Afternoon! I just got back from Racing for the Cure and am ready to update. Once school is out, I'll be able to update more frequently.

Enjoy this newest chapter!

"You leave him alone!"

Evan Vidad was lucky to come by the way he had. If not, then who would've saved his green-clad roommate from the group of jocks beating him up?

"Oh! Hi, Evan!" the ringleader said cheerily. "Your roomie just fell down, and we were helping him up. Right, green guy?"

"I'm not stupid," snapped Evan. "I saw what you were doing back there. You have about five seconds to back off of him, or there's going to be trouble."

The jocks knew they were beat. Reluctantly, they released their frequent victim, who stared back at them with no emotion in his eyes.

"You okay, buddy?" asked Evan.

The man nodded, still wearing that emotionless expression. He was dirty and bruised, with still-fresh blood on his face. But their blows had given him no pain, because these monsters cut out his heart a long time ago. At this point, he really didn't feel anything anymore.

"Thank you," he said softly, standing up before Evan could help him. His eyes checked the jocks into his infallible memory. He tasted their names like buttered popcorn.

David.

Jim.

Adam.

Blaine.

Under Evan's vigilant eye, the four mumbled a very insincere apology and promised to stay clear of him from now on. His blue eyes smoldered them, silently making it clear that their apology wasn't accepted. Too bad they weren't intimidated…

"Spar with me?" offered Evan.

His roommate smiled. "Absolutely." Sparring with Evan provided an outlet for aggression after encountering the fearsome foursome.

Once Evan was out of earshot, headed for the Training Room, the ringleader, Blaine, leaned in his victim's ear and whispered, "You won't always have Evan around to protect you, and when that day comes—we'll be waiting."

Glaring, the man stepped on Blaine's foot and stalked away. After hearing these threats for years, he was immune to them.

Those four should be the ones to watch their backs…

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

After six straight hours with Evan in the Training Room, the man in green was hot, sweaty, invigorated and craving more. The fact that he'd bested Evan further increased his adrenaline rush. His blood pumped so much, that he found his anger redoubling. He wouldn't be satisfied till he punched the stuffing out of at least one of the four jocks. There was no telling what made him angrier—their joke of an apology or their hypocrisy when they called him a coward and yet tried to nail him whenever Evan wasn't around. God, they made him sick.

He was taking a walk to try and cool off when he heard screaming. He recognized the voice—Evan! Without a second thought, he was dashing toward the source of the sound, hoping against hope, and when he got there—

Dear God.

No.

No!

Blaine had a cruel smirk on his face, with David, Adam and Jim wearing similar expressions, getting a kick out of hearing Evan's desperate cries. Their knuckles were stained with blood—theirs and Evan's. Lust mingled with the malice in their eyes, and it was then that the man noticed their state of undress—

Evan himself, for simply standing up for a good friend, was completely naked and held on the floor by the four people who he'd stopped from beating his roommate to a pulp. They sought to break him, to make him unavailable as their favorite target's hero. Blood laced his face and torso and pooled on the ground around him, but he continued to fight back, even as something the man couldn't see was shoved inside him and his screams were muffled by their punches.

The green witness snapped out of it to notice that Blaine had a photo of a woman in his back pocket, a woman with auburn hair and wearing an orange dress. It occurred to him that after Evan, Daisy was on their list. The tiger inside him roared to life. He was going to do to them what he should've done this morning!

In an instant, Blaine was off of Evan and in the man's angry grip. He slammed him into the ground and punched him harder than he ever punched during his years in Smash. This threw the remaining three into confusion, allowing Evan to kick free and scramble for some clothes. There would be plenty of time for his roommate to have some fun before he got back.

Still focusing on Blaine, he began to propel electrified fists into him, a technique taught to him not long after the first Smash tournament. The electricity caused his victim to jolt in pain, yowling. He called to his cronies to do something, yet fear had them anchored to where they were. They were essentially adrift without his leadership, another reason the man decided to pick him out first. After he took care of him, the others would be no sweat.

Calling out for his lightning powers once more, he wasted no time in suspending Blaine in the air with his electricity, watching him writhe and twist like some sort of puppet. He poured more and more volts into his body, smiling with glee as Blaine's hair stood up on end and the smell of something burning filled the air. The electric shocks caused his heart to overload, and the intense heat was enough to shut down his organs and melt all of his bones. Blaine screamed over and over again as every part of his body slowly ceased to function, praying for any deity to just take him and get it over with. The deities seemed to favor the lightning-wielding Smasher, though. It took a good fifteen minutes for Blaine's pained shrieks to finally sputter out. The green avenger passively allowed what remained of him to drop to the floor with a stomach-wrenching thump.

Evan returned, now clean and in a fresh pair of clothes, nodding in approval at his roommate's work thus far. He wasn't broken yet, and he had a score to settle with the remaining three. The three who were now at the mercy of the one they just attempted to break as well as the one they spent years trying to break.

A gloved hand closed over Evan's hand, a powerful, silent acknowledgement of the situation and their alliance.

David, Adam and Jim tried hard to hold it together, probably to appease the spirit of their dearly departed leader, but it was no use. Three deflated jocks stood no chance against two victims who'd patiently waited for a chance at retribution, two fiercely loyal friends. Evan was almost as creative as his roommate, and the way he crushed Jim's windpipe with methodically placed blows was a severe indication of that. Adam and David made the unfortunate mistake of going for the man who'd dispatched their ringleader, and he showed them the same mercy he'd shown Blaine. They managed to give him a few good ones, but he shook them off as if they were nothing. Then, he introduced them to his awesome spearhand, plunging it over and over until they were on their knees. By that time, Evan had finished with Jim and was now available for assistance with vanquishing the last two. His roomie was doing okay on his own, thanks to his fireballs, his down-B and his acrobatics, but he was never alone during all of the times he'd put up with them, and this shouldn't be any different.

When Adam suddenly tackled the man from behind, Evan saw his chance. He easily peeled the jock away, and his roomie jumped to his feet and focused on David as if nothing happened. His grunts and David's pleas rang in Evan's ears as he punished Adam for his little sneak attack. After lighting into him with rapid-fire jabs, he kneed him into the ground and bashed his face against the pavement over and over. He didn't stop till blood, skin and some muscle tissue started smearing the floor. Evan remained crouched over him, panting, until—

"Watch out."

Evan jumped out of the way just as his roomie pounced on Adam with his hammer! He slammed it down with such force that the ground shook. Evan decided that he didn't need to look at the end result. Besides, he still had a crumpled David to deal with.

For this one, they really put the "team" in teamwork. They played a twisted game of catch with him, Evan throwing David to his roomie while he smacked him back with his hammer. He tested himself to see if he could spike him harder, higher and farther every time. He wanted David's cries to become just as panicked as Evan's when he found him, and they were. Evan started volleying David to him with punches and kicks instead of throws, since the hammer was launching him so far. Finally, the two men tired of this game, and Evan threw the victim down and stomped on him, with the roomie putting on the finishing touches with his hammer.

When he finished, the man glared hard at what used to be four jocks. "You never thought you wouldn't have your alpha-male to protect you, did you?" he asked sharply. "Well, you should've watched your backs, because this was bound to happen sooner or later."

He turned to Evan, concern replacing rage. "Are you hurt?" he asked.

"Nothing I couldn't handle," Evan pompously responded. "Thanks, though."

"Hey, we're friends," said his roommate. "We look out for one another."

Still buzzing from the encounter, the two Smashers hightailed it back to the Training Room, where they whaled away at each other till they were called to dinner.

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