Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.72 - Against the Tide

Mod faced down Amarque and Helion above the Atlantic. The surrounding sky was calm, and one hundred feet below, the waves rolled lazily. It was a picturesque scene.

But even separated as they were, Mod could see Amarque scowling and the fierce look of determination on Helion's face.

Then Amarque raised his hands, and the sea below them began to boil. Waves surged upward as another mountain of water stretched up into the sky. Except this time, it wasn't a team of supers doing it—it was just one man. Amarque pulled the waves until physics broke—until the waves looked like rivers and streams of taffy or gel instead of saltwater. Amarque would take the raw material and bend it to his will.

At the same time, Helion fired his eye beams. Neither cape was holding back now, but Helion's display was more immediately impressive. The sky glowed, like Helion had carved a gash in it and red light was leaking out. The air around the beams super-heated and let out a sound that was half scream and half explosion.

But Mod had been summoning his own mountain. Nanite swarms surged up from below him, rising like a twin mountain to Amarque's. A geyser of nanites erupted from the top and joined with Mod. He extended a hand, and the swarm became an extension of his arm.

Mod had once channeled a mountain's worth of power—

Now he did it again.

His swarm formed a complex network of channels and inverters, all made to swirl and flow so that no individual nanite was burned away. Mod's outstretched arm became a swirling cyclone. Helion's twin lasers struck the heart of the cyclone and were dispersed, funneled into millions of channels and funneled into Mod's spare fusion cores.

The magma chamber beneath the Vault had been tame in comparison, almost as if that vast mountain of power had been condensed and purified into a tiny star.

And yet, it wasn't overwhelming his systems.

Energy poured through Mod's swarm and into his cores, and Mod felt himself relax. He'd expected a scalding hot beverage, and instead found it refreshing. Mod drank deep, and his cores quickly topped off. He funneled the excess power down the swarm and into the Atlantic, using the ocean as a giant heat sink.

Mod amplified his voice so that it boomed over the shuddering sky. "You're still holding back!"

The lasers abruptly snapped off, revealing Helion's sneering face. Helion didn't have time to reply.

The red glow that had filled the sky a moment ago was replaced with twisting masses of water, like Amarque had turned the world upside down and the ocean was falling into the sky. Some masses were as thick as skyscrapers, and Amarque and Helion were quickly dwarfed by the display.

Amarque snapped his fingers, and the mountain of water began to change. It transmuted into a whirlwind of stone boulders and a hail of razor-sharp blades. With another wave of his hand, he hurled the barrage at Mod. The air screamed as the tornado of projectiles was unleashed.

Mod rocketed forward into the heart of the maelstrom. He slipped around boulders the size of houses and batted aside car-sized ones like toys. His point-defense system shot down smaller boulders. The whirlwind of blades slashed at him but his outer layers reknit as quickly as they were damaged.

Again, Mod felt that his opponent was holding back. The feeling assaulted him, more powerful than even the maelstrom above the Atlantic.

"Try harder!" Mod shouted. "Try again!"

Mod couldn't even see his opponents through the hail anymore, but Amarque answered his taunt. Amarque pulled on the air between them just like he'd pulled on the water. What had been a half-mile stretched until it faded into the horizon. The boulders and blades sped up until they moved with the speed of asteroids and comets.