Apart from the tense situation between Waterlad and Zephyr, there was a fight still going on in the room. It wasn’t immediately apparent because two Sentrys specialising in obscurement were participating. Snowflake was still making snow fall, forming an opaque wall, and walling off what I realised was half of the office space, while Muffle’s power muted the action going on. I only noticed when an explosion from within the snowcloud threw flakes of snow in my direction and shivered from the sudden cold.

Headache was still active, if moving slower than she had been before. There was more time between each of the beams she was shooting. Fighting with her were two members of the Racketeers: A guy whose mask seemed to be made of paper mache, Junk Mail, as well as a taller woman wearing nothing but a grey bodysuit with similarly grey denim accessories. She also wore a sculpted porcelain mask over her upper face which left her jaw revealed and her black ponytail to hang free. I recognized her as Clothesline.

Her power was superspeed, and when she ran her body density changed. Most of it became less dense, while the rest of her body became inversely as dense, and the extent of this effect was dependant on how fast she was going. She’d taken her name by making her arm the hardest part of her body and running people down, specifically clotheslining them.

There was another guy who looked like he headbutted a disco ball and used the rest as a helmet. He had a blue jacket that was zipped up all the way to his chin, and he was wearing baggy pants that had a black and gold pattern on them. A Racketeer. Prism. The guy was pulling at his legs, but failing to make them move. I couldn’t see what was holding him, but he’d effectively been removed from the fight by the looks of it.

Despite having removed one of the supervillains from the fight, Snowflake and Muffle were still outnumbered. I could only catch glimpses, meaning most of the battle went unobserved. Junk Mail’s ability let him summon paper, which wasn’t that great a match up against Snowflake, but Clothesline’s superspeed seemed to make up the difference. Headache was constantly harassing Muffle and Snowflake both. All that put the Sentrys in a slowly losing battle from the looks of it.

I turned my attention back to Waterlad, who had started striding towards me. Zephyr was interposing herself between the villain and myself, striking at him again and again, but whenever she struck him, Waterlad’s body just caved unnaturally then rushed back to its former form, not unlike the surface of water, and he kept going. Completely unfazed.

Sudden wind forced me to cover my eyes when they got close as Zephyr delivered a particularly strong blow. I briefly saw a hole open in Waterlad’s chest. It was large enough that Zephyr’s twister arm could fit inside and still leaving enough empty space for me to see out the window behind him. Waterlad still strode towards me, uninjured and wearing an annoyed expression.

Waterlad’s power made him nigh impossible to pin down. It essentially caused him to be liquid, but didn’t interfere with his solid form. Therefore he could do anything like a normal human would, but without most of the side effects of literally being water. Physical attacks, like the ones Zephyr was delivering, as well as the ones I would use, wouldn’t be able to actually do anything to him.

His trident, on the other hand, had been proven to be quite an effective weapon in the past. I kept my eyes on it as he extended his free hand towards me.

“Hey rookie.” He waved, ignoring Zephyr’s hand in his head. “Welcome to the world of heroes and villains.”

“Do not engage with him.” Zephyr told me. She abandoned the futile effort and flew into me, pushing me several metres across the room before setting me down. “You can’t do anything to set him back, I’ll hold him here. You reinforce Snowflake and Muffle. That goes for Slingshot as well. Get her out of the ceiling.” Then she flew back towards Waterlad, dodging as he raised his trident and delivered a blow that nearly parted the teenage villain in two.

“I just want to give him the down low!” Waterlad exclaimed once he had reformed.

“You mean to invite him to your side!” Zephyr retorted.

“Would I be so unjustified!?” Waterlad shot back, adopting a pretentious tone. “With the way you treat your subordinates, I’m surprised that there even is a Sentry!”

I shook my head and glanced at the ceiling in time to see one of the tiles buckle downwards. Ignoring the banter between Waterlad and Zephyr, I ran up to the tile and jumped on a desk. I pushed it up, startling the blond heroine.

“Slingshot, we have to reinforce her.” I realised that wasn’t right. “No, not Zephyr. We have to back up Muffle and Snowflake. Get down, out of the ceiling, and help. Zephyr’s words, not mine.”

Slingshot nodded, gulping and emitting a “meep” like sound. I stopped my power and fell to the floor, sticking the landing for once. When Slingshot had extracted herself from the space between the ceiling and the floor above, I looked at the fights going on around us.

The cloud of snow Snowflake was responsible for had shifted further away from us, telling of the movements of the engagement. Every so often the snow would clear, and I’d see a villain running for cover or winding up for an attack. Headache’s beams lit the area again, striking at the ceiling. I had an idea.

“What’s the range on your telekinesis?” I asked Slingshot.

“I don’t know.” She confessed. “Um, I mean, it’s a good range. I can probably pick up anything in this room. I’ll struggle with the heavy stuff, though.”

“Good enough, here’s the plan.” I checked where Waterlad was. Zephyr was slowing him down, but he seemed adamant on getting closer to me, so I started pulling Slingshot further away. “You stay as far out of reach as you can. When you see a villain, use your power and drop a ceiling tile on them. Easy enough?”

Slingshot nodded as she drifted upwards, but she didn’t fly away to safety. I ignored it, I needed to figure out a good moment to join the fray and Snowflake’s power was making that harder than it should have been. Due to the powers being thrown around in the room, I was hesitant to step close to the blizzard. I didn’t know if Headache’s beams stuck to clothes, and from what I had seen, they probably did. There was only one way to be sure and that was a chance I wasn’t willing to take.

It didn’t matter in the end. The next time the snow cleared a dark shape barreled towards me from within. It was moving at such a fast speed that I wasn’t able to dodge out of the way. The blur caught me in the shoulder and I was sent spinning onto a shelving cabinet.

I was able to recover quicker than I had when I was fighting Killer Kage, and I used my power to swing at where the villain had been. Of course, being so fast, my assailant was nowhere near my swing when it occurred. I took a moment to figure out where they had gone and saw a denim clad villain picking herself out of a ruined desk. She dusted snow and dust off of her shoulder and I readied myself as Slingshot was awkwardly drifting away off to my left.

Clothesline looked up and saw us. Her head turned to Slingshot. “I remember you.” Her voice was raspy, and cracked a little on ‘you’. I liked how it sounded, but I didn’t let myself dwell on that. “You were with Zephyr in the tower. I’ll bet this is the first time you’ve been outside. Same goes for you.”

“No.” I said settling into a batting position. “I’ve been outside before. Several times a day, actually.”

“Lock?” Slingshot called quietly.

“Rookie, that wasn’t meant literally.” Clothesline tilted her head back and to the side. Rolling her eyes. It didn’t have as much of an effect since she was wearing a mask. “I was talking about- Know what? It doesn’t matter.”

Clothesline’s body blurred, and suddenly she was no longer there. I swung reflexively, amplifying the force in the swing by three. The swipe met nothing. Clothesline’s target wasn’t me. I looked in time to see a grey blur with a surprisingly solid left arm take Slingshot down to the ground.

A ceiling tile hit the floor where Clothesline had been standing and I heard a girl’s scream. I recovered from overbalancing on the swing. The staff had slid itself upwards in my grip and I was no longer holding it where there was a good centre of balance. So I turned its gravity to zero and ran towards Slingshot and Clothesline.

Before I was able to get close things started flying. The pieces of stationary that hadn’t been knocked off the desks yet started lifting up, drifting for a moment, then darting towards the hero and villain. Clothesline was standing, or rather, flickering over Slingshot, and was delivering vicious kicks and punches from all angles. Slingshot was curled up on the floor, weathering the assault as best she could. I heard her cry out each time she was hit.

The pens, erasers, and sometimes keyboards Slingshot was using to attack Clothesline were easily dodged by the villian. She simply moved fast enough that she had enough time to dodge every single projectile sent her way. They weren’t well aimed projectiles either. Slingshot hadn’t been lying when she said it was difficult to shoot things towards her.

I finally got close enough to swing and pulled the staff back in preparation for the attack. Then I was hit in the back as Clothesline was suddenly behind me. My mind blanked between the time I got hit and when I hit the ground, and my staff dropped from my grasp, clattering across the floor.

We never stood a chance. Clothesline power let her move more than five times as fast as Slingshot or myself, and that was a conservative estimate. She had the speed to navigate our attacks as if we were moving at a snail’s pace, and had the necessary weight behind her punches to do real damage. We were in way too deep.

My eyes opened and I gasped for air. After a second I flinched and tried to roll over. The porcelain mask wearing villain standing over me rolled me back before I got anywhere.

“Just welcoming you to the ring, rookie.” Clothesline slapped me, thankfully without hardening her hand. “Y’know, I’m partnered with psychopaths, guys really fucked in the head. When we were briefed on this we were told to delay you guys. Not to maim, and not to kill or anything, they didn’t say that. Just to delay. The others all got this look in their eyes, like they were looking forward to this when Yearn said that. See, my working theory is that most of the rest of the Racketeers don’t care for words like “Delay” so much as they’re looking forward to the fight, and they’re looking to make it last for as long as possible.”

I stared at her, remembering what Killer Kage said during our encounter. It kind of in tune with what Clothesline was telling me now, if with extra psychopathy mixed in. My fingers brushed against a keyboard Slingshot had probably thrown using her power. This would make two.

“And I can see where they’re coming from, but it just seems so pointless.” Clothesline was monologuing now. “I’m supposed to slow you down, but fighting a long, drawn out fight is a lot of effort. I feel like it’s better to just deal with you straight away. Case in point.”

Clothesline flickered in place, coming to a stop a fraction of a step from where she left. Slingshot’s cry was cut short.

I fumbled with the keyboard and started swinging it towards Clothesline. Suddenly, she was right in front of my face. Her porcelain mask filled my vision and I flinched back before I could get a good swing going. She was too close for that swing, anyway. Clothesline dashed back and maintained some distance between us.

A “Tsk” sound came from behind the mask. “Rookie, I know you have super strength. I’m not letting you swing at me, grab at me, or do anything at all, really. That would be very, very stupid.”

I stared at her eyes through the holes in the mask. Clothesline hadn’t put anything on to conceal her eyes, so I could see the intense hazel colours staring at me. That didn’t do much to help her keep her identity secret, but then again, she was wearing denim on a battlefield. She probably hadn’t even considered putting on armour.

My thoughts raced. She said I had super strength, which was wrong. I had telekinesis, which couldn’t be more different. No. Other things had fewer similarities. Wait, could I use that to my advantage? Clothesline thought had super strength, and therefore needed a wind up to hit her, but that wasn’t necessarily true. I tended to swing at people physically and use my power to enhance the force behind the swing, but that was more for me to keep hold of my weapon when I did that. It also let me use known forces as a benchmark.

When I’d used the toilet paper to shoot the spiders earlier, there hadn’t been any wind up. Now there was and I wasn’t sure exactly how aerodynamic a keyboard was. Maybe I could use I to hit Clothesline. She was insanely fast, but when I imposed a force on something the reaction was instant. I doubted Clothesline would see that coming.

Making sure to stay relatively still, I angled the keyboard so it was between my hand and Clothesline. I didn’t want my fingers to get in the way again.

Clothesline noticed the movement and glanced at my hand. “Right, while it’s been fun, I really do need to help out Junk Mail. Fighting Snowflake is like trying to pick out white glitter in the snowfall.”

I gave the keyboard the force I’d given to the one that had broken Killer Kage’s arm while she was finishing that monologue. I felt air rush around my hand, heard another sickening crack, followed by a horrible scream and Clothesline dashing around randomly. I tried to scramble to my feet and get away, but the speedster collided with me, bringing me back to the ground as I tried.

The fact that this was the closest I’d ever been to a girl was not lost on me as I scrambled to get her off of me. When I was out from under her, I took a moment to make sure Clothesline wasn’t an issue anymore. She was moaning at a supernatural speed and thrashed around a bit before eventually settling at a normal speed. I bolted to check on Slingshot and found her in a strange way.

Clothesline had hit Slingshot in the face, and her aviators were now lying, utterly bent, on her chest. One of the limbs caught in her costume. The blow had left a frighteningly clear mark on Slingshot’s face where the rims of the glasses had been pressed into her face. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving, just drifting, telling me she was unconscious as she floated above the snow that had gathered on the floor.

The most unsettling thing about the sight was that Slingshot wasn’t lying flat on the air. Instead she was lying on a dutch angle and was rotated to a three quarter angle away from the floor.

I grabbed Slingshots shoulders and started shaking her, but she didn’t rouse. My mind moved back to the few lessons in first aid I’d had over the past week. They were brief, barely an hour long, and my tutor kept changing, so I had to sit through different explanations for the same thing. But one thing I remembered was that if someone was unresponsive, the best way to get a reaction is through a pain response. I grabbed a pen and pressed the flat of it into Slingshot’s fingernail. There was no response, so I used my power to press harder.

Slingshot gasped and jackknifed forward, barely missing me with a headbutt as she did.

I grabbed her shoulders and tried to hold her still. “Slingshot, it’s me, Lock.”

Slingshot was hyperventilating. I didn’t know what to do. Clothesline groaned behind me so I glanced back at her and felt my stomach flip. Her shin wasn’t straight, she was holding it at that weird angle with both hands. If I was right, she was about to try and set it, so I looked away. The grinding sound and scream of pain behind me told me I was right.

While I was looking away, Slingshot was facing towards Clothesline. When Clothesline corrected her leg, Slingshot stopped hyperventilating. She made a whining noise, which finally keyed me into what was happening. I turned her head towards mine, but she was still looking at Clothesline.

“Slingshot.” I said, trying to get her attention. “Slingshot!”

Her eyes met mine. They were green.

“You’re not breathing.” I told her.

Slingshot’s eyes were wide, and she was quivering. I realised this girl wasn’t meant to be here. She was scared- no, she was terrified. It was something I really sympathised with, but something needed to change, otherwise Slingshot would get in an even worse way.

Her eyes darted to something behind me. I turned to see the guy with a disco ball for a mask approach, his hand outstretched and glowing. If he was about to shoot a beam at us, he was interrupted by his sudden lifting into the air. His hands clawed at the mask and his legs swung wildly, the glow of his hand faded quickly.

Then he shot downwards head first. There was a thud and he stopped moving. Slingshot breathed out and leaned against me. At the same time Clothesline was standing up, sending alarm bells off in my head. Didn’t she have a broken leg? Was she going to take revenge for me breaking her leg?

If she wanted revenge, she wasn’t going for it now. Clothesline turned into a blur and sped off towards Snowflake’s snow cloud. I noticed her good leg was solid. It kind of looked like she was hopping at an extreme speed.

There was a break in the cloud and three things happened. First, Muffle stumbled out of the snow, one arm and half his torso covered in paper that was blowing off of him. Then Headache’s beam lanced out from within the cloud and deposited two orbs of volatile energy near Muffle’s feet. And finally Clothesline tackled Muffle to the ground, making her chest solid instead of her leg at the last second.

Muffle and Clothesline went down a near Headache’s explosive orbs. After a moment I realised the orbs were about the same distance away from Slingshot and myself.

“Take cover!” I yelled as I scrambled to get behind something. Slingshot was quicker on the draw than me, and darted several metres further than me in the space of a single second.

Fliers.

I didn’t manage to get behind cover before the orbs went off, and was picked up by the shockwave. It carried me a short way before I impacted against the shelf Clothesline had hit me into before.

Painfully, I pulled myself to my feet and looked at where Muffle and Clothesline had been. No, where they still were. They looked like it hadn’t even gone off. My gaze drifted downwards. My body was heavy and the aches weren’t helping. I noticed the carpet where the orbs had detonated was ripped up to a point. That point being about where Muffle’s black hole of sound would’ve started.

That meant Headache’s power was also consumed by- Another set of explosions courtesy of Headache went off somewhere I wasn’t looking see.

The world went sideways, then black.

~~~

“Sentrys!” Zephyr’s shout brought me back to the present. “Retreat!”

I jerked up. Snowflake’s cloud had moved into the centre of the room and was considerably less dense than it had been when last I looked at him. Snowflake was sliding across the carpet towards a staircase inexplicably in the centre of the room, previously hidden by the snowstorm. Muffle was barreling after her at a slower pace. Slingshot darted past me up the staircase, and Zephyr was still engaged with Waterlad.

She gave me an urgent “Lock!” and Waterlad swung at her with his trident. Zephyr blocked with her hurricane arm, using one of her handheld twisters to redirect the attack while the other struck back at his head. Waterlad’s grin rippled away and returned in less than a second.

That was more than enough to get me moving. I scrambled in the direction Snowflake had run. My head was still aching, and the blurs at the edge of my vision reminded me that Clothesline was probably still around. The ache worsened, and I held my hand to my head as I finally made it to my feet.

I made it to the stairs and made to start ascending, only I passed some kind of barrier and the stairs were suddenly a step further than I thought they were. The sudden mislocation took me off guard and I couldn’t correct my step in time, so I tripped on nothing and barely caught myself before I cracked my teeth on the stairs.

A noise from behind me made me turn. The guy who wore the disco mask was standing with his hand outstretched and glowing. He lowered it, clicking his tongue. As he did, the barrier I passed faded, and he was suddenly five paces away from me.

That was Prism’s ability. He had the power to shoot blinding rays of light, as well as set up fields of refraction according to the wiki. I had seen him use, or try to use both in the past however long it had been. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out.

Jumping at the reveal, I turned to scramble up the stairs and stopped. The air around me was trembling, only it wasn’t really. Everything was normal except for the fact that huge forces were present, but acting in opposition with themselves and therefore were cancelling themselves out. It was a vibration only I could sense, and it was destabilising, growing larger by the moment. The effect was greater in the direction that I came from, I touched the staircase and the building snapped into focus. I was able to identify where the source was. It was close.

Instead of running up the stairs I took cover behind them. Then the space in the room tore apart and thunder rocked what remained. The guy with the disco ball helmet was thrown past where I’d taken cover, and the sensory part of my power went haywire. I could see, but I felt blind. Then everything returned to normal.

I recovered from the sudden shift in space, then peeked out from behind the stairs. A new man was standing in the room, glowing a soft white-green colour. The glow softened, and turned to a blue colour, then transitioned to white, then red, then finally to the colours of Victorious’ costume.

He wore a dark blue hooded flowing cape, which was just settling around his feet. He wore light armour a shade darker than his cape, but a closer inspection would reveal dark reds adding texture to the costume. A light mask covered his eyes and cheekbones, but left the rest of his face relatively visible. Victorious didn’t care for heavy armour like his associate Archangel did, he thrived off of superior mobility.

The man turned slowly, surveying the room as villains regained their footing and saw who had just arrived. His figure ascended, still turning. The snow around him evaporated and I felt the temperature rise. It was an imposing scene, and everyone stopped to watch despite themselves. It was a fitting entrance for one of the Aegis, and one who numbered among the three undisputed strongest Transhumans in the world.