The next volley sailed clean over where Greg’s head used to be, his best impression of a dropped anvil saving him from hundreds of shiny needles ripping through smoke. The sudden drop let gravity take him, freefall doing all the work as he let himself go full dead weight — no fight in it, total ragdoll — his own thoughtless decision-making had him caught by a mana platform, the perfectly square blue-white plan forced into existence under one boot mid-fall.Kicking off at an angle that would have made any gymnast or athlete cry about form, White Knight’s knee snapped high as he burst off in a hard brutal diagonal.Wind roared, aerokinesis a localized atmospheric detonation right behind him loud enough to swallow the rest of the world for a second. His shoulder clipped a curtain of glass dust on the way forward and through, punching through the gap in his pauldron hard enough to make him wince. Something else stabbed along his ribs as his undershirt tore open beneath the plates, the flare of single reds more of an annoyance than the pain.
Still moving.
Still closing the distance, and that was the whole ballgame right now
Vicky slammed into the inside of her personal snow globe again with a scream, all rage and force behind both scream and strike. It was a clean shoulder-check of a hit, something that could’ve put at least a cheerleader-sized hole through a hatchback. All it managed was to crack exactly one over-sized layer of glass before Shatterbird just restocked.
The monster dancing atop glass didn’t even flinch as three fresh spiked sheets slid into the spinning gap like nothing happened, glass currency for glass currency with no wait time.
Part of him wanted to rage about how that wasn’t fair, but then this was the Slaughterhouse Nine. Nothing about their existence was fair.Even still, glass control might have been broken, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t break it.Both hands thrust forward, gauntlets open as a gust ripped sideways from his palms. What could have easily been rated a Category 3 sudden storm tore the looser shards and layers away from Glory Girl.
The cage didn’t break, of course.It was built too deep and too strong for that.But it open, just barely, enough that Vicky’s eyes found his through all the glitter for the half a second he needed. Enough that he could see her better too, blond hair whipping like his own mane, jaw locked, and absolutely feral about the situation.
Which… said so much about Glory Girl.More than anything, though, the hole let them communicate better.“Brace thyself!”
“What?” She blinked at him mid-punch, a flying dagger shattered into white powder on her knuckles.“Brace!”“I don-!”No time to workshop the wording, Greg threw out one hand and the platform snapped into being right behind her, in place at an angle; blue-white, light-bright and about as structurally sound as a jenga tower.
People may have had all sorts of unkind nicknames for her online but from what he knew of Vicky personally, she actually was smart. And when it came to reading a fight, the blonde girl basically had another superpower on top of her actual superpower.
So it was no surprise to him that Glory Girl understood the physics immediately. Both feet out and knees bent, she used it like she was born for it — actually used it, Glory Girl launching off his platform with her own flight stacked on top.
Leverage.
For the first time in thirty seconds, she had leverage instead of just raw output with nothing to push off.
And it showed.Her fist punched clean through the wind-weakened shell, the whole floating cage cracking down the center line — top to bottom — as something in Shatterbird’s face showed her mood.A small thing, barely a twitch, but Greg still caught it. Good.
He wanted the psychopath worried. He'd been worried since the windows started singing, seemed only fair to redistribute some of that.Another pair of eyes searched through the storm and found his smile even as he burst and glided from place to place. “You.”White Knight blinked as the word came from everywhere at once, the single sound bouncing and resonating from each shard in the air spinning in this stupid glittering cyclone. Okay, kinda sick of a power.
Shame it was trying to turn him into confetti. “I have no words for you, witch!” He changed direction, barely dodging fully-shaped swords of glass — something he doubted was accidental in design — as they nearly took his legs clean off. “I will allow you yours before I take your head!”He wasn’t sure if he was actually going to cut her head off, but this whole thing was already a lesson in improvisation at this point. “You’re the one he’s curious about.”
This again. Greg rolled his eyes at the reminder of what Mouse Protector had stated and Ms Game had confirmed. “Yeah, no! I’ve been made well aware of that already. Thanks for the follow-up!”
Another burst of wind punctuated his shout back, a swing from his fist sending his own aerokinetic payload toward the glass-witch. I can be a villain all on my own if I wanted to!
Glory Girl burst through what was left of the cage, jagged curtains torn apart as she yelled something Greg couldn’t even make out. Propelled by zero patience, she slammed into the underside of Shatterbird’s floating glass throne, both fists out in front of her.As mad as she was, she didn’t actually touch Shatterbird herself but — then again — he wasn’t sure Glory Girl meant to as the whole hovering platform tilted sideway—
Oh shit. —sideways toward Glory Girl, guillotine layers of glass rushing down to punish her for the audacity of getting even closer.“She’s gonna dogpile you the second you get near!” White Knight kicked off another Mana Platform, tearing forward as quickly as he could. “Quit hitting the furniture!”“Yeah, sure!” She twisted in mid-air, stuck in a dogfight with all the knives cutting after her. “Now you tell me!” “I figured it was obvious!” He burst off the blue again, turning his head just in time to stop the hovering Shatterbird raise her hand to her mouth; fingers hiding a smile.
…a smile?
White Knight snapped his head around as Danger Sense blared a warning, eyes wide as all the glass behind him turned around like it had opinions and he had just shouted they were all wrong.
Every single jagged shard and broken edge tore back at his spine from the blind spot, like they remembered him specifically and wanted a rematch.Twisting hard in mid-air, White Knight bit down with just as much force on the four-letter word that wanted freedom. Wind blasting out his right side to shove himself left, a platform flashed to life at his left — shoulder, not foot — and Greg bounced off it ugly, bouncing like a pinball to juke the sudden nightmare intent on chewing him up.He still ate a dozen shallow cuts across his back and thigh as the glass piranhas kept on his tail.
“Hey, a little help over here!” Vicky came around again faster, forcing Shatterbird to split her attention two ways, one eye on the bouncing aero-knight and one on the muscle missile made of spite.
“Workin’ on it, my lady!”
His mouth opened wider with the words, heat building in the back of his throat — past his molars and under his tongue — in an itchy-furnace feeling he hadn’t quite gotten used to. The first breath came out more shimmer than flame, enough to warp the air and soften the edges of the nearest incoming shards.Shatterbird’s smile hitched for a second.
Greg sucked in a deep breath — bad air, glass dust and smoke and blood and burnt plastic and the tang of his own blood; all of it into his lungs as he fueled it with mana.
Then he breathed.Nothing cute; not like a birthday candle, or a campfire, or even a bonfire. The real deal with a red-hot core, blinding orange at the edges, and hot enough to fold the air in on itself. Face to face with a furnace under pressure, the wall in front of him went from a dull red to a brilliant white in one breath; smallest shards softening to glowing beads mid-air, needles losing cohesion, and six-foot lances sagging to nothing.Sheets ran molten into curtains and ribbons, falling away before cooling instantly to slag on the asphalt far below.
“Whoa!” Glory Girl cheered somewhere off to his left. “Okay, keep doing that!”Kinda the plan, yeah. He kept breathing out as Shatterbird threw everything she had at him, the whole storm compressing down into the stream of fire as volume tried to out-argue thermodynamics.
Greg pushed forward, wind at his back in a continuous engine as platforms flashed under his boots quick enough he could barely register summoning it before it was already replaced with a new one.
One step, gone.
Another, gone.
Another.
Each blue-white flicker just long enough to kick off and drive closer, closer, closer.
Vicky slammed into the underside again — one more clean shot, an uppercut brutal enough to force the whole floating setup on a lurching path up and sideways; Shatterbird’s defense chasing the wrong threat for one beautiful stupid second.
Greg took it, shoving every last bit of wind he could gather directly behind his back, and drove himself straight through the last molten curtain of glass.
Shatterbird tried to scream.
He watched her pull the breath in, watched the storm start to gather together in a single shudder, the whole city bracing itself for another round.
"Nay!"
He breathed out again and the dragon-fire caught her whole, whatever scream she’d been loading up going nowhere at all as he consumed the air.
All the glass quit.
Every bit.
Every where.
All at once, dropping straight down to the ground all over the entire downtown grid; the trembling stopped in a ragged uneven wave as it tinkled to the ground.
Brockton Bay didn’t go quiet with it, though.
It honestly couldn’t.
Not with sirens still screaming their lungs out, what few car alarms that still rang blaring loud over the sounds of actual people shouting for help. Fires crackled and plenty groaned all around below in a way that sounded distinctly structural.
But the glass stopped singing.
That was good, at least.
He hung there a second on nothing but wind and pure spite, his boots finding a platform that flickered like it was as wiped as he felt; the drain finally catching up to him as all the red danced across his line of sight.
His armor looked like it had lost an argument with a cheese grater, forearms burning as something hot ran down them. His right leg throbbed in a way that told him it had already healed but his nerves hadn’t quite gotten the message. The entire dogfight from the PRT to right now had taken minutes.
Too many minutes.
Ten, possibly.
Probably not fifteen, though; still long enough for the street below to fundamentally change while he was busy trying to keep the skyline from turning everyone into sliced meat.
Ping!
[Bonus Objective Complete: Prevent Shatterbird’s citywide glass attack.]
"...yeah." Greg stared at the pixelated text with nothing else to say to that. Cool.
The hard-light platform under his boots flickered again, White Knight dropping ten feet down before he slowed his fall with another gust of wind from his palms.
Below, still chaos with people moving and plenty not.
The PRT ENE headquarters in the distance was still a smoking mess blocks away; Theo was back there, Sparky was back there. Lady Bug too, and Mouse Protector with her cracked helmet and the smile that wasn’t a smile.
Above all else, the Nine were still in the city.
Eight now. He blinked at his own correction as he watched what was left of Shatterbird’s carbonated body split apart on the ground. Yeah, looking like eight.
“Hey, Knighty, we should g-!” Vicky was still in the air as he finally dropped the rest of the way to a rooftop, blue eyes both wide and focused. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to finish what she had to say.
Not as the ground shook first.
Blue eyes snapped up as something huge tore out of the smoke blocks away, not too far from the PRT building. Fast and high and wrong, it tore out of the ground before his brain almost finished registering it as a shape and was already gone before his mouth could open.Vicky zipped up beside him, braking hard as she breathed heavy; eyes locked on the same spot in the clouds as his.
“…what the fuck."
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Gregory Lucas Veder
Student
Level 62
Title: Endbringer Fighter
XP: 28,750/180,000
Age: 16
HP: 8,240
MP: 3,372
Will: 3,654
STR: 501
SPD: 303
VIT: 452
INT: 152
WIS: 22 (-70%)
CHA: 44 (+9) (-90%)
Unspent Stat Points: 139
Unspent Perk Points: 20
Cash: $5,726,825
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
SKILL/ABILITY CHANGES
Mana Platform: 25 → 28 (+3)
- Constant creation/dissolution throughout aerial combat
Aerokinesis (Adept): 40 → 42 (+2)
- Heavy repeated propulsion use during extended dogfight
XP GAINED: +300,000 (Shatterbird defeated)