His jump carried him up a hundred feet, robotic legs amplifying his strength as he leapt high and hard. The world almost seemed to slow, Greg’s brain working as fast as his skin was sloughing off. Need range.

  Mana twisted by instinct, a flood of energy focused on his four arms, and their forearms.

  All of them reshaped, each one reconfiguring as twenty tons of metal in total folded back to the elbow, unfolding out like some kind of mechanical flower that bloomed into spiral turbines instead of petals. The turbines began to spin, blue light forming inside the rotating metal with the kind of glow that Greg had grown used to over the last few months.

  "EAT THIS!"

  All four arms unleashed a wave of rippling energy, each a dozen feet wide, point-blank into Leviathan's body, energy beams carving through water and into Endbringer flesh. The blasts hit with enough force to make the air scream, Leviathan thrown back through three layers of shieldwalls and concrete.

  The impact maximized as all four beams converged, the raw force creating a temporary canyon in the street as it launched Leviathan even further. All of it tore through and away from the Boat Graveyard, cutting through downtown, the blast and Leviathan all centering on a single spot in the form of a crater. THOOOM!

  Water rushed in to fill the void, creating a lake that was gonna be someone else's problem because Greg had bigger fish to fry. Very big fish.

  As the mana beams stopped firing, all sixty feet of him recoiled from the discharge, the mech stumbling backward before Greg caught himself. Note to self... wave motion cannons have more kick than expected. Steam rose from the barrels as they cooled, metal hissing while Greg tried to remember how standing was supposed to work.

  "All units, focus fire on the breach!" Legend's voice cut through the chaos, across the comms, and above all the storm and rain. “Keep it down!”

  Hundreds of different beams, blasts, and fields converged on Leviathan's wounded side, drilling into inhuman flesh that was already trying to heal itself because apparently Endbringers didn't believe in staying down when they were supposed to. Eidolon manifested some sort of black energy that hurt to look at, each blast slowly disintegrating the environment yet able to pin Leviathan in place.

  Alexandria dove from above, adding kinetic force to the assault with fists that could carve through mountain and bedrock both. Purity's light beams joined in, and with her an army miniature suns and purple lasers and red blasts, artillery-grade energy barrages, debris launched at supersonic speeds; everything lit up the gray and stormy skies pummeling Leviathan and deepening Brockton Bay’s new inner-city lake.

  Three minutes flat.

  Inside the core, Greg felt the countdown ticking in what was left of his brain, his body feeling like flesh paper now, only moving because energy was doing a pretty good impression of blood. The mana sphere around him pulsed erratically, vision flickering between normal sight and pure energy that made everything look like a really intense light show.

  "Come on, body... We've been through worse. Remember that time I ate gas station sushi? This is basically the same thing."

  Pain was becoming abstract, just another input to ignore while he tried to keep sixty tons of weaponized scrap metal from falling over and crushing half of downtown. Just hold together. Still got more than a couple minutes left in me.

  "Timer says three minutes flat... That's like, three whole minutes to save the day." He nodded to no one, consciousness flickering like a bad internet connection. "Or die trying. Probably die trying... Definitely die trying."

  The fight had leveled almost twenty blocks and wrecked over twice as many, water mains bursting to create geysers that only helped Leviathan because of course they did. Electrical lines sparked and snapped, adding lightning effects to the mech that would've been cool if they weren't actively trying to electrocute him. "Sorry about the property damage... Brockton Bay. I'll totally help with the rebuild if I survive." Big if.

  The Endbringer charged and cars flipped through the air in its wake like metal confetti, a city bus spinning end over end before crashing into a traffic light. Greg caught it with one reformed arm and slammed it into the Endbringer's face with a roar that probably shattered windows three blocks away.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  On the plus side... traffic is definitely not a problem anymore.

  Leviathan adapted because of course he did, and began targeting the mech's joints with high-pressure water cuts that sliced at Greg’s knee connections.

  Fuck you. He reconfigured the legs with a thought, redundant supports forming as scrap flew to him, pulled by his power and all the mana leaking from him like magic Chernobyl. Steel beams formed diagonal braces, concrete filled the gaps, the whole process happening faster than thought because thinking was starting to become optional anyway.

  "Evolve... adapt, overcome."

  Leviathan's tail strikes became more precise, surgical, probably trying to find weak points in armor that was constantly shifting and changing. Greg responded by making the armor more chaotic, harder to predict, because if he didn't know where his weak points were, neither could this gecko dickhead. "If I don't know where my weak points are... neither do you!"

  "All aerial units, strafing patterns!" Legend coordinated the attack while Greg tried to remember how his legs were supposed to work.

  Purity, Dragon's damaged suit, and a couple dozen other flying blasters started launching whatever they had, laser beams raining down like some kind of sci-fi apocalypse. "A-air support," he muttered, voice cracking on the exhale. "Yaaayy."

  Leviathan tried to target the fliers, got distracted by Greg's massive fists because apparently sixty-foot teenagers were hard to ignore even when you were an unstoppable force of nature.

  "Keep him busy, White Knight!" Legend called out, probably not realizing that Greg was running on fumes and spite at this point.

  "Yeah…” The mech’s head shook with his own, giant shoulders shrugging too. “I-I got n-nothing else better to do."

  The battle charged on and Greg’s time dropped even further, the two minute mark already behind him.

  Even still, he couldn’t stop.

  Each coordinated strike created openings for the others, Alexandria timing her dives with Greg's punches to double the kinetic impact while Kaiser's remaining walls reformed into a spike forest around Leviathan's feet. Good ol' German engineering. Iron spears lanced upward, forcing the Endbringer to shift position right into Greg's waiting four-armed bear hug that quickly turned into a two-armed piledriver into the ground. Am I gonna have to thank a Nazi?

  Leviathan shook free and Hookwolf launched himself like a living blender at the monster, getting swatted away but creating another distraction because apparently even psychotic neo-Nazis could be useful sometimes. Eidolon switched powers, created localized time dilation fields that made Leviathan's movements slow in patches, giving Greg tactical advantages he was too delirious to fully appreciate.

  “Fuck! Off! Fuck! Off! FuckfuckfuckOFF!” Greg timed his strikes to hit just as Leviathan exited the slow zones, each impact having at least double the force as he thrusted forward, venting all the mana he could from his elbows like rocket punches.

  "Science, bitch! Or magic! Or science magic! Whatever works!"

  Half-cackling, Greg launched himself forward, mana thrusters blasting from the feet of his massive body, his feet. The ground cratered beneath him as he tried to tackle Leviathan, concrete and asphalt exploding outward as he burst through the street.

  Leviathan ducked aside, lithe body avoiding the four-arm grapple with movements that were way too graceful for something that size. Fuck! Greg skidded to a stop, water churning and ground shaking as the material beneath his feet got carved up by over a hundred tons of magic-maintained mech.

  A blur of black rocketed past his massive frame and a split-second later, the ground shook. A full-force charging punch courtesy of Alexandria herself was not a joke and Leviathan didn’t have a sense of humor, not the way he got rocked back, the woman hitting like a missile with anger management issues.

  Greg charged back into the fight, massive hand grabbing Leviathan by own arm and leaving the Endbringer wide open for Alexandria t-

  THOOM!

  -for Alexandria to take a direct tail swipe from the monster and go flying miles back into the ocean. Fuuuuuuuck.

  Still in his grip, Leviathan thrashed, the monster using water pressure to pry his fingers loose, high-pressure jets of water lancing into a suit that healed as much damage as it took. "You started this whole thing... don't run now."

  The mech grew spikes whenever Leviathan tried to grab it, metal flowing like angry mercury to form jagged points. The Geo-Armor responded to threat by becoming more, simple as breathing and dangerous as a thousand different swords. Surprise!

  Lady Photon, Legend and Laserdream flew above them, coordinated laser blasts pouring down in a rainbow of colors that was thicker with red and purple than usual. Their beams pummeled Leviathan deeper, distracting the Endbringer while Greg grabbed another limb with the kind of grip that suggested he had no intention of letting go until one of them stopped existing.

  Gahd dammit, his eyes snapped to the side as a muscular tall blond man stood atop a rooftop, blood running down his face but a mass of concrete held high above his head. With a grunt, he hurled the thing hard at Leviathan, doing his best to contribute like his wife and daughter while Greg tried not to laugh his head off at the thought of a family bonding moment during an Endbringer fight. At least someone's having quality time.

  Greg, half-dead inside the suit but still functional enough to be vindictive, grabbed Leviathan by the tail with all four mech arms, feeling the appendage writhe under his grip. The mech's feet tore trenches in the street as he rotated, still holding tight as he spun the Endbringer like a hammer throw, each revolution building momentum that turned the air around them into a hurricane of displaced atmosphere.

  Water spun off Leviathan in perfect spirals the faster Greg spun him, the blond yelling and screaming as loud as he could as he fought to keep his grip against Leviathan’s own impossible strength.

  "GO SOMEWHERE THE FUCK ELSE!"

  The words tore out of him with enough force to crack what was left of his vocal cords, but the mech had speakers and the mech was pissed. With that scream, he let go and launched Leviathan over the bay, sending the Endbringer sky high and trailing off like a meteor.

  BOOM!

  Every remaining window in a two-block radius gave up, glass raining down as Leviathan became a silver streak disappearing into storm clouds a good mile up and two to three miles out.

  Note to self... throwing Endbringers is surprisingly satisfying. Inside the mana sphere, what was left of Greg tried to laugh and mostly succeeded.

  The mana around him started glowing brighter, brighter, energy building to levels that made his teeth ache and his vision blur into pure light. His chestplate began to open, massive metal doors sliding apart to reveal the core where he floated, basically a goldfish living off Mountain Dew Hi-Voltage; suspended in power that was eating him alive one cell at a time.

  Timer says... what does the timer say?

  He couldn't remember. Didn't matter.

  This was it, this was the moment.

  Let's see how much mana "infinite" really is.