Novax chased after his mother as she rained hell down on Magne. After her cataclysmic headshot, the Rogue was barely keeping conscious enough to shield from ensuing attacks. The barriers he had managed to erect were all but ignored as she pummelled him with blast after blast after blast.

  "Fuck off!" he roared, surging with telekinesis to send her pinwheeling away.

  Crimson righted herself with a controlled series of blasts and was twisting to defend when Novax beamed him through an ice arch. The Rogue splashed into a massive snow pile.

  "You fucking traitor!" he shrieked. "I'll kill–"

  Crimson's knee interrupted by crashing into his torso, driving air from his lungs and flinging him backwards. Novax cannoned in and stomped on his spine at over fifty times the speed of sound, plowing Magne through the ice and into a formation of caverns deep below.

  The Rogue pinballed off glacial stalactites before slamming into a carpet of stalagmites. Novax and Crimson wordlessly darted in behind him, taking brief note of their new environment before closing in on the Rogue.

  Magne pulled dozens of car-sized ice spines from the collapsing cavern around them. "You side with him ? With the ants?!?"

  "Tunnel," she warned Novax, rebounding herself off a larger column.

  "WRONG MOVE!" screamed Magne as the swarm of frozen javelins surged forward.

  A vortex of energy cascaded from Crimson's hands to engulf Magne's projectiles, instantly melting them to steam. Novax shot in behind it, using the opening to reach Magne and crack his armoured fist hard into the Rogue's nose.

  Magne flailed off his feet, then careened further from Novax's heat vision. When he cratered a wall, the cavern shook. The Rogue pried himself free, then was forced to duck as Novax uprooted another twenty-foot stalagmite and chucked it like a spear.

  The Hero was seconds away from another thermal beam when the floor beneath him split and tried to clap into him. He leapt away, then shouted as the slabs, now crunched into a massive ball, pinned him to a wall.

  Magne lifted his hand to bring the whole thing down but was instead forced to defend against Crimson's flood of plasma.

  He ground his teeth and was in the process of reaching out to telekinetically grab her when the energy disappeared, and Crimson Nova instead rammed her heel into his throat. It didn't command the physical weight of a Novax punch, but the thermal fallout yanked him up and into another tailspin.

  "You have no idea what you're doing!" he warned, cocooning himself to deflect Novax's check. His barrier shattered, opening him up to Crimson's plasma ball.

  It exploded, and he blasted through dozens of ice walls. The two Heroes shot after him, completely bypassing the collapsing glaciers purely through the heat of their armour.

  Magne shoved everything away with an enormous flex of telekinetic authority. The debris rose miles high. He latched onto them at random and pelted his approaching aggressors with everything fast enough to reach them.

  Matthius dipped and dodged through hundreds of frosty projectiles before a blunt wall sent him reeling. Elise simply erupted and melted everything stupid enough to come within a mile of her, then bulleted for her adversary.

  "We gave you a home!" he bellowed, reaching into the bubbling waters to summon a geyser. It tossed her off her charge and flying into the sky. Magne tracked and went for the spectacular by summoning an arena-sized glacier to flatten her. Novax recovered and was angling his heat vision when Crimson pounded an energized fist into Magne's attack and blew the whole thing to smithereens.

  Unperturbed, Magne latched onto the shattered rocks and riddled them like hail. Unfortunately, this left him open and defenceless to Novax's flying, supersonic kick, turning everything momentarily black.

  Magne splashed awake in a gigantic pool somewhere and screamed. The heat and frost were taking their toll. His fingers no longer had feeling, and his mind had long since started to slow.

  A foot cracked into his back and dunked him hard beneath the waves. Magne reacted violently, expunging all water in a hundred feet and sending the offender spinning. The second, wisely out of range, waited for the wave to pass and speared him with a rod of light.

  Magne skidded across slushy water before crashing again. He couldn't move this time. He was freezing, burning, and completely out of energy. Crimson didn't care, landing on him like a meteor. An ice hill collapsed behind them as she dragged him through a mile of snow.

  "You'll never win. She'll never let you," he hissed, froth bubbling in his mouth.

  Crimson pooled enough energy in her hands to melt her armour's scales. Bloodred plasma seeped into her eyes, igniting the air around them and vaporizing snowflakes foolish enough to land on her shoulder.

  "I don't give a fuck," she snarled, seizing his face. "You stabbed my son."

  Magne screamed as his skin caught fire. He screamed louder when energy poured out of her eyes and turned his to goop. He didn't stop screaming until her fingers dug through his skull, sank into his brain and blew the entire thing apart.

  Elise panted as Matthius glided down beside her, staring at the headless corpse of a once King-Class Alpha. The body would even periodically twitch, sending little ripples of telekinetic energy through the snow.

  Elise ignored them and reignited her power, burning the blood off her body.

  "Jesus," muttered Novax.

  Tacti skidded across a lake of ice and snow, cracking it multiple times but moving far too fast to stop. He whipped himself upright with a flurry of glow steps, but couldn't do much to brace against the thunderous blow that punched him hard into another mountain.

  It buckled with a roar, dislodging hundreds of thousands of tons of stone into the ocean below.

  "Isn't this what you wanted?" demanded Nova, hurtling knee-first into the Rogue's hastily vacated crater. "A contest of strength? Just you, me and our fists?"

  Tacti glow stepped a hook that Prime evaded before crunching his elbow hard into the Rogue's midsection. He bounced like a ball, then pinwheeled about fifty miles higher from Nova's next punch.

  "What was it you said?" sneered Prime, materializing before him like a wraith of fury. "Something about ants and weakness?"

  The Hero slipped two jabs but took a glow punch to the bicep. The night sky lit up as his armour sheared off and he spun through the air. Tacti was on him instantly, but couldn't manoeuvre quite as well and ended up tanking an axe kick to the shoulder blades. A new mountain was ground to dust when he landed.

  "You wanted the real me, no? The purest Prime?!?"

  Nova smashed through the glacier with the power of a hydrogen bomb and sank the entire island. A float twice the size of Guadalupe shattered like glass as Tacti was sent flying.

  "No new tricks for either of us!" hollered Nova, ducking Tacti's swing before being plunged into the ocean from a kick. It steamed off his armour as he twisted and shot out of the water before being bullrushed by the Rogue.

  They grappled down into a cavern. Nova wedged his forearm in Tacti's throat and drove him hard into a wall, which disintegrated like it never existed in the first place. The heat of his armour burned the Rogue's skin and drew a yell. Nova disengaged before Tacti could counter, then clapped hard enough to punch the Rogue down through a mound of ice.

  Tacti glow kicked away from Nova's follow-up and shoulder-checked him into a spin. He stepped quickly to close back in, but Nova's palm found his throat first, and he slammed hard into the ground. Cracks webbed up through the ice around them and began to bury the cavern with debris.

  Nova reared back and delivered a punch that almost sent debris flying into space. Tacti's teeth joined them as they shot from his mouth and disappeared into the snow.

  "No civilians to shield you now," sneered Nova, pounding a scaly boot into his enemy's chest. The cavern gave, and they plummeted into the waters below. Tacti kicked himself upright and tried glow stepping away, but Nova got there first and dragged him across the underside of another glacier. The Rogue twisted and punched himself free before scrambling for air.

  A glow clap opened a gaping, two-hundred-foot opening, but his aggressor returned in a white fury and tackled him into the side of the ice tunnel.

  They blew it apart with wild punches and kicks before Tacti sailed out in a fountain of blood. His skin was charred, and muscles frozen. He struggled to react, and Nova was sparing no quarters. The Rogue flopped to a stop ten miles later and managed only to find his knee before being rocked with an uppercut.

  Nova's fingers locked around his ankle before he could clear the mesosphere and slammed him into the ice, hard. Antarctica witnessed another of its city-sized glaciers be ground to specks as Nova tossed Tacti into the side of a mountain.

  He was there instants later and started hammering. Stone dissolved to mist around them as Nova landed close to a hundred punches in all of three seconds. Tacti raised a weak glow punch in reply. Nova snorted with derision and let it glide past his head before seizing the wrist and breaking the arm with a kick.

  Tacti's scream came out in a gargle. More blood spurted from his attempted shrieks when Nova brought his knee down on the shoulder of his working arm. The crack of bones shattering blew stones into the sky, and Tacti's howls sent ripples across the waves. Nova slugged him quiet, then broke his legs. It took five seconds, and suddenly, Tacti was a bubbling lump of broken body.

  Nova hovered over him with a contemptuous look of abject disgust. "You have no idea what true strength is. You aren't a god. In fact, I suggest you find one immediately and begin supplicating it not to be reincarnated, because I will relish the opportunity to kill you again. And again. And again."

  Tacti actually managed to form a defiant snarl. "You lose."

  "Of course I do. Reincarnation doesn't exist." Nova drove knuckles hard into Tacti's throat, crushing the larynx. "I only get to do this once."

  The Rogue began to spasm as he suffocated. That only worsened when Nova seized him by the heel and tossed him into the ocean.

  It took almost a full minute for the Rogue's seizures to cease and his heart to stop its frenzied beating. Even with lungs full of blood, organs beaten to mush and bones shattered to hell, Tacti took his time.

  Nova didn't move a muscle the entire time. He simply crossed his arms, floating a foot over the waves as he watched the villain die.

  "Your kids are dead," I informed Norton, keeping Evo in the corner of my eye as my HUD powered up. It pinged Lucas' corpse almost a hundred feet away, an unfortunate casualty of Elise's opening attack. I silently cursed her. "The Novas are going to tear them apart."

  She started slowly backing away. "Not before Evo kills you."

  "You hear that, Evo?" I said, looking at the youngest, weakest Triplet. "You're supposed to kill me."

  He began to vibrate with energy while adopting a sneering glower. "I should've killed you in New York."

  "But you didn't," I retorted, shaking my helmet. "You failed so spectacularly, in fact, that you actually helped set this whole thing in motion. How does it feel to be directly responsible for the death of your entire family?"

  He roared and catapulted himself with a gravity-enhanced lunge. I watched his arm fully shift to metal and arc to pulp my brains.

  Instead, it struck the energy shield that bloomed out of my forearm. The impact blasted out a shockwave around us. Evo's eyes widened as the energy of his punch rolled down through my scales, through the veins of my suit and down into my free hand. They got even wider when it coalesced in my gauntlet, and a four-foot Bloodreaper shimmered to life.

  Evo barely managed to scramble back and limit my counter-swing to a thin line across his stomach. He hissed, dumbfounded, staggering as he clutched his midsection. I watched the blood burn off the tip of my sword while he stared at his smoking abdomen in shock.

  "One true blow and you're beaten." I chuckled, facing him as a second Bloodreaper ignited in my left hand. "Disgraceful."

  His eyes narrowed, then gravity inverted.

  My thrusters toggled in the nick of time, dragging me right as everything on my left was flattened to paste. I strafed him with pulse blasts, then flicked a disk in his direction.

  The sonic grenade drove him to his knees. My helmet filtered the clamour as I raced forward, sword out. A second before I beheaded him, my weight was reversed, sending me soaring as he crushed the bomb.

  I aerially readjusted and caught him with a two-handed pulse. Evo was thrown onto his back, then yelped in confusion when two disks went off and submerged the area in smoke.

  I emerged from the fog with a vengeance, swinging for the kill. Evo scrambled back and managed to get some kind of gravity shield before my weapons ran out of charge and fizzled out. I swore and intercepted his granite backhand with a shield, which yanked me off my feet and flailing into a freezing pond.

  Evo didn’t get off lightly, though, since the thermal charge at his feet exploded and launched him into a writhing tumble. I flew out of the pond, grateful for the suit's insulation and produced two more disks. They slapped together as Evo crawled out of a snowbank and struggled to his feet.

  I didn't give him the chance to retaliate, pushing my thrusters to get me airborne and sailing into his chest feet first. Evo hit the deck, then smacked me into the snow with a hit I felt through the scales. He still screamed just the same since the red-hot armour seared angry burns into the offending arm.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He turned and went for a wild haymaker, but it was slower. And less precise. The cold was already getting to him.

  I weaved it and dropkicked his crotch, folding him to a knee. My next punch bombed into the side of his head, rolling power up into my armour.

  My Bloodreaper charge went up by twelve percent.

  He swung another backhand that I intercepted with an energy shield. Eighteen percent. I dropped it and stomped into the side of his throat, planting his face headfirst in the ice. He coughed out snow while flinging out a wild gravitational blast that brought me up to twenty-six.

  My alarms went haywire as the ice around me cracked. I rolled clear as a geyser exploded out from below, then loosed a pulse beam. Evo glided off his feet and landed on my combined disks. The first charge lit up and burned powerfully enough to literally burrow into his back. Evo screamed, then went flying head over heels when the second exploded.

  He slid to a halt thirty feet away with blood oozing from his shoulder blades. I cruised in and smashed my knee into his cheek, throwing his injured back into the cold, melting slush. He thrashed for balance, staggering as I again whipped his head back with a right cross.

  Evo found his feet, then me. His fist, this time, was made of boron. The punch practically screamed with desperation. I didn't even bother raising my shield and simply caught it.

  Forty-seven percent.

  "One true blow," I chuckled as he stared at his fist in horror.

  I discarded the limp limb and powered my open palm into the underside of his chin. His jaw clamped shut and bit a chunk of his tongue out. I curved my next strikes lower and riddled his torso before connecting a spinning kick to his temple. The sharper design of the heel plate dug into the skin as he lifted into a careening barrel roll.

  Evo collapsed in a heap. I let him scrabble upright, drooling blood and trembling with disbelieving terror.

  "I'll kill you," he slurred.

  I cocked my head. "How? You're an ant."

  He charged. I sidestepped and kicked his leg out, then grabbed the back of his neck and started hammering punches into the back of his bald head. He struggled weakly before managing to hurl a wild punch I telegraphed and jumped back to evade. Evo wheeled around as he screamed and lunged, throwing his arms out to project a wild wave of gravitational power.

  I ducked, ignited my fully charged Bloodreaper and swung. Evo hacked out a wet cough as I rose to my full height and deactivated the sword.

  "Ants can't kill me," I said as his torso slid off his hips and slapped into the snow. "They're insects."

  I turned towards Norton. "I must confess disappointment."

  I triggered my thrusters and glided over to her impassive figure, fifty feet away. "I was of the impression that I stood among gods."

  She turned from gazing at Evo's corpse. "Thank you."

  I hesitated. "Come again?"

  "I would never have got here alone. Granted, I did wish for my sons to handle the monotony. I suppose it was always coming down to this."

  I scowled, though she couldn't see it. "Your death?"

  Norton sighed as she began to glow. Telekinetic energy surged out from her hands to resolve in a translucent ball that levitated her off her feet. Platinum power vibrated in her arms as the rest of her body shifted between steel, granite and boron. She looked down at me as bronze plasma ignited in the palm she slowly raised in my direction.

  "My evolution."

  I didn't need to think before triggering my shield. I wasn't vaporized, but did get flung like a toy and sent spinning hundreds of feet. The blast overloaded both of my Bloodreapers instantly. I dragged to a stop almost a mile away. My alarms were screaming in protest.

  "I am grateful."

  She was above me. How the fuck was she above me?

  I tossed a smoke disk and rocketed for cover. She glow clapped both the cloud and myself out of the sky. I hit the ground again, and this time I was pretty sure something fractured. Ignoring the pain was something of a habit by now, so I rolled to my feet.

  I need distance, I thought, almost panicking as she closed in.

  "You've shown me that I can only depend on myself. Even children, with the best intentions, fail."

  I read the telekinetic strike and barely shielded in time. She flicked her hand, freezing me in a gravity well. I couldn't even blink; it was so strong.

  "You almost won. I'm impressed."

  There was nothing I could do to stop the plasma blooming from her palm. I couldn't dodge, block or counter. I just sat there like a sitting duck waiting to be melted.

  I would've, too, had her beam not bent like a noodle and diverted into my mother’s waiting arms. Norton's eyes widened as the Crimson Nova sucked her energy up, assimilated it and blew her out of the sky. She didn't even get the chance to land before Matthius appeared and threw a supersonic punch.

  Norton, somehow, telekinetically dragged him wide before appropriating a boulder and sending it hurtling towards me. Elise overtook it and plucked me from the well instants before the missile pasted me into the snow.

  "She has all their powers," I warned as we skidded to a stop, ninety yards away. "I have no idea how."

  Matthius forced her back with a stream of heat vision before being dragged to the ground by increased gravity. He pushed through it, but couldn't adjust to her incoming glow punch.

  Jason absolutely could, though, and literally smashed her out of sight. She pinwheeled into the distance and disappeared into a glacier.

  "That was one of Tacti's glow punches," he commented, scowling worriedly. "Since when could she do that?"

  I staggered to my feet and pulled off my helmet. Her initial blast had destroyed my HUD. "She absorbed their powers, probably after they died. I assume they're dead?"

  "Yes," confirmed Jason.

  Matthius wore the same expression he made when offered oysters. "Definitely."

  "Then we need to kill her," declared Elise.

  They, strangely, looked at me.

  I frowned, glancing between them. "What?"

  "What do we do?" asked Matthius.

  My immediate reflex was sarcasm, but I hesitated. His tone wasn't antagonistic. Nobody's expressions, in fact, were sardonic or condescending. Not even Elise, who, from repeated glances at my temple and side, actually looked more concerned about the blood trickling down my head, and any potential damage she'd done pulling me from Norton's well.

  They actually needed me for something important. They wanted my help.

  They wanted me.

  I banished the lump in my throat.

  "Do you have a plan?" asked Jason as Norton’s iceberg shuddered.

  I snorted. "Always." The iceberg exploded. "Listen up."

  Amelia Norton erupted from the mountain of ice Prime Nova buried her under. She was furious . She'd been so close to killing Skies when the rest of the rabble interjected. She could scarcely believe her misfortune.

  Crimson Nova? A spy the whole time? To think she'd extended the hand of friendship. She should've listened to Magne. Sweet Magne. She could still feel him in the moments before his death. As a mother, she had no choice. Though it was a necessary evil, like the rest of them, that didn't mean she had to enjoy it.

  She would enjoy killing these ungrateful vermin, though. She owed her boys that much.

  She used her newfound telekinesis to find her targets a few miles away, then frowned as they suddenly split. The rascal was likely up to something again. No matter. She had the raw power to overcome anything.

  She was a god.

  Nova and Novax accelerated into wide arcs at her sides. She frowned, bracing to redirect them into each other when a beam of white plasma roared out from her right. She barely blocked it and was even slower in defending Nova's rush, which knocked her into the snow. She used Evo’s forms to mitigate the damage but still felt her teeth rattle.

  He was absurdly strong. He had to go first.

  Plasma beat Novax back, then she turned on his father, dragging out gallons of water to swat him from the sky. He danced around them and moved to ram her. Norton caught the Hero with a gravity well first, pulling him beneath the ocean's waves.

  Novax was just as fast, though, and suddenly she was throwing up a barrier against his punch. The impact still cannoned her into a massive float of ice. Neither moved to reattack, disorienting her for less than a second.

  And that was all Crimson Nova needed.

  The ice at Norton’s feet evaporated as a pillar of fire erupted from inside the glacier. She screamed as the plasma scorched her skin, burned her clothes and ignited her hair. She wrenched herself clear and flopped in the snow, crying as her body seized from shock.

  Small, sticky objects smacked into her back. Norton didn't have the presence of mind to wrench them off before their simultaneous explosions drove her into the ground.

  "Die!" she screeched, unleashing Ergo’s energy at the wasp.

  Instead, something collided with her shoulder and knocked the attempt wide. The ice collapsed beneath her as Novax's blow shattered the glacier. She countered with a glow punch that catapulted him into the ocean. Nova appeared on her left, smacked her second glow punch aside, then cracked his elbow into her cheek. She had to wrench her head out of the ice to avoid his next kick, then sent him flying with a gravity pulse.

  "I won't lose!" she screamed right as Crimson's fist emerged from the ice and cracked into her teeth. Norton reeled back, floating unsteadily before being plastered to a cliff face by a plasmic cyclone.

  Debris crumbled around her as Skies swooped in and began stomping his boot into her face. He bobbed past a glow punch, then was clipped by her steel-form backhand. Or, at least, his shield was, even if the grinning idiot was still sent flying. The victory was tragically short-lived, as Nova tackled her from up high and grated her across the bumpy face of a glacier wall.

  She ripped out a chunk to bat him aside, then thrust out her arm to intercept Novax's heat vision. She then had to expand her shield to catch Elise's as well, at the cost of stretching her powers to their absolute limit. Norton was completely locked in place and unable to respond when Nova scooped out a loose hunk of ice, nearly the size of her farmhouse and tossed it like a beachball.

  It fell at an ironically glacial pace, slowly tumbling over to bat her down into the sea. Norton scrambled out, shivering violently at the freezing temperature before another blow staggered her rising flight.

  Helpless frustration was starting to overwhelm her. Every time she got close to the runt, his family would close in and distract her until he could fly in and contribute some useless attack. A single of Nova's punches was worth a thousand of his.

  She needed to kill him, and she needed to do it now. Their morale would plummet, and she'd finally be rid of the annoyance that may very well have unravelled all the plans she'd spent over twenty years setting into motion.

  Novax bull-rushed her before her beam could connect. She screamed and hit him with so much gravity the ocean bowled inward. Crimson poured a sun's worth of heat up from below and set every one of Norton’s nerves alight. She matched it with Ergo's energy, only for Nova to send her crashing back into the snow.

  This time, though, she’d expected it. She managed to roll his blow and catch him in a spinning telekinetic whip, temporarily punching him out of the picture. Crimson shaped up for another shot but was knocked awry by water Norton commanded to geyser up from below. Novax was then dismissed with plasma, which left...

  Nothing.

  She scowled. This was exactly where Skies would usually pop up, sting like a little bee and flit off.

  Her musings cost her.

  Novax materialized from below and put his knee in her sternum. Her upward arc was redirected backward with heat vision, where she bounced off Nova's elbow. Norton endured a violent tailspin for the ground, but Crimson was there first, pounding a glowing fist into her torso.

  She wheezed as blood erupted from her mouth, but refused to go down. She wouldn't let them win. Richard deserved so much more.

  These animals would not stop her.

  An omnidirectional surge tossed the Novas like beanbags. She would focus on Nova, she decided, building energy in her fist. That way–

  Light flashed below her. Norton ignored it until realizing her legs wouldn't move. Nothing below her waist would, actually.

  Frowning, Norton looked down as her arms lost power. There was a sword. A Bloodreaper. But that didn't make any sense, since... where was he?

  The air before her shifted and blurred as Skies pulled Novax's camouflage cloak off and straightened out from his crouch. Norton’s eyes watered as her brain struggled to make sense of the situation.

  She'd failed?

  Skies calmly brought his hand up to her torso and ignited his second Bloodreaper in her abdomen, right beside the first. He gave it a second, then reactivated the first higher up in her chest.

  "No..." slurred Norton. There was no way. He was a blank. How could...

  "What did I just tell you?" tutted Skies as the Novas surrounded her. "You never watch the little guy. Not even when he's waving around the weapon of a god, or whatever these things are supposed to be."

  Skies deactivated both swords and seized her hair. "You lost before that teleporter ever turned on because you assumed we weren’t on offence. First and last mistake. The fifty-ton sign reads 'SWORD', dumbass. We hit first. The fight was on before you ever stepped on my lawn."

  He raised his hand to her throat and forced her head back. Norton obstinately tried to fight.

  Skies scoffed at the feeble, pathetic splutter of telekinesis. "If you're going to bring guns to a knife fight, bitch, learn how to fucking shoot."

  Norton heard the sizzle of ignition, then everything went dark.