#47 - BULWARK hit the ground first, the street buckling under his feet. His skin wasn't skin anymore—it was a mountain's face, grey and unyielding. He didn't speak. He just stepped forward, planting himself between the creature and a group of trapped civilians, becoming a living fortress.
From his right, #32 - SIREN touched down, her hands already raised. Her mouth opened, and the world went silent before a visible C O N C of distorted air lanced out. It struck the creature's shoulder with a sound like a planets collision, chipping a plate of chitin the size of a dinner table and making the beast stumble sideways for the first time.
#28 - FLUX blurred into motion from the left flank, a streak of grey and blue. He'd absorbed the kinetic energy of his landing and released it through his fist as he vaulted onto the creature's lower leg. The hit echoed with a deep BOOM, and a hairline fracture spiderwebbed across the chitin.
#38 - VEIL landed gracefully behind them, her hands weaving. Panels of glowing, amber-hard light materialized in the air, forming a protective canopy over a collapsed bus, shielding the people clawing their way out.
Hovering above it all, controlling the battlefield's very air, was #12 - ZEPHYR. With a sweep of his hand, he conjured a vortex that sucked deadly debris away from fleeing crowds. With another, he sent a concentrated blade of hyper-compressed wind screeching toward the creature's eyes.
It was a masterpiece of coordination. A ballet of devastating power. For a glorious moment, they were winning. They were heroes.
The creature roared again, but this time it was different—a lower, more intelligent frequency of fury. It stopped trying to bite and eat. It planted its four legs and the jagged plates along its spine began to glow with the same cobalt energy as the Breach.
Siren fired another sonic blast. The creature didn't flinch. The energy around it absorbed the sound, shimmering.
Bulwark charged, a seismic event in human form, aiming to tackle its leg. The creature simply swatted him with a forelimb. There was a horrific, grating SCREECH of granite on crystal. Bulwark skidded back fifty feet, leaving trenches in the asphalt, a deep crack now visible across his stone chest.
Flux, capitalizing on the distraction, shot up its side, aiming for the head. The creature's glowing spines pulsed. A wave of pure, concussive force emitted from its body in a silent, expanding sphere.
It hit Flux mid-air. There was no kinetic energy for him to absorb—it was a telekinetic blast. He was flung away like a ragdoll, vanishing into the facade of a building with a sickening crunch.
Zephyr cried out a warning and threw up a wall of compressed air. The creature's next attack wasn't physical. It opened its maw and a beam of focused cobalt energy, a Breach-beam, lanced out. It pierced Zephyr's wind wall like it was mist, catching him in the shoulder. He spun from the sky, crashing down in a heap of tangled limbs, his suit smoking.
Veil's constructs shattered under a second, indiscriminate pulse from the monster. The backlash made her scream, clutching her head as she collapsed.
Siren was the last standing. She poured everything into one final, desperate scream—a sonic drill aimed at the beast's open mouth. The creature seemed to… swallow the sound. Then, it tilted its head and returned it. A distorted, amplified echo of Siren's own power blasted back at her, throwing her through the window of a nearby store.
Silence, save for the creature's low, vibrating hum and the mournful crackle of the Blue Breach.
Seventeen seconds. That's how long the fight lasted.
Ranked heroes #12, #28, #32, #38, and #47 were down, scattered across the ruin like broken toys.
The creature turned, its glowing eyes scanning for more prey. Its gaze passed over the rubble where Edgar and I lay hidden.
We had just witnessed the impossible: a Blue Breach monster that didn't just fight. It adapted. It won.
And now, it was still hungry.
The creature's head swiveled, its glowing cobalt eyes locking onto a new point of chaos: a small girl, no older than six, standing alone in the middle of the street. Her dress was dust-stained, her face a mask of terrified tears as she screamed for a mother who couldn't hear her.
It took a step toward her. The ground trembled.
"No," I whispered, the word barely leaving my lips. "No, no, no, no…"
My father's voice was a drumbeat in my skull, loud and clear. When you see danger, you run the other way. You run the other way. You run.
But then another voice cut through it. Deeper. Calm. From a hundred interviews and public service announcements. The voice of The Almighty, answering a child's question on a late-night talk show: "What would a hero do? He would see someone in need… and move."
My body moved before my mind could argue.
I was running.
"You idiot!" Edgar's roar was raw with disbelief behind me. "What the hell are you doing?!"
I didn't look back. "I can't!" I shouted, the words ripped away by the wind of my own sprint. "I can't leave her!"
Edgar could only watch, bleeding and stunned. That idiot. He's powerless. How is he doing this?
Logic had left me. There was only the girl, the monster, and the shrinking distance between them. I snatched up a broken length of rebar from the rubble. With a grunt I didn't know I had, I hurled it. It clanged harmlessly off the creature's plated hind leg.
It worked. The beast paused, its head turning from the girl to me.
"Hey!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "Over here!"
I sprinted past the creature, my arms waving. It took the bait, a low, interested rumble building in its chest. I reached the girl, scooping her up in one frantic motion. She clung to my neck, sobbing. I ran, my legs burning, my heart a jackhammer against my ribs.
The creature gave chase. It wasn't a sprint; it was a deliberate, terrifying pursuit, like a cat after a mouse. Each footfall was a localized earthquake.
A woman watching from a shattered doorway screamed, "Someone save them! They're just kids!"
The creature raised its colossal forelimb, claws gleaming. It wasn't swatting. It was aiming.
From the rubble, Siren, struggling to rise, saw it. "NO!" Her voice was a broken rasp.
Bulwark, the crack in his granite chest still smoking, launched himself forward in a last, desperate tackle. He was a hero. He was also too slow.
The limb came down in a blur of crystalline death.
We closed our eyes.
BOOM.
The sound was not of impact, but of absence—a vacuum of sound followed by a detonation of force. The ground cratered five meters behind us, dust and debris blasting outward in a ring.
But there was no pain.
We opened our eyes. We were still alive, untouched.
And then… a laugh.
"Hahahaha!"
It was a bright, easy sound, utterly out of place in the apocalypse. Standing between us and the creature's still-raised arm was a man. He blocked the monstrous limb not with a shield or energy field, but with his own forearm, pressed casually against it as if holding up a shelf.
He wore faded blue jeans and a simple navy polo shirt. The fabric strained over shoulders and arms corded with muscle that seemed less like a bodybuilder's and more like a geological formation given human form. His hair was windswept, his expression one of mild amusement.
That iconic golden hair, those glowing blue eyes. I was certain... He was The Almighty.
He didn't look at the monster. He glanced back at us, his eyes a startling, kind blue. "All is well," he said, his voice calm, carrying effortlessly over the chaos. "You are safe."
Then he moved.
It wasn't a flashy motion. He simply swung his blocking arm to the side. The creature, a being that had shrugged off a coordinated assault from five top-ranked heroes, was shoved. It stumbled sideways, crashing into a half-colloved building with a ground-shaking thud, off-balance and confused.
The Almighty turned fully toward it. He reached out with his left hand and, with terrifying gentleness, took Theo by the shoulder, moving him and the girl a few more paces back, placing himself squarely between them and the beast.
He cocked his right arm back. Not in a wild haymaker, but in a textbook-perfect boxer's stance. The air around his fist began to warp, shimmering with heat haze and a low, gathering hum.
"Creature from another world," he said, his voice now carrying a weight that silenced the very air. "I am The Almighty."
He didn't shout. He stated a fact of the universe.
"Therefore…"
He thrust his fist forward.
…feel my might.
His knuckles never connected. They didn't need to. The air in front of his fist compressed, ignited, and expelled. It wasn't a shockwave. It was a cannonade of pure atmospheric pressure, a visible lance of distorted reality that traveled faster than sound.
It hit the creature center-mass.
There was no dramatic explosion. There was an erasure. A perfect, cylindrical hole, seven meters wide, blew clean through the creature's torso, vaporizing chitin, crystal, and alien biology into motes of shimmering dust. The beam didn't stop. It continued, carving a tunnel of devastation through the ruined cityscape behind it, shearing through buildings and streets before finally dissipating a full kilometer away.
The resulting shockwave arrived a heartbeat later. It was a visible wall of concussive force that rippled outwards, threatening to flatten everything that remained standing. From the ground, Zephyr, his arm clutched to his injured shoulder, saw it coming. With a pained scream of effort, he threw up his one good hand, summoning a swirling, groaning wall of wind that braced against the oncoming devastation, protecting the huddled civilians behind him.
The force hit Zephyr's wall and split, roaring around it like a river around a stone.
Then, silence.
The creature's remains, now just a hollowed-out shell, toppled over and began to dissolve into cobalt ash.
The Almighty lowered his fist. He didn't pant. He didn't sweat. He just stood there, a man in a polo shirt surrounded by ruin.
The other heroes could only stare, their injuries momentarily forgotten.
Siren lay propped on an elbow, her jaw slack.
Bulwark, still in his granite form, simply stared at the kilometer-long scar of destruction. The crack in his chest seemed insignificant.
Veil whispered, her voice full of awe and shattered pride, "He really is the number one…"
High above, the violent clouds churned by the battle began to slowly part, as if commanded, allowing a single shaft of late afternoon sun to illuminate the street. It fell directly on The Almighty, and on the two children he had shielded.
He turned back to us, the easy smile returning. He knelt, his eyes level with the little girl still clinging to me.
"See?" he said, his voice soft again. "Told you you were safe."
He then looked at me. His gaze held no pity, no condescension. It was assessing, curious. He saw the terror, the adrenaline, the sheer stupid bravery.
He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Then he stood, winked at the stunned Edgar, who was still gaping from behind a chunk of rubble, lifted the creature and with a casual leap that shattered the pavement, he was gone, soaring into the newly cleared sky.
The fight was over. The heroes were saved. The monster was gone.
And Theodore Griffin, powerless, holding a sobbing child in the heart of the devastation, had just been acknowledged by a god.
To Be Continued...