. She watched cracks, chasms open up on what might have been, was probably the ground. There was a hole. Not a hole in the ground, a hole in space. It bled and cried and spewed forth impossible things, shapes and substances that didn't seem to know what they were outside of the nightmare world of her other eye.

    March was caught in the maelstrom. She could see her with both eyes, two sides of the same time. Three faces looked on from one side and the rabbit cape from the other. The surge of strange matter had caught her, rolled over her like an avalanche. Crystals were digging into her flesh. The damaged hand was beating against the prison that consumed her body, leaving trails of bluish stains on the substance.

    The stain in one eye was a beacon in the other. A light shining through the murky void. One of the faces turned to it, looking away from another direction. Another link. Something else she couldn't see, couldn't understand.

    The lines began to spark, and the face tensed, prepared. When the sparks reached the end of their trails there was a surge, something that hurt to look at, something terrible being done on a scale that made her feel like a flea in front of an atom bomb.

    The wave of matter shattered, scattering over the yard. The dull red glow of crystals sent the area into a harsh radiance. March, or the thing that used to be March, tore herself out of the remains of the mass. She moved like a zombie, strange twitching jerks on limbs that were caked and coated with the matter of the hole in space.

    The hole shuddered and more pieces fell away. The remains of Apeiron's robot, the genesis of all of this, began to sink, except it sank sideways, upward, and inside out. It sank through space, moving from one eye to the other, spinning out through that impossible void.

    Vicky tried to move, but couldn't figure out how. Something twitched from the perspective of one eye, then the other. No coordination. No consistency. She couldn't function. She was helpless.

    Helpless as the hole in space writhed and belched forth crystal and flesh. She saw March, moving in uncoordinated jerks. All her earlier grace and coordination was gone. With her other eye she saw another of the faces focus on the thinker, or the thinker's body. Pulses moved from the impossible mass and March's body followed, like a puppet with strings ten miles long.

    The puppet was backing up, sliding along the ground as the bubbling crystal, a material that couldn't decide if it was rock, water, or fire, advanced on her. Not just on her, it spread through everything. Into everything. Spearing into the air and seeping through the earth. She managed to figure out which legs were hers, just enough to push herself back, next to Rory.

    The crystals closed in on March. A pulse moved from the third face, a pull of a puppet string, but it wasn't acted on. Whatever it was attempting to do was lost under the mess that was the cape's deformed body. Vicky watched in horror as the crystal and stone flowed over the girl. Red shards of the material closed around her, and crimson crystals began bursting from her reforming flesh.

    Once again she thrashed against the material holding her, but this time something was wrong. Vicky saw it, the face couldn't puppet the strings and follow the light. Not with precision. What was a neat watermark sloshed out like a torrent, staining the crystals like a paper towel laid across a coffee spill.

    The splattered version of the mark flared, the energy spreading like a flame across a pool of oil instead of the gunpowder trail it had been before. One by one the disconnected sections flared and then exploded, each marked by a pulse from one of the three faces.

    The larger stains moved and flowed through the material as March kept feeding them, only flaring as they reached the limit. The entire apparatus holding the thinker fell to pieces, allowing her deformed body to break free in an awkward gait. But a lone, disconnected portion of March's power seeped towards the portal.

    And Vicky was afraid. The same fear she had felt when she saw the gem pulled from the remains of the robot. She wasn't entirely afraid, just mostly. Partially. Half afraid. Afraid for herself?

    No, afraid for her. Something feeling afraid for her, for her safety. A fear building as the blue stain reached the portal and started to bubble. Material flowed forth carrying the mark of March's power. It seeped and flowed through the crystal and stone like an infection.

    Power. The gate, the portal, the hole, it had its own power. Beyond the giants in the nightmare world, beyond the energy they sent forth. Apeiron had used it, channeled it to power his machines, but that wasn't all it could do. March's power had touched it, and given it a form.

    And it was spreading.

    A trail snaked towards her, bursting concrete as red crystals stained with blue pushed up from underground before spreading closer. And closer. She focused, tried to remember which were her arms and lurched backwards, grabbing Rory. With all her strength she pinned the flailing cape and dragged him away. Well, pushed the two of them across the ground with her legs, but it saved them as burning shimmering crystals dug their way into the containers they had been leaning against.

    It was all she could do. She lost sense of her coordination after that, barely managing to hold onto Rory as he continued to flail and struggle, dry heaving when he wasn't screaming in horror. She looked toward him and almost lost her grip.

    In one eye she saw Rory, her old friend, hero of the city, son of the Mayor. He struggled in a blood-stained costume, straining against her grip as a nest of crystal branches spread through the containers above them. In her other eye she saw exactly why he was struggling.

    It wasn't the three faces that directed March, or the towering mountains that surrounded herself. It was a charnel house. A dead, twitching mass, left to autonomous functions, vacantly carrying out rote commands as it ground itself down to necrotic flesh. Worse than lobotomized, it was like something out of a horror movie. Like something made by Bonesaw. Things that didn't fit, cobbled together and forced to work. Pieces of different structures rotting at the seams as it wound down its existence without hope of direction.

    And worse than anything, alone. No lighting danced between it and the distant shapes of the sky. No direction, no guidance, no purpose. It existed, but it didn't live. It worked, but it didn't care.

    Glory Girl pulled back from the other cape and looked around herself. Spinning branches of crystal with one eye, and towering structures with the other. She understood. The fear wasn't hers. The anger wasn't hers. The revulsion wasn't hers. But the thing under that? The concern? That was for her.

    Her vision, it wasn't split between eyes, she was just seeing two places. Both eyes still worked, still saw the consumed container yard, but there was another perspective, her perspective from within that world. The world of powers.

    She could place the mountains around her, finally understand them. Their bursts of light, shared energy, it made sense. Lady Photon. Brandish. Manpower. Shielder and Laserdream. The powers of her family towered over her, above her.

    And next to them she was so small. In a gathering of invincible giants, hers was the fragile one. Small, weak, young, and unproven. It was the opposite of everything she thought about herself, her powers. Her mother, her aunt, uncle, and cousins, they were the barest slivers of the full potential of their powers. Titanic forces using the lightest touch to provide the abilities that defined them.

    Then there was her power. The fragile one. The one with nothing to spare, nothing in reserve. She could see the components now, the pieces of her power. Strength from Uncle Neil. Shield from her mother. Aura from Dean, his power a distant and quiet shape in the void. The flight? That was nothing. A trick every power had, with most not bothering. Not caring to add it.

    But her power, it cared. It cared about her. It was giving her everything, everything it could. Its tiny collection of cast-off components, the refuse of her family's powers, were leveraged for everything they could give.

    She didn't have the massive reserves other powers had, the monolithic, reality warping potential that eked out a drop at a time, but she didn't have the distance, the disconnection. She was special.

    Not special in the way she thought, where she figured she was one step away from the big leagues, Protectorate Leaders, heads of major teams, capes everyone talks about just from the strength of their power. Not special in terms of strength, or reach of power, but special in another way.

    The comforting feeling was particularly welcome in the face of the nightmare around her. She knew her power cared about her, but that didn't help when her mind was split in two places and branches of crystal and stone-flesh were advancing towards her, all slick with March's power.

    She watched as that oil-slick flame spread from the portal, snaking down a line of the impossible material until it reached the end. There was a blue flash, a blast that she could feel in her teeth, and an entire section of the world was gone. The explosion had blasted out everything around it, coring containers, leaving holes where solid concrete stood, and opening a path for more material from the portal, red crystal snaking down the edges of newly carved trenches and tunnels.

    One by one the blue stains flared with purplish flame, chasing down the length of their effects and leaving nothing in their wake. Panic gripped her as she watched a spark burst to life and start trailing down the mass of otherworldly crystal that extended towards, over, and around her and Rory.

    Her power wanted to help, but it couldn't. She was spread too thin, too uncoordinated. March had moved like a toddler learning to walk, but she couldn't even tell which legs were hers. The greasy blue stain of that power loomed over her, still extending even as the triggering flame burned its way to the end of the massive fuse.

    She felt her power's care, its affection for her, but that wasn't enough. That wouldn't save her, or save Rory. She couldn't move. She was living in two worlds, and could barely focus on one at a time. She needed to do something, anything, but she was helpless.

    Rory was no better. The man had gone from flailing to convulsing to trembling so hard that he was practically vibrating, actually sending cracks through the foundation beneath them. She didn't even want to think about what that would do to his injuries, but if those blasts caught them it would be the least of their problems.

    There was an empty sensation as she felt her power pull back. Not away from her, but like its attention was directed somewhere else. Immediately that other world, the second vision of space she had been able to see clearly, warped, stretched, taking on insane geometry. The clear picture, the understanding of the structures of the world and their meaning fled along with her power's attention.

    Her power, the power that cared about her, had been moderating, translating the insanity of the world beyond the portal. It had been helping her function, helping her understand. But it wasn't doing that now. It was focused somewhere else, doing something else. She didn't know what, but she prayed as the flame of March's power snaked towards her.

    Focus, her leg, her knee. Bend, plant foot, press back. Slide a few feet along the ground. Again. Burning trigger moving closer, plant other foot, push. Wrong leg, push with other leg. No, other-other leg. More distance. Not enough. A crystal mass extending from where it burrowed through a stack of containers loomed over her as it began to light up with purple flame.

    Then it shattered, blasting apart in an explosion of shards that quickly flared out in tiny pops of March's power. Another section shredded itself, then another. Each burst drove back the encroaching explosive crystal, battling against time as the detonation trigger approached.

    In the dust and light of the blasts highlighted shape could be seen, standing above her. Just the outline was visible, formed by areas where dust parted and movement cleared the air. It was her. A perfect outline of her, exactly as she saw herself. No, it was her forcefield, only bigger, independent, and directed.

    Her power. The fragile one had stepped in. Had saved her, saved Rory. The form lunged one last time, obliterating a spike of crystal just as the trigger reached the end. There was a thunderous pressure around them and a feeling of incredible weight. Her bones rattled and she felt like her eyes would pop.

    Was this what Apeiron had endured, when March sprang her ambush? She was just out of reach of the blasts, and it was still harrowing. When the explosions cleared she saw the damage, the cleared area of ground around them. Anything adjacent to the crystal growths was just gone, completely obliterated.

    Past that it was like the most intense, but also most limited explosion had been set off. Looking at containers, concrete, and any material unfortunate enough to be close, it was shredded and blasted to the edge of the explosion's radius, creating a kind of compressed area. The walls were solid, packed in and holding the shape of the explosion.

    More blasts were going off across the storage yard, and with each one the pressure on her mind lessoned. Each blast, each drain from the source of power, weakened the link. She felt her shield return, the attention of her power shifted back. The second world came back into focus, but dimmer, less connected. With each blast it faded further away.

    And then it was gone.

    The explosions stopped. The grinding, nails on chalkboard sound of crystal burrowing through cement vanished. There was a hollow, empty silence to the place, deafening in the absence of both pressure and panic. The nightmare, the chaos, was gone.

    Well, not completely gone. The scars from March's power messing with the gateway littered the area, cutting trenches and tunnels throughout the container yard. There was no sign of the thinker. Vicky had last seen her stumble off after freeing herself and setting off the nightmare of explosions.

    She cursed herself. She never considered that the girl would still be a threat. Never considered what Apeiron's technology could be turned towards. She had been careless, slow, sloppy, and let a villain, a worse villain than anyone believed, get away.

    But not unharmed. Whatever nightmare had been released from the space of powers might have saved the cape from death, but she was far from whole. Vicky had seen the connection between the cape and the three faces of her power, the delay and awkward movement were a consequence of that. The precise strikes turned to brutal and sloppy acts of desperation.

    March was still a threat, but a different kind of threat than she had been before. As much as she wanted to go after her, the thought of being taken by surprise in the dark, hit by that striker power, stayed her hand. She had other things she needed to do, more important things that adding to the mad rabbit's body count.

    Glory Girl stood shakily to her feet and surveyed the area. The site of the portal was an untouched ring of crystal lined stone surrounded by warped and blasted troughs in the earth. March's power had deleted most of the intruding material, but traces of it were still present at the edges of the blasts.

    There was something else that was still present. Not anything physical, just a feeling, a sense of care, concern, affection. Her power. The fragile one out of all the forces in her family, had been able to maintain a connection. A link. She could feel it, in her mind, in her aura, in her power.

    She leaned down to check on Rory. His breathing had slowed and he wasn't shaking, or vibrating, any more, but the concrete under his body had turned to powder under the force of his convulsions, with a network of cracks spreading dozens of feet in every direction.

    "Rory?" She asked hopefully. There was a slight twitch from the cape. "Don't try to move. I'm going to get you help." Another slight twitch.

    She was less concerned about jostling him than she'd been when she arrived. The Wards were probably nearby. They had medical support with them, and could send in professionals to sort out this mess. She pulled out her phone and drew up Missy's number.

    And watched as the screen went black. Not black like turned off. Black like a sudden sparking sound and the smell of electrical smoke. She stared blankly at the thing, trying to figure out what happened. Eventually she put the apparently bricked device away and decided to handle things the old-fashioned way.

    She gathered up Rory, her forcefield helping to steady and protect him in flight, and lifted off the ground. After being reduced to such a wreck, not even able to stand, much less fly, the sensation was freeing, lifting her spirits.

    Spirits that came crashing down as she saw the line of dark streets extending through the docks. Several blocks wide and stretching nearly the width of the north city, it was like someone had recreated the Cape Blackout in miniature.

    She quickly realized it drew a direct line, a straight vector through the city to the site above the bay where Apeiron, Dragon, and Lung were fighting. Apparently the world deciding to turn itself inside out hadn't interrupted the showdown between the tinkers and Lung.

    From this distance she couldn't tell how the fight was going. Lung looked bigger, frighteningly big, but they were too far out to see properly. Dragon was engaging him, while it looked like the robot was dropping in the air. She couldn't tell why or what it meant. Even if she could, it wouldn't do any good.

    Triumph needed a hospital. The nearest one, thankfully out of the area of the blackout, was too close to the ABB attacks. It would be a madhouse. He wasn't in bad enough shape to need emergency care, and she could cover ground more easily than an ambulance, especially in this.

    She made her decision and started flying. The PRT headquarters, and its attached hospital. They had the facilities to deal with capes, and would be able to help Rory and communicate his state to the rest of the Protectorate.

    She soared against the wind, heading south through the city that was far from safe. There were still echoes of explosions, the attack hadn't been totally disabled. She spotted active fires from the air, and she knew the gangs would be out in force. Somehow all of that paled in comparison to what hung on the fate of the battle above the bay.

    She had never seen Lung this big, or this powerful. Even with Apeiron and Dragon fighting him at the same time she couldn't be sure they could beat him. If he overwhelmed them then the city would be next.

    What would happen then? With no one who could stand against him, and free rein, what would the man do?

    Simple. Whatever he wanted. Reduce Empire territory to ashes, demand the head of any hero he didn't like, or melt the Rig or PRT headquarters into slag. If he got past Dragon and Apeiron there would be no second line of defense. That would be it.

    She looked back in concern and saw a glow like a small sun stream forth from the aerial duel. Something was happening, some key moment. The robot surged up towards Lung, its rockets barely visible through the glare of light and heat coming off Lung. As the robot closed it distorted, like an image through a heat shimmer. The entire fight was covered in some effect that served to distort light, only giving hints of the energetic exchange between the robot and the bestial gang leader.

    It did nothing to obscure the follow-up attack. The sky shifted from twilight to noon as an explosion the likes of which Vicky had never seen blasted upwards. Clouds parted, windows shook, as a pillar of white burst into the upper atmosphere.

    She couldn't watch it for long, not with the level of intensity. She turned her back and focused on getting Rory to the hospital, to the help he needed. She judged the state of the blast by the sharp shadows it cast against the city. Night to day, with buffeting winds and tremors in the ground.

    When it finally faded Vicky risked a glance back towards the bay. Dragon's suit and the robot were plummeting towards the water. No, it was a controlled dive. They were trying to get as low as possible. Looking up through the cleared clouds she could see a black speck, illuminated by the last hints of sunlight.

    Lung. Lung had been caught by that blast, an attack that could only be described as nuclear in scale. But he was still there. Physically at least, but there was something intact. Everything she knew about the gang leader told her he would heal and come back stronger. There was no end to this.

    Then she saw the second object. Just a glint in the light, but unmistakable. Tiny compared to Lung, but moving. Positioning for something. Some last, desperate attempt to stop the city's destruction. Whatever Apeiron was planning she hoped it would be enough.

    A faint blue glow started to form around the shiny speck. Then it was gone. A white line extended from where it had sat, to where Lung had sat. Past tense. The bloom of white, the parted atmosphere, and the streaks extending past the horizon left little doubt about the gang leader's status. The fact that that parting atmosphere was bowing down, extending in a pressure wave that only looked slow because of the distance, was even more confirmation. And concern.

    The sea was surging. Parting under the effect of… whatever that was. The light was fading with no sign of Lung or the speck, but the shockwave was another story. Vicky closed on the PRT headquarters as she watched the sea surge, build, and mount towards the city. Watched it wash over the boardwalk, flood streets of Downtown, crash against the barriers created by Apeiron's ambush. Then it sank back, leaving nothing but soaked streets, washed out buildings, and a choppy sea.

    Lung was gone. The city was safe. Safer than it had been in years. That building doom, the dread she had been stomaching since she saw how far the man had advanced in his fight, it was gone, evaporated in an incredibly freeing sensation. Millions of concerns, worries for the safety of her family, friends, the people of the city, they were gone.

    There were still problems, but Lung wasn't one of them. He wasn't going to triumph and rain fire down on them with impunity. He wasn't ever going to do that again.

    Apeiron had killed him. She looked at the empty sky. It wasn't confirmed, probably would be difficult to, but that kind of hit, that energy, the fact that he was just… gone. It was good enough.

    Lung was dead, and Apeiron had killed him. The Dragon of Kyushu had been defeated by a cape who no one had heard of a week ago. She didn't even know how to process the weight of the event.

    Fortunately, she didn't have to. The PRT headquarters had a landing pad for situations exactly like this. She had been spotted on her approach and was greeted by a pair of hospital staff and a gurney. They quickly took over Rory's care, wheeling him into the hospital.

    In her attempts to explain the situation, rather badly in all honesty, she was met with mostly blank eyes until she mentioned difficulty walking. That was something they latched on to, and insisted she join Rory for examination and treatment rather than rushing off to help with the recovery.

    She put up a token effort of resistance. The attack had been exhausting enough without the addition of seeing the world break around you. She could still feel that connection, the link to the fragile one, her power. Her power that cared about her. Not the strongest, but loyal and concerned. That was enough.

    More than enough. It had let her see what was happening, make sense of the nightmare world of powers. She remembered how things shifted without its help, the flashes of unconnected information, the warped scale and looping perspectives. Thanks to her power she had insight, understanding. She knew what was happening, more than she did before. Maybe more than anyone but March or Apeiron.

    Was there anyone she could talk to about this? Anyone who understood it? She didn't know if the Protectorate had anyone who specialized in this kind of thing, but she was perfectly fine waiting to find out.

    It turned out she didn't need to wait that long.

    "I heard you've been through quite the ordeal." Vicky looked up at the friendly eyes peeking out from an American flag scarf.

    "I think I have a lot of company there." She offered. The older cape's eyes crinkled.

    "Doesn't make it any less true." She took a seat next to Vicky. "Thank you for recovering Triumph. It meant a lot to everyone here."

    "I'm glad I could help." She admitted. "How is he?"

    "Physically, he's recovering well, but the event left him in a bad state." She paused, then continued. "I heard about what happened. What you saw."

    Vicky sat up. "I know it sounds crazy, but…"

    "NO." The woman replied sharply, then calmed herself. "Victoria, Glory Girl, when I got my powers, I saw something. Something like what you described." Vicky looked up at the cape's hopeful eyes. "I didn't know what it meant. I triggered as a child, but some of it, from some of the details you described, I think they were the same thing."

    Vicky sighed and sank back in her chair. "I thought everyone would think I was nuts. Got caught in some tinker explosion, started seeing stuff." She suddenly sat up. "But that means Kid Win was right. Apeiron, he's tinkering with, messing with, powers?"

    Miss Militia nodded slowly. "Probably. We're not sure. We're not sure of a lot of things right now. The Protectorate is too busy putting out fires, literally in some cases. The other gangs have fallen back for the night, but the North Docks and everything around ABB territory is a mess."

    "I saw it from the air. It looked bad, but what… how bad is it?"

    The woman let out a long breath. "Everything coastal south of the Boardwalk is flooded. Minor concern, but it caused some electrical faults, so we've got more blackouts. We still don't know what happened to the North Docks. Dragon is trying to analyze it, something to do with that robot. Towards the center of the effect, it fries everything with a circuit, some kind of persistent EMP, also messes with radio communications and does something to light. It's not just the Docks. There's a corridor of the effect extending all the way across the bay. Basically, the worst thing we could have to deal with during recovery efforts."

    Vicky shuddered at the implications. It explained what happened to her phone, but she couldn't even be angry right now. Just losing radio communication in a situation like this was a disaster, much less with it actively destroying electronics.

    "What about Bakuda?" She asked.

    "Gone to ground." Miss Militia admitted. "Apeiron, he leaked a tracking frequency for her bombs. We've been able to track anyone she implanted, but she caught on too quickly, The EMP effect made things harder. We think she's hiding with maybe a few dozen ABB members on a leash. Dragon is working on it, but isn't optimistic in the current situation. Too much to deal with from the analysis, and we're still trying to manage the last of the attacks and whatever Apeiron did to the city with those elemental emissions."

    Vicky nodded and Miss Militia continued. "I need you to tell me everything about what happened with March. We have people moving to the site, but it's in the middle of the dead band. Any information you can give, any details, could make a difference.

    Vicky replayed all the events in her head, all the fear and dread and uncertainty. The horrific fate of March, and the shifted perspective beyond the physical universe. Going through it again was the last thing she wanted.

    But if it would help, if it would make a difference, she could do it. She felt the presence, the care and concern of the fragile one. The slight shifting in her forcefield when she relaxed her mind and let her power flow. She could help, she could make a difference.

    Because she might not be the strongest, or the best, or even have a hope of reaching that level, but she had enough. She had support. And she wouldn't be alone.

    She turned to the older cape and smiled. "What do you want to know?"
     
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    • Holy shit.

    So March used the call beads to punch into shardspace like her Ward plan, except she didn't break the ice. Probably because Scion isn't dead. At the epicenter, GG saw into shardspace, so she's got a bunch of that knowledge to deal with now.

    The PRT will probably be convinced Apeiron is a team of tinkers that are tinkering with powers now. Everything they've seen confirms that- the giant robot, the "stranger robot" that Lethe will pick Joe up in, controlling massive swarms of drones (edit- also GG's shardspace report)...

    Also, there's a possibility that they're going to drop the hammer now that they have hard evidence of something memetic that Joe has done (the attack names). They can't just leave it alone.
     
    Amazing chapter, also, totally called it when I said they would assume Apeiron was a collective of Tinkers with him as a figurehead.

    Trevor23 said:
    Purely looking from the outside perspective, i'm quite certain nearly everyone will conclude that the entire scenario with Apeiron nearly dying was orchestrated by him in order to bring ABB capes together in order for him to deliver his devastating decapitation strike which resulted in Lung's death.

    Though at this point, I think 'Apeiron' will no longer be considered as just an individual, rather they will likely come to the conclusion that 'Apeiron' is in fact a collective that uses the same name with Apeiron simply being the figurehead/main combatant of the group. If looking from an outside perspective, Apeiron's powers makes no sense with the sheer amount of versatility and power he has displayed, not to mention how quickly he managed to build up his tinker tech and his multitasking capabilities unless they come to the conclusion that he is the Eidolon of Tinkers with large amount of other abilities from different categories on the side.




    Further more, Dragon's observations from the last chapter which she is surely to report will also likely help the PRT come to the conclusion that 'Apeiron' is in fact a collective rather than individual.
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