245 Supreme Leader [Führer]
245 Supreme Leader [Führer]
“That’s not for you to decide, little man,” I said, my voice transmitted clearly through the vacuum by the communication earring embedded along my lobe.
He did not need air to answer.
“Are you deaf?” Eclipse’s psychic voice echoed directly into my mind. “I already introduced myself, didn’t I?”
I drove my fist into the space he occupied.
He vanished.
No displacement of dust. No sonic cue. Simply gone.
I frowned.
That reaction speed was extraordinary.
The instant he reappeared at an oblique angle, several razor-thin cards spun toward me. My null barrier adjusted automatically, recalibrating against their vector and composition. They struck my skin and bounced off harmlessly, scattering into outer space.
I stood at the apex of the nullification class. The application manifested as a layered barrier hugging every inch of my body. It did not merely negate powers. It nullified momentum itself. Any force carrying kinetic intent could be erased on contact.
Of course, it operated in gradients.
The stiller I became, the deeper I immersed myself in positive nullification. The deeper the immersion, the closer I approached immovability. In that state, I was nearly absolute.
More cards materialized from different angles, striking in rapid succession. I did not move. They failed.
“Retreat,” I ordered my troops over a private channel. “You are unnecessary here.”
They hesitated for less than a second before complying.
Eclipse did not permit it.
With a glance alone, the armored suits of several soldiers phased off their bodies. Metal peeled away as if embarrassed to remain attached. The exposed men convulsed in the vacuum, their limbs flailing soundlessly.
Even I felt a flicker of irritation at the sight.
My body existed in a constant null state that extended to internal processes. Oxygen deprivation did not concern me. Pressure did not concern me. My soldiers were not so fortunate.
Those who remained ignited their jetpacks and fled.
Eclipse merely shifted his gaze.
More suits slipped away.
Energy bolts from distant emplacements lanced toward him, but they passed through his form as if he were a ghost.
“Arrogant to no end,” I remarked. “I must say, you are strong. Unfortunately, you met me.”
My nullification was not static.
It had polarity.
Positive state entrenched me in stillness, maximizing invulnerability. Negative state inverted the principle, amplifying my motion instead of canceling it. In combat, I pulsed between the two. Positive by default. Negative for execution.
The transition was not seamless.
There was a gap.
Approximately 0.03 seconds of vulnerability at each pulse.
Most opponents could never perceive it.
I did not allow them to.
In less than a blink, I crossed the distance between us, shifting into negative state to accelerate. I reappeared before him and drove the heel of my palm upward into his jaw.
He reacted.
Despite his classification as an intangible-type cape, often fragile in direct contact, he caught my wrist mid-strike. Impressive.
Electricity erupted from him in a concentrated discharge.
I shifted instantly back into positive state.
The current collapsed against my barrier.
“That won’t work on me,” I said calmly.
I stepped deeper into negative state, sacrificing invulnerability for velocity. My arm blurred through the thin margin of vulnerability between his shifts. I felt the resistance of bone, then the shattering give.
My strike connected with his face.
There was a sharp, satisfying crack as his nose and skull fractured under the impact. The force drove him downward, carving a crater into the lunar surface beneath him.
Dust plumed in silent waves.
I stood over the impact point, returning fully to positive nullification.
“That,” I said coldly, “is what you get for challenging me.”
It should have been no contest.
I stood twice Eclipse’s height, with the mass and density to match. My frame was not merely natural; it was engineered. Years of augmentation, surgical enhancement, chemical refinement, and careful synergy with my nullification power had shaped me into what I was. I possessed martial discipline, peak physical conditioning, and the flexibility to shift between overwhelming force and precise control.
He was an intangible specialist.
I was a fortress that could move.
I turned briefly, letting my gaze drift toward the distant Earth suspended in black. The rebellion across my territories was already an irritation. The emergence of those aberrant tree creatures had compounded the problem. Now this man had forced his way to me personally.
The multiverse was vast. At this stage, demigod-class capes were not rare. Around rating twenty, some even declared themselves gods. I knew better. I had seen powerful creatures far beyond that scale, including members of the SRC leadership.
Still, I was not insignificant.
Then I felt it.
A spike of dread pierced through my spine.
I froze.
That sensation was not physical. It was psychic. Intimidation weaponized.
I turned sharply.
Eclipse stood upright in the crater I had made, face restored, posture composed. No visible injury. No disorientation.
Interesting.
“You just lost your initiative,” I told him evenly. “You should have gone for the kill.”
He would have failed, of course. My body had layers beyond nullification. Reinforced bone matrices. Adaptive tissue. Internal redundancies. My size was the visible consequence of a deeper integration between power and scientific augmentation.
He shifted into a stance.
A fist-fighting stance.
I laughed.
“Hah.”
His small frame was not built to overpower mine. His specialty, intangibility, had already proven ineffective against properly timed pulses. Still, there was something peculiar about him. He exhibited more abilities than my initial profile of him suggested. The healing alone implied regeneration. Yet he showed no discomfort, no lingering stiffness from the damage I inflicted.
My nullification pulsed upward as I entered negative state and rushed him.
I brought my fist down in an overhead hammer strike.
The lunar surface exploded beneath the impact.
Eclipse was gone.
For a fraction of a second, I could not locate him.
Then I felt it.
Movement along my skin.
Not external.
Across it.
He appeared flattened, a living image slithering over my body as though my skin were a canvas. Metallic clinks rang out as his cards struck from multiple angles, probing for seams in my barrier.
I seized him mid-transition and forced dimensional reintegration, dragging him fully back into three-dimensional space with brute force and nullification.
He twisted free with surprising agility, kicked off my chest, and launched backward into the air. Cards spun toward me in a widening arc.
I caught them easily and flung them back with greater force.
They halted midair.
Telekinesis.
The cards reversed direction instantly and shot toward my eyes.
They struck and bounced off my barrier.
Then two more emerged from behind the first earlier throw, concealed by trajectory and timing.
I shifted too late.
One card embedded itself directly into my right eye.
For an instant, I saw nothing but white.
Pain flared.
True pain.
Fury surged upward, threatening to destabilize my pulse rhythm.
I forced myself to remain still.
Anger reduced precision.
The card vibrated violently, electricity surging through it in an attempt to penetrate deeper. I clenched my jaw, reached up, and tore it free from my eye socket, tissue and fluid scattering in slow arcs across the lunar surface.
I hurled it back at him before it could detonate fully.
I forced myself to think instead of react.
If Eclipse truly possessed broad telekinesis, he would have lifted lunar debris and turned the battlefield into a storm of projectiles. He had not. The only consistent vectors were those metallic cards. That suggested focused telekinetic imbuement rather than general environmental control. It resembled how my subordinates carried fragments of my null barrier through adapted technology.
I adjusted accordingly.
I rooted myself in positive state, maximizing nullification. The stiller I became, the deeper the effect saturated my body. Eclipse struck repeatedly from shifting angles, cards ricocheting, electricity flaring, dimensional distortions grazing my outline. I absorbed it all without advancing.
Who was this man?
No registry I reviewed had mentioned an intangibility-class cape operating with this level of versatility. Even his name carried theatrical weight.
“You really are tough,” Eclipse remarked, circling. “I might as well not waste time on you.”
Then he vanished.
Not upward.
Not backward.
Downward.
He sank beneath the regolith in an intangible phase.
I did not pursue. I waited.
One minute passed. Then three. Then five.
He did not resurface.
A blur approached from the perimeter. One of my speed-capable subordinates halted before me, visor cracked, voice urgent through comms.
“Sir, we’re under attack!”
I felt irritation coil in my chest.
A diversion.
I stepped past him to advance toward the reported disturbance.
I did not get far.
A hand emerged from behind me.
It pierced through my back with impossible precision.
When it withdrew, it held a heart.
My heart.
The subordinate’s voice shifted in tone, casual now. “I can’t believe that worked.”
I turned.
The man standing before me was no subordinate.
Eclipse allowed the borrowed face to dissolve, revealing himself.
Psychic mimicry.
I had dismissed his psychic display earlier as intimidation alone. I had been wrong.
My nullification did not protect against perception manipulation if no kinetic or energetic vector was present. He had not forced influence. He had nudged emotion. Dull anticipation. Distracted focus. A subtle dimming of vigilance.
“How did you do it?” I demanded, though I already understood the category.
“I specialize in empathy within the psychic spectrum,” he replied calmly, examining the organ in his hand. “Tricking emotions is rather easy for me.”
I lunged in negative state, sacrificing invulnerability for speed. My arm blurred toward his neck.
He evaded cleanly, retreating with minimal motion, still studying the heart.
“That’s strange,” he murmured. “How are you still alive?”
Because I had been born with two hearts.
A mutation unrelated to my power, born from industrial negligence and chemical saturation in my homeland. My mother had worked among toxic runoff for minimum wage. I had entered the world with extra fingers and a bifurcated tongue as well. Those I removed surgically. The dual hearts I kept. They became an advantage.
Blood flowed heavily from the cavity in my chest, but my positive nullification slowed its momentum, reducing hemorrhage.
“Which master do you serve?” I asked.
“I am my own master,” he said without hesitation.
Interesting.
For a fleeting moment, I considered recruitment. A cape of this adaptability would be invaluable. However, his reaction to authority was evident. He would not bend.
He tossed the heart aside, as though discarding a curiosity.
I recalculated. If I remained in positive state, I could endure. The danger was blood loss, not structural collapse. Regenerative support would take time.
Then a mundane sound pierced the silence.
A ringtone.
Eclipse frowned at his smartwatch and silenced it with visible annoyance.
“Ten minutes is up,” he said. “I guess you got lucky.”
A portal unfolded behind him.
He stepped backward toward it.
“I will send someone to negotiate terms,” he added. “I am willing to recognize the NSD as a separate organization from the SRC and the others. If you wish to build a base on the moon, you will have to pay rent.”
Even now, he postured.
Then he vanished through the portal.
My hands were shaking.
I stared at them as the tremor ran through my fingers, subtle but undeniable. My breathing was steady. My posture remained upright. My nullification field held firm.
But my hands were shaking.
Fear.
“Me? Afraid?” I muttered, and a laugh tore out of my throat, sharp and hollow in the vacuum. The auditory feed in my earring carried it back to me with sterile clarity. “Ridiculous.”
Except it was not.
Eclipse could have killed me.
He had my heart in his hand. If he had pressed harder, if he had exploited the gap in my pulse cycle, if he had followed through instead of posturing, I would be drifting lifeless above lunar dust.
“I was spared?” I said, the words tasting like poison. “Unacceptable. I am better than this. This cannot be.”
“But you lost, and he won.”
The voice came from behind me.
I turned slowly.
A portal shimmered open in the same location Eclipse had used. From it stepped a man in full extravehicular gear. His visor was dark, but I could see the faint indication that his eyes were clouded beneath it.
Blind.
“The name’s Guesswork,” he said casually. “SRC.”
I frowned.
He was already patched into my communication frequency. That alone spoke volumes.
The more immediate question surfaced in my mind.
Was Eclipse SRC?
Guesswork tilted his helmet slightly, as though amused.
“Nope,” he said lightly. “Eclipse is his own person, head of his own faction. It just so happens that the SRC and his Company cooperate when it suits both sides. Mind you, it was Eclipse who rejected an offer to join the five seats at the top of the SRC.”
I said nothing.
That detail was deliberate. A display of status. An attempt to elevate Eclipse in my estimation while positioning the SRC as generous but not dominant.
This man was talkative.
Too talkative.
Every sentence was placed with care.
“See,” Guesswork continued, stepping forward with infuriating ease for a blind man in vacuum, “I’m a close friend of Eclipse. He asked me to negotiate on his behalf. So let’s talk business.”
I remained in positive state, still as a monument, minimizing blood loss while repair systems engaged.
“What do you think of establishing your own nation here on the Moon?” Guesswork asked conversationally. “If not a nation, perhaps an embassy. A sovereign foothold. Of course, like Eclipse said, you’d need to pay rent. But that doesn’t sound so bad, right?”
His visor tilted upward, as if gesturing toward Earth.
“Given that you’re under attack from multiple fronts. Rebels in your territories. Those strange tree entities. And most recently, multiversal rivals taking potshots at your holdings from a comfortable distance.”
He paused.
“Frustrating, isn’t it?”
Silence stretched between us, broken only by the faint hum of distant machinery from my base.
“But hey,” he added cheerfully, “at least you’d have a Plan Z if everything goes wrong. A fallback. Somewhere to consolidate. Somewhere to retreat to.”
Retreat.
The word struck harder than Eclipse’s fist.
“For example,” Guesswork said, spreading his hands slightly, “running away here.”
My jaw tightened.
He was baiting me.
Testing pride against pragmatism.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
I looked past him at the curvature of Earth, then at the crater Eclipse had left in my base, then down at the dark stain of my own blood on lunar soil.
I had lost.
That was fact.
The question now was whether I would lose again out of arrogance.
“You presume much,” I said at last, my voice steady once more.
Guesswork chuckled softly. “That’s my job.”