Jason Fuller & The Elementals: The Stones Of Olympus (Book 1)

by Andarion The Storyteller

This story is about the adventures of a young mutant named Jason Fuller and his friends as they embark on a journey to save the world from Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil. Lives will be changed, destinies will be fought, ancient magic will resurface, and for Jason, a question that has plagued him since his parents death, about what it truly means to be a hero, will be answered.

9. Chapter 9: Venom vs Delta Force

Chapter 9: Venom vs. Delta Force

Why is it always me? Seriously, why is it that whenever we face a blood thirsty killer opponent, they always go after me? Is it because i'm team leader or something? Because if it is, I may seriously consider stepping down. Anyway, Venom, who was now a bloodthirsty maniac, or should I say EVEN MORE of a bloodthirsty maniac, was charging towards me with a battle axe made out of shadow, or something like that. Mrs. Kennedy said, our suits wouldn't be much help against magic metals, and i'm pretty sure this qualified as very magical. However, before Venom could get within 5 feet of me, Grant busted out of his bonds in a super heroic way, and flew into Venom like a cannonball, launching the two of them deep into the greenery. I could hear what I assumed to be Grant punching Venom, as well as Venom's raspy screams of pain. I took this time to try and get out of my own webbing. I fought and shook, even tried using my electric powers to fry it off; nothing worked. Just when I was about to summon a Mega Lightning Strike to try and get me free, via blasting my tree to cinders, Allyson flew over to help me out.

"Need some help?" she asked me in a super smug way.

"How'd you get out?!" I asked in a super surprised tone.

"I basically burned them off, as soon as I lit my body on fire, the webs just melted rather quickly to be honest."

"Awesome, now hurry up and free me, we gotta help Super-G!"

"Wait, what's the magic word?"

"Let me go because i'm team leader, and Super-G might die if we don't move our butts on the double?"

"Close enough," she said as she activated her Blazing Sun Form, and touched my webbing.

She was right about the 'rather quickly' part. As soon as she touched the webs, they not only melted, but quite literally, scrambled off of my body, like they knew what fire was, and did not like what it meant for their future. They only made it a few feet away, before they burned into nothingness, but still, kinda weird.

"Thanks," I told Allyson. "Now come on, Grant needs us, whether he knows it or not."

(Grant's Perspective)

You guys are so lucky. You know it costs 9.99 per month to have the WWE Network, and be able to watch awesome pay-per-view matches? Well get ready for a massive hero vs villain showdown, that should be 49.95 to see, hear, or even read, for free.

So basically, when Venom charged at Jason, I immediately sprung into action like the amazing super awesome hero I am. I broke out of my webbing, and while going at super speed (I refuse to call it Speed Mode or Comet Speed, maybe i'll name it later, something football related), I trucked Venom in the gut at the speed of a bullet, and we both hurtled further into the Amazon. While we were flying, I kept a hold of Venom with my left hand, and punched him multiple times with my right. At least 20 times in the face, 15 in the gut; I just didn't stop, I couldn't afford to. Now I know what you're probably asking, and the answer is yes, I was super afraid. I mean seriously, for all of my joking and humor, I was afraid I wasn't gonna walk away from this fight, I was afraid, I would fail Thunder-Man and Sunbird; these fears increased, due to the fact that I could actually be hurt now. But I wasn't gonna let that stop me. As a former quarterback, I was used to game day nerves, once you got in your zone, everything was fine. This was no different. As soon as I started punching, my objective wasn't about survival, but about winning. Anyway, after a few more punches, Venom started to fight back. He roared at me, and swept his left arm at my face. I easily blocked it, and countered it with another punch, but Venom clearly was not taking anymore. He started thrashing and swiping at me wildly, making it harder for me to hold on to him, and maintain my flight pattern. After he started biting at me with his massive jagged teeth, I decided to cut my losses. It's not that I was afraid the bites would hurt me, it's just, unless it's from a cute girl, biting is off limits for me. I punched him one last time in the face, threw him into the air, and faster than he could even blink, I flew 100 meters back, and flew back around, delivering a massive Super-G sized punch to Venom as a present. He must have really felt that punch, because his black goo kind of went all wild and disoriented as he soared backwards. By the way, I never mentioned it before, but I am way faster in the air than I am on the ground. Don't get me wrong, i'm pretty light on my feet when I need to be, but in the air, I was way faster, probably fast enough to give Jason a run for his money. Anyway, I flew in pursuit of Venom and when I caught up to him, I got the biggest/worst surprise ever. I had knocked him about half a mile backwards, in the middle of another river to be precise. At first I was confused, we had already crossed the river a while back, but then I remembered that the Amazon had lots of rivers snaking in and out of it; if only that was the most surprising part. Yeah, remember when I said I knocked Venom IN the middle of a river? You see, the thing about the word IN, is that it implies that he was submerged, or swimming in the water; which would have been pretty funny to see now that I think about it. No, when I caught up to Venom, he was hovering over the water, engulfed in a fiery red aura, like Goku in Kaio-Ken. He looked pissed off, but then again, he always looked pissed off. He didn't say a thing, he simply charged at me like a missile from hell.

The bad thing was, he was moving so fast, I couldn't block, dodge, or intercept him. He tackled me so hard and fast, the wind was knocked straight out of my lungs. We soared backwards along the length of the river for a few seconds as I desperately tried to get free. I punched and kicked the guy with everything I had, but at such high speeds, and close proximity, I couldn't land a really good blow; Venom on the other hand, had no problem landing hits. I punched him once in the face, and he raked his claws against mine, multiple times. Maybe it was because of the stone, or maybe Venom was that strong, but his slashes stung a lot. We continued this cycle for a few more seconds, until Venom got tired of it, and decided to finish me off. He held out his right hand, and a shadow axe with red highlights formed perfectly in it. The blade started to surge with war god energy, so even if it didn't kill me, this swing was gonna hurt me really, REALLY BADLY. I didn't wanna feel the pain I was set up to feel, so when he swung the at my face, I pulled off a really awesome/stupidly lucky move. I knew i'd never be able to summon my axe in time, and even if I could, I couldn't block his. There would be no way in the world I could dodge the swing, or block it with my arms, so I used Venom's own momentum against him, to save my butt. I quickly wrapped my arms around most of his chest, which probably would have felt gross if it was touching skin, and kneed him as hard as I could in the gut. It wasn't much, or at least not much to Venom (this would be enough to shatter your rib cage, and punch a hole through your chest), but it was enough to get me in the clear. Venom's grip on me slackened, and I was able to move my head just under the axe, as it made it's first round. Before he could come around for another swing, I punched Venom as hard as I could in the chest. He completely let go of me at this point, but I wasn't done yet. As he was flying over me, I grabbed hold of his right leg and took him for a Super-G sized spin. I swung him around for a few seconds, enough to disorient him, and let him go, launching him high into the air; I still didn't stop. I flew back another 100 meters diagonally upwards, and when I had gained enough speed, I turned around, and charged straight for Venom. This time, I intercepted him in midair with a brutal flying kick, and while he was shooting backwards, I caught up to him, cupped my hands together, and brought a hammer blow down, knocking Venom straight into the water. I had hoped that would be enough to put him out of commission, but two seconds later, I was sort of surprised to see him rising from the water, holding yet another shadow axe, and bellowing a massive war cry.

Dude, at this point, I was only thinking of two questions. How do I bench this guy for good? And where the living f%#^ were the rest of my team? Anyway, Venom was charging at me, but this time in was in slightly slower motion. I could tell he was moving sort of fast, but for some reason, I was seeing him in a slower frame. Now that I think about it, the whole world seemed to be standing still, like it was holding it's breath or something. I know Jason calls this his "Speed Sense" but I will have none of it. Timeout is a better reference, short, sweet, to the point, football related, and my new term for it, so you can just deal with that anyway you wanna. So like I said, Venom was charging at me, but because my body had called for a Timeout, he was moving through invisible Jello. Now I could have done any number of things. I could have flew around, and clobbered him from the back, I could have got a tree and beat him to a pulp with it, I could have tried digging into his goo for the stone, and cut off his power source. But because I was super impulsive, and frustrated, I did the one thing I know you all wanted me to do anyway. I summoned my axe, and charged him head on, roaring my own battle cry.

Either because my body was done with it, or the adrenaline from the charge had shut it off, I shifted out of Timeout, and Venom resumed his missile-like dash towards me. Luckily, I was soaring at him with just as much, if not more speed, so I was ready for impact. My first move was defensive, that's how I like to deal with one-on-one encounters. I let Venom swing at me first, and before the axe struck my face, I blocked it with my own. It was definitely by accident, because somehow, Venom's axe got tangled under the bottom hooks of my axe. I was surprised, but not surprised enough to where I didn't take advantage of a perfectly good fumble. I twisted like a torpedo, wrenching the axe out of Venom's control, and when I settled on the other side of him, I kicked him hard in the chest and assaulted him relentlessly with my axe. We went up, and up, me hacking away wildly at any part of him I could reach. My swings were fast, powerful, and realistically, should have shredded him to pieces, but somehow they didn't. It was like I was hitting a yoga ball with a stick, no matter how many times I swung at him, the axe didn't cut into him, it just kept making dull, but probably painful impacts. I kept up the assault for a few more seconds, and after realizing how useless it was, I decided to ditch it, and try something else. I didn't just stop and let Venom recover; that would be just plain stupid. Instead, I whacked him one last time, sending him high into the air, and before he could even think about recovering, I intercepted his flying body, and hit him in the back as hard as I could. I must have really put myself into that swing because this time, I heard a loud boom, and as Venom was shooting down into the water, his form went all disoriented again. I was starting to think that I had finally done him in on that last shot, but then I got pulled into another Timeout. Instead of Venom charging at me again, this time, dozens of constructs, made of red energy, and shaped like various weapons of mass destruction, were flying straight at me. From missiles, to grenades, combat knives, you name it, a red construct was there. At first I was shocked, but then again, it wasn't like this wasn't coming sooner or later. Anyway, the weapons were flying in every direction, even if I flew around to Venom, there would be no way I could get a clear shot from behind. Instead, since I can break through energy constructs, I hefted my axe, and soared directly ahead. Realistically, this was a stupid thing to do, but as you'll soon come to realize, i'm all about stupid. As I soared at Venom, I swung my axe back and forth, crushing the red constructs in my way, which were moving at the velocity of a speed walker compared to how fast I was going. I struck down a bunch of missiles, and dodged a lot of giant knives, but before I could get to Venom, he did something weird, or should I say, completely bad ass.

Before I could get to him, Venom started to glow with so much red energy, I thought he was gonna blow up; if only. He roared so loud, probably alerting the entire continent, and thrusted his hand in my direction. Suddenly, red energy crackled in his clenched fist, and half a second later, a red bolt of lightning, with enough energy to power a million schools, shot at me at the speed of…..well, a lightning bolt. By all circumstances, it should have pelted me in the face, but apparently I was having none of it. The lightning bolt was coming at me really slow, like a highly inflated balloon drifting across the air. I quickly raised my axe, and with all of my strength, hit the bolt with the flat of one of the blades, sending it right back at Venom. The bolt hit him with the force of a tank, and the explosion was nothing short of the boomage it would take to level a skyscraper. I was blown away several hundred feet, before managing to stop in midair. Even worse, that explosion actually hurt, like the way a punch in the chest by Mike Tyson might hurt for you regular types out there. It took a few seconds, but I was eventually able to get my bearings. As best as I could tell, I was still in the same place, just a little ways away from the starting point. Even better, there was no sign of Venom anywhere; a few sparks of red electricity were still sparking every few seconds, but tar boy was nowhere to be seen. I made the mistake of thinking that after an explosion like that, even he couldn't get back up. That was before the giant black hand grabbed me.

It wasn't Venom's hand. I knew that, because it had my entire body gripped in it's palm; only my neck and head were free. Also, this hand was made entirely of black webbing, and it grabbed me from under the river, like a poisoned geyser or something. If only that was the worse part; because for some reason, I couldn't get free. I tried struggling against the hand, but it was pointless, the thing was somehow too solid for me to struggle against, and yet not solid enough for me to really struggle against anything; it was almost like water condensed into a fist. I even tried flying out of the thing, but the grip was too strong to fight against, even for me. Suddenly, red electricity surged through the hand, it's energy microwaving me like a hot pocket. It was slightly shocking at first, but it gradually escalated into pure unbearable pain; I couldn't stop myself from screaming out. As if the situation couldn't get any worse, I could see Venom floating 50 meters away from me. He definitely got his bell rung from that blast; bits and pieces of his arms and legs were missing, but gradually regenerating. Now that I mention it, for a brief second or so, I saw something on, or should I say in, his chest that looked like skin, human skin, but that was impossible; from what i'd heard around school, Venom was some sort of alien. Anyway, in spite of the serious pain I was in, I still had enough of my wits about me to see him conjure up red missile stockpile, big enough to level NYC, in other words, I was in for a brutal beatdown. Venom had his arm raised, no doubt savoring the moment. However, before he could launch nuclear warfare on my face, two streaks of lightning, and golden light, pelted Venom in his side, and sent him soaring into the other side of the Amazon. The cavalry had arrived.

The pillar fist that had me locked down was obviously sustained by concentration, because when Venom took a dive, the pillar melted, and I was free to fly around as I pleased.

"Thanks guys," I thought to Sunbird and Thunder-Man. "Just so you know, I had him on the ropes, I was just lulling him into a false sense of security. By the way, what kept you?"

"More monsters" Sunbird thought to me. "Plant gorillas ambushed us, I torched the lot of em'."

"And I helped!" Thunder-Man indignantly thought to me.

"Well thanks for the assist, but it's not over, this guy can seriously take a wallop; get ready."

"Get ready?!" Thunder Man thought to me with a mental laugh. "Dude, we just blasted him with like half a million volts, and a bolt of concentrated light, he can't be coming back, let's see if we can find the stone and-"

Venom's gluttonous roar filled the air, like the screams of a cheerleader in a horror movie. One second later, he came charging out of the forest, blazing like the red Super Saiyan of hate he really was.

"You were saying?" I thought to Thunder-Man in the most douchiest way possible.

His face was just priceless, pure and simple, he straight up couldn't believe anything could come back from a blast like that.

"WELL DON'T JUST FLOAT THERE LIKE AN IDIOT, LET'S GET HIM!" he mentally shouted to me, and probably Sunbird.

I summoned my axe, and charged Venom again, this time, he was gonna face the full fury of Delta Force; don't worry, the name change will eventually happen.

The fight against tar boy started out with a bang. Literally. Venom conjured up another volley of red missiles, and hurled them in our direction. Realistically, the missiles probably would have hit us if Sunbird didn't step in; but before they could even get close to us, random sun shields bursted in every direction, taking the brunt of the missile barrage, and sending more off course from the explosions that were high enough to not be a danger to us. The few missiles that did manage to stay their course were easily dodged by Thunder-Man, who was running on water, and by Sunbird and I, who were basically human fighter jets. I managed to get to Venom first, and I made him suffer for that. I swung my axe sideways, aiming for his neck, and when he ducked, I kneed him hard in the chin. While he was stunned, I uppercutted him with my axe, sending him airborne. I didn't stop there, not by a long shot. I soared after him, raised my axe, and struck him hard in the back, sending him further down the river than I actually intended to. Luckily, Thunder-Man stepped in, to keep the torture chain going. He was standing on the river side while I was doing my thing, but that's understandable, poor guy couldn't fly, and not even he could run forever. Anyway, in super speed terms, he ran down the river, a lot farther than Venom actually would have landed, and when he came charging back, he had his spear in mid swing which was surging with way too much electricity to be legal. Looking back on it, I see why he did that. At the force Venom was falling at, Thunder-Man wouldn't have been able to swing on him without dislocating his shoulder, or losing his sword in the process. So, when Thunder-Man actually struck Venom with his spear, a huge bolt of lightning, shot out of the blade with a very loud BOOM! Venom went flying with a very loud RAAAAAARRRR…in a direct collision course with Sunbird! At such high speeds, Venom should have steamrolled her, but she must have had really good reflexes. Before Venom got within three feet of her, she yelped, thrusted her hands out, and a golden fiery fist, big enough to punch through and armored vault, shot out of the water and hit Venom like he was a volleyball. He shot up into the air with a loud SCREEEEEE!; he was also clearly messed up. I realized what Sunbird did was all reflex. Her face was all golden and full of shock, plus the water was boiling with enough heat to exterminate an entire legion of sea life. Besides, she put so much power into that shot, that Venom was literally falling apart. His black tar body was in disarray, and it was almost like his body was in living pain. Now that he was more exposed, I could confirm what I had originally thought before; Venom was a dude. Underneath all of that alien gunk, was a guy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and wearing some jeans and a black T-Shirt. Venom quickly recovered his armor, or liquid, or whatever, and start glowing again. This time, he wasn't messing around, he summoned multiple lightning strikes, and hurled lots of missile constructs at the team; it was all I could do to dodge, break, and deflect most of his strikes. Sunbird wasn't doing so hot either. She had pretty much given up on evasion, and was focusing solely on blocking all of Venom's attacks with her solar force field. How Thunder-Man was doing, I couldn't say, but due to the fact that I kept seeing streaks of lightning flying over the water, I took a wild guess and came to the conclusion that he was ok. I was about to try another frontal assault on Venom, but I guess Thunder-Man pretty much had that covered too. He stopped on the other side of the river and held his hands to the sky. All of a sudden, thunder clouds darkened the sky, almost to the point to where it was black. I'm pretty sure you know the rest, Venom got a Zeus sized lightning strike right in the face, that plummeted him straight into the water.

"Guys, we gotta regroup and combine our efforts if we wanna take this guy down." Thunder-Man thought to me and Allyson.

"That's what i'm talking about!" I thought back to him. "So what's the gameplan, bro?"

"We gotta keep him off balance. Super-G, you and I gotta use our speed, get in close and strike hard, don't give him a chance to recover."

"And me?" Sunbird asked him.

"Your blasts have a really bad effect on him, we'll need that. Keep your distance, and when I give the signal, blast him with as many sun balls as you can. If that doesn't work, pelt him with as many constructs as you can, i'll help out if you need the extra firepower."

The water lit up bright red, and Venom came screaming out of it, a battle axe in one hand, a ball full of red fire in another.

"SUPER-G!" Thunder-Man screamed aloud.

"I'M ON IT!" I screamed back, as I charged Venom for all I was worth.

Maybe it was because I was super high on adrenaline, or I had somehow managed to go into, i'll call it Blitz, but anyway, Venom was basically frozen in air. I summoned my axe and smashed his face in, sending him flying towards the water. This time however, I decided to give Venom a break, and spare him another river bath. Before he hit the water, I intercepted him, and hit him as hard as I could with my axe, sending him skimming across the surface.

"NOW, SUNBIRD!" I heard Jason mentally scream to Sunbird, as he rushed to help me beat Venom down.

She reacted really slow like, but after like two seconds in regular time, she blasted a wave of golden fireballs in our direction. The fireballs were moving so slow, it was like they weren't moving at all, but that was our advantage. Thunder-Man caught up to me, and together, we put the hurt on Venom. Thunder Man turned on his Voltage Fists, and started to beat the crap out of Venom's face and chest. Occasionally, he would run in a circle around Sunbird's fireballs, and return with a thunder charged flying kick. Simultaneously, I was just beating on Venom with my axe as hard, and as fast, as I could; occasionally stopping to charge up, and hit him with a power swing. Between the two of us, we hit Venom at least 400 times in under two seconds. Luckily, he couldn't move as fast as we could, or our combo streak would have been cut off a good while ago. Finally, after the third second, and about 400 more hits, I told Thunder-Man to get clear, while I helped Venom get more acquainted with Sunbird's powers. I flew around him, and hit him with the flat of my axe, knocking him backwards in a direct collision course with Sunbird's blasts, before getting clear of what was sure to be a major explosion. Thunder-Man and I slowed down enough so that we could get a better view of the big boom. In short, it was awesome! As soon as the blasts made contact with Venom, they went KA-BAAM! Golden fire spewed in every direction like a fireworks display, and Venom was launched upriver so fast, it would have given Quicksilver a run for his money. I quickly chased after Venom for two reasons. One, Sunbird's explosions had a weird effect on him, made his body lose it's form, and expose his human inside. Two, Venom had the stone of Ares, if I could just find out where it was, I could take it from him and maybe that would depower him just enough for the team to take him down. I mean seriously, without his speed, weapons, and constructs, he wouldn't even be fit for a punching bag.

To be honest, my plan probably would have worked, if not for the surprise blast. I caught up with Venom, who was now the guy with blonde hair, and black clothes. Now you got to realize, I was in Blitz, so there was no way he should have seen me coming, much less react to it. I saw the stone was locked in his right fist, and tried to grab it. I probably could have, and should have chopped his hand off, but there was no need to, and I didn't wanna be brutal about it. I grabbed for the stone, but before I could even touch the guy's hand, the air shimmered like a heat wave. When it cleared up, the guy had his fist on a direct collision course with my face; I was so surprised, I forgot to dodge. WHAM, BRAAAAAM! The most surprising thing was how much that hurt. As soon as the guy's fist hit my face, a wave of red lightning and fire, strong enough to punch through steel, erupted in my face and sent me soaring back to who knows where. After a few seconds, the wave dissipated and I plopped into the water. My face was hurting so much, I wondered if it was damaged. I wanted to move, but it was like the message wasn't traveling fast enough to my body. My movements were sluggish and slow at best, but there was no way i'd get above water on my own. Lucky for me, I didn't have to. The water suddenly became so bright, I thought I had died and went to heaven. Don't worry ladies, it wasn't so. It felt like a giant hand had reached down, and was pulling me upwards. A second later, I came out of the water, coughing, sputtering, and completely disoriented. I heard Sunbird singing, and I felt my body warm up. A few seconds later, my vision cleared, and I found myself on the grass by the river. Sunbird was breathing heavily, and her eyes were so wide with worry, fear, and relief, it was a wonder they didn't roll out of her sockets.

"You ok, Super-G?" she asked me in an extremely out of breath voice.

"I'm fine, thanks to you," I responded. "But where's Venom and Thunder-Man?"

She pointed upriver, but I still couldn't see them; then I remembered Thunder-Man's speed. I concentrated on seeing faster, and suddenly, Thunder-Man and Venom were as clear as day, like the world flicked a switch on a PowerPoint or something. Let me tell you something: Never piss Thunder-Man off. Ever. The guy was an electric beatdown machine, knocking Venom with Voltage Fists at speeds so fast, he had to be in SMS; plus he was swearing so much, it'd make an old lady feint. He did a backflip, hitting Venom in the face, and sending him airborne with a bolt of lightning that ejected from his feet. Thunder-Man stopped on top of the water and jumped. As he did, two huge bolts of lightning erupted from his feet, and propelled him high into the air. Thunder-Man proved he was just as capable of handing out beatdowns in the air just as easily as on the ground. He created two huge lightning fist constructs, and started to beat the hell out of Venom. Somehow Venom managed to recover, and stopped Thunder-Man's lightning fists with his own, made of red lightning. That didn't stop Thunder-Man at all. He yelled really loud, and his lightning constructs exploded, knocking Venom further away, but sending him sailing towards the ground. While falling, Thunder-Man managed to summon a volley of missile, swords, arrows, etc., in the form of lightning constructs, and sent them flying towards Venom. They hit him with the force of a truck load of bombs, and when he fell down, he plopped into the water again. Thunder-Man on the other hand, managed to land perfectly on the water, and run to where Sunbird and I were.

"Dude, are you good?" he asked me.

"Fine bro," I said. "But, so is he."

I pointed to the sky, where Venom was floating a good 200 meters in the air, seething with rage.

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!" he shouted at the top of his unearthly lungs. "I WILL NOT BE DENIED YOUR BLOOD, MORTAL CHILDREN! COME TO ME MY SERVANTS OF WAR, GIVE UNTO ME MY FEAST!"

He stretched his hands out, and from nowhere, a layer of black tar spread over the water, and both sides of the greenery flanking the river. Venom thrusted his hands downward, and the tar plunged into the water, and into the forest. At first, nothing happened, and I was about to make a smart joke before resuming the ass kicking assault on Venom. But that was before everything went red. Literally, the water turned bright red, like neon lights were at the bottom of the river. On either side of the river, bright red lights blazed deep in the greenery, and I knew without a doubt that something bad was coming for us. It took a few seconds, but after that, I heard multiple roars, and the threat showed itself. They were humanoid, but barely. Each of them were 8 feet tall, made completely of Venom's tar, and glowing red hot with war god energy. They had razor sharp talons, but as far as I could see, had no weapons. There had to be at least 1000 of them in total, but even that wasn't scary, we'd dealt with more than this; Venom was gonna have to seriously step up his game if he wanted to take us down.

"KILL THEM!" he roared. "DELIVER THEIR CORPSES TO ME!"

Thunder-Man and I immediately tapped into our respective super speed powers, only this time, we weren't alone. Sunbird stood next to us in her Sun Form, a mixture of smugness and seriousness on her face.

"What?" she asked us in a sarcastic tone. "You didn't seriously think i'd let you two make another battle plan without me, did you?

"Ha ha," Thunder-Man recovered. "Now seriously, we need to focus. Super-G, take the ones on the other side of the river, chop em' to pieces. Sunbird, blaze a trail up the river, torch the lot of em'. As for me, i'll take these...things over here."

He electrified his sword.

"Ready, team?" he asked us.

"Ready." Sunbird and I said at the same time.

"Alright then, let's go!" he said, as he charged to meet the oncoming legion of tar monsters.

Sunbird and I raced to our battle positions as well.

So, I wanna say that everything went according to plan, but of course nothing usually does for our team; good thing we do improv really well. I flew to the other side of the lake, and started hacking away. At first, I actually thought I was making progress, because when I slashed my axe through the bodies of the tar monsters, their bodies went all disoriented, and it seemed like they were dying. Meanwhile, and at the same speed, Sunbird was going upriver, a blaze of golden fire erupting from her hands and melting all tar monsters in contact to sludge. I couldn't exactly see Thunder-Man in the midst of the battle, but it was safe to say that he was taking it to his side of the monsters as well. After a full minute of running, I started to slow down; seriously, going at super speed is not as easy as it looks, you gotta really be ready for it. Anyway, it was during that time that I realized two things. A: none of the monsters that I had slashed through actually died, they just looked like they were. B: apparently there were more monsters coming through than we actually thought, because all of a sudden, I was up to my neck in tar monsters that were overflowing from the woods. From up above, Venom was starting to realize that his tar monsters were not getting the job done. He roared really loud, yelled something evil and Shakespearean, and charged Sunbird dead on. At first I thought she was gonna need some help, but she surprised both Venom and myself, when she uppercutted him with the biggest fire fist construct, sending him soaring upwards, screaming and melting. Sunbird didn't stop there, she created two huge Sun Swords, and charged Venom, who had recovered enough to create two red battle axes, and charge her too. For a while, the two fought in the air, like two Super Saiyans with weapons of war. Meanwhile, I was still figuring out how to stop an oncoming army that was immune to axe slashes. I went into Blitz Extreme again, which is basically the super and more awesome version of SMS, and went to work. I was hoping that somehow, my redoubled efforts would somehow transfer into actual success; needless to say, that wasn't the case. I slashed, hacked, and batted away as many enemies as I could, but it still wasn't enough; at best, I was just stalling them. Finally, after I was literally running on water, trying to hold my own against the tar monster onslaught, I asked for help.

"THUNDER MAN, SUNBIRD, I CAN'T HOLD EM', I NEED HELP!" I mentally screamed to them.

"GET IN LINE DUDE!" Thunder Man screamed back. "I'M UP TO MY NECK IN WHATEVER THESE THINGS ARE!"

"Ugh, you two are hopeless." Sunbird thought to us in and oddly calm voice for someone who was fighting a war crazed super villain.

"You think you can do better?!" I thought back to her.

"Trade places with me for a few seconds, and we'll see."

Quicker than a second later, Venom got hit in the side of his head with my axe, and went tumbling through the air. Sunbird smirked at me, and rolled her eyes.

"You can let me take it from here, Thunder-Man," Sunbird mentally said to him. "I got them covered."

Thunder-Man didn't object, and suddenly a flash of lightning shot downriver, quicker than the eye could follow.

"It's all you sweetheart." I told Sunbird.

"Never call me sweetheart." she told me, before she went all apocalyptic on Venom and his army.

She raised her hands in the air, and screamed really, really loud, which by the way, I wish she would have warned me about, because her scream was like an army of starstruck fangirls. After I got over the initial scare of me permanently losing my hearing, I pretty much had a heart attack, after seeing what Sunbird had done. Basically, an actual sun, about the size of several mansions stacked on top of each other, materialized out of nowhere. Seriously, a blazing sun with enough heat to melt an entire rainforest, just popped out of nowhere; if you can look at that, and not freak out, i'll buy you lunch at a five star restaurant. I could feel the intense heat resonating off of the massive fireball of death, but it's heat didn't affect me whatsoever. The same principle applied to the gravity the thing had. It had enough gravity power to swallow an entire skyscraper and I could feel that force, could feel that it was there, but it didn't effect me in the slightest. I bet Venom and his possy wishes they could say the same thing. The hundreds and hundreds of monsters were snatched from the ground, as if there was a hook attached to their backs. They were sucked into Sunbird's sun at the speed of a bullet, and burned into nothing; poor things never stood a chance. Venom on the other hand, was a different story. For some reason, he was resistant, not immune, to Sunbird's sun. His red aura was blazing like crazy, as he tried desperately to avoid being oven roasted; the scary thing was that he was actually succeeding. Sunbird grunted, clenched her fists, and the gravity of the sun cranked up to maximum, as in, if she was aiming for me, i'd probably get the sun burn of a lifetime. Venom started to slowly get pulled into the sun, but I could tell Sunbird was at her limit, eventually she would tire out, leaving Thunder-Man and I to fend for ourselves. Apparently Venom was starting to realize this, because he started to talk mad #^!+ to Sunbird.

"IS THAT THE BEST THAT YOU CAN DO LITTLE GIRL!?" he bellowed at her. "ALREADY YOUR POWER BEGINS TO FADE WENCH, AND I WILL REVEL IN THE TASTE OF YOUR BLOOD, AND THE SOUND OF YOUR SCREAMS, AS I TEAR YOU AND YOUR DOGS ASU-ARRRGGGHHH!"

Whatever else that douchebag was gonna say, it was abruptly stopped by the impact of my axe being thrown in his face. Maybe it was the fact that he was trash talking one of my teammates, or maybe the war god energy was getting to me again, but I was ready to go ham and straight up tackle Venom into that sun myself. Luckily, I didn't have to. Apparently, Thunder-Man was waiting somewhere nearby, because all of a sudden, a huge bolt of lightning pelted Venom in the chest, and shot him straight into Sunbird's sun. She roared in her own way, and the sun transfigured from a ball of flame, into a stream of flame, that was roaring into the sky, and probably creating another hole in the ozone layer. After like 5 seconds of straight charbroiling, Sunbird cut off the mega furnace; I just managed to catch her, as her Sun Form flickered off and she fell.

"Whoa there," I said to her as I set her gently on the ground. "You alright, Sunbird?"

"Yeah, yeah, i'm fine, don't worry about me," she said. "It's just, that was the biggest thing i've ever made, the toll was just a little shocking for my body, that's all."

"Are you gonna be ok?" Thunder-Man asked her, once he zoomed to our location. "I mean, are your power reserves severely depleted?"

"No," Sunbird almost snapped at him. "Most of that sun I made was taken from the light and heat that was already in the atmosphere. I definitely put a lot of my own power into it, but it's nothing I can't get back, especially with this battle suit."

"Ok then cool." I said quickly, because whatever the deal was with them, we needed to avoid it, and settle it later. "Well then, all that's left is to start searching for what's left of that guy, and get the s#####!+++++++++!"

Yeah, the reason for that long drawn out swear word, was the fact that our problem wasn't over yet. You see, after that major furnace blast, there was a lot of smoke in the air, almost blocking out everything in sight. The smoke had just cleared, and hovering in the air, was the one person who I really didn't wanna see right now: Venom. He had a flickery red circular aura around his body, that was on the verge of collapsing. Immediately I knew what happened. Somehow he managed to get a force field around himself, and somehow through an amazing amount of willpower, managed to keep it up through the sun, and the furnace bast. He was now hovering in the air, clearly winded and pissed off, but still very much combat ready. He didn't say anything, but he was seething in rage, and It was pretty clear about what he was thinking on the inside: 'I am going to kill you all'. Finally, after what had seemed like forever, Venom roared louder than he ever had, and the Amazon went to hell. Roaring red fires raged deep in the forest, yet somehow, there was no smoke rising from the flames. I didn't notice them coming until it was too late, and if it wasn't for Sunbird's quick thinking, the team would probably have been overwhelmed. Out of nowhere, another thousand tar monsters materialized out of nowhere, but this time, these suckers were ready for war. They were either carrying pure black blades, AK-47s, or had super elongated claws that could tear a grizzly bear to shreds. The swarm closed in on us from all ends, and had us surrounded in a matter of nanosecs. Luckily, they were unpleasantly surprised with spontaneous combustion. That's what happens when you run face first into a barrier made of golden fire. Sunbird was buying us some time, which meant we had to come up with a plan, as in fast.

"Guys!" she said through strained words. "We have to finish this now, he's just toying with us at this point.

"You're right," said Thunder-Man. "We won't be able to hold out for much longer, he's starting to break our strategy down, we need to take him out on the next attack, or else it's all over."

"Then what's the plan, bro?" I asked him. "I see you got one in the works, so let's hear it."

Thunder-Man shifted into his "Speed Mode", so I did the same, and turned on the Blitz. Everything else, including Sunbird was moving at the speed of snails, even Venom was frozen in mid Hitler shout. Smart move on his part, Sunbird could only give us so much time, we had to make every nanosecond count.

"We have to get him away from the stone." he said. "But the only way to do that is to get to the man inside; how can we get in there?"

"Well he's vulnerable to Sunbird's fire attacks," I said. "Maybe she can catch him by surprise and blaze his armor, or whatever that is right off, of him."

"That might be able to work, but it would take way too long, we'd be overwhelmed by then, unless you and I wield some of her Sun Blades, and stall all of these goons."

"That sounds like a good plan."

"Only for a short time. With all of these attackers, we'd have to be running at Speed Mode Supreme-"

"Blitz Extreme," I interrupted him. "That's what i call it.

Thunder-Man face palmed me, which I admit was not undeserved.

"Ok then," he said in a super annoyed tone. "We both would have to run really, really fast just to keep these things off of her, and even we can't run forever, besides, Venom would be all but expecting Sunbird's attacks, and we've seen first hand how he can resist and block her powers, the fight would be 50/50 at best, we need a sure shot victory charge. Wait a sec, you held Venom off for a good while, did you ever do something that gave you the drop on him for a bit?"

I thought for a millisec before saying-

"Whenever I punched him really hard, his armor thingy would go haywire, the same way it does when Sunbird torches him."

And just like that, as if delivered by from Heaven, we both got the same idea, like we were in sync with each others thoughts, which technically we were.

"So if you-" said Thunder Man

"While she-" I said.

"While I-"

"We got this bro!"

I dapped him up, and we both slowed down to tell Sunbird our genius, no-way-it could-fail, super plan.

"We have a plan Sunbird!" Jason thought to her.

"Already?!" she thought back in disbelief. "That was like half a second."

"Gotta love super speed, now listen up, we gotta get this right."

Thunder-Man thought the plan as quickly, and as simply as he could to her. Luckily, she caught up to speed really fast, and we were ready to deploy in no time. Naturally, this is where things would start to go wrong for us. Apparently, Venom got tired of watching his foot soldiers burn, because he started using a more direct approach. A really heavy impact struck Sunbird's barrier, nearly breaking it. Luckily, Sunbird held up; however, that still didn't stop Venom from trying again. He struck the barrier with lightning strikes again, and again; five times in total. The pressure from the assault was so much, that for the first time, Sunbird actually cussed.

"DAMN IT, JASON!" she roared. "GET THIS BASTARD OFF OF ME!"

Thunder-Man didn't need to be told twice. He raised his hand, brought it down with a roar, and Venom was struck over the head with a massive lightning strike, that could probably level a skyscraper.

"NOW!" Jason roared. "LET'S DO IT!"

Allyson thrusted her hands out with a yell, that sounded more like relief than aggression, and the barrier exploded into a fiery blast wave, that incinerated at least 200 tar monsters. On that positive note, I took to the air, and soared as fast as I could away from the battle.

(Jason's perspective)

Some fight huh guys? The sad part is, it's almost finished. By the way, don't worry about Grant flying away like a little baby pee pants, it's all part of the plan. Anyway, after Grant took off, Allyson gave me the tools I would need to help me complete my part of the operation. Immediately, two Sun Blades, that blazed with golden fiery deadliness, materialized into my hands. I gave Allyson one last look of encouragement, and we both charged at our respective enemies. Me for the 1000+ black gooey monster army, Allyson for the main man himself. I can't tell you exactly how her fight was going, but from what I could see, she was holding her own pretty well. As for me? Well, I was getting around. With my Sun Blades in hand, I ran from end to end of the river, slashing down anything that crossed my path. In a matter of a second I had already taken down 300 monsters, and I just kept on going. I didn't bother wasting any time or energy calling in lightning strikes, or thunderstorms, or anything like that. It was clear that my speed, plus these blades, were all that I needed to get the job done. Besides, with all these monsters running amok, plus Venom and Allyson fighting in the background, I needed to keep all of the power I could store, for emergency situations only. I kept up my pace, not too fast to where i'd be burning more energy than I could regenerate, but fast enough to where everything was slow enough for me to have a decent control over the battlefield. I managed to catch a glimpse of Allyson, who was busy punching Venom's lights out. Weirdly enough, I was more worried about Venom than about her. Allyson had proved she was more than capable of stepping up to a challenge on her own. Given enough time, she probably could have taken Venom out on her own. Lucky for Venom, we wouldn't be finding out today. Two minutes. Two minutes and thirty seconds tops, but sooner rather than later, this fight was going to end, with us as the victors. Allyson just needed to hold him off for a little bit longer.

(Allyson's Perspective)

Hey readers, it's me again. So, let's do a review shall we? Grant just took off to only God knows where. Jason was zipping to and fro, slashing down bloodthirsty black slime monsters, who wanted to rip me to shreds, and I was battling for my life against one of Spider-Man's most deadly foes, who just so happened to be possessed by the stone of the Greek war god. I really need to rethink my life at some point, I can't see how it got this chaotic.

I turned on my Blazing Sun Form, as Grant and Jason like to call it, and made a beeline for Venom himself. Ironically enough, even in the face of certain death, I wasn't really afraid. Besides, the only thing Venom had proven so far, was that he was all talk, and little muscle; I could totally take him. He saw me coming, and I swear his face kinda morphed into some kind of smirk, like he expected, and wanted me to attack him; that didn't make me feel any better. Venom took the first move of the match by summoning a volley of swords, missiles, and red thunderbolts to hurl at me. I didn't even flinch at this amateur move. I concentrated for a second, and blocked all of his moves with various shield constructs, and charged him dead on with a speed of a comet. By the way, for those of you that are going all, 'there is no way she can be that powerful', well you're both wrong and right at the same time. If you think that I created all of those shields, which were like 20 in total, of my own stored power, then you're wrong. True, I could have done this, but there was no need. You see, another aspect of my powers is that I can manipulate light and heat that is already in the atmosphere, and completely leave my energy reserves untouched. It takes a bit of concentration to pull off, and in truth, I had only just perfected it when I created that massive death sun, but yeah, after I had gotten that down, blocking Venom's attacks was nothing more than predicting where the constructs would be, and manipulating the light in that area to harden into shields; cool huh?

Moving on to the fight. Now I could have matched Venom blow for blow, and summoned my own construct attack volley, but that would be pointless. Venom had at least proven his skill with ranged combat, at best, i'd be able to stall him for just a little while, before the collateral damage of our power battle, blew a hole in the Amazon. Besides…I couldn't risk hurting Jason. Instead, I created flaming boxing glove constructs around my fists and charged Venom again. This time, I didn't give him any room for defense; I shifted into Comet Speed, and struck Venom as hard as I could in the face with a right hook. By the way, I wasn't stupid enough to believe that I could actually take Venom on based on my strength; i'd leave that to Grant. Instead, I willed my constructs to give off an explosive charge with every impact. Not only would this give me a fighting chance in a fist fight, but the explosive fire would burn away parts of Venom's skin, and keep him off balance. For about 10 seconds, this was actually working. I assaulted Venom with enough fiery jabs, uppercuts, and hooks, to knock out a UFC fighter; unfortunately it wasn't enough. True, my punches were deteriorating Venom's outer skin, one time I punched him so hard in the face, that the goo flew completely off, revealing the guy inside's face. I once blew his shoulder completely off, and I had punched him so many times in the chest, it was a miracle I didn't ever get deep enough to actually reach the guy inside. But the thing was, all of this was just slightly off-balancing him, if anything, I was just a minor nuisance. After a few more seconds, Venom managed to catch my right hand in mid punch, as well as my left when I tried to get out of his grip. Naturally, i'd be screwed, but I willed my hands to blaze with so much golden flame, that Venom's arms literally burned off, forcing him to retreat.

I couldn't give him a chance to recover, so I created a Blazing Mega Sun Sword, and flew in pursuit. By the way, when I put Mega in front of a Sun construct, it basically means the construct is so big, that I have to control it mentally. So yeah, I was not playing around. I flew at Venom as fast as I could, which by the way, was not near Comet Speed, but hey, when you're maintaining a giant golden fire sword that can slash through buildings like butter, while simultaneously willing two smaller ones to remain in the hands of a lightning speedster, it puts a hamper on how fast you can fly. Anyway, I was just within slashing distance, when Venom noticed me, but by then it was too late for him to counter attack, the blade was already in motion. Instead, a giant red shield blocked my strike, and just managed to save him from being a sushi roll. I slashed at him for five seconds, hammering furiously at his shield. Finally, after hitting the shield six times, I hit the shield one more time, and it shattered like glass. Venom tumbled downward through the air, and although he was disoriented, apparently, it was enough time for him to create a giant red sword, and counter charge me with a huge roar. The sight of that was enough for me to nearly lose concentration, but I didn't, I'd be dead if I did. As he slashed at me, or should I say as his sword slashed at me, I willed mine's to parry the strike, and the fight was on. We went back and forth in the air, commanding our blades to slash, block, and stab each other relentlessly; eventually I decided to end the standstill. You see, I was secretly, building up enough energy to make a power blast, enough to melt the very slime from Venom's body, all that was left was for me to get close enough so that it wouldn't miss. At that very moment, Venom willed sword to slash at me in a downwards strike; a perfect opportunity. I willed my blade to counter slash at his, but I put a lot more force into it. The result wasn't as favorable as I expected, but I managed to keep his blade away from me long enough to get into Comet Speed, and fly as close as I could get to him. Once I was one foot away from him, I unleashed the power I had built up, in a massive and powerful Blazing Sun Blast. Unfortunately, I didn't get the desired result. Just so we're clear, the desired result was Venom's black skin being violently melted from his body; yeah that didn't happen. Somehow, Venom managed to get faster in less than half of a second. In that short span of time, he saw my blast, raised some sort of protective body shield around himself, and took the entire blast point blank. Just so you get the full gist, this blast had enough power to blow a hole through 20 titanium walls, melt the Statue of Liberty like butter, and make the combined heat from 10 volcanoes seem like a spring evening. Yet somehow, it couldn't even phase a guy who was specifically vulnerable to fire; believe it or not, my job actually gets WORSE than this, trust me. Anyway, for five straight seconds, Venom just took the blast head on. Once my power had ran out, Venom roared at me, and a red bolt of lightning shot out of his mouth, hitting me dead in my chest.

At first, I couldn't feel anything, but that probably meant that I was in so much pain, my body couldn't process it immediately. The lightning bolt hit me so hard, I was shot out of the sky at like 100 mph, and hurtled straight into the water. At first, I thought that the bolt would propel me so far into the water, that I would drown; but just as soon as I hit the water, the force of the bolt had suddenly stopped. Like I said, I was in pain, but my body chose to realize that after a few more seconds. It was like an anvil, plus a fifty pound boulder, had dropped on my chest. Every breath would hurt if I wasn't holding it, and even that was torture. It was too wet underwater for me to activate my Blazing Sun Form, but I could at least activate my regular Sun Form; that's what i'll call them when I alternate. Anyway, I managed to work through the pain, and fly my way up to the surface. By the way, I think it's worth mentioning that while in my Sun Forms, I have an infinite air supply, I was never really in any danger of drowning, as long as I got my Sun Form up and running again. Once above the surface, I saw something so mind bendingly impossible, I thought I was suffering from blunt force trauma or something. Lightning, as in thunderstorm level lightning, was streaking up and down the water, as well as in and out of the Amazon; it was a miracle I wasn't electrocuted. I could see that in my slight absence, the number of monsters had increased; but somehow, that didn't matter. Anytime the lightning bolt sped across anything, the monster was blasted with a runoff lightning blast, and shot so far into the Amazon, it would take them at least ten minutes to get back. By the way, this process was happening at least 50 times over in the course of a second, so while the battle field was slowly and steadily being overrun, the lightning bolt was keeping them at bay. More than that, Venom was being pummeled. At this point, I had pretty much knew that Jason down there causing all the commotion, and boy was he raising something bad. It was like Venom was getting hit 100 times by an invisible man, who was immune to exhaustion. Once or twice every other 5 seconds, Venom would manage to break away, and try to blast Jason down; but every time he tried, he was either struck from above with lightning, or hit in the chest with random lightning constructs. I didn't know how Jason was doing it. He was running faster than I had ever seen him run before, but he should have run out of energy a long time ago. Whatever he was doing, I had to stop him, get him to slow down; because as impressive as it was to see him take on and army by himself, I knew the effort to do what he was doing was killing him, I had to get him to turn it down a few notches, before he ended up hurting himself. Now that I think about it, I was slightly put out that he didn't try to save me, but then again, electricity and water don't mix well when they involve people who can be shocked to death; like me for example.

"THUNDER-MAN!" I mentally screamed to him.

"SUNBIRD!?" he mentally screamed back with so much worry and relief, I almost forgave him for not trying to save me. "ARE YOU OK, ARE YOU HURT!?

"I'm fine, but you need to slow down, you're gonna hurt yourself!"

"I can't, these guys are spawning like flies, without your Sun Blades, I can't keep em' down for very long!"

"I'll make some more for you, then i'll get back to pummeling Venom, just slow down before your legs explode, you moron!"

"Ok, geez why you gotta be so rude?! By the way, where in the world is Super-G, he should have been back by now!"

The million dollar question.

"We can't worry about that right now," I thought back to him. "Right now, we need to focus on staying alive, Super-G will show up. When that will be is debatable, but he will show up, we gotta trust him."

"Yeah," Thunder-Man thought to me. "Ok cool, let's do that. By the way, are you sure you're up for Round 2 with ooze boy? I can take him if you need me to."

"No, i'm fine," I thought back with a mixture of indignation and gratitude. "My suit pretty much healed me, what with all this extra solar energy coursing through me; besides I have a score to settle."

"Ok then, Sunbird, do your thing, but can I get those Sun Blades first? My legs are starting to go numb."

I created two Blazing Sun Blades over the surface of the water, which disappeared as quickly as they were made. A second later, the huge lightning bolt that was thundering across the waters, gradually ebbed down into a simple streak of voltage. Still faster than the eye could clearly see, but at least slow enough to know that the runner wasn't in danger of blowing his legs out. All that was left, was for me to face Venom again. I looked directly forward, and found him looking straight at me, his long snake like tongue licking his jagged teeth, like he was looking at a meal. This time he didn't get to roar, I had that covered. Well it wasn't really a roar, so much as a screech. I got really angry, and started to glow even more than I already was. When I screeched, the sound was so loud, it was like a nail on a chalkboard X50. Almost all of Venom's oncoming monster's were destabilized, leaving them all to vulnerable for Thunder-Man, who obviously wasn't feeling the effects of my screech. Venom on the other hand, was getting the full effect. His body was basically jumping apart, leaving the blonde guy exposed periodically. I summoned my swords, my actual Vibranium/Adamantium ones, connected them at the ends, and willed them to expand into my double bladed spear. Unfortunately, Venom had found a solution to my screech. Apparently, his red body shield was strong enough to block out sound, because once he managed to get it up and running, his skin stabilized, and stayed that way. I stopped screaming, it was useless anyway, and rotated my spear around, to get the feel of it. Again, I took Kung-Fu since I was six, I learned how to fight with a staff during that time, and this was just a staff that happened to have two blades attached to each end; not a big difference. Venom looked at my spear and tilted his head. Almost as if in a challenge, he created a huge black sword with jagged edges and red highlights. I activated my Blazing Sun Form, willed my spear to blaze with golden fire, and with a slight growl, charged Venom head on.

Like the war crazed idiot that he was, he counter charged me with a mother of all battle roars. Before crashing into each other, I turned in a circle while in midair, giving off the illusion that I was gonna slash at Venom. Instead, Venom was completely blindsided when a Sunspot materialized over the face of the water, under his general area, and shot him with a high pressured blast of golden fire. The Sunspot blasted him like twenty feet into the air, giving me the perfect opportunity to strike. I shifted into Comet Speed, and flew after him. As far as I could tell, the blast hadn't really damaged his body shield much, so it would be up to me to wear it down. In Comet Speed, Venom was pretty much a sitting duck, especially since he was off balance. I flew after him, and slashed at him with my spear, making sure to charge the spear heads with explosive energy to further off balance him. For about two seconds in real time, I flew back and forth slashing as often and as hard as I could at Venom, slowly and steadily wearing his shield down with 100+ slashes. Just as I was about to deliver the final blow, that was sure to leave him vulnerable, he regained his balance, and unleashed a powerful wave of blood red flames, that would have blown me back to the States if I didn't create a barrier around myself. Venom, who was now matching my speed, charged at me with yet another roar. This time, I charged him back, and we both engaged in a heated sword vs spear conflict. Venom slashed at me horizontally, like an untrained idiot, and I simply flew above his head, flipped in midair, and hovered just behind his back.

What? You thought I was going to fight him head on? Yeah, like I said, i'll leave the stupid stuff to my other teammates. Anyway, Venom quickly turned around with a slash. This time, I simply ducked, and while coming up, slashed my spear vertically, hitting Venom in the face with an upward slash, that was followed by a backflip kick. While he was stunned, and after I recovered from my backflip, I grabbed my spear with two hands, willed the fire on the spear to blaze even more, and spun like a ballerina tornado, slashing Venom in the chest so many times that he should have been little bitty pieces. How many times did I slash him exactly? Well, let's just say it was more than 30; that'll put it in perspective. Anyway, after I was pretty sure I had reached the low 70's I stopped suddenly, grabbed my spear like a baseball bat, and hit him in the head, willing all of the built up energy in my spear to explode right in his face. The blast was so strong, two huge waves rushed across either side of the river, I kinda laughed at the thought of Jason getting a river bath; yeah, I might be a horrible person. Anyway, Venom rocketed into the air at like 120 mph, not very fast, should have put a little more torque in my swing. I soared after him, willed my spear to blaze with another wave of golden fire, and resumed my spear attacks. I assaulted Venom with a volley of stabs, slashes, kicks, and a giant flaming fist for good measure. I didn't stop there. Venom's shield was still operational, but flickering, I had to take it out while he was still out of it. I created two Blazing Mega Sun Fists, and kept the assault up, hitting Venom as many times as I could with the floating fists of doom, and stuff like that. After twenty consecutive hits, I willed the fists to launch him at like two missiles, knocking him further down river; I got a little more creative with my next attack. I kid you not readers, as Venom was flying down river, I willed the light around him to solidify, and shape into a giant chimney. Before Venom could figure out what he was in, I slashed my spear down, like a hammer, and the chimney spit Venom out with a huge golden furnace blast. I followed Venom, who was on the verge of reaching the 5,000 feet in air, flew behind him, and created a Blazing Mega Sun Hammer, to knock him back within the battle field. I followed that up with another hit from a Blazing Sun Bat, sending him skimming across the water. Somehow, Venom managed to stop himself, in an at least 200 mph flight that wasn't his; ok, that was kinda scary. This time he didn't give me a chance to regain control. He created two swords, but instead of charging me like I thought he would, he took to the skies, roared really loud, and created an arsenal of hundreds of red sword constructs to hurl at me. It was like a scene from 300, weapons were raining for days! I could have willed the light around the weapons to solidify into shields or something, but there were hundreds of sword constructs raining down; even under the best of circumstances, that would be pretty hard to block. Instead, I created a Mega Sun Shield, 20 feet in width and height, pretty big I know, but like I said, it was raining weapons for days. The initial impact was a lot less that I expected, kinda like when you get tackled by someone who's not as strong as they look. My shield was definitely gonna hold, but I couldn't stay in defensive for long; Venom would eventually break it. I took a deep breath, focused on maintaining the shield, and with a huge leap, charged Venom as fast as I could.

Sometimes I know I say it too much, but you really gotta believe me when I say this was not as easy as it sounded. I soared upwards, my shield blocking all of Venom's attacks, which at first was kinda easy, like lifting 20 pounds with one arm, that was until Venom got creative. Suddenly, the red swords turned into red missiles raining from the sky. To make matters worse, Venom took a page from my book, and commanded his missiles to explode on contact. Forget trying to reach him, it was all I could do make sure my shield didn't break. Still, things got even worse. Missile constructs appeared around me in every direction, plus some buzz saws and swords for good measure. Venom crossed his swords over his chest like a pharaoh, and the constructs zeroed in on me. On a reflex, I deconstructed the shield and used the energy to create a barrier around myself, which was both smart and stupid at the same time. On one hand, the barrier was smaller than the shield, but retained the massive power used to make it. Even Venom's best attacks would have little effect on this thing. On the other hand, the barrage of weapons never stopped, I was pretty much trapped in this one spot, because like I said, this barrier would be hard to break; hard but not impossible. Venom's barrage went on for like five more seconds before I realized two things. A: I had an almost never ending supply of power that I could tap into to save my butt. B: I still had my spear out, and I was subconsciously feeding it energy. Seriously, the thing wasn't even visible under the golden bonfire, if I needed to break through Venom's body shield, this thing would DEFINITELY get the job done, all I had to do was get in striking distance. I thought about my barrier, how I made it out of recycled energy from another construct, if I could do that, then maybe I could do other things. I focused on giving the barrier more energy, feeding it, like it was a computer in need of a charge. If the barrier was getting brighter because if it, Venom couldn't tell, because he was too busy screaming curses on me and my bloodline. Finally, after I was pretty sure my barrier had enough power to blow through a skyscraper, unleashed most of the power on Venom in a focused, and powerful blast.

When I say that most of the power was used to blast at Venom, it was because some of it was kept to maintain my barrier. I was still under heavy fire by Venom's never ending construct barrage; if used up all of the power to blast him, i'd be skewered like a pig. Instead, I calculated the precise amount of energy it took to keep the barrier up, before I started feeding it more energy. Once I had built up enough energy to blast Venom out of the sky, I used most of that energy in my blast, while still maintaining the energy required to keep the barrier up. The blast was definitely powerful, but more important, it was fast. It ripped through Venom's constructs like they weren't even there, and he didn't have time to react, before getting hit by a golden Kamehameha (yes, I actually know what that is), and being shot higher into the sky like a ballistic missile. I quickly dashed after him, my blazing spear of death at the ready. Again, after being launched a considerable distance, Venom somehow managed to stop in midair; this time, he definitely saw me coming, and I may have been imagining it, but his face seemed to morph into an expression of fear. I was flying too fast for him to actually set up an effective counter attack, but he did his best. Once I was in slashing distance, he horizontally slashed at me from either side with his two swords that he somehow managed to hang on to. It was so easy to counter him, that i'd be insulted if it wasn't so funny. I willed two Sun Shields to form on either side of me, completely stonewalling Venom's blades. Before he could do anything else, I stabbed him in the chest with my spear and willed all of the energy in it to be unleashed in a super violent and destructive burst of golden flame, that I like to call Heaven's Wrath.

To say that this blast was powerful, would be the understatement of the century. Remember when I said that my fire powers had the potential to destroy entire cities? Well this blast, and i'm not even exaggerating, pretty much had the firepower to destroy NYC like it was a sand castle, heck, if the blast wasn't directed at the sky, it probably would have blown a trench of destruction through half of the Amazon and then some. The good news was that Venom's shield HAD to have been broken; seriously nothing could block an attack like that. The only problem was, and again i'm not even kidding, he was most likely on the verge of reaching the exosphere. Whether Venom could survive in the vacuum of space, I dunno. But if he did, he'd be back with his shield fully functional, and a very pissed off attitude towards me. I did the only thing I could do, and flew after him. I couldn't really see him anymore, but Heaven's Wrath had left and extremely bright vapor trail that I could see very clearly; I follow that, I find Venom. I flew as fast as I could, using every spare ounce of energy I had to get even faster, but even at my top speed, I was never gonna catch up to Venom. Still I tried, and tried, and tried, burning into my vast energy reserves to fly as fast as I could. Finally, after I was about to give up, I suddenly…..couldn't feel anything. It was like my body had just shut down; I was conscious and aware, but I couldn't feel my body or anything. When I opened my eyes, everything was just flashes of gold and light, moving so fast, it was like a kaleidoscope. I could tell I was moving really fast, but I didn't know how fast, or if there was anyway to actually know how fast; also, I didn't know how to stop. This wasn't good, at this rate i'd probably fly forever, or until I ran out of energy, or flew into space, whichever came first. I didn't want this, I wanted to catch up to Venom, and punch him back to earth; more than that, I wanted to stop.

Suddenly, as if my body heard me, I could feel my weight again, and everything wasn't a kaleidoscope of bright colors. Even better, I found myself face to face with Venom himself. Well, at first I didn't regard that as a good thing; in fact I may have screamed extremely loud. That was before I realized one key thing. Venom was frozen. Not actually frozen in ice, although we were really high up; in fact now that I think about it, I couldn't see the ground, and the sky was starting to look black, but that's beside the point. The point was that for some reason,Venom wasn't moving, he was pretty much frozen in mid scream. Immediately, I knew this wasn't just your average super speed perception thing. I had done something, either to Venom, or to myself, that made this happen. Upon thinking on this, I looked at my body, and nearly fainted on the sight. My body wasn't all there, it was like I was looking at a golden hologram it. Sure, I could feel my weight, but I could see right through my body, like it was made only of light. Then it hit me. Venom being frozen, my body being shiny and see through; I was as fast as light! After I got over that, I realized another thing; I was extremely powerful all of a sudden. Maybe it was the fact that I was still super hyped on adrenaline, but I felt super powerful. How powerful you may ask? I'll put it this way. In my current state, I could probably lift 300 tons, fly around the world 30 times in under a second, and blast a hole in the ocean floor a mile long, while I was still in orbit; and no i'm not exaggerating, I was so freaking ready right now! I floated over to Venom, who was still frozen in mid scream of pain. I could have done a number of things to him, each more fun to think about than the last, but for team reasons, I decided to keep it simple. I could still see the solar vapor trail, clearer than a beacon from God. In my mind, I imagined the vapor trail heating up, paving a way for Venom to crash in the most awful, most painful way possible, and finally taking out his shield (yes it was STILL WORKING). Next, I willed as much power to fit into my right fist as inhumanly possible, and let me tell you something, the power was half of that of an atomic bomb. I hit Venom with everything that I had, and raced after him. Again, the world switched from blue, to golden lights. I arrived just in time to see Venom crash into the river, which pretty much exploded like a overboiled pot. Everything in the water, including Jason, was washed ashore, and you better believe I laughed my solar butt off. That was until my past caught up with me.

It was as if my powers were shutting down. One second, I had enough energy to destroy half of Texas, now it was all I could do to stay afloat and conscious. My body shifted from pure light, back into my Sun Form, and even that was flickering on and off. This didn't make sense, I could sense that my energy reserves were so far from being depleted that it wasn't even a question of power, yet here I was feeling weaker than I had ever felt in my life. At least I had taken out Venom right? Nope! Out of the river, Venom slowly rose over the surface like a zombie. While I was definitely bugging out over the fact that he was still alive at this point, I was impressed with my handiwork. Venom's skin was halfway melted off, and his body shield was completely gone. The blonde guy had burns and bruises all over his body, and he looked like he was hit by a bus, then again, after feeling that blast, he probably wishes he was only hit by a bus. As his body regained his form, Venom summoned a battle axe, and charged me once more. He was sluggish, slow, and was basically limping, but he still had enough left in the tank to finish me. I barely had enough to stay awake. I thought I was finished, but before Venom could get within five feet of me, a bolt of lightning, thankfully that was blue, hit him in the chest,and sent him soaring backwards. A second later, Jason landed on the side of the river, his sword ready, and a thunderbolt in his other hand. I thought he was gonna charge Venom head on, then again, I had only just noticed the absence of the monster army. But before he could, the sound of a huge sonic boom, followed by Grant mentally screaming "GUYS I'M COMIN' IN HOT, TEE HIM UP!" exploded in our heads. I couldn't exactly do that, but thankfully, Jason could. A bolt of lightning erupted under Venom's feet, sending him soaring into the sky. Half a second later, I felt Jason's arms wrap around me, and carry me to shore; where I collapsed, completely exhausted.

(Grant's Perspective)

Ok, two things guys. A: Yes I know I was a little late in my arrival, but bear with me, I can explain. B: No I didn't run away from the battle, and because this is the last part of the chapter, I can piece everything together. From start to finish, the plan was about a decisive blow that would take Venom down. Thunder-Man and I had figured out that Venom was vulnerable to fire, and getting hit really, really hard in the face. The team was pinned down by tar monster's who were basically made of the same substance as Venom's skin, but we couldn't focus all of our combined efforts on them, or we'd never finish Venom off. So, Thunder-Man and I came up with a plan to divide and conquer. Basically, Sunbird would make two Blazing Sun Blades, as she calls them, and Jason would use his speed to fend off the monsters. Sunbird, who just so happened to have golden fire powers, would be in charge of holding off Venom for a few minutes. My job was to fly off into the distance for about 50 miles or so, and gather a ridiculous amount of speed. Next, I was supposed to fly back as fast as I could, and punch Venom dead in the face; the boom from the punch would be enough to make him shed his skin, and allow me to take the stone from the guy inside of , the plan was only supposed to take about three minutes. Due to some…..unforeseen circumstances, it took ten. Let me explain what happened.

As soon as Sunbird blew the majority of the monsters away with an explosive wave, I took to the air, and turned on the jets, flying as fast as I could upriver. It didn't take me long to break the sound barrier, maybe like five seconds or so. But that wasn't enough, I needed to be faster than Venom could see me coming, and because it was obvious that he could see and react on my level, this wasn't fast enough. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, giving it 110%, and getting faster by the second. Below me, the continent of South America rushed by in a blur of green trees, and bluish brown rivers. Let me tell you something, nothing in this world compares to the feeling of flying. It's like you're unrestricted from everything. As long as you have the skill and the endurance for it, you can fly anywhere in the world, no planes, no money, just you and the open air. The feeling of the wind rushing against my face at like 1000 mph was indescribable. The very knowledge that things like gravity, physics, and normal limits mean nothing to me, was simply mind blowing. Who cares if I might never play football again, I dare Peyton Manning to fly faster than sound. Suddenly, my body felt strange. It was like the joy and excitement had somehow electrified every nerve in my body, and believe me I know the feeling. My speed tripled in half a second, and I sped off into the distance like a missile. At first it was scary. I was going faster than I thought was even possible for me, even while flying. After 10 seconds, it felt amazing, I was flying faster than I ever thought possible, I was freaking unstoppable! After another 5 seconds, it felt scary again, I was going faster than I ever thought possible, even while flying, but there was just one little problem; I didn't know how to stop.

It was like I was shot out of a cannon; the momentum was unbelievably awesome, but I had no control over it. I was going so fast, that I couldn't even see most of what I was flying over; everything was just a blur of green and blue. I flew out of control for like 20 seconds, desperately trying to stop, but not knowing how to. When I had flew so far, to where I was starting to see more blue on the horizon than anything, I made one last ditch attempt for a stop. I put everything I had in my brain, and focused it on a point of focus where I would stop without warning. You see my power of flight isn't about me propelling myself off of the ground, or mentally willing myself to levitate, no it's about gravity. Let me explain, because I know I made it sound simple when I was fighting Colossus. You see, I figured it out really quickly while I was jumping on my trampoline after practice. I was deep in thought about how I did what I did on the field. While doing so, I imagined what it would be like to not be affected by gravity. On the next jump, I didn't come down, and believe me nothing will bring you closer to $#!++! % your pants. The point I am trying to make here, is that my flight power is based of me willing myself to not be affected by gravity, while in the air I can twist turn, speed up, and roll at will, but if I want to land, all I have to do is will myself to be affected by gravity again. What I was about to do was similar to that. Instead of gravity bringing me down to the ground like a meteor, I wanted it to function like an airbag, stopping me in my tracks, but leaving me in the air. I focused on a distance that would take me 10 seconds to reach, I didn't really know where that would even be, but I thought as hard as I could on that, and counted down. 5,4,3,2,1. Suddenly my body stopped, as if it was being held in place by a giant hand. I must have been going super duper mega fast, because when I stopped, a huge sonic boom, way bigger than the one that breaks the sound barrier, echoed through the air, people in Cuba probably could have heard it. I felt strange, like my body had broken apart while flying, and was in the process of recovering. The sensation lasted for a few seconds, but quickly subsided. I didn't know how, but I could tell that i'd be able to fly at that speed again; this time without losing control. I quickly surveyed my surroundings, and nearly lost the bottom half of my jaw. Out in front of me was nothing but endless sea, no land whatsoever, just water, water, and even more water. I quickly turned behind me, and thankfully saw South America not to far away, all I had to do was fly at 5x the speed of sound, and clock Venom in his head; no biggie right? I turned around, got into my game zone, and prepared to take off. Before I could get out of the starting blocks, something big, heavy, and fast, tackled me from behind, and flew me into the ocean.

The good news was that even without my powers, I could hold my breath for like 2 minutes. With them, my lungs were able to hold twice the capacity of air, so with a proper deep breath, I would be able to last a full 30 minutes underwater. That was if I had time to take a breath; since I didn't, i'd be lucky to last five minutes. I struggled and fought against whatever it was that had me, but it clearly had enough strength to keep me down. It started to claw and bite at me with it's teeth and fangs, so it clearly was not human, but it also had arms and legs, so it wasn't entirely a beast. Either way, the thing was trying to drown me, and I was having none of it. When the thing bit at me again, I quickly reached and grabbed it's head, locking it tight over my shoulder. I took off like rocket, and in no time, we were above the water and back into the air. I quickly flipped, and donkey kicked the thing off of me, sending it soaring upwards. Once I was able to catch my bearings, I managed to get a look at the beast, and yes it was a beast. It was 8 feet tall, with strong muscular legs, ripped muscles, and pecs that looked strong enough to block bullets. It has red scaly skin, and a long tail to match. It's head was that of a dragon, with cat-like eyes, two golden horns coming out of it's head, not to mention it's golden talons on it's hands and feet. At first I couldn't believe it, but after I had closed my eyes and blinked a good few times, I finally came to terms with the fact that I was staring at a human-like red dragon, that had just tried to drown/eat me. It was bad enough that I had to deal with Venom and his never ending legion of war crazed tar monsters, now I had to deal with this joker? Being a hero can really bite sometimes. Where this thing came from, I didn't know. Why it was trying to kill me? Maybe it was hungry. All I knew was that Thunder-Man and Sunbird were busting their asses to stall for time, so that I could take Venom out. In other words, I didn't have time for this. Bummer for me, the dragon man did. He didn't roar or shout, like Venom did, he just raised his claws, and charged me so fast, I almost didn't see him.

The dragon man tackled me hard in the gut, but I managed to get used to the momentum, knee him in the chest, and throw him off of me. I didn't give him any room for rest. I flew after him, and punched him as hard as I could in the face and gut as often as I could, once I caught up. I thought that it was just dumb luck, but apparently, this thing could go toe-to-toe with me. After punching him with the force of a truck for the tenth time, he blocked a left hook aimed for his face, and started to put the hurt on me. First, he hit me like 100 times in the face and chest at speeds so fast, even I couldn't keep up. Even with my armor, plus my nearly indestructible body, this thing could really punch, I was gonna feel this in the morning. Next, dragon man uppercutted me, and while I was stunned, tackled me again with the force of a missile. Instead of just blunt impact, dragon man started to punch me in the gut, which was so fast that, it I imagine this is what a jackhammer would feel on your normal people chests. Still, dragon man didn't stop, he caught me by the neck and squeezed hard. I imagine he was trying to cut into my skin, but that wouldn't be happening anytime soon. Realizing that, he uppercutted me again, and launched me high into the air; before I had a chance to recover, I felt the heel of his foot against my forehead, sending me plummeting towards the water again. It was at that moment that I realized how much I underestimated the beast. First, was when I underestimated his strength; I couldn't afford to make that mistake with anyone else. Second, was when I underestimated his intelligence. I knew a little bit about personal combat, and I know that a heel to the head, at the right angle, can really mess you up. In other words, that thing knew how to fight, how to kill. More so, he was trained by someone, the way a soldier is trained for battle; I knew if I survived this fight, I'd meet the head soon enough.

I managed to recover right before I hit the water, but by then the dragon man had already caught up to me. He tried punching me again, but I was ready this time, and blocked every last one of his super speed strikes. I managed to catch him by the wrists, and force his arms apart, but he had something special for me. Yeah, you probably guessed it. Dragon Man opened his mouth, and bathed me in a stream of white hot flames. I was surprised by two things. A: THIS $#!+ HURT! The flames had to be like 2,000 degrees; I felt like I was being roasted for a barbecue. B: The flames didn't kill me. Sure they burned like hell, but I didn't melt or anything like that, which still wasn't a great alternative, considering I was in more pain than I had ever experienced in my life. Dragon Man held on to me, and didn't let me go, determined to roast me alive. Yes, I was screaming like crazy, but I still was able to somewhat focus. I remembered how fire couldn't burn underwater, usually, and used that to my advantage. I managed to knee Dragon Man in the gut again, which caused his flames to redirect from my face. While he was stunned, I forced him underwater, and using my flight, spun around like a torpedo; that would take the gas out of his flames. Next, I punched him as hard as I could under the chin with the mother of all uppercuts; seriously people, I probably sent waves back to the shore of the Amazon. I followed him up, and punched him with a gorilla pound, sending him soaring forwards. Finally, I flew ahead of him, kicked him higher into the air, and while he was still on the way up, I flew ahead of him, and summoned my axe. When he caught up, I sliced him in half. There wasn't as much gore as I expected, just a lot of orange blood that splattered everywhere. Besides, as he fell, dragon man melted into ash, that was scattered to the wind. I didn't feel sorry for it, and I didn't have time to anyway, because out of nowhere, a huge red portal sprung up, and three huge medieval-like, big, bulky, on all fours, red dragons, flew out of it and roared so loud, it would be impossible for the whole continent to not hear it. The dragons were way above me, but they turned their heads toward me and snarled. Either they were really hungry, or they could smell the blood of the dragon man I had just killed; either way, they flew at me with aims to either cook, eat, or cook and eat me.

This time, I was having none of it. Those dragons were fast, but I was way faster, and smaller; plus I had an indestructible axe. The dragons circled overhead for a few more seconds, before charging me from all sides. I took aim at the dragon who was coming down on my right side, and counter charged. I tapped into Blitz while I charged the dragon, so he was an easy target. I quickly soared to his neck, willed my axe to extend into spear mode, and swung with all I had. The cut wasn't clean or pretty but it did the job. Most of the dragon's head was hanging on by a small thread of sinew, so it was definitely dead. I threw my spear at one of the other dragons, who looked like he was on the verge of actually facing me, and the axe sliced right through his neck, and returned back to my hand. The last dragon was just a formality at this point. I flew onto his back, sliced off his wings, and brought my spear down on his head, slicing his dragon brain in half.

After that…let's call it a 'workout', I set my sights back on the Amazon, where I was needed, but it would be a while before I would be able to return to help my friends. I suddenly heard some type of war horn sound, and from about a few thousand feet above me, a giant red portal, big enough to swallow a football stadium, popped up. Out of it, an army of Dragon Men, about 1,000 in total flew out. They were armed with black swords, axes, shields, even armor. They were flanked by 20 medieval dragons, like the three ones I had just killed, who were also dressed in black armor. They were coming at me pretty fast, so I tried to shift into Blitz before I realized I couldn't. For some reason, I had never shifted out of it, I was still moving at super speed, but the dragon army was just that fast; I hefted my axe and counter charged the army, refusing to let them pin me into a corner.

For the 60 seconds in real time that I actually lasted, I did pretty ok. The Dragon Army flew at me from every direction possible, cutting off any chance I had at maneuvering around them, so I had to improvise. I threw my axe as hard as I could, and let it go on a killing spree. I had to remember to thank Mrs. Kennedy for the remote control function on my axe, it was a real game changer. Every half second, twenty dragons were cut clean through in every direction. It wasn't a perfect strategy, in fact after a while I had to call my axe back, due to the oncoming rush, but I managed to take out a good 200 or so Dragon Men, so I didn't complain. I managed to escape the onrush of Dragon Men, long enough for me to change my axe into spear mode. I rushed back into the fray, swinging wildly, and took out another 50 Dragon Men in the process. Even though these dudes were fast, I was slightly faster, plus, given the fact that I was going at the speed between Blitz, and Blitz Extreme, I could hold my own pretty well. I flew back and forth killing as many Dragon Men as I could with each swing. Their armor was kinda strong, in fact if it wasn't me swinging the axe, they might have been ok, but it was me, and I was crazy strong. As far as strategy goes the only thing I could think of was, kill, kill, kill. As long as I kept up this pace, and avoided those suspicious black weapons, that looked nothing like obsidian, i'd be ok. That was until the huge warship flew out of the red portal.

The warship was made completely out of that black metal that the Dragon Army was equipped with. It was the length of two football fields, armed to the teeth with missile blasters, weird looking things that were probably laser cannons, and had weird looking fighter jets on it. If the boss of this operation was anywhere, he would be in there. Anyway, I was still hacking down Dragon Men, with relative ease. If that ship was gonna be a problem, i'd deal with it after I got done with this. Unfortunately for me, the ship had other ideas. A red hieroglyph like thing, as big as a billboard in the shape of a dragon head, blazed in the air a few feet from the ship. Now I wasn't a pro at this whole arcane thing, but i'm pretty sure that was some high level magical wiz biz going on up there, which did not spell good news for me. The image burned in the air for a few seconds, or should I say nanosecs, and then combusted into like a thousand little red arrow-like beams. Each of the beams hit all of the remaining members of the Dragon Army, and boy did it help them. All of a sudden, they glowed with a powerful red aura; you'd think they were connected to the stone of Ares. But the worse thing? They were SO much faster. Seriously, I went from being in a comfortable stride, to being up to my neck in monsters. So much for a comfortable pace, now i'd be flying for my life.

To be fair, I lasted a lot longer than I thought I would. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, to keep up with the Dragon Army, and went to work. I knew I couldn't stop to fight, i'd be dead if I did, but that didn't mean i'd have to be all evasion. I broke away from the onslaught, and kept flying, always focused on staying ahead. To help keep them off of me, I kept throwing my axe backwards, and while still flying, moved my hand wildly in every direction. I didn't know if that would work, because I assumed i'd have to maintain constant eye contact with the axe to control it's flight pattern; luckily, it wasn't so, and my ears were filled with the dragon-like screeches of my fallen enemies. I did this for a while, occasionally having to hack down rouge Dragon Men that managed to catch up to me. Still, I was getting tired, Blitz Extreme was difficult to maintain, and these Dragon Men were not making it easier for me. I managed to throw my axe back a few more times, taking out about 50 or so with each volley, before I couldn't maintain my speed anymore, and my past caught up with me. First, the Dragon Man started blasting fireballs at me. I managed to avoid most of them, but you have to realize, when you're being shot at from all angles by 500+ pissed of Dragon Men hybrids, you'll get a fireball or two to the face. During the small second that I was stunned, the Dragon Army basically dogpiled me with fire. Seriously, they all managed to get in a perfect sphere-like formation around me, and simultaneously let it go, fire style. To say that the pain was excruciating, would be the biggest understatement in the universe. So much fire was being rained down on me from every direction, I couldn't see anything but orange, I couldn't feel anything but the burning streams of flame, and above all, I couldn't do anything but scream. The heat was unbearable, it had to be like 10 volcanoes, filled with magma,being poured all over my body; I imagine this is what Hell would feel like; talk about an epiphany moment. I wanted to escape, I wanted the pain to stop, hell I would have taken death over this, too bad my body had other ideas. Seriously, even I was surprised at how my body wasn't being consumed by the flames, I mean, invulnerability had to have some limits right? Anyway, after like 20 seconds of being roasted alive, I felt extremely sharp pains in my arms and legs, like someone shot spears through them. I felt the metal that had just pierced me, extend into long lengthy metal bonds. that had to have been chains. The chains pulled my arms and legs apart until I was in an aerial spread eagle position, and then the pulling stopped. The Dragon Army suddenly stopped attacking me, although there faces said otherwise. They were still snarling, biting, swiping, and snorting fire at me, but still they didn't lay another claw on me, even though they looked like they really wanted to. I didn't know what they were gonna do to me, but for now I decided to play along. These chains may have been enough to hurt me, but I could feel how breakable they were. Also, the chains were attached to four dragons, the medieval kind, that were flying in various directions. They looked heavy, but I could move them like they were pillows; for now, I was simply catching my breath.

Suddenly, a red beam of light shot out of the dragon warship, and stopped a few feet in front of me. The light blazed like a red fire, and then flashed bright. After the flash dissipated, my eyes were faced with the horror of a scaly, black-haired, extremely beautiful woman. Seriously, it was a hot chick! She was Asian looking, with tan skin, and red cat like eyes. She was wearing some type of battle armor that was only covering her boobs and upper rib sections. Her torso was completely exposed, but I doubt that mattered anyway. Like I said, her body was scaly, like a lizard's. It probably wouldn't have been enough to keep my axe out of her guts, but I bet her skin was hard enough to endure shotgun blasts. By the way, I forgot to mention that she had huge red dragon wings protruding from her back, that just happened to be on fire. She wore red and gold arm shields with matching boots. She wore some type of long and loose red skirt, with Chinese dragons designs on it, and yes she was wearing underwear underneath. She was also ready for a fight. Two katanas were strapped to her back, she had two knives strapped to each of her arms, and her fingernails were black talons, like the material her weapons were made of. I wasn't particularly scared of this woman, but I was definitely interested. Obviously, she captured me for a reason, all I had to do was sit tight, and wait for her to explain. If worse came to worse, I could bust out, summon my axe again, and raise lots of hell.

The woman floated towards me, and cupped my chin in her hands. Her talons felt prickly, and I must have flinched, because she suddenly smirked, and slowly raked them down the side of my face. Just like I thought, the metal was sharp enough to cut me, and I felt blood drip down my face; this seemed to turn on.

"I like the way you bleed, little boy," she said in a deep reptilian female like voice.

"Thanks," I said, trying not to shudder at her unnatural voice. "I like to bleed good for the ladies, especially pretty ones like you."

"Ugh," she said. "Do not waste your time, I am not interested in mating with you."

"Your loss sweet cheeks."

She glared at me, her eyes glowing ever so slightly.

"You are human," she said. "And yet, more, explain yourself immediately, or I will tear your heart out."

I had no desire to get my heart torn out, so I quickly told her my hero name, that I was a mutant, and apologized for killing a lot of her Dragon Men, on the off chance that this was a misunderstanding.

"By the way," I added. "I didn't catch your name."

"You will address me as the Dragon Empress," she said with a slight growl. "And do not fret over the creatures, they are insignificant."

"How can you say that?" I asked her. "Aren't they your soldiers, don't you care about them?"

"They are not really alive, little mutant, their lives are worth less than dirt."

"What do you mean, they are not really alive?"

She turned her back to me and floated a few feet away.

"Stalling?" she asked me. "Very smart, but ineffective, you will not live to see another day, little, mutant, you can not be allowed to interfere in my conquest."

"I don't care about your stupid conquest!" I snapped at her. "I'm trying to help my friends beat this alien monster, who has the power of a war god."

"Oh yes." she mused. "My ship did pick up massive power levels in the direction that you traveled from. Just for your information, that girl who wields the power of the sun, will fall very soon, even with her guardian lightning bolt."

My insides froze, and I hoped that I wasn't letting it show. Sunbird and Thunder-Man were getting worn down, and here I was playing bondage with a dragon lady dominatrix. I had to bust out of here fast, but now wasn't the right time, I needed to know more about this woman, she was too dangerous to be left alone.

"Now regarding your previous question?" she continued. "These creatures are merely experiments made of dragon, demon, and human DNA. My father Surtur has rewarded me handsomely for supplying him with a never ending army of minions, who have no will of their own, and no desire; other than death and destruction."

"If that's true," I responded. "Then what's to stop your boys from tearing each other to bits?"

She pointed to a golden necklace with a red ruby on it. It didn't look like anything special, but her expression of dominance and superiority said otherwise.

"They have no will, no intelligence, no individuality." she said. "But like bees, they belong to a hive, and I am their queen."

"Thought you were their empress," I said.

"SAME THING!" she snapped at me, her body briefly igniting in flames. "This pendant controls all of their brain wave activity, as long as I have it, the only people they will destroy, are the ones I command them to."

"Good to know," I responded. "I'll put that info to good use when I take you down."

"Says the boy freak wrapped in chains," she said. "Do not make false statements of bravado, youngling, it will only make your death that much more painful."

"Yeah, yeah," I said while preparing myself. I had figured out how to beat her, or at least buy me enough time to take her on directly, but that warship armed with weapons still bothered me; I needed to know one more thing before busting out.

"You said something about conquest," I said. "What exactly are you conquering?"

She smiled really wide, revealing a set of nasty sharp dragon fangs to go with her dragon themed appearance.

"Why, your entire planet dear little one!"

I resisted the urge to laugh. Sure she seemed like a featherweight, but she was definitely vindictive. If she said she was gonna conquer the world, I had to take that seriously.

"And just how are you gonna do that, little miss Dragon Empress?" I asked her. "No offense but, your army is kinda lacking in the whole numbers thing, plus that ship of yours doesn't seem to have enough firepower to take over an entire planet on it's own."

"Humans," she said with a disgusted tone. "So quick to judge solely on appearance; my vessel is armed with massive amounts of weaponry, but that is only for occasional massacres, just for the Hel of it. The true prize is the missile silo in the weapons vault. There are only six of them, each for every land mass, except for the cold ones. Each missile has enough explosive energy to decimate expanses of land as big as the kingdom known as Texas, but that is only the beginning. After the initial impact, that will be sure to cripple the morale of the inhabitants, the residual energy of the explosions will open Texas sized portals to my home realm of Muspelheim, where millions of my father's servants will heed the call, and flood into your world. We will kill every last man, woman, and child. The water will become fire and blood, all life will burn in fire and brimstone; the glory of my father will rain down on this pathetic Midgard, and I will usher in the first great conquest of Muspelheim. GLORY TO SURTUR!"

I made my move. No offense to her, but she talks way too much for my liking. I went into Blitz Extreme, gripped the chains near my hands, and pulled on them with all I had. Next, I summoned my axe, and quickly slashed off the chains on my arms and legs. I didn't bother to remove the points out of my arms and legs; it would take too much time, and I probably would bleed a lot more with them out. The spell to make the Dragon Men faster, had either worn off, or Dragon Empress wasn't focusing on maintaining it, because they barely moved while I escaped. I threw my axe towards the upper right medieval dragon as hard as I could; the blade went clean through his neck. While his head was falling in slow motion, I motioned my hand in a circle and the axe followed, decapitating the remaining three medieval dragons. Finally, I turned my attention to the queen bee, herself. She said that the necklace was the one giving her control over the dragon army, so that became my focus. Again, I probably should have done it on the first try, and this was the last time I would show sportsmanship to my enemies, but instead of going for a killer blow across her neck, I reached out with my free hand, to take the necklace from her. She was way faster than I anticipated, because even in Blitz Extreme, she reached for one of her katanas, and nearly took my left hand off. I managed to move it out of the way, thank God, but that was the least of my worries. For starters, it was pretty clear that her sword, as well as all of the weapons in the Dragon Army arsenal, was made of whatever metal was able to pierce me, so my invulnerability factor was useless. Second, she actually knew how to use that sword with precision, skill, and discipline. I was pretty much 75% power swings, 25% basic moves Nightcrawler managed to teach me; in other words, there was a very, very, very, good chance I was gonna get skewered.

I made myself a promise that if I lived to make it back to the Helicarrier, that I would learn how to use weapons like someone who wanted to survive a fight. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't any good either. Dragon Empress hacked, stabbed, and assaulted me with so many aerial sword maneuvers, that I would have been a piece of sushi on a silver platter, if I didn't have any basic skill. Lucky for me, I managed to keep up with her, just enough, so that I could block, and dodge most of her strikes, and stay alive. Even so, I got scraped a few good times. She was always on the offensive, pushing forward, while I was flying backwards; desperately blocking and dodging. She struck at me multiple times with well precisioned slashes, before managing to get a decent stab near my face. She didn't get the kill, but she did leave a big gash on my right cheek that stung real bad. I managed to ignore the pain, and keep moving, looking for any kind of opening that could help me push her back, and more importantly, get that necklace off of her. She kept the pressure on me with that sword of hers, and over the 3 seconds in real time that we crossed blades, she managed to cut me across the chest, legs, and the other side of my face. Luckily, the armor held up just enough that the blows didn't reach my fleshy areas. After those three seconds were up, Dragon Empress decided that she was fed up with me, and made a move to finish the fight. She kept the pressure on, making sure to keep her face close to me, and when I managed to lock her blade in my axe, and wrench it from her hands, she opened her mouth, and blasted me with a wave of fire.

My first thought was, OH F*(&!^% $#!+, NOT AGAIN! But that was before I realized something important; it didn't hurt. Seriously, the fire was definitely hot enough to melt right through steel, and I had taken a volcano sized fire bath from those dragons, but for some odd reason, her flames didn't hurt, they barely felt like the heat in an average room. Still, this was the perfect opportunity for a surprise attack, while she expected me to be cringing and crying out, I charged her as fast as I could, and slashed my axe across her neck, or at least I would have, if she didn't move. The slash didn't decapitate her, but it barely managed to swipe her necklace with one of the points. To be honest, she couldn't have gotten this lucky in her life again, because if my axe had gotten any closer to her neck, it would have cut a line clean through the front of her neck, and she'd have bleed out. As such, the axe cut the necklace in half, which abruptly exploded with the force of a firecracker. After that, all hell broke loose.

We were both so shocked at what just happened, that we slowed down enough to witness the descent into madness. The Dragon Army blinked their eyes, roared a lot, and shook their heads, like they were coming out of a trance, which they pretty much were. They looked at each other, like they were foreign, dangerous animals to each other, and before Dragon Empress could do anything, they turned on each other in a huge and bloody battle. Under most circumstances I could appreciate a good monster fight, now was no exception. The Dragon Men abandoned their weapons and started to rip each other to shreds with their claws and teeth. The sounds of roars, and blasts of fire were extremely loud, but I could her enough to know that Dragon Empress was shrieking and cussing, like a spoiled princess who didn't get the pony she wanted for her birthday. She turned on me, grabbed her other katana and charged at me; this time I was having none of it. I had pretty much figured out her strategy which was multiple strikes, and aerial maneuvers, followed by quick stabs, and pressurized attacks. This time, I decided to change it up a bit. I blocked all of her horizontal strikes with my axe, which by the way, I could move through the air just as easily as I could a knife, and when she tried for a stab, I sidestepped, or side flew, and brought my axe down on her arm, severing it completely. She screeched, and quickly backed up, creating a fire barrier around herself, as I relentlessly pounded away at it with my axe. After hitting it like ten times, the barrier exploded in my face, and sent me tumbling backwards. When the dust settled, Dragon Empress was floating in the air, her severed arm completely regrown. She pulled out two of her knives, did some sort of Indian-like battle cry, and charged me again.

To say that the fight was chaos, would not do it justice. Dragon Empress slashed and stabbed at me with her black knives, and after a few slashes across the chest, plus a knife lodged into my right shoulder, I pretty much got the hint that swinging an axe was useless. I ditched it and decided to fight unarmed. I know that seems stupid, but i've had an unfortunate amount of experience with girls assaulting me with weapons. Dragon Empress slashed at me from either side with her daggers, but I backed up enough so that the blades missed me. When she tried to stab at me on the go around, I rushed in, grabbed her wrists and twisted them, forcing her to let go of the knives. I realized that her main asset was not strength, she was definitely strong enough to lift cars and trucks, but compared to me, it was like grappling with a sixth grader. I quickly kneed her in the gut, uppercutted her with a powerful right punch, but before I could finish her off, I got blindsided by a Dragon Man. Yeah, I forgot to mention, the whole chaos thing? That was from the Dragon Army mayhem I had caused. While me and Dragon Empress were fighting, an entire battle was raging around us. The roars and screeches were deafening, and inferno blazed around the air so much, that if it wasn't for my newfound immunity, i'd never be able to focus on the fight. Anyway, it was basically a free for all, me and Dragon Empress were definitely fighting each other, but occasionally a stray Dragon Man would attack us individually, and we'd have to dispose of them, before resuming our fight. Regarding the one that had just tackled me, I simply torpedo spun until he let go, did a midair somersault to regain my bearings, and summoned my axe to slice him in half, before charging Dragon Empress again.

This time, something was different. She was glowing with that same red energy that the Dragon Army used to have, when she hit them with that spell. I didn't take any chances, and decided to ditch my axe again, and fight hand-to-hand; that always seemed to work best with me. We collided for a few nanosecs, and started to beat the living crap out of each other. The spell she had used on herself had definitely made her strong and fast enough to deal with me, but I was no pushover either. I punched at her multiple times in the face and gut, some of them made impact, but she was super fast, and had some crazy fighting skills; she gave me what for to. Most of the problem stemmed from the fact that she had claws made of that black metal. She usually punched and kicked at me, most of which didn't make impact, put when she used her claws, them shredded through my outer armor, and made some really deep scratches on my face. After that, I pretty much decided to hell with gentleness, and yes, I was holding back on her account. I tapped into Blitz Extreme and went ham on her for only God knows how long, or short; time at supersonic speeds is confusing to say the least. Anyway, I beat her down with the fury of an entire football team, and then decelerated out of Blitz Extreme to give her one more mega punch to the face. She was supposed to fall to the ocean, but she had way more endurance than I gave her credit for. She did get launched back a good several yards, but she managed to catch herself, and stop in midair. Before we could get around to charging each other again, the Dragon Men decided to break up our little fight fest. Hundreds of em' just up and decided to attack us, and I had to bust out my axe for some heavy duty slaughtering. It took about 3 whole seconds, but with the combined efforts of Dragon Empress and myself (no we were not working together, we were both killing our own enemies), we managed to slash, hack, and decimate the entire Dragon Army; not a single one was left alive. I heard Dragon Empress roar like a lion, as she turned on me.

"YOU THINK YOU HAVE WON BOY?!" she bellowed at me. "MY WEAPONS WILL STILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOUR WORLD, AND USHER IN A NEW AGE FOR MUSPELHEIM, AS FOR YOU, YOU SHALL BURN IN HELLFIRE!"

Before I could say something cool and witty like, "no thanks", a sphere of fire, orbited by weird looking symbols materialized around me. I tried to pound my way out of it, but I couldn't make a single dent. Suddenly, I felt a lot of pressure on every side of my body, and when I say a lot of pressure, I mean I felt like a giant hand that weighed a million pounds was trying to crush me into a ball. The weight wasn't unbearable, but it was definitely difficult to withstand, I could barely move a muscle, much less escape the barrier; then came the fire. I wasn't worried when she said "burn in hellfire," but I really should have. Fire blazed inside of the barrier, filling every space with violent inferno. I only wish it were regular fire; that would have been less painful. As it was, Hellfire was just awful to say the least. The fire was so hot, probably hotter than the sun, my body was not accustomed to handle that kind of heat. Worse than that, the fire was doing more than just damage to my body, I felt the fire burn within me, as in it felt like something inside me, something so unbelievably precious, was burning along with my body. I was definitely screaming but I couldn't hear myself. I was praying for the pain to end, but knowing that it wouldn't, knowing that I wouldn't be able to die, and that as long as the flame persisted, all I would know was unimaginable pain. How did I know that, Dragon Empress told me. She was whispering in my head, telling me secrets about hellfire and how nothing in the universe could stack up to the pain. She said that she wanted me to suffer forever, that she would like to enjoy my screams forever, but that she had no time for it, and that it was time for me to die. I was in so much pain, I nearly told her thanks, but before I could, the million pound weight, and the hellfire exploded in my face.

It hurt, or at least i'm pretty sure it was supposed to. Basically, the spell, and yes this was magic, imploded on itself in a massive explosion, that was powerful enough to destroy 10 city blocks. Even with my invulnerability, an explosion like that should have knocked my lights out, but, something weird happened. The explosion detonated around me, and I felt the force of the explosion, but when I looked at myself, I was all there, no missing limbs or anything. Remnants of the spell flickered around me in flashes of red lightning. It was as if the spell just wasn't compatible with me, like I was somehow unfit for it to destroy. Dragon Empress' face was simply priceless, a mix of total exhaustion, and sheer disbelief that I could survive such an attack. Sure glad I didn't tell her about my magical immunity.

"My turn," I simply said, as I charged her for the last time.

She had nothing left in the tank, which made it easier for me to punch her five times in the face, uppercut her into the air, and upon catching up with her, summon my axe, and slice her wings off. Then I hammer punched her with as much force as I could muster, and sent her soaring into the ocean with a very satisfying BOOM, SPLASH! I didn't have time to enjoy my victory, she said that the missiles would launch regardless of anything else, I flew towards her ship, desperate to stop the attack. Lucky for me, the ship didn't have a force field or anything; guess she didn't expect any visitors. The ship had six individual rocket launchers each armed with a missile ready to go, on the deck of the ship. I could have destroyed the launchers with my axe, but I couldn't take the chance of so many missiles being detonated at once, and so close to a populated area. Instead, I raced to a door at the back of the deck, and ran around the inside of the ship as fast as I could, looking for a way to destroy the whole thing. I raced up and down every corridor, in every room, and after a few seconds I got lucky. I found a place that looked like a futuristic engine room, rows and rows of computer like devices, that were blinking a bunch of signals that I didn't understand, were stacked against each other. In the center of the room, was the engine, or at least I assume it was. It looked like one of Sunbird's mini suns, but with a lot more swirling fire, that was packed into a glass container. The container was attached to four really thick black tubes that were snaking their way through the ship's walls and structure. This was obviously the power source for the whole ship, and these tubes were transferring the volatile energy throughout it. I immediately got a suicidal idea. I summoned my axe, and very carefully, made a small cut into one of the tubes. Good thing I did it in Blitz, because the flames spewed out of the the cut, like water out of a fire hose. No time to think anymore, the ship was going down, and if I was gonna go down with it, then i'd at least make sure all of the potential civilians that could get caught in the blast were safe.

I went into Blitz Extreme, and went smashing away. First I cut completely through all of the other tubes, and for good measure, threw my axe straight through the glass container. The explosion was pretty sick, or at least in super slow mo it was. Fire was slowly blazing outwards, on it's way to consume everything in it's path. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been a big deal, but then again what counts as normal anymore for me? The explosion would be enough to destroy the ship, and if it wasn't for those Texas busting missiles, there would be nothing to worry about; hell, i'd probably be able to take the hit with no problem. But this wasn't the case, if I didn't get this ship higher into the air, it would definitely destroy most of South America, including Thunder-Man and Sunbird.

While still in Blitz Extreme, I flew outside of the ship, and under the hull. I read online that an average battleship weighs about 47,000 tons. I had been on a battleship when I went on vacation with my family a few years back. I could tell you from personal experience, that this ship was at least twice the size of an average battleship; this meant that on my own, I had to push a 94,000 ton continent sized bomb into earth's upper atmosphere in about 3 seconds real time. Man I really should have thought this one through. I pushed up against the ship with all of the strength I had. At first, it was useless, I was strong, but 94,000 tons was too much, even for me. After a few more nanosecs, I managed to push the ship up, maybe half of a foot, at this rate i'd never make it. Still, I pushed against the ship with all I had. I remembered my coach telling me, before he came out as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, that most of lifting came from the legs, and lower body strength, not upper body; I decided to see if I could translate that into midair flight terms. I curled my legs up, like I was doing crunches, focused on flying as fast as possible into the air, and let it rip. I was doing a lot better on the second go around, the speed of my flight was doing most of the work, but I was definitely making progress. I didn't focus on anything other than going up, nothing else mattered. I willed myself to fly faster, and faster, knowing that I had to at least get 200,000 feet into the air before I could make a last ditch effort to escape. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until I felt it again. That super mega, near uncontrollable burst of speed, that got me to where I was in the first place; I was suddenly making more progress than I thought would be possible. This progress didn't come without a cost though. My lower body was producing so much momentum, that my focus had to be shifted to maintaining the weight with my upper body strength; again, this ship weighed 94,000 pounds. I closed my eyes and focused on keeping it together. My arms were screaming in agony, they felt like they were gonna implode on themselves, but I kept going, ignoring the pain. How long did I fly? In regular time, about 1.3 seconds, but at super speed that may as well have been a whole minute. After that, I started to feel the heat on my back, the fire starting to engulf me in the inferno. I risked opening my eyes and looked around. I could still see the ground, and if I looked to either side of me, I could see the edge of California in the distance; In other words, I was getting dangerously close to being in orbit, oh, and I couldn't breathe. I decided that this was far, enough and that it was best to abandon ship.

This time, I had more control over my flight. I couldn't just stop my momentum, or i'd be overtaken by the flames. Instead, I let go of the weight, flew forward, and then straight down. I could still feel the heat of the explosion in the distance, but I was safe, and more importantly, so was South America. I flew downwards until South America didn't look like it was just a picture on a map; man I must have flew really high up. I willed myself to fly even faster, not caring about anything else, but getting back to the fight, God knows how long my friends were fighting, and Allyson; Dragon Empress said she was fading fast, I HAD to get back ASAP. I flew down, until I was super close to the water, then I made a sharp turn, and soared back into the Amazon as fast as inhumanly possible. It didn't take much longer until I started to feel the presence of the war god; shortly afterwards, I started to see lightning and sun blasts. It was time to end this thing.

"GUYS!" I mentally screamed to them. "I'M COMIN' IN HOT, TEE HIM UP!"

A thunderbolt erupted out of the water, like a geyser, and Venom shot into the air, or at least he would have; I was flying so fast, he barely made it 10 feet in the air. I focused on my gravity point, which was Venom's face. That was my mark, my mission, my End Zone. I reeled my fist back, not caring about whether or not it would kill him, and yelled really loud. I was at the 50…the 40…. the 30...the 20…the 10.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!

The punch was so powerful, that a wave of wind spread out in every direction. Because Sunbird and Thunder-Man were so close to me, they were safe; the super sonic boom materialized just outside of them. Everything else was pretty much decimated. The wind was so powerful that entire trees exploded from the blast of wind. Leaves, vines, anything that couldn't take the blast, was torn to shreds. Even worse was that the wave spread out further than I thought it would; I imagine most of the Amazon felt the brunt of the impact. Anyway, the punch had achieved it's initial goal. All of the goo on Venom was so scattered that I could see the entire body of the guy inside. Still, the goo was lightly attached to him. I used my remaining momentum by spreading my hands, and bringing them together to form a sonic clap, making the goo flee from the guy entirely, as well as causing one hell of a wave to travel down the length of the river.. Instead of taking any chances, I immediately grabbed him by the shirt, and flicked him hard in the head, that would be enough to knock his lights out, maybe give him a concussion, but definitely not enough to kill him or nothing. I tossed him onto the shore, and turned to the goo floating in mid-air. We couldn't just leave it to fall in the water; it might infect a fish or something.

"Thunder-Man!" I mentally screamed to him. "Speed up now!"

A blur of lightning flashed for a second, and Thunder-Man materialized, gasping for breath.

"Dude, where the hell were you!" he shouted at me. "You were gone for like 10 minutes, and how fast are you going; I actually had to TRY to get this fast! Why…..why is your armor shredded? Are those spear points in your arms and legs, dude?"

I could clearly see that he had trouble maintaining his speed, the guy was surging with lightning, even at super speed, he usually didn't do that, unless he was running. He must have been tapping into all of his power to make it this far; we had to act fast before he dropped.

"I'm sorry about being late, bro," I started. "I promise i'll explain in a bit, but right now I need your help. Venom's goo, help me collect it all, we need to destroy it, before it can get onto something else."

Thunder-Man looked to the goo and nodded. I always appreciated how on board he could be with a random plan. He raced over the water and started to push the goo in varying places where it was sticking out. I flew around it, helping him contain and condense it. The effort took a couple seconds in real time, but we eventually managed to condense the goo into the size of a beach ball.

"SUNBIRD!" I mentally screamed to her. "THE GOO, TORCH IT NOW!"

At that moment, my body gave out on me. I didn't realize it, but the speed was wreaking havoc on my endurance levels, it was all I could do to make it back to shore. I managed to catch sight of a mini sun, about the size of a jumbo beach ball, burning away over the water. After a few seconds, the mini sun dissipated, and when the flare died out, there was no trace of the goo. I looked over at Sunbird, who I managed to land beside, as she lowered her arm, and collapsed into a unmoving heap on the ground. I quickly got up and ran over to her. Her face was super pale, and she was barely breathing, but she was alive; that was the most important part. Thunder-Man ran over to where we were, and looked at Allyson with more concern than I ever thought he could show; the guy was totally nuts over her, you'd have to be blind not to see that, but then why were they at each others throats, did I miss something?

"Is she ok?" he asked me.

"Dunno man," I said. "Let me ask her."

Before Thunder-Man could stop me from doing it, I yelled "SUNBIRD, YOU OK?!", right in her ear. She barely muttered a word, but her lips were moving, and I could hear faint singing. Her hand vaguely moved, but I saw her point up, and got the message.

"She needs to get closer to the sun, bro," I told Thunder-Man. "I got her, don't worry. Check on that other guy, and get the stone away from him, i'll be back in a few."

I scooped Sunbird into my arms, and took to the air, leaving Thunder-Man on the ground.

(Jason's Perspective)

I watched Grant take Allyson to the air for a few seconds, before snapping myself out of my trance; Grant was right, Allyson would be ok, there was nothing to worry about. That's what I had to keep telling myself so that my heart wouldn't give out on me. I trotted over to the blonde guy, who had one nasty welt on his forehead, and saw a red glow coming out of his left hand. I summoned my sword, and willed it to surge with voltage for good measure, before inching forward, and prying the stone from his hand. The energy surge was incredible, I could feel the strength and the power flowing over me, begging for me to let it in. I also felt something else from the stone: emotion. It was like this thing was alive in some way. It was angry that I had beat, or should I say, helped it beat it's former master. It knew that I was gonna lock it away forever, and hated me for that too; but there was something else in there too: respect. It was grudgingly proud that I had managed to lead my team to victory against such a strong opponent. I felt something stir within me, like a small surge of foreign energy. It felt good, it made me feel stronger. I didn't know it for sure, but I think the stone had just 'chosen' me. A few seconds later, my watch started bleeping again. I tapped the black button, and Fury spoke.

"Thunder-Man, report," he said. "What's your status?"

"We got the stone," I said. "It was the stone of Ares. We had to go a few rounds with Venom for it, but were all ok, Super-G and Sunbird are in the air, trying to get her juiced on some solar energy; the battle exhausted her."

"Venom was there?"

"Yeah, we neutralized him. Sunbird's ok too, thanks for asking."

"Good work, we're sending upgrades to your communicators. One activates a container for the stone, to block out it's energy, and make it safe for transport. The other activates handcuffs that neutralize super powers in metahumans, also making them safe for transport."

"Oh you won't have to worry about that Fury, we burned Venom's goo to nothingness, all that's left is some blonde guy."

"Ummm… ok then, sending upgrades now. Say 'activate container or cuffs', to summon either or. The jet is on it's way back to pick you and your team up, should be arriving in half a minute."

"Copy that, Fury, see you in a bit."

My watch flashed and bleeped again, on screen, the watch said: upgrade complete.

"Activate container," I said.

The watch bleeped again, and my watched glowed with a faint blue slight. Out of it, blue building block looking things burst out, and merged together. When the light died down, a clear cylinder, about a foot tall, was hovering over my watch. I grabbed it, opened the lid, and put the stone inside. The canister locked itself once I reattached the hood, and the stone started to float until it was between the bottom and top of the canister.

"What's that, bro?" Grant called down to me.

I looked up and saw him and Allyson, who was flying down by herself in her Sun Form, floating down towards me. They looked fresh and energized, even Grant, who was bleeding all over before going up, was as good as new, no spear points in his body, cuts all healed; although his suit still looked like a lion had it's way with it.

"A container for the stone," I said once they reached ground level. "It blocks out the energy the stone emits, making it safe around other people."

"Cool," said Grant.

I turned to Allyson.

"How you feeling, Sunbird," I asked her.

"Good," she said trying for a smile. "Going at lightspeed really took it's toll on my body, i'll have to get used to the feeling."

You got be in a seriously messed up world like mines, when you can just simply accept that you're friend said she'd have to "get used" to traveling at the speed of light.

"Ok then," I said. "Well, Fury also said that we have access to handcuffs we can use to bring in metahumans so...activate cuffs."

My watched glowed again, and a pair of handcuffs, shaped like a huge rectangle with holes in them, materialized. I grabbed them, walked over to the blonde guy, and moved his hands into the holes before locking them.

"The jet should be here any second," I told the two after I had restrained the blonde guy. "We just gotta wa-"

I was interrupted by the sound of a jet screeching through the sky and stopping right above our heads. The bottom of the jet opened up, like a giant garage, and a blue tractor beam shot out, lifting Grant, Allyson, the blonde guy, and myself into the air, and into the jet. We quickly strapped ourselves in (and the blonde guy), and were speeding our way back to the Helicarrier in no time.