“I didn’t come here to punch the air, I came here to deal with you!” Thundra shouted back defiantly, picking up a thick metal chain in both hands. Hill just watched her emotionlessly. “Not even going to pull out that flail of yours?” she challenged him.

“Why would I need to, Red?” he replied, unmoved. “Go ahead, take yer best shot.”

His complete indifference to her was enough to goad her to the attack. With a sharp cry, she was charging forward in a blur of motion, whipping that chain around to slam into the side of his head with all her strength.

There was a CLANG that would have deafened anyone without ear protection, and she crashed right into him as her chain just... stopped. He didn’t move so much as a millimeter, just looking down at her.

“Ahhh!” Her twitching hands dropped the chain as she bounced off him. It thudded to the ground, obviously extremely heavy, and very durable, since it hadn’t broken or anything, and it didn’t bounce.

In mid-step, there was a blur, and abruptly she was also faceplanted to the cement, a crunch of stone and cracks radiating at her impact point as Hill just looked at her.

“This... isn’t enough... Weight to stop me!” she snarled with difficulty, getting her arms up beside her awkwardly, and starting to push.

He took a step forward.

She slammed back to the ground with a cry, writhing under his heels as his full weight came down on her.

She was rated for sixty tons or so. Under a hundredfold Weight, his three thousand pounds on her shoulders was one hundred and fifty tons.

Her bones were creaking at the massive load on them, and she couldn’t move at all.

The Vizard paled, but the Dragon Man roared defiantly, spreading his wings as if he was going to attack.

“Calm down, kid. She’s fine, just getting an object lesson.” He glanced at Wittman, unmoved by the display of the protective creature. “Now, you got any tricks you want ta try? Dimension-popping? Diablo came around two days ago, tried that, tried disrupting it, and going gaseous, too. Turning to light? Some Living Laser mook passed by, just bounced off. Pure force? You ain’t got the muscle, and those mitts of yours don’t have the power ta get through it.”

Hill stepped back, and his Weight turned off. Thundra groaned in massive relief, slowly getting to her feet and then backing away from him, glaring at him for being beaten so easily as she worked her severely stressed shoulders.

Hill ignored Thundra, save when she tried to grab her chain, and he glanced at her once, stopping her in mid-move. She left it where it was.

“A simple resonance match and I will be able to pass completely through this childish field,” the Vizard began haughtily.

“Yeah, no. The Red Ghost came by with his monkeys, tried that,” Hill interrupted him in a bored manner. “Sumthin’ ‘bout encrypted rotational vibrational frequencies constantly changing. I think he knows more than you about passing through stuff with phasing crap, Wittman.”

The Vizard looked a little out of sorts. “Vibrational attacks through the ground?” he pressed.

“She made it to deal with me and Flint Marko. Do we look stupid enough not ta try groundsplitting on her?” Hill almost rolled his eyes, and it was definitely in his voice. “Did you see the grass inside even ruffle from the air pressure when I hit it? No, you were too busy taking the full impact of the hit feeding back out!

“You shoot that thing, the first thing yer gonna do is blast yerself. You try ta set up some sort of resonance, then yer gonna hit yourself really, really hard, and I’m kinda sure you don’t want ta blast yerself ta bits.”

“If it’s so strong, why are you here, Hill?” the Vizard demanded of him.

“I’m being paid ten thousand dollars a day ta ensure that when idiots can’t get through the field that they don’t tear up the landscaping. Also, ta make sure the kids who live here can get inside safely, so nobody sits outside and camps the place. As a courtesy, I’m telling the dummies who are coming up here ta not bother with minor attacks.

“The only one who has come who had a chance of getting through was Cain Marko. His idiot partner nearly put a hole in himself when he tried shooting the field. The Juggernaut also knows Dealer, and Dealer knows him. He touches that field, he’s going for a trip to the bottom of the sea, where it’s cold, dark, and easy ta get lost for months as you try to walk out of there when you’re too heavy ta swim.

“He decided he had better things ta do with his time then stumble around in the soup for weeks, and Black Tom needed a doctor, anyway.

“Now, move along. If you think yer gonna wait for the kids ta arrive and do some hostage play, well, then.” The air quavered around the Mountain as he let his arms drop, and the four of them, including the reconstituted Hydroman, backed up a step as matters got heavy. “Then we’re talking bonus money, and I get ta get serious.”

There was a crink as the chain on the cement crunched down into the sidewalk under its own weight, deeper than Thundra’s imprint.

“I wasn’t planning on doing anything so base,” the Vizard sniffed swiftly, waving his gauntlets urgently. Hill glared at him, then relaxed without moving at all, the heaviness in the air vanishing like magic once again.

“Whatever. You want ta waste your time, fine, but make it quick, and don’t mess up the ground. Dealer can fix these little impressions, but we’ll both get irked if’n you muck things up.” He wagged his finger at Dragon Man. “That means no breathing fire on stuff, kid!”

Dragon Man huffed in disappointment, the claws on his feet gouging the pavement petulantly.

Swearing to himself, the Vizard cautiously stepped forward and past The Mountain, reaching out to touch the field with his gauntlets, get the readings from them, and mutter some more.

Hydroman half-heartedly tried to press through the field, failed utterly, and didn’t even bother trying to get in from below or find a pipe or something to infiltrate from the nearby East River.

“How did you resist my chain so easily?” Thundra demanded of him angrily, her fists clenched.

“You want me stepping on your head next time, Red?” he replied without batting an eye, and she hissed and retreated another step. “Better. You wanna take a punch at the field, be my guest. Mind the lawn.”

She looked at it, and remembered the blow he’d hit it with, far stronger than anything she could deliver. A Piston Punch, people called them.

She didn’t bother wasting her time.

Seeing that they weren’t going to do anything stupid, Mr. Hill glanced around, then pulled out his chair and sat back down to his card game. He’d been perfectly placed to deflect the shockwave from his hit, and the cards hadn’t moved an inch.

He made his first play slowly, keeping an eye on everyone, and looked up as a shadow settled down across from him.

He glanced at the crouching Dragon Man neutrally. “You play cards, kid?” he asked, as the creature stared at the colorful cards with interest.

The mute creature shook his huge head.

“Huh. Well, let’s start simple, then.” He reached down into his bag, pulled out a bottle of Dealer’s Honeyed Lite, something he lugged around for non-Earth types, and offered it to the brute after flicking off the cap and catching it in his mouth.

Even her bottlecaps were getting more exquisite. Lightning Water Iron was tingling on his tongue like a popping sourball.

“Try this.” A big clawed hand grasped the brown bottle carefully, and Hill fished out another Dealer’s Best. He popped the top, clinked it with the one the Dragon Man was holding and tilted it back to take a quick swig.

The Dragon Man did the same, and promptly quivered from head to spiked tail. Blue fire spurted out his nose, and he stared at the bottle in his hand in wonder.

“Slow, kid. Take it slow. Sip it. Enjoy it. Whole two people on the planet make a brew guys like us can enjoy.” He set his bottle down on the table, and broke up his game of solitaire, gathering up the cards casually and shuffling them as the Dragon Man watched the big hands moving with strange skill with great interest, the creature clutching his new favorite drink.

“We’ll start with Go Fish. Lemme show you how this works...”

---

“Dragon Man! We’re going! Come!” the Vizard called out sternly.

The hulking construct turned his massive head to look at Wittman, clutching his hand of colorful metal plates carefully, and puffing out a plume of blue smoke. His tail twitched once, and then he turned away huffily.

“Get going, Wittman. We got a game ta finish.”

There was an iron tone under his voice that said Wittman had used up all of The Mountain’s restraint. The Vizard choked down his next words, and turned to go back to the van he had arrived in, feeling massive resentment that Richards had such resources to call on even when he wasn’t home.

“Oh, and Wittman, Red.” They both paused in midstep as his gravelly voice broke over them. “Dynamo ain’t even on the planet right now. She is gonna be very interested ta hear that the two of you only dared ta come ta visit her when she wasn’t here. She might come visitin’, I’m jus’ saying.”

“I will face her again at any time!” Thundra exclaimed, turning on him defiantly.

“Red, you ain’t even faced her once. That tournament? That wasn’t Dynamo. That was some watered-down, crippled display she had to put on because of that blue freak.” He took a small swig, matched by the eager Dragon Man miming the gesture and timing. “She took you down easy-like with both her hands tied behind her back. She comes looking for you, you best lose that attitude, or it’s gonna be painful.

“Git.” He held up his cards as a big purple claw indicated a four on the row of card faces scratched into the table, and Dragon Man chortled in silent glee as Mr. Hill sighed and held out a four of clubs for him.

============

The Present...

“That’s Dynamo, kid,” Mr. Hill pointed me out helpfully. “She can make these brews, too.”

Dragon Man promptly waddled over past Ben, picked me up as I lifted an eyebrow, and gave me a big bone-crushing hug as everyone stared in bemusement.

“Dealer said you had to be the one ta give him a voice,” Mr. Hill went on, voice carrying no audible amusement whatsoever at my situation. “She said she gave him a Mark and an Awaken Construct or sumthin’, so if you can give him a voice, that’d be real nice of you.”

“Well, when he gets done trying to powder my ribs...” I murmured back, giving him some pats on the horned head. He hastily and almost delicately put me back down.

“Gotta watch them hugs, kid. You know how strong you are,” Hill admonished him calmly. Dragon Man, looking a bit mortified, scampered back behind him.

“Tomorrow,” I told Dragon Man. “I get a day off after going to another galaxy, participating in three space battles, and breaking up a millennia-old space power!” I waved at them as I headed into the building.

I touched the field, and Argent Savancy spread over the whole thing, shattering the massive Ward instantly. Dealer had been paid one million dollars to set it up for the duration of none of the FF being at home, and nobody had gotten inside.

==========

As an interesting feature, when The Mountain is Rooted, he can’t be harmed by anything of earth, crystal, or metal. So, for instance, he wouldn’t be harmed by a building falling on top of him, cannon fire, meteors coming down atop him, or even being slammed by Thor’s Hammer.

Hercules just beats him up with his fists, of course.