Superhero life? Super-Sized troubles!

Enormous tentacles fall onto the forcefield with tremendous power... and almost come to a stop. They are slowed so much, like insects caught in molasses, but the giant monster has enough strength to push through the field. The barrier does not break, of course. Force cannot break forcefields any more than a large weight can break gravity. The forcefield is just that; a given volume of space where force is applied in specific ways. It is neither a physical object nor something that can be deformed, but an intangible effect with the illusion of solidity.

My eyes glow and twin beams of power lash out at the attacking monster. Where they pass the air catches fire not because of increased energy but because the Force Adjustment part of the Eyebeams weakens molecular bonds enough that air molecules simply fall apart. The beam splashes upon the nearest tentacle and though it is slowed it still cuts through. The monster, like anything with its own power, is resistant to outside interference to an extent. No amount of durability should have helped when the forces the durability of matter depends on to begin with are reduced, but magic keeps working anyway. Our powers clash and I prove the victor, two tentacles severed and the rest retreating through the barrier. I kick the still twitching remains, fleshy cables the length and thickness of subway trains, out of the barrier before their power can take root or they begin to radiate mutating beams. You never know with monsters, so better safe than sorry.

"Stay inside the shield!" I shout at the helpless civilians, half of which are in various states of shock, the other half frozen in abject terror. I only get nods in return from the four soldiers and the Osprey's pilot, not that they would have any better chances than the journalists and cameramen if the kaiju decided to focus its attention on them. Then I'm off.

A sonic boom splits the air as I leave the speed of sound in the dust but before I can really get going a tentacle slams into me like a meteor. Despite its size it is impossibly fast, the bulbous core of the monster being capable of whipping it around faster than a human eye can see. I am hurled into the ground with the force of a ship-killing missile but before the monster can line up a second blow I'm airborne again. In a split-second I become faster than a speeding bullet, a bullet exceeding three hundred pounds with all my momentum concentrated behind an outstretched, invulnerable fist. Invulnerability to collisions leveraged to effectively break the equations of motion means my momentum remains unchanged; I punch a gaping hole through the next tentacle to attempt an interception without slowing down at all, the rubbery flesh and metal wiring of its cybernetic endoskeleton severed completely at my passage.

Another tentacle slams into my back and while it is also a collision it is more of a combat blow for the monster. Themes matter more than reality or logic in powers and Focused Invulnerability has a very narrow application. I drop like a rock from the impact, spine hurting, then slam into the rocky ground and go through as if it were water. This gives me a split-second to get my bearings, reorient and think the next few exchanges through while out of the monster's immediate reach. Could I get time for a high-speed ram? No, it's already turning towards the civilians, probably in an attempt to force me to fight up close where it has the reach and limb advantage. Acting outside of time is an option, but I don't know what trump cards the monster has. Big enemies always do and I'd rather not be tired when they invariably come out. On the other hand, I got my own trump cards to bring to bear.

I blast out of the ground with Forced Acceleration helping push me at a decent Mach seven, searing through another tentacle at the other side of the beast from where the civilians are. As I hoped, it turns around to engage me. Whoever is responsible for making this thing, they would hardly care about a bunch of civilians. No, their goal is a strike at Yours Truly and the kids, the only hero team currently active in North America. I dodge through half a dozen consecutive tentacle-whips thinking that that's a terrible name for a hero team to have.

Focused Invulnerability is on its near minute-long counter to be able to change what it protects again so I drop it and bring up the Eyebeams once more. Directly invisible, matter-disintegrating rays cut a path through both the air and monster flesh in whatever trajectory I can visualize, turning impossible corners seemingly at random but actually hitting the softer underside of the monster's many limbs, slicing into the titanic muscles and melting through cybernetics. No tentacle is severed but more than half are wounded in the process. The beast roars, its cry more akin to a blast wave than sound. It scours snow, dust and rocks from all around down to bedrock with the force of a kiloton-level explosion, but the shield around the journalists easily holds against a measly fifty pounds per square inch.

Far more worrying is that the monster is regenerating. The first two tentacles are almost fully regrown, the many wounds it took since then also partially healed. Even the cybernetics underneath the slimy flesh are self-repairing if at a slower rate. A direct blast with my Eyebeams carves a trench into the central mass' side, revealing tougher layers of muscle so finely interwoven with cybernetics you need a microscope or super-senses to tell the difference. That new layer is more resistant to my attacks, having an additional defense similar to but weaker than my Immutable Force skill.

Whoever made this thing put in a lot of thought and effort, probably months of work to get at this point... but where did they find the power? The mass and muscle they could get if they had a biotechnology power themselves but while it's possible to grow magical ability through other means, violence and murder are still the number one sources on the planet and that thing is way too powerful, with enough varied abilities any sacrifices to feed it should have been noticed. Forget the disappearance of a research station, this would have taken thousands of sapient beings as materials.

The gash at the monster's side is already closing. Three seconds of not significantly harming it and it turns to the reporters once more, one of the newly regrown tentacles splitting length-wise into quad gripping claws before ramming down. I'm already there to punch it away, and the next tentacle and the next, shattering their internal structure and forcing them to limp back until an impossible feint followed by a quick grab from nowhere gets me wrapped up in the second tentacle to evolve into a grapnel. Before I can break out, a city's worth of electricity grounds through my body, causing all my muscles to spasm. Then it happens again and again before more Eyebeams can reduce the monster's limb to sludge.

I fly out of the monster's grasp and evade its next few blows, relying on Eyebeams to deal more damage until Empowering Regeneration deals with my still-twitching limbs. An euphoric wave of energy follows as all my abilities grow slightly stronger. The more the fight lasts the stronger that effect will be, but I'm not the only one who is adapting. That electrical discharge was another straight-up power, one strong enough to hurt through my defenses. That's not a claim most supers can make so how is the damn kaiju doing it without equivalent power of its own? All I can sense is the power level typical of minor supers, just spread out throughout the central core.

I guess I'll have to punch that thing open to see what makes it tick...

xxxx

Mark came to with a groan. His whole body hurt, from the back of his head to his toes. Every bit of exposed skin felt raw, he was pretty sure his ears had burst and he didn't want to open his eyes out of the fear they were no longer there. That scare proved unfounded, though they still ached and he still couldn't see for shit. A few moments later his ears popped, the rapid healing all supers shared just finished repairing his eardrums. The rest of him on the other hand was worse than he'd thought.

His costume had actually melted and stuck into his skin and was full of holes where fragments from what must have been multiple powerful explosions had pierced deep into his body. Those wounds were slowly oozing blood, not as bad as gunshot wounds would have been but still pretty gnarly. Several of his bones were definitely cracked - his ribs hurt too much for anything else - and from the way his lungs hurt with every rattling breath he was pretty sure he had blast lung. That was basically a death warrant without specialized medical attention... for normal people that was. Normal people couldn't regrow their eardrums, after all, though Mark had never tested the limits of his recovery. That would have been a dumb way to go, cutting himself up to see if he would heal.

All in all it meant that he was impossibly, unbelievably, incredibly, gloriously alive! He did not have any durability enchantments worth mentioning and while his base durability could maybe take shots from a hundred-millimeter cannon, even a single MOAB point-blank should have been a hundred times worse than that. He was pretty sure he'd shot about dozen just as that zombie brute was slamming into him. He should have been not just dead but blown to very tiny, bloody bits.

Yet he had somehow survived. And since he was alive, he still had a battle to finish.

Flight with the Gravity flight suit came easily but he didn't dare climb more than a few feet. The Haughton impact crater might be as deep here as the Eiffel Tower was tall; if he lost sight of the ground he might never find this location again in the mist. He also had no idea where this place was, though. He'd been flying during the explosion; the blast must have thrown him back and now he had no idea where the others were, no way to find them. With the magic here distorting all his senses he was already hopelessly lost with no means to find the others but get out of the crater entirely and start from the beginning. Given how badly the fight had been going they might be... might be... but he couldn't do anything else. It was his only option...

...or was it? He mimicked the abilities of the General Atomics MQ-25 Avenger followed by the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. Then he ignored all the guidance systems, all the sensors, even much of what his own sight was telling him and focused on their inertial navigation systems. Systems that needed no access to any external signals, any reference points, landmarks, or outside information at all. You could seal them in a box and they'd still work to tell you which way you were going because they relied entirely on measuring your own acceleration and simple mathematics to chart a course. Maybe if they had been actual, technological systems, the enemy's magic could have still messed them up through direct interference but they were not. They were just his powers mimicking those abilities so there was no actual tech to mess with. He made a turn and the mimicked flight systems worked to chart it perfectly. More than that they recorded it and now that he had dismissed the malfunctioning sensor-equivalents they were giving him useful data.

He did not whoop triumphantly. There was nobody around to see so it didn't happen. He just set a course in a widening spiral that would sweep his surroundings and sooner or later stumble where he needed to be. Moving at the highest speed his superhuman reflexes could handle so close to the ground, he swept the area at four hundred miles an hour. He also made almost no sound whatsoever, because he did not have actual engines like the vehicles he mimicked any more than he had an inertial navigation system. Before long he could already hear the sounds of battle. He adjusted his trajectory, flew just a bit higher to ensure he was out of melee reach of the enemy, and moved in. What he saw was not the worst he'd been expecting, but it was far from the best as well.

Gabby was on the ground, surrounded by three of the brutes and one floating sword. All three of the enemies were sporting deep cuts, one even had one of its arms entirely severed while another's leg was barely attached but the Hispanic boy was seriously injured too. Both his arms had been broken, as had his nose, and he was cradling his ribs and limping both. The only reason he was still standing at all was the sword automatically defending him... but it was just one. Mark didn't know if his condition didn't let him control more than one sword or his power had been simply exhausted but what he had left was not enough to fend off the monsters. They would feint in an out both with their limbs and their tentacles then another brute would attack from Gabby's blind spot as soon as the sword got out of the way. Mark got the distinct feeling they were just toying with him.

Barnes was actually worse. The girl was held off the ground by her arms by one of the monsters, a severely wounded one. Wounded or no, it was still strong enough to grapple the brunette and pin her arms completely while it threw a stunning blast from point-blank range every few seconds. Between stunning attempts the girl would flicker, her feet kicking wildly at the monster, their blows multiplied until they dealt some damage, but not enough. Mark had no idea how many times she had been hit by that stunner but instead of an uncountable storm of duplicates, she seemed to be limited to just a few. From what he could tell she was still holding on via sheer willpower while the monster was toying with her every bit as much as the other three were doing with Gabby.

Mark wanted to puke and not because of his wounds. The moment he entered the fray, drew attention to the fact he had survived in any way, the monsters would stop holding back. Worse, he could not use any heavy ordnance, not with his teammates in the blast radius. In their condition he did not know how much more they could take either. And with a total of four brutes to deal with, monsters that had proven themselves resistant to his attacks, there was only so much even a surprise attack could do. He had a choice to make.

For the first time in his life, Mark hated his choosing to be a hero...

xxxx

Cindy was done for.

She knew it, Gabby knew it, even the monsters tormenting them knew it. She'd lost count of how many times she'd been blasted with that aura up close and every last one of her muscles was not cramping only because of the lingering dregs of power she'd gained from killing the other brute. That power was the only reason she was still clinging to consciousness, making her a little bit tougher but it was not enough. With the stunner hitting her like a punch to the gut and a shock to her nervous system every few seconds she didn't have the strength to break the monster's grip or the focus to make enough instances to kick it to bits. She'd even dropped the magic knife Gabby had given her seventeen, no eighteen stunners ago. By this point she was only continuing to struggle out of spite. Like hell would she give those bastards the satisfaction of giving up.

Then a torrent of explosions chewed up the brute's back. Both she and it were sent tumbling away and in the process it lost its right arm. Cindy didn't care how it had happened or why, only that it did. Before the mangled monster could recover or attempt to stun her again, she flickered between positions. Her legs found themselves bracing against the thing's arm and she pushed with all her might. Her shoulder burned as her arm was dislocated and nearly torn off, but she had stopped caring about mere pain four minutes and thirty stunners ago. Slick with gore, her arm slipped through the fingers of the monster's remaining hand. A fraction of a second later she had flickered to the edge of her range, next to her fallen knife.

Mark, who had somehow returned from the dead after getting himself exploded by his own powers, was busy trying to help Gabby against three of the brutes. Both of the boys were getting creamed as the enemy started using stunners on them but for the moment, Cindy did not care about that either.

She took a stunner at nearly max range, laughing at how the mild nausea and disorientation barely made her flinch. Then she split into as many instances as she could and swarmed the bastard that had been tormenting her for no reason. Unlike the monster, she did not take her time. Before its stunner's eight-second recharge could finish she had literally hacked it apart. A powerful wave of euphoria thundered through her veins and her everything no longer hurt so much.

She walked towards the rest of the fight but unlike Soldier Boy she did not charge right in. The moment the three brutes used their stunners on the boys, she ambushed them with as many instances as she could make - which were a lot more than there had been before her latest kill helped her recover. She didn't try to kill them; a dozen instances around each of their legs crippled their ability to stand upright in three seconds flat. Then those instances manifested ahead of the brutes and kicked out... launching them a hundred feet back with their combined strength. Each monster in a different direction of course.

See, she'd had nothing to do over the past few minutes than attempt to kill the enemy or fantasize about killing the enemy... and even at her lowest she had more than one head to think with. Separating them so that they could not mutually support each other with their stunners was the key. Crippling their mobility so they could not close in was another. Growling like a wounded animal and not caring at all that the boys could see, she charged. A stunner hit her, but she was so juiced up on adrenaline and murder-created power that she forced herself and most of her instances through it, then stabbed down with a hundred blades. A few seconds later yet another, even stronger wave of euphoria burst through her. She could really get used to these murder power-ups.

Cindy was about to deal with the other two as well, when she remembered Mark and Gabby were there, too. A look at the boys was enough to tell her they were badly beaten up, maybe as badly as she had been when Mark saved her. Had that really happened? Had Soldier Boy really saved her life after all those times he'd shouted his hatred for her to anyone who would listen? She took a moment to collect herself, then walked to the two... she couldn't call them idiots any more, could she? Eh, maybe only on Tuesdays.

"Didn't you blow yourself up?" she greeted the black boy as she joined them.

"I got better," he boasted but she did not miss his own confusion at the fact. Looking at things from hundreds of perspectives was so damn useful.

"Really? Because from where I'm standing you both look like shit," she told them then pointed her thumb in the surviving monsters' direction. "Bag one of those brutes each. They're strong enough that killing them gives enough of a power high to heal, maybe more."

The two boys looked at each other then at her questioningly. She could see it written in their stupid faces. 'Why didn't she claim the kills herself', they'd ask. She rolled her eyes and had a few instances push them towards the crippled undead.

"Just get the healing before more of them come, you idiots!" And there went her new resolution, only lasting ten seconds. They made it soo hard to stop calling them names with their antics! "Then we can hunt down whoever made those things and feed him their remains before we horribly murder him."