“Best to stay away when he gets like that,” Nyx said. “It’s dangerous for everyone.”

Shards of concrete and asphalt broke free of the pavement and road, respectively. They floated towards Mindpunch first before shooting away with the next shock wave. With every pulse, the size and number of shards increased. The force behind them appeared to grow, too. Because of the distance, Danny barely felt the aether leaking through the rift.

“Shouldn’t we get Mista Fista out of there, too?” Danny asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust him,” Nyx replied.

“He’s a kid, too, you know?” Danny asked.

“And? There are kids that are fucked up because of what the world did to them. Then there are kids that are fucked up because they think its funny to behave that way. Eventually, it becomes a part of who they are. Mista Fista falls in the later category.”

As the pulses around Mindpunch grew, the suction pulled Mista Fista towards the force’s source. When the suction pulled him off the ground, the young probationary asset clawed his gauntleted hand and struck the ground. His fingers dug into the asphalt, anchoring him place. The shock wave threw him in the opposite direction, but the gauntlet held.

“We need to stop him, at least. This can’t be good for him or anyone around.”

“The only one who can currently get close to him is Roach,” Nyx said. “I’ve told Malfunction, and she’s passed on the message.”

“What’s he going to do?” Danny asked. “Hit him in the back of the head?”

“What? No! We don’t want to hurt or concuss one of our own. Chemical sedation is relatively safer and the risks to him are minimal.” She sighed. “It’s been a while since something like this last happened.”

“Did he push himself too hard?”

Nyx nodded. “He’s got the volume and power but lacks control. When he tries concentrating and focusing the psychic energy too much… something snaps.”

The rift appeared affected by Mindpunch’s shock waves. It rippled too before bending and wrapping around itself. With each shock wave, the rift appeared to shrink. Then through the pulsing air, Danny’s floating air spotted Roach. The super moved on all of his six limbs, staying low and moving along the walls. He moved so swiftly and without getting spotted. As Danny watched Roach, he noticed the raindrops had changed trajectory, too. They flowed towards the rift and Mindpunch, but touched neither, and gathered in a giant puddle. Waves rippled through them spreading from the young super.

“Get Roach to hold off,” Danny said.

“No. That’s dangerous for the kid and everyone else. I thought you wanted to save Mista Fista—”

Danny pointed at the smaller rifts along the street. “Look. They’ve all shrunk. Whatever Mindpunch is doing is affecting all the rifts.”

“I’m not going to rift one of my own for this,” Nyx stated matter-of-factly. “My priority is the kid.”

Arguing with her is pointless.

Instead of continuing the conversation, Danny leapt from the five-storey-building’s roof. He coiled the muscles in his arm hollows, pointing the mouths at the ground. Once half a dozen feet from it, he primed and launched a pair of compressed air projectiles. Unlike with his previous attempts, the move didn’t hurt and sounded less like a screeching trumpet. They exploded against the ground and the resulting burst of air buffeted him from below. For good measure, Danny had coiled the muscles in his legs as well, and uncoiled them just as he touched down.

The unpractised manoeuvre resulted in Danny landing awkwardly on his right foot and falling into an uncontrolled roll. He groaned, sitting up and massaging his lower back. Danny was confident with better form and control, he’d manage the jump with ease. As he rose, a hand closed on his shoulder. Purple smoke surrounded Danny and when it cleared Danny was back on the roof.

“Damn it!” He swore.

“Trying to flee a teleporting Mover?” Nyx tutted. “That’s a bad idea. You gotta be faster about it. It might be difficult, but you need to trust me. Leaving Mindpunch like this is a bad idea for everyone. We’re better off closing the rifts in the more traditional—”

Danny tuned her out as the battlefield abruptly changed. Besides the rift shrinking into an almost spherical form, the water under it went abruptly still. The waves washing outwards from Mindpunch rebounded from an almost purple circle under the giant tear in space. The floating eye saw the silhouette of a man, surrounded by several glowing amorphous shapes. When the man raised his hands silver tentacles burst from the unusually still water and wrapped around the rift.

“What the hell is that?” Nyx asked, stepping closer to the roof’s edge.

When Danny sent the floating eye closer, a silver tentacle wrapped around it, too. The rift put up more of a fight, but his eye disappeared into the puddle, severing Danny’s connection to it. The piercing headache that followed, almost drove him to his knees.

The still living behemoths broke away from their current fights and raced towards the rift. Meanwhile, the tentacles holding the now almost-perfect sphere went taut, but failed to make it budge. Aether radiated from the strange occurrence, confirming that it was magic at work and not some unknown super. He wracked his brain trying to think of a way to help the process and escape Nyx, but nothing came to mind.

Then Roach reached Mindpunch and stabbed his bottom with a syringe. The shock waves ceased immediately. Whatever force held the rift in space appeared to fail, too. A pair of behemoths reached the sphere just as it started sinking and tentacles extended from the puddle to pull them in, too. The circle in the puddle lost its uncharacteristic stillness after drawing in the rift. As soon as it disappeared, the remaining behemoths shrank to the same size as the pint-sized soldiers but kept their proportions. Many keeled over almost straight away, others fell as soon as the combatting supers caught up to them.

“I told you everything would sort itself out,” Nyx said. “It’s not the first time I’ve been around a major rift.”

“Do you know where I can find Druid?” Danny asked. “I need to speak to him.”

“It might not be the best time right now—”

“I may have a lead on Power Merchant’s game.” He paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. The eye no longer transmitted information to Danny, but he could still sense it. “I saw Jose the Lizard and Boudica take three rift creatures away in an armoured truck.”

Nyx’s brows furrowed. “He never kept the creatures and us in the same facility.”

“Maybe he didn’t hold you in the primary facility,” Danny replied. “Either way, it’s the first step. Take me to Druid. Let’s see what he and Fenrir think of this.”