The Summit cape, Invarius, stood atop an abandoned warehouse building overlooking the street. His squad of capes and assorted trash cans had staked out the Easternmost secret entrance to the Gnosis compound.

He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled. The smoke lingered around him, completely ignoring the wind. His hair and jacket collar floated upward, altogether giving the illusion that the cape was standing underwater. He’d surrounded himself with an ambient power field, which would protect him from any unexpected powers or projectiles. As soon as a bullet entered the field, his reality warping would shred it into powder.

No one knew what these intruders were capable of—not the Summit or the Brotherhood, and if Gnosis knew, they sure as shit weren’t telling. Somebody clearly thought they were hot stuff.

Invarius chuckled. It didn’t much matter what their capabilities were when they were staring down three dozen capes and twice as many gun barrels.

He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but the biomechs alone could probably handle whoever came out those doors. Invarius had chaperoned two of the recent mask raids and seen the mechs for himself. If the Brotherhood kept this shit up, most low-level capes would find themselves out of a job.

But that was the way the world worked, right? Get good or get lost.

A voice came from the other side of the roof. “Uh, this blows.”

Invarius rolled his eyes, not sparing a glance at the young cape on the other side of the roof. He was another one of the fresh-out-of-high-school recruits—complete with a homemade mask and a comically big jacket. It was true that McGuire and the other newbies had at least fought against the Deep Ones. That put them exactly one notch higher than the other fresh recruits that only enlisted because the Summit quashed vigilantism. Those new masks-turned-capes had only done the right thing out of fear.

“I hate waiting,” McGuire said, his voice grating on the veteran super.

Invarius muttered, “Can’t you be annoying quietly?”

“...No. I don’t think I can.”

Invarius rolled his eyes. The intruders had better hurry up and come out. Otherwise, he’d wind up throwing this kid off of the building. But knowing his luck, McGuire would just bounce.

A crash echoed through the street. Something or someone blew the door off its hinges. Two supers sprinted out of the underground, moving at an impressive pace. A flurry of activity followed—

Four biomechs went down instantly, cleaved in half by a flying door. At the same time, the other super carrying a pistol and small shield fired shots at the rooftop. Invarius didn’t even need to move. His ambient power field shredded the bullets down to powder. By the time they hit him, they felt like the world’s weakest snowball.

Invarius was mildly impressed, though. He looked down to find spots of dark powder on his coat. The bullets must’ve been dense with how much material was left over. He chuckled. Between the pitiful shots and the biomechs toppling like broken toys, Invarius was already enjoying himself.

“You spoke too soon, McGuire. Why don’t you leap down there and get some action?”

McGuire leaned over the edge of the roof, leveling a homemade slingshot at the intruders on the ground.

“Damn, they’re fast! I can’t get a shot from up here. …What the heck are they wearing?”

Invarius sighed and ignored him.

The reality warper flared his power. He probably could’ve helped the biomechs below, but instead, he stretched his perception, searching for the positions of the other Summit teams. He could sense most things biological—even the Brotherhood’s biomechs, which had brains or something inside them. But supers stood out most of all, seeming to glow in his sight. Powerful supers stood out like lighthouses, but even weak supers were easy to find. They dotted the rooftops of Eastside Belport.

That was where Invarius focused. He reached out across the rooftops. Strands of his power connected supers to him like a spiderweb.

The psychic, Kairon, was already alerting the rest of their forces. A second later, Invarius pulled.

He wasn’t a mage or a telekinetic—he couldn’t just teleport them or pull them to the fight. But his power was the next best thing. The strands of power would shorten the distance between them. Running several blocks would feel like a hop, skip, and a jump.

He called the ability shunting, and he was proud of it.

Even though he wasn’t the most powerful reality warper—still only Class 2 by Summit standards—he’d found himself in command of other Class 2 and even Class 3 capes. All thanks to his ability to affect the battlefield.

It wasn’t without drawbacks. The effort required increased dramatically with the distance and number of people affected. Invarius was currently pushed to his limits. To compensate for this, he didn’t shunt everyone at once. He prioritized groups, pulling a few capes at a time. Once the priority supers were across, he could pull the bulk of the Brotherhood’s mechs.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The first groups of supers were already shunting across when Invarius felt something on his face—on his eyes and creeping down his throat. His vision went black. He couldn’t even see his hands in front of his face.

Invarius sucked in panicked breaths while he desperately held onto the connections to his fellow capes—partly out of duty, but mostly because his other senses were cut off and he had nothing else to cling to.

Invarius barely heard McGuire’s muffled voice. “Dude, what’s wrong—oh, what the fuck is wrong with your eyes?!”

That didn’t help Invarius’s panic at all.

~ ~

Lock tore the single heavy door off its hinges, and both he and Mod led the charge out onto the abandoned streets. Even though TINA fed them enemy locations and info, it was one thing to see a display in his HUD, and another thing entirely to see it in person.

As soon as they got out into the open, enemies opened fire. Most of it came from biomechs on the ground, but a few blasts of ice and fire came their way from nearby mages. Lock retaliated in kind, hurling the steel door through multiple smaller mechs, then leaping toward the lone hec unit like a madman.

Mod didn’t have time to worry about his friend, though. He focused on the capes on the roof, taking his first several pistol shots at the reality warping super, Invarius. None of the shots hit directly—Invarius had surrounded himself with a barrier—but Mod knew how Invarius’s power worked. He didn’t make impenetrable barriers like Athena. Nor would they transform matter that entered them. Any projectiles that entered would get slowed and shredded into dust.

Maybe Invarius could make a better barrier, but Mod was betting that the cape wouldn’t put that much thought into it—

Until it was too late.

In the next few seconds, Mod fired volleys at anyone that popped out of cover, including biomechs on the ground and capes on the roof. Mod didn’t miss—even as shots clanged off his impact shield. The biomechs were good shots, but weren’t nearly fast enough to avoid incoming fire, and Mod’s nanite countermeasures worked just as well on mechs as they did on capes. Nanites pooled around the mech’s cameras and sensors, rendering them almost completely blind.

Though the mechs couldn’t talk to one another the same way drones could, they could still share info. So even though a mech should’ve been blind, they could still find Mod’s general location and were still dangerous. That was good enough for Mod. He hadn’t exactly planned on sitting still.

Athena and Arsenal had come out to join the fight. Lock and Athena worked together to topple the lone hec unit. Blue light flashed in the corner of Mod’s UV vision as Athena lopped the mech’s leg off at the knee. Even if the mech’s armor was too thick for her to cut through outright, crippling the thing was just as effective. Lock used his freakish strength to topple the hec unit, and it crushed two other biomechs as it fell.

Lock didn’t get out of the exchange unscathed. His body was littered with cuts and bullet holes, but they were already healing. The blood covering his skin was already dried.

Mod was leaping through the air before the ground had finished quaking. He soared upward four stories to the top of the nearby building where Invarius was hiding, just in time to see his face covered in nanites. Invarius was stuck in an open-mouthed scream, pawing ineffectively at his face.

Mod breathed a sigh of relief, even as the reality warper struggled—

Until he saw McGuire standing nearby.

It’d been almost two months since the end of the war with the Deep Ones. Two months since Mod had seen his friend. McGuire hadn’t changed a bit. The gadgeteer was still wearing his trademark explorer outfit—khaki clothes and vest, along with an enormous backpack and homemade mask.

Mod smiled wide. He would have hugged McGuire right then—

Except that McGuire leveled his slingshot at him.

“Hey man—woah, don’t shoot!” Mod let his nanite disguise flicker for just a moment, letting his supersuit show through.

McGuire shook his head in surprise, then pointed to Invarius. “Don’t ‘hey man’ me! What the hell did you do to his face?!”

“It’s a, uh, long story—get down!”

Two more supers appeared on a nearby roof. A mage and a telekinetic with bright red hair—

Mod barely registered them before he dropped them with nanite bullets.

McGuire’s eyes widened. “You just shot Cherry!”

“It’ll wear off in an hour.”

Arsenal’s panicked voice came through. “We’ve got incoming! Capes are warping in.”

Mod’s wordless question and answer came almost instantaneously. Invarius was bringing capes from other Gnosis entrances. Somehow, he was still concentrating on his power.

Mod turned and punched Invarius in the chest. Even with the reality warping field around him, the punch landed hard. Invarius crumpled onto the roof.

“Woah, woah—”

Mod cut off his friend. “Apparently being blind and deaf wasn’t enough to stop him from using his powers. Now, are we cool?”

McGuire stared back at Mod through his oversized mask. “Yeah, we’re cool. I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to. It’s just… Man, the Summit is going to have my ass after this.”

Mod chuckled. “Tell Cherry sorry for me.”

“I will.”

TINA’s voice came through Mod’s earpiece. “Mod, the psychic is here.”

Mod’s heart sank. That was exactly why they needed to keep moving. Every second they stayed was another cape or biomech that caught up to them.

Machinegun fire and destruction raged on the street below, interspersed with flashes of Athena’s blue barriers and battlecries from Lock.

“Guys, we need to get out of here.”

“What is it?” McGuire asked.

Both Mod and McGuire ducked as mechs targeted them. Machinegun fire riddled the roof, spraying bits of concrete across their shoulders. It was like suddenly all of the mechs had decided to ignore Lock.

“What—oh shit, oh shit, oh… shit…” McGuire’s panicked voice trailed off.

Mod turned in time to see McGuire spasm. His entire body lurched like he was a marionette being tugged backward. A pained gurgle came out of his throat. He jerked and twisted, somehow still staying on his feet.

Mod wasn’t sure what was more frightening, seeing his friend spasming under a psychic attack, or hearing Lock and Athena making similar sounds.

McGuire’s body finally relaxed—

Then he leveled his slingshot at Mod.

~ ~ ~