Indomitable was tired. The entire Squadron Supreme had deployed to deal with the escaped supervillains from Blackreach. The White Knights had tried to stop them, but were completely outmatched. They were still finding pieces of Grandwizard, the team’s mage, after Storybreaker did… something that caused the mage to literally explode from the inside.

The initial riot only got worse from there. The only surviving staff at Blackreach were the people working in the infirmary. The supervillains had all avoided the area as they made their escape, for some reason. But that was the only bright spot in the whole affair.

Out of three hundred and fifty inmates, forty-seven were dead on the scene, killed during the riot. Another one hundred and sixty-two were injured, some of them to the point where it was questionable whether they would recover. Of the one hundred and forty-one escapees, twelve had later surrendered, and a further forty-five had been captured by the Patriots of Austen and the Squadron Supreme. And they had been forced to kill another twenty-five escapees, to keep them from harming civilians.

The fighting had lasted for over a day, and Indomitable was tired. More concerning, however, was the fact that he was injured. Not life-threatening, just a gash in his side where he’d been cut with an energy blade. But the fact that he could be injured at all was cause for concern.

Before the System, his powers had included some enhanced strength and endurance, but were mostly focused on him being completely invulnerable. Now, the System treated his flesh like armor, and armor could be penetrated. Oh, sure, it took a strong attack to manage it, but that didn’t matter. He was no longer invulnerable. He was weak. Mortal.

He was Indomitable! He’d stopped tank rounds with his face, without even gotten a bruise! Ever since he’d gotten his powers, there had only been one person who could hurt him. And now, some no-name villain with an energy blade power cut him. How the mighty had fallen.

“Are you still moping, brother?”

Indomitable looked up from where he had been sitting, resting. As expected, his sister, Pyra, was there, frowning. He just shook his head. “It is all wrong. It isn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Oh, grow up! Yes, things are different now. But sulking because you aren’t as indestructible as you used to be makes you look pathetic. Do you think he would be sitting around moping if he were here?”

Indomitable bristled at his sister’s rebuke. But at the mention of him, he snarled, leaping to his feet. “That smug bastard is probably loving this! I swear, the next time I see him, I’m going to shove that sword of his so far up his—”

“Yes, yes. You’re very intimidating, brother. But you do remember that he beat you before, even when you were invulnerable? He didn’t let the fact that you were stronger or more powerful than him stop him. He still beat you, beat ALL of us.”

“I wish you wouldn’t speak like you admired him. You sound just like you did when—"

“Oh, please, brother,” Pyra cut him off. “Iceblade might have made me a lovestruck fool with whatever trick he used on me, and Lady Victory, and I remember everything he did to me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t step back and acknowledge his accomplishments. He took on the entire Squadron Supreme alone, and won. There are maybe ten people in the world who could pull that off, and you know it.”

Indomitable knew it, all right. There was a reason why the Squadron was the world’s premier super-team, after all. But Iceblade had tore through them that night. Alchemy and Titan were both taken down in a single exchange. Foxtrot had hit him, but he managed to stun her, and then throw her in the path of Lucky Star’s attacks, before taking down Star. Then, he’d mind controlled Pyra, forcing Indomitable to take down his sister.

The fight between him and Iceblade had been tough. The man was slippery, he had to admit. Ice on the ground had made footwork difficult, but he was able to use his super-strength to crack it, disrupting his footwork. He’d been closing in, to end it, when he saw Iceblade do something strange.

The villain took a stance that he knew, from his training, was an iaijutsu stance. A quick-draw technique. He had dismissed the danger, because he was invulnerable. That was his whole thing, after all. A sword wouldn’t be able to hurt him.

Except it did. The blade emitted a ghostly light, and instinct made him bring up his hands to block. But that pale blade cut through him, as though his flesh and bone were not even there. And he was hurt. His body had been unharmed, but even so, he felt pain, all over. And then Iceblade had simply walked away, taking Pyra with him, saying that killing without payment was bad for business.

Later, Foxtrot had examined him with her mystic arts, and found that the attack had wounded his Soul, not his body. The idea that something could harm his soul directly was strange, but he could accept that. He didn’t like it, but he could accept it. He could even accept that, somehow, Iceblade had found an artifact that was capable of such a thing.

In truth, it wasn’t the loss that made him hate Iceblade, but how he had toyed with both his sister, and his girlfriend. After the loss, Pyra had been missing for weeks, as Iceblade toyed with her, making her his mind-controlled sex slave, before releasing her. And Lady Victory? It had taken months of therapy for her to come to terms with the things she’d been forced to do while under his control.

“Actually,” his sister said, breaking his reverie, “I heard that the New York Knights got a visit from Iceblade. He gave Mechana ideas on how to contain supervillains. She’s already started working on a new line of security measures that can be used at facilities like Blackreach, and should be ready to deploy them by the end of the week.”

“What? Why would he do something like that? Don’t tell me he’s decided to go straight.”

“Hah! As if. No, apparently, he was concerned with escalation. Same reason why he let us live, when he fought us. If he keeps things nonlethal, then we have to do the same, right? And he has a better chance of escaping from Blackreach than he does from the morgue.”

“That sounds like the bastard. I don’t suppose the Knights captured him?”

“No, he escaped after giving them the information.”

“Damn. So, how did he know about the System’s powers, and how they worked? We still haven’t had a chance to look at things, with all the fighting.”

Pyra leaned forward, and whispered, “Well, Mechana told me that he hinted that…”