Midnight draped Westvale in a brittle hush. Storefronts lay gutted from the last week's riots, their windows shattered into teeth of glass that glittered like frost along the gutters.
A single BOOM rolled through the city. Windows rattled in their frames. Streetlamps swayed.
From the far edge of downtown, a silhouette rose against the fractured skyline—thirty feet of black Luxium, a fortress given legs. The Juggernaut.
Its torso loomed broad and tiered like stacked tectonic plates, every panel overlapping. One arm ended in a crushing gauntlet the size of a car, the other in a modular energy cannon whose inner coils pulsed with molten light. Digitigrade legs bent and straightened with hydraulic precision, each step sinking inches into asphalt.
The air trembled. Low-frequency shockwaves rippled through the streets, bending streetlamps until their bulbs popped in cascades of glass. Sirens wailed, thin and hopeless against the seismic rhythm of its advance.
Sensors along its chest and helm flared crimson. Beams of scanning light fanned outward, latching on to faint Gifted signatures like a predator scenting blood.
The city fractured into panic.
A teenage telekinetic burst from a basement window, dragged upward by a sudden magnetic clamp that locked around his torso. He screamed as the Juggernaut's dampener field crushed the energy from his outstretched hands.
Blocks away, a healer threw herself over a group of neighbors, golden light blooming from her palms—only for a net of electrified Luxium to drop from the sky, pinning her in a crackle of sparks.
Every corner of the city seemed to convulse with fleeing shapes: parents hauling children, street vendors abandoning carts, Gifteds trying desperately to mask their presence while the dampener field peeled their powers bare.
On the forest ridge beyond the outer highway, Grant stood with the Ampers, the night vibrating beneath their boots. From this distance the Juggernaut was only a shadow wreathed in industrial glow, yet each impact felt like a heartbeat in the earth.
Red lightning threaded Grant's skin, answering each tremor with a pulse of its own. He didn't need Slha's scanners or Nullis's intuition to know the truth.
"It isn't hunting randoms," Brakkon said quietly, eyes narrowed on the distant giant.
****
Crownpoint City blazed like a jeweled crown against the night—glass towers strung in neon, skybridges glittering. Hover-cams drifted in tight formation above the central plaza, their lenses glinting like a thousand patient eyes.
At the plaza's heart, a raised dais flared to life. The Volts stepped into the floodlights as one: seventeen silhouettes of polished armor and practiced poise.
Ignis moved to the podium first, her presence drawing the kind of hush that no broadcast delay could capture. Her red-gold plating shimmered in time with her heartbeat, her cape's embers flickering with controlled resolve.
"Good evening," she began, voice carrying across the plaza and through every live feed. "Tonight we confirm an active Gifted threat in Westvale. Civilian safety is our priority. With full government authorization, the Volts will deploy to assist and stabilize the region."
Reporters surged forward, microphones like spears of light.
"Is the Red Tempest behind the attacks?" one shouted.
"Will federal forces coordinate with you or stand down?"
Ignis raised a gauntleted hand. The crowd stilled as a faint ripple of her emotional energy—warm, steady—rolled outward. "Our focus is the protection of every civilian life. Speculation helps no one."
Ampra slid beside her, armor gleaming yellow. "Order and protection," she said smoothly, her tone calibrated for headlines. "We will contain the instability before it spreads. That is our commitment to the people—and to the law."
The questions kept coming, but the message was already locked: the Volts were the story. Their unity filled every camera frame, their confidence leaving no space for rival claims.
Somewhere behind the polished words lay a quieter truth: by morning, the public would see Westvale as the Volts' stage—and whatever choice the Ampers made next, the narrative now belonged to Ignis and her team.
****
The forest hideout shuddered as another deep tremor rolled through the earth. Overhead, the hanging bulbs swayed, casting jittery light across the command room's bare concrete walls.
Slha bent over the central console, her fingers a blur across the holographic display. A red line traced the city grid in slow, deliberate loops. "It's not wandering," she said, voice tight. "The Juggernaut's pattern is a spiral. It's closing on our coordinates."
Aldus cursed under his breath. "Then we move now. Scatter before it pins us. We split, we survive."
"Scatter and it hunts us one by one," Acuent shot back. Her eyes, sharp as flint, never left the pulsing map. "This thing doesn't tire. We run, it picks us off. Together we have a chance."
Brakkon stepped closer to the table. "You don't understand what it is," he said, voice low but edged. "I know that armor. That field. It's a weapon built to erase Gifteds. I ran once when they tested the first prototypes, they were way smaller. I won't run again."
A dull BOOM cut through the night, closer this time. Dust sifted from the rafters.
Nullis flickered into solidity beside the doorway, her face pale. "It's breaching the outer ridge," she said. "Minutes, maybe less."
The hologram pulsed brighter as Slha overlaid new data—heat signatures, magnetic flux, dampener spikes. The Juggernaut's red marker filled half the map now, its circumference a tightening noose.
Grant felt the vibration through his bones, each impact syncing with the restless current of red lightning beneath his skin. He kept his voice even. "If we stay, it finds us. If we run, it finds us. So what's the move?"
Silence held for a breath too long. The next tremor snapped it like glass.
Brakkon's eyes narrowed. "Then we don't give it the fight it expects. We give it the one it can't handle."
Brakkon caught Grant's sleeve and pulled him toward the corridor. His voice dropped to a hard whisper. "If anyone can counter what's coming, it's Rook. He's in Silver Coast on a rescue run. Find him. Bring him back."
Grant met his eyes. Brakkon wasn't one to rattle, but the urgency there burned hotter than the red current under Grant's skin. He gave a single nod.
The next heartbeat cracked like thunder. Grant blurred into motion, the hideout vanishing in a streak of crimson light.
****
Silver Coast sprawled beneath him in a wash of neon and salt haze. Towering spires glimmered along the ocean, their reflections rippling across water. But the air carried panic—sirens wailing over the crash of surf, Taskforce skimmers prowling the sky.
Grant stopped on the edge of a ruined pier, senses sharp. The faint echo of gunfire tugged him inland.
A warehouse squatted at the shoreline, half-collapsed and bleeding blue sparks from its broken girders. Inside, figures darted between splintered crates. Rook moved among them like a phantom, cloak of shadow bending around each step. A small group of Gifteds—wide-eyed, terrified—followed his precise gestures toward a loading bay.
A burst of rifle fire shredded a steel beam near their heads. Rook whirled, flinging a compact gadget that exploded in a flare of static, shorting the Taskforce sensors.
Grant flashed into the fray, red lightning scorching the floor. Soldiers staggered back, blinded by the sudden glare.
Rook didn't even flinch. "Took you long enough."
"Westvale's about to be crushed," Grant said over the din. "A Juggernaut—thirty-foot exo-fortress, dampener field strong enough to strip every Gifted in the city. It's hunting us."
Rook's eyes widened a fraction, then narrowed with resolve. "Figures they'd roll that monster out." He yanked a sleek, disk-like device from his belt. "Then I'm done here."
He thumbed the activator. Blue light blossomed, wrapping the rescued Gifteds in a humming sphere.
"Keep breathing, stay low," he told them, calm even as another barrage cracked overhead.
Grant raised an eyebrow. "That's it? No dramatic farewell?"
"Westvale first," Rook said. "Everything else later."
The sphere pulsed. With a sound like the ocean inhaling, Rook and his charges winked out of sight, leaving only the faint tang of ozone.
Grant exhaled, a quick grin tugging at the edge of his mouth. "Guess I'm running back solo."
He let the grin fade into focus, red lightning flaring. In the next blink he blurred through the night, red lightning spilling across highways and shadowed plains. Wind howled in his ears—then the world split apart.
Colors inverted. Space folded.
He staggered into a vast chamber suspended in an endless gulf of stars. Walls of living starlight shifted like breathing constellations, every flicker older than time. At the center, a throne of swirling galaxies turned slowly, and upon it sat Celestius—neither man nor god, yet unmistakably alive.
"Protector," the voice intoned, resonant enough to rattle bone, "this conflict is local. It does not endanger the multiverse. Your task is larger—preserve the Core itself."
Grant straightened, the crackle of red current crawling along his arms. "If I'm a Protector, I start by protecting my people. That begins in Westvale."
Celestius studied him, eyes like collapsing suns. "On your Earth, every champion wears a symbol. What will yours be?"
Grant's mind flashed to the Ampers' mark—midnight black. Then to the sphere of red light Celestius had once shown him. "Black," he said quietly. "And red. Red like the Sphere you showed me."
Starlight rippled outward. Threads of dark energy coiled around him, forming a black suit etched with glowing red lightning.
Celestius lifted a hand, galaxies swirling in his palm. "Then run, Protector. Carry your world's color."
The chamber folded in on itself, stars collapsing into a tunnel of red light. Grant leaned forward and launched.
Daylight struck his face.
He erupted into the heart of Westvale, the city a war zone beneath a pale morning sky. The Juggernaut towered above the skyline, its black Luxium armor glinting like a mountain of steel. Shockwaves rattled crumbling buildings as it advanced.
Below, the Ampers fought to hold the perimeter—Xylo's ice walls splintering under concussive blasts, Nullis phasing through collapsing rubble to drag civilians clear. Across the avenue, the Volts struggled to keep order, their polished armor dulled by smoke and dust.
Crimson lightning cascaded from Grant's new suit, the air around him humming with charged ozone.
He stepped forward, every arc of red energy answering the city's trembling ground.