As we flew through the air, the giant lizard walking through New Kinsington’s bay stood in the center of my sightline. I looked at it and wondered if my power was really enough to kill it. Honestly, I had no idea if I was strong enough. I had never used my Level 3 Telekinesis at full power before.

  “What’s your problem with Kingfisher?” Sparrow asked angrily.

  I didn’t want to explain myself because, honestly, I knew I was being irrational. Kingfisher had just designed the prison. He didn’t pull the trigger and kill Ganymede himself, but I couldn’t control how I felt. Every time I closed my eyes, the memory of a teenager being torn apart by a downpour of bullets played out in my mind.

  “That kaiju, what’s its name?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  Sparrow didn’t answer my question for a few seconds, so Ryan said, “We usually just give the kaijus numbers, so that one must be Kaiju 21. That’s unless there’s been a new kaiju in the last two weeks.”

  “Nope,” Sparrow said. “That’s Kaiju 21.”

  “Wait, you probably don’t know what a kaiju is,” Ryan said. “You see, a kaiju…”

  “You don’t need to explain that, I got it,” I said.

  A quick peal of laughter sounded over the intercoms before Sparrow said, “You know what a kaiju is, but you didn’t know about Sebastian Sutton?”

  “Amnesia is a fickle mistress,” I said, trying to sound cryptic.

  “Do you know your name, Macro?” Sparrow asked.

  I opened up my wallet and held my license out, though only Ryan Kovacs could see it. “According to this, my name is Kevin Avery, and I’m twenty years old.”

  “That tracks,” Sparrow said. “The other Level 3s were all somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two when they gained their powers.”

  “How old are you, Sparrow?” I asked.

  “Th-that’s not important,” Sparrow said, clearly embarrassed by the question.

  I paused, an eerie thought bubbling to the surface of my mind. “How long have you been a Hero?”

  “Four years.”

  She must have been in her mid-teens when she started. My God, I knew that teenage heroes were common in superhero media, but the idea that children were fighting in regular life-or-death battles against criminals filled me with unease.

  I looked down at my hands. The power within me was astonishing, and it made me wonder if I was strong enough to fix this new world I found myself within. Was I strong enough to prevent people like Sparrow from suffering unnecessarily? One way or another, my first step was to destroy that big lizard.

  “It needs a better name,” I muttered, barely loud enough for anyone to hear.

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  “What was that?” Sparrow asked.

  “I don’t want to be known as the guy that killed Kaiju 21. I want to be the guy that killed Mothra or Rodan. What should we call it?”

  Ryan paused for a moment. With his hand on his chin, he said, “Well, it controls electricity…”

  “Electrozilla!” I said, snapping my fingers.

  “That’s as good a name as any,” Sparrow said, and I swear I could hear her shrug on the other side of the intercom. “Just don’t expect that name to appear on any official documents.”

  Honestly, I expected them to make fun of the name when I said it, and I regretted the name the moment it came out of my mouth. This world had different naming conventions where nobody batted an eye when I declared my name to be “Macro-Kinetic,” so I guess “Electrozilla” wasn’t that abnormal. Plus, they probably had no idea who Godzilla was, anyway.

  We landed, and Sparrow said, “Everybody out.”

  Once outside of the Albatross, I realized that we were standing on the top of a high-rise building with a good view of the harbor. I had a straight shot at Electrozilla as he slowly approached us, getting larger and larger with every step. By my approximation, he was more than a thousand feet tall (about the height of the Empire State Building). Electrozilla would dwarf the building I was standing on if he reached it.

  “Okay, uh, what now?” I asked, looking over to Sparrow.

  “I don’t know. Grab it or something. You’re the expert.”

  “I am not an expert on…”

  My rebuttal was cut off as Electrozilla reared back and roared. The sound was apocalyptic. Almost every window in the city shattered, and the pain in my ears almost drove me to my knees. When I could hear again, the first thing I heard was the sound of a baby crying in the apartment below me.

  With that painful lesson, I knew there was no time to goof off. Every second I wasted not attacking the kaiju was a life endangered. I had to attack immediately.

  I projected my hands toward the creature, though I lost my sense of distance after a few miles. Seeing the water, I realized I could use it for rangefinding. I slammed my projected fist downward, and a spout of lake water erupted upward a few thousand feet in front of Electrozilla. I did that a few more times, causing eruptions in the harbor that resembled a field of underwater mines detonating. The roiling spouts of water barely reached the kaiju’s shoulder, and I wondered if my power would be enough.

  Somewhere in the port, a pillar of fire projected upward like a tornado. I hoped that the fire was being controlled by an ally, and I continued focusing on the kaiju.

  After half a dozen attempts, I found my range. A geyser of water erupted just a few feet away from Electrozilla, and I knew I could reach him. With a cupped hand, I reached out and tried to grab his arm. Just as my telekinetic hand should have made contact, however, my connection fizzled, and I could no longer feel the feedback in my hand. It was just like the Mandeville Mist.

  “I can’t grab him,” I said to Sparrow.

  “What?”

  “I think he’s protected by the Mandeville Limit.”

  “No, that’s impossible,” Sparrow said, though I could hear the doubt in her voice. “The Mandeville Limit only protects humans.”

  “Impossible or not, I can’t touch him. I need something to throw, something heavy.”

  “There!” Sparrow said, pointing to a set of electrical transformers on a nearby rooftop. “It’s metal, and we can just compensate the owners later.”

  “Fine, as long as I don’t end up in prison because of this.”

  With one hand, I kept the range to Electrozilla internalized. I held my projected hand in that fuzzy area where it frequently popped in and out of reality. With my other hand, I grasped several hundred pounds of steel electrical equipment. The metal crumpled and bent under the weight of my grasp until all of it was contained within a sphere that measured four feet in diameter.

  I pulled back the impromptu cannonball and set my eyes on Electrozilla.