‘It’s always so east to draw him up. Even if only with the faintest scent… It should have been the whole steak!’

The world through the eyes of someone different certainly had its effects. New memories to sift through and burn like kindling, new feelings to express and learn from. A new person to talk to even, if he ever got the chance. But that could wait. It had to wait. Resent had had the rest of his meal taken away from him, and this fresh feeling of being wholesale denied was refusing him the social graces he played with. An unfortunate and maddening hold over from his previous host. He was still hungry.

And still wanted to see what he was fully capable of now, to see just what this little trade had given him. Though, it didn’t matter what had been offered up in return, they’d both only had one goal. To become whole again. To be strong again. To know what it felt like to be on top again. A funny commonality, an abhorrence of weakness. A… resenting of its yoke upon what they can do. What they can achieve. What they could experience… together.

At least… that’s what he thinks. Another funny happenstance. His own weakness used against him. His pitiful defenses rent asunder without his even knowing. Even easier than that left over scum, far more inviting and generous. And certainly more structured. A better shared consciousness to build with, mind and body and mind. And maybe a light snack amongst his wretched moral failings, his most interfering ideals. So what was left could feel unhindered, free. Even as it sank lower and lower into this revitalized void. Pressed down by the weight of the meal he helped procure, a heap of his own comrade no less. Power of a more filling density than the weak rabble sent scurrying for their pitiful… ungrateful… safe and happy…

‘Hggrmm… maybe I’ve taken too much from him already. His thoughts are annoying.’

Still the feeling of physical life drew Resent away from his hangry musings. The clank of metal on metal on asphalt, the mild tug with every step pulling at the skin seared to its plate. The cold approach of wetter weather, the convection of mountain and city air pushing back at him and rustling the leaves all around. The smell of air unblemished by industry and civilization, save for the tary additive crunching under his talons. The city of Kadia was far and away, no longer under the threat of this wondering amalgamate of parasitic existence. The forested hills that defended it long passed over as well, his kick off too strong to leave them in his range table. No, Resent was now thoroughly in the dense forest roads that crisscrossed the northern expanse of the region. But far from lost in his wonderings. A scent caught on a different meal, one dragged from his new hosts mind and wrung for detail. For its compliment. The Terrace River meandered up the hilly terrain at his side, followed within earshot by this lonesome road with only one destination. The fort the bore this laden name.

A bit of a hold out, once a training camp for orienteering and mountaineering, if the military even still felt it was wanted, or even useful. The first waves of valiant defenders of freedom and country, hoping to put a swift end to the crisis that had befallen them, came from here. Local boys and girls even more vehement to rush into the fray. All of them slaughtered like cattle… pointlessly… without-

‘Grrh, I’m starting to understand why Seth hates this annoying fool. So stubborn and hypocritical. Really likes to burn himself into you.’

The base wasn’t left without for too long though, reinforcements and volunteers swarming up this wide empty road hoping to help as best they could. And so the fort became headquarters for the war effort. Planning room and training camp rolled into one. But not without an insidious worm wriggling into it. The League took command away once the realty finally seeped into the unpowered ingrates in charge. The fort still hosted their little drills and pageantry, but the worm was already thoroughly in control. Thus when all was said and done, when those lucky beings they so hatefully called laceroids were wiped from this world, the League wasn’t the one who left. Though really there weren’t many people left to pull recruits from after their homes were rendered to ash and wasteland.

So now it was the League’s Northern Kadia outpost… and ancillary military base. The scenic dead zone sentinel that they sent their poorest performers and most unsociable characters to. Left to patrol the forests and abandoned towns, and live alongside the men and women in uniform they rely upon for the grunt work. The afterhours deployments, the security details, the smiling meat shields that placate the masses and make them more amenable to their betters.

‘Hmm, another commonality. So cynical this one… and so limited.’

The road meandered its path through the hill country, crossed its partner and left it to return to the mass grave it originated from. Leaving Resent, and Para, to walk alone to the goal clearing the hill side ahead of them. Built up walls more for style than need, slanted and earthen to blend it to the scenery. Beyond though towered the eyesores that broke this idyllic environment. Low stocky block houses concreted and covered with firing holes. Yards of asphalt and beaten dirt to train and train and train. And backed up to its eaten away terrain stood the miniature Hill that made it out to be the League owned base it was. Cavernous landing pads cut into the solid concrete, and staked armored panes looking down over the subordinates this imitation lorded over.

But that wasn’t all that broke this forest apart. That marked it as the property of the powered elite of this world. The vast craters beaten into the forest saw to that. Splintered and pushed over wood circling deep indents torn near to bedrock. Evidence of tantrums almost… kindred in their expressed resentment. At least that’s what seemed plastered all over the most obvious culprits face. A welcome already being brought to bear.

‘How thoughtful. I won’t need to hunt for them.’

A smattering of colors and fiery stares braced just before the defilade of their base, no need for cover when bullets cease to even scratch up the surface. But still the telltale cower of emplaced infantry on the lip of the earthworks meant they were still willing to tr-

‘…Oh. One of them certainly thinks himself brave and worthwhile.’

A figure alone on the wall pulled up straight as a board, costume and finery and unorthodox weaponry marking them as powered above the rest. And their almost showman like drawing and aiming making them out to be more than willing to start this all off. Like a naïve initiate too scared to hold back the inevitable.

‘What even is a bow to a go-‘ *SHEKOOOOOOMMMmmm*

The sudden rapid disassembly of the left side of Resent’s metallic face certainly proved that bows worth in this battle, as did the kick of the pressed together shockwaves smacking him in what was left of his face. Plate metal shattered, new threads not accustomed to holding tight and keeping together. Bone and flesh stripped of excess below, splattering and tearing in the rebound, sonic booms used with more direct aim than saturation. The drum in the remaining ear exploded, teeth rattled together, bones creaked and threatened to splinter. But this damage wasn’t his, it was Para’s. And it was all too easy to heal it away, just not to siphon the pain.

The arrow, shot at speeds unprecedented, continued to fly with no regard for maximum range. A few unlucky trees only stopping it three deep in a shower of splinters and needles. But the armor yet again denied its destruction. What weaved through threads pulled at their charges, greedily clung to their property and dragged it all back to where it belonged. The flesh underneath was restored the same, just with more density and more matter ripped apart to refill it. Excess build up, power so dense it bled out, was used and the damage disappeared without a thought to the expenditure. There was too much for him to gain after all. Especially as that kindred resentment charged into the fray.

Explosive force rocketing him out of formation, burning scowl voicing his fury, but a wild stare belying his enjoyment. Potential energy revving up, ready to become kinetic at a moment’s notice.

‘Kineticlysm… How simple.’

A bracer locked right wound up regardless of his air speed, set to make another crater in this rather nice terrain. But his scowl was buffeting away, turning just as unhinged as the one countering it. And Resent wanted none of that.

‘It’s no fun if you’re enjoying this too.’

That kinetic reversal lost its relative velocity, its comparable speed. It became mired, slow, and at the mercy of something far too fast to just let it strike it. That metallic abomination, that living resentment countered his force, exploded forward before trained perception could catch up, and dragged a heavy metal foot to bat this over eager kin away to watch. To stew, to boil, to feel the despair Resent wanted. What he wanted for everything in this world to taste like.

His side crumpled, his inertia altered, and his wild stare flickered as it was filled with that red menace it tried to compete against. His body flailed, a tan and steel blur hurtling into the tree line and ripping through the arbor backstop. Twisting inertia scathed away as Resent landed down and tore away at the road, leaving his only real opponent for last. Not even allowing him the honor of a viewed realization… That they all were going to die.

More asphalt exploded between flexing talons, the actualization of this wanton death not leaving time to react. Beyond what was already under way. The ahead road melted and vision turned to star struck swiss cheese. Radiation, directed and dredging a path like a metaphysical saw. An over suited flyer laying down fire from on high, and doing their best to not irradiate the entire ecosystem. Resent on the other hand felt the heat tear through him. Threads snapped under the neutron buzz saw, cut loose the marionette flying too fast to avoid. Plates oozed for the instant the exposure lasted, the entire right side left to the whims of drag and momentum. As was the siphoned scarecrow beneath. Skin pulled too taught burned and boiled, and limbs free to flail under no one’s control. For as long as Resent allowed it.

That greedy pull wrenched the plates back, connections severed but thoroughly his. That clanking resurgence ground his velocity to a halt, planted foot reforming just in time to retake the flailing limb and slam it into the asphalt. All to turn him about on his would be atomic butcher, all to turn that maw in line. A small star, a relinquished bit of energy from that vacuous center, but enough to halo that maw in fried air and on coming death. The melted irradiated road became a trench of white, orange and, red. As did the unlucky forested elevation beyond. A straight upward slice tracing into the air. Straight to that radioactive menace given too much jurisdiction. But much more fresh air to breathe.

The maw whipped over, losing its beam of frothing plasmic death just short of the gated defilade. The bisected figure of that amateur hour chef left to linger like an unobserved explosion. Before all that had been held back and ignited was let loose. The road, the chewed through forest, the butchered butcher, all exploded down and up this beamed slice. That containing suit was rent open and relived, poured its contents to the air for all to know that even survival was a slow death. The air turned blue, aurora in solid gradient like the air was illuminating itself. All that held back radiation left to scorch like that little dead star’s revenge. But all Resent could feel in the all over burn creeping through his and Para’s back was something perfect. That true despair he wanted all to feel before they died.

But the empty feeling in his gut turned physical and screeching as another supersonic arrow ripped through it. The vaporized asphalt behind fled in terror as metal and flesh turned to shrapnel, a straight path from hilled road to an already readying bowman of thoroughly lost calm. Another harpoon of holed and hollow metal already slamming into place and being drawn back to straining limits. All the while that shrapnel was already clanging and crackling back into place, smug maddening grin meeting that glint of another pitiful attempt at topping him. A glint that tore that grin off of his face. Plate and grey matter turned to mist and spalling, the world closed out to physical senses by the en mass lack thereof. But the one sense that was too ingrained to be broken stayed, highlighting all like over dense vector grids. And treated that bottomless pit at its center to the feast waiting for it.

Without even waiting for his head to reconstruct, those ruthless talons clanked and scratched the asphalt. Headless body too hungry to wait any longer. The return from vertebra to skullcap restored and rebooted those mundane senses, returned that metallic visage, and those red glaring eyes. All to the opening up of all hell to turn it back. The earthworks light up with fire from emplacement to small arms, the holding back heroes on the downslope all yelled in unison as they broke their ramshackle ranks, and again that glint and screech tried as it might.

A single step met with cacophony, chunk after chunk disappeared into flash friction sparks only to reappear a moment later like its strings refused to break. The plates sang with the sounds of ricochet and spalling, cracks and gouges building up to shatter what had once refused to break. Only for it again to return without sign or scene of attrition. Only bottomless emptiness filled too full to outlast. A bringer of that despair. An unkillable atrocity advancing through hell and high water. Waiting for it all to come to him.

The first wave, literal in too many ways, crashed into his advance as the bullets ceased their percussion. Mud and muck, thick as sludge but viscus as the sea slammed in from the right. Recoil only an inch, another step pushed through metaphysical quagmire rent away from energetic existence. Another glint and screech. The cold snap of that liquid impediment freezing solid in its throws. The shattering impacts of fists thrown at distance. Another step regardless of what was loosed and what tried to slow him down.

Muck and frost steamed and screeched, as another arrow tore a shoulder away, the right arm spiraling free trailing flash frozen flakes of Para’s desiccated being. Threads cut the boiling away fog in barely visible paths, traced back to their points and pulled back what was broken yet again. Just in time for a hammer to dent that grin off of Resent’s face. Plate and skull cracked and compacted and a bit of off kilter recoil resulted. But that grin stayed its place, popping crunching back to full as another step raked through the melting away peat. Just in time for another strike of the hammer. A beefy bearded simpleton treating Resent as a nut needing to be cracked open. And acting as the anvil that he will be broken upon.

The dented face plate cracked again, a second hit in line. Another thrown punch absent its physical fist. A strike to the back knee crumpled the next step, a staff finding a weak point to pressure. Another ring of that maw shaped gong, a spike of muddy water chilled too fast to freeze skewered and exploded the left shoulder. Beat after beat, strike after strike. Vengeance, collective and exacted at last. They wanted him dead, they all wanted a piece, they wanted what was denied them. They wanted recompense for their humiliation. For treating them as nothing more than speed bumps. For making fools of their dedication to keeping this world safe and happy. Emotions ringing with every hammer strike, every phantom fist, every staff prod, and every chilling attempt to keep him still. Every… pitiful… attempt.

Every action furthering just one single goal. To keep him back. And keep him still. So the real hammer of justice can come down on him. A final arrow cleaved the air and his uppercut head to empty space, choreographed motions pulling the rest away from collateral damage. But those motions receded just as fast as his head did, the set up finally ready. The frosty peat bog boiled, flacked, was ripped away as fuel and material. The head rematerialized, was wound back into place, was returned to its grinning glaring brilliance still forced straight up. With nothing to see but that cool empty sky, that warming real star, and the kinetic cataclysm returned to finally off load all that he’d been left to carry.

Container cuffs shaking like an earthquake, tearing themselves apart from pushed past limits. The air rending in concentric outlines of his oncoming form, no more enjoyment allowed in this fight. Only pure wrath compounded tenfold, and focused all into a fist flying for that maddening evil grin. A grin more than happy to meet this-

Perception, parity via proximity and overpressure. Contact made, but not impact. Balled overburdened fist against flat metal nose. Time, the world, all were slowed to nothing by an instantaneous connection… and release. All with a single focusing medium to bear this over built potential. No air to kick, no dust to scatter, no void to create by expansion alone. Only a fist hitting metal and transferring everything it had into everything it held. And rending for all it was worth.

Another instant and that metal cracked, all of it. From snout to sole, tip to talon. All of it. Bone and flesh tore and split, more casualty than target. Organ and vessel rupturing and loosing, geysers flash frying in the sudden forceful realization of motion. Kinetic potential passed along to fast for perception to keep up. And too excessively for the world to hold back any longer. The air and ground in even circumference, all were kicked and gouged into forcible submission. Carried along for the ride as those cracks multiplied beyond solid existence. As the rest of the world felt this almighty-

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

The downslope, the forests, the earthen defenses, all were beaten back as potential turned kinetic and matter failed to hold it. The ground caved, the road tore away, the trees fled and shed their weaker limbs. The air haloed and condensed, rebounded and cracked, thundered through the hills deadened to these retorts of its relative silence. A plume of vaporized matter shot skyward, the earth rocked and heaved asunder, the sun blotted out by the ground taking its place. And any unprepared bodies thrown without mercy. The heroes and hunkered soldiers were battered down, none too slow to avoid what they’d all expected. Only the final deliverer of this cataclysm was collateral damage, though the most prepared for its arrival. Inertia and saved up force preventing him from being sent out to sea by the shockwave, container cuff thoroughly obliterated out of existence, and still enough left overpressure wave to throw him into the new walls of his latest masterpiece. Leaving him to sit as the darkness he’d created decelerated and crept wider.

A darkness… not dark enough. The swirl and current of upward rebound clouding this crater, the higher altitude wind blowing it all into the sun. It should have left it all in shadow and empty dust. More than enough force to turn metal to nothing, the flesh underneath little more than a stain where it could even have spread. But still… the darkness was not total. An afterglow, a phantom light, the finest flicker of illumination of it all. Like that radiation still clung to everything. But as that dust settled its tumultuous course, a figure was still standing in that empty center. Surrounded, and contrasted in red.

The mundane obliterated. Physicality washed away in an instant. Twofold body reduced to atoms at the mercy of the wind. The new… replaced by the old. The amorphous, the fragile. But no longer simulated, no longer prismed with outside emotions, no longer abstract and despairingly singular. No longer contained. The world a glow with floating stars, each of flickering piece of the whole. A piece that weaving thread, humming with that singular calling note. All of it pieces of Resent. All of it wasting away, being stolen by entropy and solid reality. A reality unworthy of taking it. A theft unacceptable in its criminality. A wasting… refused with every fiber of this scattered being. A solid core, a key threading thought, an outline screaming against the void it held within. All of it with one simple expression of its being manifest. Resentment. And a totaled sum of this all ruling thought.

‘I will not die for this world… It will die for me!’

And so the world felt his pull.

That light, that red glow permeating all in that empty space dug into the earth, that vacuous figure at its center. All of it. All of it… He wanted-

“ALL OF IT!!!”

That light in an instant became a sun brought to earth, rays beyond count turning the returning air to auroric fire. Threads, electrons, altered being thrown out in all directions. Dusted and smattered existence grabbed hold of with no regard. With no restraint. Atoms, chunks, stains, and dust. A body obliterated refusing to die. But pulling more than its being back into place. The ground, the crater, the forest, the clouds. The defilade, the foot hills, the block houses, the buildings. The heroes and soldiers that fought without thought to this outcome. All that the light of this fully realized menace touched curled away, felt its pull, felt its hunger. And so lost out to the gravity of this resentful star.

Hands clawed at whatever they could, bodies pressed low and tight to whatever was sturdier than themselves, feet lost traction whipped from under whoever they desperately tried to carry to safety. But it was all worthless. As that crater lost out to its better. The ground tore away, the earthworks crumbled and exposed its contents, the trees splintered and uprooted. And those desperate bodies were dragged into that all-consuming whole. The torrential jackhammer of gravitational cavitation, the rending of matter down to nothing but empty waste, the screams of those lost to the gravity well cutting short. And turning to nothing over crushed dust.

Soldiers too weak to escape their own rent cover. Heroes not strong enough to hold on, to outpace the inevitable. The disjointed chorus of crashing earth and concrete debris, of snapping limbs both wood and flesh, of despair… Of true ripened despair brought to all who thought their world savable. The screams of refuted arrogance, the cries of out shone wrath, the strains of broken resolve. All were lost. All were consumed. And all… tasted of that finely rued existence that Resent wanted for all. The regret of trying to spare them from his existence.

Though… not all fell into that burning light of over massed resentment. One soul spared the damnation of a mass grave of stellar obliteration. A relative shadow cast over him without the wrath wrought threads of rematerialization. The one left for last. Bare hands shielding his face as best they could, trying to stymy the light of his entire contingent’s annihilation. That menace star too bright, its restoration from his attack too much, its survival too damning.

Skin reddened and boiled, the light too much to, the heat too much. Even as that crimson glare died down. As threads retracted back to the being they made up. The ground below it flowed to glass too brittle to stand on. Talons dared to crunch it regardless, completely returned to their defiant parasitic form. Metal carapace locking down the desiccated meat inside. Gaunted wreathing of blood red static holding tight to its restored host. The metallic plating shining like its layers were burned clean of the blood and death soaked into its fathomless being. The abomination that should never have been refusing to accept entropy’s call.

The air rushed toward it, like its entire body was sucking in a breath. A grinding, growling release only corroborating that fact. Its claws splayed in the returned light of the cleared away sky, its pillarous tombstone of ejecta dragged back to the hell it tried to claim. The warmth of the sun reflecting off its plates like over glossed iron. And yet… the world was left in a cold void. One of complete energetic death. All of it sequestered, taken, eaten. And turning back toward one final source. One running toward it with all it had left of its resolve.

The slamming of that bare hand onto that shining metal, the sound of crunching knuckle and rebounding force. Kineticlysm’s pitiful attempt at final retaliation only proved his readiness. He had stewed long enough… and now knew nothing but overriding despair. Gone was his excitement, his kindred small resentment, his boundless want of this fight to the death. Now, in the light of those red glaring eyes, beneath the tower of aberrant existence he’d tried to topple, below that hungering… broken in grin. There was nothing left. But despair. And so even that was taken.

A flash, a shift. Everything too fast for even the one perpetrating. A claw backhandedly racked through, a trail of blood too thinned to even splatter. And a body torn apart and flacking away. Emotion, memory, soul, being. All rent with the flesh and bone bearing it. And all consumed like mythical ambrosia too sweat for mortal pallets. The warmth of life stolen away, the dissolving of memories in a sea of caustic existence, the last gasp of consciousness against the gravity of this living black hole. All of it too much not to break that grinning metal wider to take it all in. This is what Resent wanted, what he now lived in reality for. To tear it apart and make it regret ever existing in the first place. Just as he used to. Just as he fought against. Just as… he was made to. By the one he set this much greater trap for in the first place. The one now screaming the name lost to his being.

‘It’s just so easy...’