Inside the train cart, Spike was on his knees beside Diss, holding her hand. William was still standing beside her, one hand on her throat, counting out her pulse.

"Pulse seems to be strong and steady. I'm not sure whether the serum worked, but I don't think it's going to kill her. Worst case scenario, she's in a coma, and I suspect if we get a good healer down here they can deal with it. I think we're going to be fine from here. just need to get back across the border to a proper hospital."

Spike sighed, and nodded.. Before turning to the Lord of Iron, releasing her. "Can you get us back north? Preferably without jostling her too much?"

For a moment, the pale, wounded figure turned to Spike... then the girl. For the barest of instants, he considered striking out. It was always possible that he could take out spike as well as the girl in the moments before spike could change his density. On the other hand he wasn't entirely certain about this will guy's powers.

Plus, It would probably ruin his chances of getting a pardon. And while the Lord of iron had no intention of remaining on the straight and narrow for too long, there would be all sorts of opportunities available while spending a bit of time on the right side of the law.

" I've got this. It's not going to be as fast as actually rolling, but if you break us off of the rest of the chain, I can just spot or walk us all the way back across the border, until we see lights."

Spike Studied the Lord of iron with a moment of suspicion, as if he could read what was going through the man's mind. then he nodded. " Alright. let's get moving."

There was no way Spike could stop him from killing either of his friends in the train carts, But on the other hand there was no way he could survive doing it either.

***

"General, we've received word from the Chinese. They're glad to hear that the threat is ended, but have to warn us that Tai is no longer listening to them. He's gone rogue and is simply destroying everything in his path. The communication device he carried didn't survive his first blast, and anyone that has tried to get close enough to talk to him has ended up cooked alive. We aren't sure if he plans on stopping at the border, or even stopping at all."

The tech glanced back at the door to the tent. Bates had relocated north of the border, forewarned about the timing of Diss's activation... and while plenty of tanks and some other equipment had been lost, the air force had enough warning that only a handful of planes had been. While the war had been devastating to US forces, if it was truly over, they'd still remain far and away the most advanced and expensive military on earth.

The elation general Bates had been feeling at the incredible success of Spike's ploy vanished in moments. He had already received congratulations from the president, as well as assurances that every resource that was available would be deployed to get the now ruined country back up and running.

There were already plans to divide up the country like it were the spoils of war, with the United States dividing the bulk of the still populated parts of the country into new states, and starting a closer relationship with the European Union in exchange for their assistance getting its infrastructure back up and running.

The southern part of the country would, by prior agreement, go to the Chinese. But the Chinese had devastated most of it, meaning that they were essentially claiming a mass of ash and death.

But if Tai wasn't stopping? What the hell could stop someone who could manifest the heat of the sun in the palm of his hands?

"... Call in Spike, as soon as he gets here. I want Ripper, Eyeball, and Valkyrie as soon as you can get them. And have the DMA check their roster for... whoever might be able to take out Tai."

The tech nodded. "Of course, sir. There's a whole dossier on how to do it, but, well. In the event of a World War Three, our best option was to just throw Valkyrie at him. But, well. When she gets close enough to do the job, she won't even be able to see him."

***

" So you see, this shadow master guy and most of his kids can do this whole thing where they drain the life force, Kinda like the soul, chi, or the spirit, from one living thing, and pass it on to another. when they do that, it makes them stronger, tougher, healthier in general. it also makes them heal really fast for a little bit right whenever it goes in, And if you've got more than half a dozen people's worth, then you basically stop aging."

Eyeball had to take his helmet off, so that Emerald could hear him, but she'd always been amazing at hearing and seeing things while in flight. Despite the rush of the wind, emerald was able to keep up with the conversation fairly easily; Eyeball was the one who had trouble hearing what she said in response unless she pulled him up so she could speak right into his ear... Something that, when it happened, seemed to be accompanied by the occasional bite.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"There's some limit to it, diminishing returns, you can't just drain 500 people and have the strength of 500 people, but he said from what he felt when he met Zeus in Greece, something like that was the source of the Olympians longevity. Most of them seem to just be fairly capable metas who had their souls extended artificially somehow, probably by someone just like him."

She leaned in to half-shout into his ear. " So we're basically like Gods now?"

"Not really. But if we don't fuck around, we can live to see the next millenia."

".....Do you think you'd be strong enough to kill my grandma?"

Eyeball blinked... and looked up at Emerald. "Why the hell do you want to kill your grandma?"

She let out a sigh. "Oh, look. Its a base. I think I see lights." She started to glide downwards, heading for the desert... as Eyeball pulled his helmet back on.

When they settled on the dirt, he turned. "Yeah, not gonna let that one slide. If your grandma did something to you bad enough that you need to kill her, I'm in to help. Just let me know what's going on."

She nodded. " Sure, fine, we'll talk once this is over. Just gotta get my brother in on it too."

As they casually walked towards the tents, a few snipers on guard towers watching, lowering their weapons as they moved, a Humvee pulled up beside them. A soldier looked out the window. "Ma'am. Sir." He opened the door. "Sir, the general wants to speak with you. Immediately. There's an emergency."

Eyeball nodded. "I'm sure there was. Must have been something insane for someone to use an EMP that big. Did we get many machines while it was going?"

"...He thinks we got all of them, sir. But this might be worse."

***

The meeting around the table involved some of the most impressive figures and modern metahuman history.

Valkyrie, the invulnerable amazon, tall and unstoppably powerful, wearing her usual leather leather jackets, reinforced by unknown exotic materials to make it tough enough to withstand the sort of explosion that would disintegrate the wearer in most cases.

Ripper, a meta human assassin and one of the elites among the DMA, his power's generally unknown, but known to have cleanly killed some of the most dangerous enemies of the United States over the years; tall, lean, dark skinned, He looked like he belonged on a basketball court aside from the same black DMA uniform those in the tent had seen many times before.

Eyeball, a bit more normal in build than the other two, but wearing the same chrome helmet with its two currently inoperable red LED lights that he'd been shown with on the news after some of his exploits. The chrome helmet and the black body armor he wore had become something of a signature by now.

Spike was notably absent, with no communication having been heard from him since whatever it was that had destroyed the machines. When asked, Bates had simply commented he was on his way back.

Bates tapped on the machine in the center of the tent, revealing a holographic projection of what appeared to be the sun at first. A ball of white hot plasma, whose grim implications only became apparent after the image zoomed out and showed the landscape it was rolling across.

" Alright, people. here is the situation. One of the Chinese Titans was killed in action in action by a machine. We don't know the exact details, but as the Twins were moving north together, she probably died in front of her brother.. with predictable results. Tai seems to have gone into a bit of a berserk rage, burning a path across the continent, ignoring any calls to stop."

He tapped a button. The image displayed a long series of numbers; but the most notable was a temperature; 8,000 degrees. " He's burning so hot, that the only three people we have who can survive to get close enough, are the two of you and Spike. In theory, if we got a lump of diamond and and shot it out of a rail gun, it it might manage to kill him before his heat made it into dust. But we only have a handful of rail guns, and no ability to aim accurately enough to hit a human sized target from the water. We also have some orbital assets with similar armaments, that can be here sometime tomorrow. But if we wait that long, We are probably looking at a global famine with the amount of heat he's putting off."

Bates looked around the table. " The two of you are here because I'd like to ask you to give it your best shot. You'll be blind by the by the time you get close enough to hit him, and you'll need to get right up on him to do any good. For you....."

He looked at eyeball. "My men tell me that you claimed you could look at anything and if it were possible to kill it, you could tell them how. Can you tell me how to kill this fucker?"

Eyeball stared at the hologram. He ran some numbers in his head, thinking. " Tungsten and diamond take a lot to vaporize, but by the time you reach him they would be that hot. If Valkyrie can give me just a tiny bit of that neutronium y'all have her making, and I can get some of my gear from Colorado, I can take him down."

Bates stared at him. "That would be a bold claim, Eyeball."

"They don't call me Titanslayer for nothing."

Valkyrie tilted her head. "And just how much neutronium would you need? You realize a neutronium bullet would weigh as much as a good sized building right?"

"I have been working on my own custom railgun build, to get a projectile moving so fast, with so much force, that maybe I could hit Spike with enough force to either kill him, or make him so dense he sinks right down into the Earth's core and can't escape without causing a global catastrophe. My current build fired a 10-kilo needle at... well, lets say its quite fast. Could go through a tank without stopping."

He smiled. " If you can get me a single grain of neutronium, or just something else dense enough it can make it through without melting... something only Valkyrie can make, if we give her a handful of diamonds to crush.. I can put it on the tip of a bullet, and I can kill Tai with it. It... probably would have done the job on spike, but I was hesitant to ask." He glanced at Bates.

"It'll cost you, though. Something for me, to do the job on Tai instead of Spike, and for Valkyrie as well."

Bates looked clearly irate; the fact that the only thing that might stop Tai was a weapon meant to kill one of his best assets troubled the man. ",,,What?"

"For Valkyrie, ask her. For me... I always fancied my own private island. And there's some nice ones off the coast of Mexico, some of which happen to be uninhabited now, and unclaimed by any government... You can get the papers taken care of while I get what I need."