“Great, now try it the other way.” Sarah instructed, smiling at Isaac and squeezing his hand.

  It still felt odd to Isaac to use his powers so casually, especially on other people, but Sarah was far more sanguine about it than he was. She’d been raised by people who had powers, with friends who had powers, and they all practiced them regularly. The gang was probably even more willing to use their powers in various way than heroes were wont to. Unlike him, she hadn’t been half-afraid of her powers for most of her life.

  Following her instructions, he slowly pulled inertia out of the illusionary apple that Sarah had conjured between them, reducing its resistance to change in general without focusing on one particular thing. Unlike with a physical object, an illusion didn’t have mass to adjust, but it still had a concrete existence to affect.

  Sarah had suggested experiments that would have made him turn and run the other way if he had been by himself. It wasn’t in his nature to apply his power to other people, let alone in ways where he wasn’t sure of the result. The apple was part of Sarah’s smoke, so it was part of her power, but at the same time distinct from it. Even now part of him was afraid of breaking things, of doing something irrevocable to her, but she didn’t seem worried.

  “Yeah, it’s easier that way,” Sarah confirmed, the apple cycling through green, red, yellow, then purple, pink, polka-dot. “Still weird how both ways increase my control. I’d love to be able to get them both going at once.”

  “Not sure how that’d be possible, but that’s probably just because I’m not good enough at it yet,” Isaac admitted. After being given the time to really push at the limits of his power, he was pretty certain that he had years of mastery to go before he could consider himself skilled with the broader, less concrete applications. Just because he couldn’t do something now didn’t mean it would be like that forever.

  “You’ll get there,” Sarah said with assurance, patting his hand and then leaning back and stretching, giving him a grin as he appreciated the sight. “You know you could probably make a pretty good living just giving supers tune-ups. A touch here and there to make it easier for people to get their own powers working.”

  “It’s a good thought,” Isaac admitted, and the idea appealed to him in some ways. It wasn’t a combat role, which he was pretty clearly not cut out for, and he could help people who were struggling to control their powers in addition to maybe giving some types a boost. Pragmatically, it’d make him a lot of powerful friends or at least acquaintances, and while it’d also come with enemies, the meta sphere was only tangential to the super one. And his powers already had people coming after him, so anyone he could get on his side would be a bonus. “Going to need a lot more practice, though.”

  “Always does,” Sarah said. “You’ve been doing pretty good though, yeah?”

  “It has been a useful week,” he agreed.

  The work he’d been forced to do for Zys didn’t take up all that much time, overall. His minder escorted him to and from a big industrial area, the twenty-foot behemoth prowling along far too lightly for its size and keeping other lizard-people from pestering him. Zys’s people had decided on having him reinforce several large deployable walls, sections of crystal armor with built-in levitation.

  It only made sense, since the way his power worked the changes had to be on something real, and for the moment he was only confident in repeating the process of enhancing a protective wall with more of what made it protective and a wall. Though considering the power that shrouded Great King Zys, more was still a fraction of the way toward something that could actually stand up to that level of force.

  The rest of the time had been filled with trying to make serious sense of the new directions he could take his talent. While before he’d been careful and incremental, it was clear that he had to take larger steps, and the fact was he didn’t really feel bad about any unintentional havoc he’d wreak on Zys’s city. So for the most abstract conceptual changes he threw caution away and pushed his full power into his alterations, as well as trying things like making it harder for moods to change, or easier. Pushing and pulling at things like trying to hold the lighting in the room the same, seeing how far his power compounded its effects. Sarah verified he could cause hyperfixation, or hyper-inattention, something that he immediately filed away as something to never do. Accidental mental influence was bad enough, but weaponizing it would put him on everyone’s hit-list.

  On the other hand, some of his experiments just didn’t work at all. Like with the lighting, normal physical reality was just so well established that making things a touch harder or easier didn’t alter anything. That made it clear that his power wasn’t some kind of reality-warping absolute, that he couldn’t just change whatever he wanted. Not only did he require touch, which meant being in the area of effect even with metaphorical qualities, but it had to be something that was ultimately amenable to the idea of resistance to change.

  That still left quite a lot, and the vague, uncertain nature of the feedback he did get from his power certainly made experimenting more difficult, but he was getting a far better handle on things. Working with Sarah helped, since he could tinker with the effects her talent had, and having someone who could tell him exactly what had changed was incredibly useful.

  At the very least, it seemed that he could draw the conclusion that the magnitude of his change was roughly the same, or at least, consistent across metaphysical domains. A lot of his guesswork was based on the subjective feedback from how Sarah felt, but it fit in with what he thought he was doing on his end. He still wasn’t investing or divesting a lot in absolute terms, but when it came to ephemeral concepts and metaphysics, that might be fairly significant in an absolute measurement.

  Some other things were less understandable, or at least, less obvious about why they did what they did. Altering Sarah’s illusions was not symmetric; it wasn’t like they got strictly better or worse from altering their resistance to change. Which was true of physical inertia too, so that was consistent even if he felt like it shouldn’t be. Trying to affect other things, though, was like grappling with a phantasm.

  “It just seems weird that I can change big dynamic things but not smaller ones,” Isaac commented a few minutes later as he tried to change the lights again, flicking a tablet slate on and off. Making it harder to change state was one thing; he could make the tablet resistant to a change in state and cause overheating like he had before. But making the tablet stay lit after switching it off seemed to be impossible. Not that he minded, but the oddness stuck in his mind.

  “Just the way powers are,” Sarah said, playing with Astoria and Shay by shifting a large, padded ball into smoke and back again at different corners of the room, effectively teleporting the toy around. The raptors were certainly having great fun chasing after the ball, and it was definitely good practice for Sarah. So far she hadn’t been able to duplicate the feat with anything he hadn’t tampered with, but they were both sure that was merely an issue of practice. After all, she’d never had trouble with her clothes or personal effects, so doing it at a remove seemed like it ought to be possible.

  Of course, she’d just said why it might not be.

  “You know, back when I thought I just had some minor physical powers, I didn’t bother looking too deeply into the theories behind it all,” Isaac remarked. “Why some people ended up sovereign and others got dregs. Other than the whole there is no useless superpower they teach in schools, anyway.”

  “It is far too broad a subject to approach for anyone but an academic professional,” Savage opined. He looked to be reading his book again, but his eyes kept straying to the ball the riding raptors were kicking around and chasing after as it turned to smoke. Isaac suspected he wanted to join in, but absolutely would never admit to it. “Too much variance, too much uniqueness. As well ask why any individual is the way they are.”

  “Sometimes I wonder that too,” Isaac said, and Sarah laughed.

  “So do we all,” she said, her good mood falling slightly. The week had also been punctuated with periodic bouts of anxiety as she worried over her brother, and why James had decided to stay in the brawl-room that had gotten him crystallized. Hopefully they would have good news on that once they finally got back to civilizations.

  “I think—” he began, and was interrupted by a deep, distant rumble, a shaking as if an earthquake had arrived, and a chiming that the translator bangles hurriedly interpreted as an alarm.

  “Trouble,” Sarah said unnecessarily, some of the smoke hovering around her feet condensing into shoes before she hopped upright. Isaac followed suit; they’d both gotten replacement wardrobes from the generous budget they’d been given, and while they still looked like kimonos, they had something more robust than sandals to walk on. They’d always known they would be breaking out, after all.

  “Might be time to get Lia,” Isaac said, already considering how to do it. They knew where the hospital was and how to get there. They had translators, but if Lia would literally die if they took her out then they’d have to leave her or stand and fight.

  “Good,” Savage said, his synthetic voice emotionless as ever but the snarl that accompanied his words made his attitude entirely clear. “I’m tired of sitting here doing nothing.”

  They started packing up, able to properly do so now that they could access the crystaltech barding’s functions for Shay and Astoria. Part of it was translated whistle-language, part of it was the psionic connection the bracelets gave them, but they could access the cargo areas, basically saddlebags, as well as the flight functions and various other alterations of the saddles.

  A minute or so into their hasty scramble, the door opened and the little ikiski that was their sort-of-butler appeared, stepping in and cocking his head at their activity. Isaac tensed, reaching for the cord he’d kept looped around his wrist opposite the bracelet. It was too useful not to have a weapon on hand, even if he wished he didn’t need it.

  Instead of asking what they were doing, or going to raise an alarm, the ikiski’s scales flickered, turning from amethyst to a familiar green. A change in posture and suddenly Isaac recognized the little guy.

  “Gratin?” He and Sarah asked it at the same time, each of them more incredulous than the other.

  “Was that you the whole time?” Isaac demanded, feeling a little put out.

  “Not the whole time, no no,” Gratin said as he finished relaxing back into his normal color and attitude. “Only two days yes.”

  “What, ah, happened to the original?” Isaac asked, suddenly uncomfortable. For the most part their theoretical imprisonment had been polite and urbane, but it was still imposed by force of arms. If it weren’t for Sarah’s talent making them incredibly slippery, they probably would have needed to use significant violence to get out.

  “Stasis chamber yes,” Gratin said promptly, which was a relief. The little guy hadn’t really been rude or mean, so he probably didn’t deserve being murdered and replaced, which was definitely a possibility. For all that the ikiski’s casual violence never rose above a certain threshold, obviously it could, when it came to anything with serious stakes.

  “Less chatting, more breaking out,” Savage said, his cybernetics whirring as a pair of relatively large guns articulated out of the armor, unfolding themselves on either side of his head with a series of sinister clicks.

  “Indeed yes,” Gratin said. “Before Third Claw arrives and we must fight.”

  “Yeah,” Isaac agreed, figuring that Gratin meant the twenty foot tall, scar-marked minder that had been hanging around all week. That was definitely someone he didn’t want to scrap with. He hurriedly called Shay through the psionic link, asking her to bring Lia’s mount. The three raptors padded out into the room, heads tilted at the alarm chimes, and Isaac crossed over to them.

  “Okay,” he told them. “Like we practiced.”

  One of the things they’d had time to do was to get their mounts used to lower-inertia movement. Isaac didn’t take everything away, that was too much, but there was a certain sweet spot where they still had enough traction and weren’t pushed around by stray breezes, yet the lower inertia meant the raptors could move with impossible agility. Something they very much liked, even though there hadn’t been the chance to go full tilt with it. He needed to reduce the inertia of everyone else to go along with it, but none of them relied on that kind of force save for Savage, and even then it was only certain of his weapons.

  He touched Shay’s muzzle, dialing down her physical inertia to increase her agility and increasing her ontological inertia to make her less vulnerable. The other mounts got the same treatment, as did Sarah and Savage, but when it came to Gratin he wasn’t certain. It wasn’t like the small ikiski had much mass to begin with, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Do you want me to adjust you, too? It’s permanent unless I undo it,” Isaac warned, having outlined what he was doing for the little guy. Given Gratin’s propensity for vanishing and reappearing, there was a good chance he wouldn’t get the opportunity to revert the alteration.

  “Do yes please,” Gratin said happily, fairly wriggling in place as Isaac offered his hand, pushing Gratin’s inertia down to a fraction of its normal amount and pushing in some extra ontological inertia, even if he wasn’t certain how well it’d work for someone with whom he was unfamiliar. The little lizard-man danced around for a moment, flitting this way and that, before jumping up atop Lia’s mount. “Okay ready then now.”

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

  Shay altered her crystal-panel wings into steps again to let Isaac mount up, the saddle featuring back support now that he’d been able to access its settings. He barely got settled in before they dashed out the open door. Savage led the way, pelting headlong down the amethyst corridors toward the hospital, with the everyone else following.

  “What’s going on, by the way?” Isaac asked, figuring that Gratin might actually know.

  “Doctor Mechaniacal has come to the Deep Kingdoms yes,” Gratin said, and Isaac actually froze for a moment. It wasn’t like he had forgotten the drones, but he’d taken no news as good news and hoped that events above would continue to keep Mechaniacal’s attention. It seemed he was not so lucky. Then he shook himself, sharing a look with Sarah and letting Shay carry him along. He’d have to deal with Mechaniacal’s presence as and when he could.

  The scurrying of ikiski in the corridors reminded Isaac of when the alarms went off in Star City. Haste, but not panic. Not that Isaac had any idea how much of a threat Mechaniacal actually was to Zys’s mountain. Perhaps they were justified in their confidence, and with the movable walls Isaac had enhanced they were more protected than ever.

  The raptors pelted along, taking the opportunity with their reduced inertia to go around the occasional knots of traffic by jumping off and along the walls. They barely needed their wings for such techniques, though if they were out in the main causeway flight would have been the better option. Unfortunately, Zys might well be out there, and of everyone, the Great King was the one Isaac wasn’t certain of slipping away from.

  It only took a few minutes to reach the hospital ward, all during which Gratin seemed to be quarreling with Lia’s mount, though the translator only caught a part of it. Whatever it was about, it didn’t seem to be resolved by the time they crossed the threshold into the medical center, and the raptor shook herself in a visible huff as Gratin hopped off. The actual doctor was not in evidence, and the smaller attendants were sent scattering by a few words from Gratin himself.

  Lia’s crystal coffin was behind a patterned curtain, locked into place and with gemstone pipes and conduits plugged into the back. The readout nearby translated as fairly stable; Isaac didn’t have any formal education, but he’d worked in the hospital long enough to be able to recognize some of the charting jargon. As he had figured, the doctors could have released her earlier, but her status wasn’t completely recovered so there was still an excuse not to.

  “Hang on,” he said, and hopped off Shay to land – lightly, as his inertia was still very low – next to the stasis chamber as Gratin worked the controls. He reached out, not quite able to touch Lia, but ready to. “Okay, go.”

  Gratin crooned and warbled at the interface, and a sharp chime sounded, ringing loudly and making the crystal surrounding Lia crack. It shivered, then suddenly collapsed into red sand before evaporating into nothing with the sound of soap bubbles popping in succession. He grabbed Lia’s hand and shoved inertia into the recovering aspect of her health, putting all he could into it in hopes that it’d stop any relapse in the future. And it’d wear off on its own, once she was recovered.

  “What,” Lia said, then something else in her native lunarian, a long repeating syllable accompanied by her runes glowing softly. Then she blinked, focusing on them. He could see the moment she realized what had happened, then she surged out of the empty stasis coffin. Savage was there at the same moment, reaching out to steady her with a cyber-arm while Lia’s mount crowded in, and Isaac took a step backward to let them sort themselves.

  “Someone’s coming,” Sarah muttered to him, puffing at her kiseru, still mounted raptor-back as she used her smoke to scout around them. “That minder of yours. Big guy, and he’s ignoring my illusions.”

  “Ah, heck,” Isaac said with a grimace. They hadn’t bothered being stealthy, given the current crisis, so it wasn’t a surprise someone had tracked them down, but he didn’t like how fast it had been. He knew the guy was around, but the minder wasn’t always hovering so Isaac had hoped they’d managed to slip past. It seemed they weren’t so lucky.

  He patted Shay and took a few steps toward the door as he invested himself, taking up station between the incoming ikiski and everyone else. There was no telling how long it’d take for Lia to get her bearings, and he doubted that Zys would be willing to hurt him, even if the Great King cared little about his companions. Moments later, the massive form of the lizard-man stepped through the oversized doorway, clad in pink and purple gemstone armor. A faceless helmet, cuirass, cuisses, and greaves, but it wasn’t solid like metal armor would have been. Instead it was more like bits of lattice covering the essential areas, while projecting protective fields outward to cover everything else.

  “You will return to your quarters,” he said, a low polyphonic that the translator conveyed as brusque and imperative. The tones of someone used to being obeyed.

  “Yeah, no,” Isaac said, doublechecking that he had put as much inertia into himself and his clothes as possible. While he was careful not to shove inertia into his identity, given what had happened with Ravdia, both physical and ontological inertia were safe enough. On the other hand, he was up against someone who was nearly four times his size and ten times his weight, with armor and technology to match. “Thanks for the hospitality, but we’re out.”

  “You will return,” the ikiski repeated, taking a step forward and reaching out toward Isaac. That kind of contempt was personally offensive, so he took a step backward and flicked out his cord, hitting the outstretched hand with the force of, if not a small car, an oversized motorcycle. It would have sent a normal person flying, but the ikiski barely budged. In a straight fight, Isaac was clearly outclassed, but there was no point in a straight fight.

  “Sarah!” He skipped back another step, and plume of smoke wrapped around the lizard-man’s head. The ikiski growled, batting at something off to the side that only he could see, and Isaac took a running start to shoulder-check the big guy — admittedly, it was only at hip level, even with a jump, thanks to the size difference. Enough to make him stagger, but then the crystal armor powered up with a rising melody.

  Pyramidal studs emerged from the surface of the armor, sparking and then blazing with light and a deep, nausea-inducing bass. Isaac stumbled backward from the sudden flashbang, and the ikiski raised an arm in his direction. A prismatic discharge leapt outward, barely missing Isaac but still making his limbs tingle uncomfortably, his fingers going numb. Behind him, Sarah bit off a cry and Savage hissed. He risked a glance back to see that the bolt had nearly hit them, as well, and it was only by sheer luck that it hadn’t broadsided Lia, as the remnants of the beam hit and spat against the wall just to the side of the stasis pod where she had been only moments before.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Isaac said, which was obvious but also a cue for Sarah to smoke them away.

  “I—” Sarah started, but was interrupted by another high, wailing noise from the ikiski’s armor that sent Sarah slumping against Astoria, blood suddenly dripping from her nose. “Disrupting the smoke,” she choked out. Isaac grunted, a chill settling in his gut. He’d considered Sarah’s smoke powers to be more or less invulnerable, but clearly they weren’t. Clearly the ikiski had put some thought into how to counter them, and it didn’t need to be something like Mechaniacal’s power suppression to work.

  Isaac whipped out the cord again, angling at one of the studs broadcasting the noise and – presumably – disrupting Sarah’s smoke. It was a particularly useless gesture, as the ikiski was no longer blinded and, even if he had been, it was obvious that the minder had been selected and armored with Isaac’s enhanced inertia in mind since the cord just skipped right off. If only they’d sent someone of human size, then Isaac could have manhandled the lizardman and been on his way.

  The lizardman’s arm blurred, and immediately reminded Isaac why he hated super-fights. An impact like being hit by a car, and he was suddenly in a crater in the wall, kept alive only by the sheer investment in himself. His vision swam, his head numb but stinging at the same time somehow, and he only barely caught himself as he slid down to the floor. This wasn’t friendly sparring anymore, this was a real fight.

  The big ikiski took two steps forward – toward Sarah, not Isaac – and Astoria bounced upward, leveraging her reduced inertia to flip up and over the deceptively quick lizard-man. Too quick, unfortunately, since he grabbed Astoria’s tail with an offended squawk from the raptor in question and slammed her, along with Sarah, into the ground. Thanks to the reduced inertia it was not the deathblow it really should have been; after all, the sudden stop was what killed you and with low inertia that didn’t really work.

  But it wasn’t anything close to invulnerability, and as he watched Sarah tumble across the floor he gritted his teeth, darker options springing to mind from his endless brainstorming over the week. There were some obvious applications of inertia that were terrifying to even contemplate, and fit more into the supervillain mold than the superhero one. But he wasn’t either of those, and this wasn’t Star City where the rules were known.

  “Make him bleed.” He tried to shout it, but it came out more of a wheeze as he threw himself forward again. Not to try and land a serious punch on the oversized guard, but instead to drop down and tag the Ikiski’s ankle. For that brief contact he pulled on what he’d practiced with Sarah and focused on attention, reducing its resistance to change. Making it harder for the giant to keep focus. Then he tumbled forward to keep from being stomped as the guard slashed down with armored toes.

  Savage clearly heard him, despite the droning of the ikiski’s disruption armor, and an explosion of gunfire echoing in the small room deafened Isaac. Streaks of blue projectiles slammed into the soldier’s scales before he rounded on the cyber-raptor, a purple-green force shield appearing from crystalline bracers to block Savage’s fire, but the guard was shaky and unsteady after what Isaac had done. The projectiles ricocheted around the room, spalling and sparking as they hissed and dissolved.

  Whatever caliber or make of gun Savage was using managed a few nicks in the lizardman’s scales, making it through before the guard got his shielding up. Even direct hits only left shallow cuts or gouges, barely noticeable given the size of the ikiski in question, but that was enough. Red blood seeped from the wounds, and Isaac wobbled forward before lunging at the ikiski’s back. He slapped his fingers at one of the cuts on the ikiski’s hip, focusing his power without care for finesse.

  He focused on the lizardman’s blood, giving it inertia and turning it from water, to gelatin, to concrete. Making it harder to circulate, every little turn and twist of a vein or artery bearing an additional strain, the heart having to work ever so much harder for each beat. It was pure physicality, nothing subtle about it, and he could feel his inertial investment suffuse the ikiski’s body. He only had a second, but with all his practice a second was all he needed.

  A moment later, a labored backward swipe sent Isaac tumbling across the floor, nearly colliding with Sarah as he hastily dialed down his inertia so he wouldn’t squish anyone. The enormous lizardman turned halfway, blinking slowly and then with a ponderous grace toppled to the floor. The impact jolted through the tiles beneath Isaac’s hands, and he shuddered with a stomach-churning disgust. He knew he had to do it, but that moment of stillness before the ikiski had collapsed would live in his mind’s eye forever.

  “Oh that is very not good no,” Gratin said from next to Lia, where he was still fussing over the bracelet around the lunarian’s wrist. “Great King Zys will be very unhappy.” Isaac grunted, not particularly caring that much about Zys even if he felt bad about the minder.

  There was no time to sit and stew. The entire fight, such as it was, had really taken only moments, and there was still an ongoing situation outside. Alarms still wailed, and despite the ikiski’s unmoving body, the armor kept droning out the disorienting low tones. He summoned Shay with his bracelet, scrambling to his feet and going to help Sarah up, except Astoria reached her first. The raptor gripped Sarah’s arm delicately in her teeth and scooped a wing panel under her to flip her around, seating her back on the saddle with a jolt that would have been deeply uncomfortable if everyone weren’t still inertially reduced. Sarah was dazed but not so badly off that she couldn’t grip a holdfast.

  Shay followed Astoria’s example in a quick remount, throwing Isaac onto her back and forcing him to hastily rip his inertia back down to the escape level lows that he’d settled on. He found himself next to Lia, who had mounted up while he was too busy being distracted, with Gratin behind her sharing the saddle. Isaac was still wheezing, but thankfully Gratin had the presence of mind to chatter a quick comment about the inertial alterations for him. After a nod from Lia, he adjusted her to the same level as everyone else before nudging Shay forward so he could check on Sarah.

  “M'good,” she said, and while he knew that wasn’t actually true, if she was up for continuing on he’d have to accept it for the moment.

  Then they were out and away from the hospital, following Sarah and Savage to get away from the anti-smoke effect. Nobody wanted to be caught without that particular trump card, as it was one of the few things that let them engage with the real powerhouses around them. Once again Isaac leaned into his power without any reservation, feeding the inertia of their escape as they went along.

  He could feel it mounting as they pelted across the gap of the massive causeway toward the edge of the palace-city, at least until they caught sight of what waited for them outside. The sky was crowded with massive, black-and-silver spheres, each one far larger than any of the drones that had hunted him through the streets of Star City and far more ominous-looking. The firefight between the drones and the palace was a deafening rattle, colored bolts of plasma spraying out from defenders and mounted defenses, while the drones returned fire with some sort of ring-shaped burst, a translucent orange energy that splattered against crystal, hazing it with some sort of lingering, crackling residue wherever it landed.

  “Ikiski disguises!” Isaac hissed, and Sarah grunted acknowledgement, still woozy from getting thrown around by the scar-faced minder. He wished he could do something about that, but it would have to wait until they weren’t in the middle of combat. The smoke around them fuzzed, congealing into their disguises as Chiak and Tianit, and Isaac pushed inertia into them — but just a little bit, having no desire to think of himself as a reptile-person for the rest of time. Gratin made a squeaky noise of surprise, but whatever he was going to say was lost under a baritone voice echoing through the air.

  “All this is unnecessary.” The words came from something so incredibly out of place that Isaac hadn’t even registered it at first. An immense tower, a modern skyscraper, improbably transported into place less than a mile away. “Simply produce the surfacers. I have no quarrel with you.”

  Above him, Isaac spotted some of the floating walls being maneuvered into place, shielding portions of the mountain — to astonishing effect, at least to what he could see. Mechaniacal’s weapons seemed to simply slide off the walls without leaving whatever anti-crystaltech residue he was using, which was more than Isaac had expected. Ontological inertia was heady stuff, it seemed, especially when it was focused down and used to reinforce something very specific.

  The ikiski response was Great King Zys. It only made sense; it was, after all, not only his kingdom and people but his actual house that was under attack. The massive amethyst kaiju stomped out of an overhang maybe half a mile from them, stretching to his full height and roaring.

  “Begone!”

  The bellow expanded outward in a visible wave, drones popping like confetti for the first few seconds before something suddenly changed in their construction. The drones shifted color, altered their shape, and the effect stopped. Zys inhaled deeply, the enormous crystalline fins along his back glowing with ominous light as he faced the skyscraper and opened his jaws, a coruscating beam of ravening light bursting into being and hammering Mechaniacal’s base.

  The metal plating stopped it dead.

  There was no splash, no sound of impact, no counter-beam. It simply vanished as if completely nullified, which was more terrifying than if the skyscraper had weathered the attack with sheer toughness. The blast washed the battlefield in a moment of silence, then the skyscraper whirred, a ratcheting click like some great clock being wound.

  Isaac didn’t actually see the shot. There was just a sudden blur of movement from Zys, and a thunderous detonation as the kaiju backhanded something the size of a sedan into the upside-down sky, where it crashed into the thick jungle hard enough to raise a cloud of vaporized vegetation.

  “We should very much go now yes,” Gratin said, wriggling nervously from where he sat behind Lia. But Isaac couldn’t help looking at the confrontation between Zys and Mechaniacal, and seeing something like the Glorybeam incident once again. Two great forces clashing, crushing all those nearby whether they intended to or not. The fact that it was all happening because of him was just extra pressure, as if he hadn’t been convinced enough that he needed to start using his power openly.

  “No,” Isaac said, looking out at the chaos. “I can help.”

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