"RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The air, the sky, the ground, the soul. Everything haloing in infinite stars, blown back and cracked open to ring the toll for all to hear and feel and know. Power beyond imagining burned up and burned through. Threads beyond counting yanked taught and ripped apart harder than even possibility would allow. This amalgamate being of maladapted emotion separating spectacular from its fresh pink host. Cancerous armor torn away, flung with prejudice and everything left of this finale.

A grand carving, a freeing, a separation and excision of a parasite from its Para. And all the wash loosed in toe as twin wakes hurtled to their own disparate corners. That final admission, that final accepting of that cursed moniker echoing through every hill left bereft of so much timber and life. Through every roll in the landscape all the way to its terminus. And in every ear and heart watching that curtain fall away and the danger pass into falling adrenaline.

It was over, it had to be now. And Seth knew full well what he was in everyone’s eyes. He was the monster they feared, the terror they couldn’t reconcile with, the nightmare that haunted them all anew. And he’d rather accept it than pretend to be anything else. Because his was not the continuation, but the ending of this damnable cycle.

An end falling upon him now as those crashing down repeaters of history settled in their ruts. All that power corrupting absolutely, and leaving a hell of a withdrawal when it’s used up. That bulk deflating, dissipating away into the halo that plied one last aurora into the burned up air. Those horns flacking and cracking back to just plain and simple juts, the need and pageantry gone. And that flowing mane…

“huhhh…” ’It was nice while it lasted.’

More fodder and conciliation for that ripped open air. And one last facetious claw back as the weight of two worlds fell upon his back… and his shoulder… and just fucking everything. Overdone was too overdone, this was just gravity giving him a piece of its mind for daring to ignore physics for a few seconds. And honestly, he was ecstatic to just be standing there to take it. Wreathed in the warm light of that once again stymied sun, bereft of weight sinking deeper than used up muscle. A catharsis all its own, justice done and cancer removed from its host. He was smiling. Even as his powers rebooted in reminding duty, and all the eyes on him and this scene finally came into focus.

A focus he’d finally understood. An infinite moment of self-reflection fighting through every baleful fiber. Across the whole spectrum of his thrumming resonance with its dial ripped away. All just to try and keep the tone to Resent’s hold in his mind. And in turn finding its starting bell deep inside. Those long resented sensors, the forgiven infraction by the Garkah. Their failure to keep him safe.

They’d activated on their own in languishing disuse, found a hold all their own like all the rest that they had made. Though emotional line of sight wasn’t exactly what was wanted, it’s what he got. And it had started this whole mess by just taking more than could be lent. But there didn’t need to be more existential questions right now. Especially as the dust of a new advance back into the crater billowed up from its lip. And predominantly charged toward the fleshy half of this forcibly deconstructed sandwich.

Steely glares, uncertain kowtowed looks, judgment of the truth they didn’t want to believe. But as that force pulled into the rut he’d cut, they couldn’t help but know that truth. There was their Parasonic, skin freshly regrown so many times over it could hardly be said to be the same person. All his hair gone, all his nails ungrown, and the unfortunate reality that whatever he’d worn when he got into the suit hadn’t survived like he did. Just a naked newborn body languishing in the dust he’d helped create without a scratch on him. Save for the things he’d traded his entire soul for. A reality dawning on him as he opened that one eye to the vindictive gleam of true Eschenwald in his face, and the torrential fury of the volcano he’d betrayed.

A gleam and glare ignored as that dawn shifted over, felt the weight of hollow flesh, the dead zone across his face. A numb pawing at an empty socket, a psyche worn to nubs falling in on itself. Surrounding judgment falling on deaf ears and uncaring guilt. His loss restored and tearing him apart. Featureless fingers scratching at his empty socket, beating against his foot and hand, doing everything to force them back into being. Force them back to make his sacrifices worth it. But he didn’t deserve that anymore. A withering stare beaming the justice of his actions at long last. And meeting that crumbling psyche across the radius he’d been thrown down. And hearing his pitiful attempts to-

“Give them back…”

That look not even acknowledging the burning edge threatening his face.

“Give them back.”

The disappointed cringe at the bain of trainees now reduced to this.

“Give them back!”

The done with this shit falling between them with her fist already balled and simmering.

“GIVE THEM BA-“

*CRAkk*

Aegis had more than enough revenge to exact on him, more than too much reason to take him for a ride into the stratosphere and leave him to drop. But that simmer had to settle for cleaning his clock and leaving him to black out in the dust of his crimes. And look back at that assenting grin fighting to stay upright. A grin that couldn’t last long in the shadow of everything lost today. Lives failed because he didn’t go far enough, or didn’t go about it right, or just straight up wasn’t strong enough to put an end to him back them. A new weight to add to the pil-

“Grrrhhh No…!” ‘No… This blame’s not mine. Not anymore.’

This was all on Resent and Para. This was all brought about by them and them alone. Blaming himself only clouded the fuel for his fire. Only made things worse. His choices were his and theirs were theirs. Assigning blame to things out of control only turns the world on its head and only makes the scars left over burn deeper. But…

But he still had a responsibility here. He wouldn’t hold the blame anymore, but he was still the only one who could end it for good. A good promised long ago but seeming futile amid this new ash. And certainly felt harder to act on as he swiveled to… start…

That glare, that red eye still refusing to close. Plates crumpling and sagging to the ground. Oozing structure away as the empty space within lost composure. But still that armor clawing its way up like a marionette in an earthquake. That being beaten flat wincing and scrunching back into desperate singularity. A baleful tone doing its best to rerise and make him rue. Seth hadn’t really tried to kill him yet, but he at least hoped that he would stay the hell down.

That rue already felt as he gritted at his twin in feeling the strain. There was still the needed end to this. The thing far more rued than more fighting and dying. But something felt… off in that rising dim glow. Something wasn’t right, he couldn’t feel his glare, couldn’t see his threads crawling back into place. This wasn’t withdrawal, he could feel and see everyone else. It was like his senses were being baffled, fought against, matched. Like…. like Resent had learned to focus for once in his miserable existence. Like he was trying to look for something in-

‘NO!!’

That maligned learned focus flared narrow and shot down. At his feet, at the center, at the divining rod still burning a hole into the Earth’s crust. A lurch in retaliation, a fight to beat him down, that false maw rising open like a predator over prey. A kink, a failure to pour everything out aganst, a being untethered from mortal need and tackle. A widening, those hazel blue eyes realizing that there was nothing they could do, the current already revving into unstoppable torrent. And a turn, the last of that hole in reality closed tight and wanting all, and that failure coming about before anyone could realize that their dread was reignited.

“AEGIS!!! SHIELD THEM NOW!!!”

There was no time for grim realization to take hold. There was only the whirling cold stare like a code phrase had been said, a doming orange bubble falling as wide as it suddenly could, and the rising falling heat of another stellar breath. The burden of power taken now falling on the other twin.

A slamming weight, gravity’s condemnation outdone. A wicked fire across the entire spectrum and beyond it, forcing its way deeper like Seth had chosen death by microwave. With an added macrowave cycle. His eyes shut on reflex but stars burned where they wished. A breath held in his lungs but boiling and cursed for the added medium to his hell. The smashing solar wind cracking him down into the whiting hot melt, the fire smothering out every shadow.

A plasma wash, another auroric spin cycle, but one far shallower and less directed for all that it mattered. Still not enough focus, not enough of a hold. Resent just pulling power across already melted lines. A more localized hole in the fucking magnetosphere, its center at his feet and full torrent falling upon him. Glass and molten bedrock lapping away as quick as they lost composure. But this was still weaker, and he still clung to himself with every fiber.

Scales blistered, melted, chared, and reformed. Muscle baked and bonfired, but still refuted this scorn. Bone popped and reset. Seth’s mind was true fire. Tissue repairing as fast as it was burning and demanding everything left of this overused being. No thought spared to the comforting orange far behind him, trying its best to spread its way over, to spare him this turnabout of stellar comeuppance. But this was just deserts for daring to steal from Gaia. And he had far worse things than a total sunburn to keep at bay.

His opposite, his twin star, that red glare lost in the suck. A slave to the draw of power overwhelming. No control to differentiate, to change and wield it all as his own. Just raw siphon with nothing allowed to exist in his way. Rocks and dust, the earth’s crust heaving up. Conductive metal veins buried deep now cracking the surface, as simple dirt and stone were caught in the crossfire.

Everything in his way pouring up into that vacuous maw, that vacuous being. Empty armor beaten against by earthen onslaught, but pressed into shape by sheer adversarial gravity. He wasn’t even able to cull the chaff, just pulling every bit of matter he could for all the electrons they housed. And crushing that being tighter and tighter. Building it larger and larger. A growing titan of matter and earth rising, glowing from within like a self-starting core, spreading veins of cancerous siphon through all that overflowed its gullet, over everything it had pulled to itself. And piling on a pressure too much to be held.

That maw relentinh, glutted and stuffed with a boiling down boulder. Its stripping of the Earth’s shield easing back to let this baked battlefield have an atmosphere again. That orange barrier behind falling back before all their air was used up and lit on fire, and that penitent sunbather ahead allowed to stop being broiled alive. Stances hardened as best they could, but his waning was clear. Seth needed help. Especially as this new golem of material world waxed higher, reared back on its colossal knees to tower consequential.

Orange and red spillover dripping from every crease and crevasse. A new match for the armored terror, but scaled to fit standing astride an ancient port. The pit at its base filled with everything it couldn’t keep eating, and melting into plug before a real volcano was roused into being. And like that already blown false one trying to form up a new line, its stability was not long for this world it so wished to be part of. Pressure on pressure, tight pull squeezing matter down into that singularity, stocking it like a blast furnace without a thought for an out.

Hollow eyes lit up with their new gargantuan red glow, thread work being spreading in and through, but wincing and reeling as the prospects of this new form were finally felt. A full body gagging, a geyser swarm of ejecta across its surface, a barely managed fold over to hold himself together. But this was all worthless. The air was trembling, the ground quaking, that all over accretion disk was spinning too fast to keep back. Structure melting more and more as that threatened volcanic result was coming to pass. And there was too much in its path to just let slip hell.

‘Fuck…! This is gonna hurt!!!’

A split second need, a shift, a copying. A learned structure repurposed. A learned possibility made necessary. A decoupling of energy from the matter it drove, an outward expenditure and pushing out structure. Far too many electron fibers wrenched out and put to work. A slapdash field of redirecting energy convecting out into corona. Encompassing as much as they could on this notice, rounding this already bulging bubble about to pop in nuclear fashion.

That structure losing out, centrifugal forces winning out against gravity and matter, pressure and pull turning to release and point blank Krakatoa. That orange barrier tried to add its weight behind, but there was only so much speed that could pour out before nothing could be keep back. Before action and reaction's conflict came to its almighty-

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

The earth heaved like a wave, the air kicked like another breath from the sun, all eyes were ducked back in blind and fear, and all that excess matter turned ballistic projectile. Boulders like houses turned that failing lip to holed and melted splatter, more lateral meteorites to decimate the surround. A shrapnel cascade faster than the tearing open ground, turning all to solid cavitation and molten rain. The worst rising higher over that desperate spreading orange, threatening everything for miles as a new broken sky. A new hell on the horizon already so close to its progenitor. But a beat back of its towering height as it met the blue shimmer of desperately spread out being.

Devastating speed turned to limp spiraling down, wider destruction nothing more than falling smoking rocks. Seth’s threading, his tacit being beneath all that regenerating meat, was domed out wide as it could go, wafting in convection counter and perforating volcanic ejecta. Magnetic fields fighting acceleration, containing pyroclastic outflow, and keeping this bomb from cracking that plug below. But its expenditure was absolute as that wave of earth and air slammed with everything it could get through.

That shimmering deceleration field popped in recoil but its purpose was done. The worst prevented and reduced to plinking debris over that orange transparency. The ground wave breaking over and buffeting those inside, but cutting it to just echoing crack. Remainder falling about like so much titan worthy pyrotechnics. Globs of melt splattering and cooling back to rock, smoke filling every angle, heat pouring through as air turned to brimstone. And the effort expended impossible to fight off.

Seth was still standing, but his senses were blank. Threads reeling back into their places but thinning to near breaking like tissue in the wind. The heat was cooking everything it wanted, metal splatter etching into his legs. Returning nerves only rang with every possible warning. Ringing ears slowly tuning down. Blistering scales hardening back to fight back the cooling inferno. Lungs and nose charring and searing back with every seething breath.

He was alive, but his strength was only just. Only able to keep him upright. His knees winced and wobbled, his outstretched arms shook and wanted nothing but to fall back to his sides. It was Berta and Eagleville on a completely different level, but the same burned out feeling. There was only enough power left to keep him conscious, to keep him himself and not an empty soulless husk. But, instead of the inevitable empty threatening darkness before him, there was only rising crimson flaring through the pyroclasm.

The smoke and ash whipped away in violence, that titan of matter clearing its space. A smaller stature more fitting of an archaic temple’s god. A harder ore structure held tighter than its slagged exterior, some focus wrought and control molded to fit. Malicious focus with only one real target. That burning accretion disk within spinning ever still. That black hole of a being churning it into a frenzy. Its reeling off of its tectonic recoil falling it back to ground like a toppling silo, but its glaring eyes said this was not its fall. As did the star dying in its throat. The relativistic jet crowning the pole of that hole in reality. A blast of siphon scaling up to crack this land in twain. And nothing but him in its path to stop it.

Those failing arms rose back up before they could lose an inch, those traitorous knees locked amid their rattling, every fiber left holding and reeling in tight, every muscles flexing tighter to just hold on. He was all that was left, every bit of what he had to offer had to be offered. If he had to eat himself alive he would. If he had to tear himself into nothing but atoms in the wind he would! Because the alternative was death to everyone behind. Not even that vaunted shield could hold this back. This falling over maw, titanic claws cratering blastsam to the wind. That oozing charge burning everything caught in its light. This air threatening to ripped everything else apart. Nothing would survive, nothing would withstand, so he had to keep it back however he could!

A rising roar, a countering yell. Those twins alight in disparity and fury. That snapping open release, that haloing ionization, that dying stars revenge on all that lived before it. That sacrificial burn, that thinning shadow, that rising… pushed back wall of threadbare stopgap. And the fuller shadow whipping its arm out in front of another world shattering-

*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

A ground level river of crimson light, a miles long trail of plasmic death, of burning open crust, of forest turned trench alight with fire to its own atomic core. Vertical splatter and drag, churning cuts into the landscape filled with red too bright for the earth to keep to itself. Towering trees scorched and dashed, toppling out as its path gained altitude to the curvature below it. A merciful maximum range pluming out into fire more terrestrial, yet swaths beyond charred to their canopies. The skies cleared wedge by fire and horror. A coughing lurch, that forceful release failing to hold yet more. The light wavering into more visible understandable current. Sputtering and bunching and dying away as the atmosphere reasserted itself in the face of this hellish wound. And all the eyes able to see its devastation and beheld its results. Both from without… and within.

Twin trenches, cuts across the earth stretching for miles and still glowing with dirty glass. A single lip of the crater turned to a plateau on one side, falling away even more and frying in its brethren’s pyre. A single spared cut of cooled dust and glass between wave melted gouges. A cut filled near to its borders with heroes almost unable to comprehend what they had just survived. Trainees bunched tight together by stronger arms, away from the edges that burned by simple proximity. Shameful shields of steel and gleam angled to their defense, but chiefly ahead in fear misplaced. Ahead that lone tower of scales and accepted terror still stood in smoking defiance. Staunch sacrifice only just stopped before it could end him. But its effects still total, power spent to its last, but a grin driving up as best as could be managed. Because-

“What the hell is that shield even made of…?”

That tower crumpled to the ground, spent and outdone at long last. Its saving grace blocking it away in metal impervionce. As that round hoplite shield glowed its preternatural defense. And as Aegis whipped it wide to show that her charges would not die this day. Nor ever again.