Greg Arc 8, Chapter 16 Outline (Patreon)

"LIVING HERE IN BROCKTON—"

The words rip out of him as Greg's voice booms, carried not from his throat but through giant lungs of metal, amplified across half the ruined city. Inside the giant sphere of blue mana, he floats there, mostly naked, teeth gritted as he tries not to scream, doing his very best to focus on what’s right in front of him.

The sound cuts through rain and chaos like a divine announcement

Every cape on the battlefield stops what they're doing to look

"Is that robot singing what I think it’s singing?" L33T mutters over comms

Visual: A 60-foot-tall armor mecha, hammered from shipwrecks, cars, rebar, and streetlight scaffolds, stomping through the flooded wreckage (think Gypsy Danger proportions.)

Armor construction:

Arms like siege pillars, legs like industrial pistons.

Pieces still floating in orbit around him, constantly rebuilding, reweaving as chunks break off.

His chest and stomach burn red from overuse—inside the chest of the roughshod mecha, a floating ball of shredded Greg, suspended in a massive sphere of mana.

The mech doesn't walk—it falls forward, catches itself, falls forward again

Motion flows like water, like Greg's walking down the street to grab lunch instead of piloting sixty tons of weaponized scrap toward an Endbringer. 

His left foot—the mech's left foot, same thing now—comes down and the impact ripples through six blocks of flooded concrete. Water explodes upward in perfect rings, a twenty-foot geyser that catches the light and looks almost pretty for half a second.

Then his right foot hits and the pretty moment dies.

Steel plates spin in orbital patterns around the main body, ready to patch damage

Car doors flap like metal wings, welding themselves into gaps

"Holy shit," Glory Girl breathes, hovering at a safe distance. "He turned himself into a Gundam."

Second battle cry as he charges:

"FIGHTING VILLAINS NEAR AND FAR!"

The next line tears out of him with enough force to crack windows three blocks away. His throat barely exists anymore but the mech has speakers—improvised from car stereos and emergency broadcast systems—and they're all cranked to eleven because why the fuck not?

His skin isn't skin anymore—it's paper-thin membrane stretched over muscle that glows like neon. Every nerve ending burns with the intensity of a welding torch, infinite mana eating him alive one cell at a time.

Five minutes and twelve seconds.

The countdown ticks in his head like a bomb timer. Five minutes to save everyone. Five minutes before his HP hits zero and his body gives up the ghost. Five minutes to make this hurt worth something.

"Living here in Brockton—" The song helps. God, it helps so much. 

His consciousness flickers between human awareness and something else—something manic and bright and laser-focused on the thirty-foot monster that broke his fucking sword.

Every impact of his massive steps causes shockwaves across the ruined terrain.

The stumble happens because Greg forgets for half a second that he weighs sixty tons now. Human reflexes, inhuman mass. His foot goes through the storefront like it's made of tissue paper, and for a moment he's falling—sixty feet of armor crashing toward the street.

Except falling is just another kind of movement, and Greg's been moving his whole life.

He rolls. Not thinking about it, not calculating angles or impact vectors. Just rolling like he's tumbling off his bike, except when he rolls the entire world shakes. Concrete explodes into dust clouds. The mech's shoulder tears a trench through asphalt before his other hand slaps down and arrests the motion.

Then he's up again, smooth as silk, like the last five seconds were choreographed instead of barely controlled disaster.

The armor flows with him. Responds to him. Geo-Armor pulling in new material to replace what got scraped off in the fall—manhole covers, fire hydrants, someone's motorcycle that was parked in the wrong place at the wrong time, anything with enough iron content to matter. Sixty feet of jury-rigged death machine that responds to his thoughts like his actual limbs used to, back when those still existed.

He doesn't pilot it. He is it.

Greg’s booming voice cuts through the chaos:

"YOU GOTTA FIND THIRD GEAR IN YOUR GIANT ROBOT CAR!"

Greg can taste blood in his mouth—what's left of his mouth—but the pain is distant now, pushed down under layers of manic energy and absolute focus.

Four minutes and eighteen seconds.

This is it. This is the moment every Saturday morning cartoon prepared him for. Giant robot. Giant monster. Theme song at maximum volume. If he's gonna die, at least he gets to do it right.

More metal swirls toward the mech—street signs, manhole covers, pieces of Dragon's damaged suit. The mech grows larger, denser, more chaotic.  The bus hits his shoulder and just... integrates. Geo-Armor doesn't care what something used to be—only what it can become. The yellow metal flows like liquid, reinforcing joint connections, adding mass to his frame. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Greg wonders if there were kids inside.

There weren't. He can feel that, somehow. Empty. Good.

The armor keeps growing because the armor is hungry and Greg is feeding it everything he can see. Stop signs become finger joints. Car chassis become shoulder plates. A hot dog cart gets absorbed into his left knee and somehow that seems perfectly reasonable.

Inside the mana sphere, what's left of Greg looks like someone took a person and dipped them in acid. Flesh hanging in strips, bones visible through skin that glows blue-white with power. His right leg is still gone. His left arm is mostly suggestion and wishful thinking. He’s healing… but not fast enough. Still, the mech has two arms, two legs, and enough raw fury to punch through a city block.

Fair trade.

Civilians, heroes, and villains alike scatter from his warpath.

Purity banks hard left: "What the hell is that thing?"

Kaiser tries to redirect his metal walls, realizes Greg's mech is stronger

"He's pulling from my constructs!" Kaiser shouts. Hookwolf, in full metal form, nearly gets caught in Greg's gravitational pull and is forced to dig into the ground for traction to avoid being sucked in.

Legend flies overhead, maintaining safe distance: "All units, unless you are high-rated Brutes or Movers, give White Knight room to operate."

Eidolon hovers nearby, ready to intervene: "What is… what is that power?"

The Endbringer turns from Kaiser's maze, green eyes locking onto the approaching mech. For a moment that stretches like taffy, boy and monster stare at each other across a flooded intersection.

Water begins swirling around Leviathan in defensive patterns

"Oh good, I have your attention," Greg says. Four minutes flat.

Leviathan's tail lashes, testing the distance

The two titans face each other across a flooded intersection. Greg's consciousness flickers again. For a split second he sees Angie's face, terrified and alone. Then he sees Gram shattering against Leviathan's fist.

"Remember how you BROKE MY FUCKING SWORD!"

Clash begins

Greg doesn't think about it. Doesn't plan angles or calculate force vectors. He just moves, the way he's always moved, except now his body is sixty feet tall and built from ships.

The tackle happens at the speed of thought. One moment he's standing, the next he's airborne, shoulder-first, flying toward Leviathan like a missile with delusions of grandeur. The mech moves like Greg moves—smooth, natural, inevitable.

Contact. Three minutes fifty-five seconds.

The manic energy spikes, pushing back the pain as the impact sounds like a meteor strike. Good.

The shockwave hits everything at once. Windows blow out in expanding rings. Cars flip end over end. The convenience store doesn't collapse—it disintegrates, concrete and steel and someone's morning coffee all becoming one big cloud of flying death.

Greg feels it through his frame, through bones made of seaworthy steel. The impact travels up his arm like an electric shock, but instead of pain it just feels right. This is what his fists were always meant to do. This is what his body was built for.

Greg's mech staggers, nearly topples, catches itself against a water tower. 

The water tower crumples under his hand like an aluminum can. Greg didn't mean to grab it that hard, but everything he touches turns fragile when he stands 60 feet tall. 

Inside the mana sphere, what's left of his body tries to laugh and mostly succeeds. "Ow. Physics is mean."

"Ow. Physics is mean."

The pain keeps building. Mana burns through him like acid, like starlight, like every birthday candle he ever blew out all trying to melt him from the inside. But the song helps. The song always helps.

Leviathan counters, using a spiral of high-pressure water to slam Greg

The water hits him like a freight train made of liquid hate. Greg doesn't see it coming—just suddenly he's flying backward, weightless for a moment that feels like forever. Then his back hits the parking garage and physics remembers to be a bastard about everything.

First floor: concrete supports snapping like breadsticks. Second floor: Greg's frame punching through reinforced beams. Roof: collapsing down on top of him like the world's worst blanket.

Cars rain down—a Civic, a pickup truck, someone's minivan with soccer ball stickers still on the windows. They hit his armor and stick, Geo-Armor automatically integrating them into his frame. More mass. More material. More Greg.

Greg emerges from the wreckage, mech trailing concrete dust and rebar

 The damage is already healing—not healing, integrating. Every broken piece becomes part of him. Every dent gets filled with new material pulled from the wreckage around him.

"Good news: the armor fixes itself," Greg says, his voice carrying across the flooded street. "Bad news: I think I just destroyed someone's F-150."

The truck in question is currently serving as his left elbow. He can feel it there, solid and reassuring, like armor should be.

Greg reshapes the armor mid-combat:

The change happens without conscious thought. Greg needs more hands to grab Leviathan, so the armor gives him more hands. Simple. 

Natural.

A dozen car chassis spin through the air, slam into the mech's shoulders

Metal flows like water, like mercury, like the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. Car frames stretch and bend and become arm bones. Engine blocks become shoulder joints. The whole process takes maybe three seconds and feels like coming home.

Four arms. Two legs. 

"If two arms are good, four arms are better. That's just math."

Greg's hands—all four of them—find their targets like they've been planning this their whole lives. 

Two fists clamp down on Leviathan's tail, feeling the alien muscle tense and writhe under his grip. The other two grab the Endbringer's left shoulder, fingers sinking into flesh that should be impenetrable but gives way under sixty tons of applied pressure.

The servos don't whine. Greg doesn't have servos. He has muscles made of ship hulls and determination, and they're holding just fine.

Water builds around the contact points, trying to pry Greg's grip loose. High-pressure jets that could cut through steel. Doesn't matter. Greg's grip is stronger than steel now, stronger than anything that isn't pure concentrated fuck-you.

"Come here, you overgrown gecko. We're gonna have words."

The words taste like copper and ozone and victory. Greg clamps down harder, feeling Leviathan's struggles through his fingertips. This is happening. This is actually happening.

The first punch lands with the sound of thunder having an argument with a building. Greg's free hands blur as they hammer into Leviathan's torso, each impact carrying the weight of his entire frame behind it. 

Not strategy. Not technique. Just pure, undiluted violence delivered with mechanical precision.

“YOU! DIG! GI-ANT! RO-BOTS!” 

The words tear out of him like a battle cry, like a prayer, like the last thing he's ever gonna say and he wants to make it count.  The song is everything now, the only thing keeping him focused through the white-hot agony of infinite mana eating him alive from the inside out.

“I! DIG! GI-ANT! RO-BOTS!”

Every syllable was met with a another blow as Greg scream-sang at the top of his lungs. Each word hits like a physical force as his fists move in time with the song, each punch landing, each combo the world's most violent percussion section.

“WE! DIG! GI-ANT! RO-BOTS!”

Inside the mana sphere, what's left of Greg grins with bloody teeth at the best worst thing that's ever happened to him.

Waves and lances of water buffeted the giant suit but as much damage was done to it, found itself repaired almost immediately. 

“CHICKS! DIG! GI-ANT! RO-BOTS!”

Each punch shakes the ground for blocks.

Leviathan thrashes, water exploding outward with each impact

Greg's mech staggers with each retaliation, feet tearing trenches in asphalt as it held firm

"Stay still! I'm trying to beat some sense into you!"

The tail strike comes out of nowhere, fast as lightning and twice as mean. It hits Greg's knee joint and something important breaks—not the armor, but the connection between thought and movement. For a split second he's falling, crashing through a warehouse wall like it's made of paper.

But falling is just another kind of movement, and Greg's been moving his whole life.

He rolls with it. Lets momentum carry him through the building and out the other side, using the crash as a pivot point. When he comes up, all four fists are already moving, already swinging, already aimed at the exact spot where Leviathan will be when the calculations finish themselves.

Four-point impact. The sound of the world ending.

"NICE!"

Leviathan flies backward like a thirty-foot missile, tumbling through storefronts and street lights and someone's parked car. Greg doesn't let him get away. 

He leaps.

"OH NO, YOU DON'T!"