Three hundred seventy pounds of armored combat wear struck the half-flooded street of Wainright Avenue, the composite armor and servo muscle he had designated as the Cerberus Frame transferring kinetic energy into the street.

  A single calibrated pulse of force radiated out beneath his soles, and the street failed exactly to predicted tolerance.

  Horizontal sheets of heavy rain, each one nearly the size of hail stones, ricocheted off the surface of his frame, hydrophobic plating performing to standard as Leviathan made it clear why water had become one of the fastest rising phobias for untold millions worldwide. Visibility: 3.2 meters unaided, 11.4 with predictive ghosting.

  It was hard enough to handle as it was, but the wind made it harder; eighty kilometers per hour; that was his estimate at least, and shifting vector just the slightest bit roughly every seventeen seconds on top of that. The hero in armor marked ballistic deviation on an overlaid grid as he pulsed a status ping to the Protectorate net, pinging on each Armband worn by a Protectorate hero. Dragon had been kind enough to let him name them, even though it was mostly her design that made them function en masse the way they did.

  Alexandria and Legend returned confirmations within three seconds of each other. Yet, Eidolon failed to transmit even after another six, forcing a visible frown to form below Armsmaster’s visor. Network integrity fair; potential communication dropouts.

  Leviathan moved forty?eight meters due west, body shearing through two?story storefronts with no perceptible friction. Water around the Endbringer moved differently, dangerously, to the point where one had to monitor nearly every stray wave or risk death, at the least.

  A slow death was still death, but far less manageable.

  “Legend, right sweep incoming,” Armsmaster sub-vocalized, a private channel already opened directly to the luminous cape in question. “Shield line exposed.” There was no acknowledgement and Armsmaster didn’t wait for one either, expecting the hero to do what a professional did.

  As he expected, within the second, the laser-wielding Protectorate leader ascended a sharp thirty meters, before banking as he strafed the Endbringer with a hail of light to draw its attention.

  Armsmaster tilted ten degrees forward, and shifted his frame into speed mode. The suit rerouted energy from strength capacitors to joint servos; jump jets cycled for pulse ignition. He ignored the growing heat load because the fight would not last long enough for thermal exceedance to matter. He raised the arm?mounted coilgun, fed a three?round burst of 3?millimeter tungsten?core slugs across Leviathan’s line of sight. The Endbringer’s motion pausing by seventy milliseconds provided Legend room to angle a photonic barrage across the chest. Light energy lanced, water converted to expanding vapor, and Alexandria capitalized—punching Leviathan’s head with enough force to sound off like a dozen explosions at once. Pressure shockwaves ruptured the fa?ades of empty buildings and hydrokinetic backwash detonated storefront glass.

  Legend’s second volley missed as Leviathan twisted, tail whipping with enough force to send a wave directly his way, but Armsmaster was ready.

  Phantom Displacer, Initialize.

  Micro?coils compressed local space, the air around him warping as his suit transferred itself twenty meters instantaneously. The shockwave from it cracked the storefront windows nearest him; the sudden warping of space costing him nearly nine entire percentage points off his power?cell reserve. Acceptable.

  His soles touched down barely two seconds after the tail sweep tore through where he’d just been, Endbringer limb followed by a wave nearly as powerful slicing through everything.

  His right gauntlet fired a spike?cable, tungsten tip boring into Leviathan’s right knee joint a fraction before the Endbringer completed rotational momentum. Grapnel torque shifted Leviathan’s mass by point?seven degrees; not much, but enough that the tail’s scything arc overshot the melee cluster before it could take out a dozen other capes.

  Instead of the defender line, it carved a new trench in the flooded asphalt.

  Fingers squeezed the trigger to the launcher attached to his wrist, barely any pressure. Even still, a plasma flechette streaked out and the monster bucked ever so slightly, projectile embedded into its chest.

  Alexandria’s next strike followed brutal, singular geometry: an upward elbow that traveled less than thirty feet but displaced thirty tons of water. Leviathan reeled, an opening measured in heartbeats, and Armsmaster extended the halberd, the carbon?titanium haft telescoping with servo?assisted snap, blade humming with a vibratory edge that could slice through steel.

  With the slightest shift, he committed to strength mode. Capacitors dumped power into artificial sinew as ozone bled from vent ports. He stepped in, rotated hip and torso, and drew the blade down Leviathan’s flank. The cut scored seven centimeters deep before vibratory fields refused to go any further.

  Behind him, a screaming chorus rose. Voices, civilian. Possibly a rooftop vantage had collapsed. Non?mission essential. He flagged the matter and sent it to the Rescue side to handle.

  Eidolon descended in the periphery, green aura swirling. Power manifestation ambiguous—likely mass?canceling.

  Leviathan pivoted and the Endbringer’s tail splintered a city bus into curling metal, propulsion vector aimed toward a cluster of less?armored capes. Casualty predictions fired off in his head as jump jets erupted, thought meeting action as directional nozzles blasted off behind him, pavement shattering from the raw force of his takeoff.

  The blunted halberd slammed into Leviathan’s side, kinetic payload releasing full force and intercepting the beast’s charge path. Now. Dexterous fingers articulated themselves within his armor, halberd spinning position as a spike shot out from it. Both grapple system and jump jets did their part, working in sync to pull him at speed.

  A split second and several dozen meters away, Armsmaster landed out of the path of a water blast that would have pulped him inside his armor.

  Coherent plasma tore from Eidolon’s fingers, merging together into a column of green emissions much larger than the sum of their parts. Torrent after torrent from Leviathan shattered into steam in a fraction of a second as Eidolon’s spectral output forced Armsmaster to turn his eyes away; optic sensors in his visor nearly oversaturated which shouldn’t happen, but Eidolon’s abilities were as confusing to him as they were anyone else.

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  Still, he had to note, Eidolon power selection inefficiency: moderate.

  Halberd braced in his grip, Armsmaster launched again.

  Jump jets overlapped with his phantom displacer, the dual-use consuming nearly another ten percentage points of power but rewarding him with near?instant presence on Leviathan’s right shoulder. He swung downward and the blade bit down into Leviathan’s flesh. Power reserves flashed yellow—seventy?two percent. Enough for two more displacer cycles, or eight jet bursts, before he risked half-power. He prioritized long?term engagement: shift back to speed mode to preserve energy, maintain mobility.

  Eidolon flew directly overhead, hands held out in front of them as space visibly distorted around the cloaked hero. Armsmaster’s eyes narrowed as a new power manifested—gravity lens?

  Whatever it was, the air seemed to thicken around the Triumvirate hero, rain slowing to a vertical crawl within a ten-meter sphere.

  Leviathan entered the field, mass effect rippling skin like storm under tarp. Endbringer speed halved. A momentary advantage, emphasis on momentary. Armsmaster toggled strength mode again, sprinted—servo hydraulics pumping like rail pistons in miniature as each stride cracked pavement. He timed his halberd thrust with Alexandria’s descent punch; instrument co?ordination achieved perfect ninety?degree offset, maximizing shear stress. The blade penetrated deeper this time, an entire twenty centimeters, until resistance matched the torque plateau, until he withdrew, launching himself back quickly before Leviathan could retaliate.

  Status overlay updated: White Knight—down. Armband beacon offline. He acknowledged that, regretful as it was.

  Leviathan recalibrated, the Endbringer’s tail flexing.

  Charge posture identifiable: low center-of-mass lean, hips lowering, dorsal fin alignment. The classic trench?carve attack, one of Leviathan’s standard moves. Predictable. Target vector: through melee cluster toward seawall, angle 122 degrees. The impact arc was already modeled by his systems even as he double-checked it himself mentally, Armsmaster aware that the attack was not one to take lightly. Rescule lines in jeopardy, containment compromised and pushback…

  Drowned would be putting it lightly.

  He rerouted the power lattice: durability and strength simultaneously. Efficiency dropped, but survivability rose. Forty?one subsystems adjusted at once: gyro dampening, skeletal reinforcements, alignment thrusters… the list went on and on but Armsmaster’s focus had already shifted to more important matters as his halberd folded to magnet mount.

  He charged forward, barking orders and predictions into his open comm as a new power dropped from Eidolon’s hands, bubbles that launched from his hands, growing from the size of marbles to van-sized roiling translucent monstrositiies. Each one of them seemed to freeze the world, trapping rain midair, as oversized droplets formed around each one and forming giant suspended globes. Temporal reduction zones, Armsmaster realized as Leviathan slowed noticeably, tail dragged behind him in one of those bubbles.

  The armored cape was already off, halberd aimed out as he launched three micro-missiles the Endbringer’s way. Three concussive implosions collapsed water inward, focusing shock into tissue.

  He pivoted again as Leviathan righted its posture, still a hunchback but standing as tall as that hunched back would allow at a good fifteen feet of quasi-reptilian muscle and might. The monster’s tail was drawn back, but the tactic changed: a spinning whip with several tons of force to clear defenders.

  He was a defender.

  The world flashed red as his HUD screamed errors: Alexandria was struck hard, the woman in all-black thrown across boulevard like a child would a Barbie doll, the force of her impact cratering a building to damn near nothing. Vital feed stable but decreased movement. He charted a gap in formation: Legend barely assisted on aerial defense as several of the Ballistics Batallion had ducked for cover.

  Eidolon was still mid?power build, Alexandria still down, and the majority of the ground line running thin. Without another moment of wasted thought, he moved to plug the hole.

  Jump jets fired, all six at once, each at diminished thrust but diminished was only a relative term; 25%, enough power to move at a distinct velocity, a fifth of what Velocity could actually reach.

  Still enough for his needs.

  Leviathan’s knee passed by him as he flanked, the wall of grey-ish flesh its own barrier.

  Internal query: fatigue? He didn’t have the chance to wonder as another notification tore his attention away. Suit heat: 93 degrees C internal near shoulder.

  With barely a thought, Armsmaster diverted coolant from thighs. Lower locomotion cooling reduced; speed penalty of three percent. Worth the cost.

  Rain volume decreasing slightly—wind shift latitudinal. Good for ballistic accuracy.

  Armsmaster didn’t have another moment to consider the weather as Leviathan’s posture shifted, He tracked dorsal spines flattening, water tension along edges spiking—a hydro?blade ripple effect pattern. Next assault… likely high?velocity water blades, known decapitation hazard for unarmored. He opened a broad channel: “Incoming hydro?cutter grid. Scatter!”

  The scream left his throat, subvocal becoming very vocal in fact, at the same instant as he triggered a secondary function, his halberd shifting as a finger-thick translucent circle formed at the center — haptic shield disc — and a crackling arc of plasma at the very tip of his weapon merged.

  Water blades sheared directly across the space where Armsmaster stood, the liquid vaporized in a near instant as the heat of his combined shielding function converted a killing blow to little but vapor.

  Now—power at sixty-five percent, his system read out as Armsmaster already flagged a minor withdrawal. A few seconds… just enough to recover, that was all he needed. The mission was still in progress but the suit couldn’t continue exceeding peak combat ratings like this, not without burning power faster than the backup reactors could supplement it. He routed drones to autonomous harassment routine, synced with Legend.

  Information complete. Seven tools not yet deployed. Three emergency systems locked—final fallback.

  Five pushes left before suit exceeds tolerance. The information was already logged and accepted, no further time spent on thinking as Armsmaster just recalibrated his gyros.

  He moved.