"All barrier units, tsunami protocol!” Legend's voice cut through the comms, and Eric Pelham froze as his chest hitched, vicegrip squeezing as the countdown went off in his head already. “Thirty seconds to landfall! Maximum barriers!"

  Thirty seconds. His hands shook as he stared up at the wave, ears popping from that low rumble as all the water in the world rushed toward them. Twenty-nine. "Okay, that's... that's not a lot of time," he muttered, voice coming out high and rushed as he just lost another second talking about it.

  Don't sound scared heroes don't sound scared. The math should be simple, surface area times pressure distribution divided by energy drain except the wall of water looks nothing like the Rig’s neat little simulations, nothing like practice and his palms are sweating inside his gloves which never happened in training.

  "Twenty-seven seconds to landfall!" Alexandria shouted, even louder than Legend, as Eric’s hands shook, heart a living hummingbird against his ribs.

  A dozen feet away, metal screeched out in front of a cape in armor, Kaiser’s metal barriers rising like metallic mountains that actually looked solid, like something that might work. "At least someone knows what they're doing," Eric breathed out, frowning at the thought he was impressed by Nazi construction work.

  Barrier-unit capes deployed out, already forming up as near the shore as they could get as quickly as they could, real heroes rushing to the coastline in formation that made it clear they've done this exact thing before. His feet moved before his brain even managed to catch up, eyes wide and teeth grit as they carried him toward where the actual heroes were setting up their defense.

  Surface area, pressure distribution, energy drain. Surface area, pressure distribution, energy drain. The math worked in simulation, worked perfectly every time they'd run the scenarios, he should be able to hold off one of Leviathan’s waves without his shield giving way. In theory.

  In practice...

  Well, staring at several million tons of displaced seawater moving at highway speeds, theory felt optimistic.

  The gap… He couldn’t help but feel it again, far too aware of how far behind he was, the least useful member of New Wave. Not big and strong like Dad, he clenched his teeth tighter, Can’t punch through buildings like Vicky. It went without saying that Crystal and mom could do everything important he did, just better.

  He was just the slow shield guy, and no matter how much he dyed his hair to stand out or put a smile on his face to hide it, he knew he wasn’t even a tenth as useful as Amy. Even Aunt Carol, who wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy on the best of days, had that focused precision with her constructs that made them look effortless, on top of combat skill that made her New Wave’s best fighter.

  The shield capes spread along the waterfront among almost two dozen others, each one of them taking position like chess pieces. Bastion took point, massive barriers shimmering to life with solid gold energy that looks like it could stop freight trains. Shieldmaiden flanked over to the left of Bastion, prismatic constructs interlocking in patterns that hurt to look at. Redoubt anchored hard to the right, shield generators spinning up with mechanical precision.

  Eric found himself in the middle of the line, squeezed between heroes nearly twice his age at minimum. "Don't screw this up," he whispered to himself, words lost to the wind.

  Twenty seconds now. Nineteen. Eighteen.

  His chest tingled as his power gathered in his chest. A half-second later, his force fields bloomed to life as soon as he called on it, bright royal blue exactly the way he dyed his hair, except for the translucent part. They were good shields, strong shields, rated for Category 4 hurricane winds and small explosives. But looking at them next to Bastion's...

  "Mine look like soap bubbles next to his," Eric muttered, then caught himself. He knew it wasn’t like that or at least that bad, that his barriers tested stronger than most Shakers. Stop comparing. Still, when Bastion's constructs looked like they could stop a freight train, Eric suddenly felt like his might stop a particularly determined pigeon.

  Fifteen. He shook his head. Don’t compare yourself.

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  The rest of the shield line activated in sequence, each cape adding their barriers. To his right, Statline’s fingers twitched faster than any normal human digits should have, a dozen different glowing lines, white-hot filaments, flared out in front of him and spread wide. Noisegate was crouched on a cracked rooftop at the edge of the coast, overlooking the approaching surf, with grey static circles blooming from his palms, all of them stacking outward. Dabba was barefoot on wet sand, the large Shaker-Brute standing strong in front of a small mountain of black granite with spray hammering it like a drumbeat.

  And Eric's...

  Eric's were blue and they were bright and, most of all, they were his.

  "Everyone link up!" Bastion called out, voice ragged and raw, the cape on the verge of losing it after nearly an hour of shouting over the storm. "One single barrier as best you can!"

  Eric flares his shield wide, pouring everything he's got into it, energy streaming from his chest and h-

  The tsunami hit.

  The sound was like the end of everything, like God dropping a mountain on the world.

  Everything went black as his arms jolted, every inch of them trembling. Limbs suddenly newborn as all the energy drained out of them, Eric forced himself to lift his feet off the ground, holding tight as a gasp tore out of his throat along with a mouthful of spit trailing down his front.

  His eyes snapped back open — they were closed? — another gasp forcing its way out. N-No. He can't believe what he's seeing even, arms shaking as he tried to keep the barrier up.

  So much w-water. Like someone replaced the whole world with it, like Brockton Bay was a new ocean.

  "Hold the line!" Bastion shouted but his voice was strained now, not that perfect authority from before and Eric gritted his teeth, pouring more power, power he didn’t have, but the water pressed back against his shields with impossible weight, millions of gallons trying to find any weakness any crack any — Surface area pressure distribution but the math doesn't WORK when the water's this heavy this angry this…

  “Nnnffff!” A groan spilled past his clenched teeth, and he wasn’t the only one.

  One by one, the barrier unit capes nearest him started straining, Eric’s eyes widening and breath coming faster as he saw each one; Redoubt's generators throwing sparks that smell like burnt metal, Shieldmaiden staggering as her prismatic barriers flickered like dying lightbulbs and even Bastion's massive constructs had stress fractures running through gold energy like lightning.

  No. No. His were buckling just as hard, vision going dark at the edges because all his power's going into keeping the wall up a- "No no no not now please not now.”

  Pressure built past anything he's experienced in training, power stretched thin like taffy about to snap. NO! Everything had its weakest link and out of a million gallons, it only took one to find it, that one point between his barriers and Shieldmaiden's where the energy didn’t quite connect right.

  A jet of pressure punched through, spraying across the defense line like the world's most violent garden hose and just like that… it’s over. Eric’s hummingbird died in his chest as he saw the first arc of water forcing its way through the gap, widening it, making everything worse.

  "Shielder!" Bastion calls out. "Shore up that section!"

  He tried, he really did.

  But his shields were already maxed out, everything he's got going into keeping what he has stable. "I can't hold it!" someone shouts, maybe Redoubt, maybe him, he didn’t know, his voice lost in the roar of water trying to kill everything he knew.

  The organized defense was coming apart at the seams, and it was his fault, his weakness, his gap that had started everything unraveling. "Mom would've held it," the thought clawed through his skull, "Mom would've figured something out."

  The water kept coming, relentless and uncaring about fourteen-year-olds who dyed their hair blue to feel special. He could see people behind the line, other heroes, civilians who couldn't evacuate, all depending on him to be strong enough.

  All about to die because he wasn't.

  "I'm sorry,"

  A second later, the water pressure increased exponentially and the floodgates opened.

  The shield wall collapsed in sections, water pouring through like a broken dam and Eric's shields shattered completely as the third wave hit, feedback ringing through his skull like someone had just rang a bell inside his brain. He fell to his knees on flooded concrete, gasping, the final tsunami towering over them ready to complete its devastation.

  This was it. This was how they lost. Everything they'd fought for, everyone they'd tried to save because he wasn't strong enough wasn't good enough wasn't

  The water began its final descent toward the city as he looked up, vision going dark, as something broke.

  Then something else built.

  Different. Wrong. Right.

  Like rewiring his brain with a chainsaw except the chainsaw was made of electricity and it HURT.

  His forcefields fractured then reformed, dense crystalline structures laced with what felt like counterpressure membranes that his power suddenly knew how to make even though he'd never heard those words before.

  Power flooded through him, different now, and he held his hands out not knowing what was happening but shields formed anyway. Denser, layered, small hexagonal barriers stacked on each other and building outward like living glass, beautiful and terrible and nothing like the simple force fields he'd always made.

  Crystalline structures that learned from each impact, adjusted and adapted in real-time, spreading from his position like fractals made of light. He collapsed to his knees but kept the shields up because that's what you did, that's what heroes did even when their brain felt like it was melting.

  The new barriers sliced through water like it was air, cutting pressure waves into manageable pieces but Eric felt like the pressure only got stronger somehow. He glanced to his right as Shieldmaiden dropped unconscious, her barriers failing completely. What? Both to his left and right, other capes staggered and fell like dominoes, a third of the capes manning the wall suddenly out of it.

  "No, this was supposed to help!" Eric gasped, watching his perfect new shields stand strong while everything else crumbled around him.

  The cape coordination was falling apart, unconscious allies couldn't maintain their sections, water finding new gaps, new pressure points to exploit. Eric pushed his power to its limits, crystalline shields spread wider, thinner, attempting to protect the entire waterfront alone even as his body strained nearly as much as it had before, trying to cover gaps left by fallen allies.

  "Comeoncomeoncomeon!" But there was too much water too much pressure too much coastline to cover. For every gap he filled, another opened somewhere else, an inevitability that his new power couldn't solve because he just wasn’t enough.

  "NOOOOO!"