Once the flailing stopped, Immortal tossed the half-corpse aside. Only two were left, and one of them was on her back, still clutching at her bruises and catching her breath.
“Of anyone left here, your life still has purpose, Aaliyah,” said Immortal “don’t throw it away when there are still so many you could help.”
“It felt like I died a couple times already,” said Aaliyah as she reached into her cassock with one hand, “It doesn’t matter if you do kill me now, because if I walk out of here, I’ll just be the living dead. Especially if I let you kill the rest of them. I can’t live like that anymore,” she wrapped her other arm around GalvanGal’s shoulders, “I don’t know how you can live like this.”
“It’s not about what I can live with. It’s about fulfilling the responsibility that only I have the strength to carry. I can’t let anything get in the way of that.”
“So I’ve heard. I guess I just wondered how many people you have to kill to save humanity.”
“As many as it takes, even if it's everyone.”
Aaliyah snickered, in that ugly pig snort she always had. She kept snorting, then came giggling that rose to laughter interspersed with snorts. Twinkling tears fell from her eyes she was laughing so hard. With both her arms occupied, she could not muffle her ugly laugh the way she usually would. Since she was busy, Immortal kicked a nearby golden stalagmite until it broke off.
“Sorry… sorry,” she struggled in between giggles, “it’s just… hearing someone talk like that in real life is too much. I can’t take this either.”
“I’ll relieve that burden for you.”
Immortal drove a golden stake at the heart of the living saint—and a galaxy of voltage rode up the stake back at him. His ice-soaked body, the clamminess and constriction he had acclimated to, was brutally ignited in a sudden wave. He pulled the stake back but the venom still coursed in his veins. In front of him was a constellation connected by undulating electric currents. Behind that barrier was the star cross that now bristled with amethyst. Aaliyah stood up, pulling GalvanGal up with her.
“How’s that, Tyler?” asked GalvanGal.
“You couldn’t recover your electricity, so you entrusted the rest of your energy to supporting Aaliyah’s magic. But a shield with a broken spear is just a tombstone,” said Immortal. GalvanGal shrugged Aaliyah off, spit out blood, and cracked her knuckles. Aaliyah dragged Todd back with all her strength.
“Come on coach, put me in so I can shut him up.”
“Go get him… hugh… champ,” huffed The Living Saint
The same star-spangled barrier from before was erected in a cage around Immortal and GalvanGal. They only had to exchange looks to understand each other. ‘We’ve done this before and it ends the same every time’ he was saying as he readied the gold stake. ‘Not like this we haven’t, this time it's gonna be different’ she was saying, the same way she said every time.
Every time that she came to me. Every time I smashed her into the dirt. Every time she got back up with a smile.
She dove to the floor, her hands dug into the ice and pried open a crevice. That snapped Immortal out of his haze. That last shock must have made him delirious. He needed to focus on what was in front of him. This time, she won’t get up.
She dug further into the crevice to pull apart the ice. Cracks spread out until she finally ripped out chunks of ice that were sent to the walls of the electric bubble. The chunks ruptured on the walls and the galvanized splinters were launched as shrapnel, turning the bubble into a blender. Immortal whirled the stake to knock away most of the shards but many still impaled him. The hippo charged heedless of the hailstorm battering her. She made a blatant feint to disguise her stomp that caused a fissure in the ice to make Immortal lose his footing and stumble closer to the barrier wall. Thanks to that effort, she was skewered in her stomach instead of her heart, her reward being a slower death.
The blood poured down the stake and dripped to the floor, the latent electricity keeping it from freezing on contact. She grabbed the stake, but with it already run through her and lacking the strength to pull it out, all she accomplished was staining her gloves. With her energy exhausted, sparking shimmy was no longer protecting her, and her natural steely flesh was punctured by crystallized magic.
Certepe and Seletega, among many other tools and methods, had drawn blood from the invincible before. Traitors who were once family were shown neither hesitation nor mercy. The blood that has been spilled to preserve peace could drown nations. Any one face was lost in that ocean a long time ago.
She held out a palm filled with blood to him.
“What is this?” asked Tyler.
“It’s a big bug!” Hippo strained to say with confidence to mask her unease. The hemolymph of the beetle pooled in the little girl’s palms and spilled through her fingers.
“Why are you handing me this?”
“I… I thought bugs were scary even though I like coming out in the forest. So I thought if I faced my fears I wouldn’t think they were scary…”
“Hippo, you’re supposed to kill animals that could threaten you. Your irrational fear lead you to kill a defenseless creature. You’re the scary one here,” said Tyler. The unease she stomached turned into full-blown panic. She dropped the beetle, started shaking and swaying and hyperventilating. “Ugh, seriously why would you do this?”
She opened both palms to him—and used both to grab ahold of his shirt. Her headbutt crashed into him, shattering the helmet and rupturing the barrier. The shockwaves that coursed through him made Immortal lose his grip on the stake and stumble back while GalvanGal’s limp body slammed into the floor. The gash in his forehead dribbled blood down his face. He dipped a finger into his blood as if to confirm it was his.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Heh… heh…” Hippo giggled between bladed breaths, “got you this time… Tyler…”
She was, unfortunately and shockingly, correct. That haziness distracted him again. But this was just a scratch. She was the one without a stomach. All that was left was…
Aaliyah punched him on the shoulder. Only his eyes moved to look down at her. The ice around them made the room cold, but it the contempt in his eyes chilled Aaliyah to the bone. Even so, she stoked up the fire in her heart with her own strength and punched him again. Immortal seized her by the throat and lifted her off her feet. His boot stomped on Hippo’s wound, making her retch.
“What can you possibly do?” said Immortal, “Both of you would be nothing without me, but instead, you chose a dead end rather than my future. What more could I have when I’ve tried everything?”
“You could have tried not stabbing me.” His boot pressed on the wound harder.
“You don’t get…” she struggled under his grip, “...to say you tried everything… when you make demands and crush all opposition,” said Aaliyah.
“That is the only way progress has ever been made. No one has been respected because they begged on their knees for it. Surely you can understand that.”
“I do… you’re right. Which is why… you should try paying more attention.”
To what? This whole area is frozen over. All combatants are incapacitated. Their only hope of living is about to have her neck snapped. The only reason she lives is because of the flickering vestiges of energy from Hippo that are delaying the inevitable. That Hippo is giggling now; even as she spits up her guts, she keeps giggling under his boot. Now Aaliyah is giggling too, snorting like a pig even as she is being choked. Maybe the delirium is finally settling in, and driving both these women mad in their final moments. Or maybe…
Immortal looked at the confinement vessel encased in a block of gold.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Or what? You’ll kill us?” said Aaliyah with a smirk.
He could not spare the last traces of his own magic on checking if Hippo tampered with the vessel. He had already used portals many times already, and another use would unmake him without accomplishing anything. All that was left was…
Immortal pulled out one of the shards impaled in him and gutted Aaliyah with it before dropping her with the Hippo. With both out of the way, he focused himself entirely on the vessel; more specifically, whatever was about to come out of the vessel.
A deafened silence as all sound was snuffed out. A white orb burst out of the vessel and flash melted the gold. Immortal strained to hold down the orb as it struggled to break free. The confinement vessel was meant to prevent the chain reaction that would cause a truly dangerous detonation, yet if this orb was let loose, a storm would ravage the western seaboard. His magic, famished from use, was too feeble to contain the orb for even another moment. Instead, Immortal opened the only safe channel that could absorb the hellfire: himself.
He opened the channel just at all and the first nuclear lance raced to impale his very soul. He steadily widened the channel, even as infinite nuclear lances rained upon him, he held his ground. Even as the fire seared him inside in out, into his memories and dreams and future yet to be, he must bear it because no one else could. Because if he didn’t then all was lost. Because if he didn’t every kill, and death, and struggle and sacrifice would have been for nothing.
Pain is the only thing that gives Tejieue’s life meaning. As long as he takes the pain, someone else won’t have to. That’s why he is absorbing this pain now. Absorbing this fire. That’s why he’s doing this now. Every lance that pierced him shrank the white orb just a little, and an eternity later it would be all gone. Just a little longer, just a little more. Just keep going. Just keep holding on. Just keep going on. As long as he takes it all there won’t be any for anyone else. As long as he does it all, no one else will have to do anything. One day, no matter how long it takes or how far away that day is, one day, this would all be over and everything would be better.
That’s why he has to do this. That’s why Tyler Deimos must blend in and protect the masses of mankind. That’s why The Gator must wade through the murky dark in hunt of nightmares. That’s why the Immortal must create a united front for humanity’s future. That’s why… that’s why…
Why am I here?
Immortal was on his knees, his leggings wet from warm yellow slush. The rest of his body was dried out by the white fire in his heart that threatened to devour him from the inside out. Aaliyah had healed the others enough to close their wounds, as her cassock was stained with her blood. She cradled Todd in her arms like he was a child. As soon as the fire in his heart was snuffed, Immortal would rise from his knees and finish what he came here to do.
What was I here to do?
Hippo still had blood seeping out her patched-together stomach as she crawled towards him. She had to take a breather before she sat down and another breather before she spoke.
“That’s one for me,” she said with disemboweled satisfaction, “you’re getting sloppy, old man.”
“Don’t you sass me when you had to kamikaze a nuke to get anywhere I theorized that this was why you chose this place, but I thought you would be smart enough not to do it. What if I just left?”
“You wouldn’t leave innocent people to die.”
“Proud of taking hostages now. Your mom was right to leave you. If you had any brains, you could have come up with a better plan than this.”
“You’re probably right. I’m an idiot with more power than I can think to use. I couldn’t imagine any way to beat you. I knew you would always have a trick to counter anything we could throw at you; always keeping calm and steady to think through the best course of action no matter how thick the chaos gets. That’s why I could only think to exhaust all other options to put us both in a corner. The rest, I left up to you, because I knew you’d find a way. Besides, you're the one who said I needed to destroy everything if I wanted to win,” said GalvanGal. Immortal snickered without being able to help himself.
“Ugh, seriously why would you do this? Why would you put faith in your enemy?” Immortal scoffed.
She opened both palms to him, full of her blood and a beetle’s hemolymph.
“Because you’re my hero, and I wanted to be more like you,” said Hannah, the little girl he always knew, “nothing will ever change that because I wouldn’t be here without you.”
The Gator’s body softened which allowed the white fire to spread from his heart and flow down his veins.
“Even after I tried to kill you. Why bother talking to me.”
“This isn’t enough to hurt me, so why not just talk while I can.”
Tejieue’s body relaxed which allowed the white fire to burn away his insides. There was so much left to be done, too many burdens to be left to others. He needed the strength to hold all the burdens, now they were slipping away from his shoulders to crush everything he tried to build. The future he tried to build for Letiche was falling apart from the inside out. He looked to Aaliyah, who was now helping Garrick up. Helping the sick and injured was when she looked most like an angel to him.
Was I going to…
“What’s going to happen if I’m not here? I can’t leave anything to chance.”
“You said you wanted to build a future for humanity. I believed you. But I also realized that you wanted someone who could save you too. Someone you could think of and feel like everything would turn out okay. It’s something I took for granted for a long time,” Hannah brought his hand to feel her heartbeat, faint yet defiant, ”It’s okay. We’re going to be okay. You’ve done enough.”
Tyler’s body let go completely as the white fire turned his flesh to embers that fluttered into the air and flickered away into nothingness. She had her palms on his cheeks like she wanted to remember the shape. She held them there as he faded away, and stayed there even after.