Greg slapped on top of the shattered rooftop, wet flesh and open muscle splattering a bloody mess as he slid across cracked ground. His giant mech form fell apart around him, tons of weaponized scrap metal crumbling back into constituent parts while he lay there steaming.

  He was almost a beacon, Greg able to see the remains of his infinite mana still wafting off him in visible plumes; a massive blue bonfire against red innards.

  It wasn’t just blue, though.

  A healthy amount of gray and white came with it as steam rose from where his superheated insides met the flooded roof, water hissing and bubbling around his vaguely human-shaped hot plate of a body. Debris from the remains of his dissolved mech rained down, metal hail that pinged and clanged against concrete; the worst set of wind chimes he’d ever heard.

  "Ow." A rusty, raggedy hoarse husk, that was all he could describe his voice as. And why wouldn’t it be? His throat was missing a chunk and his lungs…

  Well, those were probably half-soup inside his chest. "That's gonna leave a mark."

  On what, was the question, but he didn’t really have an answer either.

  Still alive. Barely. He spit up a thick wad of something more than just blood, the chunk of gooey meat dribbling down his chin. …Great.

  His limbs…

  Well, one of them was missing and the rest barely felt the need to listen to the commands his brain were sending at them. Not… no, he twitched his leg with as much force as he could, the thing shuddering in place… no, not paralyzed. Either way, they were still pretty much dead weight attached to a fading core running on little more than spite and healing powers chugging along as best it could.

  Damage report? "Limbs are officially on strike…” Leg was still shaking, too. “Can't say I blame them."

  If it had stopped there, it’d be one thing but noooo. “...why do my eyes hurt?”

  Ocular pain. He was still conscious, still aware, still me which Greg wasn't sure was good or terrible because anybody who wasn't him wouldn't have cooked themselves alive with infinite mana. What do you wanna be when you grow up? Ms. McGillicudy’s voice drifted into his brain, the memory of his first grade teacher’s voice suddenly important right now. I dunno, some kind of sixteen-year-old pressure cooker, I guess.

  Through the static in his ears, Greg could hear the roar of approaching water, the ocean deciding to relocate to downtown Brockton Bay whether downtown Brockton Bay wanted it or not. Greg blinked up through red-rimmed eyes, everything rushing back at the sight of the mega-tsunami towering over the city; a liquid mountain range blocking out what was left of the sky.

  "Oh right... The apocalypse.” He coughed up another thick piece of red that came with something white and hard, Greg not even blinking at it. “A-almost forgot about that."

  He tried to turn his head, and managed maybe two degrees of movement before his neck muscles reminded him they'd quit this job about ten minutes ago. "Neck muscles have joined the strike. Union solidarity... yaaaaaay."

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  The water blocked out everything, a wall of destruction that made his sixty-foot mech look as intimidating as a toy someone had left in the bathtub. "That's... that's a lot of water. Like, statistically improbable amounts of water. Where'd it all come from?"

  He could see the edge of the shield line right in front of him on the shoreline, flickering barriers trying to hold back the ocean and… well, they were definitely doing a better job than he would have expected. Each one of them was unique, each one of them straining against pressure that shouldn't exist outside of ridiculous textbook physics problems.

  His brain jumped around, neurons firing slowly as he tried to do the math. Do I know any math even? Despite his brain feeling no different than a fresh smoothie right now, he was still doing his best. Infinite mana + Mana Shield + Help these guys?

  Not much of a plan, but once again, it was all he had.

  Now, would it work? Ehhh.

  He wasn’t in the mood or state to do analysis, but he knew it was better than zero, and worse than guaranteed at least. "Okay, Ms. Game…” Time for his usual strategy for life-or-death situations. “Throw everything at it and pray."

  He reached for his mana, feeling it respond like molasses mixed with lightning, sluggish and clumpy but still oddly quick and free-flowing in parts as the blue burned at what was left of his nervous system. "Come on, power... One more miracle. Just one more."

  The simple action of lifting the stump where his arm used to be cost him more than fighting Leviathan had, muscles screaming in protest, bones grinding against each other loud enough it almost hurt his ears. "Lifting a stump shouldn't be this hard... Then again, arms aren't supposed to be this broken."

  His stumpy limb shook with the effort of staying extended, trembling but staying up. "Come on, lefty... We've been through everything together. Don't fail me now."

  The stub stayed up, pointing toward the threatened city like the world's most pathetic victory pose, and Greg whispered through blood-filled lungs, "Mana Shield."

  It didn’t form all at once.

  The shield.

  Whether it was the fact that his own powers were taking their sweet time or because his subconscious had learned subtlety, it started up in layers, the force field building up section-by-section. What was just a few meters across, starting small, began expanding hard and fast in a spread of blue-white energy across the skyline; a low-hanging aurora borealis, beautiful and terrible and probably visible from space.

  He touched his other half-hand to the edge of the blue barrier that Shielder and the other capes had made, channeling his infinite mana into their effort because teamwork made the dream work, even when the dream was "not dying horribly in a tsunami."

  The Shield Corps' flickering barriers solidified, synchronized with Greg's mana stream, a symphony of power all hitting the same note, and the mega-tsunami hit.

  Not gradually, not with warning, it arrived like the end of the world had decided to make a personal appearance, hitting the massive city-sized shield with force that should've deleted Brockton Bay from the map.

  The shield held.

  Brockton Bay survived.

  Leviathan, wounded and now denied his kill, disappeared beneath the waves. The very large, very angry fish clearly having had his worst day ever, left only disturbed water and probably some serious environmental damage that was gonna be someone else's problem.

  The mega-tsunami began to subside, returning to the ocean with the kind of reluctance that suggested it really wanted to finish the job but couldn't argue with physics and infinite mana.

  Greg's body finally gave out, going limp on the rooftop as he rolled onto his back, the timer in his head still counting down, closer and closer to zero, numbers that meant his HP was about to hit rock bottom and take him with it.

  Vision went even wobblier, red eyes blinking as something landed hard nearby, vibrations shuddering through the flooded roof. He could barely see but he could feel well enough, and whoever it was moved with that particular kind of energy and force that meant they punched things for a living.

  "...Hey there."

  Or at least a hobby.

  Greg Vs is currently on Chapter 17 of arc 9, a full 15+ 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 of this story on here, I'd really appreciate it.

  Thank you for reading the story by the way.