As the aircraft flew its way southward, Eyeball was busily examining the contents of the crate, replacing the equipment he'd been wearing, much of which had been destroyed by the effects of Diss's power. A replacement helmet, slightly upgraded version of the one that he had just lost, a few new grenades, fortunately his firearms seemed to have come through just fine but he'd expended plenty of ammunition fighting robots, and a reload was useful... if not really needed for this job.

The breach cam grenade had to be replaced, which he considered a bit strange, while he always carried one with him, he had never actually fired one since leaving the military. He had bought a whole case thanks to how cheap the things were, and at this rate, even counting the ones that he was breaking apart and making his own custom versions of, he would probably never work through them all.

He pondered what he had seen while talking to the hero, Ripper. While the man would be absolutely insane to fight for most people, able to phase out, or whatever he did, move around, and pop back in, against Eyeball, that was pretty much a death sentence. He would just take one shot, plant a shroud grenade wherever the man was going to pop back in, and watch him reappear as a corpse.

If this Apollo guy had this short of precise short term precognition on top of his more vague long term stuff, it was obvious how a group of Metas he was working with could get themselves to be called Gods.

Once he had his usual gear sorted out, rifle, handguns, grenade bandelier, and of course body armor, It was time to examine the 'Special' rifle.

The Titanslayer Special, final version... for now.. was designed to only fire a single shot. A series of capacitors that he would have to charge before taking the shot would trigger a series of extremely expensive magnetic accelerators allowing the projectile, a heavy, pointed, armor piercing needle shaped projectile that looked somewhere between what would come out of a high end sniper rifle and a low end tank, to launch at truly ridiculous velocity. The previous model had had a very rapid possible cycle time, which would be wonderful if he needed to take out multiple high end targets; but not good enough for its intended purpose.

After extensive alterations, he'd managed to make the capacitors destructively dissipate their charge; they would use all of their power up in a single millisecond, and the rifle would essentially detonate while it was firing. He had the components to reassemble the rifle to fire a second shot, but it would essentially be completely rebuilding the rifle barrel, and at this point each set of components would cost over 100 grand. There would be no test shots. If not for his power, there was no way in Hell he would trust the weapon. And all of that work, making the capacitors only single shots, had only bought another 35% additional velocity. Still, with the kinds of speeds he was working with every bit counted.

The normal projectile for this weapon was a was a 10 kilogram slug. Starting with the basis of a 76 millimeter naval round, and working through various iterations over the course of the months he had been designing this gun, he ended with a 55 millimeter projectile that had an accelerant base which would be ignited by the detonation of the barrel itself, giving it just a little bit more kick a few meters it was launched.

If he tried to fire it from a shoulder mount without a tripod or other support, it would probably break his arm, shoulder, and hand; possibly even all the way off. But its ability to penetrate a human sized target was better than even the heavy tank weapons he'd dealt with in the army.

After checking each component, assembling the rifle, and making sure with his power that it would work properly, Eyeball disassembled it once more, and packed it in the foam inside of the carrying case, went back into the crate. Pulling out the three parachutes, he loaded one onto himself, and attached the other two to the crate.

For just a moment, he considered doing something he had dreamed of the first time he'd seen soldiers dropping gear from a plane on a parachute. Climbing onto the crate as if it were a surfboard, popping the chutes, and riding it all the way to the ground. His drill instructor had told him that if he'd ever had such a stupid idea again he would bitch-slap him into next Tuesday, but he'd thought it would look awesome.

And for good reason. it was an incredibly stupid idea. You could really easily get tangled up in the parachutes and fall to your death, or lose your balance and fall off. And usually this gear would fall, and hit the ground, harder than a person would, but not hard enough to damage the contents too badly; or at all, if they were packed right. This crate probably wouldn't; the chutes were a bit oversized. But still.

Obviously he would never do such a thing. Obviously.

***

Spike was leaning forward, hands on his knees, bracing himself after the harrowing experience of being repeatedly teleported southward. Every moment had felt as if he were falling through a dark, endless tunnel, and he had to carefully control himself so as not to increase his density too high. He did that once during the early teleports, and fade and Fade had abruptly left him behind, unable to carry the additional weight.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It didn't help that Faye had almost immediately left, heading back north to grab someone else. Or that Valkyrie was already was already here, sitting at the bottom of a hill, a massive impact crater likely resulting from her having leapt dozens of miles to arrive here at a time; the speeds the woman could achieve in a jump were mostly limited, it seemed, by what sort of ground she was jumping off of.

She walked up to Spike, grinning down at him. "So, government boy. Heard my buddy Eyeball almost killed you. You been too chickenshit to ride in a plane ever since."

Spike had to remind himself while looking back at her, that despite her apparent youth, this woman was older than his mother, and probably grew up speaking this way. "Maybe. But who won in the end?"

" You're a titan. The fact that there was even a chance is incredibly embarrassing."

Spike glared up at her, crossing his arms. "Look, you're the only one who's just flat out invulnerable. Everybody else has at least some way they could get hurt. On the other hand, all you can do is punch really hard. if I got pissed off enough I could pull the goddamn moon out of orbit. And maybe I couldn't kill you, but I could launch your old ass into the sun. Maybe you could crush my head like a grape, but you still get tossed as easy as any regular 400-pound lump of meat."

She stepped closer, grinning. "Sure. You could try. I've been prepared for that sort of bullshit for over a decade now, though."

Spike stared. How the fuck do you prepare for being launched into the sun? This woman... Good lord.

The two had a bit of a tense standoff there on the hillside, with the light of Tai slowly growing visible off to the West. Things would only grow worse when Valkyrie started flirting; it was fairly well known that her 'type' were the very tiny handful of people she considered dangerous; now that they knew she had a son her absence awhile back was explained, though the question of who the father was was still up in the air.

Fortunately for Spike, the tension was broken by the sudden reappearance of Fade, holding Ripper. Ripper grimaced, shaking himself, as Fade stepped forward... looking off at the slowly growing ball of light in the distance.

Ripper glared. " I could have made it here in the damn truck. Where the hell is it? You pulled me out while I was still driving down the damn road."

"Don't really care. If Eyeball fails, you three are our only real chance, and we need to get this done. The damage is already considerable. I can see why they would send Spike and Valkyrie. Wouldn't you get toasted the moment you appeared?"

A sigh, and a slow headshake. " Probably. But if I appear partway in the same place as him, both of us would die in a very unfortunate fashion. Only problem is I can't really see our world from the other side so I'd need have a really good idea of where he is."

Fade blinked. " And how do you know what happens if you appear partway in something?"

Ripper reached down, and unsnapped the buckles on his left boot; to reveal a shiny chrome prosthetic. "Past experience. Very direct past experience. If he weren't emitting this fire aura, I could stick this prosthesis inside his head and then poof. Done it a few times since I lost it."

He glanced over at Valkyrie. " They aren't sure whether it would work on her though. don't think it's worth risking me trying."

Valkyrie laughed, and and attempted to clap Ripper on the back, only to see him fade from existence, and reappear a few feet away seconds later. " Hah. Nice trick. I would be interested to see whether that worked."

After a moment, Fade interrupted the encounter, looking up at the sky.. "Hold up, folks. Looks like we've got... are you serious?"

As a plane flew overhead, two objects could be descending from the sky. One an armored dragon girl with green scales and dark blue body armor.

The other; a 7 foot long wooden crate with a lunatic standing on it as if it were a skateboard, and a parachute on either end. From this distance it was impossible to make out anything other than specks of color; but that shiny dot of chrome over the black armor made it clear; Eyeball was on his way.

***

Emerald shook her head, continuing to dive alongside him. Eyeball had asked her to grab him if things screwed up on the fall, and she'd gone along with it. Dumbass. Cute, silly, dangerous, but still, sometimes, a dumbass.

She ended up not needing to intervene. He made it look strangely impressive, if still stupid, as he landed the crate on a hilltop about 100 feet from the gathered heroes and villainess; smoothly cutting the parachute cords and letting them be carried away by the wind, rather than letting them pile down atop him.

She landed beside the crate, a quick flap helping to easily settle on her feet, grinning down at the group, revealing a long row of sharp teeth; not that anyone here would be intimidated, but still. Half the point of being a villainess was doing things with style, right?

Eyeball glanced over at her, and gave a thumbs-up, before turning down to the group. "Hey, Valkyrie. You got me some Neutronium?"

She started walking up the hill. "Of course. Got some all the way down, dense as it can be, and something closer to halfway." She held up two small BB-sized objects, barely visible at a distance. "This one weighs about six hundred kilos." She held up the other. "This one about forty-five. I've got another one that's only ten."

Eyeball looked at the two, nodding slowly. "Huh. The six-hundred might be too much for my gun, but definitely won't melt before impact. The gun can handle the 45, but if he's as hot as he might be, the ten probably would melt. I've got a few bullets. Mind if I have all three, we can try them? And... mind handling the six-hundred one for me? Just..."

He unpacked the crate, tossing the lid aside, and removing the three bullets; long, impressive-looking cylinders that didn't look like they belonged in a man-portable gun. "Mind pressing those into the tips of each for me? I'm gonna plant the gun, get ready. Only gonna get two shots at this, but I'd prefer to make it on the first; have a reputation to maintain, after all."

And, of course, he might just use the second to send Spike a gift. Who knew. The day was young.