Approaching the General Assembly Building I felt hesitation once more. The majority of my fights since before gaining powers I'd simply charged ahead and dealt with them. Be they as insignificant as a cheerleader tryout or as terrible as facing a demon in battle, there had been little in the way of hesitation or second thoughts. Objectively, what I was doing today did not even rank in the top-ten of difficult encounters I'd gone through. Conventional explosives, five guys with weak, cut-rate powers granted by someone else, a bunch of civilians the bad guys didn't even want to eat messily while still alive then convert into monsters? Nothing my senses had revealed so far was particularly threatening, even if I'd have to limit myself so as not to bring down the building.

It wasn't the responsibility that made me hesitate, I concluded, but that I'd have to perform for an audience. The whole battle in the plaza had been a performance already, probably recorded a hundred times over from all angles - records that would be analyzed in the days to come, commented upon by talking heads and other idiots with a lot of social capital and zero expertise in what had actually gone down. Everyone in the country would have an opinion, even if that opinion was just "hot girls rule" or "it's a hoax; see all the CGI? The Earth is flat, by the way."

If the first public appearance of a powered hero that couldn't be covered up would be talked a lot, that was still nothing to what would be said about the first time a powered hero personally shaped world politics. Because that was exactly what this whole thing was about, what the villains were trying to do here. A huge political statement that would also conveniently weaken the greatest obstacle to their plans; the world cooperating with heroes. Because let's say Herakles existed and acted as he did in the most heroic of his stories? People would be partying in the streets because someone that might as well be a god cared about their lives, helped protect them and kept the worst bad guys in check without asking for payment. And governments? Governments would love the guy. Yeah, they couldn't control him, but why would that matter if he brought more economic stability and market confidence for free and never did anything against their legal-yet-corrupt methods of gaining more power? Herakles's Twelve Labours were done at the behest of a corrupt government, after all.

But say that instead of the God of Heroes the first widely seen and even more widely talked about super was Dracula. Not the romanticized novel character but the warlord that staked people in public as warnings and burned whole towns down to the last woman and child if they annoyed him. And that he also happened to be a cannibalistic monster who could turn the corpses of those he'd murdered to more cannibalistic monsters, spread plagues through summoned bats and rats that made a joke out of any disease control measures and could and would call down storms to lock down mass transportation, cause widespread damage and destroy crops so whole states would starve. Suddenly all normal people from governments to the least capable civilians would start an Inquisition against everything super because supers would become existential threats in their minds.

For those reasons I was far less comfortable applying my usual blind charges, especially since a guy that had not been the leader of this whole operation had already proven a bit of a challenge. So I took a bit extra time to look into things before going in, stretching another half-minute to a subjective ten with Forced Acceleration and using Force Adjustment to note each and every detail that might matter, from the positioning of the hostages to all the resources the bad guys could access, to their apparent power level - and keeping in mind that the latter reading might not always be reliable.

Invisible to the naked eye, the thin dome of signal negation around the building was slowly fading already. I'd charged the quarter-inch-thick field to last for only ten minutes, reversed Proximakinesis suffusing its volume and countering any force applied by non-visible, non-thermal electromagnetic radiation. That effect still destroyed any signals passing through, similar to destructive superposition except the wave did not reappear beyond the other side of the effect; unable to propagate it disappeared permanently. Beyond said shield and below the building proper, below the basements used as conference rooms, storage for visual media, refreshment and sanitation, there were a series of tunnels, both for maintenance and for other uses. Several of those were not in the building plans one could find online or the official documents either but somehow the bad guys had found them. Enhanced senses probably, or a form of super-senses; I couldn't actually tell. The evidence of that were the no less than six bombs spaced together in a ring of passages, linked together with short-range communication lasers, each in view of two others. Presumably, both interruption of the wireless links and tampering with one bomb that could be detected by the others would trigger them - and they had a lot of sensors. Self-diagnostics obviously, temperature and vibration sensors that would prevent cutting into them, a gyroscopic system that would detect attempts to move them, a Faraday cage mesh wrapped fully around their mechanism that both blocked most signals and would detect if anything cut through with only millimeter-thin gaps for the laser to go through, even air pressure, radiation and chemical sniffers though how those would help was anybody's guess.

None of those sensors could outright detect powers, or changes at the molecular level applied within the bomb itself with no apparent means of application, and there hadn't been any exotic sensors whose function I couldn't guess at. So I'd extended an inch-thick force-field at them from outside the building, with a bulge at the end that I could apply Force Adjustment to. Six adjustments later, the explosives in the bombs had a lot stronger molecular bonds. That made them burn and explode about as well as solid iron - that was to say, not at all. Those fields were also active still; being vastly smaller than the dome over the building, they could be made to last with only a minor amount of stamina expenditure.

Further up, most of the rooms were entirely empty. The only exceptions were the two atriums; the larger one at the front most observers, support stuff and other officials came in through, and the smaller one at the back reserved for each country's delegates. Those had their gates locked and barred, with nobody to guard them. It was the detail I liked least in all of this; why would the bad guys not post any sentries there? Were they so confident of their other preparations they didn't care about a potential assault? Whatever the case, I decided my plan would not include an assault through there, or the building's roof. Repetition was the mother of predictability and I did not want my enemies to be able to guess at my moves.

The Main Assembly Hall was a hundred and sixty five feet long, a hundred and fifteen feet wide and seventy-five feet tall. It was closer to a small stadium than a room and could accommodate eighteen hundred people on its amphitheater-like seats. Only a fraction of those seats were occupied but two hundred and ninety-seven people almost evenly spread between ethnicities. These had to be the delegates; short of personally knowing them I couldn't actually tell that they really were, because it was a secret assembly. It wasn't as if I could look those people online and nobody official had the authority to tell me, for obvious reasons. It was another bit of the situation I really did not like, because how could I tell them apart from ringers, collaborators, or outright terrorists that might be in their midst? I had to take that into account in any plan that included any sort of interaction with the hostages until the authorities arrived with more information. My best bet was to put them all in a safe area and limit their movements and access to communication with me standing ready to stop any shenanigans.

Complicating that part of the plan were the bomb vests each and every hostage was wearing. Those were wired all together and while they lacked the extensive tamper-proofing of the bombs in the basement, setting them all up that the others would go boom if one was disabled or removed would be fairly easy, turning each hostage into a deadman's switch for all the rest. Simple, effective, hard to overcome with the bad guys ready to press the button at a moment's notice and absolutely punishing of any mistakes. Each vest held two pounds of C-4 explosive sandwiched between three thousand steel balls each one eight of an inch in diameter. The terrorists had obviously read up on Claymore mines and liked them very much, though I wasn't sure their slap-dash upscaling and redesign would be nearly as effective. At four times the mass of said mine though, and with the hostages all sitting within half the effective range of a Claymore, that did not matter. Any one vest going off would kill or maim the majority.

I had not dared extend any force fields into the chamber itself, out of worry that at least one of the bad guys had super-senses and all of them had a level of sensory enhancement. Even if the chance I'd be actually detected was minimal, risking it was not worth it... especially since I'd have to directly modify three hundred vests one by one. That would probably take half an hour, leave me even more fatigued than I already was, and the villains would certainly not stay put for that long. There was the obvious solution of destroying them under instant action, but I was hesitating. What if another villain could react to that? Unlikely, but you did not disregard a capability the enemy had already used against you, especially when a plan of yours hinged that he did not. I had another idea but it was similarly risky. We'd see.

Last but definitely not least came the bad guys. Four mountains of muscle even larger than I was, though again lacking the other signs of overt superpowers. Whatever had given them their abilities had made them even tougher and stronger than any of their fellows I'd already met, and they wielded an assortment of supertech weapons whose functions I could not read with how their physics warped to something that definitely didn't work like the theories we'd been taught in high school. Their rifles looked like the ones on the robots outside, so there was a good chance they wouldn't be a problem. Their clothing was mostly mundane, except for an armored mesh over their normal fatigues. It looked like medieval chain mail, though it had multiple supertech attachments in the neck, belt and boots and even more physics-warping around the right glove and a tiny knife in the off-hand sheath. All of those were objects though, and however dangerous they might be, their ashes would not pose nearly the same threat. From there, just some conventional beating would do, as long as the fight didn't spread to the hostages.

The fifth guy was not like the others. He just wore normal clothing, had no supertech, no obvious weaponry no matter how hard I looked and his physical attributes were actually lower than those of the obvious guards. What he did have was a remote control with multiple buttons, a cell phone that couldn't connect to anywhere outside the building and a short wave radio. Underestimating someone because he didn't seem to have combat-oriented powers was a bad idea but at least his gear were entirely mundane. None of them were dead men's switches - I'd checked and none maintained a continuous connection to anything via wireless means. Barring powers on the fifth guy's part, they should be easy to destroy but on the off chance he had something to counter me, taking them out would not be my first move.

All the enemies accounted for, I focused on myself and activated the access ring Liz had given me.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y10m19d Known skills:

Points: 1/208

Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Eyebeams, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forcefield Creation, Forced Acceleration, Greater Proximakinesis, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Attributes: Might 50, Agility 25, Reason 6, Vigilance 22, Ego 25, Luck 6

Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II

Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope I

The last couple of fights had given me another point, a trickle of extra growth compared to what I already had. Probably the fight with that Mirage guy who'd managed to push me for a short time... and given me a stark reminder of the dangers of overconfidence. It could not change much, but just in case I tried to expend it to make another custom skill now that I knew the situation. There was feeling of gathering tension, of strain against an unseen weight within me and the anchor ring grew warm. The more I kept at it the warmer it got, until I worried the little band of heavily enchanted metal would melt. I stopped trying before it got to the point and considered the sensations. The weight felt great, but not immovable. Maybe twice the magic I had available for spending? Two points of permanent expenditure then, for something that could be done for free with either months of dedicated effort or doing something clever with my abilities and using it in high stakes situations a few times. Not an unfair exchange for when there was need, especially if the new skill could be shaped exactly to my specifications just before tackling a major but known threat. I made a mental note for future-Maya to save two points when she had the chance.

Now though I needed every last advantage I could get. Would some extra Vigilance help? Agility or Might? Attributes were not linear, each increase was a noticeable boost and every little bit helped. I needed this thing to go as perfectly as possible... wait, that was it!

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y10m19d Known skills:

Points: 0/208

Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Eyebeams, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forcefield Creation, Forced Acceleration, Greater Proximakinesis, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap

Attributes: Might 50, Agility 25, Reason 6, Vigilance 22, Ego 25, Luck 7

Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II

Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope I

I little bit of luck went a long way. Normally, I preferred to have control over things, to beat everything any enemy could bring up by simply being the immovable object and the unstoppable force, but when the stakes were so high... stakes were chance, and chance could be affected.

There were other minor details like exactly who was standing were, how they stood and where they were aiming, or what furniture, interior walls and mundane tech was present but those would only need minor adjustments instead of dictating the plan itself, or could be ignored because their impact was negligible. Having all the information I could reasonably gather and done everything I could think of to tilt things in my favor without showing my hand, I spent the rest of my super-sped time to put everything together...

xxxx

I went into the General Assembly Building the standard method; through the door. The door itself on the other hand was anything but standard; a maintenance access hatch for a sewer tunnel or perhaps storm drain older than the building itself, it had been sealed and filled with both poured concrete and debris. Its original purpose I had no idea about, but with a bit of wiggling and disintegration of obstacles I got very close to a sewer line and from there into the restrooms with only a single toilet seat destroyed. An impermeable force field covering me from head to toe dealt with both the sewage and the smell and the barest flicker of disintegration dealt with anything clinging on said field before it was dismissed. I certainly did not sing any spy movie themes, no sir.

Now inside and from what my Force Awareness could see still undetected, the time for stealth and hesitation was past. With a speed only slightly under the sound barrier, I broke through the back door to the main chamber, reached the stage in under a tenth of a second and blasted with my eyebeams at the bad guys' apparent leader. His short wave radio and his cell phone turned to dust but the blast at his remote control met a black barrier that stopped it cold - a barrier that my Force Awareness did not detect at all.

"Hah!" the very young-looking man shouted and waved, three more black barriers appearing around him and almost entirely hiding him from view. "You thought it would be that easy, Hero? Minions, get her!"

He sounded like a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain. Why did he sound like a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain? No, asskicking now, questions later. As the four 'minions' approached warily, their main weapons fell prey to copious beam spam faster than they could aim. Their chain armor was made of sterner stuff though, each of my shots splashing against the metal mesh with no effect - almost. The supertech device in their back triggered every time a beam was nullified, sending out a wave of something that displaced air but couldn't be perceived by my senses. It was that effect that did not adhere to conventional physics that caused the nullification, but each time it worked the device that produced it grew hotter - by a lot. I was guessing it would only stop half a dozen more shots at best. Hmm... blast them more or get on in with the program?

Deciding on the latter, I speed-blitzed the much slower enhanced. Tough they might be, they lacked the additional powers of full supers and their equipment had no answer for purely physical bashing; in moments they were all down for the count.

"You dare attack us in our moment of triumph? Fool!" their leader cried out. "Witness what befalls all those who oppose us!" And with that, he pressed a button on his remote. It was big, it was red, and it was clearly labelled "do not press". When he did just that... nothing happened.

"Were you expecting something impressive, perhaps?" I mocked him, the hostages safe from the detonation signal behind another signal-negating barrier. With me present in the chamber and the volume to be covered vastly smaller, I'd raised it the moment I burst onto the stage.

"How is this possible!" he protested... rather childishly. Then he pressed the button several more times. Was this really the villain behind this attack? A man-child barely my age with gadgets, lots of followers, heavy equipment and an elaborate plan that... didn't really fit the image he was showing just then? Something smelled rotten in the state of Denmark.

"What are you, five?" I told him even as I charged, shattering three quarters of the shadowy fields around him. More formed, but I could destroy them faster than they regrew; this would be barely a delay. "You assaulted the United Nations, kept delegates from almost every country on the planet as hostages, kill thousands... for what?"

"I was promised a showdown with a hero," he whined nasally, then attempted to tie me up with more of those black force fields. They were cold to the touch, almost unpleasant mimicries of physical objects, but even layered they were relatively fragile. The single bands he could get around my limbs tore and shattered like chalk before disappearing into puffs of black smoke. The only way my Force Awareness could detect them was from the air they displaced, while my eyes could see them just fine. "Instead I get a barbie that can't even act the role."

"You're insane!" He really, really was. Should the other villain being mad have clued me in? But even he had been reasonable at first; he just had a weird hangup and a berserk button I'd kept pressing. "So many lives lost..." and it was all for nothing. Some idiot's delusions growing deadly because he'd gotten his hands on some power... wait. He'd said 'he had been promised'. "Who put you up to this? Who gave you your powers?"

"Insane?! Insane?!" he was actually spitting in his rage, though his own shield caught and kept it from infecting anyone else with his stupidity. "For stringing a bunch of useless fossils up and crushing their little tin soldiers?" He cackled. He actually cackled. "Look around you. The world is changing! The day of old fogeys in their assemblies and back room dealings deciding the fate of the world has passed. Now people like me have the power. We could bring governments to their knees, do whatever we want and no-one could stop us." He sneered at me and even more grasping shadow-chains tried to tie me up. They failed. "Except people like you would serve them like loyal dogs, upholding the status quo. Why are you even wearing a costume? You're a glorified cop, doing what they want. You have some measly measure of power, you could carve a small place to rule, a village or town but no. You'll just die here... and then I will remake this world in MY image."

"The problem with that is that you're ugly," I told the delusional idiot then turned around and unleashed my eyebeams at the delegates. There were some belated screams but they all stopped when they saw what had just happened. Disabling the explosives individually would never have worked, so I had angled the beams' trajectory into a zing-zagging but continuous path that burned through every singe bomb in sequence. The three hundred bomb vests were less than a thousand feet apart in total while the beams traveled at the speed of light; they had all been harmlessly disintegrated before any detonation signals could go anywhere. As a bonus, most of the wires keeping the delegates tied up had also been cut through, leaving only their legs still bound.

"No! NO! I REFUSE!" the rather pathetic villain cried and threw his remote control at me. It bounced off his inner shield then hit him in the eye, doing next to nothing but providing a brief distraction. At the speeds I could more, that was more than enough to burst through his barriers and punch him in the face. Then I did it again and again, the third blow leaving him unconscious at my feet.

"Governments exist to protect people and allow civilization to flourish, dumbass," I told the unconscious villain, then kicked him in the ass for good measure. All those deaths, all the chaos, the fear, the political upheavals to come, for nothing. "I happen to like civilization; it has houses and pizza, and the internet. Rule the world?" I grumbled and turned around. "Way too much work."

Then I realized what I'd just said and before what audience, and prepared to rip open the ground and bury Yours Truly and her big fucking mouth.

"I happen to disagree," a very deep voice called from behind me and I turned around only to see a humanoid shadow crawling out of the unconscious villain's gaping, painfully dislocated mouth. Red glowing eyes flicked between me and the delegates and the voice went on in an agreeable, civilized tone that immediately set me on edge. "Let's discuss this as civilized people, shall we?"

And with that the three hundred delegates and their escorts dropped every attempt to free themselves, sat back down as one, then raised their left hands to their throats. Shadowy knives manifested in their grip, their edges an inch from each delegate's skin...