1st January 2023

The situation was bad, real bad.

He felt a boulder whizz past his head as he dodged and weaved through the ruthless flood of rocks she threw at him. It hadn't even been 5 seconds after he gave her his name that she'd started tossing car-sized balls of Earth at his general direction. His dodging was neither graceful nor was it particularly pleasing to look at. He looked like a flailing ragdoll getting shook by a spoiled child who'd been told "no." But it was working... Somehow. That he was still alive and hadn't been hit at all was pure luck. But he was willing to bet she was most likely holding back on him.

Dodging individual boulders was a challenge in and of itself, but with a supe as powerful as her? She could've drowned him in rocks without breaking a sweat. There's a million different ways she could have killed him by now, and for some reason she hadn't chosen any of them. Which led Hughie to only one conclusion: she was toying with him. Like a predator poking and prodding at its prey, just to see what it would do when it knows death is inevitable. Judging from the amount of skill she had over her powers, she had a lot of experience using them. How many people did she kill trying to hone her skills?

"Do you do anything other than dodging, Hughie?" She drawled as she summoned boulder after boulder from the ground and tossed them at him half-hazardly. "I was at least expecting some cool energy powers. Those glowing blue eyes aren't just for show, are they?"

He grit his teeth in anger, just barely managing to dodge another flying boulder. He felt the wind hitting his face as he increased his speed incrementally, worsening his vision.

She raised her eyebrows, a maniacal ear-to-ear grin stretching across her face. "Ooooh, how fast can you go, twig? Mach one? Two? Because you're gonna need to do better than that!"

The boulders she summoned from out of the ground increased in quantity, causing his stomach to drop at the sheer sight. She cackled at his shocked expression, then snapped her fingers. They shot towards him all at once, like a colossal tidal wall of rock expanding itself before his very eyes. So big it was the only thing he could see. Hughie realised at that moment that he only had one option: going up.

He just barely managed to evade the titanic wave of boulders, desperately climbing higher and higher into the air as more rocks flew by. Most of them weren't cause for worry, but as time passed they began to get closer and closer. Hughie finally decided that moving left and right like a serpent to mess with her aim was the best course of action.

As a car-sized rock whistled past him, he inwardly thanked his intuition. The rocks increased in size for a reason. She was throwing bigger and bigger rocks at him to compensate for her lack of accuracy.

The news and police helicopters, realising they may get caught in the crossfire, moved at even higher altitudes to avoid getting shot down. Hughie wanted them to leave outright. She was holding back now, but once she got serious he doubted being in the skies - no matter how high - was going to help.

Before he could've formulated some kind of strategy, a strange sensation on his leg caught his attention. Hughie looked down and saw a grey, liquid, tentacle-like appendage wrapping itself around his legs. He didn't even have time to comprehend what was happening when the tentacle solidified, locking him in place and preventing him from moving. His eyes wandered down, tracking where the strange coil came from, only to bear witness to an immensely long tendril the size of a Titanoboa connected to the ground. Reaching up into the sky like a snake.

He must've been at least 2000 feet high. And she managed to create a strand of concrete that, on top of being able to liquefy and solidify on a dime, was tall enough to catch him mid-air... While he was flying?

He didn't have the chance to comprehend how much bullshit that was before he felt the tendril pull him down at immense speeds. Hughie's insides churned and his stomach flipped, as if he were in free fall. He screamed and panicked, and decided to finally use the singular offensive power he had: heating things up with the palm of his hands. Disappointingly simple, and very unfit for the current situation. But in the singular month he'd had these powers, this was all he'd learnt besides flight.

His hands began emitting a bright neon blue as he clamped them around the concrete appendage. He maintained a tight grip, melting some of it off and turning it into molten slag. His heat-resistant body stopped him from burning alive as the extremely hot pieces of concrete hit his face. But even as he melted down chunks of the tendril off, it seemed to "regenerate," replenishing the lost concrete with more of itself. Because of course she was able to do that.

He wasn't even a superhero yet, so why was she the first villain he had to fight? Surely he could've started off by smacking down common crooks in seedy back-alleys, like most superheroes?

The ground got closer and closer, his best attempts at escaping proving useless. He observed how fast she was pulling him down, and he surmised that he was probably going to die on impact. But he held onto the grim hope that it would be instant.

Hughie solemnly closed his eyes and braced himself for the inevitable. Even as he was plummeting to his death, he could acknowledge that the wind felt nice. Calming, almost, like a sedative.

A couple of seconds pass...

And he was still alive.

He was still alive?

Hughie felt somebody holding him up bridal-style, stopping the tendril from pulling him down outright. He opened his eyes in trepidation, wondering if the crazy bitch intentionally pulled this stunt just to catch him in her arms. Instead, he's greeted by the most ethereal, jaw-dropping creature he'd ever laid his eyes upon. He'd seen her hundreds of times before, who hadn't?

Starlight.

"Need some help?" She asked with a sly, cheeky grin. She had a beautiful smile.

"Uhm... Uh..." He replied dumbly, his jaw not quite fixed back in place. "Y-yeah?"

She giggled at his dumbstruck expression before pointing her hand towards the tendril's base, a blinding flash of light emerging from the palm of her hand a second later. The bright spark seared into Hughie's retinas, temporarily blinding him.

"Oh shit," she muttered. "Sorry, I probably should've told you to close your eyes before I did that." She chuckled nervously, an apologetic expression etched on her face. As he came to, he looked down below, only to realise that she managed to vaporise the entire thing with one blast.

Realising he was no longer in the clutches of a concrete vice, and instead being held princess-style by a literal goddess, Hughie (not-so-gracefully) scrambled to get out of her arms. Righting himself in the air and putting a few feet between them, refusing to look her in the eye.

"I have a girlfriend," he thought, panicked. "I have a girlfriend, I have a girlfriend, I have a girlfriend, I have a girlfrien-"

"Thanks for the save." he said nonchalantly, or rather, with as much nonchalance as he could manage in his current state. He looked up to see the news and police helicopters still present, and most likely recording the entire thing. He cursed under his breath, realising he was gonna have to explain that to Robin later.

Then something occurred to him.

"Wait, since when did you fly?"

"I-" Starlight opened her mouth to respond, before getting sent flying by a house sized, cylindrical-esque boulder. The giant behemoth just barely missed him by an inch, its sheer size displacing the air around it as it sped by. Hughie looked awestruck as his eyes followed the monolith continuing to rise into the sky, still struggling to process just how close he was to death, and how big that thing was.

It went higher and higher, until a brilliant blast of light erupted from the top of it, cracks formed throughout the mass of rock. Rays of light shooting out from inside the fissures, until a blazing discharge of yellow exploded, shattering the entire thing and darkening the surrounding area, leaving only the illumination of the blast itself for a split second. As if he were watching small-scale nuclear bomb detonate right before his eyes.

Massive shards of rock peppered the flattened remains of Times Square, sending out pieces of shrapnel as they shattered against the ground. Hughie looked back up to the source of the explosion and spotted Starlight, as invincible as ever, staring down at the earthbending villain with her signature glowing eyes. He followed her gaze and noticed a large dome of concrete, riddled with cracks from the onslaught that had just occurred. The dome split in the middle and unravelled, sinking back into the ground and revealing the geokinetic villainess.

"Seems they finally sent the big guns in!" The earthbender shouted in delight. It wasn't a pleasant sound, her loud voice reminded him of those stereotypical whiny witch voices you'd typically hear in kids' shows. "Now how badly do I have to maim you till' they send the rest of The Seven after me?"

Starlight descended lower so the villain could hear her speak. "Trust me, evildoer, the rest of The Seven aren't needed for dealing with small fry like you!"

Hughie could hear the villainess scoff. "You'll see."

Starlight turned to him, an urgent look on her face. "You're gonna need to get out of here and fast. At this point you'll be dead weight."

He nodded solemnly and took off in the opposite direction, hearing the sound of Starlight letting out a battle cry as she flew at the villain full speed. The sound of energy blasts and rocks being shattered mid-air got quieter and quieter as he flew farther away, his beating heart being the only consistent sound in his ears. His adrenaline levels climbed down, and the full weight of the situation dawned on him.

He survived a confrontation with one of the most powerful supervillains to show up in recent memory and lived. But Times Square had been levelled, and potentially hundreds to thousands of people died because of it. That pervading sense of... Powerlessness at the sheer sight...

He suddenly felt a crushing weight overcome him, his body on the verge of collapse. A mixture of mental and physical exhaustion culminating in a desperate need to lie down.

He'll worry about his appearance on national TV later. But right now? Falling asleep in Robin's arms sounded good..