Dyllan took a step forward and reached deep into the crimson light floating before him. Inside it he could feel something solid - a handle. When Dyllan tugged on the handle, he could feel the energy resisting the pull - but the slower and more gently he pulled, the weaker its resistance was. As soon as the handle began to leave the swirling light, the energy began to dwindle - slowly draining into the handle to form a baseball bat, layer by layer - like it was being pulled from a 3D printer.
The last of the crimson light vanished as soon as the bat was free.
It looked like it was aluminum, but had the heft of lead... though it felt strangely light at the same time. He could feel the momentum of the weight, but it followed his every gesture effortlessly - its force never puling to continue its path or dragging behind to continue its rest. It was painted in dark green camo, and its handle was wrapped in sports tape. The paint was pristine and completely unscratched, almost as if the metal of the bat was just naturally colored that way.
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Except, that is, for one spot… one spot where the paint had been scratched off in the shape of a bird with its wings outstretched. A dove, the symbol of peace. Dyllan had no proof it was a dove, he just knew. Now that he was thinking about it, most of the weight in the bat seemed to be concentrated at the center of the dove.
A watermelon sized bullet flew past Dyllan’s head. His Nightmare was done demanding he fear it, and now seemed intent on taking the terror it craved by force.
Not that it mattered. Dyllan was now armed not with his fragile Virtue, not with his animalistic Vice, but with his Trait: the very core of his being. Much had changed in Dyllan over the course of his life - he had grown and he had broken, but this one thing had remained the same. It had grounded him. It had defined him. It had driven him to pursue violence when he was young, and driven him to disavow it when he was older.
For as long as Dyllan had been Dyllan, he’d had his Justice.
And there was nothing his Nightmare could do to change that.