Leon struck first. He stomped his foot, shattering the ground they stood on with earthbending. As the concrete buckled and shattered into fragments, Isotope didn't even try to fight. He let out a frantic yelp and flickered away, vanishing in a fsh of green light while his colleagues fell into a heap.

  His enhanced spatial awareness couldn't pick up where Isotope fled to. The man was gone, likely miles away, but Leon couldn't afford to let the escape distract him.

  The crackling of electricity reached his ears. Kursk had turned into a bolt of lightning and soared into the air within a blink of an eye. When he reformed his body, electricity wrapped around his hands.

  Leon raised a thick dome of earth around himself, barely blocking Kursk's electrical discharge in time. The bolt smmed into the rock with the sound of a thundercp, charring the surface. Inside the darkness of his shell, Leon's mind raced.

  Kursk is faster than I expected. And his electricity will completely disable my ability to move properly if it hits me. I need some way to block his electricity… Wait a minute.

  Inspiration struck Leon like a lightning bolt. Standing tall, his arms reached out before snapping back in. Fragments of earth split from the ground and covered his body from head to toe, leaving only a gap for him to see through.

  He wanted to apply Reinforcement on the armor to bolster his defense. But before he could, a dozen heavy metal ptes burst through the dome he had raised, pelting his newly built armor with the force of cannonballs. The impact pushed Leon out into the open, his heels carving deep furrows into the docks as he skidded backward.

  The metal fragments circled Magnattack like a swarm of angry hornets, returning to his side with a magnetic whine.

  "You think you can hide behind a wall?" Magnattack roared, his armored arms outstretched. "Think again!"

  Leon didn't answer. He unched himself forward, the concrete beneath his feet exploding. He was a blur, closing the distance to Magnattack with terrifying speed.

  Magnattack reacted with practiced precision. He gestured, and a massive barrage of high-velocity metal including rebar, discarded chains, and his metal ptes converged on Leon in a swirling vortex.

  Leon didn't stop. He crossed his arms, enduring the pelting metal as it ground against his earth armor. He felt the shocks vibrating through his bones, but he held firm.

  As he neared Magnattack, Kursk descended like a falling star. The Russian nded between them, his hands glowing with the intensity of a sun. He sent a torrent of electricity toward Leon's chest, and Leon met it without slowing down.

  The electricity snapped across the earth armor, charring the stone. But Leon charged through, nding a punch on Kursk's face. The blow unched him past Magnattack and into a shipping container, denting its side.

  Kursk groaned, putting his hands on the ground as he struggled to stand.

  "I'm not done with you!" Magnattack yelled.

  He focused his magnetic grip, and the metal storm intensified. A heavy steel beam tore itself from a nearby crane and smmed into Leon's side. Parts of the earth armor shattered under the concentrated pressure, the stone falling away in clumps to reveal Leon's heaving form.

  Magnattack followed up immediately, sending a hail of razor-sharp metal shards at Leon's exposed chest. Leon didn't retreat. He leaned into the pain, his adrenaline-spiked blood roaring in his ears. He caught a flying metal pte with his bare hand, the steel denting under his grip, and hurled it back at Magnattack like a frisbee.

  The armored vilin ducked, and Leon used the opening to blitz him. He was a heartbeat away from ending him when Kursk's hands cmped onto his throat from behind.

  The world turned white.

  Electricity surged through Leon's body. With his Removal pushed to ninety-five percent, his nervous system was already a live wire. The influx of external electricity was an agonizing overload.

  Every muscle fiber in his body locked in a rigid, violent spasm. He could smell the ozone and the faint scent of singed fabric as the current cooked his skin.

  Inside, Leon felt like his chest was a furnace about to explode. His heart hammered against his ribs with a frantic, rhythmic thrum. His vision blurred, the docks becoming a smear of gray and yellow. His consciousness remained clear, but he could no longer maintain his hold on the earth armor.

  The remaining fragments fell, exposing him entirely.

  "Haha! Die, you bastard!" Kursk screamed, pouring every scrap of his electricity into the hold.

  Leon's jaw was cmped shut so hard his teeth felt like they would fuse. He couldn't even scream. His blood was roaring in his ears, a frantic rhythm that kept him anchored as his vision began to fray at the edges.

  With every ounce of willpower he had left, Leon forced his hands upward. His fingers, trembling violently from the current, dug into the thick material of Kursk's yellow-cd forearms. He flooded the suit itself with a votile surge of energy. He felt the fabric hum beneath his touch, saturating with the same explosive force he usually reserved for his cards.

  "Huh?" Kursk muttered, looking down at his glowing suit.

  The localized burst of kinetic force was a thundercp that threw both men apart. Leon took the brunt of the shockwave, the bst barely rattling his reinforced frame compared to the agony of the electricity. But it was enough. The circuit was broken and he was free.

  Leon didn't give them a second to recover. He spun on his heel, his feet finding purchase on the cracked concrete before he had even fully stopped sliding. He flicked a charged card at Magnattack before the man could reposition his metal armor.

  The card impacted the center of Magnattack's chest pte and detonated in a blinding burst of kinetic force. The armored vilin was thrown backward, his metal ptes scattering as he crashed through the wall of a warehouse and went still.

  [Defeated Magnattack! Reward: 850 GP]

  Kursk lunged again, but the lightning dancing across his skin was dim and flickering, his reserves drained by the sustained discharge. Leon met him halfway. He caught Kursk's frantic, telegraphed punch. The electricity stung his palm but failed to stop his momentum, and he delivered a devastating series of strikes to the Russian's midsection, head, and groin.

  Each punch and kick nded with a heavy thud. He finished the assault with a brutal uppercut that lifted the man clean off his feet and into the air. Within moments, Kursk hit the ground with a final, heavy bounce and didn't move.

  [Defeated Kursk! Reward: 1350 GP]

  [Feat Achieved! Defeat two supervilins simultaneously in a single encounter. Reward: 1000 GP]

  Leon stood in the center of the silent docks, smoke rising from his tattered waistcoat. His chest heaved in deep, jagged gasps as the purple hue slowly faded from his skin, the agonizing strain of the Removal finally subsiding. He reached up with a steady hand and straightened the remains of his tie, his gaze lingering on the warehouse where Magnattack y.

  The windfall of points shimmered in his vision, but Leon was focused on the silence. He had survived. Won.

  He looked at his hands, which were still trembling slightly from the electrical aftershocks, and a feral, tired grin touched his lips.

  But Machine Head's words echoed in his mind, wiping his grin away. "Not even the GDA has any clue we exist."

  Leon stood alone in the wreckage of a war the world didn't even know had started. His meta-knowledge was full of holes, his suit was ruined, and he was the only thing standing between an international shadow organization and the children under his protection.

  "I'm way out of my depth," he whispered.

  Between the high-octane rescue and the 4-on-1 ambush, his nerves felt like they had been scrubbed with sandpaper. For now, he just wanted to get back to the Suite, check on the kids, and maybe see if Lily needed anything.

  But a new sound cut through the air. It was a heavy hum his mind associated with sci-fi technology.

  Oh, for fuck's sake. He groaned in his mind. What now?