Chapter 48

Vanessa was scared, hurt, confused, and quite honestly, in this very moment…

All she wanted was William.

She should have expected things to go the way they went after what felt like her entire world came crashing down all in the span of a couple days. The ambush mission going to absolute shit in a handbasket, William and James getting arrested by the PRT, Tammy being taken by Avalon after getting her arms broken in a completely lopsided fight, and three more of their members just dying to either the blackie or whoever the hell was piloting that big black Tinkertech monstrosity of a vehicle. 

She hadn’t been as close to Alabaster as she’d been with the other two, Daniel and Justin, but that didn’t matter - what mattered was that Avalon and his team completely eviscerated the Empire’s plan, tearing them apart and dismantling them with an ease that seemed almost preternatural, and now she was alone and nervous and had no fucking clue on how to wrap her hands back around the chaotic, splintered fragments of her life. 

Everyone she actually cared about in Brockton Bay was either dead or locked away, and before anything could have been done to even slightly rectify that horrible situation - before she could convince Kaiser of William’s usefulness and loyalty, and beg him to fashion some sort of prison break… Lung ended up seeking out Avalon on his own and engaging him in full-fledged combat.

When news reached them of this battle, there had been a moment of cautious, paranoid hope. Their meetings had grown longer and more frequent over the last couple days, and a hell of a lot more bleaker as well, but Kaiser had rallied their spirits by declaring Avalon a lost cause. Claiming that, as much of a brute as Lung was, the teenage negro with ‘too many powers and not enough sense’ would fall beneath the dragon’s ire, and then their only worry would be rebuilding and warding away Coil’s forces as they regained their lost manpower. He hadn’t mentioned William or Krieg or Tammy, but that was fine. 

Vanessa could wait. 

There had been a fledgling sense of anticipation, then, as they gathered together - Kaiser, her, Fenja, Menja, Purity, Night, and Fog - in order to watch the cataclysmic event unfold. The fight was happening live on national television, and the internet was going bombastic over it all. It should have been a good showing; something to watch and laugh over as Lung thoroughly trounced the arrogant boy.

… Feeling the temperature drop in the room, food and drinks long forgotten, as Avalon bullied the dragon man across the beach, and then the ocean, had been the first sign that everything was about to change. 

Kaiser had excused himself with a cold tone of voice, claiming that he needed to make phone calls, and Purity had quickly followed him out the room as he left at a brisk pace. Conversation after that was stilted, interrupted by the occasional raised voice as Purity argued with Kaiser out in the hallway, and that feeling of anxiety and hopelessness began building more and more as the fight went on.

When Avalon summoned lightning, even the eternally unflappable Night and Fog turned ashen, standing up in that creepy, synchronized way they did in order to excuse themselves and make their own calls. 

Vaness wasn’t stupid. She knew what was going on. The Gesselschaft made her uncomfortable, a notion that she knew was shared by the late Crusader, the kidnapped Rune, as well as Hookwolf, Cricket, and Stormtiger. She’d grown up in the Clans, raised on the idea of family, honor, and the ways of a true American. German folk up North simply didn’t understand their ideals and beliefs as much as a true, red-blooded American, and that was fine - they could use each other as much as they needed to, because at the end of the day, they still fought for what was right. They still fought for the supremacy of the superior race. 

However, common interests and goals didn’t mean that their way of operating overseas didn’t make Vanessa uncomfortable, and with the way that things were going, she had felt like, at the time, she would end up dealing with them a lot more in the near future.

Avalon’s interview and speech after he thoroughly won the battle and turned Lung into a golden trophy - it had been a grating one. Just more whining from the people who loved victimizing themselves, ignoring their own pitfalls and negative influence on the world. It was just more monkey-loving drivel that none of them had any interest in hearing, but Kaiser, sitting closer to the screen with a pale face, had stopped Purity from shutting down the television. He inched forward even more, knuckles paling as he clenched his expensive smartphone with an iron-clad grip, and told her to turn the television up higher.

“Max Anders, CEO of the Medhall Corporation - otherwise known as the Leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight, Kaiser…"

Immediate outrage. 

Purity had gasped, her face turning ashen, and both Fenja and Menja had surged to their feet, their bodies visibly growing larger as they screamed obscenities at the screen. Kaiser was still silent, his body shaking, and Vanessa truly wasn’t sure if it was in fury or fear. 

Probably both.

But the bomb wasn’t done exploding. Avalon had proceeded to expose Coil as well, alleging that he was a PRT Consultant by the name of ‘Thomas Calvert’, and he wrapped it up by declaring that they - meaning, Kaiser and Coil - had only an hour to turn themselves in, full-stop, before he proceeded to hunt them down and basically kill them where they stood.

And he would without hesitation, they all knew. He’d shown it with Crusader and Stormtiger. He’d shown it with Oni Lee. He’d shown it with Lung. Avalon was racking up a bodycount that would soon be counted on both hands, and after what they had just seen with his fight at the beach… the boy had the firepower to back up everything he was saying and more.

Looking back on it… maybe that was when she should have left. 

Intrinsically, Vanessa knew that staying with the Empire would end with her death. She heard the burning passion in Avalon’s voice, even through the speakers of the flatscreen. Everyone could. She didn’t agree with what he’d been saying, didn’t even want to think about it to be honest, but the way that he used his words and channeled genuine anger and determination into every vowel that left his mouth… it had sent cold shivers down her spine. 

She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would do what he promised he would do. 

And Vanessa didn’t want to die. She really, really didn’t.

So why did she end up staying with Kaiser?

Her body and mind had felt numb and distant, as if she was merely following along on autopilot as he and Purity screamed at each other.

At some point Night had led her away and into another room once things seemed on the verge of turning physical, insults such as ‘coward’ and ‘less of a man’ popping up and causing the dirty silverware in the room to bend and quiver with restrained power.

It was only after she’d led her outside did Vanessa realize that Night was leading her to a black Rolls-Royce with tinted windows, and although she didn’t fight her on it - partially because she knew that she stood no fucking chance - Vanessa had felt the flames of fear in her chest fan themselves at the unknown.

Where were they going? What was happening? At the time, no one seemed liable to tell her - not even the driver, some random blonde-haired man in a black three-piece suit. 

Minutes later - not long, maybe ten or fifteen - Kaiser had come outside, ducking quietly into the seat beside her, and Fenja joined him. Menja walked around to the passenger door and stepped in. The atmosphere had been quiet. Unsettling. Purity had been nowhere to be found, and both Night and Fog had disappeared as well. 

Still not saying a word to her, as if just expecting her to go with the flow, Kaiser had told the driver one simple word. “Drive.”

And then they pulled off. Fast.

It had been a bit over an hour since then, and though the brain fog and shock had somewhat lifted, leaving behind a crippling feeling of anxiety and fear, Vanessa still wasn’t completely sure what was going on. Kaiser had been hissing into his phone almost nonstop, switching to heavily-accented German every now and again, so she was fairly certain - no, almost completely certain - that they were going to meet up with fringe members of Gesselschaft. People that could help them out with surviving the night when Avalon the fucking Black Bogeyman came knocking. 

The realization did less to help her nerves than she’d thought.

An hour of vaguely unsafe speeding saw them out of the Bay and onto I-95, the cover of the night making them blend into the darkness with the matte black vehicle. Silent, swift, efficient - that was Kaiser’s MO when he wasn’t being the Shepherd, caroling men and women to follow beneath his banner. Before, Vanessa would have found it charming. She would have sought security in his expediency and pragmatism. Now, however, with the clock shifting past midnight and her mental shot to Hell and back?

She just wanted to get away.

“You must pay attention to the time, Smith. It’s 12:38 - if Avalon wasn’t killed by Coil and his army of mercenaries, then I doubt it’ll be long until he figures out some asinine way to track us down. We need to get to Portland, now.” Kaiser tapped incessantly on his knee, a slight frown creasing the corners of his handsome face. Metal flowed between his fingers like liquid, extending out from a gleaming silver band on his ring finger, and his bright blue eyes kept glancing out the side of the window.

The driver, Smith, glanced up at the rearview mirror. His face was pinched as he nodded once, jerky and terse. “I’m driving as fast as I can without arousing suspicion, sir. I’ve seen four different State Troopers in the last half hour, and with… everything happening, you-”

“I’m aware of my predicament,” Kaiser interrupted sharply, his head snapping back to fix Smith with a warning glare. “But time is our biggest enemy right now, Smith, alongside the ignorant pest hounding our heels like a salivating mutt. Law enforcement does not scare me tonight. Go faster.”

“... Understood, sir.”

The engine revved, and the Rolls-Royce accelerated.

Traffic was tight, I-95 oddly congested for such a late night, and their speed had gone from a brisk eighty-five miles per hour to a more stilted sixty. However, Portland… it was a destination that laid along their route, but-

“What’s in Maine?” Vanessa hesitantly spoke up, painfully aware of the three sets of eyes that immediately turned in her direction. 

Fenja and Menja watched her for a moment, their unfairly attractive faces impassive masks, before seemingly finding her pitiful enough to glance away disinterestedly. She couldn’t even blame them; they were as unflappable as ever, rebellious and incensed in the face of Avalon’s bloody feud, while she had almost completely shut down, as quiet as a mouse for the entire car ride.  

Her leader, however - he held her gaze evenly, a look of understanding dawning in his eyes. The severe frown on his face relaxed into a thin, drawn line, and Kaiser inclined his head.

“Succour, my dear,” he replied gently, gesturing towards her with his phone. “I have allies further up North, ones that would grant us…sanctorum whilst we await reinforcements. One such ally has a penthouse in Portland that we can utilize while I set up further meetings.”

Vanessa worried her bottom lip with her teeth, gaze drifting downwards as she absorbed the information. As candied and confident as his voice seemed, the underlying meaning was clear, even for someone as out of touch and frazzled as her.

We’re fleeing. We have allies who’ll help us hide from Invictus while we gather more capes.

A life on the run, beneath a man whose civilian identity was just shafted completely on national television.

Vanessa felt her chest constrict.

Kaiser continued, speaking more to himself than just her at this point, and she struggled to pay attention. “I cannot fight back against the allegations until I’m certain that I am secure and protected from those savages, but time not clearing my name is time the toothless public has to grow fangs and bite at my hand…”

He smiled thinly, the expression looking more pained than happy on his face. “It is not yet a checkmate, but Avalon… he has played a decent enough hand.”

“Do you think he is still coming?” Fenja asked, her piercing blue eyes still focused solely on scanning the dark, rain-slicked vehicles driving by. The car wasn’t large enough for her spear, but the lack of a proper weapon didn’t seem to bother the gorgeous woman. She was unflappable, completely and utterly. Vanessa admired that confidence.

“Coil is… deeply entrenched, wherever he is,” Kaiser responded, his eyebrows furrowing in consideration. “It would take Avalon time to get through his defenses, if he didn’t decide to flee. It’s highly likely that the boy still attempts to hunt us down, but…”

“We’ll hold him off if it comes to that. If we grow large enough, not even his lightning will strike us down.” Menja declared, glancing back over her shoulder to narrow her gaze at Vanessa. “The second we see him, Othala-”

“Give me super speed,” Fenja finished, clenching her fists. “Avalon is a mobile fighter. He relies on his teleportation and agility to avoid getting tagged, so we need to go hard on the offensive immediately.”

“And whilst the two of you fight him hand-to-hand,” Kaiser continued coolly, “I will engage at a distance. An interstate is hardly the best venue for a battle like this, but with traffic being as it is, there’s a high chance Avalon pulls his punches significantly. He definitely won’t be summoning that lightning storm again, if he can pull that off twice in one night.”

“Even if he could, metal conducts electricity, right? We’ll just have to-“

She zoned them out.

With all three of them - Kaiser, Fenja, and Menja - discussing battle strategy and tactics in the case of Avalon actually catching up and attacking, there was not much else for her to contribute.. Vanessa listened from the edges of the conversation, her body numb as the realization of what was possibly to come settled within her stomach. There wasn’t any questions or inquiries towards her or what she desired - only blunt ‘You will give us this in the case of this happening’, and an expectation for her to simply nod her head and go along with it.

So she did, like always.

Vanessa hated herself for it, because what she truly wanted to do in that moment was be the coward she knew she was and jump out of the speeding car. She wasn’t in costume. She had no mask. If they fought out here, then her identity would be exposed - not to the entire world like Kaiser’s had been, but at least to Avalon and any nearby civilians… if Avalon didn’t know it already.

She wanted nothing to do with him. She felt trapped, like a mouse being stalked by a bobcat, but she was also too afraid to do anything about it.

So she didn’t… like always.

Instead, Vanessa leaned back into the seat, wrapping her parka tighter around her body, and mentally prepared herself to be Kaiser’s power-battery in the case of Eidolon-lite swooping down on their vehicle like an angel of vengeance.

Hope was fleeting, anxiety overpowering every other synapse in her brain, and not for the first time in her life…

She prayed to God for forgiveness and mercy.

____________________________________________

12:49

I caught up to them on I-95, my flying form shrouded beneath the darkness of the night sky.

The rain had turned from a constant downpour to a more middling drizzle, but that did nothing to lighten the dreary atmosphere that felt almost permanent on Earth Bet. 

In my vision, a circle of wispy blue magic surrounded the mass of vehicles moving northwards, effortlessly keeping pace with the moving traffic. Clairvoyance had done the same thing with Coil’s base - instead of sending me straight to the entrance of the bunker in a neat little line, it had bled into roughly a three hundred foot circle surrounding the entire area, leaving me to personally search for the exact location. With Hidden Intuition, Conveyance sorcery, and the exact knowledge of what I was looking for, it had hardly been much of an issue with hunting down Coil’s base.

With Kaiser moving down the fucking Oregon Trail, however, things were a bit more complicated.

‘’Prolly best to not cause a pile-up collision on the interstate, eh?’

I accelerated my speed, pulling ahead of the Clairvoyance circle and drifting backwards along the wind. The vehicles were coming towards me now, almost looking like little toy cars from my position in the sky. I’d never been much of a car person - money had been hard to come by in my previous life, so the extent of my experience with vehicles ranged from 2004 Nissan Altimas to broken Scat Packs. Even then, I had a damn good feeling that Kaiser wouldn’t be caught dead traveling in anything less than the best, even while fleeing for and there were only a few notably good looking cars moving down the interstate tonight.

Still, it felt odd, flying backwards at a bit over one hundred miles per hour. Every single one of the human instincts in my body that weren’t yet shifted by Heroic Aptitude was screaming at me to watch where I was going, the very real risk of an accidental death looming in my throat like an ice cube, but at some point over the past few weeks, I’d stopped listening to those mundane fears. 

Hell, I doubted I was even fully human anymore, anyway-

Now wasn’t the time.

“Lock in, Jay.”

My eyes became warm within my skull, a silvery glow emanating from the irises like hazes of moonlight, and my vision - already sharp and crisp - sliced through the darkness like razor sharp blades. Even with my mana beginning to run low, the constant channeling of Clairvoyance stopping it from recovering as I actively held the spell, I had more than enough in my tank to utilize Conveyance, flickering down to street level within the same time it took me to draw two breaths.

With Arcane turned on and the cover of night shrouding me in darkness, no one even stopped to inspect the new person hovering over the road. Cars kept moving, water jutting up from rode over rain puddles and dissipating into steam on contact with my passive Aqshy shield.

I continued to fly backwards at a clipped pace, and glanced into the white Toyota Camry speeding past me.

No nazis, just some asshole kid with daddy’s car. Not my business.

Turning my head to the rest of the speeding cars, I narrowed my gaze and flexed Hidden Intuition. 

Mitsubishi Outlander, driving eighty miles per hour. Driver is a woman, panicked and scared. Another woman in the backseat, breathing heavily. Rotund stomach. Pregnant. Driver rushing her to-

I wished them luck, but they were not who I was looking for.

Black Audi A6, driving 75 miles per hour. Driver is an elderly man, wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigar. Scars along the face implies he has seen combat. No other occupants in car.

Next.

Blue Volkswagen, driving 70 miles per hour. Female driver, an elderly woman-

No.

Gray BMW, driving 73 miles per hour. Male driver, two kids in the backseat-

Ugh.

Black Rolls-Royce, driving 90 miles per hour. Driver is a male wearing a black suit, face drawn and body tense. Beautiful blonde-haired woman in the passenger seat, three more occupants in the back-

‘... Hold on.’

Clairvoyance shifted, the spell being cultivated between my hands pulsating and throbbing with a sudden burst of energy. The ghostly blue circle surrounding the traffic abruptly shrunk before my very eyes, surrounding the black Rolls-Royce speeding down the fourth lane of I-95 and sticking to it. 

I knew what this meant. After all, the same thing had happened when I finally managed to track down the entrance to Coil’s bunker.

I fucking found Kaiser.

I was relatively surprised at the sudden rush of heated rage that suddenly washed over my body. I’d never been someone guided by their emotions, especially ones such as anger or sadness, but there was just something about knowing that the equivalent to a motherfucking Grand Wizard in the KKK was a mere eighty feet away from me, fleeing from me… 

It did something to my chest. Something much uglier than the cold, jaded finality of my hunting of Coil.

‘... Yeah. You’re gonna suffer, asshole.’

I just needed to get them away from the civilians

In a woosh of displaced air, I teleported across the interstate, palming the water-flecked bumper of the Rolls Royce and swinging my long legs over the top of the trunk in order to stand proud on top of the car.

My movements were light, footsteps barely ghosting over the surface of the sleek black metal, and no one inside even shifted at my sudden intrusion. Wind pressure tried its damnedst to push me off the back end, but I was too stubborn and strong to be dislodged. In spite of the enmity swelling my throat with anger, I remained focused on the task at hand, calling down the Lore of Heavens to empower my next spell and shield me from the distracting winds.

Clairvoyance faded away into nothingness between my palms, replaced by a very different azure spark that brought forth the taste of ozone and the smell of petrichor and the earth-

“A-Avalon?! Woah, is that you?!”

Headlights behind blinked, pulling me away from my channeling, and I glanced over my shoulders with a bemused frown. Some black guy was hanging out the passenger window, face awash with an awe that damn near bordered on fervent worship, and the Hispanic dude driving the Prius was barely keeping the run-down car straight on the road as he babbled something incoherent to his friend. The black guy was holding his phone in his hand, recording me despite the shitty 1 AM lighting.

‘Shit.’ 

They saw through my Arcane. Not surprising, considering I was standing on top of a speeding Rolls Royce. The perk wasn’t infallible. But with them taking notice, it was only a matter of time until-

Alarm bells.

I twisted on my heels, pushing off of the car and taking to the air as a warped, discombobulating pulse of silvery energy shot through the portion of the trunk I’d just been standing on, a gleaming steel spike as wide as I was and twice as tall jutting from the metal and skewering nothing but the crisp night air.

“Ohhh- OH SHIT! BRO, HE’S FIGHTING KAISER! YOOO!”

Fucking idiots.

“You’re comin’ with me, dickheads.”

It was the ‘dickheads’ that triggered the spell.

I slashed my arm downwards, my magic carrying me down the interstate at a whopping ninety miles per hour as whoever was driving Kaiser’s escape vehicle promptly accelerated in a vain attempt to lose me.

That ended up being his downfall, though .

The Sapphire Arch materialized in front of the speeding car in loud, vibrant sparks of Azyr, twelve feet across and at least nine feet tall. Half a dozen more metal spikes jutted up and out of the street, lunging towards me at impressive speeds, but compared to a lot of the shit I’d already dodged over the course of this long ass night, it was simple to just teleport out of the way.

I did so just in time to watch the Rolls Royce attempt an evasive maneuver to dodge the Sapphire Arch, nearly hydroplane into speeding traffic, and - in a crackle of lightning and a whomp of air - disappear into the magical gateway. The sapphire structure dematerialized immediately, just as the shellshocked fan and his buddy caught up from where they had slowed down out of fear. The cars beneath me honked their horns and swerved to dodge the spikes that Kaiser had formed.

It was a safety hazard, and a bad one at that. But I could feel Kaiser and his ilk contained within my Sapphire Arch, the spell just waiting for permission to spill them out of its pocket dimension so that I could pass proper judgment. That anger hadn’t faded over the course of that minor skirmish. If anything, it had grown.

… However, I wasn’t the type to just leave other people to clean up my messes, and it wasn’t like the nazis were going anywhere anytime soon. Much like Rune had been for an entire twenty-four hour period, they were effectively stuck with me. Magically-bound.

‘Priorities. Safety first, premeditated murder second.’

With a sigh, I floated back down to the interstate, idly side-stepping a scuttling Honda Civic and nudging it with a sharp jolt of raw Aethyr to keep it from clipping its mirror against the side of one of the spikes.

Arcane shifted off, the magic attempting to hide me from the world fading away into nothingness, and I raised a hand in order to send a stream of fire into the sky. Flames billowed upwards, the drizzle of rain hissing and steaming on contact with the magical crimson flamethrower. 

“‘Ight, everyone!” I shouted, allowing Force of Spirit to magnify my voice and carry it through the air like the ringing of a bell, “Slow the fuck down! Your boy’s gonna do some magical street cleanin’, so just relax for a second!”

The good news? They listened to me immediately, cars slowing down to a standstill as I turned and began breaking the towering metal spikes with sharp, mana-empowered chops of my spear.

The bad news?

… Cameras. A lot of ‘em.

And honestly, I was kinda getting tired of flash photography. 

___________________________________________________

Five Minutes Later…

The forests surrounding I-95 on either side of the interstate were relatively sparse and unimpressive, all things considered. The trees were tall yet dying, the forest floor coated in crinkled orange leaves that seemed ready to turn to dust at the slightest provocation. Outside of the Turnpike that I’d left behind a few minutes ago, there were no real landmarks or structures to worry about. Crickets chirped in the underbrush, owls hooted ominously from the barren tree tops, and I…

Well, I dropped a Rolls-Royce Phantom out of the sky. 

The engine roared as the vehicle blasted out of the crystallized Sapphire Arch like a cannonball, wheels spinning and finding no purchase on thin air as the driver struggled to regain control that simply did not exist anymore. The headlights blinked and flickered, shining bright beams along the looming treeline, and I could hear someone screaming from within the vehicle as it battled, and lost, against gravity.

It fell.

The car dropped hard, its forward momentum bleeding out almost instantly as gravity took hold, and the passenger door abruptly slammed outwards hard enough to break it off its hinges. As a seven foot tall Menja dropped out of the falling vehicle, long blonde tresses whipping and flapping violently in the wind, the undercarriage of the car shimmered and undulated. A thick pillar of gleaming steel began extracting itself from the car, squeezing out slowly like an especially chunky splinter, but whatever their plan was...

I wasn’t standing idly by like some slack-jawed NPC.

BOOM!

My Armament, overcharged by the same hefty dosage of mana that coated my arm in its golden shroud, shot out of my hand like a bullet. The glowing weapon sheared through the air at speeds even I struggled to perceive, eating up the distance between it and the quickly growing Menja - or was it Fenja? She didn’t have time to finish her transformation, having only grown a few more feet in the brief couple seconds she’d been airborne, and could do nothing but gape in horror as my spear slammed forcibly into her chest.

The spearhead sank in meatily, cracking bone and gouging flesh, and the momentum carried through with brutal vengeance. Menja’s legs flopped in the air as the Armament sent her blasting through the treetops, branches and limbs snapping and collapsing on impact with the giantess’ out of control body. Within moments she was out of sight, a distant explosion of wood and soil announcing her calamitous landing.

Whether or not she died wasn’t an issue I had time to worry about.

“Turn to dust.”

Chamon erupted from my outstretched hand in a thick wave of gold-tinged energy, flying through the air and enshrouding the enormous pillar of steel that Kaiser had managed to erect from the bottom of his car. It had kept them from crashing down into the forest floor from over four-hundred feet in the sky, the pillar sinking deeply into the wet soil and slowing their momentum to a crawl, but I refused to give them time to regain their equilibrium.

As the Golden Winds surrounded the metal, the gleaming steel immediately became corroded and brittle, pit marks appearing up and down its massive length. Over a hundred feet of metal broke down in an instant, crumbling into a collapsing mountain of dust and powder that showered the forest below in a broken, rusted brown mess. The car began falling again, its safety net effectively counterspelled, and this time - there was nothing that they could do.

If a Rolls-Royce falls in a forest, and there’s only one guy around to see it… how fucking loud is it when it hits the ground?

From personal experience? Very.

CRASH!

The vehicle broke through trees when it landed, windows shattered and metal crumpled in on itself. I took a step forward on thin air, teleporting closer a hundred feet with each casual movement, and within seconds I was hovering over the wreckage, blowing dust away from my face with idle shifts of Azyr. The car had rolled over onto its side on impact with the ground, and heavy tendrils of smoke billowed from the perforated hood. There was no screaming, or moans of pain, or swearing - just dead silence.

It genuinely didn’t seem as if anyone had survived, which was…

“Kinda anticlima-”

My mask became uncomfortably warm.

Battle-hardened instincts screamed at me, shouting for my body to move…

So I moved.

The shrill, grinding sound of blades unsheathing from a scabbard tore through the rust-speckled clearing as a thin, gleaming silver blade jutted up from the ground I had just been hovering over, extending out at least fifteen feet before stopping. My eyes narrowed, flicking to my left as a serrated steel saw blasted out of a nearby tree, forcing me to soar higher in the air to avoid being bisected completely in half.

‘Yeah, fuck this shit.’

Without turning my gaze away from the ground - the only place metal could realistically come at me from - I raised my hand towards the smoking wreckage of the car. Aqshy roiled over my skin, its fiery flavor spicy on the tip of my tongue, and I got ready to finally put an end to this long ass night of death, bloodshed, and gratuitous violence-

“Hold on!”

I paused.

Hearing Kaiser’s voice for the first time ever was an unsettling experience. Buttery smooth, well-articulated, and relatively deep, it wasn’t hard to understand why he attracted so many retarded, easily brainwashed white Americans beneath his banner. However, the flimsy bravado couldn’t hide the shakiness lurking just behind the surface. His voice shook along the edges, frayed and agitated, and I watched as the armored man climbed clumsily out of the crashed vehicle. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a single scratch on him.

Which probably meant the blood coating his chestplate wasn’t his.

“It’s been made clear, Avalon, that you’ve won here tonight,” he continued, raising both gauntlet-clad arms high above his head. “And I, Max Anders, now also known, and exposed, as ‘Kaiser’ of the Empire Eighty-Eight... am willing to surrender myself fully to the Protectorate in exchange for safe transportation to-”

CRACK!

Kaiser is invincible.

I’d already clocked that, but thank you Hidden Intuition.

My fist, still fully extended from the massive haymaker I just slammed into the blondie’s jaw, throbbed in agony. Even empowered by mana, the punch felt like I’d just gotten done smashing each of my knuckles with a meat mallet; all hot, pulsing pain and crushed cartilage.

I exhaled softly, waving the injured appendage as I watched the neo-nazi flop messily through the air, limbs flailing helplessly around his body. He came to an abrupt stop when his back slammed against a thick ash tree with another resounding ‘crack’, nearly breaking straight through.

What little leaves were left on its branches fluttered down on impact.

“If you’re not taking any damage, I’m guessin’ Othala’s still alive,” I observed, speaking loudly so that the wheezing man could hear me from over fifty feet away. My left hand began to glow with a radiant light, an orb of golden mana forming within my palm as I channeled the restorative magic of Healing into my body. 

A burst of Hysh would have arguably been faster for such a minor injury, but Restoration was a perfectly valid school of magic that I had every intention of getting more practice with. Even now, as I faced down the bogeyman for black people, I could feel my innate understanding of healing magic grow with use.

It was an invigorating feeling.

“M-my surrender,” Kaiser coughed, spitting out a wad of saliva and mucus. “Do you not accept my surrender?! I’ve laid down my arms, raised both hands in defeat. Have-”

“‘You no shame?!’” I finished, my voice high with both incredulity and amusement. Hovering a few feet over the ground, I began to draw closer to the desperate man. “Is that what you were gonna say? ‘Cause if you finish that sentence, I’m liable to skin you alive. Might just do it anyway.”

Shakily, Kaiser pushed himself back onto his feet. He tried to fake it by leaning his body ‘coolly’ against the tree, right hand pressing into the bark, but my eyes pierced through the darkness as easy as any flashlight. Nothing could hide the way his legs quaked beneath him.

He was scared.

“... There must be something you want, Avalon. I refuse to believe that you’re so mindlessly barbaric as to desire wanton murder and mayhem purely off of emotion.”

Kaiser is scared. Kaiser is humiliated. Kaiser is stalling.

Hidden Intuition seemed almost amused, and I knew from personal experience that that was rarely ever a good thing.

“Second Sight.” I murmured beneath my breath, activating the second pair of eyes hidden behind my head.

“Let us strike a deal, Avalon!” Kaiser continued brazenly, taking a slow, arduous step forward. He clenched his left fist and raised it up to his chest, a forced smile forming on his lips. “If you’re not satisfied with my surrender, I’ll leave Brockton Bay. I’ll leave the U.S! And money… money would never be a problem for you again. The Empire has hands in companies across-”

I tuned the inane yapping out, recognizing the empty platitudes for what they were:

Distractions.

Fenja wasn’t slick.

I had watched as she pulled herself out through the windshield of the totaled car, swinging over the smoldering remains of the hood with the contemptuous ease only an eight foot tall body could give her.

Bruises lined her body, cuts and lacerations carving up her dress in multiple places, but the injuries didn’t seem to deter her in the slightest. Her bloodied face was drawn into a vicious scowl as she quietly padded over the forest ground on bare feet, grabbing and yanking out the thin, rapier-like blade of steel that Kaiser had tried to puncture me with a few minutes ago. She was fast, her long legs clearing distance with ease, and she was growing with each step.

From eight feet to ten.

From ten to twelve.

From twelve to fifteen.

Just as she was a few giant steps away from striking distance, Fenja had already grown to damn near eighteen feet tall, the blade in her hand lengthening to just a few feet over that height. She drew her arm back, bloodied teeth baring downwards into a ferocious snarl, and with picture-perfect form, lunged forward to skewer me with her makeshift sword-

CLANG!

As the sound of cogs crashing against each other rang through the forest, turning the world around Kaiser and I into a monochromatic wasteland, my mana reserves tanked, draining from roughly thirty-five percent to ten. Even as the wave of vertigo washed over me, bringing with it a deep-rooted nausea that felt vaguely reminiscent of hunger pains, I stepped forward, away from the razor-sharp tip of the time frozen sword, and stared at my opponent.

Kaiser stared back, blank faced and horrified.

“Gray Boy…?” he swallowed, pushing himself off of the ash tree and taking a cautious step backwards.

“Careful,” I said coolly, ignoring his unasked question, “You step outta our lil’ bubble and you’re frozen in time. For eternity. Not the best way to go.”

That made him freeze up.

“You kill off my Empire, and Gesellschaft will not stop until you and your allies are dead. They have dozens of capes, Avalon - and they gain more and more each day. You cannot win.”

“...” My eyes glazed over, thoughts turning to important matters as Kaiser’s barely composed voice filled the clearing.

“If you would simply parley with me, then we can figure something out that’s pleasing to both sides. More than my beliefs, I am a businessman. I do business, and I- I can see the same spark in your eye as well. You and I - we’re not so dissimilar, Avalon. We are powerful, we are vaunted, and we have the weight of the world on our shoulders.”

“Hm…” 

Kaiser smiled, a bead of sweat dripping down his dirt-smudged face. He took another step forward, hands raised once more in a clear sign of deference. “I can see that you’re thinking more on the subject. That’s good… I knew you weren’t as simpleminded as I’d feared. Let us-”

“Got it.” 

I snapped my fingers in victory, invoking my will into the pure, raw Aethyr that coated the world around me. The sensation of being was almost tactile in nature, like holding your hand out of a window in a speeding car. The Aethyr didn’t necessarily want to be used, but neither was it against being utilized - so long as it wasn’t abused and overstimulated. I’d become familiar with manipulating these invisible currents of magical energy in the form of rough telekinesis, but this time, I wanted more fine control. 

Hell, in this case, I needed it.

“Did you figure out your side of the negotiation?” Kaiser asked hesitantly, narrowing his eyes at me. He didn’t dare to try another metal-based attack, recognizing the fact that he was, by all accounts, completely and utterly outclassed in every single way, but that didn’t mean he let his guard down.

Not that it mattered.

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Or nazis,” I responded distractedly, reaching out with my new tactile senses and searching for my target(s). “But you can help me out with something. A new spell I just came up with.”

“... I’m not sure if I-”

“I cast… Testicular Torsion!”

CRUNCH!

"A-AGHHHHH!"

The dastardly magic was accompanied by the sound of flesh warping, bones crunching, and a fully grown man screaming like a little girl a mere quarter of his age. His fancy suit of armor meant nothing in the face of my new spell - one that transcended physical shields and barriers in order to strike directly at the heart of what made a man, well… a man.

And, like all men struck in the balls… he fell.

… I may have tested the spell out on him a few more times after he collapsed, too, the pain eventually dragging him into tortured unconsciousness.

In the end, Kaiser’s execution was a boring, yet brutal affair - death by hanging with his own tie, beneath the monochromatic sky. I stripped him of his armor, leaving him in a dirty and tattered black suit that may have once been valued in the thousands. Eventually some predator would pass by, see the rotting corpse of a human being dangling from a tree branch, and gain a large dinner to eat off of for the next week or two. At least then his existence would actually have a semi-positive effect on the world.

But that was in the future.

For now, as I stood in the middle of the forest clearing and stared up at the frozen, black and white face of a snarling Fenja, I had to ponder to myself, not for the first time tonight-

‘... Do I kill off the rest of you? Am I really built like that?’

It was a rhetorical question, of course. 

I’d already figured out that I was, in fact, built like that.

But somehow, taking the time to at least question it a little bit made it easier for me to cope with.

I was exhausted, physically, mentally, and magically. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, preferably with Cassie and Amy, and sleep for the next five days…

So could I just blame it on crankiness if I decided to say ‘fuck it’ and blow up the entire forest?

Probably not, but it was an amusing thought.

‘Screw it, then.’ I sighed, summoning my spear in a burst of mana. ‘What’s a couple more fights?’

With the sound of cogs smashing together once again, I unfroze time…

And leaped right back into the fray.

_____________________________________

Perks Accepted:

No perks accepted today - not enough CP for what was rolled.

400 CP remaining.

A/N:

Goodbye Kaiser.

So, next chapter's gonna begin with the aftermath of everything here. You won't see the fight between Avalon and Fenja because, let's be real... there's no real way she wins that. BUT! You will see if he ended up killing the rest of them, or bringing them into the PRT...

Any guesses on who's brought in and who's killed?

With this, we have officially ended the Brockton Bay War Arc! applause

What that means is that we are very close to our first world hop. As some of you know, this was the plan:

Defeat Coil

Defeat Kaiser

Defeat Lung (side quest)

Clear BB of villain groups.

Establish Invictus as dominating hero team.

A bit of R&R/Training

Hunt down Jack Slash

Get the FUCK out of Earth Bet.

We've marked out the first 4 for the most part, and the 5th one is well on its way. Let me know what little character interactions or conversations you wanna see in the upcoming chapters as we head towards our S9 Road Trip arc.

See ya next chapter!