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 offering its high albedo. 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 stretching from edge to inner center, stopping just short of the darkest patch of torn apart matter. Only adding to the vantablack spread.

No vests or helping hands reached this far in, this rubble hiding no buried survivors. And no one this close was in any state to be saved, let along cataloged. But still, forms scrounged the haze. Beeping equipment and the shine of hazmat suits telling 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. Clothes torn and burned and their edges, made folly of being brought along. Shoes worse off. Some of the silent teams found their newest company though, yet failed to vocalize the sudden collective mortal danger. Merely stumbling 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.

The fire that drove him in was battered, snuffed by the oppressive void of this battlefield. He tried to reach out and focus, to try and take a more thorough stock of what was here, but that void swallowed up his inquisitive threads with desperate hunger. And his sight was empty as that void. No energy, no freely moving electrons to highlight this blasted corner of the world. Except… for dim lights scattered like fallen stars in the ocean.

Hard to recognize, fading under the wither of ravenous entropy surrounding them. But still they shined, 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 self-directed signal. Seth stopped, reached down to it, 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 flesh. 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 won't let go…", 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 were 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, a twisted facsimile, spreading their beings about their melting down nerves. Like a fucking spider injected it venom to digest from the inside. So it could suck it all out as it pleased. But it didn't even allow that mercy. Resent had just cut them apart, torn them away, rent their beings, and left the rest to rot once it had its fill. Leaving only Seth to pick up the pieces.

Pieces… that held to a different harmony than their own.

Something off, left over, left behind, used and abandoned. A piece of this suit's new wielder. A contemporary, a template, so he wouldn't get indigestion swallowing these people whole. So their beings couldn't slip away and congeal like grime on a pan. A counter to what he'd done to fight it before. A grasping hand corporeal 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 fucking picky toddler! It was still hot, burning. His talons winced but stayed their hold as he marched to it. Knelt down into it so he could feel its condemnation for himself. The emptiness replaced by stinging updraft, sooty air blinking his eyes and forcing them closed. He needed the 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, its would disregard this hurricane of atomic nonsense. No, this was the one who caused all of this, the one who started this. Their blood soaked this burning ground, their viscera chunked into fallen excess. They'd been wounded and slashed. And yet all sang a tune of more thorough conversion. Seth tore down to its level, reading and listening to what it held and had to say. Feeling out for what they felt. So he could know who the hell he was going to deck into the sun!

Broken fragments met him, recent additions and muddled experience. 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 enjoying this slaughter.

Seth needed to know who had caused this, he had to know before he ripped this place apart himself so no one would have to feel this again. Before everything fell upon him like an alter ego gone rogue. But the idiot inside was smothered and soaked to the bone by 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? Hard to lock down. Someone knowledgeable, someone with motives less extreme than literal annihilation of everything. No less ambitious, but wavering into downright psychopathic. Weakness? A trade. A broken will from failed attempts. It was all a mess even here, so clouded by Resent's mass that it was just a lensed distortion. But he just needed time.

Time that ended too soon.

As ever present eyes found their bravery.

In the torrential want to burn him alive.

A light invaded his attempt at darkness, one he knew and let shine through unhindered. 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 properly. Wrath truly justified, sadness burning to impossible extremes, loss and want intermingling into condemnation down right righteous. Victims all of his mistake, and the punishment for his crimes. He opened his eyes, and those glares became a fire to rival 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 that there was no Hothead adding on to…

Seth's scanning eyes turned down. This wasn't simple reminder, this was a reopened wound. Battered and rent until it poured everything it held out. Only a losing hand was left to hold it back in place, one powered by hatred and sadness that he wished he never had. As much as Seth hated Hot, he didn't want him dead. But Mag couldn't see this as anything but more loss. 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 right arm, and all her might bulging her left 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 tense. The empty scabbard on his hip the sign for his own meager loss in all of this. A master was more than the blade wielded, his was just dumb metal anyway. But his long since lost smile wasn't blaming Seth as hard as expected it to by now. Still, they held their shared stance. While Seth was left with 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… But there was more to her glare. A challenge. A demand. 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 only trusted as his doing.

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 penitent to blame more than they would accept. A sorry forgiveness, that would never 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 all they held to. 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 his own stance shifting too fast, 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.

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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 its 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.

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 before it was felt. 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 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 to just have. 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 took a bite out of, 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, fed that always waiting for a chance heart so its disparate parts 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 the left side of his vision was taken over by that broken loose hysteria. 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… Still Seth did not accept this as his end. Could not. 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 finally seen, looked into that same repentant staring down to accept the blame being hammered into him.

But there was more than just a wound. A slight tinge of something at its center, like a lost love humming through to the claw keeping hold of the only thing keeping him upright. A love Mag had 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, he returned. And so the bloody slaughter continued anew. Yet the one who heard this message loud and clear was the only one there to accept that blame. A message that compounded in on itself at long last. Forced Mag 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 backpedaling and losing their strength, as 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 it away from everyone, failing horribly and smearing Seth's blood down his face. Maglev left scrunched and sobbing on the ground with nothing but a silent manual "Please stop stabbing me". 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.

The faces of his refuted blockers trying to surround him 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 and pressing into the burned and holed hoodie he's sacrificed, stance still too wide to get caught up but utterly stopped.

"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 DEAD!!!"

The moment self-destructed and that hug turned to poignant grabbing of those reeling hover hands. 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 and repaired it. Put it on and let Resent take all the power it could want. And… whoever it was just let him take over! I only caught bits and pieces, torn away threads left in the blood you drained from him. And… and there almost nothing left of whoever it was. They're smothered completely in that thing. 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 beared 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, deeply wrought, 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 like records suffused with emotions. They felt guilt over... manifests? Some kind of an arms shipment? And…

'The suits!?'

The out of order memories crept clearer. They'd pulled them out of storage and sent them to United for repairs. Stole them back to cover their tracks. Gave them to Tango along with the manifests for the weapons. They're the reason the bank was hit but…

'This doesn't make sense. Why would they feel guilt and hate me over this?'

A plan… No, a scheme. To whittle away the weak or push them over the edge. Some kind of held belief that this was how it had to be done. So… so he could show them they were…

"Hgrrrr!"

Seth had ruined their plan and the possibilities of it sent his focus to a razor's edge, highlighting and sifting through these broken and misplaced strands in an imperceptible instant. A single fragment blaring louder like it was just waiting for this instant, this weakest moment to be found, to be heard, to be known. To... to light the match and set Seth off.

A filament that colored in this black empty pit, that wrapped all these stained strings into a messy ball of former 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 unacceptable distance. Across consciousnesses separated but once one and the same. A path, an admission, a weighted lure for something Seth still could not keep back. That living resentment wanted its former cellmate back. And he got it again!

With just the utterance of one single word.

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