The deadly swarm of robots smothered every inch of Captain Steel. Central One had sent a platoon of bug-like machines toward the mightiest human in two universes to slow him down. Metal mandibles ripped and tore at his flesh and clothes. His plasma vision exploded from his eyes, sending a chunk of them toward non-existence. He burst through the swarm and followed their trail toward the city's quarantined section. Compared to the rest, the city's north side was relatively perfect. He hit the roof of a department store with such force that every window on each floor popped outward like a bubble. Glass shards rained down upon the OHs and machines that fought to the death below.

Roxanne hit the sky from beneath buried rubble and followed the destruction trail. From a distance, a black cloud shifted and swirled about the debris like angry hornets. Blue beams of plasma vision cut through the clouds on and off like a dying flashlight; one errant beam hit a building and sent it crumbling. It was hard for her to fathom how many drones she saw. The rioters overrun by the pure cold savagery of the machines made her stomach turn. How could there be so many? It had to be every drone on the planet and beyond.

Roxanne, you must not let him find my core.

It was him, Central One, in her head as if nothing was wrong. The sheer gall. Of course, he came to her. She stood on the right side of things, didn’t she? The so-called good and moral side?

“Tell me where you are?”

You must lead him away from me.

“I’m not stupid. Mark yourself in my HUD and shut up.”

I have dispatched assistance.

Assistance? What else could there be? As she approached, she tracked Cap emerging from the rubble only to be surrounded by grayish clouds. Within her HUD, she caught the temp in the area dropping 3 degrees every second. The smoke cleared, revealing that he was encased in a thick block of ice. This ice imploded into mist in the face of electrified plasma. The plasma punctured Cap’s abdomen and sent him flying a few feet, positively charged with electricity.

“Woo! Yeah! We got this!” Cosmic Rivera shouted before Bleed energy welled up inside him and exploded outward. It hit the area Cap had landed on and bathed it in a blood-red illumination. Behind Rivera, FaultOne bent down, touched the floor, and the entire ground shuddered beneath his fingertips. A crumbling line of earth traveled toward Cap and imploded inward. The ground beneath Captain Steel disintegrated to dust, and he vanished into the blackness below.

They all touched down one by one around the hole, the Zero Year Soldiers. The backup turned out to be a bunch of kids whose only reason to live was for a fight and little else. Great, Roxanne inhaled sharply, knowing this was only a reprieve and she had seconds to act.

She retreated inward to move at the speed of thought.

Foremost, Roxanne asked for the locations of all those still alive and in quarantine. Every building housing human biosignatures were marked instantly on her HUD: Fifty-two skyscrapers in total, thirty of which were likely—hopefully—filled to capacity. Each one held roughly 134,000 to 235,000 souls, give or take. It was hardly anything, even if she assumed they all were packed to capacity; Roxanne felt sick to her stomach. Another problem had emerged as well; they were too close. The fight needed moving, but where? Downtown? Further inland? There were people there, too, surely.

And what of space? Azonne suggested. Roxanne reckoned that Captain Steel wouldn’t go anywhere he didn’t want to go, but it was an option, small as it was.

Back at full speed, Roxanne moved closer to the hole. The kids were smug and annoying. They danced a rhythm only they understood, and the opening in the ground glowed bright blue. So bright it was almost white.

Plasma vision.

Roxanne snapped off six shards of her aura to protect those damn kids in hard-light shells. It left her aura weakened, but that was the job. The ground underneath their feet warped as if it were suddenly liquid, followed by a cone of hot-blue plasma energy spurting upward from the hole.

The heat was intense and pushed the air around them viciously. Roxanne flipped off her feet end over end, desperately trying to cover her eyes from the light. The Zero Year Soldiers ping-ponged off each other and took out large swathes of robot drones and structures alike. Eventually, the cone dissipated, and it got tranquil.

Captain Steel exploded out of the hole and hovered in the air. His eyes and head darted around feverishly. He spotted two Zero Year Soldiers on the ground: ZB-Low and FaultOne. FaultOne was unconscious and being tugged at incessantly by ZB-Low. His frame was too large for her petite body to move. Cap grimaced, and plasma poured out of his eyes, painting the ground.

They were gone.

Roxanne charged toward him on instinct; her rings sprung to life and spat out hard light bands that trapped his arms, neck, and head. Cap’s power was immense and stretched the light bands toward breaking; every ounce of her strength pushed near their limits. She dug her feet into the ground and tensed all her muscles.

“Cap…,” She growled. “S….stop this! Please!”

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Sweat pooled upon her forehead while Captain Steel’s neck muscles bulged and tensed against the hard light. Blue plasma erupted from his eyes at different intervals while he struggled to look at Roxanne or anything besides the direction she forced his gaze to go. Below them, The Leak clutched at his head. He was the youngest of the group and panicked immediately upon realizing he was the only one awake. Beside him, EVE and Cosmic Rivera were unconscious and blessed enough to have missed the vaporization of two of their friends.

But he saw it.

All of it.

Silly name aside—one he picked for himself, of course—The Leak was low-key one of the more powerful members of the group. Hydrokinesis is essentially the ability to control or manipulate water in all its forms, and he liked performing parlor tricks most of the time. Such as making water move from one cup to another, becoming fluid himself to fit in tight spaces, and things of that nature.

Here, at this moment, he felt connected to every ounce of water in and around the city.

Puddles.

Drinking water reservoirs.

The ocean.

The ground shook underneath his feet just as the sun found itself blotted out from the sky. A massive tsunami crested over the horizon, large enough to clear the skyscrapers and cast the city into darkness. Roxanne saw it quickly and acted; she released Cap from the light bands and flew toward the colossal wave.

“Ohgodohgodohgod,” she muttered while she climbed. Scenarios and solutions played out within her cortex, but none felt truly feasible, yet she had to do something. A sizeable hard-light shield suggested was as good an idea as any, but how large could she make it? Too large, and it had the potential to stretch her aura thin enough to be useless.

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In her peripheral, she caught a glimpse of him passing her: Captain Steel. He was traveling at 1c, just the speed of light according to her HUD; his passing barely registered. It was so fast that it caused a “light boom,” a rippling of space-time that caused reality to warp and pop with such force that it instantly dissipated the tidal wave.

It was now raining.

Roxanne, taken aback, watched as Captain Steel floated away from her; absent-minded as if he hadn’t done anything at all. She approached him cautiously; her arm outstretched and ready to fire off at any moment.

“Cap…?” she uttered; he didn’t notice her. “Are you alright?” This question got his attention entirely.

“What?” He replied. He appeared to be fighting against himself, tense as if he had little control over his muscles.

“Talk to me, man,” she said. “I know you’re feeling weird and unmoored, but you still did the—”

“Right thing?” He kept his back to her. “I always do the right thing.”

“You’re not right now,” She said. “Please, stand down.”

“I can't,” he kept his back on her. “How do you possess the Sight and not see I'm doing what needs doing? Unless you really can't see. Perhaps this universe has gifted me enhanced sight even beyond your own.”

“Everything happens for a reason, that it?”

“How do you believe otherwise after all you've seen? In hindsight, I thought you being so eager to lie about who I really was, meant you knew what part you play, but you don't, do you?”

“You're insane. Being here is making you lose it!”

“What's insane? Knowing what to do and then doing it?” Captain Steel almost laughed. Whatever sound he did make chilled Roxanne to the bone. “You think this is the first time I found myself on one side of a line and did what I had to?”

“…The 17 years were worse than you had let on, wasn’t it?” She asked. “Why pretend? Why lie?”

“Lie?! I never lied to her; I didn’t elaborate out of respect, but I never misrepresented myself!” He snapped. His eyes were twin neutron stars. They were bright and cast sharp shadows across his face. “Instead, you had me lie on your own; you and her completely content!” He smiled, satisfied as if he had gotten one over the rest of them. It hit Roxanne like a punch to the gut.

“You went along with it….” It was all she could say.

“And I started to believe it,” he replied. “It felt nice to believe it. I didn’t, at first, you know—I didn’t trust you at all. You had this manner about you; I was sure you were just some villain. Then I saw Corina…

“It was a one-two punch, really. Seeing her followed by the world's reaction to my being alive? My god, you saw it!”

“Yeah…”

“And then to see my wife…alive. My kids; alive as well! Not just alive, but as I always dreamed they looked; who could have known that; who could use such a thing against me?” He pressed his palms against his chest as if he were asking himself right then. “With no answers…it became a lot easier to believe.”

“You never said anything….”

“I did! I told Corina! But, I also slipped into the narrative,” he said while pausing to consider something seemingly only he could see. As he spoke, he regarded whatever that was as if it were honestly in front of him. “My very being was filling cracks left behind by the person you said I was pretending to be, and I liked it! Gresh, I swear I did—but things got harder to ignore.”

“Like what?” She asked.

This is good, Roxanne. Keep him talking while we transfer our core to a secure bunker. We are also attempting to secure you more help.

More kids with more powers than sense? She fumed silently. How about not? Silence on the other end signaled that Central One was done with their side of the conversation. Roxanne tightened the grip on her wrist and returned her total focus to Captain Steel.

“Like what,’ she says. Surely you know; you live in it.” He almost laughed. “All I see is pain and suffering; this universe is my nightmare. After the death of my family, I saw the state of the world and spearheaded independence for OverHumanity. I used that power for reforms and changes to human government across the bubble. It was hard fought, but I’m proud of what I built.

“Here? I see in this place the world that could have been. For a time, I felt like I belonged here—like I was getting folded in—but-but I couldn’t ignore that. Every day showed me a new indignity. I see now that I have to finish what I was building there, here.”

Okay, Roxanne, I’m sending my new location. Be ready.

“I can hear him, you know.”

Captain Steel had moved so fast he was in her face instantaneously, but she was ready; her mind and muscles had come alive on their own and got used to the speed he had operated in. He had swung an overhead right, and she deftly pushed it away.

He swung again, attoseconds faster than the last, and she blocked that too. A flurry of punches came her way and was met equally by a barrage of blocks. She moved without hesitation, pure instinct honed over billions of lifetimes. Her aura buckled under the pressure but held firm.

“I know where Central One is,” he said after stopping. He seemed neither impressed nor frustrated. “Now, where was I?”

“No! Stop,” Roxanne held her hands out in front of her. “Just stop this! Your army is dead or dying, and it's just you against an entire city of drones!”

“And you.”

“…and me,” she nodded, weary. “Don’t you see how pointless this is? You marched a bunch of people here just to get killed!”

“You see how broken everything is!” He snapped. “You know that nothing will change unless it's forced! That’s why you did what you did!”

“What…?” Roxanne’s brow tightened. “How do you know—”

“I told you, I see everything now.”

“I did what I did because I believed there was a better way!”

“This is the better way!” He shouted.

“No,” she spat through gritted teeth. “You think you can convince me that change can be achieved through death…through mass murder?! No, I won’t. Never.”

“So! Do you not think I am here for a reason?”

“No! God, no. You’re the result of a universe desperately trying to fill a void. A cosmic accident, not some messenger from on high,” she scoffed. “If you’re the result of The Balance trying to assert itself well…to hell with that!”

“You’re wrong, Roxanne! I’ll destroy Central One, and you’ll see!” He bolted past her as fast as she could have imagined, even faster than that. “You’ll see it’s what you need!”

He sliced through the swarm of remaining robots and buildings; he split air molecules in twain on his way to a central point on the ground. Captain Steel knew precisely where Central One had gone and hit the ground with the force of 2 atomic warheads.

The upended dirt and debris blotted out the sky. Roxanne moved swiftly to the area; the backdraft from her speed cleared out all the smoke. Below her, there was a crater 150 feet deep and at its center was Captain Steel. He glowed white-hot and perched atop a partially buried metallic cube.

For lack of a better term, this was Central One’s brain. It was machinery and circuitry that was, and still is, the most potent quantum nano-processors in human existence. Encased in a multi-polymer nano-etched material, this was the first time it had touched surface air in hundreds of decades.

Captain Steel paused and glanced back at Roxanne; he smirked and reared back. Roxanne aimed; light tendrils spat out from her rings and wrapped themselves around his upper torso. As the energy bands went taut, she landed with a loud thud behind him. Her toes dug into the dirt and tensed while he struggled against the pressure.

Roxanne flexed her hands and arms and sent her aura to encase him entirely in a hard-light outer casing. She held her left hand upturned in front of her and pulled back her right hand to assert control over the man-shaped shell. She visualized it floating between the palms of her hands and pushed down on the invisible space between them.

The pressure Captain Steel felt upon his muscles was like nothing he had ever felt. It was getting harder to expand his chest just enough to breathe, let alone move. If it kept up, he would pass out because even Captain Steel needed to breathe. His captured feet hit the ground like dead weight; Captain Steel wasn’t going to let some kid beat him; he wasn’t going to allow it. He flexed harder, and the casing gave way just a little.

Roxanne’s pupils grew at the display of strength. She held her right hand out front with the left close to her chest and the palm facing her right shoulder. Under her breath, she chanted:

“Light as dense as a singularity; light as strong as gravity. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she said, teeth clenched tighter than a vacuum seal; forehead damp like a rainy day. She switched hand positions and chanted again.

Roxanne. Hold strong. Be ready.

Central One again, she ignored it. To aid in this, Azonne cut off all external communications. Her muscle memory strained against the forces of the mental exhaustion she was subjecting herself to, trying to restrain the unrestrainable, and stop the unstoppable. Across her lineage, none had faced such a thing except once…by her.

“Beat Lady Steel in a fight once,” she whispered. “True story.”

Roxanne! Azonne screamed and overwhelmed her, reminding her of her vitals to save her life.

Like a plug had been disconnected, Roxanne felt all the strength drain from her body. Her knees buckled, and her muscles cramped across her body as she flew past the breaking point. Feeling the momentary slack in pressure, Captain Steel flexed once more and split the hard light shell into millions of debris that shot back at Roxanne and overwhelmed her. Knocked off her feet, she collided with the dirt wall of the crater, revealing busted water pipes and other parts of the foundation.

The ground below her rumbled while the foundation behind her visibly—and audibly—cracked and splintered. Within seconds the hole got dark as the entirety of the building looming over the crater collapsed upon them both.