The magnetic boots struck earth with tremendous force, each impact driving deep into soil that had been carefully cultivated and maintained for decades. Expensive imported grass, the kind that cost more per square meter than most people earned in a month, tore free in great clods. The turf, manicured to country club perfection, was destroyed under tons of powered armor moving at combat speed.
The sound was distinctive and terrifying. Not the soft footfalls of normal human movement, but deep percussive impacts that transmitted through the ground like localized earthquakes. Each step announced the Stormtroopers' approach with mechanical certainty.
Accompanying the footfalls was a symphony of servo-systems at maximum output. Electro-fiber bundles contracted and released with humming vibrations that rose and fell in pitch as power demands fluctuated. Servo-devices whined at the edge of audibility, their motors spinning at rates that generated heat despite sophisticated cooling systems. The armor sang its song of war, and everyone who heard it understood instinctively that something terrible approached.
Nolan led the charge, his black power armor eating distance with ground-shaking strides. To his left and right, barely visible even to enhanced optics, the Stormtroopers maintained formation. They hit the manor's perimeter simultaneously from multiple vectors, converging on Titania's last known position with the coordination of wolves closing on prey.
The manor's interior had descended into chaos.
The sudden blackout had transformed a sophisticated diplomatic function into pandemonium. Hundreds of guests stumbled through darkness, their eyes not yet adjusted, hands reaching out blindly for support that might not exist. The sounds of breaking glass punctuated screams as people collided with furniture, with each other, with architectural features they couldn't see.
But the bodyguards were professionals. Their training kicked in immediately, overriding the instinctive panic that seized civilians. Tactical flashlights emerged from holsters and jackets, powerful beams cutting through the darkness in sweeping arcs. The lights found each other first, bodyguards coordinating through brief flashes of illumination, then began sweeping outward, searching for threats.
The beams caught movement at the periphery. Massive shapes, darker than the surrounding night, advancing with inexorable purpose.
"Enemy attack!" The shout cut through the screaming, years of military training compressing terror into actionable intelligence.
"Protect the general! Formation on the VIPs!" Another voice, deeper, carrying command authority that demanded obedience.
"Get the armored vehicles started! Extraction protocols now!" A third bodyguard, already thinking three steps ahead, planning for retreat if defense failed.
Orders cascaded through the security detail, decades of combined experience activating like muscle memory. Large-bore automatic rifles, serious weapons designed to stop vehicles or punch through light armor, came up to shoulders with practiced smoothness. Safeties clicked off. Fingers found triggers.
They opened fire without hesitation, without warning shots or verbal challenges, recognizing that anything moving that fast in powered armor represented lethal threat.
The muzzle flashes were brilliant in the darkness, strobing light that painted everything in stark yellow-white snapshots. Spent brass cascaded to expensive marble floors, the metallic tinkling almost musical against the thunder of sustained automatic fire. The smell of burned propellant flooded the space, acrid and choking, mixing with the sharper scent of fear-sweat from panicked guests.
Bullets hammered into the Stormtroopers' armor.
The impacts created cascading sparks as copper jacketing and lead cores shattered against ceramite plating that treated conventional ammunition with contempt. Each hit transmitted force through the armor into the soldiers beneath, bruising impacts that added up over time, but none penetrating, none stopping the advance.
The Stormtroopers didn't even slow down.
Nolan's arm came up, the precision bolter settling into his grip with the weight of familiar purpose. His helmet's targeting system painted priority markers across his vision, sophisticated threat assessment algorithms identifying command personnel through body language and positioning.
He squeezed the trigger.
The bolter's roar was enormous, each shot a controlled explosion that sent mass-reactive rounds downrange at hypersonic velocity. The rounds crossed the ballroom in microseconds, the distinctive whistling of their passage audible even over the chaos.
The first commander took a bolt round center mass. The warhead detected resistance, armed itself, and detonated. The explosion was catastrophic, pressure and fragmentation turning flesh and bone into paste. The body separated into component pieces, torso from legs, arms spinning away like grotesque pinwheels.
The result wasn't death, it was obliteration.
Blood sprayed in arterial gouts, painting nearby guests in warm crimson. Internal organs, pulverized by the blast but still recognizable in shape, splattered across expensive dresses and tailored suits. A section of intestine landed across one woman's bare shoulders, and her scream achieved pitches that shouldn't have been physiologically possible.
More commanders fell. Each bolt round found its target with precision that spoke to enhanced reflexes and extensive training. Each detonation created new horrors, new sprays of biological matter, new reasons for the civilians to lose their minds completely.
The Stormtroopers added their fire to Nolan's, their bolters speaking in synchronized rhythm. Any bodyguard who didn't immediately drop his weapon, who showed even fractional intent to continue resistance, became a target. The explosive rounds were utterly indiscriminate about what they destroyed, treating human bodies like fragile containers that burst messily when subjected to sufficient force.
The psychological impact was devastating.
These were professional bodyguards, men who'd seen combat, who'd witnessed death in various forms. But nothing in their experience prepared them for the sheer visceral horror of watching colleagues literally exploded into component parts. The smell alone, human bodies opened and their contents exposed to air, was enough to make hardened soldiers retch.
The guests, wealthy elites accustomed to safety and comfort, simply shut down.
Their minds couldn't process what their eyes reported. The cognitive dissonance between "diplomatic reception" and "industrial-scale butchery" was too extreme. They stood frozen like prey animals confronting predators, trembling but unable to move, unable to run, unable to do anything except wait to learn if they would live or die.
Nolan's heavy footsteps carried him through the bodyguard line, now thoroughly broken. His armored bulk shouldered past men who'd dropped their weapons, who stood with raised hands or simply collapsed to their knees. Those who made the mistake of reaching for him, of attempting some desperate last resistance, found themselves grabbed by the throat and hurled bodily through the nearest exit.
The impacts of bodies against walls or ground were sickening, bones breaking with wet cracks, but Nolan was already moving past, searching the crowd with targeting systems that filtered for specific parameters.
There. Deep in the panicked mass of civilians desperately trying to retreat despite having nowhere to go.
A tall woman, nearly two meters in height, platinum blonde hair styled elaborately despite the chaos. The silver dress she wore caught flashlight beams and reflected them like liquid mercury, making her impossible to miss even in the darkness. Her face showed no fear, only cold calculation, eyes tracking the armored figures with predatory focus.
Titania.
Recognition was simultaneous. Nolan's targeting system locked on, painting her position in his HUD. Gao Qi and the Bane brothers, converging from their approach vectors, saw her at nearly the same instant.
They slowed their charge without conscious decision, combat instincts recognizing something dangerous in the way she stood. Their formation shifted smoothly, spreading out, creating a cage of armored bodies that left no escape route uncovered.
Four Stormtroopers surrounded one woman. The math should have been overwhelming, advantage so complete that resistance was futile.
But Titania's expression suggested she thought otherwise.
"Who are you?" Her voice carried clearly despite the surrounding chaos, hoarse but steady, no tremor of fear. "Don't you know who I am?"
The question hung unanswered. Nolan had no interest in conversation or negotiation. His arm rose, ceramite-sheathed fist gesturing in tactical sign language.
Gao Qi and the Bane brothers moved instantly, their power armor propelling them forward in coordinated assault. Three vectors, simultaneous approach, standard takedown doctrine for a single hostile combatant.
"Pathetic." Titania's lips curled in contempt. "Don't overestimate yourselves."
Her feet, still wearing impractical high heels despite everything, planted firmly against the marble floor. Her posture shifted, weight settling, muscles coiling.
Then she moved.
Power exploded from her body in ways that defied human limits. The floor beneath her feet, solid marble chosen for its beauty and durability, shattered. Cracks radiated outward in expanding spiderwebs, the stone fracturing under forces it was never designed to withstand. Pieces of marble burst upward, propelled by the energy transfer, peppering nearby civilians with stinging fragments.
Titania pivoted with dancer's grace despite her size, her body twisting to bring one fist around in a devastating arc.
Gao Qi, approaching from behind with chainsaw sword raised, never saw it coming.
The punch caught him square in the chest plate, right over the breastbone. The impact was catastrophic. The auxiliary power armor, designed to withstand anti-vehicle weapons, deformed visibly. Gao Qi's entire body, encased in tons of armored protection, lifted off the ground and flew backward like a kicked toy.
He traveled more than ten meters before hitting the floor, the impact creating a crater in expensive marble, his armor's systems screaming damage warnings as structural members bent and power conduits severed.
Inside his helmet, Nolan's eyes widened fractionally. The analysis was immediate and disturbing. Super strength. Significant super strength, well beyond Captain America's level, approaching or exceeding Hulk-adjacent categories.
This was going to be much harder than anticipated.
"Bucket!" His voice cracked through the comm-net, using callsigns for clarity. "Restrict her joints! Beer! Subdual strikes, aim for unconsciousness!"
He drew the chainsaw sword from his power pack's mounting point, the weapon's teeth spinning to operational speed with their characteristic scream. Then he charged, adding his mass to the assault.
The plan had always acknowledged Titania as superhuman. But they'd underestimated the specifics. Raw power, simple and direct, was proving far more difficult to counter than exotic abilities would have been.
Little Bane, callsign Bucket, moved with surprising speed for someone his size. He'd watched Gao Qi's flight, understood the message it sent, and adjusted his approach accordingly. No direct confrontation, no matching strength against strength.
Instead, he angled to Titania's flank as she prepared another devastating punch. His armored hands shot out, ceramite fingers closing around her right arm above the elbow. He pulled hard, using leverage and position rather than brute force, attempting to control the limb through technique.
Simultaneously, Big Bane, callsign Beer, closed from the opposite side. His fist, already in motion, aimed for the back of Titania's neck. A precision strike, designed to rattle the brain, induce unconsciousness without permanent damage.
"Metal bastards!" Titania's voice rose to a roar, fury replacing contempt.
She didn't care about the silver dress tearing, didn't care about the exposure as fabric ripped away under the strain of movements it was never designed to accommodate. Her body, revealed as the dress failed, was pure muscle. Not bodybuilder definition but functional strength, the kind that came from genetics and enhancement rather than gym work.
Her free arm came around, another punch launched with the same terrifying power she'd demonstrated before.
Big Bane recognized the danger, aborted his attack mid-strike, and shifted to grappling instead. His arms wrapped around Titania's left arm, locking it against his chest. His legs moved with practiced precision, driving forward to sweep her supporting limb.
For a moment, the three figures formed a strange sculpture. Two armored soldiers restraining one woman, their combined mass and strength barely sufficient to hold her. Titania's knee crashed into the floor, forced down by mechanical advantage and coordinated effort.
But she didn't stop fighting. The servo-motors in both auxiliary armor suits whined with strain, their output pushed to maximum trying to contain her. Power backpacks hummed at frequencies that suggested imminent overload, cooling systems struggling to dissipate the heat generated by sustained maximum effort.
Nolan arrived in that moment of stalemate.
His ceramite-sheathed fist, backed by full power armor strength and considerable momentum, crashed into Titania's forehead with brutal directness.
The impact was devastating. Her head snapped back, neck hyperextending, blonde hair whipping violently. Her eyes rolled upward, pupils disappearing as consciousness flickered.
For a heartbeat, victory seemed certain. She was going down, going unconscious, becoming a recoverable asset rather than an active threat.
Then the ring on her left wrist pulsed.
Purple energy erupted from the jewelry, expanding outward in a perfect sphere that enveloped Titania's entire body. The light wasn't quite solid, wasn't quite liquid, existing in some state between physical and not that human senses struggled to process properly.
Teleportation technology. Emergency extraction. A dead man's switch or automatic activation tied to consciousness levels.
Nolan's enhanced perception processed this in microseconds. His arms moved before thought finished forming, the chainsaw sword already in motion.
The spinning teeth descended toward Titania's left arm, aiming for the shoulder joint where bone met socket. No hesitation, no mercy, just cold tactical calculation. Better she lose an arm than escape completely.
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