Shatter and Thunderclap

A.K.A Chapter 12

The ensuing fights didn’t even last a minute. The second Quakes clawed feet touched the ground he was already in action. His tail popped over his shoulder and shot towards Gillians face, whose eyes widened and instinctively leaned back. Gelid stuck her hand in front of her face at an angle, creating a wall of weak ice.

It did its job, diverting Quakes drill safely to the side before shattering. The two leapt backwards. If they were going to win this fight, it’d be from range. Two shots rang out, both of them narrowly dodged by a hair’s breadth. He ran forward on all fours, only to be interrupted by a wall of ice sprouting in his path.

Iron claws found purchase, even in the durable ice, and he scrambled to the top. Just as he crested the barrier, it disappeared, melting into the ground like it had never existed.

‘Clever bitch!’ He growled inwardly.

He was a sitting goose.

“Nice one Gel!” Gillian crowed as she took aim. Little rat couldn’t dodge in mid-air. Her brown eyes stared down the sights at his falling body. Weighed down by his metal bone structure, he fell faster than usual.

Still easy pickings for someone of Gillians caliber.

‘Like fish in a barrel.’

Barrel of the gun lined up with Quake’s eyeball, she pulled the trigger.

Quake whipped around, armored tail covering his body as he curled into a ball. The bullet that would have taken his head off, bounced off the spinning machinery and into the craggy rocks to her left, where it shattered a large boulder to smithereens and carried off into the distance.

‘Dammit!’

The storm overhead started to pick up steam. Lightning beamed across the sky and thunder started to roar.

This wasn’t good, the stupid beast could deflect her gun fire. Worse, it seemed to be taking inspiration from it. Landing with a surprisingly soft thud, Quake darted over the shattered boulder and grabbed one of the smaller pieces, which dwarfed his body, and lifted it over his head. Rearing his arms back, he hurled it straight at them.

“Gelid!”

A chunk of ice formed in front them barely stopped the rock. It dropped in front of them, obscuring Quake from their view for a split second, which was all he needed.

Running after the projectile, he lined up his body with it and shifted the iron from his drill to form a smaller one on his hand. Jumping forward he pierced through both the rock and the ice.

Gillians instincts kicked in again and she threw up her gun to block the metal coated limb. At the start of the fight, she blocked him with ease, now? The gun was almost stripped from her hands. A deep rent was carved through the steel. Steel augmented by her own power to be tougher than normal.

‘Dammit, he’s getting stronger as he fights.’

A blue pillar plowed into Quakes ribs from below and pushed him into the sky. He winced a bit. It hurt, but overly so. His weight worked to his advantage here, the wind did shove him a bit, but not enough to carry him off the mountain.

Gillian didn’t bother to fire at him. He’d already displayed his ability to dodge gunfire. Instead, she opted to stock up on ammo. Gelid focused her power and extended the ice pillar to encompass them, then added a top layer to the dome several meters thick. Mostly due to Quake’s tail drill expanding in size again and the nasty expression on his face.

He landed drill first onto the ice, cracking it, sending vibrations down the walls and into the feet of the two women. They were professionals though and ignored him. Gillian stuck out her hand and motioned with her fingers. Small, bullet shaped hailstones formed inside the chambers of the gun.

“We’re going to have to surprise him.” Stated Gillian.

“Alright. Are we doing the Ice Field maneuver?” Asked Gelid.

She nodded. “You’re going to have to push yourself in this fight. All that matters is that he dies. We may still be able to salvage the situation back at base, if I can spin the situation right.”

Gelid looked nervous but nodded. Truthfully, Gelid was the stronger combatant out of the two of them, and Gillian knew it, but she lacked the confidence to lead and was most content when following orders. That was part of what made her so perfect in Gillians eyes.

So docile and malleable.

She’d need to put a ring on that if they got out of this alive.

Pecking her girl on the cheek, she motioned for her to continue with their plan.

Up on top of the dome, Quake was getting frustrated. The stupid ice kept regenerating. It would take him ages to break through at this rate, which wouldn’t be ideal. The storm was starting to pick up some serious steam now. Lightning was now a permanent fixture on the dark blue backdrop of the sky and the roar of thunder had become a constant.

He looked down through the foggy ice and couldn’t make out anything. He decided to jump down and dig from underneath them.

“Hey mutt!” He whipped his head around just in time to cross his eyes and focus on the bullet nanometers in front of his nose. He tilted his head out of the way. Was it his imagination or was that slower than before?

“Come and get me!” Yelled Gillian, firing another shot that was promptly dodged.

The other girl was still encased in ice, and judging from the ice pillar rapidly rising out of the ground to meet him, not needing to come out anytime soon.

Slashing through the frozen water with enlarged claws, he hurled to cut-off chunk at Chief Bitch’s head. More ice rose to block.

‘So, bitch-in-command is acting like a control center? That’s gonna be a problem.’ He thought to himself as another bullet whizzed past his head, slower than before.

Instincts flaring, he took a short hop off the ground. A thin sheet of ice spread out with the dome as it’s epicenter in a one hundred meter radius. Sleet poured down on top of the permafrost, creating a dazzling, blinding flash of millions of crystals all around him as lightning practically poured out of the sky like a waterfall.

‘I can’t see anything.’

Blinded, spikes of ice slammed into his body. Only his natural toughness stopped him from being impaled in every direction. As it was, they still cut deep. Blood began to seep out of his wounds. He roared in pain, though it was lost over the yell of thunder.

His drill slammed down onto the ice. Suddenly he could see. For a certain measure of the term ‘see’. It would be more accurate to say that he had total awareness of everything on the ground. Vibrations ran through the length of his tail providing him with the location of everything on the mountain. He could see Gillian, back against a pillar of ice, holding her gun over her head backwards and shooting at him. Quite accurately too, she wasn’t half bad with that toy.

Further down the mountain he could see James and the rest all making their way down to the Dragonfly.

Across the mountain and looking down at them, to his surprise, was Hiro. He was staring directly at them, was he going to help?

Hiro gazed down at them, then inclined his head to look at the small object in his hand. Turning away, he continued down the mountain.

‘Hmph, coward.’ Quake spat as he sliced a bullet in two.

Multiple spears rose out of the ground, scoring nicks and cuts all over as he twisted his body like a professional gymnast. The extreme temperature didn’t bother him, only the rough jagged edges of the ice.

‘This isn’t working. I need to be smart about this. Only my tail and claws can destroy that ice. That’s three methods of that I have. She can make more than three, and every time I focus on one, the other attacks.’

He jumped into the air and used his drill as a shield.

‘They must be coordinating someh -OW’

A bullet slammed into him from behind. It felt like the mammoth had just swung its almighty fist into his head.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’

He stumbled forward. Ice rose out of the ground in a complicated pattern. Little pings rang off of them in turn and he realized what was happening just as another bullet slammed into his stomach. Steel burst from the soles of his feet and secured his position on the ground.

Inspiration came like a flash.

‘I’ve got it!’

Gillian let out a cool, misty breath that was immediately whisked away by the fierce winds howling across the mountain. The layer of ice that covered her body was cold, but necessary. Gelid was working hard, constantly attaching, breaking and reattaching the ice to the ground to keep her anchored to the slope. She didn’t need to reload like this. Ice covered the gun as well, allowing Gelid to sense when she was out of ammo, and create more hailstones as ammo.

Aiming in a random direction, she trusted Gelid to take care of the rest. Years of working together had provided them with a level of coordination that was unparalleled by any soldiers in their division. The bullet flew forward, unimpeded by the supersonic winds blustering around. Pillars of ice with specially placed notches rose out of the ground in its path. Ricocheting off of them, the projectile was almost dodged, but three ice spears rammed into the animal’s side. Unable to dodge them all, he chose to allow one of the spears to penetrate his skin and deflected the bullet.

So, the little bugger knew that she was more dangerous? Smart.

What was it doing?

Quake was pissed, he was also extremely happy.

Pissed, because people were shooting and stabbing him.

Happy, because the people shooting him and stabbing him were about to had their heads ripped off.

He leaned over on all fours. His cable tail unspooled from his back, tripling in length and the coiled wire came undone, each strand separating to form a cat o’ nine tails. On the end of each of these wires, was a small drill about the size of a fist. One of them dipped down and rubbed against the ground, providing him with his vibration sense. The others spread out and stayed stationary, swiveling like security cameras, searching for any signs of misconduct.

‘Now where is she?’ His senses registered someone putting their foot down.

‘There.’ He ran on all fours, zig-zagging to throw off Gillians aim, the explosive movement throwing him from side to side faster than her eyes could see, almost appearing to teleport forward.

Pillars of ice, some flat and aiming to knock him back, others sharp, looking to turn him into a pincushion, rose from every direction. He sensed all of them the microsecond they began to form. The smaller drills darted forward to meet them, not smashing through them, just pushing the tip against it and spinning was enough to break it like glass.

Gillian began to panic, as did Gelid.

‘No, no, no!’ Quake was on her now, bearing down with razor sharp claws. She looked into his black eyes and found nothing, except for his overbearing intent to kill. It weighed down on her like a physical force. Her gun wouldn’t make it time to block, had he gotten faster or was his lethal intentions so great it kept her from blocking?

Either way it didn’t matter, She squeezed her eyes shut.

Inside the dome, Gelid could feel all this happening and panicked.

Gillian was going to die.

Gillian was going to die and she couldn’t stop it.

How was she supposed to live without her?

Eyes wide, she flexed her might and focused her power on the enemy.

Ice answered her call

Time seemed to slow to a crawl for Quake as he inched forward. Rain hung suspended in the sky and lightning lethargically painted itself across the dark canvas above them. Clouds above and below.

Then he felt it.

The deep, shivering freeze.

All over his body. He couldn’t stop it.

Every atom in his body was being slowed to a crawl.

Ice began to spread from inside his body. Covering his internal organs and covering his eyes. His lungs filled with ice.

Panic spread through his body like a wildfire.

He tugged at his limbs. No dice.

He tried shifting metal. Nothing.

The temperature of his body dropped to absolute zero.

‘N-need to break this ice’

Even Quakes thoughts were being frozen.

‘N-need to s-shatter it to pieces’

‘….need to..’

‘….shatter’

He let out a growl of distorting metal and pushed!

The ice surrounding his body [shattered], twinkling into millions of pieces.

The shattering didn’t stop there.

The dome of ice that protected Gelid fractured to pieces immediately.

The entire mountain shook as Quake’s power roared through it. Deep within the depths of the mountain, magma bubbled and boiled as the shifting rocks caused it to rise to the surface faster and faster. Even over the howling of the wind, everyone, even Jeck and Avanos, who were miles away floating above an abyss, could hear the bang, as the mountain blew it’s top off.

Rock and magma were hurled miles into the air. Ashes mixed with the already brewing hypercane to form a volcanic storm of titanic proportions.

Quake didn’t hesitate for a second. Turning away from Gillian, he raced towards a now defenseless Gelid, who was panicking at the lava lapping at the hastily created ice platform.

Gillian raised her arm and fired at him. It wasn’t nearly fast enough.

Crossing the distance before the bullet could make it a third of the way there, Gelid had a look of surprise on her face as he pushed one of his tail drills into the side of her head and out the other.

Gillian choked on her own gasp.

Quake glared dispassionately as the ice platform he now stood on melted into the flowing stream of lava.

It tickled.

“You…” She choked out, face progressively getting more and more red, grinding her teeth together.

“You little FUCKING RAT!” Howling in fury, she directly at him, heedless of the lava and lightning raining down around her. Quake let the corpse on his tail sink into the lava and moved to meet her in the middle.

‘On her own, she was nothing special’ Quake thought on all fours.

It was interesting, he mused, to be able to see his own growth as he fought. The lightning that once appeared and disappeared in blinding flashes now seemed to be easily observable to the naked eye. Gillian herself was practically moving in slow motion.

He dodged out of the way of a bullet, stopped in front of her, then caught the next between his teeth.

He cut a fearsome figure despite his diminutive stature. Head tilted slightly, mouth slightly agape, due to bullet lodged between razor sharp teeth. Fur stained with blood and dirt and eyes that seemed to pierce through you without even acknowledging you were there, as if you weren’t worthy of recognition as a person. The slope put them directly face to face, about an arm’s length away.

Something caught his attention. It was a feeling of apprehension, like the second before a heavy object hit the ground. Something was off, but what?

‘The lightning’ He noticed.

‘It’s going the wrong way.’

Indeed, above them, lightning reversed mid-stroke and electricity raced towards a focal point. Even the power of the volcano eruption was being redirected to it.

‘What the..?’ Was all he managed to think before an unholy, white light lit up the surrounding area and he nearly had his eardrums blown out.

Blinking the spots out his eyes he turned back to Gillian who had recovered too. She growled and fired another shot. This one moving so slowly, he wasn’t sure it was moving at all. He waited for what felt like an eternity, but in reality took less than a millisecond.

The bullet bounced off his eyeball.

Gillian, eyes widened in shock, then she sighed, resigned to her fate.

“Just get it ov-“

Quake swung his arm and lopped her head off.

He spat the bullet out. It didn’t taste nice at all.

Battle practically forgotten, he started to make his way down the mountain. As he bounced from rock to rock, he pondered over his experience in the ice and wondered if all concepts were a strange as the one he just met.

***

……even Quakes thoughts were being frozen.

‘N-need to s-shatter it to pieces’

‘….need to..’

‘….shatter’

Suddenly he was somewhere else and he could breathe again. He looked around.

He was in a fairly normal looking apartment building. A couch with a few cushions scattered about. An empty yogurt tin sat on the coffee table in front of it. The T.V was on, displaying a man with a large green coat resting on his shoulders. A small kitchenette was off to the side.

Running water broke Quake out of his stupor. Out of the bathroom walked a tall man with dark skin, like Gillian. Curly black hair and a pair of aviators sitting on the bridge of his nose, tilted down to stare directly at him. The two gaped for a moment.

“Oh my god, how long were you waiting?” Cried the man. “Come sit down, come sit down.”

Quake looked around again, blinking in surprise as he was suddenly sitting on the sofa.

The strange man pulled up a chair from the kitchenette and sat down across the coffee table.

“Sorry about that, you got here a little quicker than I expected and,“ He paused, taking in Quakes confused expression. “Is this your first time in the tower? My god it is, no wonder you’re so confused.”

“Who the hell are you? Where am I? What happened?” Quake leapt off the seat and slammed into the seat. Whipping himself around, he jumped off the couch to grab this guys throat and landed back on the couch.

‘What’s going on?’

“’What’s going on?’ is what you’re thinking, right?” Quakes shocked expression was all the confirmation he needed.

“Well don’t worry, I’ll explain everything. As for your first question,” He pointed his thumb at himself. “I am Shatter, a Shatter. You’re currently in our apartment building. What happened? You made an appointment for an interview. Sought me out, subconsciously or not, you asked for me, so here I am.”

Quake narrowed his eyes as he tried to focus.

“I..what? I don’t get it. Made an appointment? An interview for what exactly?”

Shatter smirked. “An interview for your first Aspect.”

Comprehension dawned on Quake. This was how Jeck got his Aspects.

Wait, he never mentioned anything about an interview though.

“So how does this interview thing work exactly?”

Shatter waved him off with a laugh.

“This ‘interview’ is a formality at best. We just like to get to know who we’re giving our powers to. Like a battle royale, we like to see who can beat who and what-not. It’s a bit of entertainment for us. Haven’t found a winner yet, but my gut feeling says it’ll be soon, so I want another dog in the fight.”

“Us?”

“Concepts, kid, you know what that means?”

“You guys are like ideas, right?”

Shatter wobbled his hand back and forth in a ‘so-so’ motion.

“Eh, sort of. We’re…weird, we exist out of all temporal and special constructs. All of reality is merely participating in us. To give you an example of what we are, a square is only a square because it participates in form of Square, she’s my next-door neighbor, by the way, lovely gal.”

Quake looked up at him, trying to puzzle it out.

“So, you guys are gods?”

Shatter shook his head, walked outside onto the balcony and motioned for Quake to join him. Spinning around and pointing at the looming apartment building, he turned to Quake.

“Y’see that? That’s where we live, You see how every level is divided into floors?”

Quake risked a glance up at it. Up on the top floor, he seen someone looking down at him waving. It was me.

Hi Quake!

He found himself with a headache and looked away quickly while nodding. How did something have a set size, yet never end?

“Well, we’re on the first floor. Beings like myself can’t get to the second floor without permission, like how you weren’t able to get here without my permission. I’m a platonic concept, but I’m still not even an ant compared to what you find on those floors above me. There are concepts that I use to describe things, imagine what they use? Probably goes all the way to the top, if it has one.”

How were we on the first floor if this thing never stopped?

“What’s below us?”

Shatter put a hand on his patchy chin and rubbed it.

“Interesting question, I guess you could say that everything is below us? This apartment doesn’t exist in any spatial or temporal constructs like universes or fictional works, well, apart from this one, but that’s only because the writer on this floor is writing it. It’s,” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “Look, let me put it like this, you have your dimension, your universe, adjacent dimensions, your multiverse, your omniverse, then you have the next dimension, which is infinitely greater than that, and the next one, which repeats the process.”

“Then once you get past them, you’ve got the aleph-one, then aleph-two, these are something to do with cardinality and a lot of complex math that I don’t fully get, anyway, go past aleph-infinity and you’ve got some kind of consciousness thingy where all natural laws come from, there’s a whole bunch of narratives down there too, then you finally reach the basement of this apartment building, get it?”

He really, really didn’t, but his headache was starting to get worse. He closed his eyes in pain.

“I…okay, yeah, can we go back inside?”

Shatter chuckled at the nosebleed that was starting to form in Quakes nose.

“Hah, didn’t think so. Yeah, come on.”

Just appearing back where they started didn’t phase Quake this time. Shatter reached over to a tissue box and handed one to Quake to wipe his nose.

“Now, you look like a fun little critter, lot of potential, so I’ll give you a bit of my power, just remember, you can only have a maximum of three at any time,” He frowned, “well, four really, but everyone and their mother chooses Death at first, not that his usually works, Layers and all, but still, must be nice being that popular”

He shook his head clear. “Anyway, rules of the game are, 3 Aspects at any one time, you can change aspects at anytime but don’t expect us not to get upset about it and finally, the most important rule.”

He clapped Quake on the shoulder and gave him a friendly smile.

“Is to have fun.”

….The ice surrounding his body [shattered], twinkling….

***

That was not at all what he was expecting. What the hell was all of that? Did Jeck go through that?

Stopping halfway down the mountain, just below the cloud layer obscuring the peak, he looked around. If he squinted, he could see the Dragonfly, off in the distance, hovering near the bottom of the mountain. They should be safe enough. The eruption was mostly focused on the opposite side of the hill.

He’d wait here for Jeck, he decided.

Wait, wasn’t he forgetting something?

‘If that bird was nesting, shouldn’t it lay eggs?.’

***

1 minute ago

Jeck leapt over the edge of the mountain and down the other side, behind him, he could feel the presence of Avanos, just over his shoulder.

‘This thing is faster than I thought.’

Bouncing down the rocks, body nearly parallel to the ground, as if he were running up the mountain instead of down it, he approached the bottom layer of clouds. Above him, the sky was turning dark. Thunder clouds sprang forth from the ether, called forth by the beating of Avanos’ wings.

Avanos sped up and lashed out with a wing, He jumped over it and watch as it carved a deep trench into the solid rock.

Whipping around, he brought his fingers to his lips and blew out a stream of fire. Rock and stone melted into magma from the sheer heat he spat. The storm king – or was it queen? Whichever it was, dodged out of the way with impossible speed.

‘Who the hell decided to make this thing that fast?’

Landing on the curve of the mountains spine, he stuck a hand out and wood burst out of the ground, several feet thick, curving, bending and branching off. This continued down the face of the mountain to the ground, trapping Jeck in a maze of vines, bramble and wood.

‘This should slow him down a little, plus it gives me a little more room to maneuver.’

Jumping from branch to branch, dodging Avanos’ attempts to shred him with his claws, he quickly made his way through the mist barrier separating the top half of the mountain from the bottom.

‘I’m wondering how Quake will fare. Sparring with you is one thing, fighting to the death is another.’

A laser was dodged by a hair’s breadth.

‘Kids got scary potential, he’ll probably do fine.’

The laser burned bright, igniting the timber Jeck was using as a running track. It lapped at his feet, chasing him down.

‘Hot, hot, hot! What I wanna know is how this thing has a Layer. I tried enforcing [death] on it at the start of the fight and it didn’t work.’

‘The reason you didn’t target the two women being?’

‘I didn’t want to. I thought it’d be a good learning opportunity for Quak- woah.’

‘Oh my.’

Having breached the layer of clouds, Jeck could see what was on the other side of the mountain stretched out before him. Forest continued on for miles, until it suddenly stopped. Inky blackness expanded out to the horizon, creating a line so straight you could have used it as a ruler. It was a little jarring to see. It was like someone scooped the night’s starless sky into a bucket and emptied it into a basin on earth. The pitch black abyss left the horizon and met the ground where a shelf of rock hung out over it.

‘That’s the Drained Ocean? That’s so cool! I gotta check it out.’

‘Be careful, you’ve still got the bird to deal with.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’

Avoiding a bolt of lightning, now coming down like rainfall, he leapt onto another branch and dodged Avanos’ wing swipe by running around. Underneath the branch and now defying gravity, he flipped onto the ground and began sprinting for all he was worth.

Avanos came in at an angle, lashing out with a talon and catching Jeck right across the back. The attack cut right through his clothes and into the skin, already he could tell that Avanos was stronger than any other person he’d fought before.

He hissed in pain.

‘Shit. This thing is strong. If I don’t kill it now, it’s gonna head back up to the mountain top. I won’t make it in time if it does.’

The rain was torrential, coming down as a solid layer rather than individual raindrops. Yellow flashes lit up the sky, not that he could see it, but the flood of energy coming from the sky was impressive.

He brought two fingers to his lips. Gouts of flames shot out at the avian in concentrated streams.

Avanos flapped its wings and soared over it, then dived and slammed into Jeck, who rolled and managed to get back onto his feet and keep running.

He draped a finger tip along the ground. Stones, blunt and sharp flew as though launched from a cannon.

The bird swerved, twirled and flipped over every single one of them.

Jeck cursed and, by [comprehending] the clouds method of creating electricity, fired a bolt of lightning from his hands. Avanos squawked as she seen it coming but couldn’t move out of the way. It’s slammed into her and vaporized the trees behind her. Smoke obscuring her form.

‘I hate doing that. It’s so cheap.’

Avanos pulled herself out of the smoke, looking like the blast did nothing more than ruffle her feathers.

He picked up the pace running now that she was truly pissed at him. Bursting through the tree line he skidded to a stop on the hanging rock formation over the void. As he did, a weird feeling came over him. It took him a while to place exactly what was wrong.

‘There’s no air here. It’s a vacuum.’

Luckily, he didn’t need air. Didn’t need a lot of things that most people did.

He looked around, nowhere to go.

Forward, left and right all led into the abyss.

Backwards?

Avanos landed on the shelf, cutting off any thoughts of running backwards. She roared as she stepped forward menacingly. As she did, oxygen slowly returned to the area, permeating the vacuum.

He didn’t need his Aspect to put the logical conclusion together.

‘I understand now, the trees on that mountain could only survive at those heights because this species of bird creates its own atmosphere. These birds evolved to fly through space.’

Interesting to note but it didn’t really help him here. Taking the initiative, he flashed forward and took a short hop and threw a punch directly at her chest. It lifted her off the ground and threw her backwards.

Instead of landing she threw her wings out and arrested her momentum in mid-air. Screeching, she flapped her wings and let gravity take hold of her.

Jeck’s eyes widened as her enormous foot cast a shadow over his face. Yelping, he threw himself out of the way.

Avanos stomped again, the lashed out with a sweeping wing that threatened to bisect him, he strafed around her foot and ducked her wing.

They clashed, over and over again. Jeck too quick and agile for Avanos, Avanos too fast and tough for Jeck.

A loud boom rattled the area, shaking them both to the core. Reaching out with his senses, Jeck caught sight of the volcano erupting and mixing with the storm.

“Quake!”

Capitalizing on her opponent’s distraction, Avanos leapt into the air and fired her laser.

Not at Jeck, at the base of the overhang, right where it connected to the cliff.

Jeck could only watch in horror as the ground he was standing on joined the rest of the volcanic eruption, tumbling into the void.

Avanos gave him one last sneer as she took off, weaving through the falling rubble with preternatural grace.

Furious, he desperately sought a way to turn the tables. She was faster than him, even if he made it back to the clifftop, she’d have still killed everyone there before he could intervene.

Unacceptable.

‘I’m not losing anyone else again.’

He only had one option then, to take the fight to her.

He sprinted along the edge of the rock as it slowly made its way into the abyss. Once he reached the edge closest to the cliff face, he jumped.

Landing on another piece of falling rubble, he bounced off them like a pinball speeding upwards into the sky.

Emerging from the bottom layer of clouds, into a swirling tornado of volcanic ash, he quickly located Avanos’ form, white outline on black, distinctly different from the energy around it, winging her way towards the peak.

Gathering power, he launched her own laser back at her. He hated using his [comprehension] Aspect, but he couldn’t turn it off, and this time he was actually protecting somebody.

Shrieking as the laser singed her feathers, she turned around sped after him. The rocks flying down from the sky seemed to slow down as they both pushed themselves to their limits.

He continued bouncing from rock to rock, and, at one point, bounced off a lightning bolt as it sailed past him.

Avanos kept up with him. Flying around like a jet, crashing through rubble and shooting off beams of pure energy.

Muscles burning, Jeck came to a realization.

‘I can’t win. Not like this, I’m not strong enough. She’s going to pull the floor out from underneath me and these boulders won’t last forever. I have the speed to hit her, I just need the power.’

All around him, energy lit up the sky, both above and below.

‘And I know where to get it.’

Abandoning his fight with Avanos, he ascended into the sky, faster and faster, until he launched himself into the dark clouds above, hiding him from view.

[Comprehension] let him understand how things worked.

If he knew how something worked, he could replicate it. Technology, powers, biology and everything else.

He knew that Quake’s drill passively absorbed energy while it spun. It sucked in all the dust around him when he first encountered him.

He could replicate Quakes biology, but it required iron. Which he had.

The molten steel he tried to drink at the quarry.

Forming a small drill in his left hand and letting it pull energy in from both the hypercane and the volcanoes eruption, he grabbed a lightning bolt out of the sky with the other. He gritted his teeth in agony as the raw power flowed through his body. Lightning reversed its flow as it was drawn into his body.

The power vaporized his cloak, shirt and the bandages that covered his right arm. Bone saw the light of day for the first time in weeks.

His muscles ripped themselves apart as his body tried to contain it all.

The clouds parted around him like the Red Sea as he descended from the sky, thunderbolt held aloft in his skeleton arm.

Avanos, sensing him through the air currents, had come to the same conclusion and began charging her laser.

It was time to end this.

With a wordless roar, audible even above the storm, he launched the thunderbolt downwards.

Avanos’ eyes widened as the heaven’s fury pierced straight through her laser and crashed into her. The entire world lit up white for a brief moment, only Jeck and Avanos were observable as little more than two silhouettes.

Color faded back in as an earthshattering thunderclap roared in victory.

Jeck hung there, suspended in the air from the kick back of the attack, as Avanos’ smoking body spiraled into the abyss.

Panting, he tried to angle his body so that he landed on the surface instead of following his foe into the darkness.

Tumbling out of the sky and landing with a painfully solid thump, he desperately wished that he could pass out. Every muscle in his body trembled in pain from the power that coursed through it.

“Ow…Ghost it hurts.” He whined.

‘I’m well aware of that Jeck.’ Ghost sighed.

‘Do something about it.’ Jeck groaned pathetically.

‘I physically can’t.’ Ghost deadpanned back.

‘Ugghhh, what do I even pay you for?’

‘You don’t pay me, at all.’

In lieu of replying, Jeck took a quick look around the area to see who was coming for him….aaand of course they were waiting for him to come back.

‘This is gonna suck.’ Jeck thought to himself as he gingerly pulled himself off the ground.

‘Once,’ He thought to himself as he made his way up the mountain. ‘Just once, I’d like to be wrong when I say that.’

A rib twinged painfully.

‘Ow.’

***

Quake poked his head into the entrance to the cavern. Sure enough, there was the eggs he had speculated about. Three in total, dark, with whisps of purple coming off them. Lava pooled in an around the base of the eggs but they seemed unharmed by the events of his fight.

‘Better get these things down before momma bird comes knocking.’

Uncoiling his tail, he created three new strips of cable and wrapped them around the eggs. Lifting them gently off the ground, he padded softly on all fours back down the slope. Letting his drill touch the ground, he felt the slow approach of two feet, rhythmically limping along the ground.

‘There he is.’

A minute later he came hobbling over the hill.

“Woah, what the hell happened to you?” They both exclaimed.

Quake looked at Jeck, shocked. He’d never seen the human have so much as his hair ruffled unless he wanted it.

To see him shuffling forward slowly, covered in dirt, grime and blood, right arm replaced with bone?

It was almost unthinkable, so divorced from the invincible mental image he’d created in his head that it took him a minute to process what he’d seen and heard.

“What do you mean what happened to me? What happened to you, what happened to your arm?!” Quake shouted.

Jeck narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What happened to my arm? Oh! You’ve never seen me with the bandages off, have you? No, this is what it normally looks like.”

He held up his arm and wiggled his fingers, laughing at the misunderstanding.

“Haha..oof…my everything.”

He grimaced in pain.

“As for the rest, well, that’s just a result of the fight, did you see it?”

“I’m pretty sure the people at the outpost could see it.”

“Dope, but enough about me, what the hell happened to you? Your way stronger now than you were a few minutes ago, you’re almost as strong as me! Great job.”

He reached out and ruffled the fur on Quakes head.

Quakes cheeks felt warm. He wasn’t happy or anything, and if he was, it certainly had nothing to do with Jecks praise.

Wait.

“Almost?”

“Yep,” Stated Jeck happily, “you’d still lose to me in a fight.”

Quake held up both hands in a placating gesture.

“Let’s not get hasty now.”

Jeck’s smile turned into an irritating smirk. “I’m giving this topic all the thought that it deserves, and the conclusion is obvious. If we were to fight, I’d win.”

“I’d beg to differ.”

“Then beg.”

Quake looked at Jeck. No comebacks were coming to mind so he did the next best thing.

He took one of his claws and poked Jeck in the chest with it.

“Ah you son of a whore.”

They continued arguing the rest of the way down the mountain until they found the Dragonfly. Jeck could sense immense power coming from the machine.

When they approached, James threw open the door and ran to greet them.

“You guys made it!? Where’s Gillian and Gelid? What happened to Avanos? What did you guys do?”

“Hey James, I’m fine thanks for asking.”

James grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. “Ahaha, that was totally gonna be my next question.”

All the other soldiers filed out of the vehicle and were now surrounding them. Jeck turned to Hiro. How to play this?

He decided to play dumb.

“Hey, wow, you found the source of power you guys were looking for!”

That clearly wasn’t what Hiro had been expecting him to say.

“Power? What power source? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said, panicking.

Jeck bulldozed past any objections with all the social grace of someone who hadn’t been near polite society for three years.

“Yeah man it’s right here.” Quick as whip he reached into Hiro’s pocket and pulled out a seed.

Hiro’s face turned into a rictus of fury for the briefest of seconds before he faked a laugh.

“Oh that? I found it just after Gillian started attacking us and must have forgotten about it in the excitement. Silly me. Hahaha…haha…ha….”

Jeck smirked internally, if looks could kill – Hoo boy, he’d be dead a million times over.

James pulled a data pad out of his pocket and gave the seed a once over.

“This is it. I can’t believe it. Hiro, thank you! You truly went beyond the call of duty, how could I ever repay you?”

Hiro’s smile was terribly stiff.

“All in a days work sir, as for my reward….I’d like to quit. This whole adventure has been enough for a lifetime, I want on the next train out of here.”

“Of course, I understand completely, this incident was quite unusual.”

Stowing the seed into his lab coat pocket, he turned back to Jeck and Quake to badger the story out of them.

As they finished recounting the events that had transpired, Jeck felt something, something large and fast and pissed.

“Fellas I have some bad news.”

Boom!

Everyone stumbled as the ground shook due to the force of Avanos’ landing.

“I don’t think I killed it.”

Quake gave him a look and hissed. “Yeah, we can tell.”

The bird’s eyes locked onto Quake, or more specifically, the three eggs he still held behind him.

“She wants the eggs back.” James whispered.

Seeing everyone frozen in fear, Jeck walked over to Quake and grabbed him. Marching him over a good thirty feet away from the Dragonfly, they gently deposited the eggs on the ground.

Avanos regarded them with suspicion before walking over to the eggs. She bent down and picked one up softly in her beak.

Quake stared at her. ‘How is she supposed to carry them all? She doesn’t have a pouch or anythi-‘

She swallowed the egg whole.

‘Never mind.’

Quickly repeating the process with the other two, she turned and regarded the group as a whole.

Jeck stepped in front them and pointed way from the group.

“Leave.”

Avanos stared at James for a second longer than everyone else, then took off with a flap of her wings.

Jeck let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank god she left, otherwise I would have had to go all Planned Parenthood on her.”

He mimed an uppercut. Then clutched his chest in pain.

“How do I keep forgetting about that?”

Quake sniggered at him, little bastard.

He limped back over to the vehicle. Then glared at everyone still standing around.

“Let’s get going already, I want a shower and some hot food already.”

At his behest they all piled into the Dragonfly and headed back to the outpost.

The next few days until Jeck and Quake left would be fairly quiet, a nice break from all the action.