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Sirens wailed through the shattered city like dying animals, their cries overlapping with the roar of fire and the distant thunder of collapsing steel. Thick black smoke billowed upward between the buildings in violent spirals, swallowing the late afternoon sun until the sky turned a sick, bruised gray-purple.
Entire sections of the commercial district had been torn apart. One city block had collapsed almost completely inward, reduced to a jagged crater of broken concrete, twisted beams, and burning vehicles.
Dust hung so heavily in the air it looked like a storm cloud trapped at street level. It coated everything white, cars, shattered storefronts, trembling civilians stumbling through the wreckage. Blood streaking through the pale dust in ugly smears.
Somewhere deep beneath the rubble, emergency alarms shrieked endlessly, muffled under layers of debris. Civilians screamed for help from buried pockets underground, their voices thin and desperate between the grinding creaks of unstable buildings. Rescue crews fought to push deeper into the destruction, but every few seconds another aftershock sent showers of concrete crashing down around them.
Blue fire erupted across the street. The explosion of heat hit suddenly enough to make nearby officers recoil instinctively.
Temper landed in the center of the ruined intersection with enough force to crack the asphalt beneath his boots. Glowing fractures splintered outward from the impact in shimmering lines before cooling instantly.
His long coat snapped violently behind him in the heated wind. Frost crept along one sleeve in spiderweb patterns where his support gear struggled to regulate the monstrous temperature tearing through his body. Flames rolled from his arms and shoulders in unstable waves from the flight. They flickered hotter every second before he forced them down with one sharp exhale through clenched teeth.
“Status!” he barked immediately.
The nearby police visibly straightened in relief at the sight of him.
“Villains are still active inside the commercial district,” one officer reported quickly, breathing hard. “No known casualties but the west side’s almost completely collapsed, we’ve still got trapped civilians under at least three structures - ”
His eyes swept across the devastation once, fast and calculating as he took in the scene. Burning gas lines, leaning support beams, secondary collapse risks, entrapment zones. Few escape routes with too many civilians and too little time.
“Heatless!” he shouted.
A massive figure emerged through the smoke beside the ambulance line.
He looked almost unnatural against the chaos surrounding him. Towering and broad-shouldered, but somehow with a calmness to him that bordered on unsettling. Screaming civilians rushed past him while medics shouted over one another, yet he moved through the disaster easily.
Frost crackled softly over his gloves. “Already on it,” he called back.
“Take triage. Keep civilians stable until transport catches up. Prioritize crush injuries and burns.” Temper pointed sharply toward the overcrowded medical line. “Toga’s with you.”
“Aw, you say that like I’m attached at the hip.”
Toga skipped over an overturned taxi with alarming cheerfulness, medical bags bouncing against her sides. One sleeve was already stained red from a civilian she’d treated minutes earlier, but she carried herself with bright energy.
She dropped beside a crying man clutching his side.
“Hi!” she chirped with a smile far too sunny for the apocalypse around them. “I’m gonna help, okay? That’s a nasty bleed, but don’t worry, we’ll get you patched up in a jiffy!”
The civilian stared at her in stunned confusion.
A few feet away, Heatless crouched beside a woman trapped beneath a collapsed support beam. Her leg bent at a horrific angle, shaking violently from pain.
“You’re alright,” he said calmly. “Focus on me.”
Ice spread from his fingertips, not solid freezing ice like his siblings produced, but delicate crystalline fibers that crawled softly beneath the skin like glowing frost-veins. They wrapped around damaged nerves with impossible precision.
The woman gasped sharply, then sagged in relief as the pain vanished almost instantly.
“There you go,” Heatless murmured. “Stay awake for me, alright? I’ve got you.”
Another explosion ripped through the district. The shockwave thundered down the street hard enough to rattle broken windows loose from nearby buildings.
Temper spun toward the sound just in time to see three figures dropping from above through the smoke.
Skyline landed first, hovering inches above the shattered pavement before touching down lightly, wind curling around her boots. Null slammed down beside her with considerably less grace, nearly slipping on loose debris before catching himself with an irritated curse. Spinner landed last in a low crouch, tail lashing sharply behind him as his eyes swept over the destruction.
Skyline grimaced at the ruined street. “Shit, this is bad bad.”
Null adjusted his gloves with tense urgency. “Oh really? Is it because everything’s on fire?”
Temper pointed toward the western collapse, “Null, Skyline, you deal with the west collapse. There might be people buried under at least three floors.”
“On it,” Skyline answered immediately.
Null looked toward the mountain of rubble, swore under his breath, and sprinted off.
Twice suddenly burst from the smoke at full speed, nearly tripping over a broken street sign.
“There’s another group trapped underground!” he shouted frantically. “Or maybe there isn’t! But there probably is! We should definitely panic about it!”
Temper jabbed a finger toward Null’s direction. “Then go help them.”
Twice threw a dramatic salute. “Roger captain! I hate authority! I desperately crave validation!”
Ten more Twices split off around him in muddy flashes, scattering in different directions as they bolted toward the rubble alongside Skyline and Null.
“Left sides collapsing!”
“No it isn’t!”
“It might be!”
“Everything is collapsing!"
Skyline groaned loudly without slowing down. “Twices, less screaming please!”
Meanwhile, Null crouched beside the collapsed structure, studying the tangled mass of broken steel and concrete pinning a civilian beneath it. The remains of the building groaned ominously overhead, every strained creak threatening another collapse.
Dust drifted through the air around him like ash.
“Stay still,” he ordered sharply, already moving forward.
The terrified civilian trapped beneath the support beam let out a shaky breath. “I - I can’t feel my leg - ”
Null carefully pressed all five fingers against the fractured beam.
The massive slab quickly ceased to exist. The concrete and metal disintegrated instantly into fine gray dust, unraveling so unnaturally fast it barely looked real. One second the beam was there. The next it collapsed inward like dry sand spilling through invisible fingers.
The surrounding debris shifted dangerously. He grabbed the civilian’s shoulder before the rubble around them could cave inward.
“Easy,” he said quickly, voice suddenly calmer than it had been moments earlier. “I’ve got you.”
The civilian stared at him in shock as he pulled them free.
Nearby, Spinner lifted chunks of broken concrete off a trapped kid with brute force, muscles straining beneath torn sleeves. The child clung to him the second they were free.
He glanced sideways at Null. “You always do the dangerous part first.”
Null snorted softly while helping the rescued civilian toward paramedics. “Well, if I screw up the dangerous part, there usually isn’t a second part.”
Before Spinner could answer, another explosion ripped through the street.
The blast wave thundered through the smoke hard enough to shake the ruined storefronts around them. Glass shattered outward as a warped figure crashed violently through the windows of a nearby department store, laughing hysterically while flames spread behind them.
“HAHAHA - LOOK AT THIS PLACE BURN!”
Blazes erupted across the intersection as Temper launched forward like a missile.
Heat exploded outward from him in a violent burst, carving scorched streaks across the pavement as he accelerated. The air itself distorted around him from sheer temperature.
“Spinner, you’re with me!”
Spinner stiffened instantly and dropped the slab he’d been moving, “Right!”
The villain barely had time to turn before Temper slammed into them hard enough to obliterate the remains of a bus stop behind them. Metal twisted like paper from the impact. Both bodies tore through shattered glass and concrete in a whirlwind.
The villain snarled through bloodied teeth and swung wildly.
Spinner intercepted immediately. His tail snapped around the attacker’s arm with a sharp crack, stopping the punch inches from Temper’s face before wrenching the limb violently sideways.
“Temper!”
“I see it!”
his flames surged hotter.
Fire spiraled viciously up his arm, unstable and furious. Beneath the reinforced support gear wrapped around his body, the heat was already starting to burn through his own skin. Smoke hissed from the metal restraints around his wrists as the temperature climbed past safe limits.
The villain grinned when they noticed.
“Oh?” they mocked, wiping blood from their mouth. “Number One can’t even handle his own quirk?”
Temper smiled back with all teeth. “Cute observation villian.”
Ice exploded across the street.
The temperature crashed so violently the air itself cracked. Frost surged outward in a blinding wave, flash-freezing half the intersection in seconds. Cars iced over instantly and streetlights crystallized white.
The villain lost their footing for half a second and Temper took the opportunity to drive a burning fist directly into their stomach.
The impact detonated like a bomb. The ground cracked beneath them as blue flames erupted upward in twisting pillars. The villain’s body folded around the hit before launching backward through layers of frozen debris.
Behind them, movement stirred through the smoke.
Then more figures emerged. Villains poured into the street through the haze, armed and grinning as they spread through the destruction.
Spinner’s tail lashed sharply behind him. “Not good.”
Temper clicked his tongue in irritation and reached for the comm at his neck.
“Null,” he barked, breathing hard. “You got anybody available? We need backup over here.”
Even as he said it, his eyes stayed locked on the growing crowd.
Under normal circumstances, he could’ve handled this alone.
But not with all the unstable buildings collapsing around them, or the civilians still trapped beneath rubble only a street away.
Every second he pushed his quirk harder increased the risk of collateral damage. One missed attack, one small loss of control or a single overheated burst in the wrong direction and innocent people would die.
That was a risk he refused to take.
Static crackled through the comm.
Then Null’s strained voice answered, “No. We’ve got our hands tied here.”
Temper swore under his breath. “Fuck.”
A villain lunged at Spinner from the side with a rusted pipe raised overhead.
Temper flicked one hand outward instinctively.
A spiral of ice erupted from the pavement and wrapped around the attacker mid-charge, freezing them solid before they could land the strike.
Another villain burst through the smoke directly toward Temper.
This one was massive, both forearms wrapped in jagged layers of scrap metal like crude gauntlets. Sparks flew from the steel as he charged.
Temper shifted to meet him but the man suddenly jerked violently sideways mid-step, a strangled yell tore from his throat as red magnetic energy flashed across his chest in jagged arcs.
“What the - ?!”
His entire body launched sideways like he’d been hit by a speeding truck, slamming directly into another villain hard enough that both of them crashed through the shattered remains of a convenience store window in an explosion of broken glass.
Then a familiar voice called lazily through the smoke, “Well, that’s rude.”
Red energy flickered again somewhere beyond the haze. “Starting without us?”
Temper looked up sharply just as Magne dropped out of the smoke above them.
She landed atop the wrecked remains of a transport truck with a heavy metallic clang that echoed through the ruined street. The entire roof crumpled inward beneath her boots from the force of the impact, twisted metal screeching loudly as dust burst outward around her.
Red magnetic energy flickered briefly around her gloves before fading.
Beside her, a small blue marble spun lazily between elegant gloved fingers.
Compress stepped through the drifting smoke with impossible composure, entirely untouched by the chaos consuming the city around him. Flames reflected faintly off his polished mask while debris rained somewhere in the distance behind him. His long coat swayed gently with each measured step as though he were arriving at a formal gala rather than a battlefield littered with fire and collapsed buildings.
“My sincerest apologies for the delay,” he said smoothly, voice calm and refined. “Traffic proved rather uncivilized.”
Temper visibly relaxed for approximately half a second before glaring at them instead. “Took your sweet time.”
“Oh, don’t pout,” Magne shot back as she jumped from the truck. “Some of us can’t launch ourselves through buildings like loose fireworks.”
Spinner exhaled hard through his nose in obvious relief. “Thank god.”
“Careful,” Compress mused lightly while adjusting one glove. “You’ll wound Temper’s ego.”
“My ego is fine!”
Another villain burst from behind an overturned bus with a crazed scream, swinging a jagged metal pipe overhead as they charged directly toward the group.
Compress sighed dramatically. “So hostile,” He tutted softly and flicked the marble forward with effortless precision.
The villain vanished instantly mid-scream, their entire body compressed inward in a violent swirl of distortion before collapsing into a small blue marble that bounced neatly back toward Compress. He caught it delicately without even looking.
Spinner stared for half a second. “You make that look way too easy.”
“My dear boy,” Compress replied warmly while pocketing the marble inside his coat, “confidence is everything.”
A sudden explosion detonated nearby.
The blast wave slammed through the street hard enough to force everyone to shield their faces as debris and shattered concrete rained around them. Fire rolled through the smoke in violent orange flashes.
Three more villains emerged immediately afterward.
“Oh come on,” Spinner groaned.
One of them spotted the evacuation line down the street and immediately sprinted toward the fleeing civilians.
Temper moved first. Blazing fire exploded violently around his arm, heat distorting the air as he lunged forward, but before he could strike, another figure slammed into the villain from the side.
“I got him!” A Twice clone wrestled the attacker into the ground with manic enthusiasm.
Then another Twice appeared standing triumphantly atop a crushed mailbox nearby, pointing dramatically toward the fight.
“We got him!”
A third clone immediately tripped over a chunk of debris and smashed face-first into the concrete.
“I do not got him!”
Temper pinched the bridge of his nose, “Why are there so many of you?” he muttered.
Magne barked out a sharp laugh while throwing another villain sideways with magnetism. Red energy wrapped around the attacker’s chest before violently launching them into a wrecked police cruiser and folding the door inward.
Compress smoothly pocketed another marble. “I do admire his enthusiasm.”
A deafening crash thundered somewhere deeper within the district. The ground trembled beneath everyone’s feet.
Then Heatless’s voice crackled calmly through the comms despite the screaming and sirens in the background. “Status?”
He ducked beneath a flying chunk of concrete before answering.
“Magne and Compress finally decided to show up,” he said sharply. “We’ve got this handled.”
Another villain flew past him screaming after Magne casually hurled them into a traffic light.
“Mostly,” he amended.
Another thundering impact echoed from deeper inside the collapsed west sector.
Everyone froze for half a heartbeat.
Then Null’s voice snapped through the comm line, harsher than before. “The west side just shifted again.”
Every expression changed instantly, back straightening. Even Compress’s posture tightened slightly beneath his calm exterior.
Temper turned immediately toward the ruined skyline looming through the smoke. In the distance, one of the partially collapsed towers groaned loudly, its upper floors leaning at an angle they absolutely should not have been leaning at.
“How bad?” Temper demanded.
Static crackled heavily through the comms.
Then Null answered grimly, “Bad enough that you should stop asking questions and start praying the building doesn’t come down on all of us.”
—
Dust rolled endlessly through the shattered remains of the parking structure in suffocating gray waves, thick enough to sting the eyes and clog the lungs with every breath. The entire west side of the garage had collapsed inward on itself, each level pancaking into the next until the building resembled a mountain of crushed concrete and twisted steel.
Massive slabs hung at impossible angles overhead and bent rebar speared from the debris everywhere like exposed bones.
Every few seconds the ruined structure groaned deep within itself with long metallic creaks and grinding shifts that sounded horribly alive, like the building was slowly dying around them.
Null stood near the center of the collapse zone with one gloved hand pressed against a fractured support beam thicker than his torso. Sweat slid down the side of his face, cutting pale streaks through the dust coating his skin.
“Okay,” Skyline called carefully from above him. She hovered several feet in the air between two broken levels of the garage, her quirk keeping her suspended while she scanned the unstable structure around them.
“Tell me you actually have a plan.”
Null ignored her completely.
His eyes stayed fixed upward at the tiny pieces of concrete crumbled from the ceiling and bounced off his shoulders. Somewhere deeper inside the garage, steel screamed as another support shifted under the unimaginable weight pressing down on it.
The whole structure was moving around them.
Twice clones sprinted frantically through the wreckage carrying civilians one after another toward the perimeter where paramedics waited behind emergency barricades. Every clone shouted over each other while running.
A muffled cry suddenly echoed somewhere beneath the debris.
Skyline’s head snapped sharply toward the sound. “There!”
Null vaulted over a collapsed slab and climbed across unstable concrete making the structures groaning heavier beneath him. Dust exploded around his boots as he shoved chunks of debris aside until he dropped beside a narrow opening trapped between two fallen sections of ceiling.
A little girl was wedged inside the pocket beneath the rubble, half-buried beneath dust and shattered concrete. She was probably around eight. give or take. Her breathing came fast and uneven.
“M - My mom - ”
“We’ll get to her too,” Null cut in immediately.
The ceiling above them groaned again.
Skyline landed beside him in a crouch, carefully distributing her weight against the unstable surface.
“Hey,” she said softly, her voice immediately gentler. “Look at me, okay? You’re doing really, really good right now.”
The girl’s terrified eyes locked onto her instantly. Skyline smiled despite the sweat gathering at her temples and the dust clinging to her face.
“What’s your name?”
“A - Aya…”
“That’s a pretty name,” Skyline said warmly. “I’m Skyline. This grump over here is Null.”
A tiny huffed laugh escaped Aya before she winced sharply in pain.
Null’s expression tightened immediately. He leaned closer and carefully examined the slabs trapping her legs. His eyes tracked every fracture line, every unstable angle, every point where the weight above might shift.
Then he swore quietly under his breath.
Skyline looked over instantly. “Bad?”
“If I disintegrate the wrong section,” Null muttered, “this entire pocket comes down on top of her.”
As if to prove his point, another violent groan thundered through the garage. Dust rained down around them in thick curtains and somewhere nearby, metal snapped with a deafening clang.
Aya whimpered softly.
Null closed his eyes for one brief second and exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Alright,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “Aya, I need you to stay very still for me, okay?”
The little girl’s lower lip trembled violently but she nodded.
Skyline rested one hand gently against the concrete beside the opening.
“Keep looking at me, sweetheart,” she said softly. “What’s your favorite color?”
“P - Pink…”
“Excellent choice. Mine’s blue. Mostly because it matches my brother’s permanent stress levels.”
“Hardy har har,” Null grumbled back without much thought.
Aya gave another shaky laugh.
Good.
Keep her calm.
He slowly slid his hand into the narrow gap beside her trapped legs. The space was barely large enough for his wrist. Dust trickled over his knuckles as his fingers hovered above a fractured section of concrete supporting the slab above them.
One wrong touch and that was all it would take for several tons of concrete to collapse directly onto the child.
His jaw tightened hard enough to ache, but carefully he pressed all five fingers down.
The concrete disintegrated instantly into fine gray powder, then the larger slab above them shifted with a deafening groan.
“Now!” he barked.
She lunged forward, grabbed Aya beneath the arms, and ripped her bodily out of the opening just as the entire pocket collapsed inward behind them in a thunderous explosion of concrete and dust.
The space where the girl had been trapped vanished beneath falling debris less than a second later. Skyline stumbled backward through the collapsing rubble, cradling Aya tightly against her chest.
“I’ve got you,” she murmured, launching upward before the unstable floor beneath her could give way completely.
Aya clung desperately to her neck like a lifeline.
Null remained where he was for one long heartbeat, shoulders slumping as adrenaline crashed violently through his system.
Then another cry for help echoed from deeper inside the structure.
Skyline returned moments later, landing beside him with dust coating her hair, costume, and shoulders white. “Aya’s with the medics.”
Null nodded once. “Good.”
The building groaned again. A support column several yards away suddenly split with a sharp cracking noise that echoed through the garage like a gunshot.
Skyline grimaced and looked over the sprawling wreckage surrounding them. “We’re losing time.”
She was right.
Too many voices still echoed beneath the rubble. Too many people were buried under thousands of tons of collapsing concrete.
Null clicked the comm at his collar. “We’ve still got multiple survivors buried,” he reported quickly. “The structure's getting worse.”
Static crackled violently before Temper’s voice answered through the sounds of fighting and explosions in the background.
“Get as many people out as possible. Pull out if it starts coming down.”
Skyline rested a hand briefly against his shoulder. “We split up,” she said. “We can cover more ground.”
Null hesitated only a second before nodding. “Stay airborne as much as possible.”
Skyline gave him a crooked grin. “No promises.”
Another rumble rolled through the parking structure, making dust and debris fall from every surface.
Then she launched upward again, weaving through the fractured upper levels with practiced precision. From above she could spot movement hidden beneath collapsed floors and broken support beams.
“Two survivors on level three!”
“Adult male pinned near the eastern support!”
“I hear someone under the stairwell!”
Null sprinted in the opposite direction immediately, vaulting over broken slabs while dissolving debris with precise touches whenever he found trapped civilians.
Around them, Twice clones rushed frantically wherever either sibling directed them, hauling injured civilians toward safety in an endless flood of duplicate panic and yelling.
For several frantic minutes, they worked separately but perfectly in sync. Each trusted the other completely to handle whatever waited in the ruins ahead.
—
Heatless stood in the center of controlled chaos.
The entire triage zone stretched across nearly a full city block, overflowing with injured civilians and exhausted emergency crews.
Stretchers lined the pavement in uneven rows between ambulances with their rear doors thrown open. Red and white emergency lights strobed endlessly through the drifting smoke, washing the disaster scene in harsh flashes.
The air was thick with overlapping smells but mainly , leaking fuel, antiseptic, blood, and melted plastic.
Sirens screamed from every direction.
Paramedics shouted vitals over one another while civilians cried out in pain somewhere deeper in the crowd. Medical helicopters thundered overhead intermittently, kicking dust and ash across the street.
And somehow, standing in the middle of all of it, He remained like bedrock in a hurricane.
He knelt beside a teenage boy laid across a stretcher near the curb. The kid barely looked sixteen. Blood soaked through one side of his shirt from a deep gash running along his ribs, and his breathing came in sharp uneven bursts from panic as much as pain.
Heatless carefully peeled back the ruined fabric to examine the wound. “This is going to sting for a second,” he said evenly.
The boy swallowed hard. “Am I gonna die?”
“No.” He didn’t soften the answer with false comfort or gentle reassurance. He simply said it with absolute certainty that made people instinctively believe what he said was truth.
The boy stared at him for half a second, visibly grounding himself against the calm in his voice.
He pressed two gloved fingers carefully beside the wound and frost spread outward instantly.
His quirk manifested as delicate, almost organic-looking fibers of frost that threaded themselves carefully across damaged tissue and exposed nerves like glowing silver roots. The crystals crawled over the injury with precise control, numbing pain receptors while slowing the bleeding beneath the skin almost immediately.
The boy gasped sharply but after his entire body sagged with relief. “Oh my god…”
“There you go,” Heatless murmured while adjusting fresh bandages over the injury with practiced efficiency. “See, you’re still here.”
Nearby, Toga was managing an entirely different flavor of chaos.
“Hold still!” she chirped brightly while pressing gauze against a middle-aged man’s forehead. “If you keep squirming, I’m gonna make your bandage ugly on purpose.”
Heatless glanced up briefly. “Toga.”
“What?” she asked innocently without missing a beat. “He’s conscious. Teasing is medically indicated.”
Before she could continue arguing, a paramedic’s voice suddenly cut across the triage zone in panic.
“We’ve got a woman in cardiac distress!”
Heatless was on his feet in seconds, and crossed the crowded triage area in three long strides, weaving past medics and injured civilians without slowing. Toga darted after him immediately, her trauma kit bouncing against her hip while she shoved past a pair of arguing EMTs.
“Move, nerds!”
The woman lay on a stretcher near the ambulance line, barely conscious.
Her breaths came in shallow and uneven huffs, each inhale hitching painfully. Blood had already soaked through the makeshift compression bandages wrapped tightly around her chest, staining the fabric dark crimson.
A medic looked up desperately as Heatless dropped beside her. “We think collapsed lung - ”
“Tension pneumothorax,” Heatless corrected instantly after one glance.
His eyes scanned her condition in seconds.
Tracheal deviation. Distended neck veins. Labored breathing. Pressure buildup.
Bad, bad, bad, bad.
Toga was already kneeling beside him and digging through her kit before he even asked.
“Needle,” she said, handing him the decompression equipment immediately.
Heatless took it without looking. “Read my mind.”
“I spend enough time around you,” Toga replied while checking the woman’s pulse. “It’s mostly anatomy facts and deeply suppressed anger.”
Together they moved with seamless efficiency born from brutal experience.
Toga stabilized the woman’s blood pressure and oxygen flow while Heatless carefully relieved the pressure building in her chest. Frost spread delicately beneath his fingertips again, threading through damaged nerves to dull the agony threatening to send her body into full shock.
The woman cried out weakly at first but she suddenly sucked in a full breath and the color slowly returned to her face as her breathing evened out.
The surrounding paramedic stared openly. “How did you - ”
Heatless was already standing and stripping off one glove to move toward the next patient. “She’s stable for transport now,” he said simply.
Toga snapped her medical bag shut with a grin and pointed dramatically toward him. “He’s annoyingly competent.”
Another ambulance screeched to a stop nearby bringing fresh civilians pouring into the triage line.
Heatless glanced toward the ruined west side of the district where massive clouds of dust still billowed into the darkening sky. Through the static in his comm he could faintly hear Skyline shouting survivor locations while Null swore aggressively at collapsing infrastructure somewhere in the distance.
A loud metallic crash echoed from that direction immediately afterward.
He looked back toward Toga and handed her another sealed trauma kit from a nearby supply crate.
“Go,” he said. “Ambulance three just got two more criticals.”
Toga caught the kit one-handed and saluted dramatically with her bloodstained glove. “Doctor Doom and Nurse Delight are on the case.”
The two of them disappeared back into the sea of injured civilians, swallowed once more by flashing lights, drifting smoke, and the endless noise of a city trying desperately not to fall apart.
—
Temper ducked sharply as a jagged chunk of concrete whistled past his head close enough for him to feel the displaced air against his cheek.
The debris slammed into a traffic light behind him and exploded into fragments, showering sparks and shattered metal across the frozen street.
“Compress!” He barked without looking.
“I see it,” Compress replied smoothly from somewhere to his left, somehow managing to sound mildly offended that anyone would think otherwise.
A villain burst through the smoke at that exact moment, screaming as they swung a jagged steel pipe overhead with both hands.
Compress sighed theatrically. “Honestly, where are their manners?”
He flicked a marble lazily into the air and the attacker vanished mid-charge in a violent swirl of distortion becoming only a polished glass sphere dropping neatly back into Compress’s waiting palm.
“Really,” he mused, “they’re making this far too easy.”
Nearby, Magne planted her boots against the cracked pavement as another villain charged directly at her through the smoke. Red magnetic energy exploded around her hands in jagged arcs.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she called back with a grin sharp enough to rival Temper’s. “I’m having fun!”
She thrust one arm sideways and the charging villain suddenly jerked violently off course like they’d been hooked by an invisible cable and launched sideways into the overturned remains of a city bus.
The impact folded the metal inward with a deafening crunch.
Spinner vaulted over the hood of a wrecked sedan nearby, claws scraping against dented steel as he landed hard on the opposite side. His tail whipped out immediately and smashed into a villain’s knees snapping them sideways and forcing him to the ground.
“There are still six more coming!” Spinner shouted.
“Seven!” Temper corrected instantly.
Blue fire detonated from his outstretched hand in a violent wave, forcing two advancing villains backward as the street erupted in heat distortion. At the same time, ice exploded outward beneath his feet in razor-thin veins that raced across the pavement and flash-froze another pair of attackers solid from the legs down.
His support gear shrieked in protest. The metal restraints wrapped around his wrists hissed violently as smoke curled from overheated seams.
Magne was quick to call him out, “You’re overdoing it.”
Temper bared his teeth in something far too sharp to qualify as a smile. “I’m pacing myself.”
A massive figure burst through the frozen street like a charging tank.
Stone-like armor shifted across the villain’s skin in uneven jagged plates, thick layers grinding over one another with every movement. He was enormous — nearly twice Temper’s width — and laughing as he barreled forward through shattered ice and debris.
Before he could fully pivot, the brute slammed into him, sending him skidding backward across the pavement.
“Temper!” Spinner shouted immediately.
He caught himself with one hand against the street, fire bursting around him as he slid. Ice crackled outward beneath his fingers to stop his momentum.
Static crackled through his comm at the same time. “Temper,” Skyline’s voice cut through clearly. “We’ve cleared your area.”
No civilians nearby anymore.
No more reasons to hold back.
The villain thundered toward him again, each footstep cracking the frozen pavement beneath his weight. Stone plates shifted across his body like moving armor, thickening over his shoulders and fists until he resembled a walking bunker more than a man.
Temper rose slowly from his crouch.
Blue flames licked hungrily up one arm while frost crawled over the other in mesmorizing patterns.
He swung a fist the size of a cinder block directly at his head and Temper vanished.
The villain barely had time to blink before a burst of fire detonated behind him with enough force to shatter every nearby window inward simultaneously.
BOOM.
The brute twisted instinctively but it was already too late.
An ice-coated elbow slammed into the back of his neck with brutal precision. The impact folded the much larger man to one knee, cratering the street beneath him.
Spinner stared openly now. “He teleported?!”
Compress adjusted his mask calmly. “Not at all."
Temper appeared in front of the villain before anyone could properly process the movement. Blue fire roared from his left hand point-blank into the brute’s chest.
Heat exploded outward in a blinding wave as the force launched the armored villain backward through an abandoned city bus, tearing through one side and out the other in a hurricane of twisted steel. The wrecked bus lifted partially off the ground from the impact.
Magne let out a low whistle. “Oh, that was nasty.”
The villain stumbled out of the flaming wreckage somehow still standing. His stone armor glowed dull red from the heat, cracked in multiple places while smoke curled from the gaps. He let out a furious roar, and slammed both fists into the ground so hard the street erupted with Jagged pillars of concrete exploding upward in violent rows racing directly toward the heroes like sharpened spears.
Ice exploded outward beneath his boots in a perfect frozen circle.
The rising stone spikes flash-froze solid mid-eruption, then, in the same fluid motion, azure flames raced through the frozen structures instantly like lightning through glass.
The entire formation detonated into a massive cloud of superheated steam. The battlefield disappeared behind blinding white vapor. For one impossible moment, everything went silent.
Then a silhouette emerged slowly through the steam. Blue flames streamed behind Temper in long predatory waves, curling off his body like living smoke.
The villain actually took a step backward.
He tilted his head slightly. “You done?”
The brute screamed and charged desperately again anyway.
Temper met him head-on.
Fire and ice erupted simultaneously around him.
His right fist burned hot enough to melt steel while the left arm was wrapped completely in glowing blue frost.
The first punch landed like an explosion against the brute’s ribs. The second — a flaming uppercut — lifted the massive villain completely off his feet. Before the man could even fall, Temper spun sharply and drove a kick into his torso that instantly encased half his body in crystal-blue ice.
Then he launched upward after him in a spiraling pillar of blue fire.
Spinner stared in disbelief. “No way…”
High above the ruined street, suspended in smoke and firelight, Temper caught the frozen villain by the face. For one suspended second, the entire battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
Then Temper drove him straight back down. A colossal shockwave blasted outward across the district, extinguishing nearby fires and rattling abandoned vehicles for half a block in every direction.
The pavement collapsed inward. Dust and steam exploded skyward.
When the smoke finally cleared, the villain lay embedded deep within the center of a massive crater. Frozen solid from the neck down beneath layers of thick ice.
Temper landed lightly on the crater’s rim, smoke curling from his arms in slow spirals. Frost crackled softly across the edges of his coat. Blue fire still flickered around him in low, predatory waves that illuminated the destruction surrounding him.
He looked down at the defeated villain for a long moment. Then calmly brushed dust from his sleeve.
Spinner let out a stunned, breathless laugh as the shockwave finally faded. “Holy shit.”
Magne crossed her arms over her chest, staring down into the crater with a grin stretching across her face. “Show-off.”
Compress gave a few slow, polite claps from beside the wrecked bus, somehow still immaculate despite the battlefield surrounding them.
“Magnificent,” he declared warmly. “Truly, you do have a flair for spectacle.”
Temper ignored all of them. He turned slowly toward the rest of the battlefield instead.
The warning systems built into his support gear wailed louder, shrill alarms piercing through the ruined street as angry red lights flashed along the restraints wrapped around his wrists and spine.
Heat erupted around him again, more violent than before.
The air distorted instantly around his body, air shimmering hard enough to blur his outline while frost simultaneously raced across nearby shattered windows in branching veins. The temperature drop was so sudden the moisture in the air froze mid-drift.
Every remaining villain froze where they stood, some literally, ice spread silently across the pavement around their boots, creeping outward in jagged patterns like living cracks.
Temper’s eyes glowed through the drifting smoke.
“Last warning,” he called. His voice came out rough from smoke inhalation and dust, but it still carried across the ruined district with terrifying clarity.
For one suspended moment, nobody moved. Then one of the villains — a woman with long serrated blades jutting from both forearms — snarled and lunged anyway.
A streak of blue crossed the battlefield faster than the eye could properly follow.
The woman suddenly found herself upside down frozen solid from the waist down, embedded harmlessly into the shattered wall of a storefront with ice locking her in place like concrete.
Nobody had even seen Temper move.
Another villain panicked and raised a firearm toward him.
A razor-thin shard of ice snapped through the air.
CRACK.
The weapon’s barrel froze solid before the trigger fully depressed, ice jamming the mechanism instantly as frost exploded over the attacker’s hands.
A third villain turned and tried to run.
Fire detonated at his feet with just enough force to blast him violently off-balance and send him crashing backward into a towering wall of ice that erupted from the pavement behind him like the bars of a prison cell.
Three seconds was all it took.
By the time the steam cleared, every remaining villain was down and the area crackled with cooling ice and the distant wail of sirens somewhere beyond the ruined district.
Temper stood alone in the center of it all, chest rising and falling hard. Blue flames still flickered around his arms in unstable waves, though they’d weakened from an inferno.
His support gear flashed angry red warnings against the smoke-darkened street. Then slowly, he lifted one hand and pressed two fingers against the comm at his neck.
“All known enemies are down.”
Static crackled briefly.
Then Null’s voice came through first, breathless, exhausted, but unmistakably relieved. “About damn time.”
Another burst of static, then Skyline came through. “West side’s clear,” she reported. “Last civilians are being pulled out now.”
Heatless spoke next, calm and steady as ever despite the exhaustion hiding beneath his voice. “Triage is under control.”
The ruined street hissed softly around them while ice melted against scorched pavement and dying fires smoldered beneath collapsed debris. Ambulance lights washed over shattered storefronts in rhythmic pulses of red and white while dust drifted slowly through the air like gray snowfall.
It settled over all of them eventually until the heroes looked less like people and more like exhausted statues standing in the aftermath of a war zone.
Temper remained at the center of the crater he’d created, shoulders heaving visibly now.
Blue flames still licked lazily around his arms, though the fire sputtered occasionally in uneven bursts. Smoke curled from beneath the metal restraints around his wrists where the overheated support gear had begun scorching against his skin.
Across the block, the city seemed to exhale with them.
Police officers cautiously advanced to secure the immobilized villains. Paramedics wheeled the last stretchers toward waiting ambulances. Firefighters disappeared into smoking buildings to check for lingering flareups.
And somehow, through all of it, Twice clones still ran everywhere.
One carried debris while another directed traffic despite having absolutely no authority to do so. Two separate clones argued loudly over who had technically saved more civilians and another one dramatically fainted face-first onto the sidewalk.
Skyline finally dropped from the sky beside Temper.
Her landing kicked up dust around her boots, brushing concrete powder from her ruined costume. Her hair was coated gray with debris and a thin scrape cut across one cheek.
“Well,” she sighed, “This was a terrible afternoon.”
Null emerged from the direction of the collapsed parking structure moments later carrying a sleeping little girl carefully in his arms.
A paramedic rushed over immediately to take the child from him. Only after she was safely transferred did Null seem to realize his hands were shaking.
Spinner stepped beside him and clapped a hand firmly onto his shoulder. “Nice work.”
Null snorted tiredly and leaned into the contact.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “but I’d like to formally request fewer collapsing buildings next time.”
Heatless appeared from the triage line shortly afterward, soot streaked across his uniform and dried blood stained both sleeves nearly black.
Toga skipped happily beside him carrying three overstuffed trauma kits at once while humming to herself.
“All civilians accounted for,” Heatless reported with a tired exhale.
Toga beamed proudly. “And only two people threw up on me this time!”
Magne laughed loudly while lowering the final restrained villain onto the pavement for the police. “I swear,” she said between laughs, “your team gets weirder every single year.”
Compress adjusted his mask delicately before giving a small theatrical bow. “And yet,” he said smoothly, “we remain remarkably effective.”
For the first time since arriving, Temper finally let himself relax. Which turned out to be a mistake because the second the adrenaline loosened its grip, his knees nearly buckled beneath him.
Natsuo was beside him instantly, catching him firmly by the arm before he could hit the ground. “You’re overheating.”
Temper jerked his arm away automatically. “I’m fine.”
Null looked over immediately, completely deadpan. “Translation: he is absolutely not fine.”
Skyline crossed her arms.
“Translation of your translation,” she added, “is that he’s about thirty seconds away from passing out face-first into his own crater.”
“I said I’m fine,” Temper snapped again, though noticeably less convincing this time.
Smoke curled from one sleeve, then he swayed slightly.
Everyone stared at him.
Temper opened his mouth to argue and immediately got hit with the rapid-fire explosion of camera shutters.
Flash after flash ignited across the ruined street like miniature lightning strikes.
Beyond the police barricades, an entire wall of reporters and news crews had gathered while the fighting died down. News vans crowded the intersections with satellite dishes extended overhead. Bright floodlights snapped on one after another, cutting harsh white beams through the drifting smoke and concrete dust until the devastation looked almost theatrical.
Microphones rose above the crowd like weapons as everyone started shouting at once.
“Temper! Over here!”
“Can you confirm casualty numbers?”
“Was this a coordinated villain attack?”
“What happened inside the west collapse?”
Touya closed his eyes briefly like someone developing a migraine in real time.
Tenko let out a long groan from nearby. “Oh, no.”
Toga perked up instantly. “Ooh, media time!”
Compress straightened his coat with visible delight. “At last,” he said smoothly, “my true battlefield.”
Magne rolled her eyes so hard it was practically an athletic event.
Police officers waved the heroes toward the barricades as reporters nearly climbed over one another trying to get closer.
Temper rubbed dust and sweat from his face with one hand before stepping forward first.
Cameras intensified instantly the second he entered the floodlights. For one suspended moment, he looked exactly like the image burned across billboards, news broadcasts, and magazine covers all over the country.
Tall and smoke-streaked but somehow perfectly composed despite obvious exhaustion.
Frost still clung to one shoulder of his ruined coat while dark scorch marks spread around the metal restraints wrapped along his wrists.
Even completely worn out like this he looked dangerous.
A reporter shoved a microphone forward first. “Temper, what can you tell us about today’s attack?”
His gaze drifted once over his shoulder toward the destroyed district behind him.
Collapsed buildings and Burning wreckage that surrounded ambulances loading the injured and held exhausted civilians wrapped in emergency blankets.
He couldn’t really call this a victory now could he?
“The important thing,” he said evenly, “is that every civilian we located was evacuated alive.”
A ripple passed through the gathered reporters immediately.
“How close was the situation to becoming catastrophic?”
Null barked out a short laugh from behind him. “It was catastrophic.”
Skyline elbowed him sharply in the ribs.
“What my brother means,” she corrected smoothly while stepping beside Temper, “is that the situation was extremely serious, but all rescue operations were successful.”
Despite the exhaustion visible in her posture, she still smiled easily toward the cameras. Dust coated her black hair silver beneath the floodlights and a scrape cut across one cheekbone, but somehow she still looked effortlessly reassuring.
The cameras shifted eagerly toward her.
One reporter raised a hand immediately. “Skyline, witnesses say you personally evacuated dozens of civilians from the upper collapse levels.”
She shrugged lightly. “That is what heroes do.”
Null folded his arms nearby. “And she won’t stop reminding us.”
Skyline pointed at him without missing a beat. “Oh, please. You literally dissolved an entire parking garage one support beam at a time.”
Another reporter immediately pivoted toward him.
“Null, is it true you rescued a child trapped beneath three collapsed floors?”
He visibly regretted existing in that exact moment. He looked deeply uncomfortable with the sudden attention, shoulders stiffening immediately as cameras turned toward him. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
“She was scared, so we got her out. That’s all.”
Nearby, Heatless had somehow accumulated his own cluster of journalists while continuing to peel dried blood from his face.
“How many civilians did you treat on-scene?” one reporter asked quickly.
Heatless slid the gloves into a pouch at his waist. “I don’t know the exact number.”
Toga immediately popped up beside him with the energy of an overexcited gremlin.
“But,” she announced dramatically to the cameras, drawing the word out, “he saved everybody and looked very good while doing it.”
Heatless didn’t even blink. “Toga,” he said calmly, “you have blood on your face too.”
She wiped at her cheek lazily and smiled wider. “That happens.”
A visibly bewildered reporter stared at the two of them. “How did you remain so calm during all this?”
Heatless glanced briefly toward the ambulance line where paramedics still loaded injured civilians into transport vehicles.
“People were hurt,” he answered simply. “There wasn’t time to panic.”
The straightforwardness of it seemed to catch the reporter off guard.
Meanwhile, several yards away, Compress gathered his own semicircle of reporters like a magician collecting an audience.
One journalist extended a microphone toward him eagerly.
“Mr. Compress, witnesses have described your performance as ‘show-stopping.’ Any thoughts?”
Compress placed one hand elegantly over his chest. “My dear friend,” he said warmly, “if one is going to save the day, one should at least do so with style.”
Several nearby reporters actually laughed.
Magne snorted loudly beside him, making another journalist turn toward her next. “And what role did you play today, Magne?”
She grinned immediately and cracked her knuckles. “I threw people.”
The reporter blinked. “The villains?”
Magne winked. “Mostly.”
Laughter rippled through the exhausted crowd around the barricades. Small, tired, disbelieving laughter from civilians, police officers, paramedics, even reporters.
For the first time all afternoon, the atmosphere eased.
Behind the heroes, the ruined city still smoldered beneath drifting smoke and flashing emergency lights.
—
By the time they finally made it back to the Permafire Agency, the adrenaline had burned out of everyone’s systems and allowed for exhaustion to hit all at once.
The agency’s massive glass lobby doors slid open with a soft mechanical hiss. Warm light momentarily spilled out across the sidewalk.
“Absolutely not.”
Touya stopped dead barely three steps inside the entrance as Natsuo pointed firmly down the hallway leading toward the agency medical wing.
“You are going to medical.”
Touya kept walking anyway. “I am going to my office.”
“Hm. Interesting.” Natsuo folded his arms. “Counterpoint, hell no.”
Touya looked genuinely offended by his audacity. “I’m fine.”
“You are actively smoking.”
Touya glanced downward to see one of the metal wrist braces attached to his support gear was, in fact, smoking slightly.
Tenko walked directly between them without slowing, coat dropping dust across the polished lobby floor.
“If he passes out in the hallway,” he announced tiredly, “I call dibs on stealing his chair.”
“You already steal my chair, asshole.”
“Yeah,” Tenko replied immediately, “but then it becomes funny and symbolic.”
Hana snorted as she kicked off her ruined boots near the entrance, sending dust everywhere. “You two are exhausting.”
Compared to the disaster zone they’d just left behind, the agency itself felt almost unreal in its calmness.
Soft lighting glowed warmly along the hallways while muted jazz played faintly somewhere deeper in the building.
Someone had apparently started coffee hours earlier and forgotten about it because the entire first floor smelled faintly like espresso and burnt sugar.
Jin collapsed face-first onto one of the lobby couches with a dramatic groan loud enough to echo. “I have died in the line of duty.”
Another Jin clone immediately flopped down beside him.
“We died beautifully.”
A third clone pointed weakly toward the ceiling.
“Tell the public I was handsome.”
Compress stepped elegantly over all three bodies without even glancing down.
“Please perish quietly,” he sighed. “Some of us are attempting dignity.”
Meanwhile, Toga had somehow already raided the agency kitchen in the thirty seconds nobody was paying attention.
She returned carrying three ice packs, a family-sized bag of chips tucked under one arm, and what looked suspiciously like an entire cheesecake balanced against her hip.
“No one ask questions,” she announced proudly.
Natsuo finally succeeded in cornering Touya near the reception desk by physically grabbing the back of his scorched coat before he could vanish down another hallway.
“You’re concussed.”
“I am multitasking.”
Tenko dramatically flopped sideways over the arm of the couch like a dying Victorian nobleman. “Just tranq him at this point.”
Touya shot him a tired glare. “You offering?”
“Absolutely,” Tenko replied instantly, sitting up a bit like he might actually go get a tranq gun. “I’ve been waiting for years.”
Hana dropped heavily into the chair beside him with a long exhausted exhale, tipping her head back against the cushion. Dust clung to her eyelashes and tangled through her hair. There was dried blood smeared across one sleeve and a bruise darkening along her jawline.
Still, she cracked one eye open toward Tenko. “You almost dropped a parking garage on yourself today.”
Tenko scoffed immediately. “Incorrect. I almost dropped a parking garage on everybody.”
Hana pointed lazily at him without opening her eyes again. “Y’know, this is exactly why you got banned from building blanket forts as a kid.”
Tenko sat upright so fast the couch squeaked. “That was ten years ago! And it was one time!.”
“One?” Natsuo echoed incredulously from across the room.
Spinner looked up from where he leaned over the kitchenette counter drinking water straight from the tap.
“Wait,” he interrupted. “Hold on. Blanket forts?”
Touya finally gave up resisting and dropped heavily into one of the lobby chairs while Natsuo immediately started unclasping the scorched restraints from his wrists with the long-suffering precision of someone who had performed this exact routine hundreds of times before.
Tenko pointed across the room. “In my defense, he kept adding space heaters.”
Touya looked completely unapologetic. “It was winter!”
“You almost cremated us!”
“That sentence explains so much about you,” Spinner muttered.
Toga suddenly lit up like she’d discovered buried treasure. “Oh my god,” she gasped. “Baby hero stories.”
“No,” Touya said immediately.
Natsuo snorted softly while inspecting the burn damage creeping up Touya’s forearm beneath the ruined support gear.
“You know,” he said dryly while reaching for fresh bandages, “most people stop setting themselves on fire after the first few decades.”
Touya leaned deeper into the chair and closed his eyes. “Weak mindset.”
“It's his chronic stupidity,” Hana offered without a second thought.
Touya cracked one eye open just enough to glare at her.
“I survived an entire city block trying to kill me,” he said tiredly, “just to come home and get bullied in my own agency.”
“Yes,” Natsuo replied calmly while tightening a fresh wrap around his wrist hard enough to make Touya hiss. “That’s the reward for surviving.”
Toga somehow ended up on the arm of Touya’s chair, balanced there with deeply concerning ease while eating cheesecake directly from the container.
“You were kinda scary today y’know,” she informed him cheerfully.
Touya looked entirely unimpressed. “I’m always scary.”
“No, like,” She waved the fork vaguely. “Extra scary. Like your murder aura had murder aura kinda thing.”
Compress slowly lowered his coffee cup. “A sentence,” he sighed deeply, “that only this agency would accept as meaningful feedback.”
Hana laughed tiredly into her sleeve.
Outside the massive front windows, the city still pulsed red and blue beneath distant emergency lights. Helicopters occasionally crossed overhead, their spotlights sweeping across smoke lingering above the skyline.
News reports were probably flooding every station in the country by now and social media was almost certainly losing its collective mind over footage of Touya pile-driving a man through a city bus.
But that was tomorrow’s problem.