Stumblebum and I snuck out along the road and went further East. Both the supertank and the rampager were nowhere to be found. While I had been cowering in the alleyway, Torque had been getting tossed around like a ragdoll apparently, and he was still at it, as far as I could hear. It sounded distinctly different from the noise of a simple building demolition. The steel plating rang out like a bell with every beating that it took.

"Torque tried that same move twice," Stumblebum told me. "You know, with the pincer and the ramming-rod? But the second time it didn't even phase the motherfucker. Nobody can figure this guy out, whatever he is. Luckily, he seems pretty entertained for the moment. He's like a cat chasing a toy, and that'll have to do for as long as Torque can hold out."

"Maybe he really is invincible..." I spoke. If Torque had only managed to knock him off his feet, that wasn't the same thing as getting a hit in past his defenses. If the pincers managed to pick him up first, then the attack was more of an afterthought.

Stumblebum seemed to be looking for something. A vantage point. "Nah. There are countless supers in the world, my dude, and only one of them is actually unkillable. Wherever these damn curses come from, they have a logic to them, everybody knows that."

"So, what then? Maybe we drown him, like the Saviors did with Melkor?"

Stumblebum scowled, but he had found what he was looking for, and started directly towards it. A bank building that stood a good ten stories above the rest. "Zephyr tried choking him out already. Don't tell anybody she can do that, though. It's kind of a big secret, I guess. Her hail-Mary. I saw that yellow lightning thing you did, by the way. It missed by a mile, but it sure looked cool," He laughed.

"Wait, what?"

"You, new guy. Do you really have no idea what your power can do? Just after my head got minced and the big bad went flying, you did like a blast thingy. I heard of a guy out in Nevada with empathic bolts or whatever he calls it, so I'm guessing that's what you got. Pretty snazzy power if it works."

He had to be talking about the blast of pain that I'd wasted a minute or two ago, but I had no idea that it would be visible to the naked eye. I thought that everything having to do with the mental energy I manipulated was purely intangible, but maybe it was more literally a form of energy than I'd ever considered before.

We got to the front of the building and stared up. "I'm sorry, but if you're thinking of taking me up there to try shooting at him again, I don't think I'm going to be any more accurate than I was before, if not less-so at that distance. I need to get closer," I said.

Stumblebum spread his arms and stepped into my personal space. "Your lack of curiosity over my power is concerning," he said. "Now gimme a hug."

I did as he said, wrapping my arms awkwardly around his torso as he snuggled in close. With the physical contact, I had a tighter link to his thoughts. His amusement over what was about to happen left me with only the vaguest clue as to how I should prepare; by holding on tighter.

It felt like being launched out of a slingshot. Much like the falling sensation that came with my own power but wracked through with a violent inertia matched only by the suddenness of the stop that came next. As we parted from each other, I stumbled back and almost fell again. When my eyes were ready to open, I saw that we were someplace different entirely than before. We were no longer on the streets, but the roof of the bank building.

"So... you're a teleporter," I guessed. "And you can teleport... after death?"

"That's right," Stumblebum said. "And I need line of sight, so this is more for me than for you, pal. But you're welcome to take potshots off the roof if you really feel like it. I'll be looking for an entry point to the fight."

"No, no. My head is splitting enough already. My power has limited uses."

"Ah, drawbacks. I would know a thing or two about that."

"But you're literally unkillable, aren't you? You're the one unkillable super that you mentioned? How can that be possible?"

"Beats me," he said, though the tightness in his shoulders betrayed some reluctances. He changed the subject quickly. "Hey, you got any idea what's going on down there? Can you listen to their thoughts?"

"Most people don't have articulated thoughts in the middle of a fight. Just intentions. But let me see what I can pick up from here."

Once I'd assumed my see no evil, hear no evil position as before, I cast out my mind over the battlefield and took it all in. There were half a dozen supers on the field now, judging just by the contexts of their movements. The rampager was easy to pick out with his inhuman form in cerebral space, and the fact that everyone was keeping a wide berth around him. A single swipe of his claws had been enough to take out Asphalt, who was by far the toughest hero in the city. Nobody else would be risking it now.

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There wasn't enough information for me to make out what was going on, though. People were waving their arms and moving in all sorts of unpredictable patterns, but none of it amounted to something I could intuit. I needed more, goddammit. More direct input from their bodies. The signals were there, in their visual and motor centers, but they were just too muddled to interpret at this distance. My perspective was locked to the area just around my body, like a floating third eye. And just like any regular eye, it had trouble reading the bottom lines.

If I could just get it closer, I thought, then maybe I could perceive more.

Being in cerebral space was dizzying enough already. There was no up and no down, only glowing bodies of different colors. Even though my position was fixed in reference to them, it always felt like I was drifting, or falling. Pushing to move myself closer without accidentally shifting my body was like trying to fly by hauling the seat of my own pants. It just wasn't working.

If I'd done all this experimenting in the past, I wouldn't be so useless right now. If only I had woken the fuck up before the world was literally falling down around my ears.

"It's no good," I said. "I can't tell anything except that there are more people involved now and they're keeping a distance. I think they're focusing on locking him down more than anything."

"That's what I would do. Hey, maybe he'll get bored!" Stumblebum said. He poked my shoulder and pointed out over the city. "You see that carpark over there? You think we can teleport to it?"

I nodded. With the rampager stuck in an intersection just up the road, the odds we'd get hit by any debris with a full line of cover were slim. It was only one little hug, and we were on our way. My sense of direction had never been so completely fucked up in my life.

Closing my eyes in one place then being jolted to another made me finally give up fighting my headache and exhaustion and let it all out. I doused the parking lot with a bit of vomit while Stumblebum tried to encourage me from a safe distance. "Happens to everybody their first time!" he called.

I simply waved him off. Once my hurling was done, the adrenaline coursing through my body was ready to give me my second wind. That was the story I decided to tell myself, anyway.

"Stay back and follow me then," Stumblebum said. "You've got a lot riding on your shoulders with this, Adrian. You're the best trump-card we have for the time being, so I'm praying that blast of yours does some real damage."

I steeled my gaze and kept close at the rogue's back. As soon as we cleared the corner, it was pure chaos. Fire, explosions, laser beams, flown cars, and panicked shouts. These were not the markers of a fight well-in-hand, nor did I see anything but worry held barely constrained in their auras. Everyone believed that it was only a matter of time until the next person dropped. Then the next, until it was them.

They weren't wrong, either.

The rampager for his part was flying around the fight in a blur, leaping like an animal on all fours. He was kept constantly at bay by a combination of obstacles and distractions being put in his way. Whenever he would get too close to one of the heroes on the ground with him, Zephyr would launch them wailing into the sky on a pillar of air. They didn't much seem to like it, but it beat being dead. I watched, however, as this system inevitably left a gap.

The rampager charged forward at a lone super at the far end of the fight, forcing Zephyr to reposition to a different rooftop up above in preparation of putting them out of harm's way. He did this only to veer and double his speed at a group of three others, tackling into the middle one as the others ran away. He tore her limb from bloody limb, letting out a satisfied howl as he dug in.

Stumblebum and I crouched down, trying to avoid being detected by our enemy as he got me within just a few hundred feet. I started to charge up my blast then. I could hardly walk with all of the pangs of negative energy that kept escaping from their intended prison. The weaker I became, the harder it was to control the energy I was generating, especially as I pushed it far beyond my last attempt.

I might be out of the fight after this, so I had to give it my all.

"Adrian?" Stumblebum asked. He could hear me struggling in pain.

I didn't say anything. I moved ahead of him to a van that had been shoved into a light pole and readied myself to step out from around the corner and fire. This time I paid more attention, and I could see the yellow and black crackles of lightning that were arcing over my skin, gathering at my fingertips.

"Adrian!" Stumblebum called out again, but it was too late.

I exited my cover, and, in that instant, my eyes didn't have to search long for the rampager. He was mid-leap, arms outstretched, gory-covered face beaming with a smile as his gaze locked-on to mine. I fired my shot, but nothing would change his path now. The energy which lanced between us was enough to blind me momentarily, and I braced for impact.

It hit me and drove me down into the asphalt. My whole body screamed out in pain, with trembles moving through everything. I didn't know if I'd just been bisected, but it sure felt like it. When I opened my eyes again, Stumblebum was standing over me and he had a hold on my forearm. He was pulling on me, but I was still too knocked silly to comprehend why.

The rampager had landed on me, but he wasn't moving. He was completely unconscious.

I was seeing stars, but I still managed a smile. My mask had fallen off entirely and everyone was staring in shock; a whole throng of people in costume standing dumbfounded in the rubble. As soon as Stumblebum got me clear, they realized they needed to capitalize though, and rushed in to start pounding on the fallen monster's body.

"W-what the fuck h-happened?" I stuttered out; my power too spent to even attempt another projection. My ribs were broken. Of that, I was sure. It was a feeling I'd felt before.

After propping me up against a wall, Stumblebum looked me over. "You sure as hell hit him alright!"

"Y-yeah..." But he'd hit me too, and it looked like I was worse for wear.

"You got him, Adrian! What are you bummed about?" The man in the zombie mask tried to congratulate me.

Something wasn't right, though. The heroes were kicking and stabbing at the monster, but their auras were still filled with fear. They began to back up, but not before a blur of grey movement scattered their bodies. The rampager was on his feet in a flash, with his forearm pierced all the way through a super's abdomen and out the other side.

That hero gurgled out his last words as the monster threw his corpose aside. It turned its head to look around. Inevitably, unstoppably, it turned its attention to me.