"HAAAA!"

FLASSSH!

"Azarath metrion ZINTHOS!"

FWOOOSH!

Pink energy mashes against black shielding in the center of the oil platform.

The two color streams burst.

Jinx lands from an acrobatic flip.

I plant on the ground from a levitating dive.

"Nnngh!" Jinx angles her pink head forward and charges at me.

Robe billowing, I sprint straight at her.

She summons a blade of hex.

I producea sphere of black energy.

"HAAAAA!" she flings her pink serration straight at me.

I snarland throw forward the spherical shield. "Nnngh!"

CLASSSH!

We collide on the upper tier of the oil platform.

Pipes hiss and spurt flame all around us.

We groan and struggle and fight to force the opposite opponent to the ground.

"Nnnngh….!"

"Mmmmnnghh!"

"I didn't th-think the Titans would be this reckless!" Jinx hisses. "Chasing H.A.E.Y.P. all the way here with your superpowers is just asking for trouble! This oil platform is practically a powder keg!"

"Only because Gizmo charged the entire place with C4 explosives!" I grunt at her. "Trying to make a mark in the oil industry?"

"If you're gonna fight us….I hope you're prepared to die as well!" Jinx struggles to say.

I push my shield against hers: "Death is trivial….if the need for justice is greater!"

"I-I never knew Raven of the Titans was so idealistic!"

"Nnngh…h-hardly! Idealism is a redundant way to live one's life! Existence is a deterministic prison that we are barely the active dictators of!"

"Nrghh….a-assuming you were willing to toss two and a half thousand years of Platonic philosophy!"

"Hardly! Like Plato…nghh…I-I agree that we are born with all the potential we'll ever need. But that manifests itself in more than just a rational spectrum, but also something akin to a spiritual autonomy!"

"What's the p-point of autonomy anyways?" Jinx hisses. "If life is…nngh…nothing but a grand hallucination, then what we individually accomplish matters only as far as we live up to our universal perception!"

"Wh-What are you talking about? Mmmngh…didn't John Locke lay out the predominating standard of empiricist rationality? The mind is a mostly passive, personal environment while the world is only a PARTIAL mental construct…hence giving way to the relative representation of what we call 'knowledge'!"

"But Berkeley mopped the floor with Locke, girl!" Jinx struggles to say. "The world is exactly as we perceive it, for the m-mind is wholly active in our constant reinterpretation of the world! N-Nobody can trust her senses perfectly, wh-which is why color and sound and taste are just as illusionary as unicorns wh-when we don't see them! And yet e-everything I just m-mentioned could be conjured up in a st-state of psychosis when—nnghh—the binds the keep our mentalities enslaved to grand narratives are finally torn loose and tossed into oblivion!"

"I never thought that you were-nnnghh!—an avid fan of such radical subjectivity! I can deign to some aspects of idealism, but Berkeley is as insane as his ultimate teachings are! If there is indeed any s-significance t-to be found in a concrete world where active mental constructs and physical circumstance coincide to produce for us the sensation of reality, then one can only find answers in s-separating her mind from the imprisoning flesh domain of the body through careful meditation and purposeful deconstruction of the linguistic and hallucinogenic tools of homo sapien rationality that hold us down!"

"That sounds kinda mystic. Are you into Zen at all?"

"Yes. I meditate daily."

"Cool. So do I…..with Hello Kitty fragrance candles."

"You don't say."

"Yup………….."

"……………….."

"………………."

"……………..you know….if you believe in Berkeley so much, then the color pink for me could just as easily be 'blue' for you…."

"HEY!" Jinx snaps out of it and frowns at me. "I happen to LOVE pink!"

FLASH!

She shoves me back.

I slide across the platform and lift up three levitating pylons of steel to toss at her.

"Nnnnnghhh!" she summons a huge ball of energy.

I grit my teeth and flick my wrist, tossing the steel beams at her. "Azarath Metrion ZINTHOS!"

"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

FLAAAAAAAAASH!