"wake…"

"up…!"

A weight considerable… but comforting. Nostalgic of that hand-me-down tomb, but cold. So cold. Like this could be anything but a more actualized tomb. Metal pressing. The suit drained of its power, his body drained of its song. So much that not even his drift into unconscious rest brought back his strength. But this was still a better outcome than the alternative. If this Resent was really tied to him, a part of him, then all Seth had to do was stay like this. And he could never hurt anyone… ever… aga-

'grrrr'

"wake…! up…!"

It was still trying to worm its way in, draw him out of the martyring hold he held. That dark pit locked up and squeezed of all its contents. But all of this was his power, his body, no one else's! No one else's tool for their own ends!

"wake up!"

No one else's misguided target!

"Wake up!!"

No one else's damnit!!

'This is my body damnit-'

"WAKE UP!!!"

The void of subconscious thought shattered, the outside world flooding in against his will as he was forced back to consciousness through malicious alarm. Back to the crater he knelt in, full of dusted road and drained matter. Back to the main street he and Resent had fought over, and turned to sun scorched melt. Back to…

To the world staring down on him with judgment claustrophobic.

He felt the eyes on him before he could even open his own, too many to discern, too much hate and retribution to sift through. Like his nightmares had still refused to abate, but had found new actors turned physical. But… but he knew one glare out of the countless, one that resolved before all others could twist into those laceridic glares of his own people. One of concern, of broken guilt, and of scorned hope unmistakable.

Despite the weight pressing down with the condemnation of a god, he lifted his head up as the world returned through the suit's darkened eye slits. Lifting it to see Aegis stood ready for a battle she couldn't fight, flanked torrential by righteous malice, surrounded by so many heroes all prepared to render that judgment in full. The League had caught up with him, found him at last and at his weakest. And were dead set on ending this one crisis before it rivaled another. Dead set on completing the cycle their own way, and damning Seth to his fate.

"Get it yet! They've come to kill you!"

Like a ghost and a parasite mixed into one, Resent bore down on Seth's wakened mind, still visible opposite him but gaunted by the sacrificial drain. Burning glare still just as malicious as ever coming from a near skeletal frame.

"So. Is this what you wanted? To doom us both? To die pitiful and weak?"

Its voice scraped at his mind, but its claws were worn to nubs, burn reduced to an acrid tinge, and there were no more holes to worm into. But it still filled his ears and blotted out the yells and jeers that he felt from the army come to end it all.

"You think that will be my end as well?"

'hgrr'

"I survived you before, remember. That bitch with the ridiculous sword put a stop to us, but you were the only one that felt that pain. I will survive this just like before. They will tear you to ribbons, burn you alive, and crush the ashes to the dust you fear you'll leave behind."

He pulled in as close as the mental block could let him.

"But I… will… survive!"

A boastful draw back pulled him out of his focus.

"I mean, you can't kill what was never allowed to live in the…!"

His voice faded out, focus dimming him to a red blur against a blotched landscape. His worn down mind too tired to keep giving a fuck. Maybe it was better to just give in and let it happen. Let them slice and burn and… and turn him to dust like everyone else. He'd done too much, couldn't keep what he was back. Those nightmares may well have been true. So going out like his mom seemed better than risking falling again. Adding more guilt. More weight that could crush everything flat.

But… but something caught him. Caught his tired giving in, like those glares had found an in to his conscious mind. But… more. Feeling coming through, words. Speaker's words? That message. Etched into the inside of his helmet, just in his sight as he stared ahead. Replaying. Skipping. And… And glowing red with Resent's flaring boastful expenditure.

He still had power enough to throw around or… Or it was always leaking. The whisper against the pull of that degraded abyss. Not directed, just uncontrolled by the gravity that held it together. A… thread. One he could follow all the way to its hollowed center. A thread… he could pull to unravel this living black hole.

Seth's eyes traced the message again and again. Heard it repeat again and again. Felt the care that Speaker put into it, the pride he felt in him for trying to make things right. Felt his belief in him… to find that better path than they did.

He looked down, head heavy against the weight of the world ever pressing down. Against all that he'd done and all that was ahead. He could still feel himself, an armored claw closing slowly with his eyes. The hand beneath run ragged and chaffing. But it was his. Hidden from everything by a cocoon of metal… And fear.

Fear of resentment and hate for what he had. Fear of distrust and paranoia for where he came from. Fear of… a lie he had to live because he couldn't even trust himself. Could accept himself. A lie meant to hide in plain sight. A lie meant to draw attention and disregard it as simple mimicry. A lie tainted by power. A lie used against him without who he really was even considered. A lie he was fucking sick of living under!

One last lie to admit to. One last lie to accept and break. One final grand lie that needed to be made right. So this world could know plain and true who it wanted to end here. That world refocusing, Resent's boasts filtered through as the dregs of utterly ignored condemnations filled his ears.

"…this be the end of your terror!! Of your threats to this city and its people!! Of your blind carnage!! Let this end once and for all, so that peace may regain its reign!!"

Erdwut's monologue wasn't as impactful as he'd hoped, just as much fear stuck in the fury it roused. But it had enough of an effect. Enough get Seth back to his feet. To slam a claw down and pull a leg out from under him. To refute his own penitence still inadequate. A shaky titan of metal and contested terror, a drained well of power beyond their fathoming, a man… finally tired of lying to himself about what the fuck he was.

He was given power by the worst event to ever strike this world. He was party to the true culprits' escape from judgment that they were sourly due. He wanted for nothing but to see them atoned, to have them be given the chance to even be heard before their ultimate castigation. But, standing amid this downpour of hate and vengeance, he knew that none of that mattered anymore.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The Garkah had resigned themselves to their fated punishment. Taken their own path because they knew too well that he would take their blame from them. He was already a pariah too dangerous to be left alone, to be left alive. Because his own resentment was staring him in the face, waiting for him to see a twisted promise made reality.

He rose up from his crater, dust falling free and shaking loose, trailing him face to face with his Resent. A true revival of that titan damning the consequences that waited to bear down.

'So… What if I choose live?'

Despite the grit in his thoughts, the strain in his admission, Resent's glare lit up at his acceptance.

"Heh… You just have to show them what your power truly looks like. But you threw it away didn't you? You doomed us both. Unless…"

'Unless I accept you back in…'

"Yes… Together we can put an end to all of this. All you need is a little bit to work with, to start back up the tone. And I have plenty, but none of the material needed to pull by myself. But us, together, can show this world the error of its defiance of our existence!"

'…So be it.'

Seth relaxed his body, shaky tension and focused blocks released their passive holds on what little was left over.

'Let's finish this…'

"And never be refuted…"

'Ever… Again…"

The air tensed around Seth before his grip returned, claws tightened as electricity ran roughshod returned to his body. Resent was free to blot out his mind and smother his psyche with the thin sheet that remained. But their drained state was short lived, as the storm started up. The power he'd thrown away had fallen far, but he could feel its path still leaking upward. A glassed jag of burned melt. Tracing the path it took, yet feeling the draw of it back to its master. As he felt the true breadth of what it fell into.

But that was too much… no… It was more than enough. Resent spooling himself thin to feed the connection, let Seth run as deep as he had to. The form in front of him flaring, gaunt frame turning nearly skeletal. The power from below latched and called back to its altered state, crashed into with the resonance that all his power held. And pulled with everything it rang. The air about him shifting in kind. Twisting, buzzing, swirling drained dust to follow the siphon in its spiral back up. As the first bolts raked return from that dynamo overflowing.

The heroes watched, ready for when Seth chose his moment to strike, ready for when the order to put down this terror was shouted. But as the air followed his call and flashed to plasma, as he powered back up to face them, they made no moves to counter. Erdwut's locking glare keeping them at bay. Because a true fight was necessary for this to end. Putting him down was not enough, they had to defeat him in combat. They had to show that they were worthy of protecting people after letting this metal monstrosity run free.

Aegis could feel his will smother every rational idea before it could be thought, he would entertain no other course of action. This had to happen, they had to fight this battle even if it cost them. Her stance shifting regardless, this power up felt different to the others. The pull more directed and the source deeper than just a local power grid. She was going to have to contain it, but then again… that was the only thing she was even brought here to do.

The air around him churned faster and faster, flashes of ionization striking the suit with ferocity incessant, the weight of it ebbing away with each bright intake. He could feel the surface like it was his skin, the energy passing through it like the blood in his veins. His feelings mixing with Resent's, the tainted menace burrowing deep in and making this suit his and his alone. The blotting sheet that encroached over Seth's mind thickened, darkening and returning to that swallowing abyss. But even as his world faded to black at the edges, the red glare of that message, that reminder of who he was and who he wanted to be, denied that darkness its permanent hold. And Resent didn't care in the slightest.

The storm swirling around them suddenly burst into full tilt. The dust churning into a devil raked by lightning from all sides. His own dynamo of colossal proportions that recoiled those hateful glares at last. The wind, forced to swirl around, buffeting them back. But the rising field of orange energy relieving the assault. Aegis forming her barrier at last, as the drain looked to only increase further. Seth's eyes shut before he could see it, before it could kill what needed to rise, as the power coming in surged to its peak.

He could feel the dust sandblast the outer layers, could feel his body numb away. He could feel the gaunt fame of Resent fill back in and his abyss take its hold over him. He felt it pass through, mix with his mind, take control of his body, like every time it had done before. He felt its psyche overlap his own, his mind fading as the world faded with it, as all that was left was his right eye focused on the one spot left in that totaling void. As his eyes reopen absent his will, illuminating through the whirling debris that clouded their ground. One blue and dimmed, plasma building and shifting away. The other red and burning, pure siphon seeking to feed upon everything in this world. Both illuminating the storm that was theirs.

But those eyes shut back closed and left their silhouette to only be lit by the raking bolts tearing the air around them. And those clawed hands tightened against that outward will. Resent was left in the lurch as its control now waned, as its power was siphoned away! Form thinning again without it knowing… That he was the one being overpowered! The suit lurched in kind, still trying to exert its will but failing fast. It struggled, just as Seth had struggled for control, but that swallowing abyss, that tacit realm of empty void cracked as its depth could no longer be held.

"You… YOU BASTARD!!!"

The suit rocked as the struggle compounded, as Seth reasserted that all of this was his and his alone! As that thread was taken and his tone rang through it!

"You think you can consume me!?!"

Resent's form darkened, as the suit's edges began to glow against the occluding tempest.

"You think you can just make me go AWAY!?!"

That glow crawled up the plates, the joints, the servos and rotators and every gap and edge this heap of cursed metal had across its tainted surface.

"I won't go quiet like that insufferable oaf!!!"

The glow stretching through the neck and up the helmet, outlining the jagged maw straining and wanting.

"I refuse!!! I won't let you forget all the pain you left me with!!!"

The eyes reopened, both burning with that glow… that overwhelming plasma blue glow.

"I WON'T LET YOU-"

'WHO THE HELL SAID I WOULD LET YOU GO!!!!'

The tempest raging around their chosen ground blasted apart! As the air, the dust, everything of this material world ran in abject fear! As that maw burst open!! As the suit could no longer hold back the storm roaring inside! The glow crescendoed into a pure torrential outpour. Like every bit of power Seth had taken in was being pushed back out, energy doubled in its scale and set on a single guiding purpose.

To burn away this resentment and be free once and for all!!

The heroes were blasted into recoil, the air slamming them through the shield put up to protect them. Aegis' shield could keep back the worst of it, but this was another level. This siphoning storm flaring away as they shielded their eyes, as that maw blared its fury for all to hear! For all to see! Like staring into the mouth of an active reactor dead set on melting down! Dead set on destroying itself and ending this façade! Cracks crossing plates and exuding more torrential glare only cementing this outcome, and forcing Aegis to double her shield just to keep it contained.

The ground shook, the air shook, everything taken hold of a shaken! As the power flowed in and roar out! Pressing being and suit to their very limits. Resent little more than a true skeleton hanging on for its own existence, washed out with the light tearing the suit apart! More cracks, more power, more defiance of this accursed cocoon! This wasted effort! This lost attempt at protecting everyone else from the truth of what Seth really was! Of what he had always been!! Of what his truth should have always been!! He was more than this tainted suit! He was more than this corrupted memory!! More than this avatar of guilt and suffering! He was himself and nothing else!! No matter what anyone else said!! No matter what they could ever say!! And no matter what-

'I AM WHAT I CHOOSE TO BE!!!!'

The light at last flaring its last, tore the world away in its luminosity! The suit, the ground, the ionized air, all of it shattering as that light burned away! Plates shattered, joints split and splayed, servos shot like bullets, every piece becoming shrapnel of what was once a shining carapace! The ducking and wincing heroes returned their flashed eyes only to flinch as that heavy shrapnel slammed the shield before them. Resounding waves of rebuffing energy echo falling down the field. Pieces big enough to take heads off crashing away and scattering about this crater of unmaking. Aegis holding her stance as a gauntlet piece shattered apart in her face and fell to the dusty ground. A cacophonous, heavy shower of destroyed metal and outward denial.

The last impact striking the ground parabolic before Erdwut. The upper faceplate, eye slits and jagged broken teeth. The visage that had terrified his city, killed his people, reminded them of their long dealt with nightmares. Now reduced to a glowing burned up husk fallen into the dust. The eyes still glowing the last of his burn, that menace star going out at last. But, looking back up from that dead broken terror, the Elite were still faced with that very same visage.

A silhouette still crowned by horns, coated in shock and countered by tail swaying, falling back down from what could only be seen as metamorphic recoil. Still stood there. Still the same form as the metal scattered to the winds. Those eyes opening once again, both a burning blue to meeting them through the clouds kicked and billowing. Scraping away at their buried nightmares. Because it was one thing to fear what could be true. What shouldn't be possible.

But what now stayed its burned place before them.

Can't be the truth!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.