Riot End
Scion's punch didn't have much force behind it. It hadn't even smashed my body away like so many other attacks had. But it made me fall to my knees as if my very life had been punched out of my body.
I was going to die. Scion was going to kill me.
"Damn it," I yelled. I looked up and glared at him. "Why? Why are you doing this?"
He didn't say anything. He stared with an unreadable expression.
"I'm trying to help people," I shouted. "All I want is for everyone to live. I don't want them to be scared." There wasn't any strength in my body to stand up. "People shouldn't have to fear death. It shouldn't be around every corner."
I coughed and my body trembled. My hands were shaking and my throat was dry.
"I don't want to die," I shouted at Scion. "I don't want anyone else to die either. Can't you understand that? Isn't that why you're helping people?"
He was Scion, and he didn't respond.
"Isn't that why anyone helps people? Isn't that why there's heroes?"
I was too weak to stay on my knees. I fell over and crumpled into a heap on the ground, staring up. Scion towered like a mountain above me, his golden glow only enhanced by the sun in the middle of the sky.
I felt the sun's warmth on my face. I didn't have the strength to shout.
"Guess not, huh." I said. "Powers have only hurt us. They only cause death." I used the last of my strength to raise my hand into the air. I tried to grab the sun that had eluded me for over a year. "We'd be better off without them, I bet. Today is a day we should have been looking forward to."
My raised hand fell. I didn't have the strength to move my limbs.
"Damn you," I cursed. "I could have defeated it. I could have defeated death. The heroes, the villains, even the civilians. No one could stop me."
Scion leaned over, casting a shadow over me. This would be the last sight I ever saw. I took down everyone who came after me until Scion. That put me just under Endbringers in terms of threat level. Wonderful.
He reached down and grabbed my head with his hand.
"Can you?"
My eyes widened. Did he—
And I saw it. Shapes moving in blackness. Helixes formed in the deepest of space. White creatures floating among the cosmos. Tendrils emerged and planets were devoured. Shards launched and recovered, thousands of years of history and cycle after cycle. Alternate dimensions. Uncountably many deaths and immeasurable amounts of knowledge received.
And confusion. And loss. And uncertainty. Goals, motivations and death. And death and death and death—
The stars would go supernovae, dust would scatter and new stars would be reborn. And slowly black holes would form, stealing away the stardust from the universe. And eon after eon there would be less stars in the sky, and more and more black holes. But then those would evaporate, leaving nothing left but a vast expanse of emptiness.
I could see it. All of it happened in front of my eyes. The universe died.
All of everything would come to an end in a whimper as the stars winked out of existence. How stupid. How stupid I had been to worry about Brockton Bay.
Scion lifted his hand from my head and I hyperventilated. I didn't—there wasn't—
I cried. The number had seemed so large. Eighty thousand lives. Mere minutes ago it had been such an overwhelmingly large amount of people. I had to save them at any cost. But it was nothing.
Eighty thousand was nothing. Compared to all the universes and all the dimensions. There were no names for the numbers for how many lives there were. Planets were devoured, billions killed. But it was nothing. Compared to everyone. Compared to saving everyone, what was a few trillion people? Or even ten times that, or a hundred. A trillion planets was nothing compared to everyone.
Except,
"I don't want to be sacrified," I said.
It wasn't an argument. Scion stared.
"I'm not prey."
He stared.
"We want the same thing."
He was gone from my vision. All that remained was the sun shining down on me. Was one final blow coming to finish me off? I made sure to keep my eyes open. I looked at the blue sky and the golden sun. At least I would be able to die under this warmth I had been deprived of for a year.
I clenched my teeth.
"No," I shouted. I forced myself to spin onto all fours. My limbs were too weak to support me, but I made them support me anyways. "No," I shouted again. Even if it's shameless. Even if I deserved a quiet death right there in the sun.
Fuck that!
I'm going to fight. I'll eat the dirt I walk on if I have to. To live, survive and breath. It doesn't matter who I have to swear fealty to or what deals I have to make. Or who I have to piss off or who I have to hurt. I want to live and I'm—
I'm—
"I'm going to live, damn it!"
I forced myself up and spread my wings. Scion was still there, right there a few yards away. His expression forever unreadable. He couldn't be beaten, but I could run away. That was all I could do. Run away, hide, flee, survive. That's all I was going to do. Survive.
My knees were ready to buckle at a moment's notice, but I was standing. My wings kept me balanced but they were heavy on my back.
I lifted a foot up and placed it behind me. A single step. That was all it took to run away. Steps in the opposite direction. As long as I could accomplish that I could survive.
Scion stepped in succession with me, but his steps were longer and faster than mine. He was on top of me and grabbed my hair, throwing my head back to look at him. Not him. It.
"It's you, right?" I spat. "You take the powers away. Today your experiment is over, you'll take the shards and kill everyone. Did you learn anything?"
Silence.
"Fuck you either way. What should I care if you stop the death of the universe? I won't be in it. None of us will."
He dropped me onto the ground. My knees couldn't handle it and I fell onto my face.
"Not one person you killed would agree," I screamed into the ground. "All those worlds? Not one of them would agree. Your goal might be noble, but everyone you kill hopes you fail. A trillion-trillion snuffed out lives all wished for your demise. And everything like you."
I reached my arm out and grabbed onto the pavement, dragging myself along the road. I could see Scion's feet in the corner of my vision, but I ignored it. Until my last breath I would struggle if only to spite the thing looking down on me.
My head smashed to the ground as Scion grabbed it. But the impact threw more memories into my brain that weren't my own. Two entities intertwined, one of them lost and the other lost in a different way. They were boats floating down a forked river.
There was a light and a direction for the entity, but it had led nowhere.
There was a fear that the lost entity had suffered the worst fate in the universe and was gone.
There was confusion.
I grabbed the pavement and dragged myself again. "Fuck you," I said. "You know what happened. You fucking know what happened." My fingers dug into the asphalt. "Because of you, we all feel that. We all lost someone. It's your fault."
Scion's hand was still on my head so I couldn't drag myself away. Loss, fear and confusion. He kept throwing that at me as if I knew how to fix it.
"Say something you fuck."
There was no response, but there never was. Scion grabbed me by the shoulder and rolled me over. He knelt over me, his expression unreadable. Because it wasn't an expression. It wasn't a human, it was just an illusion of one.
Oh.
"You don't know," I said. "You don't know what you're doing."
No response, but it was correct.
"Just leave," I said. "You've fucked up this experiment. You're hurting us for no reason. Are you that callous? To kill this world for no reason?"
Scion still didn't move, but his hand pinned my head to the ground. Images I'd already seen flashed through my mind of powers being taken away, killing their hosts.
"Like hell you're doing that," I spat. "You're telling me with all your power you can't leave without killing everyone? You find a way. Here's something for you to do: take fucking responsibility for all the pain you've caused. You take that pain onto yourself and put it right.
I pushed myself to my knees, Scion releasing my head from his grasp. My body could barely keep itself upright, but I reached out and grabbed its shoulder.
For a long time it stared at me. Whatever words were supposed to come next out of my mouth, I couldn't think of them. I used Scion to force myself up onto my feet and hobble away. Run away and survive. To live, all I had to do was that.
"Goodbye."
I turned around to see a flash of yellow and Scion was gone. I stood up straighter, control of my limbs coming back to me. My wings could fold and unfold as before and my legs could support my weight.
Madison was lying on the ground in the distance. I ran up to her body and knelt down. "Madison," I said. When she didn't respond I shook her by the shoulder.
She groaned. "What..."
I helped her sit upright. She grabbed onto my arm for support until she got her bearings. "Are you okay?" I asked.
"Yeah." Madison looked at her hands. "It's gone."
"What is?"
"My teleportation. It's gone." She reached into the pocket of her transistor sweatshirt and pulled out a small gun. She cradled it in her hand. "This is all I have to protect myself now."
I looked up at the sky, but there wasn't any sign of it. "Scion left," I said. "And he took his powers with him."
Looks like he found a way. I wondered what it cost him.
"I don't know what that means," Madison said. "But I think I understand the relevant part."
I stood up and helped Madison to her feet. Around us were people staring in shock and wonder, but beyond them the sounds of riots echoed. Things like that didn't stop all at once, even if something world-changing had happened.
"What did you stay to him?" Madison asked. "I couldn't make it out."
"Mostly yelling," I said. "I can't remember the exact words."
It didn't seem like a good idea to tell Madison everything I had learned. Maybe I would tell her later, after I had thought through everything Scion had forced on me. But right now there was a very real problem in front of me. A city was rioting.
The inevitable heat death of the universe would have to wait. That was a problem for another day.
I stared at the ground. It would be solved though, I added in my mind. It was a problem I must attempt to solve. I can't put it off forever.
"Will you believe me if I say it now?" Madison asked.
"Say what?"
"That no one will get in your way. That you can do anything you want and no one will stop you."
I smiled. "Tell that to the Endbringers."
Madison brought her hand to her face. Her point did ring true though. When I decided to save this city, the Triumvariate had fallen to me within hours and Scion himself turned around and left. My joke was frightening in its truth: if the Endbringers were gone, there wouldn't be anyone or anything that could stand against me.
It wasn't a scary thought. It was a pleasant one.
I put a hand on Madison's shoulder. "If you stay out here you're going to die," I said.
She reached her arm up and grabbed my hand. "Then I'll borrow that healing of yours for a time longer. I hope I don't fall in love with you while doing so. Do you think tinker-tech still works?"
"Yes," I said. If Scion had retrieved his shards and left, that only meant we couldn't use powers anymore. But things built by and created by powers would still exist. "But we won't be getting any more of it."
Madison nodded. "I liked Squealer's vehicles."
"To be honest, Bakuda really did impress me with her stuff. I wasn't play-acting about her."
The city was in riots, but immediately in front of us there was nothing. The few people that had been hidden fled after Scion left, unwilling to face me when he didn't.
I stepped behind Madison and swept her into my arms. Without her ability she couldn't do anything to stop me and she didn't even try. She just wrapped her arms around me and held on. "Let's save this city, Madison," I said.
She shook her head. "Our city, Taylor. Let's save our city."
I extended my wings and took to the sky.
