I received a polite notification from the referees to not employ the use of magnetism again. They had reviewed my fight with Gilgamesh, and given that I’d not used magnetism itself to attack the enemy, and mostly just duplicated my own sticky-fu, they’d allowed the fight and results to let stand, but I was not to do such a thing again, or magnetism-wielders would start showing up in manipulated suits of armor, riding along inside them to compete, launching railgun-ammo, and the like.

Eh. I hadn’t expected to have free run with the technique. It was mostly a way of trying to get my excess power generation into the fight.

+10d6 bioelectricty/Totemic power. +9d6 Lightning Reserve. +5d6 Shock Gauntlets from Soul Magic. +5d6 from Air Elemental Command Ring. +2d6 Shocking from Function and Tiara. Technically, I could also add +78d8 (actually 1248 +36d6 + 152 or so) from Paired Repeating Holy Meta’d Perpetual Shards with Kickers.

And that was not including my Pocket Space, which was sucking in all that power, all the time, along with all the juice my Dupes were putting out, and all that was available for me to dump out if I cared to.

Mmm. Well, I was still getting in constant, endless Rep Counts, I guess. If I was satisfied with just spending Valences, I could Perpetual anything from I to V and ceaselessly send those into the Underweb Pocketspace.

Wall of Force could be interesting if I decided to pull out a hundred of them at a time. It would definitely give Sue a run for her money...

I’d just have to think up something else. But for now, it was my hands tingling with a new feeling under my adamantium gauntlets as I silently called upon the power of Jarnbjorn, which I had established a link to as a Crafter and a Caster, and which was reacting to the presence of the being to which it had been originally upgraded to fight some fifteen hundred years ago.

He strode up, big and tall and massive and heavy, his warped face wrought in an eternal frown, looking at me dismissively, as if the fight was already over and done in his favor.

In his defense, he’d cut a fast swathe through some of the muscle boys that I had handled, as they didn’t have the means to counter his regenerating Celestial armor and power-shifting... but for some odd reason he'd stayed away from Thor. If the Mercy bands hadn’t been active, there would have been a lot of medical attention required of those he’d hacked, pierced, and hammered his way through.

I actually blew a IX just to Assay him as he strode up.

------

En Sabah Nur, the Apocalypse

Human (Mutant Morpher)/2 (Supremist), Shapechanger/20 (Cyborg Construct variant, Cosmic)

Expert/6, Melee/6, Warshaper/5

Strength: 65+

Dexterity: 25 (40 Reactions)

Constitution: 40

Intelligence: 24

Wisdom: 16

Charisma: 25

Notable Talents/Traits: Born Tyrant; Survivor; Bound Servant of the Celestials

...

---------

Huh. Shapechanger/20 was like a bastardization of the Outsider/20 Thor and Hercules and their fellow gods had. It meant he had an ungodly amount of Health compared to normal mortals, as none of the normal humans had a racial Class anywhere near that high, with the closest being the Hulk’s Gamma Mutate/14 (She-Hulk’s was only /8, the Abomination /12), and both Ben Grimm and Mr. Hill sitting on Avatar (Earth Elemental)/14.

Naturally he was restricted by his Cyborg nature, but the Cosmic edge to him, giving him a power source that transcended more mundane energies, wasn’t something to underestimate. Benefits of being a minion slave to the Celestials.

It was cool. He was going to get a BIG surprise when he challenged certain others, namely the Markos, The Rock, The Mountain, and Hercules.

The Sandman wasn’t going to have any problems fighting him to a tie. He’d grind and irritate the bastard down, and the only way he’d have to deal with Flint would be Thunder Claps, which would get boring, repetitious, and not work if he was prepped for them. Bring in enough sand, and Apocalypse couldn’t do much about it but settle for a tie, as Flint wouldn’t be able to hurt him, either.

Nur probably thought he was going to pick on the Juggernaut. His Cosmic energies would be enough to deal with Juggy’s force field, and then it was just a case of chopping and tossing around while enduring Juggy’s flailing.

Of course, if Juggy was successful in beseeching Cyttorak to anoint the handwraps of the Juggernaut with some of his blood, well, Mr. Nur was going to get an armor-rending surprise from the Champion of Cyttorak, and learn why you don’t underestimate the Pact of a Demon God of the Octessence.

Mr. Grimm and Mr. Hill had carefully felt the power running through Jarnbjorn. It might be the blood of a god, but it was being expressed through the cutting power of steel. The Axe was a +VI Legendary Weapon, sure enough, but it had no other real surprises than that. Its power against Celestials was effectively typeless, a Blessing from a god.

Poor thing really needed some Naming Karma for character.

Bringing up some Earthpower to replicate the effect was totally possible for a pair of Earth Avatars like them, and they’d hur-hur-hurred together all night as they worked out what to do.

Me, I could feel the Axe on the other end of the link, waiting with ferocious anticipation to cut this bastard. There was a definite sense of familiarity there, and eagerness to taste his blood or oil or whatever was flowing in him, be it by proxy or no.

He ground to a halt in front of me, and glared down at me with cool contempt. Always polite to old fossils, I bowed hand over fist. “Elder,” I said respectfully.

“Yield now and spare yourself the pain,” he said in a hollow, rather metallic voice, his armored form visibly growing and shifting in length and structure.

“Relying on morale-destroying effects before a fight is a sign of weakness, Elder,” I reminded him kindly, taking up my own position opposite him.

“Your choice, woman!” he snarled, clearly unconcerned with anything I might say or do.

Oh, this was going to be fun. There was a snap of voltage condensing down to visible edges and points on my hands via Versatile IUS, even as his own hands became bladed spears and spikes sprouted off him in a showy defense. He sneered at the minor display on my hands, even eye-catching as it was.

If he had been smarter, he would have realized it applied to my whole body, but hey, let the four-thousand-year-old would-be King of Mutants make his mistakes.

“Fight!” the referee called out.

I released my Root, reversed it to a Repulse hard, and charged him at three hundred mph from a standing start.

He had good reflexes, but not that good, nor enough power to respond with force in kind, even to get some spikes up to take the charge. With a crash, I drove my arm right up to the shoulder into his chest, tearing through his vaunted chest armor and out the back side, impaling his artificial heart.

His entire being froze in shock at the hit and massive disruption as the Bane/Constructs Infused into Function and the Golembane Scarab hanging from my Chasuble turned all the damage to the nastiest combination of effects it could have on him, going after all the important things inside him.

I fought tons of robots and droids. Of course I had a Golembane Scarab. It nicely took care of ALL his Damage Reduction!

I braced my feet on the lower body that had fused into something like a cabled serpent, and gave him a freaking uppercut that tore off the front part of his face, literally ripping the sneering scorn and surprise off it completely. I took a step and spun, and the axe of my heel sheered through his neckless head and sent it bouncing away from his body.

The referee gawked as I proceeded to chop the bastard apart, his body still shuddering and trying to regenerate as I did so. The combination of the boosted Bane of Legends and Blooding said no, and when I was done thirty seconds later, En Sabah Nur was scattered in a dozen pieces across the arena floor as those watching stared in disbelief.

“Fucking cybermorphers think they’re something,” I muttered for the benefit of the cameras.

“TKO and Match to Dynamo!” the referee belatedly calling out, his voice rising enthusiastically there at the end. I gather he’d dared to bet on me since I’d accepted the challenge, he just hadn’t expected anything quite so straightforward.

The roaring of the crowd that came piped in was pretty impressive. Nur’s head over there was rocking back and forth in shock and disbelief, even as the front of his face slithered across the floor towards him.

This was the third day, and I wasn’t doing casual duels with Students today. Namor was going to be later, and I’d just given the Avenging Son yet another reason to not like what was going to happen here.

---------

Unofficially, I was already rated above Namor. Officially, since I hadn’t bothered to challenge him, Champion’s judgement stood and I stayed at sixth place.

He had challenged both Mr. Grimm and Mr. Hill. That hadn’t gone well for him.

He thought he’d have an edge, since he was wearing a set of Bracers that surrounded him in a thin sheath of water. It had literally no effect, other than mild fire resistance, being more like the residue of being splashed by a wave than anything.

But it was enough water for him to function at absolutely full power in a surface engagement, and, he’d thought, give him an edge against the rocky pair.

After Hill’s big fight with Attuma and they’d gone into business together, Ben Grimm had asked Mr. Hill how he’d done so well under water. Not long afterwards, Grimm had quietly asked Dealer if he could get one of those Rings of Water Elemental Command.

Three months later, it had been delivered, a pale coppery thing that blended into the stones of his right thumb, practically invisible, and Benjamin J. Grimm, the ever-loving blue-eyed Rock of the Fantastic Four, had never had a problem in or under water ever since.

Nor had he had problems fighting Namor, although the latter just attributed it to Ben eating more metals in his diet and getting stronger, and evolving beyond needing to breathe underwater.

The two Avatars had both beat Namor silly. His greatest advantage over them, flight, was not something he could use here, and even if he could, they could both neutralize it now. With the additional boost from their Rings against the Atlantean prince and his Water-based might, instead of being at a disadvantage, they freaking dominated him and smashed him all over the place, moving with bouncing, metal-pounding speed when it was time to move, and standing like mountains when it was time to Root.

Mr. Hill’s take-it-and-punish-‘em style got a lot of support for his willingness to endure hits. Grimm’s style involved more wrassling, and his rocky form easily became a rolling boulder or bouncing rock, giving him a uniquely active and acrobatic style for a hulking mass of orange stone. There were a bunch of earth-based Geoic aliens, mostly silicon-based, who were huge fans of his now.

Namor’s style was that of a professional soldier and warrior; clean, fast, powerful, and precise, with allowances made for the fact that he could rend steel. He really had no way to withstand the pair of them, the Rings destroying his ability to keep his footing against them, and they just swamped him, his nifty new Bracers notwithstanding.

His fight against Hercules had been pretty much a joke, and quite schooled, Namor instead accepted fights from below where he rapidly schooled them instead. He’d notably done well against everyone but Juggernaut, who he effectively grappled into a tie, but he’d even taken down the Abomination and Gilgamesh, so he was no slouch with his water helping him.

Dealer didn’t need her Primal Ring for anything, so we had swapped for this.

“Your Majesty,” I greeted King Namor as he came up to the center ring.