A relief, a shattering, all that tension weakly cut to a falling vibrant ribbon. Mass exhales, the twin clang and bop of both borrowed swords hitting the asphalt road everyone had fled to. A finality, a nightmare finished and burned away at last. An end to the fight and an end to the worst of their fears made real. But… not an end to everything wrought. One breath still hanged, heat beating back the air just trying to return to normal. That volcanic glare still locked on that blue and steel glint now making its way toward them. Erd couldn’t hold back what still burned within him.

“Aegis… you know what you need to do…”

A callous whisper seethed, barely registered below Buster’s exuberant “Thank fuck!!” A juxtaposition, a maligned call to arms, another cause for exacerbation and rage all her own. A sidelong glare burning away her wanted laxation. That volcano not even giving her the curtesy of meeting in challenge. Still locked solid, still unable to see anything but another threat. An… unfortunately understood fear. This whole fight had been something too extreme, too much. And if this was what Seth and things like him could do then… Then she didn’t want to know what would happen if this came about again. But that didn’t mean she was about to condemn him for a future not even foretold. They ignored the last one after all.

Those willful blades lifted from their blacktop cuts, inanimate hearts feeling the hardness cutting that fire to safer stature. Before both slammed down and broke that lock for what little cause it was worth. Living hearts skipped still frazzled beats, all eyes accented to Aegis’ demanded authority. All of them. Erd turned about on the defiance rung in. Those glares finally meeting and feeling equality of clout at long long last. At least in terms of this pseudo political bullshit!

“grrr…Do it! If you’re the only one who can, you have to end this before this happens again!!”

His growl, his rumble, even the unbound heat pouring off without a conduit to direct it all. It all just felt so… pitiful. So utterly broken. So pointlessly infuriating that Aegis couldn’t even keep the fire within from dimming even further. From just not even being mad at him anymore. A dawning disappointment shining like so many adverse stars already burned away. And yet scorching that glare nearly back down to all that boiling shame that fueled it.

“No.”

Directed condemnation only burying deeper.

“The fights over. We won. You want to keep fighting, you’ll be doing it yourself. But I’d suggest you come to grips with yourself before repeating history. Seth has a tendency to shatter everything around him without much care for the repercussions.”

“Ow… It’s not like I want to you know.”

That breaking glare snapped hard as that blue and steel echoed its words with barely a step given weight. No metronomic thuds or menacing stomps. Just an overly tired shuffle that snuck him in to danger close. A smirk meet him as Aegis turned with much less internalized fear and a lot more snark than she’d managed in a long while.

“The truth hurts, and so does a fourth degree sunburn!”

The helmet managed a hollow chuckle. Its maw affixed and solid, but the smile inside still able to make its way through. Even in the down pour of ire from this blown out Erdwut. The one still bereft of something Aegis didn’t really need anymore. The clanking steps of passing victory were accented with the warbling of energy turned blade. That borrowed symbol of authority and all the rest of that destiny nonsense freed from the road and shifting in her grip. Its will recoiling, her own intentions counter to its want. But she wasn’t beholden to passed down status.

“Here. You wanted it back right?”

A smile and pressed out handle meet Erd as he tracked that armored terror passed this wholly subjective roadblock. A new surprise, a new fear reeling him back worse than the nightmares behind his eyes. A rebuttal to his shame, a rebuffing of his bravest moment. A tentative hand not wanting to reach up but snatching that handle before it could escape and find someone else. A will feeling betrayal but withering in the light of Aegis not needing all that power anymore. A look crossing down at the handle now firmly in his hands as that blade dissolved and took back the rightful place it already had. Just with more broken open truth to keep him from masking everything away. He had his own problems to deal with now.

Problems still moving through the hopefully more understanding leers of those feeling another downward spike of relief. More eyes watching Seth walk this victory over himself away. Brave faces fighting what little fear remained, David still trembling but squaring up. Maya’s glare beside only harder because he still couldn’t stop from trembling. They still knew what he was, knew half of what he’d done, but they at least understood this wasn’t something black and white. They could blame him all they wanted for their loss, Seth would take it all the same. He at least deserved Maya’s hate in this.

Zeleny and Jacob certainly didn’t have that to hang over him, but a slight thankful look from her at least shined a little more light. Cauterizer and Phoenix Tech weren’t shining much though, their loss was more recent and not quite countered by keeping them from sharing Hothead’s fate. Still they were more humbled, more hatred kept at bay. A hate still silent but there in Samurai and Kaze’s eyes. Keeping them together stymied the worst from boiling up, but it would be there forever. He’d have to tell them one of these days, but now wasn’t right.

Seth knew all this without a word passed along. Just as much as he knew the halved glare burning up from the ground beside him, weighed down by more judgment than even he’d inflicted. Golden chains of coiling lightning threatening him if he were to even try and fight the hand pressing his shoulder. Another only somewhat restrained fury towering over. Zeus’ Strike keeping Para down, more blame on him for his son’s injuries than Seth. But only just.

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And yet, that one eye filled in more than enough. More loss felt, more fire being piled upon, more hate stocking it to skyscraping bon. A numb hand contorting as it tried to ball up, an empty eye flexing without its center piece. And that glare… stopping Seth in his tired tracks to meet it with weight overwhelming. With greater fire rising over, with flames akin to the sun’s judgment being nigh. Hatred meeting hatred in a single silent instant. And forcing the lesser’s down with prejudice more than founded. Para knew something of fear as that bright shining eye bore down on him. The same one he’d doomed to be cut open, the same that could only see him in its glare, the same he’d given his soul away to have. Now... it was back where it belongs.

Those stopped talons returned to their pace, a little weight rung back in and unable to be restrained. At least the worst on his path was over and Aegis’ own concern could be alleviated again. Really didn’t need another foyer incident, but she understood the sentiment bearing down. And the strength it took to keep walking away after. Strength followed at marginal distance as the rest of the heroes took precedent. They couldn’t heal themselves after all. Though one took more attention than everyone else, a bulky begging mass filling the left side of her vision. Buster wanted her sword back.

“Please…?”

Aegis sighed off the disappointed chuckle and strained up the slab of metal vibrating its thanks into her grip. Like a cat purring, and subsequently being smothered by it owner. Buster hugged against the flat like it had been days. Like her situation was anything like Erd’s and her wielding was in question. A still rather heartening reaction getting a smile and a sore arm in return. And a fair distance deficit from the one she was following. But with no more weight and authority holding her down, Aegis was more than willing to catch up before Seth crested the hilly road before them. Before the rumbling on the other side… Wait?

She sprinted after as that metallic head tried to disappear below the decline, and as that rumbling stopped in tire screeching familiarity. UTAHs, several of them. Boots pouring out before she could reach parity. Colors of every shade and demarcation, reinforcements getting here too late and nearly slamming face first into the one they’d been all too acquainted with. Aegis didn’t know Erd had called in more, what he’d told them they were running into. But they knew what they were here to fight, and it was walking straight into their assembly area. Without a hint of slowing down, or even giving them the time of day.

Medics making for the rise, for the wounded they believed needed their help, froze in their accents. Covered faces and armored bulks reeling back. Disembarking heroes startled to a standstill, held up their forming groups and watched on. Throngs of color coded designs were stopped in their briefing tracks, silence cutting the hurried formations to bystanders. The road kept clear for future need, but now acting as red carpet for the metal terror just walking right into their lines. Right into their sights. Like nothing had happened, like he wasn’t responsible, like all their pain and anguish was beneath it. Like a damned blind idiot who couldn’t read the room!

Aegis kowtowed the observant as she power walked in his still too far tracks. A glare and signal enough to stop any concerted effort. Her presence enough to assuage the uninformed. But still a tension was mounting, the air was too quiet and the eyes too focused. Too angry. She needed to get ahead of this. She knew what Seth was dealing with. Fatigue and fresh wounds and whatever the hell he managed to do to Resent could have left him much will left. Even a single misstep could set off something far worse than what’s already festering. This fight was over, more fighting would only lead to more hardship and more fucking scars to heal. And all of that would be on him if someone else-

*SKEEShsh*

Set him off.

A splash of white fluff and crystals, a recoil in the towering armored bomb that just took a fucking ball of ice right to the eye. A flinch across this claustrophobic’s night terror, like predators seeing their prey stumble. A damned B-team idiot glaring his hardest, hand still outstretched from flinging that ball as hard as he could. He wasn’t even the one who made it, just the sharpest marksman in his group. And regretting his actions already as his face turned pale. As that ice turned to steam. And that burning azure flared to take in the face of a dead man.

The wrong moves, the wrong defense. All those tensed onlookers turned to hardened protectors of peer pressured stupidity. Powers lit up, weapons lifted to ready, another wave of useless fodder set to crash against already proven disproportion. These idiots were about to go to war over their own first strike and Aegis was going to have none of it. That simmer rose off her, fought fatigue and adrenaline withdrawal, fought to drag all this hostility toward her and make the mere prospect into a venture to literal hell. She stormed forward, to set herself between, to force them all to see the gravity of this idiotic antagonism and make them rue ever-

But an armored claw stopped her advance. And straightened up like a pushed over sapling before even the slightest regret could push this all further to hate. That burning eye dimmed as the icy steam wafted away, that armored form almost water compared to the steel hardening to every offending movement. A calm almost torrential in its own right. And a tone almost jovial against the scorn surrounding.

“Nice shot. But you’re not gonna get anywhere that way.”

That stopping claw pulled back, met its partner as both grabbed hold of that still smile scarred helmet. A sudden twist and pop, a release of hot air kept at bay by seal or just settled in the joint. A lifting like it weighed nothing. A springing of stark white once again freed. Then horns receded and slid to open air. And at last those eyes dimly shining, those grey scales hardly a sheen, and that maw… still grinning like nothing bad had ever happened.

“There. Now you can try again. And put your back into it more, all you did was startle me.”

That damned B-teamer stammered back, like a ghost had returned to haunt and call him chicken. All those solid stances wavered as the real beast beneath that even more hated armor revealed itself, put his helmet on his hip and called their misinformed bluff. Rose higher than he’d been flinched and smiled away their willingness to keep this vaunted struggle going. The good fight against terror, the protection of all those safe and happy lives, that bright future. Where the hell was it in that slight victorious chuckle?

“No takers… Alright, you can try again when you feel like it’s worth it.”

A crushing sensation, an aggravated impotence, a few simple words like this wasn’t even a battle. Just a bunch of bugs trying to stake a claim upon a whole damn planet. Aegis couldn’t believe this was the same Seth. Could bring herself to intercede, to simmer further, to do… anything. Not even as those armored talons returned to crunching the road. Not as he started walking away without even a glance given. Not even as all that weight and presence just left without even a goodbye. Like everything was beneath him. Not quite ignored, just… not in his way anymore.

Like there was something more important. Something drawing all that would be ire away, that should be mounting fire rising into the stratosphere. Like those returning, even, calm, metronomic steps were on purpose. Like that smile hide an inferno raging just beneath a placid surface only held by soothing familiarity. Like this wasn’t over. Like that dimmed blue eye… hid the red still burning inside.