Ch 5 intro: Here it is, with no further ado. Read and enjoy.
Oh, I'm trying out something new. Italics are now emphasized words in normal speech. That's a pretty common convention I think, and I may have used it before, but whatever. Oh, and don't forget to watch for changing point of view, denoted by a change of scene or (-character name-). Oops... I wasn't supposed to ado this time was I? Go! Read! Enjoy! Review! ... NOW!
Chapter 5: The Blue Lament of BattleDowntown Jump City, ten minutes before Skye's arrival.
Blue was happy. Something about wanton destruction of everything he could lay hands on always had a way of picking his spirits right up. Now, somewhere between the eighteenth car he had given a one-handed toss into a crowd of people, and the most recent light post he was using like a baseball bat to break skyscraper windows and sweep away the pathetic police resistance that had shown up to stop him, he had lost all of his worries in the pure joy of destruction. Gone were the concerns he had harbored about being too stupid for solo work, about not being the leader of the new syndicate, and about what his disguise made him look like. Instead everything was inundated by the red glow of berserk battle euphoria, and for the first time since busting out of prison, Blue was truly happy.
Tiring of the now bent and twisted light post, blue gave it a javelin fling into the nearest building, sending it flying through the walls, leaving a five foot wide path of destruction where it pierced. Striding toward the nearest car, he gave it a slight tap on the roof that crumpled the top into the bottom and folded it cleanly in half, so that it's front and rear bumper faced the sky. Twirling lightly on his feet, he brought his arm around in a blow that flung the wreckage high into the sky and took out a news helicopter that had gotten too close. As the fireball blossomed in the sky above him, he pounded both hands into the ground, ripping up a two-ton hunk of road about the size of a small swimming pool, throwing that mass easily into the nearest storefront. Before the five-story building could completely fall into it's neighbor, Blue had already taken a pickup truck in each massive hand and smashed them together over his head at high speed. The fused hunk of metal made the perfect projectile, and he wasted no time in giving it an overhand toss far into the quickly retreating mass of people that were fleeing his rampage. The twisting and skipping hunk of steel hopped against the road once, twice, then a third time before cart-wheeling directly at a clump of people. Disappointingly for Blue, a blast of green light arced in out of nowhere, describing a curved path that intercepted his two-car meat grinder in mid air and sent hunks of molten steel every which way except toward the people.
Slightly annoyed at the anti-climax, Blue turned to see where this opposition was coming from. Gazing into the smoke of his destruction, he spotted five figures standing close by and ready to fight. Deciding that he should make the most of having spotting them through the smoke before it could clear and give them a chance to deliver a few smart-ass lines, Blue grabbed a sedan and whipped it around like a boomerang, sending it at the Titans faster than the eyes could follow. The figures in the smoke scattered easily around the high-speed projectile, and someone shouted "TITANS, GO!" loudly enough for him to hear it over the raging fires behind him.
Before anything else could happen, a figure came flipping toward him out of the smoke. Even as this registered, a number of flying objects pummeled Blue with explosions galore. Surprised but not shaken, he took the explosions like a champ, and when the figure's acrobatic advance came to a head with a flying leap of red and green blur, clearly aimed for his head, his enormous paw was already in position to deliver a smack of epic proportions. Connecting with a sickening 'TWAP,' Blue sent this first assailant flying toward a nearby building, directly for it's seventh floor. "One down," he thought with satisfaction, as the lithe form paid a steep price in pain for thinking even powerful explosives could disorient him.
The victory was cut short by the interdiction of a huge green rhino's enormous horn into Blue's lower ribcage. Never stunned for a moment, Blue flipped around in mid air, landed with his hands in the pavement, and with a lighting-fast upward pull on the ground, had a car-sized hunk of black road flying towards the still-charging rhino before it could make another four steps from where it had struck him. The lump of rock sent the rhino flying backward, and it's fate was lost to Blue as another challenger made his presence known with a blast of blue sonic energy into his stomach.
Even as he staggered from the first shot, another two had hit each of his shoulders, blowing him backward and quickly destroying his balance. The advancing figure of a man/machine done up in blue circuits and armor continued to blast him again and again, from closer and closer, until it stood over him and held him to the ground with a constant stream of destructive energy pressing into his chest.
"Fallen and you can't get up, huh buddy?" said the bald cyborg as he pinned Blue to the ground. Not rising to the taunt in the least, Blue reached out and grabbed a nearby metal construction I-beam that had fallen from a crumbling building and used it one handed to swat his metallic opponent to the side. The resounding clang of unbendable metal meeting unbustable armor at high speed echoed thorough the streets of Jump City, and when the dust cleared, Cyborg lay pressed two inches into a building's wall with a huge dent in his lower chest armor. Closing in for a punch that would have crushed Cyborg's skull and brought the whole building down around his target, Blue was interrupted once more.
In mid stride he was caught between the rapid advance of two huge pieces of blackly glowing building debris closing in from each side with disgusting force. The resulting stone sandwich gave him more than enough to think about, as the sharp pain from the crushing force stoked his rage-fueled strength even further. Flexing his spectacular muscles, Blue began to force the two boulders apart, even as they continued to drag him further into the air. Just as he was about to release himself from the black stone grip, a neutral female voice shouted "NOW!" and the world was reoriented once again as a searing burn arced down his side and carried him free of the boulders, depositing him instead on some high story of an already-crumbling office building. When the green haze cleared from his eyes, Blue was falling quickly toward the ground, impacting with a crash that fractured the road for twenty feet in every direction. Yanking himself up with the speed that anyone who hadn't been hurt at all would have, he was able to see the next attack coming.
A purple, orange, and red streak of speeding woman came arcing down at him from his direct front, gaining a green glow as it reached ground level. A series of staccato green blasts rushed toward him and impacted with searing pain, but once again failed to prevent his inspired counter attack. With spectacular timing, he pounded his fist onto the broken ground and caught the red-haired slip of a girl with a piece of stone that catapulted up at the impact, sending her flying off balance toward him. Bringing his left fist around in a haymaker's arc from right to left, he landed a full force blow against the girl's back that flung her through the air like a sack of sand. As her form skipped and rolled limply away in the distance where she had finally landed, Blue lamented for his stinging fist. Hitting the girl had been like punching triple-plated steel, and while he was used to it, he hadn't been expecting it.
Exhilaration of victory flooded Blue's body then as he searched for his next victim among the building dust and oily black smoke. The kiddies were putting up quite a bit more of a fight than he had expected, and the excitement of facing a new challenge had Blue high with mindless happiness that mingled freely with his unstoppable rage.
His next opponent wasted no time in making her own next move though, so his search was cut short by several watermelon-sized rocks hitting him in the back with the force of cannonballs. As he struggled to stand, more and more shattered against his muscular back, attempting to drive him into the ground. His amazing strength shined though as he fought his way to his feet, only to discover that the barrage of stone had mysteriously stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The respite was a ruse, he discovered, when a hunk of building foundation the size of a small skate park came falling quickly towards him from above. He barely had time to get his hands up and catch the enormous weight (let's say... 5 tons?) before it could crush him.
After nearly breaking everything he had absorbing the shock of the concrete island's fall, Blue was left with the twin dilemmas of what to do with it now and how to stop the ground from crumbling beneath his feet, which was exactly what he managed by lifting it up two inches and bringing it back down on his neck. With a horrifying crackling noise, the massive artificial stone split down the middle, he allowing a piece to fall to either side of him, taking out another building that had thus far escaped damage somehow.
Turning to face his latest opponent, he found her keeled over and breathing heavily as she tried to recover from the massive exertion that chucking that hunk of stone at him no doubt involved. When she saw him standing there, clearly unharmed, her eyes widened in amazement, and she somehow managed to pull herself together for another attack. Before Blue could charge her, she shouted three words he couldn't quite make out, and suddenly huge swirls of white-edged black energy enveloped her, grew incredibly large, and flew directly at him. He leapt to the side, but the energy tracked him down and wrapped him up, even as he dragged himself toward the dark girl. When the energy had fully enveloped him, he was only a few feet away from his target, who was standing her ground fearlessly, hands pressed to her head in concentration, a look of desperate determination on her face. Picking him up and suspending him in the air, she too floated upward to be level with him, just out of his flailing reach.
"You've caused enough commotion for one day, and now its time for you to pay for hurting my friends," she said in a tired, calmly indifferent voice with only the slightest edge of submerged anger.
"DO YOU REALLY THINK DIS WILL HOLD ME?" spat back Blue, his eyes fairly glowing with rage. Making good on his threat, he whipped his arms out to his sides and brought them together again with a resounding CLAP! The force of the impact created a shockwave that flicked Raven away like a shot, propelling her at high speed into the ground some distance away. As he righted himself after his own subsequent impact with the earth, he began to look around, searching for the first defeated enemy he would finish off.
(Robin)
"This hasn't been going well," thought Robin as he gripped his aching side. Experience told him that he had broken at least two ribs when that behemoth had swatted him away, and if Starfire hadn't caught him before he hit that building, it would have been much worse. "No...Starfire..." he thought, an even greater pain gripping his heart as he remembered watching helplessly as she was clobbered as well. Now that he had recovered enough of his senses to walk again, it was time for him to get some revenge.
"Beast Boy, it's time to Joust," he said, feeling a familiar presence staggering up behind him.
"Dude, we're both beaten up Robin, we need to get the others and come up with a plan," was the green kid's pleading response. "I just managed to get out from under that rock by becoming a mouse, and you've seen better days too by the look of it."
"There's no time for that!" was the leader's heated retort, as he swung his hand through the air in frustration. "Everyone else has already been beaten, if we try to retreat now, there won't be anything to stop him from hurting more innocent people." The deep pain in his voice spoke not only of shattered bones and internal bleeding, but also of injuries to his pride, sense of duty, and confidence, a message not missed by Beast Boy.
"Okay Robin, I'm behind you, but I don't really think a guy who can shrug off a five ton hunk of concrete--literally!--is going to be bothered too much by a joust," he warned, as he prepared to change into a horse.
"Noted, and that's why it's going to be a joust with some explosive power behind it, right Cyborg?" spoke Robin with a smirk, as his heavy metal friend also approached to regroup.
"You got that right, no one messes up my body and gets away without some SERIOUS PAIN!" added Cyborg, as he transformed his hand into a cannon and rubbed the dented area of his chest. He winced as several loose wires sparked and hissed within him, but the look of burning determination never left his face.
"So dat's where you guys was hide'n eh?" came their opponent's deep and deeply stupid voice from their right. Snapping around with an expression of pure rage, Robin shouted "TITANS GO!" and the three scattered once more. Running as fast as he could with the sharp pain in his chest, Robin circumvented the debris of several fallen buildings, meeting up with Beast Boy out of the villain's sight. Leaping nimbly into the air, Robin landed on Beast Boy's horse form, and the two took off at a gallop toward the blond bruiser that had so far proven indestructible. As they rounded the first lump of demolished building, they reached full speed and spotted their opponent tangling with Cyborg. The two had been exchanging grievous super-strong blows, as evidenced from another dent in Cyborg's armor and a new crater where the muscle-bound lout had no doubt been flung by a Cyborg shoulder tackle. Another huge punch from their opponent sent Cyborg flying into a nearby pile of stone, but not before he had removed a large, thick, disc of some kind from a compartment in his back and sent it flying toward Robin with a quick fling.
Catching the disk, Robin attached it to one of his plasma explosives and loaded the deadly payload to the front of his metal fighting staff, extending it and aiming it for the bruiser's head in the few seconds between his nice catch and the sudden jarring impact of two huge masses. The detonation of his plasma bomb an instant before Cyborg's armor-piercing mine directed the twin blasts entirely toward the behemoth's ugly mug and awful haircut, launching him away as he screamed in pain and rage, even as Robin hopped off of Beast Boy and the two rushed to where the flying heap of muscles had landed.
When they arrived it was to find not a nearly broken foe ready to be finished off and locked up, but a raging and flailing knot of muscular fury gripping his sizzling face and thankfully bald head with both hands. As Robin tried to launch an attack at the wounded beast's legs, he was knocked away painfully by a huge elbow's random spasm. Recovering from the stinging blow, he saw much the same thing happen to Beast Boy's gorilla form, though he at least managed to get one good ape punch in before hand. Then, just when Robin thought they might be wearing down this terrible opponent, a directed smack arced out at Beast Boy as he tried to give the gorilla punch another go, smashing the green ape over the nearest pile of stone and out of sight. Slowly now, his flailing stopped and he pried his other hand from his face.
"Who is this guy?" asked Robin in abject horror, as he watched what seemed to be pieces of melted flesh cling to the man's hand as he pulled it away. The melted mess that covered the muscleman's mug was hideous beyond reason, with runny and dripping bits flowing near eyes that appeared to be bulging from the skull.
"YOU BUSTED MY MASK!" shouted the vision of horror cryptically, "NOW YOU'RE GONNA PAY!"
With that bellow he launched a new assault at Robin, charging forward and attempting to crush him into the ground with a series of overhand smacks. Robin, though injured and mildly nauseated, was still agile enough to dodge the suddenly clumsy blows of his partially blinded opponent. Searching for an opening, he dashed away and to one side, and soon he was no longer pursued. Looking back to see why he had lost the enraged brute, his heart almost stopped...
The Battle Zone, a few minutes earlier
Raven had pulled herself out of the rubble she had landed in only with great difficulty. Having nearly exhausted her power trying to contain the brute's rampage, she lay almost helpless amid the remains of old buildings that had never stood a chance in this clash. Hearing a small sound behind her, she turned to see that her decent had by chance landed her near Starfire's prone form. Staggering slowly to her still friend, her heart aching more with every step, Raven felt her cool persona melting in the face of the ultimate injustice. Before her lay happiness incarnate, silenced. With trickles of her blood blending morbidly with her red hair, Starfire lay broken upon the ground. Blood and more blood leaked from her ears and nose, as well as from dozens of small cuts on her arms and legs, all of which were dwarfed by a bleeding gash across her exposed midriff.
"No...not you..." whispered a horrified Raven, the raw emotion she felt mysteriously absent from her voice, as if her long practice at hiding what she felt prevented her from expressing it openly now, when it was truly necessary. Eyes that had not felt the wetness of tears for longer than she could remember welled slowly as she gazed at her quiet friend, her consciousness contracting in panic so extreme that she missed even the enormous explosion that took place not far from her.
Just as it seemed the stress of what she felt would rupture her consciousness and spread her sanity on the winds, her panic-heightened senses detected a faint glimmering of hope. The slightest breath stirred Starfire's otherwise deathly still form, and suddenly a new thought consumed Raven's mind.
"Alive..." she whispered weakly, her mind latching onto the thought like a steel trap. Suddenly the world seemed to get light again where before it was dark, and Raven's panic was instantly replaced by a sharp dread and iron determination. For she still dreaded that her friend might slip away, while she was determined that as long as she still drew breath, that wouldn't happen. An unignoreable rumbling in the ground interrupted her reverie of emotion at this point, and when she turned her gaze toward the source, she was faced with the first, and possibly the last, test of her determination.
The sight that greeted her gaze was a disfigured giant chasing Robin through the rubble, trying intermittently to smash the handsome hero into bird jelly. Suddenly Robin dogged to one side, and the giant's gaze shifted inexorably from him to the two girls where they lay. As the danger made itself clear to Raven's fatigued mind, time seemed to slow with the dread realization. Pain, fear, and fatigue all forgotten, Raven began her chant, having never had more need of her demonic father's black gift.
"Azarath..." she began the familiar mantra, arriving at a state of total calm that had nothing to do with her training and everything to do with impending death. She felt as if she had all the time in the world to finish, to throw up her hands and stop the death of her friend and herself. The time dilation was startling, and she used it to her advantage as she continued.
"Metrion..." she spoke next, simultaneously reaching down to the deepest depths of her soul, scrounging up every reserve of power, every drop of black energy contained within her. There was no point in saving any of it for later, for if this failed, there would never be another later. Using every ounce of her focus, she pulled forth power she didn't know she had, wrenching it out to serve as the last barrier between her and her friend, and the impending death that charged ever so quickly nearer.
"ZINTHOS!" she shouted, all the black power she had accumulated leaping from her eyes and hands as she willed the air around her to solidify. A black dome of rigid air that fairly buzzed with the force of her spirit sprung into existence between her and the charging beast of muscle, mere instants before his arms flashed forward in twin blurs of death.
At this moment, the fateful meeting of irresistible force and immoveable object, the strongman's unnatural ability finally met its match, and his spectacular blow rebounded with the sound of a gong. A twin punch carrying enough force to crush a diamond to dust, knock over a skyscraper, or relocate a goodly portion of mountain knows no true match however, and as the tolling sound died away, Raven's black dome cracked and shattered, even as the raging attacker's arms were thrown backward by the force of the rebound and he had to stagger to stay on his feet.
For Raven, time came back, and she was greeted by a deafening tone and the sound of her shield breaking. Everything she had left had gone into the shield, and even that hadn't been enough. As her vision began to fade with her consciousness, she saw the foe bent on her destruction recover his balance where he stood above her, raise his arms, and grin with his disfigured visage as he prepared for a new deathblow. Explosions rocked off his back as thrown weapons tried valiantly to distract him, but with the taste of blood in his mouth, the behemoth was not even shaken. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was a bright light, then there was only the softly accepting blackness.
(Robin)
"NOOOO!" screamed Robin as he realized beyond doubt that nothing he could do would save his friends from being crushed mercilessly. He had already emptied his utility belt into the villain's back but nothing would shake the murderous freak from its homicidal path. Robin's experiences with Raven and Starfire flashed before his eyes as he dashed toward them in vain, taunting him with memories of the good and bad times they had been through together. Now mysterious, reliable Raven and kind, beautiful Starfire would be stolen from him, and the mere thought of it threatened to bring his world crashing down. Before he could even get halfway to them, he could see the murderous man's massive fists begin their downward decent, and it seemed all hope was lost.
With a flash of brilliant silver light, a beam of hot crackling energy lashed out from somewhere on his right, dazzling his eyes as it struck the massive man in his upper shoulder, knocking him sideways as the flash of heat caused a minor explosion of air. Two more beams flashed out in successive bright righteousness, hitting him even as he twisted through the air and knocking the giant back a few more feet with each melting impact. When Robin's stunned vision cleared, the assailant was trying to drag himself out of a ditch fifteen feet from the two unconscious girls, huge black burns etched onto his side. Far too worried about his friends, he wasted no time wondering at his spectacular luck and ran towards his fallen comrades.
Up close, their state was worse than he could ever have imagined. Star's wounds seemed almost surely fatal, and Raven would not be waking any time soon. With the sound of the behemoth bellowing his rage to the world as he crawled up to full stature and searched for the source of his weeping wounds, Robin was left sadly short of options. Moving Starfire would kill her, no doubt, and he refused to take Raven and leave Star for dead, it wasn't in him and Raven would never forgive him anyway. Decided, he stood, extended his metal staff, and took up a defensive stance (slightly stooping over his bad ribs), prepared to sell his life dearly for his friends. Idly he wondered how Beast Boy and Cyborg were doing, and if they would be able to save the girls if he couldn't, but then the muscleman had focused his rage and with two huge strides was upon Robin once more.
Dodging the man's first hasty swing with a quick hop, Robin landed on his massively muscled shoulders and struck down onto his head with the staff. Leaping away before another swing could take him apart, Robin flipped in mid air and landed in a crouch behind him, just in time for a high speed fist to come swirling at his head as the man turned. Leaning back on his heels, Robin dogged a clipping blow that would have crushed his skull, then lashed forward with a straight pole to the killer's kneecap that would have crippled a normal man. Before the disfigured man could retaliate, Robin was on the move once more, rolling between the large arch of the man's legs and trying to come up with a blow to the man's spine, only to find himself in searing pain. The roll had pinched his ribs together, dislocating one of the broken prongs into his internal organs and causing a pain so intense it threatened to white out his consciousness. Holding on, but just barely, he looked up just in time to see a huge foot right above his head.
"I've failed—"was all he could think, before it came rushing toward him...
A few minutes earlier, Skye's arrival.
After the next set of explosions had shaken the ground and the sky began to darken with clouds of black smoke and dust, Skye was certain of his destination. And of course, if he needed further directions, he could also have followed the opposite path of the horde of people fleeing in panic. Pushing through the people was getting him nowhere fast, as the tide of flesh buffeted him backward just as quickly as he pressed forward. Deciding that haste was more important than ethics for the time being, he exerted a suggestive mental force on everyone in the mob and made them think a two-foot area around him was an immovable object they had to stream around. The crowd parted miraculously, with some people seeming to become squeezed against the blank air and struggling not to be crushed against the imaginary wall in the press of the masses. He was moving forward almost as quickly as if there was no crowd at all then, running through the living sea as it parted like butter before a hot knife, dashing toward the sound of destruction and battle.
Coming out of the far side of the fleeing mass came as a sudden shock, the people were simply there and then not, but Skye took the opportunity to pour on the speed. Sweat dripping down his alabaster skin, he wiped his forehead with his black button-down's long sleeve, it's unbuttoned sides flapping behind him as he speed along. The weapons he had strapped under the back of his button down glinted silver in the afternoon sunlight, jingling slightly despite their tight harnesses being attached securely to his back and waist.
The next obstacle to try and impede his progress was a group of police and firefighters seeking to stop fires from spreading indiscriminately through the residential buildings near the battle. These valliant men and women were braving stray boulders, laser beams, collapsing buildings, and thrown cars to ensure that the people fleeing to safety would have homes to come back to.
"We can leave that freak to the Titans people!" shouted a fire chief as his forces marshaled hoses, axes, and extinguisher-bots against the all consuming flames, "But they need us to stop these fires, and we don't want to let them down, so GET A MOVE ON!"
Inspired despite himself, he knew that these noble people would be forced to try and warn him away, or otherwise slow him down, so he used another telepathic compulsion to ensure that they never noticed his passing at all.
[Who were those people?] asked Vera, who monitored all he saw and heard through his implant.
[They were firefighters trying to save people's homes,] responded Skye, almost glad for something to distract him from the pain of keeping up a flat out sprint for five city blocks.
[What—you mean people do that manually here?] Vera asked, incredulous.
[Robots here aren't advanced enough to do it alone yet,] said Skye, remembering the most recent technology report he had had to read so he'd know these things about a homeworld he never spent time on.
[Well then, I'll bet they must get a fat salary for work like that,] was Vera's next supposition. She was clearly trying to give him just the distraction he needed to keep pushing his limits.
[Not really. In fact, many do it for free, and those who do it for a living really aren't paid all that well,] Skye informed her regretfully.
[Skye,] said Vera, with an admonitory tone, [you come from a really screwed up planet.]
[I know,] was his slightly sad answer.
There was no more time for talking then, because as Skye fairly slid around the next turn, a scene of incredible destruction greeted him. The toppled remains of buildings lay strewn over broken streets. Piles of rubble taller than the light posts (most of which were broken anyway) blocked the sidewalks, and steam vented from manholes that had long been missing their covers. The twisted remains of automobiles dotted the other wreckage, seemingly at random, with some on top of destroyed buildings and others barely sticking out of holes opened in the street to the sewer below.
Wasting not a single moment, Skye scaled the nearest gutted building with a series of agile leaps up a crumbling pile of wreckage, arriving at a vantage point that overlooked the entire battle zone. Sensing only a handful of thought-emitting minds, Skye turned toward the most active, a male one shouting despairing thoughts into the ether so loudly that Skye didn't even need to try and hear them. Zeroing in on these thoughts, he gazed into a screen of obscuring smoke and searched for the source.
With a gust of wind, the smoke cleared for an instant, and that was all Skye needed to pull a split second draw and have off three disgustingly accurate laser beams from his service blaster. When he looked to see what he had hit with his instinctive snapshot, he saw a hugely musclebound figure lying in a ditch, not far from where two prone forms and one running from were also present. Then the smoke obscured the scene again, and Skye cursed as he leapt over the side of the building he had shot from. Sliding down the side of the building by pressing his feet and arm against it, he quickly switched over to a mysteriously undamaged lamppost half way, and then was on the ground in the next moment. Kicking it into high gear again, he opened up every minute speck of speed he possessed as he raced through a maze of rubble toward his opponent.
Desperately he tried to contact the mind of the being that had managed to shrug off three shots from his laser blaster, seeking to disable the behemoth as quickly as possible and help out the incredible warriors that had opposed him so far. As he searched, he located the mind of the one young fighter that was still engaging him, and from there tracked down a mind that he wasn't even sure could be considered a mind.
This mind floated on a film of pure rage so blind and unthinking that Skye was left with no route to infiltrate and debilitate it. The rage acted more effectively than even a really good mind shield by removing the passages of the mind through which a telepath could enter, making any contact with the mind (safe contact anyway) impossible. Of course, the IDP had trained Skye's powers to a truly impressive extent, and had not ignored some of his more sinister latent talents...
"God I hate using this move," he thought to himself as he mounted the final mound of debris between him and the raging battle before him. Reaching the top, he leapt forward, drawing his power gauntlets from under his button-down in a swift movement of his arms behinds his back, activating them as he pressed the ground with his hands.
The gauntlets themselves were a set of two intricate silver mesh gloves with enormous red gems set into the back of the hands. As soon as Skye channeled his telepathic powers into them, the rubies vented streamers of white light that matched his skin, the ribbons quickly bundling and wrapping around his forearm to form a visible shell around the silver mesh that was the true form of the guantlet. As his telepathic powers pulsed through the specially reactive gems and metal, the encasing white light wrapped around his arms formed two wickedly spiked bracers. The twin gloves of light were Skye's weapons of choice, giving him a wide range of new options for his mental powers, as well as a supernatural strength.
The Gauntlets activated in the flashing instant it took Skye to bend his arms and aim his next attack. Luckily, the brute was on one foot, like he was about to stomp on something, because this meant he didn't even begin to have enough balance to stop Skye's attack. In a blur of spinning motion and white light, Skye catapulted himself out of the handstand and directly into the brute's face, corkscrewing through the air to maximize his impact. The shock from his feet contacting the melted scars of the killer's face was so strong it threatened to break his ankles, knees, and hips all at once, but the fiend's fortunate lack of footing saved Skye's bones, and the giant went toppling over as Skye completed an acrobatic flip and landed on his feet in a crouch.
Facing the fallen, but far, far from defeated enemy, he sprung forward, preparing to use the only power he regretted being born with. Clearing his mind for the coming onslaught, he stretched out and gripped onto the brute's head before he could begin to stand. With a deep breath and an exertion of malicious power, he began the draining...
(Robin)
Robin was more than a little stunned when instead of the massive foot advancing to crush his skull, grinding it into the rubble with what he could only imagine would be a sickening wet sound, an entirely different sound of impact filled his ears. With a thud that Robin recognized as the contact of boot and head (he knew it well) the foot instead began to recede, and the ground shook as the titanic brute fell backward. At an utter loss for words, thoughts, and actions, Robin continued to stare vacantly at where the foot had been a moment ago.
With a burning pain, the plight of his friends snapped his mind back into focus, and he flipped up to his feet just in time to see a figure he didn't recognize leap forward and grip onto the head of their momentarily disoriented opponent with two glowing white hands. As he watched in fascination, a wave of energy blasted out of the gauntlets at the very instant of contact, the white flash of light pushing him slightly before passing. After a moment of calm, a strange light enveloped the brute's body, then began flowing up his prone form and into the mysterious stranger. More and more light came from his body, and more and more of it took the quick trip into the Titans' rescuer, when suddenly the brute began to scream, thrash, and flail on the ground.
The scream was earsplitting and soul wrenching, seeming to suck the support right out from Robin's legs with it's piercing, terrifying intensity. The rabid thrashing shook the ground, pulverizing stone to dust and cracking the earth, but still the stranger held on, refusing to stop the terrifying process of whatever it was that he was doing. Just when Robin thought it couldn't get any weirder, the stranger's eyes began to emit a frightening red glow that reached out from behind his sunglasses and painted the area in front of his face with bloody color.
The more red light that leapt from the stranger's eyes, the less the brute thrashed, until his movements slowed down to virtually nothing. The light continued to flow however, and just a Robin began to move from fascinated to concerned, the stranger spoke.
"Knock him out," he said, in a voice that sounded carefully controlled against yelling or crying or something.
"What?" Robin asked, unable to comprehend exactly what was going on, and understandably reluctant to follow such a sudden order from a stranger, even one that had saved him (and presumably the girls moments ago).
"I...can't...stop...draining...until...the...bastard...blacks...out..." he struggled to say, as if he were in great pain or was having trouble staying conscious. As Robin looked on, he slowly crawled up onto his knees (he had been lying prone during the draining) shaking uncontrollably along the length of his body. As he saw this shaking, Robin understood that whatever it was the stranger was doing, it caused him great distress, and the quivering of a person that had saved his life was all it took to motivate Robin to action. Unsure still of just how effective he could be, he moved to attack.
With a flying leap, Robin shot into the air, flipped twice, then brought all the weight of his body and the force gained by spinning down onto the tip of his staff, crushing it into the brute's fabulously muscled stomach. Having braced himself for this blow to bounce off as all his past ones had, he was shocked when his staff not only made a spectacular hit into the brute's stomach, but sunk in deep and pressed into the killer's vitals. With a whimper of air being pressed from his lungs, the villain passed from consciousness at last.
When he landed after the blow, Robin admired his handy work, and then turned to confront the stranger only to find that the young man had retreated from the now unconscious brute already. His distress had not been quieted by victory, and even now he shook with some unknowable terror, pain, or other mysterious infliction. Even as he watched, the black-clad man fell to his knees and started groaning low, pained words to himself that Robin couldn't quite make out. When he tried to walk up and see if he could help, or get help for, the guy that had saved the life of him and all his friends, a snarling shout warned him away.
(Skye)
Skye was rippling with energy that threatened to tear him apart. The brute had been filled with rage, so Skye had used the psychic draining to empty him of that rage and open a path for a more conventional attack. However, the instant the draining began, something whet wrong, and instead of sucking out the rage and containing it within his own controlled mind as he had done many times before, with many different emotions and energies, Skye had tapped directly into the villains core of power and began to drain that instead.
"Some kind...of connection...between his rage and his power?" thought Skye as he gripped his chest with his gauntleted hands and tried to ignore the feeling of being torn in two. He had managed to divert from pure power to power and rage after adjusting, but tampering with the connection to his foe's spirit had also been a mistake, trapping him for the duration of the draining without the escape route his original piercing strike into the brute's soul had left. If it hadn't been for that fighter's intervention, his head would almost certainly have detonated from the energy filling it so spectacularly overfull.
[Skye, I don't know what you just did, but your vitals are spiking! Chill out before this kills you!] shouted Vera into his mind, as confused by Skye's reaction as she was by the readings all his vital signs were returning. By all rights he should have died five times already, considering his pulse and blood pressure alone, and yet he still stood.
"I...can't...hold it in," he gasped to no one in particular, as the power racing around inside him searched desperately for an exit. It was like a snake of pure burning magma writhing within him, and even as he thought this, the rage he had sucked up also made its presence known.
With a resounding snap of power, the internal shields that had been holding back the brute's rage popped, Syke having lost concentration on them as he tried to deal with an overflux of power splitting him open. Combining instantly with it's familiar friend the power, the rage exploded forth, knocking down all of Skye's internal barriers and inundating his mind with a desire to kill, destroy, maim, eradicate, and otherwise make others suffer.
"AAAHAHHHAHHAHGHGHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHGG," his mixed bellow of fury and pain fairly wrenched from his lungs, knocking back everything around him with a simultaneous burst of telepathic energy so powerful it could be felt by the body as well as the mind. Though he barely noticed, the young man that had defeated the brute with his help was thrown back, gripping his head in pain, even as the last vestige of Skye's own consciousness snapped forth with his last chance of survival.
Throwing up his hand, he directed all that fury and rage into his gauntlet, where it was happy to combine with the psychic amplifying gem, expand spectacularly, and exit as it had desired so forcefully to do. With a blinding flash, the woven silver ribbons of the gauntlet unraveled, ballooned outward, then re-formed into a massive beast's head that was several times the size of Skye's whole body. The woven light molded into a fang-filled jaw to dwarf a Tyrannosaurus's, sprouted eight-foot horns that phased mystically through the ground they dug into, and opened slanting, red eyes. This light beast then opened its jaws and from its throat came a quickly growing red glow, building in the throat as the same glow died in Skye's eyes.
After a moment of complete calm, where neither the slightest pebble nor the most sweeping gust of wind dared move a single molecule, Skye vented all the pent up energy in one massive blast. Like dragon's fire, a red beam stretched into the sky from the light beast's open maw, starting in an infinitely small point just outside the parted teeth, then swirling out cone-like to a twenty-foot diameter of roiling, twisting, knotting red and white energy emptying itself against the afternoon sky. All around, wind whipped into gale force, fires leapt higher, and the smoke and dust cleared away from the chaotic energy like a billion brown and black insects fleeing a flame's heat. It's sound was the most terrible rushing and roaring of wind and stone that could possibly be imagined, blanking out all other sound in it's furious howl. The pillar rushed up and up, like flames eager to consume the stars, flashing out to touch the cold infinity of space with hot rage and glaring power, never to return to containment of mind, soul, or flesh.
And within the pillar of undiluted destructive force, an image could be seen by any brave enough to stare at its terrible visage. A face was there, one covered in stone-like angular lumps and decorated with one huge eye with a creamy blue iris. The face's mouth was twisted in a grimace of fury, and it opened its mouth to vent silent screams of rage to the sky, even as it was carried away in the destructive energy that contained it. At last though, both the image and the pillar of energy died away to nothing, the light beast unraveled down to the now quiet silver gauntlets, and Skye was left in the suddenly silent aftermath of battle, bathed in bright sun on a Thursday afternoon.
Dropping to his knees, Skye felt empty and disoriented. Contributing to these feelings were the facts that he had used most of his own power to direct the rage out, his body was badly damaged by the stress to his system, and there was a female voice in his head nagging him about some kind of known criminal who's image she had spotted in the explosion of energy. Looking to his side, he noticed the young man clad in the red and green combat suit staring with wide (masked) eyes and a stunned expression directly back at him. To complete the absurdity of the moment, the brute, who had lain still between Skye and the young fighter since the draining, vanished from where he lay with a flash and a rush of wind.
If possible, the fighter's (still masked) eyes grew even a little wider, his gaze sliding down to where the brute had been, then back up to Skye with a self evident question. The lightheadedness Skye couldn't fight off compelling him to answer, he managed to mumble, "I didn't do that one," and give a slight shrug.
"The shrug was mistake," he thought mirthlessly when a wave of unbearable pain flashed through every muscle that had moved. The white heat of pain blanked out that annoying female voice, which had been yelling about teleporters indicating an advanced enemy presence, then blanked out everything else as well. With a slight thud then, Skye fell forward on his face and passed out.
(Robin)
Left more than a little shell shocked, it took the collapse of the Titans' rescuer to snap Robin back into a functioning frame of mind. Immediately following that snap was a rush of the panic, fears, and heartache that had taken a little vacation while confusion, shock, and awe had hijacked his brain.
"STARFIRE!" he shouted as the memory of her bloody, still body came back with a crackle of absolute horror. Turning on his heel, he flipped out his communicator and called up the EMS teams. They were going to need a lot of ambulances.
Preview: WHOAH! Now was that great or what? How can I possibly top this one? You'll just have to wait and see I'm afraid. In the next chapter we'll learn how everything turned out once the dust settled, so unless you're some kind of heartless prick, I'm sure you'll want to know who survives, who doesn't (it's a possibility!), and all about how Blue's defeat alters the situation. Also be prepared for another big dose of sci-fi, with Skye's powers revealing a new front. Don't miss one heart-wrenching second of: Aftermath.