Dust clouds bloomed into pink and orange, a beam traced through and haloing them apart, and melting line in front of a lifted armored foot. The stylized concrete burned away to glowing path as three heroes came bounding through the dust. 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 on her right, ice coating his hands and stare just as cold. Lastly Ziyou slammed down her left, all the joy sapped from her face, replaced with disappointment and condemnation. Phazer lowered her hand, but kept an obvious charge on it.

“You ought not to have done that kid!!”

Glaz gestured toward Para.

“Yeah! Para’s a piece of shit! But he’s our piece of shit!!”

Para twitched in his crater, regaining a little consciousness and turning on to his one not-broken arm to watch the proceedings. Ziyou never broke her aggressive stance as Phazer releveled her hand.

“And an attack on him is an attack on all of us! So don’t even think about crossing that line, just stand down and-”

The sound of metal crunching melted concrete as that step was taken in wanton defiance. She hardened off the insulting interruption.

“You asked for it then!!”

That hand flared without hesitation, a light red beam streaking into the suit’s shoulder, a burst of dissipating heat and recoil were all that resulted. The metal glowed slightly from the heat, but it was of no consequence. What was the problem... was that someone was getting in the way! That burning eye turned to her, another weighted step continued unabated, talons tearing through yet unblemished concrete. Phazer wasn’t impressed, but turned even harder down.

“Guess there’s nothing else to be done.”

She looked to each side, a silent acknowledgement from both her compatriots before suddenly raising both hands. A duel flare up and lock back into her chest, dazzling lights held tight and congealed and 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 struck the head, dissipating in a burst of heat and scattered light. Then the next twenty hit in quick sequence. A bright show of light and heat but again, like Hothead’s barrage, it amounted to nothing more than a distraction.

A foot went to lift again but stuck fast, the sound of creaking and condensing mist below the dazzle. The barrage let up as the head looked down, foot frozen solid to the path. The other foot 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 pulled up on simple reflex as an intricately drawn tiger came slamming hard into the side of the head. The ice at the feet shattered as the suit crashed down to the side, claw and teeth marks indenting into its surface. She’d been holding back even before, keeping her real strength in line with the competition, but now she was letting loose and using every bit she had.

The left stabbed down, chewed asphalt and concrete to retake control. Talons scarred that concrete turning back around, the animalistic movements from before rearing the head up hard. Living metal pulling itself up in an instant jerking refutation of its leveling 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 before her, a hardened immaterial defense that was raked with devastating effect. Shell splintering and dissolving in the right’s wake. The left rearing back and loosing a stabbing claw. But that defensive stance shifted in the ink split was her that 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 was judo flipped past, smashing down and cutting path away on its side. A claw forced down scraped away at momentum, but found the suit stopped sooner than expected. Another bout of condensing mist, but now the whole suit found moving a struggle. Frost creeping over the helmet and arm, trying to win out against the heat pouring from inside, Glaz denying that nova free reign.

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 launched forward, rushed by the sight of its obvious strain. Clear intent to finish this quick or be overpowered. 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. She leapt over, avoiding sweeping metal, but didn’t have a clear target to hit with her full punch. But that didn’t matter as a right 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. Right whipping away her like an underhanded catapult, skipping her across the path, the dragon on her arm dissipating as she focused on avoiding road burn. A sheet of ice met her as she neared her comrades, slide replacing scrape as the suit landed down. It righted 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 that began accumulating. It took 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. The blast was bigger, a cannon shot compared to a standard bullet, and near double in speed. A guard flashed up before it impacted, an understanding of the disparity immediately. Impact splattered the shot into streaks of light in outline, more heat and recoil forcing its way in. The parted streaks spilling about and melting holes into the path, into the buildings close by. Before the guard could shift down, a second shot struck it. Then another. And another.

The light show kept the burning eyes down, and the 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 that plasmic fire, bring that growl higher above as it drove the suit lower. Before it dropped out entirely, 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 missed and splattered concrete to smoking chunks. Sidewinding motions made 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 fire, charged another shot, a look of desperation on her face as the light died down. And 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! But Phazer’s charged up shot doubled in luminosity before the suit made it to her, only a few more feet separating them. 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. The hands shot up in an instinctual shield, 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 Phazer.

Ziyou was between them, a pillar of ice on her shoulder and a grim determination on her face. A lens like a tree trunk and long as a bazooka. And Phazer was already shooting into it.. The light from her hands refracting and focusing and refracting again. The blast becoming a beam of indiscriminate power, directed luminosity, and ultimate condemnation. And it was leveled at the chest reared back too high. The only thing it could do was watch as Ziyou mouthed out one final retort as the beam took its hold.

“Sorry about this kid.”

A sudden instant of splattering light, of directed heat and undeniable pressure, and a sudden lighting up of the night beyond as the beam burned through too fast for any sense to differentiate. Layer after layer buckled and melted away, threads snapping and deconstructing. And flesh rending away in haloing flare. Weight was nullified and thrown back, the beam burning its image in as it dissipated into the sky, and left in its path a gasping charred hollow. The suit crashed backward to where it originally started its charge, concrete chucks bashed apart in its wake. Dust draping over the battlefield once again. And Seth skidding to a stop face down… into a world of black.

He could feel again but he may as well have not even bothered. The pain, unlike anything he’d ever felt, was everywhere. Everything.. 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 reeled away only to break open what was already 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 could reach it. A chill rose counter, emptied him out and made him horridly aware. That something was gone from where it should be... and a true void was calling 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 glared down on him through the void that encroached on all sides, that had swallowed him whole and now dragged out his agony. He could make out figures arrayed against him, the devastation that surrounded them... and... Para. He was holding his face, struggling for purchase in the hole he had been left in, wincing and gritting against his own agony. He could still match his glare despite the loss of an eye, see him struggling against the only recourse left to stop his fall. Deadly force.

Seth understood it, he was dying. He could feel the gaping hole in his chest, edges screaming their loss and flooding out his mind. Blood defiantly percolating and sputtering through the cauterized cavity, muscle tensing and failing to flee the hollow void, that creeping cold spreading to every vain. His heart was gone, burned away and cored through his chest. The weight of the world was falling on his back yet again. But now… it was crushing. His arms strained to keep him up, keep him from falling into that true void that called over the one surrounding him. The only thing he could do was look out at the ones who no doubt did this to him and wonder... What happened? What did he-

“Just die already!”

That matching glare, that reciprocated eye, Para mouthing through his own pain, silent words that no one could hear. No one… but Seth. A connection forcibly made and forcibly blared, that match trying to strike again… and again. The abyss closed in around 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!”

Seth felt his blood move on its own, warmth defy creeping chill, the void recede where the 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 threads, metal and layer over top reconstructed in kind to fill that self swallowing gap.

“Fucking die!!”

His heart reformed and beat like an earthquake, lurched him against the weight pressing him down. And dropped his senses to a knife's edge... As those silent words stopped being silent.

“JUST FUCKING DIE YOU UNDESERVING BASTARD!!!”

The abyss closed like a trap around him, a cellophane mold that suffocatingly formed around him, till only his right eye stayed open to the world, but even that was not long for this world. Another fall, Seth being drug even deeper without moving the slightest bit, like everything he was, everything he is, was being consumed by the abyss, taken over completely, blotted out and subsumed. But he didn’t care. All that mattered, all that he knew, all that he could care about… Was tearing Para apart. Was breaking him open with all the power he denied him having. Was making him pay for every caustic insult and callous action. Was making him regret… everything. And so he let that abyss flood over him, take hold over him, let it throw his pain on to that wrathful fire to let it tower over all.

Feeling melted away, what was left of his consciousness fell back like all the times before. But the abyss now held sway where subconscious had kept its vigil, kept him focused and targeted on that one single goal. Kept him on the path he'd chosen for himself, even through this mud drenched detour of wanton vengeance. Now though, where self-control used to reign, now there was naught but the hell that had been wrought.

The strain of metal tearing open, a new rising grinding growl, an undeniable signal to the heroes that Seth was still active despite the fatal wound. That their attack had an effect, just not the one they hoped for. 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- *Bwwoooo*

The surviving streetlights illuminating the path flickered in sequence, escalating waves of power loss like an out of control tide. The suit seemed to steady itself, the burn in its eyes returning and growing in luminosity, illuminating the presumed grave they were consigned to. A wispy glow rising off like steam, turning the air into localized aurora that flashed to visibility with each darkening wave. A final wave turned the path to blown out darkness, ionization filling the dark like paths of color, before all those lights shattered their true overcharged deaths. Crystal dust refracting and refracting, glittering that aurora beyond its means… and melting to slag in its wake. The path was left to the cold night, save for Phazer’s charged up hands, the lights looking down from the Hill, and the plasma steam congealing around their opponent.

The edges of the suit began to illuminate with the burn in the eyes, a rising whir eliciting the sense of a charging up machine as it grew brighter and brighter. Arcs of electricity added 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 that aurora was siphoned away. As that red burning eye spread its weep to every edge of the suit, 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, confidence defiant of the danger, defiant that there was anything worse than what had already been done. But… he wasn’t the one in control anymore. Something worse was. Something that only knew-

“RRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!”

That metal maw exploded open, that glow crescendoed, and the world was caught in oppressive perception that none could escape. A sudden back blast of atomized concrete was all the warning the heroes got as the head whipped up like an out of control fire hose, as a beam of blood red plasma tore from it. Toward them. The beam snaked up the street in the barest fraction of a second, climbing the side of the buildings on their left, chewing a path of caustic fire through everything it touched. All before whipping back over again, as the heroes realized the peril they let rise. Glaz was the only one to act in time, a disparity in perception and an understanding of what was coming. He dropped the cannon and tackled his hesitating wife to the ground, as the beam flashed through the air her head used to occupy. Para looked back in ducking reflex as the beam cut into the stairs behind him, the glow of superheated material his only warning. As its path finally realized its demise. A fiery ribbon, overheated and loosed of its bonds, exploded in sequence. Buildings caved as their facades blew out, and burning rubble splattered across the battlefield, the stairs further scattered like shrapnel.

Para ducked again from the shower of smoking debris smacking into his already beaten form, painfully hacking at the dust filling air. He shot his head back up to the fight at hand, but went wide eyed as the horrid result came into view. 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 he froze and was forced to return to the sight beside him. Phazer finally rose in hurried fashion, but was stopped by the grim air permeating through the dust and fire. She turned in kind only to join her comrades in fear. As all of them looked upon the headless body of Ziyou still standing in her position. No blood, just a cauterized and smoking stump twitching off nerve impulses that arrived too late. Intention consumed by that wanton disparity. Nothing left of her but a limp body falling in on itself, crumpling to the ground like an empty shell. Those horrified stares and that tyrannical weight falling on to them was interrupted though, the hacking crunch and weighted scraping of the suit rising from its blasted position. Turning them from one horror to another, the burn in the eyes brighter than the smoldering debris. 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.

Shock and dread turned and melted, sparked like stones on steel, ignited already piled up tinder too long overdue, and bellowed by determination beyond simple strength. Phazer already had a pilot light on full blast, both hands overcharged and a-

“aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”

And a blast furnace in her heart wanting nothing but obliteration for that wrought 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 unbridled wrath. Shots splashed across the atomized concrete, lit up the path and everything still in it with every impact. But the ones that hit may as well have been misses, spatterings of light and heat over inscrutable metal. Shine out moded and wanting. The suit stepped out of its atomized crater, undeterred and unaffected by the shelling as it started forward. Titanic steps accelerating and crushing what was left of the path. 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 charging back at them.

The last of the ineffectual blasts streaked away as Phazer pulled both her hands back, focusing all that wrathful rise into another beam cannon. The light and melted dust from the blasts cleared 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. 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 from the cannon with recoil to match its new intensity, dust and fried air haloed away opposite its path. But that light scattering against acrid power firing out of that maw, new found control keeping it in line. An equal match, equal fires burning against each other, but not so equal fuel as the maw won out.

Light bunched and caved, was pushed back and out, streaks splaying off and burning more of the already ruined path, all the way back to its source. Phazer kept firing, but her beam was being pushed right back at her, all the way back to the cannon. She recoiled when she realized, releasing her beam to try and dodge, but the suit’s beam followed her path to the exact. It refracted and defocused, lost power and definition, but was too much for the ice to hold. Sheshot up a desperate guard as the beam hit the last lens and the cannon gave out. A wave of hardened red burned ice shattered and tore into Glaz’s shoulder, bashed Phazer at point blank, sending her to flying into the rubbled staircase behind Para. All while Glaz was writhed to the ground, 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. There was nothing left to get in the way and nothing was going to get in the way… Ever again!

It rose back up and stomped forward, talons cracking and tearing through what little solid concrete remained. Nothing stopping it, nothing between them, nothing- *SSHEEEEEhhhh* but a growing wall of ice. Glaz stood back up, arm wincing in pain but powered through. He'd slammed both hands to the ground, coating the entire area in ice, before forcing them both up to build that ice into shape. A foot thick wall blocked out the suit’s vision… Got in the way! A flashed up left dashing it like the weak defiance it was! Ice crunched and boiled as the suit charged across it, no more delays and no more pitiful impediments! Glaz fought his pain, folded his arms at his sides before shooting them up one after the other. Large ice spikes shot up in rapid succession, some set to intercept as the suit careened 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. Glaz realized the futility of his impromptu road hazard, shifting back again to prepare a last ditch construct.

He slammed both hands down, the crack of his shoulder eliciting an extremely pained grimace, but he did what he had to. The ice in front of him squared off and rose in a feet thick wall, rising painfully slow in the face of what was basically a charging metal laceroid. The last few feet were forced up as he launched his hands up from the ground, recoiling in neglected pain. 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 grew loud over everything. Before the wall shattered like glass. A pair of horns leading the way through. Glaz fell with his wall, onto his broken shoulder and under a spattering of quickly melting ice.

The suit pulled itself back up straight, maw leaking its overheated breath, left eye blaring through the icy fog. Glaz looked up from his broken spot on the ground, the ice raining around him reflecting the crimson light from that eye like it was the only bright spot left in the world. The suit paid no mind to him, he didn’t matter anymore, he wasn’t in the way anymore! But Glaz was having none of it. He crawled over, wincing at his broken arm, and reached out toward an armored leg, latching his hand to it. His hand seared upon the broiling metal, but ice quickly formed despite this. Hot metal screamed alongside creaking ice as the suit was seemingly locked down in desperate defiance. He was determined to slow Seth down no matter what… But Seth wasn’t in control any more.

The frosted foot rose, ice shattering away, scolding flesh to char. That oozing, malice soaked red bleed pouring out from the edges. 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 and that plate mail talon down upon him. It caught his neck and crushed it into the ground, turning it hard against itself and with a snap echoing through the darkness advancing down this dilapidated path. The hand burned up and fell limply away as Glaz gurgled what little air he could swallow. The suit pulled 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!!

Phazer pulled herself off the rubble of the Hill’s stairs, charging hands cutting through the still hanging dust. Stumbling over half charred stairs and crumbled concrete, she narrowly tripped into Para’s crater. He had a look of demanded attention, reaching out to her as she pulled away back to the fight. Snatch the pink border of her surplus pant leg, dragging her back as best he could. She looked back in anger at the audacity, but didn’t care to scold him in such a dire situation. A look drowning in pain and desperation, his voice a hushed 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… under that sickening, bone crushing snap.

She watched as the suit lifted its foot from on top of her dying husband’s neck, his head turned toward her against itself. She watched the light leave his eyes as foamed blood dripped from his mouth. Her horror reflecting in that burning red glare as it watched atoms strike beyond count, smash together over and over, burn themselves into a soup between it and its target. Her hands clenched 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 glare, calm red turned to a near matching energized burn. The energy in her hands flared up into her arms, veins scorching their paths as her skin failed to contain this conflagrating fury. The dust and fog on the battlefield was pushed away in inanimate fear, as her sadness erupted into a wail of stellar wrath breaking into true fusion. She slammed her hands together in front, open palms of pure uncontained light. The air rushed away from her wrath became physical, formed into a ball of light like a true newborn sun, coronal flares escaping malicious focus driving it bigger and bigger. The ground soon quaked as her feet cracked into the path, as all of her fuel was poured into that fire of all consuming wrath. But suddenly that small star narrowed down to a point, a flash compression, a frightening stillness, a darkened calm before all of it turned to-

*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

A column of red hued light swallowed the path, swallowing the suit in a deluge of its own doing. The darkness was burned away as that rival sun made its grand entrance, turning night to day for half the city. Windows and buildings closed off and empty for the night, scorched and shattered, Phazer not in control of her power and far from caring. Wailing from behind her wrath made manifest. But the deafening drone of this localized solar flare was under shadowed. Streams of lights flaked off at increasingly close distances, a masked rumble persisted through the torrential drone and grew closer. All while a pair of horns rose against the current of her handheld sunshine. She barely had time to see through her blind outburst as those horns cut closer and closer and the stomping of metal on melt and rubble grew louder and louder. Until those horns withdrew, the rumble stopped. And that metallic maw broke through the base of her stellar column.

In an instant it eclipsed her sunlight, the blackhole it had become now its own manifest. The solar storm ceased with jarring speed, another sun swallowed whole and leaving its mark burned into every retina. Phazer recoiled back, her eyes dimming from their energetic wrath. Her face turned from wailing anger to slow realization of pain, as the suit rose up from its chomp, 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 stared into the unblinking red burn that had just outshined her own. She couldn’t hold back as that terror became forced its way to-

“aAAH-“

But that terror was snuffed out as a right flashed over, the one soaked in that red energy of refused mercy, and caught her in the side. It raked her away with the extreme malice afforded to those who kept getting it the way! Metal claws tearing skin and heavy cloth, scorched paths of char out of what they caught, but all the force was 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. Her tumbling flight only ended with her back hitting a load bearing pillar that kept the building up despite itself. Another unnatural snapping of bone, followed by the chorus of falling debris as the building caved a loose floor onto her. What other sounds that could have signaled her end masked by the dying cacophony of a structure made casualty.

The suit never turned to be sure, it didn’t care. Its eye burned ever brighter down at that target that kept getting refuted. Down at Para, broken and staring on in horror from his hole. It lifted its head to the side and whipped it open, disgustedly spitting out the charred remains of Phazer’s still smoking hands for him to understand, and to break the hellish silence that now hung over the now pitch black battlefield.

“Ever… Again…”

Its voice was metallic, jagged, buzzing with electricity at every syllable. And it wasn’t Seth’s voice.

“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. 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. The maw roaring an unnatural electric roar as it loosed itself, the ground atomizing in its wake, air breaking apart around its clawed fingers. But despite its want and wanton purpose... it all came to a whiplashing halt. As a blessid field of translucent orange energy flared up in between, and a pair of hands cut through the last dregs of kicked up dust. Aegis had arrived.

Her expression was fire, her body language a raw message of scorn. Her heartfelt plea disregarded and lost in the storm of compounding fury that had only finally been halted. The suit froze at the sight, an invulnerable impassable line stopping it from ending this all. It snapped its claw closed, snarl at her arrival, metallic echoes of what had become of Seth voicing an impedance yet again getting in the way. But realization flashed through that searing glare. The suit reared back again, it remembered it could go right through that shield like it wasn’t there.

Aegis watched on in fiery condemnation, awaiting the truth of his fall to mindless wrath to ring out like all the rest. But it grew to confusion as it never came… as Seth held his attack. The metal maw snarled at her, at itself, as the claw refused to move from its high place of power. Instead it latched down on the head, around that dimmed blue eye, forcing it all down in a pain buried beneath the surface. The burn from bothy those eyes broke, closed shut from the now clear internal struggle. They flashed open, red glare dimming down as the head shot up to display a now held off rage. But now that field held back more than just the two of them.

Behind Aegis a steadily growing line up of heroes, both new and old, began to form. Mediknight kneeling down with Para on his shoulder. Kabar and most of his trainers formed and flared up behind her, Ohm and his dad coming in from the left, Marco and Master Da Feng the right, 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 greater force, to turn it to what it wanted. The right claw was joined by the left, the eyes shut tight in anguish. It raised his head up, forced the hands away and roared at the gathered heroes, at its impeded vengeance, at everything. That red eye burning in defiance to itself. But the claws finally closed in as something struggled for control, grappling around the maw with clear subconscious intent. They wrapped around it as it tried to roar one final time, but it was slammed shut and forced low. The burn snuffed out in the same instant, both eyes hallowed to darkened holes on a burned out suit. A tense moment killed fiery glares as the claws fell to their sides, as that something rose up straight, whatever struggle gone and won. There wasn’t any emotion, any outward message. There was just a towering suit mimicking a long dead terror.

It stood still for a long drawn moment, eating away at all those heroes’ hate, before the shrill shriek of forced movement egged it back and away. It turned from the barrier, away from all that demanded retribution. Away from Aegis trying to understand what was happening and failing. Only hoping that what little part of Seth that was now in control was done fighting and still held on to the promises he’d held himself to. The light of the barrier was too dim to keep him illuminated as he trudged into the darkness of that light burned battlefield. The only sound the even scrap and thud of his taloned steps. The heroes stayed put in their positions. Either to continue the bluff that they were a match in the blasted conditions, to hide their haphazardly staunched wounds from the foyer turned windtunnel. Or they understood that there were more important things right now than continuing this fight. Namely dealing with the grievously wounded… and the dead.

Aegis’ fire waned in the face of Seth’s struggling, in the flash of unearthly malice that the red eye had given her, and in the hollow stare that she’d looked into for an answer to all this. But all she could do was keep her post until he was far and away, and her shaken resolve could be added to the casualty list. She fell to her knees when she was sure, releasing the barrier and breaking the façade that she held up. The wounded bulwark took a barely thankful breath, pulled ahead around Aegis as she stifled her tears. She couldn’t bring herself to lay blame and turn sadness to directed anger like them. She knew too much, felt she had done too little to stop this. She could only hope it would end before more lives were lost, or before greater suffering was caused. All she felt she could do was hope.