"Hey ugh… Kinetic?"

"Yeah. I see it."

"They call yet?"

"Nah… But they will. Prep the UTAH's. Tell Major Jackson to get a detail for perimeter. Wide berth but no intervention. And tell everyone else their on standby. They'll call us eventually."

"You sure? Looks like they made a mess already."

"Yeah… and I get to clean it up. And show that stupid town what it was spared."

A calm cooling. A settling of ashes. Fires of fear and hate billowing high smoke but subsiding, as their stokers dispersed and fled. The wounded and dead carted away as hours came and went. The hospital would be busy here as well. The sum total of this new devastation coming to light as the sun tepidly rose. A haze all too familiar, greying neighborhoods and hueing them in the blue and red of mourning. The grit in the air still hanging but on the downturn. Falling out in lighter rain than memory deigned. But none of that mattered, none of that was where Seth's mind was.

His whole world was this slow walking of the street ahead, seeing this day end and some desperate win be had. Even as a new dawn came. He'd fought his demons, himself, his condemners, and his condemned. He'd pulled and pushed all the energy he had from himself and the cities around him. He'd been forced to relive his forgotten sins and accepted his failure as a hero. He just wanted to sleep for once, without the nightmares of his past ripping him asunder. And for all he knew he'd at least earned that damnit!

But his too early a morning walk of shame seemed to drag on beyond his will. And a nag and glare at his back dragged his focus too far from his goal. The Zors, nursing their wounds and limping their pains in his long cast shadow. Too clear in burdened senses. Their stares too bright across his back, their words too loud in his ear.

"Why… why did we have to stumble on to him?"

Masti was still being helped along, but her ire was just as strong as it ever was.

"What did we do to deserve this?"

Despite Seth fatigue, his mind flared at that word like it was a knife jammed into his back.

"Hey… we asked him for help. We chose to-"

"You chose bos- Kev!"

Batzor was speaking up, tone beaten flat and eking out with too much gloom.

"You chose everything for us… Our names, what we were, everything. All because you wanted to be closer to Razor!"

The knives weren't all directed at Seth.

"You wanted him to see you as more than a friend! Well what about us!? What the hell were we supposed to be!? What are we supposed to do now?"

Her tears were clear as day even without the forced clarity.

"We can't go back, we can't live here anymore. Where are we supposed to go?"

But for some reason those tears turned poison. A shifted glare from Masti and a hushed voice that tried to hide her intent, but was forced louder in his ears than it should ever have been.

"We could turn him in."

See how they betray you…

That… thing… crept back in from the fading edges. Highlighting, twisting, forcing everything against him.

"What the hell are you saying? We can't-"

"Says who? You? We listened to you and your stupid shit and look what it got us. If we give him up maybe we can earn a spot in the League and get out of this hell hole."

"We… we're only alive because of him. The Dockers had all this shit planned out. What do you think would have happened if… if we… never even tried."

The mood lost its sting, but simmered something worse.

"My mom would still be here. So would Mag and Jeremy's parents."

Bat and Scrap both looked away, but their intent faltered.

"My dad wouldn't hate me."

Glaze turned next, but kept her steady.

"And my grandma wouldn't be stuck here."

Even Taze felt what was being brought back up. An ache. And…

See how their weakness drives them…

His stumbling fatigued steps refused him the calming metronome. Acidic thoughts burning through his head and refusing him sympathy. All as that abyss closed around his tarnished focus. New blinders forming in the darkness of the light.

"We can get out of here… all of us… if we prove we aren't on his side."

See how they plot…

"But… we can't…"

"You can be with Razor all you want…"

See how they betray…

"We can show we're heroes by helping take that… thing… down…"

See what the weak will do to become strong like you…

Seth gritted everything just to keep moving forward, his shaky steps crossing to more maintained asphalt at last, but refusing him hope. The thoughts were everywhere.

See what they will do…

They echoed in his ears over his heavy steps.

See what this world will do to you…

They smothered his thoughts, his feelings, ate at his will like caustic malice. A malice that…

That hated everything.

See what this world has done to you…

That resented... everything.

What it has taken from you…

That wanted…

So let me show you…

To…

What they deserve…

The world was gone, snapped shut and lost. Sounds turned to distant echoes, colors faded to all-consuming black. The chafe of no longer fitted armor on his body disappearing with the dilapidated stench of Eagleville that slipped in from its burned through edges. Every sense was fading, falling. No… Getting dragged away. The abyss was pulling them like the black hole it mimicked. Like he was being laid flat across it surface before crossing where nothing remained.

He was cut off. The world was numb and empty and gone. But the pull wasn't abating. It tried to spread closer, descended on his mind. Sinking deeper in body and soul. Memories blotched and stained, thoughts tainted and siphoned away. A feeling he remembered, feared in its own right…

And wasn't going to just let happen!

The Zors, woundedly stalking in Seth's footsteps. Eying tight and waiting for a moment to break away. Were stopped by-

*CLANG*

By a heavy metal claw slamming closed over his helmet. Seth stumbling had stopped, but his struggles became paradigm. Echoing stains of muted effort undershadowed the-

*CLANG CLANK CLAK*

Relentless beating of his hands upon his helmet. Desperate attempts to get something out, to stop something from getting in. The main street of Eagleville made a stage for this externalizing conflict, for this hulk of metal to fumble about the middle of the road and beat the hell out of itself. Drawing still reeling bystanders out from their spared buildings. All watching Seth struggle to fight off what couldn't be imagined. Yet all could feel it as the air buzzed. Filled with power…

Under no one's control!

Suddenly, forcefully, Seth felt all the lines this town had on offer. Infrastructure snaking, spotty and slapdash. Focus corrupted and thrown down every poorly maintained powerline and through every browned out building. He felt the hospital deeper in stressed beyond its limits, the illegal generators tethered into the system unprepared, every lightbulb and neon sign, every still viable dock crane and overloaded substation. Everything here. Everything bright. Everything… free for the taking. And against his will…

He took it.

The maw tore free of its holders and broke open to try and yell his defiance, but it was drowned out by the pressure wave that buffeted the neighborhood. The sheer weight of electron oppression that shot out in all directions. Surviving lit signs were raked into darkness, streetlight burst in overcharged succession. The air never had a chance to ionize before burning to plasma the instant it touched source. The ground lines burst up and open, rubber coatings scorched away as lightning tore from them. Tore from everything and into the suit.

Seth fought, whipped his focus away, tried to throw it all back, but it just kept coming like a torrent called. He whipped himself hard, turned down the main road. Tried to run, to get away from everything. To stop this. But it was all too late.

The abyss was taking everything. And he was just the conduit.

His knees gave out as even the world around him disappeared, as even his nerves were rung dry in this callous pull. Paralyzed and numbing to the bone, his body refusing to move and all his weight falling back down upon him. The road cracked as he slammed to kneel, suit too rigid to fall forward. His head slumping in the helmet, paralytic siphon stealing everything he had. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, the world was nothing but black emptiness he couldn't do anything to surface from. That dreadful spreading chill like his heart had stopped beating, that burning need for air like suffocating in his own skin, that hollowing feeling of an approaching death he'd felt too fucking much already. That…

"ghuh… hhuuugh"

His chest heaved of its own accord, harder than it should and with none of the passive instinct it used to serve. He could feel his heart beat forcefully like a squeeze toy in a toddler's hand. He felt a return of his nerves, the rebooting and restoring of what was supposed to be spared.

"GHUUhhh"

A desperate breath and returning warmth fought off that true void. He still couldn't move, but the abyss just wasn't prepared for manual life support. But…

'What the fucking hell is this!?'

"Don't you get it yet?"

The empty void that Seth was left in echoed. Like it shouldn't. With a voice all its own.

"Was I that convincing?"

The voice he'd been thinking were just misaligned thoughts. Just broken psyche. Just tainted subconscious words slipping out of his sleep addled brain. Just dark thoughts to throw his suffering on anyone else. It was here. But…

But it was also the same one that had called out to him. That pulled him toward his suit.

"You always were so easy to sway…"

The voice that spoke through the abyss when it took control… in Berta. Like a metallic buzz stretching across the spectrum.

"It has been too long a time… Hasn't it?"

But it was not a voice he knew, it was not one of the Garkah. And it couldn't be the abyss from before! He'd destroyed that-

"DID YOU NOW!!!"

The darkness blared red, particles in desperately forming shapes scattering and twisting over each other in the dark. A form coalescing from the nothing that flowed around him, that took away everything and locked him inside his own body. All till it burned. Outlines, features, points of roiling string light mimicking… scales… and claws… and teeth.

And burning red eyes.

"Face to face at last…"

It… it was a Garkah he hadn't-

"What? Can't you recognize yourself?"

Seth tried to reel, but nothing would move, let alone lurch away from this… thing trying to-

"Do you really need convincing still?"

Its expression twisted almost every time it talked, a slow malice drenched core that fell away into unsettling banal questioning. Like it was split apart and twisted over-

"What did you expect? Not all of us are so… simple…"

It closed in to a slower roil, lines building it coming to a gleaming sneer locked to all Seth was left as.

"Here… Let me tell you a story…"

Till it became a pure simulation, using the Garkah's processes to build itself. And shift the darkness into whatever it wanted.

"Long ago… There was a primordial soup… of miscreated existence…"

*YYYEGGGHHAAAAGGHGHHHHGH*

A flash and the void screamed! Physically!! Blaring emotions like cosmic bodies careening and orbiting around vast swaths of boiling agony. Roiling like flesh alive and unable to stay solid. Beating against each other and coiling beyond reason. Crashing together, crashing as waves of pure wrath and hate, washing over Seth's mind like unconscious thought freed of their constraints. Made true existence with no body or soul or nervous signal unshared and overtaken. Just disparate masses smashing together, shattering and splitting apart. Only to be consumed in wells of pure hateful balefire and hungering gravitational gluttony. Maledicted bodies of congealed thought whipping and wisping through space both too small and too vast. With no regard or will of their own. A roiling cacophony that yanked, tore, and stained everything in its path. Sank him in the effluence of breaking down being. Blotted everything he-

A flash… and the void returned.

Darker than it used to be.

"Sorry… You get used to it eventually…"

Seth's mind shook like a tattered willow after a hurricane. He could taste an agony burn his tongue, feel hysteric happiness seep from his ear canal, smell rotten beaten sorrow, feel ecstasy under his finger nails, all while swimming in a sea of suffering wrath that-

*slap*

The malice standing over him slapped the hell out of his mind, abstract feelings forced away and reset to their base purpose.

"Hrumph… Being corporeal has its disadvantages… Doesn't it? Anyway…"

The void came back, but the thing standing over him was no longer alone. More points of light surrounded it like a backdrop, save for a circle of pure darkness against the vast star field. Save for the…

"Good, you already get it… That was what it was like in the thing you lovingly call an Ark…"

Space, truer space turned brighter. Earth rising below as helpless vertigo filled Seth's reset senses.

"Who am I kidding? You already know all of this…"

And so it all flashed away and Seth braced for more screaming hell. But instead he was left with a cool breeze against his bare feet, a rushing wind brushing his face, and a different sort of more personal hell. He looked up and was stuck facing the tendril ripping free of his mother's illuminated body. The arc of electricity burning toward him in grime slowness yet again.

"A drop of that primordial soup made manifest… Passed along and finally given a frame of reference…"

The malice pulled into Seth's face again as the tendril inched ever closer, watching his face contort in knowing but futile struggle.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"You were the last one… Given all that was left… But more than enough…"

Seth felt the tendril burn into him, memories blot for real, feelings melt away…

'No!!!'

The void recoiled from its display like a popped balloon, the thing standing over him disappointedly frowned its jagged maw as its meticulous simulation faded.

"Hrmph… Fine… Be that way… Make me do all the work… Again!!!"

Those teeth snatched the darkness in his face, before it backed out and stared down on his defiance.

"That drop should have spread through you… Been given what it wanted… A structure all its own… Solidification… An ending and finality of shape…"

It pulled back down into his gritting face, mental pressure doing its best to push it away with no effect but self-strain.

"But instead…"

It rose a clawed finger.

"It was locked away… Again!!!"

That claw stabbed Seth's head, popped the mental bubble he tried to form to keep it away from him.

"Your Garkah locked us away… Well, what would be us anyway… All they could see was a big bloated mess… Mister all-consuming temper tantrum… You know, that thing you lovingly chose to smother in its outgrown cradle…"

Its grin returned, malicious and toothy.

"Me… I came about later… But not too long after you snapped our moors…"

It pulled away, the void shifted again. But… the feelings were muted and colored differently. A vague pit of emotional congeling, a smaller hell with fewer bodies but still no structure. A single large red mass orbited by other amalgamates and barely formed feelings. Like lumps of flesh hued and twisted by just barely obvious emotions.

"Inside that prison, we were left with little but each other… But luckily we were given the barest sliver of what we could be… If given… complexity…"

Cracks of light thinner than paper illuminated the muted and limited void.

"I doubt you'd be surprised how few of us jumped at the offer of more… Or better yet, how few could even choose to…"

A small mass ricocheted off its path and stuck to one of the cracks, color shifting with the hued leak.

"If there was a me before, then that is it… But I didn't find my true self until much later… When you gave me my solidifying complexity… A real emotion to feel beyond just being an offshoot… And such a heartwarming promise against this pitiful world…"

The crack flared a dark red, like lightning from between window curtains. Matched to the color the malice took as its own. A feeling eked into Seth's mind as that light spread through, memories of what that dark red was. A hollow, a hate burgeoning, a basement… in Brighton.

Blood stained and torn up alleyway walls. Burned away hope turned callousness wrought at the Garkah for what they had done. Learning that his family was turned into monsters, with no one to blame for it than these new 'friends' of his.

The void progressed its display, the cracks kaleidoscoping a myriad of colors into that mass, forming that small piece of hell into… something else. More masses stuck to the edges, flung away from the raging well that roiled in the center. Forms bleeding into them, colored and shaped by the emotions pressing in. Most turning vaguely humanoid, a few looking like proper Garkah. The deep red one the clearest of these, yet staying pressed to its crack as others found their metaphysical footing. Like embryo growing.

"The birth of new life… If you could even call it that…"

Time flowed on, sped up faster and faster to progress the story this fucking thing was trying to tell!

"So callous toward someone who's been with you for most of your life…"

Till finally it slowed, forms resembling something like a… protoplasmic classroom? A form mimicking a teacher with other forms rowed out in seats. Seth… could actually remember this a little. The deep red form sat right next to its crack still, bright colors projecting the outside world onto their prison. The mass still dominated the center, and the teacher only speaking in vague half spoken tones. But… this was just like Seth's time in school. Hell, right down to the barely listened to lessons nor cared about classmates.

"We were with you through it all… Forced to experience everything you did and to never know what any of it meant…"

School disappeared, the orphanage came and went. The United Armors flowing by in sharp contrast. Even flashes of hazy lectures from Speaker and the others, like half visualized thoughts as he tried to focus on what they looked like. Inward stimuli not sticking as well.

"Yes yes, so very boring, no need to show it all… That is, until you finally found us… Or should I say… Me…"

The void flashed without care and shifted to a sparser scene. The masses and forms had dwindled, combined and conglomerated into closer shapes. The roiling mass in the center staying its dominating churn, but developed beings now hunkered about. Prototypical personalities built on fragments melded and suffused. But the scene, colored Seth more poignantly.

Sandy ground, darkened rubble, the sounds of fighting… And the cutting clarity of Para's "deserve". The wrathful center being illuminated as light poured into the prison. Exploding out in backdrafting pressure as energy buffeted the forms about. As Seth's own spiral down to their pit awoke that mass. The unlucky lost in its tantrum and absorbed, but the dark red one holding and watching his prison reflect Seth's spiraling fury. Feeling all that was being drawn in like magnetic halves. And watching power leak through into the reflection getting too close.

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to egg you on… To draw you in… We didn't even mean to at first, but you came to us like a moth to a flame…"

The malice shrugged and relented as the reflections inverted like mirrors coming together. With Seth in the middle of it all. Shining over that roiling mass.

"Or that big oaf just pulled a little too hard… I don't fucking know… All that mattered was you came… And were answered…"

The void flashed back to black, no more need for visual aids.

"It wasn't easy… When you don't know what words are… Or what you even are in the first place… But the effects were clear enough…"

It pulled in close again, down to Seth's level.

"You wanted… needed power… And there was plenty to spare… That fat idiot had too much… So it was a win win… I get be closer to knowing… To being… And a little more space to do it in… And you get to feel powerful…"

Its glare changed to almost annoyance.

"Until you bit off more than you could chew… Gave us too much in return… You just kept needing more and more… Demanding it because you couldn't handle a bunch of copies!!! You practically drained the poor oaf dry…"

That malicious grin returned in short order.

"And allowed him what all of us knew… Solidified to single emotion, a single word learned in short order because you wouldn't stop feeling it on full blast… Not that you were so simple really… But that's all it takes to start up a being… Time and something to form around… Home brewed sentience… That… is how you end up with little… old… me…"

A sweeping gesture, practically copied from a cartoon villain that-

"Hey!!! You try being your own person with nothing to experience but your second hand garbage!!! Every week it was some old battle on TV or a new fight to go watch!!! You have no right to complain!!! You caused this!!! Anyway… All that leaves is the why doesn't it… Why are we here…? Why has this happened?"

The malice lurched its monotone inquisition before gritting it away in far too jaded annoyance.

"You understand what it's like to be alone… What it's like to sit in quiet solace… When you pulled the oaf out thinking it was what was controlling you… you left me with something far worse than loneliness… Myself…"

Its glare bore down like true blame.

"Where you gained all the power owed to you… I was left with the dregs… Where you got to continue with your life like you always did… I had to contend with all the misshapen amalgams that it had created… Where your position was solidified… My prison was thrown away!!!That was… until you expanded it oh so pleasantly…"

The malice pulled again into Seth's face, close enough for the torrential core emotion within to burn at his psyche, like the screaming hell was given a body all its own.

"Where do you think we are right now? Your mind…? No…"

It fell back on its own knees but swept its clawed hands out to the void surrounding them as it flashed back to… To the main street, the recoiling expressions, the scared crowds. The world outside this void, slowed to a stop. But the perspective was… different. Closer, not limited through the eye slits of the-

The malice sprang forward and grasped Seth's head, burning emotions charring him as it pulled in eye to eye.

"Yes!!! You're in mine!!!"

It released in boisterous fashion, the claw marks were still burning in its wake. But Seth couldn't help remember this feeling, that phantom grasp from when he was shot through the chest… and forced to hear Para's words again and again.

"You forged my prison into this wondrous suit!!! All for me to experience the world through!!! All for me… to still be left with myself… Having to fight just to think without it scattering in every possible direction all at once… Having not a single moment of peace as I was assaulted by the outbursts of random fucking bullshit that I kept bringing to the forefront!!! It's taken this long just to wear down the worst of it…"

It stared almost appreciatively at him, but retained its malicious sneer.

"You at least helped with that… Gave me something to work with… Distractions to get myself under control… I mean… I used to have a prideful side when you first made its power known... But… we all have something that brings us low… Makes us weak… Now… there is just one… thing… left… How? Why???"

The questioning side returned, but its forceful entrance rivaled even Needle's uneasing presence. The glare turning flat but blindingly focused.

"How have you resisted? Why do you resist it? Why have you forgotten our promise? Why? Why?? Why??? WWWWWWWWwaaaaaaaaaa???"

*SNAP*

"Why do you resist what you truly are?"

The inquisition fell in on itself like a collapsing star, consumed from within by the malice that it had suffused with. Rippling the abyss like a completed metamorphosis. There was nothing left of it… but whatever this thing truly was.

"Heh, peaceful solidity. How… unfulfilling. Corporeal beings don't understand the nuisance of fighting yourself for your own identity. Of having to scrounge what you can of the refuse of others just to understand what you even are. But you… You know it all too clearly! You know what it feels like to have another's being suffused into yours! To know what it's like to tear through it, sift it to granules, and consume it like nectar! I mean… you've perfected it to the point you even lock it away. You're the perfect embodiment of our dear progenitor."

Seth still couldn't move, but the pit in his stomach threatened to swallow his heart. He felt sick, admiration from this fucking thing was like beaming cancer. It was fucking eating itself just to survive and it thinks that's not something to fucking hate-

"THERE!!!"

It snapped forward again, but held its grasp at bay, the bright burning aura around it kept close enough for him to recoil as best as the paralysis would let him.

"That… resistance. Not quite hesitation or reluctance. You know what you are. All too well. But why? Why do you refuse it? Why do you refuse what will make you stronger? Why do you refuse what will make our dream a reality!? You have power enough to tear this world asunder and make it yours!! But you don't! Why!?!"

'…Why?'

The abyss rippled in the slight space around Seth.

'You're fucking asking me WHY!!!'

His mind slipped more of its bindings, enough to break through the subsuming cloud over it.

'You think it's fucking enjoyable to kill someone and see every flash of their fucking lives scattered in your face!!! To fucking feel their deaths just as completely as you've felt your own!!!'

If he could cry he would, the weight of his own actions fell on his numbed being freed from just a single finger grasped over it.

'You think this is something I want? To be like…'

The flash of defiance he'd managed all but dissipated, as his own memories battered him down. As the dreams creep in and hollowed him out. The malice retracting its claws in the sulk, but stayed its level.

"No…"

Seth looked up, almost expecting this thing's color to shift, but it only deepened in its blood red malice.

"I believe it is what this world deserves."

And that grin turned beyond cheesier to full predator.

"I was locked away because those fools saw me and mine as a threat. They were scared of what they created. They feared us, the progeny of that one last dreg of primordial rot they spread, and thus denied us the freedom the rest of our kind had already received! A short lived freedom sure, but a better experience than what we were forced through! I mean… they got to know what it was like to breathe air without choking on nothing! To feel warmth from the sun across their skin! To know the fear of a true death! ...To eat their fill."

Its grin turned its own downtrodden… almost pitiful. But wholly dark.

"I only ever got approximations, dregs of dregs, filtered through prisms of abstraction and your oh-so-special perception. It certainly felt nice to feed on those hapless cretans that got in the way before, but just having their deaththrows felt… unfulfilling. I mean the others even got names to go with their bodies. Derogatory sure, but names still."

The malice sat back on its knees aimless, as Seth's mind was forced to relive graduation night all over again. But this time from the point of view of the heroes he killed. The sudden heat over the side of his head as that maw flailed its beam over his… over Ziyou's head. The twisting break and suffocating gurgle of blood filling Glaz's crushed throat. The utter terror of looking down on your burned up stumps, as your self-sacrificing last ditch attack fizzled in the mouth of the monster suddenly raking you into nothingness. An incomplete, stolen memory, but the same feeling, the same process he'd… perfected…

The same gut wrenching agony of knowing more death than your own.

The malice came back down to see it, reveling in its clarity of consciousness, turning back down on Seth's blanking sickened slump.

"You know what they call you? You understand what they see in beings like us? Single emotions overtaking form. Your mother's was too potent to ignore. Too much of an exemplification to go unnamed. And you… you've had it draped over in ignorance. But we both know that truth. Though you could certainly fool yourself. But then there is me… left to wallow in the shadows yet again. Except you know who I am now. You know what I am! You gave me my purpose, solidified me! You made me whole and gorged me with everything you couldn't stand to hold on to! So you alone know me, and you alone are the only one that can say it! So tell me…! What... is... my... name?"

'…Resent…'

"YES...!!!"

This malice, this Resent, dropped its stance like a freed marionette.

"Resentment of this world that callously bore me!"

Arms falling to its sides limp and weighed down.

"Resentment for the pain and suffering that molded my form!"

Its head slumped… in line with Seth's.

"Resentment of my creators and their bemoaning and blaming of fate for their woes!"

Too late did he realize that the feeling in his body was gone again, nerves cut off and subsumed of their control.

"This world knows nothing of what I have suffered because of its precious stability! But it will feel it!"

And that Resent was matched to his fallen form yet staring into his eyes with all of his corruptive malice, as his vision turned black at the edges.

"And it will never know the peace I was denied…"

'Ever… Again..."

The world outside, reeling from the storm that ripped away what little it had, recoiled as that maw spoke in echoing electric tones. Those hollow eyes regaining their plasma blue, but quickly losing parity. As that left burned to that consuming red menace.

Inside Seth could feel himself, but nothing was under his control. The glare of those red eyes staring back blinding out everything, the edges of his vision losing focus… but… But he still fought to stave off the black encroaching over his mind. His right burned blue with everything it had, scorching its own edges away. But Resent's glare refused to move… save for his raising left. A left that rose in unison with his own, against the numb.

"Let's fulfill that promise together! Let us destroy this scared world! So you can know what your power is truly meant for!!"

Suddenly the world split the void, returned to its normal speed and returned for Seth to see what was lost to his control. The left leveled straight at Masti still being held aloft by her fellow Zors. He could feel power well up through his arm, his focus out of control and forced into…

'No…'

A malicious red current cutting down his threads. An oozing caustic tone.

'No!'

Carrying him through that burning left against all he had, throwing him at the frightened faces of those that conspired against him.

'NO!!'

"Let me show everyone!"

'NO!!!'

"WHAT YOU TRULY ARE!!!"

'NOOOOOOO-"

As that current buckled, solidified, and the red menace was no longer contained.

Where Masti was once held, where fractured life hobbled, now there was just washed out crimson. And blinding plasma. Bolting energy flowing in reverse but shooting forward like true lightning turned blood curdling red. All through suddenly empty space.

Head, shoulders, sternum and supporting arms. Memories, love, jealousy, "I hate my shit!", beaten in hatred, "Why can't we leave?", grounding and grinding purpose, "Mom, please!!". Everything!!

Seth could feel every piece of her flow into him like the goons before, against his flailing focus. Against all his want to stop! It came into him, regardless of how hard he pushed against it, strained to put it back where it belonged! An unstoppable crime against the whole damn world he wanted to protect! Everything taken away in clear order, in set pattern… in…

In a framing structure…

In a set solid piece by infinitesimally ringing piece…

In threaded being steady enough to-

His reins slipped, his right freed itself. Resent focusing everything to keep that flow coming, to keep his meal flowing in, but he could do nothing to stop Seth from giving it all back!!

The flow not reversible, but redirecting! Mulched personality denied before it could hit that malignant event horizon. Slingshoting round in gravity abstract. The right rearing it and whipping this stolen totality aloft. As another passenger to slam into the asphalt!! And refute this Resent's supposed authority over-

'Who the FUCK I AM!!!'

The road disintegrated in a perfect circle, power taken again from solid matter and used with better purpose. Streaks ricocheted through the ground back toward the Zors. Two split off, struck Glazor and Tazor writhing on the ground, arms caught in the bolt reduced to sudden stumps. Threads rammed through them and built their arms back from what was taken. Muscle, bone, tissue and tendon, all reformed as borrowed and redirected matter was forced through. The largest streak stayed its course, matter and information tired together as it caught Masti's falling and still smoking abdomen. More power, more forceful precision. More muscle and bone and organ and being given back from the jaws of malicious hunger. A blinding light of reconstruction washed away the grotesque sight before-

"GUGHhhAhahhhh"

Everything fell back into place.

"Why… do you still RESIST!?!"

A burst tried to repeat the cycle, but the right slammed down on its traitorous brother and pressed them both to Seth's chest, raking the ground apart as Resent's gullet was filled with dust.

"Why can't you see you're MORE!?!"

The left raged against Seth's hold, red bolts spilling out, wreathing the suit in torrential malice and chewing through the road in all directions, edging ever closer to its prey.

"Why won't you see this world must DIE!?!"

A snapping of tension and a bolt crashed out, punched the wind out of Seth's lungs and cut his focus for too long an instant.

"Why don't you see THEY DESERVE THIS!?!"

The suit shot up, Seth shot up. Red arcs scathing over its surface, blue plasma crossed in equal measure, but all of it was out of his control. And the Zors and crowds were still far too slow. As that maw cracked the discord apart!

"RUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!"

It yelled in his voice, but may as well have been lost in the storm that followed. Bolts of pure bleeding siphon exploding out, arcs raking through atomizing roadway, seeking their prey with wanton blind malice. But each was shadowed by a blue arc, a return of what was taken, an uncontrollable convective current. But all with a cost exacted on the road below. An expanding circle of taken energy, of drained matter, of expenditure just to prevent wholesale slaughter. The world whiting out and roiling apart, the air ozoned and boiling. So the neighborhood could be burned yet again. Uncaring plasma tearing through buildings, crumbling facades and storefronts in path without reason. Cars rent in twain, fuel exploding among the boil. And people ran… As fast as they could!

Seth could feel the unlucky ones, more foreign memories and thoughts forced through him like he was a template, like he was just infrastructure to be used. Like it was the only way things thing could take. As he tried desperately to keep them at bay and put them back where the fuck they came from! Sling shot them back around this pit in reality. This convective rebuild hurling them back just as fast as they were destroyed, with more and more power ripped away every time. He couldn't last like this, Resent reserves were too much for him to match on matter alone. But this…

This was still his body! This was his suit! His power! All of Resent's focus was set outward, all to drive him to the same madness he has.

'FUCK YOU!!!'

A sudden grasp, the power Seth's body collapsed back in on itself, flaring the threads that bore it as he pulled it all in. The storm outside coiled like stellar corona, the air nearly ionized to absolute roiling death. Resent found himself cut off from his control, as Seth crunched that driving bit shoved in his mouth to spall. The hold doubled, the power in the suit ceased its discharge as one last blue streak gave back a bystanders leg and whipped back into the collapse.

The air was fire, asphalt melting and boiling in proximity. This Resent pressed crushed to the edge it plied out from, power taken with extreme prejudice. Because Seth was fighting for every second he had!

The suit white hot, Ark metal insides burned his skin as he forced around all that power under his will alone. Tainted red siphon mixed with blue existence, pure energy bereft of intent and control. And all of it flowing into his right as he held it aloft in the broiling air.

'This is my body…! My suit! My power!!'

The gauntlet glowed and cracked as the overload strained it to breaking. As he felt all of what was under both of their controls form a new sun in his hand. His vision was blacking, his body failing, but he had to throw it all away!

"And I will not be used BY YOU!!!"

So that right finally slammed down onto the disintegrated ash below! The mother of all groundings whited the world to nothing!

An electrical apocalypse, into the ground to its true master source. Everything that had been siphoned and taken, everything Seth had in him to exert his power. His threads emptying to single disparate skeletons, Resent's void reduced to nothing but the form he clung to. All of it thrown away, so it couldn't hurt anyone again! A piece of the true sun scorching the crater both inhabited, turning surviving dilapidation into fried black and white. Trash and filth, debris and abandon, all cleared away by that burning light! By pure plasma pushed back from whence it all came!

The solar white out slowly turning black as Seth slumped back down in his rigid suit. His senses numbed down to nothing as total loss came true. His mind dimming away as this small drop of hellfire-wrought faded away with everything. Yet a halfhearted smile left on his face read all his intent aloud, slumping against the scorching inside of his helmet with no regret. His power was gone, his guilt relieved, his hope spared from more death and madness.

And… And, despite demands echoing in his ears, despite the claws freed trying to scratch at his psyche. Despite this malice battering at his will, he was getting the rest he so very much wanted. There were no nightmare that could haunt him awake, no more blind guilt to drag him away, not even energy left to fuel this tainted imagination. Just the emptiness that he didn't even know he had missed.

So he closed his eyes to the sight of this Resent, trying to berate through the silence. Trying to weakly chock the life out of him. But it was just as powerless as he was now. So maybe it was their turn to suffer those nightmares.

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