Chariot jumped from the vehicle and shouted for us to drive, it was just an illusion. I didn't know what he was talking about, but if he said drive, we had better drive. I heard the door slide shut and glanced back, and my blood froze.

It...wasn't Chariot closing the door. I hoped I was just still asleep, or hit my head harder than I thought. I could hear Chariot screaming on the comms as the van started to move.

The man, the terrifying Exhuman who had fought and beat the P-Force, he was here, eyes closed all creepy-like, and advancing on me and the hurt girl. Mage, I think they had called her.

Lightning slashed at the back of the vehicle, melting thin white lines in the back of the door. The van was pulling away though, and we were leaving Chariot behind. He was the only one who could stand up to this maniac, and now he was slipping away.

The evil Exhuman knew what was up, he turned his back to us, prepared to challenge Chariot, knowing he was the only threat here. He just had to wait for the van to pull away and victory was his.

Or...so I thought. I'd completely forgotten the other man in the cabin.

The medic sent the Exhuman flying into the ceiling with a single blow, stepping forward, rising, and launching a crushing uppercut in one motion that left a huge dent in the ceiling where the little fucker's head hit it. The Exhuman landed in a heap, and the medic's exosuit hissed with pneumatic force as he punched the guy again, so hard he went flying through the van's doors, breaking them open with a crunch. The most beautiful, amazing crunching sound in the world.

The bad guy spun and bounced off the dirt, right into Chariot, who was running after the van at top-speed. I saw one moment of Chariot's surprised face before the two of them went down in a heap. We were still driving pretty fast, but the medic handed me the blood bag and then jumped out of the back of the van, landing on his feet as we drove away.

We...didn't get very far. The driver heard all the banging and stopped the car only twenty feet down the road.

"Driver!" I yelled.

"What?" came the muffled reply from his compartment.

"Get back here!"

It was agonizing long seconds while he unbuckled himself, opened the door, and walked around the back of the van, inspecting the damage with a shake of his head.

Meanwhile, Chariot was getting his ass kicked. The medic was doing what he could, but the bad guy was too fast, and Chariot was collapsed on the ground, lightning nowhere in sight. I saw flashes of the bad guy disappearing and reappearing, stomping on Chariot's broken hand or kicking him savagely in the head, vanishing as the exosuit reached for him.

"Take the bag!" I screamed, almost throwing it at the driver and bolted from the van.

I didn't know what I was doing. I was completely helpless against this guy...my mind was screaming for me to stop, but my body just kept moving forward.

Chariot, he...he'd...in the short time we'd been together, he'd already put everything on the line for everyone, over and over. He'd given himself crippling injury and thrown himself at the bad guy to buy time for me and his team to escape, had protected me with his own body.

And now he needed somebody to help him. Probably somebody better than me, but there wasn't anyone else. My feet stung as they slapped the pavement as hard as I could push them.

And then I was on him, the bad guy. He just reappeared in front of me, and had all his attention focused on Chariot, his face so mad like I'd never seen anyone before. Teeth bared, face all red, veins pulsing in his forehead, blood running over his closed eyes from where he'd had his head smashed.

I reached out, dove to grab him around the middle. My hands passed through nothing as he vanished inches away from me, and like an idiot, like the useless fighter I was, I just fell forward into the dirt.

I pushed myself up and dusted myself off. Even if this was all I could do, I had to do it.

I ran at him again, screaming, tears streaming behind me. A wall of fire sprang up in my way, but I didn't even react in time and just ran into it. I didn't even mean to, I was just running as fast as I could. It burned but I was out of it as fast as I'd run into it. He was gone again though, and I looked around to find him.

Another car pulled up, coming from the wrong direction, they had turned around to come back. Before it even came to a stop, the back flew open and the huge Exhuman jumped out. Inside, I saw the skinny Exhuman man on a stretcher in the same setup as our van had for Mage, another medic in there keeping an eye on him. The silver-haired girl hopped out as the van stopped completely, disappearing before her feet even hit the ground.

The air tore apart and there was a flash of blue in my peripheral. One of the XPCA wearing all white with segmented wings on her back, tipped in blue plasma flashed into being, almost like the silver-hair girl had disappeared. She could fly, she had guns all over her. I thought...maybe if there was a hope to save Chariot, this girl looked like she could handle it.

I had to hope. He deserved saving, deserved more than a stupid florist like me could give him.

At once, like it was all planned, they all launched after the bad guy. Rockets slammed into the ground wherever he showed himself. The huge guy moved easily a hundred times faster than me, and looked like he could freaking fly, almost catching him again and again. Lasers poured from the air all around Chariot, making a wall of death, even as more of them erupted from the heavens like Skyweb, obliterating entire chunks of the street at once.

Chariot was safe at least. With the constant chasing and lasers, the bad guy couldn't get close to him. He was curled up now, maybe finally passed out from the abuse.

But then I saw his lips moving and something on the ground next to him.

It couldn't be possible. Even after all he'd been through, he was whispering into his comms, coordinating the attacks of his team, but as I watched it unfold, I realized that had to be the truth. The attacks were too organized, cycled to keep everyone out of the laser blasts, give the big guy the best shot of catching the baddie by pinning him with volleys of laser fire and ordinance right before he was about to strike, how they moved and flowed like one cohesive unit.

The medic was jogging out of the fight, way out of his league, like me. He came to my side, and then, to my surprise addressed me.

"Blue, you're called Steffie?" he asked. His voice came out of the exosuit in a robotic tone that made it sound more like a statement than question.

"I'm Steffie, yes," I said, distracted by the fight.

He held out a black disc for me and, confused, I took it.

"Hey, Steffie. I need your help." It was Chariot's voice. I could see his lips moving as he spoke to me, his words barely more than a croak.

"I know! We have to get you out of there!" I shouted. I thought I saw a smile on his still, prone form.

"It won't matter. I should have known. He can chase us as long as he has Jack's power. We need to beat him or this will never end."

"I'll do whatever I can," I said. I didn't know what I could do, but if Chariot had a plan, I trusted in it.

"Karu needs to peel off to protect Mage and Jack. The rest of the convoy is gone by now and should be safe, but he's shown an interest in them, and grabbing one of them and escaping is his best move now." He coughed, and it sounded wet. I looked over and saw there was blood in the corner of his mouth now, and my heart did a flip.

"If Jack was carrying someone, he could only blink half as fast, so if he does that, we'll catch him and win. We need to make sure he can't just drive off though. Work with the soldiers and get Jack and Mage out of those cars, okay?" He coughed again. "I might have some other use for you later just...just be ready, okay?"

"Okay," I said, nodding at the comms. Getting people out of a car. I could do that.

The medic and I went to Jack, I guess his name was, since he was closer and there was another medic there already. "We need to get him on the ground," I said.

"Why? Who the hell are you?" asked the other medic's robotic voice. I think she was a girl under all that armor.

"Orders from the strike team. Move!" shouted my medic, and to my relief, the girl complied. All three of us went around Jack's body, unstrapping him from the floor, and then the two of them easily lifted the stretcher and carried him with precision onto the ground where they set him down.

Like clockwork, the armored airborne girl was touching down on the back of the van. "I've got him. Go."

We ran to the other van while the girl disappeared into the air again with a flash. I didn't know people could move that fast, and wondered if that was maybe her Exhuman power.

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I heard comms chatter constantly between the team, coordinating their attacks.

Almost as soon as we'd reached Mage, the bad guy appeared right behind my medics. I was behind, not able to keep up with the young military guys or their crazy suits.

When he appeared, the jagged shard of rock he'd been holding appeared with him, in the back of my medic. I heard a strangled synthesized yell as he stumbled.

I grabbed the bastard from behind and then felt the world lurch as we were suddenly somewhere else.

"Get the hell off of me!" he shouted, and elbowed me.

But I wasn't coming off. I held on with everything I had. If Chariot could tear off both his arms fighting this guy to protect me, I could hold onto him as long as I could, at least. I jumped on his back, wrapping my arms around his chest and my legs around his waist, even bit him in the shoulder. Anything, to keep from being thrown off.

He gave an angry yell and flailed at me, but I wasn't going anywhere. Chariot had said he moved slower when he had a passenger, and now he did. If we got hit by a missile or something...I'd just have to hope my powers held out and blew him to pieces.

He moved over and over, popping into a new place every second, clawing at my arms around him. I could see the others attacking, could see they were hitting closer and closer than they'd ever been. I could feel the sweat running off the bad guy onto my arms, feel his panicked breathing in my chest pressed against him.

I had to hope my powers would work for this. I didn't want to think about how much it would hurt if they didn't, or how dead I would be. I'd never tested them against anything like this, never tested them at all, really. But if I thought about dying, I felt my grip loosening on him.

I had to be strong, like Chariot. I remembered his low determined stance, his body poised and tensed as he stood over me, protecting me with himself, for entire minutes while this guy appeared all over the place. The look of determination in his brown eyes as he gave us one final glance and told us to run, before charging off on his own.

My grip tightened until my knuckles were white and I felt blood under my fingernails. I hoped we did get hit with a missile. I hoped my powers would blow this...this...this asshole into so many pieces that they had to collect him with a dustpan.

We were getting close to that, too. I felt heat on my leg as a laser almost clipped me. The blasts were getting closer and closer. He was slowing, jumping only every second and a half now. In another minute, they'd have him. He was jumping further and further from the fight now, too, trying to escape rather than win, but Karu and the big guy were unstoppable, she appeared out of nothing almost as fast as he did, and the big guy dove right through a freaking building wall without even slowing down.

I leaned down and bit the asshole in the neck, as hard as I could. He screamed and grabbed my head, tearing out my hair and making me see spots flash in my eyes, but I just bit him harder.

And then...I don't know. I felt...not there. Not all there. My arms were still wrapped around him, but I couldn't...couldn't feel my legs. Couldn't feel my back. Like, I'd just become really heavy all the sudden.

I stopped biting him enough to look down and saw we were sticking out of a wall. Halfway out of a wall. My legs were hanging there limp and my back...it was just...in the wall.

Before I realized it, he stepped forward and out of my arms, and swore as he grabbed at the bloody spot on his neck. My arms suddenly free, I pushed myself out of the wall, but nothing happened. My back, from the waist down...was just wall now. He'd moved us so that I would show up halfway inside it, and I didn't even know what that meant.

Except...that...it didn't work anymore. Like my spine was just gone from the waist down. The flying girl and big guy appeared, and he disappeared fast as ever again. The two looked at me and at each other with worry and pity carved onto their faces.

Wordlessly, he punched the wall on my left and on my right, shattering the bricks like they were nothing, and I fell to the ground. She flew off while he pulled the rest of the wall off of me, but it didn't matter. It was like half of me now just didn't exist.

"Can you walk?" he asked. I shook my head and tears fell. I'd messed up. I'd messed up really bad. There wasn't any fixing this. What had I even been thinking, trying to be a hero? Pretending I could do something in a situation like this.

He picked me up easily and threw me over his shoulder. Like meat.

"Thanks for everything you did there," he said, grunting as he launched both of us back in the direction of the vans. We were flying, and fast. "I'm uh, Tower, by the way. Sorry about all this."

I didn't have words. I let the wind whip away my tears, but more kept coming.

From the comms chatter, the fight was getting more desperate. The girl with the lasers couldn't keep him off of Chariot and Jack and Mage all at once, and he'd touched Mage and presumably taken her powers. The rocket girl didn't have any zone control, she could chase him around all day, but couldn't stop him from appearing anywhere like Chariot could. He was appearing on top of Mage for fractions of a second each time, stealing away more and more of her. Chariot kept pleading to focus on protecting Mage.

"I have an idea, but you may not like it, Ashton," she said. "I have shock nets, I can throw them over the wounded. He will not be able to get close but…"

"They'll do less damage than he will. Do it, Karu."

We rejoined the fight just in time to see her fire her weapons twice, and large canisters exploded from each arm into a slowly spinning net which wrapped itself around the wounded, pinning them to the ground, and then a moment later, coursed with electricity.

Mage didn't react beyond jolting, but Jack sat bolt upright and yelled, thrashing for a moment before he reappeared a foot away, still writhing.

"Damnit, I hate electrical ordinance," Karu said, frustration in her voice.

But something else had happened. The villain had appeared as he always had, but then stood there, looking confused or angry, for over two seconds now. As beams fell from the sky at him, he jumped out of the way instead of disappearing.

Comms exploded as Chariot, the silver-haired girl, and Tower all began yelling at once. Before we could see anything else, walls of fire erupted from everywhere. Tower flew through one or two of them as he skidded to a halt in the street, and I noticed that even the illusionary heat did not reach my legs.

"This ain't gonna stop me!" Tower screamed, and even with me still on his shoulder, launched towards the Exhuman.

He wasn't there. There was just fire everywhere.

"He's using it as a smokescreen to get away," Chariot said, coughing from excitement or nerves. "Karu?"

"I can't see anything from up here. It's just fire everywhere. It's whiting out my optics."

"Damn it. Tem, can your illusion suppress his?"

"Y-yes. But, only if I am trying to. I can't...can't s-simply erase all of them...of them, or anything. I do not think...I think I will...will be useless again..."

"Jack, are you there? Jack?"

"Jack lost his comms earlier," I said. "The Exhuman took it and gave it to you, Chariot."

"That's right. Damn it, damn it, damn it."

Tower flew through the fire left and right at random, but as we flew I thought I saw something lurking in the fire.

"There!" I shouted. Tower barely touched the ground and sent us flying where I was pointing. A tall, thin, figure, on the other side of a wall of fire. Tower bore down on him, increasing his speed, and holding out his free arm.

I saw closed eyes and a confused half-smile for a fraction of a second. The wrong ones. Tower slid to a stop, inches from Jack, who looked politely confused as he reappeared out of the way.

"Jack!" I shouted, and threw him my comms, still able to hear the chatter on Tower's. Nobody here needed to talk to me anyway. I wasn't a damn hero.

"Jack?" I heard Chariot say.

"Jack here," he replied.

"Jack, he's using the fire to get away. It's just an illusion though. Can you see through it?"

"I can. I wondered why you weren't all chasing him, and thought you might have a reason. Shall I stop him?"

"Bring Tower and the girl with you."

"Wilco, over and out," Jack said, and put away the comms, advancing on us very slowly, nursing his chest wound with a smile. "Shall we?"

He put a hand on me and on Tower, and before I could object, we were moving. It took...a lot longer than it had before, when the bad guy was moving two of us, it felt like almost four or five seconds, but with the same stomach-dropping sensation, we were somewhere completely different, almost half a block away, and there, running directly into us was the prick.

"Woke up, huh? No wonder I lost grip of your powers," he said to Jack.

"I wouldn't really know," Jack replied with a shrug. Without pause, Tower hit him so hard he flew across the street and into a wall, embedded halfway into it, like he'd left me.

Before the dust even settled, he cracked his neck with a turn of his head and stood up.

"Uh," said Tower.

Suddenly we were on top of him again. It looked like despite there being three of us, Jack could move us a lot faster if the distance was shorter. Tower wasted no time in punching him back across the street into another wall, with apparently the same amount of effect.

"He didn't regenerate this fast from getting stabbed," Tower said.

"So stab him!" shouted Karu.

"I lost my knife," said Jack with a sad smile.

Before he could regain his feet, Jack had put us behind him again, and Tower smashed him into the floor with so much force the street next to the sidewalk we were on cracked. He only laid in the crater for a moment before rolling to his feet.

"Tower," I whispered, apparently unable to learn from my experiences. "You can't get hurt, right?"

"I mean, I can. But not from like, punches or speeding trains or anything, if I know it's coming."

"Explosions?"

"Nah, I'm good."

"Tower, hit him with me. Jack, get out of here."

"What? Are you crazy?"

"No, but if you use...use me like a weapon...I'll explode. He'll be...gone."

"You're all insane," yelled the asshole, before Tower punched his face into the ground again.

"Are you sure?"

"No, but do it."

Jack grabbed the guy and my hand and I felt my stomach unsettle. The bad guy writhed for several second as Jack did whatever he was doing, tried to punch Jack in his wounds, but Tower just casually reached out and snapped his arm like a toothpick. I don't think it was even his powers, just how strong he was. His scream was like music to me.

After another dozen seconds, we were back where it all started. First floor of the construction site where the jerk had told me to go hide. Jack nodded at us and then disappeared.

"You're really sure about this?"

"He'll just regenerate anything less, right?"

"I don't know. Chariot?"

There was no response.

"Yeah, just do it," I said, and swallowed. Tower didn't seem sure where to grab me but I put his huge hands right around my middle.

"No, wait! Wait, please!" The jerk slowly scuttled away, pleading, his broken arm hanging at his side. "The XPCA needs strong Exhumans, right? I'm the strongest there is! Let me...let me join you…"

"The world doesn't need people like you," Chariot said, his voice exhausted and colder than the Exhuman's powers.

Tower lifted me easily into the air and smashed me down like a hammer, slamming my head and shoulder into the Exhuman.

I felt my skin harden like diamond at the force of the blow. Tower hadn't held back, and the force of his strike was magnified a thousandfold by my shield, which exploded, radiating it in all directions. I blacked out immediately, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing but a world-shaking boom.