Ramming into the enemy that dared to attack his son, Nahma hooked the heavy gray V-shaped plate on his forehead into the thing and hurled it into the air. Waving his left antennae and reforming it as he did, he sent a gigantic blast of energy at the fleshy enemy, and it crystallized into ice as it did.

To his fury, the enemy liquified, slipping through the small cracks in his attack and falling to the street, blobbing outwards before forming into the vague shape of a human. Nahma growled at it with earsplitting volume. "You will not harm my son twice."

It would be the last thing he said before the fight ended. Pulling more of his body out of the distortion in space that allowed him to arrive so quickly, he coiled up tighter and tighter, raising his head and snarling at the thing.

Blood began streaming across the ground, collecting into the meaty enemy and making it grow bigger and bigger. Nahma's many eyes narrowed. He didn't know much about this enemy, only that it had survived his ice attack and his headbutt. That alone made it worthy...

Worthy to use every power in his arsenal.

To say Nahma was angry would be a grievous understatement. He hadn't been present when Bain had fought Stitches back in the Tower. He'd gotten revenge for Bain when he killed the brute that removed his arm. He'd noticed his sheddings and their success in slaying those that hurt his hand and hurt Hetty.

He hadn't been able to actually protect Bain in any of those situations. Either the sheddings had not reacted in time, his instructions for them to stay hidden had prevented them from helping, or Nahma hadn't been involved personally. Whichever reason for it, Nahma had been feeling an increasing sense of distance and had decided to attribute it to the fact that Bain had been injured repeatedly in the past few weeks when he had never been truly hurt before.

Well, not since Nahma hit him all the way back then, but it'd been more of a startled whack than a real hit.

Lowering his head, Nahma growled again, an earth-shaking rumble that made the chunks of rubble dance where they lay and made the assembled heroes fall over, holding their hands to their ears.

The flesh-enemy made the first move, lunging forward and swinging a misshapen arm forward, reshaping the end into a blade. Nahma tapped into one of his many speed powers and vibrated through it, allowing to pass to the other side, and bit it at the limb. It dissipated into blood and bone and gore, falling to the ground and returning to the enemy.

Whipping one of his antennae forward, Nahma opened his mouth as the ground tilted sideways, gravity following his wishes as thick gouts of blue fire erupted from his mandibles, torching the enemy.

At least, it was supposed to. The enemy raised one arm, summoning more bone and deflecting the flames away, harmlessly flickering into the air and melting the asphalt back into the road. Spinning, it formed its limb into a forest of blades and launched them at Nahma in an unpredictable weaving array of sharpness.

The tip of Nahma's right antennae split and split again, over and over until there was a tree of antennae sprouting from the base of his skull. The antennae whipped forward, the ends changing into armored hooks and catching the blades, deflecting them away and sending them into the surrounding buildings, carving through stone and road as easily as a bite through a rat.

Detaching the antennae, Nahma forced himself to grow a new one and spread the tip into a bunch of three dense ones. Twisting them tightly around each other, he growled as he rapidly unwound them.

The majority of the street imploded around the enemy, buildings, rubble, and garbage hurtling towards it and condensing into an ever-thicker ball as Nahma made space and gravity want to meet at a small point. Snapping his head sideways, Nahma told them to move away from each other, and they complied.

Tearing away from each other, a massive spray of blood and bone exploded outward as gravity decided it didn't want to exist in the exact spot the enemy had been previously occupying, and Nahma grinned inwardly, reverting his antennae to normal. No one could stand against...

...it was back. The fleshy bits were collected together in the form of the enemy once again, not even noticeably smaller than before, and Nahma's eyes slitted.

How very... insolent.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bain lifted his head from the ground where he'd landed, shaking himself like a wet dog. "Stitches?" he called. "Are you there?"

The building they'd been on had collapsed, and they'd gone from the roof to the lobby in a matter of seconds. Dust bloomed around them, light filtering through it in uneven beams.

A piece of rubble slid away, Stitches clearing the dust away from his eyes. "Yeah, I'm here. What just happened?"

Coughing, Bain shook his head, trying to get the incessant ringing out of his ears. "Uh... Nahma happened. He's pretty mad."

Stitches' eyes widened past all the dust. "Cark. Is anyone still here?"

Getting to his feet, Bain replied, "I don't know. Gren?"

The ceiling materialized with previously invisible sheddings, holding the collapsing roof up. Politely, one of them responded, "Yes, Bain?"

It wasn't Gren, but Bain continued either way. "Can you guys tell if anyone survived?"

It shrugged indifferently. "It is hard to tell. Nahma's fighting is disrupting..." it waved one of its antennae around uncertainly. "...everything."

Bain's eyes narrowed. "Can you get us to a good view?"

The shedding grinned.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Nahma was well and truly incensed.

One antenna hurling never-ending curves of bladed light, the other wreathing his body in a deflective shield of shadow, Nahma had attempted most of his ranged abilities to little effect. He was beginning to realize that the enemy was highly resistant, if not completely immune, to cuts.

So he decided to go for a closer range.

Launching the darkness forward like a wave, Nahma charged behind it, mouth open and dripping liquid fire as his entire body uncoiled violently, sending him forward fast enough to break sound with a boom.

Tilting gravity temporarily, Nahma twisted his head downward and facing upward, then caused the gigantic V-shaped plate on his forehead to heat up to absurd temperatures, the air steaming as it came into contact with it. Growling, Nahma came up in a full uppercut headbutt and made contact.

The liquid form of his enemy compressed at the impact, and most of its mass went flying into the air, following the inverted gravity. One limb shot forward at Nahma's briefly unmoving form, the end shaping itself into a deadly-sharp blade, and sheared through Nahma's skull and foreplate, sending the top half of his head to the ground with a dull thud.

It took Nahma a moment to figure out most of his head was missing, but once he did, the antennae sprouting from the top half of his head exploded into a massive web of tendrils, solidly placing the severed portion back on Nahma's neck. Popping his jaw and mandibles briefly, Nahma tested them to make sure they worked.

A hammer-shaped punch of solid muscle and bone crashed into his forehead, and his head snapped backward. At the same time, a faintly transparent afterimage of his body went upward. Following the backward path, Nahma sped away, the afterimage filling in with green and blue color as it solidified.

In mere moments, Nahma was coiled a thousand feet in the air, his Molt underneath him, shaking its head as it processed the fact that it existed now. "MOLT!" he commanded, and its head, identical to his, looked upward. Snarling, Nahma told it, "The enemy has injured Bain, and will attempt to do so again. Ensure that it cannot move."

Molt blinked its many eyes, then roared in response, hurling its body forward. Rotating sideways, it slammed its body into the ground, building layer after layer of carapace out of its own flesh as it built a circular wall around the enemy, shadows still blocking its view from what was occurring.

Nahma himself raised his body into the air, then began flying in a tight pattern in the air above Molt and the enemy. Increasing his speed further and further, a funnel of wind began to form, growing in power. He activated every speed ability he could use at the moment, and the funnel became a screaming tornado.

Using his various powers, Nahma generated lightning, lava, boiling water, and even random types of energy, the bolts and fluids exploding from his shell and combining with the vicious tornado.

Tightening his spin one last time, Nahma shot upward, righted himself, then aimed directly down the center of the tornado. He could see the enemy quite clearly - every shred of blood, bone, and gore it had collected desperately trying to collect into a form. It couldn't, though - Molt's massive wall formed from his own body blocked him from either gaining mass or launching it away to escape. The full shed's legs were tightly interlocked in a mesh of limbs. Neither of them would be moving any time soon.

Which was, of course, Nahma's plan to start with.

Summoning one of his most dangerous powers, Nahma inhaled deeply, the coagulation of heat, ice, energy, and fire streaming into his mouth, condensing into a massive ball. A wave of purple energy shot up Nahma from his tail to his head, and his eyes glowed violet.

He could have said something. Given the enemy a chance for its final words, however unintelligible they might have been. It had been a good fight, after all, and had even given Nahma a good excuse to come to the surface for the first time in fifty years.

But it had hurt Bain.

He fired.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Stitches' jaw was hanging open as he watched the ensuing battle between Meatbag and the uncontested strongest monster in Centropolis.

The ground shook, hit by some cataclysmic impact as the titans fought. Stitches almost fell down, but Bain supported him, helping him to stabilize. Neither of them could see the fight very well, but random changes in gravity or sudden jerks in time let them know for sure who was winning.

Stitches shook his head in disbelief. "He was going so easy on us."

Bain nodded mutely, unable to look away.

Suddenly, the maelstrom of shadow surrounding the battle and obscuring it from their view was sucked upward, and Stitches' breath hitched. "What the..."

A second Nahma was coiled in an enormous circle, its own body layering on top of itself in a cylinder a hundred feet tall. Above it, Nahma spun and twirled around a tornado of chaos, glints of light in every color of the spectrum shining through it as it was pulled upward by an inexorable force.

A shaft of purple light spiraled around Nahma's shape, growing in intensity as it approached his head and the shrinking ball of increasingly bright energy hovering in front of his mouth.

Bain's eyes widened. "GET DOWN!"

Tackling Stitches, he slammed a hand over his eyes, shutting his own as tightly as he could.

There was a brief silence, a split-second fraction of a moment where nothing moved. Stitches felt as though he were floating, hovering with one hand out in a gesture. There was a crack between Bain's fingers, a side effect of his trying not to injure Stitches with his razor-sharp claws.

Then Nahma fired.

To call the violet-rimmed beam of white light erupting from Nahma's mouth a laser would be an understatement. Technically correct, but it would be the same as calling a nuclear explosion a mushroom. It burned the air, space and time vibrating unsteadily at its edges as it bored into the ground, an endless attack composed of sheer destruction. It was awesome in its pure, unadulterated power as Stitches' eardrums blew out.

When it finally stopped a full minute later, Stitches wasn't sure if it'd finished. Even with Bain lying bodily on him, blocking his vision, he could still see the purple afterimage imprinted on his eyelids.

With a groan, Bain rolled off of him, letting his limbs go limp as he collapsed to the distant roof they'd been put on. Stitches was amazed that it was still standing.

Rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, Stitches sat up. "What happened?" His own voice sounded distant, faraway even though his eardrums were already repairing.

Shaking his head, he pushed Bain. "Are you okay?"

Bain waved an arm at him, facedown.

There was a ground-shaking rumble as Nahma scooped Bain up with one of his antennae, his form still ragdolling as he picked him up. Stitches walked forward, his knees a little unsteady. "Whoa, Nahma! You gotta wait!"

Nahma growled at him, a searing breath of hot air exhaling directly into Stitches' face. "No, I will not wait. Bain is not having a good time. So we are taking a short break from being a hero."

Stitches waved his arms wildly. "But - but Nahma! He's got a territory to take care of!"

Nahma snarled. "The sheddings will maintain it. But Bain and I will be going into the tunnels. We will have a nice, safe, comfortable family vacation and eat rats. Hetty will come. We will have fun."

Stitches didn't know what to say to that, stammering, "But-but-"

He thought of something and seized on it like a drowning man with a plank. "Wait! Unless you're a hero, all of this will be considered willful destruction! Won't you need to-"

Nahma cut him off. "Fine. Mark me down as a hero for the time being, corpse. And if you say anything further, I will eat you."

Placing Bain just behind his V-shaped plate and securing him there with an antennae like a seatbelt, he said irritably, "Goodbye, corpse. You are useless and I hate you."

Turning, his enormous form began crawling over destroyed chunks of rubble as he headed down the hole his beam had carved. The giant form of his full-shed toppled in after him, its insides visible and white-hot as it fell.

Making his way over to the hole, Stitches stared down it in blank shock. The beam had punched through the road, the tunnels underneath it, and every layer past that. A perfect circle eighty feet across, the edges glowing red and melting with a smell like burning rubber.

He couldn't see the bottom.

Mentally, Stitches told himself not to annoy Nahma anymore.