I can make something like this, which is brilliant, then I go and dismantle my fricking hoverboard to get parts for a project I never even finish.  Idiot.

Ahaha!

Kind of relatable, honestly.

Ballistic marched towards Vista, who was trying to climb to her feet.  He was intercepted by Glory Girl, who slammed him into a wall.

Woo! Go Glory Girl!

She punched him, drove her knee into his gut, then slammed him against the wall again, to keep him off-balance and hurting.

Oof. Nice.

Ballistic slumped against her and grabbed at the collar of her costume for support.  A second later, Glory Girl was a blur, disappearing into the skyline.

Whoops.

The Manton effect might keep him from just making people rocket off, but it doesn’t apply to clothes, and people tend to be attached to clothes. I doubt anyone would want to fight Ballistic naked (except Narwhal, I suppose), so he’s got a pretty solid loophole there.

His attacker gone, Ballistic fell onto his hands and knees with a grunt.

Looks like she got him to feel it, at least.

His spark pistol sported a small power core that used spatial warping technology to magnify and then reabsorb a steady electrical current.

Huh, neat.

The barrel was wired with a helix-shaped electromagnetic rail, based on some of Armsmaster’s old data on the ‘hard’ light Purity and Dauntless created.  Nanomolecular, ionically charged rifling on the barrel’s interior was arranged to guide the fired charges into a rough elliptical shape, which sustained their shape and consistency the longest.

This is either well-written technobabble or confusingly phrased semi-realistic science.

I can’t tell which, which is exactly why the former option has the word “well-written” in it.

*rereads a couple of times*

So basically the gun gives a physical shape to an electric charge, and through nano-magnets in the barrel, it makes that charge elliptical because that’s more sustainable?

In laymen’s terminology, it was not unlike a power bar that was plugged into itself, with a small addition that made each revolution of the current larger than the one before.

Hm. Alright. Sounds like something you’d want to avoid in most circuits, but here it’s being controlled and taken out of the system.

An attached battery kept the current going.  The shots themselves were ‘hard’ electricity condensed into balls, which meant they had a physical impact to them, due to how they carried and transferred kinetic energy.   Given how the weapon charged, waiting a few seconds between shots meant the next shot hit harder, up to a limit.

I see.

Any time Genesis moved to attack, Clockblocker set paper in her way, edge towards her, or he tried to duck in close enough to touch her.  Giving up on more physical means, she exhaled a cloud of the choking smoke.

Nice.

Clockblocker and Weld both worked together to minimize the spread of the cloud, using paper and plywood, freezing it in place with Clockblocker’s power.

😀

Kid Win decided they had a handle on that.  It was up to him to help against Ballistic and Sundancer.

Alright, Kid, whatcha got?

As he climbed to his feet, breaking into a run before he was even standing straight, he raised his spark pistol and fired off a series of oversized blue sparks at Ballistic.

This ought to work better than firing at Trickster, at least. Unless Trickster intervenes again.

Trickster managed to teleport him again, swapping his position with Ballistic’s.

Yup, there we go. This time Kid might’ve been prepared, at least.

The forward momentum of his sprint was enough to get him out of the way of his own gunfire.

Ah, that’s good. 🙂

He’s telling us exactly where he’s going to attack next.

Yeah, but why. So that they can put up defenses that will backfire? Or because he doesn’t actually want to hurt the Wards too much?

Kid Win looked up, saw Sundancer with her orb hovering a good fifteen feet off the ground, keeping it away from the walls of the building and the corpses that were hung above them.  

Yeah, you can turn up the heat, but let’s try not to desecrate the corpses even more.

Even though it was fifteen feet up and thirty feet away, he could feel the heat of it prickle his exposed skin.  He knew from the Endbringer fight that she could make it bigger, move it faster.

Huh, nice.

As the burning sphere drifted forward, staying at roughly the same height, Flechette and Glory Girl were forced to scramble away.  Shadow Stalker leaped off of the top of the wall and into the alleyway next to the building to get away from the heat.

The Wards are scurrying away like mice.

Only Vista remained where she was, caught under debris that she was striving to shrink down and push away.

Uh-oh. Try not to melt the space kid, Sunny.

“Hey!” Ballistic bellowed, “Little girl!”

What do you want with Vista?

Kid Win saw Ballistic pointing at Vista.  The villain, between his build and armor, had the frame of a football player, a dramatic contrast to the young heroine.  He pointed at her, paused long enough for her to bend the ground into a semblance of cover, then launched a chunk of concrete at her.

…is Ballistic serving as a distraction? I see just about no other reason for him to act like this.

The concrete flew at an angle that wouldn’t have hit the girl anyways, struck the barrier and shattered, sending debris careening onto and into the girl.

Huh. Well, that backfired for Vista.

Vista screamed and fell backwards, part of her barrier crumbling to land on top of her.

Hard.

I’m a tinker.  I’m supposed to be smart.

Sounds like I was on the right track!

So how can I have been so stupid?

What’s wrong?

…are you blaming yourself for something that happened during the Leviathan fight, or later?

Ballistic raised one hand and pointed at Kid Win.  He waited until Kid Win moved before kicking at the uneven, rubble-strewn ground, sending a spray of concrete and wood fragments flying like a hail of bullets.

Oh, okay, we’re back in the battle. Guess we’re seeing the rest of it after all.

It only grazed the teenage hero mid-leap, lacerating the side of his stomach, hip and thigh, chipping his armor.

Ow.

It still hit hard enough that it twisted him in midair.  He landed on his back atop the rubble that covered the ground, grunted.

Thump. Ugh.

Hey, someone’s gotta provide the sound effects.