Superhero life? Super-Sized troubles!

Muscles contracted at random as power-enhanced electricity coursed through my body, completely ruining any coordination and leaving my everything weak as boiled noodles. Pain was something I'd been familiar with long before I'd gained powers and something I'd gotten unfortunately exposed to often during the Invasion of Florida. When monsters have repeatedly set you on fire, the equivalent of being tasered doesn't seem that big of a deal in comparison. No, the annoying thing was how an amount of damage almost completely negligible when compared to my overall durability or what my regeneration could help with could be so disabling. The drawbacks of still having a human body under all the enhancement; there were still some human weaknesses left.

The additional pressure of countless minor psychic pinpricks further drained strength and stamina like a constant low-intensity beating, Empowering Regeneration struggling to keep up with the weakening attack. While my body's full abilities grew faster than the rate of weakening, the end result was far worse because the weakening was applied to my effective strength during electrocution. Then the giant monster's tentacles stretched me out, removing all leverage other than my own powers... powers that partially relied on my own physical strength.

I pulled, twisted, strained as much as possible under the circumstances but it didn't work. No slipping an arm free, no budging of the tentacles holding me, no obvious strain on my opponent as I struggled. There wasn't even an opportunity to capitalize on enemy mistakes because as soon as it got a good hold the monster was content to keep it, stand there and regenerate from its prior wounds while it had me at a disadvantage. Knowing it was a long shot, I used Spatial Leap to just blink out of its grip.

In an instant I got about a hundred feet from my prior position. Of course, that did nothing for my unresponsive muscles, the additional weakness from the eyes, or the disorientation caused by their combined effect. The tentacles got a grip on me almost instantly and slammed me into the ground for good measure. I tried again and again and again, with similar lack of results. The only change was the monster clamping the fifth electrified grapnel it had just grown around my torso and upping the current by a fourth.

Somewhere in the distance a powerful explosion formed a mushroom cloud over part of the crater and from the radiation emissions my Force Awareness picked up the blast was definitely fission-induced. Either the bad guys had access to tactical nukes, Mark had learned how to mimic them, or Gabby was trying that trick of changing his swords' metal into a fissionary. That last one worried me most of all because none of the kids had the durability to stand up to a nuke point-blank, even a small one. I'd thus advised the kid not to attempt it unless he had no other option. This was... probably bad? They still had their rings, though. If they were dangerously wounded or were hit by something lethal, the enhancements on them would activate, offering the kids several additional options. Until I could get out of this predicament, it would have to be enough.

In another attempt to escape the kaiju's grip, I activated my Eyebeams. Blasts of energy shot out... then flailed uncontrollably around. My body was shaky enough and my focus disrupted enough that all my attempts to aim the damn things went even worse than trying to leave the monster's grip via teleportation. Beams of disintegrating force burned trenches into the ground, drilled into distant hills, vanished into the sky above. Some did hit the monster, carving trenches into its flesh but they did not stay in the same place long enough to cause significant wounds against its power resistance. The monster's response was to just turn me around so I would be looking outwards instead of at it and trying to aim around my back with Force Awareness went quite badly. I had to stop after one of the beams hit only a few yards away from the force dome the civilians were hiding in.

After a minute of no further reaction from the monster I tried to slip its grip again, just in case it had lost focus or grown overconfident like human fighters often get, but no dice. I kept trying constantly for the next few minutes anyway. By then my body was drenched in sweat, my muscles were beginning to cramp by the constant involuntary contractions, a numbing, unnatural fatigue was settling in and I was beginning to have trouble focusing in entirely mental tasks. I had to give it to whoever had designed the monster; it had good counters for every one of my better-known abilities. The combination of the shocking power, the draining eyes, the regeneration, the power resistance, the instant reflexes was very good at keeping me on the ropes once caught so I'd either exhaust myself or more bad guys turned up. As things stood, it would probably be the former; as far as the bad guys knew, I was well and truly caught.

Whatever programming ran the kaiju either thought just that, or had been given further orders because my captor started moving towards the crater at a good clip for its stupendous size, which meant faster than any land vehicle could have had in that terrain. Even as it did, both the pressure from the psychic eyes and the electrical power it could generate increased as its internals developed further. Something about its fight with me and especially how it kept me captive was either feeding it more power or helping it apply its abilities. The ache of being tasered turned to pain, then the agony of dangerous levels of electrocution. At the same time its psychic draining left me almost completely paralyzed.

We descended into the mists filling the crater, the kaiju too large to be completely hidden. Having to ensure I did not slip its grip was probably why it was no longer moving underground, that and delivering me faster to... wherever it was going. It only took another minute and I was seriously doubting I could hold on much longer when we stopped. We had arrived at the center of the crater and the complex it held here.

Well, something had finally gone well at last. As the kaiju held me and cranked up all its efforts in a bid to knock me out before presenting me to its master, I reached for my power slots. I fumbled once or twice but the third time managed to slot in Retributive Defense. Suddenly all the lightning and psychic pressure resisted by Force Adjustment, as in the majority of the physical effects, were turned back on the kaiju. After so long getting pummeled by the enemy, Empowering Regeneration had strengthened my abilities enough so what was reflected back at the monster was actually a good deal stronger than its original attack.

The monster was large and powerful but ultimately not as tough as I was. By waiting to flip the tables for so long I was also sure the return hit would be overwhelming. Had I been in its place I would have passed out immediately; the monster had all its musculature and cybernetics fried, its semblance of nervous system shredded and by the time it stopped twitching it was a well-cooked wreck.

I dropped to the floor of a crater with a groan, surprising the significant force of super-sized, super-ugly zombies. Even without the constant electrocution and energy drain I was still severely weakened, exhausted, with my regeneration working hard to fix it. That meant the first zombie to lay its hands on me was merely torn in half from my punch instead of exploding.

The rest of the army charged in what promised to be a brutal but short-lived fight before I had words with whoever had the great idea to attempt to capture me.

xxxx

For the first time in all her days, Cindy's life depended on keeping calm, quiet and out of the way. It was supremely boring.

When it had become clear the zombie army would overrun Mark, Gabby and her she'd quietly started 'disappearing' instances of herself, making them not interact with the perceptions of everyone nearby. It was quite amusing to the teenage girl that the same application of her powers that let her spy on the soldiers in the base after lights out would prove critical against an army of brainless, blindly marching walking corpses.

Some of those instances bumped into some undead and had to be deleted, others were shot through either by the enemy or her teammates own attacks, but Cindy could always split more of them a split-second before she deleted the old ones so there were always more. Fighting her way out of this pit would never happen, but sneaking? The way those less powerful undead swarmed they'd hardly notice if whoever was stepping on them was a fellow zombie or a Cindy-instance their minds would tell them was simply not there. When the time came to flee she'd just delete her visible instance and disappear in the confusion. She felt a pang of guilt at planning to leave Mark and Gabby behind, but she'd feel a lot worse getting torn apart by monsters, right? Right.

Except when Mark was shot out of the sky he was not killed. The monsters beat him up until he stopped trying to fight back, then carried him deeper into the complex. That changed things. It changed them a lot. First, she switched which was her primary instance before the zombies overwhelmed her defensive lines. Then, because the boy was probably thinking he was about to die, she threw Gabby a few sappy lines about not dying and not being overconfident. As if the great Cindy Barnes would ever stop pushing boundaries of herself and others but hey, it kept him from doing something stupid, didn't it?

Then came the harder part; pretending to get captured. Not only did she need to keep her hidden instances away from anyone's notice, not only did she keep the one visible instance there as a distraction, she actually had to feel that body being beaten to unconsciousness. Letting it wink out to save herself the pain would obviously ruin the ruse so she concentrated on the instances that weren't beaten up and did her best not to scream out with any of them.

From there, things got easier. Following her own body as it was carried through a mad scientist's lab as built by the lowest bidder - because government contractors, right? - she finally got to see the big kahuna, the supervillain responsible for all the ugly she had to see, hear, feel and occasionally even taste. Having accomplished her super-stealthy, super-spy, super-infiltration all the way to the heart of the enemy complex, she immediately regretted it.

Not only was the Big Bad a big-ass sack of lard, not only was his megalomaniacal plan a cliche piece of crap repeated ad nauseam in comic books, but he had stripped all three of them down to their panties. Cindy had no problem getting naked to make a good distraction for her extra selves especially when the only ones who'd get to see would be the boys and a dead man walking, but the fat bastard had not even pretended to show any interest in her looks. He had tried many needles until one worked, taken blood samples from all three of them with equal professionalism, then strapped them all into those torture machines pretending to be restraints without even copping a feel.

Pouting, the girl resolved to be as annoying and arbitrarily contrary as possible just to see if she could get a reaction out of the guy. It had worked reasonably well. She'd mouthed off, then gotten a bit shocked for it. Gabby had woken up then and gotten shocked too, followed by Mark. Both boys had shown perfectly normal reactions by gaping and maybe drooling upon seeing her near-naked body, then the bad guy started monologuing. Cindy didn't even need to hide particularly well to avoid notice, merely parrot the right words every kidnap victim gave to every supervillain kidnapper sooner or later and she basically got free rein to explore the bad guy's office. She found every light hidden behind a crystal, every power cable masquerading as something cooler and more alien, every door and every lock. The computers were all biometrically locked but that would not help the bad guy if they all suddenly got gutted.

Sitting through the whole explanation of how he farmed people for powers and how he had several extra brains into that huge skull of his was supremely icky, but then something interesting finally happened. The Big Bad showed them video of Captain Barbie getting captured by his pet kaiju. For a few moments Cindy was really worried, then remembered the villain had them all captured. Maybe they'd see Maya tied up and naked too? Then the guy went and ruined it because he couldn't wait. That would have been worth so many blackmail points but noo, he had to start his stupid experiment on Cindy's captured instance.

The instance was about to wink out and clue him in that something was off. She had absolutely no desire to see what that experiment felt like it especially when brain extraction was in the cards, so she had to act soon.

Then the screen showing their teacher getting schooled exploded, forcing her hand. In under a second she had sliced every cable, broken every light, gutted the computers, closed and locked the doors and was well on her way to freeing Gabby. She had no illusions about the doors holding for any length of time but they would at least slow down the zombies that fit into the corridors and the three of them shouldn't need too long to blow up one giant asshole.

Naturally, that was when Mark started screaming as he caught fire.

xxxx

Mark screamed and not just because the pod he was strapped into tried to force him to stop using his powers. One of his slots mimicked the biggest mass of Hafnium Carbide his powers would allow, a ceramic so refractory and heat resistant its melting temperature exceeded seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The second slot mimicked a plasma cutter and the third a good soak into gasoline that is then set on fire. Combining the temperature of the plasma torch with that sheath of flames still hurt because even the most heat-resistant substance on earth can't endure flames five times hotter than the surface of the sun.

On the other hand, even that flame would take time to burn through fifteen hundred tons of Hafnium Carbide' worth of heat resistance while it melted his bindings with absurd ease. He jumped off the electrified prison and lost his balance as his feet literally melted into the ground. But that was great because he fell forward... and grabbed the Fat Bastard's arm on the way down. Fat and muscle sizzled, blackened and burned on contact but didn't fall apart as he'd been expecting. Instead the Big Bad threw him halfway into a wall with a base strength greater than Mark's own.

That was fine. Mark could do strength, too. He dropped the flames to mimic two copies of the largest non-electrical locomotive in the world and replaced the Hafnium Carbide with an equal mass of modern armor plating. The next time the Big Bad punched him he barely felt it and when his eyes glowed bright yellow the stunner just rolled over Mark with no effect. A solid lump of armor could not be stunned. Mark's answering kick to the knee also barely bruised his target but that hadn't been his goal anyway.

"Stupid brat. You think I wouldn't give myself extra powers too?" the bad guy boasted like every supervillain ever. "It would take more than the likes of you to- ARRGH!!!"

"I dunno about that," Cindy said, having finished turning the Fat Bastard's left foot into hamburger. "You seem pretty stabbable to me."

Mark had no idea where the girl had come from or why she was in her pink Hello Kitty catsuit instead of near-naked but he welcomed the reinforcements. That she had the presence of mind to also free Gabby and borrow one of his swords to fight with while the other boy recovered was even better.

"DIE!" the enemy screamed, shooting a black beam at Cindy's center of mass. The girl only flickered in place, the beam passing through her to cut a hole deep into the ground. No, not cut; several cubic meters of rock were just gone, vanishing without trace. Mark decided not to try and tank the beam if it was used against him but Cindy had no such problem; she kept daring the Big Bad to shoot her, ignored it, then cut up his enormous body bit by bit. "Why won't you die you insufferable menace!" he whined, getting only more slices for his trouble.

"What's up, Big Guy? Weren't we just stupid brats about a second ago?" Mark mocked, then kicked the knee Cindy had cut up and already weakened.

"Where's your scientific superiority now?" Cindy mocked him, cutting into his other leg. Instead of responding, the guy glowed green and his wounds started healing before flashing yellow. All of Cindy's instances staggered and most of them vanished and the Fat Bastard turned tail and ran.

"Oh no, you don't!" Mark clamped his arms around the guy's good leg and held on. A giant fist slammed into the side of his head but it barely fazed him; he'd received more painful hits while sparring.

"Yeah," Gabe said as he entered the fray with half a dozen of his own blades. "If you're so powerful, why flee?" Black energy crackled over the man's hands but before he could blast Mark and Gabby, Cindy's instances chopped them apart, leaving behind only slowly regrowing stumps.

"Fools! Strike me down and my creations shall wake up and spread all over the- URK!!!" That particular proclamation of doom was literally cut short by Cindy jumping onto the guy's back then cutting open his throat. Then the girl flickered into a storm of stabs until the bastard's head fell apart.

"I'm taking bets," a gore-covered Cindy said as she landed on the floor uncaring that she looked like a demented serial killer. "How true do you boys think his threat was?" The proposed bet only added to her appearance.

"Cindy, you know you're completely crazy, right?" Gabby asked her while manifesting more swords just in case things somehow turned worse. "Yeah, you're our crazy teammate but don't you want to, I dunno, cool down sometime?"

Whatever the girl's answer was going to be they never heard it because the building started falling apart then and there.

"Ugh, I hate load-bearing bosses," Gabby complained as all three of them ran for it. Eerie crystals shattered, metal walls were mangled, concrete and armor plating exploded to bits as they hopped, skipped and blasted their way out of a labyrinthine lab designed by a madman. Mark very carefully did not look through the doors they passed by. The 'farm' outside had already more than taken up his monthly nightmare quota.

"I don't think it's the dead guy causing it," Cindy voiced her opinion as they kicked through a wall and found themselves back outside.

"What makes you say that?" Mark couldn't help but ask.

"Dunno," she shot back as a horribly inhuman cry split the air and painfully pounded against their eardrums. "But something tells me the giant tentacled horror thrashing the building is a good clue."

Mark couldn't help it; he looked back. A mass of green-black tentacles oozing boiling tar was indeed dismantling the labs in a blind rage. Praying it would not notice them he pushed himself to run a little faster and the other two followed. "Anybody know which way is out?"

"It's a round crater, Soldier Boy," Cindy snarked. "Every way is out."

Just to prove her wrong, the universe provided another obstacle. Just ahead of them the ground shook and flowed like a stormy sea before another giant monster burst out of the ground. Instead of tentacles this one was a giant worm - if worms grew to several hundred feet long, were covered in armor plates as thick as whole tanks and had a maw filled with teeth longer than Mark was tall.

"I hate you, Cindy," he said with feeling. "Soo fucking much!" Then the giant worm exploded. A figure wearing a familiar white and blue costume flew through it as if it had had the consistency of jello, mangling its head beyond recognition and killing it instantly.

"Why are you running?" Maya casually asked as if this was just another training exercise and not a nightmarish battle with the creations of a demented supervillain. "At least two of you have flight powers, you should have fled by air."

"Well excuse us for getting beaten and captured while you played hooky with a giant tentacled monster," Cindy shot back in her usual form.

"If you can joke you can still think so you have no excuse for losing your heads," their teacher told them with zero signs of having been embarrassed by the girl's words. "Fly back to the landing strip, pack the journalists into the Osprey and flee the island."

"What about you?" Gabby asked, looking a bit worried. In the distance more monsters burst from the ground. None were as large as the one they'd seen in the video but all were at least the size of a small skyscraper and there were several of them.

"I will make sure none of these beasts leave here," the pale-looking blonde replied. She was a little less perfect than usual, with black circles under her eyes and signs of exhaustion showing through her serious expression. Even if she had won the battle with the largest of the monsters it must have not been easy. How would she deal with another half-dozen or more? "That and remind certain people why they should keep their stupid ideas to themselves instead of funding black research programs."

xxxx

My punch sent the runty, blade-covered kaiju flying ass over teakettle, caving in its ribcage in the process. Unfortunately it would regenerate and it had lots and lots of friends. I briefly accelerated halfway across the island then flew back, ramming into one of said friends and pushing back into the crater. Ever since the kids had killed the guy that made them, every monster on Devon Island was scrambling to swim out to sea. The small ones were not an issue; they were too slow to reach the coast in time so their numbers were useless. It was the dozen giant monsters that were proving a problem.

All of them were smaller than the big one that had almost captured me but none of them were exactly small and only the smallest had been weak enough to kill quickly. Would I get them all in the end? Probably, but not even I could hold them back indefinitely while they were trying to escape. I had no idea what other surprises that madman had put in them; for all I knew they could release a dozen engineered plagues the moment they hit the water. Good thing was, I only needed to delay them until the squishy people hauled ass.

A glance with Force Awareness showed the kids had done as instructed and the Osprey was leaving. Even the journalists were quick to pack up when told to flee; maybe having a front row seat to a real kaiju attack had helped them grow some healthy level of fear for the monsters after all.

One of the ugliest monsters, a giant green ooze that disintegrated everything it touched, attempted to engulf me. A concentrated blast from my Eyebeams dissuaded it and it fell back, hissing hallucinogenic mist from every square inch of its surface as it did. A forcefield around me and holding my breath for a bit ensured that attack got nowhere and then it was time.

I didn't do anything fancy, I simply picked up a decently sized boulder and flew off. At a mere hundred tons it wasn't a threat to even one of the kaiju by itself but as I got higher I added Proximakinesis to hold it together for a while longer and Force Adjustment for that final step, both of them in a forcefield and the second with a short delay build into it. The moment I hit two miles up I dropped it and flew away.

Ten seconds later, actinic radiance brighter than the sun split the skies and shook the earth. A fireball twenty-five miles wide in diameter swallowed the ancient crater, obliterated everything within and burned several hundred meters into bedrock. The shockwave that followed would be heard all over the world to at least some extent and shatter windows two hundred miles away. Force Adjustment applied to the nuclear force on one hundred tons of rock had turned it into a six hundred megaton fission weapon.

It was both clean-up and warning, a warning further supervillains would better heed or suffer my... displeasure.