Sly Cheshire teleported to the Platinum crown’s massive shoulder. Running along the mech’s castle-like pauldron as he looked for the spot highlighted by the schematic that was on his AR display. He found the area and noted that the design was the same as the one on the schematic.

Then he crouched and hurriedly pried the panel open with the claws installed in his gauntlets. Pulling the panel open, until there was just another space for Sly Cheshire to slip in one of the cryo-grenades from his utility belt.

The grenade went off. The mech’s operator, Henrietta Albani tried to swat the hero from her shoulder. The mech’s hand hit the figure of the receding hero but went straight through like it was hitting smoke. All it had hit was one of Sly Cheshire’s afterimages. The real Sly Cheshire had already moved on. Aiming for another of the areas that were marked as being weak to cold.

On the ground, Math Moth and Cloudy Midnight fought closer to the ground. Cloudy Midnight fired balls of explosive moonlight at the creature’s knees and ankles to stress its joint and keep its attention.

Math Moth would leap around. Delivering debilitating blows to the areas that her two partners were weakening for her. Using her abilities to amplify the force behind each punch so that each time she swung her weapons it was like a bunker buster being dropped.

The heroine looked at the wasted and warped metal tonfas in her hands, and wondered if they would hold up till the end of the fight.

It was too much for her to do the math to reduce the backlash to the weapons ‘and’ increase the force of her attacks to their maximum, so she could only imagine what her hands would look like if she were fighting barehanded.

The three heroes fought feverishly. Assisted by the efforts of Rokuro Inoue, who was no longer preoccupied with looking after his cousin, Melle.

Young Melle and all the other survivors of the initial clash had been instantly evacuated and sent to the emergency responders after being pulled into the Uncanny Gentleman’s subspace .

The mage swung his scythe at the mech as provocation. Occasionally shooting out beams of dazzling, but ineffectual, bloodlight at the mech’s thick armor. Working hard to stay alive while the heroes took the city-killer down.

Eventually, everyone’s hard work was rewarded. Sly Cheshire tore a final coupling and dropped a final cryo-grenade in a key spot near the base of the mech’s spine. Math Moth leapt up and smashed down on the mound of ice and frozen metal with such force that her tonfas all but disintegrated.

Cloudy Moonlight was finally able to destabilize the Platinum Crown, using the accumulated damage his partners had done, to blow the mech onto its back like an up-ended turtle.

Math Moth and Sly Cheshire leapt onto the Platinum Crown’s chest and Math Moth tore upon the plated cage that surrounded the mech’s cockpit. Sly Cheshire’s eyes narrowed as he glowered down at Henrietta.

“You’re under arrest! Step out of the mech and surrender, or we ‘will’ use lethal force!” said Sly Cheshire.

Rokuro might have had something else to say, but he was being detained by Cloudy Midnight who was standing ready to blast him with a beam of moonlight if he so much as touched his scythe.

Henrietta stepped out of the cockpit as she was ordered, then the heroes had the two scions cuffed and ready for processing. The heroes’ fight was over.

Math Moth looked towards the other end of the altered-space wondering exactly when the strange man and the three-eyed woman got so far away. Wondering how it was that the three-eyed woman and the strange man were able to get so far, looking like they were dozens of miles away, when logically the space should only have been warehouse-sized.

“Should...Should we help that guy?” said Math Moth.

Sly Cheshire sighed and shook his head.

“Do you really think we could actually help? I’m pretty sure I just saw a mushroom cloud come from one of that woman’s punches. Whatever’s happening over there isn’t something we can handle, just get ready to evacuate in case things go south. I’ve already radioed the people outside that we might have an A-rank threat or above on our hands.” said the Cat-cowled man.

No one argued otherwise. The sound of the blows being traded by the two oddities said everything that needed to be said all on their own. Each blow brought a deafening eruption of sound. Each punch and kick sounding like it wipe out mountains.

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

“Oh, Cassandra, dear Cassandra, do you have any idea how much of a headache this is?” I muttered.

I was still entangled with the three-eyed woman. I won’t front, she was pretty much kicking my ass at the moment. That was how deep the disparity between our body’s calibers were.

Even with all my skills I could only barely keep up with her and I’d already had to use two of my limited actions to keep the woman’s blows from tearing me apart.

*Bam*

I saw stars and chirping birds like out of a damn cartoon as I received a blow with enough force to deform the bones in that thick skull of mine.

*Bam*

I received another blow and felt the skin, bones, and muscles of my neck strain to keep my head attached to my body.

*Bam*

She got in a gut blow that was heavy enough to tear open a hole in my chest.

All this happened in less time it takes for the average human brain to realize that it’s just been hit. In the blink of an eye I’d already received twenty or thirty blows and the woman was getting faster.

My best guess was that the woman’s third eye had some kind of precognitive power. Precognition plus a strong dose of mesmerism.

I could imagine how frightening the Three-Eyed Queen would have been in her hey-day. A super-powered juggernaut that could not only see what you were about to do before you did it, but could also guide your steps in the direction she wanted you to walk.

Fortunately, for me, those kind of tricks didn’t work on me.

Even more lucky, as the fight carried on things started getting more even. I was able to get a kick in every five hits instead of every ten or twenty.

My adaptive physiology, and some of the strength that I technically shouldn’t have been able to reach due to my current terrestrial limitations, were helping me cheat. And like I always say, if you’re in a fight and it doesn’t feel like your cheating somehow you’re completely either out of your league, or not fighting smart, so I was feeling pretty good about how things were going.

Around the five minute mark, I realized that her punches weren’t landing with the same ‘omph’ anymore. I looked down at my body and swore as I realized that I was now standing more than a foot taller.

“Well, shit…” I said. Annoyed because A)it looked like I’d ended up tapping into more of my precious limited actions after all, and B) I probably wouldn’t be able to shrink myself down.

All I could do was hope, I’d end having enough juice to run a semi-permanent shapeshift that kept me at a more human height.

My height wasn’t the only thing changed. My musculature and bone structure was also a lot more robust than it had been previously. Stepping outside myself for a moment to take a better look, I realized that I’d turned into a blast from my past.

What had once been an average looking, moderately tall human, was now a nine foot tall diamond horned, titanium skinned, titanium-hooved, demon lord. Three burning crowns hovering above his head. Two sets of dark red wings appearing at his back.

“Tch...How nostalgic.” I said. Smirking with a mouth filled with far too many, too sharp, teeth.

It seemed my demonic aspects had activated under the stress of the blows I’d been taking. After thinking on it for half a second I decided to let the mechanized parts of me wake up a little more as well. I grew even taller. Stopping at a height that was a little over twelve feet.

My hooves were replaced with metal claws. My horns were covered in a shimmering black alloy. My eyes were replaced with fairy lights.

The nanites that passively flowed through my body began to surge, and my flesh was replaced with humming wires and machinery. My wings were replaced with a set of rectangular, hammer-shaped, gravity-manipulation drives that were connected to my back by long flesh and metal tendrils.

As my ‘stats’ rose, the fight became a little more equal. Soon instead of simply being beaten, I was genuinely trading blows with the three-eyed woman. A right hook met my chin in a way that would have had my brains rattling around if my head wasn’t already basically just decoration at this point. I responded with a haymaker from the left that made her head snap back, and sent the woman bouncing away.

Sensing a shift in the momentum, I pursued her, chasing after her like a roaring locomotive. Flames poured from my nostrils as I ran, my foot falls heavy making it feel like the earth was shaking.

She landed shakily and then as she stood, a beam of purple light shot out of that third-eye of hers. Luckily, she wasn’t the only one who could see a little bit of the future. My akashic feed warning me of this ability and predictive models telling me to be wary long before I reached her.

I ducked, and the beam missed me. Unluckily the heroes were right past me and the beam didn’t seem intent on stopping.

“Tch, Seriously?”

The gravity drives in my tendrils hummed to life, and I soared backwards like an arrow fired from a bow. I used my psionics to catch energy and fed it to the nanites in my body. My whole body began to glow purple as my structure digested the anomalous beam’s power.

I landed just a few feet away from the heroes and turning my head a full one hundred and eighty degrees and I told them to clear the area.

“You can’t really help much right now, and as you’ve seen, you’re more of a liability than anything else right now...so...uh...not to be rude, but…”

Sly Cheshire nodded understanding. Math Moth frowned looking like she wanted to argue. Cloudy Midnight simply gaped seemingly distracted by my new form.

The heroes left the space, and I decided to make some serious use of the energy I’d just eaten and my shapeshifting powers. My body consumed the materials that made up the fallen platinum crown to fuel the transformation.

Soon I was taller than your average skyscraper. I was a massive thousand foot tall horned hound. My fur was made of metal. My eyes were made of fire. I opened my maw and revealed an aether cannon. The sort of cannon, higher-tier civilizations, mounted on their warships. I lowered my head towards the Three-Eyed Woman and fired three short bursts. Three blasts each.

The woman went down with the second burst. I fired the third burst just to make she didn’t leap back up again.

With the battle over, I transformed back into myself again. Which at this point, meant I was a seven foot tall, glowing eyed, tentacle haired humanoid. Later, I’d take a little extra time to turn my form into something more human, but that would have to wait for the moment. I needed to make sure that the three-eyed woman wasn’t dead.

She wasn’t. She was just charred to hell. Her skin, and the flesh beneath, smoking. The air around the fifty mile deep crater I’d left her in was filled with the smell of cooked meat, but somehow she wasn’t dead. Another testament to how tenacious the woman’s physique had been.

“Well, at least with this your debt is over.” I muttered.

I cast a spell on the woman that would suppress her consciousness and keep her asleep as I healed her. Then I cast another to search her spirit, soul, and body and forcibly root out any sequelae that might have been left by the ‘geas’ she’d been under.

This was just a little extra service. Honestly, if she’d just come to me and told me about the geas, I could have just broken it, and fixed things that way, but the woman was stubborn and we probably weren’t so close that she would have given me direct access to her soul if she were awake.

As her skin regenerated under the ministrations of my healing spell, I found myself staring at a very familiar face. Cassandra Neuville slept with a look of ease that I rarely saw on her face while she was awake.

“It’s been hard on you…” I said. Sighing. Feeling a rare bit of empathy.

Cassandra’s actions might have been a bit morally dubious while she was younger but the woman was a good person overall. When she escaped the CRUS (China-Russia Unified State), she didn’t escape alone. She escaped with fifteen children that some of the country’s shadier agency’s had been modifying and training into human weapons.

She saw thirteen of those children adopted into good families and ended up raising the last two, Ashley and Douglas, by herself.

She didn’t escape on her own. Even with all her strength, or perhaps directly because of her strength, it was impossible for the woman to just disappear. It took the intervention and assistance of a certain family of mages for the Three-Eyed Queen, then known as Three Eyed Dragon, to able make her escape.

This assistance came at the cost of five years of service that built up the Three-Eyed Queens current questionable reputation, and the promise of three favors.

These three favors enforced by a powerful geas that would strip the woman of her will and essentially make her puppet to see her debt fulfilled. Meaning that she wouldn’t have been able to reject any order she was given, including those that could come with grim consequences such as the deaths of her niece and nephew.

Once Cass was all healed up, I tossed her into my storage space for living objects. I made sure Mint knew she wasn’t food, and then turned my attention to my own injuries and sundry issues.

Fifteen minutes of fussing got me looking more or less human, with black hair that at least pretended to not be made of tentacles. My eyes were still on fire but I was pretty sure I could fix that later, or just wear glasses to glamour the change away.

My height was pretty much stuck at over seven feet but I figured I’d be able to get it down to 7, 3’’ when I was feeling less exhausted.

My build was a little beefier than it had before but that was fine, though I preferred being slender to being big, I could rock the jock look just as well. The most worrying change was that more of my actual visage was leaking out of my body.

I was a little too pretty, and the air of fascination seeping into my aura was a little too potent, but again that was something that would have to wait till I’d recouped my lost strength.

I snapped my fingers and a new set of clothing appeared on my body. I had to use a little magic to make the clothes fit which made me even more tired.

I snapped my fingers again and the altered-space vanished. I found myself standing amidst the remnants of the ruined warehouse. I turned around and saw Math Moth, Sly Cheshire, and Cloudy Midnight, staring at me.

“What happened?” Math Moth.

“Well, I’m not dead, sport. So I’d say I won.” I said.

“How about that woman? Where is she?” said Sly Cheshire.

I opened my mouth wanting to say she’d gotten away. Then I saw Rokuro and Melle sitting in an ambulance watching on and heard myself say,

“She’s dead. Very dead. So...no need to look for her. For any reason. In fact, I’d take personal offense to anyone who did and possibly wipe out them and anyone behind them.”

“What?!” said Math Moth. Her face going pale beneath her goggles.

That was the point where I realized that the kids had known about their Aunt’s moonlighting before I had...

Even without using my akashic feed it should have been obvious. Of course, Cass’ niece and nephew would know about their Aunt’s past and current circumstances. They’d escaped the CRUS together, after all.

Which begged the reason of why they’d dared take on a job where they might be forced to face the fearsome woman. If they were anything like their aunt, I imagined it was probably some misguided desire to keep others from getting hurt.

“Is...Is she really dead?” said Sly Cheshire. His right hand forming a tight fist.

“Indeed. Is there a problem? If so, I suggest you go complain to your aunt about me later.” I said. Keeping my tone even. My aura surging despite the fact I was in no state for another fight.

Sly Cheshire seemed to shrink into himself, as he unclenched his fist and loosed a shuddering sigh of relief. He took his sister by the shoulder and glowered at me.

“No… Now I think it’s best you leave.”

“Another brilliant idea.” I said. Glad to take the invitation.

I interfaced with the dark-eye network and had the satellites teleport me out of there.

Instead of teleporting directly to my place, I stopped over at Cass’ place and dropped her off. I figured she’d clear things up with the kids when she woke up. Then I teleported back to my own apartment and faded into nothing between the worlds. My existence ceasing as my exhaustion finally caught up with me.