Lose Yourself
By JadeRabbyt
III
Danny tore his gaze away, fists clenched and eyes narrowed into the wind. Smoke wreathed the buildings a couple blocks over, lingering over the roofs before rising up to smear itself across the heavens above. Through the grey murk ran three streaks of white exhaust, one stopping short some distance away from Danny, the others running past and away from him. They stretched off into the distance like railroad tracks: always parallel, never wavering, distorted only by a faint breath of wind. They skirted the sky, running out and away for miles only to cut back suddenly, dashing back so rapidly to head straight for Danny. The white streaks became the tails of two grey metal toys whose whine began to rise, whose roar became an irrepressible thunder as they hurtled toward him.
Danny lit his fists with familiar plasma, bringing two healthy orbs to life as the planes closed the distance. His hands shook as the seconds slipped away, the planes speeding forward, their figures resolving ever clearer as each passing second revealed new details of the planes' construction. The thin needle spiking out from the nostrum. The gunmetal grey of the hull. The blood-colored tips of those tubes beneath the wings and the tiny movements of the shadowed pilots. Danny braced himself as he tapped his other resource once more, feeling the sting bite into his brain as the power flowed again. Again it pulsed into his fists, swallowing the tamer energy and snapping between his fingers in electrical sparks. Somewhere a voice protested, asking if its price was acceptable for a freshman for a veteran even for a general, if perhaps there was something wrong with a world where this was possible
but itwas swept away, destroyed and cast out by the pain in his mind and the duty at hand.
Danny tracked the plane on the right, molding and enlarging the charges, making consciousness subservient to instinct once more. They were so close now. The whine escalated to a shrill screech that trembled the air. Ailerons, metal plating, the dark humanoid blur in the cockpit-all grew colossal as the air was pierced by a new sound, and Danny's eyes widened but it was only the sharp rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of metal slugs passing straight through his chest, threading his ghostly body with focused vortices of thin, dirty air while the planes split his eardrums with their guns but now They were heading right at him They were on either side of him and HehadtodosomethingNOW!
Danny thrust out his fists and sent the two deadly blasts ripping away from him and hurtling toward the rightmost plane. He gasped as the kickback tumbled him head-over-heels, throwing up his hands to shield himself from the imminent blast, from the inevitable explosion that was a little too long in coming.
Danny regained his balance and spun upright, eyes darting from one lugubrious smoke cloud to another. His brilliant energy spheres vanished in the distance. Not a flicker of an explosion or shard of wreckage met his sight. The exhaust streaks ran straight past him; the two had swerved around him.
Danny whirled just in time to see the two jets drop four bombs.
Already the bombs were some distance away from him, carried far beyond easy reach by the momentum of the planes. The bombs traced a sharp arch as gravity caught hold of them. Narrow guidance tailfins held the bombs balanced as their rockets sputtered to life, spurring the bombs onward to target the most vulnerable areas of the city. But long before the rockets fired, during the first wavering moments when the clasps had released the bombs and gravity reached up with long fingers to pull them earthward, Danny had turned and plunged after them, tearing through the smoke and wind as the touch of gravity worked with his own powers of flight.
The emerald fire around him stretched behind like the tail of a comet. That strange power had once flowed in exact, if painful, channels in his blood; now it tore through him like fire as he raced with the speed of angels and demons after the glinting bombs. The smoke stung his eyes as the energy pulsed to his fists, and Danny grew nearer to the bombs even as they grew nearer to the city below, thoughts like water cascading in his mind.
Arms outstretched and hands thrust forward now Fire! and there go two green spheres for four grey bombs, the green spinning after them (a hit!) and now there are two orange flares and only two more bombs. Quick now more power just one more blast (oh god this hurts) and then four orange flares, all over the city, and the sky is filled with heat and smoke and there is nothing left to see or feel but only a long fall, fall from the sky struggling for sight for flight for enough power to remain only half ghost.
Through the sky, dropping out of consciousness, a green flare against the dark residue of the recently exploded bombs.
Tucker shaded his brow, muscled tensed and eyes desperate. The hero who always was, the freshman who never was, now there he was falling from the sky. Tucker clenched the loose strap of his backpack, turning to watch the screeching jets shoot away behind a concrete edifice. When they found out who did this, who was responsible… Well, the guilty party would end up experiencing some serious technical difficulties. Tucker would kick up every virus and trojan in his arsenal to go after these guys. But what paltry retribution that would be for all this. For the ruins of the city, for the lives of the dead, for whatever Danny was forcing himself to do.
Danny still plunged earthward, and Tucker's mouth fell open as the emerald fire around his friend split for a moment, allowing two circles of white to run over him before winking out and leaving that same green. Tucker examined the buildings as Danny fell behind them, marking them carefully in memory. He scrambled for his palm pilot and its navigation program, fumbling for a moment before shoving it back in his pocket. He didn't have the patience right now. He had seen where Danny had fallen; it would be better to just go and find him.
Or what was left of him.
What was left of him? What was that supposed to mean? Tucker had no idea what was going on. His best friend was trying to save the city from who, terrorists? China? Some little dirtball middle eastern country or bad-tempered extremists or what, exactly? But at the end of this nightmare, would the name of the enemy really matter? Tomorrow morning, would any of it matter to the dead? Tucker didn't know. He groaned and gave his head a single shake before turning away and sprinting down the road. He wasn't a philosopher, he was a best friend, and that was one job he knew how to do. Tucker raced away down the concrete, the metal instruments clattering in his backpack as they jostled one another.
Sam jerked to a stop at the corner of the block, her breath freezing in her throat. One more corner to turn, one more sight to see, then she'd know what was left for her to do. One more corner to turn, but her feet wouldn't do it. She kept seeing his face, his laughing face, with those dancing blue eyes and the shock of hair that fell so garishly over his forehead. She loved those jokes he'd crack, even if they weren't always very clever, and his rare hope, that precious attitude which led him to attempt what others could not conceive and the absence of which she felt so painfully in herself. Sam squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a fresh hot stream run down her cheeks, leaning weakly against a newspaper stand.
"Just let him be alive." She raised her eyes to the filthy sky above. "Just alive." The clouds of smoke glared back at her, darkened and angered by the recent explosions, mixing and pulsing with new currents. They were no help. Sam took a breath and, setting her jaw, stepped out beyond the corner. There was that tall beige office building, here was the squat apartment complex she had seen from a couple blocks back. But where was-
Danny!
Sam laughed, clasping her arms to her chest and turning her face to the sky in smiling gratitude. Ahead of her a storm drain boiled thick white clouds of steam. Nothing unnatural littered the streets, only the standard amount of garbage and the nervous feet of onlookers, and there was the storm drain before her boiling up reassurance that she hadn't lost her love quite yet.
She hardly noticed the rubber-necking morons gathered around the drain, but she saw that one of them had at least been decent enough to bring a crowbar. Sam snatched it away from him, breathing a pardon. The bovine gathering grumbled in protest but let her start on the drain, watching her closely as she knelt to the grating. The steam knitted itself around the crowbar as she jammed it in, the white vapor running between her fingers and scorching her hands. Sam gasped and sat back hard and the crowbar twanged in the grating, stuck like a blackened toothpick between the grungy metal bars.
"Easy, Sam." She jumped as a tentative hand rested itself on her shoulder, her eyes flashing as she turned on its owner.
There was Tucker, standing just beside her. He tensed under her scowl but he didn't move. Her eyes darted between his nervous face and his presumptuous hand, then she nodded and lowered her head. The hand could stay. Sam took a deep, rapid breath and waved to the grate, voice cracked and staggered in her own ears. "He fell… but the crowbar…" She groaned and threw up her hands. "The steam won't let us in."
Tucker nodded down at her. "Yeah. I see." She leaned back against his leg, shaking her burned hands in the cool air. Sam tried to slow her breathing, trying not to think about Danny down there in the sewers. The planes could yet be heard above the scream of the siren, and rumbled explosions and splintering of wood echoed from the inferno a couple blocks over. The steam hissed past the bars while people argued and shouted nearby, and Sam blushed to find herself wishing for silence. A silence of everything where she could just be allowed to rest from all this, the planes, the fire, the explosions and the chase, everything. She pulled her knees to her chest and hid her face in her hands.
A stranger, Sam thought it might have been the one who'd brought the crowbar, started to ask about them, about Sam, about what it was that was boiling away in the storm drain. Sam clenched her teeth and let Tucker handle it.
"Just get started on the grating. There's somebody down there we've gotta get out." The man stared at him for a moment before turning back to the other gawkers. Tucker looked after him, waiting for them to start before turning to Sam with a forged smile. "At least he must have managed to change back in time. He's probably fine." Sam returned his edgy smile with a sad grin of her own.
She stood up, brushing the dirt away with beleaguered strokes. "I guess." She folded her arms, watching the group bumble helplessly about the grate. The steam continued to billow skyward, hiding the tunnel below and its powerful occupant. "How hot…" She gulped and started again, grasping at words. "What would be…" Sam lifted her head and met Tucker's eyes. He wrestled with the same question. Tucker opened his mouth and looked down, closed it again, looked at her and at the drain behind her. She watched him, wanting him to deny what she had seen in the basement, that martyring flame that had so consumed the friend she loved. Maybe it was a noble cause, but what justifies suicide?
What right did Danny have to exterminate himself for a city of shallow, ungrateful jerks who almost deserved to be eradicated for the idiots they were, for the independent thought they lacked? Sam's arms trembled in the heat of the steam only a couple feet away.
Tucker shifted his feet. "They've got the drain open."
"But how are we going to-"
Tucker beamed, a bright glint in his eyes. "Thought you'd never ask. Wait here." He rushed over to an evacuated shop and thrust open the door. It was a real estate agency with wide glass windows, bordered on the sides by heavy grey curtains. She watched Tucker rummage in the secretary's desk and leap away from it with a pair of scissors, moving to the curtains. He cut them down with a proud flourish and rushed outside.
Tucker began slicing the curtains into thinner strips, running the scissors through the thick fabric, ripping and tearing it furiously. Sam grinned, putting a hand to her mouth as he worked. Tucker finished with one of the curtains and tossed her a couple of long, wide scraps.
"If there's one thing I'm good at, it's problem solving. Tie these around your head and arms. It'll protect us from the steam."
Moments later, the two of them stood over the grate, heavily blanketed in the dusty fabric. Sam looked down into the dark, recalling all the time she had Danny had spent together, all the time they had laughed and joked about some ridiculous school event or a particularly blunt villain. She remembered the curve of his smile and their last touch, down in that dirty clothing-store cellar.
"You coming?" The hiss of the steam nearly drowned out Tucker's voice. Sam looked down as Tucker disappeared into the drain. She dropped her legs into the hole, sitting on the edge, feeling the heat of the steam through her leggings before scootching off the pavement and into the drain, into the haunted obscurity of the billowing white steam.
A/N: Revision of III completed with critique from Liaranne. Hope this clears things up a bit for you guys. II's reviewers are thanked profusely: panda13, Creator-Chaos, D/Sfan, soccergurl1990, Sakura Scout, Angels624, Necromacer Anonymous, Liaranne, Mujitsu Yume, prncssGrl1881, and Mrs. Granger-Weasley.