This looked like one of those big crossover events DC or Marvel liked to do.
Every villain across the whole Beacon Nation seemed to have made some kind of pact to cause trouble in their respective cities all at once.
Some scheme cooking with a Darkwing villain, an old nemesis of The Immortal and Omni-Man taking point, one of Red Rush’s speedster rivals roaming the outskirts…
In short, whatever their actual goal was, the Guardians of the Globe had gotten cornered in some kind of trap and had their hands full.
Meanwhile, on the news, Nolan just kept flying around, focused purely on saving people.
Probably just slacking off.
Couldn’t be that that one punch had actually hurt, could it?
Either way, Leon knew:
he wasn’t going to draw much attention for a while, so he touched down on a high-rise across from a power plant.
The villain he’d picked was the electric guy currently tearing the place up inside.
His outfit these days was a hooded jacket plus a mask.
His Viltrumite wisdom had kicked in — as long as he kept his most identifying trait, flight, under wraps, nobody would connect the dots to him too quickly.
So for now, running was good enough.
He locked onto that bright yellow silhouette and dropped into a sprint.
The next instant, the chunks of pavement kicked up behind his heels grew bigger with every stride.
In a heartbeat, an entire wall of windows on one side of the building shattered all at once!
Meanwhile, inside the power plant.
“Bow before me!”
Clad in a skin-tight yellow suit, a lightning-bolt crest on his head, the electric man roared at the hero in front of him.
Whatever the organizer’s real goal was, they’d been thoughtful enough to arrange full control of the power plant for him.
He immediately drew power straight from the grid and knocked them all flat.
His own strength surging as he siphoned it in!
Higher and higher!
“Heheh, with the Guardians out of the picture, I’m—”
INVINCIBLE (orange text on a yellow background)
Right then, Leon — wreathed in countless threads of arcing electricity — swung a fist down at him from above.
“Some rando hero thinks he can waltz in here too?!”
The electric man could obviously sense the shift in the air.
Instead of dodging, he channeled his electric power directly to meet the punch head-on.
But unlike The Immortal, whom he’d fought before, this fist was unstoppable — it plowed straight through layer after layer of lightning and landed flush on his cheek.
Wait, that’s wrong!
Snapping back to his senses, he instantly transformed into pure electricity and skirted around a support column, putting distance between himself and Leon.
Looking back, he saw that fist buried right where he’d been standing, ring after ring of cracks slowly spreading outward, and then — sinking down.
Cold sweat!
Pulling his fist back, Leon studied the electric man with obvious curiosity from behind his mask.
Because as far as Leon remembered, this guy wasn’t supposed to be nearly this tough.
It was only after scanning the whole power plant that it clicked for him.
“Guess the villains around here are just that considerate, huh.
Powered himself up just for little old me.”
Now that he thought about it, it really did track — Machine Head hadn’t just sorted out his identity and school situation, he’d even lined up housing for him.
Only fair to pay back that kindness with everything he had, then.
“You’ve — you’ve still got some fight left in you, huh?
Heroes like you are a dime a dozen around here, so—”
“How’s your speed?”
Electricity crackled across the electric man’s whole body.
He triggered a chain of equipment explosions that instantly spread out along the cracks Leon had already carved into the floor, blowing an entire level to pieces.
Amid the debris raining down everywhere, he rode one of the chunks and charged straight at Leon.
Once!
Twice!
The current he’d become grazed past Leon again and again, presumably dealing some real damage each time.
And the electric web he wove out of pure speed was steadily reeling in more and more charge, pinning Leon down bit by bit.
Restrict the movement, and it doesn’t matter how strong he is — the advantage’s mine!
As for Leon, he gave it a solid five stars.
So this was what real electrotherapy felt like.
His whole body had still been faintly aching after the fight with Nolan, and now, after a few good jolts, his circulation felt loosened right up.
Not only that, his resistance to electric attacks kept ticking upward, and he could feel that new empty container inside him steadily filling.
Alright, so getting hit builds up NP, noted.
What about attacking, then?
With the ground closing in fast, Leon quietly adjusted his stance with his smart-atoms and landed clean.
Then he shook off the arcs still clinging to his body and, with pinpoint precision, caught the electric man by the ankle right as he threw a punch and tried to fly off.
“Wha—?!”
Under his mask, the corner of the electric man’s mouth froze mid-smirk.
How the hell did he catch me — I am lightning.
There’s only supposed to be one guy in this whole world who can keep up with that—
In a burst of sudden acceleration, he got slammed straight into the ground, his limbs bending at unnatural angles.
The searing pain of those fractures snapped him right out of his electric form, and he went down for the count.
“Almost full.”
Leon looked at the barely-conscious electric man — decent attack speed, good power output, a solid NP farming target.
He tossed the man into a pile of rubble and got ready to head off in search of a fresh villain.
Right at that moment, a voice sounded overhead.
“I got word someone’s trashing the power plant.
That you?”
A burly, bearded man in blue-and-yellow slowly descended, speaking into his comm at the same time.
“I’ve already arrived, no need to send anyone else over.”
“I’m the one who put a stop to this attack.
The villain’s lying over there.”
“I’d like to believe you, but seeing as I’m here now, unregistered heroes still need to be logged.”
The Immortal swept his gaze across the scene.
There weren’t many people in the world capable of this kind of destruction in human form.
And now there was a new one on the list, someone with this much destructive power needed serious attention.
Just like that Omni-Man fellow, who claimed to be from Viltrum…
Besides, the man standing in front of him still hadn’t cleared himself of suspicion.
“Unfortunately, plenty of people still don’t follow that particular law, but I already saw what I saw.”
“Then there’s nothing left to discuss, is there?”
Leon squared up again.
“Go ahead and use force, then, if you have to.”
Seeing Leon act so ungrateful, the man’s expression flickered with anger — impulsive, quick to temper, dominant.
Very The Immortal of him.
But since he was already here, Nolan and the others had probably been freed from that trap of theirs by now.
Leon thought it over, arms raised to block the incoming Immortal.
Not bothering to burn flight to absorb the force, he let himself get carried up into the air, still holding his stance.
He landed, then took a few exaggerated steps back for show.
Kind of light, actually.
Is this the legendary one-shot-Omni-Man guy?
But…
full charge.
Might as well end this quickly.
On The Immortal’s second attack, he noticed the hooded man wasn’t defending at all — just raising a hand-blade high overhead.
“Has he lost it?
He can’t seriously think a gesture like that’s gonna hurt anyone?”
Confused, he pressed forward, accelerating.
But just a few meters out, an overwhelming sense of danger — so overwhelming that even someone as long-accustomed to death as he was still felt the instinct screaming — washed over him completely.
In that instant, that seemingly comical hand-blade came down on him like a great chasm splitting open.
“This slash is gonna be really—what’s the word again?”
The Immortal saw it, reflected in the eyes beneath that hood — tension spreading fast across his own face.
Gotta dodge—
But before he could even move, his consciousness was swallowed by the collapsing building.
A minute later,
Leon stood on the rooftop, snapping a photo of the smooth, clean cut left by his vertical hand-blade slash, just before the whole building came down.
“Limited destructive power, but specialized for cutting performance?”
Now he finally understood just how frustrated Nolan must have felt this whole time — one-shotting everyone he came across, and still having to play along and pull his punches for the act.
[Viltrum’s Top Student]: @Orange-Haired, Gold-Eyed Menace to Humanity Check it out, how’s this Noble Phantasm looking?
[Orange-Haired, Gold-Eyed Menace to Humanity]: Deal — next time we run into someone annoying, I’ll burn a Command Spell to buff you, and you go cut them clean in half.
[The Tiger of West Junior High]: Wait, didn’t your Noble Phantasm’s description say “Anti-Personnel”?
Is this even legal?
[Mala Donkey Head]: Maybe Leon’s just really, really strong.
[Not-a-God Yellow Weasel]: Guess I’d better pick up the pace.
I’m genuinely looking forward to this, Leon.
[Kansas Farm Boy]: That’s a lot of destruction — was there some really strong villain that needed your full effort?
[Kansas Farm Boy]: Uh, that was the villain, right?
Not long after, right as Leon got home, his phone lit up.
It was Nolan.
After their last training session, before Nolan left, Leon had given him his number.
Had he been found out?