Imbalance 4.1

"This way," came a voice behind us. As a group, we turned, following a cape dressed in a rather bright yellow costume with white accent stripes. He led us over to a table at the entrance of the large tent we were in, and began passing out items to each of us.

"Radiation pills in the foil packet, wristband communicators, and a basic map of the surrounding terrain. We're pretty sure he's coming straight towards Johannesburg. Armbands will guide you to the main groups. Instructions for wristband use on that board over there," he pointed at a poster in between this and another tent, "and good luck out there." He turned and headed back toward the big pad of plastic in the middle of the tent, and we strode out with our items.

Armsmaster spoke up. "Okay, everyone on search and rescue, with Velocity. Everyone who is defending, with me. Attackers, with Battery, and Panacea, head for the medical tent."

God, everything was moving so fast. I still had to figure out how I was going to swallow this horse pill. I walked over to Armsmaster, looking over the instructions for the wristband, and finding them unfortunately reliant on verbal commands. I was gonna be pretty much screwed if I needed something important, I could already tell.

Armsmaster looked at myself and Clockblocker, and gestured for us to follow him. "This is your first Endbringer fight, the both of you. I won't sugarcoat it; Behemoth is powerful and exceptionally deadly, even for one of these monstrosities. Clockblocker, you will mostly be creating barricades to protect tinkers, who will be creating larger, if less physics-defying, barriers to slow him down. Mandala, you'll be defending him, and supplying material."

I found a public fountain, and we quickly stopped to swallow down the giant radiation pills.

"I'm going to assist the tinkers however I can, so Clockblocker, you're in charge. I cannot stress enough the importance of the truce rules; it doesn't matter how despicable the person is, unless they are fighting other capes or otherwise using the Endbringer as a distraction, you are not to pick a fight. Am I clear?"

"Crystal, sir." Clockblocker's voice was once again tinged with iron, completely serious for once in his life.

The ground shook again, a basso thrum to my senses. The distant echoes of rolling thunder came from the ridges to the north. If not for the quake, I might have mistaken it for the thunderclouds on the distant horizon, but the armbands confirmed it a moment later. A hundred tiny voices in a half-dozen languages sounded, but the ones closest to us said:

"Behemoth has surfaced in grid AH-4, heading due south. Currently emitting radiation."

I pulled my staff pieces off my back armor, snapping them together. Taser, useless. Antigrav section was high priority, so straight in the middle. Hardlight would be useful for weak shielding, but I was kidding myself to think it would hold. Glider was high priority, taking the other end section.

Clockblocker looked up from the map, his body language tense. I took a moment to reach up and put a hand on his shoulder as I leaned in to look.

"Okay, from what I can gather via wristband, we need to head to the northern section of the area known as Parktown, meet up with a team of tinkers that are currently en route."

I nodded, pulling my hand off his shoulder and flashing him a thumbs up. I worked the staff controls, popping out the wings and firing up the antigrav, and gestured for him to grab on.

"Fuck, we should have practiced this more…" he commented as he grabbed onto the upper handholds. "Okay, let's go."

I lifted the staff, now nullifying his weight, and took a running start, ignoring his yell of exhilarated fear as we took off the ground.

-Shangri-La-

Johannesburg reminded me of Brocton Bay, strange as it was to say. It had no sea, no ports to speak of, and yet, the division between rich and poor was so clear it might as well have been drawn in marker.

Poor districts were derelict, full of tight, congested street, some of which I unhappily noted people on. The buildings were shabby, the streets littered, and a rather large number of windows were boarded up.

It made me angry, remembering that as we flew over the rich half of town. Like night and day. Streets were wide and paved, houses were spaced out even though we were in the middle of the city, and most were old but well-maintained. Most of the houses had a carport, whereas the poor area had mostly had the occasional car on the side of the road.

Maybe it was a funding thing; I didn't really know much about city planning. But Brockton Bay had that dichotomy for a reason; the areas had been built for a purpose, and that purpose had disappeared. It stood to reason that these areas of town, so clearly delineated, stood a purpose, but if so, it must have been one long since past.

This city was sick. Not that it mattered, since it might be uninhabitable by the end of the day.

I brought us down to street level at Clock's signal, cushioning our landing with a pillow of air. The street stretched northward, giving us a clear view of the slowly advancing tower of smoke.

"This way." I followed after Clockblocker, who had taken a running start upon landing, looking at the tiny screen on his wristband. "They're two blocks this way, one block over! Look for a McDonald's!"

We approached the McDonald's, sighting a figure on the roof. I had Clock grab my staff, turned on the antigrav, and leapt up. The thought struck me that we probably looked pretty absurd, a tiny kid waving around a teammate on a stick, leaping a cartoonish distance. The animated panels on our respective costumes probably did little to help this.

The roof was coated in a fine black gravel, and upon it sat three figures, a whole bunch of tools, and a machine about the size of a beach ball.

"You are the help we asked for?" was the greeting we received upon landing, spoken somewhat deliberately by one of the capes, a woman decked out in armor reminiscent of a Valkyrie, with a futuristic, swept back wing headpiece. I let Clock talk it out, focusing on my main goal here.

Behemoth was probably only a few minutes away, and I wanted to trap him here, buy time. For that, I'd need a huge area, large enough to stay out of his kill aura, and I'd need a good prison for him. I pushed on a world, and began shifting the building to shining, sterile metal, making a point to leave the tools intact.

The worlds swung into view, shimmering and full of information, telling me how this world had floating oceans, how that one was a world where everything was half the normal size, how another had flowing lava rivers-

I clamped down on it, trying to focus on the task at hand. Clockblocker needed my help, these capes needed my help. I needed something to make a barrier from, a strong one, something resistant to heat and electricity. I let myself be pulled in, immersing myself in the ever-increasing knowledge, letting the limits of my power fall away. Letting the world fall away.

A world with a forest of diamond; too fragile, shear forces too easy to create. Titanium alloy in the walls of that cathedral; flexible, but easy enough to melt. Tungsten carbide crystals coated a volcanic plain; possibly sufficient, but might be too brittle. Wait, there- a world plagued by lightning, where spires and crags of an exposed material drew bolts into the ground. A near-superconductor, and not a weak one at that.

I chose the world, pushing it out. Now I needed… what was it? A battlement, a castle, a wall? Right. I needed a huge wall of the material, because someone needed me to do that.

I absently noted the towering figure that was slowly approaching us in the distance, the constant chatter from my wrist. I willed a wall, thick and tall, to grow between us, as instructed by the familiar voice that stood nearby. The pull called again, and I let it, allowing the wall to grow at speed. On a whim, or perhaps at command, the surface under us changed from the conductor to the surrounding obsidian. Moments later, I noted the power flowing through the material, dissipated into the ground.

My power fed me information on this material, its melting point, its chemical structure, its electron shell, the structure it formed when it was under a certain pressure and temperature and torsion. As another shock drove through the wall, it told me how the bolt would be heating up a few degrees across the hundreds of tons of shimmering golden iridescence, the heat conducting throughout the material in seconds.

The wall was tall enough, now, enough that I could stop growing it. I pushed away, slowly regained awareness of the people around me. I turned my head, looking to Clockblocker, now easily ignoring the information that encroached on my awareness. At some point, I had sat down and put my fists together.

He noted my movement. "Good, you're back with us. Nice wall by the way, probably saved our asses a few times already." I smiled, nodding my acknowledgement. "Okay, the tinkers are almost done with their forcefield, Behemoth is about a mile north of us and closing fast, and as you can hear," he gestured to the wristband, which I realized was still chattering on, "They're getting clobbered out there, so we need to draw his attention. Any ideas?"

I thought about it. My range was about a half mile in every direction, by my estimation, and was currently filled with more crags of conductive metalloid and obsidian, interspersed on a plain of granite crags. I could maybe counter the flames, but I knew relying on my wall would probably be useless once he got close, and I had no options for resisting lightning beyond that. I realized what had to happen, and typed.

'I need him to be here.' 'Might be able to stop him.' 'You go with them, okay?'

He tilted his head, a sign of confusion. "Why do I need to go with them?"

I was already typing, and stood as it played the message.

'I'm gonna drop him, then bury him.'

"That's… actually a really good plan. Okay, Mandala. I'm gonna trust you on this, and we'll pull back and set up a fallback point. See you there." He turned, and walked away.

Other people might have thought he was distant, but I knew better. He knew how unlikely it was that this would succeed, knew this was possibly my most reckless idea yet. But he also knew that I wasn't stupid, and trusted me to come out of it alive. He forced himself to be calm, because he knew the stakes.

He was a good friend, even if his jokes were terrible.

I turned my attention to the armband, turning away from the tinkers and teammate.

Batu down, BR-8. Dichotomy deceased, BR-8. Longhaul deceased, BR-8.

I typed out a message, then pressed the talk button and message button on my wristband. A few seconds after I sent it, Alexandria's voice came over the wristband.

'Draw Behemoth towards the giant metal wall to the south. We have a possible way to contain him. Fliers, rendezvous with me for further planning."

The unending chorus of names began again.

It was done. Behemoth was on his way.

I thought a wordless prayer, opened my glider, and took to the skies.