First, Camilla turned to the three trainees that could control liquids. "ML's, fuse your energy with these waterways and keep pulling up water from the units." To the lead rookie, one of the gases-liquids, she directed, "If you feel a new water line open down there, draw it up here."

Next, she turned to the two gases-only controllers. "MG2's, fly along the opposite end of the building and evacuate any non-metas that you see."

Camilla nodded at the meta that could only control solids. "Take the MS1 with you. Unless told otherwise, follow evacuation protocols for compromised structural integrity and fire." Then, at their confused looks, she added, "MS's and strength CT's on structural stability; MG's and speed CT's on evacuation. CR3's on ground support as healers, ML's on fire control."

"Ma'am!" the lead rookie called out to her, slightly panicked. "Incoming! Three of them, ETA forty seconds!"

It was more like thirty-five seconds, but it was a close estimate. Camilla quickly sent the others off to their assignments, ignoring the confused questions they asked each other about her orders, and worked on building another wall of water with what the rookies collected.

The additional waterlines had helped immensely, especially since now they were up against three simultaneous attacks. It took no time at all for the four of them to complete their defensive measures, and Camilla began pouring energy in the wall to release against the attack at the moment of impact. As a backup, she turned to the ML2 liquids-solids guardian from the stairs.

"You, stabilize the building." 

"But, it's like fifty stories!" the kid said helplessly, wasting what little time he had to actually follow Camilla's orders.

"It's forty, and just focus on this side of the building. Hurry!" Camilla didn't have time for babysitting when the three fireballs were mere seconds aways. "Brace for impact!"

She just had to hold out for four more minutes.

As soon as it hit, Camilla released the energy she had stored within the water, pushing each of the balls of flame to a complete and sudden stop. Still, the building must have felt some of the impact, as the whiny ML2 guardian let out a startled yelp and hunched over on the ground, cradling his hands. The other two rookies fared much better, but even they were knocked off their feet at the unexpected force. Regardless, their defenses worked yet again, and like the previous time, the fireballs sizzled with a cloud of steam even denser than the first time.

Suddenly, something clicked in Camilla's mind. There had to be a reason that the enemy kept sending fireballs, especially now that it was proven more than once that they could be nullified. And if the attackers were guardians, which Camilla was sure they were, then they would know that it was standard guardian procedure to always counter fire with water, as it was the most effective and least destructive method.

The enemy knew that any experienced guardian would use water to defend an area filled with so many civilians, and that the Barracks held more than enough water to keep up a solid defense. They had to expect that the Barracks would be defended by water; what if they actually wanted the steam?

They were going to use the tactic that the US team used during the Games. They didn't care if they didn't have visuals. They just wanted to blind the Barracks.

"Get rid of the steam!" Camilla ordered the two MG3 guardians, ignoring the one that was still hunched over on the ground who would've been no help anyway.

The entire rooftop was shrouded in a cloud of steam, but with the two rookies, they managed to thin it out just enough to see another wave of attacks coming at them, set to meet them in thirty-five seconds.

"Follow the others," Camilla sternly ordered the young guardians. "Look for stragglers and get to the ground."

"We can still help!" the lead rookie replied, more determined than ever.

For an instant, Camilla remembered a similar scene, years ago, where she had their same naive eagerness. And it did not end well.

"Support the evacuation," Camilla directed, already condensing the steam with the water from the building to form a new wall. "These people aren't going to let up until this building goes down, or they're found."

Camilla drew energy from the warm water, saving it for herself and cooling the wall at the same time. From her peripheral vision, she could see the lead rookie stubbornly sticking around, and Camilla knew she couldn't get mad at them when she would've done the exact same thing.

"The faster everyone is evacuated, the faster the backup crews can find these traitors and take them down," she succinctly explained, hoping they would understand. Belatedly, Camilla remembered the straggler and nodded at his pathetic figure. "Besides, he needs to get out of here."

Three more minutes.

The lead rookie only looked like they were about to argue for a second before holding back their comments in favor of a sharp nod.

"Understood," they said, and the three rookies were off the rooftop seconds before the next attack hit.

Just in time too, because while the blast was slightly weaker than the last, it was quickly followed by three more attacks in quick succession. Then after a brief respite, another wave of attacks came, this time with six smaller fireballs, all aimed for various points throughout the building.

It was exhausting, maintaining a defense and keeping the steam out of the way. But at the sight of the last few people scrambling out of the building and into the street, Camilla knew that it had been worth it.

But of course the enemy wasn't going to let her feel proud for a second, and the next wave of five fireballs were aimed directly at her on the rooftop, and not the building. Like all the other times, they were fast, but Camilla was faster. The first three she blocked easily, and she quickly reincorporated the steam that formed back into her defenses.

Everything changed with the fourth one. As soon as it hit the water, it exploded with a blinding light, sending Camilla flying through the air and landing hard on her back. Belatedly, Camilla noticed that, unlike the previous attacks, the fourth fireball had burned with a dazzling white light—a magnesium fire. The enemy had hid the color of that particular attack before anyone could realize what it really was, and before anyone could realize that water was the last thing you should use against it.

But before she could regain her bearings, the fifth fireball hit the Barracks without meeting any resistance, and Camilla felt the rooftop crumble beneath her. And then she was falling.

Just two more minutes.

Fortunately, Camilla could fly, and she quickly dropped into a controlled descent, trying to fall with the rest of the debris instead of against it and potentially crashing. Because of that, she was slightly relieved to find that the attack hit multiple floors, and she wouldn't end up flying into the floor of a level that had withstood the blast. That time had to be quickly approaching though, and Camilla navigated her way through the chunks of concrete and drywall in search of a clear escape route.

Eventually, Camilla's luck ran out, and she was struck by a stray piece of debris that sent her tumbling across the floor on whatever level she was passing through. Thankfully, while parts of the floor had succumbed to gravity, the section she landed in was still standing. The fall had knocked the air out of her lungs though, and Camilla began hacking through a coughing fit as she tried to regain her breath through the clouds of dust.

But there was no time to take a break when there was another wave of attacks rapidly approaching her, and while she had been thrown to the opposite side of the Barracks again, Camilla didn't need her abilities to sense what she was up against.

The last attack had taken out most of the walls separating the units on the floor she was on, leaving her with a clear line of sight through the building and out the balcony door of the neighboring unit. A small part of Camilla worried about the structural integrity of all the floors above her; the rest of her worried about the next incoming attack, the sight of which made Camilla feel like she was looking into the sun.

At least one of the fireballs in this wave was a blinding white, meaning Camilla could either block it with a wall of water and risk another explosion, or she could somehow get rid of the oxygen they were feeding off of. She supposed she could also try using a wall of air again, but it had been strenuous enough using it against only one fireball; she didn't have the strength to handle any more than that. That left her to either defend with water or take away the air. Both ideas were impractical, but at least the latter would cause less damage.

Camilla scrambled to her feet and carefully headed out on the balcony of the unit across the nonexistent hallway, hoping that the structure wouldn't collapse under her weight. If she was planning on manipulating the oxygen, she could approach it in two ways.

One option was to take control of each fireball and drain them of their energy and oxygen, one by one. It potentially would be a more efficient use of her own energy, but only if she could guarantee that she could overpower her opponents and their control over the attacks. And if she couldn't, the attacks would hit her and the Barracks with their full force.

Her second option was less efficient but had a higher chance of success. Instead of trying to take control of her opponents' attacks, she could let them fly into a blanket of space that was completely, or at least nearly, void of the air molecules that fed the fires and connected them to their creators. While trying to create and maintain a vacuum throughout such a large space would be exhausting, it was the most effective and safest way to cut off her opponents' control of the attacks while also starving the fire of oxygen.

After taking a few seconds to weigh her options, Camilla made up her mind: she was going with the vacuum.

She just needed to hold out for one more minute.

With her hands outstretched, Camilla took control of a small volume of air in front of the building, then carefully began pushing the molecules outwards in all directions, as if she was inflating a balloon. But the problem with gases, at least when trying to create a giant vacuum, was that they always wanted to fill the space of the container they're in. And in this case, the container was Earth's entire atmosphere. So if Camilla pushed the air one way, more would just take its place. The only way to prevent that was by continuously forcing the air out in all directions, and to maintain that force.

It took about fifteen seconds for Camilla to realize she wasn't going to make it in time. Her vacuum wall was at the necessary thickness, but it only spanned three floors in height and two-thirds of the building width, barely half the size she needed it to be, and she was running out of energy. Immediately, she tried to come up with alternative methods of defense that she could use, but her mind was blank. And the attack gave no indication that it was slowing down.

Until she spotted movement out of the corner of her vision, and five pairs of guardians were flying towards the fireballs. While one of each pair kept themselves and their partner airborne, the other focused on slowing down the attacks, either by using the water that was now rapidly flowing from the Barracks's broken water lines or by trying to fight their opponents for control over the fire. Thankfully, they all avoided going after the blinding magnesium fire, and Camilla was impressed and grateful for the support. While they couldn't stop the attacks completely, it gave her enough time to bolster her defense.

When the first fireball entered Camilla's vacuum wall, the flames immediately began to dissipate, and while its momentum continued to carry it towards the building, it also began to fall. By the time it emerged from the vacuum, it had cooled off too much to reignite, and what was left was quickly extinguished by the guardians in the air. The same happened to the second and third fireballs, but they were immediately followed by the bright, white flames, and the ultimate test of Camilla's defenses.

Compared to the others, the magnesium fireball was smaller but almost three to four times hotter. When it crashed into the vacuum, its trajectory began to fall but the flame was still too hot. By the time it returned to the air, the fire picked up again, and with no one to control it anymore, it began its collision course for the lower floors of the Barracks.

In an instant, Camilla dropped the vacuum in favor of controlling the magnesium fire. There were still three more fireballs flying towards her, their flames a relatively safe red, but she hoped the other guardians could stall them enough so she could handle the more pressing issue. 

As the white fireball rapidly fell past her spot on the balcony, Camilla followed it with her hands, sending her own energy flying through the air after it. But as soon as she took over the flames, a surge of energy began to burn through her, and she felt herself collapse to her knees, then flat on the ground from the overwhelming power.

She felt like her entire body was going to explode from just suspending the immense amount of heat in midair, and her self-preservation instincts were yelling at her to just let it go, to just let it fall and hope for the best.

But there was no way Camilla could do that, especially with all the people that were spread throughout the streets below. Still, she had to do something, and it had to be soon. So with as much effort as she could muster, Camilla braced herself and threw the ball of white flames up into the night sky.

Belatedly, she hoped that the skies were clear of air traffic because all of her concentration was focused on either pushing the flames away from civilization or regulating its energy so it didn't kill her. While it helped that she could use the fire's abundance of energy to fly it faster and higher, the energy still had to pass through her so she could convert the heat into motion, and Camilla could feel her consciousness fading with the exertion.

So as she lay on her back, splayed across the balcony floor, she forced her eyes to focus on the white ball of light as it flew further and further, and grew dimmer and dimmer, until eventually, it faded away into the darkness.

Zero minutes left.

Camilla hadn't realized that her consciousness had begun to drift off until a soft green light began to glow through her eyelids, beckoning for her attention. She immediately opened her eyes, but both her mind and body felt numb and sluggish, and she could only move just enough to turn her head slightly to the side.

In the distance, a bright green flare had been launched into the sky, its smoke trail coming from the same direction that the attacks came from. The hostiles had been neutralized or they had escaped; either way, the coast was clear. The fight was over, and the Barracks were still standing. And with that in mind, Camilla let her eyes close for a much-needed nap.

---

NOTES

This is one of the chapters I'm most concerned about because I have no idea if it makes sense to other people. Please, if anyone reads this, let me know if certain parts (or all of it) are confusing. (But please be gentle, I'm fragile.)

Thank you for reading, voting, and commenting!