Hovering in the sky above Brockton bay, the figure of Taylor Hebert looked down at the scene of Brockton Bay below her as it was engulfed in fire and war. The three big gangs, the Empire 88, the ABB and the Merchants had started fighting over a week ago when a new Nazi Cape going by the name Kristallnacht had entered the city and killed Kaiser and Hookwolf, effectively usurping control of the Nazi organisation.

He had then bluntly and to the point, declared war on the rest of the city, stating that any 'lesser races' would leave within the next two days or be 'purged' for the 'greater good of the racial purity of the Aryan race.' Any 'race traitors' would be put down if they attempted to interfere with the 'righteous crusade' of the Empire.

Naturally, Lung had responded by burning down one of the Empire's safe houses and badly wounding Victor and Cricket in the process. The message being that no one tells the Dragon of Kyushu what to do.

Skidmark had responded by gathering up any and all drug-addled addict he could get his hands on and launching an all-out assault on Empire territory, spearheaded by several of Squealer's vehicles, ranging between a heavily-modified dump truck that had a turret-mounted lightning canon wedged on top of the area where the garbage was usually held, and a behemoth-like monstrosity that was as wide as the roads that bristled with cannons, machine guns and all manner of other weaponry, both mundane and exotic.

Suffice is to say, collateral damage had been the word of the day.

The Bay had suffered five percent civilian casualties in the first two days of fighting. It may not have sounded like much, but when it's five percent of a city's entire population you were talking about, that still meant that the number was in the thousands.

The evacuation of the Bay had started with everyone rich enough, swiftly followed by everyone else who could leave. The rest…hunkered down, prayed to whatever deity they followed and hoped to wait out the storm.

Once every one that wanted to leave had left, the Governor had ringed the city and declared martial law, ceding control of Brockton Bay to the PRT and Protectorate for the interim of the crisis. No reinforcements had been forthcoming for the Protectorate ENE, but the Wards had been evacuated.

Director Piggot had brutally taken the reins and basically ordered New Wave to join the Protectorate temporarily. The unspoken 'or else' hadn't needed to be said. Even so, Lady Photon had refused, stating they would cooperate with the protectorate as they had done in the past without compromising their group's identity.

Piggot had not been amused.

Still, there had been little she could do. Turning the Protectorate on New Wave at that juncture would have been wasteful and counterproductive. Instead, the obese woman had focussed on marshalling the forces available to her in one hand, whilst demanding backup from the PRT and main Protectorate with the other.

Taylor scowled down as her hometown burned. When the fighting had started, her Dad had been caught in the middle of it at the Dockworker's Association. He had been killed by Kristallnacht himself. When she had heard about it…she had had what she had thought was a fit, but had actually been her getting powers.

"Kristallnacht…!" she snarled, her rage warping space around her as her powers flexed. Forcing herself to calm down, Taylor grabbed her binoculars and peered through them, trying to find the target of her wrath. Unlike Kaiser, who had been charismatic, eloquent and charming, Kristallnacht led by iron fist and force of will. He led the attacks on the important targets not to stand and monologue, but as a way to show those beneath him exactly what would happen to them if they crossed him.

All she had to do was watch and wait for a big offensive by the Empire and she would find HIM without fail.

She panned over Arcadia, the PRT Building and several neighbourhoods before she finally found the one she was searching for. Kristallnacht was of average height and dressed in a heavily modified SS Officer's uniform, minus most of the fruit salad ribbons and ornamentation. An actual cape flowed over his shoulders, reaching down to his knees and bore the emblem of a death's head made of shattered pieces of glass. Clasped in one hand was an officer's parade stick. His blond hair was concealed by the cap and his blue eyes (they would be, stupid Nazi) were hidden behind a full-face mask fashioned to resemble the symbol on his cape.

He had the power to control and manipulate silicates, mostly glass. That he had taken the name of one of the earliest Nazi acts of terror against the Jewish population of Germany and turned it into his Cape name spoke a lot for how much of a diehard Nazi scumbag he was. Taylor had heard that the European Nazi Cape organisation Gesellschaft had denied that he was one of their Capes and, for once, she believed them.

That was neither here nor there, though. Kristallnacht was accompanied by Purity, Stormtiger, Othala, Crusader, and Rune. That was a lot of the Empire's strength in one place. Krieg, Night, Fog, Fenja and Menja had fled after Kaiser's death and Cricket was still out of commission. Victor was an unknown though.

Taylor threw aside the binoculars as she prepared to head down to engage the murderer of her father. She had made sure to get rid of anything on her body that was a silicate of any form, including her glasses. It was fortunate that getting her powers had corrected her vision somehow.

She was dressed in a fairly plain ensemble; jeans, a t-shirt, a hoodie and a red scarf on her body, with her hair tied back in a severe plait, leaving her face covered by a full-face mask as well. It was plain and unadorned compared to Kristallnacht's, but that was how she liked it. It was white, with a neutron symbol painted in black on the centre of the forehead. A little misleading considering what her power actually was, but she liked doing that.

"Kristallnacht…the one to be broken this time around is you!" she snarled. With a shimmer of light, Taylor's body vanished from sight.

Later

With Glory Girl

"Fuck!" the blond teen cursed as she dodged another one of Crusader's ghosts. She, most of New Wave aside from Panacea and Shielder, and almost the entirety of the ENE Protectorate were facing off against that madman Kristallnacht's Empire, which was really making her nostalgic for Kaiser, something that she had thought impossible before this nutjob had shown up.

Armsmaster was holding off Rune, while Miss Militia and Velocity were holding Stormtiger back. She and Dauntless were dealing with Crusader, while Othala was skulking around Kristallnacht. Brandish, Manpower, Laserdream and Flashbang were holding off the unpowered members led by Victor, of all people, while Lady Photon was engaged in a duel with Purity.

They were winning…for the moment.

"I tire of this absurdity." Kristallnacht said, his heavy German accent making it sound like 'I tire of zis abzurdity.'

With an irritable wave of one hand, all of the glass in the area, aside from Armsmaster's armour and visor surprisingly enough, shattered into small triangles and swarming around him like an evil deranged cloud.

"Die." He said flatly, before flapping one gloved hand irritably. The cloud shot at the battling heroes like a swarm of silicate locusts. They all broke off from their fighting partners and retreated. Miss Militia used some sort of beam weapon to melt and destroy the glass encroaching on her, but there was too much for her to handle alone. Lady Photon interposed a forcefield around the heroes that blocked the hail of glass.

"Ja, ja, very impressive, mein Frau." Kristallnacht clapped sarcastically, "Let us see how strong your barriers really are."

With another gesture of his hand, the glass shards rose into the sky and formed a series of giant drills that spun in the air and lanced down at the shield, grinding into it and making Lady Photon stagger slightly in order to keep her shield up.

"Aunt Sarah!" Glory Girl moved to support her, "You OK?"

"He's…strong." Lady Photon grunted, "He can obviously reinforce his glass to the strength of steel when he controls it, otherwise it would have shattered by now!"

The struggle continued for a minute or so long before the match was interrupted by someone flinging a car at Kristallnacht. He scrambled out of the way, letting up on Lady Photon as he did so.

"Who…?" Glory Girl looked around to try and locate their helper, but there was no sign of anyone.

"Who dares?!" the Nazi roared as he stood up again. His only answer was another car being flung at him from another direction. Purity blew it out of the sky with one blast.

"There!" Crusader pointed into the sky as a figure dressed in ordinary clothes, but wearing a scarf and mask, appeared floating in mid-air. Whoever it was, they were floating down slowly, arms crossed and staring straight at Kristallnacht.

"And you are?" the Nazi demanded.

"The person who's going to kill you." The floating Cape replied coldly. The icy tone of her voice made the hair on Glory Girl's neck stand up straight. "As for a Cape name…well, call me Gravitas."

"Bah, foolish Amerikaner." Kristallnacht snorted, "Purity, kill her."

Reluctantly, the glowing female figure rose into the air to confront Gravitas. With one hand, the second most powerful Blaster on the North American Continent unleashed a beam of pure white light at the floating girl. Glory Girl wanted to yell a warning, but there was no point; even Lady Photon's shields had a hard time with Purity's blasts, and the attack was too quick for a warning to do more than distract the girl.

Imagine the surprise of absolutely everyone watching when Purity's blast bent around the girl a foot away from striking her, wrapping into a ring that was rotating…no, orbiting around Gravitas like one of Saturn's rings.

Purity stopped her attack in shock at being no-selled against someone other than Lung or an Endbringer. Hell, everyone was surprised. Aside from gravitas herself.

"That was a powerful laser, Purity." Gravitas said calmly, "Thank you for the weapon."

Without so much as a gesture or an incline of the head, the ring of light from Purity's attack moved up and over her before shooting straight at Kristallnacht, who waved a hand and interposed his glass fragments, changing them into a thick wall. The two striking each other caused a large explosion, destroying over half of the Nazi Cape's fragments.

Gravitas watch coolly before a single word came from her.

"Sloppy."

"What did you say?!" Kristallnacht snarled.

"I called you sloppy." Gravitas answered calmly, "You rely far too much on arm and hand gestures to control your Vitreokinesis. It broadcasts your intent and is a sign of how little you have practiced your abilities."

"You…!"

"Do you think I just randomly decided to come and fight you today, Broken Glass?" the girl asked icily, "I've spent most of the last two weeks following you around invisibly, watching most of your fights to figure out your powers and weaknesses. I even employed a Thinker to confirm my conclusions for me."

The SS lookalike glared at her.

"First, you have two separate powers. One is what allows you to shatter anything made of glass or a large amount of silicates within a certain range, a hundred yards or so. Then you have the power that permits you to telekinetically control the shards and increase the base toughness of them." Gravitas stated, "One curious thing that I noticed is that you never use any glass that is already broken in your area. That means that your first power marks the glass that it breaks, allowing your second power to manipulate it. And any glass piece smaller than an A5 sheet of paper is unaffected by your first power. Meaning that in order to render you powerless, you simply have to be taken somewhere where there is no glass."

"Silence! I am Kristallnacht!" the man shouted, pointing his swagger stick at her. "And you are dead! Kill her!"

The last was an order to the Empire Capes, who moved to follow orders. Crusader had one of his copies lift him into the air as he readied his spear, Rune hovered on a manhole cover, two spheres orbiting around her. Purity raised both hands to fire an even more powerful blast at Gravitas, Stormtiger drew air to his claws and Othala touched Victor, granting him a power.

"We should help her!" Glory Girl growled, wanting to do something.

"We can't." Brandish shook her head, "We need to draw this out so that the PRT troopers can evacuate the neighbourhood fully. This Gravitas is drawing Kristallnacht's ire, so he'll focus on fighting her before returning his attention to us. It's cold, but we have to think about the people we are protecting before a girl who is throwing herself into the lion's den."

Then the Empire strike force launched all of their attacks towards Gravitas. Crusader sent ghosts charging forwards, Rune attacked with her spheres, Purity fired her most powerful blast yet, Stormtiger fired two large blasts of air and Victor used the power Othala granted him to launch a fireball. All of the attacks converged on Gravitas and, just like before, they all bent around her, orbiting around her a foot away in lazy circles.

"What the…I can't control my spheres!" Rune yelled.

"It must be because I have a more magnetic personality than you, Rune." Gravitas said, "Now stand aside. For the moment, my business is with Kristallnacht and only Kristallnacht. None of you can do a single thing to me, so stand aside or get hurt."

So this was another thing that caught my attention. Well, the power was. The Nazi guy just…came to me. Don't like Nazis; don't like their beliefs, so writing the Empire and any new characters therein is going to be HARD for me, because I genuinely hate them. Hope this was still an enjoyable read.

No power chart this time because…well, I want to see if you can guess her power.