I could see Sue was over there, invisible, her unseen force fields pushing the bastard’s hands and feet away as it lashed out, contributing to its horrible accuracy. Peggy smashed into the back of its knee, her silver mindblade punching into the armored joint and drawing a scream of pain and revulsion from the figure. It swept down at her, knocking her away, and Firetop came burning right in there behind the blow and promptly filled the hole with Nova-intensity flame, practically burning off half of its left leg.

Yeah, it didn’t much like that, energy writhing within the armor as it rebuilt its integrity.

Morgan, Nimue, Dealer, and Ursula had this dolt ringed and the area Sealed, and the Shields were on Save-the-City duty as it flailed about at the heroes who could still fly. Thor, War Machine, Wonder Man, the Wasp, and LJ were about it.

The Rock literally bounced over to its good leg, latched on, and the ground for a hundred feet around him crunched as he locked to it and heaved sideways, sending it right into the incoming Wonder Man’s fist. Telekinetic hands trying to control its fall didn’t work, and a bolt of lightning as thick as a man came screaming down from the sky and pounded the bastard into the ground.

Still, its shields were pretty good... except flashes of silver kept tearing them down, and when they did, azure arcs of lightning abused it with Divine condemnation.

“Its claim that it’d tear Primus out of the sky and return Terra to the true people did get some interest from us,” I replied, crossing my arms. “Did it claim a name?” I asked neutrally. “Crusader or something grandiose and archaic?”

DiDi snickered, “Onslaught!” I glanced over at her, and she just shrugged. “I don’t give them names!”

“It tried to kidnap Franklin,” Reed said grimly, approaching his final calibrations, ignoring the tumult ahead of us. Ben got backhanded like he was a child, hurtling away at incredible speed... but barely a hundred yards away, he slowed down abruptly and basically floated down to the ground. Seconds later, Runes on his hide burning silver, molten cracks blazing scarlet against his scorched hide, he was bouncing back into the fight. “DiDi and the Baxter defenses held it off long enough for help to come in, and it fled here.”

I flicked an eye into the surrounding areas, where the less mega-powered heroes were disassembling some rather large numbers of people engaged in suspicious activities. The Spiders, Arrow, and most of the Baxter crew of college-age mutants and hero-types were among the capes. “Naturally it had the ground prepared for something...”

“Something reality-rending in power,” DiDi stated calmly. “Meant to trap or disable Primus, if it couldn’t handle it.”

“Poor baby.” Whatever it was planning was getting disrupted quickly, as McCoy analyzed what was going on and made sure the key portions of it were destroyed. There was an explosion off to the side of polychromatic energies that looked like some type of exotic power generator getting a Cannonball to something vital.

Sam Guthrie, leading with his chin as usual...

Onslaught didn’t seem to like that much, but the unending assaults and constant rending of its force shields were definitely a bit much for it to work with, and the Interdiction and Stillflight were still totally interfering with any form of psychic Summoning and reality-bending.

“It’s putting out a lot of telepathic pressure, I see?” DiDi was supercharging Reed’s device, and it was thrumming up in the psi bands, slamming into a lot of mental force pouring out at us with demands to submit and obey.

My own layered psychic defenses weren’t letting it through, and everyone who had any brains in this business wore magnapsium now, enchanted and tech-enhanced with Parker Psion Protection ™ to keep out them nasty telepaths. I could imagine that the entire surrounding city might have gathered up and charged in to help the bastard if Reed hadn’t twinged to the trick and stopped it.

“The Casters are caging its mind-bending on the magic level, while I’m countering its psionic broadcasts,” Reed explained. A crimson arm flicked out in our direction, and something extremely powerful detonated in front of us and went flying into the sky as it touched the force fields being generated from DiDi’s gauntlets, bolstered nicely with some exotic Sigils. The rebound against the dolt wasn’t appreciated by it at all, drawing another bellowing curse and rant from it. “I understand one of your sisters has been chasing it around the mindscape for several weeks now?” The bellow ended with a crashing right to the jaw by the Rock, who grabbed onto Onslaught’s helmet and slammed six Crimson-hued Piston Punches the size of a small car into it hard enough to send it reeling backwards before Ben was flung off yet again. The Crimson Cestus of Cyttorak, on the job...

“The Crux are trying to make themselves their own god to take over the world. It’s a thaumental construct powered by willing souls amalgamated into a collective consciousness,” I informed him. “It was after your son for his reality-bending powers.”

“Yes, we surmised the same. The recent tumult over the slain mutant Proteus concerned the same matter, correct?” Reed asked icily.

“We believe so.” The Euroforce had thought they had stopped the effort, until they realized there was a child mutant energy-absorber who was the real attempt to reform Proteus. He had abruptly disappeared as they attempted to recover him from his bitch of a mercenary mother, gone in a violent explosion, and they’d wondered if he’d been overloaded and destroyed. “The Interdiction is keeping down its stolen reality-warping powers from Proteus, then. It either absorbed the boy or drained his powers from him.”

It wouldn’t have near the Caster Level to beat any of the Casters holding that power down. Reality might as well have been made of adamantium for all it was concerned.

“It is basically made up of dead souls, and fed on both raw magical and psionic energy, then. Is there a way to disassemble it and destroy it?” Reed asked directly, glaring at the creature that had tried to steal his son away.

“Blast it with vivic energy while immersing it in the sun would probably work. The combined energies at that scale will disrupt its integrity, and then vivus will start devouring its unnatural energies quickly. It’s made up of dead souls, after all, trying to exist in the world of the living.” I considered the problem. “Any other solution will leave its resonance intact, and it will just rebuild itself over time.” I eyed his informational displays. “Do you have its core frequencies, Reed?”

“Nearly.” Ten boneless fingers, each ‘joint’ a contact point, were dancing over buttons and keys as he watched displays, mentally zeroing in on the foundation of Onslaught’s powers. “I can’t speak for its magical powers, but its psionic ones should be in this range...”

“I need another Sigma to spring a reversal on it,” I said with a glance, voltage starting to dance on my fingertips.

Another force wave tore up the ground in front of us, filled the air with debris, and blew into the sky, deflected.

“I think it may have a modicum of intelligence,” DiDi mused, her eyes never leaving it, the white lenses glowing as hazesight ignored the stuff in the air. “I think it’s trying to escape. LJ and Ben are having none of it...”

“Hey, Didi, how about a supercharge?” James Rhodes called down from inside the War Machine armor.

DiDi glanced at me, being on Protect the Doc duty, and so I raised my hands and hit him.

Green-white voltage went writhing out in a humming stream, all the more ominous for the lack of crackling. It poured into Rhodey’s armor, perfectly attuned to it, and he whooped as he promptly began letting go with the biggest array of repulsor blasts that he could... which was pretty impressive when he was getting supercharged like that.

Unable to fly and with its legs being constantly knocked out from under it, as well as being tossed around and bashed back and forth by the superstrong heroes who understood what it was trying to pull off, Onslaught was unable to get away. The Shielders were taking the most powerful of its blasts with aplomb, the four Casters were holding down its mental influences, and its trap for Primus had obviously failed.

It wanted to flee and discorporate back into the spiritual planes, but that wasn’t going to happen, either, now that it had been stupid enough to incarnate here.

“This should do it!” Reed announced, and I scanned the readouts, which were fine-tuning through rampant interference and fluctuations with incredible speed, helped along by the dolt still trying to get through telepathically to us.

“Hey there!” a new voice interjected. “Can I help?”

I turned to look at Red MJ standing there, blinked once, and very slowly, smiled.

“Hey, there’s a Null Fifteen standing here,” DiDi murmured in a knowing voice. “And there’s this big scarlet bastard made out of psimagic sitting over there.”

Even Reed turned to look at MJ at that.

“Sword up and out, Red. BOYS, PUT THE BASTARD ON THE GROUND! Hold on to me, Red!”

She snaked an arm around my neck, Sonja flicking out of her arm in a silent gleam of hardened space, reality condensing to a golden-black bar of absolute edge.

WHAMSLAMBAMBOOMBOOMBOOM and Onslaught went over, crashing to the ground.

I moved, cutting off Rhodey’s feed as I zipped along the ground at speed, just off the surface with Repulse, and was right on top of the guy with my passenger.

A very hard Null erupted and swallowed the world in magical and psionic immovability.

The glowing orbs inside that force-helmet snapped over in surprise and horror as Red Mj, She-Devil with a Soulsword, came down on it.

“Keep its arms away from her!” I shouted as the first blow carved right through its helmet, something that had defied Mjolnir, and went inside. Suns and Stars went off in cold golden brilliance, and Onslaught screamed in agony.

The first blow slammed into me. I was anchored to its own body and holding it away from her as it tried to smash her away.

Sun Strikes, cold and harsh and pure, detonated behind me as Sonja carved into the bastard, and its entire body convulsed beneath us.

With a crash of lightning, Thor was down next to me, bracing to take the next hit from the other hand against Mjolnir, the massive hands clawing over us, trying to get past us.

Ben rumbled up and smashed into the wrist of the hand on Thor, forcing it up, and LJ came down and a saber beam of Novaflame half-severed the gauntlet, driving it away.

Rhodey came up behind me, and I promptly punched him full of juice while he unloaded at point-blank range into that hand.

Wonder Man crashed down onto the rents that Red had made into the helmet, rents that were not sealing or mending, and tore them further open.

Rhodey’s autocannon reversed and promptly pumped some explosive, discordant reality into that opening, even as a golden edge ripped and slashed around inside it.

“Thor, we’re going to need a Hammer-toss all the way to the sun.” He glanced over at me as I levered that massive hand up, and didn’t let it pull away, while the Rock was Anchored and gripping the gash Frankie had opened up, preventing that hand from flailing around as well.

“’Twill be done!” the Prince of Asgard declared.

“Seal it!” I called out.