Ouranic devastation. (Alternate version)

[A/N : Try this version. I powerscaled the villains up a bit.

MC is also straightforward here instead of menacing. Saves time.

Reason for inaction was also added.

Tell me if this is better?]

____________________

We exited the portal to a hidden alley in Brockton Bay, as I deposited the payments in the Undersiders' accounts.

"You got it?" I asked.

"Yes. Thanks." Tattletale answered.

"Now what?" Paige asked, as we walked back to the Undersiders base.

"Nothing. Work is done for today. Go with Lisa. You can stay with them for a while until I crack Dragon's code. Then, we'll talk about the next job, if you still want to. Or you could just leave. Dye your hair, pluck those feathers and you can leave the States before anyone notices."

"No. I have made a decision. I'll-" She said when something whizzed past her and into my stomach.

"PAPA!" Star cried, hugging me tight.

"Star?" I asked, lifting him into my arms.

"What are you doing here? Didn't I tuck you in bed? It's way past your bedtime."

"I had a... hick....I had a bad dream! There was ...bad man....he..." He sniffled into my chest.

"Shh... it's okay. Papa's here." I said, rubbing his back, "No one's going to hurt you."

I heard footsteps stumbling in after him as Alec, Bitch and Taylor ran in.

"Where did he go?" Taylor asked.

"This way." Bitch replied.

"How is that little shit so fast?" Alec gasped for breath.

"That little shit is my son." I warned.

"Yeah we figured, when he came out of that green portal. Maybe you should teach your son not to attack people on sight." Alec shot back.

I raised an eyebrow, looking at Star.

"He tried to control me. I was scared." Star cried.

I levelled a glare at Alec as he shivered.

"He's three. He had a nightmare. He was on edge. Of course he's going to attack you if you try to control him. You are the grown up here. Shouldn't you have the sense to not attack him?"

"Bullshit. He's not three. He looks eight, at least."

"That's you problem here?" Paige asked, amused.

"Who's the bird bitch?" Alec asked only to get another glare from me.

"I mean....bird babe, yes." Alec corrected, as Tattletale shook her head.

I sighed.

"Nevermind. Just go home. And be nice to Paige. She's going to stay here a while." I said, looking up the time.

"It's already 2 a.m. I should go. Star needs some sleep. I'll be in touch if anything else comes up, though I doubt any of you will need to or want to work again."

Star was already drooping his head sleepily, muttering, asking for Offee.

I felt a pang of pain thinking about it.

Such a little child, and he's already lost two mothers.

I opened a portal back to the ship, and took a step forward, when I spotted a slight orange glow lighting up the street as if something was on fire. From the look of everyone else, I wasn't the only one who noticed it.

Curiously, though nothing looked to be on fire around us. Not big enough to cause this.

Until Tattletale stuttered in shock, her eyes to the sky.

"I-is that-?!"

I looked up in horror to see a hazy form up in the sky, as if the sky was a false ceiling and the haze was water damage, before cracks appeared on it.

The sky thundered and broke open, revealing the source of the glow to all.

A meteor, shot out of the sky, like a falling star, straight at us.

The waterlogged streets began to clear with sheer wind pressure the meteor was putting down, and the crumbling hovels around us creaked and rumbled, the cement cracking in their forms from the howling winds.

My blood ran cold as I raised my hand to the sky, using my power to extend the forcefield over the entire or at least most part of the city it would reach, covering us all from the impact.

And impact it did, with such force that even my forcefield shook, flickering, strained at the load.

The ground beneath our feet quaked, and cracked, while the rest of the city blocks around us at the edges of the forcefield collapsed into rubble.

The meteor itself shattered into pieces above the city, raining smouldering boulders and volcanic ash over the bay, just as my forcefield broke under the strain.

It was meant to protect me, in concentrated forcefields. Spread out over the city, of course it's batteries had drained faster.

My earpiece buzzed.

I pressed on it's side, shutting the thought scrambler down, realizing who it was that I was I was facing. After all, I was the one who had baited them here.

It's just the unfortunate time when the bait was bit.

Star being here was going to be a liability. I can't risk him getting hurt.

With that thought I dashed for the portal, only to find myself stuck midstep. Frozen.

The time space fuckery detector wasn't beeping so this was something else.

Immediately I sent out my nanobot swarm in a net, as other voices cried out.

"Fuck!" Alec shouted.

"What's happening? Why can't I move?" Taylor cried.

"Papa? I can't move!" Star said.

"Don't worry, Star. Papa will do something." I said, checking the swarm.

Five presences pinged on my mental map.

Four men, one woman. One of them sat in a corner on a rusty folding chair sipping chai from a styrofoam cup.

"We were almost getting tired of waiting moon man." The man in the corner said, grabbing my attention.

He was dressed in a blue patterned kurta and pajamas, some sort of tinkertech vest over it, and a police issued gas mask slung over it.

NDPD it read.

New Delhi police department.

The thanda capes!

"I'm surprised you beat the meteor. And protected the city at that. I saw as much in my visions, but seeing it first hand....it is something else." He praised.

"I'm surprised too, you know." I said, looking at him out of the corner of my eyes.

"I didn't think you sewer rats would have the balls to trespass into american territory. Attack it with a meteor strike no less? Those are some big cajones for guys who are too afraid to even be known by your street vendor."

Of course that was a lie. I knew them from the story.

The best way to describe these thanda cape cells was a phrase from the PRT chief herself.

'When the government starts to question why the PRT needs to exist, trying to cut down our budgets, all we need to do is point across the aisle to the thanda capes of India to shut them up. For as long as those monsters exist, the PRT's existence will always be justified.'

They were the truly horrifying powerful capes that stood at the top of the world, alongside the likes of Eidolon and Legend.

Their powers were absolutely game breaking, even before the Simurgh did whatever it must have done to them.

From time traveling Phir Se, to the guy who can teleport meteors, to Sifara who can anchor anything to any other thing.

There was one time in the story, when he anchored the PRT headquarters to a table on the sidewalk.

When someone lifted the table, they would also lift the entire PRT headquarters.

If they broke the table, the same would happen to the building.

Honestly, this kind of a physics molesting power put even me on edge against them, even with all my preparations just for this moment.

"Sifara. Teach our friend here some manners." The man said to another.

Sifara nodded.

From my nano swarm I could feel him break a....was that a tooth pick?

Crack!

My spine broke!

I fell to the floor, Star below me, still frozen.

"Hraasrgh!" I screamed out in pain.

"Brockton Bay is almost condemned. We are just another feather on the pile of shit. If it breaks the city's back, so be it. An appropriate cost to ridding the world of you." The man leading them continued, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Bastard!

I pressed through the pain and pushed out my technokinesis, signalling the nano swarm spread out over the city to gather onto my location.

I didn't have enough nanobots to kill them yet and making new ones would take more time than I had.

So this was the best option.

All I had to do was stall for time, distract them.

Suddenly, the world shifted around me, and a man appeared beside me, grabbing the portal gun from my holster, before disappearing.

The super teleporter!

I remembered him too. He was different from the man who could teleport meteors. He had an even stronger power.

In this world, powers had a small flaw called the Manton limit, that prevented them from using their abilities inside someone's body, to prevent their powers from accidentally harming the user.

This meant that telekinetic powers couldn't just crush someone's brain or stop their heart.

Phasers couldn't pass through people.

And pyromancers couldn't boil people alive from inside out.

But as with everything there were exceptions.

This teleporter was one such exception.

He could teleport into people's body, and delete from existence the parts where his body overlapped with theirs like a game breaking glitch.

It was stupidly overpowered ability and one he was a master at using.

The man reappeared behind me, moments later having given the portal gun to the man in the chair.

His hand telefragged into my chest, shoving in, gripping my heart.

It vibrated as if flickering in and out of existence.

His other hand, held me by the shoulder, bringing me face to face with their leader.

"Gah!" I spat out blood, my heart going into cardiac arythmia.

"You've stolen my heart~" I joked even as every breath was becoming a labor for me.

The man gave out a low chuckle.

"You're funny, moon man, I'll admit.

But we have more important matters to discuss.

This is a curious invention. Care to tell me about it? It travels across dimensions, doesn't it? Mind explaining how it works?" The man spoke with certainty.

He knew about it. He knew I was coming here.

That meant only one thing. He was the leader of the Thanda capes. A high level thinker with relativistic powers.

This confirmed it. My plan to bait them here had succeeded.

Only problem was that it succeeded at the exact wrong time.

If Star hadn't been here I could have taken them in a heartbeat.

"Turanta, the astrologer, I presume?" I asked, using my technokinesis to wrap my subdermal mesh around my heart and bring it back to the right rythm, my breath returning to me.

Simultaneously, I embedded another part of the mesh quietly into the teleporter's arm, waiting for the opportune moment.

"You presume correctly. Though how you know of me, of us, I don't know." He replied, taking a long sip from a small styrofoam cup of chai.

Powerplays is it?

Very well then.

"You will tell us, won't you? In time, once we get you to sing for us." He added.

"How about a fair trade, then?" I asked cheekily, "If you tell me where Phir Se is hiding, I'll tell you where you die. Here's a hint. It's here."

Turanta broke into guffawing laughter as he heard me, nearly spilling his tea.

Slapping his thigh, he replied.

"Hah. You joke. I think you don't know what situation you are in, moon man. You have no power here. Your life is in our hands. Literally."

"I think not." I smiled, as a light blue glow began to pulse through my body, and the teleporter began to squirm.

Turanta raised an eyebrow at his comrades feeble attempts at escape before alarm came over him.

"Teleport away!" Turanta cried.

"I can't!" The teleporter replied, struggling to remove his arm, as the pulsing reached a peak, and a blinding blue grid burst forth from my body.

It slipped right through the teleporter, disintegrating the man, his skin flaking away while his body exploded with a blinding light.

The shockwave blew the others away as well, while I used my mesh to patch up the hand sized hole in my chest, injecting a CodeRed into my veins.

My body started to regenerate as the fallen capes began to stir to action.

My spine recovered, setting back in place, and I stood back up, pulling out a laser visor.

The meteor teleporter began to move a fallen building into a blur, preparing to teleport it above me.

"Nyope! You ain't doing shit!" I said, spliting him in two with my laser beam.

The building fell back to the floor with a shudder resonating across the street.

I turned around to see the other members, and found the woman spawning clone after clone from her body.

I turned the lasers, cleaving through her, body after body piling on the ground until at last she stopped spawning any more, her head melted open on the pavement.

It was brutal, yes. But necessary.

I wasn't just going to let her Naruto shadow clone takedown my ass, while old astrologer over there gets away with the portal gun.

I turned to the other teammate, a man in a plain white shirt and a surgical mask over his face, as he pushed off one of the clones that had splattered guts all over him ruining the shirt, and raised hand at me, stopping me in my tracks with an invisible force, as his other hand pressed own on a rock.

Sifara then, the guy with the ability to maintain spatial relationships, anchoring things to other things.

He probably anchored me to the rock in his hand to stop me from moving.

But finally, I had gathered enough nanobots.

"Puree him." I ordered and my nanobots churned through Sifara like butter, leaving a puddle of blood behind.

Out of the corner of my eye, my sensors spotted Turanta trying to make a run for it.

Not so fast.

I whipped around, slicing off Turanta's legs.

He fell hard to the floor chin first, and let out a pained groan, having split his jaw.

I walked over to him, and picked up my portal gun from the floor, holstering it back.

I knelt on the floor beside him, the laser goggles burning red, and asked.

"Now then, time is of essence here so I'll be straightforward. You can tell me where Phir Se is hiding, I kill you and him, ending this whole problem right there and then.

Or you could keep silent, in which case, I will extract your memories, kill Phir Se, and leak your family, friends, relatives information to your enemies. So the choice is yours." I whispered in his ear.

He shivered, his eyes betraying the naked fear he felt at the moment. But he held on.

"I don't know wher-"

"Oh cut the bullshit. I know your power astrologer. You can see where anyone is at any given time with relation to anyone else. So don't try to fool me. Tell me. Where is Phir Se?" I asked, as a shocked expression soread over his face.

"He's in New Delhi, in our enclave below Chandni Chowk." He replied.

"Nope. I'm not an idiot. The time space anomaly below Chandni Chowk isn't Phir Se. It's too stable. Too static. It's probably your other time manipulator, the guy who can feeeze people in time." I replied.

"You knew...!?" He asked, his eyes going wide.

"Of course I fucking knew." I said.

The thing about Turanta's power is that, I don't think it gives him a string of possibilities. It gives him one single solid path to follow. But that's also it's fatal flaw.

If he doesn't get a straight answer, he won't move. And if he didn't move against me, I wouldn't be able to find Phir Se or deal with him. After all, if I raid their HQ, they could just teleport away.

So I set this up.

My earpiece here? It has thought scrambler to use against mind control attempts.

But when coded right, it has another use. It can eliminate a set of thoughts from my head, forcing me to focus on one thing alone.

This way, with no uncertainty in my actions, his power fed him what I wanted it to, leaving him dancing in the palm of my hand, just as planned.

"You never had a chance at killing me, Turanta." I said, burning his arm off.

"Now, tell me where he's hiding. And I'll leave your family alone. How about it?"

Just then, his phone buzzed, and my contacts started pushing in alert after alert.

"What's happening?!" I asked, going through the dozens of notifications pinging up every minute.

"Time space anomaly detected.

Location : Kaziranga National Park, India.

Energy signature rising to 180 Megatons.

Energy signature rising to 200 Megatons.

En...."

"How?! No. Nevermind.

Computer, display anomaly coordinates."

Turanta began to laugh, starting low before his bellowing laughter echoed across the plaza.

"You're too late moon man. I win. We win. Looks like it was you who underest-"

I killed him with a blast, before I looked up and connected to the cameras on the probe to find a pillar of light blazing past it, straight at my ship.

Nonononono!

I stood back up, and put in the coordinates to the location and opened a portal, dashing in, coming face to face with a blinding light.

I put up my hand to my eyes, but it did little to nothing.

The excess runoff of light was so powerful, it penetrated my hands, passing through. I could see my veins from through my hand.

Meters from me, stood Phir Se, in a deep canopied valley, rocky outcrops and lush plant life blocking any vision to the sky.

And above him, an array of golden gates, with blinding lights gushing seamlessly within them in a functional reverse mobius strip.

That's how! I realised.

That's how my systems didn't find it until it was too late!

He wasn't altering the present. He was altering the past, gathering power in the past before returning to the present at the last moment.

"Too late, moon man. You're too late!" Phir Se shouted.

"Fuck you!" I cried, burning through his head, his headless corpse falling to the floor, where I gored it with the laser till not even ash was left of him.

Meanwhile, I connected to the portal projector on board the ship as opened a huge portal in the beams path, leading onto the surface of Pluto.

For a moment I considered directing it back to India, as revenge, but something of this magnitude would probably tear through the planet like wet toilet paper.

I don't want to commit genocide if it wasn't necessary. Besides I still needed to get Eden's shards from here. It will far more labourous to find them in the rubble of earth.

Seconds later, I felt the signal to my contacts fizz out, as the light beam began to bloom as it pierced past Jupiter's gas cloud, refracting into the shadow of Uranus, disrupting my connection to the ship.

It slammed right into my reflective mist protection, instantly turning the protective barrier into a cage of molten slag around my ship, before it passed through the portal, slamming into Pluto. A cosmic shockwave bellowed out from the impact, the chunks of an annihilated Pluto spreading outwards, tearing through Uranus, dissipating Saturn's rings, leaving deep scars on the planet.

And all I could say was.

Fuck! That was awesome!