A/N: I'm gonna be putting this warning on all of my fics for the next rotation: updates may stop being so regular in the near future, as my backlog empties of chapters. My dad was on death's door last week, and while he made a frankly miraculous recovery, they're still talking in terms of hospice and uncertain life expectancy. Between the stress, the incoming holidays, and the occasional road trips we may be making to visit him, rebuilding my backlogs necessarily takes a backseat. If I go quiet for too long, just know that I'd make an official announcement if a fic was going to be abandoned, so unless you see that then I just haven't gotten back to it yet!

If you want more updates on writing setbacks and life events, plus bonuses like writing prompt responses, or just conversations, come check me out on Spacebattles.

This chapter beta'd by Undead Robot and broughtfromxp.

Imbalance 4.5

I wanted Behemoth to run away as quickly as he could burrow, back to the core of the earth where he would stay for a thousand years. I wanted to cast him into the depths of the ocean or the outer reaches of space, leave him adrift and alone until the end of time. But right now, what I wanted most was for him to feel the weight of the pain he had caused, to hurt him in a way he would not soon forget, so that he might know a measure of his own monstrosity.

My hands moved, guided by a will that was not entirely my own, and the world moved with it. The flames of the city roared high, the rain froze in place, the ground shattered like glass, and the very air seemed to thicken as all sound went still. My body sprung into motion, all the pain and injury I'd felt before sealed away. A swirl of my arms whipped the rain into ice and gathered it to me, and a sweeping motion smashed the sleet into seven shimmering scythe blades, each as tall as Armsmaster in armor and wickedly sharp. Like an archer drawing a bow we removed the impurities from the shards, crushing them till they were hard and clear, and a kick sent the opening salvo flying.

Behemoth turned unnaturally fast, taking the hits on his forearm, each man-sized blade leaving shallow cuts in the rhino-like hide. Another sharp motion brought spikes up from the ground, stabbing at the underside of the forearm in multiple places but stopping far too short.

He snapped off the tips with a quick motion, taking a step towards us, and was rewarded with an impact from behind as someone else attacked him. We used that moment to grip the earth, reaching deep into its thrumming bass and bending it to our will with a mighty heave. Behemoth was thrown onto his back as the ground he'd been standing on flew into the air, a concrete slab as large as a house rising from the ruins of the city. As Behemoth stood, we peppered it with a machine-gun fire of sharp gravel from the block, each stone too small to bother redirecting, but their combined cutting force enough to leave a deep patch of shredded flesh across his back.

We weren't the only ones fighting him, and our offensive had provided a moment to rally. To my right, Legend poured blue-white lasers onto Assault, who was using the constant feed of kinetic force to copy my barrage of material whenever he could. Alexandria fell in like a meteor to leg lock around Behemoth's neck, then began smashing it in the eye with cold, calculated precision using her right arm. A dozen other capes blasted him from afar, strange effects and mundane projectiles whizzing and zapping him without end.

Behemoth tried to roar, and we cut it to the level of a whisper with a clap. He quaked, and the ground barely trembled. He sparked flames, and we quelled them. He tried to advance, and we tore the ground from under him to force him back.

The Endbringer tore Alexandria off his head, seemingly unfazed by the damage to his eye. The mangled head snapped to face us, and it suddenly charged, trying to catch us in his kill radius.

I tried to retreat, but my body wasn't my own. Whatever force was controlling us, it wasn't capable of things like fear. I could feel it, like searing light filtered through a blindfold, its thoughts alien and cold and sharp, only understandable when I took a conceptual step back to see the puzzle instead of its pieces.

Confidence.

We held our ground, throwing an unending tide of shrapnel and hurricane winds at the First as he closed in. I could feel the moment we entered the kill radius; energy built up inside my body, hot and powerful, like a welding torch flame but a hundred times more, trying to incinerate me.

The strange soul that controlled our body immediately stopped bending the elements to its will. It rapidly swept its arms through a sinuous motion, a swooping, aggressive form I'd never seen before. It traced a flattened infinity symbol with my fingertips, and I could feel the raw energy Behemoth was using within us divide, split into two somehow different yet equal parts. It crackled, surged, wanted to recombine, wanted to obey its master. But whatever the force controlling me was, it was absolute in its ability, and confident in our combined strength. As I reeled with the realization that I wasn't dead, my hand pointed two fingers at the monster, and the energy within us found a new target.

Behemoth was sent stumbling back as a bolt of lightning leapt from our fingertips with a roar, every bit as powerful as the ones he'd used today. I felt him try to redirect it, but the force controlling me kept mastery over the bolt with cold, ruthless ease. He continued trying to incinerate us, and we fed that power back into the bolt. He tried to incinerate us with fire from the outside, and we drained it of strength to fuel the lightning for another second. The bolt only stopped when he gave up trying to kill us, and my body launched back into attacking twice as quickly as before.

This was impossible. I should have been dead, incinerated or smitten, my body succumbing to its injuries as we dodged the swipes of the Endbringer at point-blank range. It was terrifying, but as we tore more boulders of stone from the terrain, crushing them to crude, dense fists so that we could fight Behemoth on his own scale, I had to admit that it was also exhilarating. I wasn't alone in this fight, both outside and within, and together we had the power to make the Herokiller stay on the defensive.

He wasn't retreating, though. Sophia's body was still behind me, and I resolved that he would not cross that line without going through me. I felt a simple affirmation of that from my new partner/protector, and as one we started pushing him back.

We broke open a water main deep underground and directed it to the surface in a series of pencil-thin jets, punching holes in the bedrock and concrete as they lanced into the Endbringer. Huge fists of earth beat with a low thrum, pummeling the Endbringer from a dozen angles, barely denting the murderous beast's hide but pushing him back nonetheless. Alexandria delivered a flying roundhouse kick into the off-balance Endbringer, revealing a stump where her left arm had been, and though he redirected the strike into the ground, a stomp of our foot silenced it to a shudder. A dozen capes realized that no quake was coming and used the moment to fire off a wave of attacks, orbs of light biting deep into hide, beams digging furrows through flesh, panes of force boxing him in and freezing his hide while a spectral wave knocked him to his knees momentarily.

Behemoth was still doing damage, even as we drove him back. I felt twin notes of energy crackle across the battlefield, and the thing in control didn't even pause its attack as the Endbringer took two more people from the world in an arc of searing light. As he turned to retreat in earnest, dropping to the ground and tearing at it with great craggy claws, chunks of stone and debris were flung in eerily accurate arcs towards certain defenders. I wanted to stop them, but the alien presence continued to press the assault, even as the First disappeared underground entirely, even as the rubble projectiles found their marks.

When I felt it trying to drag Behemoth back to the surface, my pleas to do something about the damage ceased, replaced by a dawning horror. While I'd been fighting, the lack of control had been something best not thought about, a necessary sacrifice for an exhilarating and desperately needed power. Now, when I was unable to stop myself even though the fight should be over, when I was literally watching myself try to drag an Endbringer back into a fight when it had already done so much damage, I was terrified of it, terrified of being locked away, terrified of the fight.

This, and only this, seemed to break through to the other soul. It stopped, panting heavily as sweat dripped from our brow, and relaxed its grip on the bedrock. We felt Behemoth shatter it a moment later, and in a few seconds it was too deep to stop anymore.

The thought drifted across from the other, a mess of concepts, memories, and intents, some of it familiar, but most of it feeling cold and off-center on some fundamental level. As I untangled the thoughts, I felt it begin to retreat.

Confusion? Protected.

Wait! I called out mentally. It kept slipping away, and I knew I had no time. I gathered up my own mixed thoughts and feelings about my powers, not bothering to translate them into words or censor them, and pushed it to the other soul. There was a lot of bad in there, of course, but also a fair bit of good, and I hoped that, whatever this aspect of my powers was, it might understand me better for it.

While the Triumvirate met overhead, their gaze often turning to me, the spirit sent back one final jumbled message, and then I was alone. I collapsed to the ground and hugged my legs to my chest as the pain rolled back in, shutting out the world as I focused on deciphering the meaning of the last message I'd received from what might have been the source of my power.

Agreement.

-Shangri-La-

I was wracked with coughs again, and for a relieving moment, only my body was in pain.

I was in a shallow agony, every breath or twitch of muscle a fresh jolt of raw nerves, mild but extensive burns, sore or torn muscles and rattled bones. Twisted wells of unspent power lingered from Behemoth's failed kill aura, forming pockets of wild energy in a line up through the core of my body that pulsed and pounded like the blood in my veins. My ears rang, the left one probably sporting a burst eardrum, the right taking in sounds like needles to the skull. The medical tents were less noisy than they had been earlier, but each crying person facing their death by radiation poisoning or person with third-degree burns still made themselves known to those of us with less permanent injuries. I wasn't entirely sure which one of those I was, but I suspected the former.

I appreciated the pain, though, because it made it easier to not stay in my head for too long.

Today had been one of the worst days of my life. That was an objective fact. I'd been reckless, in hindsight, so caught up in wanting to help at every turn that I'd never really stopped to consider the possibilities. I'd been stupid, quick to act, slow to learn.

I'd nearly died for it, several times over. I'd lost control in more ways than one, and I'd failed to be a voice of reason out of some twisted attempt to compensate for that in the moment. Ultimately, my teammate had paid that price for me, and though I'd done my best to avenge her, that didn't change the fact that a girl was dead and a family would mourn.

The worst part, the part that kept repeating in my head? I might never know if it was the bolt, or my rash attempt to save her from it, that dealt the final blow. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

"Two times in one day, huh?"

I raised my head from the bed slightly, confirming that it was in fact Panacea at the end of my bed, then let it slump back to the pillow. She walked up to my bedside, giving me a thin smile that spoke of a need to rest.

"The Triumvirate gave me a direct request to get you back on your feet ASAP, but that's up to you. Do I have permission to heal you?"

I gave her the most sarcastic thumbs-up I could manage. I didn't really want to 'talk' to anyone right now, even if it was Scion himself come to have a conversation, but laying here with my thoughts was slightly less appealing. For the moment, anyway.

She laid a hand on my forehead, my body going numb as she worked. "So, what kind of trouble did you get in this time? That's some pretty major attention."

I shrugged. It wasn't exactly something I could explain, even if I had pen and paper, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if Amy knew enough about my abilities to even begin to understand. I wasn't sure if anyone did, me included. The PRT might; the Triumvirate might, from raw experience; but the people I knew? I couldn't say.

Panacea took her hand away from my forehead, standing with a tired sigh. "You know the drill with my healing by now, so I won't bother you with the spiel. Triumvirate are waiting by the entrance. Back to work, I guess."

I wanted to give her some kind gesture, but found myself unable to bring myself to the effort. Instead, I smiled weakly at her, already too late to be caught. Then I was alone again, my eyes taking in the details of the tent's lead-meshed fabric as I tried to work myself up to getting out of bed. She'd healed my body, but my mind and power needed a different kind of help.

After what could have been ten seconds, or just as easily ten minutes, I sat up, strapped on the mask that was as busted as the rest of my once-red costume, and wandered to the entrance of the tent.