The air, the sky, the ground, the soul, the everything haloing in infinite stars. Blown back and cracked open to ring the toll, for all to hear and feel and know! Power beyond imagining burned up and burned through. Threads beyond counting yanked taught and ripped apart. Harder than even possibility would allow. This amalgamate being of maladapted emotion separated from its fresh pink host. Cancerous armor torn away and flung with extreme prejudice. And everything left of the effort it took. A grand carving, a freeing, a separation and excision of a parasite from its Para. And all the wash loosed in toe as twin wakes hurtled to their own disparate corners.

That final admission, that final accepting of that cursed moniker echoing through every hill left bereft of so much timber and life. Through every roll in the landscape all the way to their lows and highs. And in every ear and heart watching that curtain fall away, and the danger pass into falling adrenaline. This was an end, one of many left. It had to be now.

Seth knew full well what he was in everyone's eyes. He was the monster they feared, the terror they couldn't reconcile with, the nightmare that haunted them all anew. And he'd rather accept it than pretend to be anything else. Because his was not the continuation, but the ending of the damnable cycle!

An end falling upon him now as those crashing down repeaters of history settled in their ruts. All that power corrupting absolutely, and leaving a hell of a withdrawal when it was used up. That bulk deflating, dissipating away into the halo that plied one last aurora into the burned up air. Those horns flaked and cracked back to just simple juts, the need and pageantry gone. And that flowing gold dusted mane…

'huhhh… It was nice while it lasted.'

More fodder and conciliation for that ripped open air. And one last facetious claw back as the weight of two worlds fell upon his back… and his arms… and knees. Overdone is too overdone, this was just gravity giving him a piece of its mind for daring to ignore physics for a few seconds. And honestly, he was ecstatic to just be standing there to take it. Wreathed in the warm light of that once again stymied sun, bereft of weight sinking deeper than used up muscle. A catharsis all its own, justice done and cancer removed from its host. He was smiling. Even as his powers began rebooting in reminding duty, and all the eyes on him and this scene finally came into focus.

A focus he'd finally understood. Those infinite moments of self-reflection fighting through every baleful fiber still ringing. Across a whole spectrum of thrumming resonance with its dial ripped off and its circuits left fried. It was all just to try and keep the tone to Resent's hold in his mind, yet in turn finding its starting bell deep inside. That moment long ago, that painful loss of innocence. Those long… 'resented' sensors. A forgiven infraction by the Garkah. Their failure to keep him safe, and the true beginning to Seth's culpability. Now laid bare as fused to him as a mark of shame. Finding a hold all their own on his soul, in his tone.

Empathetic, emotional line of sight wasn't exactly what the Garkah had wanted, just something so they could know when he was seen by their sins manifested. Calculations as to what they would be falling far too close, but he was a kid already weighed down hard. And yet subconscious Seth had other plans. While it had started this whole mess by just taking more than could be lent, it also gave him one last lasting means. To see his parents past all that they had become. To feel them, even if they were beyond saving. A hazy memory, blacked out. His subconscious auto piloting what it knew he would want more than likely. Definitely a better side of him than other aspects.

But existential questions weren't really helpful right now. Especially as the gaze of so many fell and swiveled. Fear and awe amid the dust of a new advance back into the crater. Yet only charging toward the fleshy half of this forcibly deconstructed sandwich.

Steeled glares, uncertain kowtowed emotions, judgment of the truth they didn't want to believe. But as that force pulled into the rut he'd cut, they couldn't help but know that truth. There was their Parasonic, skin freshly regrown so many times over it could hardly be said to be the same person. All his hair gone, all his nails ungrown, and the unfortunate reality that whatever he'd worn when he got into the suit hadn't survived like he did. Just a naked newborn body languishing in the dust he'd helped create without a scratch on him. Save, of course, for the things he'd traded his entire soul for. A reality dawning on him as he opened that one eye to the vindictive gleam of true Eschenwald in his face, and the torrential fury of the volcano he'd betrayed.

A gleam and glare ignored as that dawning shifted over, felt the weight of hollow flesh, the dead zone across his face. A numb pawing at an empty socket, a psyche worn to nubs falling in on itself. Surrounding judgment falling on deaf ears and uncaring guilt. His loss restored and tearing him apart. Featureless fingers scratching at his empty socket, beating against his foot and hand, doing everything to force them back into being. Force them back to make his sacrifices worth it. But he didn't deserve that anymore. A withering stare beaming the justice of his actions at long last. And meeting that crumbling psyche across the radius he'd been thrown down. And hearing his pitiful attempts to-

"Give them back…"

That look not even acknowledging the burning edge threatening his face.

"Give them back."

The disappointed cringe at the bain of trainees now reduced to this.

"Give them back!"

The done with this shit falling between them with her fist already balled and simmering.

"GIVE THEM BA-"

*CRAkk*

Aegis had more than enough revenge to exact on him, more than too much reason to take him for a ride into the stratosphere and leave him to drop. But that simmer had to settle for cleaning his clock and leaving him to black out in the dust of his crimes. And look back at that assenting grin fighting to stay upright. A grin that couldn't last long in the shadow of everything lost today. Lives failed because he didn't go far enough, or didn't go about it right, or just straight up wasn't strong enough to put an end to it back them. A new weight to add to the pil-

'Grrrhhh No…! No… This blame's not mine. Not anymore.'

This was all on Resent and Para. This was all brought about by them and them alone. Blaming himself only clouded the fuel for his fire. Only made things worse. His choices were his and theirs were theirs. Assigning blame to things out of control only turns the world on its head and makes the scars left over burn deeper. And he refused to leave more scars. But…

But he still had a responsibility here. He wouldn't hold the blame anymore, but he was still the only one who could end it for good. A good that certainly felt harder to act on as he swiveled to… start…

That glare, that red eye still refusing to close. Plates crumpling and sagging to the ground. Oozing structure away as the empty space within lost composure. Nothing to form, to tangle around. Nothing to pluck and ply at, no physical medium to subsume for control. But still that armor clawing its way up like a marionette in an earthquake. That being beaten flat wincing, scrunching back into desperate singularity. A baleful tone doing its best to rerise and make him rue. Trying and failing to retain a shape, an existence in the physical.

Seth hadn't really tried to kill him yet, but he at least hoped that he would stay down. That rue already felt, as he gritted at his twin in feeling the strain. There was still another needed end to this. What came next far more resented than more fighting and dying. Having to rend another living being should never feel good. Yet even this would need more than just necessary sacrifice of morals.

But something felt… off in that rising dim glow. Something wasn't right, he couldn't feel its glare. Couldn't see its threads crawling back into place. This wasn't withdrawal, he could feel and see everyone else. It was like his senses were being baffled, fought against, matched. Like…. like Resent had learned to focus for once in his miserable existence! Like he was trying to look for something in-

"N-rghh!!"

That maligned learned focus shot down, at his feet, at the center, at the divining rod still burning a hole into the Earth's crust! A lurch in retaliation, a fight to beat it down, that false maw rising open like a predator over prey. A kink, a failure to pour everything out against, a being untethered from mortal need and tackle. A widening, those hazel blue eyes realizing that there was nothing they could do, the current already revving into unstoppable torrent. And a turn, the last of that hole in reality closing in and wanting all, and that failure coming about before anyone could realize that their dread was reigniting!

"AEGIS!!! SHIELD THEM NOW!!!"

There was no time for grim realization to take hold. For what was sought to damnation to whisk away doubt. There was only the whirling cold stare, like a code phrase had been said, a doming orange bubble falling as wide as it suddenly could, and the rising falling heat of another stellar breath. The burden of power taken, now falling on the other twin.

As it all slam down!

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Weight, gravity's condemnation outdone! A wicked fire across the entire spectrum and beyond it! Forcing its way deeper like Seth had chosen death by microwave! With an added macrowave cycle! His eyes shut on reflex but stars burned their way in, a breath held in his lungs but they boiled and cursed that filling air, the smashing force cracked him low but the fire smothered across every inch! A plasma wash with auroric spin cycle, but one far shallower. Less directed.

Still not enough focus, not enough of a hold. Resent just pulling power across already melted lines. A more localized hole in the fucking magnetosphere, its center at his feet and full torrent upon him. The existence of his being electric enough to hold back the worst of this raw sun scorch. Glass and molten bedrock lapping away as quick as they lost composure in comparison. This was no enough to match his attempt at brute forcing for c, he could still cling to himself for dear life!

Scales blistered and reformed, muscle baked and refuted, bone popped and reset. Seth's mind was on fire, literally and figuratively. Tissue repairing as fast as it was burning. No thought spared to the comforting orange far behind him. Trying its best to spread its way over, to spare him this turnabout. But this was just deserts for daring to steal from Gaia. And he had far worse things than a total sunburn to keep at bay.

His opposite, his twin star, that red glare lost in the suck. A slave to the draw of power overwhelming. No control to differentiate, to change and wield that power as his own. Just raw siphon with nothing allowed to exist in his way. Rocks and dust, the earth's crust heaving below him as they melted down. Conductive metal veins buried deep, a frightening seep of liquid metal mantle upflow, just simple dirt and stone caught in the crossfire. Everything in his way pouring up into that vacuous maw, that vacuous being!

Empty armor beaten against by earthen onslaught, but pressed into shape by sheer adversarial gravity. He wasn't even able to cull the chaff, just pulling every bit of matter he could for all the electrons they housed. And crushing that voracious being tighter and tighter. Building it larger. And larger! A growing titan of matter and earth, a rising glow from within like a self-starting core, spreading veins of cancerous siphon gripping over everything he had pulled to himself. And a pressure too much to hold!

That maw relented, glutted and stuffed with a boiling down boulder. Its stripping of the Earth's shield easing back to let this baked battlefield have an atmosphere again. That orange barrier holding fast as the air flared in cooling hiss, and that penitent sunbather ahead allowed to stop being broiled alive. Stances hardened as best they could in preparation, but his waning was clear. Seth needed help. Especially as this new golem of material world waxed higher. Back on colossal knees to tower consequential.

Orange and red spillover dripping from every crease and crevasse. A new match for the armored terror, but scaled to fit standing astride a port of antiquity. The pit at its base filled with everything it couldn't keep eating, and melting into plug before a real volcano was roused into being. And like that already blown false one trying to form up in the shadow cast over, its stability was not long for this world.

Pressure on pressure, tight pull squeezing matter down into that singularity, stoking it like a blast furnace without a thought for an outlet for all that squeezed together friction fire.

Hollow eyes lit up with their new gargantuan red glow, thread work being spreading in and through, but wincing and reeling as the prospects of this new form were finally felt. A full body gagging, a geyser swarm of ejecta across its surface, a barely managed fold over to hold himself together. But this was all worthless!

The air was trembling, the ground quaking, all over accretion disk spinning too fast to keep back! Structure melting more and more as that threatened volcanic result was coming to pass. And there was too much in its path to just let slip a new hell.

'Fuck… This is gonna hurt!'

A split second need, a shift to desperation. A decoupling of energy from the matter it drove. As the only source of power left to use. Far too many electron fibers wrenched out and put to work, being added to by eating away at the body they clung to. Rounding around, slapdash generation, a field redirecting energy into convecting out corona. A pulse to deaden, to encompass, to round out in the face of the bulging bobble about to pop like a nuclear bomb!

As that structure started losing out, centrifugal forces winning against melted matter, pressure and pull turning to release and point blank Krakatoa!! That orange barrier tried to add its weight behind, but there was only so much speed that could be poured out before it couldn't keep up with the already started-

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

The earth heaved like a wave, the air kicked like another breath from the sun, all eyes were ducked back in blind and fear, and all that excess matter was turned ballistic. Boulders like houses turned that failing lip to holed and melted splatter, more lateral meteorites to decimate the surround. A shrapnel cascade faster than the tearing open ground, turning everything to solid cavitation and molten rain. The worst rising higher over that caught out orange, threatening everything for miles. A new hell on the horizon already so close to its progenitor. But it could scream all it wanted, this wasn't their end!

Devastating speed turned to limp spiraling redirect, destruction nothing more than falling smoking rocks around him. As if the air had cracked and parried that matter turned overpressure. Tacit being burned as fuel, pushed to swirl and spin like the pulse generators before it. No metaphysical and hungry for flesh! Magnetic fields fought egregious acceleration, holding back the pyroclastic tsunami crashing into it. And over it. Expenditure absolute as far as letting rip again, so that wave of earth and air slamming out still had to fall with everything it couldn't get through.

That roiling mockery of a magnetosphere popped, but its purpose was done. The worst prevented and reduced to plinking debris over that orange transparency. Secondary ground wave breaking over and buffeting those inside, but cutting it to just echoing crack. Remainder falling about like so much titan worthy pyrotechnics. Globs of melt splattering and cooling back to rock, smoke filling every angle, heat pouring through as air turned to brimstone. And the effort expended impossible to fight off.

Seth was still standing, but his senses were blank. Threads limply slowing and reeling back into their places, but their thinning to near breaking was plain as the day now blackened. The heat was cooking everything it wanted, molten splatter had etched into his legs, slag stuck to and tried to glob off with his scales. Returning nerves only rang with every possible warning as he came down from his overdone cooking. Ringing ears slowly tuning down, blistering scales hardening back to fight back the cooling inferno, lungs and nose charring and searing back with every seething breath. He was alive and regretting it, but his strength was able to keep him upright. For how long though?

His knees winced and wobbled, outstretched arms shook and wanted nothing but to fall back to his sides. It was the real Berta and that crater in Eagleville on a completely different level, but the same emptied out feeling. There was only enough power left to keep him conscious, to keep him himself and not some soulless husk. But instead of empty threatening darkness waiting to meet him…

There was only rising crimson light.

The smoke and ash and pyroclast whipped away, that titan of matter clearing its space. A smaller stature more fitting of a temple's god, a hard smelted ore structure held tighter than its slagged exterior. Some more focus wrought and control molded. Malicious focus with only one real target. That burning accretion disk within spinning ever to rip it, him apart as he had been!

That black hole of a being churning it into a frenzy. The reeling off of its tectonic recoil falling it back to ground like a toppling silo, but its glaring eyes said this was not its fall. As did the red giant dying in its throat! The relativistic jet crowning the pole of that hole in reality leveling! A blast of siphon scaling up to crack this land in twain! With nothing but Seth in its path to stop it!

Those failing arms rose back up, those traitorous knees locked in place, every fiber left holding and reeling tight, every muscles flexing tighter to just hold on! He was all that was left, every bit of what he had to offer had to be offered! If he had to eat himself alive he would!! If he had to tear himself into nothing but atoms in the wind he would!! Because the alternative was death to everyone behind! Not even that vaunted shield would hold this back! The very earth around and under made to traitor, the reverb enough to destroy them! He had to hold!!

This falling over maw, titanic claws cratering the already blown away ground! That oozing charge burning everything caught in its light! This air threatening to ripped everything no matter if it was in the way or not! Nothing would survive, so he had to keep it back however he could!!

A rising roar, a countering yell! Those twins alight in disparity and fury! That snapping open release, that haloing ionization, that dying stars revenge on all that lived before it! That sacrificial burn, that thinning shadow, that rising… reeling back wall of threadbare stopgap. And the fuller shadow whipping her arm out in front of the world turned to-

*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

A ground level river of coronal mass ejection! A miles long trail of plasmic annihilation! Of burning open crust, of forest turned trench alight with fire to its own atomic core! Vertical splatter and drag, churning cuts into the landscape filled with red too bright for the earth to keep to itself! Towering trees scorched and flew, toppling out as its path gained altitude to the curvature below it. A merciful maximum range pluming out into fire more terrestrial, yet swaths beyond charred to their canopies and skies cleared by their up swells. Turning resting eyewall to cumulo-canyon. Thundering the air apart for countless leagues. Letting the pureness of this demon's wrath known by everyone!

Roaring beyond Earthly! Hating beyond existence! Snuffing out that which raged against, in the light dying to meet it! Making it feel small! Making it feel fear! Making it know the hate it made him feel!!

Till a coughing lurch cut his torrent! That forceful release failing to hold to his gargantua! The light wavering into more visible understandable current. Sputtering and bunching and dying away as the atmosphere reasserted itself in the face of hellish wound upon already defiled Gaia. So that all the eyes able to even see its devastation, could behold his might.

Both from without…

And within.

Twin trenches, cuts across the earth stretching for miles and still glowing in rivers of glass and lava. A single lip of the crater turned to isosceles plateau. Falling away even more and frying in the pyre surrounding. A single spared cut of unmarred dust and glass between wave melted gouges into this battlefield. A cut filled near to its borders with those disbelieving their own comprehension.

The young bunched tight together by stronger arms, away from the edges that burned by simple proximity. Shields of steel and wrangled power angled to their defense, chiefly ahead in fear… misplaced. Ahead at gleam brandished in awe made shame. Ahead at that lone tower of scales and accepted terror still stood in smoking defiance. Ahead at staunch sacrifices only just stopped before they could be realized again. But prior effects still totaled too high, power spent to its last over known. And yet a grin drove up that still smoking snout as best as could be managed.

"What the hell is that thing even made of…?"

Before he too crumpled to the ground, spent and outdone at long long last. Saving grace blocking it away from that hateful light. As that round hoplite shield glowed its preternatural refusal to just be broken.

Steaming off the errant and the offending! Whipping wide to show that Aegis would not lose another this day! That her place was where she wished to be and no other. That this was her fight too.

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