Dense emptiness intermixed with pulverized concrete. Fine particulate matter under and between, clinging to everything in structural desperation. A wash of grey air and black ground, heated to a still warm char and only unshadowed by a single surviving face. Light reflected down like a softened mirror, faux windows shattered away by the presented forces but off-white concrete still offers high albedo. And the wind seemed to push the clouds away from this still standing defender, even as its brethren lay like spokes to a wheel of breaking. One that has crushed too many this day. Vast piles stretch from edge to inner center, stopping just short of the darkest patch of torn apart matter. Only adding to its ventablack spread.
No vests or helping hands reached this far in, the rubble harbored no buried survivors. And no one this close was in any state to be saved, let along cataloged. But still forms scrounged the haze, the beeping of equipment and the shine of hazmat suits said plenty of their intended duty. To just make sense of what had happened. And tally up what they could. Most were too absorbed in their craft and scans to notice the reptilian menace slowly taking stock of their crime scene. Those that did couldn’t drive themselves to vocalize their sudden collective mortal danger. Merely stumbled away as fast as they could, squeaks and hard breaths enough of a signal to their compatriots that they needed to run. But Seth disregarded their fear, his own was already too much to deal with.
That fire driving him in was battered, snuffed by the oppressive void of this battlefield. He tried to reach out and focus, try and take a more thorough stock of what was here, but that void swallowed up his threads with desperate hunger. And his sight was empty as that void, no energy, no electrons to highlight this blasted corner of the world… except for the dim lights scattered like fallen stars in the ocean. Hard to recognize, fading under the wither of ravenous atrophy surrounding them. But still they shinned, twinkled, almost… hummed. A piece ahead flashed in a set pattern at incomprehensible speed. Its edges bleeding into the darkness around it, but still it tried all it could to keep that flash, that frequency, that signal. Seth reached down, hesitating at the layer of tar black dust still coating everything. But more pressing matters had to refute his trauma. More pressing-
“RUUUU”
That flash became comprehendible, his barely reaching claw making connection before he could prepare or know just what he’d sought. A procession of images, sounds, senses and thoughts. A racing heart loosed and unable to keep a safe rhythm. The smell of flash fire ozone and burning air. The sounds of screams drowned out by that fearful heart and her own frantic breaths. Terror, demands made to gods known and unknown, aches bled away by hysteric demand, “I want to go home!”, she had to pick her son up from school, “I don’t want to die!”, he’s going to miss band practice, “I don’t want to die!!”, he’s all she has left, “I don’t want to-“
“GUUHhhurhhurhh”
That retching lurch, that pit that will always be waiting for its chance. Another death forced upon his mind… no. Countless. This star field, these flickering dying lights. Flash harmonized, cannibalized, forcibly ripened and ripped away before they could be destroyed. Existence retained in shattered stained glass, bits and pieces held in closed bleeding loops and scattered to the winds. All of them… they were all people carved apart. Flaking away, dying even in inadvertent retention. A half assed consciousness cross over, spread their beings about their overloaded nerves. Like a fucking spider injected its melting venom. So it could suck it all out as it pleased. But it didn’t even allow that mercy. Resent just cut them apart, tore them away, rent their beings and left them to rot once he’d had his fill. Leaving only Seth to pick up the pieces.
Pieces… that held to a different harmony than their own. Something left over, left behind, used and abandoned. A piece of this the suit’s new wielder. A contemporary, a template, so he wouldn’t get indigestion. So their beings couldn’t slip away and congeal like grime on a pan. A grasping hand to throw them onto the fire. One that left fingerprints, ones too messy and covered in other people’s blood to read. But Seth could see where he could get the pure evidence he needed.
He picked himself up from the blackened ground, fire reigniting and driving him on. The epicenter, the focal point of all this death strewn about by a picky toddler. It was still hot, burning. His talons winced but stayed their hold as he knelt down again in that burning pit. The emptiness replaced by stinging updraft, sooty air blinking his eyes and forcing them closed. He needed focus anyway. A claw dug into the dust, no hesitation left to it. The heat, the movement like pressure differentials, over-active electrons being forced about and pulled in every direction. But still… there was hummed tune amid the turmoil. Not Resents, his would disregard this hurricane of atomic nonsense. The one who caused all of this, the one who started this. Their blood soaked this burning ground, and sang a tune of more thorough conversion. He tried to focus, read, listen, feel out what they felt. Know who they are.
Broken fragments, recent additions. Their true self was probably locked away like he’d been too many times already. But what he saw, what he felt, what he-
“Hgrrrhrrmgrrhh”
Seth could feel claws rake through flesh, his claws. The taste of blood and dust and crushing fear assaulted his tongue. Screams, slowed to a crawl by perception too overzealous to compensate. Too wanting to hear every warble and note. Resent was enjoying this, was probably still enjoying this. Seth needed to know who had caused this, he had to know before everything fell upon him like an alter ego gone rouge. But this idiot was smothered and soaked to the bone in this physical resentment given sway. He could some feel commonalities, shared reasons. Paths down into the depth that they had been dragged down through. A villain then? No, someone knowledgeable, someone with motives less extreme. Less ambitious and downright psychopathic. Weakness? A trade? A broken will from failed attempts. It was still a mess even this pure, so clouded by Resent’s mass that it was just a lensed distortion. But he just needed time. Time that ended too soon.
His closed eyes felt a light he knew shine down through them. That calming orange glow he’d been expecting to face. His focus melted, and allowed the eyes amassing and glaring down on him to fill his senses. Fury, wrath, misappropriated and yet still justifiable rage. Victims both of his mistake, and the punishment for his necessary crime. He opened his eyes, and those glares became a fire to overwhelm his own.
Erd and Maglev contorting their worst, twin masks trying to hide behind feelings destroyed and unable to be kept at bay. Eschenwald already gleaming just beyond that millimeter of orange hope, and reflecting the wrath wanting nothing but to skewer him alive. Mag’s though was the more shocking deterrent as it wobbled out of sync. Disparity beaten into him and a wound on his soul finally finding an out. Strange there was no Hothead adding on to… Seth’s scanning eyes turned down. This was a reopened wound, battered and rent until it poured everything it held in out. Only a losing hand was left to hold it back, one powered by hatred and defiance. As much as he hated Hot, Seth didn’t want him dead, but Mag could see this as anything else. Not as he was.
The other side bore more condemning glares and more obvious wounds. Three hands finally seated on that slab of metal Buster called a sword, just only one of hers. A pressure patch sucked into place over the stump that was her left arm, and all her might bulging her right trying to keep her dinosauric blade high and pointed to strike. Samurai assisted in steadying, close stance set to catapult her sword with the momentum she was struggling to create. The empty scabbard on his hip the sign for his own meager loss in all of this. Though that lost smile wasn’t blaming Seth as hard as expected. But still they held their shared stance. And still Seth had a greater opponent.
Another scorned warning, a broken promise he couldn’t rightfully keep, the justifiable anger it wrought. Aegis expression was that true fire again, nearly burning the air between them. Hell, the aura around her looked liable to make it a reality. But… there was more to her glare. A challenge. To prove he wasn’t the one responsible. To prove these glares wrong. To make this right. A challenge he had to meet, the only way he rightly could. By accepting the punishment due.
He rose up out of the dust and death, shaking and forcing away the clinging darkness. His opponents shifted to meet him, to tear the heart from his chest yet again and make him pay for what he’d done. What they thought he’d done. But all they found as that terror now firmly branded on to their minds stared back at them at their level… was the soft expression of a repentance. A sorry forgiveness, nothing that would stop what was coming. They wanted their pound of flesh to realign the scales tipped too far out of favor. But still they needed to know he was being truthful. They needed to understand that passing through this condensed transparency wasn’t just a fluke, an exploit, a trick on everyone to break their reputation. It wasn’t possible with malice and ingenuity, it wasn’t a weakness they should condemn its wielder for. It was the only truth they could see with their own yes right now.
A truth they needed to be taught. Because, even like this, even as a monster in everyone’s eyes, he was a hero in every possibility. When he was angry, when his wrath seemed to overwhelm him, he was still fighting, still pulling back from that edge and far from blind. That what had happened before, what they blamed him solely for was the exploit, the trick, the break used by that thing they now knew first hand. And in that soft sorry acceptance, they could have what they could take. But they would not have their closure from him. Even as he took another enflaming step through that subjectively tarnished hope. And met the relief of rightful assertions, and a gleaming sword to the face.
The reverberating pong, deep set and saying plenty, was all Erd received. No resistance, no bunched up threads, no tough bone to slow Eschenwald down. Just a flash shifted stance, a flesh curdling swing, and the sound of Aegis’ shield refusing his possibilities like all the rest. Or at least his sword’s. But this refusal was not alone, even if it was followed by a familiar shift from overly hot to creeping cold. Even if it tore at instincts to survive and stop what was happening. Even if Seth felt his throat gurgle air it shouldn’t have in it, as well as blood spilling in between the new folds. A decapitation, too fast to transfer inertia, to throw everything out of whack, to toss his world end over end. But enough to tell him in clear plain words that his actions had consequences. Even if he refused to accept their totality.
Those bunched folds realigned, threads snapped back to their released connections, flesh sealed back up with a charged sizzle Erd knew and had seen too much of. A final admission to Seth’s lineage, one he’d only half accepted the last time his blade cut into him. Now… now there was nothing for his denial to hold to. And thus nothing to keep back the reality not even sparing him the curtesy of looking him in the eye. All his hesitation received was a hacking, bleeding clear of the throat he just severed, that same repentant stare forward, and another step too far to accept. Even for those less inclined to cut him to ribbons.
The entire right side of Seth’s vision turned metal and ashamedly vindictive. And his face took the brunt of that ill countered ire. Dusty sandals and an over stressed arm swung away as hard as they both could, making sure he felt this one for all their losses had been worth. And whatever his reattached vertebrae were worth. Horns and bones cracked under deafening echo and all were whiplashed back, recoil throwing his neutral stance as wide as he would allow. But his talons dug cutting ruts to keep him upright. Even if his neck was snapped in half, he wasn’t going down. The sting certainly reminded him he wasn’t paralyzed, as did the crinkling grit against his teeth as his shattered face struggled to hold the pressure of his acceptance. His scales panged, spiked from within and from each other. And that same scrunching peeve of a broken horn hanging loose covered up the mangle that was his popped out of line spine. But again, he refused to allow this closure. Though it seemed like this was more just to get a point across than to kill him. Certainly left him feeling that way.
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Bone snapped and realigned, and stopped trying to skewer out of his skin. His spine popping his head at angles it really shouldn’t to just reset its pathing and re-allow him to breathe. The recoil abated and the sparking reconstruction of destroyed skeletal structures ceased with the restored horn, and another hack out of a destroyed breath. The time it took was negligible, fast enough to still see the emotions that charged this strike up, and see them abate in the face of its refutation. But the next step taken off it all was far from allowed at any rate.
A yell, unheard and unexpected. Cracking and expressing more loss than had been known. That mask of disinterest and disengagement hanging off Maglev’s face had finally fallen into the same trap as his fellow Elite. One of loosed fear and overly personal desperation. Though the self-shaving spike of rebar he was javelining sure didn’t want to keep it- *KRAKOUoooooo* to himself. Supersonic, roughly shaped, and already torn through Seth’s chest. Bone and flesh splattered and bounced off the dissolving barrier behind, its target skewered with a knowing accuracy. An already attempted maneuver. More flesh and ribs thrown away and rippled to tatters on the way out, its cargo torn out without a hitch. And that cavernous creeping chill, that screaming bleeding edge, that twice over hole in his chest given a third attempt to put him down.
Seth’s senses flooded out, drained away in slow order. A breath seeped out of its ripped through lung, that pit in his stomach was given fresh air and more space to yawn wider, he couldn’t help wince at every lost motion that twitched against the bore hole that was his chest now. But still this was not their closure. A talon stomped back, cut the new momentum kicked into him, and his senses were spread out against the pain. The metal spike harpooned into the ground behind him was a light like it was a part of his body, corruptive spread highlighting it-
“Hgrrrm”
Tracing it with every splattering beat of the round heart it kababed. As if it was a match for his previous heartache. A grit and focus, a pulling of threads and repurposing of material. That rebar illuminated and lost structure, freed that, always waiting for a chance, heart so it could be pulled back into place. Threads infinitesimal lit up in its path, taken matter carried along and brought into place. Blood lost and sinew destroyed returned under flashing discharge, bone reconstructed once their charge was realigned with its torn off aortas. Another beat to push the cold away and it was like nothing had-
“AAGGGHHHH!!!”
A still closing patch of scales suddenly reeled as another intrusive spike of over sharpened metal stabbed between exposed ribs, and his the left side of his vision was taken over by that broken loose fear. A new physical wound was torn into his heart as Maglev lunged and stabbed, latching to his shoulder without care or learned hesitation so he could repeat his strike over and over again. Every beat was accented by another goring spike, regrowing flesh was ripped and slashed away, every glancing blow against a rib sent that adjoining flitch through his entire chest. But still… Seth did not accept this as his end. Only as his punishment. Or at least someone else’s partial catharsis.
The flurry of splattering blind vengeance came to a lurching halt, neutral accepting stance suddenly broken by a single open claw catching one last stab at thee. The sudden motion tensed every muscle refuted at his flanks, and flinched the one only now stopped before him. Blood dripped from spike to cape, stained his overpowering fear sent overboard by a simple stopping of his fall. Blood mixing with tears trailing down his face as he looked up, looked into that same repentant stare looking down to accept the blame being hammered into him. The slight tinge of his lost love humming through from the claw keeping hold of the only thing keeping him upright. A love he’d been ashamed of, been peer-pressured away from, but still a love he wanted. But all of it lost to the monsters he’d been faced with. A wound on his soul ripped open as they returned and continued their bloody slaughter anew. Yet the one who heard his message loud and clear was the only one accepting that blame. A message that compounded in on him at long last. Forced him back up and out of the pit he’d been thrown in. And drove him back in shame and more achievable catharsis.
The blood drenched spike fell to the stained dust below, shaky feet back peddled and lost their strength, and the weight he’d tried to escape dropped him to the ground out of Seth’s path. Hands grasping at his head, trying to cover his shame from everyone, failing horribly and smearing Seth’s blood down his face. Maglev was left scrunched and sobbing on the ground with nothing but a block. And the tension wrought by it melted away in the sobs none of them could console. Least of all the monster at the center of it all, who still had the worst of his beatings left to take as he turned back up to the focus of his accepting repentance. Back up to Aegis’ now colored and muddled fury.
The seemingly always ready concern she had was stifling the fire in her eyes, but could do little to the staunch ire she exuded. A broken promise, a defiant arrival, complete disregard for his own wellbeing, complete ignoring of all the strain he put on those still trying to grapple with it all. Her fists were tightening, that aura was returning, there was nothing Seth could do but step up to take what was- *BAAAKKKkkkk*
His world turn completely around in an instant, the faces of his refuted blockers now squarely as surprised as he was. The bones of his jaw split like a sledgehammer had just been shot into it, that hitch in his throat returned as it twisted around with him, he could feel the pinch of rippled vertebrae on his spinal column. His arms twitched absent of his control, he struggled to take a breath for a second longer than before, the numbness of paralysis allowed to seep away at the pain. He wasn’t really expecting her to hit this hard, and neither were the rest of the Elite. But slowly that numbness was faded out, that contortion reversed in popping fashion. Bones reformed and that hitch cleared, but still a claw rose to sooth the pain and concern away, rubbing all the expression slammed into him in so it wouldn’t- *pft* overwhelm him. Like the sudden hug he was getting from the one who just slapped him back to last week.
A wobble saying more than Aegis could accept holding back.
“Do you have any fucking idea how worried I was when I saw that suit staring back at us!?”
Her arms wrapping around his exposed chest, stance still too wide to get caught up.
“Do you have any idea… what that thing did to Hot?!”
That failing hold saying it loud, but he already knew what Resent wanted.
“Do you have any idea how happy I was to see your eyes weren’t red?!”
She pulled back and regained level with him, concern finally winning out over scorn. Well, maybe only a little bi-
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO HIM BEING INCAPED!!!”
The moment self-destructed and that hug turned to poignant grabbing of those reeling hovering arms. A shaking grip to mount that scorn back up.
“You said he couldn’t come back!! Well he sure as shit came back with a hell of a lot more than you left him with!! What the hell happened!?!”
Reality and blame fell back on him without regard, so he’d have to refute that as well.
“I- I don’t know yet! I was trying to find out when you all… interrupted!”
Those grappled arms twisted free and softly countered her hold on them.
“Someone must have taken my suit, repaired it, put it on, and feed Resent power enough to come back from the brink I left him on. And… whoever it was let him take over! I only caught bits and pieces, torn away threads left in the blood you drained from him. And… and there just nothing left of whoever it was. They’re smothered almost completely and utterly. It’s damn near impossible to tell where Resent ends and they begin, because it’s just all Resent! It’s just all the pain he caused here, left behind like he couldn’t be bothered to clean his plate.”
His teeth bared and gritted as he was forced to admit that revolting comparison. Aegis had to accept just as much fury as she put on him.
“They sure as shit didn’t seem all there anymore!”
Common dread, fury, and ragged demeanor met as they looked at each other, Aegis still needing to admit their part in this.
“Hugrh! I get the feeling we never even had our hands on the suit in the first place. Techno’s locked himself away but… No… No he definitely isn’t the one who’d be stupid enough to put it on.”
“There’s only one way we learn who caused this. It’s the reason I had to be here… like this.”
Seth pulled back up straight and reaccepted his blame.
“I’m the one who didn’t get the job done. I’m the one who spawned that thing in the first place. I need to be the one to fix this mess. I need to be the one to heal this scar before it bleeds into everything all over again. And I need to end this before it gets worse.”
That reaffirmed tower of scales and menace turned back toward that blackened center of this new lesion on society, back through the gauntlet he’d just stepped through. Though only one face still burned for a second round of more than earned punishment. Erd stanced back up with sword high, he wasn’t going to allow another blasphemous step from this thing. But the eyes he stared to in challenge and zealous wrath did not meet him. Yet he was not bereft in willing opponents, the eyes of his fellow Elite more than willing to meet his. Aegis glared from around Seth’s turned purpose filled form. Buster and Samurai flanking him with ire befitting those already done with this egregious conflict. All together more than his own ire could surmount. But that did not mean he would lose quietly.
“Why the hell are you taking his side?! Even if he was telling the truth, that thing is a part of him! Everything that’s happened has been his fault! Why are you just letting him-“
“That’s enough Erd!!”
Aegis’ withering command squashed that broiling cone to shield.
“That’s enough.”
Heat still pouring off, wrath still clear for all to see, but the weight of something inside tore his elevation down to a more manageable level. Equal footing, something that Aegis appeared to have sought for a long time. And the full nature of this cease fire order seemed to aid this burgeoning dichotomy. Nothing either of them could do to stop monsters of this level, except let them fight it out. So the least they could do was support the one that didn’t atomically consume an entire city block.
Seth paid little mind to the proceedings though, not his place, not his fight. His was back in the void cooling off from its run away thermal mosh pit. The one stained with blood too heavy to clean. And the only evidence left for him to follow. The dust scraped its cooled clumps against talons stepping through, the chill of calmed de-energized matter creating its own disharmony. A knee dropped out and set him down back in the center, scales feeling that same clinging hell all over again, just with more places for it to clog and stick to. His tail hovered just over it all, trying to keep it at bay, but a claw still pushed down deep in to return to that vacuous nightmare.
To the same emotions, the same revelry in the slaughter. The same bleeding desires, the same hollowing screams cut short. That same malice, that consuming resentment of a world once foreign and unattainable. That resentment of the world denied to it out of fear. That resentment of ever being created in the first place. And… and a resentment of Seth. Another commonality, deep, practically anchoring the one sucked into this black hole. They hated him, they both did but this was different, more personal and less parasocial. Something Seth did to them, something they did to him, things they did. Fragmented memories, still clouded in Resent, but copied wholesale and disseminated as slapdash being to fill them out. Disjointed images of records, manifests, an arms shipment, and…
‘The suits!?’
They’d pulled them out of storage, sent them to United for repairs, stole them back to cover their tracks, and gave Tango the manifests. They’re the reason the bank was hit but…
‘No… these memories are too old. They don’t know me… They didn’t know who I was. So why…’
A plan… No, a scheme. To whittle away the weak or push them over the edge. To show them they were...
“Hgrrrr!”
Seth ruined it and the possibilities sent his focus to a razor’s edge, highlighted and sifted through these broken and misplaced strands in an imperceptible instant. A single fragment blaring louder like it was just waiting to be found, to be heard, to be known. A filament that colored in this black empty pit, that wrapped all these stained strings into a messy ball of being. An echo, resounding and rebounding in its vacuous cage… waiting for someone to hear its message. For him to reach out and-
“You never deserved to be a hero anyway.”
That focused edge became atomic, drastic, too much to take and took fine to differentiate. The truth forced upon him, that string trailing like a wire across distance. Across consciousness. A path, an admission, and a weighted lure for something Seth thought he held sway over. But that living resentment wanted its former cellmate back. And he got it.