Interlude ???.H (Heinrich)

Heinrich - 'Julius' to the public - landed over the flooded street, turning the flowing water beneath his feet into a metal foothold. With a flicker of thought, all cracks across his bronze skin mended back into pristine muscles. Though there was not much he could do about his costume, shredded and drenched.He glanced at the ruins surrounding him.The city of Latina was devastated. Buildings swept away by the strong currents. Others cut apart like someone had taken a scalpel to the concrete. The water below was barely draining. There would be no rebuilding for many years to come, the casualties were too many.All of this had been caused by a single parahuman.Already the peninsula had been struggling to recover from Leviathan's attack the year prior. Then he showed up and made everything worse. 'Cariddi'.With hatred in his eyes, Heinrich focused on the now dead parahuman: Cariddi's expression was frozen into the prideful stance he always took. Heinrich's own power had turned the villain into a bronze statue, skin, blood and bone transmuted into metal. Cariddi's power had interacted weirdly with Heinrich's: it usually took less than a second to turn a grown adult into a bronze statue. For Cariddi, it had taken thirty minutes of constant contact. But now he was dead.Only Heinrich himself could survive having every inch of his body transmuted into metal.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.It had been a massacre. Every other parahuman that had come with Heinrich had died: some had been swatted apart by a casual swing by Cariddi, others had drowned in the neverending current of water that the parahuman produced. Most had been shredded by jets of pressurized water.Heinrich stood alone among the flooded street and said nothing.Until the irritating sound of a helicopter forced him out of his thoughts. Glancing up, Heinrich spotted it flying closer and closer, cameras pointed towards Cariddi's corpse.Idiots."Get the fuck away!" He screamed, but his power did not strengthen his voice. The noise made by the flowing water was too loud.Then he heard a 'crack'.Heinrich glanced towards the frozen statue. Towards Cariddi. Who should have died."GET AWAY" He continued to scream, desperation bleeding into his voice. His expression must have also been painted by sheer panic as the helicopter suddenly began flying away. Too little, too late.A jet of water burst from Cariddi's corpse. It sliced clean through the helicopter and the passengers within. Four bloody corpses, cut in two, fell with the wreckage, followed by an explosion.Then Heinrich heard his laugh once again.The statue burst apart, revealing Cariddi alive and well. Smiling.That day the city of Latina was erased from the map.