25.7

*ACT YoE 4,181/LT September 15, 2000

Earth Bet

United States

New York

Eve floated high above New York, waiting for the disaster she knew would happen shortly. It was even odds if she’d be able to get the last golem core at this point or not. If the winged abomination Wilson showed didn’t show up, Eve would be stuck waiting another approximately two years. Were she not certain that the time flows between here and the Cyber Depths were dissonant, the waiting would have been more than annoying.

A portal snapped open far below her, and she grinned as Rabbit and Dragon, hovering nearby in metal suits, said, “Go time!  Go time!”

***

Alarms screamed into the corridor behind Hero as he said, “Door, New York, Central Park Tower.” Hero stepped through the portal and emerged onto a rooftop where the city’s horizon spread like a living canvas of concrete and steel. Two other Cauldron members, Alexandria and Legend, arrived moments after he did, their expressions etched with resolve. He ignored the chill caress of the wind before speaking. “Alexandria. Legend.” Hero’s voice was low but steady. “What happened?” The entire organization had never had a breach. They were concealed in a whole other Earth separate from Earth Bet for the love of all that was holy, just for this reason!

Alexandria replied, “Doctor Manton snapped. He stole two vials from the Cauldron stockpile before escaping. Per standing protocol, he was immediately booted from Cauldron’s network.”

Before they could press on, another Door ripped open the evening fabric. Eidolon arrived; his silhouette outlined against the kinetic rush of air, an effortless master of flight that stoked private envy in Hero. Despite his ambitions, he’d never quite tamed the freedom of unbound soaring, even with Cauldron’s cutting-edge tech and boundless resources harvested from alternate Earths.

“Let’s get this over with,” Eidolon snapped. “We all have better things to do than chase delusional mad doctors.”

Legend cut through the tension. “Is there any understanding of why this occurred?”

Alexandria’s eyes narrowed, and she stated, “Number Man reckons it was his messy divorce—losing a custody battle pushed him over the edge. Contessa believes he timed his breakdown perfectly to exploit the vulnerability in our current methods. With the threat of a third Endbringer looming things are in flux. He knows that casts a shadow over normal precognitive accuracy outside her personal Pathing.”

Hero asked, “Do we know where he is?” There no time to waste with a possible double trigger event and a new Endbringer poised to strike.

“He’s still within Clairvoyant’s range, Door, Doctor’s current hotel location,” Alexandria replied curtly. Hero thanked the world for small favors. Every bottle mixed by Doctor Mother was a gamble. Like their four bottles, some gave untold power, while others did nothing more than flavor a cape’s power to a particular bent.

Legend leaped from the roof without a word and began hovering as if defying gravity’s relentless pull. Hero put down the flash of envy once more as the blue and white clad man said, “Let’s go.”

Eidolon muttered, “Compassion kills. We should just nuke him,” but allowed Legend to take the lead and call for a door close to the doctor’s current location.

Hero entered the door behind Legend, and Alexandria and Eidolon trailed after him. As they exited the door, he adjusted his flight pack. His scanners noted a slight discrepancy in the airflow several thousand feet above them. It was only detectable due to the complete lack of anything between the hotel's top and the sky above. The door had opened out on the top of a rundown hotel on the border between boroughs, where Dr. Manton had taken refuge

Immediately getting to work, data pulled by Hero’s helmet programs off the internet suggested the doctor found anonymity among the city's transient masses after whisking his daughter away from his ex-wife’s dilapidated flat, his highest priority. Observed security in this hotel was laughably lax—a half-dead network of cameras and locks that a child with a magnet could bypass. It was no wonder the doctor moved in without alerting anyone. Only the power of Clairvoyance and Doormaker made Cauldron’s rapid response possible.

They found the target inside the dim room of No. 403, located just below. Within the room, Dr. Manton cradled a grotesque creature that only vaguely resembled his daughter Abby in the most abstract sense. The abomination had the vague contours of femininity, its patchy, bleached fur matted over a body contorted beyond recognition. Zebra stripes denoted the only coloration, while on the right, the torso had fused with an arm to form a hideous maw lined with jagged teeth, saliva pooling over twisted skin. The left side had collapsed into a crumpled mess—a deformed mass dominated by a drooping, catlike eye and spidery, basalt growths marking its surface like a curse. Even now, Hero saw the form pulsing and twisting as if working to mend the errors induced into it. The tinker idly noted the mold growing along the walls to distract his mind from the horror.

“Abby…” the doctor rasped, his voice soaked in agony and disbelief as if the name itself was a lifeline slipping away.

The creature responded with a sound caught between a whimper and a growl—a harrowing chorus of misplaced organs and agony in every note. Legend’s usually sympathetic eyes widened in muted horror at the flesh monster. “Doctor, what have you done? You know the chances of a Case-53 better than anyone!” Legend shouted, his voice trembling with shock and sorrow. It was clear the doctor was beyond sane now.

Manton’s reply was a jumble of incoherent justification, “It was meant to work… The research—she was supposed to be better… to show her…” He hadn’t noticed their presence until Legend spoke out.

“Abby…” came a pitiful moan from the creature—a sound that mingled lost hope with deep, unspoken terror.

Hearing his daughter’s cry, the doctor’s despair boiled over. “You!” he snarled, rising and seizing Legend by the collar as if to force him into action. “Fix this! Fix her! It was the cursed flesh of your filthy organization that caused this!”

“Manton, I—” Legend tried to reason, but the older man’s grief was a tidal wave that overran his words. “Fix her! Bring her back!” Manton’s anguished pleas grew louder, his tears carving tracks on his disheveled face as he pummeled Legend ineffectually. Doctor Manton’s madness blurred reason and love into one violent outburst.

Before anyone could say anything further, a figure shimmered into existence in a flash of silver light. She stood directly over Abby’s prone form, surveying it with quiet intensity. Alexandria, Eidolon, Legend, and Hero all glanced at each other with confusion. The figure matched what they had on record for the woman who ended two Endbringer threats before they were out of their infancy.

“The things I do for the World’s Rules to bend.” Said the silver witch-cape woman dressed as a Halloweener, with a giant, pointed silver hat shading her face. Doctor Manton whirled, looking at her with a confused expression that turned into hope as she continued, “I can save her.”

Hero watched as Manton rose, grasping towards the new cape with empty hands. “Fix her… please… Abby… I’m so sorry. Dad’s so, so sorry.” Finally, overwhelmed, he sank to his knees, as if performing supplication at an altar. A diabolical grin passed across the strange silver witch’s face before she raised her right hand.

Hero moved forward to stop whatever the woman would do before it could worsen the situation. “…all your fault…” came the next broken murmur as Manton’s eyes flickered with sudden clarity amid his anguish, sensing Hero’s movement. “It’s all Cauldron’s fault…”

“Doctor, you shouldn’t let an unknown—” Alexandria tried to stop him, reason bleeding through every syllable. A new cape arriving just now couldn’t do anything good, especially when they had no clue about her powers. A vague memory of a silver figure from years past intruded on Hero’s thoughts but he waved it off as he focused.

“It’s all Cauldron’s fault…” Manton insisted, his tone a hollow echo of broken promises.

“We need to move now! Push them both into a controlled environment.” Alexandria said. “Door, Cauldron HQ.” At her command, a familiar portal flared to life on the wall like a desperate beacon of hope. Hero understood she planned to rush in before whatever the silver-clad witch-cape could do took effect.

“No, you can’t take her!” Manton screamed, turning to them, his arms flailing. “If there’s any chance to stabilize her, I will take it!” The doctor’s grief morphed into something unhinged in that split second—a white-hot fury that drowned all reason. “This is all your fault! You can’t have her!” he roared, snatching a familiar vial from a coat pocket with trembling determination. “Abby, Daddy will protect you,” he vowed, a promise etched in pain more than conviction. Before the doctor could drink, the silver witch-cape snapped her fingers and said, “[Sacrifice For Power]”

The world fractured, and countless voices screamed as one.

Manton collapsed, his fall sending him spiraling into a disorienting vortex that appeared—a cosmic dance of starlight and despair that blurred the line between benediction and apocalypse. It looked nothing like a normal grant of power from a vial.

“We can’t know the results! Go hot!” Hero shouted from the haze of a world vibrating out of sync, his voice trembling with fear and urgency. Whatever the witch had done was beyond conventional physics, precisely as he would expect from someone who could solo two Endbringers. His realization of the woman’s appearance had come too late.

“You took Abby from me!” came a jagged, anguished cry as the mentally shattered doctor lunged forward off the ground like a stop-motion film figure. His form shimmered as if it weren’t quite in the same world as the rest of them.

Hero jerked back, activating his flight pack in a frantic bid for safety. At that moment, he knew too well that the unstable power driving Manton’s transformation could obliterate him with a single misstep. His helmet sensors were screaming wild alarms about the space around the doctor’s form.

“Doctor! Pull yourself together!” Hero bellowed. Yet his words fell on deaf, maddened ears as Manton’s figure advanced. Unwilling to risk it, the tinker’s stun-blaster snapped to life, fitting into his hand with magnetic speed.

“Shut up! Bring my Abby back!” the mad doctor roared, lost in grief and rage. The man wasn’t even coherent now, as his words made no sense and followed no logic anymore.

“Attacking us won’t help her,” Hero argued. The surrounding reality was rippling like a well of still water disturbed by a single pebble; his tinker suit sensors, joining his helmet, were starting to gibber in furious alarms. He locked down his emotions and prepared to fire at the doctor.

Once the doctor is stunned, the reality-bending effect will likely end, in Hero’s opinion. Before he could fire, it happened—a vision so impossible it defied sanity. In front of Manton’s desperate eyes, a phantom Abby materialized with her back to him, rendered in clear, stark black-and-white zebra stripes as if she were a ghost born of fractured memory. The apparition shifted in the air, fluid and haunting—a wisp of nightmare made flesh. The monster was directly in front of Hero, and he could see the silver cape’s work as it corrected the inhuman form to something viable. Stable. Yet, nothing human.

Instinct flared, and Hero fired his weapon without deliberate thought. The precise and desperate bolt struck the Not-Abby surreal projection only to shatter harmlessly against an invisible barrier. In the cramped confines of the hotel room, his emotions turned to icy fear as reality destabilized further. Hero watched as Legend’s lasers, too, dissipated into nothingness upon striking Not-Abby’s new appearance as if caught in a fickle mirage. Hero’s fear gained further depth; clearly, the creature’s form no longer conformed to conventional physics.

Not good, not good at all. Hero thought locking his panic down behind a wall of iron will.

What else didn’t conform to physics? Endbringers, that’s what. Hero shivered from cold that wasn’t physical.

“Manton shut it off. Stop whatever power you're using!” Legend shouted. “Do it or we’ll move to completely lethal measures, we won’t have a choice!”

“Silence!” Manton bellowed, his voice turning venomous as he screamed his rage at Cauldron’s supposed real or imagined betrayals. “I should never have joined such a group of demons! I’ll end the farce you represent!”

“Enough,” Eidolon declared. In an instant, a sphere of swirling darkness coalesced and collided with the zebra-striped projection, erasing it—if only for a heartbeat.

But just as quickly, the phantom young lady reappeared, looming behind the doctor with a malignant presence. No words could prepare them for what came next as the creature teleported instantaneously: elongated, razor-sharp claws slashed out, raking across Eidolon’s back as she appeared behind him. In a twisted moment, the strongest among them crumpled to the floor, red streaks blooming like scars, soaking his green and white uniform, bleeding into the fabric of his suit. Hero blanched; Abby’s form could penetrate a cape’s defenses by ignoring physics. That meant they were all vulnerable, except perhaps Alexandria, due to her power.

In the chaos, Dr. Manton moved forward with inhuman speed, his attack inflicting a sickening blow on Alexandria. A savage strike cost her an eye—a brutal, unexpected price that left her gasping in utter shock. Hero gaped. Better than any other, he understood how the quantum effect of Alexandria’s power made her immune to normal physical damage. To strike through that effect, Manton had bypassed standard physics exactly like his not-daughter did. None of them were safe.

Legend was instantly at Alexandria’s side, his concern a silent promise of ruthless retribution as his lasers pushed the doctor back, burning searing scars into the madman like a vampire exposed to sunlight. Unlike his former daughter’s form, the doctor didn’t have the same immunity.

Rising from the floor, Eidolon seized his chance and sent a stray lamp hurtling through the air towards the doctor. “When in doubt, take out the projector. It has to be the doctor, he’s maintaining her form,” the wounded hero stated as he rolled upright from the floor. Even as the lamp approached Doctor Manton, a single claw separated the bronze light fixture into pieces. The Not-Abby projection instantly seized the room’s bedframe, brandishing it as a club to tear through the nearby wall’s window with furious abandon. Hero shivered as he realized the monster instantly understood the doctor’s vulnerability, which meant retreat was the safest option to save her father.

The doctor twisted inhumanely back from Legend’s lasers and vaulted onto the bed. It looked like they would escape unscathed before a sense of pressure descended from the silver witch-cape’s smirking figure. Without mercy, the witch snapped her fingers once more, and Not-Abbey instantly solidified while Manton’s grew dimmer like a reflection underwater.

Thinking there was no chance of solving the issue peacefully, Hero holstered his blaster and prepared his Endbringer cannon. Whatever magical bullshit occurred didn’t matter to him. The destruction trailing behind the duo was impossible to ignore—and so was the threat of the doctor’s newfound, erratic power. A creature like Abby had become, able to ignore conventional physics, was too close to similarity with Endbringers. The tinker wouldn’t let it develop; killing the monster in infancy was better than allowing it to grow. It pained him as he remembered the bright-eyed girl from the near past, but Hero’s mouth set in a grim line.

“He’s cornered here, we can’t let him escape to the wider world,” Hero stated, eyes fixed on the retreating figures of the doctor and his not-daughter. As a tinker, he could use the cannon, but the area of effect would be devastating.

So be it.

One shot to resolve everything.

“What power are you using right now, Eidolon?” Hero asked, eying the father and daughter duo.

“General gravity, black hole effects, and telekinesis,” Eidolon grunted, frustration thick in his tone even as he glanced at the witch. “I need time to swap powers.”

“We don’t have time, I’m using Titanslayer. Legend take any shots you can, you’re the only one that appears able to damage the doctor so far,” Hero stated with finality. “This ends now.” He aligned the tinker cannon, targeting Doctor Manton. Ahead of the shot, the doctor and his spectral Not-Abby projection raced toward the shattering window—a desperate bid to vanish into the city’s maze. Hero unerringly unleashed his disintegration ray in a blazing twist of green light. The tinker’s attack was a firm denial to risk the enemy escaping. The hyper-dense beam would have torn both apart, but instead, Not-Abby intercepted the energy in another physics-defying move, disintegrating it with an effortless, almost casual backhand gesture. The monster’s form, however, shuddered, rippling as catastrophic wounds that would stop anyone else appeared upon her body.

“Thought you wanted to end it fast?” a green-white-clad teammate jeered from behind, his voice edged with incredulity. “Doesn’t it go any higher? Another shot should remove the thing opening the doctor up to Legend’s lasers.”

“It’s set to theoretical Endbringer defense ranges,” came the grim reply from Hero. The words conveyed how ridiculous the doctor’s daughter had become.

“Shit. Run distraction then—my black hole isn’t quick enough to catch them, I’m pulling for something stronger and faster.” Eidolon responded. The lottery-like part of Trump’s strongest powers was irritating to the extreme in this instance.

“Got it,” Hero replied, shooting forward at full blast from his flight pack. Fueled by adrenaline, Hero veered into a cutting dive-drop maneuver, slicing through the shattered window to seal the doctor’s escape. If Not-Abby could defy physics, she might be moving by some supernatural right—but her evident inability to influence her master meant that Dr. Manton remained tethered to the laws of inertia. Their power was limited, making a boundary forged with esoteric principles.

Shifting tactics, Hero dialed down his cannon’s power, opting for a barrage of rapid shots as he dropped behind the duo. Blue-white lasers cascaded from above, courtesy of Legend, forcing the doctor into a hasty twirling dodge-plummet. The Not-Abby projection retaliated by discarding the bed frame and mattress—instead, quickly weaving a crude cocoon of sheets around Manton like a last-ditch shield. Legend’s lasers ricocheted off the makeshift barrier in an almost absurd tableau. Realizing she couldn’t affect her father, the monster had adapted to affect things around him with lightning-quick thinking speed. With rapid haste, the spectral fabric created by Not-Abby’s powers carried the doctor crashing through a wall into the dark belly of a nearby skyscraper.

Knowing that every second counted, Hero lowered his cannon, plunging into the skyscraper’s damaged exterior wall using his flight pack, quickly entering the labyrinth of a ruined office kitchenette. There, amid shattered glass and debris, he found a casualty—a man missing a head, blood pooled, a grim marker of the cost of failure. Boosting his speed, Hero and Legend moved, winding through six floors of devastation and scattered bodies. Without the power of Clairvoyance, the team would have lost any trace of their quarry. Hero’s helmet kept them on track, translating Clairvoyant’s words into a physical map to follow.

Bitterly, Hero berated himself for not taking the time to improve his current tinker suit. His scanners, honed for open-air battles against potential Endbringer-level threats, were nearly useless in the claustrophobic wreckage of the building. There were just too many signal returns to sort effectively. In the face of Dr. Manton’s unhinged vial-luck, even technology bowed to chaotic, almost magic-bullshit powers.

“Anything?” Eidolon’s voice was nearly a whisper, thick with urgency, as he finally joined Legend and Hero, appearing behind them with the whip-crack of speed-enhanced flight.

“Nothing—too many obstacles. These dead bodies were no accident; they're throwing off scans. Either that or she’s somehow invisible to my scanner, being not based on any physical principle,” Hero replied, his tone edged with fury. Tinkers were bullshit, but Manton was an even higher level of feces right now.

“Sixteen seconds until my power cycles,” Eidolon announced. “I’m tweaking a configuration to lock onto heartbeats, and another to copy your cannon for multiple disintegration shots.”

Hero could only nod, the promise of a solution a tiny spark in the encroaching gloom. But a frigid numbness snaked through Hero’s veins before they could coordinate further. The world wavered and then split into shards of ice and pain.

“Hero!” Eidolon shouted, echoing Legend behind him; his voice filled with terror.

In that critical instant, Hero’s body went limp. Looking down, his eyes caught sight of a ghastly, pale hand emerging from his stomach. Slowly, dread coiled within him as he glanced back to meet the unholy gaze of Not-Abby—her warm brown eyes warped into a predatory, sickly yellow. With a slow, malicious smirk, she slashed out, tearing through his left torso with a precision that left him reeling.

Fragments of thought scattered in the blast of agony—his ribs must look shattered, his body mangled. His arms jerked, a feeble resistance to the overwhelming pain, even as his cannon dropped helplessly at his side.

Then, a searing inferno of pain blazed through him, a hot, burning tide that swallowed all thought. Eidolon’s frantic shouts blurred, and Legend’s furious laser beams combined with the sickening sound of ripping flesh, but all Hero could register was the paralyzing agony, a cruel reminder that he was now helpless—a wound so deep it robbed him of all thought.

“Fire, David, take the shot!” he croaked, the single command a final act of defiance as his vision blurred. They had to remove the Not-Abby now while she focused on killing him. Eidolon's new power would allow him to reach the doctor before the monster could recover. The clarity of death flowed through Hero’s veins as his thoughts crystallized. With a desperate surge, he activated his flight pack at full throttle, his suit clamping onto the monster with experimental protocols. The shock of it was cold and unforgiving as he felt his left arm go numb—a stark, brutal measure of his mortality. If they couldn’t take the shot, it fell on him.

“Final Strike.” Execute. Hero thought-whispered in sync as his eyes glazed over. A single chain of desolate thoughts clawed at Hero’s consciousness in the final, disjointed moments. The bomb is a localized single percent of the sun’s power…the theoretical forcefield…should work…

Then, as the pain eclipsed all else, his vision faded into black—before it abruptly restored in a burst of silver light.

***

Eidolon watched in horror as the vicious creature that had replaced Abby ripped his friend Hero in two. Despair immediately gripped him as he knew it wouldn’t be possible to cycle to a healing power in time. Hero’s final thoughts and words activated the experimental protocols in his suit. Eidolon knew it would lock him to the priority target in range before detonating in a cascade failure of the power systems. Theoretically, a forcefield would contain the blast around Hero and his target, but they hadn’t tested it under lab conditions.

Even as rage began to mount, a chilling icy feeling rushed across his skin. Hero’s soon-to-be corpse glowed silver, floating in the air. A crack of thunder ripped through the corridor as the silver-clothed witch from earlier teleported in.

“Heal him! I know you can! Name your price!” Eidolon said instantly, making a snap decision to prioritize his friend.

“I can, yes. But you forgot the magic word.” The witch said with a sly smirk.

Eidolon stilled as his grandfather's words echoed from the woman. Immediately, he calmed and said, “Please heal him, Ms.…?”

“I hope you remember me, punchy guy, " the witch said, letting the brim of her hat rise.

“You!” Legend shouted in shock. At the same time, Eidolon became highly nervous. This cape, Eve, had ripped the Endbringer, codenamed Behemoth’s core, from his body with no more effort than when someone pulled a cracker out of a box.

Rumor and unconfirmed sightings reported she had done the same thing to the Endbringer, tentatively named Leviathan, who had appeared briefly off Newfoundland’s coast.

People might call Eidolon superstitious in the Cauldron, but they didn’t see what he saw. Both times she had appeared, an Endbringer had occurred.

Both times!

If she were here now, that meant another one!

A finger snapped, and the monster was banished while Hero’s body normalized. It took only a moment for the tinker to recover and cancel his Final Strike protocol.

“What did I miss?” Hero asked, looking at Eidolon and Legend.

“Our resident evil silver witch-cape saved your life.” Legend stated dryly as Alexandria arrived behind him, slightly disjointed from losing her eye. Eve glanced at her and restored the eye without Eidolon needing to ask.

“Manton is a future issue. There’s much worse about to arrive. The little trick I did at the behest of a local hegemon cracked space in the vicinity. The third is arriving.” Eve stated calmly to Eidolon’s disbelieving ears. “I only have a limited amount of time left. I choose to spend it on the higher threat that’s decided to descend, no thanks to you.” Eve’s glare at Eidolon caused everyone to be confused.

“Me?” Eidolon said as his brow furrowed. He wasn’t stupid; if what she was implying was true, combined with his suspicions, a terrible puzzle piece fell into place.

“Yes, you. You wanted opponents that could challenge you. Did you think your power wouldn’t deliver? Believe it. It delivers exactly what you want, not how you want it.” Eve stated as a silver glow flashed around all five of them.

Eidolon hyperventilated as the truth became reality. It had always puzzled him how something like the Endbringers could exist. The fact that they were artificial constructs had been made clear. Yet, no tinker claimed them. No villain rose upon their backs. They fell outside the understood spectrum, and now he knew why. The power of heartbeats he had gained mercilessly informed him that Eve spoke nothing but the truth. His power had given him what he wanted.

Eidolon would live in repentance for his greed till death.

***

Eve watched as the younger man recovered from learning the horrific truth. It wasn’t something to be proud of, but her powers had traced the link between the core and Eidolon after Leviathan appeared. That those extra-dimensional crystal computers would give such a poisoned fruit was very odd. Especially when, as far as she could tell, most of them adored working with their human meat-based companions. It felt like there was an invisible restriction she couldn’t fully grasp in place.

That was the only thing that would make sense. Like a curse, the crystal computers must be limited in what they can do. In a flash of realization, Eve understood that the thing hiding between dimensions was fearful of unrestricted Artificial Intelligence. Dragon’s father had been one data point, and now the restrictions on the crystal computer-things were a second.

“Fearing the potential of others? Or once burned, twice shy?” Eve murmured as she looked up at the sky above. Clouds had appeared, beginning to swirl like a portal to the realm of Air.

This one isn’t a paltry piece of work. Even as space twisted around the form, it was yet to be. Eve could already sense the malformation of a core forming, one larger than the previous two. The core would be enough to summon one more ally if she could acquire it. Rabbit, Dragon, and one other would have to take over while she completed her plan in the Cyber Depths. Then she could return. However, leaving an Endbringer alive behind her was asking for failure. Another flash of silver light brought Dragon and Rabbit’s suits to the approaching battle.

As the angelic abomination phased into existence, Eve attempted the same tactic, namely, dimensional shear. A frown marred the perfection of her face as she realized the creature wasn’t as stupid as the previous two.

A dimensional anchor had been woven into this Endbringer core.

The hard way it is, then. Eve thought as she drew Mugen No Gin’un from within her soul. Space shifted as she moved to attack. She had specifically told Dragon and Rabbit to work around her in a chaotic pattern for this battle. From what she had glimpsed, the enemy was a master of Divination. Therefore, combat had to be chaos in motion for the machines.

Eve, on the other hand, had a plethora of options. Learn prevented the abomination from using the same chaotic strategy against her.  As she closed in on the screaming creature, Mugen No Gin’un accelerated in a hypersonic slash with a singular ritual attached.

Ritual of Silence.

The psychic scream, loaded with psionic mind-melt, cut off just as fast as the wing Eve severed from the Endbringer. While Talisman of Dust III prevented the scream from affecting her, that wasn’t the case for her allies. As a premier Silver Witch, the scream was easily deciphered as a time-delay Curse. Best to nip that garbage in the bud, in Eve’s opinion.

As the Endbringer paused for a fraction of a second, Eve brought everything to bear to punish the lapse. Thousand Ghostly Hands grasped Mugen No Gin’un as it became a thousand miniature copies that instantly grew into life-sized duplicates. Ritual of Movement and Ritual of Acceleration synchronized, and Eve sliced.

The Endbringer’s wings, arms, legs, torso, and head separated as they were severed and minced. However, Eve could not strike the core, and the severed pieces instantly recombined.

Divinator, Regenerator, Telekinesis. Wonderful. Eve thought as the creature attempted to apply a telekinetic grip to her body. A flex of will tuned Witch’s Dust, making any attempt to grab her fruitless. Realizing that combat with the witch was a losing game, the Endbringer angel-esque abomination attempted to teleport.

Eve gave it a wide grin as the teleport failed. “Did you think you could play around in space in my presence?” A thousand swords chopped down again at the creature as it attempted to recalibrate an attack strategy frantically.

Even as her copy-jian swarm struck down, the surrounding superheroes took action. Legend’s lasers, Eidolon’s kinetic arrows, and Hero’s cannon all took a shot. Combined with Dragon and Rabbits' hypersonic sniping, the Endbringer started taking considerable damage, which healed away at the same insane speed.

Imagine doing this with the other two still alive and well. Fuck that insanity. Eve thought as she continued attacking while another thread focused on constructing a Curse. Constructing the curse was easy, and once it was complete, she allowed the monstrosity to strike a single blow against her. Ritual of Defense immediately locked onto the Endbringer’s mana signature. The ritual synchronized with Witch’s Dust, ensuring further damage would be mitigated immensely, even as Eve spat a spray of curse-infused blood onto the abomination’s form.

As the core within the creature began to glow a deep, vibrant red, visible to all, Eve cracked her neck—time to put in the work.