Riptide whistled through the air, my sword nothing but a streak of shining bronze as I cut through the metal blades and obstructions that Kaiser was growing from the walls around me. Water continued to flow from the broken pipes in the walls and I drew it all towards me, slowly building up a personal hurricane like the one I’d used to fight Hyperion.

A bent metal panel whistled towards me and I recognized it as one of the places where water had burst through the wall. I leaned back and to the right slightly and cut it out of the air as it flew past me. Rune’s control slipped and it clattered onto the ground behind me, but I was already focused on the next attack.

Thundering retorts filled the hallway, echoing loudly up and down the bare walls, as several of the Empire men opened up on me with their guns. Just on reflex I cut a few out of the air or deflected them away from me, but the rest either missed on their own or bounced uselessly off my armor. I barely felt the impacts––even a high-caliber rifle would have no chance of penetrating my skin or armor and these bullets felt like raindrops pitter-pattering against my skin.

Though not dangerous, what the bullets were was distracting. I nearly tripped over a steel blade as it grew from the floor right beside my foot, and a moment later a hunk of masonry whizzed past my ear, Rune’s projectile blown off course by the building winds of my hurricane. Water condensed from my storm and then shattered the broken piece of concrete into fragments.

The Empire capes and goons were reorganizing. Crusader remained at the front of the group, the part furthest from me, but several of his ghosts broke off their attack on the PRT troopers and Armsmaster to drift towards me. Kaiser moved from the front of the group to the middle, while Krieg annoyingly stayed standing beside Crusader, joined by several new armed men to make up for Kaiser’s absence.

Victor had broken off form the fight entirely and was kneeling beside Othala’s unconscious body, tending to her injuries with his stolen skills. Rune had also moved to stand next to Krieg, who was now using his brute strength to prepare projectiles for her, while her posse of gun-wielding goons had moved forward towards me. Alabaster was moving deliberately towards me as well, a long serrated knife held loosely in one hand and a gun in the other.

I was almost offended. They really weren’t taking me seriously, but I’d make them regret it soon enough. Well, more likely they just considered Armsmaster, a skilled veteran hero with years of service behind him, a bigger threat then some no-name who’d appeared barely a week ago. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, but it was definitely going to bite them in the bum.

The next time a blade sprouted by my foot, I slammed my heel into it hard enough to bend it backwards with a screech of tortured metal. Then I kicked off of it like a makeshift starting block and lunged forward, Riptide extended at an angle in front of me.

Alabaster’s blank wide eyes barely had a chance to widen before I was on him and then past him, a spray of blood dying the walls and floor red as Riptide sliced effortlessly through his lightweight costume, skin, muscle, bone, and then out the other side, bisecting from his waist to the bottom of his ribcage.

I didn’t wait for him to reset and continued forward, the storm around me sending Alabaster flying in two different directions. I ducked under a clumsy swing from one of the goons and then I was inside their formation. Wind and water buffeted their bodies and tore at their faces, making most of the men around me stagger away from me.

Riptide flashed, the sword’s blade a shining blur barely visible through the rapidly swelling storm. Guns clattered to the ground in pieces and one man screamed as Riptide, to my surprise, removed the finger he’d had sitting on the trigger guard. I had already confirmed that the blade could cut capes, but I hadn’t expected that a normal mortal would be affected, even a nasty racist one. Still, that was a mystery I could consider at another time.

One of Crusader’s ghosts jabbed his spear towards me and I instinctively moved Riptide to parry the strike. For a moment, it seemed as though the blade was going to pass right through the shaft of the spear, leaving it free to stab me. I scowled and glared at the projection, my blood roaring through my veins like the thunder of a waterfall.

The sea could not be stopped. The tides were inevitable. My strength was the strength of towering waves that sank ships and battered the coastline into sand and dust. A sheen of saltwater coated Riptide’s blade and it sliced cleanly through ghostly wood, sending the speartip flying through the air. I stepped into the thrust and sliced the disarmed ghost in half from hip to shoulder, then removed the head of the one behind it.

The Empire capes were finally responding, the shock of my sudden bull rush having left them momentarily disoriented. Kaiser took a step back and more blades began to grow from the ground and walls, but he had to be careful to avoid hitting his allies. Krieg, the only member of the Empire present who might be able to genuinely fight me in close quarters, began to turn around, but he was too far away to affect the fight for the moment.

Crusader cursed loudly, calling out, “He can fucking pop my ghosts, damn it! First Armsmaster, then this clown?”

I smiled beneath my helmet at his frustration––that was probably how Atlas had felt when Bianca and Nico began to destroy his Spartoi. Then I put it out of my mind, focusing on the battle at hand before I could get lost in my memories.

Another stream of water condensed out of my hurricane and sent Victor, who was crouching over Othala, sprawling across the ground. Two more shot towards Kaiser, whose heavy armor was protecting him from the intensifying storm, but he managed to raise metal walls in front of the blasts before they hit him, water spraying in every direction as it flew into the newly formed barriers.

“Shoot him, fucking shoot him!” someone was shouting, but the handful of remaining gang members were too focused on the PRT troopers to waste bullets on me. Well, most of them. A single shot plinked off the back of my helmet and I negligently swept a hand backwards, a small wave sending the newly regenerated Alabaster flying backwards.

Most of the water pulled back, rejoining the hurricane around me, but a single gallon remained behind and slithered over his face like a living thing, tendrils of water flooding into his mouth and nose and pouring down into his lungs.

“Krieg!” Kaiser barked, “switch places!”

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The neo-nazi villain pretending to be a real nazi charged towards me as Kaiser fell back to join Rune and Crusader. As he moved closer towards me, my storm began to falter as the water and wind blowing near him slowed to a crawl. I slashed Riptide at him, but found the blade moving as though through honey, my muscles straining against air that had suddenly turned as dense as syrup.

Armsmaster and the PRT troopers were not content to sit idly while I did all the fighting. With a textbook perfect sweep of his halburd, Armsmaster dispersed three of Crusader’s ghosts that had gotten just a bit too close to him, and then vaulted over the troopers’ defensive line and charged towards the trio of capes in front of him. The two normal goons on either side of the capes tried to shoot him, but a shotgun shell to the shoulder didn’t so much as slow him down, nor did the handgun the other man tried to unload into his armored helmet.

I lost track of Armsmaster as I had to duck away from a blisteringly fast punch from Krieg, which left visible cracks in the concrete wall beside me. I leapt backwards, luring him further and further away from his leader and squishy cape friends.

Krieg clearly thought I was trying to escape from his slowing aura and charged after me. I danced away, Kriegs small edge in speed not nearly enough to make up for the gap in skill and instincts between us. He wasn’t bad, in fact as far as I knew he’d been an active cape for literally longer than I’d been alive, but ultimately he was a mortal with a secret identity and I was a demigod born for battle.

A perfectly timed sweep of my blade nearly took his hand off. A careful dodge left him overextended and he stumbled an extra step further forward than he meant to. Riptide slapped against the side of a goon’s head and then I bodily threw the man at Krieg, buying a few more seconds and a few more inches.

Krieg threw half a gun at me with the force of a falling boulder and I slapped it aside with Riptide, even as he finally took one last crucial step forward. I grinned at him, even though he couldn’t see my face under my helmet. “Good try, but it's over! Maybe try being less of a racist idiot next time!”

And then the water that had been slowly pooling on the ground rose up behind him and swallowed Rune and Crusader. The two frantically tried to free themselves, but neither had the strength nor mobility to escape my grip. They choked and sputtered as the crushing weight of the ocean squeezed in around them, bubbles leaking rapidly from their lips.

Crusaders ghosts rushed to free him, but fresh water turned to salt water and glowed with divine authority. Spears skidded off a smooth sheet of crystal-clear water and translucent hands scrabbled at a prison they could not hope to damage.

Armsmaster instantly capitalized on the opportunity I had given him. Without Crusader and Rune to assist him, Kaiser was no match for Armsmaster at such close range. Blades grown from the floor skittered off tinkertech armor, and Armsmaser swiftly removed any that tried to appear on his armor itself.

Krieg, his back to the fight, saw none of that. “Yes, it is over indeed. Surrender and perhaps Kaiser will allow you a place within our Empire!” He spoke with an obviously faked German accent and it was honestly kind of painful to listen to someone so stupid. I mean, I’m not exactly a ten out of ten when it came to brains, but at least I didn’t dress up as a war criminal and beat up minorities.

I stared at him blankly for a long moment, then pointed Riptide at him. I could feel his power affecting me, pushing against my movements and empowering his own. It was a powerful ability and honestly reminded me a little of something Kronos had once done, though far less powerful.

There was a tugging in my gut and the bottle worth of sea water inside my armor expanded, droplets forcing their way through every crack and tiny gap in my armor and dripping down the celestial bronze scales.

I swept Riptide through the air and suddenly I no longer had to struggle to move or even breath. Krieg had a pretty good power, but it was nothing compared to stopping time around me, and that hadn’t managed to slow me down for more than a few seconds. And I was a lot stronger and more experienced now than I had been back then.

My storm was still struggling to push through his kinetic manipulation, but I didn’t really need it for this. It had done its job throwing the Empire capes and gangsters around and stopping Rune from nailing me in the head with a cinder block or something, but I didn’t need it against someone like Krieg.

I moved forward and this time it was Krieg who couldn’t keep up with me. He frantically dodged once, twice, and then Riptide’s flat slapped the side of his head hard enough that he was sent several steps before sprawling onto the ground unconscious. I’d expected him to dodge that one and had only barely had time to turn my blade. It seemed like his mask blocked just a tiny sliver of his peripheral vision and he just hadn’t seen it coming in time to get out of the way.

I flicked Riptide, sending a spray of water flying through the air. Kaiser and Armsmaster were still fighting, while the last few unpowered Empire members were being viciously subdued by the PRT troopers that had been barricading the hallway.

Every droplet of water swirling around me stopped in mid flight, then began to rapidly condense into a single sphere floating directly in front of me. Armsmaster, seeing my plan, disengaged from Kaiser and hurriedly moved several steps away from the would-be nazi leader.

I gave the sphere of water a single command: flow. It rushed forward like a tsunami and bodily lifted Kaiser off his feet. The wave swept past Armsmaster and the troopers, barely splashing their feet, and crashed into the wall at the far end of the corridor before withdrawing, leaving a groaning Kaiser sprawled on the ground in his waterlogged steel plate armor.

I pointed to the downed cape and looked questioningly at Armsmaster. The older hero looked between me and Kaiser, then nodded decisively.

The water which had been flowing away from him like a receding tide gathered back up and engulfed him, armor and all, in a full body prison. Kaiser thrashed once, tried to pull himself free with a summoned metal handhold, blindly filled the hallway with blades, and then finally went still. I waited a moment longer, then the water around his head and filling his lungs withdrew, covering the ground around him in a thin sheen. The rest of the prison binding his arms and legs remained in place.

I took a deep breath and looked at the soaking wet, limp bodies scattered around me. Then I twirled Riptide through the air and capped the blade, Riptide’s pen form swiftly vanishing into my armor.

“Glad I made it in time!” I called out to Armsmaster. “Battery, it's over! Come on out!”

A moment later the heroine hurried into the hallway, the markings on her suit glowing brightly. She stopped in shock, staring at the devastation around me.

“Sorry I didn’t leave you any nazis to punch,” I joked.

“Uhhhhhh…You know what? I’ll take it.” Then she sagged against the wall beside her, running a hand through her hair and exhaling loudly. “That’s all of them, right?”

Armsmaster walked slowly towards us, his halberd held loosely in one arm. “I believe they are all accounted for. Thank you for your timely assistance, Riptide. I will ensure that you are commended for your actions today.”

“Happy to help! Though uh, we should probably take a look at a few of those guys. I’m pretty sure I cut some guy’s fingers off.”

Armsmaster looked down at the red slowly seeping into the layer of water covering the hallway floor. “You are regrettably correct. And we must restrain and process the prisoners.”

One of the PRT troopers loudly mumbled something about how failed prison breaks resulted in the worst sort of paperwork and I reflexively shuddered. Oh Hades I hope I didn’t need to do any of that.