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.

18. Chapter 18: Home Wrecking

Chapter 18: Home Wrecking

(Allyson's Perspective)

I wanted to give them a hug, especially Grant. No, not because I liked him! No, I just really wanted to give him and Jason a hug for luck. I mean, they were about to try and change the course of an entire war all on their own. Well, them, Oroco, an army of like a million water breathing soldiers, and some sharks, I think. Besides, I could still sense, yes sense, Grant's emotional turmoil. Ever since I found out I could induce certain emotions in people's brains, and especially after I went Super Sunbird for the first time, i've been able to literally sense other people's emotions; kinda like a sixth sense. It wasn't perfect, and I didn't exactly know how it worked, but every time I focused on Grant, Jason, or any one person, I got like a thermometer reading of what they were feeling. In Grant's case, the guy was an emotional mess. I don't mean that in the sense that he was just extremely emo, I mean he was a literal emotional mess. His emotional aura was kinda burnt out, like someone had stretched it to its maximum, and snapped it in half. Aside from the occasional fluxes in emotional activity, when he was engaged in battle, he was quite literally emotionally stunted. I made a quick note to help him as soon as we were done with the mission; my songs could heal more than just physical damage. Anyway, Namorita gathered about 100 soldiers, organized them into a platoon, and motioned me to stand next to her. She positioned her fingers into a strange claw-like gesture, and hundreds of blue energy tendrils shot out of them like missiles. One of those tendrils found its way to my forehead, and the feeling was just a little under the pain of when Colonel Fury linked Jason's, Grant's, and my mind for the first time.

"Soldiers!" Namorita's voice echoed through my head. "Sound off!"

"HAROOO! HAROOO!" a tidal wave of voices rolled into my head.

"OUR MISSION IS SIMPLE! KILL THE TRAITORS! RESTORE THE HONOR OF ATLANTIS! ON ME!"

A collective roar of righteous courage rolled over my head; all I could think of was how much of a migraine i'd end up having in the morning. Namorita swam like a torpedo out of the temple, leaving me and the soldiers to follow.

"Wanna warn a girl next time?" I asked Namorita as we neared the palace. "It'd be polite."

"Be silent, surface dweller," she thought back to me. "I have no time for your vanity. As of now, you are a soldier, and will be treated as such."

I could think of a five letter word i'd like to call her.

"Whatever," I thought back to her. "Just instruct your soldiers to stay back once the monsters come spilling out, I don't need them in the way."

"I do not take orders from children!" she roared back at me.

"Fine. Pretty please instruct your soldiers to stay back, I need some leg room to do my thing."

Before Namorita could protest, the much anticipated action started to pick up. Using my Solar Steroids, don't tell Grant, but that was actually pretty funny, I was able to enhance my vision and pick up at least 100 piranhaoids coming out of each of the palace escape tunnels. No time for permission, I cranked up the speed, and shot ahead of the group.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GIRL?!" Namorita roared in my head.

"YOU'LL THANK ME LATER!" I responded.

I created a bow and arrow construct, and after charging it with a decent amount of light, shot it in a cheesy anime sorta way. The arrow was traveling way faster than those monsters heads could react, and as I went into Comet Speed, things only got worse for them. I locked onto their individual heat signatures, yup, all 500 of them, and split my one arrow into that exact number. With their heat signatures locked on, the arrows delivered them quick, and hopefully painless death bows. Call me crazy, and i'm pretty sure i'm the only one who feels this way, but I wasn't exactly having fun with this whole monster killing thing. Heck, the word monster is kinda unfair. These weren't monsters, they were animals trained to be weapons of war. This may sound a bit hypocritical, since I basically wanted Krang's head on a platter, but that was a whole other story all together. To me, Krang represented those who took sadistic pleasure in the torture of others. Like when I was eight years old, and came upon the Shelton Brothers, hate those guys, kicking an injured possum, just for the fun of it. I rushed to help the poor thing, and even though I got a few good hits to the face for my troubles, two years of prior Kung-Fu training proved too much for them to handle. Still, I was too late; the possum was dead. That was pretty much the defining point of not just my revulsion at the idea of killing, but bullying too. It wasn't right to hurt something simply because it was defenseless, or weaker than you. Sure, sometimes war merits more aggressive means of dealing with enemies, but Janus' death, by the way Jason described it, was just Krang having his fun. I couldn't save that possum,, and even though I had the power to heal people, to help them, lately my power was only being used to punch people really hard. Again, the irony of my solution for someone else's senseless violence, with even more, albeit less senseless violence, was not lost on me. Still, I needed to show Krang that what goes around will sometimes come back around sooner than you think. So many bad people do such evil things to good people, without paying for it. Not today. For Janus, and all the Atlanteans that died because of Krang and Attuma's greed, justice would be done. But enough of my soapbox speech. After I dispatched of the piranhaoids, Namorita swam over to my side.

"Impressive," she said aloud. "Perhaps you are worthy of the esteem your teammates hold you to."

"Thanks," I said back to her, glad it was too cold to be able to blush down here. "What's our next move?"

"Soldiers!" she howled through her telepathy. "Divide into four platoons, and stand guard 100 meters away from a deployment tunnel. Nothing else will be required until I expressly command it!"

This time, I was ready for the Spartan battle cry, so it was just like getting hit in the head with a tractor, rather than the whole barn.

"Follow me," Namorita said. "And turn of that damn glow, you'll give us away."

"I really miss when people ask for things nicely." I muttered, before swimming after her.

We swam to one of the deployment vents, and Namorita did something with her mouth that I assume was a type of sonar. She basically inhaled deeply, exhaled with a loud pop, and inhaled again. She did that five times, before stopping.

"We can swim to the dive chamber undisturbed," she said. "However, the palace is still infested with piranhaoids. They're spread out, and seem to be on patrol; we'll use that to our advantage. Do you know how to kill stealthily?"

"I can improvise," I responded. "Can't be too hard, right?"

"Hopefully not. The soldiers will wait until we have cleared the way for them, then it's straight to the throne room. Krang has assembled a massive number of piranhaoids, and he and Byrrah are powered by the stone of Poseidon. They are not invincible, but with the power of the sea to back them, they will be hard to defeat."

"My team and I have already defeated two enemies powered by the stones of Ares and Hades. Our track record speaks for itself."

"Hmmm. Then let us begin."

Without my Sun Form, the swim up to the diving chamber wasn't as hard for me as you'd think it be. First off, yes, I actually KNEW how to swim. Second, I just took Grant's advice, and use my Solar Steroids to power my arms and legs. I wasn't just keeping up with Namorita, i'm pretty sure I could've given her a run for her money. It was only a good 30 second swim until we reached the dive chamber, which makes little sense to call it that, given the fact that this whole place always had water in it. Besides, this place was more like an armory than a transition point. Swords, tridents, knives, nets, and laser cannons, freaking laser cannons, decorated the walls. Namorita grabbed one of the cannons, twisted some kind of knob it had by its trigger, and the cannon shrank down to the size of an average gun. She strapped it to the side of her leg, grabbed a few knives, and stuck them in various armor sheaths, including the sides of her thighs, and her biceps. Someone knew how to accessorize for a job.

"Aren't you going to prepare, girl?" she asked me.

"I have weapons of my own," I responded. "Besides, i've got way more firepower in me than this entire room. Also, stop calling me girl. My name is Sunbird."

"As you wish."

Her eyes squinted ever so slightly, and a cascade of images flooded into my brain. First off, this palace must've been using some kind of magic, because as the entire layout of the building was poured into my brain, it was obvious that there was way more room on the inside than the outside architecture would merit. Long elaborate corridors, lit with golden lights, snaked in every way through the palace. I caught glimpses of a ballroom, the throne room, observation decks, training areas, sentry towers, the kitchen, and tons of guest rooms. Obviously that was not what I was supposed to be focused on, but it was still a very nice looking palace. The thing, or things, that Namorita wanted me to see were the piranhaoids swimming about. Like she said, there was a massive buildup of them in the throne room, along with Krang, Byrrah, and Llyra, but there were still at least a good hundred or so swimming around the palace; almost like guard dogs. Namorita's sonar wave thing was still resonating through the water, and thanks to our shared connection, I was seeing everything she was. Well, seeing is a loose term. It was more like sensing; the same way you can sense a wall in front of you, even if you aren't looking or touching it. The point is, I knew where all of the enemies were, so it would be easier to take them down.

"I will take west wing," Namorita said. "You take the east. Try not to die, Sunbird, Atlantis needs all the help it can get."

I was really tempted to make a remark on how I wasn't just some tool, but since this was as close to sincerity as I got from her, I let Namorita off. We swam up to the entrance, which was more or less a huge ramp upward, until we reached the doors that led into the lower palace. I summoned one of my throwing daggers, and charged it with a bit of light. Namorita's sonar indicated that there were ten piranhaoids on either side of the door.

"Remember," he thought to me. "Fast, and quiet."

"Okie dokie," I responded, before we burst out of the door.

Since I had the east wing, I took the ones to the right, while Namorita took the one to the left. I tapped into Comet Speed, and threw my knife outward. I was still pumping Solar Steroids into my arms, and with the charge of solar energy in the knife, it was still like throwing itt through air. The knife sailed through five piranhaoid heads, and I swam ahead, not bothering to check on Namorita. Ok, I lied. I turned around for a brief second, just to make sure she was ok. Yeah, three piranhaoids were missing heads, one was almost cut in half and the last one had a knife lodged in its throat. Heck, Namorita was swimming off, and she didn't look back for a second. I chose to believe that it was because she assumed I was competent enough; not because she couldn't care less.

I gotta say, even though I didn't particularly enjoy it, I might have a future in assassination. With the sonar map in my head, even though this was a pretty big place, I was able to move fast, but not have to look over my shoulder and/or be in a panic that I could get caught at any moment. Huh, then scratch my first sentence then; this wasn't skill, I was cheating. But yeah, this sonar map was life. For example, after my first batch of kills, it wasn't until I swam about 200 meters down, and took three right turns down some really long corridors, until I sensed another piranhaoid just around the next turn. I summoned one of my Solar Sabers, love that name, and once the piranhaoid swam around the corner, I stabbed it in the chest, and for good measure, brought the blade up until I cut its head in half vertically. I swam down a few more corridors took a few turns, and came upon another batch of piranhaoids swimming up a spiral staircase. Speaking of which, the heck is a spiral staircase doing in an underwater mansion? Anyway, I hid behind a wall, and waited. I couldn't wait for them to come one by one, that would end badly in multiple ways. I was considering creating a quick mini-sun to pull them in, and fry them all at once. Still, that would probably be way too loud, and would most likely cause damage to the palace; considering Atlantis' base level treatment of us, this was easily on the top ten things not to do. Then again, Grant blew four holes in their infrastructure so…...no, no, no, no excuse. As the piranhaoids got closer, I finally settled on an idea. I waited until the head one was almost to the edge of the staircase, activated my Sun Form, and…..well, let's just say I can never blame Jason for being overly violent every again. I went into Comet Speed, summoned my swords, and in less than a second, decapitated all seven piranhaoids before I landed at the base of the staircase. Heck, their heads didn't even float away until my perception slowed down. I swam back up to the balcony, and moved on to the next set of targets. It took me maybe less than five minutes to finish off the rest of the piranhaoids. Most of the kills were pretty stealthy. A few knifes in the backs here, a few bullet-like rays of light through the head there. Once, I actually turned seven of the unfortunate souls into paste, by creating a spiked garbage compactor, and smashing them together. Like I said, I had absolutely no room to judge Jason anymore….or at least for the next week. In any case, a few well executed assassinations, a couple clumsy kills, a whole lotta constructs later, and the east wing was secure.

"All done over here, Namorita," I thought to her.

"Took you long enough," she responded.

"What?"

"I have been in position for almost an entire minute now. If you were any slower we'd have lost the battle already."

Stay cool, Ally. She's being hyperbolic. She's just a bit on edge. Her head is just fine where it is; don't kick it off. As you can imagine, Namorita and I had an almost seamless working relationship.

"Well, excuse me," I thought back to her, trying to keep my speech as venomless as possible. "I don't exactly have experience with stopping coups."

"How is that possible?" she asked me. "You wear the emblem of S.H.I.E.L.D.; espionage, assassination, and tactical assault missions should be in your list of skills."

"Yeah, about that…..i'm kinda sorta just a temporary intern. My friends and I have only been at this for less than a week.

A period of silence. I could almost hear the facepalm she must have been giving me.

"Just make your way back to the to the throne room," she thought to me as curtly as she could. "Await around the corner. Once the soldiers have assembled, we take the throne room back with no mercy."

"Yippie," I sarcastically thought back to her.

Secretly though, my anticipation was probably on her level, if not higher. I was mostly keeping myself in check, couldn't fight on pure anger, but I was more than impatient to get my hands on Krang. I swam to the area where Namorita instructed me to be, and waited. It took maybe two minutes for the remaining Atlantean soldiers to get in position; dang, those guys swam fast. I didn't see all of them, just the 25 soldiers that were in position near me. Similar to the throne room in Olympus, Atlantis' throne room was big enough to host at least three block parties. In other words, it took a while for the set up to get ready. Once we were ready, but before Namorita could give the order to attack, someone's voice echoed from the throne room.

"NAMORITA!" a silky/rough voice echoed through the water. "I KNOW YOU ARE THERE! I KNOW YOU HAVE DISPATCHED THE DREGS OF MY FORCES! YOUR EFFORT IS COMMENDABLE, YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH OF A WARRIOR WISELY TEMPERED WITH THE CUNNING OF A LEADER! LET ME OFFER YOU-"

Yeah, you probably get the gist. Blah, blah, blah, join me or die. More blah, blah, join the winning team. Even more blah, blah, rule at our side.

"He talks too much," Namorita thought to me, completely tuning him out.

"Understatement," I thought back to her. "By the way, I get first crack at him; personal reasons. But if you want to skip the monologue, I can help you there."

"Please do. I will be eternally grateful."

She said please! There was hope for her after all!

I clenched my hands together, and made a mini-sun about the size of a bottle cap. I kept feeding it energy for a good three seconds, while still keeping it in its compressed size. Finally, when it had the explosive power of an exploding oil truck, I willed it to fly into the throne room, and explode. I patched the entrance with a wall of solar energy to keep any excess damage from leaking out. After the boom was done, Namorita yelled "ATTACK!", and 100 warriors, plus me, swarmed into the throne room.

The first thing I noticed was the bodies. Of the 100 piranhaoids that were supposed to be in the defending set up, half of them were just broiled red chunks swirling about in the water. The rest of them were charging at me and the rest of the group, but they were about as important as a speck of dirt on a beach. No, I immediately zeroed in on Krang, and made a beeline for him. A few piranhaoids got in my way, but they were just one swing of a Mega Sun Sword. Still, it looked like I wasn't the only one who had a bone to pick with the jerk. About twenty or so Atlanteans were backing me up, which was kinda endearing in a way. Still, I got first crack at golden boy…..and promptly almost got impaled within the first five seconds. No, seriously, that's not hyperbole. I created a Mega Sun Fist and took a straight swing at him, only for him to dodge with a straight jump upwards, and launch a volley of missiles from his armor. On a side note, why does everyone wanna be a rip-off Iron Man? Anyway, those missiles were fast; even for me. I barely had a chance to raise a shield construct in front of me before impact, and even then I almost got blown away. I definitely remember an explosion of blue, so more likely than not, Krang's armor was also being powered by the Stone of Poseidon. Such great news for me. The explosion knocked me halfway across the throne room, and by the time I had recovered from reeling, I almost vomited at what I had to see. In my absence of a whopping seven seconds, about ten more Atlanteans tried attacking Krang at once; the twenty that attacked him with me were either dead or critically wounded. The ten that tried attacking him in my absence, most of them were dead too, and not in a subtle way. Three of the bodies had huge holes in their chests, about the size of bowling balls. Four more were brutally dismembered. There was a body with a decapitated head, another with only one limb left to his body, and the rest with huge red gory lines through their throats. To put insult to injury, as if he knew how much I wanted to beat him to a pulp, as Krang impaled the remaining two soldiers with his trident, he wa laughing maniacally. If I was capable of it, i'd be seeing red right now.

I roared, and rammed into Krang while inside a huge Solar Fist construct. We hit the wall so hard that the water rippled….well, rippled even more. Yeah, that's the other thing. While I wasn't exactly keeping tabs on Namorita, she was a big girl, she'd be fine, she and Byrrah were going at it relentlessly. And whether or not it was just him, or the two of them together, every blow was enough to cause waves to ripple through the throne room. Because of the space, the waves didn't really throw me off, but it was still a little distracting. Anyway, I let the construct go, activated my Blazing Sun Form, and managed to get in hard shots to Krang's head…...and promptly almost got killed again! Spoiler alert, Krang was a really good fighter, and had tons of weapons at his disposal. He swung at my face, and even though I caught his arm, his fist still hit the side of my face. Oh yeah, this guy was strong too. Maybe not Grant level strong, but certainly way stronger than me. Heck, it was like someone placed a shot put into a canon, and targeted my face with it; I actually flickered in and out of my Sun Form as I got launched halfway across the room. I managed to recover, only to get pelted in the chest with a ray of blue slight. Yup, Krang had repulsors on his hands too. Thanks to the combined efforts of my barely intact Sun Form, plus my armor, the blast only felt like someone slammed a mattress into me. However, after two more blasts to the chest, one of which that came from Krang's arc reactor thingy, not only was my Solar Form down and out, i'm pretty sure I was starting to get bruises under my armor. And I thought Jason was rough. I managed to get a giant shield construct up, i'd be using lots of those, and after a quick second to prepare, got my Sun Form up and running again. I quickly flew out of the path of Krang's next blast, and while flying at him again, created a charging bus construct, catching him completely off guard. He crashed into a wall, which was gonna be the least of his worries.

Or not.

No longer than maybe two seconds since he got trucked into the wall, the construct burst apart, and not because I willed it to. No, Krang blew it apart with his chest blast; the guy barely even looked fazed!

"OH, COME ON!" I yelled aloud.

Whether or not he heard that, Krang heeded my invitation. He launched a volley of missiles at me, but I don't fall for the same tricks twice. I went into Comet Speed, created a barrier around the missiles, which were less than a few feet away from Krang. I put a much effort as I could into keeping the barrier intact. Not just because I wanted the blast to hurt that douche tool as much as possible, but because I generally needed to see how much energy i'd need to use if I wanted to stand a snowball's chance of defending against his heavy artillery. The answer? A lot more than I was using right now. While I did manage to keep the blast in a relatively small radius, the shear force was still enough to break through the barrier. On the upside, literally, Krang shot up like a firecracker. Whether or not he actually took any damage though, I couldn't say; not only was he wearing armor, he also had a glowing blue aura around his body that signaled a long hard fight. Anyway, before he could recover, I launched a spear hook construct at him. While the blade didn't pierce the armor, it kinda just went all unfocused, I reconstructed the light into a lasso, and yanked back hard. I went into Comet Speed, created a flaming spiked fist construct, and after a quick jump of Solar Steroids to my arms, let Krang have a really wicked punch to the chest. I didn't slow down to enjoy him crash into the wall again. I created another spiked fist construct around my other fist, and started a fantastic rock em' sock em' attack. It was basically like playing volleyball with myself. Every punch I landed launched Krang with enough force to probably shatter through concrete. I was always there at every turn to make sure I didn't accidentally punch him through a wall, so I didn't get to test that theory out. I kept up the attack for a good 50 hits, before life remembered that I was winning too much. After I hit Krang with a hard uppercut, I tried to follow up with a double fist pound to plant him in the floor, but quickly had to get out of the way of a surprise repulsor blast. Seriously, that arm moved so fast; if my peripheral vision didn't catch it, my face would've taken all of that! As was such, Krang tried to gut me with a blade that came out of the top of his wrist gauntlet. I dodged it, summoned one of my blades to parry the other one, and before he could try for another stab, I shot him with a blast of light from my eyes. The blast merely threw him off-balance for a second, but that was more than enough time to take away a bit of his extensive weaponry. I went into Comet Speed again, set my blades on fire, and charged Krang.

As much as I hate to admit it, Krang was so much better than me at this; almost to a laughable extent. Starting out, I didn't do too bad. I faked him out, and ended up doing a flip over him. Krang spun around, pretty fast mind you, but I ducked under his back swing, and flew back a bit more, throwing some missile constructs out to distract him. Only like three of them actually hit him, this guy was wicked good at maneuvering, but they kept him away long enough for me to blindside him with another bus construct. I quickly created two clamp constructs, and flung them at his wrists. Granted, these constructs weren't all that strong. Heck, if Krang would've given it half a seconds thought, he could have broken them like glass. As was such, I willed the constructs to yanked his arms up, and before he even had a chance to question what was going on, I went into Comet Speed, gave my arms a strength boost, and slashed at his wrist blades. In hindsight, you could say that this was overkill, but I had no idea what his blades were made of, how much force i'd need to break them, or even if they could be broken. When you have so many questions to answer in such a short time, slow and steady experimentation goes completely out of the window. The good news, the blades WERE breakable, and I totally snapped them in half before Krang could stop me. I twisted in mid….water I guess? Whatever. I recovered well off from where Krang was, and hit him in the back with a Mega Sun Fist; this time, I could hear the walls crack a bit from the impact. I started to barrage him with fireballs, blasting him by the dozens at a time. I wish I could say it worked, but a huge, enough to put a crater where your house used to be huge, blast of blue energy shot out. To say I just barely got out of the way in the nick of time, would be an understatement. In truth, I was just an inch away from getting vaporized; something i'd look back on as an easy moment of the fight. Krang came back with a vengeance, tackling me hard in the gut, knocking the wind right out of me. He must've really had a hard on for those wrist blades, because I noticed a bit more ferocity in his attack. In the blink of an eye his right hand moved to his side, and a knife, i'm not even kidding, flew out of a sheath on the side of his boot and into his hand. Nothing gives you a second wind quicker than death being barely a foot away. I created an explosive wave, most of which was generated by pure adrenaline, and thankfully, was in a room so big I didn't have to worry too much about collateral damage. I bought myself maybe a second or two to bust out my Sun Swords, before Krang came swinging around again. He slashed kinda wildly at me, but after I ducked, while turning to capitalize, I had about half a second to block the knife that was about to cleave into my face. Barely a second later, Krang summoned his other knife, and jammed it into my neck. Yeah, I know this is the part where i'm supposed to die, but in the panic of the half second before my life ended, I made my Sun Form harden into a body shield that was just strong enough for me to not get shanked. I batted Krang away with a literal explosive punch, I ignited my hand with a burst of concentrated fire, and after getting over a quick reminder of my own mortality, flew after him; it was clear that this guy couldn't be allowed even half a second to regain momentum.

My momentum lasted all of three seconds. I slashed at him once with my left sword, only for it to be blocked, and get a boot to the chest so hard, it's a wonder my armor didn't dent. I managed to tap into Comet Speed just in time to catch Krang's knife, which he almost succeeded in throwing into my forehead. I created a mini-sun in my palm, and turned the heat up until the knife melted like a popsicle; that's another weapon Krang wouldn't be using anymore. I blasted at him with another barrage of fireballs, looking to off-balance him severely. Instead of dodging however, he activated an energy barrier that condensed into what I assume was some sort of energy shield. So along with his Iron Man armor, now i'd have to fight past an energy shield to get to him. Again, I should really think about how my life ended up getting to this point. Anyway, Krang came charging at me again, and if I may drop my usual disdain of cursing, this is where $#!+ got real! Krang charged at me fast, as in, even in Comet Speed I almost got decked in the face. The punch was so strong, it was as if a canon had went off; I could practically see what would've happened to my face if that punch connected. I powered up my entire body with Solar Steroids, and came up with a huge uppercut. Krang simply caught it, and countered with a punch to my side. The actual brunt of the punch wasn't so bad, my Sun Form offered me a slight amount of defense against attacks, even if I didn't focus it to be more durable; plus, the armor took at least half of what that punch was gonna be. But then came the arrow! Yeah, irony's a real bummer. Here I was, trying to avenge the death of Janus, only to get shot by the same weapon that killed him in the first place. I felt it go through my armor, but thankfully the amount of Solar Steroids I put into my body prevented the arrow from going in too deep. Heck, I managed to stifle my scream; didn't wanna give this jerk the satisfaction of an audible expression of pain. Even more, I kneed him hard in the gut, quickly created flaming spiked fist constructs around my hands, and succeeded in giving him an uppercut to the chin so hard, he blasted off faster than Team Rocket. What? Like you aren't low key nerd about something!

I planted Krang to the ground by striking him with a Sun Bolt, and restrained him with a giant hand construct. I quickly summoned my swords, connected them, and formed my Solar Spear. While flying at Krang, I set it on fire, and came down as fast as I could, trying to finish him before he could get out of my construct. I was literally a few feet away, before Krang busted out my construct with a blast from his chest. He didn't waste a moment getting his momentum back, shooting like twenty rockets at me. I propelled myself backwards, while simultaneously creating a half hearted wall of hard light. The impact alone would be enough to prematurely detonate the rockets, and I needed to be ready to defend against what was sure to be an extremely brutal attack from Krang. As I planned, the wall held up just enough to stop the missiles, and create a ripple effect that was big enough to disrupt the battle. Oh yeah, the battle was still going on pretty fierce around me. Atlanteans and piranhaoids were going at it like there was no tomorrow, which would be true for a lot of them. I caught a quick glimpse of Namorita and five other royal guards taking on Byrrah. Namorita was glowing with a blue/green aura, and seemed to be the only one able to fight him without being overwhelmingly out of her depth; wish the same could be said for me. Krang came flying through the remnants of the explosion, his trident braced for the killing blow. I dodged his first stab, slashed at him with my spear, and when he blocked it, I hit him in the face with a blast of light from my eyes. It wasn't much, but it put him off-balance enough for me to almost get him the the chest with my spear. But close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades. Krang parried the stab away with a casual twirl of his trident, and came back around with a stab aimed for my stomach. I blocked it with one of my spear points, using all of my strength to keep the prongs away from me; and believe me, Krang was plenty strong enough to make this more than a little difficult. He used my intense focus on not getting skewered to his advantage, twisting his trident to weaken my hold on my own weapon. He almost succeeded in ripping the spear away from me, but I did a side flip to keep my handle on it, and once getting my stance back, slashed at Krang. He of course blocked it, but I did some fancy spear fighting of my own, as I relentlessly kept up the attack. We went at it like this for a good five minutes, but we hardly stayed in one place as we battled. In a nutshell, it was basically a mix of ranged, melee, and construct fighting. Krang kept the pressure on me with his repulsor blasts and missiles, and even though I took some nasty attacks to the pretty much everywhere, I gave as good as I got; mostly with surprise vehicle constructs barreling into him when he least expected it. When Krang caught up to me, I was never the one on the offensive for long, he'd try gutting me again with his trident, while also trying to deck me with his ranged attacks. You wouldn't believe how many repulsor blasts, missiles, and arrows I dodged at point blank range, while also trying to defend against a golden three pronged spear. As was such, I managed to hold my own pretty well…..ok, well enough to not die. As far as speed went, I had Krang beat by half a point. When it came to strength and skill, he was way better than me, even with the Solar Steroids still giving me a boost. Like I said, the constructs I created helped me stay relevant in the fight, but with having to juggle so many skills and abilities at once, especially while away from the sun for so long, it was starting to slow me down.

"Impressive," Krang said as we kept up the fight. "Such skill, such ferocity, commendable adaptability."

How he found the focus to talk this leisurely in the middle of a fight showed just how out of my league he really was. Still didn't change how annoying his voice was. If anything, it just gave me the uncontrollable urge to stab him in the mouth.

"A shame I have to kill an opponent with such potential," he continued. "I almost feel a semblance of pity for you."

God in Heaven! Every time he opened his mouth, I wanted to shove a knife down it!

"Or," he continued, pulling out his spare knife; now fighting with a knife and trident. "Perhaps you could live to serve another purpose. A ruler needs to stay vigilant, and you'd be an excellent warm-up partner."

Only warm-up!? I started to fight a lot more aggressive after that comment.

"Come now, child," he kept talking; dear lord what I wouldn't do to make him stop! "The day is already won, and you are on the losing side."

Just ignore him, Sunbird. Rage is the enemy.

I had to keep that mantra up for a good ten times a second. Couldn't let Krang unsettle me; I was already as disadvantaged in this fight as it was.

"Still," he continued, not...shutting...the f*(#...up! "Perhaps you can serve a different purpose. I will be king soon, after I dispose of that boisterous idiot Attuma. But a "loyal general" deserves to be rewarded. Perhaps you can serve as a decent concubi-"

"NO!" I roared, pushing Krang away with an intense blast of light from my hand.

Forget calm and collected. This arrogant f*(# % deserved an earful of my shrill, unbridled girly rage!

"NEVER TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!" I roared, actually managing to get Krang hard across the chest with a hard slash of my spear.

My anger fueled my speed and strength, and for a while, it was me who had the forward drive in the fight.

"I WILL NEVER BE YOUR SERVANT!" I continued as I thrusted and slashed my flaming spear at Krang. "I WILL NEVER BE YOUR WHORE! BUT YOU'RE GONNA PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

"What in the name of Hell are you on about, little girl?!" Krang had the audacity to ask me as he defended himself. "I've done nothing to you, you insignificant wench! You are the one who insisted on interfering in matter you can scarcely comprehend!"

"WHY YOU-"

Whatever else I was gonna say, a quick blast of Krang's Unibeam interrupted it entirely. Usually this would be the part where he gets the upperhand for a large amount of time, before I take it back for him for two minutes tops before we switch roles again; emphasis on the word usually. I was way too pissed to let Krang get back in this fight. He came at me with his trident, twirling it around all fancy like, and then came at me with a quick stab to the chest. Well...I lie. He feinted a stab at me, which I completely fell for, before whacking at me with the shaft of his trident. While unexpected, and an extremely close call, I caught the shaft, and pulled. By this time, I was using my Solar Steroid power so constantly, the strain, while still there, was almost ignorable. Still, for as strong as I was making myself, Krang was still a good bit stronger. We played a three second game of tug a war, before I brought my spear up in an arc with all of my might, breaking it in half. This time, I think Krang actually pouted for half a second. He immediately backpedaled backwards, blasting at me with his repulsors. I dodged them all, blasting at him with rays of light too; though not getting any shots in either. I blasted, dodged, and kept moving forward, slowly but surely closing the gap, getting ever so close to him. When I got in super close, I ducked another one of his Unibeam blasts, and did something so stupid, even Grant would've called me out on it. I wrapped my left arm in an armored construct, and put everything I had into making it as durable as possible in a half second time frame. Before the part of my brain that prevents me from doing insane things kicked in, I grabbed Krang's palm, which was primed for a blast. Let me make this clear. I intentionally, and of my free will, blocked a repulsor blast with my own hand. For good measure, I blasted a ray of light from my armored hand as well; though that wouldn't exactly do wonders for me. The final result was….explosive to say the least. My arm construct held up just enough to block a good chunk of the blast; my counter blast helped repel it a bit. Still, my arm construct didn't hold. Even though I succeeded in turning Krang's blast against him, for the most part, the explosion ripped through my arm construct, and destroyed the hand piece of my actual armor. Most of my arm armor was still intact, and my hand was still protected by the underlayer of kevlar, but i'm pretty sure Mrs. Kennedy was gonna explode when she saw what I did to her suit. Krang didn't get off much better. While his repulsor was probably still functional, his gauntlet had scratches and dents in them. His repulsor was flickering a bit, and it seemed like some residual damage was rippling through his armor. I tightened my grip on my spear, knocked him up with a fire geyser, and continued my attack.

Something else I noticed in the split second I launched Krang upwards, aside from how shrill his voice could get, was how my fire affected his energy. Much like fire was the Achilles heel of Venom, the same seemed to be at least somewhat true for the Poseidon energy too. The burst of fire disrupted Krang's body shield. It was barely noticeable, and this was the first time this had happened since our battle started, but it was very clear his power was weakening; even if it was like 1%. I flew after Krang, activating my Blazing Sun Form, and cranking it up to an absurd degree. He recovered enough to get off a blast at me, but I easily dodged it and launched him into a wall with a blazing hammer construct. Again, Krang's body shield barely flickered, but I saw the fleeting look on his face. Whether he knew it or not, Krang was in trouble, and some part of him was scared. I charged him with my spear, but he quickly dodged my stab with an upward burst of propulsion, drew his sword, and came down with a power slash. I blocked his strike, moved his blade to the side, and hit him in the mouth with a hard elbow. His helmet had a visor that only stopped at his nose for some reason. Krang staggered a bit, giving me enough time to get another successful slash off across his chest. The next slash was blocked by Krang's sword, followed by him blasting at me with his Unibeam, but I was still satisfied with my progress. Krang pressed on with more repulsor blasts and missile strikes, forcing me to retreat and attack with blasts and constructs while fleeing. I played that game for maybe another minute, before forcing Krang to play by my terms again. I planted Krang to the palace floor by stopping suddenly, twisting over him as he flew by me, and kicked him hard in the back. As Krang face planted into the floor, I came down for a stab to the back, only to have it blocked by a blue hard light shield. Seriously, even Iron Man didn't have this much gear! Krang pushed back at me, forcing me to fight on the defensive again. This was one of those moments where it was painfully obvious how outclassed I was at armed combat against this guy. Even though I had a power, range, and somewhat of a versatility advantage, I couldn't count the amount of times I almost got impaled. Heck, the first slash I attempted was blocked by his shield, followed by a kick to my gut, and a stab to the chest that almost made impact. I just barely managed to duck under it, and try for a slash at Krang's legs. He jumped,over it, and I brought my spear up in a twirl. Krang blocked it, though the spear got dangerously close to his face, and continued to keep up the attack.

"Such fire!" Krang exclaimed. "In both the literal and metaphorical sense!"

"Stop fighting me, and i'll share all of it with you!" I responded.

Ok, not the best comeback; sue me.

"I sense an animosity against me," Krang continued. "What for, little girl? What have I done to wrong you?"

I was so mad at him for not knowing how upset I was, I almost forgot that from his perspective I was just another random dogooder trying to foil his plans. Huh, maybe guys actually are as ignorant as they pretend to be. No offense, boys.

"Not me!" I shot back at Krang. "But since he's not here, I owe you a beat down from Janus!"

I'll admit, I got a little emotional with that last response. I slammed my spear down on Krang's shield, the impact nearly split the water around us in half. See, Moses? I can do it too!, Krang buckled against the force of the impact, but still managed to hold his ground. He stabbed at me with his sword, but I swept it away with my spear and kept fighting.

"Janus?!" he asked me rather shocked. "How the hell do you know about that arrogant-"

Even in the middle of a fight, epiphany moments didn't make this guy miss a beat at all. Even worse, he started laughing! No, I want you to really understand this! While I was huffing and puffing, trying desperately to take this guy down, while he easily dodged, and blocked all of my attacks, he was roaring with laughter! Son of a bitch! Oh… Look, sorry for the language, but you don't understand! This man was such a tool! Unfortunately for him, I absolutely HATED being laughed at; condescendingly at least. My Blazing Sun Form heated up even more, I pumped so much Solar Steroids into myself to where it actually started hurting now, and let Krang have it.

"STOP LAUGHING!" I roared at him, blasting him with a highly concentrated bolt of fire. "THERE IS NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT TORTURING AND KILLING AN INNOCENT MAN!"

The blast launched Krang back a considerable bit, but the rolled out of the way of my stab, and came around with a slash to my back.I ducked under it, hit him in the chest with another blast of fire, and kept with the fighting.

"Firstly," Krang responded, still chuckling. "Namor's little lapdog would, and probably has done the same thing in the name of Atlantis; let's not be pointing fingers here, girl. Also, you?! Of all the great reinforcements that Janus could find, of all the super beings of the surface world, Janus wanted to retrieve a vain, ignorant child to defend his city?"

I kicked at him hard. Sure it only hit the shield, put I made a small burst of energy erupt from the impact. Plus that was all of my anger in one kick. Krang nearly went flying into a wall, but managed to recover at the last second. Still, I was not in the mood for more of his swordplay. I made a string of solar webbing fly from my wrist, tether to Krang's sword, and I yanked it away from him; Grant would've been so proud of me! I caught it, melted it to goo, and rushed after Krang. Even now he couldn't hide his frustration of having all of his weapons stripped away from him. I slammed my spear into his shield, forcing him against a wall. For what it was worth, at least my Blazing Sun Form was doing its job. Up close like this with Krang, my flames were murder on his body shield. The blue aura was flickering worse than a light bulb with bad wiring. If it wasn't for the shield between us…..well, he probably would've blasted me with his Unibeam. Didn't think about that. Whatever though.

"What's the matter?" I taunted Krang, who was grunting a bit. "Harder to fight without your toys?"

Miraculously, Krang didn't respond. I finally succeeded in shutting him up! I would've celebrated right then, but Krang spoiled my fun before it started. His body shield suddenly went out for half a second. For a moment, I thought his suit had run out of juice, but then his light shield got even brighter. I didn't even have time to back away before his shield gave off a hard burst of energy, forcing me a good ten feet back. I'll admit that the blast disoriented me, and Krang wasted no time in taking advantage of that. I felt the familiar sensation of three simultaneous repulsor blasts against my chest. The force of the blast planted me into the ground like a rock, then continued even further. Seriously, until I managed to raise a shield around myself, the repulsor beams were practically wiping me across the floor. As soon as I managed to get under my barrier….it was blown apart. Guess I kinda forgot Krang's suit had mini missiles in it. Yeaaah, after getting blown into the next century….and almost through the throne room walls, I wouldn't be forgetting that any time soon.

I recovered just in time to avoid a sailing knife that barely landed a few inches from my head. If my hair wasn't tied back, I probably would've been missing a good handful of it. Again, I forgot about the two knives strapped to Krang's biceps, but a quick mini-sun took care of the one he just threw at me. He released another volley of missiles at me, but I raised a wall in front of them, creating another premature explosion that Krang took full on. I rushed into him, and whacked him across the chest with my spear, which had more heat on it than three bonfires. The sheer force of my swing caused a shockwave to erupt through the entire throne room; also Krang went flying into a wall again. I wonder if you can play ping pong with people, because that's basically what was happening right now. Anyway, I was pretty sure I was wearing Krang down now. His aura flickered off for a total three seconds, and if I was just a little bit faster, I probably could've ended him. Yikes, I was turning into Jason! As was such, Krang propelled himself out of the way of my spear, just barely managing to keep his head. Instead of backing away from me while blasting me with repulsors, he activated his shield, and rushed into me. My first thought was "what does he expect to do with just a shield?". Then I thought about the hundreds of other people who must've thought the same thing with Captain America, before waking up with concussions. I blocked his charge by bracing my spear against his shield. When he moved my spear out of the way, I quickly ducked under a unibeam blast, and got him in his side with a hard kick, making sure to push him a few feet away with an explosive charge. With his free hand, Krang blasted at me with his repulsor, as well as launching a few more missiles at me. I'd be lying if I said they were easy enough to dodge, but i'm not gonna pretend it was an excruciatingly difficult labor; i'm pretty graceful when I need to be. I quickly closed the gap between me and Krang, and feinted a stab at his left side, before quickly reversing my spear around my back, and coming for his right side with a hard slash. I didn't expect to get him, but I expected that he'd expect I wouldn't get him. He blocked my spear with his shield, but before he could do whatever, I leaned back and kicked his it as hard as I could with a backwards leaning sidekick. Not sure if that's an actual thing, but I did it. This time, Krang went flying back towards the busted throne room doors. Before he could get back in the fight, I planted him to the ground by slapping him down with a giant flaming hand construct. Then I used the same hand construct to backhand and pin him into the wall beside the entrance. I poured all of my concentration into keeping that construct up for as long as possible. My plan was to force Krang's energy to burn out; no pun intended. Like I said, my fire was murder on Poseidon energy, if I could keep Krang pinned between a wall and a hot place, I could burn him dry. I managed to keep him pinned for a total of ten seconds, before things got difficult again. See, while his power was flickering dangerously like a candle in the wind, he seemed to have a lot of reserves in the tank. How much? I don't know, but seeing as he eventually managed to blast apart a hand construct bigger than his ego, as well as his entire body, the answer was: enough. I gave him zero seconds to recover, before coming in for a flying stab. His aura was a lot dimmer than usual, and even he couldn't fake being ok after being trapped in the furnace for so long. Even then, in a miraculous burst of speed, he jumped out of the way of my spear, which pierced the palace walls like a knife through Styrofoam. I looked up just in time to see him throw a knife at my head, which I deflected by swiping it away with the flat of one of my spear blades. Krang came down for what I assume was gonna be some sort of tackle, but I said no way to that, and got him in the face with a hard backflip kick, followed by, after twisting into a side position, a sweeping kick across the side of his face. In the half second it took for him to grunt, I shot a solar web out, latched it onto the deflected knife, still flying towards the rest of the battle, and yanked it back full force at him. I wasn't aiming anywhere in particular, just testing the limits of his body shield. As was such, the knife found its mark in Krang's side; going through the dimmed blue aura, and piercing the armor.

The armor was still pretty strong without the abundance of energy to back it though. While I pierced the armor, only about 25% of the blade actually went through. Granted, my spear was made of Adamantium and Vibranium, so probably wouldn't be too much of a problem for me. Anyway, Krang made a "GRRAAAHURR!" sound, that made me think he was coughing up a hairball. Also, and I hate myself for admitting this, but I kinda sorta enjoyed his pain. No, not on a sadistic level, just catharsis. After what he did, he had this and so much more coming to him. Before I could get a chance to finish him off, this man had ungodly keen reflexes, he blasted me in the face with a repulsor ray. My Sun Form took all of that, but it was still disorienting and frustrating. By the time I could see straight again, Krang was already charging me with his shield and knife. I flew back, shooting blasts of fire at him, trying to get my bearings again. It seemed like I wasn't the only one who could be graceful in the water, as Krang dodged every blast he didn't block with his shield. Still, he didn't count on me creating a wall construct in front of him. I wish I could've taken a vid of it, because it was so GIF worthy. I created another wall construct, this one with spikes in it, and smashed it into Krang. I'm not saying I was disappointed that he wasn't a blob of jelly afterwards, but i wasn't pleased that his body shield seemed to be self recharging. I followed up the failed compactor attempt by planting him to the ground with a Sun Bolt, and willing a barrage of fireballs to rain on him from every direction. I maybe got a good five seconds of uninterrupted fire blasting before, after a sudden surge of energy, Krang erected a barrier around himself, completely stonewalling my blasts. In retrospect, I probably could've poured on the extra fire power and force the barrier down, but this thing was strong enough to where it was making my blasts ricochet and spin off in crazy angles. I didn't wanna take the risk of bringing down the entire room just for a small win. Instead, I gripped my spear, fed it a little more fire for good measure, reactivated the Solar Steroids, and flew into the barrier, whacking it over the top with all my strength. The barrier smashed like glass, which made me extremely wary of either how strong I was, or how much fire was actually coursing around my spear. Krang on the other hand, just wanted my head. He flew at me, his knife and shield at the ready, and after flipping the blade into a reverse grip, made a stab attempt at my neck. I ducked under it, moved out of Krang's kicking range, and sidestepped his knife thrust to my face. While, kicking his shield, I managed to get a hold of his wrist, twist it, and force him to drop his knife; I of course melted it. At this point, Krang was desensitized to it though. He just resumed blasting at me with a mix of repulsor blasts, missiles, and occasional mini arrows out of his gauntlet, forcing me to play the fly n' blast game for a minute.

"What's even more comedic," Krang called out to me, either forgetting, or not caring that I was ignoring his monologue. "Is that you actually think you are protecting innocents!"

Ok, usually I can ignore stupid comments, but what the heck was he talking about?

"You're the one who's trying to coup the throne!" I responded, blasting fireballs and missile constructs at him. "How many Atlanteans, and sea creatures are you sending to the slaughter just to set up another betrayal?! You can't even stay loyal to your own team!"

"Oh please! How many times has Namor been at odds with your surface world heroes?! How many times has he used the armies of Atlantis to inflict war and death on the surface world?! Admit it child, you are defending a city of killers and xenophobes!"

Krang poured on the speed, blasting more projectiles at me with a renewed intensity. Again, they were easy enough to dodge, and I got him again in the face with a giant flaming fist construct. Seriously, is he ever not gonna fall for that? Once he hit the golden floor, I created a Sun Spot around him, and made a huge pillar of fire erupt from below him. I made sure to keep the pillar from hitting the ceiling; again, didn't wanna do any home wrecking. I thought that this would be the trick that finally did Krang in. I mean, a continuous wave of fire that also happened to be on a spot of gravity 2X that of the earth? It should've been a hook, line, and sinker. Sure enough, Krang proved an annoying habit of not knowing how to stay down. A unibeam blast pelted me in the chest, making my vision swim. Before I knew what happened, I felt something blunt hit my head, my chest, and then my head again, in that order. I also felt something electric wrap around my throat; believe me, I was all too aware with how electricity feels, even through the protection of my Blazing Sun Form. I felt the the electric tether yank me forwards, and again, felt the all too familiar sensation of getting blasted in the chest with Krang's Unibeam. This time, at such close range, the blast knocked me right out of my Sun Form, and made me drop the Solar Steroids. I hit the floor hard, my head bouncing off the marble floor. I'm petty sure if someone held up one finger, i'd see seven, but even with my vision a complete blur, I could make out something golden and blue about to land on my head. On a reflex, I create an energy barrier, and made it explode when Krang hit it, forcing him back., I hummed the Mockingjay theme, and healed myself immediately afterwards. I guess I could add bruised ribs to the slight concussion I had, because it felt like someone had wrapped most of my chest in an icy hot sleeve where the hot came first. I quickly got up, turned on my Sun Form, and charged Krang with my spear again, while blasting at him with a volley of fireballs. On one hand, I did get to see that it was indeed an electric whip, shooting out of Krang's gauntlet wrist, that was around my throat. That made me more appreciative to the fact that I was still alive, and more pissed at Krang for putting a leash around my neck. Krang retracted his whip, and resumed blasting at me with his free repulsor hand. I turned up my own speed, and even at point blank range, dodged the beams while blasting and slashing at him. While we fought, a small part of my mind wandered back to what Krang had said earlier about Atlantis. True, I didn't have much experience with them, but even I couldn't ignore some of the things I saw on TV while growing up. Like in 2006, when Namorita and the New Warriors caused an explosion in Stanford, killing at least 600 people, including children. Or when Namor and an army of Atlantis got involved in the final battle that same year, when the heroes were fighting each other over the Registration Act. Heck, just a few years ago he and the X-Men fought the Avengers, which led to him and a few of them getting fire powers or something like that. I'm not too in the know about the specifics, but I do know he used his power to attack Wakanda, killing God knows how many of Black Panther's people. The point being, Namor wasn't a hero and I knew this. I'm not sure he was even a good man. As much as I hated to admit it, Krang had a point; Atlantis wasn't exactly a city of saints.

"Grrahh!" Krang growled at me, as he just barely blocked a stab from my spear. "You are becoming quite bothersome, girl!"

"You're not exactly a hoot and a half either!" I responded. "But if you wanna stop fighting, feel free, it'll make my job a lot easier!"

"I have a throne to secure! You will not stand in my way!"

"I've been doing that for a while now, and the throne doesn't belong to you!"

"It should! You think Namor a ruler?! A good king?! That half-breed has bounced back and forth between being an ally an enemy of the surface world for too long! Attuma may be a violent, idiot monger, but at least he has a clear isolated plan of existence away from the surface world!"

"Sounds reasonable, if he could grasp the idea of democracy, he'd probably have my vote. But if that's the case, why do you have a target on his head too?"

"Because for too long Atlantis has hidden in the shadows of existence, hiding our glory as if we are no more than rats in a sewer. The surface dwellers have no regard for the waste they dump into our domain, the pollution that poisons the very element that gives us life!"

"There's this new thing called Ocean Conservation Groups, try getting in touch!"

"Fool! I care not for the fruitless attempts of imbeciles and charlatans! Atlantis needs me to be her king! Namor is a confused boy, pretending to be a man! Attuma wants power purely for its sake, but I am superior to them both! I will drown the surface world in its own blood! Cover its tallest towers and highest mountains in water!"

"Pretty sure Noah can tell you that's been done already!"

"And so it will be done again! I will eliminate the surface, flood the world in our glory, where we might expand; our kingdom no longer limited to the depths!"

"You call 75% of the earth limited?! You've got to get on this other new thing called math! Also, you've just told me why Namor, despite not being the perfect king, is miles better than you!"

"You think I pretend to be noble? To strive towards doing what is good for BOTH of our races?! I care only for the glory of Atlantis under my rule! Namor is too confused to do what must be done, Attuma, too weak, but I will surpass them all! ATLANTIS IS MINE!"

With his big Leonidas battle cry, his arc reactor light up like a Christmas tree. At first I thought he was going for some kind of huge chest blast, but after I retreated, sealing myself in a barrier for good measure, I found that wasn't the case. Instead, while his arc reactor ended up being dimmed down a significant bit, the aura around his armor was literally a blaze of blue fire. Basically, imagine my Blazing Sun Form, but blue, and just a smidge more intense. He gave me a glare that let me know I was dead for sure. I did the only thing I could do. I fought like heck!

So for starters, Krang's new form was strong enough to shake off constructs with relative ease. Seriously, after five giant flaming missile, fists, and sword constructs, he only faltered in his movements twice. To make things so much worse, this guy at least tripled his speed and strength. I've never shown it to Jason or Grant, but when I want to be, especially while flying, I can be much faster than them. The only reason I usually don't, is out of concern for my energy reserves. As of now, Krang was probably a good few steps faster than even that; only a few notches away from being able to keep up with me in Super Sunbird. I had to burn through so much energy, i'd have to spend at least three hours of sunbathing just to get it all back. Not counting the insane amount of Solar Steroids I was pumping through my body, that didn't consume energy, I had to spend every following second in Comet Speed, just to barely keep ahead of the threat of disintegration. Every blast out of Krang's repulsors was enough to put a tank down for the count, which did wonders for the throne room wall decorum. Unlike before, these blasts were not easy at all to dodge, Krang was that fast. Oh, and as for his strength? Well, let's just say after one shot to the face, after I quite literally was punched through two of the palace walls, so much pain, I got a reasonable guesstimate. Like always, my Sun Form protected my body from being turned into a slushy, but it took me a good few seconds to shake off the residual pain. Lucky for me, Krang's arrogance seemed to amplify along with his power; if it were Goblin or Venom, they'd already be on me to finish the job. As was such, it was extremely satisfying, not to mention therapeutic, when I slammed Krang with a Mega Blazing sledgehammer construct, and continued to slam it on top of him again, and again, and again, and again. I actually felt bad about it, because while doing so, I broke my rule about trying to cause minimum damage to the throne room. Yeah….whoever had to repair this marble floor, I hope they get paid well, because I did a number on the spot that I was piledriving Krang. Still, he showed little signs of his power fading. Granted, he was getting smashed through solid marble, so I couldn't see much of whatever was happening to him, but from what I did see, he maybe faltered in power for half a second before it would reset itself. Anyway, it's not like I was able to keep him subdued for too long.

A pillar of blue fire absolutely destroyed my construct, and while I barely managed to avoid Krang taking my head off with a flying cross punch, everything absolutely went to Hell afterwards. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Things didn't get that bad, but they definitely weren't sunshine and rainbows; I love sunshine and rainbows, especially sunshine. For the next few minutes Krang and I fought each other relentlessly, and just like the case with everything super speed related, a minute may as well have been an hour. To my credit, out of the hundreds of punches and blasts we were dishing out, I hit Krang a lot more than he hit me, but when he connected, I definitely felt it more. I whacked him a lot more with my spear, but he was so protected by his body shield, that he was blocking my strikes with his arms, and on more than a few occasions tried yanking it away from me. Again, as much as i'd like to pat myself on the back for a good effort, that only goes for so much when you're in a fight for your life. While Krang and I were in another punching and kicking fest, this guy was wicked good at whatever type of martial art he was doing, he faked a punch to my face, and opened his palm. I was used to this, just another one of his repulsor blasts, so I bent my back, dodging it just barely. The problem came immediately afterwards. I felt a bigger, much stronger blast hit me from point blank range, and plant me hard into the floor. It was obviously his Unibeam, and if you've ever seen Independence Day, that blast was doing to me, what the alien ship did to the white house. I tried to get a barrier over myself, but it was like trying to push back a tidal wave, completely useless. Then came the arrows. That's right, it wasn't enough for Krang to slowly wear me down with his uber powerful Unibeam, he had to add injury to insult. I didn't know that my arms were lying outwards, but I felt something like metal stakes being jammed into them and my hands at bullet speed. I figured the Unibeam was wearing my Blazing Sun Form down, but it was way weaker than I thought, because those stakes burrowed through my armor, and into my flesh like a hot knife through butter. Krang must've wanted to hear me scream, because as soon as I was pinned to the floor, the Unibeam stopped, and my scream of pain echoed through the water. I'm pretty sure there were involuntary tears coming from my eyes, which probably meant nothing, me being underwater and all.

"WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT YOU STANDING IN MY WAY?!" Krang roared at me.

I opened my eyes just in time to see him coming in for a landing, and in the state I was in, he probably could've put a hole in my chest with just his fist. You better believe I put every shred of focus I had into putting a barrier around myself. Krang slammed into a dome of golden flames, and even though the impact rattled it, it did hold up. Krang kept pounding and wailing at my shield, roaring in laughter at how I was practically defenseless. Every punch was almost the one that got through. I had to focus so much time on refreshing the strength of my shield, I couldn't get the arrows out of my arms. I wondered if anyone was ever crucified to the ground before? Anyway, after several dozen more hits, Krang backed up at long range, and seemed like he was gonna try blasting my shield down; his mistake, was giving me time. I created a giant flaming octopus tentacle out of the floor, and wrapped in around him. Again, I broke my only rule about damaging the throne room, because I started slamming Krang into the floor, whipping him into walls, and dragging his arrogant face through the floor again. While doing that, I worked on patching what was sure to be multiple gaping wounds in my arms.

All things considered, they weren't that bad. I had two arrows in each of my biceps, one in each forearm, and of course, one in each of my hands. I created eight hand constructs, willed them to grab and arrow, and before I could talk myself down, made them yank the arrows out of me. White hot pain, more intense than anything i've ever felt in my life, shot through every nerve in my arm. I couldn't stop myself from screaming, crying, and thrashing slightly, but I kept that tentacle construct up; I couldn't afford to let Krang take an inch. I took a look at my arms, only to see geysers of blood pouring out of them. My arms were throbbing with excruciating pain, every pulse felt like someone had put anvils into my arms. Still, I managed to reign myself in, stop my blubbering, and sing. I sang "Aloha E Komo Mai" by Jump 5. If you don't know who they are, I don't blame you, they were kind of a one hit wonder from back in the days when Disney Channel was actually good. Anyway, I sung the first half of that song, and completely patched the holes in my arm. I sung a few more lyrics to account for the blood loss, yes I can regenerate blood with my healing powers, and was ready to get back in the game in no time. Too bad the exact same thing can be said for Krang. At that moment, he pulled out his electric whips, and slashed my tentacle construct to shreds. He ended up in a kinda funny upside down position, but given the murder stare I got once he realigned himself, there was nothing funny. I quickly called my spear back to me, it was still a flaming metal stick, so I just controlled the flames around it. Krang's arc reactor lit up, but before it could shoot, a trident impaled it.

I know I sound like i'm joking, I know that seems, and is, completely out of left field, but that's seriously what went down. One second, I was staring down the barrel of a Unibeam blast, the next, a slender golden trident was lodged in the arc reactor that was gonna shoot it.

Krang didn't have time to pull back, and just like I thought, the blast overloaded and exploded in his face. He was completely blown backwards in a blue starburst of energy, and I knew for certain the worse part of what he could do was over. Even more, I owed Namorita big time. Either she was the one who threw the trident into Krang's Iron Man ripoff, or Byrrah had really bad aim. I looked over to where she was, about to send her a mental thank you, and then my stomach dropped.

I never considered it, but at the speed that trident impaled Krang, from an impossibly frustrating angle to hit such a small target, that must've taken a lot off effort, and more important, attention. As was such, Byrrah took advantage of that, and nailed her hard across the face, sending her careening across the throne room floor. Byrrah leapt after her, his trident primed for a stab. No. Just...no. Namorita and I may have had a….let's call it a difficult work relationship, but she just kinda sorta saved my life. No way was this guy gonna kill her! I flew over as fast as I could, intercepting him, and brought my spear across his head hard. Body aura or not, which he totally had, this guy's helmet shattered like an egg, leaving him wide open for the mother of all uppercuts to the face. I was in my Blazing Sun Form, and at this point, using Solar Steroids was a given, but even I was surprised, when I punched Byrrah through an entire wall!

"Thank you," Namorita thought to me.

"I should be the one thanking you," I thought back to her. "You totally saved my butt back there!"

"I accept your gratitude, now go finish off Byrrah! Krang's power has been weakened, I can handle him until you finish!"

"You sure?"

"Without a doubt, now go!"

I felt a bit uncomfortable leaving Namorita alone with Krang. So far, all of the piranhaoids were disposed of, but so were our own forces; it was just me and her versus Krang and Byrrah. Well, I suppose Llyra was on their team too, but she wasn't doing anything physically. Still, as much as I hated the thought of her fighting Krang, even if he was weakened, by herself, we didn't have time to argue. I flew as fast as I could through the car sized hole I put though the throne room wall.

I found Byrrah crashing into what I assumed to be the palace dining room. Long golden tables stretched as far as a cathedral, and the space of this room could easily fit at least five thousand people. There was some kind of object hanging from the ceiling that looked like a multicolored disco ball made of multiple gelatinous orbs. At the head of the place was this too beautiful table made of crystal, only wide enough for three people. At the center was another throne, exactly the same as the one back in the throne room, and flanking the two ends of the table were these absolutely stunning statues of a handsome male in a loose robe that only covered the lower half, and a beautiful woman wearing a seashell bikini, yes really,. They both were wielding tridents, and were blowing into conch shells. I describe this room so vividly, because I absolutely refused to fight Byrrah here. The throne room was already in renovations mode, if you wanna call it that, a few more dings wouldn't make a difference. This beautifulness was absolutely off limits. Fortunately, Byrrah landed just between two aisles of tables, and only made a small crack in the floor. That would be the last one. I flew past him, turned around, and after launching him in the air via flame geyser, I tackled him from behind, and flew him back into the throne room. I slammed him into the ground, my feet firmly planted in his back, and jumped off, letting him slide a few more feet across the room. I didn't expect him to stay down long, so it came as no surprise when Byrrah got up, hefted his trident, and swam at me with a huge "GRAAAAAAAAAH!" To his credit, at least Byrrah probably wouldn't be the monologuing type.

I sidestepped his attack, and grabbed him by his cape. Seriously? The guy refused to wear a full set of armor, but had a cape? Sure, why not? I spun him around as fast as I could, and let him go, his flight path indicating he'd sail right through the throne room entrance. I didn't let him off that easy though. I went into Comet Speed, flew past him, and kicked him under the chin with a backflip kick. Byrrah went careening upwards, and I got him again in the chest with a hard slash. To be honest I wasn't entirely sure if he'd survive. Sure, Krang's body aura was pretty durable, but that was because he had a suit that amplified and replenished the energy. Lucky for Byrrah, it looked like he had enough energy to spare. I followed up the slash with a hard kick to his chest, and let him fall to the floor. Byrrah was of course annoyingly resilient, and hopped to his feet just as soon as he hit the deck. I let him come at me, casually avoided the slashes and thrusts of his trident, before finally punching him in the throat, batting him away with my own spear, and snapping his trident in half. I gotta admit, there was something about breaking the bad guy's stuff that gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. After that, the fight was cake. Chocolate cake hand delivered on a silver platter.

While he was still fast enough that it required some effort to keep ahead of him, ultimately Byrrah couldn't touch me if his life depended on it; which it kinda sorta did. I flew circles around him, whacking him as hard as I could with my spear over and over again, basically playing a game of tennis with him. On the off chance that he was actually able to break the flow, it never ended well for him. For example, after hitting him round and round about 60 times in a glorious medley of graceful violence, Byrrah managed to surprise me, by recovering from careening backwards, upside down, and managed to transform the momentum into what would've been a pretty hard punch to my face. Surprising? Yes. Effective? Nope! Like I said, speed was everything, and this guy did not have enough of it. I drifted to the side of his punch, grabbed his cape again, and wrapped it around his head. I followed that up with a Tiger Knee to the chest, followed by a reverse kick, and brought it all to a nice and clean finish by bringing him back with a spear hook construct, and slamming him to the floor with a whack of my spear to his head. I was certain that I was giving this poor man a headache for the history books, but I couldn't afford to let up. Unfortunately for him, I was just getting into my groove. I started blasting him from all sides with fireballs, really trying to get that bothersome body aura out of the way. I kept up the volley for a good several hundred blasts, before getting more thorough with it. I think it's worth noting that Byrrah was a dizzy, bumbling mess; which worked absolutely splendid in my favor. What ensued next was either my most creative, or most cruel act of violence ever. It started with one punch, just one, but the rest was mayhem. As Byrrah was careening backwards, I created a bus construct, made it slam into his back, and drive him straight into a wall construct I put up just a few feet away from myself. Even in the explosion of golden inferno, I could still find Byrrah, and proceeded to kick him in the side of his jaw, and hammer pound him back to the floor. Before he could made impact, I shot him back up with a fire geyser, and unleashed the wrath of the sea on him. What does that mean? Lots and lotsa sea creature constructs! Dozens of flaming sharks, swordfish, eels, puffer fish, dolphins, and stingrays, all crashing into Byrrah at the speed of bullets. Each time they made impact, they combusted into explosions 3X the force of grenades, and being the absolute master of this that I was, I reshaped the fire into another animal construct, and kept the damage chain going. Heck, as the next minute and a half went by, it wasn't just animal constructs I whipped up. I went commando on Byrrah, throwing in some missile, tank, grenade, and even Gatling gun constructs to help with the cause. Yeah, sometimes even I can admit these powers bring out a side to me i'd rather keep inside. Anyway, after like a bazillion blasts of fire, I finally burned Byrrah out, but not in the way I expected to.

While I was definitely picking up on the fact that his aura was fading fast, I expected it to go out like a dimming candle; not as a July 4th fireworks bang! No, really, that's not hyperbole! From out of nowhere, as Byrrah was getting rained on with solar bullets, with his aura dimming out drastically, there was a sudden explosion of power that blew apart all of my constructs, and sent me blasting through a layer of the ceiling. I have absolutely no idea where that sudden burst of power came from. Maybe it was a hidden ability Byrrah had, but didn't show until now? Maybe it was just a product of fear and desperation? In any case, after I shook off the pain of being launched through a wall of….let's assume it was some kind of stone, I flew back down to the throne room, and found a very, very, very, comforting discovery. While Byrrah was still up and kicking, his power was cut down to a third at most. His blue aura was almost completely dimmed out, and even though he was swimming at me, his fist cocked back for a swing, even a blind person could see how out of it he was. I of course turned my Solar Steroids back on, cranked up my Blazing Sun Form, and rocketed into Byrrah with the mother of all flying kicks, propelling us both into the ground so hard, I created a 3 foot crater in the floor. I tapped into Comet Speed, stood him up, and relentlessly punched him in the across every inch of his body, until his aura completely died out, and I knocked him out with a hard punch dead center of his face. I let myself have a small party in my head, while calling my spear back to me, and directing my attention to Namorita's battle with Krang.

From what I was seeing, she wasn't exactly doing too bad. With Krang's power source cut in half, he was a lot slower, and from the looks of it, a lot weaker. While him and Namorita were absolute beasts at fighting hand to hand, he had to rely a lot more on using his repulsors, to keep her at bay. Granted, he was no slouch, and actually managed to catch her trident by the prongs, and diverting the momentum of her stab away from his already damaged arc reactor. He punted her away with a hard reverse kick, and after gripping the trident right, threw it straight for her stomach. Thankfully, a handy shield of light popped up to protect Namorita from getting impaled. As she did a backflip, recovering next to me, I redesigned the light shield into a hand, and flew her trident back to her.

"Thank you, Sunbird," she said in a tone that I swear was genuine gratitude.

She cracked her neck, twirled her trident around, and stared Krang down. The look of absolute panic on his face was worth top dollar.

"Shall we kick his arrogant ass together?" she asked me.

"Indeed we shall," I said, as we charged him together.

At this point, Krang absolutely lost his mind. He opened fire on the two of us in a completely desperate volley of missiles.

"Attack him from the bottom!" Namorita thought to me, as we dodged the missiles. "Mimic my movements, and cut him off his maneuverability!"

A small part of me wanted to scream at her for giving me orders while I was trying my hardest not to get hit with rockets, but after I was safely out of harm, and saw what she was doing, I got her drift. She was either swimming, or flying, she had wings on her ankles, at Krang from up high in a downwards curve. If I did the same thing, it would cut off Krang's linear mobility, as he was almost backed up against a wall. Plus, we were getting along a lot better now; I didn't wanna endanger that. I did as she said, and was about to get a good whack in on Krang, but at the last second, he blasted about 20 feet straight forward, avoiding us completely. I turned around, and saw his hands raised for a repulsor blast.

"NO!" I shouted, as I decked him to the floor with a Sun Bolt.

He got up quickly, but it was only to get slashed in the chest, and kicked in the side of his head. Yeah, despite the small tussle I had with his partner, Krang was still past due for a beat down. I slashed him a good three times across the chest, but was blocked on the last attempt. He quickly jabbed me in my face, and gave me hard front kick to the chest. Yup. Definitely not as strong as he used to be. If that were ten minutes ago, i'd be seeing stars. As was such, I still stammered backwards, but Namorita came to my rescue before anything got out of hand. Heck, she moved so fast, I barely had time to comprehend what she was doing. I hate how I have to actually try to make myself perceive things faster, Jason and Grant don't have it easy! Anyway, she darted past us, and came around in a U turn so fast, even I couldn't mistake what she was trying to do. I ducked and punched Krang as hard as I could in the stomach, while at the same time, Namorita slammed into his back at probably 90 mph. Krang made that awkward noise of pain that I loved so much, and I gave him an uppercut to the jaw, while Namorita stabbed him in the back of the knee. His aura was still up, so he wasn't critically hurt, but he still at least felt the force of the blow, because his leg completely gave out on him.

"Circle him!" Namorita thought to me. "Attack hard, fast, and keep moving!"

Ok, Delta Speed Thrasher, but with only two people; simple, got it. A small part of me wanted to snap at her for suggesting that first botched up plan, but if I was gonna snap at her, i'd have to acknowledge the many, many plans me and my team made on the fly, only to mess up spectacularly. Besides, as far as plans went, this one worked out pretty well. There was really no rhyme or reason to where me or Namorita struck, just for it to make Krang hurt as much as possible. Legs. Chest. Face. Back. Everything was fair game, and boy did we cash in! For the next two minutes we beat down on Krang so hard, I almost felt sorry for him. Even more surprising, was how well me and Namorita worked together. We weren't flawless, but i'd give us an at least 7.5/10. When I attacked Krang's chest and stomach, she was usually attacking the back or the head. We took turns kicking his head, actually managing to crack his stupid helmet open, and don't get me started on his kneecaps and sides. While it was very clear that my burning spear was really the only thing that was bringing Krang's power down, Namorita provided the extra force necessary to keep Krang from effectively using his repulsors. I'll admit that he pulled the rug out from under us one time though. He caught my spear, which was going for a slash to his helmet, and kicked me away, while simultaneously jumping into a reverse kick to Namorita's chest, followed by a repulsor blast that floored her hard. He made a move to swim after her, but I launched two spear hook constructs into his back, and pulled him down; his body crashing five feet away from me. As he got to his knees, I created a Sunspot under him, and cranked the gravity up three times. Somehow, as I flew towards him, he found the strength to move one of his arms up, and shot a repulsor blast at me. I dodged it, grabbed his arm, and after quickly summoning one of my throwing knives, and charging it with some fire, I stuck it straight in his repulsor, and let it detonate. While i'm not sure how much of his actual hand felt that, his gauntlet was still very much intact, the repulsor was fried; he'd have to use his left hand now. I didn't have time to gloat about it though, as I just barely had enough time to bend under a Unibeam blast, that actually almost ended up pelting Llyra! Seriously, it was just a foot away from hitting the throne, and if Llyra was aware that she almost got blasted with enough force to total a garbage truck, she didn't let on. Heck, now that I think of it, she wasn't moving at all, just muttering whatever, as magic runes and stuff floated around her. Anyway, the quick exchange between Krang and I was enough time for Namorita to get back in the fight, who made her presence known, by whacking Krang in the side of his head with her trident.

We continued for another 30 seconds of clean, fun, Krang beating, actually managing to get his aura down to a barely flickering state…..before Byrrah came back to ruin the fun. No, you did not read that wrong, Byrrah, the guy I know I knocked out good enough for an at least 2 hour period, was back at it again! He tackled Namorita to the floor, and punched at her furiously. That wasn't the worst of it, Namorita was strong enough to where she could handle herself against a depowered Byrrah….but that's the thing….Byrrah was repowering!

I didn't see much of it. Krang smacked me sideways with a backhand, and opened fire on me with a desperate, but way stronger than normal, Unibeam blast. I managed to raise a barrier around myself, but that wasn't really a victory in the grand scheme of things. I knew it was definitely Llyra who was repowering Byrrah. Don't know how she was doing it, but that's magic for ya. For some reason, it was working from the ground up. Yeah, I don't get it either, but Byrrah had glowing thighs that were rising to his chest. Me and Namorita couldn't keep this up forever; the longer we fought, the more Atlanteans were dying in the battlefield. I had to take a piece off the board….permanently. I summoned one of my throwing knives, and charged it with a handful of fire.

"God, forgive me," I prayed. "I have to end this."

I dropped my barrier, while at the same time, moving out of the way of Krang's Unibeam, and flew as fast as I could into his gut. While I propelled him into the wall, I flicked my throwing knife through my right hand, took a quick half sec to gauge the target, and threw the knife at Byrrah's head. I immediately tried to justify my actions in my head. For starters, Byrrah was setting up to kill Namorita. He had somehow grabbed her trident, and was about to bring it down into her neck. Also, like I said, I had to end this. Still, I didn't have the stomach to watch the fruits of my labor, and quickly turned away. I heard a stomach churning SHILK! sound, followed my the muffled THOOM!, that was Byrrah's head turning into chunks.

Even though it all happened in the span of a few seconds, the amount of guilt and revulsion I felt, made it seem like it was forever. The piranhaoids were almost like rapid dogs, so while I didn't enjoy killing them, I could at least not lose any sleep over it. Byrrah on the other hand was a person, a life that I had personally snuffed out. Granted, we exchanged no words between each other, and he was no better than his buddy, but he was still a person. I had tried to be cool with the fact that killing would be a thing I would have to do as a part of Delta Force, but up until now, I was never in a position that involved killing actual people. Now that I had, I would never be able to distance that away from myself. No matter how many justifiable reasons you could throw at me, it would never change the fact that I had killed a person. I was not okay with that.

Krang reacted in a totally unpredicted way; or unpredicted for me at least. He shouted "NOOOOO!", and I felt a shocking amount of genuine grief being expressed. I never even thought of it, what with his delusions of grandeur, and being a total jerk face, but Krang actually cared about Byrrah. I didn't think it was possible for him to care about anything other than his own self interest, which made me feel all the more awful for Byrrah's death. Forget the mission, I had assumed Krang was a monster that was incapable of feeling anything, that he was just another sociopath who could care less about anything that wasn't beneficial to his own self interests. In doing so, I had hurt him more than a weapon ever could.

I felt him grab my hair, yank it up, and punch me so hard in the face, I was knocked back a good 20 feet. If it wasn't for my Sun Form providing barely enough protection, my face would've been shattered.

"YOU BITCH!" Krang roared at me, as he released what was unquestionably the most powerful Unibeam blast he every shot.

In a different context, this might've been justified. I had killed his….friend I guess? But like I said, Krang had absolutely no moral high ground in this situation. He was still advocating mass murder, so that he could exact even bigger mass murder. Plus, and I know this is vain, but he grabbed and pulled my hair! There is only one instance in which i'd ever be ok with hair pulling, and this was so...not...it! All of my inner turmoil, anger, grief, indignation, lingering desire for revenge, all of it exploded to the surface like a powder keg going off. I pulled out my Sun Shields, the gadget that enhanced my blasts, and after a genuine roar of being pissed off, and so absolutely done with this, I unleashed an emotionally charged blast strong enough to level a battleship. The great thing about my powers were that, especially when I wanted them to be, they were both light and heat based, meaning that Krang's Unibeam was about as threatening as a sleeping kitten. Our blasts collided for a total of three seconds, before mine's steamrolled over his, and bulldozed him through several walls.

"Stop Llyra!" I thought to Namorita, who I hoped wasn't too traumatized that she had someone killed horribly directly on top of her. "I'll be back!"

I didn't wait to hear her reply, and zoomed after Krang.

I found him seven walls later, his body aura still functional, but only just. He was up, but I didn't give him the chance to swing. I went into Comet Speed, turned on my Blazing Sun Form, and for the next few seconds, punched, and kicked him hundreds of times over, until his aura was completely spent. I could've easily knocked him out, but I was in a really dark place emotionally, and still wanted him to suffer for being absolutely awful. I did something that was….well, f*(#^% up; no other way to put it.

I imagined a ball of light in his stomach. Because of his previously functioning aura, I doubt I could've had this much influence beforehand, and to be honest, i've never really tried to do this sort of thing. Sure enough, I felt the small sphere inside of him, and what went around was about to come around hard. I willed the light to spread to every part of his body, creating a sort of map to sense his important organs, arteries and veins. After a half sec to get acquainted to his anatomy, I willed the light to harden, and burst of of Krang's body, as spikes!

Yup, I impaled Krang at least two dozen times from the inside out. Like I said, I didn't target any vital organs, but arms, hands, feet, certain parts of the legs and torso, those were all fair game. To say that Krang roared in pain is not even half of the picture; there are certain ways people scream that you can never comprehend unless you've heard them in person, and Krang's outright wail of torment was among that number. He drifted to the ground, and I made the spikes disappear. A big part of me wanted to leave Krang the way he was, but in the state he was in, he'd probably bleed out. Instead, I sang "Heart Attack" by Demi Lovato, and healed him just enough to where he wasn't in any danger of dying, but not nearly well enough to where he could even move a muscle. He looked at me with a mix of pure rage, and savage grief, and even I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

"I've been thinking about what you said, Krang," I said, kneeling next to him. "And yes, you're right. Atlantis even under the best of circumstances is not the ideal race of co-existence, but they can be better, they have a hope of improving. Furthermore, they deserve that chance to improve, Namor deserves that chance, because at the very least, I know they have the potential for a better future."

Krang didn't respond; probably didn't see the point of it, now that he was beaten. I pulled out the necklace I took from Janus, and Krang's eyes widened.

"Recognize it?" I asked him, as I unfastened the arrow. "I was gonna kill you with it, use it as some form of poetic justice. Then again, that seems to have already been done, and i've had more than enough killing for one lifetime."

I ruthlessly jammed the arrow into his palm, and punched him out before he could scream. What? I said I wouldn't kill him. I didn't.

The next second, a huge explosion of something erupted in the throne room.

"SUNBIRD!" Namorita roared in my head. "I NEED SOME ASSISTANCE!"

I sighed. Gotta do everything myself, huh?

"On my way!" I thought back to her.

I was expecting something alarming, but manageable. Something that was slightly beyond Namorita's power to deal with, but right up my alley. I did not expect a freaking black hole covering the entire throne room. No, really, the entire room was drowning in some sort of liquidy, shadowy flame! As I flew through it, every nerve of my body quivered in a sudden coldness. Seeing as I don't get cold anymore, that said something. The flames seemed sentient, aggressive, pure evil. I heard screams, roars, wails, growls, all of which were gonna add to the nightmares i'd end up having later on. I fully expected the shadows to eat me alive, to tear right into my soul and painfully consume me…..yet they didn't. Oh, they wanted to! While they didn't explicitly say so, it felt like a group of lions were circling me from all sides, chomping at the bit to eat me alive. On a curiousity hunch, I looked at my arms, and was surprised to find that I was in my Blazing Sun Form. Usually I have to make a conscious decision to tap into that, but now it was automatic. In any case, I was grateful, because the shadows stayed away from me like I was the plague.

I looked around for Namorita, this is where being in an ungodly huge throne room really bites, but only saw two things in this sea of darkness. The first was some kind of blue/green cocoon that kept fading between the black haze. The other was a golden bonfire that was my everlasting fire spear. I made my spear fly back to me, flew over to Namorita, and quickly raised a barrier over us. She dropped her barrier, and collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath. Whatever she was did, it drained the heck out of her.

"You had one job!" I shouted at her. "One job!"

"S-shut…..up!" she gasped at me. "J-just….finish...this!"

Poor woman was so out of it. Guess it was up to me. Just little Sunbird, on her own, against a wall of darkness thick enough to devour a mall. Huh…...good thing I had my spear!

All that fire I had built up in my spear, I knew I was saving it for something. While I couldn't exactly use Heaven's Wrath, there was nothing to aim at, I could still use it in a different way. I slammed my spear into the floor, and willed all of the fire around it to explode outside of the barrier, and OH MY GOD!

I remember a few years ago when me and my parents went over to my uncle Jeffrey's place in the country for a July 4th cookout. That night, uncle Jeffrey had a barn full of fireworks ready, and we were gonna have an awesome time setting them off. Unfortunately, due to a faulty lighting system in the barn, a fuse lit a bit too early, and a few seconds later, he was running like heck, yelling a stream of cuss words so bad, my mom actually covered my ears. The barn quite literally exploded in an epic fireworks display. A rainbow of explosions, firecrackers, whizzing rockets, etc., leveled the place, but it was still so much fun to watch! I remember yelling, laughing, and jumping, while my uncle and Dad cussed and fussed at each other! What I was doing now, was at least 10X that. Sure it was only as a golden blaze, but the quick change from darkness to light was so sudden, i'm pretty sure even God was jealous.

Seeing it in action, was literally like night and day fighting one another. My fire slowly repelled the seemingly endless darkness, but the rolling blackness fought back, mixing and clashing with it; even taking the shapes of various mythological monsters. Again, my nightmares would be legendary! I managed to fight the darkness tooth n' nail, until I managed to get a solid grip on the entire first half of the room. I kept the wall of fire constantly clashing against the darkness, until I found the opportunity to turn it into the mother of all constructs. I imagined the fire taking the shape of a giant bird, a Pidgeot to be precise, the size and width a battleship; like I said, this was a really, really big throne room! I willed my Sunbird construct, like I was gonna name it anything else, to flap it wings in big powerful strokes, spreading enough fire to melt an airport. For the most part, this was working. The darkness was getting slowly getting pushed back, but it wasn't enough. It was like trying to push back overflowing water with my feet, the water was technically receding, but without a towel to soak it up, it would come back around.

I struggled with the darkness for another good minute, using, sustaining, and expending massive amounts of solar energy. Yet, this darkness refused to give in; whatever it's weakness was, raw light and heat was not it. It seemed like the best I could hope for, was a stalemate, but in the span of another half minute, the darkness started to push back a lot more. More than that, I could hear it wailing. Not in rage, and anger though, but pain; somehow, I was doing something that was hurting it. I frantically started thinking of what the silver bullet was, what it could be. What was I adding to the fire that made it the bane of the existence of this darkness? About ten seconds later, I finally got it, and the answer was so simple, I couldn't believe I didn't think of it sooner!

Under my breath, but with all of my involuntary effort, I was humming the Pokemon Theme. When I hum, sing, whatever, I can pour certain emotions into them, and make them resonate through an environment, so long as it's of living organisms. This darkness was alive, and it fed on hate, anger, and all that other bad stuff. I was humming a song of comfort, of courage, the promise that tomorrow would better. In other words, to beat this darkness, all I had to do was kill it with kindness!

"Hang tight!" I thought to Namorita. "I know how to beat this!"

I went through the barrier, but kept it up for Namorita. I then flew directly into my Sunbird construct, and after giving it new, more intense fire, I fanned the flames out, and at the top of my lungs, sang "Dare You" by Hardwell. God, I loved that song! I remember coming across it last year as, I was building a playlist on YouTube to do my English paper to. While scrolling and listening through an avalanche of theme songs, Disney songs, classic songs, instrumentals, and EDM's, I finally happened on that song. On a side note, I probably spent at least two hours not actually getting any work done, which might've been a problem if I wasn't already working on it a week in advance. Listening to the song made me light up; literally, it was only a week after I got my powers, and I was still learning where the on/off switch was. Every time the song played happiness, joy, and a love of being myself, swelled inside of me. I felt like I could lift planets, leap to the moon, and break through any obstacle put in my path! You better believe I put every ounce of that raw positive energy into every note I sang, made it resonate through every blast of flame, and give the biggest middle finger to the darkness I could. Heck, the change wasn't slow, or gradual, but immediate and unstoppable! In five seconds, the darkness was pushed back and was condensing to the throne. I pushed harder, willing my flames to coral the darkness, and force it to a singular spot, before bringing out the big finisher. I took back all of the flames that were encompassing the throne room, swirled it around myself, and shot it back out in a massive energy blast, that had a flaming screeching bird head at the tip off it. The blast obliterated the small glob of shadow, leaving only Llyra left. I wasted no time, and flew after her, a fist ready for her face. At the last second though, she raised a small portion of the darkness again, and shaped it into some kind of magic shield; I know it was magic because it was three circles inside of each other, with runes and symbols that would probably give Hermione Granger a brain freeze. One punch rattled the shield's foundation, and the following one smashed it completely, albeit in a big inky explosion. By the time I had recovered, Llyra was gone. I looked around to make sure she wasn't behind me or anything, villains are notorious for behind your back strikes. Nope, she turned turned tail and swam.

I flew over to Namorita, and sang a few notes over her, giving her back all the energy she had used up. As I sang, I noticed something rather troubling. While it may not have seemed like it, pre Sunbird/darkness fight, the water was littered in bodies, and limbs, with enough blood to put a school of sharks into a frenzy. Afterwards, all the bodies and blood were gone, like somebody scrubbed the place clean. Whether or not I cremated them, or if they were absorbed by the darkness, that was up for debate. I just found it a bit off putting that so much death and carnage could be swept under the rug so quickly.

Anyway, after I gave Namorita all the energies, she got up, gave me a quick thank you, and rushed to the throne.

"So what happens now?" I asked her.

"I have to divert the sea life to our side," she responded, conjuring green runes, and glyphs that circled around her. "Attuma has been leaning on his sea monsters, and piranhaoids to win him the day. While I can't control all of them, I can at least nudge most of the sharks, octopi, eels, etc., to fight for us. I'll need full concentration, and your protection."

"Why?!" I asked her. "We won here! I need to help my team!"

"No! They have a job to do, yours is not done yet. Please, I can't defend myself, and turn the tide of the battle at the same time. I can't be sure if more enemies won't attack. I need your help, Sunbird."

Dang it! Sometimes I hate being nice!

"Fine," I said. "Alright, i'll stay."

"Thank you," Namorita responded. "Don't worry, if the brown haired one is any indication, your friends are doing just fine."

I smiled, and turned to the face the throne room doors. If anything WAS coming, it was not getting past me.