"The fuck are you doing, you giant bitch?!"

  The words tore themselves out of Greg's raw throat with a mouthful of blood pouring down his chin. Voice cracking somewhere between a scream and a roar, he watched forty feet of Aryan wet dream send Leviathan tumbling head over heels through three buildings.

  Buildings she had no idea were empty, buildings that could have had people…

  “Nnnnnghhhh!!!” His rage wasn't just at the Endbringer now. No, that fury had company, and its name was Menja (or Fenja) of the Empire 88, oversized Nazi looking as wide-eyed and lost as the bimbo she was. “Kill yourself or die! Just get out of my way!”

  Leviathan crashed to a stop somewhere in what used to be an apartment complex, the sound of thirty feet of nightmare meeting brick and mortar echoing across downtown Brockton. Steam and debris billowed upward, but Greg's enhanced vision cut through it like a thermal scope set to "pissed off teenager."

  The giant blonde stood there looking confused, probably just now realizing she'd launched the city-killer closer to the harbor. Exactly where they didn't want it. Exactly where it could access deep water and turn this from a manageable catastrophe into a civilization-ending nightmare.

  Good job, Nazi Barbie. Really showing off that tactical genius. Unlike her, Greg didn’t waste time looking dumb. He launched himself after Leviathan, aerokinesis erupting from his hands and feet in cones of superheated air that turned raindrops to steam before they could touch him. The world blurred past in shades of red and gray, his vision tunneling down to a single point of crystalline focus.

  Alexandria's voice cut through the wind after him, screaming something.

  Greg didn’t hear and he didn’t care, already three blocks away and accelerating, tearing through the giantess’s destruction corridor as fast as he could. Shattered glass and crumpled metal rooftops crunched under his boots when he touched down for microsecond rebounds, collapsed walls forcing him to bound off bulkheads, paneling and all sorts of structure to keep his motion.

  His anger only spiked as he saw it.

  Screaming civilians.

  Evacuation teams pulling people from rubble.

  More victims, because her "help" had created more problems than it solved.

  Focus. Focus. Don't think about… His claws lengthened and he felt the burn in his eyes tighten again, something that wasn’t tears forcing its way out. Just. Focus.

  Behind him, other capes struggled to keep up, the Triumvirate forming a loose pursuit formation that looked more like organized chaos than actual coordination. Eidolon's voice crackled over comms, trying to sound in control. "Converge on Leviathan's position, maintain containment protocols."

  Greg ignored all radio chatter, his mind laser-focused on one target, one objective, one very simple goal that involved turning an Endbringer into seafood. He was going to tear it into pieces and drown it in tartar sauce while laughing, and nothing would stop him.

  Then he stumbled.

  Orange. A broken orange body half-clinging to a rooftop, and Greg's enhanced vision picked out details he didn't want to. Newter. The lizard-like teenager with skin that made people hallucinate, currently looking like someone had put him through a blender set to "chunky."

  Fuck me.

  Greg dropped down, concrete cracking under the impact, and stared at the half-conscious cape with narrowed eyes. Newter's orange skin was obvious even through the blood and debris, but touching him would mean a drug trip, and Greg couldn't afford to lose focus. Not now. Not when everything was on fire and people were dying and—

  His clawed hands grabbed Newter by the hair.

  Newter's eyes tried to focus, pupils dilated and tracking wrong. "Who... wha-" He raised a hand, probably to push Greg back.

  "Touch me. I kill you." The words came out flat, dead quiet, the kind of tone that made people step back before they realized why. Greg couldn't afford to lose focus. Couldn't afford to trip balls while an Endbringer was setting up shop in his city.

  Blue light flooded against the red, overpowered will trying to mesh with mana as it all flooded into Newter, energies meshing through his hands and finally being accepted into the monster-cape’s body. Greg watched, eye twitching with impatience as the bleeding slowed to a stop, wounds sealing themselves in front of his eyes as the orange-skinned teenager’s eyes went blank. Before Greg could figure out what to do with him, a buzzing sounded off above his head and his gaze snapped skyward.

  Of course, a growl slid out of his bared teeth as he stared at one of Dragon's med-evac drones in the sky, too little too late like everything else today.

  "You couldn't have shown up six fucking seconds ago!?"

  Greg shot off after Leviathan, leaving Newter to the drone and whatever remained of his conscience.

  He spotted the Endbringer first, rising from apartment wreckage like a nightmare wearing physics as a suggestion. Thirty feet of living tsunami, scanning the area with those alien green eyes that tracked movement like a predator sizing up its next meal.

  It was closer to deep water now. Menja's interference had actually helped it strategically, because of course it had. Because nothing could be simple today.

  Leviathan's posture shifted, more calculating than before, and Greg realized with a cold spike of terror that the thing was learning. Adapting. Taking notes on their chaotic fighting and probably planning ways to use it against them.

  Water shot sky-high, all of it surging up from storm drains, gutters, ruptured mains. The Endbringer was setting up something, and Greg's danger sense was screaming warnings he didn't want to hear. Hell no!

  Thousands of gallons of filthy water, brackish and debris-filled torrented around Greg like living walls, forty feet high, closing in from all sides with the kind of precision that suggested Leviathan had been holding back earlier. It's trying to crush me like a tin can.

  Greg felt the weight pressing against his Reinforcement, bones creaking under strain that would've turned a normal person into paste. The water formed a perfect sphere around him, pressure building to levels that made his inner ear screech in agony. He ignored the damage notifications as his muscles strained and rippled violently, holding firm against the crushing pressure. He couldn’t even open his mouth to scream.

  Other capes shouted warnings through the chaos. Legend fired lasers at the water construct, beams of concentrated energy that boiled at the water, even as more flooded in, Alexandria slamming her body into Leviathan and wrestling with the Endbringer but it didn’t stop the construct at all.

  Not dying to this f-fucking THING! The blond spun midair, flames jetting from his boots and sword, forming a tornado of fire that reached temperatures hot enough to make hell look like a vacation spot. Two thousand degrees Celsius. Hot enough to flash-boil seawater instantly, hot enough to turn water into superheated vapor that could strip flesh from bone.

  The water hissed, steamed away, the ring shattering in a cascade of violence that engulfed half the battlefield. Steam clouds billowed outward, visibility dropping to near zero for everyone who didn't have enhanced senses, and Greg surged forward with flames and wind propelling his waterlogged body. "Y-y… you're gonna die, fucker!"

  He wasn't sure who he was talking to and even less of an idea what he was saying, blood and spit flying from his mouth as words tore themselves from his throat. The idea of killing an Endbringer wasn't real. That wasn't a thing that happened. He knew that, knew it well, especially because people had been trying since before he was born.

  But fuck it, it felt real right now, and that's all he needed.

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  "Die! Die! Die!"

  Lances of fire erupted from his palms, tight and jagged but focused despite the rage burning through his veins like liquid metal. Each blast seared the air, boiled water, scorched Endbringer skin that probably couldn't be permanently damaged but felt good to hurt anyway.

  "DIE!"

  Killing an Endbringer was a pipe dream, but fuck it, it felt real right now, and that's all he needed.

  "I'll fry you into lizard nuggets!"

  White Knight launched himself off a chunk of concrete the size of a minivan, the debris field from Leviathan's water surge having turned a chunk of downtown Brockton Bay into the world's most violent jungle gym, and Greg was bouncing between pieces like some kind of psychotic Mario on bath salts.

  Blue mana platforms flickered under his boots when there wasn't enough rubble to work with, each one lasting just long enough for him to kick off and gain more altitude. Higher and higher, dozens of meters per leap, because why fight an Endbringer at ground level when you could take your poor life choices to the sky?

  Just him and Leviathan. Everything else is just... noise.

  The world blurred at the edges, his enhanced vision locking onto Leviathan like a heat-seeking missile with abandonment issues. The path forward was basically a tunnel of rage, but that didn't stop him from palming dense fireballs and hurling them back at the thirty-foot nightmare currently trying to level his city. Each one was the size of a baseball and packed as dense as he could, compressed fire tighter than his self-control as they spiraled down behind him like angry comets.

  Each explosions created a trail of destruction worthy of Michael Bay as steam geysers erupted where fire met water, asphalt flash-melted into slag, secondary fires bloomed across the wreckage, and some of the blasts actually connected with Leviathan, making the Endbringer stumble back mid-chase.

  "Goddammit, watch your fire!" Miss Militia's voice cut through the chaos, probably because she'd just done some kind of action-movie dive to avoid becoming collateral damage.

  Focus. Target. Kill.

  Behind him, other capes struggled to keep up with his berserker sprint through the air. Only Alexandria and Legend could match this speed, and even they looked like they were working to keep track of the sudden shifts in motion and direction as he and Leviathan blurred from position to position. Eidolon tried gravity manipulation, warping space around Leviathan to slow the monster down, but the Endbringer adapted faster than Greg's attention span, using water jets for propulsion like some kind of organic rocket system.

  Then Leviathan leaped.

  Thirty feet of living tsunami launching itself upward, claws first, moving faster than anything that massive had any right to. The sight of it rushing toward him should've been terrifying. Should've made him reconsider his life choices and maybe think about a strategic retreat.

  Instead, Greg grinned.

  Finally.

  Just him and the monster.

  They met two hundred feet above Brockton Bay Harbor, sword meeting talon in a collision that split the air. The blast wave didn’t end where they met, the raw force enough to knock back half a dozen fliers, sending Purity spinning out of control, and dropped Dauntless twenty feet before the golden cape could catch himself.

  Greg's dragon-enhanced strength let him match Leviathan's strike. For exactly two seconds.

  Then physics remembered it had a job to do and sent him flying. “Nnnnggghhh!” Pain escaped him, audible and raw, as Greg felt his ribs crack and give way, red flashing in the side of his vision in triple digit numbers.

  Something wet and warm filled his mouth, but his Reinforcement held.

  Barely.

  He caught himself with an air-burst that went off like a tank gun, blood running from his nose and mouth in steady streams that tasted like molten copper.

  "Is that all you got?" The words came out as a snarl, voice gone jagged and wrong as Alexandria and Eidolon raced forward. His head snapped their way, another ragged roar slipping out. "Stay out of my way!"

  The words growled out of his throat, dragon-blood making his voice inhuman, flat and dangerous in a way that made Alexandria actually hesitate mid-flight. Good. He didn't need help.

  Didn't want help.

  This was personal now.

  Legend's lasers wove between them, trying to find clean shots that wouldn't turn Greg into friendly-fire statistics. Each beam created explosive clouds of steam where they hit water-soaked Endbringer hide, the air filling with enough vapor to choke on.

  Greg pressed his attack, using his speed advantage to stay ahead of Leviathan's counters, dragon-instinct guiding his movements as he cut and cut and kept fucking cutting. This time… I’ll break through. I will. I have to. I—

  He targeted joints, old scars, anywhere the hide looked softer, letting inhuman combat intuition take the wheel while his conscious mind screamed along for the ride.

  His combo chained together like muscle memory from a fighting game he'd never played. Slash, thrust, spin-cut, flame-burst, repeat. Fifteen hits, twenty-five, forty, each strike guided by instincts that tasted like blood and felt like burning.

  Gram bit deeper with every slash, leaving visible gouges across Leviathan's torso. He wasn't happy with it, not yet, only getting a few inches deeper into that impossible hide, but he was persistent and getting deeper with every combination. Progress was progress, even if it was measured in fractions.

  Armsmaster's voice crackled through his armband, clinical and precise in a way that cut through the chaos. "Confirmed damage to Endbringer armor layer. Repeat, confirmed penetration."

  "Major push.” Greg barely even noticed, blue slit eyes blinking as Eidolon's voice sounded off through every cape's armband, trying to coordinate the mess this fight had been since the beginning. “All Blasters in range support White Knight's next attack."

  Support? He wanted to laugh, but he was too busy trying to carve his name into the chest of the city-killer. Fuck your support!

  Legend positioned for maximum laser convergence, Alexandria built speed for synchronized impact, and every Blaster in range focused fire on Greg's target. The sky lit up like the Fourth of July — if someone had replaced the fireworks with weapons of mass destruction.

  Greg didn't coordinate.

  His gaze was focused, his eyes were bleeding and he didn’t have it in him to even waste a moment thinking about anything else. The sixteen-year old just charged through the center of it all, screaming his lungs bloody and his throat raw.

  Somehow, his reckless assault created openings for everyone else, his unpredictable movement forcing Leviathan to react in ways that left it vulnerable to coordinated attacks, all the chaos working in their favor.

  Like anything good, it couldn’t last.

  BOOM!

  Water sounded off like cannon fire as thirty feet of aquatic evil shot forward fast enough to collapse what was left of a building just from the shockwave alone. Fuck! Leviathan surged, moving even faster to the point he blurred even to Greg's eyes. Me!

  Danger Sense screamed as he shot back, narrowly dodging a swipe and the hundred tons of water that followed right after it. Running! For the first time since this whole fight started, Greg felt something that might've been fear.

  Nope. Not happening.

  He pushed his aerokinesis to the limit, creating thrust cones of compressed air that probably violated several laws of physics and at least one noise ordinance. His dragon-blood burned hotter, muscles bulging as he forced his body beyond safe limits, matching Leviathan's pace stride for stride because giving up wasn't in his vocabulary and neither was losing.

  "YOU DON’T FUCKIN’ SCARE ME!"

  He launched himself forward, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  One hand drew back and hurled a surprise forward, roiling heat and razor-sharp pressurized wind propelled from his palm on a direct path and nothing holding it back.

  The baseball’s worth of firebomb hit like a depth charge, blowing apart water and air and anything else it it’s way as Leviathan’s chest cracked a full half-foot deep. An instant later, the Endbringer rocked backwards off its feet and entirely off-guard.

  Not done! Clawed fingers punched through Endbringer hide as Greg landed on it, anchoring himself to Leviathan's arm with his left hand. The flesh under his grip felt wrong, too dense, too solid, like someone had decided to make biology out of liquid concrete and spite but none of that mattered.

  All he had to do was cut through it.

  "Weapon Charge! Dash Straight!"

  Power flooded through Gram, the blade screaming with red energy, heavier and hungrier in his grip, like it was drinking the rage straight from his veins.

  "Eat this!" The blade came down faster than sound, and louder than his voice, flames screaming from it with the force of the slash as it scored across Leviathan's face.

  For a half second, the blade dug in deep, as it jolted in Greg’s grip, his teeth gritted as he forced his swing.

  A half second.

  Then it skittered off armored flesh, sparks flying free.

  But so did Endbringer flesh.

  Greg stared at the open wound going over through and under the Endbringer’s eye socket, the width of his sword and almost half the length. For one impossible moment, Leviathan's eye flickered, and then dimmed slightly, like someone had just turned down the brightness on a computer monitor.

  “EAT THAT!”

  Then the Endbringer's head turned toward him with deliberate focus, three remaining eyes locking on to him and only him.

  Oh.

  For the first time since this whole clusterfuck started, it looked... annoyed. Actually annoyed, as much as something like this could have emotions. Like Greg had just become something worth its actual attention instead of background noise.

  Pressure and waves rushed up, everybody else on the battlefield ignored as Leviathan focused it all right at him. Eidolon blasted away, Legend rocked the beast with dozens of lasers a second, and Alexandria punched and punched and punched, but the Endbringer had made its choice.

  White Knight was a threat worth killing.

  And for some sick reason that put a smile on his face. "Yeah, that's right, you ugly bastahd. Look at me."

  As happy as he was, Greg couldn’t ignore how his breathing came ragged, each gulp of air tasting like copper pennies and ozone, like someone had electrocuted a handful of change and made him swallow it. HP in the low, low, low two thousands and falling faster as dragon-blood burned through his system and refused to slow down, because he refused to slow down.

  Blood leaked freely from his eyes, nose, ears and muscles twitched under his costume, his skin cracking under strain of forces his body wasn't meant to contain.

  Even still, the pain only fed his rage, dragon-blood surging stronger with every heartbeat.

  Part of him wanted to laugh right now, wanted to crack a joke about performance anxiety, but the words wouldn't come. Nothing came except the need to hurt the thing in front of him.

  "Knight, you need to pull back!"

  A cape’s voice cut through the chaos, probably trying to be helpful, probably trying to save his life. Greg didn't even hear him. There was only Leviathan, only the fight, only the burning need to prove that thirty feet of living nightmare wasn't enough to stop him.

  He raised Gram overhead, pouring everything into one final attack.

  Max Reinforcement times six. That was an eighteen hundred percent boost and he could feel it instantly. He knew what that would do to him.

  And it did.

  Health dropped like someone had opened a drain in his chest, red numbers flooding his vision as his eyes began to bleed in earnest, Greg nearly half-blind as red, red, and more red filled his eyes.

  Gram glowed white hot, wind collapsing inward like reality was forming a black hole around his blade. Every cape on the battlefield felt the air pressure change, felt something fundamental in the atmosphere twist itself into knots.

  "Dragon! Slaying! Shockwave!"

  The technique's name tore out of his throat, half-growl, half-scream.

  "Gram!"

  Greg dove from above, faster than terminal velocity, body glowing like a meteor with anger issues and a death wish. The world compressed around him, tunnel vision narrowing to a single point of crystalline focus.

  Leviathan met him.

  Fist raised, water swirling around its arm like liquid armor, and for one heartbeat Greg realized he was about to learn what happened when an unstoppable force met an immovable object with commitment issues.

  The collision happened at the speed of thought.

  Contact.

  Gram bit deep into Endbringer flesh, deeper than any strike before it, and for one single moment the blade held, cutting through layers of impossible hide like it was built for this exact purpose.

  And then… it shattered.

  The shockwave exploded outward, reality hiccupping as forces that shouldn't exist in the same space tried to occupy the same coordinates. Leviathan blasted backward into what used to be a building, thirty feet of Endbringer meeting brick and mortar with prejudice.

  Air warped, space bent, and a tsunami of force wiped out a block's worth of floodwater, revealing cracked asphalt beneath like someone had just hit the reset button on local geography.

  Greg didn’t fare any better.

  Air torn from his lungs, ribs cracking from internal pressure, everything going sideways as gravity remembered it had a job to do and started collecting on overdue debts. Teeth receded back to normal, claws vanishing to nothing inside torn-apart gloves, power bleeding out of him like someone had opened every valve at once, leaving him suddenly, terrifyingly human.

  Everything spinning.

  Everything wrong.

  His vision went black before he hit the ground.

  White Knight (Down)

  Greg Vs is currently on Chapter 12 of arc 9, a full 20+ chapters and a whole arc ahead.

  If you want to read my original novel (Shattered Ladder, Book 1: Empty) ahead of time before it lands on Royal Road, it's currently free to all members on my

  If you guys could shoot me a review/rating, I'd really appreciate it.

  Thank you for reading the story by the way.