The lobby of the PRT building was a veritable warzone. The door to the building was torn off its hinges, and cracks crisscrossed the probably bulletproof glass that had once surrounded it. Clumps of solidified containment foam were scattered around the lobby, interspersed with metal spikes rising from the floor and emerging from the walls at sharp angles.

The remains of a metal gate covered the front of the gift shop, the glass wall that had once separated it from the lobby now nothing but a mountain of shattered safety glass that had rained down across the floor and into the bins of Ward and Protectorate merchandise for sale.

Two men lay slumped motionless across the front desk. One was a PRT trooper with a massive gash in his chest piece that oozed with blood. The other was just an unlucky worker, a metal spike extending through the dark skinned man’s shoulder and out the other side.

A third body lay off to one side near the door. From the look of things, the trooper had been standing near the wall and had been hit by the front door when it was thrown aside. His helmet was knocked askew and a trickle of red ran down his neck and was splattered across the broken remains of his visor.

A thick metal blast door in the far wall was kept open with several bent and twisted metal blades that stopped it from sliding shut and the regular door behind it had been bashed in with inhuman strength. Another door directly behind the front desk was also hanging open, while several others had been sealed shut by more blades. Kaiser had made excellent use of his power to control the battlefield, blocking off doors, cutting defenders off from one another, and disabling the cameras and foam cannons scattered around the room.

I took it all in with a glance, my fist squeezed tightly around Riptide’s handle. The Empire had come in hard and fast, giving the defenders as little time to respond as they could. Battery, who had followed me inside, swallowed heavily and a glance showed the lower half of her face looking rather pale.

“I still can’t believe that the Empire would be bold enough to attack us like this here,” Battery said softly. “We were expecting them to attack the convoys of course, but this is a big step up from their usual tactics. They must have found out somehow that we’re really short-staffed today.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Actually, it can wait. Lead the way, you can tell me as we go.”

“Right.” Battery shook herself, then pointed to the jammed-open door. Her voice was slightly choked, but she was clearly doing her best to push through it. “Through there, then down the hallway and then we should take the first left. The elevator should be disabled, but I know the override, assuming the empire didn’t wreck it on their way down. Prisoner containment is on subfloor three and I’d rather avoid fighting Kaiser in a stairwell if I can help it.”

“Okay. Stay behind me, let’s go. Now what was that about today?”

We jogged towards the door, dodging around the debris. I could probably go faster, but I didn’t really know the way very well and I didn’t want to leave Battery alone. I knew her power also let her move pretty quickly, but only in short bursts.

“There’s a special training going on in New York that Dauntless and Triumph are both at today. The exact date is supposed to be kept secret, but I guess it must have gotten out somehow. Plus, Velocity is off today, so he’s on his way, but even as fast as he is it takes him some time to get his costume on and get to headquarters.”

We turned the corner and Battery cursed when she saw the dozens of metal blades blocking off access to the elevator. If that had been everything, I probably could have cut our way through, but there were more blades growing out of the elevator doors and into the walls, rendering it essentially unusable.

“Okay, new plan. We go straight, then through the cafeteria and down the service stairs. Where was I, oh right. Militia was on duty on the Rig, and Assault and I were out patrolling, so Armsmaster was the only person on duty here today. I don’t know if it's a good or bad thing that the Wards weren’t here when they attacked; we could have used their help but the Empire is being more violent than they usually are.”

We didn’t run into anyone until we reached the cafeteria, where we found the doors barricaded shut and a pair of troopers guarding two-dozen support staff members. Thankfully it didn’t take them long to let us through, and we directed them back the way we came.

The door to the service stairs was inside of a maintenance room next to the kitchen. Battery deftly entered a code to two different heavy, reinforced doors, then led the way down two flights of stairs and through another locked door.

We emerged into a room filled with pipes, air ducts, and what I was pretty sure was a backup generator and found two more hiding maintenance workers in PRT uniforms. They seemed relieved to see us, but we didn’t stop to talk to them, instead rushing out into a well-lit hallway lined with numbered but unmarked doors.

“Without the elevator, there’s only one way down to where we’re going, so we’re probably going to run into Empire capes soon.” Battery warned me.

I nodded sharply. “Okay, stay behind me. I’m more bulletproof than you are.” We ran together down the hallway, our footsteps and the hum of the fluorescent lights the only sounds in the eerily silent corridor.

The entrance to the stairwell was through a door numbered S2-173. I pulled the door open and instantly the sounds of loud voices and fighting reached my ears, distorted by echoes until it was all just a mess of noise.

I took the stairs down four at a time, no longer bothering to slow down to let Battery keep pace. I didn’t need her guidance any more, my water sense telling me more than enough about where I needed to go. Pipes told me where the walls were and I could feel two-dozen blobs of water milling around just below me.

Inside my armor, a small flask of salt water burst open, dousing my shirt and pants, and I made sure that it soaked into my clothes and pooled against my skin. The boundless strength and fury of the sea filled my muscles and bones, washing away the strain of my earlier fight, training, and run in an instant and leaving me feeling fresh and raring for a fight.

My blood was roaring as I came to a landing, Riptide at the ready and my gut churning, ready to call the water I could feel moving through the walls to me at a moment’s notice. There were two men with guns at the bottom of the stairs, both bald, wearing makeshift body armor, and covered in prominent nazi tattoos. By the time they saw me coming, it was already too late for both of them.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I leapt from the top of the stairs, kicking off the side of the top step and extending my arms out on either side of me. One of them let out a short yell and a bullet ricochet off my helmet, a half-dozen more going wide and leaving pockmarks in the concrete behind me. Then I was upon them, my arms clotheslining both of them simultaneously across the tops of their chests.

They were lifted off their feet and thrown into the back wall. I winced as the bald one’s head slammed into the hard gray cement behind him with a painful-sounding crack. The second man was at least wearing a helmet, but I doubted either one was going to be getting up without help.

I bunched up my arms and rolled, crashing through the propped open double doors, then sprang to my feet, my eyes and demigod senses scanning the scene in front of me. I could see nineteen Empire members, a worrying seven of them capes while the rest were armed goons.

My heart fell slightly when I saw that Rune, Othala, and Victor had all been freed already. All three looked tired, but gleeful, their identities protected by black domino masks. The two young women were at the back of the group, Rune wearing her typical black-and-red robe over an orange jumpsuit while Othala was still just dressed in her prisoner clothing. Victor on the other hand was near the front of the group, wielding an oversized gun with ease.

My time spent on PHO over the last few days came in handy, helping me identify the other Empire capes. The man in metal armor was Kaiser, the leader of the Empire. He could grow metal objects like spikes and walls out of the ground. The SS cosplayer next to him was Krieg, a powerful brute and one of Kaiser’s lieutenants. The creepy-looking pale guy was Alabaster, he was some kind of reset-based regeneration, basically impossible to kill apparently but otherwise not much more dangerous than a normal person.

The last cape was Crusader, an armored man with a long spear surrounded by ghostly duplicates. He was either the biggest danger to me here or possibly a complete non-issue. His duplicates were known to pass right through walls and body armor, and I wasn’t sure how exactly that was going to interact with my celestial bronze armor, nor with the curse. Well, it looked like I was probably about to find out.

That was almost the entire Empire roster, an insane amount of resources to commit to a single attack. They really wanted to free their allies. The only capes missing were Stormtiger and Cricket, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were somewhere nearby ready to help bale out their friends if it came down to that.

Past the crowd of Empire members, two-dozen PRT troopers with shields, foam cannons, and assault rifles getting slowly pushed back by potshots from the goons and a bunch of ghostly copies of Crusader. Armsmaster, who was standing near the front and center of the group in his shining blue power armor was the only thing really keeping the Empire capes back. His halberd danced through the air, the blade glowing with a faint orange tint that could interact with Crusader’s ghosts, parrying their spears and making them fade away whenever he managed to get a clean hit on one.

This…could be a problem. One on one, I was pretty sure I could kick every cape in the hallway’s butt six ways to Sunday. Crusader might be able to give me some trouble with his crude flight and duplicates, and Seven on one with eleven other armed men to back them up in a relatively enclosed space? That was a bit trickier. Especially with Othala able to give the goons around her powers of their own. These weren’t nearly the worst odds I’d ever faced, but it wasn't a great spot to find myself in either.

Othala and Crusader were my first two priorities. I was relatively confident that god-forged celestial bronze was more than a match for the man’s ghostly friends, but they were also a major threat to the PRT troopers and I would really prefer not to test that theory if I could help it.

Stopping Othala before she could empower too many of the goons and capes around her was also very important. She could only give each person one power, and they didn’t last very long, but even an ordinary man with a gun was dangerous if they were invulnerable or had super speed.

My rather loud entrance hadn’t gone unnoticed. Several of the goons and some of the capes at the back were already starting to turn towards me when I rolled through the door, but they all had the speed and reflexes of normal humans, even Krieg, the only true brute among them. They had clearly been expecting slightly more warning before reinforcements arrived, but Battery and I’s route through the service stairs had avoided the sentry I could feel waiting near the top of this stairwell and the two men outside hadn’t really had a chance to warn anyone before they were subdued.

Had the number been anywhere close to even, I probably would have asked them to surrender before engaging. That just seemed like the thing that heroes in this world did. However, with so many dangerous foes to contend with, I wasn’t willing to take any chances.

I would try to pull my hits enough to avoid killing anyone, but that was the only consideration I was willing to make. The Empire had already shown that they were willing to kill to free their captured allies, and I had a firm belief that turnabout was fair play. I had spared Ethan Nakamura’s life and freed him from the Titans’ army. He had repaid my kindness by trying to kill me and running a poisoned blade through Annabeth’s chest.

Never. Again.

The mere thought of the traitorous, wretched son of Nemesis filled me with white-hot rage, and I directed that fury into the water I could sense around me. Every pipe in the hallway burst at the same time and access panels in the walls blew open as a torrent of water flooded through them. It wasn’t as much water as I would have liked, but it would have to be enough.

Othala, who was putting on proper shoes instead of the orange slippers she’d been wearing, was kneeling just a little bit too close to exactly the wrong panel. A tide of searing-hot water crashed into her like a Colchis bull, knocking her off balance and sending her crashing into the far wall with an agonized cry of pain. She collapsed against the wall and lay still, her orange jumpsuit completely soaked through and clinging to her body

Her scream made my heart clench painfully. That water was really hot, easily hot enough to burn, and it had also hit her really hard. I grabbed control of the hot water soaking her clothing and pulled it back into the rest of the water, but that was all I had time to do.

My other attempts at an opening attack went far less well. I managed to knock a few goons around, but that was about it. I knocked Alabaster into a wall just like Othala, but he just shrugged it off after a second, his body resetting to perfect health a second after I slammed him into a wall.

Any water that got too close to Krieg was slowed down to a crawl, my control over it unbroken but the water itself felt like it was pushing through thick mud. That completely ruined my plan to take out Crusader, who was standing right next to his nazi buddy. Similarly, Kaiser and Victor were also both too close to Krieg, the torrents of water I sent at them reduced to nothing but lazy rivers floating through the air.

Rune wasn’t too close to Krieg, but she was still in an awkward position, surrounded by a bunch of goons and far from any convenient walls. I did splash her a bit, but not enough to do more than momentarily distract her. The thug standing directly to her right went down, but I would have much preferred to take out the telekinetic and not just another random guy with a gun.

Kaiser turned around to face me, his hands folded behind his back in a picture of composure. “Ah, Riptide. You’ve made yourself a very inconvenient thorn in just a matter of days.” His voice was cool and smooth, filled with absolute confidence. “From your actions, I take it you’re not here to beg for forgiveness. You could have had a place among us, far above the lesser peoples of our great nation. Such a shame.” And then his voice turned cold and vicious. “Well, no matter. We have already fixed the majority of the problems you’ve caused. How kind of you to present yourself here so we can burn that nasty thorn before it can ruin any more lives.”

There was a retort on my tongue, but I had no time to use it. Before I could so much as open my mouth, my instincts screamed at me and I threw myself to the side, dodging out of the way of a metal pole rapidly growing out of a rippling patch on the wall beside me. And so the battle was on.