Superhero life? Super-Sized troubles!

When rumors of imminent supervillain action in Seattle came, they gathered in a field in New Mexico in the middle of the night on the off chance an opportunity would come. With the US armed forces stretched thin fighting off both monster infestations and keeping the peace in the devastated south east, border patrols were lighter than they'd been in decades and had never been meant to stop people on foot moving at more than fifty miles per hour.

When their men in New York sent word both the Big Fish and the Iron Bitch would be on the same flight, the off chance of an opportunity became reality and the small group of 'tourists' visiting the newly rebuilt attractions in Roswell, New Mexico were in position. The confirmed existence of actual aliens, if magical ones, had rekindled tourism in the supposed alien crash site to such an extent nobody noticed a group of a hundred camping in the desert. There were thousands of RVs and hundreds of other camp sites already, after all. This state of affairs fit the Everymen just fine.

Rumors, horror stories, even a smattering of real information about a growing powered crime syndicate had abounded for months, with only limited reaction from the authorities. When new villainous or outright crazy supers mind controlled people or abducted mayors in broad daylight, who had time for rumors in the dark? When FEMA and the National Guard had been deployed in no less than six states to suppress mass panic, looting and anarchy, who would notice a scant few elements moving with purpose? That state of affairs fit the Everymen too.

The reality of the Everymen was both more and less than rumors said. Everyone had been sent scrambling by the advent of powers six months before, because everyone who was anyone realized what a new source of tangible, easily usable power could do in a situation where the world's greatest superpower had just had its teeth kicked in out of the blue. And while government forces were grasping for those powers they could understand and fit their delusions of control, other actors had less political or moral restrictions and were already used to moving in more violent, bloody circles.

The hundred men eagerly drank down the strange green concoction they'd been provided. Most of them already used to mundane drugs, none had issues with using a potion distilled from human blood, especially if it boosted them with the strength and vitality of the victims used in its creation. In moments, their existing borderline-superhuman enhancements doubled and a haze of bloodlust that sharpened their senses and skills instead of dulling them fell over the group.

Then came the suits. They looked like neater, lighter and streamlined astronaut suits, with a few differences. The first was their durability; despite seemingly made of flexible fabrics, they'd all been infused with the essence of several tons of metal through strange rituals. In addition to the color of a blood-spattered, ominously gleaming bronze, they had the resilience of all the metals used in their creation as well as a good portion of their weight. A thousand pounds of extra load was a more than welcome trade for resistance to antitank weapons for the newly minted enhanced criminals however. Then came the turbines. Similar to but smaller than those used in some rapid rescue units, they were powered by rods of wood made by a lightning mage from the British Isles. Nobody knew how they were made but rumors had it the mage had drawn the attention of the Red Queen, the poor sod. At least the men could now joke about "bark reactors" in his memory.

But what everyone had really been waiting for were the guns. Cylinders as long and thick as a rocket launcher tube but filled with weirdly colored cables wrapped around a piece of rainbow quartz the size of a man's arm, they didn't look like any guns the ragtag group had used before. Their design was simple enough though, and newly enhanced strength let them ignore both the eighty-pound weight and the significant recoil.

Drilling, preparation, speeches; those weren't the things those violent men were used to. There was only eagerness and anticipation, pre-battle jitters and a bit of "friendly" roughhousing. If a couple of bones were broken... eh, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, right? Then word came in that their target was in the air. With more laughs, boasting and the occasional curse, the ragtag group took to the air.

Only their newly enhanced agility prevented several crashes then and there...

xxxx

In the months since the invasion, defense systems across the US were in high alert. From monsters to flying supers, from the creations of Mad Tinkers to enhanced military technology made through powers, entire classes of new airborne threats arose practically overnight. Despite being stretched thin and worked to the bone more than they'd ever been since the Cold War, both existing organizations and newly minted counterparts meant to track the new threats did not fail when a hundred new contacts suddenly appeared over New Mexico moving North.

Preliminary evaluations discarded both the possibility of conventional ordnance due to small size but high speed and range, and that of a monster swarm due to their radar profile. Their speed of a bit over twice the speed of sound and cruising attitude of twenty-eight thousand feet was carefully noted, analyzed and potential targets were warned. Due to the usual internecine conflict between Agencies and the covert nature of the operation, nobody in Air Defense Command was aware of a certain flight by Superhuman Response, thus the unknown bogeys' target remained a mystery.

That did nothing to delay the response, for the defenders had learned to hit back at monsters and crazy supers quickly to avoid civilian casualties. Dozens of anti-air batteries went into rapid fire, launching fast but conventional missiles against the targets. The bogeys did not react, either incapable of noticing long-range fire like many monsters were, or simply not caring. Use against man-sized, non-ballistic targets was not something most anti-air missiles had been initially designed for, but both many skirmishes and rushed R&D over half a year had allowed for significant, if somewhat unreliable upgrades. Of the hundred bogeys, forty-seven took direct hits. Of those forty-seven, twenty-one went off-course for a few seconds before rejoining the main group, eight slowed significantly for minutes possibly due to damage, but only one was shot down.

In response, the large group of bogeys broke up into five smaller ones and started evasive maneuvers. The next barrage of missiles only got nineteen hits with no enemy casualties and several missiles were shot down short of their targets. The third wave fared even more poorly, half their number being intercepted early, the rest only scoring ten hits and causing no apparent damage. The consensus of all analysts looking over the data in real-time was that the bogeys were learning. It was something the defenders had observed time and again; monsters and supers rarely trained at all, far less against actual military weapons. Initial engagements were always the ones that caused the most damage to such targets, while repeated attempts had weapons designed to bring down human-piloted craft fare poorly against those with superhuman abilities that were ready for them.

The bogeys' profile, numbers and overall threat being deemed too much to let go unchallenged, a plan to overwhelm them was quickly made. Interceptors were scrambled from two dozen military airports in the enemy's trajectory, intending a converging intercept where they both outnumbered and surrounded the enemy. But conventional forces would not suffice by themselves, so the interceptors were designated the "anvil". The "hammer" would be the kind of first strike one would have seen only in action movies before the Invasion.

Quick-response missile defenses originally intended as an anti-ballistic umbrella to defend American cities against long-range nuclear bombardment were launched. Sprint missiles redlined their drives, accelerating at over a hundred gravities for the mere eight seconds needed to reach their targets. At those speeds they were neither very accurate, nor guided from the ground as they formed a sheath of plasma from the sheer speed of their flight. Naturally, the intended targets saw the attack coming... and responded by scattering with unnatural reflexes a split second before seven Sprint missiles each carrying a small nuclear warhead turned night into day.

Despite their superhuman reaction and the toughness of their armor, twenty-eight would-be terrorists died in nuclear fire and the rest were sent reeling by both the actinic glares and the shockwaves. Then they were swarmed by dozens of the best fifth and sixth generation fighters the US government could bring to bear. Unfortunately, this time the defenders had miscalculated. The conventional munitions on the interceptors proved incapable of damaging the targets sufficiently to blow them out of the air even after multiple direct hits, and the autocannon the interceptors were equipped for close-in engagements simply bounced off the armored humans. Worse, the enhanced humans under those suits were already recovering far quicker than any mundane person could have, and struck back at the defenders. Their suits sped up, easily outpacing the jets before turning around and either employing ramming tactics or climbing on top of the jets and ripping them apart piece by piece. After the eighth such casualty with nothing to show for it, the interceptors were forced into retreat.

More interception plans were being made when communications with Superhuman Response finally went through and the decision was grudgingly made to let the professionals handle it. That would not have happened a mere two months before. More missiles would have been launched, heavier forces would have been sent, the day would have been won by the good old US armed forces and nobody would have needed help from a bunch of weirdos. Six months of skirmishes with monsters and lunatics with real power, the slow depletion of ammunition stockpiles while the economy was circling the gutter worse than any other crisis in half a century and mounting casualties on a domestic front were forcing everyone that had laughed at the idea of 'costumed freaks' to reconsider.

Because if supers fought at the front lines, maybe more red-blooded American soldiers wouldn't have to die...

xxxx

"Talk to me people," Liz demanded as she took the Captain's seat. "What are we up against?"

"Radar and LIDAR make it seventy-one bogeys moving at Mach two point five and rising, at an altitude of thirty-two thousand feet," Lieutenant Geary at the sensor station replied immediately. "Arcane Sense makes it four, no, five times that many Tier-One powers, which makes little sense when they're all single humanoids." The eighteen year old redhead was the same age as Liz herself but looked painfully young and uncertain in his first aerial battle and the fighting had not even started. Unfortunately, his ability to sense other powers extending through equipment, whether they were a simple cell phone camera or the most sophisticated military sensor array had made him a shoe-in for the Tactical officer position despite his originally having been a new recruit during the invasion. His survival during the monster attacks in Northern Florida at least meant he wouldn't freeze at the first sign of a super or monster.

"On the contrary, it makes perfect sense if they're using multiple enchanted items each," the youngest Captain in the army's history informed her less experienced subordinate while checking the seals of the Warden battle suit. Metallokinesis was all well and good but it only took one mistake at the wrong time and place to get you killed. Besides, while Liz would never admit it, the manual checks calmed her nerves.

"Air Force is saying those people were resistant to conventional munitions, highly maneuverable, and dangerous in melee," the Comms officer informed Liz while she made a final systems check. He wasn't a super so she hadn't bothered to learn his name; he'd be replaced the first time they found a support power even tangentially helpful to his position.

"Ma'am, that kind of durability doesn't fit a Tier-One power signature," Geary interjected as Forge One shook while it reconfigured.

"And what does this tell you, Lieutenant?" Liz asked after lowering her faceplate. Her voice became dull, deep and mechanical, and totally not reminiscent of another superpowered figure in black armor doing government work.

"That they're cheating, ma'am," the boy concluded after only moments of thought. "It can't be done through a low-end durability power, but nothing would stop them from building a ginormous armor then shrinking it with a low end power or similar."

"This is war, Geary," the Warden's metallic voice boomed. "If you're not cheating, you deserve to lose. Also, we're the US military. 'Ginormous' is not a word here."

Laughter broke through the tension, which meant the banter had served its purpose. Then the whole craft was shaken by several seconds of metal grinding on metal, followed by crackling like a hundred naked high-voltage lines before everyone but Liz was slammed into their seats by an invisible giant's fist.

"That's it, people. Forge One is now flying through magnetic levitation against the planetary magnetosphere." It had been a bitch to get that part of the enchantments right and it was totally untested, but nobody needed to know right now. On the other hand, there were the benefits. "That means you don't need to worry about fuel, or the occasional love tap if we're hit by a missile or two."

At the horizon limit for Forge One's current altitude, Warden picked up the approach of the bogies. Their armor had a lot of metal, though not all of it was ferromagnetic. Not that it made as much difference as people thought; any metal moving through a magnetic field produced observable electromagnetic phenomena. The more the metal and the faster it went the easier it was to perceive them, though that was only a tertiary aspect of her powers at best. Metallokinesis itself was no more limited to ferromagnetic substances than Hydrokinesis or Pyrokinesis were after all; that they carried metal and that they were within her range was all that mattered.

On the other hand, this was an excellent opportunity for further tests and enemy action had provided acceptable targets. At a mental command from her, a dozen of the seventy indentations on the left side of Forge One's hull fully opened up. From a distance they were easy to mistake for the windows civilian planes invariably sported. They weren't windows though; they were something far more interesting. At her command a dozen peculiar enchantments activated and with a barely audible puff the objects they'd been cast upon were launched through the gunports.

Each of the four-inch spheres were made of the hardest, most magically fortified alloy Warden knew how to make. Their flight enchantment was Aristotelian and capable of moving a one-ton mass at a hundred miles per hour while ignoring Newton's laws of motion. For the twenty-two pound spheres instead, the same enchantment could move them at two miles per second. Directing them felt less like piloting and more like holding each sphere in a giant's fist in her mind's eye, a fist that could move at any direction at up to nine and a half times the speed of sound with instant acceleration.

Getting used to her new toys, Liz sat back in her Captain's chair and directed them at the enemy. General Rinaker would have called them drones but Liz was far more of a Harry Potter fan.

xxxx

Ted, no last name, was on top of the world. When he'd learned about powers, he'd decided he wanted some for the same reason he'd wanted a gun; blowing things up was awesome. But then the news had started talking about monsters, and dangerous powers, and loads of people killed. Bunch of propaganda bullshit, obviously. The Man was getting scared that everyone would get their God-given right of blowing shit up now and that the goons in the suits would not be able to tell them what they could and couldn't do no more. So Ted had looked shit up in the 'net, he'd listened to rumors, he'd even gone to a couple of gatherings under bridges. Most of those had been just the usual tit and pot but not all. No, Ted had looked and Ted had found, just like the Good Book said.

The Everymen had been more than Ted had hoped for in his wildest dreams. Guns? Yep! Powers? Yep! Cool as shit armor like in the movies? Hell yeah! And all he had to do for it was just listen to them about how to better stick it to The Man. Ted had never been very, whatcha call it, educated? Yeah, that. He'd always wanted to stick it to The Man only he didn't know how. And the Everymen would tell him how to do just what he wanted in exchange for all the awesome stuff they were giving him. Win-win! So what if a couple chinks or heebs had ta bleed for it? Who the fuck cared, right?

So that's how he came to be on top of the world. He was flying higher than the fucking clouds, man! Pumped to the gills with that glowing green stuff that gave powers, and wasn't that crazy? The comics were right! Green juice made you a mutant shit and then you were just better! Stronger, tougher, faster, smarter, harder! Like, he didn't need no fucking glasses any more; he could see that dog on the ground wagging his tail at that bitch a bazillion miles away in the dark. And he had a huge gun as heavy as a sofa and could shoot it one-handed. He could even make trick shots, man.

And the best part? Them Everymen had found the plane a General and a powered Bitch building a secret prison were flying on. A prison for evil supers! Bullshit, total bullshit. The Man just wanted to take everyone's new powers or lock them away 'cause The Man was scared. Including Ted's new powers. It was like Civil War all over again and those guys were like Stark and Richards. It had sucked then, for years. Ted knew it would suck even more now, could feel it in his bones over the howl of the wind. He couldn't let the suck become real, he couldn't let The Man win.

They were closing in, Ted knew. All the boys the Everymen had armed and given powers to had already clashed with The Man not once, not twice, but three fucking times. Ted thought how it felt to take an anti-air rocket in the chest and tank it with his new armor like it was nothing. How they'd seen The Man's wrath coming down on them upon wheels of fire, how they'd scrambled madly to scatter at the last moment then had ridden a wave of fucking nuclear fire! It had been glorious, never mind the blindness and burning pain. His new powers had fixed him quickly and he was like, "Rawrr, bring it bitches!" then the fighter planes came. How he'd tanked that autocannon then ripped off the jet's canopy and crumpled the pilot like a beercan. They had to be closing for The Man to fight so hard - and they were winning! Soon Ted and the boys would be free to have all the guns and all the powers and nobody would be able to tell them no!

Ted caught a glimpse of some distant glimmer too low on the horizon to be a star and his eyes narrowed under his visor. He turned around and readied himself for trouble but didn't see the projectile clearly until it was less than half a mile away. By then he had less than a quarter of a second to react. A normal man wouldn't have made it in time but after two doses of the green and glowy stuff, Ted was easily twenty times as strong and fast as a normal man and even tougher. He wasn't the Hulk - the big guy had had a whole nuke's worth of the green stuff while Ted got only a few sips - but that was enough to make a half-turn to provide a smaller profile, present the thicker shoulder plate armor against the threat and brace for impact.

The projectile - a metal sphere - hit hard enough to send Ted in his heavy armor tumbling, hard enough to hurt even through the armor. But then Ted's newly gained combat instincts and old but reinforced bloodlust roared in response and he ignored the bruise on his maybe-broken arm. It would heal soon enough and he had bigger problems. With an effort of will backed by enhanced agility and everything a couple hours flight experience had taught him Ted got out of the tumble, checked that his weapon still worked and searched for the projectile that had hit him.

He found more than one, and the world around him seemed to slow. A dozen of the things were already harrying his new buddies, with a dozen more coming up and probably more in the distance. So he hefted his huge gun and glared at the rapidly redirecting metal spheres as if they were the clay discs that had mocked him back in the practice range over ten years before. Yet despite repeated failures, Ted had not given up then. So he raised his new gun and lined it up carefully while the battle around him unfolded in slow motion.

A shooter maneuvering at jet fighter speeds in mid-air, a metal sphere four inches across shifting like a hummingbird at twice that, it was an impossible shot for a man. But now Ted was more than a man! He was super-Ted! Even for someone of his superhuman reflexes, perception and agility the shot would have been hard, very hard. But unlike his fellow recruits into the Everymen, Ted had practiced with his shotgun religiously for years and his enhanced instincts translated that skill to his new gun. He turned the power adjuster all the way up, led the metal sphere for the second it took his weapon to charge to maximum and fired.

The Everymen's new blasters were the wet dream of any red-blooded American, in Ted's opinion. At their standard mode they fired as rapidly as an assault rifle and hit as hard as a grenade launcher while being unaffected by gravity or the wind. At full auto their rate of fire exceeded those of rotary cannons, with similar firepower but superior range. But he'd picked max power so when the fat, rainbow-colored bolt of energy struck the metal sphere there was a pink thunderclap and the offending projectile was blasted to bits.

Ted roared in triumph and went hunting for more spheres. Seeing his counterattack, his cornered buddies made his own roars of approval - only audible on their internal comms - and tried to copy him with limited success. Even superhuman combat instincts and physical ability wouldn't let them fully learn his skills, not in how short the fight turned out to be. Deep down, Ted was proud to be the best shot, even if his buddies being worse shots meant they were hit more times by the metal spheres. He blasted his fourth sphere with a smile.

He never did see the sphere that hit him in the back of the head.

xxxx

"Well... that was disappointing," Liz muttered as the distant fight concluded.

"Ma'am?" Lieutenant Geary queried tentatively.

"The new defense system only took out one of them," she explained with a displeased, some would say petulant, scowl. "I guess ordnance perfect for anti-missile and anti-air roles is not as effective against armored supers. No matter; we'll use Forge One's original defense."

"The enemy is regrouping, ma'am," Geary needlessly informed her, though due to operational security he had no idea that it was, indeed, useless. "They're less than fifty miles away and are aiming for a zero-zero intercept in four minutes."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," she said. At this range, her own senses could see the power armored attackers as clearly as Geary's enhanced sensor system, especially with two spheres of her own enchanted metal remaining just close enough to stay out of weapons range while allowing her to channel her awareness through.

These were the Everymen of the rumors and dark net stories then. Their armor had better performance than expected, a combination of engineering and low-end powers providing more than powers alone would have. Liz wondered whether they could get their hands on the supers responsible for the suits and weapons then dismissed the thought as wishful thinking. The Everymen recruited from population groups that only needed the thinnest excuse to turn against the government. When whatever super with enhanced persuasion and charisma they had was done with them, the recruits would be fanatically loyal and believe it to be their own idea. And since General Rinaker as well as the civilian oversight were too afraid of getting subverted themselves to recruit someone with similar powers, turning any prisoners would not be happening... assuming they even got any.

Speaking of the Devil, Rinaker was sitting on the observer's chair, silently watching the battle unfold. They had long since discussed tactics in case of such an attack, drilled for it, commiserated over all the things the civilian oversight and political correctness committees would never allow them to do. Without powers of his own, or deep understanding of powers in general, the Old Man was already doing the most effective thing he could have done; nothing.

Liz would admit - if you tortured her in a furnace till she talked that was - Rinaker was the best superior she'd ever had, in any venue. He knew when to help, when not to hinder, the right questions to ask, how to promote understanding, instill loyalty and actually get supers to cooperate. Unfortunately, he did not have powers and thus would never grasp the reality of the new world they all found themselves in beyond the theoretical. As a manager he was the best Liz had ever dreamt of; as a General during a very real war he was lacking. Liz knew who'd she'd put forward as his replacement, but the politicians would never hear of it... for now.

"Enemies in close weapons range, Ma'am," Geary warned. "Should we activate the defenses?"

"No, Lieutenant. I had something better in mind for them," Liz said and gave a mental command.

Immediately, the whole Forge One rose higher as it became several hundred tons lighter. The bus-sized metal ovoids it carried where the engines would be on a normal plane detached but instead of dropping like rocks they flew on their own levitation fields. Then they began to transform. They grew longer and a bit flatter, then the lower half split in two even as the outer portions of the upper part also split from the waist up. Tons upon tons of metal bent and twisted like so much play-doh, forming rough humanoid limbs. Finally, upon thick and broad shoulders of tungsten alloy an almost nonexistent neck led to a metal orb of a head with no other features than a single, enormous eye that glowed an ominous yellow.

"Let's see what our new friends will make of four of the newest Sentry golems."

xxxx

When Ted came to he had an awful headache, sported a lump the size of a child's fist in the back of his head, his helmet was both cracked and malfunctioning, and the only reason he hadn't slammed head-first to some mountain at jet fighter speeds had to be the suit's... whatcha call it... autoplot? Something like that; it wasn't a gun so he hadn't really been paying attention when it was explained. He also felt more than a little dizzy, his eyesight was looping between normal and double and something in his suit had to be leaking because he was soaked.

It took him half a minute to realize it was the back of his head that was leaking, or had been. His new healing was just about done fixing that. Even better, his new gun was still with him because it was strapped to his waist with a quarter-inch steel wire. The Everymen had explained it as a safety feature and Ted had seen its usefulness immediately. No more dropping a gun when surprised or forced to dodge. No more getting easily disarmed by the enemy. And now it had ensured his gun hadn't been lost while he was unconscious. He was so teaching his nephews the gun strap trick when he went back.

In the distance, Ted could see fierce exchanges of fire around the black shape of a plane. He wasn't about to lose the fight, so he boosted his speed as far as it would go and the air around him shattered into an endless roar surrounded by total silence. Something in his suit broke a bit further and it began to shake. That was not good, but he had no idea how to fix it. The only thing he could come up with was finish the mission as soon as possible, shoot down The Man's plane and get back to the Everymen. They'd know how to fix it; they'd made the thing. Content with having found a solution, he ignored the slowly worsening shaking and focused on the battle ahead.

It was not looking good. His new buddies, his fellow recruits were giving it everything they had... but they were facing giants! Four humongous, black-skinned, one-eyed freaks that were covered in matte black armor with absolutely no fiddly bits. No backpack, no turbines, no buttons or straps, not even a gun or tools. And yet the giants were still winning. They somehow flew without engines and shot yellow beams brighter and louder than lightning bolts. Ted's buddies pelted the giants with shots from their guns, but every shot from full auto to aimed overcharged attacks simply bounced off no matter where it struck. And when the giants shot back with their beams, they were deadly. Glancing blows singed and blackened armor. Direct hits, even for a moment, set Ted's buddies on fire. And holding the beam on someone for a second just blew them apart, armor and all.

Ted knew what he had to do then and thanked God he'd been knocked out and left behind so he could see what was going on. He didn't know how they were going to beat the giants but he knew they weren't going to do it like that. A third of his new buddies had been shot down already. So Ted unlocked his cracked helmet and let it fall apart, forgot at least five minutes worth of warnings he'd been given, and got out the flask of green stuff from his backpack. The one he was supposed to only take a sip from every hour, or bad things might happen. It was like alcohol, really; too much of a good thing just turned you dumb and senseless. But before the dumb and senseless bit you got the good stuff, right? Right. So Ted downed the whole flask of green stuff that was supposed to last him for a week in case the mission got delayed.

Immediately, a giant explosion of energy rose from his gut, making the two other bursts he'd felt earlier seem like tiny sparks in comparison. The green stuff lit a wildfire in him that spread to every bit of his body in seconds. Pain followed as his muscles pulled and stretched so hard they tore, veins burst, even bones snapped under the power of the green stuff. The green stuff didn't care; it just healed him up in moments, only for his body to tear itself again, only to be healed once more. And the more it tore, the more it healed, the stronger Ted felt. It might have taken seconds, or a whole lifetime. He neither knew nor cared; all that mattered was that when it stopped his suit was stretched to its limits over a body at least a foot taller and a couple hundred pounds heavier. The sheer might contained in that new body was godlike... and it was all Ted's.

The frantic air battle slowed to a crawl. Ignoring the giants, Ted raised his gun, flicked the switch to max power, and proceeded to pump shot after overloaded shot into the plane. Why kill the giants if they can't stop you from your goal? Except while his shots cratered the plane's armor at places, the damage they did was too light and the plane so very large that even if all his friends followed his example now the giants might win before they brought the symbol of The Man down. If only they'd all shot the plane from the start! Now it was too little, too late. The hard way it was.

Ted roared and charged at the nearest giant. The thing ignored him to better fry another flyer it had caught while the next giant over caught another of Ted's new friends with both of its grossly overgrown arms and tore him in half. But that was a mistake because they let Ted get close, and Ted knew guns. He knew a lot about guns; how to shoot them, how to clean them, how to secure them, what to do and what not to do with them. He knew a lot about eyes too; he'd burst someone's eye in a brawl not once, not twice, but three times. And he reckoned the big one the giants got they shot beams with? That was both an eye and a gun.

So when he landed on the giant's torso, he charged a shot but didn't fire; he waited. The giant's empty stare that must have killed near a dozen of his new friends slowly turned towards him, filling in with that deadly glow of an eyebeam about to fire. And when it was all full and glowy, Ted shoved his overloaded new gun into the giant's eye and pulled the trigger. The resulting explosion hurled him back with such force that his armor crumpled, his ribs hurt and his back slammed against the plane's hull. The whole thing left him dizzier than the hit to the head had, only clinging to consciousness due to his super-boosted healing. But the giant? The thing's head had been blasted to bits, leaving its body to fall to the ground far, far below. Ted liked that trade. Now all he needed was to find three more guns.

Before he could fully recover from the explosion, an enormous hand clamped around his waist like a giant metal vise. Another giant's head stared at him as its eye slowly powered up, obviously preparing a sustained blast that would fry him to ash like so many of his buddies. But unlike his dead friends, Ted had taken the risk to drink all the green stuff at once. Even then his body burned like fire, both slowly tearing itself and getting stronger. So Ted roared and pushed with all his newfound might against the giant's grip in the strange slow, dreamlike reality the whole world had become.

Ted's ribs broke, his muscles tore, but finally the giant's hold slipped. He didn't care if he forced the metal hand open or tore his own torso open to slip away, all he cared was that now he could reach the head. Then the giant fired its sustained blast, burning off Ted's skin. That was its mistake, because Ted set his feet against the giant's torso, grabbed the head with both arms, and forced it to stare at the plane above them. Not at the armored cabin his shots had failed against either, but at the plane's tail; the thinner and least armored part he could see. The giant's beam held for a full two seconds, obviously not built to cut off early. By the time it did, one of the smaller wings on the tail was gone completely and the other two looked a bit melted.

"Take that, ya bastards!" Ted roared. Then two more giants blasted him with their beams. His greatly boosted healing and toughness fought against the impossibly hot beams for about a second then were overwhelmed and he was turned to dust.

His last thought was how he'd never get to teach his nephews the gun strap trick.

xxxx

"This cannot go on, Liz," General Rinaker told her in private after the repairs were finished in flight and Forge One was about to land, seemingly untouched by the attacking force that had so troubled both the Air Force and Missile Defense Command. Ugh, politics.

"Forge One was never in danger. I enchanted every part with separate flight spells; it could be cut into pieces and still not crash." Well, that one guy had taken her by surprise but it ended up barely worse than some scraped paint. Five minutes of conjuring metal, another fifteen of quick and dirty casting and it had all been fixed.

"And what about the next time?" the Old Man insisted. "Normal soldiers backed by enchanted weapons were all well and good when we only had to face monsters but now the bad guys are doing the same thing." He harrumphed angrily. "I was never comfortable with just parity with the enemy. 'Peace through superior firepower' has been a thing since the days of Hadrian for a reason." He paused, walked around the room once, twice, then stopped. "We need actual supers in the field yesterday."

"They are not ready," Liz immediately countered, because it was true. "None of them are an original survivor. Even if their powers are good, they've not seen real combat. Not with stakes that mattered to them, not intense enough to burn through civilian mentality. Plus, they're teenagers."

"In case it slipped your mind, you are still a teenager," the General responded drily. "I don't care what you'll do, get them ready for the field. Even if you need to get your old friend to run herd on them."

"Wennefer is not my friend," Liz shot back in immediate vehemence. "Plus she's younger than I am!"

"You went to the same school, beat each other up a time or two, that makes you old friends in my book," the tall, older man told the young brunette with a shrug. "Besides, you keep reminding me that experience and power are more important than age or image. Time to put your money where your mouth is."

"...damn."