“Seth…”
“Seth… you need to…”
Voices… so distant.
Everything… so empty.
Dim.
Dark.
But ringing into the infinite.
With what was and was not.
And all in between.
Crying out. Gasping in. Twisting and growling and-
“PARAAAAAAAAAA!!!”
A bellow through the dark, through the stun, through the shattered expectations, and through a blaring headache. But...
‘That… wasn’t me.’
That was zealotry made a fool of. That was Erdwut yelling up at the podium like few had ever heard before. Because he’d been lied to.
“You said he was just strength!!”
The darkness, the throb, but all the world so clear. Like the night sky, but distant. Blurred out by lights that couldn’t pierce the black. But what could, what always did, was that careless gaze locked down at him. A smug satisfaction burned away by spite riddled contortions.
Para couldn’t accept what Seth had done. Couldn’t believe…
No… No he knew. He just wanted to know better what he had awoken. But no one would believe him if all he did was lay this truth at their feet.
‘Just say it already…’
“He doesn’t! He is!! It’s not real power!! It’s all that damn suit!!”
‘Coward…’
A dishevel. Disappointment. Massed expression all over the place but crowding toward confused. Because that sure looked like someone with plenty of power. And Erdwut flaring out its brightest guide, his arm spreading to the scrap metal display around him and the tousled Elite stumbling back together around him, only made it more defiant. Stoicism perturbed to so very far away.
“What suit!?! There’s nothing left!!”
‘More than you care to see…
Because that washed out night wasn’t so empty, just poorly angled. All the stars had fallen, leaving the galaxy to waver, while they held humming its brilliance tight. Unpowered but not left to entropy. They still bore him, if not body than soul. As a shaky new actor came back to bask in their light. Technomancer pressing buttons on his gauntlet in adding disturbance. A skittering cacophony from the stands disrupting, a new set of support arms making their way. He bent down to the floor as they approached, letting them rip what was broken from his back, and so he could pick up one of those grounded stars. Whirring alignment and groaning effort, and a presented shine to show proof.
“Para!! I scanned this thing from top to bottom!! There was no power source in this piece of junk!!”
‘Careful… Matterist can hear you…’
But the darkness didn’t not rattle and rave, smothered and soothed as it was in pleasant warmth. A healing aura. Mediknight watching over. His own defiance to the lie given indiscriminant. Doing away with the damage done, as a sore and sour duet walked in to take part. Hothead angrily gripping his more than bruised side, grumbling at getting thrown through a load bearing wall.
“I don’t give a crap what his suit’s got!! No damn kid is this powerful on his own!!!”
Ziyou held her arm in the dimming pain, and left her silent rebuttal to only the popping of it back where it belonged.
‘Ow…’
So she could shrug rather loudly in front of Hot’s uneven temper. But Para’s frustration at this back and forth only grew more carelessly demanding.
“He can’t have that kind of power! No one wears a suit like that just for FUN!! Either he’s a monster trying to hide or a weakling stealing what he doesn’t deserve!!”
‘. . .’
“And all I see right now is weakness!”
The darkness stopped being so dark. The light becoming so very bright. The sand so gritty. The weight so heavy. But fuck all of it.
‘You want monster… Fine then…’
The scene all but taken, directed and made sole focus. The orchestra pit before it ignored for all the arrayed actors and extras watching on from the edge of the ring. An ultra-light chuckle cutting through the rise snaking toward, a concern disappearing in the waft of other people’s feelings. Aegis hadn’t told them everything apparently and was letting them flounder as the truth finally set in. A nice little bit of petty justice, even if her guilt still kept her head down… As that rise came to pass, and a star floated up from the ground in front of her.
“…Uhm… guys.”
Techno reasserted himself in this play of nothing.
“You call this weak!? This suit had no conduits, no drive force! Just servos and joins! That means he’d been moving it all on his own!! There’s several hundred pounds of scrap here damn it!!”
‘One thousand three hundred and fifty three pounds… All that Ark metal’s gone and made it fat… Heavy…’
Para shot back with sound and fury.
“He can be as strong as he wants!! That doesn’t mean he gets a pass for hiding away!!”
‘Just say it already… How really feel… Or should I have hit you harder for it…’
More pieces of suit began floating up, guided by the tone none of them cared to hear. All just stuck looking up into Para’s tunnel visioned glare and his refusal to accept the facts everyone saw. That this was just getting petty. Aegis now joined by the final performer, a shock Samurai taking in the rising star field.
“Uhm… Guys!”
Techno pulled up his data pad with his scanning readings on it.
“Then what the fuck is he Para!?! Because the moves he’s been recorded doing don’t line up with just super strength!! This suit is like a walking substation!! It can’t work without a massive amount of external power put into it!! And the ONLY source of power that could come from is-”
“GUYS!!!”
The act broke, the heroes finally snapping out of their parts, all turning to Aegis’s demand for reality. As they finally saw the sky for all the stars floating in it. All of the metal about them risen and thrumming silent. Bearing what darkness had wrought and raved. As they followed those shattered pieces out and away. Back to the rut dug into the sand. Back to the trainees gathered to watch what had been among them. Back and back all the way.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Back to Seth conducting the symphony of his entire being. And lurching up right for round two.
A glare that could melt steel, a verbose expression too torrential to not see its source. The only things they received as they stared back through the growing metal constellation. The stunned silence finally allowing the buzz in the air to reach audibility. And rise as his arms slowly pulled up and into his sides. As all the cords frayed to the wind found their home.
The world a shade brighter with every passing second, the power coursing through it seen for all it was, ionized and pulled like a current in the cosmos. The hardlight array behind flickering a buried strobe, wispy aurora lighting the air around in a dim neon fire. Floating pieces starting to slowly gravitate like magnets finding their opposites. Techno fumbled with the piece he held tight to, feeling for himself the drag of inevitability. His support arms flailing stiffly with calculation, feeding and flicking his visor down so he knew first hand.
“He’s… trying to rebuild the suit!?!”
“Not a god!! Damn!! CHANCE!!!”
The forgotten, the one who didn’t want to be here. Capeless and disrespected Maglev pulling ahead of everyone. Hands extended and will made manifest. A countervailing pull against the drag, true magnetic force arraying itself against. While Erdwut split his betrayal at the tip of his Eschenwald, pointing with clear command and a bellow for those already free of this ring.
“STOP HIM!!!”
But it was all too… ‘fucking… LATE!!!”
The air flashed to jagged plasma crescendo, as Seth reared and took back what was his. The connections between shooting to the prominence of electric wake and wanton prejudice, yanking Techno off his feet and pulling Maglev with them. The first pieces impacting like the starting pieces of a puzzle, slamming into place on Seth’s body without care for recoil or collateral damage. A half a gauntlet smashing his arm, a shin guard sliver cutting his leg, a third of a rotator cuff tossing his wrist, the ribs from the skeletal frame pressing his chest, the helmet’s lower half forcing him high.
Maglev righted himself in time to join the fray charging toward him, pieces flowing past them at violent velocities. Hothead reached out and grabbed a large chunk of the right gauntlet and fought the force reeling it in. And only proved himself-
‘NOT ENOUGH!!!’
Seth suddenly lurched down into the crashing metal storm with all the grace of the loosed beast he was. Sand at his feet blasting to bake in the wake of wanton counter charge. Left pulled up as its main plate stamped in, just as Maglev loosed a metal bar vanguard. It sparked and screeched as it glanced off and was launched away. Left foot springing him up and over as Ziyou came in low. A sweeping strike failing to catch as he left the ground, momentum carrying her about to prepare to counter. The right boot reforming around his foot as it came round expected. Ziyou’s guard tight and far more than ready, but power plus weight defy preparation. Arms buckled again as plated boot struck face. Spinning her back violent and Seth back to ground. Clawing to level and lock down, to launch back onto his malicious course.
Maglev done with it and swinging one of his metal bars manual. The rest of the left gauntlet reforming as Seth extended and caught him mid strike. Center mass carrying through but arm allowed clearance, to load up all the tension imparted. To slam it forward, out of Mag’s hands and into his face. A bloody nose and lost footing knocking him on his ass. The metal bar whipped away in the lurch back down, to lock and shoot off again.
Right dragging out in haymaker, Hothead still struggling against the gauntlet meant for it. As it suddenly felt destiny call it to purpose. Realigning up, balling what was left of the fingers. And aim right in his face. As Seth loosed right into that awaiting plated fist, slipping in, slamming shut, and bashing Hot to jaw breaking spiral. Ricocheted away, sent tumbling past Aegis still locked in her spot. And watching with pride against her guilt ridden concern. Watching Seth plant his foot again and launch back into the ring.
Techno stayed ducked away to preserve his tech, and to get clear of that molten sword swinging intercept. But Seth leapt from that melt stained ground, spun over Eschenwald like a pole-vaulter as it sought purchase against empty space. More pieces welcomed to their respective places, yet forcing him to spiral off through the air. The rest of the left boot, the back plating, the hip joints, the obliterated servos, the expansions and additives and everything he could grab. All of it flowing to him as he careened about face, dragging his once again armored hands to scrape to a stop.
The last of this once sheared to slag suit slamming into place, forcing him back upright into the center of the ring. Each piece clanging into place like a metallic symphony coming to a close. All in line and threaded order. All in will made tonal blur of its depths. All till the helmet top slammed down onto his head. And rang this cacophony and struggle to closing clang and echo. As he was dragged down by the weight of it all. By the weight he claimed his own.
It labored his breathing, softly pull at the power steaming off in excess, soothed peaking waveform that threatened to take more than it was. Bringing him out what had been wrought, what he had fallen into so very dark. Allowed him to feel the Garkah clear and near, to hear them scramble to support, to diagnose and mitigate and keep him up. But Seth didn’t need them to fix it for him.
“We’ve... We got you back!”
Threat was hollowed, scared, but keep himself from failing as well. But this wasn’t Seth losing himself. And this was no time for hesitation.
“Do what you have to do! Kick some ass!! For her!!”
‘I already was. But I feel like doing it a hell of a lot more!’
A surge and anathema, Seth couldn’t help accept that call in stride. His threads felt like razor wire coiled to bursting. Roiling for a fight on real equal terms. Wanting to rise again to that hell bringing tone. But that was adrenaline and scorching wounds talking. So wound tight through every piece it hurt to even feel himself. To see that pure red piece of his life burn and burn. But now it was power, perpendicular but wanting. Bolting down his veins and across every crack and break of his suit. It took all they had to hold this thing together, and not rip it apart in callous fury or just give in to the lack there of. But this was his, a part of him, and Seth needed to be whole again. To fight at full power. So all that fury was put to its better purpose.
The discombobulated heroes regrouping on the other side of his emptied out eye slits, view screen and glass not saved nor needed. Heads nursing under Mediknight’s healing field, slats saying silent that even he wanted to see what may. But Hothead tried rushing forward once he could grit his teeth without slipping his jaw. Yet his own less than embodied fury stopped dead, as molten rock slammed before his face. Erdwut staring him down to stop from making a fool of himself, and them, again.
“We can’t blindly engage him anymore. We need to understand just what he’s capable of.”
Hothead sneered, but seemed to understand. Instead redirecting the ensuing ire, snorting at every broken edge and bent apart crease that dismissal bled through.
“Like he could do much with pile of slag like-”
*ZAP*
Arrogant redirection interrupted by electrical discharge. By pure focused inflow.
The floor of the arena glassed as a bolt of electricity shot up out of it, crashing over the suit like an inverted lightning rod. The heroes could do little but watch the light show unfold. The power lines buried below the floor, more than able to bear this brunt but ripping apart all the same. Seth pulled right from the Hill’s grid, the wispy aura of ionizing air condensed to bolts of plasma as it reach flash point. Melting the metal floor little by little on its way through, but who gives a fuck anymore!? This was what he needed, and he was taking it. Focusing it through, pooling all that uptake into those over wrung connections, flowed it around to flex control exigent, fattened up those infinitesimal threads until this power found its critical mass. And lit the air on truer fire.
Suddenly the cracks on the boots of the suit sparked to life, a blue plasma burn dancing off and up. Traveling through shin guards with a shower of over energetic shrapnel, bent and broken plates being forcibly pressed back into shape. And all those the cracks disappearing in the wake. Metal fused by a self-contained arc weld, sizzling loud and hard as arcs danced excessive and recontained. What layers still below melding back together in the press. Servos and joints snapping into battery, roaring to clear tracks, and locking to their points. What remaining gel left spread thin and disregarded. Because this was his and his alone.
The burn continued on and up, the heat unabated and searing the flesh too close to avoid, scorching fuse carrying on to the knee regardless. Feeding back into what had powered it on. Seth hunching his head in the pain accepted, lifted a foot… And snapping it apart. Fuse broken out as it split along its set points, into those metal talons that tore artificial to nonexistence. Before slamming and shattering the glassy sand below. As the other foot followed suite and the monster Para wanted showed it return.
The burn fused thigh and hip, back and chest, every crack ceased to exist under the rising blue fire. The inside baked, heated metal and skeleton singeing chafe points through his connector suit, but it needed to keep going. The spine of the suit broke its welds to pure unadulteration, folding up and clanking down, putting pieces together and extended down into that tail scything just above the shattered glass.
It fused shoulder and hand as the clawed gauntlets were forced open. Till finally the helmet was crisscrossed in azure sparks, burning back together in Seth’s reeling face. The heat forcing his eyes shut in reflex and agony, but only before he forced himself back down in slamming release. As those two forward swept horns slashed out from the helmet's top edges.
The burn abating, sparking its last to dance in the smoke, silent of it the crackling storm. Seth straightened up in defiance of his own pain. The weight of this suit was his weight, no different from the body it covered. Just shy of fused to his skin but reforged in full. He bore its same set agony, its want for vengeance, its own want to fight back. He could see those heroes arrayed against before he even opened his eyes. Till they burned open in that same plasma blue. And blared the ire of this expanded being for all to see.
That this fight had only just begun.
HERE
THE MIXTAPE IN QUESTION.