Mark watched, heart beating hard, eyes dilating to take in all the detail.

  The frozen land was bare trees and rolling white hills as far as the eye could see.

  In the middle of that, far behind several hills, was a glow. An iridescent ripple. That ripple suddenly crashed into itself and then multiplied outward. Flesh followed. Fur. One great eyeball that rolled over itself, followed by a second eyeball that fluctuated and settled down. A head. A squirrel’s head, but with ridges of bone and a mouth that was a maw, open and screaming and full of hundreds of different types of fangs.

  The squirrel kaiju stretched out of itself, like a transdimensional box unfolding. Arms stretched wide and out, and grabbed the ground. The squirrel chittered like a demon the size of a kaiju, the massive sound of it echoing across the world, as it pulled itself out of itself, dragging a rib cage and spilling organs and steaming flesh into the grey gold of the late winter afternoon.

  The arms were the length of its whole body. The tail doubled that length. Exposed bone and meat was everywhere and brown, furry flesh tried to cover up that bone, to heal over the gore and the mess. Organs sucked inward. Guts spooled themselves. And then muscle covered it all, and the bones too, before brown fur started to sprout from fresh skin.

  It was rapidly healing.

  The fact that it was so injured was more worrying, though.

  “It is not a growth-type and it crawled through a gap and it’s Daihoonian?” Mark asked, “Or was it maybe in a fight with something and it Awakened?”

  “Probably the latter,” Blackthorn said, as he glanced toward the cockpit. “It looked dead when it was born, so yeah, it was almost eaten by something.”

  The kaiju squirrel rapidly healed, and it only superficially resembled a squirrel. It was lanky. Mostly torso with squat legs on a small pelvis. Half of it was tail, practically doubling the size of the actual kaiju. That tail was fluffy, but only from a distance. Mark bet that tail hair was its largest weapon, if not its most dangerous. Kaiju hair was always dangerous. It could cut, or impale, or do a bunch of dangerous stuff. The squirrel’s head was an open maw of fangs and its body was fluffy and yet emaciated. It was hungry.

  Mark Unionsensed, even from this great distance, as the squirrel kaiju found itself as itself, once again, and Mark knew it was hungry. That hunger radiated in waves from its chest and the monster glanced around, trying to find something to eat. With arms as long as its own body and talons the size of trucks, it grabbed a tree, scrabbling at the ground. It thought it was crunching through small foliage, and not through trees that it used to gather nuts from. It found nothing, because it lacked the capacity to understand that there was nothing to eat down there.

  Then it raised up like a prey animal wondering where it could go to find food.

  It didn’t know what to make of the land in front of it, of that large wall and of the buildings behind that wall, but it wanted to see if there was food in there. So it moved forward, its stubby legs completely failing it.

  The kaiju collapsed forward, wailing in screaming worry, before it caught itself on its arms. Those arms supported all of the creature’s weight, and so the creature dragged itself forward, toward the wall of Memphi, not knowing what it was really doing or where it was going. All it knew was that it needed food and there might be something to eat beyond that wall—

  “Official prognosis!” The girl from the cabin shouted out, “Kaiju Attack Plan declares the Squirrel Kaiju as Category 3. The plan is as follows: Titanfist on first with Support Team 4. Lawful Goose as second with Support Team 3. Delaying and dissuading tactics to be deployed when the kaiju enters the battle range in 15 seconds. We have received personal orders, Steve! Blackthorn is to provide backup by the wall. Mark is not tagged as a kaiju responder, but he will be useful if he gets into position! That is all!” And then the girl popped her head out, and she was wearing nothing but a silk robe. “Me and her are taking off in the escape pod or in this main ship. The squirrel has a trick to it and we’re not sticking around. We’ll be at the wall waiting for you.”

  Blackthorn nodded and turned toward the team. “Mark is staying with me because yes, that squirrel has a trick but it’s still a kaiju that needs to be killed. Mark’s team: Your decision? To the wall with my girls, or with Mark and I?”

  Sally said, “I’m useless here. I’ll go to the wall and do something.”

  “Wall,” Isoko said.

  “Wall,” Eliot said.

  Blackthorn said to Mark, “This way. With me. The girls are taking the main ship!”

  Something beeped in the cockpit and someone called out, “We need to go get Lawful Goose! He’s calling for a pick up!”

  And then Blackthorn rushed off through a door that led to a mini vessel.

  Mark told his team, “I’ll join back up with you at the wall.”

  Mark dashed off—

  And then Isoko was there, behind him, with him, saying, “I’m going with you and Blackthorn.”

  Blackthorn ducked into a room that was not a room. It was more like a dining booth but with one chair facing away and with a steering wheel in front of it. Everything was solid grey.

  Blackthorn pointed to the pilot’s seat, saying, “Isoko? You’re certified?”

  Isoko slotted herself into the seat, readily saying, “I absolutely am!”

  “Mark, sit there. This whole thing is open top. Be ready for the chill.” Blackthorn slapped a button by the door and the door slammed shut, and then another grey wall lifted up. A ring of light blinked up around the room, and then Blackthorn said, “Blue ‘detach’ button, Isoko.”

  Isoko slammed the button and she held on to the wheel.

  In an almost effortless sort of way the ‘mobile dining room’ detached from the main ship and floated into the air. The grey wall above the glowing white ring suddenly turned clear, giving them a full 360 view of the land around them. This small vehicle floated further away from the main ship, and then the main ship buzzed away from the floating platform, like an obsidian boulder—

  Blackthorn said, “Standard flight controls with very few alterations. The red button opens the shield.” He pointed toward the space between the squirrel and the wall, saying, “Titanfist will show up somewhere there. Go there. Now.”

  Isoko said, “Aye aye, sir!”

  She gunned it.

  Mark grabbed onto a seat to hold on, his adamantium carving into the leather seat just a little. Whoops!

  Blackthorn focused on the task ahead, ignoring Mark’s property destruction.

  Mark focused ahead, setting out his adamantium where it wouldn’t damage the vehicle—

  “There,” Blackthorn said, pointing to empty space ahead and to the right. “1500 meters from the wall. What’s your range Mark?”

  “Nearly a kilometer in one direction, but commonly 500 all around.”

  Blackthorn said, “Park it 500 meters from the wall, Iosko. Do you see the ripple yet?”

  “No sir! But I see where you want me to go,” Isoko said, gunning it in that direction.

  Mark focused.

  He couldn’t see what Blackthorn was pointing at, and the squirrel kaiju was maybe 3 kilometers from the wall and closing fast with each ripping tear of its massive frontal limbs. It slapped the ground with its tail and it launched into the air a little bit, moving forward like a disjointed worm that was rapidly understanding how to move, once again. The beast clawed forward and used its tail as a third limb, pressing down against the ground, lifting its comically small legs into the air like a pair of fingers—

  Mark sensed what Blackthorn wanted him to sense, now that they were closer.

  It was a ripple in space, and then it was a small vector. Someone had teleported something into the area. Blackthorn had sensed the teleport before it had happened. It was Titanfist, in his black and yellow costume. Titanfist hovered in the air, and then he began to expand, like a dry sponge getting wet, or maybe more like a vacuum packed comforter being released from its confines.

  Isoko instantly said, “I see Titanfist! Moving to support from behind!”

  Titanfist was suddenly 10 meters tall and falling, and then he was 30 meters tall, and still falling, but his head remained at the same height and his body expanded downward. He almost looked like a city guard of Memphi, but his suit was very ‘superhero’ and not ‘normal guard’.

  Isoko maneuvered the ship to float near the wall, about a kilometer away from the superhero, and below the rim of the wall, where a whole fuckload of cannons were lined up, ready to support the superhero. More and more cannons rode up on tracks inside the wall, poking out of the top with every second, waiting to fire.

  Thousands of people were in the area. Thousands of vectors, mostly arrayed in singular purpose. There were paladins of Freyala out there, using Union to connect everyone together, and Mark joined the connection, bringing adamant to the group and expelling weakness into the world. It wasn’t much of an effect in that moment because the kaiju was still so far away and Mark couldn’t dump the bad side of the Union that well without a better target.

  He’d get a better target soon.

  Titanfist bloomed to 500 meters tall, over half again as big as the wall, and not nearly as tall as the squirrel kaiju, not now that the squirrel kaiju knew how to move.

  It was a tripod of a monster. Two massive front arms that were more like legs, and with a fluffy tail that acted like a snake’s body. Its maw was open. It hissed a violent song of territoriality and a promise of death—

  And then something flickered inside of the monster, and the hiss turned even more violent.

  Hateful.

  It was the song of a kaiju at war, and now it roared at Titanfist.

  Mark felt his adamantium turn to claws, to dig into the upholstery. The ground. The walls.

  Titanfist roared back, challenging the beast, and Mark felt an uncomfortable desire to fight Titanfist, too. His roar wasn’t a kaiju roar, but it was so close. So very close. If Titanfist tried, Mark was absolutely sure he could hit that same rumbling avalanche that promised death to all challengers.

  Mark connected his Union to Titanfist, but he had to stretch to get to him. For all of Titanfist’s size, his astral body was almost the same as his physical body. The Union-users on the wall compensated for Mark’s pull away by reaching out to him a bit more.

  The squirrel rose on its tail, all of its fur standing on end, and then it flowed forward like a snake with two long ripping claw-arms. It grabbed at Titanfist and Titanfist only had two arms, so he grabbed one of the kaiju’s arms and then its neck. The squirrel’s other hand, and the tail, were fully able to come into play, to rake flesh from Titanfist’s back, to wrap around his legs and body and start squeezing, to bring the squirrel kaiju’s lower legs with its tiny back feet and claws into play. It scratched the hell out of Titanfist’s face.

  Mark slammed into the kaiju’s uncaring astral body with adamant strength, too, punching through all resistance, to latch on like a leech.

  And then Mark tried to feed everything he stole to Titanfist.

  The transfer was painfully slow, actually. Mark didn’t expect that at all. He almost panicked.

  Mark had literally never tried to heal someone as large as Titanfist, and he certainly didn’t think anything would make this healing different from all the other healing Mark had ever done. But something was different. So very different.

  Mark was a tiny thing, and Titanfist was massive. That was the issue.

  Mark’s power was great enough that he just healed people, without worry about nuance or without caring about efficiency. Most healers used precision to heal the skin, or the muscle, or the bone, one at a time, so that they could conserve their own power, or so that they could heal what needed to be healed and forget the rest, for the moment. Most healers used massive sinks in one direction, too, taking from the world, from a forest, to heal one person or one group of people.

  But Mark was a small thing right now, and Mark was using a kaiju to heal another kaiju, and the rate of transfer had himself as a bottleneck and the amount of flesh he needed to heal was just too much. There was too much to heal! He only had so much astral body to go around.

  So Mark harkened back to an old lesson that he almost never used, when Lola had taught Mark about using precision healing words and intents to heal someone, to make his power go further.

  So Mark focused on Titanfist’s skin, his heart beating in time to the people in the wall, to Titanfist’s own heart... which was not keeping up with his own power at all? Titanfist was practically a dead man out there, standing and fighting with a heart barely beating! The squirrel’s heart was jamming like a whole marching band!

  Was Titanfist too big to support his own strength?! The fuck!

  So Mark pulled out the big guns.

  He braindanced a Union of adamant and weakness and he felt his own heart slow down too much to bring him in line with Titanfist, so he sped Titanfist up, and he focused on Titanfist’s internals, first. Forget the skin. Forget the muscle. The squirrel wasn’t getting through all of that that fast. The internals needed to be healed first.

  One heartbeat forced another, and a titan’s heart healed just a little.

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  More than enough.

  And suddenly Titanfist moved faster. He gripped with stronger hands, even as small legs tore at his face and chest, and he ripped the kaiju’s front left arm off, throwing the arm to the ground as he opened his mouth and bit off the creature’s legs. The kaiju yelled and tried to bite Titanfist’s hand that was around its throat, and it got a bite in, but Titanfist just grunted as he moved his hands to grab the monster’s other arm, which was tearing up his side.

  The torn arm was already healing, a missing shoulder becoming a stump of bone and exposed, squirming red flesh, like thousands of red eels vying to hook onto that growing bone first.

  Titanfist ripped off the second arm and then he laughed, and his voice rumbled as he gripped the squirrel’s head away from his fingers. “That’s what an adamant Union feels like, huh! I could enjoy this!”

  Mark was a crash of lightning on a platform in the sky, and Titanfist was healing from the inside out.

  The squirrel was still alive, but it was going to die soon.

  Titanfist grabbed the yelling, screaming squirrel by its neck and its stunted pelvis, even as the hair on that wrapping tail and as the lower legs grabbed at him, shredding him. Mark switched focus to the muscles and then his skin, and every red mark vanished with every thought racing through the Union of brains in the area.

  Mark switched back to the internals, fixing bone, fixing Titanfist’s bitten hand.

  Mark watched, his vision narrowing on the fight, black lightning crashing all around, as Titanfist gripped the squirrel and pulled.

  A roar that became a cry for help.

  A grunt of power that became a roar of triumph.

  Titanfist pulled the squirrel apart, torso that way, pelvis and tail that way. The tail around Titanfist’s body went slack, the cutting hairs falling limp, like so much discarded monowire. It sliced trees as it fell. It mulched hillsides.

  Titanfist contended with the regrowing half of the squirrel, yelling out, or maybe just speaking in a normal voice, “I got lots of old injuries so I’m gonna milk him for healing. Mark? You good?”

  Mark was holding on to the edge of the floating platform, black lightning shattering in every direction.

  He took stock of his surroundings.

  Isoko wasn’t here. She was on the wall, connected to him but separate. Blackthorn was somewhere else. Mark was alone on the floating platform, and veins of power flashed in and out with every beat of intent.

  … Mark was pretty sure he was good.

  He was still focused on healing, and now that Titanfist had spoken of old injuries, Mark saw why he had had such a hard time healing the big man.

  Aside from the size difference. Aside from Mark’s own smallness. Once you got past the skin, Titanfist was the most injured person Mark had ever seen. Just by volume, Mark felt swaths of muscle rebuild, like entire houses get remade in heartbeats. He felt brain injuries vanish. He understood as eyeballs healed, and the grey cast to Titanfist’s eyes became clear and blue and cognizant once again.

  The squirrel could not withstand the drain. Not now that it was just a torso and a head. It was healing itself, but it was not enough; not when Mark took that healing for Titanfist. The kaiju whined and cried as Titanfist held its throat in his grip—

  Mark felt weird for a deep moment, and then it was like a series of pillars toppling each other. Many things happened at once.

  Some critical threshold with the squirrel was passed. It began to decay and die in Titanfist’s arms.

  Titanfist sighed out in relief, like a hungry sponge, able to take everything Mark could give him and more.

  The squirrel suddenly died. Overloaded and too injured.

  And Mark rubber banded on himself, now that the squirrel was not there to drain.

  His Union broke all at once, and Mark jolted, frozen and paralyzed, as he collapsed onto the floating platform.

  Somehow, Mark’s Union had been the only thing holding the platform up, and now that all that black lightning was gone the platform stood revealed as a thing of broken metal and exposed wiring.

  The platform began to fall, and then suddenly, gently, it stopped.

  Mark groaned even as he healed himself with a basic, so very basic Union of Good and Bad, lightning crackling out from his body only briefly.

  “Ouchie!” said a cheerful voice, so very large. “That stung! Ha ha!”

  Mark blinked a few times and looked up at Titanfist’s very large face. For a moment, Mark freaked, and then Titanfist began to shrink, to chuckle, to lower Mark and the platform to the ground outside of Memphi. Titanfist’s yellow and black outfit billowed all around him, and then left him behind, falling around him as Titanfist transferred Mark to both of his hands, to lower Mark most of the way to the ground before Titanfist let him go. Titanfist continued to shrink.

  Mark stood upon the remains of the platform, upon a snowy land, as Titanfist/Punchman/Ben Daucourt stood briefly nude in the snow, at a ‘mere’ 10 meters tall. And then Ben rapidly shrunk the rest of the way and he touched his right wrist. Temporary clothing wrapped around him and solidified once Ben was only 3 meters tall.

  Ben walked toward Mark, still shrinking a little, calling out, “That was pretty neat! Do you know how difficult it is to get really good healing at my real size?”

  Mark made a guess based on the difficulty of what he had done, and how much it had taken out of him, and out of that squirrel kaiju, “Really freaking difficult?”

  “Heck yeah it is! No one can get to my real body like that…” And then Ben flexed his shoulder, and then he rolled his shoulder, and his eyes went wide. He chuckled. “I think you healed my old shoulder wound, too! That shit was always catching. Holy gods.” He sighed, looking so very happy, and then he giggled as he looked at his left hand. “Even that small numbness is gone. Maybe I won’t have to take the pills to sleep tonight.”

  Mark collapsed onto his ass, to sit there on the cold snow and the uncomfortable wreckage of the platform. “I’m glad.”

  Ben was suddenly worried… and then not that worried. “You good?”

  “I’m good. Say. How the fuck did you get that injured?”

  “The injuries pile up and normal healing doesn’t work that well at that large of a size.” Ben glanced upward. “Looks like our ride is here.”

  A hovervan opened its doors wide and then there was a man with white feathers on his shoulders and wearing a stern expression. Mark sort of recognized him as Lawful Goose, and he winced at the guy’s vector, power set, and history. The guy was the warden for Memphi’s prison, he could shut down anyone, and he was not happy to see Mark. He felt he had a duty to do.

  Mark prepared to get hauled off by Inquisitors, or whoever.

  Perhaps he was too tired right now? Maybe he should have been more worried about that. He felt stretched too wide. Like a worn out sword.

  Lawful Goose surprised Mark, though, saying, “I am miffed, Mark Careed. If you wouldn’t have had such a loss of control then I could have approached you and worked with you to debilitate the squirrel! But you chased off even your companion and your archmage support! What say you to your reckless display of power?”

  “… So you’re not hauling me in?”

  “I very well should! You are a danger to yourself and others and you even Awakened young people with that reckless display of Dominance and Submission the other day! It’s simply reckless!”

  Mark chuckled a little bit and then tried to stand, but he couldn’t.

  “This is no laughing matter!”

  “I’m fully aware, sir,” Mark said, as he propped himself up with his adamantium. “Apologies. I thought you might be working for the empires and I am relieved.”

  “I would never work for a sovereign I do not work for already! You impinge my honor, good sir!”

  Blackvein grinned for the cameras that he now saw floating all around, and said, “I must apologize again, good sir.”

  “Then your apology is accepted and the incident forgotten. Perhaps you are not as unforgivable as first believed. I will now try to convince you to be a hero, and to discard your villainous ways!” And then he leaned forward and said, “It’s part of the act, kid. If you want to do the next episode this way, we can. You’ll infiltrate the Hero’s Association this way. Noel came up with it on the fly and everyone knows that Titanfist is really Punchman and they all think I’m crazy corrupt, so if you want to do this, we can do this.”

  Mark was a little worried, so he asked, “Quark?”

  Quark spoke up in Mark’s ears, “I am getting confirmation from multiple verified sources that this is real. Noel, Mayor Ramirez, and Blackthorn.”

  Lawful Goose waited.

  And then Titanfist was there, happily slapping Mark’s back, saying, “Come on! We heroes can put out a spread just as good as any villains!”

  Mark made a decision, that was not a decision, saying, “I’ll have to discuss it with the team, so let’s get the team together.”

  “Excellent!” Lawful Goose said, as he stood up straight and proper once again, projecting his voice, “Maybe the villain can be redeemed after all!”

  Mark got into the vehicle and the hovervan floated up to the wall.

  The big guns were already sliding back down into their tunnels and the people were battening down the hatches. Blackthorn’s black crystal pleasure ship was there, on the wall, and Mark’s team was standing around, talking to each other. Blackthorn was there.

  Blackthorn smiled and said, “There he is! Excellent showing. That was probably the cheapest kaiju takedown we’ve had in a while, which I know makes Emilia happy.” And then he grinned at Lawful Goose and Titanfist, adding an unsaid threat even as he ‘happily’ said, “It’s a pretty good deal for Memphi to tell all of those empire fucks to fuck off when they get too close to good things, right?”

  Titanfist slapped a salute across his own forehead. “Sir yes sir!”

  Lawful Goose merely bowed a full 90 degree angle. Maybe a little lower than that. “Sir.”

  An air of ice vanished, like it was never there. Mark hadn’t even felt it until it was gone. It was like a knife on his neck. A grip under his clothes. And he hadn’t even been the focus of it at all.

  For all his carefree attitude, Blackthorn was still an archmage. Mark tried to keep that in mind, but it was rather hard when he saw the guy running around his penthouse, chasing girls, all of them nude and, well, excited. Mark had pretended he hadn’t seen that event twice already. He would probably continue to pretend not to see stuff like that as long as he was housed at the archmage’s tower.

  Blackthorn truthfully, happily, said, “Great! I’ll have the kids show up at midnight, and if there is trouble, if there is a kidnapping, then you two are going to get Mark back.”

  Mark almost expected the superheroes to flinch.

  But. No.

  They didn’t flinch at all.

  Both of them seriously said, “Sir!”

  Mark felt pretty good about that.

  Soon enough, Mark, his team, and Blackthorn and his girls were back in Blackthorn’s ship, flying back to the tower. Isoko had a concern eating at her, and she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  Isoko asked him, “What was that out there, Mark? You broke the hoverskiff.”

  Mark winced. “I have no idea. I’ve never had a Union do… any of that.”

  Isoko was even more concerned, Sally was worried, and Eliot wasn’t sure what to think.

  And then Blackthorn was there, helpfully saying, “I know what happened! And since you paid for magical learning, I will tell you. Imagine an electromagnet of varying power. Usually you can’t tell the electromagnet is there and on at all, unless you get some ferrous metals nearby. But sometimes, when the electromagnet is turned up really, really high, then even things that are not magnetic are captured in the field.

  “Mark connected to Ben and the kaiju and that connection was a lot stronger than the ephemeral ‘world’ idea that most Union users use. Usually, Mark never tries to make a positive connection with the large things, either, and so, Mark found himself at a crossroads of power, and it was probably only because he was using his own Union, and he has Healthy Body, and he’s also you-know-what, that he didn’t pop like a blown fuse!” Blackthorn said, “The poor skiff certainly disintegrated, though.”

  Mark went, “… Oh.” And then he added, “Yeah. That seems… pretty much what happened, I suppose?”

  Blackthorn grinned. And then he nodded. And then he told Isoko and all of them, “If you tried to do a Union like that, your gifted Power would fail instead of snap your everything in half. If Mark wasn’t Mark, he’d have probably gone catatonic from the astral body strain. Powers granted by the Tutorial are a lot stronger than magery or the Chosen system, but even they have some hard limits.”

  … Right, Mark thought.

  The message was clear: Don’t do that again unless he needed to.