The command was spoken with the casual indifference of a man dismissing a waiter, but the result was cataclysmic.
"Down you go."
One moment, Ruben and Corbin were ascending into the pale morning sky, the wind in their hair and the promise of escape tantalizingly close. The next, the sky vanished.
It wasn't a push. It was as if the atmosphere above them had suddenly turned into lead, solidifying into an invisible hammer the size of a city block. There was no time to scream, no time to brace. It was as though they were a volleyball being spiked.
WHAM.
They hit the ruined floorboards of Konrad's upper level with a violence that shook the foundation of the house. The impact knocked the air from their lungs in a wet, agonizing gasp. Ruben felt his ribs groan under the pressure, his face pressed hard against the splintered wood and plaster dust.
But the fall was the mercy. The weight was the punishment.
Lance Onida hovered above them, descending slowly with his legs crossed at the ankles, sitting on a throne of nothingness. He yawned, bringing a manicured hand to his mouth to cover the gesture, his silver eyes dull with boredom.
"Disappointing," Lance drawled, his voice clear despite the crushing noise of gravity warping the air around them. "Truly. I expected... more. You two lived with the Old Man, didn't you? You ate at Dario Kosta's table. I thought some of his grit might have rubbed off."
Ruben tried to move his hand. He couldn't. It felt like a mountain was resting on his wrist. His eyes darted frantically to his side. The dragon construct that had been carrying him, a beast of pure energy and will, was flattening. It didn't roar. It simply shattered. Under the unbearable density of Lance's Ego, the golden scales fractured like glass and dissolved instantly into sparkling dust, pressed flat against the floorboards until they were nothing but light fading into the wood grain.
Fear, cold and sharp, spiked in Ruben's chest. My constructs... they didn't even last a second. He crushed them like they was cardboard.
"LANCE!"
The shout came from below, desperate and fierce. It was Lea Lantern.
"Stop it! You're going to bring the rest of the floor down on Rosette! We have a hostage down here!"
Lance blinked, his descent pausing. He looked down through the gaping hole in the floor, past the pinned bodies of the boys, to where Rosette St. Jon was standing amidst the rubble, and where Lea was shielding Oscar and Konrad.
"Whoops," Lance said. The word was devoid of apology. It was the sound a child makes when they drop a toy they were bored with anyway.
He flicked his finger upward.
The pressure vanished.
It was instantaneous. One second, Ruben felt like he was being squeezed through a tube, the next, the blood rushed back into his extremities with a painful, tingling roar. It felt like his body had been disassembled and slapped back together in the wrong order. He lay there, gasping, his limbs trembling uncontrollably, his tactical mind racing but his body refusing to obey.
Move, Ruben screamed internally. Get up. Forge something. Anything.
But he was paralyzed by the aftershock. He could hear the heavy, deliberate stomps of Rosette St. Jon's boots crunching on the debris as she approached them.
Lance touched down on the remnants of the roof, his shoes making a crisp click on a surviving beam.
"No need to kill them, little Rose," Lance said, dusting off his lapels. "They're caught. The gravity well scrambled their inner ears. They aren't going anywhere."
From the hole in the floor, the sounds of chaos drifted up, the boom of Elise's spear, the hiss of Paul Strahm's Ego, and the terrified sobbing of Oscar.
"Should I assist the Commander?" Rosette asked, her crimson eyes still locked on the prone forms of Ruben and Corbin, her spear glowing with lethal intent. "I know her patterns. I can flank the Mime."
"Nah," Lance said, leaning back against a chimney stack, watching the battle below with the detached interest of a theatre critic. "Let her work. Truly, neither you or I know what she's fully capable of when she stops holding back. It's looking to be quite the show against the main man."
He checked an imaginary watch on his wrist. "Kade and Bruno are five minutes out. They're bringing containment units and medics. We just wait for the cleanup crew."
"Understood," Rosette said, lowering her weapon slightly but keeping it aimed at Ruben's neck.
"Main... man..."
The sound was a wet, ragged croak.
Rosette frowned, looking down. "What?"
Corbin Monet was moving.
His fingers clawed into the wood of the floor. His shoulders hitched, shaking with a spasm that looked like pain but sounded like a growl. He pushed his chest off the ground, his arms trembling violently.
"You said..." Corbin wheezed, spitting a mouthful of blood and dust onto the floor. "You asked... if Elise was struggling... with the main man."
He forced one knee under him. The veins in his neck were bulging.
"I am..." Corbin grunted, forcing himself up to a standing position, swaying like a drunkard. "I am... the main man."
Rosette looked at him with a mix of disappointment and mild surprise. "Stay down, boy. You are outclassed."
She raised her blood-spear, ready to strike him back down.
"Wait."
Lance moved. He didn't rush, he simply appeared between Rosette and Corbin, placing a hand on her shoulder to lower her weapon. His silver eyes were wide, fixed on Corbin with a spark of genuine curiosity.
"You're standing," Lance observed, his voice soft, dangerous. "After a ten-G press? Most people need a stretcher after that."
Lance smirked, that arrogant, knowing smile returning. "So, you think you're the main character in all this? The hero of the story?"
Corbin looked up. His eyes were wild, dilated, burning with a frantic energy. His Ego, Boost, fed on danger. It fed on pressure. And Lance Onida had just fed him a three-course meal of near-death experience.
"You got that right," Corbin rasped.
He hopped in place, his boots thudding against the wood. A visible shimmer of energy rolled off his shoulders. He rolled his neck, a loud crack echoing in the silence. He stretched his arms out, feeling the power surge through his muscles, knitting the bruises, hardening the bone.
"My Ego..." Corbin grinned, his teeth stained red but his smile terrified and manic. "Is awesome."
Lance's smile faltered. His silver eyes widened just a fraction as he realized the air pressure around Corbin wasn't dropping, it was exploding outward.
Corbin pulled his right arm back. The air screamed as it was sucked into the vacuum of his fist.
"BOOST!"
Corbin punched.
He didn't aim for a face. He aimed for the space in front of him. A whirlwind of pure, concussive force erupted from his knuckles, a spiralling cannonball of compressed air that tore through the fog and slammed into the gap between the Paladins.
The whirlwind of compressed air tore through the space where Lance had been standing, obliterating the chimney stack and sending a spiralling tunnel of debris screaming into the fog. It was a punch that would have pulverized a tank.
But Lance Onida wasn't there.
He had drifted to the left, a movement so slight and effortless it looked like he had merely decided to stand somewhere else at that exact moment. The shockwave ruffled the lapels of his suit, but nothing more.
"Raw," Lance commented, his voice carrying over the roar of the wind. "Messy. Lacking in finesse."
He floated upward, stepping on the air as if ascending an invisible staircase, rising out of the shattered roof and into the open sky above the estate.
"But potent," Lance admitted, looking down at Corbin with a flicker of silver-eyed appreciation. "I haven't seen an Ego scale that quickly in a while. You adapt to the pressure is it? I can't remember what they said your Ego was, I wasn't too intrigued on memorising it."
Corbin didn't want the compliment. He wanted blood.
He bent his knees, cracking the floorboards beneath him, and launched himself into the air. He was a missile of adrenaline and rage, his fist cocked back, the air around his arm distorting from the sheer density of the Boost.
They met twenty feet above the house, suspended in the thinning gray mist.
Corbin swung. It was a haymaker meant to take a head off.
Lance didn't block. He didn't dodge. He simply raised his index finger.
Halt.
A localized gravity well formed instantly in front of Corbin's fist. The punch hit the invisible wall of force with a deafening thud, the kinetic energy dispersing harmlessly into the atmosphere. Corbin hung there in mid-air, his momentum killed instantly, his eyes wide.
"You're fast," Lance noted, tilting his head. "But you're fighting physics, boy. And physics always wins."
Lance flicked his wrist.
Gravity reversed for Corbin alone.
Corbin was yanked downward, not by a fall, but by a violent, invisible hand slamming him toward the earth. He crashed into the slate tiles of the neighbour's roof, shattering them, sliding down the slope.
But before he could roll off the edge, Corbin slammed his hand into the gutter, stopping his fall. He grit his teeth, blood leaking from his nose, his Boost surging again. The pain was fuel. The fear was gasoline.
"Not... done... yet!" Corbin screamed.
He vaulted off the gutter, using the recoil to propel himself back up at Lance. He spun in the air, unleashing a flurry of air-pressure kicks, each one sending a blade of vacuum slicing toward the Paladin.
Lance sighed, looking bored. He held out his hand, palm open.
"Cosmic Vendetta: Stage One. The Pull."
Every loose roof tile, every shard of brick, every splinter of wood floating in the chaotic air suddenly stopped. They turned, aligning themselves like iron filings to a magnet, pointing directly at Corbin.
Lance closed his hand.
The debris fired.
Hundreds of projectiles slammed into Corbin at the speed of bullets. He crossed his arms to shield his face, but the impact was relentless. Stone cut skin, wood bruised bone. He was battered backward, suspended in the air by the sheer volume of the onslaught.
"You have tenacity," Lance called out, watching Corbin weather the storm. "I'll give you that. Most people break after the first volley."
Corbin roared, expanding his Ego, creating a shockwave that blasted the debris away. He lunged through the cloud of dust, bloody and bruised, closing the distance. He was inches away. He could see the pores on Lance's face. He pulled back his fist for a final, desperate strike.
Lance looked him in the eye, and for a second, the boredom vanished, replaced by a cold, terrifying emptiness.
"But tenacity without discipline," Lance whispered, "is just noise."
Lance caught Corbin's fist.
He didn't use gravity this time. He used his hand. He caught the Boost-empowered punch with a casual grip, absorbing the impact as if Corbin were a toddler striking a giant.
"The Crush."
Lance squeezed.
Corbin screamed as the gravity around his own hand intensified a hundredfold. His bones ground together. The air around him became heavy, suffocating, pressing in on his lungs, his eyes, his heart. He felt like he was being compressed into a diamond.
"You are out of your depth," Lance said calmly. With a graceful, fluid motion, he spun Corbin around and hurled him downward.
He didn't just throw him. He attached a gravity anchor to Corbin's chest and dropped the weight of the world on him.
Corbin fell like a meteor. He smashed into the ridge of the roof, broke through the beams, and slammed into the attic floor below, disappearing into a cloud of dust and darkness.
Lance lowered himself slowly, hovering just above the hole he had thrown Corbin through. He adjusted his cufflink, inspecting his suit for dust.
"You fight like a wild animal," Lance said to the darkness below. "It reminds me of him. The Old Man."
A groan came from the hole. Corbin was trying to stand, his legs shaking, his body broken but his spirit refusing to extinguish.
"Dario Kosta," Lance said, the name drifting down like a feather. "He was my teacher, you know. Back when I was a Junior. He tried to teach me about 'heart' and 'guts' too."
Lance smiled, a cruel, glittering thing. "He never understood that power isn't about how hard you can hit. It's about what you can command, but he did impart a lot in me."
Corbin stumbled into the light, one eye swollen shut, his arm hanging limp. He looked up, defiant, ready to die before he stayed down.
"He... taught us... better," Corbin wheezed.
"Evidently not," Lance replied, raising a hand to finish it.
SKREEEE.
The sound was silent to the ear but deafening to the mind.
Lance paused, sensing the shift in the air pressure behind him. He didn't turn around immediately. He simply tilted his head to the side.
From the fog, a dozen constructs erupted.
They were not the small scouts Ruben had used before. These were jagged, desperate things, dragons made of panic and pure, unfiltered energy. They swarmed over the rooftop, claws extended, jaws gaping, moving with a singular, suicidal objective: to tear Lance Onida out of the sky.
The dragons converged on the Paladin, a storm of amber light and razor-sharp force.
Lance didn't flinch. He didn't even raise his guard. He watched the swarm approach with the same mild interest one might show a cloud of gnats.
"Well," Lance sighed, putting his hands in his pockets as the jaws of the lead dragon snapped inches from his face.
"I guess they're here for me."