Light up the Night (Cheeto VS Tsunami)

She had to do this.

At least, that's what Cheeto told herself time and time again, repeating those words, rolling them in the back of her mind. She drew closer and closer to the point of no return, the precipice. The little goblin had used her powers, wrapping herself with a thin layer of her hard light and carrying herself out into the predicted path of the tsunami. Chloe had offered for her to wait out the tsunami in Hawaii, but it was impossible for Cheeto not to try. There were a lot of people who won't be able to wait the tsunami out, who'll be caught in its path. She wasn't going to let them down. "I have to do this... I can do this." It'd be hard, she'd be fighting all the destructive force of a natural disaster, trying to halt or divert momentum from hundreds of kilometers, thousands of tons of moving water. Cheeto desperately wished she had practiced with her powers more.

"This looks like as good a spot as any..." She wore a compass around her neck, a smart phone with a mapping and gps app installed in a fanny-pack around her waist, and a big, yellow raincoat. Chloe said it make her look cute. Cheeto closed her eyes and began to concentrate. Her hands balled into fists, her arms curled, she made her thoughts reality. Light began to radiate from her, waves flowing off and forming into many small balls, and arcs, dancing through the air. She quickly focused on shapes, on objects. The lights began to grow, merge, form together. She stretched her arms wide as her light took shape; a huge barrier, hard as steel and easily stretching out two kilometers in either direction of her, half a kilometer high. She raised her arms and gave a small shout, a second barrier pulling free from the first and growing to three-quarters of a kilometer in height, then that one multiplied as well, a third barrier a full kilometer in height appearing as well.

Cheeto Directed her hands down, the light she had wrapped around her body keeping her afloat as her barriers drove into the waves, the first submerging half way down, the second and third reaching the same bottom point; the rising walls bending slightly in the middle, an obtuse but sharp angle. Cheeto opened her eyes, staring at her handiwork. If this didn't work, she had other plans, but she swallowed hard. "I can do this, I got to do this..." She reminded herself, bracing herself

She'd set them up like breakers, if a wave grew they would slam into the walls and break off to the sides. Would they hold? There were hundreds of students, possibly thousands of people were depending on her. The walls lurched, pulling further into the water. Cheeto tensed and concentrated, trying to bring them back up. Her lights flared and glowed as she tried to return them to their original position, but felt them buckle, turn. She was taken off guard by the vacuum, the lights breaking, rupturing and dissolving into the water.

There were more pressing concerns on her mind right now.

She was being pulled down, and forward, towards the ocean. "In... In brightest day..." Cheeto forced out the words, the howling wind making it hard to breathe. "In blackest night," The light under her clothes, made into a harness to support her, began to glow brighter. "No evil shall escape my sight." As she spoke, she began to stagger downwards, trying to keep herself in the air, speaking a mantra she had used since she was a child to focus her mind, her powers. "L-Let those who worship evil's might," Cheeto clasped her hands together, light forming into a ball around her clenched hands, growing thicker, brighter. "Beware my power..." She let the wind start to carry her, down towards the murky depths of the seat.

"...GREEN LANTERN'S LIGHT"

Cheeto thrust her hands ahead of her, straightening her body out like a bullet rocketing head-first towards the sea. The light around her hands grew and changed shape, a point ahead of her as it spread like a shell around her, 'speeding like a bullet' took on a much more literal meaning as the light formed into one, still gaining power and speed as she rode the momentum towards what she hoped was the epicenter.

Cheeto kept her focus as best she could. The forces around her were as dangerous as they were unnatural. A stray thought, a moment of doubt, the slightest slip and she was just another victim. She drove that shell of light deeper, losing ground to the current but still fighting as best she could to reach her destination. This was just the beginning, unless Cheeto could do something. She had a plan, though. It wasn't a good one, it wasn't a safe one, but it was still a plan. She could set up defenses and hope for the best, she could try to divert the waves with breakers or channels or walls, or she could fight unstoppable force with unstoppable force.

This was going to be tricky.

This would take things Cheeto had not even dreamed of trying under normal circumstances, but must be done while also shielding herself from crushing pressure and while dealing with limited oxygen. She didn't have long, and the pressure was making her ears pop...

Cheeto felt the lurch of her light-capsule as it slammed into the sand. She was fairly deep, at least from her perspective. In truth, she was probably far closer to Manta Carlos than she wanted to be, but it would have to do. Cheeto closed her eyes, trying to drown out the world and the way the world was trying to drown her. As she remained there, eyes closed in her little shelter, she focused. Quickly, the walls of her light-bullet began to grow and change, anchoring her to the ocean floor as best they could and setting up complex, moving shapes. Cheeto had experimented with natural forms capable of motion before, and with solid objects, but nothing like this. She hastily formed herself four pillars, each driving down deep into the ground, until the pressure of the sands made further progress impossible. She concentrated on dense, heavy objects, her solid light taking on a hardness and weight beyond even osmium. These pillars soon refined and took on a form fitting their purpose; massive pile drivers, primed and ready.

With a breath Cheeto would've normally considered too greedy in such an environment, she released the weights of the first pile driver. Then the second. She released the third when the first hit down hard, sending a shockwave reverberating through the ground, and had begun to retract the fourth when the second hit and the final one released. Cheeto kept the rhythm in mind, firing them in that same pattern, at that same speed, rotating impacts in a clockwise motion. She could feel the vibrations rising through the ground and into the water, and she could feel her time growing short. Cheeto needed this to work. She planned to try and drum up a wave or two of her own, even if she couldn't match the titanic power of the inbound tsunami, maybe she could at least weaken it. As she began to draw shallow breaths to save that finite air, she dared to hope that maybe she could even stir up something capable of punching the tsunami out.

The seas parted, the voice echoed through everything, through her own hard light, and at that very moment Cheeto wish she knew spanish. Cheeto understood the threat though. "Get out or be taken for my master." She paused for a bit, her light no longer moving, her mind racing. She could leave, just slip away, maybe take to the air and try to wait this out, maybe redirect her efforts to trying to protect the city of Manta Carlos if she couldn't fully protect the island. "If you're offering this deal..." She felt something within her, words leaving her mouth before she even finished considering the offer.

"Then that means you're afraid I can stop you!"

Cheeto's hard light strengthened and reshaped. She had it, she called the bluff of whoever or whatever this is. Some unnamed malignant force thought it could scare her? Standing her ground in the face of all this, she was filled with determination. Cheeto stamped her foot, as she did so the light reshaped, pulling fresh air into her little chamber and growing it in size. Her light was powered by her will but still worked like solid matter, she shifted her structures from four piledrivers into a growing wall, reinforced with huge buttresses and support beams, She spread it out farther than anything she had ever constructed, ten kilometers to each side of her, raising it a full five stories tall. Turbines and corkscrews and propellers bristled around the wall, ready to redirect the water pressure back on itself as she slapped her chest with her hands and threw her arms wide. "FUCKING COME AT ME, BRO!"

At first, Cheeto's wall seemed to hold, she worked to reinforce her personal bubble and it seemed to hold. But how can any one being truly hold back the vastness of the seas? Her constructs began to crack and buckle, and the wall she set up to defend the island soon began to crumble away. The weight on her own bubble grew more and more intense, and soon her ears were ringing from the growing pressure around her, any attempt to shore up her defenses growing more and more futile as leaks formed and started to grow.

Cheeto's mind raced, her heart pounded a mile a minute. Without thinking, without meaning to, acting on instinct alone in a moment of panic and weakness, she suddenly vanished. Her powers had kicked in and, in a puff of smoke, she was gone. The light barriers she had set up, both to protect herself and to protect Manta Carlos, broke down in seconds, swept away by the crushing waves.