Jason Fuller & The Elementals: The Stones Of Olympus (Book 1)

by Andarion The Storyteller

This story is about the adventures of a young mutant named Jason Fuller and his friends as they embark on a journey to save the world from Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil. Lives will be changed, destinies will be fought, ancient magic will resurface, and for Jason, a question that has plagued him since his parents death, about what it truly means to be a hero, will be answered.

19. Chapter 19: One Crazy Water Fight

Chapter 19: One Crazy Water Fight

(Grant's Perspective)

So let's recap here, ladies and gentleman! We're under the freaking ocean, Atlantis is under attack, Attuma's like half a step away from getting the Stone of Poseidon, and a handful of high school newbie mutants half to turn the tide of a whole war. Oh, and assuming we succeed, there's no guarantee Namor will let us take the stone with us. Life is a roller coaster.

After getting zapped through yet another transporter, Storm-Lord, Oroco, and I were at the top of Atlantis' skyscraper tall, Great Wall of China long, guard wall. The jarring effects of getting transported were even more jarring considering we basically got transported into a shooting range where the guns were basically tanks! Literally, with only 20ft of space from each other, laser cannons that looked like a mix between tridents and crossbows lined the entire wall. They were shooting out into the water, at the glow stick dragons, sea serpents, and Antarctic Leviathans; couldn't think of anything clever to call those….things. Speaking of the battle, everything was going to $#!+ for Atlantis! With a mix of both my enhanced vision and ability to sense anything touching earth, I can totally do that, I deduced the fact that Atlantis was getting utterly owned. That crescent moon maneuvering? Yeah, that was doing wonders for the other team, who were basically on the verge of washing over the Atlanteans like a tidal wave. The sea creatures were involved over the battle, which seemed a bit odd to me, before I realized the monsters were trying to get over the wall and into the city. The only other thing that was worth noticing, was Namor fighting it out with Attuma. From what Storm-Lord described, Namor was slowly but surely losing his grip on the fight, and it was showing like so hard. Attuma's blue Super Saiyan glow was almost as big as Namor's, and while Namor was definitely putting in work, ya boy Attuma was putting in at least twice as much. Part of me wanted to help the poor guy, but I had to focus on the main battle here.

"ALAS!" Oroco shouted above the laser cannons. "THE BATTLE FARES WORSE, WE MUST MOVE QUICKLY!"

He put his hands to his temples, closed his eyes. Nothing happened at all, but Oroco seemed pretty satisfied with ten seconds of doing f*(# all.

"THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" Jason yelled at him.

"ASSERTING MY AUTHORITY!" Oroco yelled back at him. "THROUGH OUR SHARED TELEPATHY, THE ARMY OF ATLANTIS ARE AWARE OF MY PROMOTION!"

Oroco swam over to the nearest cannon, and yanked the Atlantean who was occupying it off of his seat!

"YOU'VE BEEN RELIEVED OF YOUR DUTY!" He shouted at the poor guy. "DRAW YOUR SWORD, AND GET INTO THE FIGHT!"

The guy practically tripped over himself as he drew his sword, and swam down the wall.

"YOU, LORD OF STORMS!" Oroco yelled at Storm-Lord. "FILL THE TURRET WITH YOUR POWER!

Storm-Lord got in the cannon, put his hands on the two pads, and gave them a jump. The cannon lit up with voltage, making a whole mess of pops and cracks.

"WHOA!" Storm-Lord shouted. "INTENSE! HOW DO I WORK THIS THING!?"

"THE PADS HAVE LINKED YOUR CEREBRAL CORTEX TO THE TURRET." Oroco said. "YOU NEED ONLY THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO, AND IT WILL BE DONE!"

Storm-Lord tested this out, and took aim at a nearby Sea Serpent, turning it to dust in one quick shot.

"Dude!" he thought to me. "I like this thing!"

"You would!" I thought back to him.

"GEO-TITAN!" Oroco shouted at me. "YOU PROMISED THE ABILITY TO DESTROY ARMIES! DISPLAY THAT ABILITY NOW!"

"OK, SERGEANT SHOUTS A LOT!" I yelled back at him. "BY THE WAY, I HAVE A REALLY GOOD SENSE OF HEARING, YOU DON'T GOTTA SHOUT AT ME! ANYWAY, I'M ON IT; IF YOU NEED ANY SPECIAL REQUESTS, JUST ASK!"

I summoned my axe, and flew towards the epic on epic battle.

"Gaea?" I asked her on the way down. "Can I control enough Geo-Force to stretch an entire nation?"

"As far as Atlantis?" she responded. "Yes. Don't over exert yourself though, you only need to use about 1% of the Geo-Force; use the silt to sense where your enemies are, and strike them down accordingly."

"Thanks for the tip, coach! Now let's get to work!"

I summoned a huge amount of G-Force around myself, shaped it into a nuke, and flew out into the water. I flew straight into the wave of enemies, not with the Atlanteans, straight into the heart of the enemy onslaught, where the battle hadn't even reached them yet. I landed smack dab into the center of their formation, and let my nuke construct go off, incinerating well over 500 of Byrrah's forces. I disregarded the ring of death around me, tapped into Blitz Extreme, and touched the silt with my hands. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the huge amount of land around me, getting my bearings. I felt as far as the limits of Atlantis, and the extent of the oncoming forces of Attuma. By rough estimate, I was processing at least one million square feet of land, which may sound like a lot, because it is. After I took a few to get accustomed to the feel of it, I targeted a random piranhaoid, about 1,000 miles northeast of me, and sparked a small bit of G-Force under it, killing the poor sap before he knew what hit him. I did that a few more times, targeting random enemies, until I found the minimum amount of G-Force necessary to kill a person. I'll admit, that's more than a little f*(#^& up that I used living beings as guinea pigs, but at this moment in time, I kinda didn't care. No, really, I was going through a low point in my emotional roller coaster, courtesy of Dirt Mother herself; right now, I was struggling to just give a $#!+ about anything. Anyway, after I got my game plan set up, I summoned my axe, switched it into spear mode, and set it ablaze with G-Force. From there it was a bloodbath.

Across the crescent formation, thousands of G-Force blasts went off at once, and continued to keep going off. In less than 10 seconds, almost 20,000 of Attuma's soldiers were dead. See, I was using this strategy where I recycled the leftover energy of a blast, and used it to target and destroy another nearby enemy. This may sound hard, but I had years to master stuff like this in the Geo-Nexus. For me, this was like flicking a lighter on and off. While that was going on, I was also wreaking havoc with my axe-spear. As the enemies piled on, all I had to do was swing my spear back and forth, taking dozens upon dozens of piranhaoids, barbarian looking Atlanteans, and even occasional sea monsters down for the count. Granted, I couldn't cover my back, but my All-Metal did that for me just fine. Yeah, while I was mowing down the bad guys, I summoned my All-Metal, and wrapped it around my armor. I didn't need the extra protection. From what I was sensing, their weapons were made of some type of enchanted Gold/Titanium alloy, which, even with the hocus pocus, wouldn't so much as bruise my skin. Still, it might damage the suit, and the last thing I wanted was Mrs. Kennedy chewing me out for damaging my armor again. The All-Metal would help save me some grief. More important though, as I used it in sync with my Geo-Sight, official name, I broke off several hundred small shards, and willed them to fly around rapidly, taking down all of the enemies out of my line of natural sight.

For like ten minutes, I went all Spartan Jason Voorhees on the battlefield. Every swing of my axe was the death of at least a dozen enemy soldiers. Every spare thought meant a thousand more kills to the toll, and I thought a lot. My super move though? That was some next level stuff! Periodically through the fight, after I was satisfied with the G-Force I had fed to my spear, I would shrink it back down to axe size, and hurl it as hard as I could deep into the oncoming enemy ranks. Every time I did this, I created a trench of carnage that stretched out for hundreds of miles. Also, when the axe had reached the end of it's rope, I willed the built up G-Force to go boom! Yeah, i'm not gonna pretend to be completely all good on this one; I may have been helping out the good guys, I so totally had to get Namor's autograph, but i'm almost certain nobody in existence has ever killed as many people as I currently was. Hell, if Oroco screaming "KEEP IT UP BOY, THE TIDE IS TURNING!", as well as his machine gunning of insults and curses at Attuma was any indication, I was doing my job relatively well. Couldn't count Storm-Lord out of the highlights reel though. While he wasn't exactly doing the heavy lifting of the fighting, the dude was absolutely a monster at the sniping game. From a realistic standpoint, no matter how big the sea serpents were, do you have any idea how hard it would be to hit them from so far away with such narrow shots? If you can't, imagine trying to peg a flying piece of string by throwing a toothpick. And just like that, I have a bet to make against Hawkeye! Anyway, Storm-Lord proved up to the challenge, and nailed them all in one shot with his lightning blasts. The dragons were easy enough for him to hit too, and my oh my, those poor leviathans! It wasn't really the fact that he was able to hit them, rather than what he did to them once he made contact. First off, he only every shot into their mouths; three to five bolts at a time. Even with that thing basically swallowing enough voltage to power a trillion iPhones, it was still big enough to where it wasn't in any real danger….or so I thought. Less than two seconds later, the Leviathan started to convulse violently, and lightning bolts started coming out of it, like he had swallowed a thunderstorm. After that, it was all downhill for that sucker. So yeah, I think it's safe to say that Storm-Lord had the high game all covered. Between the two of us, and of course Sunbird's hostile re-takeover operation, this was gonna be a breeze!

For the next ten minutes or so, it actually was. My G-Force manipulation had broke through enough of the crescent formation to where the defending Atlanteans were gradually starting to gain more ground. In fact, Oroco started taking me up on my offer, and made some special request to where my G-Force bursts were needed. I couldn't exactly form a complete picture of what he was trying to do, but from the look of it, he was having me create small pockets of space where the Atlanteans could gain footholds, and hold the line. He also instructed every other turret shooters to redirect their fire at the heart of the enemy advancement, making my job just a little easier. With their forces being divided, sandwiched, and thinned out where it really counted, Atlantis finally had a chance of not getting totally wrecked. So, naturally, this is where the fun really starts for me. See, while I was hacking, slashing, and bombing to my heart content, I was keeping tabs on Attuma and Namor too. First off, between the laser blasts, Oroco's yelling, Storm-Lord losing his mind over how awesome his cannon was, and the sound of battle all around me, do you have any idea how hard it was to signal out that one specific sound?! Answer: super, ultra, mega hard! After the frustration of trying to single them out, I managed to get some pretty important information off of the fight. Well, besides the fact that him and Namor were still beating the $#!+ out of each other.

"Tiger Shark!" Attuma yelled, once you removed all of the grunts. "Report, why are our forces being driven back?!

I made my hearing open up to the entirety of the expanse of the battle, searching for a reply that would match the question.

"Unclear, Lord Attuma!" a raspy voice said. "For all I know, it could be some sort of beast,or magic Namor has suddenly employed!"

"It must be the former, all of Namor's arcane advantages lie up here with me. What is the creature doing?! What might does it possess that could pose a threat to entire legions?!"

"Its power manifests in the form of some kind of energy that is both fire and lightning! It is also proven to be strong enough to singlehandedly kill thousands of our troops!"

"Where are you?!"

"Fighting in the south with the the 21st legion. We are nearing the wall, despite heavy interference!"

"Belay your role in the attack! Orka! Tyrak! You will both join Tiger Shark on this mission! Destroy the beast before he becomes a nuisance!

I was actually kinda flattered that Attuma called me a beast, but having a target on my head put a huge dampener on that compliment. I heard three distinct booms, all of which were converging on my location.

"Geo-Titan?" Gaea thought to me.

"I know, G," I thought back to her. "New playmates."

The first attack was so easy to counter, I had to keep myself from laughing. As one of the goons behind me got closer, I did a backflip over him, created a speeding car construct, a Lamborghini to be specific, and plowed him into like 100 of his allies. He'd be fine. Even though I didn't get a good look at him, I could see that he had an energy barrier around him; meaning this was either gonna be really long and hard, or really long and fun. The two other goons who were comin' in for a swing were approaching from my right and my left. I took a quick half second to get a look at them, and my weren't they a colorful bunch! They both had blue skin, which was kinda the popular trend for underwater people. The one coming from the left was kinda burly, and wore a gold chainmail suit under a purple tunic, with a purple war helmet similar to Thor's, but with fish fins. On an off note, his blue body shield clashed with his getup, this guy really needed to take a class on style. He had all white eyes, sharp teeth, and was coming at me with a one bladed long axe, made of the same enchanted gold/titanium alloy that seemed to be the default weapon choice for underwater people. In other words, unless he had a hidden awesome power, he was no threat at all. The other guy coming at me was a blue version of what you'd get if you mashed the Big Show with a gorilla, and fed it steroids. Seriously, this guy, even without his body shield, was probably strong enough to replace two entire team's worth of linebackers. His arms were bigger than me, and he had feet big enough to crush cars. He'd actually be worth a decent fright, if he didn't look so ridiculous. His entire body was a dark shade of blue, while his face was more of a sky blue, making me laugh in my head, Also, his face literally looked like it was pasted onto the front of his head! Other than that, he had golden spikes growing out of the circumference of his face. Sure, why not? And he was wearing a white wrestling suit, with a golden belt. So in addition to looking like a wrestler, he was also wearing a belt that made him look like World Heavyweight Champion?! Oh man, this guy was a riot, I was gonna feel a little bad about kicking his ass! Anyway, after getting acquainted to my attackers, I decided to give them a little greeting G-Force style. I trapped them both in G-Force energy balls, and willed the balls to collide and merge together. I hit them as hard as I could with my spear, and sent them flying into their other friend, sending them on another smash through hundreds more of their allies. I rocketed after them, and found the three stooges in a crater bumbling and shuffling over each other. I came in hard with my spear, not in a mood to take any prisoners, and brought it down hard on top of the fish friends. Well, almost sorta kinda. At the last second, Tiger Shark darted away from the spear, and the guy in gold and purple blocked the strike with way less effort than I thought he'd need. By the way, if you're wondering, Tiger Shark was some guy in orange and black spandex that had teeth designs going up the center of his suit. He also had black gloves and boots, talons extending from his hands, and a mask that had a huge shark fin that ran all the way down to his back. In short, he looked stupid as $#!+. Anyway, after golden boy, less than me golden, blocked my strike, Tiger Shark came in for a bite, only to get planted to the ground with a bolt of G-Force. Blue King Kong roared and charged at me, which I cut short with a G-Force charged reverse kick to his chest, sending him careening into more enemy soldiers. Meanwhile, golden boy was still struggling under my axe. Again, he was strong enough to block my hits, but by the looks of it, not strong enough to take me, even if my attention was mile away. I grabbed his axe, and yanked it and him up.

"Don't worry bro!" I said before punching him hard in gut, and sending him sprawling away with a front kick. "Plenty of love to go around!"

"Stop playing around, boy!" Gaea yelled at me. "Need I remind you that you're fighting a war?!"

"Hypocrite!" I thought back to her as I got ready for Tiger Shark and friends to return. "If I had a dime for every quip you said last night-"

"Just hush, and fight! Oh, and the one called Tiger Shark has Adamantium teeth; watch out for that!"

As the three of them came at me again, I heard Tiger Shark, who was the group leader, instruct his crew to a would be, not even on their best day, victory.

"Orka!" he yelled at the big blue. "Attack his right flank and restrain him! Tyrak, go for his front, cleave him in two! I'll bite a chunk out of his neck!"

This guy wouldn't be winning any medals for best strategy any time soon.

I dismantled their attack almost instantly, dodging Orka's tackle, and after swinging him around by his suit, threw him into Tyrak. That was two down, and since Tiger Shark got cold feet now that his plan was f*(# %, I took it upon myself to go after him myself. Faster than he could swim away, I punched him hard in the mouth, kneed him under his chin, and hammer punched him into the ground. I landed hard on top of him, and doused him with a continuous wave of G-Force.

One thing to notice was that it didn't take anything at all to fight these guys while keeping up my G-Force deterrent for the rest of the battle. As I was blasting away at Tiger Shark, I was still simultaneously singeing the f*(# out of thousands of enemy soldiers. To put it simple, this was the equivalent of listening to music, actually paying attention to the lyrics, while reading a book. I hear some people can't do it, but ever since the iPod came out, I was able to do it since junior high. Even more to my advantage, because Storm-Lord and the rest of the firing squad had almost decimated the overhead sea monsters, a good chunk of the cannons were diverting their fire power to the far end of the battle, just fifty miles away from where I was. What this meant, was that I didn't have to focus all that hard on keeping up the G-Force deterrent anyway. With the cannons thinning out the ranks of Attuma's army anyway, I could pull back just a bit, and focus all the more on pounding these losers into the ground.

While I was blasting at Tiger Shark, my body went into Timeout, and I turned around to see Orka about to tackle me again. As I smashed my fist into his face as hard a I could, I tried wrapping my mind around the concept of why every bad guy ever always went for the tackle, rather than something less….stupid. I guess I couldn't talk so much, though; my first action after being confronted with an army of robots, was to charge in with no plan at all. Anyway, the force of my punch was so strong, it created a 360 degree wave that blew away another handful of enemy soldiers. That's the other thing, at the degree of intensity that we were fighting at, the surrounding enemy soldiers were either getting crushed, steamrolled, blown away, or were straight up actively trying to avoid the fight. Tyrak swam in fast for a strong swing to my head, resulting in him getting punted away after I yanked his axe away from him, and threw it as far away as I could. I'm the only one who gets to have an axe around here. I refocused on Orka, and began to put the ultimate smackdown on him with hard blows to the gut, face, as well as precise hits and kicks to his pressure points and joints. Each hit was enough to shatter an elephant's skull, but Orka had the saving grace of that body shield to protect him. At first I thought all he had to him was "strength", but a quick shoulder block from him proved he had some speed to him as well. I followed up with a roundhouse kick to his head, and used the remaining momentum to summon my axe, hitting him in the face again. I was kinda sorta hoping there'd be a bit more of a slicing reaction from his face, but that's body shields for ya. As was such, Orka just buckled a bit. This guy could take a hit. I responded by charging my axe with some G-Force, and slammed it on top of his head. He face planted into the dirt. At this point, Tiger Shark was just starting getting back into the game, though not a good note. He tried for the same old strategy of barreling into me, but he looked great doing it, his swimming form was fantastic. He managed to get a foot away from me, before I willed the All-Metal to detach from my armor, and reform into a solid wall, just in time for him to smack into it at 90 mph. My biggest regret was that I didn't have my phone on me; the sound his head made against the multi colored bricks needed to be my ringtone! I dismissed the All-Metal back to the Geo-Nexus, I think, shot my axe chain out, whipped it around his neck, and yanked Tiger Shark toward a knuckle sandwich, compliments of chef me. He hit the dirt again, but Orka got up to pick up the slack. Again, he was met with a brutal punch, kick, and swing of the axe combo, which looked so good, even Tiger Shark wanted a piece of the fun. He rushed into me with a tackle that I let happen, only for me to roll with the momentum, pin him to the ground, and deck him in the head with a hard G-Force charged punch. I sensed Orka trying to barrel into me, but stopped him cold with an uppercut to the jaw, followed by a spinning kick to the side of his head, and blasting him away with a huge blast of G-Force from my eyes. While, this was going on, Tyrak, who had finally recovered after getting punched two miles away, was just finally getting back in range of the fight. Without even looking at him, I diverted his trajectory with a well placed fist construct that shot into his stomach at the speed of a freight train. As I was punching and kicking away at Orka and Tiger Shark, I created a laser cannon construct at such an angle, that it would blast Tyrak into the fight, and let it rip. The boom of the canon going off was impossible to miss, even in the middle of all of the mass ruckus. Hell, the thing was so bright, you'd have to be blind not to see it. Unfortunately for Orka, and Tiger Shark, I cranked up the gravity to about 5X the earth's gravity just around their feet; they couldn't move for $#!+. I flew out of the way of the blast, and enjoyed the fireworks display. For reference, the blast was big enough to leave a crater where the statue of liberty used to be. And before you ask me why I didn't just use this to waste Attuma's army, keep in mind, I only just now got the opportunity to use this much spare G-Force in one go. Plus, now that the firing squad was on damage control for me, there was no need. Good enough for ya? Too bad, it's all you got. Anyway, I turned the light show off after a good ten seconds and got reacquainted with my opponents. As far as I could tell, the blast didn't hurt them too bad, but they were definitely rocked.

"How is it possible?" Orka muttered.

"Ughr," Tyrak groaned.

"What manner of child can wield such power?" Tiger Shark asked himself.

"First off," I spoke loud enough for them to hear me. "I'm only three months away from being old enough to vote; not that I care about politics anyway! Name's Geo-Titan, and you guys are soooo done for!"

Underwater or not, bad guys never liked to be talked down to, especially by a "kid". They all rushed me at once, and they were absolutely adorable!

Real talk, if these guys weren't protected by their magic ocean god aura, they'd have broken necks in five seconds. As strong as they were underwater, my speed and skill easily outclassed them; they never laid a single hit on me. Tiger Shark rushed in for a slash with his claws, only for me to dodge it, and deck him across the face with a G-Force charged fist. While he was tumbling away, I rushed into Orka's stomach with a hard knee, came up with a hammer uppercut to his chin, and finished it off with a dropkick to his chest, sending him tumbling backwards. Admittedly, this left me open for a swing from Tyrak, but I was easily able to catch the punch, twist his wrist, and bring my elbow down hard on his arm. While his body shield prevented me from actually fracturing any bones, disappointing yes, I settled for a chop to the throat, followed by decking him in the face. Tyrak hit the dirt hard, but Tiger Shark and Okra were back up to take his place. For probably a good five minutes, it was just a straight up beat down fest. Despite these guys having a numbers advantage, not to mention probably having the strength advantage collectively, they were absolutely dead in the water; pun totally intended. Their plan, always seemed to be about rushing me, and desperately trying to either punch me a lot, or pin me to the ground. None of that ever worked. Tiger Shark was fast, and to some degree strong, but he could never reign it in enough to use it to his advantage. Every time he rushed at me, i'd either side step and plant him to the ground with a G-Force bolt, or let him rush into a fist, and throw him back at his friends. Orka on the other hand was all strength, no speed, and absolutely no skill. I almost felt like I was bullying him to be honest. Every swing was strong, but too wild and too slow to matter. Hell, I didn't even bother blocking, I just flew around and under his swings and made him suffer for it with so many punches and kicks to the head, chest, and back. Tyrak, to put it short, sucked in all the areas, and I had so much fun punching his stupid face in. The only thing I could give them credit on was their consistency, the guys were the epitome of perseverance. Still, they at least gave me something to do; there wasn't a single second where I wasn't punching, kicking, or blasting at someone.

"I'm so proud of myself," Gaea thought to me. "I am such an amazing teacher!"

"Pat yourself on the back later, G!" I thought back to her. "Give me some help here, how do I beat this power source?"

"What do you mean?"

"With Venom and Goblin, it was simple. Get the stone, cut the power source off at its core. These guys don't have a stone, so do I just beat them silly until they stop glowing?"

"Basically."

"Say what?!"

"Yes, you heard me correct. What you have here is an unfortunate bottom of the chain scenario. The witch Llyra is syphoning energy from the Stone of Poseidon, and feeding it to your enemies. Keep in mind, the stone is a manifestation of Poseidon's power, the entire ocean."

"I can defeat an ocean?"

"Not all of them, not now, but that's not the point. The strength these three are at collectively rank close to the power of two and a half oceans."

"Because that's sooo much better."

"Actually, it is. Until your friend disposes of their power supplier they'll always have a source to draw from, but that does not mean their power can't be exhausted for a time. Their aura's take most of the damage for them, but they can still be depleted. Take Iron Man for example, if you break the suit, and attack the body before the armor can repair, you win the fight."

"So, just punch and blast them until they stop glowing, then bring the axe down?"

"Exactly. At your current strength, if you use your powers right, and you have the creativity for it, you can physically shut their power auras down. Think of it like that silly little game you love playing. You have to get past the defensive line, and sack the opposing thrower before they have the chance to pass the ball. Speaking of which, football is an insipid name for a sport that has almost no kicking in it.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that last bit."

Of course, I was still kicking some major ass, but now with an actual game plan to go on, it was time to crank the dials up to 20! I pounded the three stooges for a few more seconds, before creating a dome of G-Force the size of a mansion. I willed the gravity inside the dome to crank up to X10, and summoned my All-Metal. I split it into two parts, and launched the globs at Tiger Shark and Tyrak. The globs constructed into life size forms of Black Widow and Thor respectively, and after giving them a full tank of G-Force, I willed them to handle my light work. Meanwhile, I summoned my axe, activated my G-Blazer, and had at it with Orka.

On a semi positive note for him, I wasn't really using all that much of my super speed; I turned up the gravity to cover for that. When I was emphasizing speed, I didn't have enough time to actually put a great deal of power into my swings. Now, I was swinging full force at Orka with my axe and fist; each swing powerful enough to crack a mountain. Even though I ditched most of the speed advantage, I was still twice as fast as Orka, and even then I was still overkilling him by the barrel loads. The G-Force dome we were in? I willed the inside of it to blast dozens of bolts at a time in every direction, hitting Orka and friends like they were lightning rods. This kept them all off balance, and made it easier for my Avengers doubles to lay the smackdown on Tiger Shark and Tyrak. Speaking of which, it was still not worth even half of my concentration to juggle my fight, managing the G-Force dome, the extra gravity, and controlling them at the same time. It was kinda one of those things where you listen to music, do your math homework, talk to someone on the phone, and think about whatever else all at the same time. Trust me, it's way easier than it sounds. While I was batting away at Orka, I was controlling the Black Widow metal construct, willing it to kick Tiger Shark's ass Wing Chun/Crane Kung-Fu style. Tyrak was getting the Karate, mixed with hammer fighting techniques, real and/or made up, treatment. I may or may not have a plastic Thor hammer replica at home that I practice moves with. Don't…...don't judge me!

So yeah, I took it to Orka pretty hard. It was really just a matter of locking onto his weaknesses, and exploiting the hell out of them. I smacked him around a lot with my axe, attacking his head, chest, and kneecaps. Over a course of two minutes, after so many punches, kicks, G-Force bolts, and axe swings, I forced him down with a slash across the chest, that followed into a sweeping kick to one of his kneecaps. I flew straight up, getting him under the chin with my axe, smashing it down on his face, and creating a charging elephant construct to smash him into one of the barrier edges. I wrapped a missile construct around myself and flew into Orka. After an awesome Michael Bay explosion, I resumed my onslaught with a passion. For like another five minutes, I gave Orka the works. Punches, kicks, and all with rare moments of him actually breaking my momentum streak. Like before, it was the same matter of whacking and punching away at him, but I put more and more of myself into it with every passing second. Surprisingly enough, he actually managed to block one of my kicks, and make a wild swing for me. I ducked under it, and blocked a downward punch from him that would've put me three miles under the silt. I know this, because stopping his punch was like bringing a downhill freight train to a grinding halt; I was literally knee deep into the ground. Orka brought another punch down, but I bobbed under it, grabbed his wrist with both my arms, and swung him around. I let him go at like 100 mph upwards, shot him back towards me by directing a bolt of G-Force to strike him in the back. I intercepted him with a flying punch to the gut, grabbed him by his suit, and swung him into the barrier again. I hurled my axe, which was absolutely drowning in G-Force, at Orka as hard as I could, and made another explosion that would make Michael Bay bust a nut! Seriously, remember how I made a dome about the size of a mansion? The amount of boomage I just released was enough to level half of Central Park; I had to divert the energy into the barrier just to keep it from blowing apart on the inside out. The explosion ripped through every square inch of the inside of the dome, and while me and my constructs were safe, Tyrak, Orka, and Tiger Shark were like socks in a dryer; if that dryer was in a fire tornado, inside a lightning hurricane. Hell, when the explosion faded out, there was a chasm inside of the dome where ground should've been. The hole was so deep, even I couldn't see anything past the blackness and swirling silt. I'm no saying I meant to do that, but i'm not saying it wasn't badass either. Anyway, I flew at Orka while simultaneously summoning my axe back to my hand. I ignited it again, did a spin to wind up some momentum, and after a quick half second to change my axe into spear mode, whacked it across Orka's head with the force of Donkey Kong in Mario Super Sluggers.. I thought nothing of it at first, just another good swing I managed to get in, but then I noticed his aura flicker! It was only for a moment, and if I wasn't so wild on the swing, I could've diverted it into a finishing slash! Still, it was enough for me to know that Orka was so done!

While I didn't manage to bring the axe down before his aura kicked up again, I still got Orka in the chest with a nasty reverse kick, and began to beat the absolute $#!+ out of him with my axe and sword. For another 30 seconds, everything was as it should've been. I was kicking ass, the bad guys were losing big time, I was on top of my A-Game; then Orka just had to ruin the fun. I was slashing at hacking at him with my G-Force charged weapons, throwing in some kicks here and there for good measure, until out of nowhere, Orka blocked one of my sword swings, before punching me away with a stiff jab. It didn't hurt enough for me to cry about it, but i'm not saying it was just a "walk it off" type of hurt. Hell, I was still reeling over the fact that Orka, the underwater King Kong, actually managed to catch me with a punch; even without a great deal of speed, he shouldn't have been able to do that! As an even bigger testament to how much life just wanted to shove its middle finger in my face, I felt Orka, who was the equivalent of an entire trainyard slamming into my body, barrel into me with another punch. I went sailing into the chasm, my body stunned with pain, my mind numb with anger. Reasonably, I shouldn't have been as royally pissed off as I was, I had been hit way harder than that, but my emotional stability was still in flux, and right now all I knew was anger! It's a good thing there wasn't any gamma radiation nearby. I did a quick tuck and roll to get my balance back, reignited my G-Blazer, and shot straight up, decking Orka under the chin as hard as I could! I went into Blitz Mode, determined to break records for how many times I could punch a living being in the face in under three seconds. Whatever that record was, i'm certain I wasn't even close to breaking it. Don't get me wrong, I got more than my fair share of licks in on him, but Orka had stepped his game up in a big way. While I was still able to use my size and maneuverability to get some quick and hard hits to his mid section, face, and lower limbs, Orka's newfound speed meant that he was a lot better at blocking and retaliating against my attacks. For example, after getting a wicked X50 punch and kick combo off, Orka managed to block the next hit, swing at me with a wide left. I easily ducked under it, but didn't count on him coming for a quick right jab. Luckily, my body called for a Timeout, and I avoided the punch. Yeah, that was the other annoying thing about this fight, Blitz Extreme and Geo Blitz Extreme were out of the question. The extra speed would mean taking concentration off of maintaining my already spread thin use of G-Force. Instead, as Orka and I went at it for a few more minutes, I had to fall back on my martial arts skills to serve him some whup ass. While I definitely got more hits in, Orka, when he connected, hit harder. He was really bad up close, his reach was too wide, so I used that to my advantage a lot. Still, Orka was putting in some mad legit work, actually learning to maneuver some, making my life a lot more difficult. On the bright side, the more I punched him, the more my anger died down. After a good several hundred hits to his jaw I felt pretty mello.

"Gaea!" I thought to her. "This isn't working!"

"Yes it is, boy," she calmly thought back to me. "You had this simpleton on the ropes forever."

"Until he came back with a vengeance and a need for speed! What the f*(# was that about?!"

"His adrenaline boosts his power, just like you. His fear of your attacks, of the possibility that each one could be the one that finishes him, heightened the effect the stone's energy has on him. Also, your glowing friend has yet to dispose of the witch that is giving splitting the stone's power to your enemies."

"Sunbird! How's she doing?"

"She could be doing worse, but I wouldn't count on her completing her end of the mission anytime soon."

"So much for the easy way out."

"Why don't you just let me possess you again? We could end this struggle almost instantly. Well...after we find time to merge."

"Yeah, i'm thinking no?"

"What?! Why not?!""

"Mamma, you gave me emotional turmoil. I'm still a wreck on the inside."

"Sorry about that, I really am, but i'm trying to help you. I'm not just a big ball of hate, GT."

"I know, i'm just not ready for that again, not now. It's definitely you, but it's also me too. Still, that gives me an idea, thanks!"

I cut her off before she could say anything pouty. On the plus side, GT was an awesome way to shorten my hero name!

"Yo, Storm-Lord!" I thought to Jason as I continued to battle Orka.

"What?!" he responded.

"That blaster thingy, can you hold and power up a charge?"

"Um…..yeah, yeah, totally! Why?"

"The dome of green fire and lightning, can you see it?"

"You mean that totally easy to see, brighter than a neon sign, swirling green ball of terror? No. Can't see it."

"Hardy har. Look, i'm gonna try something cool, and I need your help. Just charge up a blast until the count of thirty, then let it rip right at the green swirly stuff!"

"You sure about this? I don't wanna fry you."

"Absolutely positive, bro! Trust me!'

"Alright, whatever you're gonna do, do it in 3...2….now!"

I uppercutted Orka away from me, dispersed my All-Metal constructs, and went into ass kicking overdrive!

I willed the G-Force inside the dome to go haywire, striking Tiger Shark, Tyrak, and Orka with bolts at least 20 times a second from every angle. While doing that, I willed the dome to lift off of the ground and gave it a bottom half, essentially making a mini-sun of my own. Anyway, I kept the sphere rising, until it reached about 100 feet up, and held it there. That took all of ten seconds to accomplish, and there was still more fun to be had before the fireworks got started. I summoned my axe, and went to work. Instead of flying around and smacking fools with it though, I threw it at tiger Shark first, and then thrust my arm to where Tyrak was getting pelted by three G-Force bolts. Dunno if a flying axe to the face was insult to injury, but…..eh, who cares anyway? I sensed Orka trying to get at me from behind, the guy was shaking off my G-Force bolts like they were just pillow hits. Really hard pillow hits, but still pillow hits all the same. I flexed my left arm, pointing my thumb back at Orka, and my axe flew into his gut. I called it back to me, flew at Orka, and gave him the granddaddy of all uppercuts with my axe. The guy hit the top of the dome before getting shot to the bottom with a huge G-Force bolt! As the time ticked down, I upped the ante on the intensity of the G-Force bolt strikes, blasting the $#!+ out of Orka and friends, while also corralling them into the center of the orb via giant hand constructs. I reshaped the constructs into a ball construct, cramming the three water friends inside, and transferred all of the energy of the bigger G-Force dome around my axe. I made sure to keep the ball construct big enough for Storm-Lord to see, otherwise he probably wouldn't know where to shoot. Afterwards, I bolted straight backwards as fast as I could. The next second, a huge THOOM, followed by an echoing SSSKKKRRAAATTT sound, charged through the water as Storm-Lord released his X100 Big Bang Kamehameha. I timed the trajectory of the blast just right, and threw my axe at the ball construct. I was half a mile away, so I was safe from the blast radius. An explosion of G-Force and lightning, big enough to trash an airport, sandwiched my trio of enemies. Even as far back as I was, the ripple effect of the blast still hit me like a hurricane. I managed to push through the shockwave, and while calling my axe back to my hand, flew to the impact zone. Using my super vision, I could see Tiger Shark, Tyrak, and Orka, floating about in a half conscious state, even better, Orka's aura was down! I immediately went into Blitz Extreme, created a giant G-Force sword, and sliced him in half.

Yeaaaaah…...maybe that was a teeny bit too brutal. Still, it had to be done. I'll admit, slicing people in half wouldn't have been my first choice; usually isn't my first choice. Sometimes you have to make exceptions though. Hell, you think my axe was for opening letters? Besides, Sunbird didn't cut off the power flow yet, not her fault i'm sure, and that put a limit on how many choices I had. Either I let him live so he could fight some more, or put him down and make sure he's not a threat again. Believe me, I know how cruel and heartless that sounds, but war will do that to you, and this was a war. Not trying to make excuses, but i'd find a way to live with the blood on my hands. Wish I could somehow make Orka's buddies feel the same way. The poor guys came too, just to find their pal in two pieces; Tyrak didn't exactly take it all that well.

"ORKAAAAAAAAA!" he bellowed. "NOOOOOOOOOO!"

He was still a good mile away, I was flying so fast to where the water was a roar in my ears….I could still hear the absolute agony in his voice. That's the thing about wars, no matter how worthy you think your cause is, you always end up hurting people in ways that a punch can never compare to. Even if these guys were total $#!+ wads, they were obviously friends. I just severed that forever. Hell, Tyrak was so distraught, he basically had a death wish. He roared an unmistakable "i'm gonna f*(# you the f*(# up!" battle cry, and charged me head on. He took off pretty fast, supersonic, which meant that his surge of anger was giving him a big power boost. I activated my G-Blazer, summoned my axe, and prepared for a pretty epic clash. Once Tyrak was in swinging distance, I swung my axe at his head, but he adjusted his momentum, and ended up doing a twisting flip over me. Had to admit, that was pretty awesome. I twisted around while stopping my own momentum, and came around with another swing to his chest. Tyrak caught the blade with his hands, aura or not that must've hurt, and then he started to grow. No ladies and gentleman, I am not $#!++!*% you. Tyrak had size manipulation powers! What. The. F*(#!

Before I could move out of the way, his hand already had a vice grip around my body; compared to how tall he was now, about 60ft, I was the size of a rice grain. He slammed me down into the ground, which which may have well have been a fall from orbit for me, and proceeded to beat the absolute hell out of me. Giant fist after giant fist pounded into me from above, each of them like battleships crashing against my body. Getting slammed into the ground already stunned the f*(# out of me, the endless barrage of car sized knuckles slamming into me at bullet speed was a whole new level of agony. Don't even bother about asking me "why didn't you use your growing powers, GT?", because I couldn't. The thing about my size growing/shrinking, is that even under the best conditions it's still dangerous as hell. With Tyrak's fists pounding into me every half second, if I tried growing, my concentration would've been broken during mid transformation. That could've resulted in a number of painful combinations, like bones being too big for a too small body, asymmetric limbs, etc. Hell, I was so out of it, I couldn't even pull myself together enough to try and blast my way out of this. I wasn't coughing up blood, so this wasn't as bad as Demon King, but I was still royally screwed.

"SURFACE WORLD SCUUUUM!" Tyrak bellowed as he kept up the fists. "YOU DARE SHED THE BLOOD OF THE SONS OF ATLANTIS?! FOR THAT, I WILL-"

THOOOOM! SSSKKKRRAAATTT! BOOOOOOOM! Oh my God. Thank you, Storm-Lord! For those of you that didn't put it together, my boy, the son of the thunder god, just saved my ass big time! Another lightning X100 Big Bang Kamehameha just nailed Tyrak in the head, forcing him backwards, and more importantly, off of me! This is the part where I tell my friend thank you, where I tell him how much I owe him for saving me from certain death. Believe me, once the rage quit subsided, I did.

Now let's see. How do I best describe what ensued in the following…...60-120 seconds? To put it frank, i'm pretty sure even the big green rage machine himself would've told me to take a chill pill. In the brief time, about two seconds, that Tyrak's pounding was put on hold, my fluctuating emotional state started to do that at like a million miles per second. First was the fear. Like, chilling, heart bursting, you're facing down the pits of death, fear. I've never been more frozen in my own terror since ever. I was hyperventilating, crying, gulping hard just to breathe. Getting beat down by Tyrak sent me back to the day before, when Goblin beat me to a pulp and stabbed me through the chest. I didn't let on then, i'm good at burying my emotions, but I was scared $#!+less. Not just for my teammates, but because I just didn't want to die. Just because i'm a superhero…..that doesn't mean I want to die like a fish. Sure, I understand the risks of the job, but if you're gonna tell me that YOU'D be chill with dying before you reach 20, you must be high, or really hate your life. Immediately, like going 150 mph before taking a hard left, fear gave way to the rage. I absolutely hated that feeling of helplessness, loathed it, despised it! My thoughts became a slurred roar of anger and confusion. I didn't care if Tyrak was sad about his $#!+ f*(# friend! He was in my way, he deserved what he got! Cruel I know, but understand I was in a really bad place, my reasoning skills were hacked to the bone at best. White hot rage stirred inside me, or maybe that was G-Force, burning like the core of a planet. All I wanted to do was hurt Tyrak, to break his face and beat him until he was just paste swirling in the sea! Despite my tunnel vision anger, I still had enough concentration left to grow to 60ft, tackle Tyrak to the ground, and….I kinda sorta blacked out a little…...or a lot.

I vaguely remember Gaea and Storm-Lord's voices in my head, but the swirling rage shunted them to the side like gnats. I think Tyrak managed to hit me once across the face, but if it hurt, my adrenaline didn't let me feel it. Between black spots in my memory, I recalled being in my G-Blazer as I pounded Tyrak into the dirt with 100 punches per second. I remember snatches of tree bark and vines...underwater?! Flashes of gold etched themselves into my memory, so the All-Metal was used at some point. I know for a fact I used G-Force like a sonuvabitch; pretty sure I breathed it out of my mouth at some point. The most concrete thing I remember though, was the feeling of crushing Tyrak under my fists, the sickening pleasure of feeling his bones crunch under the force of my blows. Some part of me wanted to stop, deep down something inside me was yelling for me to get a hold of myself, to realize when enough was enough-

"GRANT, F*(#!^& STOOOOOP!" Gaea's voice slammed into my head like a tsunami.

No, seriously, it was like someone dropped an anvil in my head, and shook my like a maracha. I was gonna need a $#!+ ton of Advil for this, but it pulled me out of my rage mode. I almost wished I stayed angry, at least then I wouldn't have to look at my handiwork. Tyrak, the top half of him, was nothing more than a bloody slab of meat, cloth, and gold chainmail. His head was jelly paste, like someone dropped a watermelon from a tower onto a sidewalk. I didn't know if it was possible to grow plants under the ocean; based on the actual tree limbs, bridge cable thick vines, and thorns that could puncture a pickup truck, snaking in and out of what I assumed was Tyrak's chest, it was definitely possible. Whether everything else was done by hand…..I had wolverine claws around my hands made of All-Metal…...let's just leave it at that. Looking what I did was almost enough to make me vomit. Not because I had killed someone, way too late for that moral dilemma, but because of how intimate I had made this. Killing in the heat of battle was quick and faceless, this was a vindictive gorefest of my doing. I-I didn't mean to do this.

"Gaea?" I asked her, my voice on the edge of breaking. "Did-did I-"

"There's no time!" she interrupted me. "Look at the wall!"

I shrunk back down to normal size, and looked at the the huge jagged crevice in the wall where about ten turrets used to be. Residual blue energy was sparking around it, and that wasn't Storm-Lord's lightning. Even worse, of the turrets that were still firing, none of them were shooting lightning. God, no! I went into Blitz Extreme, my chest feeling like there was an iceberg in it, and frantically thought to Gaea.

"What happened?!" I almost screamed to her.

"Attuma took control of the battle, with Namor!" she thought back to me. "While you were brutalizing that poor thing over there, Attuma blasted Namor through the wall; your friend was caught in the blast zone!"

"Is he-"

"No, but he's severely outmatched, he needs your help now!"

As if on cue, Storm-Lord's voice rang in my head.

"GEO-TITAN!" he desperately thought to me. "ATTUMA'S GOT THE STONE, I CAN'T BEAT HIM ALONE, HELP!"

"ON MY WAY, BRO!" I thought back to him.

I took off towards his location as fast as I could. Before you call me out on abandoning my post, just don't. My friend needed my help. That takes priority. Besides, my rage quit deep in the enemy camp had put a huge crater in their forces. Combine that with what I did with my G-Force deterrent, and the heavy duty turret fire from the wall, and this battle was almost totally in our favor. Hell, even then we were still in the clear, because from the looks of it, Sunbird finally came through. Every sea creature, from the piranhaoids to the Leviathans, were experiencing some kind of headache that seemed to roll over the extent of the battle. Every creature that came out of the other side of the pain fought for us. This was extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY sucky for the barbarian looking Atlanteans, who seemed to be impervious to whatever was going on; they quickly became lost in a sea of ravenous animals who had a big appetite. Yup, things were going swimmingly on this side of the battle, now to pay Storm-Lord back for helping me out with Tyrak.

"He has the power of the oceans of the entire world," Gaea helpfully taught to me. "Let me possess you! You'll-"

"No way!" I thought back to her a little meaner than I intended. "Sorry, G, but I can't go through that again."

"But you'll be stronger! If we don't work together you could die!"

"And let your goddess emotions wreck me again? No, no way. We'll do this together, but at arm's length. Nothing personal, it's just my emotions."

"That is personal, Geo-Titan. But fine, i'll help you as much as I can, even if you are intent on getting yourself killed every other hour."

"Thanks. Also, i'm sorry about that whole-"

"Nothing to be sorry about, my champion. You are still as noble and courageous as a young man your age can be. Now show Attuma what happens when dare to strike the allies of Gaea's chosen warrior!"

Had to give it to her, she knew how to give one hell of a pep talk. I flew through the crevice in the wall, spotted Attuma pounding away at Storm-Lord's shield with his trident, like twenty miles away, and torpedoed straight at him. Nobody comes at my friends like that.

(Jason's Perspective)

Y'know, up until I got blasted off of the great wall of Atlantis, I was having a pretty good day. Using that turret was awesome, like being in a VR first person shooter (and I don't even like first person shooters, I suck at them)! I completely lost track of time while using that thing, and you better believe that was number one on my next Christmas wish list! Anyway, in the middle of this epic battle, after blasting down several thousand monsters, not to mention helping Grant do something reckless (cough* and save his life cough*), I really got the short end of the lucky stick. You know that old saying, "no good deed goes unpunished"? Yeah, I got some of that $#!+ first hand. While shooting at monsters and such, the battle between Attuma and Namor started to veer toward the wall, and it wasn't pretty for elf boy. Ok, technically the fight could go either way, Namor wasn't exactly goin' out like a chump, but it was clear Attuma had, and was starting to keep the upper hand. They were beating each other down on him left and right, using Poseidon energy, hard water constructs, and their tridents to brawl like gang rivals, which they kinda were in a way. Still, anything Namor dished out, Attuma dished out twice as hard. Plus there was no mistaking it anymore, Attuma had racked up enough juice to where he was glowing brighter than Namor, meaning he was stronger and good. As Namor gradually lost ground in the fight, I charged up my turret on more time, building up enough power to level two blocks worth of skyscrapers, and waited for the right moment. Granted, the right moment came at Namor's expense, but beggars can't be choosers. After a series of punches, slashes, and blasts, Attuma sidestepped one of Namor's trident jabs, grabbed it, and kicked Namor 20 feet away, before hitting him over the head with a giant water fist. Attuma now had both tridents, meaning he had the Stone of Poseidon in his possession. Sorry, that wasn't dramatic enough, lemme try again.

OH MY F*(#!*% GOD, ATTUMA HAS THE STONE OF POSEIDON! WHAT THE F*(#! HOW?! WHY?! HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?! SERIOUSLY?! REALLY, THO?! THIS IS A THING THAT'S HAPPENING?! F*(# EVERYTHING!

Better? I certainly think so. Let's move on.

For better or worse, I had my shot, and I took it for all it was worth. On the bright side, the pull back of the shot was legendary. Imagine that feeling of suddenly stopping after driving 150 mph in whatever you drive (if you drive), on top of the feeling of getting jolted out of your seat when you're in the back of the school bus and hit a pothole. If you crank that up by 10, you've got the feeling of what it was like to shoot a billion volt Super Kamehameha from one of these turrets. Whether because Attuma wasn't paying attention, or because he was too slow, probably both, he was swallowed by the blast, and by all accounts of logical reasoning should've been atomized. Then again, i'm battling for the fate of the world in an underwater kingdom for an item connected to a mythological god. At this point, logical was no longer a luxury that applied to me. Not even after the blast dissipated, a giant blue energy shield formed in the middle of it, blocking it entirely. I'm not one to brag (most of the time), but I was putting out some serious next level voltage power; Storm and Thor should learn from ME! The fact that my blast was put on hush mode that fast, that effortlessly, was just the beginning of screwed I was. The shield started to lose its form, but simultaneously grew brighter. I didn't even have time to yell for anyone to bail, before the counter blast went off. I activated my Thunder Form for protection, and shot straight up out of my turret, but, and I HATE saying this, I wasn't fast enough to get completely out of the way. No really, as fast as I was at running, my flying left a lot to be desired. Still, I managed to bust out my shield, get behind it, and create a protective barrier around myself before the blast made impact. Let's just say I after today, I really started to empathize with pinballs. The impact of the blast shot me like ten miles back, and was like half a step away from breaking my barrier. I managed to recharge it, just enough to survive becoming a living bowling ball, as I smashed through at least twenty different buildings before coming to a less than graceful stop at the entrance of some kind of temple dedicated to some guy holding a trident (yeah, that was probably Poseidon, but guys holding tridents were so common here, you couldn't be sure). I let my barrier fall, and turned onto my stomach, trying to remember what it was like to see straight. I heard a really loud boom in the distance, but didn't think anything of it until my Speed Sense went off. I barely had time to think "wait, $#!+!", before raising my shield on a reflex. The good news was that my Speed Sense was gonna be just fine. Because that operated on my bio-electric aura, which I learned to extend using electrons in an atmosphere around me, aka my Thunder Sense,I was still straight. By the way, if you think that doesn't add up, a drop of water has ten electrons in it, and I was in a f*(#!^% ocean! Anyway, the projectile, aka Namor, hit the ground just in front of me. Still, this guy got floored with so much energy, you might as well have just dropped a sack of grenades at my feet. The force knocked me backwards into the temple, where i'm petty sure I crashed into (smashed) a priceless Atlantean artifact that had some kind of religious, historical, or cultural significance. I tumbled to the floor, groaning and cussing at everything. A few second later, I felt the ground shake, but I was way too dazed to do anything about it. I heard a loud bellow, like a grizzly bear that learned how to speak, and started cussing more fervently in my head. Seriously guys, why in all f*(#!^$ hell do the big bads always end up finding me?! I'm not even the strongest member of the team! I managed to roll over enough to see Attuma standing over Namor's unconscious body, a golden boot planted firmly on elf boy's chest. He removed the stone out of Namor's trident, and put it in his own. You'd probably wonder why he'd go through the trouble of switching the stone from trident to trident, instead of just taking Namor's, but I got his drift. On one hand, Namor's trident was smaller and slimmer. It had a weird spiral hand grip, and while his trident prongs were sharp, good for both slashing and stabbing, the entire piece was just way too small for someone like Attuma, who was a little taller, and way more bulky. Hell, his trident was about twice as thick as Namor's, had a giant golden shark tooth for the center prong, and unlike the butt of Namor's trident (decorated nicely with a seashell), he had a foot long blade jutting out of the bottom.

"FINALLY!" he roared, as he became accustomed to the power surge. "THE STONE OF THE SEA GOD IS MINE, ATLANTIS IS MINE!

The water reverberated violently as his voice boomed across it, and I had a deep feeling in my gut that this dude was gonna be worse that Venom and Goblin put together. He threw Namor's trident behind him, and pointed his own at the king's chest.

"YOU WERE NEVER WORTHY OF THIS KINGDOM, OF THIS POWER! he continued to smack talk. "DIE, HALF-BREED!"

As he brought his trident own for the kilI, I tapped into Speed Mode, accessed the Power Grid, and created a shield construct about five feet away from Namor's body. I suspected that Attuma would be like Grant level strong (meaning I was so totally dead), so I put everything I had into making that construct as durable as possible. Even then, the trident stabbed through my shield like it was made of tissue paper! Seriously, what the hell?! With as much concentration as I was putting into that shield, it would be able to stand up against a barrage of missiles (i'm pretty sure), how in the name of my X50 grandfather could this guy smash through it so easy? You know what? It doesn't matter, I had an elf to save. I activated my Thunder Form, and flew right over Namor, blocking Attuma's trident with my Sky Shield. The impact should've crushed me, but the way my shield was set up, literally all of the momentum and power of the stab was absorbed into it (thank God for Vibranium). Oh, there was a huge BRAAAAAM sound, like someone hitting a gong, not to mention a shock wave around me that blew the temple apart (I put up a barrier around me and Namor, we were fine). I made my right arm vibrate super fast (Vibration Punch time, baby!), deflected Attuma's trident away with my shield, and came up with a right cross to the side of his face. The impact of the blow created a shock wave so strong, it could be heard from five miles away. A crater about five feet deep in the ground was a testament to how strong the punch was. Attuma. Didn't. Move. Oh, I managed to turn his face a little, but considering the fact that a punch like that could demolish a charter bus, it was clear that Attuma straight up ate that punch with no problem at all. He growled, and shot at me with eye beams (everyone loves the eye beams). I ducked under my shield, and reflected the blast back at him, launching him a good ten feet away. I pumped my shield with some voltage, and pursued. If anyone needed as little momentum as possible, it was this guy.

Attuma already got his balance back by the time I had caught up, and took a slash at me with his trident. I side flipped over it, and threw my shield at his head while I was still upside down (take that Captain America!). Even though a throw like that could slice a titanium vault in half, I just ended up annoying Attuma, who did little more than flinch when the shield hit his head. I landed just in time to duck under another one of his trident slashes, and summoned my Thunder Shields (the lightning enhancers, haven't used them in a while, btw, official). Didn't think i'd need these anymore, but since when have things every turned out the way I think they will? Half a second after I summoned my shields, my entire body was lost in the HUGE voltage jump. Yeah, I didn't think about it (face palm for myself), but I was in my Thunder Form; my shields were drinking and amplifying that $!+ up! If Attuma wasn't already two feet in front of me, I wouldn't even be able to see him under this curtain of lightning. Before he could make a move, I unleashed my X10 Super Ultra Final Flash, sending Attuma rocketing through at least three temples, and one of those transportation tubes. Yeah, these were gonna be used a lot. On a downside though, i'm pretty sure there were at least a good amount of civilians in the area. From what I was picking up with my Thunder Sense, most of them were soldiers, but their were lots of regular Atlanteans, scared families who were doing their best to hide from the war, to worry about. Again, Attuma ended up in a pretty unpolulated area, but I still had to be super careful not to bring the fight too close to the people.

I put my Thunder Shields away, and flew after Attuma as fast as I could, following a pretty easy trail of destruction to find him. A super annoying thing about him, was the fact that he always seemed to land on his feet (like an annoying cat). He pointed his trident at me, and shot out a ray of Poseidon energy. I dodged it easy, and pelted the sucker with a Phantom Bolt to his side. Again, it was one of those things where Attuma was barely moved, shrugging the bolt of like a punch from a ten year old. I upped the ante, and slammed a giant Thunder Fist into him, which definitely got the ball rolling a bit. While he was off-balance, I knocked him back to the ground with a Final Flash, and started to rain constructs after constructs on top of him. It start with a falling anchor, then a yacht, a whole bunch of hammerhead sharks, and anything sea related I could come up with. I kept that barrage up for maybe 15 seconds, enjoying the feeling of winning while I could. That was put on hush mode when a huge explosive wave blew up out of nowhere (interrupting my giant seal construct), knocking away like a fly. Only my Thunde Form kept me from getting vaporized. Hell, I got away knocked so hard, I flew back at least a good mile and a half, and didn't stop until I hit something solid. It wasn't a building or anything, that would be too easy, although i'd end up wishing it was. Instead, I found myself trapped in a giant hard water hand construct that was trying to squeeze me into jelly! My armor was taking all of the force, but I quickly reactivated my Thunder Form (the blast wave knocked me out of it), and put all of my concentration into creating a body shield around myself. Then came the onslaught.

Yeah, apparently Attuma didn't like being bombarded with lightning constructs (don't know why he wouldn't, they were sea themed), and decided to pay me back in spades. The first that I could remember seeing was a giant spear construct flying into me. My Speed Sense went off as it almost always does, but even then, there was little I could do stop the impact. I tried blocking it with a shield construct, but again, constructs, defensive or offensive, did absolutely jack $#!+ against Attuma. The trident shattered it like glass, and I had only enough time to put all that wasted effort back into hardening my body shield as much as I could before the spear hit me in the chest. I got bullet resistance pretty early on in this superhero gig, and i've never been shot before, but i'm pretty sure this is what it felt like to you normal people out there. Even with the body shield, it felt like a body took a sledgehammer to my chest at full force. I inhaled fast, upsetting the pain even more, and made a noise that I usually reserve for taking extreme $#!+$ (cafeteria pizza will do that to ya). That was only the beginning though, and not even the worst of it. I kept my eyes closed for all of it (you try keeping your eyes open when someone's trying to cut you open), but my Thunder Sense kept me up to date. I counted five tridents, ten swords, five swordfish, at least twenty shark teeth, and twice as many arrows. Not in that order exactly, but whatever. On top of that, Atuma was barraging me with blasts of Poseidon energy, like he had a f*(#1^% gatling gun…..which felt strange. Don't get me wrong, it still hurt like a mother, but in that oddly good kinda way, like when you swallow a lump of food that you didn't exactly chew enough (mom always tells me to chew like ten times before I swallow, but that takes too long), or finally using the bathroom after you've been holding it in forever. You can insert whatever weird good pain you want, but that's what the Poseidon energy blasts felt like to me. If getting burned alive could feel kinda good, this would be that. Anyway, Attuma kept up the barrage up for a little while longer, before I realized how stupid I was being.

Phase through it, dumbass! How could I forget that?! The way the water constructs were set up, their molecules were so compacted together (without being frozen), that they resembled solid objects! I went into SMS, and started vibrating as fast as I could. Ok, so it wasn't exactly like phasing through a solid wall, so much as it was like phasing through a thick layer of syrup. Still, I made it out ok; even got to turn Attuma's own gimmick against him. At the time, three sword constructs were making their way to my chest. I created a giant hand construct, willed it to grab the swords in one swoop, and supercharge them before throwing them back at Attuma. There was a huge boom, followed by a crackling/zap noises…...only for me to find out that attack was useless as hell. In a small crater, Attuma was sitting comfortably behind a barrier, although he looked absolutely pissed.

"INSOLENT BOY!" he roared at me, before converting his barrier into a power blast, big enough to swallow a bus.

I popped my Thunder Shields out, let them amplify the voltage of my Thunder Form, and shot another X10 Super Ultra Final Flash in response. The collision was just as DBZ-like as you'd expect it to be, our respective power blasts struggling for the win. My chances of winning were as about as even as Attuma's for maybe three seconds; then I got a small taste of just how outmatched I really was in this fight. For any of you that have ever pushed a car when it's in neutral, imagine how impossibly hard that would be if the car was going downhill at 100 mph. Not the best analogy, I know, but it's all I got. In half a second, the battle went from "I can probably do this", to "OMFG THERE'S NO WAY I CAN DO THIS!" I'm pretty sure this is what it's like to push against a tidal wave, cuz my blast was steamrolled so fast, it was actually laughable. My Speed Sense didn't even have time to go off; I tasted a mouthful of Poseidon Energy. My Thunder Form kept me from getting incinerated, but i'll be damned if it was easy to keep it up. Hell, to add insult to certain death, when my Speed Sense did go off, it was because Attuma had constructed a giant shark, made of water, to chew me to Jason bits. I quickly put up a barrier around myself, just in time to not get chomped in half. Rather than keep the shark construct gnawing at my bubble shield (I am not a chew toy!), Attuma broke it down, and propelled me down to him with a wicked fast water current. He hefted his trident like he was going for a Grand Slam, and if experience had taught me anything, this barrier wouldn't hold at all against a full on swing like that. I timed the impact just right, and as Attuma took a swing, I dropped my barrier, and summoned my Sky Shield, stopping the impact cold. Just like my Thunder Shields, the Sky Shield drank in the voltage, becoming more of a lightning frisbee. Attuma blasted at me again (shows how smart he was), and promptly got sat on his ass when his blast bounced back at him. I threw my shield at him and moved my arm back and forth once it hit him in the face; keeping the shield hitting him from different angles. Every time the shield made impact, I made the lightning around it discharge in violent bursts, keeping him slightly off-balance. Still, I was doing little more than annoying him, and once my shield started running low on energy, I summoned it back, and blasted at Attuma with my free hand. I'll always appreciate how strong my lightning is when i'm in my Thunder Form, cuz with one hand and now that I was really trying, I released on hell of a Final Flash (strong enough to put down ten tanks in a row)! Attuma got trucked 200 meters away, and after slamming into the dirt, I kept him under fire as best as I could. First, I recycled the blast energy into a giant sledgehammer construct, and kept it a pounding on top of Attuma's body. Next, I showered him with about thirty phantom bolts from every angle; the dude was on his way to becoming the next energizer bunny. I managed to keep that up for...let's be generous and say it was a full 10 seconds. After that, all underwater hell had its way with me.

It was subtle at first, just the water around me in a 300 ft radius swirling around me with absolutely no resemblance to a whirlwind at all, and you see where this is going, don't you? In less than a second, the waters were swirling around me at 300 mph, and I quickly put myself in another barrier. I was going for a ride.

In some way, I guess this was Karma coming back around. I mean, right before I killed Goblin, I put him in the whirlwind merry go round, so I guess it was fitting that the same happened to me (or my life kinda sucks, that could also be a viable option). As I got tossed around like a sock in a washing machine, bolts of Poseidon Energy started crackling through the whirlpool, you know, cuz everyone just has to steal the lightning gimmick now. The bolts slammed against my barrier with the force of….not enough? This isn't me being cocky or arrogant; for some reason, Attuma was dialing back his power. Did he not have complete control over the stone, was his grip over it weakening? A hard water killer whale construct slamming into my barrier with the force of a charging battle van said otherwise. That pattern kept up for at least a full minute. Poseidon Energy bolts kept slamming into my barrier like it was a lightning rod, on top of getting random predator sea creature construct trying to gnaw it open (so many different types of sharks, sea serpents, stingrays, eels, etc.). Still, even with my barrier getting slammed ten times a second, it still held up, even if it was just barely. What was this guy's deal? Not that I wanted to die, but this was getting straight up ridiculous.

"DO YOU SEE NOW, SURFACE DWELLER?!" Attuma's voice echoed through the water. "THIS POWER WAS NEVER MEANT FOR THAT CUR, NAMOR, AND IT SURE AS HADES ISN'T SOMETHING YOU CAN HOPE TO OVERCOME!"

I sensed him walk straight through the whirlwind, and hover in the center, looking at me hopelessly trapped in my lightning bubble. Now I knew why he was holding back, and I f*(#!^% hated him for it! Seriously, what is it with bad guys a their constant need to dick measure all the damn time? It wasn't enough for them to simply be the most powerful, or have world domination, or whatever, they always had to put on a show. Attuma was clearly no different, and decided to toy with me a little more to boost his self esteem (did he just not get enough love growing up?). He swung his trident, and a P.E. (Poseidon Energy) bolt struck and shattered my barrier. The water started to swirl faster, keeping my concentration away from creating another barrier around myself. Luckily, I was able to keep my Thunder Form, thus my body shield, intact. Good thing, because Attuma was intent on putting it to the test. P.E. bolts stuck me from all angles, hitting with the impact of cannon shots, but again, having that underlying tone of an intense burning, but somehow feel good sensation (like that burn you sometimes get when you drink a can of Sprite or something fizzy, I can't be the only one who notices that). On top of that, Attuma barraged me with several hard water constructs (fists, claws, spears, etc).

"IT WAS FORETOLD IN THE ATLANTEAN CHRONICLES THAT I WOULD RULE THIS NATION!" he roared in victory. "YET NEVER IN MY WILDEST DREAMS DID I EVER IMAGINE THAT I WOULD BE THE MASTER OF THE ENTIRE SEA ITSELF!"

Anger started to boil inside me. Forget doing the right thing, I just wanted Attuma senseless. I hated being at his mercy, I hated him celebrating a victory he didn't get yet, and above all, I hated getting smacked around! His constructs and energy bolts nailed me left and right for a few more seconds before Attuma decided that he was done playing with me. Water shackles held me still amidst the swirling water, and in the middle of the whirpool, a giant sword (this thing could skewer a gas truck like it was an ordurb), and charged it with Poseidon Energy.

"THE VERY CONCEPT OF A MANGY LIGHTNING WIELDING SURFACE DWELLER DENYING ME MY RIGHT TO RULE?!" he continued. "LAUGHABLE! A POINTLESS DEATH FOR A POINTLESS BATTLE!

He willed the sword to fly at me, and I started vibrating super fast. The way my shackles were set up, I wouldn't be able to avoid the sword, but thank God I could make it go through me in a non-stabby way. Normally, this would be nothing, just another projectile to phase through, but the P.E. added a different flavor to this construct. Besides the fact that I had to keep up the right speed of vibration for about 10 seconds straight (longer than I was used to), the P.E. burned through literally every molecule of my being! I screamed in….agony? Triumph? Pleasure? Still not really sure where I stood on this type of energy. It wasn't toxic for me, like the Ares and Hades energy, but it still a stretch to say I could trust it. As was such, this thing was all in my body now, I could feel it, and just had to hope it wouldn't have me coughing up blood when this was all over. Anyway, after the blade had "safely" gone through me, I took the fight to Attuma again (took me long enough). While I was still vibrating, I activated a surge of lightning around myself, and in a process similar to what I do when I go into my Storm-Form, I became a living lightning surge. I'll call it Thunder Form 2. In this form, i'm pretty sure I had the same powers I had in my Storm-Form, except for the fact that I was all lightning, and felt like I was one with a massage chair. I looked down at Attuma's stupid face, imagined myself becoming a Mega Lightning Strike on top of him, and OH MY GOD, WHAT A RUSH! In like a millisecond, I went from zero to Mach 2. My lightning form expanded to 10X its size, and I crashed into Attuma with the force of a….well, lightning bolt. Stone of Poseidon or not, taking a lightning bolt strong enough to level skyscrapers will put anyone on their asses; Attuma was no exception. I changed my form into a 10 ft gorilla, and started to punch the $#!+ out of him, actually giving off an authentic roar as I hulked out (I really resented that whole whirlpool thing if you couldn't tell). Despite my huge form, lightning isn't exactly known for being slow, and neither was I. SUV sized fists smashed Attuma into the silt 100 times a second, each impact equal to the force of a car bomb. I didn't give Attuma an inch; no time to create constructs or energy blasts when you're getting gorilla stomped. Still, I didn't account for Attuma's new speed and strength. After like 30 seconds of facing the wrath of Mighty Joe, Attuma somehow found the speed (God knows he already had the strength) to block one of my punches, and blast a P.E. bolt through my face.

Ok, this is where things get a little tricky. Based off of the fact that I got my punch blocked, I was clearly some form of a solid being in Thunder Form 2. Still, that wasn't the complete case. When I say that the blast went through my face, I mean it shot a point blank hole about the size of a tire through my gorilla form's face. Still, if I was supposed to feel anything, specifically pain, that was a total misfire. I guess, if I wanted to be generous, I could say that it felt like a blast of wind, but….no. Hell, the blast didn't even seem to have the effect it would've, if I were in my Storm-Form (energy blasts didn't damage the integrity of Thunder Form 2). Attuma might as well have shot at the open water for all the good it would do him. Regardless, it's the thought that counts, and I decided to give him a gift for effort.

I deconstructed my gorilla form, and formed into a tesla sphere around Attuma, violently blasting him with lightning from every direction as I lifted him higher and higher above ground. I zapped him about 30 times a second (so trippy to say that when you're the actual lightning), every bolt having 10,000 volts of juice behind them. Attuma tried desperately to get free, blasting at me from the inside out, but to no success. Nope, for the next 2 minutes, his vocabulary consisted of ZAP, CRACK, SKRAT, and POP (actually he was yelling something in Atlantean that i'm pretty sure would make an old lady faint)!

For a while, it seemed like all I had to do was play this out and bleed Attuma dry…...then Attuma found a way to kill the combo. It was so simple, I was actually dumbfounded he didn't try it sooner; all he had to do was bust out with a wave of water. Granted, it just got me off of him for a moment, and did no damage to my ability to maintain this form. Instead, Attuma just traded a bad situation for a worse one. I made myself grow and expand, transitioning from a small collection of lightning, to an almost uncontrollable surge, strong enough to wreck Times Square. I made sure to contain the voltage as I grew; again, collateral damage is a thing we wanted to avoid. This time, no amount of water Attuma was throwing out could stop the growing storm that was my…..uh, whatever, point is I turned into a huge ass lightning tornado (leave the hyperbolics to my teammates).

No matter how bad Attuma thought his little whirlpool was, I was far worse. While it probably took him effort to make constructs/blast energy, I had no such troubles. I started out slow, a few hundred lightning bolts striking him from all directions every second. Each bolt had the striking force of a missile, and while i'm not sure I was actually hurting him (that body shield wouldn't quit), at the very least I was keeping Attuma off-balance. After getting used to the feeling of being a tornado, I started to throw a few constructs at Attuma. Nothing fancy at first, just a couple of giant fists, swords, hammers, and a few missile constructs. Then I found out, "holy $#!+, i'm actually really good at this!", and went above and beyond with the constructs. I'm talking gatling guns, elephants, lions, Ben 10 aliens, Power Rangers, hell, out of respect I threw in Luke Cage, Nightcrawler, and Storm. These weren't one at a time either; every second there were at least twenty different constructs, each about the size of a two story house, hitting discount underwater Beast with enough force to probably make even Grant buckle (I said probably). That's not to say Attuma didn't have a fighting chance. While he was off-balance most of the time, there were moments when he'd get his footing back (if you can get your footing underwater), and would fight back with some constructs of his own. For example, after beating on him left and right with ten Fourarms constructs, the guy managed to create an energy charged barrier of water around himself, and made one hell of a shock wave, laying waste to all of them. I immediately tried putting the pressure back on him, creating two huge schools of Great White Sharks, and pouring on the lightning strikes, but again, Attuma proved he wasn't always as dumb as he usually was. In addition to his body shield, he created a full body cast of water around himself, essentially giving himself a second layer of protection. My lightning strikes were starting to hit with half the force they usually would, and that was problematic to say the least. Attuma started to wreck my shark constructs, blasting them away with P.E., and slicing them in half with huge cleaver constructs.I tried the same things with herds of rhinos, elephants, swordfish, I even tried shackling him down with lightning cuffs, but this guy was way stronger than anything I was able to dish out (not to mention probably extremely pissed off). Hell, when I finally did manage to get the momentum back, it took a total of 300 lightning strikes, 50 firing tank constructs, and five whole Power Ranger teams (Wild Force, Ninja Storm, S.P.D, Mystic Force, and Jungle Fury). All that, just to get the momentum back for a total of ten seconds, before Attuma gave me the finger for it.

Again, either Attuma was not as dumb as he looked, or was really good at adapting (probably a little of both), because what he pulled off next was nothing short of tactical. Not genius, but competence to say the least. A huge burst of water, a geyser the size of a skyscraper huge, shot up, and then expanded so fast and hard, it almost ripped apart my lightning tornado form. Attuma kept the pressure on, fighting tooth n' nail against my form, which was now nothing more than a glorified dam. Remember, there were still civilians in the area, and while I may not exactly identify as a superhero (bull$#!+, I know), civilian casualties was high on my list of no no's. If I let this barrier fall, the blast wave would wreck everything within a ten mile radius at minimum. I'm not saying Attuma magically knew I cared about loss of life, it's possible he just came up with a clever way of escape, but if he was using this to his advantage, to keep me on defense, i'd have to give him a slow clap for clever innovation. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, I was kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place now. Whether it was the time limit for how long I could keep my atoms this widespread, or the strain of trying to keep Attuma's shock wave from getting out, I was starting to feel that familiar pain of molecules being ripped away. I had no desire to almost die again (you can tell by the safe environments I always play in), and while I still refused to just let my form down and destroy people and property, I found a way to have the best of both. See, while Attuma's plan of trying to push me apart from the inside out was pretty good, in doing so, he left himself open. The water was pushing violently against my tornado form, but there was a space right above him that had no type of water resistance pushing out at all; a space big enough for a Zeus Cannon to come down and…. say I dunno….f*(# $#!+ up?

It wasn't exactly the textbook definition of easy, I had to (in the span of two seconds) calculate the integrity of my form, siphon off as much as energy as I could without endangering it of the vortex giving way to soon, and still find a way to give the cannon the umph it needed to put Attuma down for the count. This is where the Power Grid came in real handy. While I couldn't overcharge what little use of voltage I could spare, I could use the Power Grid to enhance said voltage, and you'd better believe I milked that for all it was worth. In half a second, I had absorbed enough energy to power Times Square five times over. I willed all of that energy to materialize a mile up above myself and Attuma (my God, how was I fine with actually being a lightning tornado?), and made like thirty percent of my being (along with 805 megawatts of power), come down in the most epic Zeus cannon ever! That is not an exaggeration even in the slightest. I hit Attuma so hard, so fast, we hit the ground in a fraction of a second, and kept tunneling through miles of solid rock. I hope I didn't end up damaging the integrity of the platform (it had a good quarter mile of buildings on it), but in retrospect, the Atlanteans really needed to reevaluate their architectural choices. As we tunneled clean through the rocky platform, I willed my body back together, and socked Attuma across the face with a lightning charged Vibration Punch. Maybe it was the adrenaline talking, but I think I was getting a bit stronger somehow. Before, all a punch (especially my strongest) could do was turn Attuma's head, now I heard a distinct "omph" escape his lips. While he was distracted, I summoned my sword, changed it to spear mode, and covered it in a wreath of electricity. I took a swing at Attuma's chest, but the blue bastard was fast, and quickly brought his trident around for a block. My spear hit Attuma's trident right at the base of the head, making contact with the slot that had the stone in it. Based on the huge ripple that came of the clash, it was still very clear he had the strength advantage. Again, if not for the Vibranium (and I guess Adamantium), my face would've been cleaved right off. Besides creating a disturbing sound (like a high pitched whine mixed with the sound of grinding metal), hitting the trident with my spear created some sort of violent feedback. The stone surged in a huge blaze of P.E. dousing me like a fire hose for each second our spears were clashing against each other. Like always, contact with P.E. felt good in a bad way. In small bursts it was ok; prolonged exposure was like being in an acid bath. I activated my Thunder Form, which more or less dampened the feeling of the P.E., vibrated my left leg, and punted Attuma as far away as I could. Granted, that was only about five or six feet away, but it made me feel good about myself. I was starting to think that I had an actual chance in this fight, that I could do to Attuma what I did to Goblin. The next few moments of my life would be the biggest wake up call i've ever had; period.

Attuma clocked me hard in the everywhere with a P.E. charged water fist construct, big enough to smash a high school football field. It felt like a skyscraper had rammed into me. On top of getting knocked away at the speed of a bullet, my Thunder Form was hit so hard, it went out like a light. From what my senses were telling me, I was maybe half a second from slamming into the bottom of the rocky platform of one of Atlantis' city parts. At the speed I was going at, i'm pretty sure that would do me in, even with the armor. I didn't have the time (or skill), to alter my trajectory, so I started phasing like a mother f*(#$ ! As I phased through miles upon miles of solid rock, I prayed to whoever would listen that i'd have enough momentum to make it back to the surface. I was still recovering from my most recent use of molecule expansion, if I stopped in the middle of this thing, there was no way i'd have the strength to keep phasing long enough to find a way out. Luckily, Attuma's punch shot me upwards with momentum to spare, and I was able to drop the phasing thing….just in time to almost get killed again. Yeah, my Speed Sense went off like a hurricane, and I managed to twist (I was in an upside down, facing the wrong way position) around, take notice of the golden trident about to hit me like I was a baseball, and summoned my Sky Shield to save me. The impact of the blow sent my soaring away like a comet, and I count maybe four seconds before Attuma caught up for another strike, this time, sending me plummeting at twice the speed into another landmass. I managed to flip, hit the ground shield first, and roll away less than gracefully through some kind of underwater marketplace. I ended up getting separated from my shield, which was less than optimal, considering Attuma was still hot on my tail. I sensed him coming at me from a downwards angle, waited for the right moment, and blindsided him by dropping a safe construct right on top of his head, sending him slamming into the dirt just in front of me. I activated my Thunder Form again, backed up as far as I could in one leap (about 20ft), popped out my Thunder Shields, and let Attuma have another taste of a full on X10 Super Ultra Final Flash (never gets old). Before you call foul, just don't. Like I said, collateral was something I was always taking into account. While there definitely were a lot more people in this area than last time (thanks Attuma), i'll be damned if i'll use that as an excuse to justify carelessness. As the blast engulfed Attuma, I made sure to control it, and make it go up in an arc. It was a close call for sure (I almost atomized a couple of decorative coral shops), but through mad crazy willpower, I managed to not destroy any lives or livelihoods...i'm pretty sure. Now if I could just translate that effort to actual success, i'd be golden.

Seriously though, Attuma basically existed to tell me "no matter how hard you try, it won't be enough". Despite getting blasted with at least 200 megawatts of power, Attuma quite literally powered through it (he soared through the blast like a scissor through paper), and kicked me in the gut so fast, even my Speed Sense didn't go off. The wind (or water), was knocked right out of me as I careened into the ground about twenty feet away. I was of course knocked right out of Thunder Form (at this point why did I even bother?), and got to have the pleasant view of Attuma leaping at me Spartan style, his trident primed for a landing stab. Despite the fact that he was crazy fast now (the effects of the stone must've really been kicking in now), he ended up tasting another mouthful of lightning; God, I was really starting to love these Thunder Shields! While all that did was make Attuma angry, it gave me just enough time to get back to my feet. He hefted his trident and torpedoed at me, roaring some kind of Atlantean battle cry. At the speed he was coming in, I couldn't peg him with a construct or Phantom bolt, not to mention the fact that I didn't have the strength to use his momentum against him like I wanted to. Instead, I waited until he was in too close, and popped out the Sky Shield. Attuma hit me with the force of a missile, but gold old fashioned Vibranium made it nothing (#VibraniumFTW). Also, because he had basically smashed into a wall with a fancy stick, Attuma lurched forwards, his grip on the trident almost non-existent, and his face almost begging to be smashed in. I gripped my shield with my left arm, popped out a Thunder Shield on my right arm, and covered that arm in voltage. As I bought my fit up for an uppercut, I made sure to vibrate my arm, and release the blast at the exact same time my fist made contact with the side of Attuma's head, adding layers upon layers of extra muscle to the punch. Attuma shot up like a volcano in a doomsday movie, and while i'm sure he'd be up and at em' in a little bit, I tried my damndest to stop it from happening.

I grabbed Attuma' trident, and tried to take the stone out of it for a quick half second. Yeah...no good. For one, the stone was locked in way too tight; no empty space to get any leverage to pry it from. Also, i'm not gonna lie, I REALLY wanted to get this damn trident out of my hands! Even if it wasn't a full second, the sensation I got from holding it, the residual energy from the stone, was so painful/invigorating, I couldn't keep hold of it without wanting to yell out. If I held this for any longer, I was afraid i'd either burn up, or not want to let go (or both). I created a construct that was a mix of a crossbow and an Atlantean turret (God, I loved those those things), and placed the trident in the launching slot. After giving it a jump of voltage, I shot it at Attuma for all it was worth. The idea was simple...ish. I assumed Attuma's trident and armor were made of the same material. If the stone enhanced the metal, and now that it was out of his grasp, the trident would impale him with no problem.

And now to address the elephant in the room. Look, I don't wanna kill, and I don't like the idea of killing, but i've accepted the idea that it was a possibility since Delta Force's first mission. Hell (and take this with bags of salt), this is coming from someone who thinks people like The Punisher are actually on to something. Not in the sense that everyone who commits crimes should be put down all the time, but in the sense that some cases are extreme enough to justify more permanent methods of putting down threats. Think of it, how many widows, orphans, and broken families would be left in the aftermath of Attuma's onslaught? You think he gave a damn? You think he'd lose any sleep over it? If the answer to those questions is no, then how much did the world really need men like him? To quote a passage from the Bible (see, Mom? I read it…..sometimes), those that live by the sword, die by the sword. From what I gather, Attuma lived by a pretty damn big sword. Granted, with the trail of black eyes and bruises i've left over the years, I was hardly one to talk, but at least my shortcomings were from self defense. I didn't go looking for trouble, I just sort of pull trouble in naturally. I didn't start the fights (mostly), I finished them. Hell, you wanna discard all the ideological bull$#!+? Here's the bottom line, either I put him down, or he puts me down. No matter which way you spin this, no matter how much you think killing him makes me just as bad, the simple fact of that matter is there was no other way of ending this; at least not easily. Sorry to break it to you, but the only option I had for taking down Attuma, was to finish him. I was just barely strong enough to beat Goblin, Attuma proved to be much more of a challenge.

Anyway, the trident hit an unsuspecting Attuma right in the chest...and did absolutely nothing! Figures. I didn't count for the body shield holding up. I figured the trident was the majority of the source of his power, that without it, there was no body shield. That didn't exactly go through the way I thought it would, and all I did was succeed in pissing Attuma off even more, while simultaneously giving him back his shiny toy. He grabbed his trident, and the water around him started to swirl like crazy. I can only imagine this is how Goblin felt when I was literally a tornado over him. Endless gallons of water swirled half a mile up, P.E. flashing and surging through it. With enough water swirling violently above you to crush a small town, you can come to realize just how monumentally screwed you are. When that happens, you really start getting creative with ways to save your butt. I created a huge ball of electricity, and shot it out. Midway to Attuma, I made the ball burst and scatter, spreading the voltage out as thin as I could, about a mile in distance. I shaped the voltage into letters, and spelled out something for big blue.

I BET YOU TOO SCARED TO FIGHT UP CLOSE!

I knew his type. Attuma was just another loudmouth trying to compensate for sucking at life. Guys like him could be riled up so easily, it was almost laughable; the kind of guy who'd throw the first punch because he heard a 6th grade "yo mamma" joke; if I could use that to stay alive, good. Of course, because loudmouth bad guys are so predictable, the water around Attuma started to swirl a great deal slower; I had gotten his attention, now to reel him in. I rearranged the letters.

TRUE WARRIORS DON'T HIDE BEHIND THE WATER! IS THE GREAT CONQUEROR OF ATLANTIS SCARED?!

The water wasn't even moving anymore, and using my enhanced vision, I could see that Attuma was shaking with rage. One more taunt oughta do it.

COME DOWN AND FIGHT! UNLESS YOU NOTHIN' BUT A…..

Attuma didn't even wait for me to finish that sentence. Good thing, Mom would kill me if she ever found out what I was planning to spell out. So yeah, good job me. I had successfully managed to make an unstoppable bull with the power of a god charge me, his head probably roaring "kill Jason!". Do I even need to spell out how much that plan backfired? Long story short, he came in fast, hard, and brutal! He didn't say anything as he slashed hacked, and blasted at me, but he sure as hell yelled a lot. I assumed that he would be in too much of a frenzy to fight straight, which didn't pan out at all. First off, I had to stay in my Thunder Form just to keep up, and it's not like I was really all that good with flying. Attuma battered away at me with his trident, forcing me on the almost permanent defense with my shield. Oh, I was able to get off some Final Flashes, even got in a good boxing glove construct to his face, but Attuma could take anything I threw at him, and gave back 5X as hard. Attuma battered away at my shield, never giving me a moment where I wasn't desperately trying to get some distance between us. For an angry war crazed loon, dude was a damn good with that trident. Every time he struck, he'd change momentum, and either try for a stab or slash elsewhere. For example, if I blocked high, he'd reverse his slash and come for a stab to my gut. When that didn't work, he grabbed my shield, and tried to pry it (and my arm) away from me. I got him hard in the chest with a Vibration Kick, slammed my shield across his face, and was jerked by the back of my neck into Speed Sense. Directly behind me, four hard jagged P.E. charged spearheads were about to get real friendly with my back. In response, I pulled out my Thunder Shields (again), backflipped over the Cadillac sized projectiles, and let loose another X10 Super Ultra Final Flash as they rammed into Attuma's chest, and head. Even if he had a barrier that could stand up to a platoon of tanks, i'm pretty sure Attuma felt that on some level, cuz he went soaring backwards at 150 mph. Before he could fire up the brain cells to recover, I tapped into the Power Grid, charged up the atoms everywhere, and hit Attuma in the back with a Zeus Cannon, sending him soaring back to me. I made another Zeus Cannon shot him from the bottom, then another from a downwards 140 degree angle, and another coming from the bottom again, and it kept going, and going, and going. I managed to keep this up for a total of 20 consecutive blasts, before I simply couldn't keep it up anymore. It's way different when you summon Zeus Cannons once in a while. When you pile them on top of each other, it feels like trying to lift a truck with your head, while a safe is lodged in your chest. My vision was swirling so bad, I had to shut off my senses, and refocus. I could still see my way around (Thunder Sense is everything), so believe me when I say Attuma was not catching me off guard anytime soon. He created a multitude of P.E. charged blade constructs around me, and despite being in mortal danger, I had to give it up for his placement choices. In every conceivable direction, hundreds upon hundreds of constructs were on their way to give me a really brutal acupuncture (I still don't get the appeal of that). There was no super easy way out of it, the constructs were piled on top of each other so thick, I couldn't dodge a thing. Plus, there was no way I could create a shield construct strong enough to block even a third of them, let alone the full set. Again, if Attuma managed to put this all together, I hard to at least give him some credit. Still, my phasing hadn't let me down let, now to really put it to the test. I kept my shield up, flew straight at Attuma, and started vibrating as fast as I could. The good thing was that with the shield blocking the straight away, I didn't have to take all of the P.E. charged swords. Oh I still took a good handful (107 precisely), but it only felt slightly above overdosing on 30 gallons of adrenaline and acid, so that made it ok. Once getting in range, I slammed Attuma in the face with a flying shield bash, threw it behind me, and before he could stop me, hit him point blank in the face with what had to be at least the 5th X10 Super Ultra Final Flash. As he careened into the ground, I called my shield back to me, and planted a Vibration Kick in Attuma's chest to help him in his journey back to the earth. I kept up the momentum by creating waves after waves of constructs (mostly Power Ranger, Ben 10, and WWE wrestler themed) to pummel Attuma as much as I could, while circling around him and a mix of ranged and melee attacks to keep him off balance. Granted, with this guy, my constructs were about as sturdy pool noodles, but they did the things they needed to do before Attuma smashed them. A Mystic Ranger would get a slash off before Attuma blasted it to bits, Fourarms would slam Attuma into the ground and wail on him for a few seconds before getting ripped and half, and Shawn Michaels got in a Sweet Chin Music to Attuma's jaw, before getting slashed apart. While the constructs were doing the heavy lifting for me, i'd get off some Vibration Punches and Kicks in where I could, and blocked all of Attuma's trident attacks with my shield, before conjuring up another wave of battle constructs to help cover my retreat.

"STOP HIDING, BOY!" Attuma yelled at me as I continued my Guerilla Warfare strategy. "FACE ME IN BATTLE LIKE A WARRIOR!"

"Not likely, Blue Man Group!" I yelled at him as I threw my shield at the back of his head. "I'm fine with this, thanks very much!"

Attuma whirled around and shot at me with a huge ray of Poseidon Energy. I ducked under it, and created a falling metro train construct to slam into him. I recycled the voltage, created a giant jackhammer construct, and did my best to drill him out of existence. I managed to keep it up for a good 10 seconds, mostly because I kept creating chain constructs to try and keep Attuma from breaking out, I even sacrificed my construct legion to focus more on keeping Attuma down for as long as possible. Still, not only did I fail, I failed so spectacularly bad, it made me wonder why I even try. Out of the five foot crater I drilled Attuma into, a huge ray of Poseidon Energy shot up, shattering my jackhammer construct. In the span of half a second, Attuma's fist was an inch of my face. My Speed Sense literally kicked in just in time for me to keep my head. Also, Attuma was covered in so much P.E. he was basically a neon stick; a violent, blood thirsty neon stick that made me both hyper and nauseous just my being near him.

I dodged the punch, but had to hightail it backwards to dodge a wide slash to my midsection. I called my shield back, making it slam into the back of Attuma's head, and side flipped over him to catch it. He came around with high stab, but only found a lightning charged Sky Shield to greet it. I couldn't get cocky though, cuz a blast of water floored me quick. Attuma pounded at me like a tiger, eager to keep up the slicing and dicing. I managed to get to my feet, my Thunder Form still intact, but again, all I could do was block, cover, and try not to scream. Yeah, Attuma was on a warpath, slashing and stabbing relentlessly at any opening he could get. In the span of two seconds, I had to block ten stabs to my legs, five slashes to my upper body, not to mention dodge/phase through so many shark constructs. I couldn't find the time to access the Power Grid, or blast Attuma with some lightning, cuz all of my concentration was solely on not getting skewered. Oh, and did I mention the part where I felt like I was being burned alive? Yeah, this fight was so over saturated with Poseidon Energy, it was all I could do just to keep myself from passing out from either pain or adrenaline. Hell, when it came to not getting skewered, I wasn't even all that good at that! Through all the slashing, blocking, and yelling, Attuma managed to divert my guard way to high, and way too far to the right, before whirling his spear around fast, slicing right through my chest. When, I say slice through my chest, I mean I phased through the slash. To say that I was safe, would be a total lie though. Up until this point, I was mostly getting the full P.E. treatment from the outside (where it should've stayed), when that trident went through me, with my body vibrating at supersonic speeds, the stone did too. While the actual trident didn't slice me, the feeling of the stone actually passing through and mixing with my internal everything, was quite possibly the most excruciating sensation of my life. My system went into shock, I literally lost the ability to stand for a few seconds as my body tried to process the massive energy shakeup. Thank God I could still hold a shield, or else i'd've been straight up gutted. Still, when I say I was messed up, I mean I was really messed the f*(# up. I could feel the Poseidon Energy mixing and clashing with my organs and powers. It was shuffling around so much, I could've sworn it was looking for something; trying so hard to make my body accept it. Either way, I was not getting up anytime soon, which allowed me to finally admit to something i've known since the first few minutes of this fight; I needed help. Through luck and skill (also serious improv), I was just able to beat Goblin….before almost dying myself. Attuma was not going down anytime soon, least of all to my hand. If I wanted to live, i'd have to call in the big guns.

"GEO-TITAN!" I thought to my only hope. "ATTUMA'S GOT THE STONE, I CAN'T BEAT HIM ALONE, HELP!"

Some part of me is ashamed for admitting defeat, but not enough to where i'd fault myself for making the decision to live.

"ON MY WAY, BRO!" he thought back to me.

I figured I had a good three or four seconds, before my knight in shining armor came to my rescue, but that was actually not the case. Before Attuma could hit my shield again, a sudden rush slammed into him, rocketing him a good half a mile away; also tossing me like a tumbleweed.

Even in my less than optimal state, I could still hear the huge THOOMS, as well as see the huge blasts of green and blue in the distance. This fight was gonna get rough, and like gentleman, we needed to take it outside.

"Geo-Titan!" I thought to him.

"What?" he asked me. "You alright, bro? You good?"

"We'll see about that, but that's beside the point. Look, thanks for the save, I owe you big time, but we gotta get this fight out of the city, like right now."

"Dude, the city is an entire country! How do we get him out of a country?!

"We punch and blast a lot until we get him out! You start, i'll catch up in a bit!"

"Right, just punch the insanely powerful junior sea god out of the area; piece of cake!"

"I can hear sarcasm."

"I don't give a f*(#."

He didn't say anything after that, but a few seconds later I heard a really loud THOOM, and saw a glowing blue ball rocketing off the ground, my friend, the flying green fire man, soaring after it. In all seriousness though, that guy (even if he's a total tool) was the best ever. With Grant providing a bit of a reprieve for me, I focused on making my body deal with whatever the P.E was doing in there. I made my body vibrate, and willed it to kinda sorta metabolize the Poseidon Energy inside of me. Granted, digesting a foreign substance probably isn't the best way to deal with said foreign substance, but I was on the clock, had to think on my feet. At first, nothing of interest really happened, just the run of the mill sensation from shaking all of your atoms faster than humanly possible (like you'd know what that feels like). Then, in a nanosec, the feels went from not feeling anything out of the ordinary, to feeling like I was trying to digest fire and ice and the same time. I groaned and rolled in pain, not even able to stop whatever it was that was happening to me. The feeling kept building and building, until it felt like I was being eaten from the inside out by some kind of cosmic tapeworm. Still, I endured the pain for a good 20 seconds, before it just suddenly stopped. No joke, the pain, and the power I assume, had stopped hurting just as quick as it had flared up. I got to my feet, took a quick sec to move my muscles around, make sure my powers were still working right (good to go on all cases), and activated my Thunder Form. Time to get back in the fight!

It wasn't hard at all to find and catch up to Grant. For one, my Thunder Sense was working a lot better for some reason. Before hand, I could only sense things within a mile radius of myself. Now, I was effortlessly mapping out at least five miles in every direction, not to mention able to sense individual bioelectric signatures within the area. Also, was I flying faster? I mean, it wasn't by much, but I noticed how flying was suddenly a lot easier, like the water pressure had somehow lessened around me. Ok, maybe that stone did give me a bit of a jump of some sort. Here's hoping I wouldn't end up paying for it.

I caught up to Grant just in time to see him dodge a front kick from Attuma, and slam him in the chest with a hard elbow. He followed it up with an uppercut to his jaw, and spun into a hard reverse kick, sending Attuma sprawling backwards like he was shot out of a cannon. I poured on the speed, zoomed past Grant, and continued the pain streak via slamming into Attuma inside a giant missile construct, and following that up with a hard flying Vibration Punch. Ok, I was definitely stronger. Thirty seconds ago, even my best Vibration Punch wouldn't have made this guy take a step back; now I actually succeeded in creating a THOOM of my own (so many THOOMS going around), and increasing Attuma's free fall speed from 300 to 340 mph.

"Whoa!" Grant thought to me. "Nice swing, dude! You been workin' out?!"

"Something like that," I responded. "Now get serious, we got a bad guy who's face needs punching in!"

"I'm always serious! This is me being totally super serious!"

It wasn't him being all that serious, but it was good enough for me to go on. Together, we poured on the speed, catching up to Attuma in a heartbeat.

Usually, this is the part where everything goes wrong, where the bad guy gets a sudden surge of power and comes back with a vengeance, only that didn't happen…..like at all. First off, while Attuma was fast and strong, he wasn't prepared to take on two people who were just as fast and strong as he was. Grant and I worked out and unspoken, but rhythmic plan of attack. Grant summoned his axe, engulfed it in Geo-Force, and repeatedly kept whacking Attuma where he could get an open shot, always launching him a good three miles with every swing. While I was less up and close with my efforts, I was definitely pulling my own weight. I usually worked from a distance, using the Power Grid to create Phantom Bolts, as well as giant constructs such was hammers, trains, swords, submarines, and mermaid warriors. Grant and I kept up that rhythm, which for the most part, went undisturbed. There were a few instances where Attuma actually did manage to break the chain, but they lasted for maybe 10 seconds (usually less), before either me or Grant would pick up the slack for one another. Case in point, after hitting Attuma with the 50th Phantom Bolt, Grant rushed in for another one of his signature axe swings, only to be blocked by Attuma's trident. Attuma came around with a left cross to his face, and Grant just, and I mean just barely blocked the punch, but as we've previously established Attuma was strong as hell. His fist had so much momentum behind it, that it forced Grant's hand back into his own face, like when a trainer who holds sparring pads doesn't put enough effort into blocking a punch or a kick. The punch sent Grant sprawling about ten feet backwards, and Attuma hefted his trident for a swing that was never gonna see the light of day. Yeah, I didn't know if that trident would be able to pierce his skin (it certainly would've gotten through the armor), but I decided against having some D-List villain whack my friend with his bedazzled trident. I hit him in the face with a point blank Phantom Bolt that shot not even a foot away from his face. He fumbled with the swing, giving Grant more than enough time to recover, and send Attuma packing with a Geo-Force charged front kick. I flew after him, giving him a flying Vibration Punch to the gut, while Grant followed it up with another G-Force charged kick to Attuma's face.

"Thanks for the save, dude," he thought to me.

"Anytime," I responded.

We resumed our mix of Geo-Titan melee, mixed with Storm-Lord range attacks. Grant steadily put more and more of his strength into each swing, launching Attuma further and further, making the ocean pop with each impact. While doing my best to keep up (oh, how I missed running), I continued doing my job of keeping Attuma off-balance with the steadying increasing sea creature themed constructs up. At one point I started using starfish shurikens, and squid homing missiles; just let that sink in for a moment. But yeah, all quirks aside, Grant and I seemed to be doing great…..then all of a sudden we weren't. Like I said, Grant and I did a bang up job of smacking Attuma around, but someone can only get smacked around in a pattern so much until they break the chain.

After another swing to his face, Attuma managed to roll into a recovery, and block a swing of Grant's axe with his trident. This was the same problem we ran into the first time, and i'm pretty sure Grant wasn't gonna fall for the same trip up twice, which is probably why Attuma used a different trick altogether. As soon as the axe hit the trident, a blastwave of Poseidon Energy knocked him back, and a everything went to $#!+. First, a spiralling blast of water, about the size of a column you'd see on the Lincoln Memorial, knocked Grant downwards at speeds of at least 100 mph. Next, Attuma went buck wild, and created a maelstrom of blade, fist, and trident water constructs. The radius of raining death was so wide, it made me wish he was a good guy, cuz if he were at the battle for the Stone of Hades, there would not be a problem of any kind. Oh, and to add a bit of a cruel sting (literally) to his attack, all of the constructs were P.E. charged. Grant was fine, don't worry about him (that came off a bit too harsh). He was getting smacked around for a bit, Attuma was so gonna pay for that later, but the constructs weren't piercing his skin, or even the armor for that matter. Me on the other hand, while my armor would be fine, if I let any of those constructs hit me without my Thunder Form up, my head would be a used pin cushion. I rocketed at Attuma, phasing as fast as I could. When I made my way through my fist set of tridents, I was prepared for the worst. Pain, adrenaline, agony; I almost closed my eyes in anticipation, and you could not have prepared me for what I actually ended up feeling.

Like I said, I was ready for that odd mix of pain and adrenaline. What I didn't expect, was the strength that came with it. The mix of pain and adrenaline was still there, but compared to what it was a while back, it wouldn't even rate a 4/10. The strength, though? That was off the charts! With every construct that passed through me, it felt like someone was putting some kind of liquid nitrogen steroid into my veins. It felt freezing, but in that good way when you stick your head in a freezer after coming inside from a scorching day (I know i'm not the only one who does that). I felt my muscles surge with the stuff, I felt myself getting stronger and stronger with each passing millisecond. If there was ever a time I didn't want this stuff, I can't remember, cuz I sure as hell wanted it now! I slammed a P.E. charged Vibration punch into Attuma's face, and OH DEAR JESUS! While it definitely wasn't a punch that would measure up to Grant's new strength, it was still enough to shatter a plane, and break the foundation of a skyscraper. Attuma hurtled away spinning. At the speed I punched him at, he probably would've been trucked away at least 100 meters, but Grant wanted some big time payback. He flew straight up, and smashed a fist into a Attuma's gut; also, he was covered in that multi metal, mostly golden looking alloy. I thought that'd be important to mention. He and Attuma shot up 200 meters before Gant hammer punched him back down, and kicked him forward with a giant Geo-Force boot construct. As we pursued our blue punching bag, I noticed something strange about Grant's multi-metal alloy. For some reason, it had glowing green inscriptions plastered all over it. Some Greek, others Norse, there was even Chinese in there. I felt a subtle power humming through it; almost like it was alive.

"You must've went through hell to get that, huh, Geo-Titan?" I asked him.

"In more ways than one," he responded kinda solemnly. "I'll tell you about it later."

He shut off the conversation, and after catching up with Attuma, whacked him with his Geo-Force charged axe. For another 20 seconds or so, everything went along smoothly. Granted, at the rate we were going at, it would probably be another hour or so before we'd get Attuma in the safe landing zone, but….I really didn't think this all the way through. Still, it's not like I had anything better as far as plans went, so I was perfectly content with creating Phantom Bolts and constructs, while Grant continued to punch the token bad guy really, really, really hard. Again, plans like that work, until they suddenly don't.

After taking the 20th axe swing, accompanied by another Phantom Bolt, Attuma recovered 400 meters away from an oncoming Geo-Titan, only this time, I refused to let him take another inch. I used the Power Grid to create a tela sphere around Attuma (about 100 megawatts, give or take). I kept it up for a half second, way more than enough time to zap him hundreds of times, and took it down in time for Grant….to get his axe swing blocked! Ok. NO! Just, just...NO! That was enough voltage to take down a whale, zapping him hundreds of times in a faction of a second! You'd think that would at least make a guy blink. But no, that would be way too easy. Again, this is where I have to give Attuma props. Swirling around him was a body shield made of flowing water. On first glance, it'd look pretty flimsy, but with the P.E. swirling through it as well, the thing could probably hold up against a falling jumbo jet. In other words, after getting lambasted by lightning, Attuma found a way to cut the impact in half. Plus, if he had the time to form a body shield like that in such a small span of time, continued exposure to the stone must've been increasing his speed (is that just a package deal with these things?). Anyway, Attuma twisted Grant's wrist, and batted him away with the flat of his trident at the speed of a missile. I side flipped over him (pretty sure he'd be fine), but before I had a chance to prep for a recovery attack, my Speed Sense activated. I had just enough time to get back into a crouching position, and block the impact of Attuma's trident with my Sky Shield. By this point, the shield had absorbed so much voltage, I was basically carrying a moving truck's worth of grenades around my arm, so as soon as Attuma's trident hit my shield, I let it all go in one huge explosion. Lightning lit up the water like a thunderstorm cloud suddenly transported under the blast lit up everything in an 800 meter radius (above the city, of course), and while I for the most part stood my ground, Attuma may as well have been ejected from a bouncy castle. I flew after him, Grant right behind me, but Attuma wasn't quite done being a pain in the ass to deal with. He recovered, and started blasting pillars of spiralling water at us; along with his usual forte of weapons and predator themed constructs. I put my shield away, and focused on trying not to get utterly destroyed by the onslaught of water, which I surprisingly did pretty well at. Oh, I couldn't maneuver for $#!+ (i'd have to work on that later), but in the meantime, I used the Power Grid to make Attuma's attacks difficult to hit me. The pillars were easy enough to dodge, I created shield constructs to block the weapon constructs, and either shot the predators with Phantom Bolts, or threw explosive dagger constructs into their heads. Oh, and Grant was powering through anything Attuma was throwing at him via flying inside of a green Iron Man construct. Pfft. Sure, why not? Still, for all of our huffin' and puffin', we'd probably just get smacked back to square one, so I tied something other than aiming for a punch.

"Element Cannon, Geo-Titan!" I thought to him. "Go as hard as you can!"

"Whoa!" he thought back to me. "You sure, dude?"

"Yeah, man! Let' do it!"

I busted out my Thunder Shields, powered them up to a beyond ungodly amount of voltage, and synced my X25 Super Ultra Final Flash, with Grant's equally (if not stronger, good God that guy could dish out the fire power!) destructive Geo-Force cannon. To make matter worse for our blue friend, we opened fire on him at pretty much point blank range. To put it in perspective, my blast was literally big enough to swallow a battleship (Fury would love that), and probably had more than enough destructive power to create a DBZ destruction crater though half of an entire state. Ditto for Grant. The blast was so strong it created reverb created waves, that i'm pretty sure would've been all disaster movie levels of destructive if they were capable of making it to the surface. Attuma was lost in the mix of green and blue, the water was so overloaded with voltage and Geo-Force, I couldn't even properly sense where he was. After keeping the Element Cannon up for a good seven seconds, launching Attuma at least 300 miles out (yeah, really), I told Grant to kill the fireworks, and called for a team meeting.

"Can you see him, Geo-Titan?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he thought back to me. "He doesn't look too hurt, but we rattled his cage a little bit."

"How far till we clear him out of the city?"

"Dude, it's the size of Australia, and to be honest, we're just barely halfway there."

"All i'm hearing is do what we did again."

"Yeah, you would."

I ignored that, and started zooming toward Attuma. At this point in my very limited experience with flying, it probably would've taken me a good minute to catch up to him, but I can get real creative with the Power Grid when I need to. As I flew, I focused on the saturated electron trial that I had created via my part in the Element Cannon. I willed the voltage to wake up again, and heighten the speed of my flight pattern, essentially creating a velocity ramp that allowed me to reach up to Mach 5, while collecting enough voltage to overload the Chrysler, and Empire State building. Grant managed to keep up with me just fine, but as we neared Attuma, I told him to back off, and let me get first crack at the big guy. I created another tesla sphere around him for good measure, poured on the speed, and vibrated up for what was probably gonna be my biggest flying punch to date. Yeah, that was an understatement. I hit him with a mix of the Vibration Punch, while unleashing all of the voltage I had collected, resulting in a punch strong enough to decimate at least five city blocks. Attuma took off so fast, it was almost like he disappeared. Grant and I flew in pursuit.

"Damn, Storm-Lord!" Grant thought to me. "You got one hell of a punch!"

"You ain't seen nothin yet!" I thought back to him, as I dematerialized into a lightning bolt.

Grant and I raced after Attuma, though he took the lead on this one (how was he faster than a lightning bolt?). Once he caught up, he summoned his axe, set it ablaze, and had a quick exchange with Attuma, who recovered enough to block his downward swing, and repel him with a spiral blast of water. I picked up the slack though. I zipped around him, and changed from a streak of lightning, to a charging eighteen wheeler, literally trucking Attuma 30 feet forward. Before he could get back in it, I broke my form into 50 giant spiked fists, and wailed into Attuma from all sides. While definitely not the most effective way to get him out of the city (I was basically playing pinball with a sea god), it did a good enough job of keeping him off-balance until Grant got back in the fight.

"I'm thinking your name should be Captain Try-Hard instead," he thought to me, as he rushed in to give Attuma another punch to the face.

"I'm thinking you're just jealous," I jokingly thought to him, as I kept my flying fists. "Hell, you're literally green with envy!"

The funny thing was he actually turned of his flaming/lightningy form for a half second. I so totally count that as a win.

Anyway, we constantly slammed into Attuma for another minute or so, getting closer and closer to the city limits. As we fought, I noticed how much longer my stamina for maintaining Thunder Form 2 felt. Before, the limit clocked at around five minutes before cellular breakdown; now I felt like I could hold it for about six and a half. Still, it's not like Attuma would give me the leg room to test the limits of that. After decking him for the 2,000 time (between the two of us), Attuma stopped us cold with a wall construct. Not just a simple slab of bricks though, i'm talking a Great Wall of China construct, bigger than a skyscraper, wider than a city, that just popped up in the blink of an eye. A few of my fists slammed into it before I pulled my form back together, and went back to normal. Grant on the other hand, charged through the damn thing. Well, charged is a lose term. Tunneled is more like it. Anyway, after getting through to the other side, Attuma, who was casually chilling on the other side, came rushing at him with a stab. Grant gripped his axe, parried the strike with an upwards swing, planted a reverse kick in his chest, and blasted him in the face with a wave of Geo-Force from his eyes. Attuma stumbled back a few feet, giving me an opportunity to get back in the fight. I flew into him with a flying Vibration Punch, though this one didn't seem to have the umph that it usually did. Attuma kinda stammered a bit, but came around with a wide trident swing. I tucked my legs over it, summoned my Sky Shield, but didn't end up using it to block Attuma's best swing; Grant had that covered. Again, I noticed how his trident would give off violent P.E. feedback when it grinded against Grant's axe, not to mention that IRRITATING scraping noise! On the positive side, the huge burst of energy gave me another shot of that addicting surge of strength. I vibrated my shield arm, and smacked Attuma with a hard backhand, sending him sprawling away from Grant. We rushed him again, together this time, but Attuma decided to try again with the constructs and water blasts. It was just another rinse and repeat situation, only with spiked walls flying at us. This time, Grant and I didn't bother with pretense. I flew straight, phasing through the constructs, while he smashed through them. We got so close to Attuma, ready to jump him like there was no tomorrow.

Before we could even make contact though, Attuma twirled his trident, and caught me and Grant in a whirlpool. He spun us for a few seconds (any longer and I was gonna blow chunks), before letting us go in opposite directions. Like always, after splitting us up, the bad guy completely ignored the stronger, way more of a threat target, and came charging after me. Even worse, dude was super fast, like, SMS levels of super fast! I didn't even have time to straighten my form, before having to sloppily block a trident stab with my shield. I managed to twist upright, and throw a hard Vibration Punch, which was blocked by Attuma with a terrifying display of strength. I blasted him in the face with a desperate wave of my Thunder Vision, which benefited me as much as throwing a rubber chicken at his face. My blast was immediately overtaken by a huge wave of Poseidon Energy emanating from Attuma's mouth! It would be one thing if I got slapped away by the sheer power of the blast, but Attuma kept a firm grip on my right fist, keeping me in the thick of the fire. With this much P.E. dousing me at once, the pain was a result of too much of a good thing; I legitimately felt like I was overdosing on some kind of god meth. Thankfully, Grant made sure that didn't last too long. He slammed into Attuma's back, forcing him to let go of me (while making a sound like a coughing cat). Next, he summoned his axe, and swung it upside Attuma's head! The blow didn't kill, but it moved Attuma just enough for me to hit him with a charging bull construct. Grant ignited his axe, and charged Attuma again, getting off two successful swings in, before Attuma blocked his last swing. I rushed in with a shield slam to his gut, and followed it up with a Vibration Punch uppercut. Grant got another punch and axe swing in, but Attuma blasted us away with a P.E. blast wave, and took the fight to us again. The water around us, for like a stadium sized radius, started to twist and change, until me and Grant were surrounded by literally thousands of piranhaoid water constructs.

"HAHAHAHA!" Attuma roared. "DIE, CHILDREN!"

He sicked his constructs on us, and retreated into the background like every token villain ever (I think this guy got the handbook or something).

"Well this looks fun," Grant thought to me.

"Whatever," I responded. "I got the ones on the...this side? You get the ones on the that side?"

"Works for me."

I get that sounds really vague and somewhat dumb, but at this point Grant, Allyson and I were so good at fighting things by the hundreds, it may as well have been a daily workout routine for us. I tapped into the Power Grid, focused on the few thousand constructs on my end, and shredded them with a series of Phantom Bolts. Grant created a Geo-Force Hulkbuster around himself, along with a hundred other Iron Man constructs, and absolutely demolished his half of the oncoming constructs via shooting missile constructs, blasting repulsor rays, or just smashing them like flies. Between the two of us, we would have mopped up all the attackers in five minutes tops; that is if Attuma had the patience to let us finish. Instead, Attuma rocketed straight into Grant, who ditched his Hulkbuster construct, and met Attuma head on. Grant rolled with Attuma's tackle, and propelled him off with a leg push. He then twisted into a charging position, summoned his axe, and got off another swing at Attuma's side. Finally, he punched Attuma in the throat with his left fist, spun around into a hard reverse kick to his chest, sending him sprawling backwards. All of that happened within a fraction of a second; I barely had time to see it all. I got back into the fight via slamming a giant baseball bat construct on top of his head, while rejoining the up and close brawl with Grant. For the first few minutes or so, the fight went more or less in our favor. While Attuma was fast enough to compare, that trident was way too long to be effective in close quarters. Every time he tried to swing that thing, Grant would block it with his axe, and leave Attuma open for a shield bash from me, or some kind of Jet Lee move from Grant. There were a few moments where Attuma would burst out of getting beat down, via energy wave, or blast of water, but because this guy had absolutely no experience with fighting with constructs (not to mention not having an imagination outside of primitive weapons), Grant and I were able to get our footing back after a small period of bobbing weaving between constructs. What happened next was so totally my fault; i'll admit that entirely. I got a bit overconfident. Grant and I together were unstoppable. The P.E. that was saturating the battle was only making me stronger and faster, making me hit harder; especially with my Vibration Punches. For a second, I forgot myself, forgot the fact that one of the main reasons villains lose, is the fact that they talk way too much when they should just shut up.

"What's the matter, Attuma?!" I taunted him. "Hard to fight with that glorified pitchfork?!"

I hit him across the face with another Vibration Punch, while Grant got him in the chest with a hard drop kick. We were already propelling Attuma further and further out of the city, albeit much slower now, but that last kick pushed him 10 ft away, giving him time to create a water barrier around himself. Grant and I tried busting through it, but Attuma really put all of himself into keeping that up. When the barrier did come down, it wasn't of our doing. The water started to glow with Poseidon Energy, giving Grant and I the hint to give him some breathing room to blow up. He of course did, but there was something drastically different about him this time around. His trident, what used to be his trident, was now a long sword with jagged points going down the length of the blade. For those of you that have every played Infinity Blade (it's so good!), just imagine the Dark Knight's blade, but golden. The Stone of Poseidon was still locked into it, just in the hilt of the blade; also, Attuma drew his other sword, which was an exact replica, just with blue Tron lines going through it.

"What was that you said to me, boy?!" Attuma yelled at me. "That it was impractical to fight with my 'glorified pitchfork'?!" Well, come and test your mettle against me now!"

He was kidding right? I mean, sure he might catch a better beat without the spear, but he was outnumbered, and if not outgunned, sure as hell didn't have the chops to make good use of his power. I summoned my Thunder Shields, and after a brief power up, let loose another X10 Super Ultra Final Flash. Attuma must've had a death wish or something, cuz he didn't move, and I saw no signs of him making any shielding moves, so he must've taken that head on, right? Yeah, my Speed Sene had something else to say about that. Attuma was literally right behind me and Grant, one of his swords was actually touching my armor, was a millisecond away from cutting into it and me! I swiveled around it (Grantt parried the other away from him), raised a fist for a Vibration Punch, but Attuma was too fast to get tripped up by that one again. He slashed at my chest, forcing me to pull back and summon my Sky Shield. While I was safe (for now), Attuma was far from done. Upon impact, he made an explosion of water and Poseidon Energy detonate with the force of a tank shot, sending me careening sideways at like 90 mph. While he did that, Atumma also propelled Grant away with a spiral blast of water, and willed the sea to create a current that pulled him further and further out. In other words, Attuma really wanted to single me out. He swam after me, practically licking his chops, and in a different turn of strategy, applied pressure. The water started to harden into spear heads about the size of mini fridge doors, and shot themselves at me. I tapped into the Power Grid, and created shield constructs to block them all, but the shots were so fast, it was like trying to block bullets from high caliber sniper rifles at point blank range; one false move, I get shanked in the head. The effort took so much concentration, I had absolutely no time to get properly set up for Attuma, who was just getting into his zone. He came in with a hard double slash to my shield, making another detonation go off, and send me sailing back faster. He created a wall of P.E. charged spikes for me to break my fall, but I phased through them, getting an extra surge of strength while I was at it. Thank God he didn't piece that part together. Anyway, it's not like that mattered, cuz as the water around me swirled and took form in like a tenth of a second, I found myself in the jaws of a thrashing sea serpent! Ok, now this was getting embarrassing! Forget survival for a moment, I was being used as a f*(#!^$ chew toy! This. Was. Unexpectable.

"FRET NOT BOY!" Attuma roared at me in laughter. "THE BEAST IS FOND OF YOU, HE EVEN WANTS TO SHARE YOU WITH HIS PACK!"

Before I could object to that, I felt something bite down hard on my legs, arms, even my head! Oh, my Thunder Form was still up; plus I was using the whole body shield function, so it's not like I was reduced to hamburger meat. Still, if you wanna tell me that getting chomped on by six different sea serpent constructs isn't scary, or the least bit stressful, I need to get a hold of whatever it is you're smoking. As was such, I panicked hard, and as of late, when I panic, things blow up. I discharged an explosive wave big enough to wreck three city blocks, which I hope was loud enough to cover the fact that I screamed like a girl. The sea serpent constructs were blown apart like sand in a fan, but Attuma was giving me absolutely no time to get my footing back, and rushed in for a killing blow, My Speed Sense helped me just barely block his double stab in time, but the next swing of one of Attuma's swords was going straight to my thighs. I tucked my legs in, gave them a vibrate, and dropkicked Attuma in the chest. While I didn't kick him far enough to actually get any time to breathe, I managed to bust out my Thunder Sword; God knows I needed it. Attuma looked at me for a few seconds, and start twirling his swords. I flinched. Usually when he started moving his weapons, I would go on some sort of ride, but again, Attuma was fighting a lot different now. As he twirled his blade, water swirled and collected around them while mixing with P.E. My sword and shield were already wreathed in lightning (Thunder Form is like a gift that keeps on giving), so I couldn't exactly make a big show of anteing up for a brawl. I simply got loose, said a prayer to God, Zeus, and Poseidon (not kidding), and charged Attuma head on.

First things first, in a clash of brute strength (like every fight i've ever been in), i'd lose every time. I may have been pretending to fight Attuma on his turf, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I had to accept and adjust for the fact that me and Attima were the same in speed, optimistically speaking, so that was one advantage I usually had out of the window. As we clashed weapons, I made sure to discharge a small burst of voltage with every strike. Not only did this help me not get thrown around like a hackey sack, but it was also saturating the water with residual voltage. That would be extremely useful coming up. I'll say this, if nothing else, Attuma was a damn good swordsman. He moved his blades fluently and with purpose. If I dodged or blocked a strike, he rarely wasted time doing the cliche power struggle. Like an airbender, when he met resistance, he changed and adapted to try and find a way around it. Every slash, stab, feint, etc., was either meant to kill, trip me up, make me too closed up on defense, or over extend my reach on the offensive. If I count the number of times I was almost taken out, i'd be well in my hundreds within the first 30 seconds. That's the other thing about the fight, Attuma and I were going at it like speed demons, putting out 50-60 slashes a second. That coincided with why Attuma was unusually short on the P.E. blasts and water constructs; he was doing his absolute damndest to keep Grant out of the fight.

Yeah, for once I couldn't blame Grant for being lazy. About 20 miles west of where we were fighting, the sea had stopped pulling Grant, and was now trying to tear him apart. In all honesty (my Thunder Sense was really improving), it was like an underwater supercell 10 miles wide, and made entirely of water and P.E. energy. The water thrashed around wildly at 300 miles per hour, keeping Grant off-balance, in addition to the legion of constructs flying at him. Swords, tridents, sharks, sea serpents, humanoid warriors, etc. Grant was doing his best to stay ahead of the game, hell, those constructs maybe got three good licks on him before he ripped them to shreds, but they were reconstructing like Hydra heads. Attuma was forcing the sea in on itself, making sure Grant didn't have the time to take an inch. In the meantime, I was doing relatively ok, but I definitely wasn't gonna get too comfortable fighting blue boy by myself. Like it or not, I had no chance of winning this without my big gun.

I blocked another one of Attuma's stabs with my shield, parried away the other slash, and kicked him in the chest with a lightning charged Vibration kick, punting him away like a football. After four minutes of fighting, I had Attuma's number….sorta. I wasn't gonna win this match with one slash or stab to the right area, but only because that body shield was a thing (why do they always have body shields?). While the first two minutes of the fight consisted of me trying not to get killed, my reflexes and observation skills were automatically feeding me the edge piece by piece. What I mean by that is at times my body would block, parry, or dodge attacks based purely on "oh God, i'm bout to get shanked!" While that was going on, my brain was working double time, analyzing Attuma's fight pattern, noticing things like his stance, striking positions, block patterns, dodging techniques, etc. I was able to look at small details, like the way his joints would bend, facial indicators, and the speed and angles of the the way his blades would move and change due to blocks or parries, and predict where his next strike would be, and how he might execute it, like some sorta on the job algorithm. Oh, and with the Poseidon Energy surging about like wildfire, my stamina was pretty much always on high, my strength good enough for me to somewhat matter to him. Anyway, l launched Attuma back to me with a Phantom Bolt, ducked down, and used the momentum to slam his face hard into my shield. I backtracked, giving Attuma the time he needed to recover, and got myself ready for his assault. He came at me with a big GRRAAAH!, both of his swords spread to either side of him. Too easy. This guy was gonna feint two wide swings, but follow through with a right slash to my legs, which would follow into him trying to stab my right side with his other sword. How'd I know this? Again, muscle memory, and systematic prediction. Because I had fought Attuma for so long, and because he was using the best of what he had to end me, I knew his next moves before he did. I went along with his movements for the beginning, and pretended he actually faked me out with his sloppily telegraphed feint. I just barely tucked my legs over his leg sweep, then pulled the rug out from under him by spinning into a reverse kick, blocking his stab with my shield, then bashing it into his face again. Whenever I threw Attuma for a loop like that, he flail a bit, sending waves of P.E. charged waves of water at me. I ducked under my shield, took a few hits, and retaliated by slamming some Phantom Bolts into Attuma from all sides. I rocketed forward, slammed him in the face with my shield again, before launching it upwards for a second; giving me a chance to change my sword into spear mode, and go absolute ham on underwater Conan The Barbarian. Again, in a straight up fight, there was absolutely no way in hell i'd win against Attuma, but speed and maneuvering would help me remedy that. I slashed his chest as hard as I could ten times, recycling the momentum, blocking his counter strikes, and using as many kicks as I could to keep him from getting his hold back. When I felt like I was losing control, I started circling him as I slashed, always making sure to watch his movements, and change directions frequently. For the next minute and a half (man, can only imagine how Grant must'e been feeling) Attuma wasn't even able to lay a hand on me. I got in about 1,000 slashes, 600 kicks, and 10 punches in on the blue bastard. Every counter slash and stab was either quickly blocked or dodged, and after a blast of lightning to the face for good measure, i'd continue on with my Jason Voorhees slash fest (seriously, with the name Jason, Halloween season is so annoying). It wasn't until Attuma launched me away with an explosive wave of Poseidon energy, that the wombo combo was derailed.

Did that hurt? Yeah. Yeah it did. In that moment, I realized that P.E. to me as beneficial in gradual doses, but all at once with that much power, hurt like hell. Still, despite feeling like a truck was dropped on my face, it was a learning experience. See, while I getting a baseline concussion, I was still able to sense how my significant ally was doing in his struggle to overtake the ocean. As soon as Attuma let loose that explosive wave, aka the moment he focused power away from keeping Grant down, the maelstrom wavered. It was only for a moment, maybe a second and a half, but his entire super storm almost dissolved away, before he brought it back up at the last second. Ok, Attuma needed absolute focus to keep the storm up. Got it. Now to break that up. I summoned my Sky Shield back to me just barely in time to block one hell of a double spiral blast from Attuma. Stupid. So stupid. I completely ignored the power building up in Attuma's swords. I've used that same tactic at least five other times, and I couldn't see it coming. While I was completely safe behind my Sky Shield, the impact was so real. At 300 mph, and with about 100,000 pounds per square inch, even with an indestructible shield guarding me, I felt like I was getting drawn and quartered by a fleet of blastoi (is that plural for Blastoise?). I dipped backwards, going with the momentum, and letting the blast coast over me, before flying back at Attuma; had to keep him in that electrical sweet spot if I wanted to have a snowballs chance of knocking Attuma off his game. Instead of a collision, I did a twisting flip over him, backtracked away from Attuma's trident swing (apparently he could switch between the forms), and threw my shield at Attuma's face, willing all the voltage in it to explode all at once. $#!+ got super real after that. Again, I was basically setting up a rapid minefield for Attuma to blow up in. Once the voltage from the shield went off, I made the Power Grid go absolutely ape$#!+. I ignited all of the latent electrical energy in the immediate area, releasing a flash wave of about 500 megawatts of power, effectively flooring Attuma if there was a floor to send him crashing down to. I kept up the voltage storm, igniting wave after wave of lightning, onslaughting Attuma with thousands of megawatts. After igniting and sustaining at least 10,000 megawatts of power, I let myself become one with the voltage, and continued to put the squeeze on Attuma. I twisted and shaped myself into hundreds of barraging constructs (insert most wild animals, tanks, battleships, missiles, swords, and mythical monsters), lightning bolts, and concentrated power blasts. Every half second was a vortex of a million volts of doom for Attuma. I assume he tried to hold onto his control of the whole "Down with Geo-Titan" campaign, but it's pretty hard to concentrate on anything when your entire body must be screaming "Oh God, everything hurts!" As was such, I could feel Attuma's grip over the sea fade, as he did his best to keep his body shield from giving out on him. I could hear (sorta), the boom that was Grant flying towards the fight, and decided to not let him fly into another violent energy storm. I collected all of myself into a giant hand, big enough to grip ten skyscrapers, and plucked Attuma away like a wad of used gum. I launched him away so fast, I could hear the sonic boom as he plummeted through the water. I willed myself to go back to my physical body, activated my Thunder Form, and flew after Attuma. While flying, I noticed how...different I felt. My Thunder Form was a lot more violent. Usually all it did was surge around my immediate body space, with a few stray crackles of energy. Now, it was violently discharging miniature lightning bolts that could've deep fried any surrounding electronics. Also, and this is probably something that I was ignoring in the heat of battle, my cells were starting to expand. I immediately knew it was because of being saturated with Poseidon Energy, and I knew this was probably gonna mutate me in some potentially life killing way; I just hoped I wouldn't have to put my team through me almost dying again. Pretty sure that's the type of 'bonding' experience you wanna have only once.

Anyway, Grant intercepted me, and we caught up to Attuma together, though he took the lead this time. Instead of his usual axe swing method, Grant summoned a big chunk of that metal he somehow always can pluck out of thin air, and shot it at Attuma. The metal encased him in a ball of….whatever the hell that thing was made of, about 8 ft in height and width. Grant made the ball surge with Geo-Force, and from the echo that I was hearing, Attuma was getting the Grant style tesla sphere experience, which didn't stop there. The water around us started to heat up while turning green. Before I knew it, Grant and I were inside a giant Chinese Dragon construct that had it's jaws crunched hard on Attuma's ball (shut up). Ok. Grant did not care whether I lived or died. That's a fact. How else do you describe it when someone wraps you in a construct of green lightning and fire, without being sure it won't harm you? Oh wait, I know, being a dick!

"WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!" I yelled at him as we continued zooming forward. "YOU COULD'VE KILLED ME! ARE YOU INSANE!"

"SHUT UP, STORM-LORD!" Grant yelled back.

A weird mix of emotions rolled through me at the same time. The first was knee jerk anger. I don't usually get yelled at, people usually know better (my God, I sound like a villain). If this were anyone else, at any other time, there was a decent chance that the poor sap would get his face busted. Still, this wasn't anyone else, and that tied into the other emotion that struck me hard: pure fear. I wasn't stupid enough to believe I could beat Grant, not even on my best day, especially not now. The look in his eyes was beyond just being pissed, this guy looked like he was gonna explode and take a city with him. The terrifying thing was I could tell that anger (at least most of it) wasn't specifically because of me snapping at him. Grant was just angry, full of rage just because. In my town, that always leads to one or more people in body bags.

"I HAD IT UNDER CONTROL!" he continued. "BESIDES, WE WERE TAKING WAY TOO LONG TO GET HIM OUTTA THE CITY! WE'RE DOING THIS MY WAY NOW!"

And now i'm all angry. He was right of course, it was gonna take forever to get Attuma out of the city my way. At least now we had a steady transportation system out of the city (all aboard the Dragon Express). Still, I couldn't let him get the last word in; i'm petty like that sometimes.

"And what exactly is your big plan, Geo-Titan?!" I snapped back. "Please, do-"

Attuma banged and pounded at the inside of his ball, making muffled threats and boasts.

"SHUT UP!" Grant and I yelled at the same time.

Grant actually made the dragon construct chomp down hard a few times to make sure Attuma got the message.

"Ok!" he yelled back at me, his voice sounding a lot less "everything should die". "Step 1: Get out of the city! We're basically there now! Step 2: Pound him into the dirt! Step 3: Keep punching him till' he stops moving!"

Not exactly a plan worthy of Athena (more up the alley of Ares), but it worked before, why not now? Grant kept the Dragon Express moving until we had zoomed past the city limits, as well as the royal palace in no time. I got a bit concerned when we kept going for another 30 miles or so, but i'm not one to be a back seat driver. After getting far from anything that could be potential property damage, Grant made the dragon take a 90 degree turn straight up, and started transferring all of the energy into the axe, until it was just me, him, and Attuma in a golden ball. With a huge roar, Grant slammed the axe into the ball, sending it crashing 100 ft below into the ocean floor like a comet; not to mention making a boom loud enough to hear across a state.

"THIS IS FOR DROPPING A HURRICANE ON MY HEAD!" he shouted as he hurled the axe down at Attuma.

The explosion was, or was going to be the most impressive display of godly destruction ever. The blast was so big, it covered and destroyed five miles worth of rock and land, while reaching so high, it practically nipped at our feet before Grant willed the blast to stop and condense on top of Attuma. While the explosion itself was technically receding, Attuma was basically taking mini nukes rapid fire. If we weren't trying to end him, I might've felt bad. Anyway, Grant lit himself up, and flew down while summoning his axe, leaving me to follow. Attuma was definitely dazed from the explosion, which didn't help him any as Grant came down and whacked him across the ocean floor. Grant got off two more hits that broke sound barrier, and sent shockwaves for miles. I was able to get a few Phantom Bolts in here and there, but Grant had some serious bones to pick with our boy Attuma. After another cross punch to the face, Attuma blocked Grant's next swing, blasted him away with a small P.E. shockwave, and began to fight back hard. First, Attuma changed his trident to a sword, summoned his other sword to his free hand (because magic), and backtracked away from Grant as fast as he could, while sending waves of energy charged water at us. Grant and I pursued, either dodging, or creating constructs to block the impact. When the water around us started to swirl a little faster, I gave that a giant "hell no" in my head, and floored Attuma with a well placed Phantom Bolt to the top of his head. He tried to get up, but I created a spiked trash compactor, and made it smash on top of him a few dozen times while we caught up to him. Attuma wasn't able to get up, even after I cut the compactor business, and I noticed how heavy everything seemed to be getting the closer I got to him.

"Uh, Geo-Titan?" I asked him.

"Gravity manipulation," he simply responded. "I can do that now. Don't sweat it, just wanna make sure I line this douche up for a grand slam. By the way, you should probably get under your shield."

I did him one better. I got behind my Shy Shield, put a vault construct around myself, and waited for the bomb to drop. As best as I could tell, Grant did exactly that. He fused his axe with a $#!+ ton of Geo-Force, slammed it on Attuma's chest, and set of an explosion that would've decimated a block of skyscrapers; at least that's what the ground was telling me. Yeah, a tremor that had to be an at least 6 on the Richter scale ripped through the ground like a shiver. The Geo-Force either went through, or over Attuma, but Grant kept the blast contained to Attuma's body frame, making a nuke just for him. I remember that being a specific thing he mentioned in the debrief of his battle against The Brotherhood….and what happened immediately afterwards. While it wouldn't be as big of a change as tuning a desert into a forest, i'm pretty sure changing ten square miles of dirt and silt into grass was still something to worry about. Grant kept punching and slashing at Attuma until big blue blocked his swings, created a small bubble of swirling water around himself, and pushed Grant off of him. Enough with Grant with his need to dick measure, it was time I get back in this fight. I flew after Attuma, while Grant recovered and did the same; each of us attacking him from either side. Before Attuma could catch his bearings, I rocked him in his left side with a flying Vibration Punch, while Grant used his head for a football. Attuma went staggering backwards, but not far enough to where me and Grant weren't on his ass, punching and slashing at least 500 times per second between the two of us. After a few seconds of constantly wailing on him, Grant floored Attuma again with a hammer punch to the top of his head, and began to restrain him to the ground via Nature Force (he made sure we knew the difference between GF and NF) charged grass and tree bark cables. I'm saying it right now, Hannah and every other nature enthusiast I knew (or didn't know) would drop their panties for Geo-Titan in a split second.

While the grass and stuff were trying to keep Attuma down, Grant and I kept him from struggling, via punching, stomping, and blasting him so much, you'd swear we were initiating him into a metahuman gang (do those exist?). That's not to say it was easy, Attuma struggled like a mother, almost got a few swings in on me, but for the better part of a minute, we managed to keep him down and stomp em' in the nuts (Boondocks reference). That was all well and good, until I almost got stabbed with a sword. Even while being beat down like a railroad spike, Attuma somehow found the concentration to summon one of his swords (the one with the stone in it) back to his hand and take a wild swing at me. I quickly summoned my Sky Shield to block the sword, only to leave myself open to a monstrous backhand from Attuma, that had me tasting grass and silt. I turned around to see Grant get a P.E. charged spiral blast to the chest, then knocked into the dirt with a P.E. bolt from above. Attuma created another maelstrom of weapons, this time from above and from everywhere. I flew over to Grant, created a barrier, and yelled at him to help me out. Before long, we were nice and cozy together in an energy force field, trying to hold up against the constructs, P.E. bolts, and Attuma slamming us with a giant f*(#ing octopus construct!

"Well this is fun," Grant said to me, though I noticed a lack of strain in his voice. "Got any ideas, Storm-Lord?"

"Not really, man," I said, shaking my head. "I tried impaling him with his own trident. That didn't work. Slammed him with a trillion volts of everything I got. Still didn't work. Think we can fall back on punching and kicking till' his heart stops beating?"

"Can't do it bro. Gaea says it's like trying to kill the ocean, we could fight for years and still not make a dent."

"What if we break the trident? From what i've seen, the stone's energy is being transferred to the trident, swords, and armor. Blue boy can't waterbend without his trident, and if we can snap it and take the stone, he'd bleed dry."

"That's not a bad way to go, but even that's a no go."

"How? Can't you metal bend now? Is the trident made of some kinda alien metal?"

"Nah, it's an alloy of gold and titanium, same as Iron Man's armor, but the problem is the stone. For some reason, the energy is interfering with my power over metal, I can't control it, and it seems to hold up pretty well against my axe."

"So we're screwed?"

"Maybe not. Everyone has some kinda weakness, we just gotta find it. Till then, let's keep the pressure on, throw in a few plays to keep him off-balance, and hope he slips up."

"We're screwed."

"Totally. Element Cannon on my mark?"

"Let's do it."

We merged the energies of our respective barriers, targeted Attuma, and without dropping our protection, blasted him out of his octopus construct with the the combined might of lightning and Geo-Force, strong enough to blast through the hull of a submarine. As Attuma staggered back, I summoned my Thunder Sword, and flew after him alongside Grant.

Getting the upper hand was relatively easy all things considered. Grant came in hard, slashing away with his Geo-Force charged axe, while I whacked him sparingly with my sword, focusing more on hitting him with Phantom bolts and constructs. This worked for a while, about three minutes, before Attuma got back in the game with a bit of a vengeance. First, he blocked one of Grant's axe swings, blasted me away with a pulse of water, and while pushing back against Grant, tried to keep me from getting back into the fight via construct assaults. They were, all of them, mermaid warriors with swords, rapiers, tridents, etc., and I was extremely unimpressed. On one hand, splitting us up may have been semi effective when he isolated me from Grant, but unlike myself, Grant had more than enough strength and skill to hold his own against Attuma. I was only away from the fight for maybe seven seconds tops, but in that time, Grant had summoned his sword to accompany his axe, and began to Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Liu Kang the f*(# outta Attuma. Every strike Attuma dished out, Grant either easily blocked, dodged, and capitalized. If Attuma swung too wide, Grant would do something along the lines of ducking, coming up with a high knee to the chest, and wailing at Attuma's chest, arms, and head escrima style. It was almost embarrassing to sense how beat Grant had Attuma; circling him effortlessly, attacking joints, kidney areas, even using blasts of Geo-Force from his eyes to keep him further off-balance. Even worse, Attuma's get out of jail free card (the way he'd use blastwaves of water to interrupt an attack) got completely shut down by Grant. While Attuma was probably gonna cry about Grant stealing his fashion sense, Grant wrapped his special metal around his battle suit, which was sturdy enough to take Attuma's desperate "get off me!" responses. If anything, I was probably doing Grant a disservice by rejoining the fight, but i'll be damned if i'll sit by and let him do all the work. I phased through Attuma's mermaid warrior constructs, flew around to his back, and slammed a hard Vibration Punch to the his mid spine, while Grant planted a boot in his chest. Body shield or not, Attuma felt that, and sounded off with a huge "ACK!" I slammed my lightning wreathed sword upside his head, used the momentum to spin into a round house to his side, and phased through a desperate sword swing to my back. Attuma managed to get off a sloppy backhand swing at me (Grant was still tearing him up from the front), but I easily blocked the strike, although I forgot about the whole swirling water around the swords, not to mention the fact that even while under heavy assault, Attuma could still throw a mean swing. As such, I got thrown backwards a little bit, but came back with a Vibration Hammer Punch to the top of Attuma's head, sending him down several feet down from me and Grant.

"Delta Bomb!" Grant thought to me. "Serve it up!"

Straight above our heads, I created a ball of voltage, about the size of a soccer ball, worth 100,000 volts. Grant did a twisting backflip, and kicked it as hard as he could Fifa style on top of Attuma's head (was aspirin a thing in Atlantis?). The explosion was moderate compared to ones we're usually know for (have to work on that), but we still at least sounded off with the force to level a city block, so it's not like I could exactly complain about it. Grant and I flew down after a spiraling Attuma, and decked him in the chest with a team up flying punch; helping on his way back to the ground. Grant flew ahead to try and pin him to the ground via falling knee to the chest, but Attuma created a barrier strong enough to keep him out, then transformed it into a shark head shooting out a water pillar. I tapped into the Power Grid, dropped a Zeus Cannon on top of Attuma, shattering his barrier and then some, then flew down after him.

"Storm-Lord!" Grant thought to me as he caught up. "I'm upping the gravity to X3! Think you can handle it?!"

"Let's find out!" I thought back to him. "You got my back?!"

"Always!"

I came down as a bolt of lightning, retook my solid form, summoned my Thunder Shields, and after a quick charge, blasted Attuma's head at point blank range. While not nearly at the level of X10 Super Ultra Final Flash, it was still within at least twice the level of Final Flash boomage, which would surely add to Attuma's head trauma. Grant landed boots to chest on top of Attuma, and I moved to the side as he started slamming his blazing axe into the poor sap's head, making the ground shake. As Grant beat Attuma down, the grass started glowing, and began to restrain the warlord. While that was going on, roots as thick as telephone poles wrapped around Attuma's swords and pulled them away from him. The gravity around me started to increase, it was a bit harder to move, but not by too much.

"I got this!" Grant thought to me. "Get to the sword, try and get the stone out of it!"

I dashed forward, locked on to the sword with the stone in it, and summoned my own sword. Ok, so the stone was locked in the hit of Attuma's sword, I couldn't dig it out with my fingers, so it was time to do some mining. I lit up my sword, grabbed Attuma's by it's pommel, and after setting it blade first in the dirt, slashed my sword against the hilt, and held it for as long as I could. I'll say this, whatever I was doing, it at least looked like progress was being made. The stone started violently spewing out Poseidon Energy, like someone who had way more than a few too many to drink. This would've felt like an acid bath beforehand, but now it was actually felt great! Here's hoping I wouldn't OD on godly energy (again). The grinding noises weren't doing any favors for me though. I kept our swords grinding against each other for the better part of a full minute, drinking in the Poseidon Energy, and wishing I had earplugs. Grant was doing fine by the way. Attuma bucked and kicked, and occasionally would free an arm away, and try for a desperate swing, but Grant would floor him again with a blast of Geo-Force from his eyes, and reinforce his restraints. For another 30 seconds, this process seemed to be working, I could even swear I was starting to make some progress with the drilling thing I was doing. Of course nothing ever lasts forever, especially not when me and my team are on top. I didn't notice it at first. With so much foreign energy polluting the space they were in, my Thunder Sense couldn't track Attuma and Grant very well; for what I could sense, they were just a big bonfire of something other. That bonfire suddenly got bigger, like someone dropped a truck of gas on top of it. Also, while I was drilling into Attuma's sword, Grant was throwing blows hard enough to shake the earth, and make shockwaves that could be felt for miles (my dreads kept getting in my face, should've tied them back). Because of the….let's call it sensory confusion, when the energy spiked, and I felt a boom that may as well have been a space shuttle taking off, I didn't think anything of it, just Grant letting off a bit more steam. Too late, I realized Grant was the one blasting off, and that big spike of energy was about to steamroll me!

With only a millisecond to spare, I backflipped over Attuma, though I brushed the energy feedback coming off of him, which felt like getting dunked in bucket of ice water. I recovered, tapped into SMS, and after comprehending what it was that I was seeing, went into Thunder Form 2 immediately! Attuma was more or less a engulfed in a violent blue bonfire.t. He was roaring in pain, not victory or triumph, and I had a hunch that he was actually feeling the effects of the Poseidon Energy, rather than the trident and armor being used as conduits. For some reason, it looked like his body were rejecting the energy, but that wouldn't stop him from being hella strong. I slammed him into the ground as a lightning bolt, reshaped into a giant gorilla, and started pounding away as hard as I could. I managed to keep him down for a total of five seconds, and 800 consecutive punches, before Attuma quite literally blew me away with a heaping load of Poseidon Energy. Again, this wasn't damning; Thunder Form to could take head on energy distortion, the only problem was how spread out it scattered me. Basically imagine being Mr. Potato Head, and realizing after a really bad fall, your body parts have been strewn across a really big living room. For me, it was like ten times worse. In Thunder Form 2, I didn't have a sense of body. While I could maintain a humanoid form, I couldn't exactly feel anything other than being a big wad of energy. Now, with no sense of self of cohesion, being spread across a large body of water with no way to even distinguish where my hands and feet were, I gotta admit, I was panicking big time. Forget topping Attuma, no use trying to win a fight if I was already dead!

I focused on trying to get myself together through sheer will power. Basically, because I was still conscious, I imagined a giant net (metaphorical) spanning however long I could make it reach, and locate all of myself. Again, it's kinda chilling when you can feel yourself in 30 different places, yet still not be able to figure out which part of that a leg, arm, or hand. The good news was that I was just scattered so thin that I dissolved into the Power Grid (better subatomic than dead), all I had to do was bring myself together again (Humpty Dumpty would be jelly ). I willed the parts of myself in the Power Grid to ignite, and shoot straight up to one focal point. It took less than a second to reform, and take my physical form again, though my partner in battle would assure i'd ditch it before I could get over the shock.

I felt it coming before Grant gave me the heads up, but it took him to scream in my head "DUDE, GET OUTTA THE WAY!", before I shot up as fast as I could as a bolt of lightning. On the way down to Attuma (who had gotten a hold of his trident again), and I can't stress how literal I am being right now, was a golden f*(#!*% battleship, blazing with enough Geo-Force to set half a city on fire! It was the most beautiful, most terrifying display of power i've ever seen in my life. 90,000 tons, going at least 500 mph, probably enough power to out shine a nuke, and again, a golden ship blazing with green fire and lightning! This is probably (definitely) gonna be offensive on multiple levels, but the only way I can accurately describe this is as the Titanic getting Hindenburged on it's way to Valhalla. Before Attuma could get the memo that the god of all catastrophes was about to slam on to of his head….well, that thing I just said happened. The impact of the ship actually crashing into the dirt was enough wreck half of Manhattan; the actual explosion (which got swallowed into the earth) would've finished off the other half and then some! I honestly couldn't tell you if Attuma survived something like that; hell, I don't know if the Hulk could take a shot like that.

"ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY INSANE?!" I yelled in Grant's head. "HOW...WHA….DUDE!"

"Oh, shut up, Storm-Lord," Grant thought calmly, as he floated down next to me. "I mean come on, you gotta admit that was the big kahuna of all epic explosions! Besides, if anything was gonna put blue boy on his ass for good, a flaming battleship to the top of his stupid helmet's bound to do it!"

I wanted refute that so bad, but that was pretty much the soundest logic i'd hear all day. Unfortunately, bad guys really don't get the concept of staying down. The ground below us rumbled a bit, and a roaring blue comet shot up at me and Grant. Gotta say, Attuma was looking a lot better with his trident in hand. His bonfire had died down, and he didn't look like he had to take an atomic $#!+. That gave him some free concentration to do that whole villain monologue thing.

"YOU DARE TO STRIKE ME, ATTUMA, LORD OF ATLANTIS, WITH YOUR PUNY SURFACE WEAPONS?!" he bellowed. "I WILL GRIND YOUR BONES TO DUST FOR THAT INSULT!"

"You were saying?" I thought to Grant.

"Shut up, Storm-Lord," he thought back to me. "Just…..goddammit!"

He created a giant dryer construct around Attuma, gave him a quick spin, and recycled the energy into a tennis racket, slamming the warlord back to the ground. Without speaking to each other, we shot straight down, both equally frustrated with how long this was taking.

Attuma was definitely one for self improvement, i'll give him that much. As Grant and I punched and slashed at him, he started to maneuver a lot more, never standing his ground for too long before retreating backwards at a comfortable pace. I had to call Delta Speed Thrasher on him a few times just to get a hold on the fight again. Also, when Grant and I did manage to get a decent hold, Attuma would bust out in a more graceful way than he usually did. Rather than trying to blow us away with another pulse of water, he made the water around us shift into a miniature whirlpool, and launch me and Grant in opposite directions, before going after one of us (usually me) for a kill. Attuma didn't do this too often, but when he did, it almost always ended with a golden sword in my gut. Thankfully, I could fall back on my Sky Shield and Grant to bail me out. Grant and I redoubled our efforts over the next five minutes, slashing, punching, and blasting away at Attuma, hoping we'd get a lucky break. Attuma made sure we wouldn't have it easy though. For one, even though Grant was owning him (dude was punching so hard, he could cause 20 foot waves just by clapping underwater) in the close combat aspect, Attuma had gotten wicked good at using constructs on a wide scope. He wrapped himself in a hard water body shield strong enough to take hits from Grant, which allowed him to keep up his concentration. The guy assaulted us with everything under the sea he could think of, each construct big enough to swallow a gas tankard. If not for me stopping him at all his turns, Grant and I would already be fish paste. On one end, I stopped ten giant eel construct from closing in on us via Spartan shield phalanx. At the same time, i'd stop a school of giant swordfish from attacking, by igniting the area with a mother load of voltage. While that was going on, I literally had to off four different Antarctic Leviathan constructs by impaling them with Zeus Cannons. Did I forget to mention the fact that this was all happening simultaneously, in the span of 5-10 seconds at a time? Forget crosswords and brain teasers, assessing, adapting, and reacting to an onslaught of water constructs was the best way to workout a brain that could digest textbooks! So yeah, this battle was a sight to behold. What with the mix of my lightning, Grant's Geo-Force, and Attuma's constructs/Poseidon Energy, it was like the July 4th, New Years, and Disney World fireworks display were having a threeway (I love that analogy).

"Storm-Lord, Geo-Titan?!" Allyson thought to us (nice of her to check in). "I can hear and feel shockwaves coming from the direction that's not where ya'll are supposed to be! What in God's name are you two doing?! Are any of you hurt and/or on the verge of death?!"

"Whoa there, Sunbird!" I assured her. "We're good….sorta. Long story short, Attuma has the stone, we got him out of the city, he's crazy strong, we're busting our butts trying to stop him….and my body is drinking in the Stone of Poseidon's energy, which may or may not be a good thing. I mean, it's making me stronger, so I assume i'll be all good and not die from god poisoning."

"Wow. Guess boys will be boys."

"The hell's that s'posed to mean?!" Grant thought to her indignantly.

"That without me," Allyson continued. "You and Storm-Lord would either kill each other, destroy everything in your path, or die. Don't believe me? Grant you blew four holes in the palace on a whim, and got shanked by Goblin the day before. Storm-Lord, you literally overdosed on your own power, and got into a fight with you friend, on the first mission. Who saved you two? Oh yeah, me. So now that we've established how much you testosterone junkies need me, how can I help?"

Wow. Just. Wow. I….fellas out there…...this is why we can't have nice things.

"How about flying over here and helping us?" I thought to her, trying to hide the burn she just gave me and Grant. "You sound like everything's under control on your end."

"Sorry," she thought back to me. "No can do. I gotta guard Namorita. After we took the throne back, Llyra bolted, but now she keeps sending in these shadow monster things at us."

Shadow monster things?! Suddenly I was having bad vibes from my dream.

"You ok?" I asked her.

"I'm fine," she casually responded. "They look and growl real tough, but they fall hook, line, and sinker for the sun blast/Taylor Swift combo!"

"What?!" Grant and I thought too her dumbfounded.

"I'll fill you in later," she thought while laughing at us. "But seeing as i've already beaten two baddies with Poseidon Power, maybe I can give you guys some pointers?"

"Shows what you know, Sunbird!" Grant thought to her. "I killed….er….let's just say it's easier to beat a squad of enemies who get the second rate treatment. The actual source is way harder to tackle."

There was a bit of an awkward pause after Grant kinda let it slip that he put some people down for a dirt nap, but it didn't last painfully long. Like it or not, all of us had a kill count today. Best to leave that conversation for another time.

"Have you tried fire?" Allyson asked us. "Fire helps a lot."

"Uhhh," Grant thought back to her. "Don't know if Geo-Force is….yup, yup it's fire and lightning. Gaea just confirmed that. It's not natural, but it's actually hotter and more destructive than your average joe's fire."

"Besides," I threw in. "A single lightning bolt can get hotter than the surface of the sun. If this is about heat, trust me, we're bringing all of it, and it ain't workin'!"

"Ok," Allyson thought back to us. "What about the actual stone?"

"It's in his trident. We can't get it out."

"Break it."

"Easier said than done."

"Geo-Titan, why don't you use your metalbending powers?"

"Tried that," he responded. "The magic around it, as well as the stone's energy, is disrupting my control over it. Kinda frustrating to be honest."

"Well….does he have an arc reactor on his chest?"

I….I have no words. Insert mental face palm.

"WHAT?!" Grant and I mentally screeched at her.

"Ok, oww, stop yelling, i'm just askin'!

I admit, while a little annoying, I got what Allyson was getting at. While she was genuinely trying to help, she was also trying to cheer me and Grant up with a bit of sarcastic humor. Not exactly the time for it, but I saw the positive side of that coin. Then again, I was coming off the heels of probably the best night i've ever had with anyone ever, so my judgement may have been a bit skewed. Grant on the other hand, was having absolutely none of her at all.

"No, Sunbird! No, he does not have….an arc reactor in his chest! Ok, i'm hitting this guy with enough force to break islands, we're blasting him with $#!+ ton after $#!+ ton of lightning and Geo-Force, using constructs out the ass, slashing, punching, kicking, over and over, NOTHING'S WORKING!"

First, Grant had some serious anger issues to work out (rich coming from me). I hear yoga, soothing music, or kick boxing can help with that. Second, looks like we finally turned that whole jinx thing to our advantage. Because we had that whole multitasking thing down pack, talking with Allyson did nothing to interrupt our epic fight with Attuma; if anything, it just riled Grant up even more. He kept it up with his seismic punches and brutal axe swings, while I managed to squeeze in some Vibration Punches, on top of creating constructs out the wazoo to keep me and Grant from getting multiple schools of shark constructs from tearing away at us (used barbwire nets, and the Sonic Heroes constructs for them). Oh, but all the while still using my Thunder Sword in tandem with Grant's axe and sword to fend off Attuma, who was still killin' it with the dual sword thing. I already used the fireworks threeway analogy, but fighting up close was like fighting in a hurricane. Attuma was slowly getting better at using water, and P.E blasts up close against me and Grant, who were trying our best not to get jostled around. Hell, all those punches and slashes we actually did manage to connect against Attuma, most, if not all of them, were due to us maneuvering the hell out of him, and getting simultaneous strikes to his upper body and leg joints. On one hand, all this P.E. was still doing wonders for me, though I could feel that body gauge getting close to that tipping point. Grant's duel wielding proved to be extremely valuable as well. Like I said, we had to maneuver in order to stay in the game, and while Attuma was formidable, he could only block two weapons at a time; an axe or a sword got through regardless. Also, and this is important, while we were fighting and talking with Allyson, the grinding noise in the sword of Attuma that didn't have the stone in it, was getting higher, more strained. It wasn't until the last second when I finally figured out what was going on, but it was too late to stop it. Grant mentally yelled "NOTHING'S WORKING!" and swung his axe at the word in both defense and frustration.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

I knew the sword would snap, but I didn't account for the potential energy stored in it. Once that puppy broke…..boom. I couldn't really give you an accurate description of how extreme it was, other than the fact that when I came to, I was about ten miles over the ground, and my eyes had to heal themselves. The explosion was so powerful I went temporarily blind and deaf. Still, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Aside from getting over the shock of not being dead, I almost felt like a completely new person. All that Poseidon energy had made me way stronger, like, break cars in half stronger. Even though I had only had my Thunder Sense for a short time, I knew what I was feeling now, this mix of water and sonar sensory, wasn't it. Oh it was just as good, better seeing as I was surrounded by nothing but water, but it was gonna take some time getting used to. Thunder Sense in itself was like having 360 perfect sight; this was that times two. Oh, and if we're talking potential energy, my body was hoarding the stuff. I could feel the Poseidon Energy coursing through me down to my very cells, I felt like a volcano about to go Pompeii! God I hoped this wasn't post-Goblin fight all over again, cuz if this stuff was gonna corrode me from the inside out, I doubt even Allyson and the Top 40 Songs of the last decade could save me. Speaking of Allyson, that brought me to the last side effect the P.E. nuke had on me: the buzzing. My head felt like a beehive, radio waves, and speaker feedback were having a brutal cage match in my head; all the Advil and Tylenol in the world couldn't give me relief from the feeling of a marching band going over my brain with spiked boots. I couldn't exactly fine tune the origin of the output, sometimes it felt like my brain was sending out signals, looking for something to latch on too; other times it was the exact opposite, like information I couldn't yet process was getting shoveled into my head. All of that manifested as a buzzing so loud, I couldn't hear Allyson screaming for me in my head until she actually managed to become louder than it. On a side note, she should make an alarm tone and patent it, no way you miss the bus with something that loud next to your head.

"JASON, ANSWER ME DAMN IT!" she so subtly nudged. "DON'T BE DEAD, PLEASE!"

"I'm fine, Allyson," I kinda sorta half truthed to her. "Just shaking off one hell of a headache."

"Oh, thank God," she instantly calmed down, her voice kinda breaking a bit. "I heard a boom. Sounded like the end of the world. Felt like the palace was gonna collapse. Grant sounded off, but you-"

My mind went in a small dash. I searched for Grant and Attuma, putting my new sonar sense to use. I found them about three miles north of where we were previously fighting, and was pleased to feel that my friend was still alive, still kinda kickin' ass. Attuma was taking the slight advantage, what with me not being there to deflect the onslaught of water constructs, but he was tucked away in a full body armor made of his personal metal, while he counter attacked Attuma with his own wave of Geo-Force charged silt storms, and Nature Force charged plant attacks (tree cables, spurs, Bulbasaurs, Charazords, Avengers, you get it). I was actually kinda impressed with his skill and creativity.

"Oh, that reminds me," I interrupted Allyson. "That explosion, it was because we managed to break one of Attuma's swords. I know how we did it, and we can do it again, we just gotta, AGH!'

My body felt like it was freezing from the inside, like every cell in my body had a pulse. My head felt like acupuncture gone wrong, and the feedback in my head got so loud I couldn't hear myself think, much less Allyson.

"It is close." A silky, watery smooth voice almost hummed in my ear like a talking bear. "Your destiny is at hand Jason Fuller. Prove you are worthy of my gift. Prove you are worthy of my blood. Prove yourself worthy of the sea god, Poseidon."

And there it was. Hello, voices in my head, I didn't miss you at all! No seriously, what the hell?! Did Olympus have my brain on speed dial? I thought I was just Zeus' descendant, now Poseidon was up in my genes too? How many other immortals owed me birthday, Christmas, and honor roll money?! To his credit, Poseidon didn't stick around long. He just left me with another "go get em', champ" that every Olympian seemed to love in the face of my certain death, and sent me on my merry way. Another bright side, the pain had went from a whopping 11, down to a manageable 4.5/10.

"Jason!" I heard Allyson scream into my thoughts again. "Jesus Christ, Jason, wha-"

"I'm fine," I quickly responded, as I started flying toward Grant and Attuma. "Just on the verge on getting new, and potentially dangerous powers. Also gods talking in my head. I'm related to Poseidon apparently."

"Why are you so calm when you say these things?"

"Cuz at this point, after everything we've been through, how can you possibly have a shred of surprise to care anymore?"

"Well, you're not wrong. What about this master plan of yours?"

"I wouldn't say it's a master plan, but it'll do...hopefully."

"Jason."

"Storm-Lord, and don't worry, me and Grant will be fine, you do the same."

"Ok, good luck."

"Ditto."

I cut off the conversation, poured on the speed, and caught up to the battle within three seconds.

"Geo-Titan!" I called to Grant. "Incoming badass lightning cannon in three, get back!"

"Bout time you showed up!" he thought back to me as he knocked Attuma away. "What were you doing, napping?"

I dropped a Zeus Cannon on top of Attuma.

"Yeah," I sarcastically responded. "Best part of the dream was you didn't have a mouth. Now, Delta Tornado, let's make it happen. Oh, and I finally figured out how to take out Attuma's prize possession!"

"Same, bro!" Grant thought back to me as we manifested an F3 level energy tornado around Attuma, taking him for the mother of all spins. "We gotta keep it up with the high powered slashes. Didn't notice it until after we snapped his other sword, but the lightning/Geo-Force we're putting around our weapons are making them vibrate super fast. Dunno if we'd get the same results with anything else, but our gear is canceling out the stone's energy around the actual weapon just long enough for ours to make contact with the actual surface. I took a peek at the molecular level, and even though it's slow, the stone's making this stuff super durable we're breaking down the stability of the metal. We keep this up, pour on the pressure, we can break the shell and get the actual nut!"

That actually caught me off guard. Not saying Grant was stupid, but I never would've pegged him for the physics/molecular science type. Then again, I was the descendant of the sky and sea gods, so what do I care?

"Uhh," I responded. "Yeah….that's exactly what I was thinking. No joke. Still, we gotta force him to pop his weapon back to trident form; the hilt of the sword is way to thick to cut through."

"I hear ya," Grant thought to me. "Drop the tornado, and get behind your shield, I got somethin' special for our boy. After we come back down, Delta Speed Thrasher!"

Before I had time to ask what it was that Grant had in store for him, he had already dropped his part of the tornado, forcing me to do the same. Now, I was still a good 50 ft above where Attuma was, and even though Grant was 20 ft lower, I could still sense him as if he were right beside me. When Grant said he had something special for Attuma, I was expecting something golden, green, rock, tree, or even that Giant-Man thing he pulled off a while back. I didn't expect Ant-Man! No for real, Grant went from being 6'4, to the size of a matchstick! For a half second, I wondered how he thought he could hurt Attuma in his current state, but then Grant hit Attuma…..and…...sweet freaking Jesus! Ok, first off, his takeoff alone created a shock wave that would've torn apart an entire complex of suburban homes like an F5 tornado through a wall of toilet paper. The actual impact of him crashing into Attuma literally could've wrecked the entirety of Manhattan. On the way down (dude was faster than a sniper bullet), Attuma crashed into the ground so hard, it would've put a mile long crater where a football stadium would've been. As if that wasn't impressive enough, I clocked Grant at two seconds flat. Yeah, all of that shock wave, crater stuff? That was after time caught up with how fast he was going. Grant came down with a Geo-Force charged axe swing to Attuma's back, and I summoned my Thunder Sword as I flew down to help him.

Without his other piece, fighting Attuma was like fighting someone with only one arm. Me and Grant circled him almost effortlessly for ten consecutive seconds, getting in at least 500 slashes and kicks in before Attuma launched us in separate directions with a P.E. charged shock wave.

"Aerodynamics now!" I thought to Grant as I launched Attuma 100 ft up with a Zeus Cannon right under him.

Grant rocketed after Attuma, smacked him around with his axe for a few seconds, and backed away as I brought Attuma back to zero with another Zeus Cannon.

"Back to Delta Speed Thrasher!" I thought to him as we converged on Attuma.

For a good five minutes, we kept this up on Attuma, assaulting him with super fast melee, and then mixing it up when he got a bit too antsy for our liking. In that small window of time, we hit blue boy with Hammer Time, Demolition Derby, Delta Barrage, and even managed to put one hell of an Avatar Beatdown on was in a giant The Thing construct, while I was Kratos wielding the Nemean Cestus. On another note, Zeus and the other Olympians must've hated the God of War series. Still, Attuma was one resilient son of a mother, and always managed, through either constructs, or sheer force of power, to bust up our attack and come back swinging. He literally powered out of our Avatar Beat down by constructing octopus tentacles around us, and slamming us together before blowing our constructs apart with a hell of a power blast.

"This isn't working!" I thought to Grant as we recovered and assaulted Attuma again. "We need that trident back out now!"

"Don't sweat it, Storm-Lord," he thought back to me. "One golden pitchfork comin' up pronto!"

He broke up our attack pattern (kind of a mix between Delta Speed Thrasher and freestyle), kneed Attuma hard in the gut, grabbed him by his back, and threw him straight up. Before Attuma could come back from that, Grant materialized a catapult construct around him, and sent him flying up and out. Grant flew after him, though not as in a hurry as he probably should've been if he wanted to take Attuma while he was down, and changed his axe to spear mode. Attuma did manage to recover, but only in time to see Grant's spear about to whack him upside his head. With only a millisecond to spare, Attuma blocked the strike with his sword, pushed Grant's spear aside, and made a slash for his chest, willing the blade to extend into trident mode. Grant managed to catch the blade, though he winced a little bit, and kicked Attuma away with a Geo-Force charged front kick.

"You got two wishes left, dude," he thought to me. "No wishing for no wishes, and Aladdin rules apply. Now if you don't mind, let's finish this!"

As Grant and Attuma had it with their spears and energy blasts, I rejoined the party. I will definitely say that the next two minutes of the fight were a bit awkward for me. Grant and Attuma didn't give each other any ground whatsoever; meaning I couldn't find my footing all that easy. I managed to stick in the background, and disrupt Attuma's attacks with some miniature missiles to his back, and some Phantom Bolts to the side of his head….and that's when it hit me. While Grant was taking the power forward position, I had to keep Attuma off-balance, and go for his trident in the brief few seconds I could squeeze in. For example, while Grant and Attuma had their spears locked, I blasted Attuma's face with my Thunder Vision, told Grant to force their spears to the side, and after summoning and wreathing my sword with lightning, I cut and grinded at the other side of Attuma's trident. Still hated that grinding noise, and I still didn't know how to feel about the P.E. showers (especially now that I knew about my other godly ancestor), but at least we had a game plan now.

Attuma managed to get off a small pulse of water, separating the three of us, but before he could lunge at me, Grant pulled him back with a crane construct, bashed him with a hammer punch to the head, and created a boa constrictor construct around him, leaving only his extended arm, and trident free. Without even glancing at each other, we started cutting at either end of the trident. Grant kept Attuma down for as long as he could, actually making the construct bite and construct harder when Attuma bucked more than occasionally. Even then, Grant only managed to keep him down for 20 seconds (a record), before he warned me to get clear of Attuma's upcoming explosive wave. I got under my Sky Shield while flying back, and even though Attuma came after me again, I blocked his stab, spun around into a backhand shield bash, and while popping out a Thunder Shield on my right arm, hit him in the face with a Vibration Punch, while releasing the equivalent of five Final Flashes. Couldn't tell if it was more of the blast, or the punch, but I really got some good torque on that swing; Grant had to side flip over Attuma and divert his flight pattern with a punching hammer construct.

"A little warning next time, bro?!" he thought to me.

"Sorry," I responded. "Discovering new know how it is."

"Don't I ever."

We flew down after Attuma, who was coming back up in a water pillar propulsing him up at like 100 mph.

"Stonewall him," I thought to Grant.

Attuma smacked face first into a Geo-Force charged golden wall, which also wrapped him in a cocoon, leaving only his trident hand free. A bit redundant, sure, but why fix ain't broken? Grant and I resumed our sawing positions, but we got even less time to do our thing before Attuma broke out of this one. I get it. If I was wrapped in a bedazzled cocoon while two kids messed with my stuff, i'd be pissed too. When Attuma burst out as that burning blue rage monster, even if it almost made me $#!+ myself, I completely understood. He blasted Grant square in the chest with a column of Poseidon Energy, sending him careening into the distance leaving us with some alone time. Let's see...me, myself, and I against that again? Yeah, how about no? I immediately went into Thunder Form 2, turned into a tesla sphere around Attuma, and after keeping him stuck inside the voltage for a good ten seconds, reconstructed myself as a sea serpent, grabbed him in my jaws, and flew after Grant. No way was I waiting for him to take his sweet time.

"Geo-Titan!" I thought to him. "If you're still conscious, i'm inbound with blue boy! Get your game face on, and nut up for round 12!"

"Already way ahead of you, bro!" he thought to me, and I noticed a burning green fire in the distance.

I released Attuma from my jaws, reshaped myself into a giant tail fin, and volley ball smacked Attuma towards Grant, who caught him square in the back with a flying kick. I changed back to normal, summoned my sword, and had at Attuma again for the thousandth time.

This time, Grant and I managed to keep up a steady pace, that actually didn't require keeping Attuma being constrained our cocooned. We fell back on using that mix between Delta Speed Thrasher and freestyling, but instead of trying to punch Attuma out, focused on purposely attacking his trident. Basically, ignoring the most basic rule of sword/spear fighting aside (never cut at the blade unless defending or deflecting), this worked out reasonably well for us. Again, I used constructs and Phantom Bolts to keep Attuma off-balance, while Grant kept most of blue boy's attention on trying not to getting an axe slammed into his skull over and over. Every spare second we had, we attacked and sawed at the trident, sometimes together, mostly in three second single attacks. Attuma managed to buck his way out of our rhythm a few times, but Grant and I would just get out of fire, use a Delta Play (Air Force, Animal Kingdom, hammer Time, and Delta Vortex, in that order), and get our groove back. It was a grueling five minutes, though it was pretty rewarding for me. Like I said, the P.E. was life for me. Every second I was exposed to it, I felt myself getting stronger and faster, my reflexes always on point, my stamina feeling like it went on forever, (the sinking feeling that this was gonna hurt in some way sooner or later). It was nice to know that my punches were actually contributing to the fight, rather than just being love taps.

"Almost there, bro!" Grant thought to me. "I'm gonna ground him, get him separated from his trident, you finish it off!"

"Got it," I thought to him as I gave Attuma one last Vibration Punch to the face before backing up.

Grant did his whole Ant-Man thing (so unfair), and sent Attuma crashing to the ground in a first class flight highlighted by a crater in the silt big enough to bury a cruise ship. We flew down together, and after growing back to normal size, Grant slammed into Attuma fists first, and began to wail on him ruthlessly. As he pounded away at him, he made vines and cables of tree bark spring out of the ground, constrict Attuma, and carry his trident further and further away from him. Furthermore, the gravity around us intensified to an almost painful degree; had to be at least 10X earth's gravity. I understood completely though, Grant was giving me every moment he could to finish that trident off. I summoned my sword, gave it the lightning works, and made a mad dash to the trident.

I didn't waste time getting set up. I just put a hand on the shaft, locked onto a spot, and started cutting for the home stretch. The trident was definitely on its way out, the high pitched squeal was music to my ears (in an ironic sorta way), and the surge of Poseidon Energy felt as good as ever. It's hard to say how long I cut at the trident, no longer than a minute for sure, but definitely longer than ten. As the Poseidon Energy continued to flood into me ruthlessly, I noticed how the buzzing in my ear turned into a hum, like my brain was starting to make sense of the feedback it was receiving. My cells started to feel like they were over inflated water balloons, but soon reached a point where they just couldn't anymore. No seriously, I reached a point where my body just couldn't take anymore; the energy may as well have been scrubbing my skin for all the good it was doing me. Even worse, Attuma went underwater Hulk again, and while Grant did his best to keep his foothold on the fight, all it took was one hit to ruin everything. I should've stopped right there, should've gotten the hell out of the way, but I was so close, I had to keep going. I put more and more pressure on the trident, I could hear it giving way, I was so f*(#!*% close! Finally, just when Attuma was maybe three feet away from steamrolling me like the U.S.A. basketball team does to Beijing in the Olympics (don't lie, you know what it is), the trident broke with an explosion for the ages! At this point, I felt like I was stuck in Transformers: Age of Explosions (watch, that'll be a thing). As soon as the trident gave way, the built up energy came to the surface so hard, I can say with complete confidence that the explosion would've leveled all of NYC. At such close range, even with my body accepting this stuff, I should've been utterly erased from existence. If it wasn't for the Stone of Poseidon saving my butt, I probably would've. Oh yeah that's right, apparently the stone must've liked me, cuz after it was free of the trident, it flew straight into my mouth!

First, cuz I I know you're probably wondering, it didn't taste like anything at all. FYI, it's hard to taste anything when your taste buds are being seared off. On another interesting note, it seemed like my magical immunity was more than just a skin level thing. Even inside my mouth, I could feel the protection coursing through my insides. only problem was, as i've come to discover, the protection was kinda sorta selective. See, while my aura was protecting me from foreign/harmful magic, as it turned out, because I had a bit of Poseidon in my DNA, this energy wasn't foreign to my body at all. In fact, being near the stone was basically a kickstart, igniting what was already there. Oh, and while I didn't taste anything, my entire existence felt the effects of the stone. All that energy that was built in my cells bursted open like a volcano project gone bad. The energy shot through every inch of my body, simultaneously feeling super cold, and scalding hot. Usually stuff like this is painful, excruciating, mindbogglingly cringe inducing to feel. Not this time! Even though it felt like an ocean of power was exploding inside of me, it was like the best kind of adrenaline boost ever. The release I felt from my cells finally letting the power go, was literally orgasmic. I felt strong, insanely strong; like destroy cities strong. The humming in my head leveled out to the point of me actually being able to understand that I was actually hearing….the thoughts of sea creatures, and even Atlanteans. It was like I had developed some sort of telepathic bond with them, which by the way, you really don't wanna know what sharks think while in a feeding frenzy. More so, I felt changed on an almost fundamental level, like the stone gave me something I couldn't give back. That was all before I came to the realization that I had let my guard down, and let the stone merge with my body! Before I could panic, I felt Poseidon invade my mind again, giving me a wave of calm to bite down my fear.

"Be at ease, Jason," he said to me. "This is your birthright, your reward for being the the descendant of Poseidon!"

"Birthday or Christmas money would've been just fine, dude!" I thought back to him. "Hell, I need a new phone; that'd be appreciated!"

"Desist with your shortsightedness boy! I am allowing myself to be distracted from the defense of Olympus to help you! By the blood of Ouranos, my brother was right about you, so disrespectful!"

"Says the guys who ignore my privacy and invade my actual thoughts! Whatever. Look, i'm in the middle of trying not to die, so whatever it is you gotta do, just do it."

Poseidon gave me a humph, and without warning, flooded my mind with information, while making the bonfire of power radiating around me go even more insane. If not for my newfound information processing skills, this would've been like trying to study for an exam for a class you've never taken (then again, I could probably do that to). As was such, I was able to understand and sort through the info with relative ease. In two seconds, I had an extensive knowledge of what my new powers were, and how to use them. Poseidon even gave me a gift to go with it. The broken pieces of Attuma's sword and trident flashed to my feet, before kinda melting together into a pile of goop worth more than a house. The goop, after getting zapped with some Sea Force (that's what P.E. actually is, more on that later), reformed into another trident that was catered just for me. Unlike Attuma's, this one was slimmer, with more precise trident prongs, and had Atlantean inscriptions etched into the entire length of the shaft. The trident flew into my hand, and the roar around me suddenly died down. Until that point, everything within a 30 ft radius of me was a Super Saiyan rage quit. The trident helped me get a hold on the immeasurable (I was so f*(#!^& lit!) power I had inside my chest. Really, the stone had made its way down my throat, and was inside my chest; a blue sea urchin was plastered across most of my chest armor as proof.

"Now save my people," Poseidon told me before he left. "Show no mercy to these barbarians who would dare to attack Atlantis!"

Usually i'd have something sarcastic and mean spirited to say, but the fact that the powers of the Greek god of the sea was physically in my chest left me speechless. How did it feel? The second I can actually explain how it feels to be one with the entire ocean, 75% of the earth, i'll let you know. First off, anything and everything that was on or under water, I could sense with 100% accuracy. I could scope out the battle that was happening at the other end of Atlantis' gates as if I was right on top of it, I could feel Allyson kicking all kinds of….whatever it was she was fighting (my senses were telling me she was fighting some kind of living infection of sorts). Hell, I could feel three different cruise ships sailing in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean all at once. My strength was so off the charts too. I knew without a doubt I could lift a battleship like it was a standard 45 pound bar in the gym. If Goblin and Venom were here, I could've taken them on myself with no problem! Now, I wasn't even half afraid of a lightweight like Attuma barreling at me like a confused gorilla. He had no trident, no real power, and spoiler alert, was on his way to taking a dirt nap of his own. I didn't even have to dodge his attack, or try to build a shield around myself, I just turned around, and with barely any effort, stopped a charging attack that would've steamrolled even Grant.

The shock wave around us leveled an entire square mile of rock and stuff (not to mention throwing Grant for another loop), but I held my ground, much to the shock and bewilderment of Attuma. His face….so priceless! He struggled and fought against me, but I had a grip like a python. Hell, the closer he was to me, the more I was taking back the small bit of Sea Force he had in him.

"It was it this moment that Attuma knew," I calmly said (too many Vines, I know). "He f*(#&% up."

I reeled a leg back, created a small pocket of lightning charged swirling water around my foot (i'll explain), and brought it up under Attuma's chin with enough force to use a submarine as a football. As my foot made contact with the underside of his head, I willed the water and lightning around my foot to explode, doubling the impact force, and all but assuring Attuma would never see straight again. He rocketed straight up at the speed of sound, leaving a trail of heated bubbles in his wake. I took off after him in my Thunder Form, willing the water around me to speed me up in a spiral propeller. Once I caught up, I charged my trident with a fork wad of lightning, and whacked Attuma across his chest with the flat of it. Attuma went careening backwards, only to be stopped by a giant octopus tentacle construct made of hard water. I willed the water to swirl around Attuma in a ball of….swirling water, but with lightning striking him from all sides; basically trapping him in a pocket hurricane.

"Geo-Titan!" I thought to him. "Get up here now! I got Attuma right where I want him, we can end this!"

"Storm-Lord?!" he thought back to me. "You're still alive?! Thank God! Wait! What's up with the stone, where is it?!"

"Inside my chest, bro!" I thought to him. "As it turns out, I got a bit more god in me than I thought! Dude, I got some sick ass new powers now, you gotta come see!"

"On my way!"

I felt him rocket towards me and Attuma from about 15 miles below. It wouldn't be long until he caught up, so I decided to have some fun with Attuma. I made the swirling water implode on top of Attuma, and let myself flex my abilities out a bit. I started with a barrage of thousands, yes thousands of piranha constructs; each packing enough voltage to total an armored Humvee. With 10,000 of those suckers crashing into Attuma in the span of five seconds, Iet's just say it's a really good thing I was far enough from Atlantis to not level it. I didn't let up on Attuma, I was having too much fun! I slammed him with a barrage of lightning charged sharks, mauled him with giant bear, and lion constructs, and dropped a mix of a Zeus Cannon and giant water spiral blast on top of his head (think i'll call that one the Sky/Sea Slammer). Attuma went barreling down at an almost uncontrollable speed, until Grant intercepted him with an equally powerful (or at least enough) Geo-Force blast to the force of my Sky/Sea Slammer to explode before it hit the ground, barraging Attuma in a storm of lightning, water, and Geo-Force.

"DUDE!" Grant thought to me. "THAT'S LEGIT AS F*(#! HOW YOU FEELING!"

"LIKE A MOTHER F*(#!*& GOD, BRO!" I thought back to him, still high on my new power.

As Grant and I assaulted Attuma together, I cranked the dials up to 100 and broke the knob. I let myself literally become one with the water around me, allowing my molecules to absorb and become the element;basically my Sea Form if you will. Grant and I decked Attuma simultaneously as hard as we could, me actually making my arms expand, charge with lightning, and swirl at like 100 mph. Between the two of us, i'm pretty sure we knocked Attuma into the dirt at Mach 3 minimum! Usually we'd have to fly after him, but with my new waterbending power, I wrapped Attuma in chains and had the water do all the work for us. Grant and I immediately went back to stomping the mess outta him with our fists, hitting him with a total of 2,000 punches, before punting him 50 ft away, and letting the constructs fly. For me, I took that quite literally, losing my body form, and melting into the water.

Ok, now seems like a good a time as any, so i'll try and make this quick. You already get the gist of my deity ambiguous heritage, so you don't have to hear that again. Basically, the connection I had to Poseidon manifested in my cells as latent energy that started to activate due to prolonged exposure to the Sea Force. Oh, right, you probably wanna know what the hell the Sea Force even is. Get ready, this is gonna sound nuts.

When Poseidon became ruler of the seas, to bolster his power, he siphoned off a small part of his life energy, and used magic to make it bond to, and spread through the waters like an infection (I know, eww). The energy merged and bonded not only with the water, but also all the sea life that existed, or previously existed, essentially giving them souls. When Atlanteans and sea creatures are born, they have a small piece of the Sea Force in them, making it their own. When they die, the energy is returned to the Sea Force. Their souls….sometimes merge with the Sea Force, but if you were an exceptional Atlantean or sea animal (now that's a religious guideline i'd read, must be nuts!), you got the V.I.P. Poseidon's Court treatment, basically underwater heaven. As Attuma had been constantly showing me, the Sea Force could be used for battle purposes, but without the stone, was extremely volatile to an improperly attuned body. Also, while it could be used for battle, the Sea Force was the embodiment of purity of the sea. True, the sea can be volatile, unpredictable, and violent, but at its core, it's a somewhat benevolent and life giving entity for both undersea and land life. What i'm getting at here is the fact that the Sea Force is meant to be the best part of Poseidon's power, only to be used for good. When you misuse it, you lose favor with it, hence Attuma's drastic decline in strength. Sure, a lot of that was attributed to the fact that he didn't have the stone in his corner, but even then….the Sea Force didn't like Attuma much at all. That's why Attuma was as desperate to keep his trident as much as he was; he was controlling the Sea Force through conduits, not through his actual body. Now, the Sea Force was eating away at him from the inside out; if anything, Grant and I were doing him a favor by beating the hell outta him. The more we jumped him, the faster the Sea Force was knocked out of his system. If we hurried, if I didn't decide to relieve him of his head, we'd be able to save him. Needless to say, we brought the pain super big time!

Quickly explaining the rest of my powers, it was the standard waterbending, while also being able to shift my molecular structure to absorb and replicate water. Waterbending was definitely a step up in difficulty above airbending; less free, and taking a bit more concentration to pull off (seriously, without the stone this was gonna be some kinda frustrating). Still, it was manageable. While I didn't try them out yet, I had a sweeping suspicion that I could channel the Sea Force, and make sea animals do my bidding. OMG….I was a black Percy Jackson! If I had a face, i'd set a record for the biggest fanboy grin. Speaking of which, Grant and I, after a full minute of uninterrupted water/Geo-Force assaulting, were starting to put the finishing touches on Attuma. For the most part, our attack consisted of a steady stream of whatever constructs came to mind (medieval weapons and sea creatures for me, super heroes and vampire Teletubbies for Grant), relentlessly beating the Sea Force out of Attuma bit by bit. In a little over a minute, any remnant of the Sea Force he had in him was knocked completely out. I immediately took my physical form, hit him hard over the head with a double hammer punch, smashing his stupid helmet while I was at it, and crashed on top of him not even a second after he hit the dirt. Common sense would suggest that I subdue him in some form or fashion, but this guy was going absolutely nowhere. First off, his skin was the equivalent of fleshy charred blue pebbles; the Sea Force destroyed any redeeming good looks he had. He was coughing up blood, and his breath was rattled and shaky. This guy was on his way out, he couldn't fight against a kitten. To be honest, I didn't know what to do now. I had the stone, I beat the bad guy, the battle for Atlantis was already won, there was nothing else to do except…...aw hell! I swear to gods it's always one thing after another!

My sensory abilities were going absolutely nuts about 10 miles off the coast of the opposing wall of Atlantis, and I felt its darkness in the core of my soul. Remember how I said the Sea Force was kinda like an infection? What I was sensing now, was literally that, but in the bad sense. That dark army I was talking about, the one I saw in my dreams, yeah they were almost within spitting distance of Atlantis! Millions upon millions (most likely billions) of dark, mutated, unnatural creatures were roaring, moaning, and wailing their way to the city; the presence of such darkness, especially now that I was prone to sensing it, was almost nauseating. Even though I saw this coming in my dream, I still had next to no idea what the hell I was going up against. Thankfully (without crashing into my head again), Poseidon gave me the cliff notes.

The creatures of the Nethertrench (that's what we were dealing with) were a mix of two things. On one hand, they consisted of unfortunate sea animals, normal or not, and sometimes even humans, that got swept up in one of its breaches; multiversal (cuz that's a thing) rifts that randomly popped up in place as deep as the Mariana Trench, or as shallow as an average fishing lake or swimming pool (apparently it happens). On the other hand, all Atlantean life that were somehow deemed to have lived unworthy lives (seriously, this is a culture class I was dying to take), their souls went here rather than to the actual underworld, though this was kinda a subsidiary of Hades' jurisdiction since Poseidon kinda wanted nothing to do with it. Basically like a sibling that who has a toy he never plays with, so the other brother gets to unofficially have it.

Where did the Nethertrench come from? It started when a power surge from Tartarus made it's way to the sea, killing a fourth of all sea life in the Atlantic about 10,000 years ago. It fed on the fear, pain, and regret of all of the lifeforms it swallowed up; turning their fear, and anger into living demonic forms like that colossal ass Minotaur with the four tentacles coming out of its back. Ever since then the Nethertrench pops up here, there, and everywhere, sucking up what it can before it can't sustain itself any longer. That's the thing about the Nethertrench, Sea Force absolutely kills its dimensional integrity. Like trying to start a fire in a wet and windy environment, the breaches could only stay open for so long before they broke down and fizzled out. It was up to the Atlanteans (if they were near enough to stop it), to make sure whatever came out didn't stay for very long. This time though, things were a lot different. I was really that Llyra chick that was messing up the natural flow of how things were supposed to go. Just like the Sea Force can be accessed by those who are properly attuned to it, the power of the Nethertrench can be used the same way. Don't know why anyone would invite that kinda power inside them, it was the equivalent of injecting yourself with a cancer for both your soul and body that turns everything you are into ethereal sludge, but sometimes bad guys don't seem to think these things through. Anyway, it seemed like the sea witch didn't head for the hills after Sunbird kicked her outta the throne room. Don't know how, don't care how, but Llyra somehow bonded to the Nethertrench….sorta. It would be impossible for one person to actually take hold of something that powerful. If the stone of the Nethertrench ever became a thing, then that would be a different story. No, Llyra had to have let the Nethertrench absorb her completely, while also somehow retaining enough willpower and control to give her some measure of power and control over it; at least that's my theory. So yeah, big bad force of darkness, controlled by an evil sorceress, on its way to destroy an underwater nation. Oh, and thank gods for one second crash courses, cuz I took in all that info quicker than it takes to make minute rice. Still, if this was Attuma's plan, he was gonna call it off right now!

"CALL HER OFF!" I roared at him, smashing my fist into his face for good measure.

I was almost afraid that I hit him to hard. He made a weird gravely/gurgling sound that made me think I gave his face internal bleeding (I think that's a thing). I took a few seconds after jacking him up to realize he was laughing, actually laughing at me! That merited another punch to the face.

"I SAID CALL HER OFF NOW!" I kept up the bad cop act.

Attuma still kept up the laughing, not even remotely giving me an inch of fear for his life.

"You can't frighten me, boy," he barely whispered to me. "I know not what the witch has done, but if I cannot have the throne of Atlantis, its destruction will be a good enough consolation prize.

I summoned my sword, and held it to his throat. Attuma should've been kinda sorta afraid for his life, but he kept laughing harder, despite him coughing up a load of blood.

"WHAT?!" I yelled at him. "YOU THINK I WON'T?!"

"Heh," Attuma barely taunted. "I know you will. I've seen enough battle to know a true warrior when I see one. If I have to die, at least I can go to the Nethertrench with a bit of peace. To know that I was killed by someone after my own heart. Someone like-"

"I'M NOTHING LIKE YOU!

Granted, that doesn't mean much when you kinda sorta shove the tip of a blade into someone's neck. Even worse considering the fact I didn't realize I was doing it until I noticed Attuma winced.

"Nothing like me?" he continued. "Look at yourself, boy. You came all this way under the surface, fought a war for a nation you owe no allegiance to, presumably have killed many more people before battling with me, and have plans to take the sacred Stone of Poseidon from Atlantis by any means necessary. What if Namor refuses to let you take it? Will you steal it from him? Will you fight him for it? Your steadfast grip and unrelenting sword hand says it all. I don't know what this stone means for you, surface dweller, but it is clear you will cut a swath through countless others to keep that stone in your chest. Are we really so different?"

If not checkmate, then definite check. My mind raced through all the probabilities that could've come up, how Namor would take the proposition of me and my team leaving with his city's most prized possession. Granted, there was always the chance that he'd be reasonable and not assume we were a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. flunkies trying to impose their will on a sovereign nation….but….yeah there was no way he could assume anything else. If his temper was anything like i've heard or seen on TV, this was not gonna be easy. Still, I wasn't gonna take it from them….at least I don't think I would've. Still, I don't see why they wouldn't give it to us, we saved their city, Doom would obviously try his hand at getting the stone, and they were in no shape to defend against an attack from him. You know what? Let's just put a pin in it. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

"Come on," Attuma continued. "You can't deny your nature. Finish what you started. Be worthy of the power you now have."

"Uh, Storm-Lord?" Grant thought to me while flying over. "I get that you're having a moral dilemma and what not, but Gaea is screaming in my head about something called a Nethertrench that's gonna wipe out Atlantis. No judging, really, no judging at all, but if you're gonna ice this fool, do it now, cuz we've got bigger, darker, eviler, fish to fry."

Ironically, the main takeaway I had from this was that Grant knew what the Nethertrench was. Still, he had a point, had to make my decision snappy. Attuma was dying, that much was certain, and considering the plan I had in mind to divert Llyra's attack (super speed thinking for the win!), it would probably be better if I actually went all Red Queen and took his head. Still, with my annoying conscience getting in the way, not to mention the fact that I could sense Krang still alive (though it sucked to be Byrrah), I decided differently. Call me whipped if you wanna (my conscience won't save you from getting knocked into next year), but if Allyson could resist killing Krang, especially after the warpath she was on, I really had no excuse to kill Attuma. I conked him in the forehead with my sword, knocking him out.

"Come on," I thought to Grant. "Let's save Atlantis….again. Oh, and hold this for me, we need him."

Grant didn't look to comfortable about flying with a limp body in hand, but he shrugged it off, and we were on our way back to the city in no time.

"So, how much did Gaea tell you about the Nethertrench?" I asked him as we neared the city entry.

"Enough," he thought back to me. "It's some kinda evil undersea Venom meets Walking Dead afterlife for bad fish people."

"How does that even work?"

"I know right?! Like, do they have commandments, do they have to accept Poseidon as their lord and savior?"

"I would so read whatever their equivalent of the Bible is."

"Right? But yeah, big scary demon thing, i've seen it all before. The good news is that whatever blue energy Attuma was packing-"

"The Sea Force, basically the exact opposite of the Nethertrench."

"Cool. Yeah, that. That disrupts its flow, but that's not the only thing that can disrupt it. Apparently, because it's an incarnation of big bad dark evilness, good and pure energy can give it a good slap upside the head too."

"So...your Geo-Force counts."

"As long as my intentions are pure and altruistic, yeah."

"So wait, then Sunbird-"

Before, I could even finish that thought, a golden blip flew past about 50 feet under us. Sunbird was some kinda fast when she had to be, cuz if Grant and I didn't mentally yell for her, she wouldn't even know we were behind her.

"Guys?!" she thought to us, looking around frantically. "Where are you?!'

"Look up, Sunbird!" Grant thought to her.

She eventually found us (how do you miss a blob of voltage in the water?), and flew up, presumably to give us a hug….until she realized what Grant was holding.

"Is that, Attuma?!" she kinda freaked out. "Jesus Christ, is he-"

"Not dead," I interrupted her. "But dying."

She kinda calmed down after that.

"Okaaaay," she said, taking a deep breath. "I guess that's better, but where's the-

I put my hand out, created a mini whirlpool over it, and charged it with some Sea Force. I then pointed to my glowing chest, hoping she'd get it.

"Okaaaay," she said again. "That's cool too, i'm fine with that."

She was in shock. Both from my new powers, Attuma's beaten body, and whatever happened during her battle. Still, I was glad to see she was coping pretty well for the moment. Not to be inconsiderate, but we had another job to do.

"So," I continued. "I take it you know about the ooky spooky dark stuff making its way to the city wall?"

"Yeah," she responded. "Llyra channeled the same type of energy back in the throne room before bolting. They don't respond well to my powers though."

"Same for Geo-Force and Storm-Lord's new Sea Force power," Grant said.

"Sea Force?" Allyson asked me.

"Didn't name it, don't care to change it," I waved the question. "Point is, Llyra can somehow control the Nethertrench's power without dying and stuff. I can sense her getting closer. She's controlling an onslaught as wide as the entire wall, plus she has some weird Minotaur/Octopus giant as her mascot."

"How do we beat that? Even if we can hurt her-uh, it….whatever, we can't stop an attack like that."

"Oh, please!" Grant almost shouted (I felt corny inspiration coming on). "Sunbird, the three of us turned the tide of a war! We led this armor better than Namor did. Plus if I had a dollar for every time we fought against something impossible, i'd have….like seven dollars! Point is we're strong, powerful, damn near unbeatable, and that's when we're separated! Together, I don't care if we have to face the Devil himself, we're gonna win always!"

BLAAAAAARRRGH! Ugh, sorry, too much cheese and corn.

"Yeah," I spoke up. "Whatever, GT. Anyway, you and Sunbird both have points. We can hurt Llyra, but i'm betting she's packing way more than what we're bargaining for. We might not be able to beat her, but if we show her we mean business, psyche her out, she'll retreat."

"So, shock and awe?" Allyson asked me.

"Exactly! Geo-Titan, can you spread your powers that thin?"

"Oh yeah," he responded. "Total piece of cake!"

"Cool," I responded. "Sunbird, what about you?"

"If we were above…..maybe," she responded. "I've never tired controlling that much energy. Still, without a lot of natural light to help me, i'll have to draw on my own reserves. I won't be able to do anything too massive, but I can still whip up somethin' fierceish."

"That's fine," I said. "I can control pretty much the entire ocean anyway. I'll do something along the lines of a massive Sea Force charged maelstrom, that oughta take some of the wind out of her approach."

"Well that's all fine and dandy," Grant said. "But why do I have to lug big blue's unconscious ass around?"

"Yeah, seriously, what's up with that?" Allyson asked me.

"Any of you ever play Ryse: Son of Rome?" I asked them.

"No," they both said.

"Oh, well long story short, you halt a barbarian invasion by slicing off the leader's head, and putting it up for them to see. Granted, this isn't just a head, but if Geo-Titan's growing powers can work on other people too, it'll do."

"Uhhhh," Grant went for a good half sec (we naturally drifted into talking at super speed) "Yeah, yeah, I can make that work, no problem."

"You sure?"

"Almost entirely."

"Alright, then let's do this!"

"Wait!" Allyson said. "Just one more thing.

She put her hand on Attuma's head, sung a few bars from Breakaway, by Kelly Clarkson, and after the glow died down, Attuma was less dead looking.

"Had to," she said. "He's not well enough to regain consciousness, but at least he'll live."

"That's cool too," I said (why did he have to be so sweet?). "Again, let's do this!"

"Don't you mean WE GOT THIS!" Allyson teased me as we flew towards the battle.

"You got somethin' better?!" I thought to her (hard to talk when flying at Mach 5).

"I could fill a book with better battle cries!"

"Same!" Grant thought to us.

"I hate you both." I retorted.

"That's not what you said last night," Allyson thought to me."

Considering how Grant didn't lose his $#!+, I assume the message was for my mind only. Still, that didn't stop me from feeling like I had swallowed a boulder. Allyson laughed at me, probably sensing how much she had just grabbed me by the hair and pulled. I basically stayed silent until we reached the other side of the city.

The good news was that Oroco had made the right decision, and ordered his troops into full retreat back into the city. The turrets were still blasting away like crazy, though it was the equivalent of throwing rocks at a charging elephant. Speaking of which, man oh man was this gonna give me all the nightmares forever! It was still a good ten miles out and closing, but the sight of the Nethertrench coming at me wasn't something I could just shrug off. The dark, somehow solid, liquid, and gas onslaught was even more terrifying up close. Before I had gotten the stone in me, the cries seemed like just that, incoherent wailing. Now, I heard the voices, of billions of Atlanteans, humans, and sea creatures experiencing years of hate, pain, and regret all at once. The shuffling of monster parts was like an amalgamation of every H.P. Lovecraft/Stephen King book ever and then some. Oh, and if Llyra was somehow supposed to be overwhelmed by the power, she was clearly not. She was very much whelmed. Basically, for those of you that have played God of War III (seriously, the gods must hate that series), imagine the fight with Poseidon, but fighting a 3,000 ft tall woman from the torso up made of shadows, with snake hair, black holes for eyes, and fangs that would put Godzilla to shame. From below the torso….well, take your pick of whatever monster head, claw, paw, tentacle, etc., coming out of a dark billowing storm of evil spreading across 3,206 miles (Atlantis put China's wall to shame).

"STORM-LORD!" Oroco yelled as he swam over to clap me on my shoulder. "INDEED, THIS IS A GRAVE DAY FOR ATLANTIS! THE VILE NETHERTRENCH HAS AMASSED AGAINST OUR GATES WITH THE FURY OF A TITAN! WE CANNOT HOPE TO-"

"SHUT UP, SHAKESPEARE!" I yelled at him. "ME AND MY TEAM GOT THIS ON LOCK! STEP BACK AND ENJOY THE SHOW!"

Oroco let go of me, muttering about how he wasn't Shakespeare, and I summoned my new trident. Much like the way my battle gear worked, whenever I wanted the trident to materialize in hands, it did. Where did it go when I wasn't using it? Basically, imagine the Sea Force was kinda like a locker that housed it when I wasn't using it. All I had to do was tap into it, call for my trident, and shazam! When I summoned the trident, the water around me swirled a bit, and small energy bolts, like residual static surged around the trident. Kinda cool, yeah, but i've been in the game long enough to be disillusioned already (I get used to stuff quick); not Oroco though. He looked at me like I was his hero, like I was the most badass, most f*(#!%& awesome thing he'd ever seen.

"And on that day," he whispered, though something was off about his voice. "He, with the golden trident, adorned with the blessings of Poseidon, will defend us in our darkest hour. And he will ride with the strength of the earth, and the fury of the Sun. The song of angels will be his sword, the souls of the righteous, his sword. PRAISE POSEIDON!"

…...…..I have no idea. I truly have no idea in the name of God what he was talking about. The only thing I really took notice of, was the fact that I realized he was speaking Atlantean, and I completely understood him, almost like it was second nature.

"Sunbird, GT!" I thought to them. "Ya'll ready?!"

"Good to go, Storm-Lord!" Grant thought back to me.

"Ditto," Allyson chimed in. "Let's do this!"

"Alright, Delta Force!" I hyped myself up. "Release the beast, give her hell!"

A flash of green, wide enough to cast a net over God knows how long, ripped across the Nethertrench like a jagged scar. Llyra/the entire Nethertrench, screamed in agony, and not the normal kind. This was a scream of outside agony, of a pure force giving Llyra a kick to the face. Grant followed that up with what can only be described as Thor with green lightning/fire. I heard Grant roar like a bear, followed by hundred of BOOMS rippling across the ocean. Geo-Force bolt, hundreds, upon hundreds of em' rained down from 10,000 ft above Llyra, striking her everywhere. Balls of Geo-Force, big enough to use skyscrapers as bowling pins, lobbed into into the Nethertrench like Deep Impact on steroids. As if that wasn't enough, dude summoned every last f*(#!^& superhero he could think of, made Geo-Force constructs the size of skyscrapers, and rained them into the Nethertrench with a fury like you wouldn't believe. Llyra would have to get used to Avengers, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, New Warriors, and dozens of other heroes crashing into her repeatedly. Granted, it was like throwing sticks at an elephant (if you wanna compare sizes), but those sticks had an explosion worth a fleet of battle jets. Allyson was the second one to get in the game, and she did not disappoint whatsoever. She flew a good 30,000 feet over the city, and was amassing as much energy as she could around herself, cozying up in the mother of all not so mini-suns. After a few seconds, she came out of the gates swinging hard; super hard.

First off, she made her sun supernova, lightning up the water, and reconstructed it into a giant phoenix looking bird. The wingspan wasn't enough to spread across the full 3,206 miles, but it was enough to cover a good 100 or so (i've never seen such a huge amount of fire in my life). Besides, even if she couldn't hit everywhere at once, she did a great job of spreading her power as thin as she could. Just like Grant, golden balls big enough to decimate skyscrapers, rained down from on high. Bolts of Sun Energy struck the Nethertrench sparingly, but effective enough. Also, because Grant's attack plan was the ideal standard at this point, Allyson threw in her own construct army too. Instead of super heroes though, Allyson went all angelic on Llyra's business. In unison with the fire from heaven, hundreds upon hundreds of angel constructs, around the same size as Grant's superhero constructs, charged down from above to kamikaze the $#!+ outta Llyra. They ranged from muscular guys and gals in medieval armor, to monk looking holy people with wings. Hell, a good chunk of them had up to 4-6 wings at a time. Still, as if this wasn't next level enough, all of the fireworks she was putting on paled in comparison to her main event. Remember the whole giant phoenix made of golden fire? Allyson was willing the construct to flap its wings over and over again, throwing wave after wave of fire (warming up the atmosphere almost back to positive digits) into the darkness. Allyson also kept up the habit of singing while doing her whole wrath of the sun bit; her voice resonating across the area like a fully amped up stereo system and then some. Of the time we spent holding Llyra back, she blew through, Breakaway, Dare You, and Giant Woman (yes from Steven Universe, she even added her own lyrics to pad the run time). Don't know how she did it, but her voice amplified the impact of the flames, like he was willing the good and pureness she so clearly had inside her into the flames. Between her and Grant, Llyra was getting the ass kicking of a lifetime. Now it was my turn to contribute.

I closed my eyes, and focused on the the length and width of Llyra's Nethertrench assault. As good of a job as Grant and Allyson were doing, they were only scratching the surface of the real meat of Llyra's assault. In actuality, the onslaught spread back a far as 2,000 miles, after that….I couldn't sense anything but pure darkness. No time to think about that, had to focus on the part of the problem I could actually control. I focused on the length and width of Llyra's further assault force, and spun my trident over my head. To put this in perspective, imagine putting your hand in a tub of water, and swirling it around, making a cute little whirlpool. I was doing the exact same thing, with the exact same ease, only on a scale big enough to cover the bulk of Llyra's attack. If we were anywhere near the surface, you'd freak out at the sight of a swirling body of water, big enough to decimate the east coast. Once I got the bulk of the attack on its starting legs, I tapped into the Sea Force to give it a bite. Accessing the Sea Force was strange to say the least. Like I said, the energy is just a bilayer of the ocean, almost one and the same if not for the dimensional separation. To access it was not to harness and beat it into submission, rather than let the energy flow through you, and bring it to the physical plane, where you could manipulate it however you saw fit. The power spike I felt in my entire being was massive, like someone nuked my insides. It took a few seconds to make it work, but I was finally able merge the dimensions, and make Llyra really feel the sting. From where I was standing, it was like watching the neon filled sea crashing in on itself for seemingly ever with no restrain. I started simple at first, just a waves and splashes crashing into the darkness. As I got used to the feeling of wielding the Sea Force, I got more bold in my attack formations. First with Sea Force charged fists, medieval weapons, sea predators (and lions), and mythological beasts to tear into the Nethertrench from all sides; large enough to decimate cities. As the minute passed, it was just a matter of me spreading my attack further and further, adding more and more layers to the onslaught. As I made the sea crash and thrash into Llyra, I joined the trend my teammates set, and summoned bolts and balls (snigger) from above. The difference was how much range I was getting in every sense of the word. While Grant and Allyson were more or less taking care of the front of Llyra's attack, I was doing the heavy lifting in the way back. Also, I was charging the giant lobs of water balls with Sea Force, and lightning; ditto for the bolts raining down on the darkness. I'm telling you, Storm and Thor would've been drinking so much Haterade right now! With my extension of control and sensory of the sea, came with an extended Thunder Sense and control the Power Grid. True, most of this was gonna get dialed back after I let this stone out of my body, not to mention the soreness that was probably gonna come with it, but for now, I was enjoying controlling a water/lightning storm that could destroy continents. Zeus and Poseidon must've been so proud of me!

Don't feel bad for Llyra though. While me and my team were owning the f*(# outta her, she put up a kinda sorta fight. For starters, she was able to shift her form towards the center of the oncoming Nethertrench (taking at least 100 lightning/Sea Force bolts to the the top of the head), and use the extra space in the front to form a tidal wave of sorts….you know, just made up of evil multiversal darkness. Grant poured on the defense, raising a barrier of Geo-Force that spanned across the city perimeter. Not to knock his effort, but I could tell that wouldn't be able to hold. Still, on impact, his Geo-Force wall would take a significant bite out of the wave; I could take advantage of that. I willed the water just behind Grant's wall to rise up, and ignite with all the Sea Force (well...more like 20%). Keep in mind, the wall was about 1,000 ft tall, and 3,206 miles long. The wave Llyra was sending at the wall was at least twice the width, though thankfully not as wide. I easily made a wave that trounced the size of Llyra's dust cloud, and shaped them into a phalanx of Roman shields. It maybe took like 2% of my attention and effort to pull off (I was gonna miss this rock), and once Grant's shield was down, my great wall of Jason stood tall. No time to revel in my awesomeness through. I broke the shield wall down, turning it back into a fluid wave again, and made it slam forward, pushing back Llyra's would be finishing move against Atlantis. As the abundance of Sea Force shoved into her and the Nethertrench, the wails of pain grew louder and louder. By the way, there aren't exactly English words to describe what he was yelling, but i'm pretty sure Llyra was yelling some really nasty things at me in Atlantean. Again, Llyra tried her damnedest to actually show up in this fight. She tried using the Nethertrench to lob balls of dark energy at us catapult style (not as ineffective as you'd think, given the distance she had to work with), giant sea monster constructs, even tired lashing out with giant barbed tentacles as far as the eye could see (and then some). Still, my defense was all kinds of strong. Every tentacle got sliced in half before it could get within spitting distance of the city. My lightning and Sea Force bolts striking her constructs and energy balls down before they could even gain any traction. With her offense getting squat, all she had to look forward to was eating the attacks me and my team kept throwing at her (also the thousands of turrets still opening fire on her, they deserve some credit too). Grant kept pouring on the Geo-Force bolts, balls, and constructs, managing to spread his power thin enough to keep Llyra busy. Again, Allyson wasn't quite on par with what me and him were doing, but 200/3,206 miles raining with the golden fire of angels is nothing to sneeze at. Still, for all our huffin' and puffin', we weren't exactly doing anything significant. Oh, we were holding her off for sure, but that's all we were doing. Personally, I could go all day. Grant seemed to be the same, and if Allyson was ever gonna run outta Sun Energy, she didn't show it. Still, we couldn't keep this stalemate up forever, eventually one of us would have to give, and unless we put the brakes on Llyra now, I was afraid we were gonna give way before she did. We had to shock and awe better. Only problem, I didn't have a better plan. Thank God Grant did.

"Yo guys!" he thought to me and Allyson. "This is doin' wonders for my cardio, but I think it's past time we send miss black witch packing!"

"Trust me when I tell you, dude," I thought back to him. "I'm all ears if you've got a plan to make that work!"

Two seconds later, I picked up a huge blob of something forming over the city. The blob eventually took the form of….Thor's hammer. Ok, Grant created a giant hammer, about the size of a battleship out of his on call liquid metal thing…..i'm willing to see where this was going.

In a "blink and you miss it" moment, the hammer blazed to life with Geo-Force, enough to set fire to an entire city, in maybe half a second. The flames/voltage completely overshadowed the hammer, but Grant was just getting started. After another surge of some Nature Force, Grant started to wrap his blazing hammer in vines and tree bark. While that was going on, he willed the silt to rise from the ground, enough to cover the hammer (had to be at least 200,000 tons worth), and upon covering the hammer, hardened it into stone, which he then transmuted into granite.

"Ok, guys," he thought to men and Allyson. "Add your energy, as much as you can into it. Fire, lightning, Sea Force, whatever, enough to make this hurt!"

"What exactly are you getting at, Geo-Titan?!" Allyson asked him.

"Long story short, we're gonna shock and awe from the inside out! More on this later, but I can cut atoms in half with subatomic Geo-Force! I'm gonna cut a swath through Llyra and her army of Dementors! You and Storm-Lord feel free to do the same if you can!"

"Hold up!" I thought to him. "You gonna release God knows how many NUCLEAR BOMBS barely 10 miles away from where we are?!

"Hydrogen actually," he casually responded. "Place is loaded with the stuff. Don't worry, I can use G-Force to keep it contained. Besides, the blasts have to cut between all the black gooey energy stuff, we'll be fine!"

"I'm gonna at least but up a barrier around her, also a shield around the city for good measure!."

"You sure you can do that, Storm-Lord?" Allyson asked me.

"No doubt," I responded. "I've got the power, all I gotta do is tap into it. Let's take a vote, all in favor of going all Hiroshima on Llyra?"

We unanimously voted aye.

"Oh, by the way, Geo-Titan," I thought to him. "Hydrogen bombs are caused by fusion, not fission."

"I can do that too," he quickly responded.

For me, contributing power to the hammer was easy. I tapped into the Power Grid, ignited the atoms around the hammer, and made the power grow until I had overshadowed the hammer in a city's worth of power. I added twice as much Sea Force to the mix. I may have set the bar a little too high, cuz Allyson had to drop her portion of the attack, expand her phoenix construct by about an extra fifty miles, and after a few more bars of 22 by Taylor Swift, added her power into the mix. While not overshadowing my power, she definitely contributed equal to it.

"Good to go, Geo-Titan!" she thought to Grant. "Let's do this!"

"Alright, here's hoping we don't vaporize ourselves!"

Yeah, that was so not happening. As Grant willed the glowing hammer of the gods to fly into the heart of the Nethertrench (thing had to be moving at like 500 mph), I raised a Sea Force Barrier over the entire city. Did I mention Atlantis is as big as Australia? While that was going on, I raised a curving dome around Llyra, once the hammer had made it within range. I kept the dome rising and extending. I couldn't completely cover her from front to back, but I could make sure my shield covered the fallout. By the time I was done, a Sea Force charged dome of water spanned the entire limit of the Nethertrench (3,206 miles exactly), as well as 50,000 meters upward. Why all the fuss? Look up the potential explosion rate for the Tsar Bomba, then you'll get it. Anyway, once the hammer hit (through Llyra tried in vain to block it, the initial explosion was nothing big to worry about, just the force of may be two or three atomic bombs going off at once. After that, Grant, Allyson, and I opened the mother f*(#!^& floodgates! I latched on to the voltage and Sea Force within the heart of Llyra's assault, and made them spread out as far and as violent as I could make them hit. The voltage didn't get too far, only about 200 miles or so, but the Sea Force...that was how I made my name. I made made the power expand to either side of Llyra's Nethertrench assault bringing in the water to to pile on the several billion metric tons of power. Grant on the other hand, upped the ante by several hundred megatons via at least 50 hydrogen bombs going off in a domino effect across the Nethertrench. True to his word, the expanse of Geo-Force, as well as the huge swath of dark energy to cut though, kept the bombs under control. Granted, Allyson unintentionally made things a bit worse. See, the thing about atomic-like bombs is that they need an incredible source of energy to set off the chain reaction that causes the actual explosion. Allyson, who was visibly and audibly straining herself, making the Sun Energy expand into volatile golden flames like a brush fire that could engulf states, was providing that energy and more. In the end, it was no harm no foul. The wall I built to contain the explosion held up beautifully, though the force waves that bombarded the barrier I had over the city, not to mention the sound of the explosions going off, was enough to make me feel like I was getting jostled around in a train accident. Hell, once Allyson and Grant had done their bit (the overall bombardment lasted a good minute or so), I put on the finishing touches. The feeling of controlling so much power was intoxicating, going to my head like an adrenaline rush. I used the old tactic of converting my defensive wall into an offensive wave, sending it on a crusade against the wounded Nethertrench energy. The wails and curses I heard were proof enough that Llyra was on the ropes, but I kept going. I converted the shield I put up around Atlantis, combined it with a large amount of water, to create a trident big enough to vertically divide Texas in half. I willed the trident to fly into Llyra, creating another huge explosion, and then set up my final play.

"Geo-Titan!" I thought to Grant. "Do the growing thing, now!"

While he did that, I flew over the city limits, about three miles out, and started creating the godfather of all combat avatars. It wasn't really original, but for what I was going for, it would have to do. I shifted into my sea form and started collecting as much water as I could; making it swirl in a gigantic ball, before giving it structure. I took my inspiration from the Poseidon boss battle from GOW III. I created a torso made completely of water, using the Sea Force to replicate the glowing tattoos. I made sure to pay special attention to making my dreads authentic. From the waist down, I was a giant mesh of thrashing water horses (the heads). Coming out of my back, I had four tentacles, each as long as a mountain, coming out of my back. Each tentacle that three prongs in it, and was glowing with Sea Force (Dr. Octopus who?). All in all, I was 3,000 feet tall, at least a million tons of water, and was even holding my golden trident, which somehow grew with me. I kept the grandstanding going, raising a wave of water twice as tall as me, long enough to completely cover Atlantis' borders. While charging it with Sea Force, I went absolutely nuts with with the constructs. Every square inch of the wave had a water construct coming out of it. I went basic on a good bit, having merpeople with tridents form on the very top of the wave. Closer to the middle, I had a mesh of cavalry knights on the backs of sharks (couldn't do horses twice). Near the bottom was my collection of god figures i've either seen in movies, read about, or played in video games. Multiple interpretations from the criminally underrated Clash of the Titans (the 2010 one, can't believe it has a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes) movie, Percy Jackson series, God of War Games, Triton from The Little Mermaid, both versions of King Neptune from Spongebob, even some drawings of the gods I liked on deviantART. Long story short, I was ready to go, I dared a bitch to come at me!

"Storm-Lord?" Grant asked me. "Not to step on your badass moment, but Attuma's all big and stuff so…"

"Thanks," I thought to him. "I'll take him off your hands."

I willed my wall of something cool to part and sent one of my tentacles to reach back, grab Attuma, and bring him forward to the limelight. At this point, the dust had cleared, and Llyra was visible. She was still holding on, but barely. Her form was shifting between instability, and the rest of the Nethertrench was starting to get more violent, less controlled. That's part of the reason why I didn't just release the fury of the sea on her sorry butt; without her controlling it, i'd most likely have to deal with raw, savage, untamed Nethertrench. Still, she could see me, and I presumed she could take a hint. I grabbed Attuma's unconscious body, now half my height, raised him up like a championship belt, and made the constructs in my giant wave get riled up like they were at a football game.

"RETREAT NOW!" I roared at her.

Her face told me that she'd like nothing more than to tell me to f*(# off, while continuing her assault with a vengeance. Still, she looked at the power I was packing, and after a few seconds standoff, made the smart decision. She and her hair hissed at me, then retreated back to wherever. It concerned me that the Nethertrench wasn't fading away like I think it's supposed to (like I know where a multiversal evil entity goes on its downtime), but I decided to count my blessings, and dismantle my construct wall. I shifted back to my body, and flew back to the wall to find a cheering army waiting for me. Seriously, it was like I won the freaking Super Bowl for them! Every Atlantean soldier who was within reach came to clap me on the shoulders, calling me "Poseidon's Trident" or, and there's no word that translates exactly for this, the closest thing would be "He that is one with, and commands the power of the sea". I wasn't the only one getting the MVP treatment. Grant and Allyson were getting swarmed by adoring fans, Atlanteans who'd kill just to touch the shoulders of the heroes who saved their city.

"Now this is more like it!" I thought to my friends, allowing myself to enjoy the attention.

"What's that, Storm-Lord?" Allyson asked me. "I thought you didn't like being a hero?"

Before I could tell her off, the crowd gradually started getting, silent. More so, the soldiers started clearing out, like they had just realized I had a flesh eating virus or something. To be honest, I might've actually preferred the flesh eating virus over what I ended up getting. After the last soldier cleared, I found myself face to face with elf boy himself. Namor, King of Atlantis.

Up close, the guy didn't look all that tough. For starters, his armor was all rough looking now. A few scrapes and gashes were prominent in his abdomen area, he was missing one of his shoulder guards, and most of the chain mail that was supposed to be around his biceps and his hair was all messed up. The guy was 6'2 (around the same as me), and even though he had that regal presence to him, he was scoring no intimidation points with me. We kinda sized each other up, him glancing at my trident, face, and of course the glowing sea urchin glyph plastered on my chest. I didn't know whether or not he was gonna thank me with a medieval friendship grip, or try to have me and my friends killed. He gave me his answer posthaste.

"Soldiers of Atlantis!" he roared in Atlantean (probably thinking I didn't understand him).

Hundreds of soldiers, as well as the few thousand more swimming behind Namor, came to attention.

"Surround the surface dwellers, defense position alpha!" he continued.

Grant and Allyson got the rugs swept out from under them when their entourage of adoring fans suddenly surrounded them with tridents pointing barely a foot away from their necks. I was spared the same treatment only because Namor was too close to me.

"Now then, boy," he said casually to me, getting up in my face. "Drop your weapon, and relinquish the stone back into my custody."

"Or else?" I spat out, fighting my instinct to deck him.

"Or else? Let us see…..how about, or else you and your companions die right here and now?"