Smacked by Oberon

A shout from behind got my attention.

I was transfixed between two alarmingly large things that were demanding my immediate attention. Just beside me, Titan Skadi was teleporting, the parts of her in the light seeming to disappear before the parts of her in deep shadow. A short distance away, Oberon was on the attack, attacking another cluster of capes who were close enough to one another that the swing of one titanic arm could catch them. Us. Me included.

My forcefield protected me from the impact. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that it sent me flying toward the ground, at a speed my actual flight couldn't touch, a massive shockwave promising to pulverize me if the impact with the rubble below didn't.

I flew hard left, while trying to slow my descent, on the half-formed thought that moving at a diagonal might buy me an instant more time before impact than moving almost straight down.

I turned over, belly toward the sky, looking for any help that others might be able to provide. A forcefield, a reaching hand. I just saw the green-tinted air that carried that pressurized air. Oberon's 'shockwave'.

I turned over again, facing the ground, and it filled my vision.

Cracked ground.

Aiming myself, contorting my body, I plunged into the crack. The side of my body skimmed the edge of the crack, and my costume tore.

I plunged into the oblivion where the damage to reality was heavy enough there was only this, a dark red landscape I'd seen in someone else's dream.

Here, where my flight was weaker, my aura not even a spark in my chest, and where my forcefield struggled to get back up.

Like my power was underwater, floundering, but I wasn't.

I stopped falling and came to hover in the air. I let out a breath I'd been holding, in a single, "bluh," followed by panting breaths.

*****

Fuck, my foot hurt. I hoped I hadn't broken bones.

- Radiation 18.7