As Above So Below, Attack Formation

Occupied France, Autumn 1944
  The village of Saint-Léon had been quiet once. Cobblestone streets, flower-boxed windows, families. Now it was fire and dust. A shell of a place—scorched by war, garrisoned by metahuman stormtroopers, and braced behind warded field barriers erected by the SS occult operatives.
  Inside a partially collapsed church, black-uniformed officers barked orders while guards set up anti-air emplacements across what had once been the village square. One of them, a hulking brute with steel grafted into his flesh, muttered to his superior, “The Allies send monsters now. Flying women. Cold men. Machines that think.”
  The officer sneered. “Let them come. We are Reichswunder.”
  They didn’t have to wait long.
  It began with a whistle—a faint, rising sound like something slicing through the heavens. Then a red flare streaked overhead, and everything changed.
  From the clouds, Miss Mach One came screaming down like a divine blade. Her twin jetpack nozzles lit the sky with flame, the roar echoing off ruined walls as tracer rounds stitched wildly behind her. She weaved between them like a dancer, banking low, diving fast. Her dark auburn hair whipped behind her flight goggles, her flight suit gleaming with oil, soot, and courage.
  “Target confirmed,” she said into her comm. “They're clustered in the square. Anti-air weak on the west side. Five minutes to ruin.”
  “Copy that,” came a voice like rolling gravel.
  The British Brawler stood a hundred yards out, arms crossed, steam rising off his bare forearms in the cold air. A battered union flag patch clung stubbornly to his shoulder. Around him, a team of Allied supers crouched in the brush at the edge of the forest. But no one moved before Bert did.
  “Let’s give the bastards somethin’ to remember.”
  He charged.
  The moment his boots struck the stone of the village road, bullets raked the air, but Bert Baker didn’t flinch. He didn’t dodge. He just kept walking—straight through the line of fire—his skin shrugging off bullets like pebbles, his fists clenched like wrecking balls.
  Beside him, a smaller figure sprinted to keep up—Firecracker Lass, her red braid bouncing behind her, grin wide and wild.
  “Oi, Bert! Think they'll like what I've brought?”
  “What’s that, Maisie?”
  She flung a satchel of explosives over a crumbled wall with a flick of pyrokinesis and a devilish wink.
  “Surprises.”
  The wall exploded inward, sending a pair of Nazi soldiers tumbling through the air. She vaulted the debris before they landed, fingers crackling with flame. With a quick motion, she lit the next charge and kicked it down a side alley.
  Behind them, the air changed.
  A sudden cold front slammed into the village like a ghost storm, coating rooftops and window frames in hoarfrost. Sergeant Avalanche marched into view, wreathed in shimmering ice armor that grew over his shoulders and chest like plated mail. His breath steamed in the frigid air. As he stepped forward, the ground beneath enemy boots froze, turned slick—trap zones forming in precise arcs between buildings and the square.
  “Left flank frozen,” he said into his radio. “Pushing them into the pocket.”
  High above, The Ultra-Defender drifted down like a prophet on a disc of pure force energy. His face was impassive, his dark hair fluttering in the wind as his hands moved like a conductor’s—building shields, barriers, and force constructs that boxed in the enemy like a collapsing cage.
  With a grunt, he tightened his fists, and shimmering walls of hard light shot up behind the retreating Axis troops. “You're not going anywhere, boys,” he muttered. “Lesson one of Newtonian combat: equal and opposite.”
  Below, chaos bloomed.
  Enemy super soldiers—created via the horrors of Axis science or empowered by dark occult rites and power, advanced commandos, wielders of cursed blades, psionically boosted brutes—scrambled to regroup. One launched into the air, howling, but was instantly clotheslined mid-climb by Miss Mach One's boot. She soared through them in a corkscrew, launching a pair of grenades into an enemy mortar nest before pulling into a backflip above the steeple.
  Bert, now deep in the fray, slammed his fists into a steel clad Axis Mech Suit that looked like it was made of walking tank armor. The sound was like an anvil struck by a thunderbolt. Sparks flew. The enemy staggered. Bert grinned. “Go on, then. Let’s see if you hit back.”
  The brute threw a punch. Bert caught it.
  Crack!
  “Didn’t think so.”
  Behind him, Maisie danced around enemy fire, ducking behind stone archways and tossing charges like party favors. Her fingers snapped with flame as she timed the detonations to drop debris in precise intervals, her demolitions a symphony of destruction.
  Avalanche slammed both palms into the ground, sending a frozen shockwave across the street. Stone iced over in an instant, sending a platoon of stormtroopers skidding directly into Firecracker Lass’s kill zone. She whirled and laughed. “Like curling, but with Nazis!”
  Then came the hammer.
  Ultra-Defender raised both hands and formed a massive construct overhead—a shimmering, rectangle, (close enough to a hammer he reckoned) of pure force, easily the size of a truck. It hovered for a heartbeat, casting a glowing light over the square. Then he dropped it.
  The hammer fell.
  The enemy didn’t break. They shattered.
  Smoke filled the air, mixed with the scent of ozone, scorched metal, and the sharp tang of snowmelt.
  Miss Mach One landed next to Bert with a graceful skid-thunk, steam venting from her back harness.
  “That’s what I call a fast and hard landing,” she said, tossing him a grin.
  Bert rubbed his knuckles. “That was the ‘above.’ We’re the ‘below.’ Worked like a charm.”
  Ultra-Defender touched down nearby, his breathing heavy but his posture still strong. Avalanche stepped up to form the perimeter, ice mist curling from his shoulders. Firecracker Lass jogged over, flicking soot off her sleeves.
  They stood together in the square, five allied forces Specials surrounded by fallen enemies and cracked cobblestones.
  “Bloody hell,” Maisie said, surveying the ruin. “Remind me what we call this maneuver again?”
  Bert smirked. “As Above, So Below.”
  Dexter nodded. “A hammer falls. An anvil rises. And in between?”
  Mach One looked skyward. “They get crushed.”
  And as the sun began to rise over the smoldering village, the five turned to disappear back into the fog—ghosts of a war most would never understand, fighting a battle most would never see.
  But the name of the formation would echo.
  Not in reports. In legends.