They were named Woodhouse and Jakobs. Those were obviously not their real names, but they sufficed if Sokolov was to work with them. Names were needed for communication, not for authenticity. Besides, Sokolov had practically invited himself into their party. The hierarchy of authority was vague between ungifted and hero organizations, like two beasts in frictional parallel. So they had signed him on with barely concealed reluctance.

“We’ve been tracking the movements of their vehicles for a while,” Woodhouse said from the shotgun seat. He was a lean-built man with a thick shadow on the lower half of his face. Aviators fit over his eyes perfectly, reflecting the world in front of him. “They use secondhand cars, likely paid for with cash. At least six have been making rounds throughout this city, making frequent stops at the place we’re headed. For weeks? Months? Who knows.”

“We do know there is no reason to believe this is all they have planted,” Jakobs added. He looked like a shorter version of his partner, with brown hair instead of dirty blonde, cut short for practicality’s sake. “There could be more gifted with psychically imprinted instructions to go crazy at any moment.”

“I don’t suppose you would know what might trigger it?” Sokolov asked.

“No idea,” Woodhouse said. “This is Cold War era sleeper cell shit. Words, lights, time, sound, all of it could be code. Every country worth remembering on the map was employing this technique back then. Whoever organized this could look like anyone.”

“He’d have to be an old man,” Sokolov said.

“Well you’d never know with these gifted. Could look like my niece pouring tea for her dollies.”

“It’s a confusing world for us normals,” Jakobs remarked. “What’s your spice, Rusky?”

“The balding in my family skipped me,” Sokolov said.

“Hey, one of us. What’s it like working for a guy who could know what you’re going to think before you think it?”

“I write less reports.”

Woodhouse scoffed. “I’d write a Crime and Punishment every month before I work under a mind reader.”

The van took a turn. They were headed towards a neighborhood full of old, empty blocks to one side. Banners hung from the top floors with numbers to call if you were looking to lease. The other side was lined with warehouses.

The van stopped. The half dozen silent men Sokolov shared the back of the van with sprang into motion, hopping out the doors one after the other with automatic rifles ready. They followed the aluminum sidings and stuck to the shadows. Two men in suits, six in full black gear, and one in civilian clothes. Two handguns, six rifles, and fists.

They had stopped about a mile away from where those suspect vehicles have been congregating. As they moved closer to the target zone, Sokolov spoke quietly into his collar.

“Who are you calling?” Jakobs asked.

“Some hero assets,” Sokolov said.

“I thought they were all unavailable,” Woodhouse remarked.

It was innocently phrased enough. Sokolov was no amateur.

“We’ve some units who aren’t frontline,” he answered. “They will have to be today.”

“I see.”

“They will be wearing the school’s patch on their left shoulder. Tell your men. We can plan a breaching strategy before heading in.”

“We already had one,” Woodhouse said.

“You’d want my guys’ help,” Sokolov said.

“…Alright,” the agent said with a relenting lift of his shoulders.

--

The overpressure was intense. Wave after wave of air blasted the unwilling spectators. The moving walls of earth had made the crater into an arena, and the audience had been given the best seats. The winners of the game stayed to watch from the safety of the finish line, but they were eventually corralled away by the game staff.

Meanwhile the students who could not leave the pit formed a protective semicircle around the woman with the shattered legs. She bit her lip to keep herself from whimpering while a peer tried to set her bones straight. All while shards of earth battered them.

The winds generated from the fight carried deadly shrapnel from the destruction around them. Each fist from the hulking mutant was a blow that would shatter a mountain. Lyssa watched it push Victory with each strike. She was barely holding her forearms up.

“Watch closer, idiot.”

Lyssa did not recognize that voice, but she followed it. She imbued her senses with Mercurial’s twitch reflex just as Victory was retreating from a blow. She was already pulling her arm back before her opponent’s knuckles met her forearm. And with every retreat she was thrust farther away from the students. The monster would lunge forward to catch her again.

“Take this time to leave,” Mercurial’s voice said. “You have enough stamina for one jump. Let me do it. I can take us far away and quietly.”

“No! Find an opening and destroy the monster!” Sethlana’s overpowering voice rang.

A young memory of Lyssa simply begged to be allowed home.

Making decisions was hard enough for the students stuck in this situation. For Lyssa the difficulty was unimaginably more severe.

“You will die like this,” said Izanami, referring to her indecision, her inability to wrangle her Selves together. It had nothing to do with their strength. That had been an excuse. Lyssa simply didn’t know what to do.

A particularly dense blast of air thrust a nest of glass shards towards her. She reacted in time to dive onto the ground, but the airborne claws have left a red streak on her arm that spilled its color.

“Come here!” One of the students was shouting at her. He was the one who looked like a lustrous statue, his metallic skin scratched but holding. Lyssa crawled towards them.

A piece of girder flew, carving a line between her and them. She shrieked from surprise, but kept moving, ignoring the buzzing of voices and suggestions in her thoughts. She finally arrived at the group of students taking cover behind the man made of metal.

The fear was palpable. Lyssa could feel the psychic emanations of terror pour from their heads. Or perhaps that was her own fear she was projecting onto them. Either way, this was a first for all of them. Who hadn’t wished to see Victory fight firsthand? To bear witness to the savior of millions swing her golden fist, dispelling evil. These lucky few had received such a gift. They spectated with furrowed brows and teary eyes.

“Where are they?” A young man moaned. He wore a stylized piece of gear on his feet. A speedster perhaps. A clotted gash marked his right foot. If he could run, he undoubtedly would have long ago. “Why don’t they teleport us out?”

Lyssa considered mentioning the energetic buzz she felt earlier. That feeling persisted, even now. The monster was the source of it. She speculated that it had a jamming component. Guesswork and theory crafting felt wholly inappropriate at the moment however, and so she kept her mouth shut.

“Look!” Another pointed at the sky. A new fleet of black drones had arrived. They looked bulkier than normal.

“They’re coming.”

“Yes! That has to be it! They’re almost here!”

“Thank you Metalloid! Just hold on for a minute longer.”

The metallic gifted nodded, saying nothing, staying vigil against the shrapnel.

Lyssa kept her eyes on the fight. She was just barely able to track their movements. Victory had stopped retreating at the edge of the crater. Before, she was constantly glancing at the students. Now her gaze was focused, dark, deepened by thought. Then came the change.

Victory stopped blocking and grabbed hold of the monster’s fist, stopping it dead. It was so large it took both her hands to do so. The winds stopped. Victory slammed the giant fist into the earth, causing the ground to tremble. The second fist swung in a haymaker and missed. Victory had leapt over the anchored arm and wrapped her own vice around the creature’s neck. She kicked out the back of its knees and forced it to kneel. Inhuman vocal cords screeched. The monster fought back with wild swings of its fists, landing blow after blow on Victory’s head. Each strike came with its own earthquake. She flinched from each one, but her grip only tightened. Little by little she straightened her own back, pulling her arms upward with her opponent’s neck in tow.

There were gasps among the group of students. Hands flew to cover mouths.

CRACK

Lyssa felt the thunderous sound reverberate in her own bones. She saw what resembled a pillar stretch the skin in the monster’s neck, dislodged from where it ought to be. The top of its head bent down onto its back. A stray pane of intact glass nearby finally shattered. One student retched. Most turned away. Lyssa was enamored. By what exactly she could not say. Victory was not finished.

Despite the injury, the creature flailed wildly, as though the absence of control freed the horrific instincts in its musculature. It had become more dangerous than before. Victory flipped the body around, ignoring the occasional fist striking true against her person. She reached her arm into the permanent gasp that was the monster’s mouth and with her other hand gripped on the dislodged pillar of spine, she pulled. The creature came undone. Entrails and viscera poured out, reluctantly at first because of the stringy connective tissues keeping them together. The ribcage poked out of the two slabs of meat like opened jaws. Even then the arms kept swinging, albeit weakly. Victory peeled the bone from the collars, then stomped on the pelvis, preventing the legs from kicking. With no skeleton to support its efforts, the dense ropes of skeletal muscle simply twitched in place. The threat had finally been neutralized.

The only one standing was a figure in dark scarlet with a wig of stringy gore and a cape of clotted fluid flowing off her shoulders like placenta. Victory turned to face them.

“Are you kids alright?” She asked.