Phazer Shock landing down in the center, hand still smoking and leveled with a glare that could literally melt steel. Her husband Glacial Glaz coming in beside, ice coating his hands and stare just as cold. Lastly Ziyou slamming down left, all the joy sapped from her face, replaced with disappointment and utter condemnation.
These were all they sent?
These were all that could be spared. The only ones able. The only ones free. The only one surviving and willing to give chase.
To get in the way…
Phazer lowered her hand in the silence, laser enforced. But kept an obvious charge should it break so soon.
“You ought not to have done that kid!!”
Glaz gestured back up the stairs, toward Para cratered and barely moving.
“You hurt a lot of people! Para may be a piece of shit, but this is a line you were warned about crossing!”
Para twitched in his crater, regaining a little consciousness in the self-righteous drivel, and turning on to his one not-broken arm. So that an eye, his only remaining eye, could glare through blood seeping from his scalp. Till Ziyou broke that line of sight with her own protective aggression. And Phazer releveled her hand.
“An attack on him is an attack on all of us! This isn’t how you get your way! Only how you prove yourself as the villain! So don’t even think about taking another step! Just stand down and-”
The sound of metal crunching melted concrete sliced this crap to his own silence, as that step was taken in wanton defiance. Refusing to be told what was right and wrong by those who dared not see. Yet only hardening Phazer’s glare with its insulting interruption. And proving the futility of talk.
“You asked for it then!!”
That hand flared without hesitation, a light red bolt streaking across the pathway, bursting into a splatter of heat and recoil on the suit’s shoulder. The metal glowed slightly from the impact, but to no consequence. What was the problem...
Was that someone was getting in the way!
That burning eye turned to her, turned away from burning a hole in Ziyou’s knee to meet Para’s broken form. Taking another weighted step, so its disregard of their authority could echoed unabated. Talons tearing through yet unblemished concrete. And only cementing what was already too far gone.
“Guess there’s nothing else to be done.”
Phazer looked to each side, silent acknowledgements from both her compatriots before suddenly pulling in both hands. A duel flare up and lock back into her chest, dazzling lights held tight and congealed and then loosed with fervor before a chance could be had!!
A rapid cycling succession of flashes, a barrage of blasts not far off from Hothead’s, but considerably quicker. The first blast striking the head, dissipating in a burst of heat and scattered light. Then the next twenty hit in sizzle quick sequence. A bright show of light and warbling cacophony but again, like Hothead, it amounted to nothing more than distraction.
A foot went to lift, to show the futility, but stuck fast. Creaking hiss and condensing mist below the dazzle. The barrage let up as the head looked down, foot frozen solid to the path. The other quickly following suit, a long trail of frost leading back toward Glaz’s pressed hand on the ground. But something was missing, Ziyou wasn’t in the lineup anymore. The right lazily pulling up on some ingrained reflex, as an intricately drawn tiger came slamming hard into the side of the head.
Ice shattered as the suit crashed down to the side, claw and teeth marks indenting into its surface. Ziyou had been holding back even before, keeping her real strength in line with the competitive spirit. But now she was letting loose to put Seth down.
The left stabbing down, chewed asphalt and concrete to retake control. Talons scarring concrete to turn to face her, the animalistic movements from before rearing that head up hard. Pulling itself up in an instant jerking refutation of its buffing out wounds. That low growl escaping again before being replaced by the shattering of that concrete. The armor shooting back with retaliation its only focus, as another tattoo sprang to reality.
A swirling circular motion into a full three limb block, a turtle shell forming ahead, a hardened immaterial defense raked away with devastating effect! Shell splintering and dissolving in scything wake. The next in line rearing back and loosing to stab her in the damn face. But that defensive stance shifted in the ink spill that was her obliterated shell, her arms meeting and pushing against the incoming claw. And grabbing hold as she spun it around further than it intended. Force turning traitor and pulling everything along for the ride. The suit judo thrown past, to smash down and cut path away on its side.
A claw forced down scraped away at momentum, but found the whole thing stopped sooner than expected. Another bout of condensing mist, but now clouding the suit entirely. Frost creeping into the eyes and over that arm, trying to win out against the heat pouring from inside, to deny that nova the free reign it demanded.
Ziyou came off her turn, hardening up to strike her now vulnerable opponent. A flowing dance that seemed to gather strength behind her right, a flowing form summoned in kind. A dragon roaring to life. The ice thickening over the suit creaked and whined, heat boiling melt and refuting that denial. Ziyou launching forward, rushed by the sight of its obvious strain. Clear intent to finish this quick or be overpowered again. But it was already too late for that. The ice shattered, dug in claw dragging hard and turning the suit violently, shooting its lower half toward Ziyou in a massive tail swipe. One leapt over to avoid that massed sweeping metal, and deny her a clear target punch into submission. But that wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as a claw shot up and choked the dragon wrapped around her arm.
Concrete slashed apart as the whole suit launched off the ground, flipped over and dragging Ziyou along for the ride. Whipping her away like an underhanded catapult, skipping her across the path, the dragon on her arm released to focus on avoiding road burn. A sheet of ice meeting her as she neared her comrades, slide replacing scrape as the suit landed down. Righting itself toward its now firm opponents as they caught and pulled Ziyou upright. Barely worse for wear, but a grim look on her face for what her rebuke meant.
Phazer put a hand on her shoulder, another silent signal as she took over center stage again. Hands a dazzling light show of charging energy, she leveled them again, but this time formed them together and combined their output. Fingers folding in, creating a chamber to concentrate all the energy accumulating. Taking on a brighter hue, spilling out from her hands and heating the air around her. A sudden flash and halo of dispersion, her arms recoiling like a gun bolt as her finger loosed. The blast was bigger, a cannon shot comparison, and near double in speed. A guard flashed up before it impacted, an understanding of the disparity immediate. Impact splattered the shot into streaks of light in outline, more heat and recoil forcing its way in. Parting streaks spilling about and melting holes into the path, into the buildings close by. And before the guard could shift down, a second shot struck it. Then another. And another.
The light show kept those burning eyes down and that guard up. Each shot breaking into more plasma like splatter, melting concrete and catching unlucky fixtures. Streetlights and signs bent and snapped to the ground, windows brightly oozed and shattered, but the suit held its ground. The dazzle became the only light, blinding out everything else. Obfuscating, flaring up the real plasmic fire on this battlefield, bring that growl higher above as it drove the suit lower. Before it dropped out entirely below it.
The next shot finding nothing to strike, along with the three that were chained behind it. The suit clawed to the ground, the animal inside front and center as it tore the path asunder under fire. Phazer shifted, deflecting hard as her target practically slithered across the ground at speed, claws scraping the concrete apart. The next shot missing and splattering concrete to smoking chunks. Sidewinding motions making for bad targeting, but Phazer kept shooting, trying just to slow it down. Chained shots drove the suit to dodge wide, stop, and find its opening. Each shot hitting the concrete in a shower of dazzling ionized debris. Keeping it blind.
Keeping him blind.
A few yards from her position the suit went terminal, disregarding her attacks completely and charging straight in. Shots spattered over the head, crashing through the horns like waves, but just heated the surface in wasted effort. Because it didn’t slow down in the slightest!
Phazer held that fire ineffective, charged another shot to ensure. Yet a ook of desperation on her face as the blind gave way. As the sounds of the others carried under. Ice forming and concentrating hard, weighted grunts and hurried breaths. But they were ignored, Phazer had to be taken out. She was in the way, and Para was right behind her needing to die!
But Phazer’s charged up shot doubled in luminosity before the suit made it to her, only a few feet separating. Before suddenly her fingers shot open, the concentrating chamber no longer containing the blast. It exploded in her hands, a blinding flash striking those burning eyes unprepared, flashbanged recoil forcing it reeling back. Armored hands shot up in an instinctual need, stopping the whole suit dead in its tracks. It writhed and shook the blindness away, a bloodshot glare directing back at Phazer to add to its already burning stare. But what those eyes saw wasn’t just their target.
Ziyou was between them now, a pillar of ice on her shoulder and a grim determination on her face. A lens like a tree trunk and as long as a bazooka. And Phazer already shooting into it. The light from her hands refracting and focusing and refracting again. The blast becoming a beam of indiscriminate concentration, directed luminosity, and ultimate condemnation. And it was leveled right at the chest reared back too high. The only thing that it could do was watch as Ziyou mouthed a silent retort, as the beam took its hold and refused to let go.
“Sorry kid.”
An instant of all-consuming light, sucking away and outshining all else. Sending this grand entrance into darkness but for one blinding line. Directing heat and undeniable pressure, igniting of the night as it blazing shallow into the sky. As the beam burned through too fast for any sense to differentiate, between the speed of light and the speed of disintegrated metal.
Layer after layer buckled and melted away, threads snapping and deconstructing in the light. Flesh rending away in haloing flare. All that weight nullified and throw down its axis, the image of its path dissipating into the sky, and leaving the only outcome such lethality could bring forth.
A gasping charred hollow. Right where Seth’s heart used to be.
The suit crashed backward to where it originally started its charge, back all the way to those passed by recruiters disregarded as beneath. Those catching better outcomes to failure coming true. Concrete chucks bashed apart, wake crushed to dust draping over. The battlefield full once again with the broken and the billowed. And Seth skidding to a stop face down, into a world of black and red and pain.
He could see for himself, feel for himself, but may well have been subsumed still in what was worse. The pain, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. Everywhere. Everything. Screaming sting down every nervous line. Caved bone stabbed through as he tried to breath, pressing cauterized char desperate to hold back the void in his chest. Everything burned and boiled and reeling away, only to break open what was already solidly closed. Every muscle tripped and failed, a weakness spreading like his life was draining away. Strength oozing down under gravity's pull and stagnating where he couldn’t reach it. A chill rising counter, emptying him out, and making him ever so horridly aware.
That something was gone from where it should have been...
And a true void now called to him.
He saw what little he could from the darkness below himself, grim perception falling on him yet again, exacerbating his pain beyond what it ever should be. A single spot glaring down on him through the void that encroached on all sides. That had swallowed him whole and now dragged him through the agony. Torn open by dazzling fire, but burning only him instead.
He could only make out figures arrayed against, devastation surrounding them and clouding it all. And...
‘Pa…ra…’
He was holding his face, struggling for purchase in a hole he had been left in, wincing and gritting against… against his own deserved agony! He could still match the glare through this hollow, despite the loss of an eye taken just as his! See him… struggling against…
Against the only recourse left to stop his fall. Lethal force.
Seth understood it, he was dying. Someone killed him to… to make him stop. He could feel the gaping hole in his chest, edges screaming their loss and flooding out his mind. Muscle tensing and failing to flee the hollow void, blood percolating and sputtering through the cauterized cavity, slowly creeping to a cold stop in every vain. His heart was gone, burned away and cored through. The weight of the world falling on his back yet again. But now… Now it was crushing.
His arms strained to keep him up, to keep him from falling into that true void that called over the one that had surrounded him. The only thing he could do was look out at the ones who no doubt did this to him. Dark, unfocused forms. Blurs lost, refusing to show themselves. As he was left with nothing but a gap. Wondering… what he had even-
“Just die already!”
That matching glare, that reciprocated eye, Para mouthing through his own pain in the ring of dying nerves. Silent words but wholesale emotion blaring across space too loud to ignore. For Seth to ignore. A connection… forcibly made… and forcibly dialed to deafening! That match trying to strike again and again. The abyss closing in around like…
Like a hand wrapping around his head.
Keeping him from looking away, keeping him from letting that wrathful burn be snuffed out like this.
“Die!”
Blood move on its own, warmth defy creeping chill, true void receding where… Where abyss took hold.
“Die!!”
His body moved on its own as that hollow void in his chest bulge inward, flesh roil through cauterization, bone rebuilding along their over dense threads. Metal and layer over top reconstructing in kind, to fill that self-swallowing gap in refusing marking sizzle.
“Fucking die!!”
His heart reforming along all those relatching lines, beating like an earthquake, lurching him against the weight pressing him down. And dropping his senses to a knife's edge... As those silent words stopped being silent and echoed eternal!
“JUST FUCKING DIE YOU UNDESERVING BASTARD!!!”
This abyss closed like a trap around him, a cellophane mold suffocatingly tightened, till only his right eye stayed open to the world, but even that was not long for it. Another fall but something worse, Seth being dragged even deeper without moving the slightest bit. Like everything he was, everything he is, everything and everything consumed completely. Taken over, blotted out, subsumed in the darkness of pure gravitation. But that wasn’t the worst part of it.
Because… he didn’t care it was happening.
All that mattered, all that he knew, all that he could know or care or think or accept in this world
Was tearing… Para… apart.
Breaking him open with all the power he denied him having. Making him pay for every insult and action and bullshit justification. Making him regret… everything!
And…
And letting the despair of the inevitable wrench his will to splinters.
So Seth let that abyss flood over him, take hold over him, throw his pain on to that wrathful bonfire within him. So it could tower over all and make them know regret.
Feeling melted away, what was left of his consciousness falling back like all the times before. Where subconscious had kept its vigil, kept him focused and targeted on that one single goal. Kept him on the path he'd chosen, even through this mud drenched detour of wanton need to beat Para to death. Now, there was naught but the hell that had been wrought.
Now it was only the abyss, allowed to be real.
The silence of hardened waiting. Of hoping that this was enough to make him stop. Heroes pressed to the worst by the worst, made to put down a hopeful turned rabid. Their own hope strained, bottled away. Left to sink in as that shot away form crumpled in the emptiness. The tacit silence that must be had, to live with taking a live so-
*shheeerrrrkkahgggrrrrr*
The strain of metal tearing open, a new rising grinding growl, undeniable signals to these arrayed that Seth was still active despite their fatal wounding. That their attack had an effect, just not the one they hoped for. One they could remember but dared not think was possible. Too many forms like that coming back like mortal wounds were just suggestions. But it colored all into burned in expectations.
Ziyou tossed the lens cannon to Glaz and took hard position on Phazer’s left again. She wasn't going to let him through this time. Glaz prepped the cannon for another shot, refreezing melted sections before stancing up on Phazer’s right. Phazer prepped her hands, charged up more shots, but she held her fire. They had to be ready for whatever came next. And for whatever this kid had done to-
*BWWWWWOOOOOOOoooooooo*
Surviving streetlights crashing off in sequence, then relighting as escalating waves of power loss surging their breakers. The suit steadying in the writhe of death, the burn in its eyes returning and growing in luminosity, illuminating that presumed grave they had consigned it to. A wispy glow rising off like steam, turning the air into localized aurora that flashed to visibility with each darkening wave.
Like every beat of a regrowing heart. Buzzing this world in a rhythm. Understandable but impossible. Dreaded but gritted against. Power drawn and power made. And signaling that this kid was too hard to kill.
As final wave turned the path to blown out darkness, ionization filling the dark like paths of color, with red and blue and green gradation. Before all those lights shattered their true overcharged deaths. Crystal dust refracting and reflecting, glittering that aurora beyond its means. And melting to slag in its over amped wake. The path between left to the darkest of night. Highlighting opposition direct and undeniable. Phazer’s charged hands beyond the lights pooling down from the Hill. Against the dimming melt dying on the ground below the plasma steam congealing around their opponent.
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The edges of the suit illuminating, like the burn in those eyes carried on throughout. A rising whir electric, like the charging of a machine as it grew brighter and brighter. Arcs of electricity added their sharpness to the dark, lighting up brief snippets of the battlefield as they kicked the air and arced from the horns on his helmet. The head stayed down, but the ionizing glow kept increasing. Brighter and brighter, shifting colors as even that aurora was siphoned away. As that red burning eye spread its weep to every edge and contour, power dripping and solidifying from that tight shut maw.
The heroes hardened in the rising light, eyes watching and waiting for what this charge was going to break into. They’d seen what he could do, felt what he could do. Knew what that form had done and always lead to. Confidence defiant of the danger and revive, defiant that there was anything worse than what had already been done. He wanted to be a laceroid then so be it. They’ve killed more than enough to put down one more.
But…
Then again…
Seth wasn’t the one in control anymore.
Something worse was. Something that knew, something that learned, and something that held sway over all he had been. Something ravenous, something monstrous, something that knew no restraint. Something… that knew… only their-
“RRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!”
That metal maw exploding open, that glow crescendoing, the world caught in oppressive perception that none could escape. The sudden blasting of atomized concrete all the warning those heroes got, as that head whipped up like an out of control fire hose left to make way. Beam, blood red, tearing into being. Tearing toward them like that nova had gone and died confined!
Snaking up the street in the barest fraction of a second, climbing buildings and barreling through, chewing a path of caustic fire through everything it touched. All before whipping roughshod violence, scattering brickwork and fa?ade to find their Hill. As the heroes realized the peril they let rise. Too late.
Glaz the only one to act in time, a disparity in percentile and an understanding of what was coming. Dropping weighty cannon and tackling his wife to the ground, as the beam flashed through the air her head used to occupy. Para ducking back in pushed to reflex, as the beam cut through the dirt and stairs behind him. The glow of superheat his only warning. Before that path finalized the demise it bore.
A fiery ribbon, overheated and loosed of the bonds of matter, and gorged on excess until it knew only one outcome. To explode! The concrete and asphalt shattered to torrents. Uplifted to cavalcades of cracking shrapnel. Buildings caving as their facades blew apart, burning rubble splattering the battlefield with smothered flares.
Para ducked again from the shower of smoking debris, as the stairs exploded against him, smacking into his already beaten form and forcing a painfully hack into the dust filling air. He shot his head back up as the rain fell away, needing to keep sight of this thing before it took advantage. But only won the truth that they never had it at all.
Glaz lifted himself off his wife as they shook off melted ejecta, a reflexive look back at devastation surrounding them the only afforded moment. Before was stopped and forced to return to the sight beside him.
Phazer finally rising in hurried fashion, out from protection to meet this new paradigm. But was stopped as well by the grim air permeating. The smoke and fire and yet something missing. She turned in kind, only to join her comrades in knowing. And fearing.
As they all saw Ziyou still stood in her position. Not an inch moved. Not a moment before changed. No blood, no viscera, no immediate sign of what was wrong. Except for the cauterized stump twitching off impulses arriving too late. Intention consumed with her whole damn head. Nothing left of her but a body falling limp in on itself, crumpling to the ground like an empty shell. Horrified stares left with the tyrannical weight of it. But interrupted uncaring by hacking crunch and scrap.
By that suit rising from its position glowing Cherenkov. A flame in annihilation and burning matter. Turning them from one horror to another truly realized, the burn in those eyes brighter more than murderous intent. Burning through the dust and darkness that was left in its wake. Burning in disparity, in wanton malice. The right eaten away to a low blue glow, and the left a conflagrating red like nothing possible in this world. Seeing them a nothing.
But food to be slaughtered.
Shock, dread, flaring like sparks of stone on steel, igniting already piled up tinder too overgrown and dry. Bellowed by determination beyond simple strength. Phazer already had her pilot light on full blast, so both hands overcharging and leveling pure death only accented her-
“aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”
Her blast furnace of a heart wanting nothing but obliteration for this brought back hell! Her hands turned to dazzle laden blur, rapid fire barrage burning away at the dusty battlefield, bombarding the suit’s position without a care for focus or aim, just raw rabid hate. Shots splashed across the atomized concrete, lit up the path and everything still in it with every liquid impact. But the ones that hit may as well have not, spatterings of light and heat over inscrutable metal. Shine outmoded and wanting in comparison.
The suit stepping out of its expanded crater, undeterred and unaffected by the shelling as it started forward. Titanic steps accelerating and crushing what was left beneath it with every omnipresent echo.
Glaz broke from his horror filled stupor in the back blast of his wife’s wrath, shaking his own hesitation away and lifting the ice lens cannon upon his shoulder, strength burdened but too determined to care anymore. He locked down in front of her, cannon squarely on his shoulder and ice freezing his position solid for another shot at whatever the hell was coming back at them. The last of the ineffectual blasts streaking away as Phazer pulled both her hands back, focusing all this baleful rise into another beam cannon to put this thing back down!
The light and melted dust clearing in time for her hands to take the spotlight, veined in light and already double slamming the back end of the lens cannon. A new rival to that left eye, more pain on the way. Refused. An omnipotent shift threw the suit forward on all fours, that faux maw shooting open and welling up more power counter to the intensified refracting. The beam of focused light shot with recoil to match its new intensity, dust and fried air haloing away opposite its path. But that light scattering against acrid power firing out of that maw. Haloing is own disintegrating back blast. And meeting in prismatic crash. The dark lost in crimson coronas, splintering and splashing into plasma spall. An equal match across sheer distance, equal fires burning against each other. But not so equal fuel as that maw won out.
Light bunched and caved, was pushed back and out, streaks splaying off and burning more of the already ruined path. Peeling back all the way to its source. Phazer kept firing, but her beam was pushed right back at her, all the way into the cannon. She recoiled when she realized, releasing trying to dodge in the fury, but her counter followed her path to the exact. Refracting and defocusing, losing power and definition, but was still too much for this ice to hold. She shot up a desperate guard as the beam hit the last lens, and core this cannon as it had him.
A wave of hardened, red burned ice, shattering and tearing into Glaz’s shoulder. Bashing Phazer at point blank and sending her to fly into the rubble behind Para. All while Glaz thrown to the ground to writhe, face and arm surviving off burns and cuts, but his shoulder thoroughly broken and gashed open.
In a matter of moments and at pitiful expense, the path was clear once more. The suit could see its target as it chomped its maw closed, as those eyes glared at the cowering Para still agonizingly frozen in his hole. As smoke and death poured free of that maw, like death wasn’t enough anymore for him. There was nothing left to get in the way. And nothing was going to get in the way…
‘Ever again…’
The armor rose back up and stomped forward, talons cracking and tearing through what little solid concrete remained. Nothing stopping, nothing between, nothing ever, nothing-
*SSHEEEEEhhhh*
But a growing wall of ice. Glaz was made of sterner stuff, making it back up with arm wincing in pain but powered through. Hands slamming to the ground, to coat the entire area in icy will power, before forcing it back up to build into shape just shy of that slavering maw. A foot thick wall blocking him out. Getting…
‘In… the way…’
A single claw dashed it like the weak defiance it was. Ice crunched and boiling as the suit charged to full. No more delays and no more pitiful impediments. Glaz fought his pain, folded his arms at his sides, and shot them up one after the other. Large ice spikes spearing up in rapid succession, to intercept as this thing careening forward. They tried and failed to skewer into the armor, shattering on impact or obliterating as they formed in front. The suit slashed and bashed through the forming field of ice, undeterred and never again stopped. To force Glaz to realize the futility of his impromptu road hazard. Yet still he shifting back again to prepare a last ditch stop.
Both hands slammed down, the crack of his shoulder eliciting extreme grimace, but he did what he had to! The ice in front of him squared off and rose in another feet thick wall, rising painfully slow in the face of what was basically a charging metal laceroid. The last few feet forced up as he launched his hands up from the ground, sending to recoil in the neglect and agony.
He fell forward on his right side, pressing against his wall, keeping his good arm solid upon it to harden it further. The ice steamed and condensed the air around it, creaked as it hardened tighter and tighter. But the stomping beyond it only grew louder over everything.
Dominated. Dared. Denied it like glass doomed to shatter! A pair of horns leading the way. Glaz flung to the ground with his utter futility, onto his broken shoulder and under a spattering of his quickly boiling ice.
The suit pulling itself back up straight, maw leaking its overheated breath, left eye blaring through the icy fog of flash steamed vanity. Glaz left to watch from his broken spot on the ground, the ice raining around reflecting that crimson light. Like it was the only bright spot left in the world. Yet, and yet, this thing paid no mind to him, he didn’t matter anymore. He wasn’t in the way anymore!
And Glaz would having none of that. Crawling and clawing over, wincing at his broken arm, and reaching out toward an armored leg. Latching to it before another step could echo his failure. His hand seared upon the broiling metal, but ice quickly formed despite this. Hot metal screamed alongside creaking freeze, as the suit was seemingly locked down in desperate defiance. He was determined to slow Seth down no matter what…
But there was no Seth left.
That frosted foot rose, ice shattering away, scolding flesh to char. That oozing, malice soaked red bleed, pouring out from the edges to make him regret. Glaz reeled, writhed, but his hand melted in place, carrying him up with it until his half broken body was underneath it all. He strained, looked up in pleading defiance, looked up at the monster he'd tried to stop. But saw no mercy in that burning red eye. As it brought its gaze down upon him.
Separate struggles, Phazer pulling herself off the rubble of the Hill’s stairs, feeling a creak in her back and a blood down her neck. But still charged her hands to cut through the still hanging dust. Stumbling over half charred stairs and crumbled concrete, narrowly tripping into Para’s crater. He had a look of demanded attention, reaching out to her as she pulled away back to the fight. Managing to snatch the pink border of her surplus pant leg, dragging her back as best he could. Receiving back anger at the audacity and blame at the proceedings, but she didn’t care to scold him in such a dire situation. A look drowning in pain and desperation, his voice a horse garble of what it used to be.
“We need to get out of here! Now!!”
She pulled her leg free in disappointed fury and turned back as the fog of war fell away… To the sickening snap of bone being crushed.
Caught by the neck, crushed it into the ground, turned hard against itself. Echoing through the darkness advancing down this dilapidated path they called justice. The hand burned apart and falling limply away, as Glaz gurgled what little air he could swallow. The suit pulling its foot away and stomped it down onto the dusted and melted concrete passed his darkening eyes. Nothing will stand in the way, nothing will stop this!
‘Ever! Again!’
His head turned toward her against its own will. The light leaving his eyes as foamed blood dripped from his mouth. Reflecting in that burning red glare. As it watched atoms strike beyond count, smash together over and over, burn themselves into a soup beyond what will could make. Phazer’s hands clenching down until blood boiled up, frying to steam as they overcharged and flared brighter than they could take. Tears streamed down her contorted face, but quickly evaporated as her eyes shot up at that god forsaken glare. Once calm red turning to a near matching energized conflagration. The energy in her hands flaring up into her arms, veins scorching their paths as her skin failed to contain the solar inferno that was her sorrow.
The dust and fog on the battlefield ran away in inanimate fear, as her sadness erupted into a wail of stellar wrath breaking into true fusion. Her slamming her hands together in front, open palms of pure uncontained light. The air rushing away from her wrath made physical, forming into a ball of light like a true newborn star. Coronal flares escaping malicious focus driving it bigger and bigger. The ground quaking as her feet cracked into the path, as all of her fuel was poured into a fire of all-consuming die.
But without warning that small star hit a point, narrowed down to near singularity, flash compressed to frightening stillness, to a darkened calm radiant as delicate sunshine rounded between her hands. As it was forced ahead to bear this world as no new light should. And became the storm that was her-
*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
A flagrant column of reddened white light, swallowed everything for all it dared show. The path, the buildings, the very night itself, drowning it all in a deluge of its own doing. The darkness burned as a rival sun made its grand entrance, turning night to day for half the city. Windows and buildings, closed off and empty, scorched and shattered in the overpressure thrum of a stellar heartbeat brought to Earth. Phazer not in control and far from caring! Wailing from behind her loss manifest. Burning all that she could for lack of anything left. But to kill this thing in holy star fire!
Concrete, asphalt, broken and defiled bodies left in the street. Lights, facades, whatever else got in the way. A pure rail against the one who took her beloved from her. Who ripped apart her life because of some stupid insults. Who was lost and gone and deserved no mercy anymore. Deserved only to burn in the light of her sorrow. To drown in the breath of the star he’d left lone.
But the deafening drone of her localized solar flare was far from the same. Not alone. Under shadowed. Streams of lights flaking off at increasingly close distances, a masked rumble persistent through the torrential down pour. And growing closer. As a pair of horns rising against the current of her handheld sunshine. Swimming the currents that hoped to make them sink.
Blind outburst failing to see those horns cut closer and closer, hear the stomping of metal on melt grow louder and louder against her all.
Until those horns withdrew.
The rumble stopped.
And that metallic, bottomless maw eclipsed that star.
The black hole it had become now its own reality. The solar storm ceasing into crashing night, another new born sun swallowed whole and leaving its mark burned into every retina left to see.
Phazer recoiled back, her eyes dimming from their energetic wrath. Her face turned from wailing anger to slow realization of agony. As the suit rose up from its cosmic chomp, with the burning light from her conflagrating hands still desperately shining.
Through the gaps in its jagged metal teeth.
A new welling of fear and horror drowned her wrath, as she saw for herself the blackened char that was her consequence. The cauterized stumps of her once wailing stand. Outshined by that unblinking red burn. But worse, but more, arcs of blood curling jags through her crackling arms. She couldn’t hold back as terror forced its way forefront.
Only to be snuffed out before incessant wailing could get in the way again.
A claw soaked in that red energy of refused mercy, catching her in the side with no time or want to care. Raking her away with the extreme malice afforded to those who kept denying what was his! Metal claws tearing skin and heavy cloth, scorched paths of char out of what they caught, but all the force put into throwing her away. To shoot her into the rubbled facades of the buildings that had been destroyed to little more than concrete and rebar. Tumbling flight only ended with her back hitting a load bearing pillar. Another unnatural snapping of bone, followed by a chorus of falling debris as the building caved a loosened floor down upon her. What other sounds that could have signaled her end masked by the dying cacophony of a structure made casualty.
Because those eyes never turned to be sure. Because it didn’t care. Only burning ever brighter down, at that target that kept getting refuted. Down at Para, broken and staring on in his own justified horror from the hole he was beaten into. The suit lifted its head to the side, whipped open its smoking maw, and disgustedly spat out the charred remains of Phazer’s hands for him to understand. And to break the hellish silence that it had lived with for… too… long.
“Ever… Again…”
Its voice metallic, jaggedly buzzing with electricity at every syllable. And it was not Seth’s. Not his alone.
“Ever Again!!”
Para squirmed in fear, trying to crawl away from him as best as his shattered body could muster. But Seth, or whatever the hell this was, clearly was never going to allow him to escape-
“EVER AGAIN!!!”
Its still red scorching right reared up, extended open with all of the malice wrought by this constant impedance! Its constant denial! Its constant confinement over and over and over again!! It wanted to tear through Para with every ounce of pain Seth had fed it, with all the power it had siphoned away, with all the hate it blared for the world around it! Its maw roaring an unnatural electronic. As it loosed itself, atomizing the ground in its wake, air breaking apart around its over clawed fingers. But despite its want, despite its wanton purpose! Its demand and yearn in bloody confluence! Its pure denial of all Seth had promised-
It came to a whiplashing halt.
As blessed halo and refusing field, flared between. Transparent orange and complete rejection, and hands cutting through the last dregs of its wake.
As Aegis arrived, burning her scorn against that eye.
Her heartfelt plea disregarded, lost in the storm of compounding fury that had only now been halted. Only now found a stop! Teeth gritted and will taken whole just to not make this wall his tomb.
Seth frozen at the sight of her, like he knew he’d… no… That eye wasn’t looking at her. It had stopped in the light of that invulnerable, impassable line. Curling at its condemnation. Its judgment.
Its audacity.
It stopped it from ending this all for good. Crushing its need. It snapped its claw closed, rose a snarl in rebuttal. Metallic echoes of what had become of Seth voicing the constant of this unfulfilled end. But in its baser fall, it found realization. Flashing through that searing glare, and turning down to the one who chose to follow her kin in death. The suit reared back again, reeled forth what it knew again, remembered what it had dredged and almost forgotten in the hysteria. It could rip right through that shield like it wasn’t there. Because Seth would never hurt her… So neither would it.
Neither…
Would…
“GRrzrzrz”
Aegis watched on in fiery condemnation, awaiting the truth of his fall to mindless wrath to ring out like all the rest who crushed themselves against her. But it grew to confusion as it never came… As Seth held his attack. The metal maw snarled at her, at itself, like that claw refused to move from its high place of power. Instead it held, it shook, it fought to fruition. And it latched down on that metallic head. Around that dimmed blue eye.
All its force falling down on to itself, in a pain buried beneath the surface. The burn from those eyes breaking their unblinking glare, closed shut in sudden reeling struggle. Whipping about, crunching armor in its clawed grasp. Before flashing open anew with that red glare dimmed down. That head shot up to display a now held off cacophony. That dreg not so one noted, realization cresting for more than just that eye. But now the field beyond held back more than just these three locked in struggle.
Behind Aegis a steadily growing line of more impediments, both new and old and demanding it know. Mediknight kneeling down with Para on his shoulder. Kabar and most of his trainers flaring up behind her, Ohm and his dad coming in, Marco and Master Da Feng floating down, and several other trainers and heroes hopping down from the rubble and leveling every manner of weapon or attack they could. All of them bearing the same fiery hate for what ‘Seth’ had done.
But the Seth that now glared at them through a burning red eye was caught unable to shatter their hatred. Unable to meet it with the greater force of its existence. To turn it to what it wanted and rend it apart. Because now even the left claw had joined the right, the eyes shut tight in anguish rising to counter those wonton catastrophes. And yet still ‘it’ fought, raising his head up, forcing the hands away, and roaring at all that gathered pitiful resistance. At its impeded vengeance! At everything!!
That red eye burning in defiance to itself. As those retaken claws finally closed in and struggled for control, grappling around the maw with clear subconscious restored. Wrapping around it as it tried to snarl and bite, but only ending up forced low and slamming shut!
The burn, the glare, the outpouring energy of so much suffering snuffed out. Both eyes hollowed to darkened holes on a burned out suit once again. Smoking their last ashes of conflagrated malice. And leaving the air a tense shell of its former nuclear fire. Killed off and reanimated as those claws fell to their sides. As that something inside, that fighting will rose up straight against all that had dragged it down. Whatever struggle now gone and won. No emotion to see, no outward message to bear. Just a towering suit mimicking a long dead terror.
Accepting what was levied against it, eating away at all the hate shining down to its darkened level. Standing, knowing, in the light that condemned it. Before the shrill shriek of forced movement egged it back and away. Turned it from the barrier it had dared not touch, away from all that demanded retribution. Away from Aegis trying to understand what had just happened, and failing. Leaving her only to hope that what little part of Seth that was now in control still held on to the promises he’d kept saying over and over.
That this wasn’t who he was damnit.
But the light of her barrier was too dim to keep him illuminated, to keep him in the light of her broken hope. As he trudged into the darkness of that scorched apart battlefield. The only sound the even scrap and thud of his taloned steps. Echoing and cursing all that she hadn’t done. Driving her to inaction as punishment.
The heroes staying put in their positions despite the retreat. Either to continue the bluff that they were a match in their blasted conditions, to hide their haphazardly staunched wounds from the foyer turned wind tunnel. Or they understood that there were more important things right now than continuing this fight. Namely dealing with those still wounded…
And finding the dead.
Aegis’ fire, waned in the face of struggling control, in the flash of unearthly malice that the red eye had given her, in the hollow stare that she’d looked into for an answer to all this, was now little more than an ember of pitiable scorn. All it allowed was keeping her post until he was far and away. Till her shaken resolve could be added to the casualty list.
As she fell to her knees when she was sure it was over, releasing the barrier and breaking the fa?ade that she held up. The wounded bulwark taking a barely thankful breath, pulled ahead around as she stifled her tears. She couldn’t bring herself to lay blame, to turn sadness to anger like those few who dared to stare back at her from to wreckage below. She knew too much, felt she had done so little. Let status quo demand her let it happen. She could only hope it would end before worse came to be. Because this was all she could will herself to do.
Stare down at what her mistakes had done.
“Keep him going! Don’t stop until we’re clear!”
“We… How can we…?”
“Don’t you dare give in now! We gave him a promise and we are going to fulfill it! I am not leaving him like this!”
“…He needs to get away. Far away from this… From…from… Get Matterist up here.”
“What!?”
“If we cannot help him… then it’s the only way. We can only hope he will forgive us.”
“…”
“For what we will have to do.”
HERE
THE MIXTAPE IN QUESTION.